11/22/09 - Paul's Mission Team Colossians 4:7-18
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I have a surprise for you today. I hope you are somewhat disappointed by this, but not too much. Today, we will finish our study in the book of Colossians. We’ll start a new series in January, and I’m thinking about studying . . . well, . . . you’ll just have to come back to find out. During the month of December we will address texts related to Christmas and the incarnation of the Lord Jesus. Then in January, we’ll begin our study in the book of . . . .
Over the past year, we’ve seen great things from these few pages of Scripture called the Letter of Paul to the Colossians. We joke about how long it takes me to make any progress through the Bible, but in walking slowly through these 95 verses, we’ve gotten quite an education. On Sunday, January 4th of this year, I said:
“The book of Colossians is about the effects of bad theology on God’s people, when they listen to men rather than God. It is a letter of instruction regarding what to believe, and what not to believe as a Christian. That is true of every book of the Bible, but this one was written for the specific purpose of addressing particular false teachings that were coming into the church of Colossae.”
Since that introductory statement, we have looked at Paul’s joyful response to the news from his friend Epaphras that the Colossians had experienced the salvation that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. In Chapter 1, he gives thanks to God for them and tells them he has not ceased to pray for them, that they would grow in wisdom and understanding and the knowledge of God.
Also in chapter 1, he reminded them of the nature of their salvation, and that it is all the result of the grace of God toward them. It is God who has qualified them to share in the inheritance of the saints in light (v12). He goes on to explain the greatness and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and speaks of Him in the loftiest terms we can imagine. It is Jesus Christ who is preeminent over all things because He created all things. In the man Jesus Christ, Paul tells his readers that “in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” It is by means of Christ’s death that men are reconciled to God, His wrath against us is removed, our sins are forgiven, and we are made holy and blameless and above reproach before Him. (v22).
He tells how it is by the grace of God that the work of Christ has been made known to the Gentile world, and that salvation in Him has been extended to the nations beyond the borders and beyond the people of Israel. He reminds them that they were spiritually dead in sin, and God has taken the prerogative to make them alive in Christ Jesus (2:13). He also warns them of those who would seek to undo their salvation in Christ, if that were possible, by making their salvation dependent upon Jewish rituals and Jewish laws.
In chapter 3, Paul warns them to live godly lives, and stop living like they did before they knew Christ. He tells them to put their old sinful behaviors to death. Now they belong to God as His chosen, holy, and beloved ones. Now, having had all their sins forgiven by faith in the Lord Jesus, they are to “Put on . . . compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love . . . .” This is how the true people of God live together as the church of God.
He even tells them how they must live in their own homes if they are going to be pleasing to God. Church life and family life for the believer are inseparable. They are not two different categories of living, where we live one lifestyle at church among the brethren, and another kind of lifestyle at home or in the public arena. Salvation affects every part of the person, and consequently affects every part of his life. Therefore, in the home, Christian wives are to submit to their husbands. Christian husbands are to love their wives. Children must be obedient to their parents. Fathers are to encourage their children, not discourage them. Slaves are to do their work as unto the Lord, and masters are to treat their slaves well.
In other words, the Christian is to live every aspect of his or her life for the One who saved them. We are not our own, we do not have the right to live as we please, we are not free to follow wherever our hearts may lead us in the pursuit of happiness. Rather, we live for Him! He died for us. The Father delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the heavenly kingdom of His Son. We have been set free from the shackles and the condemnation of sin. In Christ Jesus we have no fear of condemnation on the great day when the nations stand before God and have to give an account for their lives. God has done for the Christian what he could never do for himself: Pay for his sins.
So we live for the Savior. It is not a great thing for us to live for Him who has died for us, and who lives for us in Heaven, interceding to the Father on our behalf forever. Why would we not want to serve such a Master as the Lord Jesus? And one day, when He comes to take us home, we will serve Him perfectly, without sin, with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength. And we will do so forever! What a day that will be!
Now, let’s look at the Apostle Paul’s closing words to this wonderful book.
7 Tychicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. 8 I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts, 9 and with him Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will tell you of everything that has taken place here.
10 Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, and Mark the cousin of Barnabas (concerning whom you have received instructions—if he comes to you, welcome him), 11 and Jesus who is called Justus. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me. 12 Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. 13 For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis. 14 Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas. 15 Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house. 16 And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. 17 And say to Archippus, “See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.”
18 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.
Any time we come to a passage of Scripture that has a lot of proper nouns and names of people and places, we tend to put our minds in neutral by thinking this isn’t really all that important. We’re not sure how to pronounce the names and we don’t know where those places are, so we’re tempted to kind of mumble through these verses and move on to more important stuff.
But these 11 verses were inspired by the Spirit of God just as much as the words of Jesus in red were. This is the word of God as much as all the previous verses are in this book. So we should be careful not to overlook them or consider them to be somehow inferior to the rest simply because they may sound rather mundane. What is there here in these verses that God would have us know?
There are a few things right on the surface. First of all, like those passages in the Gospels which contain the genealogies of the Lord Jesus, there are people listed whose names are not easily recognized. In some cases, the genealogy is the only place in the bible where certain names are mentioned. But the point is that even if we have no idea who these people are, God knows who they are, and ultimately, that is all that really matters, right?
We can look out the window here and see the names of hundreds of people who have been totally forgotten. They are only names on headstones or in a genealogy somewhere, maybe. But they remain a mystery to the rest of us because nothing is known about them. But God knows them.
Here in these verses are the names of a number of people who were companions of Paul. Some of their names are not familiar to us at all. But here they are: Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, Mark the cousin of Barnabas, Jesus called Justus, Epaphras, Luke, Demas, Nympha, and Archippus. Mark and Luke sound familiar, as in “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.” But the others aren’t so easily brought to mind. The details about them are a bit sketchy.
The first man mentioned here is Tychicus. He is mentioned five times in the New Testament, four times by Paul, and once in the book of Acts. His name literally means “Chance”, but was probably understood to mean “Fortunate”, or even “Lucky”. Paul is sending this man to Colossae so that he can inform them regarding the things that have happened to Paul. Notice, this letter isn’t about Paul. Paul has written to them about Christ and salvation and sound doctrine and holy living. He hasn’t written about himself. This is not a ministry report on the work of Paul. Tychicus will give them that report when he arrives.
Notice the words Paul uses to describe him: He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. That is the kind of guy you want working with you in the ministry. Someone you can be close to, who is loved as a brother in the Lord. Someone who is a faithful, dependable, reliable, and trustworthy servant. The word translated “minister” is the word from which we get “deacon”. It just means one who serves, a servant, diakonos.
Then Paul refers to Tychicus as a “fellow servant.” Bet you can’t guess what that word is in the Greek! Sundoulos: fellow slave. Paul and Tychicus are alike in their relationship to the Lord Jesus. Jesus is the Master, and they are His fellow slaves, with a desire to do His bidding. Beloved brother, faithful servant, fellow slave.
In Ephesians 6, we read that Paul was sending Tychicus to them. In Titus, Paul plans to send either a man named Artemas or Tychicus to him. In 2Timothy he says, “Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus.” Tychicus was a man Paul could trust, someone he could depend upon to do the hard work of traveling from place to place for the sake of the encouragement of the brethren in various places. And it was hard work to travel. We hear people complaining, and sometimes we complain, of a delayed flight that is arriving 20 or 30 minutes late. It could easily take Tychicus 20 or 30 DAYS to get to some of the places he traveled to in his service to Paul and to the brethren. And it appears that he served Paul in this capacity for many years. That is the kind of men you look for to serve in ministry.
The second person mentioned here in this text is Onesimus. He is going to be traveling with Tychicus back to Colossae. He’s going back there because at some point he ran away from there. He was a slave of a man who lived there named Philemon. We can read about that in the book by that name. Listen to what Paul says to Philemon about his runaway slave, Onesimus:
8 Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, 9 yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. 11 (Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.) 12 I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.
Somehow in the providence of God, this slave who had escaped from his master, could not escape from the call of God. He ran from Philemon and to Paul who not only told him of salvation in Christ, but who also was sending him back where he belonged. In the meantime, this young man had become Paul’s child in the faith and, as Paul says, “my very heart”. He loved this young man, and sent him home to his master.
According to one document which has been found in recent years, one of the early church fathers by the name of Ignatius wrote about Onesimus. “Writing to the church at Ephesus about forty years or so after Paul wrote to Philemon, Ignatius makes reference to a certain Onesimus, who is identified as the overseer or bishop (episkopos) of the church at Ephesus (Ign. Eph. 1.3). Ignatius' Onesimus could be the same Onesimus to whom Paul refers in Philemon, if he was a young man when Paul wrote his letter. If so, then Onesimus was probably released from his condition of slavery and became a leader in the early church.”
That is a very interesting and encouraging bit of information if we’re talking about the same person. In the book of Philemon, Paul tells Philemon that this young man Onesimus was formerly useless to him, but now he is being sent back as useful both to his master and to Paul. Onesimus’ name means “Useful.” In fact, Onesimus has become so useful as a Christian that he may have very well become the pastor of the church at Ephesus, according to Ignatius! The Gospel has that kind of power to make useful people out of the most useless persons. What good is a runaway slave? What use is a slave of the Lord Jesus?
Aristarchus is the next in our list of comrades of Paul. Not much in known about him. He is only mentioned five times in the Bible, but he is always with Paul, traveling with him from place to place. Here, in verse 10, Paul refers to him as his “fellow prisoner.” Either he had been arrested and imprisoned with Paul, or he simply made himself a practical prisoner by always being available. He is seen in the Bible simply as a companion of Paul in the work of the Gospel.
There are a lot of people who serve the Lord Jesus in ways that are not high-profile ministries. The vast majority are this way, working in the background, doing a lot of what we call the grunt work, in order to make it possible for those who are more noticeable to do what they do. Paul is a prisoner. What could he possibly do in that situation if he did not have these men surrounding him, serving him, helping him in the work?
And the list goes on with people like Mark. What did he do? Well, in Acts 13 John Mark abandoned Paul and Barnabas as they traveled on their first missionary journey, and apparently that reputation for being a quitter had followed him. In Acts 15, Barnabas want to take Mark along on another trip with Paul, but they get into an argument and Paul says “forget it”, and the two of them part company because of their disagreement over Mark.
But notice here that Mark is with Paul, and he says Mark sends his greetings (concerning whom you have received instructions—if he comes to you, welcome him). There has been a restoration and a change of heart in Mark, so much so that he eventually is moved by the Spirit of God to write a Gospel along with Matthew, Luke and John. God uses weak, frail, scared, failures. He uses unlikely people to do unlikely things. Take heart when you read about Mark. God changed him and made Him a blessing to the entire body of Christ through his pen.
Then Paul mentions “Jesus, called Justus.” The name Justus was given to him, presumably to differentiate between him and the Lord Jesus. “Justus” means “righteous”. He was a godly man and along with Aristarchus and Mark, the three of them were the only fellow Jews with Paul, and he says that they were a comfort to him. They had much in common, having come out of Old Testament Judaism and into the fulfillment of all the promises in Christianity through Christ. There is a great deal of comfort in being around like-minded people with similar cultural backgrounds and experiences. And in his suffering in chains and imprisonment, these fellow Jewish Christians were a source of comfort to Paul.
Epaphras has already been mentioned and we’ve talked about him in previous sermons. But the one thing that stands out about him is his labor in prayer for the Colossians.
12 Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. 13 For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis.
He always struggles in prayer: He agonizes over you in prayer. He works hard for the sake of his brethren. Some versions use the word “zeal”. The Greek word can be translated “fervor” or “jealous”. Epaphras works jealously for you, he is jealous for your well-being, he is fervent in prayer for your sakes. Would that God would make fervent, zealous, jealous prayers out of us! What a wonderful man to have on your ministry team!
Then Paul tells the Colossians, “My doctor, Luke, (the other guy on the team that eventually writes one of the Gospels and the book of Acts) sends his greetings, as does Demas.”
15 Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house. 16 And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. 17 And say to Archippus, “See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.”
Paul has used many wonderful words to describe his “missions team”: Beloved, faithful, hard working, encouraging, fellow-slave, fellow-prisoner; these are the men God had raised up to serve for and with Paul in the gospel enterprise. They traveled with him, worked with him, suffered with him, persevered with him, lived with him, ministered with him, prayed with him, and no doubt some died (not necessarily with him but with him in the work of the Gospel).
One thing strikes me about all of this: Ministers of the gospel should not serve alone or in isolation from other fellow workers. It is inconceivable to think that Paul could have accomplished even a fraction of the work he did without the help of his friends. Moses had men to come alongside him and hold his hands up in the midst of the battle. David had Jonathan to encourage him when he was being hunted by King Saul. Solomon wrote about companionship in Ecclesiastes 7:
9 Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. 10 For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! 11 Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? 12 And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him - a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Even the strongest of men are not equipped to serve in the work of the kingdom in isolation. Discouragement and loneliness and vulnerability are crippling. That is why the Lord has placed us into a family of believers, into a church body when He saves us. We need each other. Missionaries may be among the most needy, and most missions organizations only send people out to serve in far away places in teams rather than alone.
You all have been a great encouragement to me over the years. It has been good to see how we have blended together and worked together to make Grace Fellowship exist and function as a body of believers rather than a collection of individuals who are strangers to one another and to each other’s needs and struggles. There is a camaraderie here that other churches would envy if they could see it. And I thank you for being a team, a fellowship that has come together to work at being a witness here with me in this community.
Now, let’s pray for God to raise up more leaders, more workers, more good and faithful fellow slaves to join us in this labor for the sake of the kingdom. Let’s press on in the task God has called us to here in this place. May the things that Paul said of his companions be true of us. May we also be loving, faithful, hard working, encouraging, fellow-slaves, and even fellow-prisoners if need be. May the Lord grant us the will to work together to continue bringing the Gospel to this place.