Witness Pt. 30

We'll begin our reading this morning in verse number one, Acts chapter 16, and verse number one.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

And if you're not used to looking at a Bible or reading a Bible, that's all good.

We're still glad that you're here.

And we would love for you to take one of the White Pew Bibles from the back of the seat in front of you and join us on page 983.

Acts chapter 16, page number 983.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 16, and we will begin reading in verse number one.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

So let's take our Bibles and let's read this text together.

Acts chapter 16, verse number 1.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

The word of the Lord says, Then he came to Derby and Lystra, and behold, a certain disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a certain Jewish woman who believed, but his father was Greek.

He was well spoken of by the brethren who were at Lystra and Iconium.

Paul wanted to have him go on with him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region, for they all knew that his father was Greek.

And as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem.

So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in number daily.

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord abideth forever.

The book of Acts is often titled, it's probably titled this way in your Bible, The Acts of the Apostles.

But if you were here with us back in January when we began studying this book together on Sunday morning, I told you that this book would better be titled The Acts of the Holy Spirit or The Acts of Jesus through the Apostles.

They are active, that's why it's called Acts.

They are acting, they are busy, but really the one who is working is the Spirit of Jesus.

As the apostles of the Lord continue his ministry.

But by the time you get to Acts chapter number 16, the primary actor, at least the primary human actor, is the man we know as the Apostle Paul.

He is, as it were, on center stage.

He is the one who is driving the action.

The book follows his journeys.

He is the main character.

But it's important to understand about the Apostle Paul that even though he may be the main actor, he's not acting alone.

Paul is never a solo act.

But Paul is a man who ministers, serves, and works in relationship with other people.

So you can read about the Apostle Paul early in his life, how he benefits from a relationship with a man named Barnabas, how they rely on each other, serve together, work really, really hard together.

And if you were here last week, we saw in Acts chapter 15 how that relationship ends.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

But you continue reading in the book of Acts, you'll find that the Apostle Paul has a number of relationships with a husband and wife by the name of Priscilla and Aquila.

Relationships with other, excuse me, other preachers like Apollos.

Different relationships where people invest in Paul and Paul invests in them.

One of the most important relationships in the Apostle Paul's life begins here in Acts chapter 16, where the Apostle Paul meets a young man by the name of Timothy, and he will bring Timothy into his inner circle until they ultimately become so close that Paul will refer to Timothy as my son in the faith.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

Timothy, who will become a pastor himself, will rely on the Apostle Paul for important advice, for encouragement, and for counsel.

Timothy is important to Paul, but listen to me very carefully.

Timothy is not Paul.

Timothy is not center stage.

Timothy is not the focus of attention.

Timothy never gets to play the lead part.

Even in this mission trip that begins in Acts chapter number 16, we don't often talk about Timothy being present.

We talk about Paul and Silas.

Paul is in the lead role.

Silas is in the support role.

And Timothy's also there too.

Ralph Stanley didn't sing a song about Paul and Timothy.

He said Paul and Silas stayed in jail all night long.

But Timothy was there too.

I think about it like this.

How many of you in high school were band geeks?

I mean, how many of you were in the band?

Raise your hand.

If you were in the band in high school or are in the band in high school, okay, I'm not going to make fun of you for being in the band.

God forbid that I would ever do that.

When I was in high school, I was homeschooled, I was overweight, and my favorite thing in the world was professional wrestling.

I'm not going to make fun of anybody.

Alright?

But if you were in the band, my sister was in the band, then you know one of the things that happens in a school band is you have chairs, right?

My sister, if I remember correctly, my sister was the first chair trumpet player.

And what that means is that musically, she was the most proficient trumpet player.

She was the lead trumpet player.

Let's call it what it is.

She was the best trumpet player.

And her responsibility was to lead the other trumpeters, the other horns.

But you also have a second chair trumpet player.

And you also have a third chair trumpet player.

Timothy is in the third chair.

He's not leading, he's not even assisting.

He's just kind of there.

And yet, Timothy in the third chair teaches us some important lessons that we need to learn, like the one you see on the screen, where we'll begin today, that the third chair is a great place to lose yourself.

Now, I know me, and I know my temperament, and I know my nature well enough that if I had been in the band, I would have never been able to settle for second chair.

Nobody has ever competed for second place.

Who won second place in the ACC last year in football?

Who cares?

They might as well not even exist.

Nobody wants to be the second chair.

God forbid you're the third chair.

And for some of you here this morning, you're looking at your life right now thinking, why am I not in the spotlight?

Why am I not leaving?

Why am I not out front?

Why are everybody's eyes not on me?

And yet, there's some lessons you can only learn in the third chair that all of us as God's people need to learn.

And the first one is that the third chair is a great place to be yourself.

So the Bible here introduces us to this young man named Timothy that the apostle Paul meets on a return trip to the region of Derby and Lystra.

Paul had been there earlier in Acts chapter 14, caused a lot of trouble, got into some trouble, preached Jesus, started a church, and when he comes back, he's introduced to this young disciple that everybody seems to like by the name of Timothy.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

And the Bible here in Acts 16 doesn't tell us everything it will tell us about Timothy, but it does tell us a lot about Timothy.

Gives us some QD, some some clues and some key details about Timothy and the kind of person that he was.

And I want to be honest with y'all this morning.

I love Timothy.

He's one of my favorite characters in all the Bible.

And here's why.

Because he seems so unlike me.

He seems totally different than I am.

I love Simon Peter because Simon Peter was a smart aleck who ran his mouth and got in trouble.

I can relate to that.

I love King David because every other page in the book of Psalms, David is praying for God to smite somebody.

I can resonate with that.

But that's not Timothy.

Timothy is not like me at all.

Let me show you how.

Timothy's not like me, but he may be like some of you.

First, the Bible says this about Timothy's family dynamics in verse number one, that he was the son of a certain Jewish woman, but his father was Greek.

Now, if you've been with us over the past few weeks, we have seen these racial and ethnic dynamics, these cultural differences between Jews and Greeks play out in the church, right?

Jews are not Greeks.

They're not Gentiles.

Gentiles are not Jewish.

They have different holidays, they speak different languages, they have different diets, they have different religions.

Everything about them is different so that they can never totally assimilate.

A Jew cannot really be a Gentile any more than a Gentile can really be a Jew.

But what do you see about Timothy?

He comes from what some would call a mixed background.

His mom was one thing, and his dad was a different thing.

And Timothy, as a man with a Jewish mother and a Gentile father, is probably at home in neither community.

He's too Gentile to be Jewish, too Jewish to be Gentile.

He doesn't have a people, he doesn't have a place, he doesn't belong.

The Bible also says here, and you'll kind of breeze through this quickly if you're not careful.

It says that his mother was a certain Jewish woman who believed, but his father was Greek.

So what do we know about his mother?

She's Jewish and she's a believer.

But what does it say about his father?

He's a Gentile.

Doesn't say anything about his faith, does it?

What does that tell you?

That in this sort of ethnically divided family, there's also an unequal spiritual yoke to where his mother loves the Lord, but his father, who I think probably wasn't even present any longer, maybe he's maybe he's died, or maybe he's just abandoned the family based on some things that will occur later in the New Testament.

But, but his father is not a believer.

So it was on Timothy's mother, and we know from 2 Timothy chapter 1, also on his grandmother.

2 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

Lois and Eunice were their names.

And they are the ones that were responsible for sharing the message of Scripture with Timothy.

From childhood, they had taken Timothy, they had taken him through the Bible, that explained to him the love of God, that explained to him his obligations and his responsibilities to the Lord, even though his father, who should have been the one taking the lead in that, amen, fellas?

Amen.

Was nowhere to be found.

And so I always want to stop right here and say this.

If you were here this morning, if you were a lady and you're married to a man who's not a believer, you're married to a man who's not with you, or you're married to a man who's just passive, doesn't help in the spiritual instruction of the kids, he doesn't bring them to church, or if you're a grandparent who's raising a grandchild, and if you are in any way leading a child to Jesus, that should probably be somebody else's responsibility.

I want to say you are my hero.

And I know that it's not easy.

I know that you have struggles that I don't know about.

I know that it's difficult for you in many, many ways, but what Timothy's mother and grandmother did in his life had fruit, it mattered, and one day it brought Timothy to faith and propelled him to usefulness for the gospel.

And even though you're in the hard work of sowing seeds, one day God who is faithful will allow you to reap a harvest.

So don't quit.

Even though you're finding kids to get them in church, even though right now you can't listen to what I'm saying because they're covering in all the song books, keep doing what you're doing because God will honor your faithfulness.

And if you're the man here today or watching online who's too trifling to raise your kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, come talk to me this week.

And I'll turn you over to Pastor Dave and he'll handle business for me.

All right.

But we also know this about Timothy.

This is not from Acts 16, but from a letter Paul would write to him later in life.

The Word of God says that Timothy's the kind of person that kind of needs constant encouragement.

In fact, if you know the Bible verse from 2 Timothy chapter 1, that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind, that was written from Paul to Timothy.

2 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

Here's the thing about that.

You don't write to somebody and tell them, don't be afraid unless they're afraid.

In fact, in 1 Timothy chapter number 5, Paul would write to Timothy, and he would tell him, he'd say, Timothy, some of you Baptists, this is your favorite Bible verse.

Some of you Baptists wish you weren't in the Bible.

He told Timothy, he said, Timothy, you need to take a little wine for your stomach.

In other words, Timothy has digestive issues or something, probably related to stress, and the only medicine they had in the first century to speak of much would have been wine, and so he says, Man, you need to drink a little wine.

So let me just say it to you this way: when you are such an anxious person that the Holy Spirit has to inspire the Apostle Paul to put in the Bible, bro, you need a drink.

You are a bundle of nerves.

And that's Timothy.

And would it not be easy for us to look at Timothy with sort of a mixed background, a mixed heritage, a social outcast who doesn't belong, with an anxious temperament, an anxious personality, raised by a mom and a grandmother, maybe from a broken home, would it not be easy to look at somebody like Timothy and say, Man, he's not going to have a part to play in this?

But what do you find happen to Timothy here in Acts chapter 16?

Acts 16 · chapter mention

That God gave Timothy in Paul the father that he did not have, and he gave him in the church the family that he needed.

And so I say to you today that there's some of you that have come into this place, and you come from a background like Timothy's, or you have a personality like Timothy's.

Even if the circumstances and the stories are a little bit different, there is probably in your life every reason and every excuse in the world as to why God could never use you.

There's a divorce, there's abuse, there's addiction, there's outstanding warrants, there's personality problems, there's prescription medications that treat these issues and that problem.

There's too old, too young, too educated, not educated enough, and yet God has made a place for you in his work.

And Timothy is going to step into that third chair, and while he's there, he's going to realize that God can do something great with him.

God can do something great with you too.

And we need to be reminded of that.

Because none of us have a perfect background, do we?

None of us grew up in a perfect family.

I grew up in a great family, but I'm starting to learn.

Are we live streaming this?

I better not go any further.

I saw in Living Color this in the life of our congregation.

I don't know how many of you watch our bi-weekly podcasts that Brother Ryan produces and videos for us.

Those are on Facebook and on YouTube.

And over the past few weeks, he's been releasing testimonies of people in our church.

And this past week, we got to hear from Brother Brooks.

And Brother Brooks said no I was going to call him out during the sermon, which I love to do that.

I love to talk about people while I'm preaching.

While I'm up here, they're down there sweating bullets thinking, what's he gonna say?

But Brother Brooks, his testimony is one of addiction.

Decades.

Abusive relationships, broken family.

And yet God has taken this brother.

And God has redeemed that story, and God is using it for his glory.

So don't make the mistake of coming into this church this morning and thinking, well, these are a bunch of really decent people.

These are people that have it all together.

These are people from good families who've never been in any trouble.

No, some of us know what the backseat of a police car looks like.

Some of us know what it's like to spend Christmas alone because we've made stupid decisions that have alienated everybody in our family.

Some of us know what it's like to be at the bottom of a bottle and have nowhere to look but to Jesus.

And God is able to take all of that and use it for his glory.

So the third chair is a great place to find yourself.

Secondly, today, we learn from Timothy that the third chair is a great place to deny yourself.

Paul and Timothy, man, they hit it off.

And Paul wants to take Timothy with him as they go on this missionary journey, beginning in Acts chapter 16.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

There's only one small problem.

Just tiny, really, insignificant.

Probably won't even be a big deal.

The problem is that Paul's missionary strategy depended on going into a new city, starting at a Jewish synagogue, preaching the gospel there from the Hebrew scriptures, telling them about their Messiah, the Lord Jesus, calling them to faith, and then he would branch out into the broader community.

This is what he always did.

That was his mission strategy.

He wants to take Timothy into those synagogues.

He wants to give opportunity for Timothy to preach in those synagogues.

Incredible.

The little issue is that Timothy's father was a Gentile.

And so when Timothy was born, he was not circumcised.

The way a Jewish little boy would have been circumcised.

The problem with that is that you had to be fully and totally Jewish to preach in the synagogue.

And so for Timothy to preach in the synagogue.

Can you imagine how this conversation went between Paul and Timothy?

That's Paul I had to tell him, brother.

You would have to be circumcised.

And you would think that the story of Timothy would end there.

I'm trying so hard to be godly and mature right now.

But Timothy agrees to something that's painful.

Something that was sacrificial.

Embraced denying himself so that he could be useful in the hand of God.

Now, as we have seen in the book of Acts, the Bible is explicitly plain and clear.

This is what all of Acts 15 is about.

It's what the book of Galatians is about, huge sections of the book of Romans, parts of Ephesians, it's all through the New Testament.

That a person who's a Gentile does not have to be circumcised in order to become a Christian.

We know that, right?

We are saved by Jesus alone, not our additions to his work on our behalf.

And so the Bible is as plain as it can be that you do not have to be circumcised in order to be saved.

But Timothy did have to be circumcised in order to be useful.

There are things in your life right now, for all of us, that you did not have to give up in order to be saved.

But you will have to give up in order to be useful.

Things in your life that you are attached to, that you care about, that will not keep you out of heaven, but they will keep you out of being effective.

Some of those are very, very good things.

Just think through the Bible about some of the people that God used.

God used a man by the name of Simon Peter.

Simon Peter was a fisherman and he walked away from his career in order to truly be useful.

A career is a good thing to have.

Some of our younger people maybe should look into one.

And yet, a career, a career at times may keep you from following Jesus and being useful to him.

James and John, they were also fishermen who left their career, but the Bible talks about their temper.

You know that?

Calls them the sons of thunder because they were always praying for God just to drop fireballs out of heaven and kill people.

They had to lay aside their temper in order to be useful.

Think about David.

Anointed to be the king of Israel as a teenager.

But doesn't become king for decades.

He had to give up his youth.

All throughout scripture, you find people like Samson.

Before Samson could ever be as useful as God wanted him to be, he had to lose his eyes, which is bad, and his hair, which to me is worse.

So if male pattern baldness is a prerequisite for usefulness, some of you guys should be locked in.

What might God be asking you to give up?

And why would Timothy be willing to undergo this?

Can I tell you why?

Because there's something about Jesus that has so captivated him that he says, I'm willing to take up my cross and deny myself, as Jesus invites us to do in Matthew 16.

No matter how it hurts me, no matter what it costs me, I'm willing to deny myself what is rightfully mine so that I can be more effective for the Lord Jesus.

I read this week the story of the first chair violin player for the London Symphony Orchestra.

First chair violin player.

So I would assume, I believe his name is Peter Schumann, is how it's pronounced.

He's from South Africa.

And I would assume he is as good of a fiddle player as he is anywhere in the world.

He probably don't do much fiddling, but he's a good violin player.

And he was writing and telling this story in this interview, and he was talking about how he picked up the violin as a kid.

Showed obviously incredible talent, musical aptitude.

And at 11 years old, he was training with, practicing with the best violin player in South Africa who took an interest in him.

By the time he's 15, he's on an airplane every other week to travel all over the world to learn from the best violin players in the world.

Do you know what that guy has done with his life?

He's made music.

You know what he hadn't done?

Much else.

Guarantee you that guy was not invited to many parties in high school.

And if he was invited, you know what he was doing?

He was practicing major scales instead of going to party.

He didn't play sports.

He turned away from so many things because somewhere in his life as a young man, he was captured by Tchaikovsky.

Now I know that doesn't grip you the way it gripped him.

But that music, that symphony, went through his ears, captured his mind, landed in his heart, and he said, I will give myself totally for that music so that I am able to make that music come alive into the world.

Friends, you and I, as the people of God, should be people that have been captured by the harmonies of heaven and the symphony of salvation that our life says there's nothing else to live for.

And we will give up everything so that we can make that story come alive in the hearts of people that need it.

And that's Timothy.

The third chair is a good place to deny yourself.

Third.

The third chair is a good place to lose yourself.

After what I hope is a few days of rest and recuperation and healing, the Bible says that Paul and Timothy, they go on their way.

They begin the mission trip together.

And you'll notice that it's kind of a long time before Timothy's really mentioned again by name.

They just, he's just wrapped up in the pronoun.

They, he's one of them, one of the guys.

They go through the cities, they deliver to them the decrees to keep.

That is, they're reporting the decision from the Jerusalem Council back in Acts chapter number 15.

And so the end result of this ministry is that the churches were strengthened in faith and increased in number daily.

And this basically becomes Timothy's gig for the rest of his life.

Timothy is mentioned, I think, 24 times in the New Testament.

Most of those times it goes something like this.

I left Timothy behind, Paul says, I left Timothy behind to serve you.

Or I'm sending Timothy on the way to help you.

Basically, Timothy spends his entire ministry running errands for Paul.

And Timothy never seems resentful of it.

He never feels like he's excluded.

He never feels like he's being cheated.

He's simply serving in his place for the glory of God and the good of other people.

Why?

Because for Timothy, the gospel message of Jesus mattered more than himself.

It mattered more than anything else.

It was not about Timothy being known.

It was not about Timothy being heard.

It was about Jesus.

And so I want to say to you today that many of us are living with a very toxic case of main character syndrome in our lives.

We think that everything is about us.

We think that all eyes should be on us.

And these other people, if we ever even notice they're there at all, these other people are the supporting actors in our story.

Some of them are heroes, some of them are co-stars, some of them are villains, some of them are there for one episode, but they won't be there for the next episode.

But this is about us.

Timothy understood what we need to understand today that this is not about us.

It's all about him.

John the Baptist understood this when he says in John chapter 3 and verse number 30 that I must decrease.

John 3 · chapter mention

And he must increase.

Timothy said, it doesn't matter if I'm heard, it doesn't matter if I'm seen.

Jesus matters.

And as we heard saying just a moment ago, only Jesus matters.

Jesus above all.

Jesus alone.

It's about him.

So I'm not a trumpet player.

I am a guitar player, which as we know is much cooler.

And so I'm going to borrow Brother Jack's guitar for just a moment.

And I'm going to unplug it so I'm not going to cause any damage or replace it.

But it's going to sound good.

You just can't hear it.

It sounds sweet.

Apparently, Jack's a lot taller than I am.

Nevertheless, before I moved to Alabama and I pastored in Morganton, I played lead guitar in our church's praise band.

You're not as impressed as I thought.

That's okay.

I played lead guitar in our church's praise band.

Right?

So that was neat.

I didn't necessarily enjoy it.

And here's why I didn't enjoy it.

Because I started playing guitar to rip solos.

Just to melt your face.

Free bird.

You couldn't hear it, but it was there.

And I was trying to do that on Sunday mornings.

And yes, it was epic.

Until our worship leader came to me and said, Pastor.

And I said to him, Before you go on, remember I can't fire you.

But he said, Pastor.

He said, When you're playing in church, you need to serve the song.

It's not about your individual instrument.

It's not about you dominating.

It's about the music that people are singing in worship to the Lord.

Many of us live our lives and we want to be the solo act.

Just ripping.

A rock star pose and a rock star face.

And we need to learn to serve the music of the message of the gospel.

So that in the end, does it matter what instrument I play?

Does it matter if I'm in the first chair?

Or the second chair?

Or the third chair?

Does it matter if the Lord looks at me and says, your role is not going to be the first chair trumpet player?

You're not going to have a saxophone.

You're going to play percussion.

And I say, okay, Lord, drums are pretty cool.

He says, well, yeah, they are.

But this ain't about you being cool.

So you're not getting a bass drum.

You're not getting to snare drums.

You get a triangle.

And what I need from you, our divine composer says, what I need from you every so often is to go.

And the Lord says, that's your part.

If my Savior carried a cross up Calvary's hill, if he hung there between heaven and earth for six hours one Friday afternoon, and if, as the word of God says, he became sin, even though he knew no sin, that I might become the righteousness of God in him.

And if he breathed his last with a cry of victory on his lips, saying, It is finished, so that he could remove my sin from me as far as the east is from the west.

And if his story did not end on an old rugged cross, but his story continued on Sunday morning when he walked out of a borrowed tomb to rescue me from sin and death and to hell.

If God in Christ has done that for me, then you know what I want to do for him?

Every single chance that he gets me, because I want to help make the music of the gospel go around this world, whatever chair I'm in, even if nobody ever knows my name, even if nobody ever sees my story, even if nobody thinks, man, Pastor Jesse really killed it today, no put me in the back of the orchestra and let me be for the glory of God because he is worthy.

And here's what I know, church.

What I know is that when we enter into the city of God, when you and I step onto those streets of gold and walk through those gates of pearl and we fall down around the feet of Jesus and cast our crowns to him, we're not going to be saying, Man, I tell you, that sermon I preached on October the 11th, 2026, that killed it.

I'm not gonna meet Timothy one day and Paul and Charles Spurgeon and John Chrysostom and all the great men of God and women of God who have served faithfully, and they're gonna say, Pastor Jesse, you know that teen thing, that was really creative.

No.

What are they gonna do when we get to round his feet?

What are we gonna do?

Are they gonna be talking about me at all?

Are they gonna be talking about you at all?

Or are we gonna be saying, worthy is the Lamb who was slain?

Worthy is the Lamb who gave his life for us.

He carried the burden that we could not carry, and he's worthy.

And so, friends, if we are gonna be stepping into that symphony one day and find your triangle or your trumpet or your guitar, whatever it is, and join in a concert of praise for Jesus.

Don't worry about what chair you're in.

Don't make excuses as to why God can't make a place for you because your life is a unique instrument in the hand of God.