“For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am notashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He isable to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day. Holdfast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and lovewhich is in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed unto theekeep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us”. – 2 Timothy 1:12-14.

“Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vainbabblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.” -1 Timothy 6:20

Now, to shorten the text so that you will remember it, the text is, “Jesus will keep my 
deposit, and I am exhorted to keep His deposit.” Whenever a reference is made to 
the original terms before a mixed audience, it is never done in any pedantic sense and 
the reference will be only just enough to make you fully understand. If you were 
reading the Septuagint version of the Old Testament in the Greek of that passage 
from Leviticus and the New Testament in the Greek, you would see certain words, a 
parallel between the words, so plain that you could not misunderstand. For instance, 
where it is said, “I am persuaded that He will keep that which I have committed to 
Him,” in the original it is, “I am persuaded that He will guard my deposit.” And also 
down there where it is said, “Keep that which is committed unto thee,” “Guard the 
good deposit made with you, placed in your trust.” So that the two stand in sharp 
contrast, my deposit with Jesus and the deposit which Jesus makes with me.

Now, our text says, “I am suffering a great many things on account of the cause 
which I advocate, the Gospel which I preach, but I am not therefore ashamed, and 
the reason that I am not ashamed, though it is costing me so much, is that I know 
whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He will keep my deposit until the 
Judgment Day, and I am exhorted to keep His deposit,” whatever that is, and we 
will find out directly. “I am exhorted to keep it in faith and in love. I am exhorted to 
keep it through the Holy Ghost. I am not exhorted to keep it through the Holy Ghost 
in any general sense, but through the Holy Ghost that dwells in me, through the 
indwelling Spirit of God.”

There are three ways, then, by which you may determine how you are to guard the 
deposit which God has placed with you. You are to guard it in faith, you are to guard 
it in love, you are to guard it through the indwelling Holy Ghost.

The first thing to be determined, then, is, what ground had the Apostle Paul, what 
reasonable ground had he, for making a valuable deposit with the Lord Jesus Christ? 
Man is so constituted that when he takes anything that is precious to him and puts it 
in the keeping of another, there must be some strong reason for doing that. He 
doesn’t do such a thing as that blindly. There must be some indubitable evidence in 
his judgment, at least, of the trustworthiness of the one with whom the deposit is 
made, and not merely the trustworthiness, but the ability of the one who holds a 
deposit to keep it safely.

It would be an act of folly for me if I had a bag of jewels, very precious jewels, to go 
and deposit them in a bank about whose trustworthiness I knew nothing, and it 
would still be an act of folly, even if I knew that these people were trustworthy, if 
they had no ability to keep what I had deposited with them. Before I make, then, a 
precious deposit, there devolves upon me this obligation, to acquaint myself fully with 
the trustworthiness of the party in whom I repose this confidence, and then of the 
ability of the party to safely keep what I do commit to him.

Now, the Apostle Paul alleges that he has made a deposit of the most precious thing 
to him in the world; that he had taken his priceless jewel and put it as a deposit, not 
for a week, nor a month, nor a year, but even after he was dead, even until the 
Judgment Day shall come. He says, “I have put my inestimable treasure in the hands 
of Jesus Christ and left it there, confidently persuaded in my mind that I acted wisely; 
that He is to be trusted; that He is able to keep what I did put into His trust. I am 
fully persuaded of that, and that He is able to keep it, not only today and tomorrow, 
but next week and next year, and when I am sick and when I am well, in a storm and 
in a calm, and in death and in eternity. I think He is able to keep it. I am persuaded 
of that.”

What, then, is the ground of that persuasion? Here is what he says: “I know whom I 
have trusted”; that is to say, knowledge preceded my faith. It was not credulity, blind 
credulity, that led me to put my soul and my body, myself in my entirety, myself for 
time and eternity-it was not blind credulity that led me to put so valuable a treasure, 
that is more valuable than this whole world, so valuable that a world could not be 
received for it in exchange.

“I did not act the fool in depositing that with Jesus Christ. My faith rested 
upon evidence, evidence as clear as the sunlight, abundant evidence, 
evidence overwhelmingly convincing in its cogency and force, evidence such 
as the thoughtful, reasonable, wise man might accept. And on the score of 
this knowledge that I possessed-a knowledge of what? No what about it. It 
is not a knowledge of what. It is a knowledge of whom. I know whom I 
have believed.

“I have not trusted an abstraction. I have not put my head down on a pillow 
of speculation. I have not predicated this act of mine upon any knowledge of 
geography, nor astronomy, nor mathematics, nor of any science, but upon 
the knowledge of a Person. I know whom I have believed. Not in whom I 
have believed; that is not what I know. I know the Person. I am acquainted 
with the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, mark this point, that our satisfaction and rest about the care of our soul and 
body and eternal interest will largely depend upon the degree of our knowledge of 
the One in whose hands we place the deposit. If you do not know much about Jesus, and what you do know is vague, by so much as it is small, by so much as it is misty and indeterminate, by that much will your confidence be shaken.

Every now and then in your weak moments, an enemy will come and whisper a 
doubt in your mind, either as to the trustworthiness or as to the solvency, or as to the 
ability or as to the reality of the One in whom you have placed your most precious 
treasure. I say your freedom from doubt, your freedom from distrust, after you have 
made the deposit, will be gauged by the kind and degree and satisfactoriness of the 
knowledge that you have of Jesus.

Now, I want to illustrate that and I want to take my own case, and it will be an 
experimental illustration. I do not believe that any man understands one-tenth part of 
the value of Jesus when he is converted. I think his knowledge of Jesus is all the time 
increasing.

I know when I was converted there was just this one thought in my mind: I wanted 
the forgiveness of sin. I wanted a Savior. I never had a thought about sins I might 
commit next year or ten years from now. I dealt only with my case in its present 
features, such as at the time forced itself upon my attention. I trusted in Jesus as far 
as I knew Him as a Savior and found peace in believing in Him.

But it was some time after that before I found out something else about, Jesus. I 
found by the study of the Bible that in the Atonement that He made for sin there was 
a provision not only for past sin, but there was a way by which you could get rid of 
future sins, and that Jesus was not only my Savior in that He died for me, but that He 
was my eternal Priest who ever liveth to make intercession for me, and is therefore 
able not only to have saved me, but to save me unto the uttermost, to save me next 
week, to save me next year, to save me in the hour of death, to save me in the 
disembodied state, to save me on the resurrection morning, to save me at the 
Judgment Bar of God. You see that as my knowledge of Jesus Christ increases my 
confidence is increased, is strengthened.

That is what Paul says:

“I know whom I trusted. I found out that I could not keep myself. That was 
evident. I could not keep myself an hour. I found out that my soul might be 
on its guard as much as it pleased, but that the ten thousand foes that were 
rising about it to seek its life would overcome it; that if my soul was left on 
any spot on this sin-cursed earth, it was lost, and so I took it, my treasure, 
and I hid it. I hid it in Christ. I let Christ take it with Him to heaven, and my 
life is hid with Christ in God, and now let the enemy howl. Let the clouds 
gather. Let hell open her yawning jaws and vomit out her legions of 
demoniacal hosts. How are they going to hurt me? Come up here and attack 
me. ‘Where is your treasure? Stand and deliver!’ ‘You cannot get it. I have 
deposited it in Christ. Christ in heaven holds it’.”And as J. R. Graves used to say,“Before the devil can get that, here is what he will have to do: He and his 
angels will have to overturn all the armies of God here on earth, and they will 
have to scale the battlements of heaven and beat back the countless legions 
of shining angels that stand in the presence of God, and they will then have to 
thrust their hands, their felonious hands, into the bosom of God and tear my 
life out, for my life is hid with Christ in God; and the devil cannot do that.”Now Paul says,“When I made this deposit I did not do it like a fool. I am not ashamed that I 
put that treasure there. Persecute me as much as you please. Manacle my 
hands. You cannot bind the Word of God. Immure me in a dungeon if you 
will; you cannot shut up in prison walls the Word of God. Throw me to the 
lions in Ephesus, the wild beasts, and let them gnaw me until I am 
pronounced dead. Do what you please. I have a light you cannot put out. 
You may put my feet in stocks. You may put me down in the dungeon of 
Philippi, and the sun may set and the clouds shut out the stars, but there will 
be light in my dungeon and in my heart, and though it be midnight I will sing 
praises to God that shall cheer the prisoners, because I am persuaded that 
my treasure is safe, fully persuaded about that; that I will be kept by the 
power of God through faith unto salvation that is to be revealed in that day.”Now that is why, to me, the study of Jesus Christ is the most precious study in the 
world. Every time I learn a new thing about Him my confidence increases. When I 
learn that He was anointed, not with that holy oil which Moses ordered to be 
compounded, and which was to be reserved as a sacred anointing oil to be poured 
only on the heads of kings and priests and prophets, but when I know that He was 
anointed by that which that holy oil typified, to-wit, the Eternal Spirit Himself, that He 
was anointed the day He was baptized, when as He came up out of the water the 
Spirit of God descended and rested upon Him in the form of a dove, and therefore 
He said, “I am anointed to preach the Gospel to the poor, to deliver the captives, to 
set at liberty them that are bruised.” I know that Jesus is anointed that way.

I know that He is thus anointed and accredited to be my Teacher. If I want to know 
anything about the hereafter, if I want to know anything about the secret of graves, if 
I want to know anything about the principles that shall prevail at the Judgment Bar of 
God, if I want to know something of what the earth shall be after the fire has swept 
over it with as broad and comprehensive a wave as the waters of the deluge; if I 
want to know about the Water of Life that bursts up from under the throne of God 
and on whose border grows the Tree of Life; if I want to know anything about the 
everlasting life that is there; about the absence of all tears and pain there; about the 
glorious presence of God and Jesus there, I go to my Teacher and I say, “Lord 
Jesus Christ, here is a subject that I cannot find anything about in my geography. My 
arithmetic doesn’t tell me anything about it. I do not care how far I go in the calculus, 
it cannot tell me anything about this. I may find out about the humming birds in South 
America, or about the spume of the ocean. I may be able by the microscope to 
measure the down on the leg of a flea, but it doesn’t tell me anything about all of this. 
O, my Teacher, my Teacher, tell me about this! My King, let me obey this will! My 
Priest, here is my brief record. It is a ragged one. O, Lord, I committed this offense 
and that offense, and even since I have been a Christian, and I have not a word to 
say about it. It cannot be justified, but O, my righteous Advocate with God, take my 
case and go before the Court and plead your own righteousness and your own 
atoning blood and let my sin be covered.”

Now, I say, as you know more about Jesus, your confidence is increased as to the 
wisdom of your having deposited with Him your inestimable treasure.

What is gratitude? Have men got much gratitude? Suppose I go off somewhere from 
home and I want to leave my little children in somebody’s trust, how sweet a thing it 
would be when far away to know they are in safe keeping. Now while I am away, 
resting in the sweetness of the thought that what I have entrusted to another is safely 
guarded, suppose over there, in a little bit of a matter that he has entrusted to me, I 
rob him of it, actually rob him of it.

Now I am coming to the point and the application. We are to consider first what we 
have deposited with Jesus and how safely He keeps what we have deposited with 
Him. Now then, He says, “Let there be a little reciprocity about this. I have 
something I want to commit to you; I want to make you a custodian.” “O Lord, what 
do you want to commit to us?” Paul says, “That form of sound words which you 
heard of me.” That is the good deposit that you are to guard.

What does “form of sound words” mean? You would get the idea better if you could 
just see the way it was originally written. It means that system of clean-cut doctrine 
embodied in the book that Paul writes to Timothy. As Luke puts it, “The things that 
are most confidently believed among us,” the doctrines about God and heaven and 
hell and the church and salvation, “the form of sound words.” “I want to deposit that 
with you.”

Well, will any danger attach to this business? “Yes.” “From what direction is danger 
most likely to be apprehended?” “From science falsely so-called.”

Now let me read it to you, 1 Timothy, sixth chapter: “O Timothy, keep that deposit 
placed in thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science 
falsely so-called.”

Why, the Spirit of God enabled him to see the emergencies of this hour. God’s 
prescience, His knowing beforehand, saw just as plainly as you see it today, the 
attempts made to minify, to discredit, to dilute, to render powerless the form of 
sound words which God placed as a solemn trust in the keeping of His people.

There are two ideas that operate on my mind in accounting for my fidelity in standing 
up for the Bible just as it was given.

One is, I never can surrender a chapter nor verse, nor a jot nor a tittle, so long as my 
grateful heart remembers what Jesus is keeping for me.

My deposit He lets no devil lay his filthy hand on. My deposit no lapse of time or 
mutation of revelation is allowed to interfere with. Oh, how faithful He is! He is 
faithful to His promise. He keeps my deposit intact. When I come to reach it, when I 
see it again, it will weigh just as much as when I put it in His hand. When I get to it, 
there won’t be a speck of dust on it. When I get to it, it will not be gnawed off at the 
edges and clipped off. It will not be tampered with. It will not be mixed with alloy 
and false coin. It will be my treasure just like I gave it to Him, and I am sure of that. 
And O, Lord Jesus Christ, when my grateful heart thinks of that, I do not want to 
surrender the ninth part of a hair of Thy deposit.

You may call it a little thing, but I will fight for the ribbon; I will fight for the tassels on 
its ornament; I will fight for the outer edge of the circumference, and not one foot of 
it shall ever be mutilated, not a foot. The truth is, we want it all, every bit of it, as the 
truth, as the whole truth, and as nothing but the truth, precious to the heart, 
enlightening the eye, comforting the soul in death and flooding the gloom of eternity 
with its radiance.

Some of you perhaps thought I was too strong last Sunday when I said that a man 
who would seek to rob me of what God had revealed ¾ secret things belong to 
God, but revealed things belong to us, and they belong to our children, and my child 
after me is entitled to every bit of it, and my grandchild when I said that a man who 
would come to rob me of any part of God’s revealed truth was a more heinous 
robber than Kidd, the pirate, I do not care what flag he floats.

There are two rights of property, the most sacred and the most inestimable, inherent 
and inalienable, that earth can consider, and one is that secret things belong to God, 
and the other is that revealed things belong to us, and they belong to our children. 
They belong to our children forever. They not only belonged to the little children that 
walked the streets of Jerusalem when our Lord Jesus Christ revealed them, but they 
belong to the children of Waco; they belong to the naked, destitute children that 
cower in African jungles; they belong to the skin-covered, dwarfed children in 
Lapland and Esquimau countries. Wherever there is a child, though he knows 
nothing of his property, as God’s attorney I stand and – say, “Let him have his 
property. Let him have it. It is right.” Palsied be that robber hand that would steal it 
from him! The curse of God rests upon that church that finds it and tells a lie about it 
and won’t carry it to the owner.

If a man finds your purse and keeps it and says it is his, why, you look on him with 
contempt as a thief. But here is a church of Jesus Christ that finds a treasure that 
belongs to the heathen over yonder, and just holds it here. It keeps it here. It is your 
business to carry it to him. Go, let that ignorant man know about his rights and 
property.

“The oppositions of science falsely so-called.” Yes, indeed, “falsely so-called.” You 
see a man put on his spectacles and take up a book of the Bible without a document 
in the world, without a witness in the world, without evidence that is visible or 
palpable, but just simply what can be evolved from his German consciousness. He 
says, “Just scratch out that book there.” Now, I cannot help being amused, while I 
am horrified. I will tell you what it reminds me of. When I was a child I did laugh a 
great deal over Washington Irving’s “Knickerbocker,” when I read how the 
common people found which way the wind was blowing. They said they knew which 
way the wind was blowing. “Well, how do you know?” “Well, the Governor every 
morning sends a little Negro up to set his weathercock the way the wind is blowing, 
and as soon as he sets his, all the rest of them set theirs like the Governor’s, so that 
the direction of the wind every morning depends on how the little Negro sets the 
Governor’s weathervane, and if it is nine o’clock before he goes up, you have to 
wait until he goes before you know, and if he sleeps one day and doesn’t set it, why 
you are wrong for that day.”

Now, I take up this book. of the Bible, and I am told that I have to wait until I hear 
from Germany. Last week there were two or three books left, I know, but some 
theological professor in Germany may find out next week that two of those books 
have to be scratched out. Now, just think of that and just look at the littleness of 
science falsely so-called. A worm of the dust, a mere worm, whose ignorance is 
almost as infinite as God’s knowledge, taking the treasure that is more priceless than 
all earth’s gold and silver and diamonds put together, and saying it will put a price on 
this every day, and you have just got to keep a price current to see what your 
property is worth. It will just go up and down according to my opinion.

O Timothy, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is keeping thy soul safe, who lets no devil 
touch you, Timothy, He told me to tell it to you just as I received it, and now, on 
your honor as a trustee, on your conscience as the custodian of the property of 
others, I charge you to keep it. How? In faith. Is that all? In love. Love it. Keep it in 
your heart. Let the Word of God dwell in you. How else? Through the indwelling 
Holy Ghost.

Now what does that prove? That proves that the only men who can be trusted with 
reference to the deposit which God has given to us are men, first, of faith-men that 
have faith in Jesus Christ; second, men that have love, heart-faith; third, men in 
whom the Holy Spirit dwells; and as for the rest of the crowd, why they have got 
nothing to do with it as to keeping it. God did not pitch it out as a football, to be 
kicked here and there. He did not throw it as a winged ball for one shuttlecock in 
Germany to pitch it yonder and another to pitch it back to him, but to men who 
honestly and faithfully believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and know whom they believe; 
men conscious of what He is keeping for them; men grateful for what He is keeping 
for them; to men that love Him and love it; to men in whom the Holy Ghost is an 
abiding guest; to these men, to keep it; and they will keep it, and don’t you fear it. 
They will keep it. They have kept it, bless God! in every age of the world.

One has come and blown on it and said, “I have puffed it out.” And so the “higher 
critics,” but the Book is here and here it will stay until, dear brother, it is lifted off of 
your table at home, off of the pulpit in the church, and put on the Judgment Bar of 
God as the law by which the opponents of it shall be judged.

Share this content with your peers!

About The Author

Benajah Harvey Carroll was born in Mississippi and raised in Texas. He was a soldier for the Confederate army. In 1865, at the age of twenty two, he converted to Christianity at a Methodist camp meeting after taking up a preacher's challenge to experiment with Christianity. After the war, he was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Waco and later the founder of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, still the largest seminary in the world. He was a powerful leader of the Southern Baptist Convention and was a formidable foe in the political controversies that often arose. He almost always found himself on the conservative side of such issues. He was mildly Calvinistic and a postmillieniallst. He stood strongly against Modernism and Catholicism. He believed that preaching was the essence of the pastor's duty; he was an expositor in the truest sense. He believed in the authority and the inspiration of the Bible first and foremost. He criticized and chided the "Higher Criticism" teachers as being false brethren. Carroll published 33 volumes of works, and is best known for his 17-volume commentary, An Interpretation of the English Bible. Benajah Harvey Carroll died November 11, 1914, and is buried at the Oakwood Cemetery in Waco, Texas.

Related Posts