Lesson 50 · Unit 8 · From Reading to Leading
Hand This Book On
The end point of a Bible study is the next person who leads one.
Open
Some Bibles have writing on the flyleaf. Perhaps you have seen one: the leather polished from handling, tiny notes crowding the margins of a few books, and on the flyleaf a faded line of fountain pen - a date, a name it was given to, and a signature you cannot place. Before this book reached that person's hands, it passed through another pair; and before those, another.
Psalm 78 says this is how this book has always traveled: fathers tell children, and children tell "the generation to come." It was never a private possession, one copy per person. It is a relay, one hand to the next.
Three volumes, and we have arrived here: fifty lessons. The last lesson has only one subject. That baton is in your hand now - and it is time to pass it on.
Scripture
A psalm written for the next generation, and one verse with four generations standing in it. (Psalm 78:5-7, WEB)
5For he established a covenant in Jacob, and appointed a teaching in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children;
6that the generation to come might know, even the children who should be born; who should arise and tell their children,
7that they might set their hope in God, and not forget God’s deeds, but keep his commandments,
2The things which you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit the same things to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
See
Four generations in one verse
Four generations stand inside the single sentence of 2 Timothy 2:2: Paul ("from me"), Timothy ("you have heard"), faithful people ("commit"), and others ("able to teach others also"). Paul wrote this letter from a prison in Rome, with martyrdom close. He did not tell Timothy to build him a memorial. He told him to hand on what he had heard. Psalm 78 uses the family-tree version of the same verb: fathers, children, the generation to come, and their children - with one purpose, "that they might set their hope in God." In Scripture, faith is never a collector's item. It is a baton, and one hand that fails to pass it is where the chain breaks. That you can read this book today is because for two thousand years, no generation kept the baton for itself.
Three volumes, one arc
Look back at the road. In volume one you learned to **read**: to know the God who knew you first, to take hold of the four-step key, to put roots down in prayer, temptation and community. In volume two you learned to **give**: to say the gospel as a conversation, to walk one person to Jesus, to lift up someone who has fallen. In volume three you learned to **lead**: to read every genre, and then to prepare, to ask, to hold a room, and to have a way through even when you are stumped. Read it, give it away, lead someone else into it - these are not three courses but three stretches of one road, and the direction has never changed: off the bleachers, toward the next person. Milestone Eight is where that arc lands: prepare a forty-minute study, actually lead it once, and ask a companion to sit in and give you feedback. Once you have led that one study, you are no longer only a reader of this book. You have become the kind of person it describes.
The one who hands off does not leave the field
Handing on is not graduating and going home. Priscilla and Aquila instructed Apollos and went on opening their own home for the church to meet in; Paul entrusted Timothy and went on writing, praying, worrying about him. After the handoff you have only changed position: from the field to the side of it - to sit in on someone else's first study, the way someone once sat in on yours; to spread out your question book and your preparation map for them to see, including the times you made a mess of it. That "generation to come" in Psalm 78 may be sitting in your small group right now, or in your house, or behind the counter of your shop. The day this book is handed on, the chain grows one link longer - and at the very front of the chain, the hands with the nail marks have never let go.
Deeper
Commit (2 Tim 2:2)
the word is close to depositing something valuable for safekeeping; the truth is an estate entrusted to you to hold and to transfer, not private property.
The four-generation chain
Paul to Timothy to faithful people to others; the mark of a completed handoff is "able to teach others," and hearing is only the beginning.
The generation to come (Ps 78:6)
the covenant's field of vision goes past the people in the room to people not yet born; passing it on is a command written into the law, not an elective for the enthusiastic.
Faithful before capable
the ones entrusted are those who are "faithful" and "able to teach," and faithful comes first; ability can be trained, faithfulness cannot be substituted for.
Story
In 1920 the woman evangelist Dora Yu came to Fuzhou to preach. She had given up a future in medicine early on and gone out alone to preach; her platform manner was plain and her words went straight in. In the audience sat a seventeen-year-old secondary-school student - his mother had repented at an earlier meeting and had insisted on bringing her son along. That evening the boy saw his own sin, and saw for the first time the love of Christ, and there he gave himself to the Lord. His name was Watchman Nee.
Much of what came after is widely known: that boy became a servant of a generation, expounding Scripture and training co-workers, and the co-workers he raised carried the gospel and Bible study into the living rooms of countless towns. But the chain did not start with him. A woman preacher handed it to a mother, a mother handed it to a boy, and a boy handed it to a generation. That is how the four generations of 2 Timothy 2:2 grew into a real story in Chinese soil.
(Historical account; see Angus Kinnear's Against the Tide: The Story of Watchman Nee and other published biographies. Details kept brief.)
Respond
Reflect — alone, or talk it through together
1Who are the four generations in 2 Timothy 2:2? Who has done that act of committing for you?
2The arc of three volumes - read it, give it away, lead someone else into it - which stretch was hardest for you? Which one gave you unexpected joy?
3"The generation to come": think of one actual name - who do you most want to hand this book to? What is standing in the way?
Saved on this device only — visible to no one but you.
Pray together
Lord who has been our dwelling place in all generations: this road of fifty lessons you walked with me, step by step. Thank you for the many hands that passed this book down into mine; now make my own hands open, and let me commit what I received to faithful people. Let your presence be in the one study I lead; and let the generations after me still set their hope in you, and not forget your deeds. In Jesus' name, amen.
Walk
This week's actionabout 10 min
Put Milestone Eight on the calendar: write down the date, the people, and the passage, and then send the message inviting someone to sit in. Then write two names on the flyleaf of your Bible - the person who handed this road to you, and the person you want to hand it to.
Mark it when it happens — this week, at your pace.
Spiritual practice
Pray every day this week for that name - the person you want to hand this book to; ask the Lord to work in their heart before you ever open your mouth.
Memory verse · 2 Timothy 2:2
Thethingswhichyouhaveheardfrommeamongmanywitnesses,committhesamethingstofaithfulmenwhowillbeabletoteachothersalso.
Walk further
The four-step method and Become a Companion from volume one; Timothy, the middle link of the chain; the life of Dora Yu; and year one of reading the whole Bible with a companion.
Milestone 8 · Lead a Bible Study (Graduation)
Prepare a 40-minute Bible study and actually lead it once - a small group or one-to-one - and ask one companion to sit in and give you feedback.