The Lord Be With Your Spirit

So this is a sermon that I've been dreading. And sometimes if you're here regularly, I'll tell you that from time to time, that I see things out on the horizon and I don't like them coming. And so Daniel's offering in his Bible to say, well, what in the world is he dreading? Sometimes it's a difficult passage that I think may be offensive. Sometimes it's a difficult passage to understand. But those aren't the reasons that I've been dreading this passage. It's not a difficult passage to understand. It's not a controversial passage. The reason I've been dreading this passage is because it's the end. You say, well, yeah, it's the end of the book. And I say, yes, it's the end of the book, but it's more than the end of the book. It's the last words we have from Paul, because these are the last words he wrote before he died. And so his last words to Timothy, as he's been writing here in 2 Corinthians, have amounted to him passing the baton on to Timothy and to those around him and saying, I'm leaving. This is your work.

And so our text this morning is the very last thing that he has to say to Timothy. And his words are meant to strengthen and to encourage Timothy. That's sort of been the theme of the whole book of 2 Timothy. Endure hardship. Be faithful in the face of adversity. Written by a man who is facing adversity and is about to die. He encourages Timothy, his son, to do the same. And so his final words. With his final words, Paul prays that the Lord would be with him. Very simply, the title of the sermon is, The Lord Be With Your Spirit, and these are some of the final words. And so my hope this morning as we study this text is that the Lord would use his word to strengthen our faith, as Paul intended to do with Timothy, as well as to draw us closer to him, especially when we face hardship, especially when we suffer and when we endure, which is to say, especially when we're most inclined to quit and to not serve God the way we should. Our text is 2 Timothy 4.

verses 19 to 21. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Greet Prisca and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus remained at Corinth. Petrophimus I left sick at Miletus. Make every effort to come before winter. Eubulus greets you. Also Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brethren. The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I could go through and tell you little bits and pieces about all of the people that he named. Priscilla and Aquila are probably the ones we know the most about, maybe have heard of, Priscilla, Prisca, or Anessa Forrest. But what I think Paul's intention in writing all of these names is to say, Timothy, I'm leaving, but you're not going to be alone. There are still faithful brethren out there that you know and that will be here as I leave. Then he tells them, again, make every effort to come to me before winter.

knowing that the trip was far and the trip was difficult, and that if he didn't come before winter, Paul may well be put to death before he can come in the spring. And so he says, it's important to come to me. I'd like to see you one last time. And then he says, the Lord be with your spirit. Why did Paul say, the Lord be with your spirit? Why do we need these words? What are these words? These words are a benediction, if you will, a good word or a blessing, a final word. The reason he ends his letter this way and says this to Timothy is because he realizes the difficulty of the things he's been saying to Timothy. If you could put yourself for a moment in the shoes of Timothy and think for just what it would be like to know that your dad is dying, you would be grieved. You would be sad. Many of us, some of us who have gone through that, very grief, think, how can I go on and carry on the work of my father? It would be an overwhelming emotion. Grief mixed with...

Sorrow and fear about the future. And so Paul says to Timothy, who was by nature timid and fearful, the Lord be with your spirit. Timothy loved Paul. Or rather, Timothy did love Paul, but Paul wrote this because he loved Timothy. And we understand that what Timothy was facing down was difficult. If you were here last week, I mentioned that in death, often those who are dying handle it better than those who are left behind. that the Lord's prepared them in a way to end their life in a way that those who go on say, I'm not, I don't know what to do. I'm left and they're gone. And this is the case with Paul and Timothy. And so he says to him, the Lord be with your spirit. He loved him. He'd become his father. In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul talks about his fatherhood and he mentions Timothy in this connection. He says, for if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers.

For in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel, therefore I exhort you be imitators of me. For this reason I have sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church. And so one of the things we realize, I think we understand this in our nuclear families, we understand that there's affection and there's a sense of belonging and a sense of community and loss when someone dies. But those things ought also to be true in the church. The gospel, Jesus' death, burial, and his resurrection makes us family. Paul had no blood connection to Timothy, and yet he loved him as a son. And Timothy loved Paul as a father. Those of you who are fathers and mothers understand the incredible weight that you feel of having children.

When you find out you're pregnant, until they're having kids of their own, the weight is just squarely on your shoulders. You feel love for them. And you have desires for them. For their good. For their faithfulness. For their future. And then for your grandkids, the same. But the same is true in the church, or should be true in the church. We ought to have that same sort of burden for one another. Timothy had it for Paul. Have you had people outside of your nuclear family, somewhere in your life where they had your heart and what they said really stuck with you and mattered? And not everyone had that privilege. Not everyone had that place in your heart. But there were people outside of your family. And God's kindness, he gives us mothers and fathers and other people to care for us and to support us and to build us up and to care for us. And that's how the church should be. When we planted this church,

12 plus years ago now. Doesn't seem like that long, but there it is. Our plan was this. This was our, we're going to plant a church and this is how we're going to do it. Love people. Welcome them into your family and care for them. That was the advice we got. If you'll do that, you'll have a church. And that's what we've done. And so our hearts are knit together. When one of us suffers, we all suffer. When one of us rejoices, we all rejoice. Have you cried at home some night because someone in the church has some sorrow or grief? We have. I'm sure we will again in the future. Has someone else's joy brightened your day or your week? Whatever sorrows and whatever you've got going on in your life, something good happened to them and it lifted you up. That's the sort of closeness that the church should have. And you see it here between Paul and Timothy.

There's not pretense or putting on a show. There is just love. There is just love. Now, we don't have any record of Paul sinning against Timothy or Timothy sinning against Paul, but undoubtedly that happened. Because that's what happens in families, in marriages, with siblings. And one of the things that I've observed is that in families, we will endure an incredible amount of tension, with regard to sin, and we'll stick it out. We'll still go to Thanksgiving, and we'll still go to Christmas, and we'll still go to Memorial Day, and we'll just, you know. But in the church, I want to see that same sort of commitment that we see here to the hard times, to the difficulties, when things are not as they should be. Because along with those hard times come very sweet times that we've enjoyed as a church together, as Paul and Timothy did.

And I think part of the reason we avoid this sort of stuff is that we say, I've got enough people to worry about. There's enough burden. My heart's gone out to as many people as it can, and I don't have more to give. I don't need more dependence, more people needing me, relying on me. But if we go down that path, you can avoid people depending on you, but in the process, you'll lose people to depend on. And when your sorrow and your griefs come, there won't be those to bear it with you. And so what we see between Paul and Timothy here, Paul's love for Timothy and saying, the Lord be with your spirit, his concern, even as he was about to die, was that Timothy would persevere, that he would continue in the faith, that he would continue to do his work, that he would not give up or give in to his sorrow. For many years, Paul had been...

You get the impression that he and Timothy had a very close relationship, and Paul was the primary instrument or person that God used to minister to Timothy and to prepare him for his work. He was the conduit or the vessel of God's word to him, Paul to Timothy. And Paul's very aware of that, and he says, now I'm leaving. I'm going home. My work here is done. Lord, be with my son and give him your spirit. Comfort him. You've used me to this end, but now you're calling me home. Continue to care for him in my absence. This is why Paul prayed that the Lord would be with Timothy's spirit. There are times, it's true, when the Lord provides for us directly, where his comfort comes directly through prayer or that we sense his presence and his mercy and his kindness. But I think more often than that, his presence and his kindness and his mercy, as I said this last week as well, we're aware of it through the presence of his people. And God using them to strengthen us, to encourage us, to carry us, to correct us, to do all of the things that brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters do for each other. And so Paul prays for Timothy that the Lord wouldn't leave him alone, but that he would strengthen him in his grief and for the future. So what does it mean for the Lord to be with your spirit? This is what Paul prays. What does it mean?

It's a hard thing to, this idea of Timothy's spirit, it's a hard thing, I found it hard to put words to it. Because we don't talk about our spirits very often. We might talk about our countenances. We might talk about our perspectives. And I think those get somewhat at our spirit. But I don't think they do it fully justice. What Paul's asking is that the Lord would draw near to Timothy and that he would help him. You understand that when Paul dies, Timothy is going to go through a very difficult season of having lost his father, as any of us would if we were in his shoes. With great sorrow comes oftentimes, unfortunately, great temptation. And so Paul prays for Timothy, that the Lord would be with him. Help him in his perspective. Help him in his countenance. Lift his head up. Help him to see through the grief and the sorrow. A person's spirit.

our spirits, each one of us would have them, could be described as the central way that we interact with the world or interpret the world and God. It's how we process. It's like a pair of glasses that we put on. It's how we interact. And so we see our spirit working itself out in things like anger or frustration or despair or depression. If we were to look at bad manifestations of it, if we were to look at good ones, we'd see it working itself out in joy or contentment. Or peace or patience. All of those things are expressions of our spirit, our perspective on things. Not everyone who's content has everything they want. And not everyone who's angry is without the things they need. And so you understand there's the reality of their circumstances, good, bad, or otherwise. And then there's their perspective on it. This is okay. This is good. This is bad. And many times we look at good things and say, this is bad.

And many times we look at bad things and we say, this is a good thing. You could also describe the spirit of a man as his heart or, as I said, his countenance or the seat of his emotions or his speech or his actions. It's sort of like the internal engine inside of us that moves us. And so Paul's concern was not with Timothy's body. Please protect him and don't let him die the way I'm dying. Or please make sure that he has food and shelter. Or please make sure that there are people around him. Paul prays for Timothy's spirit. The Lord be with your spirit. That you would see, that you would understand, that you would believe, that you would continue in the work you've begun. Sometimes when we pray or we have prayer requests, whether that's at small group or men's, women's group or at home, we say, do you have any prayer requests? And I think that it's very common for us to pray for our felt needs.

Or our circumstances. Here's a difficult thing. Please change it. Or, here's a good thing, and we're happy about it. I don't think we're as frequent in praying for our perspective or our spirits, how we perceive things. We might pray that our children would behave better ten times before we pray that we wouldn't be angry at them for their disobedience. And so we harbor in our minds internally, in our spirits, this frustration. And we pray, we observe, the thing we want to change is the behavior, the circumstance, the context. But that's not what Paul's praying for here. What he's praying for is that Timothy's view of the thing, that God would help him there. When we pray, as Paul is here, we should realize that God is much more than a healer and a changer of circumstances.

If someone were dying and it became clear that they weren't going to get better, should we stop praying? No. But our prayers would change, wouldn't they? We might stop praying that if they say we're not going to continue with the chemo or we're not going to continue with this thing, we realize they're making a decision or their circumstances have made a decision that we're not praying for them to get better anymore. Now what are we praying for? We're praying for our countenance. We're praying for our perspective. We're praying that God would use their suffering, their sorrow, their finishing of their life to bear fruit in those who are left behind. And so when Paul prays for Timothy, he's not asking, you know, keep him from the sorrows and struggles I've had. He asks him, would you strengthen and sustain him through his sorrows and his trials? Would you help him to persevere? Would you attend to him and draw near to him and encourage him?

The next question that came to mind for me in this passage about the Lord being with our spirit is, what do we do in this regard? Was there anything more than a request to God in what Paul said? And I think there was. I think there was instruction to Timothy. Have you ever had somebody say something to you and then you wondered, why'd they say that to me? That's not what I need. And then later in life you're like, I think they knew something I didn't know. I think they had a different perspective or they saw what was going to happen in a few weeks or a few months and they knew what was coming. I think it's the sort of instruction Paul's giving Timothy here. The Lord be with your spirit. What's the instruction to Timothy? You need to be near to God right now. You need his spirit. Many times when we struggle, when we suffer, We prefer to do it alone. We prefer to go off by ourselves and lick our wounds and nurse our frustrations and our angers. And then in the future, those things come out because we've withdrawn. Now, I'm not saying there's no place for solitude when you're suffering. But I am saying that if we're suffering, the thing that will be of most benefit to us is the Lord's presence. And if we withdraw from him,

It will not go well for us. Would it be too much to think that Timothy would have watched Paul's suffering and impending death and think, why Lord? Why would you take this man, this faithful man who's given so much and served so well, why would you throw him away into a prison only to be killed? You or I would have that thought. Why wouldn't Timothy have that thought? And so Paul tells him, the Lord be with your spirit. You need to be with the Lord and near to him in your sorrow and in your grief. Paul's reminding him of this, that he should seek the Lord while he can be found. When we feel weak, that's the time when we need to seek the Lord. In 1 Chronicles 16, 11, it says, Seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his face continually, except for when things are really hard and you're really sad. No, especially. I looked at Stephen's face and it reminded me of a story from...

When I was going into the pastor's college, we had to take a Bible knowledge test that I didn't think I was going to pass. But I did pass. And I remember one question that I got wrong. It was multiple choice. And the question was, you know, finish this psalm. The Lord is a very present help. Huh? Yeah, well, you know, I'm glad you would have passed that question. I didn't. I didn't know that. And I think too often many of us don't know that. That the Lord's a very present help in times of trouble. Too often we look at our troubles and we say, you've caused this trouble. I wouldn't draw near to you now. You're the reason I'm going through this. As opposed to you're the help out of it. Seek the Lord in his strength. Seek his face continually. And again in James chapter 4, he says draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

And again, Jesus tells us, come to me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And so it's something we would do well to learn as Christians that when we're weak, especially when we're weak, this is the time to seek the Lord. It's the time where you won't feel like you can. It's the time when you won't want to. It's the time when Satan will tempt you that he can't or won't help you. And yet it's the time when it's most important that you do it. If we want the Lord to be with our spirit, it's something we have to pursue. When David was confessing his sins in Psalm 51, he makes a request of the Lord. And it has to do with his presence. In the middle of his confession, in verse 11, he says, Do not cast away your presence and do not take away your Holy Spirit from me. In my grief, as he's confessing his sins, in my grief and in my sorrow, don't abandon me. Be near to me.

And in Psalm 73, the last verse, where Asaph's gone through all of his temptations of giving up living a holy life and wanting to live like the rest do. He says, But as for me, the nearness of God is my good. I have made you my refuge, that I may tell of all your works. When you need refuge, refuge is like a shelter. We don't speak in terms of refuges now. but it's like a shelter. It would have been like a cave or a safe place, a fortified city, a strong wall, a tower. When do you go to those places? We go to those places when there's danger, when there's a threat, when you're hurt, when you're weak. And so Asaph says, the nearness of God is my good. I have made the Lord my refuge. Draw near to him. Not when everything's going fine.

Though we should do that, but especially when it's not. As Timothy anticipates the death of his father, he has to pursue God and draw near to him. Asaph in Psalm 73 is an example to us of having come through the knothole of sorrow and grief and temptation, where at the end he says the nearness of God is his good. He's come through the temptation to walk away from God, which is what Psalm 73 is. Him saying, I don't know if this is all worth it. It seems difficult for me and easy for everyone else. But he concludes at the end of it that the nearness of God is for his good. Where else can you turn for comfort, for help, for strength, for encouragement? Where else can you find it except in the Lord? We can spend our lives looking for it. You won't find it.

There's nothing that will help us more than the presence and nearness of God when we're weak. And that's why Paul prays this prayer for Timothy, the Lord be with your spirit. It's a very simple prayer. It's just a few words, but it's full of comfort and strength and help. You know that when you're suffering, it's hard to believe the simple truths, the things that you believe in easier, comfortable times. They're hard to take hold of and believe that they're still true when the storm, the trial, the suffering comes. And so it's helpful and good for us in those times to have those around us remind us and strengthen us, to hold us up and to teach us to look to the Lord. Does that change your circumstance today? It might not change your circumstance at all, but it will change your perspective on it. So what are our applications? Two simple applications. The first is that we ought to love people and give our hearts to them. The way that Paul and Timothy gave their hearts to one another.

Every one of us could decide why we shouldn't be vulnerable with those around us. They've hurt us. They sinned against us. They leave. They're not responsive. They get angry. They're inconsiderate. We could all come up with a reason or ten for why we shouldn't get close to people. Why we shouldn't love them. But we ought not to give in to those temptations. We ought to actually love people and get close enough to them so that when they leave, it does hurt. Paul loved Timothy and Timothy loved Paul. And that's the first thing we ought to observe from this is that we ought to develop and cultivate those types of relationships in the church amongst one another. We should teach our children to do the same thing. We should put them in places where they have time and space to do that work. When they get all anxious and frustrated and he hit me and she pulled my hair and they said a mean thing or called, you know, we teach them.

to love their neighbors, to love their brothers and sisters. And so the first thing is that we would love people and that as a result of that love, we would pray this sort of prayer for them and with them when they're weak. The Lord be with your spirit. How many times do some sort of terrible burden come up and you don't know what to say? How many times have you said or heard somebody say something really stupid or hurtful? in painful situations? Have you seen people be quiet when others are suffering? And just sit with them, like Job's friends did for the first week. Love people. Get close to them. When they suffer, pray for them. When you suffer, pray this prayer for yourself. Tell other people so that they can pray this prayer along with you. This sort of prayer is more helpful than any words or counsel that can be given. I often, as a pastor, when situations present themselves, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to, it's not like, oh, let me just flip through my training for every possible circumstance that could ever arise, and here's the Bible verse for that. I spend a lot of time being like, I don't know what to say to you yet. And I always feel, I'm tempted to feel like I'm failing somehow if I say, okay, here's how to stop the bleeding. Let's talk again. Let's pray.

That's what Paul's doing here. He's praying for him. He's saying, the Lord be with your spirit. The Lord will attend to you in your weakness and help you and give you perspective and strength and sustain you through it. And I realize many times that's not what we want when we're looking for help. We want an answer, a solution. We want immediate relief. But what we need is the Lord's nearness and his attending to us. If the Lord's not near to us or if we reject, if we wander away from him, There's no counsel or help to be found that will help actually do us good. The second application, the final one, is that we should seek the presence of God. Actually, truly, really seek the presence of God. That's what Paul's telling Timothy to do here. The Lord be with your spirit. This is what you need. You have sorrows. Seek after him. Draw near to him. Cling to him. Don't be passive. And then expect your perspective on your life.

To change. It will not. Well, it will change, but it will go from bad to worse. If you want it to go the other direction, you have to pursue that change. You have to pursue, I want to be trusting God, at peace with God, faithful to God. You have to pursue that for that to happen. In Sunday school, I asked the question, I illustrated this point, because it came up at Sunday school as well, and I said, If you have a garden full of weeds and you go out and you cut down all the weeds and say, I'm going to plant tomato plants out here, what will you have in a month if that's all you do? What will your garden be full of? Weeds. Turns out weeds grow faster than tomato plants. And in the process of growing faster, they choke out the tomato plants. So if you want the tomato plants to grow in the garden full of weeds, you have to cultivate their life, their vitality.

And the way you do that is by pulling the weeds, by trimming the sprouts, by stringing them up, by making sure they're watered, by putting fertilizer or something, if you're into fertilizer. You do things to cultivate life and its work. The same is true of seeking the presence of God. It's not something that we say and then sit on our hands and wait for it to show up from heaven. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Pursue him. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. He says that right after they're worried about clothing and they're worried about shelter and they're worried about all of the affairs of their life. And Jesus' answer is, the Lord knows you need all of those things. Seek first his kingdom and all those things will be added to you. I think sometimes we go, well, how am I supposed to seek the Lord? I don't have a magic answer for you, but I have a faithful one. Attend.

to the church and to worship. Attend to the scripture and reading it. Attend to prayer and to fellowship. And in all of those places, be honest about what's going on. You might think, well, I don't want to do all that. That's uncomfortable. That's hard. I have to bear these burdens all day. I don't want to talk about them in some other context. But this is how we seek the Lord. I was reading the book of Nahum as I finished preparing. It's a short little book in the Bible. And it's largely just a condemnation of Nineveh. It's just Nahum saying, this is what's going to happen to you guys. And it's going to be awful because you deserve it. It's basically the book of Nahum. And there's this really sweet thing that's said in the middle of the first chapter. It's not a condemnation of them. It's a contrast to what they are. And this is what he says.

The Lord who's going to judge them and bring all this destruction to them. He says this in verse 7. He says, the Lord is good and a stronghold in the day of trouble. And he knows those. He knows those who take refuge in him. He knows them. So how do you seek God? You go and take refuge in him. You draw near to him. I don't feel like I can pray. I don't know what to say. I do know a Bible verse for that. The Holy Spirit intercedes with groanings. deep for words when you don't know what to say. And so if you want to know how to seek after God, we don't want you to be so concerned about the things I'm supposed to do. I want to know, is your heart inclined toward the Lord when you suffer? Or have you dug in your heels and stiffened your neck against him? If that's the case, you won't be comforted. And so you might think, in the midst of my suffering, I have repentance to do too? Sometimes, yes.

And it'll be the most relieving repentance you could experience. Because sometimes the Lord uses our sorrows and our hardships and the difficulties in our life to show us where we need to grow. It's his scraper that scrapes off all the comforts of life and exposes all the rocks that are underneath the grass. And you go, oh, I've got to dig all these things up. Yeah. And when you do, you'll be pursuing God. And God will. know you and be near to you and be a comfort to you. He will. That was Timothy's hope. That's what Paul wanted for him as he was leaving this earth. These are the last words. The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you. And that's it. This is what we need when we suffer. Let's pray.