Be careful who’s influencing you. Be careful of a gradual drift away from Jesus and his people. Do not be ashamed of Jesus, his message, or his people.

Whenever a crisis hits, as it seems to a lot these days, I see a quote from Mr. Rogers posted on the Internet. It’s a good quote, too. It says:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world.

I like that.

It’s so easy to look at the negative. It’s all around us: twitter attacks, public shaming, acts of racism, hatred, and cruelty. Fred Rogers tells us to look for the helpers and to be encouraged by the good people who are all around us.

That is similar advice to what Paul tells us to do in the passage we just read.

Just a little background on what we’ve been reading.

Paul, who spread the gospel all throughout the Roman world, is in prison in Rome and about to die. He’s writing a letter to his protégé, Timothy, who is a leader in the church at Ephesus. If I were to sum up the message of chapter one so far it would be the words found in verse 8: “Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner” (2 Timothy 1:8). Paul keeps hammering away at this theme, and we’ve been looking at this so far:

• Paul’s willing to suffer and die for the gospel. It’s so valuable that it’s worth dying for. They can take everything from you, but they cannot take away what God has done through Jesus to transform us and to guard the good deposit he’s given to us.
• He then tells Timothy — and us — to stop being ashamed and to rekindle the gift that God’s given us.
• And he tells Timothy — and us — to follow the pattern of sound teaching and to guard the good deposit, even in the face of the pressure to let it go.

But it’s time to get real now. It’s time to look at what this looks like in the lives of real people. And so Paul gives us two case studies to watch: one negative, and one positive. He tells us to look for the people who do it wrong, and to pay attention to that, and also to look for the people who get it right.

Learn from Negative Examples

Here’s the negative case study, found in verse 15: “You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes.”

Mr. Rogers said, “Look for the helpers.” But Paul wants to direct our attention first to those who are not helpers so we can learn from them and avoid being like them.

“All who are in Asia turned away from me.” Does anyone else find that depressing? Paul writes to Timothy to tell him not to be ashamed, and here he provides some examples of people who are ashamed. Don’t be like them! The problem is that Timothy is leading a church in Ephesus, which is in Asia. The very people that Timothy has to lead are the people who are ashamed of Paul and his message!

Years earlier, Paul spent two and a half years in Asia. Things went so well that Acts 19:10 says, “all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” Many believed. Now “all of Asia” had deserted Paul, or so it seemed. The tide had come into the area; now the tide seemed to have gone out.

And the ringleaders are named: Phygelus and Hermogenes. We don’t know anything about them, but Paul is most disappointed in them. They’d let him down and hurt him.

Later on, in chapter 4, Paul lists other former friends who had deserted him. He says, “At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them!” (2 Timothy 4:16). It seems that out of all the Christians in Rome, nobody stood by Paul. Nobody showed up to support him. He was unsupported and alone.

What do we learn this?

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