"Eight Faithful Servants" Colossians 4:7-18 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning we are studying the book of Colossians, and we're going to finish the letter as I said, so let me read the text that is before us.

Colossians chapter 4.

Colossians 4 · chapter mention

I'll begin reading in verse 7 and go to the end of the letter.

So follow with me as I read from God's Word.

Colossians chapter 4, beginning in verse 7.

Colossians 4 · chapter mention

Tychicus will tell you all about my activities.

He is a beloved brother and faithful minister, and a fellow servant in the Lord.

I sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts.

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.

Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you, and Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you've received instructions, if he comes to you, welcome him.

And Jesus, who is called justice, 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.

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.

For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you, and for those in Laodicea and in Hieropolis.

Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas, give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha in the church in her house.

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, and say to Archipus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.

I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.

Remember my chains.

Grace be with you.

This is the word of the Lord.

The National Science Foundation reported recently in their general social survey a statistic that I think will probably surprise none of you.

They reported that more than one in four respondents to their survey said they have no one with whom they can talk about their personal triumphs or troubles.

And if you exclude immediate family members, and most people say are their closest confidants, if you exclude immediate family members, more than half of respondents say that they have no one outside their immediate family with whom they can share confidences.

The survey concludes that our society is replete with social isolation.

And I said I don't think that would surprise any of you to hear that that's the findings of our social scientists.

But this might surprise you.

The survey I just quoted from was published more than six years before the outbreak of COVID-19.

And it does not take a social scientist to say things aren't improving.

We are a society in which social isolation has become the norm for Americans.

Now there are all kinds of different books and monographs that have been published citing some of the causes for this social phenomenon, but I just want to say at the beginning here that is not the case in the church.

It is not the characteristic life of a believer in Jesus Christ.

Paul in this letter shows us exactly why that is the case.

Because the book of Colossians is written to show us that what it means to be a Christian is to be united to Jesus Christ, such that you're eternally elected by the Father, and in the Spirit brings you to faith in Jesus Christ.

You participate in Jesus' death and resurrection.

All of your sins are forgiven, and you're fully incorporated into the life of Christ.

You share in divine life.

This is what it is to be a Christian.

For the Father to look at you and see you is so fully identified with Christ that all of the love and favor He has been showering on His eternal Son forever, He now showers on you.

Because the line between you and the Son, in a sense, has been blotted out because you're fully incorporated into Jesus Christ.

His inheritance is yours, his status in the heavenly places you share in, because God has graciously brought you in to share in divine life forever.

But Paul also wants us to see that as you share in this union with Jesus Christ, this deeply personal and intimate, everlasting union with your Lord, that personal union is not a private one.

Because as you are incorporated into Christ and share in the life of Christ, you also are incorporated into, united to, and share in the life of everyone else who is united to Christ.

You are joined to Christ and to all of his body.

And that's what's on display for us in the end of this letter.

This little greeting that it would be very easy to just gloss over, if we try to penetrate into it for just a moment, we will see that what's on display here in this greeting, the final closing of this letter, is Paul's giving us a window into what genuine Christian fellowship looks like.

And as soon as I say that, that the end of this letter is a window into genuine Christian fellowship.

I should also add that this word fellowship is a very profound, meaningful word in the New Testament.

It's one of these words that gets thrown around in the parlance of kind of common modern American Christianity as a throwaway word.

The fellowship, I constantly am having to tell teenagers that Christian fellowship is not you get together with your homies and you do the same things that people in the world do just without drugs and fully clothed and have less fun.

Rather, fellowship in Christ is you are sharing in the life of Christ.

So what you're participating in, what Christian fellowship is, is that you are doing things that those who are outside of Christ have no access to.

You are sharing in the love of Jesus Christ.

You're sharing your life together.

So you do normal common run-of-the-mill things, like you eat meals together and you talk together, but you're accessing divine strength so that as you share your sorrows, you can actually bear one another's burdens by the power of Christ.

You can rejoice with one another and not compete and outdo one another.

You can pray together and access divine grace for every season of life.

You can rejoice together in what God is doing in your life.

You have access to divine Trinitarian life with one another.

When you're sharing a Christian fellowship, you are sharing in the life of Christ.

That's what the word fellowship means.

The word fellowship is a word that you could also render as sharing or participation.

What is the participation in?

The participation is a sharing in the divine life of Christ with one another.

What we see in this passage is a window into what that looks like on the ground.

What does it look like to share in Christian fellowship, to just share your life together with those who are united to Jesus Christ?

What I want to do in this end of the letter is I just want to walk through and just kind of character by character examine what we see about what Christian fellowship practically looks like in the life of the church through eight faithful servants that Paul lists in this text.

Verse 7, Ticekus will tell you all about my activities.

He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord.

And I've sent him to you for this purpose that you may know how we are and he may encourage your heart.

So Ticekus is the letter bearer.

He's functioning as the mailman for the letter to the church in Colossae.

And what Paul says about him is that he's going to encourage you.

He doesn't say anything else, but as you look at the rest of the New Testament, you can discover a little bit about Ticekus's life.

He's mentioned five times in the New Testament, first in Acts chapter 20 and verse 4, as Paul is traveling through Greece after he'd been kicked out of Ephesus, it says that Ticekus was with him.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

And it seems likely that Ticekus probably went with him for the journey through Greece as he got on a boat and crossed the Mediterranean to Judea, and then was arrested in Jerusalem, put on trial, and imprisoned in Caesarea for a couple years before he was sent to stand trial before Caesar in Rome.

It seems likely that Ticekus was with him for all of that because Rome is the most likely provenance for the writing of the letter of Colossians.

That is, probably, as we try to reconstruct Paul's biography, he is on house arrest in Rome, and Epaphras, the church planter in Colossee, is encountering difficulties that he's not sure how to deal with, and so he travels all the way to Rome to get Paul's advice.

And Paul's response is to write the letter of Colossians.

But this letter is absolutely crucial for the life of this church, and so he's only going to give it to someone who's been proven trustworthy.

And whom does he give this letter to?

But his good friend Tychicus, who has labeled faith labored faithfully with him for years.

As you read the end of the letter to the Ephesians in chapter six, you find that he also delivered that letter to the Ephesians.

And it's not just these two letters, but later in Paul's ministry in Titus chapter 3, he says to Titus that he's going to send Ticekus to Crete to encourage Titus.

Titus 3 · chapter mention

And then the last letter that Paul writes, in fact, the last chapter of scripture that Paul writes in 2 Timothy chapter 4, Paul says that he's already sent Tychochus on another journey to Ephesus.

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

This is a man for whom we know nothing except what he did for the gospel.

We don't know a single letter that he wrote or word that he spoke, but we do know that whenever there was a need to serve the church, he was there.

Whenever there was anything that needed to be done, he was there.

He was a man who was characterized by faithful service for the gospel.

So we see that Christian fellowship is a serving fellowship.

It's characterized by people who recognize that we share in divine life.

We have the same priorities, we have the same values, we're partners in the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and so whatever the need is, whether it's visible or invisible, I'm going to serve in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is why Paul gives him these labels in verse 7.

You see that he calls him a beloved brother, a faithful minister, and a fellow servant.

You notice that that's the same kind of labels that's used for the Apostle Paul or for Timothy.

So the Apostle Paul, who is the vocal leader, who is the one who's been entrusted with apostolic ministry, who's the kind of upfront person that everyone sees, you might think that he would have something of a superiority complex and would suppose that Tychochus, yes, he's helpful, but he's kind of a lower rung on the ladder of the Christian hierarchy.

That's not the way that Paul views him, though.

Paul views him as exactly the same status as himself.

Because what it means to be a Christian is to be united to Jesus Christ.

And if you are united to Jesus Christ, you're united to all of him.

You have a faith of the same status as the very apostles, because your status is not based on who you are, what you do, but based on your union with Jesus Christ.

A serving fellowship wherein we share the same life, and so we serve one another in the same ministry, gospel ministry.

Here's a second person Paul names in this letter.

It's in verse 9, Onesimus.

Paul says in verse 9, and with Tychicus, I'm sending Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother who's one of you.

They will tell you of everything that has taken place here.

Now, if you're just reading this letter in a vacuum, suppose that you haven't read the letter to Philemon for a moment, and you read this letter, you'd see that Onesimus, he must be a member of the Colossian congregation, and that he is a faithful and beloved brother, the exact same language that's used to describe Tychicus and Timothy and Paul.

So you would think that this is another warrior, a kind of missionary warrior, along with all of Paul's other friends.

Then you open the letter to Philemon and you discover that Onesimus, in fact, is a runaway slave who had stolen from his master Philemon and had departed, somehow had encountered Paul, had become a brother, and now Paul is sending Onesimus back to Philemon and to the church in Colossae with this letter in hand, and he's labeling him with the same levels he gives to the most elite servants of Jesus Christ.

You know what that demonstrates is just what I was saying a moment ago, that Christian fellowship is a unifying fellowship, because the primary lens for which you see any other believer in Christ is the lens through which God views that individual.

You see them as in Christ, full participant in all of Jesus, all of his righteousness, all of his love, everything that belongs to Christ belongs to this person.

And so the primary way that I view him is in Christ.

Now, let's just make the problem a little bit more difficult here.

Let's suppose that you were a member of the church in Colossae, and you knew Onesimus, and you knew what he had done.

You'd seen that the damage that he'd caused to the household of Philemon, and you had just heard, you just heard a moment ago, as this letter is being read publicly to the congregation.

Look at chapter 3 and verse 22.

Paul writes, bondservants obey in everything, those who are your earthly masters.

And then verse 25, the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.

And then you look at Onesimus and think, well, he Paul says wrongdoer is going to be paid back, but now you're saying, beloved brother, receive him like he's one of our own, like he's elevated to the status of Paul himself?

In fact, if you read the letter to Philemon, here's just a few excerpts from that letter, Paul writes to Philemon, which probably would have been read, I like to imagine, I can't prove this, but I think it makes sense, that these letters probably would have been read publicly, back to back.

And Paul writes to Philemon directly in this letter and says, I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.

I'm sending him back to you, sending my very heart.

So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.

If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

Do you see what Paul is doing?

What Paul is doing is what he had just said a moment ago in chapter 3, verse 12.

This is the way you regard those who belong to Christ.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other.

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

The kind of union that we have with Jesus Christ is a unifying union so that every person is fully and equally incorporated into the very life of God.

Therefore, it is a forgiving fellowship.

Because if Christ has forgiven me, if Christ died for me and he died for you, how would I not also forgive you?

How would I place you any lower than what Christ has placed you?

How would I fail to forgive you in any way that Christ has already forgiven you?

A unifying and forgiving fellowship is just characteristic of the kind of relationships that we participate in when we participate in Christ.

Here's a third person that Paul mentions in this address.

Look at verse 10.

Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you.

Now, Aristarchus, like Tychicus, was one of Paul's longtime companions.

He's also mentioned five times in the New Testament.

The first time he shows up is in Acts chapter 19 and verse 29, in a really wild incident where Paul's in Ephesus, he's kind of turned the city on his head because so many people are being converted to Christ, and a mob gathers together, and they start a riot, and they can't get hold of Paul, but they know that Aristarchus is one of his friends, so they grab him, drag him into the arena, and surely beat him.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

This is a man who learned very quickly upon following Jesus Christ that following Jesus Christ was going to be entail a suffering life.

He learned very soon that fellowship in the Christian church, fellowship with Christ, was going to be a suffering fellowship.

You could say he was a man who counted the cost, took up his cross and followed Jesus, and never put it down.

Because the rest of what we find of Aristarchus is him just doing the same, the exact same pattern of his life.

In Acts chapter 20, verse 4, again, after Paul is kicked out of Ephesus, he's traveling through Greece with him.

Acts 20:4

It's there in that verse, Acts 20, verse 4, that we learn that he was probably a Hellenistic Jew, because he was a Macedonian from the city of Thessalonica, and he stays with Paul all the way through his travels across the Mediterranean into Jerusalem, in his imprisonment in Caesarea, and in Acts 27, verse 2, as he gets on a boat to go to Rome, we read that Aristarchus is there with him, traveling across the Mediterranean with Paul.

Acts 20:4 Acts 27:2

Now, as Paul is likely in Rome at the writing of the letter of Colossians, Paul describes him as my fellow prisoner.

Now I don't know if that means that he was voluntarily associating with Paul in his prison imprisonment, or what I think is more likely is that because he was viewed as an associate of Paul, he was also placed on arrest.

This is a man who understood that the purpose of Christian life is not my comfort or my dreams, but it's Christ.

It's the glory of Jesus Christ, that Christ would be exalted, whether by life or by death.

It's the advance of the gospel.

That is the purpose of our life on this earth.

He was a man who counted the cost and said, Yes, that's worth it.

And I'll follow wherever the call leads me.

And it led him, in this instance, right next to Paul as a fellow prisoner, because he believed that the gospel was worth it.

Colossians chapter 4 and verse 3, Paul says, Pray also for us that God may get us out of prison.

Colossians 4 · chapter mention

The first thing that Paul prays isn't that, but it's that God would open to us a door for the Word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak.

This was Paul's priority, the advance of the gospel, that more of God's children would come home.

That was Aristarchus' goal, too.

That was his priority.

He had imbibed the priorities of Jesus himself, the glory of God in bringing his people to redemption.

That was his life.

He understood that if that entailed suffering, the suffering would be worth it.

But Paul goes on in verse 10, and he names another of his fellows in verse 10.

He says, look at the rest of that verse, Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions.

If he comes to you, welcome him.

Now this Mark is the very Mark who wrote the second gospel, the gospel according to Mark, and we know a number of things about his life from the pages of Scripture.

In Acts chapter 12, we find that as he's a young man, the early church in Jerusalem is meeting in his mother's house, so he's been part of the church from the time he can remember.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

In Acts chapter 13, as Paul and Barnabas go on their first missionary journey, he accompanies them.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

But we also learn that at some point he gets scared or nervous and he leaves them.

So in Acts chapter 15, when Paul and Barnabas are planning their next missionary trip, Barnabas wants to take Mark with them.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

And Paul doesn't trust that guy and says, No way, I'm not taking that guy with me.

That guy turned tail on us last time we went out.

I'm not, I don't trust him.

And so Paul and Barnabas part ways.

Some years have passed before the writing of the letter of Colossians, but apparently something has happened because now, when Paul mentions Mark, he doesn't say, I don't trust that guy, but rather he reassures the church in Colossae, if he comes to you, receive him.

That's a command.

What has happened?

Why is it that Paul somehow has been restored to Mark and trusts him?

In fact, if you look at the last letter that Paul wrote to Timothy chapter 4, verse 11, very close to the end of his life, he writes to Timothy, Get Mark and bring him with you, for he's very useful to me for ministry.

What changed?

Now it's not told to us explicitly what happened, but the very early traditions of the church fathers tell us that Mark became the disciple of Peter, and that as he's writing the gospel of Mark, he's largely writing Peter's memoirs of his first-person accounts walking with the Lord Jesus.

And when Peter writes his first letter, he gives a greeting at the end of that letter in 1 Peter chapter 5, where he writes, She who is at Babylon, which is probably a code name for the church at Rome, Rome being coded as Babylon, is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son.

1 Peter 5 · chapter mention

I think we have direct evidence here in the New Testament that Peter, who was a man who knew something about being restored to the Lord Jesus, took Mark under his wing and discipled him.

Peter himself was a man who had betrayed the Lord Jesus, was he not?

He was a man who knew the grace of the Lord Jesus to restore him to ministry.

And if Jesus entrusted Peter with a ministry, Peter was teaching Mark that he would trust him with a ministry.

Something has happened such that by the time you get to Colossians, Mark has been fully incorporated back into Paul's trust.

This is a picture of the kind of relationships you have in Christ.

When you have the same goal, which is Christ.

Not me, not my ministry, not the expansion of my goals and my desires, but Christ.

By his word, by his way, you have the potential to restore all kinds of relationships you thought were lost.

When the goal is not me and my desires, but it's Christ, his glory, and his word, you can have a restoring fellowship, which is modeled for us by Paul and Mark.

Paul also mentions, if you look down in verse 11, a third individual in this little cluster.

In verse 11, he says, And Jesus, who's called Justice, is also with me.

Now we don't know anything else about this individual.

But we do know that he's called Jesus, and so that means he's probably a Jew.

Jesus is a Greek name for Joshua.

You notice that explicitly in verse 11, Paul says, These are the only men of the circumcision.

So he's there referring to Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus called Justice.

They're Jewish companions of Paul, and he says they're the only ones who are Jewish who are with me of my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me.

There's a couple things that you could just say here about Jesus called justice.

One would be, well, why does he go by a different name?

And I think there's two possibilities, and I don't think you even have to choose between them.

It could be a both and scenario.

On the one hand, you have this reality that in the Christian world now, there's only one Jesus.

So it would be very natural for a follower of Jesus, the Lord God, to take a back seat and say, just call me justice.

But you'll notice that there is a linguistic shift here.

Jesus is a kind of Jewish Greek name.

Justice, if you were tortured with Latin case endings at some point in your life, I don't say tortured, I say delighted.

They're wonderful.

You would notice that justice has a Latin case ending.

This indeed is a Latin name.

So he's moving from one culture to another.

So it could be that he's taking a backseat to Jesus, or it could be that he is moving from one culture to another for some gospel ministry purpose, the letters likely being written from Rome.

What you find here is that Jesus called justice is not a person who is putting a stake in the ground and this is who I am, this is my culture, this is my identity, but rather he is a man who has said, Christ is my identity, Christ is all.

You can call Jesus Jesus, I'll go to different cultures, I'll take on different identities because what matters is Christ.

And when you have those kinds of friends, what Paul says is those kinds of friends become a comfort to you.

When you find people who are united to Jesus Christ who say, that's it.

Jesus is what matters.

The advance of the gospel is what matters.

Serving brothers and sisters in Christ is what matters, and you get those people around you, that's where you will experience deep relational comfort, even in the midst of very difficult life.

Circumstances.

Paul moves on in verse or excuse me, verse 12, and names a sixth fellow servant.

In verse 12, look down at your text, he says, Epaphoras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, he also greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.

For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and Hieropolis.

We know Epaphras from the beginning of the letter.

I think it's worth just reading that again.

If you flip over to Colossians 1, Epaphras seems to be the individual that planted the church at Colossae.

I've mentioned this before, but it's worth just reading this verse that introduces us to him in the letter in Colossians 1, verse 7.

Colossians 1:7

Paul says the Colossians have heard the gospel, verse 7, because you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant.

He's a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

So this individual, Epaphras, seems to be the one who planted the church, carried his concern all the way to Rome to seek Paul's advice.

Now the letter is being sent off to the church in Colossae, and you would ask yourself, why isn't Epaphras going with the letter?

If he loves the Colossians so much, if he's labored for them, why isn't he going with the letter?

In Philemon, verse 23, Paul calls Epaphras his fellow fellow prisoner.

It seems to me that what happened is that Epaphoros comes to Rome, makes himself a known companion of Paul, and he ends up in the slammer, and he's locked up with Paul.

Now you had to know that he he had to know rather that that was a risk.

His love for the Colossians is such that he would travel thousands of miles at the risk of ending up imprisoned, away from his family, in order to do them spiritual good.

And as he is locked up with Paul in this Roman imprisonment, what is he doing?

Well, he's not feeling sorry for himself.

Rather, verse 12, he's laboring with prayer for the people in Colosse whom he loves.

That's characteristic of Christian fellowship.

Not a kind of feeling sorry for myself when I'm suffering, but a laboring for one another in prayer.

You could say Christian fellowship is fundamentally a praying fellowship.

It's the kind of life that you share together.

Let me just back up and say it this way.

If Christian fellowship is, and it is, shared life with Christ, and so shared life with one another, then wouldn't it just be natural that our fellowship would look like talking to Jesus?

This is what Epaphras is doing.

But he's not just talking to Jesus casually, he's laboring in prayer.

That I find both convicting and comforting.

Convicting in that how often are my prayers laboring and intense, so that you could call them struggling and agonizing.

But it's also comforting for me in that have you ever felt that prayer was hard work?

There are certainly times in life when prayer just comes as natural as breathing.

But there's also times in which prayer feels a little bit hard, doesn't it?

According to this text, that's okay.

Just press on.

Prayer is worth it because you are, when you are praying, engaging in divine life.

You are engaging the power of the very God of the universe.

You are engaging in the God of all mercy and comfort who hears your prayers and cares for you.

Christian fellowship, then, is a praying fellowship because we know that the nature of our fellowship is we share divine life, and so we speak to the divine.

We speak to the God who gave us his very life.

Paul goes on in verse 14, and thus two more faithful servants.

If you look at verse 14, Paul says, Luke, the beloved physician, also greets you.

Luke, again, is the author of Luke and Acts.

So we've got a lot of writers of scripture in this jail cell.

And we know many things from Luke, from the book of Acts.

All of the we sections seem to be firsthand accounts where Luke is traveling with Paul.

So he's a man who spent many years faithfully serving along Paul's side.

This verse makes two contributions to our understanding of Luke as a man.

We know that he is now a doctor.

If you grew up in Sunday school, you probably heard Luke called the physician.

It's actually this verse alone that tells us that he was a doctor.

We also learn from this verse that Luke is likely a Gentile because Paul said in verse 10 through 11 that Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus called Justice were the only Jewish believers with him.

So Luke seems to be excluded from that, so he's likely the only Gentile writer of Scripture.

But we also learn from this verse that Luke stuck it out.

He traveled a long time with Paul, but he didn't give up.

He stuck it out with Paul in the midst of his imprisonment, and when you get to the end of Paul's life, 2 Timothy and chapter 4, you find that Luke is there too.

The last chapter of Scripture that Paul writes for it, just before he is taken to glory, he says, Luke alone is with me.

Luke was a man who persevered.

I think you could call Christian fellowship a persevering fellowship.

It's not a shared life when it's convenient or easy.

It's not a shared life on my timetable or when I would like to, but it's a shared life permanently.

Because the nature of the shared life is eternal life.

You share eternal life, and so you persevere with one another in the ministry that God has given you to share in advancing Christ.

It's a persevering fellowship.

Now, we actually have one last servant, and he is a kind of converse of everything that we have seen before, and he serves as something of a warning.

You notice in the end of verse 14, Paul also says that Demas greets you.

And Demas is only mentioned in one other text in the New Testament.

It's the verse just before, Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter 4 that Luke alone is with me.

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

Why is Luke the only one left?

Well, because Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.

This certainly would serve as a warning for us.

It is possible to participate externally in the life of the church, but not to share divine life, not to have the regeneration of the Holy Spirit by which you actually love Christ and hate your sin.

It's possible to participate in so many of the benefits of spiritual life, externally but not internally.

And so this would serve as a warning for us.

What happens if you don't do what Paul said in Colossians 3?

Seek the things that are above and put to death what is earthly in you.

This can be the outcome.

If your attachment to Christ is merely external for the temporary earthly benefits, sooner or later the truth will come out that you love this world more than the world to come.

But let's think of this from Paul's perspective for a second.

This isn't the only person who deserted Paul.

Paul lived the kind of life where he opened himself up to other people, where he shared his life with others.

And when you open yourself up to shared spiritual life, you open yourself up to the possibility of this kind of pain.

What would motivate Paul to open himself up to such an extent that he would be vulnerable to this kind of relational burn?

Well, I think you get a window into Paul's heart in 2 Corinthians chapter 7.

2 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

2 Corinthians is probably the letter that Paul wrote where his heart is most fully on display because he's writing to the Corinthians who have given him a hard time, a people a little bit like Demas, whom he had labored over and suffered for, and now they were not responding to Paul in a way that was godly.

And so in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 4, this is a particularly relevant window into Paul's heart.

2 Corinthians 7:4

He says to the Corinthians, I'm acting with great boldness towards you.

I have great pride in you.

I'm filled with comfort.

In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.

Now, in the context of this letter, the affliction that he's talking about is not merely external physical persecution that he's suffering, it's the relational affliction that he suffers when people betray him.

And Paul says, Yeah, I am open to that.

I am vulnerable to that.

I have experienced it before, I'll experience it again.

Why do I open myself up to that?

Because when I open myself up to fellowship, to genuine shared life, I open myself up to overflowing joy.

And the overflowing joy outweighs the affliction that I experience.

The overflowing joy makes it worth it.

This is the window into Paul's heart.

The way that Paul lived his life was he understood deeply and profoundly that the nature of his identity is that he is everlastingly united to the Son of God.

And because he is in an eternal union with Christ, he's also in a union with everyone else who shares life with him.

And so he opens himself up so that he's not just privately sharing life with Jesus, but he is publicly sharing spiritual life with everyone else who belongs to Christ.

There's one other thing that I think is just worthwhile to just mention as we've walked through these eight faithful servants.

That is, what do these people have in common, really?

Outside of Christ, what do they have in common?

You've got Jews and Gentiles and Gentiles of every ethnic and linguistic background, you've got rich and poor, you have educated and uneducated.

What you have is a group of people who are brought together for one reason and one reason only.

They share divine life.

They're all united to Christ.

This is what Christian fellowship is: it is people whom God has called out of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved Son, to belong to Him and to belong to one another.

And they labor together in a serving, unifying, forgiving, suffering, restoring, comforting, laboring fellowship that's worth it because we partake in the glory of Christ.

Now these eight faithful servants, though, are also writing to two faithful churches.

And we should say just a thing or two about these two churches.

If you look down in verse 15 in the passage, Paul writes to the church in Laodicea in verse 15, give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and to the church in her house.

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, and say to Archipus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you've received in the Lord.

So in verse 15, he's writing to the church in Laodicea, that's a neighboring town.

And you'll notice just two things to notice are one, he calls the church in Laodicea, whom he's never meant, brothers.

The same status that he gives to his warrior missionary clan, and he even shares in himself.

He knows that this is a young church, that they are struggling, that they are immature, that they are unwise, but the primary way that he views them is not lower-tier Christians, unwise Christians, annoying Christians.

The primary way that he views them is brothers in Christ, fully incorporated into the life of Christ, sharing everything that belongs to the church, sharing everything that is given to those who participate in divine life.

Do you think that if someone got to know you, they would be able to say the primary way that this brother or sister looks at other Christians is as Christians?

The primary way that they look at those who belong to the church as brothers and sisters in Christ.

This is the way Paul looked at us.

The way that Paul looked at people was primarily as divinely united to Christ.

That's the same way that the Father looks at us.

How could you look at someone any other way than the way that God looks at them as fully forgiven, incorporated in the life of Christ, fully bestowed with divine favor?

This is the way Paul looks at people, brothers in Christ.

One other just historical note on the church in Laodicea in verse 16.

This letter is supposed to be read to the church in Colossae and then sent to the Laodiceans.

And you might ask yourself, how does that happen?

Well, the way letter writing would have worked in the ancient world is that what Paul is implying is take the letter, copy it, and send it to Laodicea.

And you get a window here into the way that the New Testament so widely proliferated in the very, very, very early years of the Christian movement.

The letters that were being written by the apostles would be received by an individual church.

Sometimes the letters, like some of Paul's letters or some of Peter's letters, the letter of James, are written to multiple churches and so are probably sent out even with multiple copies, even from their point of origin, but the letters would be received, copied, and sent to other churches.

And there's no limit on the way that these letters were supposed to proliferate.

They were supposed to be read, obeyed, copied, sent.

What you find is that in the very early years of the Christian movement that the letters have a very wide geographical distribution, such that it would have been nigh impossible for any authoritarian singular source to get hold of all of those copies, rewrite them according to their own traditions, and then send it out again.

It was impossible because from the very outset, the receivers of these letters were instructed to copy them and distribute them as widely as possible, which is just a long-winded way of saying you can trust your Bible.

When you open up the text of scriptures, you have what Paul wrote.

You don't have what some centralized authority rewrote and burned all the other copies, because they couldn't have gotten hold of those copies because they were just on the loose as soon as they came from the pen of the apostle.

So you can open up the Bible and say, I am reading what the Lord said through the Apostle Paul.

I'm reading the words of God.

That's the church in Laodicea, but Paul also writes to the church in Colossee in verse 17, where he says to Archipus, see that you fulfilled the ministry that you've received in the Lord.

Now, Paul only mentions one individual in the church at Colosse, but in the letter to Philemon, there's a few other individuals mentioned, and what you notice, if you read that letter as well, is that Archipus is the only individual named in both letters.

I think what just makes sense is that Archipis is probably the kind of functional elder or pastor of this church.

And he tells him, see that you fulfill the ministry you've received in the Lord.

So two things to note about this.

One is, Paul uses this word, the ministry you received in the Lord.

And he uses that word receive one other time in the book.

If you look up in chapter two and verse six, chapter two, verse six is really the thesis statement of the whole book, where Paul says, As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

Let's connect the dots there.

I think what Paul is implying is that if you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, you also receive a ministry.

To receive Christ, to receive divine life, to receive divine pardon, to receive eternal life, is also to receive a ministry in this life.

You have things the Lord gives you to do.

So as you think about, I am a member of the kingdom of God, I have divine life, I'm united to Jesus.

I'm a Christian.

And I'm united to everybody else that belongs to Jesus.

That means that God has given you something to do.

So the question would just be, are you doing it?

This is supposed to be a serving, unifying, suffering, restoring, comforting, laboring, persevering, fellowship.

You have a multiplicity of ways that you participate in that when you serve and pray and labor for the gospel, which I think is exactly what Paul's pointing to in this verse.

When he says, see to it that you fulfill the ministry you have received.

What is the ministry you've received?

Well, in 2 Timothy chapter 4, a text I've quoted a few times here on the screen, Paul gives us the kind of closest grammatical parallel to this text.

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

And there he tells Timothy, this is one of the last things he writes, as for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist.

Fulfill your ministry.

Do you know if you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, this is your ministry.

Do the work of an evangelist.

That is your ministry.

Now, this is true in a multitude of ways.

Firstly, all of us certainly have been entrusted with the Great Commission to make disciples.

That is the mission of the church.

This word that's translated, do the work of an evangelist, could be translated even kind of more comprehensively as do gospel work.

Do the gospelizing work.

The ministry of the church is gospel ministry.

It is to get the message of Jesus to God's people so that his children can come home.

And when they come home, it is to give them the fullness of the gospel so they can grow up into maturity and stand fully assured in all the will of God.

And part of standing fully assured in all the will of God is being fully assured that God's will is for more of his children to come home.

So you are engaging in the work of bringing more of God's children home through the gospel.

This is the work of the church.

So we could ask the question: the church that I'm serving and the ways that I'm serving in ministry, can I connect them to the gospel?

Not that you wouldn't have to work too hard to find how you were doing that.

Whether it's setting up for VBS and prayer and giving financially, whether it's directly in Bible study, whether it's doing the work of evangelism directly, everything that you are doing is the work of the gospel.

You are doing the work of an evangelist.

Now that should be both a challenge to us to think critically about how am I doing the work of the of an evangelist in the gifts that God has given me, but it should also be an encouragement that if you are serving the church, you can see the ways that your ministry is being used by the Lord to bring his children home and grow them up into maturity in Christ.

That's the work that we are all engaged in, and there is no other.

This is what we share in, this is what we partner in, this is what we labor in.

And the last little postscript here in the text is verse 18 where Paul says, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, remember my chains, grace be with you.

And I think it's worth asking, why does he say, Remember my chains?

Well, as I just said, what Paul entrusts us with is the ministry of the gospel.

And when he says, Remember my chains, let's just go up to chapter 4 and verse 3, where he first tells us that he's in chains.

And when he's in chains, what is he in chain for?

The gospel.

And as he's in chains for, what does he ask for?

That the gospel would continue to go forward.

What he's calling to mind is remember, this is what you were called to.

When you were called to belong to Jesus, you were called to the gospel ministry.

But as you are called to the gospel ministry, you are not called to it alone.

You're also called to it in partnership, in shared life, in shared ministry with everyone else who participates in the life of Christ.

This is the great privilege that we share together.

As we share in Christ and one another, we share in the same ministry that Jesus himself died for, to get the gospel out, to bring his children home, and to help them to stand fully mature, assured, and all the will of God.

What a great treasure we share together.

Father, we do thank you that you have called us to belong to you and have given us a share in the ministry of the gospel.

You've given us gifts and relationships and opportunities to serve you, so we pray that we would serve you well.

We pray that you would give us humility and love in our relationships, that all that we do would be done in love in such a way that we would be united together in our common love for Christ.

I pray that you would close us with humility towards one another, that we would have compassionate hearts, that we would be forgiving, that we would be united in our common goal of exalting Christ.

And we pray that you would give us fruit and energy and perseverance that we would labor together and that you would be exalted in our church.

We thank you that we have been called from darkness to the kingdom of your Son.

We thank you that we get to belong to you.

We pray these things in the name of Christ.

Amen.

Let me ask you to stand as Alex comes forward to give the benediction.

Again, if you're here this morning and you would like to find out more about what it means to be a part of the fellowship of believers here at Emanuel Bible Church, or if you'd like to find out more about the gospel and what it means to follow Jesus Christ, I invite you to stop by our information desk.

There are folks that want to answer your questions and talk with you and pray with you.

Reflecting on the great, miraculous mystery that is the church, the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Ephesus as this, which I leave is your benediction.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able, to do far more abundantly than all we could ask or think, according to the power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

We trust your grace by faith in you sons of disgrace all right, just a babe, sons of disgrace, all right, just a babe.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.