It is the custom in the movies to give someone, before you kill them, the opportunity to do one final thing, or maybe say some final words. Or perhaps you want to offer someone the opportunity to choose what they will have as their final meal. Do you have a dying wish? Well, apologies for sounding a little macabre at this point in the summer, but if that was you in that position, what would be your single dying wish — the last thing that you would like to do before you die?
That question raises what we most value in life — what are the things that we care about most deeply. If you're a Christian, it's interesting to reflect how that has been transformed by the fact that you know Jesus. How does knowing Jesus change what your dying wish would be? How does the fact that your life is gripped by the good news of Jesus, the gospel of Jesus Christ — how does that grip change and transform your last wish? I suppose the first thing to ask is, is it transformed by the fact that you know Jesus, and if so, how?
If you're here this morning, though, and you're not yet a Christian, you're still looking into all of this, trying to work out if it's for you — it would be interesting for you this morning, then, to reflect on that, and to think, if I was to follow Jesus, how might that change my life. But actually, you don't just ask questions like that when you reach the very end. For example, if you retire, and you move to a new area of the country to live out your retirement, from the age of, say, seventy, until whatever it turns out to be — what is your deepest longing for the season of your life that you will spend living in Scarborough-on-Sea? Or if you're younger, and you leave home for the first time, maybe to go to university, maybe to start your first job — what is your deepest wish as you launch out in life as a young adult, as you go to a new place to meet new people and do new things?
This was all a very real issue for the apostle Paul as he wrote to Timothy. Let me read verses 6 and 7 again. Paul says: “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
It's interesting to compare this letter to the letter that Paul wrote to the church at Philippi. There he was, once again, in prison in Rome. He did not know if he would finish that time in prison with release or with execution, but he suspected, more likely than not, he would be released. Here, once again, he's back in prison in Rome. He doesn't know if he will be released or if he will be sentenced to death. But it sounds like he expects, more likely than not, this time it will be the end.
But as we look together at this passage, we're going to discover it is far from a negative and pessimistic passage from a chap on death row. This is a passage full of hope. Paul is far from certain that he will die in prison, and Paul has work to do.
Sometimes the little headings that the Bible editors put into our English Bibles are really useful for us, because they help us get an idea of roughly what's going on in a particular sentence. And some preachers get a bit lazy, or appreciate the leg-up, and think, well, if I want to know what I'm going to preach on, let's look at the heading and see — and that's going to be the topic for my sermon. If you're going to try that trick this morning, you're not going to get a lot of help, because they've completely run out of inspiration. Let me tell you, this passage is about so much more than personal remarks and final greetings. In fact, one friend of mine, slightly tongue-in-cheek, has developed a kind of parody of that sermon preparation technique. He says, “If I'm a bit short of ideas, and struggling on a Monday morning to get into the text for next Sunday, you could always have a look at the heading that's in the English Bible and ask the question, what is wrong with that as a heading for this passage?” And that usually gets the brain juices flowing fairly quickly. This is a passage full of hope.
Now, we're going to do something slightly ambitious this morning, so you might find it even more useful than normal to have that sermon outline where you can see it. Normally, when I preach through, what I do is give us a series of little headings just to direct us through the passage we're working through. This morning we're going to try to run two sets of headings in parallel — okay, slightly ambitious. We're going to do it, though, for a really important reason: we need to distinguish what Paul is saying to Timothy from what Paul is saying to all of us. This is a personal letter from the apostle Paul to a church leader called Timothy, and yet he's speaking to us as well — but he's not saying the same thing to us as he's saying to Timothy.
Let me just show you what I mean. If you look at verse 22, right at the end of the reading, it says, “The Lord be with your spirit” — “your” there is singular. So he's giving greetings to Timothy: Timothy, the Lord be with your spirit. But then he says, “Grace be with you all” — “you” there is plural. He's greeting the whole church in Ephesus. So he's writing a letter to Timothy, knowing and hoping that as Timothy opens his letter to read what's just arrived, the whole church will be stood behind him, looking over his shoulder, reading along. But what he says to Timothy is not what he necessarily wants to say to everyone else.
It's a little bit like — we get this every few months, we have done for all my adult life — when a member of parliament who serves in the cabinet of the UK government decides they want to resign and not be in that role any more. So they write the prime minister a letter to say that they're resigning. That's a personal letter, isn't it — between one government minister and their prime minister, to say, “I quit.” And yet, curiously, you can read that letter on any national news website you might choose to turn to. It starts on some social media, and within half an hour everyone's got it. Now, isn't that a strange thing? So it's a personal letter from the MP to the PM — and they know what they're saying to the prime minister, basically, “I quit” — but there's also a message there for everybody else, and they're hoping the nation is reading over the prime minister's shoulder, because they've got something to say to the rest of us as well.
So, what I've got for us this morning: four things that Paul is saying for Timothy. But as we do that, we're going to find here five things that are Paul's dying wish for us.
1. Gather the team (9-12)
So, number one, from verses 9 to 12: gather the team. Paul writes: “Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. I sent Tychicus to Ephesus.”
Many people, as they read this passage, hear it saying: this is a portrait of Paul in prison, and he's lonely, what he needs is his mates to come and keep him company. That is not true. Have a look down at the end of the passage, the so-called final greetings: “Greet Priscilla and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus stayed in Corinth, and I left Trophimus sick at Miletus. Do your best to get here before winter. Eubulus greets you, and so do Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and all the other brothers and sisters.” That's not a man who's lonely and short of company — he's in contact with the entire Roman church, and he counts them his family, his brothers and sisters. Paul has plenty of company.
No — the people in verses 9 to 12 are his team-mates. We recognise the names from all over the rest of the New Testament: Demas, okay, never heard of Crescens before, but Titus, Luke, Mark — those last three all have New Testament letters named after them, or Tychicus. Suddenly, these are Paul's team-mates. These are prominent individuals. And Paul's problem is he's currently down three team-mates.
First is Demas. Demas has gone to Thessalonica, on the northern coast of Greece, up near the border, because he wanted an easy life — we're told that Demas loved this world, literally loved this present age. Now, here's the thing — look up a couple of verses, to verse 8, where Paul promises a crown of righteousness to everyone who longed for — literally, loved — the appearing of Jesus at the end of time. We've met quite a bit in 2 Timothy about people loving different things — beginning of chapter 3, people loving pleasure, loving themselves, loving money rather than loving God. So here's Demas — he didn't love the fact that one day Jesus will return and usher in a new age. No, Demas was in love with this present age. So he took early retirement.
Then there's Crescens and Titus — they're not present for Paul's team assembly either, but for a good reason: it seems they're on mission elsewhere, they're already deployed. Paul has Luke with him. So he wants Timothy, and he wants Mark.
If you look at Paul in his letters, and in the book of Acts, you see that his priorities, again and again, are: do whatever it takes to get the good news of Jesus out there. It seems to me very unlikely that in Paul's dying weeks or years he's going to want to take the A-team off the pitch so that they can come and be with him in prison and just keep him company. That would be very far from Paul and his priorities. No — these are Paul's travelling companions, these are Paul's mission partners. This is not a portrait of Paul looking inwards on himself, lonely. This is Paul looking out — let's get the team together. He's building a mission team.
That's what Paul's telling Timothy to do: go to Rome. He's not telling the rest of us to leave home and go to Rome. So what are we being told to do? Two things here.
(a) Spread the gospel
Number one: spread the gospel. Paul's priority, in a Roman prison cell where he's likely to die, was to gather the team and get the mission going. How much more should that be the priority for us, living in a country where Christians enjoy a huge amount of freedom, not only to worship, but to do pretty much whatever we want. Now, certainly it's true the UK is becoming a more hostile place to be a Christian, but let's not kid ourselves — living here is very different from living in Iran, or North Korea, or the northernmost tip of Nigeria. Very different. Living as a Christian here is a picnic compared to living in those places. So surely we can make it our priority and our focus to get the good news of Jesus out. You won't do it if you're like Demas — you'll only prioritise and focus on the good news of Jesus if you are convinced that eternity matters. But Paul is saying to Christians everywhere, he's saying to us, “I want you to share my heart, I want you to have my heart for seeing people come to know Jesus.” We describe ourselves as a church, as a family on mission together. And Paul is saying, let's get the good news out there.
(b) Send the gospel
Spread the gospel, but also send the gospel. Timothy is in a place called Ephesus. Now, 1 Timothy started with an instruction to Timothy to stay there in Ephesus. 2 Timothy ends with the instruction: leave Ephesus and come and find me in Rome. So if you picture the whole church in Ephesus listening in to this, the unspoken message to them is, “I need Timothy now, please.” But just imagine this — they would know Timothy really well. He would have loved and cared for them. He would have been alongside them in joy and grief. He would have advised them, counselled them, taught them. He would know them well, they would know him well. For Timothy to leave Ephesus to go to Rome will be a huge wrench for them. I mean, I know he's sending Tychicus to Ephesus, presumably to take Timothy's place, but it's not the same.
It is such a joy for a local church, whenever we get the opportunity, to send someone to go off to receive some training, one day, to serve as a pastor of a church somewhere else — what a joy to get to do that. Or what a joy it is if we get to send someone from this church to go and serve the Lord Jesus on the mission field in another part of the world. What a joy — but it's a bittersweet joy, because the people that do that are never the people that nobody knows. Nobody knows their name, no one's heard of them, they're not doing anything — no, they will always be the people that everybody knows, they're serving in lots of ways, and taking them out leaves a huge hole behind.
We're talking, as a church, about wanting to see new churches started and planted in two towns, Malton and Filey. We would love to see new churches in those places. If that happens, it is highly likely that a number of people from this church will make the decision that they want to leave this church and go and help that new church to start. And again, there will be the people that we'll notice aren't here. It hurts to do that.
There is far too much war in the world at the moment, and one of the painful points in warfare, not just in the movies but in real life, is when young men and women have to leave where they live at home and travel to the front line where they will serve. It's painful for them, because they don't know what they will face, what trauma they will experience, they don't know whether they'll come back — sometimes, if they're very young people, in the Second World War it was seventeen-, eighteen year-olds, they maybe never left home before at all in their life. Hugely stressful. But actually the greater stress is not for them — it's for those they leave behind, who have to say goodbye. They will live the next — well, actually, they don't know how long — that is the point, without that person, in their family life. Milestones may happen without that person able to join them. It's really hard.
And Paul is saying: if you love eternity, you won't just spread the gospel, you will send others too. And that is just as costly.
2. Bring the tools (13)
So, number two: bring the tools. This is verse 13. Paul writes: “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.” Never heard of Carpus in Troas — I think he shouldn't be running a cloak business, I should think he's running a carpet business. I just love the idea of buying carpets from Carpus's Carpets in Troas. But there we go — if anyone's inclined to move to Troas, you could start a business called Carpus's Carpets.
If people are inclined to think of Paul as lonely and isolated, this just reinforces that he's not only lonely, he's cold — he wants his duvet, or a thicker one. And he's also bored, he's run out of reading matter, he's rubbed out the crosswords in his puzzle book so many times he now can't avoid seeing the answers, and he wants something new to read — so bring my iPad. This isn't what he's saying. This isn't a duvet he asked for — this is his travelling cloak, this is his barber jacket, if that's your style. He's saying, “Get down to the outdoor camping shop, I need my walking boots and my all-weather waterproofs, please.” And we don't know what was in the scrolls and parchments — they probably weren't empty, maybe his collection of sayings of Jesus, maybe his sermon notes, maybe his Old Testament commentaries. He wants his library and his notes. This is not a man who's given up. This is a man who wants his team, and he wants his tools.
Now, just imagine for a moment — please don't get too anxious about this, there's no evidence this is imminently going to happen — but imagine for a moment that Pastor Lee and I both get arrested for no crime other than being pastor of Trinity Church in Scarborough. So there we are, we're locked up, and it's time to think, who will go and visit Pastor Lee and Pastor James? And Pastor Lee sends a message out and says, “What I'd like you to do, visitors, please, is I'd like the whole church leadership team to come and see me. They normally meet on a Monday to plan for the week ahead and to pray together — I'd like them to come and visit me on a Monday, please, that would be symbolic. And when they come, could they please go to my house and bring all the commentaries that I've got on Malachi and Galatians, those two books. Could you download an offline copy of our church database — I just want to have sight of all the people, the different groups they're in, the teams they're on, I've got a few thoughts, I want to be able to have a look at all of that. And bring my bishop's robes.” What would you conclude if Pastor Lee wanted that team of people to come with that kind of kit? Well, I don't know what he's planning, but he's got an idea, and he's not a man who's given up. Bring the tools.
(c) Equip the gospel
So what's the message then for us — given we're not Timothy? It's this: equip the gospel. Gospel ministry needs resourcing. Now, happily, wonderfully, this is a church very far from the case where the pastors come up the front and do the preaching, and do some work with individuals and some group stuff, and everybody else is just passive. It could not be more different from that. This is a church where all hands are on deck. There are so many ways to serve that everyone who wants one can have a role to play — and if you want a role and haven't got one, head to our connect point, and we'd love to explore with you how you can be involved. Only some Christians will, in the end, go to a Bible college, or go and be a missionary, or pioneer a new church plant. But all of us can be generous — generous with our finance, generous with our time and our skills, to equip the ministry both here and in other contexts.
3. Watch for trouble (14-15)
Number three: watch for trouble. Verses 14 and 15. “Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done. You too should be on your guard against him, because he strongly opposed our message.” We don't know much about Alexander — we don't know who he is, we don't know what he did. Maybe he was instrumental in getting Paul arrested. Maybe he lives in Ephesus. Maybe he lives in one of the towns that Paul would have to travel through to get from Ephesus to Rome. We do know that Paul tells Timothy: be very careful with Alexander, that man is trouble, he caused me a lot of pain and a lot of difficulty, do not get caught in his net.
(d) Be shrewd with the gospel
That's for Timothy. What's the message for us? Be shrewd with the gospel. So don't miss this — he's not saying be so suspicious of everybody that you meet that you're jumping in fright every time the wind blows a leaf. No. Neither is he saying write people off — you meet someone new, and think, “Oh, looking at your hair colour, I think if I told you about Jesus you would say no, so I'm not going to tell you” — no, don't write the answer for people, just tell them about Jesus and find out. Neither is he saying that we should retreat and hide — “Oh, this is a bit of a tricky truth from God's word, if I go teaching about this and talk about this I might get in some trouble, better not go there” — no. But he is saying, don't be naive. Don't think that if you live for Jesus and tell other people about Jesus, everybody will love you for doing that. They won't. There will be some people who really hate the fact that you stand for Jesus, and he's saying, be alert to the dangers.
Now, mostly, for most of us, the message here is just carry on as you were and don't panic — but do keep your wits about you. Imagine you find that there's a colleague at work who really can't stand the fact that you're a Christian, so they are watching everything you do, waiting for that moment when you bring your faith into the workplace in a way that is inappropriate and crosses some kind of boundary, so they can report you and get you into trouble — a bit like Daniel, in the book of Daniel, when a law is passed saying you may not pray to any god except the king, but his enemies are there, deliberately watching Daniel's window, hoping he's going to trip up. Maybe you end up with a colleague like that at work — I hope not. What do you do if that happens? Do you stop telling any of your colleagues about Jesus? Of course not. But supposing you decided that you would do that when that particular colleague wasn't in the room to witness it — that wouldn't be cowardice, that would just be wisdom. Be shrewd with the gospel.
4. Endure the trials (16-18)
And then, number four: endure the trials. Verse 16: “At my first defence, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me — may it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
Here are two things you need to know to understand this. Number one, in the Roman legal system you would have had two trials — you'd have a kind of preliminary trial, at which you could be found guilty, but assuming you're not, there would then be a delay, potentially a long delay, before you have the full trial. That's what he means by his first defence. Second thing — again, in the Roman legal system, you would need a patron, you would need somebody who can vouch for you, like a character witness, who can stand up in court and say, “This person is an upstanding citizen, they're a good person, I can't believe they would do any of the things they're being accused of, I say they're a good egg.” That's what you need — someone like that. And at Paul's first defence, Paul did not have that. He had nobody. “At my first defence, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me.” Now, remember, Paul's in contact with lots of Christians in Rome — they're all listed in verse 21 — and yet none of them put their head above the parapet, willing to stand beside a man likely to be condemned, and say, “I'm with him.” You don't have to have much imagination to figure out why they didn't want to do that.
And yet what a lovely, generous spirit Paul has in response to this: “May it not be held against them.” I hold no hard feelings, I understand why they wouldn't want to stand with me, I wouldn't want to stand with me either — so I want nothing said bad about them, and I want God to forgive them too. It's very Christlike. Remember, on the cross, Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing.” Remember how Peter was with Jesus on trial? Peter wasn't Jesus's character witness — three times he denied even knowing him. And yet later Jesus beautifully and gently restored Peter, and did not hold it against him.
No character witnesses — and yet he was not alone. “The Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it.” God strengthened Paul so that, through his testimony in the trial, more people heard about Jesus — to use the trial to preach the gospel. And so he was spared the lions. Probably not literal lions here — it would be very unusual for a Roman citizen to actually be sentenced to death in the arena, although Christians were becoming so hated it's actually not impossible. Either way, he was spared.
But what do you make of verse 18? “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack” — will rescue. That cannot mean he's confident he will get off from this trial, and from all future trials, and that every time persecution and suffering comes his way, at the last minute there'll be some little trapdoor escape that allows him to slip off and escape the trouble. Can't mean that — we've seen he highly expects he won't survive this one, he won't leave prison alive. No, he tells us what he means, doesn't he: “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom.” The Romans might execute him, but they can't stop God's plan to get him to heaven.
This is the Paul that Timothy is being asked to go and join. “You're going to come and stand with me, Timothy.” Things could get bumpy for Timothy on this road. Yet Timothy is eternally secure. So he can endure the trials, knowing that.
(e) Endure for the gospel
And the message for us: endure for the gospel. Paul is saying, however shrewd you might be, trying studiously to avoid your local franchisee of Alexander the metalworker, you won't escape all the hardships. Remember the promise from chapter 3, verse 12: everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. You cannot escape all the hardships. Instead, remember what success looks like for Paul. It's not that he gets off at trial. If you're in prison on remand, facing a sentence, your prayer request to your friends would be, “Please pray that I'm acquitted.” Not Paul. Success for him is not being acquitted — it's enduring without denying that he knows Jesus, and continuing to speak for him at every opportunity.
Many of our young people have just finished a season of exams — GCSEs and A levels have just finished. Those of us who are a bit older can remember what it feels like to be going through GCSEs and A levels, or O levels, or whatever we had at different stages of our lives — and we remember, exams are painful. But then if you've got another one in your timetable, it may have hurt the first time, but you have to go and do the next one anyway, because that's the road to get the qualifications that you want. Don't sit the exam, you won't pass it. Just imagine, though, that someone comes along and says, “I have a plan, I would like to rescue you from the pain of your final exam.” You'd be all ears, wouldn't you? “How are they going to do that?” “How do you mean?” Well, they could do it in one of two ways. One thing they could do is say, “At the time of your last exam, I will take you out for lunch, and then you don't need to do the exam, you can have lunch with me — pain rescued.” “Oh, great, will I still pass?” No, you wouldn't pass, but the pain of the last exam is solved. Ah, what if they said instead — and sadly no exam board would ever allow this — but what if they said instead, “I will come with you, I will sit with you in the exam. I can't write anything, I can't whisper in your ear, you're going to have to read, revise, do the work, write the paper, you've got to do all that. But I will be there next to you — if it's hot I'll pass you a drink of water, I'll just be there whispering encouraging thoughts in your direction the whole time. We'll go through it together.” And the last exam will still happen, but the pain of it will not.
Well, that would never happen in real life, but that is how the Lord stood with Paul in his trials. God rescued Paul so that he was able to speak boldly for Jesus. God got him through it. And if life is tough for you because you follow Jesus, this is what endurance will look like — it does not mean escaping the consequences. Some Christians do lose their job. Some Christians do go to prison. Most Christians lose some of their friends — not usually in a dramatic bust-up, but just because they gradually lose contact. No — endurance looks like coming out the other side, still following Jesus, being known publicly to be one of his followers, and still speaking about him to other people.
Conclusion
So what are Paul's final words? We don't know, because we do not know whether Paul ever left this prison, or whether he was to die there. We don't know when or where he died. We do know that these are his last recorded words. And the deepest wish for the end of Paul's life was that the good news of Jesus would keep spreading. So Paul gathers the team, Paul gets his tools, and he keeps speaking about Jesus right to the end.
Brothers and sisters, what is your deepest wish for life? Paul wants us to be focused on more people hearing about Jesus, so they can follow him too. So we need to use the opportunities God gives us to do that. We need to help others to go. We need to do what we can so that others have what they need to go. We keep our wits about us, and we keep doing it even when it hurts. This is a radically different set of priorities and values for life. But all of this is God's doing — it's his gospel, it's his plan of salvation. And if we are one of his children: “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack, and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever.”
And this time, you can respond.