Fighting the Good Fight (2 Tim. 4:6–22)

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Ligon Duncan: If you have your Bibles, if you’d open them to Second Timothy, chapter four, it’s a joy to be before you this morning in this gathering. I’m so thankful for Tim and for Don and for what they’ve done in bringing together the gospel coalition, and it’s all of our hopes that we simply serve you as you seek to be faithful in your local congregations. And so it’s my privilege to serve you the word here today, we have already been given rich fare. Aren’t your hearts full? My heart was filled up from the first exposition. It’s going to take me a long time to unpack what we’ve already heard. If there’s anything that comes out of this conference for you to carry home, especially from the expositions of Second Timothy, it would be this that I would commend to you. Here’s my exhortation for you to read and reread and to live in and to pray the pastoral epistles of Paul first and second, Timothy and Titus. And I think that’s important, because the pastorals give us apostolic instruction for life and ministry. They teach us about Church Administration. They teach us about public worship. They teach us about the qualifications for ministers and elders and deacons. They show us how women are to be involved in the life and ministry and work of the church. They tell us who ought to provide for the needy, how to give spiritual counsel to aged men and women and to young men and women. They stress sound doctrine. They relate that sound doctrine to the living of the Christian life. They demand consecrated living. They show the value of creeds and confessions. They reveal the closing activities in the life of the apostle Paul. They disclose church life at the end of the first century. But more than that, they are written for our instruction. They show us how Christian ministry is supposed to be done. They show us what Christian ministry is supposed to be like. And Paul expects us to pattern our ministry on these principles. He’s not just making suggestions. The Apostle Paul is laying down permanent principles and patterns and priorities for the Christian life and ministry in these pastoral epistles, and one of the reasons that it is so hugely important that we let the pastorals influence our ministry and shape our church life now in the 21st Century, is that two errors have bedeviled the Western Church for closing in on 200 years now. And the first error simply says that if the church is going to be an effective witness to the world in its own time, then its message is going to have to be changed. The message that Paul used won’t work in our current setting, and it has to be changed. The second problem that has bedeviled the Western Church for the last 200 years is more common amongst evangelicals, and it says that, no, it’s the message is basically all right, what we need if we’re going to be really successful, if we’re really going to reach our world in our culture is we need new methods. Our methods are going to be the key to reaching our culture. And furthermore, it goes on to assume that our methods are not essentially related to nor do they flow from our message. In other words, it divorces theology from methodology. Now you recognize the first error is the error of theological liberalism. Friedrich Schleiermacher, in the late 1790s looked around and saw the German Reformed Church not reaching its culture, the culture had essentially adopted the outlook of the Enlightenment and rejected Christianity. And Schleiermacher, while he was at university, had the same experience himself. His father was a very devout, simple believer. And Schleiermacher came under a deep, deep. Duress in his personal thinking about penal substitutionary atonement and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, he could not believe that Jesus was the only way. He could not believe in vicarious substitutionary atonement. And so he decided that unless Christianity changed its message, it would fail to capture the culture. And so he delivered his very famous speech on Well, it was called a series of addresses on religion, speeches to its cultured despisers. Now you understand that Schleiermacher and the Liberals that followed him didn’t sit down in a tavern somewhere and say, What can we do to destroy Christianity? What can we do to wipe out the church? How can we dispense with Christian orthodoxy? Their motivation was missiological. They wanted to reach their culture, but they thought they had to change the message. Totally unlike what Ajit taught us last night, Ajit taught us about making the message accessible, not changing the message. They felt the message had to be changed, and we have seen that plan played out over and over and over again in Western Christianity for the last 200 years, and it is an utter dead end. And the pastoral epistles will show you why it’s a dead end. But the other error is the error of modern evangelicalism. It basically says the church can’t be built. The Church won’t effectively engage its culture unless its methods are changed, and those methods are unrelated to and do not flow from its theology. They’re utterly neutral. They can be totally abstracted. You can take the same message and you can send it out, and it will be just as effective as any other. But the pastorals constantly press you to see that how we do ministry is related to the message, that methodology is related to theology, that the message and our methods are connected. Let me explain how if in our message, we are committed to a God who speaks to infallible truth, to a sovereign God, to supernaturalism and the work of the Spirit, and we adopt a methodology that embraces epistemic skepticism, consumerism and rationalism, our methods will undermine the message that we’re attempting to capture with the world. To break this down at a very popular level, if we are calling people to come to Christ, die to self, take up their cross and die daily, a methodology that says Have it your way will utterly contradict what we’re calling them. To Jim Boyce used to say, what you win them by you win them too. Now, is this a subtle assault on creativity and methodology? Absolutely not. Is this somehow an assault on the whole issue of contextualization, which the gospel coalition has thought about a lot. No, everybody does ministry situated in a culture. But here, and I didn’t know that Tim was going to use this terminology, here’s what traditionalists do, and here’s what some progressives tend to do. Traditionalists tend to assume their culture and then impose their assumptions in their methodology. Progressives will tend to adopt the culture and then impose their adoption. Now I think neither of those approaches are correct. Traditionalism, in its approach to culture, will often times, end up reinforcing an ossified traditionalism, whereas the progressive approach can tend to reinforce a faddish changing progressivism, but the pastorals teach us that God has given us a gospel message, and gospel means and our methodology flows out of and is related to that we need the creativity, but that creativity needs To be anchored in and connected to and consistent with our theology. In other words, theology informs methodology. Our methodology is derived from and consistent with our theology. And you see that playing out in the pastoral epistles. And so I think that the pastoral epistles actually. Help us with both of those errors that have bedeviled the Western Church for 200 years. God will build his church. He has given us a gospel message, and gospel means and our methods flow out of and are connected to that message and those means. Now, as we approach the end of a letter, you may be asking yourself, What can we learn about the gospel and grace and ministry from concluding comments in a personal pastoral letter like Second Timothy. And I think that’s a good question. I think we need to answer that question. And I’d like to give you a three part answer to that question before we read the text and pray and hear God’s word explained and applied. What can we learn about God and godliness, about Christian life and ministry from closing personal comments in a letter from Paul to Timothy, I think a lot. Let me ask you a question, do you think that Paul can get to the gospel in closing remarks? Personal exhortations, requests and words of greetings? Yes, he can, and we’re going to see him get to the gospel even in these closing remarks. Do you think that Paul can get to grace in closing remarks, personal exhortations, personal requests? Yes, he can. We’re going to see him do that in this particular passage. But why should we expect to learn anything about God and godliness, about Christian life and ministry from these closing personal comments in a letter from Paul to Timothy, first of all, because we believe in inspiration, we’ve just heard Brian Chappell preach a tremendous message that dealt with the text in which the Apostle Paul says all scripture is given by inspiration and is profitable. That includes the censuses and numbers, the genealogies in First Chronicles. It includes every part of the Bible. It is not all applicable in the same way, but it is all profitable and it is all inspired. And so there’s no part of God’s word from which we should expect not to be profited and not to be instructed, including the ends of pastoral letters. Secondly, we should expect to learn about God and the gospel and about the Christian life and ministry from the end of this pastoral epistle, because it’s essentially a public letter. Yes, it is very personal, and it’s more personal than First Timothy, but it’s still a public letter. Machen points this out in his work on the New Testament pastoral letters, that these letters, though they were personal, were always written with the congregation. In view. Do you remember Mark telling us how kind it was of the Apostle Paul to do the name naming instead of making Timothy do that in the letter? I mean, it’s Paul who names Hymenaeus and Philetus, he’s the one who names them as the heretics, so that Timothy doesn’t have to but how does the congregation find that out? Let me allow my imagination to run for a moment. Timothy stands up on Sunday morning in a house in Ephesus, and he says, three days ago, I received a letter from Paul, the man who brought so many of you to faith in Jesus Christ, man who was the planter of this congregation, its first pastor, man who is my father in the LORD, the man who is among the apostles of the church, I received a letter from him. I have read it 17 times in the last three days, and now I’m going to read it to you. And as he reads through the letter, he gets to the point where Paul says, avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, men who have gone astray from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and thus they upset the faith of some it’s in reading it out loud that Timothy is able. I mean, it’s, you can imagine the reaction of the congregation. Paul said that. Paul said that about Hymenaeus and Philetus. That’s it. Game over. No further questions. Us, we’ll avoid them. They’ve departed from the faith. So yes, these letters are incredibly personal, but they are also public letters, and they’re meant to instruct and encourage and edify the church, and that means the end of these letters will do the same thing. Third in these closing remarks, we’re going to find what you might call incidental instruction. The first and the last part of these closing remarks give us rather direct applications of the truths that are being propounded in them. The final part of this letter begins with an exhortation and it ends with a benediction. The application of those is pretty clear and straightforward, but in between that exhortation and that benediction, you have requests and warnings and greetings that are very personal, and you might ask, how can you apply those? And I would like to suggest that underneath the requests and the warnings and the greetings, underneath those things is revealed commitments in ministry, which we can learn from truths about Christian life and ministry and the gospel and grace that we can learn from let me give you an example. If you are reading through Calvin’s institutes, and you get to his treatment of prayer, and not four paragraphs into his treatment of prayer, he pauses to give you seven helps against your mind wandering when you pray, you are not only helped By Calvin’s explicit practical instructions on helping you to focus in your prayer, so that your mind does not wonder in wander in your prayer. But you’re also encouraged by this thought as you read that section, good grief. You know what that means. Calvin’s mind wandered when he prayed praise God, just like me. It’s not that Calvin had heard of a guy in Silesia whose mind once wandered in prayer. The reason that he’s giving you those seven practical exhortations is because he’s had this struggle and he wants to help other Christians. You’ll find Paul doing that the exhortation may be or the request or the warning may be directed towards Timothy, but underneath it, there’s a blessing for you. So let me just outline the passage, and then we’ll pray and read it. Verses six through eight, exhortation, verses nine to 13, requests, verses 14 to 18, warnings, verses 19 to 21 Greetings, verse 22 benediction, exhortation, requests, warnings, greetings, benediction, let’s pray our Heavenly Father. We bow before you today and ask that You would open our eyes to behold wonderful things in your word, your instruction. We direction. We need your word more than we need food, and we need your word to rule in our lives and in our churches by your Spirit, do this thing, O Lord, now in Jesus’ name, amen, Hear the Word of God from First Timothy, chapter four, verses six to 22 for I am already being poured out as a drink offering. And the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing do your best to come to me soon. I. For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia, Luke alone is with me. Get mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me. For ministry Tychicus, I have sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with carpus at Troas, also the books and above all, the parchments Alexander the Coppersmith did me great harm. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. 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 so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To Him be the glory forever and ever amen greet Prisca and Aquila and the household of onesiphorus Erastus. Erastus remained at Corinth, and I left Trophimus, who was ill at Miletus, do your best to come before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you as to Putin and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers the Lord, be with your spirit. Grace. Be with you, amen. And thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, inerrant Word. May he write its eternal truth upon all your hearts John was right on Tuesday in this whole book, Paul is saying to Timothy over and over again, Timothy, keep on feeding the white hot flame of God’s gift in you, namely, unashamed courage to speak openly of Christ and to suffer for the gospel. And Paul does not cease with that instruction, even in his concluding comments, all that he’s said is designed to buttress Timothy in the race that he is running. And I want to draw your attention to these five things, this exhortation, these requests, these warnings, these greetings and the benediction, and see how they all serve to buttress that message, which Paul unveiled in the first 12 chapters of the letter, or the first 12 verses of the letter. And the first thing I want you to see is the exhortation that he gives in verses six to eight. It’s very straightforward. He says, Timothy, I’m about to cross the finish line. You cross the finish line too. Now the application of that is pretty straightforward, isn’t it? We’ve just been singing about it, the Gideon town and hymn that we just sang a church arises all about it. It points you back to saints who’ve run the race well, but it points you forward to an assembly of saints that are awaiting you at the finish line. And here’s the Apostle Paul. Saying to Timothy, I’ve run the race now I can see the end. It’s days, it’s months away. I’ve run the race. You run the race, and you cross the finish line too. Your your goal is nothing short of that finish line. There’s no aim in ministry. There’s no temporary or temporal success. There’s no earthly satisfaction short of that finish line that will do cross the finish line. Think of the last day when from Earth’s wide bounds and oceans farthest coast through gates of pearl stream the countless hosts singing to Father Son and Holy Ghost, hallelujah. Hallelujah, and the King of Glory passes on his way. You think of that when you do ministry. That’s the arena in which you’re doing ministry. That’s your ultimate goal. Yes, you want to do good now. You want to see people come to faith in Christ. You want to see people’s lives transformed. You want to see their communities totally changed. You’re ready to pour yourself out, just like God has poured me out, to see that happen now, but that’s not your finish line. You tonight, Don and Tim will know about this circumstance, but a number of years ago, there were a number of significant moral failures in the ministry amongst reformed evangelicals in Britain, and it deeply unsettled many of the brethren that were trying to do faithful gospel work there, because some of their heroes had fallen along the way. And Jeff Thomas, who has been the pastor for almost a half century now, at the Alfred place Baptist Church in Aberystwyth, was speaking to my dear friend Derek Thomas, about this, and he said, Derek, when I was a young man first going in the ministry, I wanted to be someone great. But as I see my heroes falling all around me, all I want to do now is cross the finish line without shaming God’s people and abandoning my Lord. I just want to cross the finish line. That’s what I want to do. I want to finish well, Derek, that’s what I want to do. And here’s, here’s Paul saying to Timothy, I can see the finish line from where I am. I’m almost there. By God’s grace. I’ve made it. You make it too, Timothy, it helps us to have the testimony of saints who’ve run a long race, and then to hold before us the picture of where it is that we’re trying to get so that we get there too. We need to exhort one another in this way, brothers, the world and the flesh and the devil on every side wants us to fall short of that finish line. And here’s Paul exhorting his son in the Lord by God’s grace, I’ve gotten there. You get there too. Secondly, there are these requests. Aren’t they fascinating? They boil down to this, Timothy, I’m lonely and I’m cold and I’m unable to study without my books, especially the parchments. Would you come see me soon and bring them even before winter? Now, you all know spurgeons famous sermon on this passage, don’t you? Do you know Spurgeon sermon on this passage I’m asking, do you know it? Oh, shame on you. Here’s what Spurgeon says about this request, Timothy, come and bring the books. We do not know what the books were about, and we can only form some guess as to what the parchments were. Paul had a few books which were left, perhaps wrapped up in that cloak, and Timothy was to be careful to bring them. And then here’s what Spurgeon says, even an apostle must read. I. There are some of our brethren who think that a minister who reads books and studies his sermons must be a very deplorable specimen of a preacher. A man who comes up into the pulpit professes to take his text on the spot and talks any quantity of nonsense is the idol of many, if he will speak without premeditation or pretend to do so and never produce what they call a dish of dead men’s brains. Oh, that’s the preacher we want. How rebuked they are by the Apostle Paul. He is inspired, and yet he wants books. He has been preaching for at least 30 years, and he wants books. He has seen the Lord, and yet he wants books. He had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books. He had been caught up into the third heaven and had heard things which it is unlawful for a man to utter, and yet he wants books. He had written the majority of the New Testament. And yet he wants books. And he says to Timothy and to every preacher give yourself to reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves that he has no brains of his own brethren. What is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read, renounce as much as you will. All light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritan writers and expositions of the Bible, we are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure is to either be reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books, which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master service, Paul cries, Bring the books. Join that cry. Now give some attention to what Paul asked for here. First, he asks for Timothy to come see him. He tells him that only Luke is with him, but he asked Timothy to bring Mark. Now my imagination wants to run wild. You have half of the gospel authors and the writers of over half of the New Testament that are to be collected together. And there’s some special parchments that Paul once brought with them. Your mind can run with. What’s going to go on in this meeting? I don’t know what went on in that meeting, but I do know this. Paul knows that he’s going to die in a matter of weeks, and he is still thinking about reading, learning and leaving a deposit of sound truth in writing for the edification of the church. When people belittle this book that you hold and preach from, they are belittling the product of a man who saw Jesus, a man who was brought into the ministry by Jesus, and they’re belittling the pattern of Jesus. Isn’t it amazing to you that when Jesus is on the road to Emmaus with the two discouraged disciples, that what does he do? He takes them to the Bible. Jesus is there. Couldn’t he just ad lib it? And he takes them to the Bible. Anybody tell you that preaching the Bible is about information transfer and that we postmoderns are beyond that now we know it doesn’t work that way anymore. That’s fine. You can think that you’re just taking on Jesus and Paul. I’m sticking with them, because that word of God is delivered through the preacher into the hearts of God’s people to teach them about God, Grace, the gospel and godliness, and to facilitate a divinely word mediated encounter with the living God. It’s not just about information transfer. It’s not about filling their brains up with stuff. It’s about bringing them into the presence of God. Paul knew that, and he’s he’s devoted to working on that to the end of his life. Look at the warnings, verses 14 to 18. The again, the exhortation is very. Straightforward here, isn’t it? Timothy, watch out for Alexander, and don’t be surprised if you find yourself all alone. We don’t know much about Alexander, but isn’t that description of Paul’s final hearing amazing? 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. You know what? What stuns me about that is all the people that aren’t named in this passage, that weren’t around the Apostle Paul at the end. I mean, this is Paul, for crying out loud, and he’s alone. Now, what’s the subtext of that? What? What? What do we learn from that you hear what Paul is saying. Paul is saying being faithful in gospel ministry doesn’t mean that you are not going to be left alone. Your master was left alone. All his disciples deserted them. Paul was left alone. No one was with him when he finally had the opportunity to give that defense and to declare his faith. No one was with him. You know, there are whole, whole generation of young men with a fire in their bellies for the gospel serving the church today, and they’re deeply wounded by the church, and they’re angry with the church because the church has let them down, and the church has abandoned them and deserted them and left them alone. And they’re angry with the church, you know, it’s it’s hard to love someone that you’re angry with, that you’re bitter towards, because they expected the church to be there for them and to not let them down in their time of need. And here’s the Apostle Paul saying, I love the church, and she wasn’t there for me. She wasn’t, she wasn’t there for Jesus, and he loved her anyway, and I love her anyway. May it not be counted against them. Because let me tell you this Timothy, the Lord stood by me. God may be calling you right into that brothers, and when he when he does, he’s not doing something singular and unprecedented and never seen before. It’s exactly what happened to Paul. It’s exactly what happened to your Savior. Why should you expect if it happened to the master, it won’t happen to his disciples? And here’s Paul saying, Timothy, don’t think that your faithfulness will mean that you won’t be left alone, because you may be but that’s okay, because the Lord stood by me. Now it’s in this little warning section, in verses 14 and 18 that Paul gets to the Gospel, because he says, Let me tell you what happened when I was left alone. Look at what he says, Let me tell you what happened when I was left alone. I was able to proclaim, I was able to proclaim the message so that all the Gentiles should hear I was able to what message is he talking about? Well, he’s already told you, go back to go back to chapter one, verse eight, join me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ. Jesus, from all eternity, but now, has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ, Jesus who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher, he summarizes the gospel. There you go back to First Timothy in chapter two, God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man, Christ, Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all the testimony born at the proper time, Paul has all sorts of brief, pithy summarizations of the gospel. They populate his letters. And that’s the message that he proclaimed. He got to proclaim the gospel. That’s what he longed for, Lord, I want to proclaim the gospel in the precincts of the palace of Nero, in the heart of the city of Rome. Get me there, and Paul’s saying to Timothy, I got to do it. I was alone. Everybody had deserted me, but I got to proclaim the Gospel. And I not only proclaim the gospel which is the power of God, but I proclaim the gospel which is the power of God, by the power of God. Go back to First Timothy one again, and look at how he says that the Lord was there and he enabled me to do this. Can you imagine what an intimidating context that would have been in which to proclaim the gospel? Did you hear John’s exhortation to us not to be wimps? You know how the Lord has a way of getting at you in faithful preaching. Not 45 minutes before John preached that exhortation. I had wimped out on a phone call with a man in gross sin that I should have in love, gotten all over him, and I didn’t, because I didn’t love him enough, and I wimped out. That’s the first thing that I’m going to correct when I get back to Jackson. I Jackson, and Paul’s in this arena where everything’s conspiring against him to be faithful, to proclaiming the gospel, and he’s alone to boot. And he says, Timothy, by the strength of God, I proclaim the gospel there. It’s what I’ve wanted to do. And then look at the greetings verses 19 to 21 and again, it’s very simple, isn’t it? What he’s saying? Timothy, I want you to greet some very special people, and I want you to send some greetings from some very special people to very special people. Paul spends a lot of time at the ends of his letters giving Greetings. Is he just following the niceties of his day. I don’t think so. What do we learn from this? We learn from this that Paul loves people in such a way that he wants to express that love that He has for people in such a way to create real Gospel community, and he wants to convey the love of Christians to Christians in such a way that it creates real Gospel community. There is an agenda in Paul’s greetings and salutations, in his passing along of personal remarks to people. He wants to build up the body of Christ, its coherence, its communion, and he wants to do it by the expression of love. It is not something incidental and formal for him. He’s not following niceties. He’s got an agenda in mind. He genuinely loves God’s people, and he wants God’s people to know that he genuinely loves them, and he wants God’s people to know that God’s people genuinely love them. You know how strengthening it can be to pass on that kind of word of commendation and greeting from brothers to brothers who aren’t with one another when we’re not with one another in ministry, because ministers are temperamentally paranoid. When we’re not with one another. We’re suspicious of one another. We’re certain about ourselves, but that guy over there, we’re not so sure about. And watch Paul. He does this with whatever you want to call it, the Conservative Party and the Progressive Party in the early church. He’s constantly saying, Okay, now we, who are thought to be on the progressive wing. We’re going to send a gift back to the traditionalists in Jerusalem, because we want them to know that we love them and we care about them, even though they’re, frankly, a little suspicious of what we’re doing here in Asia. Minor, and he sends greetings for the same reason, because he’s building love and gospel community in the body of Christ that doesn’t just happen. That kind of unity brothers and sisters doesn’t just happen. It takes deliberate intentionality. That’s why, in a in a letter of the New Testament, i. Now, Paul’s got time to deliver those kinds of words of greetings, and you should, too. One last thing, look at the benediction. We’ve got the exhortation in verses six to eight. Cross the finish line. You’ve got the request. I’m lonely. I can’t study without my books. Come bring that cloak. Do it before winter, when it gets really cold here, when you can’t travel. Timothy, watch out for Alexander. He’ll do you harm like he did me harm. And by the way, don’t be surprised if you find yourself all alone in your faithful gospel ministry. Timothy, I want you to greet some very special people and send some greetings from some very special people to some very special people. And finally, to this benediction in verse 22 and it’s very simple, Timothy, the Lord will be with you, and so will his grace. Now look, benedictions are like to many Christians. They’re like what the flight attendant tells you before you take off. Please return your seats and tray tables to their full and up lock upright and locked positions. Stow all of your cellular telephones and iPhones and iPods and turn them to the off position. Please make sure that your seat belts are fastened low and tight. What do we do when that happens? We zone out. And that’s how people react to the benediction. They zone out, and they’re missing something huge, the people that were on us, airways, flight 1549, that landed in the Hudson River a few weeks ago. They may have zoned out during those final safety instructions before they took off. I guarantee you 45 seconds later, they were trying to remember them. You know, let’s see how to open that door. I’ve been sitting on the exit row for eight years, got no idea. What did she say? Benedictions are important. Do not miss this benediction. Paul says to Timothy and to you, he says, The Lord, be with you. Now that’s huge. That is huge. It’s connected with everything else that he has said in this letter and everything else he said in his ministry. You remember, in Exodus, 33 after the golden calf, God comes to Moses, and he says, okay, Moses, I’ve heard you. I’m not going to blast Israel into oblivion right here in the middle of the wilderness, but here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to send you on up to Canaan, but I’m not going to go with you now. Very frankly, most of us would say, great deal. That’s good. That’ll work. We get to go to the promised land. We don’t have to worry about getting the Lord mad because he’s not in our midst anymore. That sounds good to me. Good deal. You remember what Moses says, Lord, if you want go with us, just go ahead and get it over right here. Because the whole thing that I’m about is being with you. The very essence of Your grace is that you would be my God, and I would be your person, and that you would be Israel’s God, and that Israel would be your people. So if you’re not going up with us, just kill us here. Let’s just get it all over with right now. And you remember the Lord responds to the mediators prayer, and he says, I’ve heard you, and I will go up in your midst. Paul, is saying, Timothy, the Lord will be with you in the garden after Adam and Eve, sinned, God said, go go out of my presence. Go out of my fellowship. Go out of the enjoyment of communion and fellowship with me. Go out. Go and by grace. Every time you hear a scriptural call to worship, do you know what God is saying to you? He’s saying Come Come in. Come into my presence. Gather my people. Come in you. If you speak a scriptural call to worship, you’ve already preached the gospel at the beginning of the worship service. Because. It’s not God’s word go. It’s God’s word. Come, come into my Come unto me all my people, and I will give you rest. Come worship and bow down, kneel before the Lord your maker. I’ll fellowship with you. Come be with me. I’ll be with you. And then when the benediction comes at the end. It’s go, but it’s not go away from me. It’s I will go with you. My presence with you isn’t ending. At the end of this service, here’s Paul saying to Timothy, the Lord will be with you. And then what are his last words? Grace. Grace, be with you. Because, how is Timothy going to cross the finish line, and how is he going to cope with being abandoned in faithful gospel ministry. And how is he going to deal with the opposition of Alexander, and how is he going to deal with his own personal timidity, not with his own resources, but with the grace of God? I Grace His favor, something that you haven’t earned, something that you haven’t deserved. Be with you, Timothy, and I’ll meet you there on the other side of the finish line. Many of you have 2030, 4050, years of ministry before you, God willing. I don’t know how many more years I have, 1015, 20, maybe, by God’s grace, I want to meet you on the other side of that finish line. Be there. Let’s pray, Lord God, I pray that your peace, not the peace of rest and ease in this present world and in our current condition, but that peace of and from you, that total well being, that only you can bestow, and the communion which we have with you by your grace, which gives peace and peace. I pray that that peace would be with my brothers and sisters today, even when the world is falling around their ears, even when they are engaged in unremitting conflict with the world flesh and devil, I pray that that peace would be with them through God their Father and Jesus Christ their Lord, until the daybreak and the shadows flee away through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.