2 Timothy 4:16-18

Hey, everybody.
Thanks for being back with us.
We are kind of working our way through the last chapter here
of 2 Timothy.
We’re in the fourth chapter,
verse 16 today.
Just going to read a couple of verses
and then talk about some of the themes of this.
This would be one of those passages,
Michael, I think you could read through and
maybe pass it by.
I mean, it doesn’t sound like maybe there’s a lot here,
but I think there’s some really interesting jumping off places.
So let me read it for you,
then we’ll get into it.
“At my first defense,
no one came to support me,
but all deserted me.
May it not be counted against them.
But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength,
so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed
and all the Gentiles might hear it.
So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.
The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack
and save me
for his heavenly kingdom.
To him be the glory forever and ever.
Amen.” So another one, we’ve said this in the previous studies
we’ve done on Paul’s writings.
They have these moments where he gives praise
and he ends usually with this word, amen,
as a kind of almost doxology
or kind of a worshipful moment in his writing.
I think the fascinating theme that we run into today
is a kind of forsakenness,
a kind of aloneness
that Paul says, “When I needed people,
they deserted me.
I was left alone.”
And then he says,
“May it not be counted against them.
But the Lord stood by me.”
And I have to think,
Michael, we get devotional on this one pretty quickly
’cause yes, this is biographical.
Yes, Paul is talking about his own experience,
but I think it would be a rare person
who couldn’t resonate with this
in the sense of having moments where they felt
forsaken,
where they felt
alone, where they faced some difficult moment in life
and we felt as though we did it by ourselves.
Maybe people hadn’t actually deserted us,
but we feel deserted because those moments are fraught
with a kind of loneliness that is built into them.
And I think it’s very interesting
that Paul kind of biographically gives us this snapshot
of his own experience,
one with which I think most of us can relate.
Yeah, Clint, I think that’s fair.
I think that what we discover here is
really a long tale of Paul’s life experience.
And let me explain what I mean by that.
This is certainly not the first time
as we see here in verse 16.
He says at my first defense,
that defense likely does not count
all of the other defenses we know
from the book of Acts that Paul made.
I mean, he made defenses before Jewish councils.
He made defenses in front of Gentile cities.
Paul is not a stranger towards both legal
and theological defense.
He’s done it throughout his entire apostolic ministry.
Here, it’s reasonable to guess
he’s talking about his first defense in this trial, this final season.
We know from the book of Acts
that there’s a long extended period
where Paul speaks to numerous people
in different places of power
and that that sort of sends him up the chain
as he makes his way to Rome.
It’s likely that’s what he’s referencing here.
And if that’s true, Clint, I think it’s worth noting
that Christian life is not something that spares us
from needing to give a defense,
number one, in the most simple sense.
And then in another sense,
it doesn’t spare us from the trial.
It doesn’t spare us from the difficulty.
It doesn’t spare us from the moments of desertion.
And we would like it to be otherwise.
In fact,
people of faith, men and women of faith have historically
looked for that in the gospel.
And when they found it,
they’ve generally had to read some things
in some interesting ways.
I think as Christians look through Paul’s experience,
we see the reality that when the good news
of Jesus Christ is proclaimed,
it will find opposition.
And maybe the scariest thing
is in the book of 2 Timothy,
that opposition has not been
in what we might call the world.
And I know we’ve mentioned this theme before,
so I’ll stay here very shortly.
But the point being,
sometimes we discover along the way,
the greatest pain is the desertion from within.
It’s the people who Paul’s already named and says,
they are wreaking havoc within the community.
They’re dividing us.
And that is something that needs corrected as a leader.
So it’s worth noting that as this older pastor writes,
this younger pastor, Clint, we’ve had moments that have been inspiring.
We’ve had moments that have been devotional
and meditational.
And any one of us would read them in the morning
and feel like they blessed us
as we set out to live that day.
Now we come to a moment which is sort of the end of the day,
but not just one day or any day,
the end of Paul’s life and ministry.
And these are sobering words.
And I don’t
think softening them
is necessarily the right path.
I think let them stand for the contrast that they are.
There’s good,
we’re blessed as part of the faith,
and there are moments of darkness and struggle and fight.
And in those moments too,
we are still being faithful as followers of Jesus Christ.
Obviously we wanna be careful
not mining too deeply in any one verse,
but I do think this is the kind of verse,
verse 16 here, that does offer us comfort
when we face those kind of moments on our own.
Again,
I suspect all of us have at some point felt alone,
felt disconnected from those around us.
And for Paul to say that and lay that out,
and he’s of course,
we have every reason to assume he’s speaking literally,
but then to say,
may it not be counted against them,
a sort of gracious statement,
a statement that leans toward forgiveness.
And then we move to a more spiritual underpinning,
but the Lord stood by me.
And I think unfortunately it is often in those lonely moments
that we come to that realization
that God has been with us.
We often don’t know that except in reverse.
We face moments where we feel alone.
And when we get through them and look back on them,
we then see the presence of God that we often missed
in the midst of that alienation,
in the midst of that loneliness and in that struggle.
And as we go through that,
as Paul has many times,
we learn to trust that.
And what’s important I think about that, Journey Michael,
is that God becomes present to us
in those moments then in the future,
not because it feels different,
but because we understand it differently.
We have faith that we are not alone,
even though in those times,
it may still feel as though we are.
And so we push back against that emotional sense
of loneliness with a theological conviction
that we are not abandoned.
We are not left to our own.
And I think ultimately that’s one of the journeys
we see on the cross.
My God, my God, why have they forsaken me?
Father, forgive them.
So the very cross itself embodies that struggle
of a physical, emotional sense of forsakenness
pushed back on with a spiritual theological conviction of God’s presence.
That God may not feel present,
but we proclaim that He is.
And I think there’s a beautiful tension there,
one that is not beautiful when you’re in it,
but on the other side of it,
it is.
And so I think it is very significant
that Paul goes from describing that moment
quite seamlessly and naturally
into a vocalization of praise.
Let it not be counted against them,
but the Lord stood by me and gave me strength
that I might continue my work.
So I was rescued.
The Lord will preserve me from every evil, right?
So now we’re going to confess from confession, to proclamation,
to adoration, and ultimately to Him be the glory forever and ever,
amen.
That’s a wonderful, but not easy journey.
Yeah, and I think that you speak eloquently
about the theological nature of Paul’s writing here.
I just wanna point out something
so that we don’t pass by it.
Interestingly, to me, some of the most powerful words
theologically in this section
actually come in the middle of verse 17,
and they’re small words you might read by them.
The Lord stood by me, gave me strength,
so that.
Those are deeply theological words.
And I just wanna caution you,
be careful, Christian,
to what you define as being God-ordained.
When we say so that,
we should do so humbly.
Now, we’re speaking here of the Apostle Paul
at the end of his life in ministry.
I think it’s reasonable to say that
by the power of the Spirit,
he sees clearly, he’s speaking here in some ways prophetically, but he says,
so that through me,
the message might fully be proclaimed.
That is a thoroughly Christian hope.
The idea that,
yes, I’ve suffered.
Yes, I can’t even give voice
to that feeling of being deserted,
but God is doing this so that.
And then here, so that another might hear the good news,
so that another one might be blessed.
I mean, that is the force and the inextricable movement
of the gospel, that God works through us
for the sake of the other.
That’s chiefly what we see revealed
or most clearly seen in the life of Jesus Christ.
That’s what his life is, is
a gift from God,
both in the being born to
dying and then being raised from the dead.
So I think, for instance, just worth noting,
when you are in that moment of suffering
or when the trial and trouble comes,
that message of hope and faith is the so that.
It’s that God is able to make of this something,
even with ingredients that are horrible.
I mean, this doesn’t make the desertion
or the defense palatable.
It doesn’t make it enjoyable.
It doesn’t make it better substantially.
What it does is remake it into something
that has meaning as opposed to something that destroys meaning.
It’s subtle.
There’s probably more preaching there
than there is Bible study,
so be aware of that.
But I think it’s a beautiful phrase
as Paul works it into the letter.
Yeah, I don’t wanna overdo this,
Michael, but if you just kind of look at the bookends here,
all deserted me to Him be glory forever and ever.
We get there in two verses,
but that is a significant journey.
There are miles and years of experience
from the beginning to the end there.
They deserted me.
I was alone.
I felt forsaken.
I was hurting.
To Him be the glory.
That is the quest of our Christian life.
That is the nature of our discipleship
to begin with our experience of broken humanity
and end with proclamation of God’s praise and worthiness.
And it is sometimes a lifetime to get there.
And I think, yeah,
it’s interesting.
I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of this
as a powerful preaching verse,
but there is definitely a sermon or two in that.
And I think Paul,
as we’ve said this before,
three verses and Paul gets a book worth
of human experience and theology in them.
So I’m again impressed with him.
You know, I’m not going to put this in Paul’s mouth.
I’m struck here by the end of 17,
Clint, the idea that I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.
A question that I would ask of this text,
and I’ve not done enough research
to be able to answer this here is,
is he in this referencing Daniel
and that prophetic vision of when God rescues us,
when God doesn’t remove the threat, right?
Daniel’s thrown into the den.
The lions are there,
but it’s their mouths that are closed.
Is that what Paul’s referencing here?
Is this merely a metaphor?
Is there maybe some special meaning in this community
that we don’t know about?
What sermon did Paul preach when he was there?
Was it about the mouth of the lion?
These are things that we can’t answer,
but it’s certainly a question I would ask of this text
is what do we learn in such a very specific
and very much biblical metaphor,
that idea of being rescued from the lion?
Of course, we know that John is gonna take
that same image of the lion and put it next to the lamb
and say that when God makes all things right again,
there’s no need to be rescued
because the one who brings threat is united
to the one who’s threatened,
that there’s a peace that is cosmic.
There’s a kind of reunification that can only be imagined
as God’s best from the very beginning of creation.
So it’s amazing how just even that simple phrase
could inspire a whole line of questioning
as to what’s the depth of what Paul’s doing here,
but don’t let that distract you.
And Clint, I think you rightly moved us there.
And so I think we should end there
as we come to some kind of denouement
is that at the end of the day,
regardless of what is happening in Paul’s life,
and he says it,
that he’s giving defense,
that he’s been deserted.
He ends this by saying,
and make sure you see this,
to God be the glory forever and ever.
I mean, that is the universal chorus of every Christian
from all time and place.
We all join our voices to God be the glory
in good and in bad,
because we believe that in God,
all of that is taken up and made into something new,
something meaningful, something resurrected.
That is the hope of the gospel.
And so it’s the right movement in our lives.
Wherever you are today,
may your life move you towards glory and praise.
It may not feel like the next step,
but sometimes taking that step of faith,
choosing to bring glory to God.
That’s the moment where we suddenly connect
with this deeper stream of the faith.
And we find our hearts catching up to our intention
as we seek to glorify God.
Yeah, and if you’ve hung around church,
you may know this,
the word amen simply means let it be so,
or so be it.
And so that’s a fitting last word today,
let it be so.
Thanks for being with us friends.
We’ll see you tomorrow as we come to the last section
here in the book of 2 Timothy.
Thanks everybody.