Alone on Your Own

Alone on Your Own

Sexagesima

2 Timothy 4:9-16 (ESV)  9 Do your best to come to me soon. 10 For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. 11 Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. 12 Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. 13 When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. 14 Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. 15 Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. 16 At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! 17 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. 18 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.

Sometimes we feel like Greta Garbo, “I vant to be alone.” But, there are times, when we need company and support but have none. We are alone and on our own.

1. Paul Alone

The letter we call Second Timothy, or, if you’re Donald Trump or British, Two Timothy is the last letter Paul wrote that is included in our Bibles. He was in Rome, a prisoner for the second time. While his first Roman imprisonment and trial resulted in his release, he did not expect it would go well this time. He wrote to Timothy, “I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.”

He had had a preliminary hearing. He had not yet gone to trial, but he expected when trial took place he would be condemned. He very much wanted to see his son in the faith and trusted assistant Timothy one more time, so he urged Timothy, “Do your best to come to me soon...Do your best to come before winter.”

He explained to Timothy that he was very much alone. Various of his partners in ministry had gone to places where their ministries were needed. He says, “Luke alone is with me.” Luke was the physician who had traveled with Paul and who would write two books, one his Gospel account of Jesus and the other his account of the Apostles called Acts.

There is a mystery here. There was a church in Rome which had received the letter that is the  greatest theological exposition in the New Testament. Where were the members of that church? Why were they not ministering to Paul in his need? We don’t know. Perhaps it was because of persecution in Rome.

Then there is a sad story here. One of Paul’s partners in ministry had not gone to another place to build up the church, but “Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.” Demas who had been with Paul during his first Roman imprisonment loved this present world more than the kingdom of Christ and the world to come. How painful it must have been to Paul that Demas had left Paul in a time of great need and had turned away from Christ and the Gospel.

We might be surprised to find a man such as Paul feeling so vulnerable and expressing so poignantly his feelings of abandonment and loneliness. He was a profound theologian, and he was a strong leader. But his theological depth and strength of personality did not immunize him from the need for friendship and companionship or from feelings of human loss and loneliness. He was open about his emotional life as when he expressed the feelings of hurt the Corinthian church inflicted on him or the all but inconsolable grief he would have felt had his friend Epaphroditus died of an illness.

Paul had felt most alone and on his own at the time of his first the hearing. “At my first defence, no one came to stand by me but all deserted me.” It’s hard to imagine a more difficult situation than being on trial for his life and having no one at all to stand beside him but rather knowing that they had abandoned him. Where was Luke? Perhaps he had been sent or called away for ministry. We don’t know. We have to think he would have been there if he could, but we also know that Paul felt there were those who could have been and should have been with him but weren’t.

Yet Paul was not bitter. He believed that there there were Christian brothers who should have been in court with him. They weren’t, and that was a failure of Christian duty. But Paul prays as Jesus and as Stephen the Martyr prayed before him, “May it not be charged against them!”  

Paul was neither the first nor the last to go through being alone and on his own. There was Joseph in the pit where his brothers threw him, then alone in the strange world of Egypt, and then thrown into prison because he would not give in to the temptations of a wicked and selfish woman. There was Elijah the lone prophet of the Lord facing the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. There was Daniel thrown into the lion's’ den because he dared pray to the LORD.

But preeminently there was our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane as he asked his three closest disciples to watch and pray with him in his hour of distress but found them each time falling asleep. And, when he was arrested, all of them forsook him and fled. And,  when Peter made his way to the courtyard outside the place where Jesus was being tried, Peter three times denied he know the Savior. No one has ever been more alone and on his own than the Lord Jesus, when his disciples left him alone, and most of all, when on the cross he bore our sins and was abandoned by the Father as he bore the penalty of our sins.

There are times when we may feel most alone and on our own…

...when you are in the MRI machine and listening to that jackhammer sound

...when on Friday afternoon you get called in and told you are being laid off

...when you come home to find that your husband or wife has left you

...when you come home to the empty house after burying the person you loved most

...when you are in the depths of depression and no one understands or can help

...when the person you thought would never abandon you or give up on you does

...when you are where no one can accompany you, walking through those last steps of the valley of shadow of death

There may be times when we all will feel alone and on our own either because no one can or no one will go with us where we must go. We as Christians bound by the bonds of love and should consider it a sacred privilege to stand by and with one another and to give comfort and support when fellow believers walk through the lonesome and dark valleys of life.

2. Paul Not Alone

Though Paul found himself alone and on his own when he went to court, he found he was not altogether alone. “Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me.” He had a friend in court who stood with him to comfort him, support him, and give him courage. The Lord is the Lord Jesus who, when he gave the church the commission to go and make disciples, had promised, “I am with you always.” Paul had found this to be true. When he earnestly prayed that something he called “a thorn in my flesh” would be removed, the Lord did not remove the thorn but said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” During his first imprisonment in Rome he wrote to the Philippians, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” He found in this experience of having ni human help that the Lord was with him.

He is with us, too. Our subjective experience - our feelings - may vary. But we have the promise. “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” and so we take that by faith. David wrote, “Even if my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.” We may feel alone, but we are not alone for the Lord is with us. We may feel we are without help, but we have a helper at our side.

The strength the Lord gave to Paul helped him to give witness to his faith in Jesus as Messiah, Savior, and Lord - to tell how though he had been a violent persecutor of the church and enemy of Christ, he had nevertheless found mercy from Christ Jesus who came into the world to save sinners, even Paul, and  how Christ had put him into service as an Apostle to Gentiles, and given him the privilege of preaching Christ’s grace and mercy. So when Paul might have shrunk in fear because he was alone and on his own in court, because the Lord was with him, he could proclaim the message of Christ in the Roman capital in a Roman court.

When he went into court that day, he felt as though he was putting his head in a lion’s mouth. But, the lion had not bitten his head off, because the Lord rescued him, as he had rescued Daniel before him. So, for then, his life was spared.

But he knew that was temporary. All our physical deliverances are temporary. I sometimes feel like as we age we spend more and more of our time dodging bullets, but we know as Paul did that sooner or later there will be a fatal bullet. For Paul that came in condemnation by a Roman court and execution by a Roman sword.

But Paul is confident that will not be the end. “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. The Lord will not let the evil man does, nor the curse of sin, not even death death, inflict ultimate harm on Paul. The Lord will bring him safely through death, safely into the heavenly kingdom. Paul had earlier written that to depart his life is to be with Christ, that to be absent from the body means to be present with the Lord. We will safely pass through death and into the presence of our Savior. There, with him resting from our earthly labors we will await the glorious day of resurrection.  

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,

For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;

I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand

Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,

The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;

For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,

My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;

The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design

Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.

Even down to old age all My people shall prove

My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;

And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,

Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,

I will not, I will not desert to its foes;

That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,

I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

With such confidence we can say as Paul did, “To him be the glory forever and forever. Amen.”