2 Timothy 1:15-18 Ready for Both

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Don Filcek; 2 Timothy 1:15-18 Ready for Both

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches on his series of 2
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Timothy, Faithful to the End. Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.
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I'm Don Filsek. I'm the lead pastor here, and I really am glad to welcome you to this gathering of God's people here in Matawan, Michigan.
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We are the church, and gathering in the name of Jesus Christ for the purpose of worshiping
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God through the revelation given to us by His Holy Spirit in His Holy Word is what makes us a church gathered together for fellowship under the
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Lordship of Jesus Christ for His honor and glory. This morning we're wrapping up chapter 1 of 2
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Timothy, and in our short passage, really just four verses that we're going to be looking at this morning, we find a challenge to our expectations of the
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Christian life. God's Word is faithful to challenge us and challenge the way that we look at the world.
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So if we're honest, many of us don't think deeply about our expectations. You have them. Every human has them.
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It's a question of whether you've thought through them or not. You see, we navigate life with all kinds of expectations that are nearly subconscious to us until we actually put some thought to it.
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Like, for example, I expected the sun to rise today. How many of you would agree with me? You expected the sun to rise today. I expected my car to start when
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I pushed the button this morning. I expected that it's going to get warmer in the coming months, right?
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Like you kind of have some expectations. And while I can communicate those expectations to you if I think about them at a deeper level, and there's of course many other expectations, but I acknowledge that I'm not owed any of these things, right?
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I wasn't owed that my car would start this morning or that the sun would rise. I've entitled this message,
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Ready for Both, because we're being called through this passage to a relational expectation in the
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Christian life. I have met Christians, I've counseled Christians, I've talked with them, I've given spiritual direction to some who are shocked, shocked and startled by relational brokenness in the church in general.
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Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Some of you in this room have encountered some relational brokenness within the church, whether that's here or other places.
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I think it's kind of a little bit like to our detriment that we would be shocked to see relational brokenness in a fallen world, as if God didn't tell us that there would be wolves, as if the apostles were never, there's no indication that they were abandoned by their colleagues like this passage here says they were, as if we're not often commanded to maintain unity, which if it requires a command that we maintain unity, then that means it's going to be difficult, it's not going to be natural, and as if Jesus Christ Himself didn't experience betrayal.
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Of course, our Lord and Savior, our example, our model, experienced betrayal in this world.
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So this small section of Scripture matters because many set up, I believe, in their minds a fictional expectation of life in Christ and then, and then, and then question
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God when their unrealistic expectations are not met. It is good for us to hear from God that there will be betrayals, there will be those who abandon, there will be those who stick as closest friends, and sometimes those will cross over in a tangle of sinfulness, abandonment, and sorrow, and that's just real.
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To be abandoned, think about it, to be abandoned requires relationship in the first place.
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To be betrayed presupposes some previous friendship or unity. Or to have, as the text is going to use the phrase, turn away, to have people turn away from us requires that they were once with us in some important way.
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Paul shares two personal stories this morning, and they're not just added into the text as an aside to Timothy.
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Now, remember that we're reading a letter written from Paul near the end of his life.
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He's probably going to be executed by Rome about, within the year of his writing this, and he's writing to a younger man passing the torch.
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We saw him pass on the torch of the gospel last week, and then he, throughout this letter, is basically highlighting expectations and the way that Timothy ought to minister, and he is writing about some friendships that they have here, some friendships that they hold in common.
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And these will serve as two types of examples for what has come before in the text.
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He's given us here in the text examples of contrast. He's contrasting cowardice and courage, desertion and dedication, and fear and faith.
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To the younger Timothy, Paul is setting his expectations while calling Timothy to continue on in faithfulness to the message and faithful service to others in the church.
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So as we read this short text this morning, I would encourage all of you to consider and think about this as I'm reading it. Consider the expectation that this sets up regarding relationships, and also consider the higher calling on you to faithful unity together and friendships for the gospel's sake.
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So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 2 Timothy 1, verses 15 through 18.
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Again, 2 Timothy 1, 15 through 18. Recast, this is God's holy word.
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This is what He desires to communicate to us. It's a valuable word. It's from God, and it's probably the most important thing that we do in our gathering, is hearing directly from Him through the pages of His revealed word.
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2 Timothy 1, 15 through 18, follow along, it's a short passage, but let's give it our attention.
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You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are phagellists and homogenies.
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May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Anesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains.
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But when he arrived in Rome, he searched for me earnestly and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the
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Lord on that day. And you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus.
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Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. Father, I thank
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You. I'm grateful that You have seen fit to use us, broken and fallen people, in a broken and fallen world to advance
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Your purposes, to call us into a gathering of people who are working to follow
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Your ways, to do things the way that You have designed us.
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We don't do that perfectly, and so we thank You for Your grace. We thank You for Your mercy. I think many in this room have been hurt, and many of us have hurt others.
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We are not perfect, and we have not experienced others as perfect. And so,
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Father, I pray that You would guide and direct our expectations through this text, but also guide and direct the calling on our lives to lean in and not lean out, because we are all to a person self -protective.
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We like to build walls. We like to build an outer shell on our heart that we can't get hurt again.
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And, Father, I pray that You would help us to continue to lean in on love, continue to lean on bearing with one another, continue to lean in on advancing unity together for the cause of Jesus Christ, our
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King. Father, I thank You for the gospel that gives us hope for a better future than the present that we live in, where there is pain, and there is sorrow, and there is hurt, and there is relational brokenness in families, and in relationships, and in neighborhoods, and among coworkers, and things are not the way that they are meant to be, but we reflect on the gospel and remember that there is a promise for a better world than this.
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Our hearts long for it. We desire for it. Father, we long to be better towards others around us and to receive better from others around us.
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And there's a day coming when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will return and set up His eternal kingdom, where there will be no more death, no more pain, no more shame, no more sorrow, no more tears.
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We look forward to that day, but in the meantime, I pray that You would use us for the purposes for which You've saved us, to lean in and advance as a community who loves
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You and shines a light to the world around us. Father, I pray that that would be real in this place, and I thank
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You for that experience over the last 16 years, just to see recasts loving one another, caring for one another, leaning in in relationships with one another.
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Father, I pray that even now You would receive the mingling of our voices together in these songs as worship before You, that we would be prepared to enter
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Your presence by even hearing from Your Word and recognizing that You're a God who takes all of this into account.
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You know our brokenness, You know our frailty, and You have seen fit to rescue us. I pray that that would be the joy that fuels our worship and singing even now.
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We ask this in Jesus' name. You can go ahead and be seated and make yourself comfortable as much as possible.
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If you need to get up and get more coffee or more donut holes back there, I think there's some left.
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If you need to use the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left -hand side there. I would encourage you to reopen to 2
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Timothy 1, 15 through 18. We read that earlier, but to have that on your lap and to be able to see that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's Word is really vital to our learning,
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I think. And I want to start off by saying what I think is pretty self -evident but needs to be stated.
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The Christian life is defined by community. There is no church without a gathering, without a gathering of community.
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We are saved, really, by the blood of Jesus Christ into a gathering of worshipers of Jesus Christ for His glory and for His honor.
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And what I want to point out is community is not merely, like the church and the gathering of God's people is not merely something that serves my personal spirituality.
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As if I'm an isolated unit that goes out and grabs some podcasts and reads the
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Bible and spends time with my family and does things, and that God is primarily, fundamentally concerned with me as an individual aside from the church, that is not the case.
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As if God gave us a church to attend so that we can merely grow ourselves.
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It's one more tool to serve ourselves. No, that's not the case at all. Instead, He has called us into His metaphor in the
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New Testament, a body. And the body metaphor is used to intentionally convey that under Christ, who is the head of the body, the rest of us function as an interconnected arrangement of various specialized organs serving the benefit of the whole, we need each other, like you kind of want your arm to stay connected to your body.
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Like that's the kind of relationship we are to have together. It's a benefit to the whole that you are here and that you are connected and that you are serving and that you are loving and that you are caring and you are unified with one another.
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And I start here with the body metaphor in order to convey the essential and central nature of the church in a believer's life.
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You ought to never think, you ought to never think or give in to at least the long -term notion that you attend a church.
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Well, certainly it's okay to attend a musical or to attend a movie or to attend a sporting event, but you are not made to attend a church.
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As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to state it pretty emphatically that you are only what you are made to be in a local church context intentionally connected with other believers.
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That's what it means to flourish, is to be connected in vital relationships with one another. The words of 2
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Timothy 1, 15 through 18 do not take place in the context of an accounting firm or a school among the staff or a family reunion or your high school.
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They are set in the context of the body of Christ, a gathering of believers, a local church.
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And they conjure up all kinds of expectations when you think about relationships. Those of you, some of you are newer to the church, some of you have been kicking it around churches for a while and you have some experiences.
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And I would, I've encountered many people and what's vital in this message is because I've seen it.
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I've encountered people who have been shipwrecked on the rocks of unmet relational expectations within the local church.
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We have a tendency to hurt each other and to hurt each other real bad at times. And it's especially insidious when it's within the local church and our expectations are that we love each other well.
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I've heard people say, I thought we were called to love each other and people in churches can say hateful things.
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I thought we were called to teach the truth and false teachers rise up and gain followings for false doctrines.
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And I thought we were supposed to love one another, but we can feel abandoned in our darkest moments at times by especially, especially, especially by people that we know are called to love.
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Right? It's all the worse when you know that there's instructions for us to love one another, to be unified with one another, to forgive one another.
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And when that doesn't happen in the church, what do we do? Does that destroy your expectations of the power of God to transform lives?
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Well, he kind of gives us some indications of what to expect here in scriptures. This passage serves two purposes.
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It will by its very nature set out to temper our expectations in this world, in this fallen and broken world where we're fallen and others are fallen.
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And that means that we're hurt by others and we also hurt others as well. And if this is the way that people acted,
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I want you to think about it this way when we read this text and we walk through it. If this is the way that people acted toward an apostle, the apostle
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Paul, turning away from him in his moment of deepest need, probably in his entire life,
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I mean, he's getting ready to be...he's about to be executed for his faith and he says, people have scattered from me.
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They've left me. Then why should we be surprised when that happens to us?
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But fortunately, that sounds like a down message, but fortunately that isn't all that we find here. We also find an example of a guy following an example of a guy who loves well.
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His name is Anesiphorus in the text and I want to just call him...I wrote that word enough this week and it took up enough letters that I began to shorten it and I eventually settled on nicknaming him because you only nickname what you love.
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So I nicknamed him Onesie this week. You can see that right at the beginning. It's actually Anesiphorus, but I just called him
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Onesie. Linda said you should go with Nessie. That works too, but whatever. I like nicknames and that's what
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I do. So if I give you a nickname, it's actually care. But we see one verse as an example of cowardice...one
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verse as an example of cowardice and desertion and fear, while the positive example gets three verses, and I think that's telling to us too.
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Paul didn't linger on this negative example, but instead he accentuates the positive, but we still have to deal with the negative here.
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And so our outline is bad examples, verse 15, good example, verses 16 through 18.
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Bad examples and good example, and that's really the structure of this short text. We were going to obviously start with the bad examples.
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Fortunately, we get to end with the good. Both the positive and negative examples that Paul is giving in the text are not news to Timothy.
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So in other words, he's talking to Timothy about something that the two of them already know, but he's reminding Timothy of that.
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He's bringing us into it, but there's details that we don't know here. It's obvious by the opening here in verse 15 and by the very end of this passage, at the end of 18, that Timothy was well aware of the desertion of many in the province, the
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Roman province of Asia, while also he was quite well aware of the positive example of onesie in the text as well.
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So don't lose sight of this being a very personal...the writing of 2 Timothy is very personal and vital and the final writing of the apostle
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Paul. And as such, Paul writes with a lot of emotion. As a matter of fact, that's a hallmark of the book of 2
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Timothy, is that there's a very personal feel to it. He shares more emotion from Paul than in the other letters and in his other writings.
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As a matter of fact, verse 15 contains what scholars like to call hyperbole, but the rest of us like to just call it exaggeration.
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Exaggeration sounds a little bit negative, right? Like when somebody exaggerates, you're like, well, is that a borderline lie? Hyperbole is for dramatic effect.
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But I think we know how this all works. There are times when you've exaggerated yourself and it wasn't a lie, it was just really expressing how you felt.
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There are two quite specific reasons that when Paul says, all of those in Asia have left me, while we know that that's an exaggeration from his heart, is because he says, all who are in Asia turned away from me.
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But the first thing that's kind of interesting is he's writing to Timothy, who is in Ephesus, which is the largest city in the province of Asia.
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Timothy hasn't deserted him, obviously, and he is about to commend Onesie, who is also a man who is likely a deacon of the church in Ephesus, which is also in the province of Asia.
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So there's at least a couple of guys that have been faithful to Paul and continued with him. Not every single person has betrayed him.
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But when a person in despair says this kind of emphatic thing, everybody has left me, or says something like this,
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I've heard, I feel like nobody understands what I'm going through. How many of you ever felt that way? I feel like nobody gets this.
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I feel like nobody understands what I'm going through. It would not be the time to lean in on a person saying that and say, how do you know that?
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Have you met every single person on the planet? Have you interviewed them all to determine whether or not they understand your pain and your suffering?
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Of course that's not what we do. Of course we understand how people in grief respond with exaggerative statements like,
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Paul here, everybody in Asia has left me. And that's important that we get that emotion in here.
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Paul is feeling this here near the end of his life. He's feeling deserted. But we can surmise from Paul's words, at a central hub of his ministry, he's traveled through Asia many times, he's encouraged the churches, he had a really, really robust ministry in Ephesus, and they have not been of any substantial help to him in his hours of greatest darkness at his final arrest, his imprisonment, and soon looming execution.
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We can fairly say that many have, as the text, and agree with the text, many have turned away from Paul, and he feels like everyone, he feels like everyone, he feels like everyone has deserted him.
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By the way, it's good to acknowledge what shape that turning away takes, like, what's he saying about those churches in Asia?
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Is Ephesus defunct? Are they turning away from the gospel? Are they rejecting Jesus?
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Well, no, it doesn't say that. It doesn't seem so. They are intentionally distancing themselves from the apostle
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Paul. Note that the text states directly that these believers are turning away, Paul's words, Paul writing, he says, they're turning away from me, from Paul.
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And there's a couple of things at play here. When you see the word shamed, like, I'm not ashamed, or you're gonna see in just a moment that Anessa Forrest was not ashamed of Paul's chains.
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We don't live in a shame -based culture, okay? So we don't carry the stigma with us down through the generations of things, and so a shame -based culture is basically a culture, and they're still alive and well today.
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The Middle East is a shame -based culture. The last thing you do is give an affront to somebody. That stigma can turn against a family for generations, like, your kids might not be able to show their face in public after dad does
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A, B, or C, right? We have a more individualistic culture where the person themselves is the person.
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They're responsible for their own behavior, and sure, dad might have done some really stupid stuff, but the kids still go to school, right?
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They still get out in community, but this is a significant thing. And then the other thing that's at play here with people splitting from Paul is the injustice of Roman law that made association with a known criminal a serious fear and a serious shame, a fear that you're going to be indicted as a result of association with one who is a noted criminal.
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We will see Onesie being commended for not being ashamed of Paul's chains, while we are left to deduce reasonably that many in Asia were indeed ashamed of his chains and trying to distance themselves from him here in the end.
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And it could have been sufficient for Paul to just keep this at the generic level as he's writing this to Timothy. He could have just left it, got on with his point, and got this point across by merely saying, everybody has abandoned me in my moment of need, and Timothy would have gotten the point just fine.
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But instead, Paul does something that probably makes many of us uncomfortable. He names names. He names names.
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How many of you get uncomfortable when leaders or pastors or people get up and start naming names? Don't agree with this person, don't agree with that person, whatever.
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He names the names here. And again, remember that this letter is both personal between Paul and Timothy, but it's also vital for the church teaching down through the ages.
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So that's why we're reading it here in 2025 in Matawan, Michigan, is because it's vital to us.
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It's connecting thoughts about the church and the way that we ought to roll and things that we ought to do. But what you need to understand is that Paul and Timothy knew things that we don't know.
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There's an insider aspect to this that's personal. Between the lines is knowledge about this guy
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Phagellus and Hermogenes, these two guys. I call them Fig and Herm. Again, just give them a nickname. But both
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Paul and Timothy know these guys, and the structure of verse 15 drives us to conclude that it was a huge deal.
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It was a big deal that Fig and Herm turned away from Paul and Timothy. I don't think it's stretching the text at all to see in all of these who turned away a sense of betrayal on Paul's part.
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To turn away from Paul requires that they were once with Paul in support and encouragement.
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And so it stands to reason that Fig and Herm were once supporters, if not even ministers, alongside
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Paul and Timothy in the province of Asia, and they bolted. They bolted. The mention of their names here indicates that this one stung for the
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Apostle Paul. His naming them is to say, it's as if he's saying, even these two guys turned away from me.
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Even Phagellus and Hermogenes. How alone am I, Timothy? How alone do
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I feel? How betrayed am I? How abandoned? Even my good friends Phagellus and Hermogenes, they ghosted me.
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They won't even return my texts. They leave me on read all the time. One observation
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I thought about this week that accentuates the pain this must have caused the Apostle Paul is that I believe that desertions like this hit him harder than it does many.
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You see, Paul didn't go home to a wife and kids at the end of the day. He was single for the cause of ministry to Christ.
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His mission and ministry was his life.
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His ministry family was his only family. And being neglected by those who once were his friends must have been one of the hardest and most painful parts of his ministry, and he mentions it.
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So now that we understand this bad example, let's consider our own expectations. If the Apostle Paul found betrayal among his church friends, if the
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Apostle Paul found betrayal among those who were close and ministered with him, ought we to be surprised when people treat us poorly?
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Should we expect better? We certainly are not called to keep our distance from people to protect ourselves from inevitable disappointments.
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We are called into a robust community life, church, doing life together and caring for one another, taking meals to those in need, engaging in C groups and E groups, the community groups and the
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E groups that are going to be starting, the education groups that are going to be starting up in the fall and serving each other well and praying for one another as needs arise.
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And by the way, this is the text, but this is not at all like this church
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I've experienced this way. I've experienced the unity and the love and the care for one another here, and I just encourage it to continue.
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So this is a message of continuing on in that. Maybe there's some conviction for some here that aren't connected yet, but I just want to commend you guys that I see a lot of this happening.
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I see a lot of the encouraging stuff happening. But we are called, church, to do a couple of things that one of them comes naturally, one of them doesn't.
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And you can guess which one I think doesn't come naturally. We are called to help one another, and we are called to ask for help when we need it.
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One of those isn't very easy at all, is it? Helping others? Oh man, if we put a need out there, man, people are ready to bring meals, they're ready to do the, but man, it is like pulling teeth to get somebody to say, like, can we help you?
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Nah, we got this. Nah, we got this. No, you don't have it. I've been in those situations where I don't think you have it.
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I don't think you're doing all right, but we're here if you need anything. We are called in the church, think about this, we are called to bear with one another, maintain unity with one another, love one another, and even forgive one another, and this last one is kind of cute in its implications.
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If you are called to forgive one another, guess what that means? You are going to be hurt.
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You are going to be sinned against, and you will even have people close to you who turn away from you.
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Oh, that's not a fun expectation, but it ought to be in our minds when we read texts like this, and that's okay, that's okay, you'll be okay.
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People close to Paul turned away from him, and people close to Jesus turned away from him. We are in good company when we are injured by those who once were close friends.
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But hear me carefully, church, what our hearts want to do when we are hurt in the church, or we are hurt in society, or we're hurt in family, is we want to immediately put up walls.
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We want to put up barriers. We want to protect ourselves. We have a tendency to grow cynical and see behind every face a malignancy.
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We want to disengage. The call here in this text, we're going to see in a moment, is to go the direction of Vanessa Forrest, not the direction of Phagellus and Hermogenes.
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We are being called in a direction, and I want you to think about this irony, because there is a deep irony in this text about what our hearts want to do.
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We want to encapsulate ourselves, to preserve ourselves, to protect ourselves, self -preservation.
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When you read this, when you read this text and respond in fear for your own heart, you become fig and herm to someone else.
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You become fig and herm to someone else. God forbid that in hearing this warning and this expectation that we withdraw to protect ourselves and become guilty of the very thing these two men did in neglecting their close friend
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Paul in his moment of need. But that's what we'll do if we withdraw. If we don't lean into relationships, we don't lean into friendships, we don't risk, we don't put our neck out for one another in care and concern, then we will be guilty of being these guys eventually.
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We will leave others in the lurch. Do you get what I'm saying? But that's what our hearts want to do.
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Somebody, somebody, I'm talking to you all, somebody needs your continued encouragement in their life, maybe today and at least this week.
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Somebody needs you. Because there's a second part of this text. In verses 16 through 18, we see the good example of a man named
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Anesiphorus. In verse 16, Paul calls for a blessing on the household of Onesie. He's literally saying,
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I want his family to be blessed. Onesie has been out on a traveling trip to Rome, and so it's likely that Paul blesses his family and household because they've had to make sacrifices while Anesiphorus is out ministering to Paul in Rome.
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So he says, may your family be blessed. I want them to have mercy because look at, you've been here sowing your time where you could have been with your family and you could have been managing your own household, instead you're here ministering to me in Rome, thank you.
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May your family receive mercy as a result of the way that you've served me.
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And we find that Onesie did several things that Paul commends him for. He often refreshed
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Paul. This phrase has both a spiritual and physical component to it, that word refreshed, it goes all the way to the extent of food.
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Anesiphorus has encouraged Paul's spirit by visiting him during that terrible imprisonment in Rome, but he also quite likely brought snacks and care packages.
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How many of you would appreciate that in a moment of need, right? Like you just kind of like, hey, if there's need, we do that same kind of thing, like where there's a surgery or there's an injury or there's a loss or something like that, we often will, we've got a meal train here that gets rolling pretty quick and people start providing meals for people in need here, and I love the way that we do that.
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But Paul was refreshed by the tangible ministry of Anesiphorus, and it may be that some of our greatest ministry has been the meeting of tangible needs of others around us.
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While we think of great ministry as missions work overseas or teaching the Bible or evangelism, but note that the parable of the sheep and goats that Jesus tells, and I encourage you to look that up later,
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I don't want to sidetrack you by giving the reference to that, but the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus talks about taking water to a thirsty person, he talks about feeding a hungry person, he talks,
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I love it, he talks about visiting someone in prison, and guess what Anesiphorus did? He literally visited somebody in prison, it happened to be the apostle
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Paul, that's what he's doing here, he's just doing kindness, just love, just the kind of thing that we would want, if you were in prison for your faith right now, would you hope that somebody from church came and visited you?
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I hope somebody shows up, like if I end up going to jail because I shared the gospel or I actually preached
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Romans 1 or something like that, if I were to go to jail, I hope somebody comes to say, hey, how's it going in here?
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You look good in orange, I don't know, I don't think it's my color, but...
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And I want to point out that what I'm saying could sound different than what we talked about last week, because what we often do is we confuse these acts of kindness with evangelism and go,
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I am doing the gospel, I'm doing evangelism because I visited somebody in prison, that's not the case, you're doing acts of kindness, but that's not the gospel.
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But do both, don't create up, build up a false dichotomy and be like, ah, I don't have to...
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You get what I'm saying in that? I just do nice things. No, that's, you're called to do both. Neglect the gospel and certainly serve one another with the tangible needs that each other has.
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Onesie often, the word is often in Greek there, often refreshed Paul. This wasn't a one -off ministry, but he kept blessing
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Paul with visits, which is evidence of the second thing that Onesie is commended for in the text.
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He wasn't ashamed of Paul's chains, he didn't give into fear. In other words,
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Paul is acknowledging the risk involved to Onesiphorus for associating with him at all. Going to visit a person in jail made you look like a co -conspirator with them.
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And lest you think that Paul is just there because people didn't like him sharing the gospel, no, he is there and about to be executed for some high treason.
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Like, the message that he's been proclaiming that Jesus is Lord is perceived against Rome and against Caesar himself.
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Like, he's about to be executed by the Roman state as a Roman citizen based on his refusal to bow the knee and say
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Caesar is Lord, but instead he keeps saying Jesus is Lord and they weren't having it. They didn't like it.
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So Onesiphorus is at risk of going like, oh, you're one of them too? It would only take a guard saying that for Onesiphorus to get in a lot of trouble.
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Oh, hey, you with the food. Can you imagine a soldier saying that? Hey, you with the food and all the good stuff that I'd like to eat.
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You must be one of them too. And Onesiphorus gets some chains alongside Paul.
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And he doesn't just get to like occasionally encourage Paul. He gets to sit with him in the cell. Sticking with Paul, visiting him in jail, bringing him care packages was risky for this man.
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And Onesiphorus took that on in order to remain a faithful friend to his good buddy Paul. May God grant to everyone in this room a friend like this.
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May everybody in this room, my prayer for you is that you would have a friend like this, but it doesn't end there church.
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My prayer is that you would be a friend like that. Who needs you like that? Who needs you to stick with them through social shame, through difficulty, through everybody else and all your friend group is betraying them right now and talking about you, talking talking to you about them and saying, can you believe they did this?
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Can you believe they did that? Can you believe? And they need a friend. They need somebody to stand with them.
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Maybe that's you. God, may God permit us to have friends like that and to be friends like this.
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Not too afraid to stay connected to a death row criminal, Onesiphorus. Often refreshing him with his presence and with snacks,
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Onesiphorus. And further, Onesiphorus is commended in verse 17 for his diligence in seeking out
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Paul. It seems likely that Onesiphorus went to Rome for some other reason, but while there on whatever business took him to Rome, he searched for Paul and found him.
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And the fact that he had to search earnestly, you see that in the text? He searched for him earnestly. It's one more evidence that Paul was not merely under house arrest.
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He was under house arrest in Rome earlier, but now he is in prison awaiting execution in the
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Mamertine dungeon beneath the streets of Rome, a terrible place that all different kinds of historians have written about it.
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And we have documents dating to this time about what a terrible place that was. It's not the place you wanted to visit.
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You don't want to take a care package of this place. And locating a prisoner there was not going to be street level information.
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You weren't going to just go talk to a vendor and be like, where's Paul? I imagine that Onesiphorus had to do quite a bit of searching.
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The word earnest is there. And maybe even, I don't know, I'm speculating, but maybe even a little bribing to get down to the location of the apostle
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Paul during this time. Again, the friendship of Onesiphorus is being contrasted with the rest of his relationships, with the rest of Paul's relationships in Asia.
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They left him the moment of his rest. They scattered from him in fear, while Onesiphorus stands as an example of a man who runs to the point of a friend's need, goes in where everybody else is running out.
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Be that kind of person. There's a play on words that makes the start of verse 18 sound strange in English.
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You can see it there. Verse 18 reads, May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the
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Lord on that day. And they've really worked hard to, the language is just like, may the Lord grant him mercy from the
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Lord that day. But instead, you get this phrase to find in there. And that adds a little bit of a strange sound.
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But Onesiphorus, it's a play on words because Onesiphorus searched and found Paul. And Paul's glad for that.
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But then Paul further wishes for him to find something else. Ah, you found me, earnestly sought me and found me.
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My prayer for you is that you would find mercy on the day of final judgment, Onesie.
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This is not at all a statement of doubt about the faith of Onesiphorus. As a matter of fact, Paul seems to be quite confident about the outward signs of faith in this man.
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But Paul offers here in this final verse, one of the best blessings he can think to give anyone.
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And I agree. I think it's one of the best things that anybody could wish for somebody else. Think about it.
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What could you receive that would be greater than mercy granted by Jesus Christ, our
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Lord, on the final day of judgment? Is there anything? Anything that you could be given that would be better than that?
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I can't think of anything better than my Lord standing before and saying, mercy applied, welcome to my kingdom.
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And that's what he wants. That's what he wants for his friend here. And he's wishing that. He's saying, this wish prayer is
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Paul's highest of wishes for somebody. I believe, by the way, that Paul expects it to be fulfilled based on his knowledge of the life of the
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Holy Spirit in his friend Onesiphorus as evidenced by the very end of verse 18, rather.
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And in a personal way, Paul highlights to Timothy, hey, bro, you know this dude.
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You know the service of Onesiphorus given to the church where you're serving right now in Ephesus. The word service here in association with a specific church at the later date of this writing.
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By the way, we're getting near the end of the writing of scripture when we're reading 2 Timothy. And back as the church was developing and growing, some of these words took on more formal terminology.
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And it's quite likely that Onesiphorus was a deacon of the church of Ephesus, that it was a more formal role.
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I tend to agree, which would make sense of his bold acts of service here. But either way, this man was exemplary in his service to the church and is also exemplary in his service to his friends.
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So how are we to apply this passage to our lives here and now, church? 20 -25, Matawan, what do we do?
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As my sermon title implies, I see some application regarding our expectations. What do you expect in life?
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And that's my first application. Don't be surprised by hard relationships. Don't let that sidetrack your faith.
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Bible's telling you it's gonna happen. It's predicting it. It's literally saying, like, this happens.
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It happened to Paul. It happened to Jesus. It happens. We would not have so many commands.
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Think about it. We wouldn't have so many commands to maintain unity, bear with one another, love one another, if we were not going to be tempted to diss each other, walk all over each other, and turn away from one another.
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We have to be commanded to stick in these relationships. This is not a call to expect the worst in each other, not at all.
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But it's a call to a solid faith that is not expecting something that God never promised.
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You see what I'm saying? Some people think that God has promised you a rosy time. You come to faith in Christ, and all your relationships are gonna be healed, and everybody's gonna love you coming to the church, and it's just gonna be, oh, big hug fest, and everybody's gonna love each other.
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And then they're shocked when that doesn't happen. But that's never predicted for you. That's not the expectation.
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The second thing is bless those who are faithful. Unfortunately, it's often the squeaky wheel that we give the grease.
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If we're not careful, we will give into a negativity that spends all of our time on fig and herm.
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We'll spend all of our time on those who have hurt us. We can become complainers and whiners about those who have betrayed us, and that can become so much a part of our lives that we cease to lift up our eyes and see the faithfulness of others around us.
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But note that Paul mentions them in passing while spending the bulk of his time commending and blessing a good example.
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Oh, indeed, Paul does occasionally name names, but he doesn't linger there. He doesn't linger there.
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He never mentions, by the way, in the New Testament, in any of his writings, he does not mention a negative light anybody twice.
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He mentions people's names in a negative light. He doesn't mention them twice. He doesn't go back and re -litigate that.
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But he warns, and he says, I've been hurt, and here are people who have hurt me. But how many times, you look at the end of Romans, and it's just commendation after commendation of faithful.
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He names names, and they're all faithful witnesses. And those he names more than once, you'll see those at the end of various letters.
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And it's a lot of times there's overlap in those lists where he's commending them to one church, he's commending them to another church, he's mentioning them in Romans.
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You see what I'm saying? Invest in the faithful among you. Offer encouragement, offer blessings, openly commend and offer thanks to those who have refreshed you.
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But there's another angle of this passage that also aligns with the reasons I believe for which it was written. Be a faithful friend.
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Be a faithful friend. Don't give in to relational cowardice, but be courageous.
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Don't be quick to desert your brothers and sisters in Christ, but consider your dedication to them in the
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Lord. Don't be fearful. Don't be a fearful friend, but be a faithful friend.
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Not a fearful friend, but a faithful friend. It might seem like a stretch in this passage to go from friend to church and church to friend.
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It might appear to be a formal service in the church that some people might think that that's what Onesimus is doing here as he was formally sent by a church to care for Paul or something like that.
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And then why would we talk about friendships and vice versa? But I believe that these two things touch at a point of the common ground of relationships within the church.
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Friendships and church should go together. I've talked with people who say, all my friends are outside of the church.
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Well, change that. You ought to change that. Jesus Christ gave his life in order to draw together his church, a gathering of people under his lordship, living with common values, living with a call to show love and unity.
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And yes, even a dedication to one another that could be defined and should be defined by the word friendship.
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And if you struggle to connect the words church and the word friendship together, then
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I would suggest you might just be sitting a little too much on the sidelines. You might need to get into the game and begin investing in others here to get your hands dirty, to risk a little more in the kingdom, get involved in community groups.
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Yeah, that's gonna be at the end of the summer, but man, it's gonna come up quick. Probably don't even wanna hear that, but I mean,
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August will be here, September will be here before we know it. I heard that.
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It's not even really that warm yet. Paul wanted a contrast here, and he wanted to contrast shameful desertion with commendable faithfulness.
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And if your name was gonna be included in scripture, and you're like, man, it would've been cool to live in biblical times and have your name in there, and then you're like, oh, there
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I am, fig and herm. Unfaithful, let him down. That'd probably be where I'd be, right?
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And then you're just like, oh, I wish I wasn't in the Bible. Don't put my name in there. Onesimus, Onesimus, Onesie.
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What a guy, faithful, commended to the mercy of God for his kind, steadfast, earnest, and faithful service to his friend.
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I don't know why we pick the names in English that we do, you know, some place in the
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South, there's a Jedidiah, and there's a couple of Ezekiels down there, but up here we'll do Jason. I don't know if you know that's a biblical name.
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Michael, you know, those kinds of things. But why not? I've never met a kid named Anesiphorus.
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This is a dude. Like, this is a guy risking it to go into the dungeon with Paul, like in the trenches with him, saying,
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I'm not gonna leave you, man. I got you. I got you, brother. I'm not gonna diss you. By God's grace, we are called into this community full of risk.
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We serve a Lord who was betrayed. All his disciples turned away and even physically ran off into the night as he was arrested.
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He knew betrayal. He knew what it was like to have everybody leave him as he was arrested and sent to be tortured for you and me.
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He took upon himself our chains. He died a shameful death, beaten and stripped for us, so he could make this.
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This. Seem a little anticlimactic? This, us. Not the building.
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Not buildings with stained glass and cathedrals, but us. He did this to make us a gathering for his glory and for his honor and left us here to love one another well and to share his light and life with others until he returns.
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That's what he's done. Recast, we are a local manifestation of his love made tangible on this earth.
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We live out his love in our community. We live out the gospel in our community. A gospel of forgiveness, a gospel of reconciliation, a gospel of unity under one glorious Lord and King, Jesus.
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So come to the tables if that is true of you this morning. If Jesus is indeed your Lord and Savior and you're practicing his gospel peace with others here, our communion revolves around the table, his sacrifice that forges a community, his love that fuels our endurance with one another, his forgiveness empowers our forgiveness of one another.
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Church, relationship is not a side project. It's not a side project. It is the core of redemption.
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God reconciling us to himself and reconciling us to one another as well.
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And he did all of that through his cross. So let's come remember his body broken for us and his blood shed for us.
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And then let's go out this week ready to love each other well in faithful friendships.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for us.
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I thank you for the together. I thank you for the gathering. I thank you for the community. I've experienced so much love and care over the last 16 years here at Recast since we started in a basement with just a dozen or so adults.
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And now it's grown so that our love has grown and more people to care for, more people to love.
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It's been a joy to see. Father, I pray that you would continue that work in us. Loving one another well, rebuking when rebuke is needed and correction when correction is needing and encouragement when encouragement is needed.
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And I thank you that I've seen all of those done well here over the years. Not perfectly, but well.
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And I rejoice in the opportunity that we have to come to these tables and reflect as your church, as your body.
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And we get up in these lines and we say and we testify by getting in the line and taking the cracker and the juice. I'm not okay without this.
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I'm not okay without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, without his body broken in my place, without his blood shed in my place.
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I'm a mess. But in him, I find redemption. In him, I have hope.
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In him, I can be reconciled. In him, I can forgive the great hurt that I've received from others.
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Father, I pray that there would be ongoing, ongoing commitment here to reconciliation, ongoing commitment to friendships.
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And for those who are sitting on the sidelines to jump in and get in the game, to jump into community, to begin to talk to others.
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There's introvert and extrovert and all that stuff. And some people here just hope to not talk to anybody when they come through the doors and hope to be able to sneak out real quick.
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And whatever you've designed us for our capacity to interact, maybe just an introvert grabbing some one person and talking with them and sharing about their week.
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Father, I pray that you would be cementing relationships here and continuing to do so under the great and awesome sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we remember as we come to these tables.
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We thank you for the gospel. We're not worthy of it, but we're grateful for it. It is the unifying thing that holds our church together.