The Lord Stood By Me
This last passage of 2 Timothy usually has a heading that says something like “Personal Instructions” or “Final Concerns” (or something like that), because this is the end of the letter, and by this point Paul has concluded his pastoral exhortations to Timothy. His tone turns from charging Timothy about ministry to now he’s speaking personally about his own ministry. Paul gets autobiographical. He mentions together his past, present, and future, which actually starts in verse 6.
The last pastoral exhortation to Timothy is in verse 5. It’s the concluding, summarizing imperative “fulfill your ministry.” We saw this last week. Verse 5:
Be sober-minded
Endure suffering
Do the work of an evangelist - fulfill your ministry
And those words usher Paul into considering the fulfillment of his own ministry.
His present, verse 6: “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.”
His past, verse 7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
His future, verse 8, “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day...”
Paul is saying that now there’s nothing not much left for him here; he’s been faithful to his calling; and what’s most on his mind these days is seeing the face of Jesus. That is Paul’s perspective and unsmudged clarity on reality. And it’s with that perspective and clarity that he gives us these “Personal Instructions.” And this is really important.
We should see verses 9–22 has the natural extension of what Paul has already been saying. Having already become personal in verse 6, Paul ends the letter with practical requests and reports — he’s requesting of Timothy some very practical things, and he’s reporting to Timothy his recent experiences. And Paul in this passage models for us two truths that could change our lives.
And these truths are something that you probably know. This is something that you’ve most likely heard before. But the way that we see Paul apply these truths is absolutely beautiful. Here they are:
Truth #1: We need people Truth #2: Jesus is enough
This sermon is about these two things. Let’s pray:
Father in heaven, we believe that you speak to us through your Word, and in moments like this, when your Word is open before us, we long to hear what you have to say. Help us by your Spirit, in Jesus’s name, amen.
Truth #1: We need people
The first truth I want us to see is that we need people. Paul models this right away in verse 9 when Paul says to Timothy: “Do your best to come to me soon.” That word for “do your best” is the same word Paul uses in Chapter 2, verse 15 when he says, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved...” There’s an intensity and a rush here. Paul really wants Timothy to come see him. Try hard, Timothy. Do your best. Make every effort to get here.
And then Paul says again in verse 12, “when you come” — which means, this is still on the front of his mind: Do your best to come, Timothy, and when you come ... meaning: You’re coming, right? You’re going to be here won’t you?
And then in verse 21 Pauls says it again: “Do your best to come before winter.” This is the same thing he said in verse 9 but now there’s a timeline, see. Don’t put this off, Timothy. I need you here soon — by winter, okay? Try hard to come before winter.
This is really the theme of this final passage. Paul is locked-in on this. He wants Timothy to visit him, and why?
Because Paul, a human, knows that he needs Timothy, a fellow human.
There are things that Paul desires, and there are possibilities not yet realized, that he knows will not happen in his insolation. He wants to do things that he knows he can’t do himself. See, Paul is very aware of his horizontal dependency, and we can learn from him.
Each one of us, when it comes to life in general — or pretty much any venture we undertake — we swim in a matrix of horizontal need. God has created us in such a way that we have to depend on other people who are dependent on other people who are dependent other people...
This is fundamental to human nature, and it’s a good thing. To realize our neediness is necessary for humility and wisdom, and should embrace this and live in it. And when we do, when we’ve established the reality of our humanity — when we know we need people — there are some details here in Paul’s story that I think will help us out, and I want to show you these. These are three practical takeaways from Paul’s practical report.
1) Faithfulness is the key to usefulness.
Look at verse 11. Most of Paul’s ministry partners have scattered, but in verse 11 he says, “Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.” Now at first this may not seem like a big deal, but remember that Paul and Mark have some history. There’s a story about Paul and Mark back in the Book of Acts.
Paul’s first missionary journey was with Barnabas, and in Acts 12:25 we read that Paul and Barnabas were bringing with them “John, whose other name was Mark.” That’s the same Mark here. Mark was on the team (see also Acts 13:5). But in Acts 13:13, we read that Mark ended up leaving the team. Acts 13:13, “Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John [who is Mark] left them and returned to Jerusalem.” So the team went one way, and Mark went the other.
And then later, in Acts 15, when Paul and Barnabas were preparing for their second missionary journey, Barnabas wanted to take Mark with them, but Paul said No. And Luke tells us exactly why Paul says No in Acts 15:38, “But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.”
Mark’s name isn’t even mentioned here. To Paul, Mark had become “one who had withdrawn.” Mark was a deserter. Mark was not team material. And so Paul had to cut him. Mark is out!
Now, juxtapose that to 2 Timothy 4:11. Paul tells Timothy to get Mark and bring him. And why? “Because Mark is very useful to me for ministry.” This man who was a liability had become an asset. The man who Paul once turned down is now among the few men Paul wants to be with him. How did that happen?
We don’t know exactly. Paul had mentioned Mark once before in the Book of Philemon as a “fellow worker,” and we don’t know the details of change that took place between Acts 15 and then, but it must have been significant. And whatever the details were, we know the verdict was faithfulness.
Mark had shown himself to be faithful, which almost certainly means that after being cut in Acts 15 he didn’t ball up and cry and throw himself a pity party. He could have done that. He could have wallowed and whined and made excuses for why Paul wanted him off the team. He could have eventually just blamed Jesus for the whole thing and abandoned the faith, because people do that. We live in a world of whiners.
I tell my kids that if they want to do some good with their lives, don’t be a whiner. Just start there. Not whining is a good first step toward faithfulness, and if you would indulge my speculation for a minute, I think this was the case with Mark. I venture to say that Mark, rather than whining, learned something from this situation with Paul, and he kept his chin up, and he put his energy toward something productive, like, I don’t know, writing one of the Four Gospels! And when Paul is at the end of his life, he wants Mark. He needs Mark, because Mark is useful to him. Because Mark has been faithful. Faithfulness is the key to usefulness.
So to anybody who has ever been passed over anything, see Mark. Be faithful.
Okay, here’s the second takeaway. We need people, and ...
2) Enemies will be enemies.
In verse 14 Paul reports on Alexander the coppersmith. Now there is an Alexander mentioned a couple other times in the New Testament and they are most likely the same guy. Paul mentions Alexander to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:20 and he calls him a blasphemer. Paul mentions him again here as bad news and he tells Timothy to watch out.
Now we don’t know the details of what Alexander did, but we know that it was harmful, verse 14, and that it was doctrinal, verse 15. Paul says in verse 15 that Alexander “strongly opposed our message.” Basically, Alexander did not like the gospel that Paul preached and he did things to get in the way.
And this is all a little ironic. Because we need people. Paul knows that. We know that. We need people. But we don’t need all people, and some people we emphatically do not need because some people are enemies, and that will always be the case. We just need to know who is who. Horizontal dependency requires horizontal assessment, and sometimes we must beware because there are enemies. So don’t be naive. Be aware. Enemies will be enemies.
Okay, here’s the third takeaway. We need people, and…
3) People will disappoint you.
Paul says, again in verse 9:
Timothy, do your best to come to me soon. (Because I need people.) For Demas (a person I needed), is in love with this present world and he has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia. Titus to Dalmatia.
Now I don’t think Crescens and Titus are in the same boat as Demas. Demas has deserted Paul and presumably abandoned the faith, but Paul says that these other two guys have simply gone somewhere else. He says in verse 12 that he sent Tychicus somewhere else. So there are different reasons for why these men have gone different places, but they’re still not with Paul, and that was especially difficult for Paul in verse 16.
In verse 16 Paul reports about his “first defense.” And this was most likely the first stage of his present trial. He’s still going through this trial as he’s writing the letter, but this “first defense” was something like his initial appearance before the court in Rome. Now we know from Acts 25 that Paul had appealed his case to Caesar. He wanted to go to trial before the Roman emperor, and that’s where he’s headed. This is a big deal. And in his first defense, standing before whoever that was in Rome, he had to do it alone. He says, verse 16: “no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me.”
And again, we don’t know the full stories for each of those “no ones” and “alls” in verse 16. I’m sure some of them had decent reasons for why they didn’t make it. We don’t know. We do know, though, that Paul doesn’t have hard feelings. He says plainly: “May it not be charged against them!” Paul is gracious — and yet still, not being there is not being there. And not being there when you’re needed there, hurts.
We can imagine that there’s a little bit of pain in Paul’s heart as he’s urging Timothy to come visit him. Paul wants Timothy to know that he was in a place — in that first defense — he was in a place where he needed his friends, but they weren’t there. They left him. And that kind of disappointment — relational disappointment when you need those relationships the most — that socks the soul, man. It’s a punch in the gut. It hurts.
And I don’t need to tell you this. But the deeper you go in your relationships, the more you rely on people, the more you know you need people, the riskier your life becomes because people will disappoint you. We are people who need people, and we will all at times let one another down. Brothers and sisters, deal with it. The inevitability of relational disappointment is not a reason to not need people. . . . especially when Jesus is enough.
Truth #1: “we need people.” Truth #2: Jesus is enough.
Truth #2: Jesus is enough
Verse 16: “At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me ...”
This is my favorite sentence in all the Bible. Paul is describing here the practical nearness and strength of Jesus, and do we have any idea what this is like?
I want to close our time by talking more about what Paul is saying here, but first let’s notice the purpose and promise that Paul mentions in verses 17 and 18.
Purpose and Promise of Jesus’s Nearness and Strength
The purpose is mentioned right away in verse 17. Jesus stood by Paul and strengthened him 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.”
And that last phrase there about the “lion’s mouth” is a metaphor for death (see Psalm 22:21). Paul is saying that Jesus spared him from death at his first defense in Rome. That was part of Jesus standing by him and strengthening him. Jesus sustained Paul’s earthly life in that first defense because Paul’s purpose had not yet been fulfilled.
“To depart and be with Christ is far better” — Paul has told us that (see Philippians 1:23) — but Jesus wasn’t yet done with Paul, and until Jesus is done, it’s necessary that we stay here. Paul tells us this in the Book of Philippians, and we see it 2 Timothy. It was true of Paul, and it’s true of us.
It means, Christian, if you’re here it’s because Jesus has a purpose for you, and he will fulfill that purpose. The purpose that Jesus had for Paul in Rome was to stand before the Emperor Nero and preach the gospel, which Paul would do.
Paul would go on to stand before the ruler of the world’s greatest superpower. And at that epicenter of the highest human authority, to the head of the Gentile world, through Paul the message of Jesus would be fully proclaimed. That was Paul’s next appointment, and he knew it would be his last. That’s his purpose.
But there’s also a promise. Jesus who is near to Paul and strengthening Paul would rescue Paul from every evil deed and bring him safely into his heavenly kingdom.
The promise here is not the absence of death, but it’s victory over death. Because Paul did die. Nero beheaded him. But the evil deed of a sword through the neck did not have the final say, and in fact, the violence of that sword only became Paul’s safe passage into glory, which is where he’s at right now. That evil deed done to Paul was a little dot on the map, and then Paul has Jesus forever. Paul knew Jesus would rescue him.
This the purpose and promise of Jesus’s nearness and strength in verses 17 and 18. But I want to talk more about what exactly is Jesus’s nearness and strength. What does it really mean that Jesus STOOD BY PAUL and STRENGTHENED HIM?
What Actually Is Jesus’s Nearness and Strength?
Well, first, and at the very least, it means that Jesus will be there for you when others are not.
In verse 16 Paul says that “no one came to stand by me.” None of his friends, none of his ministry partners, none of them stood by him. But in verse 17 he says: “the Lord stood by me.” The Lord Jesus, then, is contrasted to the disappointment Paul felt by relational absence. When others were not present and Paul needed them to be, Jesus was present. Jesus showed up. Jesus was near.
And Jesus being near Paul, standing by Paul, was to strengthen him. Which means that Jesus isn’t just there for you when others are not, but he will do for you what others cannot do.
He will give you strength. Paul talks about the strength of Jesus throughout his letters, and he’s already talked about it in this letter. Do you remember the command in Chapter 2, verse 1? Chapter 2 starts: “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”
And in that sermon we talked about how the “grace that is in Jesus” is the same as saying Jesus who is full of grace. This is strengthening in chapter 2 is from Jesus just like it is here in Chapter 4. And this is the way Paul lived! His experience in 2 Timothy 4 was not a one-time thing. We read in Acts 23:11 that when Paul was on trial in Jerusalem, “the Lord stood by him” and Jesus actually said to Paul to “take courage.”
And I think that scene gives us a little vantage into how the strengthening happens. Jesus strengthens by his nearness, and by the nearness of his voice. Jesus communicates to us. And we know his speaking comes through his Scriptures — Jesus has given us this Book — but if we’re going to get what Paul is saying here, if this is going to make any sense to us, we first have to recognize that Paul understood a dimension of reality that we often don’t, and it’s that Jesus is real.
The Realness of Jesus
See, most of us most of the time live like Jesus is just an idea. It’s not that we don’t believe in him, we do — we know who he is and what he’s done — but throughout the details of our day we don’t orient to him. We don’t think about him the same way we think about the real people we see and interact with, and the more we live this way day-in and day-out, we eventually relegate Jesus to a category of “Less Real” than the things we constantly deal with.
We act like Jesus is stuck in an old shoebox we’ve crammed somewhere deep in our closet. We function that way, and the first thing we need to do is acknowledge it. We should acknowledge that this is normally how we live, and I just want to say, so that you know: I aim to give my life to helping you live differently.
I want us to live like the apostle Paul, who received every moment in light of the realness of Jesus. Just look at Chapter 4. Verse 17 doesn’t come out of nowhere ...
Look at verse 1: I charge you, Timothy, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus — oh let me tell you about Jesus! He’s the judge of the living and the dead, and he has a kingdom and he’s coming back, and what I’m saying to you right now, Timothy, I’m saying before him. I answer to him!
Verse 8: Timothy, there’s not much left for me here. But henceforth, the next big item on my calendar, is that crown of righteousness laid up for me, that crown that Jesus himself — the righteous judge, remember — Jesus himself is going to award me that crown. But not only me, Jesus has crowns for everybody who loves him.
Verse 14: Alexander the coppersmith is still bad news, Timothy, and he did me great harm, and Jesus is going to take care of that. Jesus, the judge, remember, the sovereign one, Jesus, will repay Alexander according to his deeds. They’ve not been ignored. They’ve not been swept under the rug. Jesus will make him pay.
Verse 17: And I was on trial, alone, because nobody else came to stand by me, but Jesus stood by me and strengthened me.
Verse 18: And Jesus will rescue me from every evil dead. Nero’s sword will not have the final say, but Jesus is going to bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. He bringing me home, Timothy, and I’m going to see his face. And to him be the glory forever and ever. Amen!
Do you see that for Paul Jesus has been there with this whole time?
Paul’s Unsmudged Clarity
This is what it means for Paul to have unsmudged clarity on reality. Even as Paul is writing this letter, as he is saying these exact words, he is saying them like Jesus is right beside him, and...
The One who he answers to
The One who will award him
The One who judges evil
The One who supplies strength when everything else fails
The One who he is about to see
When Jesus is real, Jesus is enough. We need people. Jesus is enough.
And this means, make every effort to surround yourself with people who will help you, who will be with you, who can bring you things, and when they don’t, when nobody comes, when you’re all alone, remember that Jesus is all you really need, and he’s always there, near to you, strengthening you, because he is real.
This was no theory for Paul, but he lived this way, with Jesus standing by him, and strengthening him, and I want that so badly.
Jesus, I Want Your Realness!
This is our calling, brothers and sisters. This is how Jesus intends for us to live. I wrote this sermon that way. As I studied this text and wrote this manuscript and as I’m saying this to you now, I’m doing it with Jesus right here and at work.
Right now, in this moment, the Lord Jesus, more real than any of you, is seated at the Father’s right hand, and he’s looking at us — Jesus, I want to live like you’re real!
Don’t you, church?
I think the personal nature of verse 17 warrants our personal reflection. Do you want to know Jesus like Paul knew him? Do you want to live like Jesus is real? Or are you okay with Jesus in the shoebox?
First, if you’re here (or watching) and you’ve not yet put your faith in Jesus, I invite you to do that. Jesus is real, and he’s the judge, and you’re going to answer to him. That’s just the facts. But he offers mercy to you. At the cross, Jesus suffered the punishment we deserve for our sins and he died for us, and then on the third day, he was raised from the dead victorious over sin and death, and if you trust him, if you turn from your sins and bow to Jesus, you will be saved. Trust him.
And then for all of us who do trust Jesus, we so badly need revival. We need revival in our souls, in our homes, and in our church. I think the best summary for revival is a renewed and deepening recognition of Jesus’s realness. Don’t we need that? And so what I’d like to do as we close here and come to this Table, is I want to ask Jesus for this. Let’s just ask him.
Lord Jesus, you tell us to ask and we will receive, to seek and we will find, to knock and it will be opened to us, and so we are asking and seeking and knocking that you would be more real to us than anything else. We so often live in the fog of our circumstances and the haze of our activities, and I beg that you, in all of that, would stand forth clearly, to stand by us and strengthen us. In your great name, amen.
The Table
And now we come to this Table, which Jesus has given us to remember his death. The bread represents his broken body and the cup represents his shed blood. And as we eat and drink, we renew our fellowship to him and one another, and together we give him thanks. We do this, first, as the covenant members of Cities Church, but if you’re here and you trust in Jesus, we invite you to eat and drink with us.
His body is the true bread. His blood is the true drink. Let us serve you.
