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The following message is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "Why Come Before Winter?" Let us continue in worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in Paul's second letter to Timothy, chapter 4.

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I begin at the verse numbered 1. "I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the Word. Be urgent in season and out of season.

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Convince, rebuke, and exhort. Be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will

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turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already on the point of being sacrificed.

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The time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.

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Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. Do your best to come to me soon.

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For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful in serving me.

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Tachias I have sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all, the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm.

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The Lord will requite him for his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. At my first defense, no one took my part. All deserted me.

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May it not be charged against them. But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the message fully, that all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth.

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The Lord will rescue me from every evil and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet Prisca and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus.

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Erastus remained at Corinth. Trophimus I left ill at Miletus. Do your best to come before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brethren.

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The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I ask you to think with me this morning about the three things most necessary if we are to mature in Christ as individuals and as the church militant.

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Back in October of 1915, a young minister stepped into his pulpit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and at an evening service preached a sermon entitled, "Come Before Winter." It was built on the passage of scripture which I have just read in your hearing. Paul is under house arrest in Rome.

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He writes a letter to his beloved son in the faith, Timothy. He asked him to bring his cloak, to bring his books, to bring his parchments. And then he urges him to come before winter. That's because the Mediterranean Sea was a dangerous sea at any time of the year for

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vessels of the first century kind, but it was especially so in winter. So Paul is saying to Timothy, "Come while the journey is still possible. Come before it is too late." Now from this passage, this young minister in Philadelphia derived his theme and illustrated

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it in three different ways. His theme was this, "Many good opportunities come to us which we miss because we put off till tomorrow what we ought to do today. And sometimes tomorrow never comes."

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His three illustrations are, "Miss no opportunity to grow in character. Miss no opportunity to show love to those whom you hold in your heart. And miss no opportunity to respond to the call of the Holy Spirit to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.

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For what is possible today may be impossible tomorrow. For the heart freezes over and the conscience grows cold. So come before winter." Now one of those who attended the service the night that sermon was preached wrote a

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letter to the minister and said that he had been so helped by it that he hoped the clergyman would consider preaching the sermon every year. And the young minister thought of that and decided he would do it. And so for all of the remaining years of his ministry, every year at just about this time,

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he would preach his sermon come before winter. He never changed a word of it. Now in 1927, this young Philadelphia clergyman moved here to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to become the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church.

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He served in this church for 27 years. And that means that 27 times Clarence Edward McCartney preached from this sacred desk his message come before winter. There are many who believe that it was the greatest sermon he ever wrote.

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But one of the things that intrigues me very much about his sermon is this, that in it he says very little about the cloak that Paul asked for. He devotes only five lines to that. He says very little about the books which Paul requested.

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He devotes only three sentences to that. He says nothing whatever about the parchments. And then he devotes a paragraph to Paul's desire to have Timothy with him. In other words, McCartney does not choose to focus in the sermon on the particular things

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which Paul requested. But it is those very things that I suggest for our focus today. For the greatest necessities for Christian growth to become mature in Christ as individuals and in the church militant are to be found in these things for which Paul asked.

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Why come before winter? Clarence Edward McCartney answered that question. Claim every opportunity which is yours lest you be frozen forever. Why come before winter?

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I answer that question today. Claim that which lifts and teaches and warms you. Claim the scriptures and educated mind and Christian fellowship. In a very real sense, Dr. McCartney's message and my own are the same.

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We are both saying that while the seas are with you, while the wind of the Holy Spirit fills the sails of your life, while the waters of your experience are still warm with life and not cold with death, come. This is what Paul wrote.

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This is what Clarence Edward McCartney proclaimed so magnificently. And this is what I add my timid testimony to this day. Come before winter. First Paul writes to Timothy and he says, "Come before winter and bring my parchments."

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The only thing written on parchments in the first century were holy words. What Paul is asking for is the scriptures. We know that Paul was a student of the scriptures because first of all, he was a Pharisee and they devoted their entire lives to the study of scripture, but also because he repeatedly

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quotes from the Old Testament in his New Testament writings. Paul loved the word of God written. There are two great fountainheads of Western civilization. One of these is Greek, for the Greeks taught us how to think and reason.

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And one of these is the Hebraic tradition, for the Jews taught us about life and the proper conduct of it. Now because we spend more of our lives in conducting our affairs than we do in reasoning about them, I think it reasonable to suggest that the Hebrew tradition has had more influence

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upon our Western civilization than any other. The greatest ideas and ideals of this time had their nativity in this book from a time long ago. Do you want to know about art?

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Here is where beauty is defined. Do you want to know about science? Here is where the basic principle of science, the unity of everything that is, is laid down. No book has meant as much to us as this book.

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The noblest dreams and deeds of humankind have been mothered and nurtured by this book. Now when Soren Kierkegaard spoke of the Bible, he called it love letters from God. Love letters of course are very personal and intimate. They are never an end in themselves.

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They are altogether honest and they not only affect the one who writes them, but they also affect the one who reads them. In just this way, scripture is the love letters of God. For it's on these pages that God is revealed.

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It is here that the eternal sacrificial nature of his fondness is shown. It is here with exquisite simplicity that we are told about the awful passion of God. This book convicts, converts, comforts, counsels, challenges. Fifteen hundred years after Paul wrote to Timothy and asked him to bring the parchments,

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William Tyndale was imprisoned at Villevorde. Now Tyndale was the man who was to give up his life as a martyr because he dared to translate the scriptures into the language of the people of his own time. In prison, as winter came, he wrote a letter to a friend of his and said, "For Jesus'

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sake, send me a warm cap and a woolen shirt and above all else, my Bible." It has always been so with Christians. In the first century, in the time of William Tyndale, and today. We need the word of God written.

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We need the scriptures. "Timothy, bring the parchments while there is still time. Come before winter." Now, the second thing that Paul asked Timothy to do is to come before winter and to bring

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his books. The word is "biblia." It refers not to the scriptures but to other books. Now books were very expensive in the first century.

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Yet there is no doubt that Paul did have some kind of small library and this doesn't surprise us since he sat at the feet of one of the greatest teachers of the day, Gamaliel, and we find ideas quoted from other sources in his writings in the New Testament. Paul always encourages all Christians to love God with their minds.

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Jesus says we are to love God with our minds and Paul believed that. Now, Paul never says that you have to be a highly educated, learned person in order to be a Christian, but he does say that once you have become a Christian, you will never be satisfied with continuing ignorance.

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I was in Gettysburg once and saw a rather amusing scene. A very, very heavy woman got onto a public scale. She was so heavy that the dial, which of course started at the top, went all the way down and around and past the top and about five inches beyond it.

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A little boy watched this and he saw that the needle ended up just a short distance beyond the place from which it began. And he turned to his mother and said in a voice which all about could hear, "Gee, Mommy, that lady must be hollow."

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My friends, there are a lot of people who have hollow, empty, vacant minds and this impedes their growth in the Christian faith and this weakens their witness. A super sophisticated society like our own ignores the ignorant. It does not heed them.

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Never underestimate the power of a book. Would there have been a French Revolution without the writings of Rousseau? Would there have been an American Revolution without the writings of John Locke and Thomas Paine?

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Would there have been a Russian Revolution without the writings of Marx and Engels? Books change history. Yet it's interesting to notice that fewer than 10% of our American citizens read as much as a single book a year.

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And many of the books which they choose to read are as close to literature as what you get at McDonald's is close to food. Not only that, but these same people do not read to their children and with their children, encouraging in them a love of books.

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A hundred thousand babies are now born in this country every year already addicted to narcotics through the indulgence of their mothers. And this is, of course, a tragic statistic. But one that is far worse is this, that there are millions of youngsters born into this

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society every day whose minds are never stimulated, whose spirits are never encouraged or fed by the example, the teaching, the encouragement of their parents to read. You want evidence of this? Well, recently they conducted a survey across our country and asked our teenagers whom they

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thought to be the greatest heroes and heroines of the day. They answered Madonna, Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, Michael Jackson, and others of a similar kind. These young people who made these choices have never really, many of them, most of them, come face to face with the great issues of life.

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They've never confronted poverty as Steinbeck shows it in The Grapes of Wrath. They never thought much about courage as Stephen Crane forces us to do in The Red Badge of Courage. They don't think about self-sacrifice because they've never been confronted by Dickens'

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A Tale of Two Cities. They never give themselves to the pondering of the costliness of love because they do not know Edmund Rostrand's Cyrano de Bergerac. They vote for Michael Jackson because they've never read the biography of Stonewall Jackson

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or Sheldon Jackson or Andrew Jackson. They vote for Clint Eastwood whose adventures are on film because they know nothing about the stories of Admiral Byrd and Scott and Halliburton. They vote for Madonna because they don't know anything about Madame Curie and they've never

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walked a day with Anne Frank. Paul says, "Whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just or pure, whatsoever things are beautiful or gracious, think on these things. And where are these things most readily found?

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They are found in books." "Timothy, come while there is still time. Bring the books before winter." And finally, Paul writes to Timothy and he says, "Come before winter and bring that which

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will warm me." He asks for his cloak which will warm his body and he also seeks the presence of Timothy which will warm his soul. All of Paul's friends have left him except the beloved physician.

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And Paul is seeking tender, loving care. And we all look for that at one time or another. I discovered on Friday of this last week that Dale Carnegie who wrote his book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People," produced that volume in 1936.

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Since that time, it has gone through 95 printings and there are over 8 million copies in circulation. And I found that very sad because in the first place, what he teaches does not work and in the second place, because it shows that so many people are still trying to learn how to win a friend.

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Did you know that in a national survey, 44% of the citizens of our country said that they have their warmest personal relationship with their pet, their dog, their pussycat, their parakeet? I think the saddest commercial on all of television is the one produced by the Miller Brewing

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Company. You know, surveys have shown that the loneliest hours in the 24-hour day are from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. That's the reason you find so many hotels and restaurants and bars having happy hours

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at just those times. Well, the Miller Brewing Company has sought to take advantage of this. And in this commercial, it shows a bunch of guys, there are never any girls in the scene, who are enjoying the social lubrication which comes with too much beer.

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And they laugh and they care for each other and they touch one another. The implication is, of course, that you can't have any real brotherhood without beer. And that's very sad. There is a kind of tenderness taboo in America, which is to be much lamented.

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It is sad when someone cries out for a friend and gets no answer. And it is also sad when one hears a cry and does not answer it. C.S. Lewis writes in his book, The Four Loves, "If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.

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Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, your heart will change. It will not be broken.

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It will, to the contrary, become quite unbreakable, impenetrable, unredeemable." An open heart is painful, but an open heart experiences miracles. A closed heart doesn't hurt so much, but there are no miracles. I remember some 13 years ago when I was in the coronary care unit of one of Pittsburgh's

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hospitals. Now, those are wonderful places. They do a tremendous amount of good, but they're rather cold. They're sterile.

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You're surrounded by monitors and other kinds of machines. The nurses do everything they can to make you comfortable, but of course, they are strangers to you. I was lying there with my eyes closed trying to go to sleep when I felt a presence next

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to me, and someone took my hand. I looked, and it was one of the students from the college where I was teaching in those days. How he ever managed to get in there, I don't know because only members of the immediate

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family are supposed to be in there, and they are only to be there at very limited times. But I was glad he had come, for this lad was one of my chapel aides, one of those with whom I had developed a particular and beautiful relationship. His visit was very brief.

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He told me that he loved me, that he was praying for me, and then he bent down and kissed my forehead. He started to back away, but I held on to his hand. I pulled him close to me, and I put my other hand on his head, and I said, "The grace of

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the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you always." We held fast to one another for a moment, and then he was gone, and I slept asleep of great peace.

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He was my Timothy, and I was his Paul, and he came before winter. My friends, the three great supremacies are to be lifted by God's word, to learn of the lives of others, their victories and their defeats in the world of books, and to love openly and to permit yourself to be loved.

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These are the things which are necessary for growth, for maturity in Christ as individuals and as the church militant. So on this Christian Education Sunday, I would remind you that the goals of our church school are precisely those of which I have spoken this morning.

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We focus from the littlest child to the oldest adult on the testimony of the parchments, the scriptures, on those things which challenge the mind and lead to the reading that helps us grow, and on that fellowship which shows the tenderness of Christian love. In the end, what Clarence Edward McCartney flung out from this pulpit 26 times, today

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I echo. Come while the currents run with you. Come while the winds are in your favor. Come while the waters of your life are warm before they become cold with death.

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Come lay claim to the learning of the scriptures, to the learning and profiting from the lives of others, and to the loving which belongs to Christians as they serve one another. Come while it is still possible. Come before it is too late.

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Come before winter. Let us pray. Oh God, bless all those who are gifted to teach. Bless all those who exercise that gift by teaching.

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Bless all those who wish to grow in their personal maturity and in their service to Christ's church, and who so put themselves in places where they can be taught. As we learn and as we live with one another, may we experience the beauty of Jesus in the things we are taught, which take root in our hearts.

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It is in his name that we pray our prayer. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]