The Lord Be With Your Spirit

This week, we're going to be back in 2 Timothy 4. We're going to be moving on into verses 16-18. And we're going to be addressing the question of loneliness as a Christian. I'm sure all of us at some point or another have felt abandoned, either by those that we love or even by the Lord Himself. In our text this morning, Paul remembers those that he had traveled with, those that he'd ministered alongside. And for various reasons, some good and some bad, they've all left him in his hour of need. And so my hope this morning is that the Lord will use this passage to strengthen us and equip us to be faithful even when we're alone in serving him. And more than that, I hope that God will give us grace to pray for those who've sinned against us and who have caused our solitude.

Our text this morning is 2 Timothy 4, verses 16-18. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. At my first defense, no one supported me, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them. But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that through me the proclamation might be fully accomplished, and that all the Gentiles might hear. And I was rescued out of the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I am glad when you guys say amen, even when I'm reading it in a passage of scripture, except for when it's in the middle of the passage and then it confuses me. So we're going to start off at the beginning of this section where Paul says, at my first offense, no one supported me, but all deserted me.

Paul is in prison now, and this isn't the first time Paul's been in prison. He's been in prison before. He's been in Roman prison before. And at his first defense, he says, no one supported me. They've all left me. Those that were close to him, those that administered alongside of him, those that he would have looked to for comfort and for strength. When this word support has to do with the sort of support that was provided for Moses when his arms were being held up and they got tired. and then Aaron came and held his arms up for him. It's that sort of support. Paul's acknowledging there's a weakness. I don't have an unending amount of strength in me. And sometimes it's good to have people around us to strengthen us, especially when we're weak. And he's saying, I was in that time, and there was no one to hold me up. There was no one to support me. There was no one to strengthen me. Just ahead of this passage,

In verses 9 and 10, he's telling Timothy, make every effort to come to me soon. Why? Because he's alone. He says, Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia. Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. And so he's alone by himself as he's awaiting his death. It's one thing to be alone and to not have strangers near you or your enemies to leave you to rot, Suffer alone. But when you're weak, it's a whole other level of grief to have those that are close to you and who, by all rights, should be there, absent. Have you ever had someone that you know suffer and your response was, I don't want to go over there because I don't want to get into the house of mourning with them. I don't know what to say to them. I don't know how to be a help to them. And I don't want to have my day or my week spoiled.

By their sorrows. I might not sleep well tonight. These things and things like it are what keep us away from those who are grieving. Maybe you've been the person on the other end wanting someone to be around. Someone to call. Someone to talk to. Someone to sit with. But there was no one. The sort of grief that Paul's feeling here I think was the sort of grief we often feel when we lose a loved one. We know that when someone passes away, they've not chosen to leave us. And yet, if we love them, we do feel a sense of aloneness. They have left us alone in this world. They're no longer there to call, to talk to. Their presence is gone. And you think, I'm particularly weak. I'm in need of support. And the person that supports me is now gone. And this is the sorrow of death of our loved ones. And this is how Paul's feeling here. He's in need of support. He's very aware of his...

of his surroundings and his life circumstances, and there's no one there to be with him. He says, all have deserted me. Sometimes when we're sad, we like to be alone. It's almost like we want to wallow in it. But the Bible tells us that that's not good. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either one of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. Have you ever been in a situation where you've fallen and there's no one to help you? Where your car breaks on the side of the road and there's no one who can come? We can multiply circumstances where we go, there's no help here. Paul is alone at the worst possible time. And you can imagine the sort of frustration that you might feel if you were in his circumstance.

The people that you love and the people that have been there and been around you and supported you in the work now are gone. You'd imagine that you could get angry, you could get frustrated, you would be embittered against them. Why aren't they here? This is not Paul's response. His response is to pray for them. And he says to the Lord, may it not be counted against them. They've left me. It was inappropriate for them to leave me. Many times they've left because of sinful reasons. Demas, he speaks of having loved the world. being the reason that he's deserted him. And then just a few verses later, he says, may it not be counted against them. Do we pray for those who sin against us, that the Lord will be gracious to them? Or do we pray that the Lord would judge them according to their failures? Paul's response here is a very gracious response. May it not be counted against them. It's the sort of thing that doesn't make any sense to our natural mind. His closest friends have left him, and his concern...

is not for himself but for them, that the Lord would be gracious and merciful toward them. We see the same sort of thing in Acts chapter 7 where Stephen is being stoned. Stephen gives a defense of the gospel, proclaims the gospel, and then they're cut to the quick and they take him out of the city and they stone him. And as they're stoning him, he calls out to the Lord and he says, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. So he says two things. First, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this against them. Having said this, he fell asleep. He died. So who stood with Stephen when he died? No one. And his prayer was that the Lord would be merciful to those casting the stones. When Jesus was being crucified, having the nails driven through him, in Luke 23 it says, But Jesus was saying, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they're doing.

This sort of mercy, this sort of concern for people and for their sins and for the judgment of God is a distinctly Christian thing. It's very natural for us to get angry toward the people who sin against us. To push them away and to say, that's not fair and that's not right. You shouldn't have done that and I'm going to punish you for it. In some way or another, as much as I'm able. We hold grudges. We become embittered. We're silent. We leave. We slam doors. We hang up the phone. We curse. And many more things, don't we, when we get angry and someone sins against us. What do you do when someone sins against you? What we ought to do is pray for them. Not that they'd repent and treat you better, though that would be nice, but rather that if we're convinced that what they're doing is actually sin, that we would realize that sin's not just against us, but that their sins are against the Lord. And time and again, you see Stephen, you see Paul, and you see Jesus praying that God would be merciful.

to those who sinned against him. Have mercy on them. Don't count this against them. Now the question that I have in my heart, and I suspect is in your heart, is how do I get a hold of that? How do I get to the point where when someone sins against me like that, I'm supposed to be gracious toward them? When someone strikes me on the cheek, how do I turn to them the other cheek and not punch them back? Paul tells us. He says, no one supported me. All deserted me. Father, have mercy on them. Don't count it against them. He said, but the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. And so the key to overcoming loneliness or resentment or abandonment is for the Lord to strengthen you. I think many times we sense the presence of God through the people, through his people being around us. For my part, when I'm around you guys, when I'm at church, I find strength and encouragement to live a more holy life.

I wish that it weren't the case that Sunday was an easier time to be a Christian, but I find that it's an easier, there's not as much temptation on a Sunday as there is in the middle of the week for me. And looking out at you, I see I'm not the only one that feels that way. And it's because we interpret oftentimes the presence of God and the strength of God through the presence of his people. So what happens when they're not around? Well, if we're left to our own devices, what happens is we fall into sin many times. And that's not as it should be.

But what Paul says here, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. He's not having some vision of Jesus sitting next to him in the cell. What he's saying is that the Holy Spirit is comforting him. There's an internal witness in the heart of a Christian that God is with them in their sorrows and that he strengthens them through it. Now, if we were to look at the kind of difficulty that Paul is going through and say, How could you feel as though God is with you? There is no other answer except to say that God comforted him and strengthened him when he was alone. When feelings of abandonment arose, he went, no, the Lord is with me. And he wasn't just talking to himself. The Lord's with me. He felt the presence of God with him. And I think many times in our circles, we don't like to talk about subjective things.

We like to talk about objective things. How can I know? Will I see him? What will he say? Paul doesn't give us any of that. What he says is that the Lord attended to him in his weakness. The Lord stood with him and strengthened him. What did the Lord strengthen him to do? Here's a thing that we should keep careful note of. Paul doesn't say, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me to bear my imprisonment and my upcoming death. Paul has in mind Two things, at least two things as he's ministering here. One is that the Lord would be merciful to those who sinned against him. And two, that he would be able to finish his work, which was to proclaim the gospel. And so he says, the Lord stood with me and the Lord strengthened me to proclaim so that the proclamation might be fully accomplished and that all the Gentiles might hear. Even as Paul is about to die in a Roman prison, his concern is that the gospel will go forth that people would hear. How often have you in your life had work to do?

and your sense of aloneness in it has kept you from doing your work. And you thought, the problem is I have work to do. The reason I don't feel the presence of God, the reason I feel so alone is because I've got all this work that takes me away from joy, that takes joy away from me. Paul's concern was not that his work would be removed from him, but that God would strengthen him to continue to do it until the very end. He wanted to be able to proclaim the gospel fully. And so what is your work? What do you do on a day-to-day basis? What are you alone in? I think many times this is the feeling that mothers have at home. If they're home with their children, they feel alone. No one sees, no one knows, no adult talks to them. They're just left with little kids all day. Husbands come home and they think, my wife doesn't understand what I've been through all day. At work, I had this problem and this conflict and I screwed this thing up and I'm not finished with that and I'm behind in this other thing.

How come she doesn't understand? You feel alone. Maybe you're single and you come home to an empty house. You go to work or you go to school and then you come home and there's no one there. Everything is exactly how you left it. And you go, now what am I supposed to do with my night, my weekend? I'm alone. Got nothing to do. No one to be with. In those moments, you have to ask, what work has the Lord given me to do? What's his calling on my life right now? Paul's calling, he was very sure of, which was that he was the apostle to the Gentiles. His job was to speak the truth to those who'd never heard it. And so even as he's dying, he's going, this is my work. Lord, help me to do this work. And his testimony is that the Lord stood with him and made him able to do it. I think also that we rely too much on our feelings or our circumstances or our desires to tell us whether God is present with us. Now, it is true that we do feel the presence of God.

Or you can feel the absence of God. But the question is not whether you feel those things, but whether you believe those things are true. When the Israelites were going into the Promised Land, and Joshua was getting ready to go in, it's sort of the Great Commission of the Old Testament. They're going in, and the Lord says, I'm going to go before you, and I'm going to prepare the place, and I'm going to be with you. And he says, don't be afraid. Be courageous, for I am with you. And Jesus says the same thing in the Great Commission. Go into the nations proclaiming, teaching, baptizing, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. He promises that he'll never leave us alone, that we'll never be apart from him. And so when we feel as though we're apart from him, we have spiritual work to do to decide what we're going to believe, which path we're going to take. Do we believe what we feel?

Do we believe what our circumstances dictate to us? Do we believe what our desires are? Or do we believe what God has said? You are with me. Satan loves to get into these times of sorrow and trial and suffering and whisper in your ear and tell you God is not with you and he doesn't care. But if you're a Christian, that is simply never the case. God is always with you. And much of us go, all the time? You mean like when I did that? Yes. He saw it. He knew about it. And he sent his son to save you from it. I think too often we don't want to be fully known. We live in a society where anonymity, privacy is very important to us. We don't want everyone to know. You ever get that feeling welling up inside of you? That's none of your business. Or why would you ask me a question like that? This is what it means to live in America is that we want to be alone. That's what anonymity and privacy is. We want not to be known.

So is it any surprise then that when sorrow and hardship and trials come into our life, we are alone? Have you ever struggled with sin and thought, I could never tell them that. They don't know that about me. What would they think if they knew? What that teaches us about ourselves is that we keep everything off at a distance. We keep people off at a distance. When sorrow comes, it turns out that those people are off at a distance. because they didn't know. On the other hand, think of a time when you've had conversation or relationship with someone who knew you, and you could speak freely. And you didn't have to worry about what they were going to think of you, because they knew you well enough to know what you meant, and they weren't going to gasp in horror if you told them what you were feeling or what you did. They may rebuke you, they may correct you, there may be things they do, but the one thing they wouldn't be is surprised.

or shocked, or I can't believe. Those sorts of relationships are the kind of relationships that show us the presence of God. And they're imperfect. They're just showing us a part of it. God is with us all the time. He sees us. He strengthens us. He bears with us. He doesn't look at us and go, I can't be bothered right now with your trouble. The Lord stood with me and he strengthened me so that the proclamation of the gospel might be fully accomplished, so that the Gentiles might hear. Now Paul's talking about a particular thing. You remember I said that he was in prison before. He says, the Lord delivered me from the lion's mouth. And what he's talking about here, that lion is Nero. When he was in prison, the Lord delivered him from Nero who wanted to kill him so that he could continue to go back out and to preach more. Paul wanted to serve God. He was close to God. He was the kind of man who said to us and to every other person who's picked up the Bible,

I'm the chief of sinners. Could you imagine if he could have edited Luke's account in Acts and said, could you please cut out the part? Could you cut out the part about how I became a Christian? Could you cut out the part where I held the cloak for those who were stoning Stephen? Could we edit that part out? Because that's the really shameful part. Paul was not afraid to be known by us because he knew that he was known by God. If we spend all of our time trying to curate people's opinions of us, What we're really cultivating is solitude. It means we're not willing to be known. We're laying the foundation for when the sorrow comes, we say, I can't say that. I can't tell them that. I can't have that be known. We will increase our grief and our trouble and our embitterment towards those that have sinned against us. When we look at Paul going through his life, you see him living a very different sort of life with different priorities than come naturally to us.

When people sin against him, he prays for them. Pray for those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. This is how Paul lived. May it not be counted against them. The Lord stood with me so I could continue preaching and proclaiming the gospel. He rescued me out of the lion's mouth. And then he says to Timothy, the Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and he'll bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. These are easy words to say, but they're hard words to believe. Paul says of himself, I'm the chief of sinners as one untimely born. And here he says, the Lord will rescue me from every evil deed. Whose evil deeds is he talking about? He's talking about his own evil deeds. He's talking about his own evil deeds. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. How can he be thinking of safety as he's about to be beheaded? It's in this way that the Lord's going to bring Paul safely into his heavenly kingdom. Nero's going to behead him.

Paul's concern was not primarily about his life on this earth and how he was going to be able to be comforted through it. His primary concern was to serve God faithfully, proclaiming the gospel to the Gentiles because that was his work. And he trusted that God would bring him through all of that work and all of those trials, that he would attend with him, stand with him, and encourage him until he entered into his kingdom, his heavenly kingdom. When people die, when godly people die, there is a great blessing to be had from them as they die. Watching them die. Because you watch them go through what Paul just described. They finish their race well. And what is it that encourages us about that and meets the grief that we have, the sense of loss that we might have of them? What helps us bear that? What helps us bear it is seeing them finish well.

The last thing we remember is that they pursued Jesus until he called them home, until their time was done. How did they do that? The Lord stood with them and the Lord strengthened them. They weren't special people. They didn't have access to some sort of strength that you don't. They lived a life of faith. And as a result, they died in faith. And so as Paul prepares to meet Jesus, as he prepares to die, as he prepares to leave Timothy, the work, he's passing on the baton. What comes after this in this passage is just a couple of verses with a bunch of names. And then that's it. And these are the last words we have from the Apostle Paul. Because he's about to be promoted from this life to the next. And he ends his life in a Roman cell, alone, praising God. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. It's beautiful. In the midst of all of his suffering, he loves God.

And I want that to be true of you, and I want that to be true of me, and I want that to be true of our children. I don't want the sorrows of this world to us to think, the only way I can love God is if I don't suffer. Because that will not hold. You will suffer. All those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer, will endure persecution, and in the end will die. Maybe not as, you know, probably not as Paul died. In the Psalms it says that the people were glad. when they said to me, let us go up to the house of the Lord. Let us go stand in his presence. Let us enter his gates with thanksgiving. All of those psalms of ascent, when the people were going up to Jerusalem to worship, they understood that that meant they were going up to meet with God as closely and as intimately as they could, which was just some small picture of what they would do someday when they died. They would go up.

from this life, and they would enter into his gates, and they would stand with him, and they would be with him. And they rejoiced at it. This is what the Psalms teach us, is that they rejoiced to be able to go and stand in the presence of God. Do you look forward to that time? Does anticipation of entering into the joy of your master give you strength? Does it make you realize God's presence with you? that he'll sustain you through this life and bear you safely through to the next. This is how we get away from feeling of aloneness and abandonment and woe is me. Sorrows make us feel that way, but God's presence keeps us away from that and shows us that, yes, there will be sorrows, but Paul's testimony of his life is not a list of his sorrows and his griefs and work left undone and this wasn't fair.

His suffering was particularly difficult. Particularly difficult. When Ananias had to go to him, the Lord told him, go to him for I'm going to show him how much he'll suffer for my namesake. And at the end of Paul's life, he praises God. To him be the glory forever and ever. Paul says, I'm a mess. I've got all kinds of sins. I've got all kinds of troubles. I've got all this stuff. But God's overcome all of those things through Jesus Christ. And he's used me and I want to be used by him. And I'm glad to be used by him. And when I die, I'm going to enter my rest and I'm going to be glad about it. This is what we as Christians ought to be, this is the way our lives ought to be oriented. This ought to be what we're thinking toward. When we're suffering, when there's some sort of sorrow, when we're sad, when there's difficulty, is it the end of your life? Is it going to take away everything that you have? For Paul, it didn't. For Christians, it ought not.

Jesus said to us, in this life you'll have trouble. In this world you'll have trouble. But I've overcome this trouble, this world, this life. And so that's what we see going on here in Paul. And I want to end by addressing the objection. But I've sought after God and I still don't feel his presence. And I really, really, really do feel as though he's abandoned me. Because this is what Satan will double down. He'll say, you're alone. And you'll say, no, I'm not. And he'll say, no, no, you really are. and we wrestle back and forth in this stuff. We'd like to come out the way the apostle does here, but many times we don't feel like that. So what are we to do? In Matthew 7, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. And he who seeks, finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened. And you say, I have. Or maybe you say, I did.

And it didn't work. How much obedience in our lives have we given up because we said, well, I tried that and it didn't work. I tried being kind to my wife and she still grumbled and complained. I tried being quiet with my husband and he was still a grump. I tried spanking my kids and their behavior didn't change. I tried obeying my parents, but they didn't give me what I wanted. I tried working hard at work and I didn't get the raise. You say, I tried it and it didn't work. Jesus says, ask and it will be given to you. And when you feel like, I haven't been given it, I would just say to you, not yet. Not yet. When we ask and don't receive quickly, we're tempted to think something wicked about God, that he would have us just sort of waste away, refusing to provide for our needs. But Jesus goes on in Matthew 7, right after the part we've just read, and he says, what man is there among you?

When his son asks for a loaf, we'll give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him? And so what I want to say to you is not, it'll be okay, but to say, if you need something from God, and he's withheld it from you until now, you need to keep asking for it until he gives it to you. Keep asking. I'm tired of asking. You won't get it anywhere else. Keep asking. You remember the woman who was petitioning the judge? Be just with me. Deal justly with me. Be fair to me. And the judge was described as a wicked judge and one who didn't care. But eventually, he gave her what she asked for. Why? Because she was persistent and wouldn't leave him alone. And that parable is meant to teach us about how we...

Pursue God's relief and his mercy and his presence. If you're going to run the race of life, you're going to have to run it until you die. You do realize that. And there aren't big intermissions and breaks along the way. And so you will feel weak. You will feel tired. You will feel like quitting. If you do feel as though God has abandoned you and you're going, why? Why this? Lord, I need relief. Lord, I need help. I want to serve you and glorify you, but this is beyond the strength that I have. I'm tired, frustrated, angry, discouraged, bitter, whatever it is you're feeling. Pour your complaints out to God and ask him to help you. Come to his people. Come to me. Come to your elders and say, here's how it really is. Help. On the one hand, we say we feel most close to God when we're with his people, but isn't it also true that we keep them a little ways off? We're told to seek, to knock, to ask.

for the things that we need from God. And then we're told at the end of this section I read to you in Matthew, that our Father in heaven will give us what is good. You realize he doesn't promise that he'll give us exactly what we ask for. We're told that he'll give us what is good. And what we need is what is good. And so if having to bear our burdens a while longer yet is what's good for us, then we shouldn't read that as God abandoning us. You'll ask for prayer. You'll bear burdens. And at some point you'll say, I'm tired of saying it. I've already told them. Nothing's changing. It doesn't work. Until the Lord gives you relief, you have to ask by faith. That's how you get to the way Paul is in this passage. Those of you who've got kids, don't they just ask? Isn't one of their primary tactics to get what they want from you to just keep asking?

And you read it and you go, you're just driving me nuts. You just wear me out. All the time, just can I please, can I have now another please when? They're teaching you something about how you should seek the things you need from God. And sometimes you as a parent to your child say, no, that's not good for you. Here's something that's good for you. And then what are they supposed to do? They're supposed to receive that with joy, even though the answer is no. So if those are the lessons we teach our children and that's how we'd like for them to behave, should we be surprised that God teaches us those very same lessons as adults? So whatever temptations you're bearing right now, whatever sorrows, whatever pit you feel like you're down in, you may very well be down in a pit, but you're not alone in that pit because God attends to us wherever we are and stands alongside of us and gives us strength.

And so the question is not whether he does that. The question is whether you want strength to bear the burden that you're bearing or whether you'd just rather complain about it. If you'd rather complain about it and grumble and run your mouth about it, you will feel alone. Not because God's not attending to you, but because you're not attending to him. He hasn't drawn near to me. And I say, well, you haven't drawn near to him. And so we ought to make it our effort. We ought to put our effort into drawing near to God. And the more difficult our circumstances are and the longer they go on and the more hopeless they seem, we ought to draw near to him so that we're able to stand, so that we're strengthened and able to bear good fruit. Let's pray.