From a Child

The sermon preached by Pastor M. J. Harley, Member of the Society’s General Committee, at the 184th Annual General Meeting.

We refer together to the Scriptures in 2 Timothy 3.15: ‘And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus’.

I was taught at school to write compositions, to write essays, and to write other things as well, and more particularly to write letters. But I did not like writing letters. Regardless of how good a letter you wrote for your exercise, even if it was your best work, if you did not put the date on it the teacher would only give you one out of ten. So to this day if I am writing a letter, particularly one that I want people to keep or that is important, I write the date: day, date, month, year.

Timothy’s knowledge of the Scriptures

The second letter which Paul wrote to Timothy did not have a date on it. It was not the done thing in those days to be so definite as to give a date. So it has been tantalising to people all along the years since to determine when it was written. Some think it was the year AD 58, some in the year 59, some a year or two or four or five later. We know that the Lord Jesus Christ began to minister when He was, in the words of the Gospel according to Luke 3.23, ‘about thirty years of age’, and we know that His ministry lasted for three years. So assuming this second letter from Paul to Timothy was written about AD 63, it was about thirty years after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of the Saviour.

Just thirty years: if you are under thirty years old that would seem a long time. But thirty years old to someone as ancient as myself or anybody over sixty is still very young. If this letter was written in AD 63—about thirty years after the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ—and if Timothy was, say, thirty at the time, he might have been born in the year the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. If he would be a bit older, he might have been a toddler at the time of the Resurrection; or he might have been younger than thirty and thus not born during the Saviour’s time on earth.

Timothy was brought up in a place called Lystra, in the district called Iconium, which was part of Galicia—in what is now part of Turkey. In chapter 3 we note that Timothy had fully known of Paul’s persecutions, his afflictions at Antioch, Iconium and Lystra. Acts 14 speaks of a man in Lystra who was a cripple, who would never have walked. He listened to Paul preaching, and Paul saw that he had faith to be healed, and he was healed in the sight of many. But the people, rather than recognising the true God, thought that Paul and Barnabas were their gods who had come down to them, and rushed to bring garlands to put around their necks. Paul told them that he had come to deliver them from all this sort of nonsense. Not long after that, the people came from Antioch and Iconium, where Paul ministered before, and that very night the people of Lystra threw stones at Paul until they believed him to be dead.

I wonder how old Timothy was at that time. He knew about Paul’s being stoned; he might have learned about it subsequently but perhaps he had been there and heard Paul preach the gospel. Regardless, when Timothy became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ—when he himself put his trust in the Lord Jesus—he knew what the possible score might be: stoning; being chased and hunted down in his own town; possible death.

Paul tells us (1.5) that the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ which was first in Timothy’s grandmother, Lois, and then in his mother, Eunice, was also in Timothy as well. If there are any grandparents here, do pray for your grandchildren and teach them the Scriptures. We do not know how long after grandmother Lois heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus that she entrusted herself to Him. It may have been before or after her daughter Eunice believed; she may have been instrumental in Eunice coming to the Saviour. It might only have been a matter of days; she may have gone home and said, ‘I believe the Lord Jesus Christ fulfils the Scriptures of the Old Testament’. We know that Eunice was a believer when Timothy was a very young infant: the word in our text that says ‘from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures’ means ‘since being an infant’: one still taking milk from the breast. She instructed Timothy in the Scriptures from infancy.

We have an incentive as grandmothers, grandfathers, fathers, and mothers to teach the children the Scriptures. And young and old alike will want to try and learn and master as many of the Scriptures as we can—studying, learning, memorising as we go.

It is interesting that when Paul says that ‘from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures’, neither Paul nor Timothy knew all the Holy Scriptures that we have. Parts of the New Testament were still being written—indeed, Paul himself was writing some of them, including this letter. It is the Old Testament that is being spoken about here by Paul. The equally inspired New Testament, with its explanation of the Old, was yet to be completed.

Learning the Scriptures

I I never knew personally Tom Rees, the evangelist, but I used to listen to him preach. It was said that he could recite the whole of the New Testament in Greek—the original language in which it was written. So much for being a mere evangelist!

Children, young people, adults: how firm is your grip on the Scriptures? I got into trouble once when I was speaking to the undergraduates at a university in London. I said to them that I thought their understanding of the Bible ought to equal the level of their understanding of their own subject of choice at university. And my question to you is: how well do you know the Scriptures? Is your understanding of them as good as of arithmetic and maths, or as good as of English, as good as of Latin or French? As good as of IT? As good as of any other subject? Because these words, these Scriptures, will do far more for you than all those other things put together. Other things may earn you your living, but we are thinking here about everlasting life; we are thinking here about spiritual life.

I did not know the Scriptures from a child, not from infancy. I was not brought under the sound of the Gospel until I was fifteen, almost sixteen, and I was sixteen when I was saved. I regret very much that I did not have the Scriptures in those early days. I am thankful that I was saved when I was, but looking back I think I would have done better if I had known the Bible from those early days. But the Lord has everything in hand.

If you ‘from a child’ have learned the Scriptures, do not throw it all away, because, as Paul writes to Timothy, ‘the holy scriptures…are able to make thee wise unto salvation’. At the time that Timothy received this letter he was a grown man, a minister: perhaps only thirty, but a grown up, an adult minister. So what did Paul mean when he wrote that the scriptures ‘are able to make thee wise unto salvation’? Timothy was already saved, wasn’t he? Of course, he was.

The Scriptures lead us to the Lord Jesus and into knowledge of and a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. But this is just the entrance to years of service in this world, and into life everlasting. Once we are saved, those same Scriptures are going continually, under the instruction of the Spirit of Christ, to show us how to live, where to go, what to do, how to do it. These Scriptures had brought Timothy to a knowledge of salvation and were growing him in salvation.

In various places Paul writes about terrible things on earth: they lived in fearful times. We also live in days that are dangerous: spiritually every temptation will drag us down; if it isn’t alcohol, it is drugs; if it isn’t drugs, it is smoking; if it isn’t smoking, it is blaspheming; if it isn’t blaspheming; it is abandoning the Lord’s Day or breaking other of the Ten Commandments. There are many different attacks upon the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and unless you walk with the Lord Jesus as you read the Scriptures, you will go down under them.

Knowing the Scriptures

The people at the Trinitarian Bible Society love the Holy Scriptures, knowing that the Word of God is able to make people wise unto salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ. As mentioned earlier, the word ‘salvation’ in the Bible is sometimes used, not about our initially being saved, but about being finally changed and redeemed and taken into the presence of the glory of the Lord Jesus and His Father. There we will dwell for evermore where there is no pain, no suffering, no tears, no crying; where everything is perfect, nothing is boring and everything is continually being made new. The Scriptures make us wise unto salvation.

But before I go on, I want to plead with you, whatever age you are: to be sure that you have entered into that initial salvation of which the Scriptures speak. There is a danger: the Lord Jesus Christ said to the Jews of his time, ‘search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me’. But he also said, ‘ye will not come to me, that ye might have life’ (John 5.39-40). The Lord Jesus Himself makes a distinction between knowing the Scriptures, and actually believing that they are His eternal word and coming to Him and being saved. What I am pleading with you is that, whatever our age, we must make it a great, great priority to come to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, to get to know Him.

Now you may think, it would be nice to know the Lord Jesus. But how can we know the Lord Jesus? The answer to that is very simple: we are spirit and God is Spirit and the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ is the Spirit; His Spirit talks to our spirits, our hearts, deep down within us, in our soul. We get to know the Lord Jesus Christ when we come with hearts broken because of our sins, repenting of them and turning from them. In a nutshell: the Lord Jesus came to deal with sin; anything else we think is nice about the Lord Jesus is irrelevant compared with why He came. He came to take away sin: your sin; my sin. If that has not been done in your life, you are not a Christian; you are not Christ’s man, you are not Christ’s woman, you are not Christ’s boy, you are not Christ’s girl.

You do not need me to tell your sins. A minister certainly does not need to hear your confession. You know when you have broken the commandments of the Lord: when you have lied, when you have stolen. Grown-ups: if you committed adultery, if you did not keep the Lord’s Day, you will know. You will know whether there is a cruel streak in you. Children: you will know whether there is within you that taunts other boys and girls. You do not need me to tell you. Whether the Holy Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ convicts you or not, you stand condemned to eternal death by the Living God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are in great danger.

The Word says, ‘God is angry with the wicked every day’ (Psalm 7.11), and we are wicked. But it needn’t stay like that: the same Holy Spirit of God may awake in you a deep loathing of your sin, a deep desire that this sin should be borne by the Saviour and not carried by you; that you should be fundamentally changed. And the delight: the sheer delight of knowing that your sins have been forgiven by the Lord Jesus Christ and that the Father in heaven has forgiven you because Jesus died upon the cross to make an atonement for your sins! You have brought your sins to Him and those sins are cleared from your record and your life itself is changed. It is not, of course, that you will never sin again: there is a fountain of sin that keeps coming. But your sin has been dealt with by the Lord. So the Scriptures teach us that it is not just mere knowledge of the Bible, but knowing the Saviour, the Friend of sinners, the Captain of our salvation. This is the most important thing of all.

We come to the Father by Jesus the Son. The Lord Jesus Christ came to die for sinners. Are you going to remain in your sins and, in that terrible expression that Jesus used, perhaps ‘die in your sins’ (John 8.24)? The person who knows the Lord Jesus Christ and who knows that great weight lifted from his shoulders, who knows that he can come freely and openly into the presence of the Father by His dear and only begotten Son the Lord Jesus Christ, will go on in life and will walk with Him and seek to understand from the Scriptures every single thing about life.

You can walk through life free; you can walk through life knowing that the Lord is on your side; you can walk through life knowing that He is ordering your way, that a convoy of love surrounds you and that He will never let you go. The Lord Jesus said, ‘as the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue in my love’ (John 15.9).

Sharing the Scriptures

So, who do you think will love the Bible best? Surely the answer has to be: those who have been able through the same Scriptures to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, whom He has found and whom He has delivered from their sins. They are the ones who love the Bible best: they are the ones who read it every day and as they read it look to the Lord Jesus for Him to explain it by His Spirit and bring something to their minds to use that day. They love the Lord Jesus and He loves them; they have found freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ and they are really free. They are the ones that know the Bible best.

Now it is, of course, within God’s power to use unbelievers for His purposes; Cyrus the Persian king (2 Chronicles 36.22ff ; Isaiah 44.28, 45.1) is an example in the Bible. He can use an unbeliever to give out Bibles. But the unbeliever is perhaps thinking, ‘I think it will do you good, but it won’t do me any good’. The person who knows the Lord Jesus Christ, who has been loved by Him and forgiven, loves the Scriptures from cover to cover because it is all written about his Saviour and his Friend, the Lord Jesus Christ. They are eager to read it themselves, and they also want everybody else to read it.

It does not matter how young or old you are, if you have found the Saviour and if you have loved the Scriptures then you desire with all your heart that the Scriptures should be made available to every man, woman, boy or girl in the world. And you can today begin to pray that that might happen. Begin to think that this is something that is really your mission in life: to make the Bible available to as many other people as possible, particularly those who have not yet had the advantage that you had out of it.

But that is only the beginning as far as prayer is concerned as well. Somebody has to translate the Bible. We have had our Authorised (King James) Version for more than four hundred years, but there are many countries in the world which are yet to have a Bible in their own language. Therefore you can pray for those who are translating the Bible. You can pray for those countries which have no Bible, or no one to translate the Bible; you can pray not only for the translators, but for the people who read it thoroughly to ensure that it is done properly and well. Many Bible translations are not good enough— they may suffice for the time being, but nine out of ten is not good enough. A translation needs to be as near to the mark of ten out of ten as possible: it needs to be very close to the original language texts.

We want those who love the Scriptures, of whatever age, to pray also for the typesetting and printing of the Bibles— because it is easy to make mistakes in typesetting and printing—and then to pray for the Bibles to be taken to the countries where they are needed. Then you can pray that the Bibles will be distributed in those countries where they are needed.

Thus your job has only just begun. And once the Bibles are translated well and distributed in other countries, you have only just begun to pray. You have had the Bible for a long time—maybe ‘from a child’. But until the Spirit moved your heart that you should come to the Lord Jesus Christ it was just words to you. Or perhaps you did not even read it. When Bibles are being distributed to others, perhaps they will stay underneath a heap of clothes in some home; perhaps they will stay unopened on a shelf. Perhaps the recipients are pleased to have it, but they do not read it. Pray that they would be saved like you have been saved.

But what else can we do?

Recognising the Scriptures

The first challenge then is that the Lord may put it into the hearts of everyone here to pray most earnestly that the Bible will go into all the world: the Word of God among all nations. The TBS is a distinctive Bible Society: we distribute the Authorised Version in English-speaking countries, and in other countries we distribute those translations that are likewise based on the Hebrew Masoretic Text and on the Greek Received Text.

What is that all about? I have not time to go into it all, but I wonder if there are some among you who would be curious enough to delve into the whole matter of why one Bible translation is better than another. If a friend of yours uses a different Bible version from the one that you have, how can you tell him or her that the Authorised Version is better?

Beyond any doubt the Authorised Version is the best translation there has ever been in the English language. Not only that, but in world standings it has been said that this translation is probably the best that has ever been made in any language. So we may have the best Bible there is here in the English language. Why go for a second best?

It is all right to take your minister’s word for it. You take people’s word for all sorts of things, particularly when you are young. But there will come a time when it will be very important for you to understand how we got our Bible and how it was translated. Believing men and women and boys and girls should increasingly be learning about manuscripts and translations.

The Bible was written in Hebrew in the Old Testament and Greek in the New, and copied by hand in early days, and many sought to ensure that the copies were correct and matched the original. But there was a man called Gaius (or Caius),1 living within 180 and 200 years after Christ, who records that he and his catechetical teacher had good and proper copies of the New Testament; but they knew of four other men who not only made mistakes when copying the Scriptures but created mistakes, and then made copies with mistakes. Thus by the end of AD 200 there were copies of the Scriptures being circulated that were false and wrong. Many of them were falsified for doctrinal purposes: people who did not believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was God changed every reference they could find to this doctrine and passed those manuscripts down. In the providence of God it is possible, even at this distance in time, to know good copies from bad ones.

But I am not going to tell you the whole history of how can we can be sure because it is something I want you to delve into for yourself: to know why we use the best Greek and Hebrew texts for the translations into other languages, and to know why the AV is the Bible in English that we like most.

Translating the Scriptures

Maybe the Lord will put it into your heart some day to work for TBS. It might be as a secretary: think of how good it would be to be a secretary who helps with the distribution of the Scriptures. From time to time jobs like that come up at TBS, and other jobs too.

But there are people with a rare gift that TBS needs—and I speak about it because it is just possible that there is someone here who has it—those with the gift of language. I have always wondered at those who, when faced with Italian or French or Portuguese or Spanish, deal with them quite happily; they never confuse the one with the other. To some it is all so simple. But it is not like that to me!

If you have a linguistic gift, the sort of gift which enables you to cope comfortably with multiple languages, and the Lord is putting in your heart to use this gift for Him, go for it! There are lots of languages in the world that need the Scriptures. But if you are going to go for it, you have got to begin with Hebrew and Greek. You need to be able to understand Hebrew and Greek so well that you will not be floundering for the easiest words in these languages. And you must know the receptor language—the language you are translating into.

Now this may well be beyond all of us here, but maybe some here—maybe you— have that flair for language. Perhaps you feel stuck with how to use it: the best you can come up with is being an interpreter at the United Nations, but perhaps you do not want to do that. If the Lord has saved you through the Scriptures, you love the Scriptures and want them to be distributed round the world. And if the Lord has given you that gift of language you can do something that relatively few people can do: you can translate. So give yourself to the Lord who is already your Saviour and pursue it.

The Scriptures learnt from a child can be built on as you grow up. But even if you learnt them for the first time later in life, with the Lord’s help you can make up time. The Scriptures make us ‘perfect, throughly furnished’ (2 Timothy 3.17). That is a good word to consider: furnished. It means prepared, absolutely prepared for something.

Let me tell you something which I do as a preacher: preparation. I was not saved until I was sixteen, but we learnt English in school much earlier—from early childhood—and we were taught all sorts of things about the language. I was not all that keen to learn English and all its parts when I was younger. But some years later, when I was just beginning my ministry, my pastor encouraged me to write all my sermons out in full. Three sermons a week, perhaps four: it was tough and I prayed very earnestly to the Lord whether that should be the way I should continue. But I found all that learning of English had helped make me ‘throughly furnished’: fitted out for a job. The English came automatically.

When you are an organist you learn to play with hands, feet, the lot. It is so complex, so difficult, but you soon get throughly furnished, able to cope with ease with hands and feet and expressions and listening. Learning to drive; hands, feet, forwards, backwards, looking, judging speeds of others: it is a terribly complex thing. But when you are throughly furnished you can do it without even thinking. The thinking is there; but you are not consciously thinking about it. You are just doing it.

When a man is so thoroughly furnished with the Bible, with the Scriptures—I won’t say he does it automatically but by the grace of the Spirit he is able to do the will of God. If the Lord is calling you, do not struggle. Follow, yield, love, obey.

Conclusion

I wonder how many of you love the Authorised Version but have not joined the Society. Lots of people support various political or charitable organisations but do not join those parties or organisations. We would love to know that we have the support, the allegiance, the commitment, the definitive interest of those who share our principles. If that is you, do join; ask about membership of this Society which the Lord is blessing. Maybe one day at the AGM we shall see this church filled; but whether we do or whether we don’t, we may share in that work today.

May the Lord bless us all. Amen.

First published in Quarterly Record 614. Edited for publication.