OUR GREAT RESCUER

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done. You too should be on your guard against him, because he strongly opposed our message.

At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen.

2 Timothy 4:14-18

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever been let down by people you thought were there for you, people you always went out of your way to support, people you trusted?

I know I have and it’s a terrible place to be, in a place where you have been forsaken.

How can we handle these times if they come upon us?

Well, as we see in every circumstance in life, the Bible gives us the answer.

Consider the life of Jesus, the One who Christians are to base their life upon. He had gone through His years of ministry with a group of hand selected disciples who He invested day after day with to prepare them to carry on His work after He passed away. He did nothing to deserve betrayal but that’s what happened to Him. We know Judas sold Jesus out to the Jewish authorities for thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:14-16).

Judas would carry out his act of treacherous disloyalty under the cloak of darkness as Jesus finished praying in Gethsemane’s garden. The subsequent arrest launched a series of events that would lead to Jesus’ crucifixion and death by 3PM the following day.

As Jesus was nailed to the cross, all of those He had been faithfully served and ministered to for nearly three years were missing except for John who witnessed the execution along with a group of women who had traveled faithfully with Jesus (John 19:25-27). His mother Mary was in that group. I can’t imagine the feelings of hurt and abandonment Jesus must have been feeling at that moment, feelings of hurt and abandonment that were exponentially amplified by the absence of His Father God who couldn’t be in the presence of the sin of all mankind that His Son bore. It was a torturous place of loneliness for the Savior of the world who would cry out in anguish:

“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).  Matthew 27:46

Indeed, Jesus experienced all of the issues we will ever go through in life to include abandonment and forsakenness. But we also need to note that God didn’t leave His Son in that place. For three days, after His death, Jesus was rescued from the grave, resurrected back to life in power and placed in authority over all things in Heaven and on earth. Deliverance and glory trumped the pain of isolation and desertion.

With this in hand, let’s fast forward to the Apostle Paul as he writes closing words to Timothy, the pastor of the church in Ephesus. Look again at his words here:

Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done. You too should be on your guard against him, because he strongly opposed our message.

At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen.  2 Timothy 4:14-18

We know Paul writes this second letter to Timothy as he neared death while imprisoned in Rome. As we saw in yesterday’s message, it was a lonely place to be, one that left the Apostle yearning for fellowship as he requested Timothy to come, bringing Mark with him (2 Timothy 4:9, 11).

As Paul continues to share his heart in today’s passage, we find him lamenting others who had let him down. A man he mentioned in his first letter to Timothy, Alexander (1 Timothy 1:20), had engaged in blasphemous teaching which had done “a great deal of harm” to Paul, no doubt discrediting the Gospel message he had established with the Ephesian church. Paul cautions Timothy to be on “guard against him” so he wouldn’t experience the same.

Paul then highlights what happened when he was at a place to defend himself and the Gospel work he was doing in the name of Christ. Note how similar his experience was to Jesus’. For at his “first defense”, he shares that “no one came” to his support but rather “deserted” him.

In other words, like Jesus, Paul was left to fend for himself but note that he too knew that rescue would be coming. For although everyone else had abandoned him, he knew the “Lord stood” at his side and gave him “strength” so the Gospel could continue to be “fully proclaimed” so the “Gentiles might hear it”.

Just as He had Daniel, God, the Great Rescuer, had “delivered” Paul “from the lion’s mouth” and the Apostle was sure that he would continued to be rescued “from every evil attack” by the Lord until that day when he would be brought “safely” to His heavenly kingdom”, the kingdom that the rescued Jesus reigned over.

Friends, God has given us His promise of rescue through His Son as well, no matter what this life brings. We may feel forgotten and forsaken, abandoned and isolated by others but the truth is that we are never truly alone. Our Lord Jesus promised that He would be with us until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20) and is as present with us right now as He was with the Apostle Paul in prison as he counted down his final days of life.

Let us never forget this and rejoice in the continual, persistent presence of the Savior who loves us and is ready to welcome us into the heavenly kingdom where He has prepared a place for everyone who has placed their belief in Him (John 14:1-3).

With these truths in hand, let us respond as Paul did when he proclaimed:

To Him be glory forever and ever.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.