“Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.” I certainly know parents who cling to that
sentence as their children wander from the Lord. I know people who believed it for and about
me for some years. It is important that
we teach our children the ways of the Lord as early as possible in order that
they know Him. One of my favorite
preacher/teachers speaks truth when he says, “Everything you do teaches.” It isn’t only our words that need to bespeak
our love of the Lord, it is also our lives.
Training includes modeling our own discipleship for our children. The way we should go is more than words.
The parable of the wheat and tares is a way of understanding
the reality of the church as both visible and invisible kingdom. Within the church we have both the elect and
those who are not truly elect and we can only know the difference between the
two by the production of fruit. The
tares do not produce fruit while the wheat does. The question we must leave to God and the end
of time because we don’t know the timing of the harvest. Sometimes it takes a long season before fruit
is seen and we have to be patient and allow Him to sort it out.
Paul is certain that there will come a time and is even
happening as he writes, when people will be deceived even in the church and
even by those who teach. Pleasure, any
pleasure, will become something that must be avoided, marriage or food not
being excepted. These prohibitions
presume that there is a dualism in the world where pleasure is not of God. We believe in a good creator God who creates
for pleasure when things are enjoyed as intended. The abuse of a thing does not negate its
proper use. Further, he urges Timothy to
set an example for the believers in speech, conduct, love, faith and
purity. Timothy is to set the standard
for the wheat, that there may be evidence of fruitfulness in righteousness.
All laud we would
render; O help us to see
’Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, Almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.
’Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, Almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.
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