Fellow Soldiers

Be inspired by two faithful men who embody the character of Christ.

We have been doing a lot of thinking and planning as a leadership board recently, on the way Calvary makes disciples. Our commission from Jesus as a church is to make disciples not only by sharing the gospel and leading people to Christ, but by teaching people to follow Christ closely. It’s both leading people to Jesus and helping them to follow Jesus. And if we’re going to keep our church community faithful to that call, we have to be diligent because that sort of fulfillment, that sort of call, that sort of commission doesn’t just happen automatically. It takes diligence, takes concentration. And so we’ve been thinking a lot about what a disciple of Jesus is, what it means to be the member of a church body, and what it looks like for the church to be faithful in its responsibility to shepherd every member of Calvary. Your leadership board is very excited about the direction of the church. We’re going to be much more focused here in the next few years, and in the church to come, on spiritual care and shepherding where every member of our church is known, fed, led, and protected. In the next few weeks, you’ll be receiving an email from me outlining what we call our comprehensive shepherding model. Its shepherding in that it focuses on our developing healthy disciples over time, and it’s comprehensive in that it focuses on care for all the members of Calvary. We want to be the most healthy, effective missions organization we can be. We don’t want anybody to fall through the cracks here at Calvary. So keep an eye out for that email. It’s going to probably come sometime just after Labor Day.

All of this focus on the healthy churches and healthy disciples of Jesus has had me thinking a lot recently about the characteristics of a Christian. What should we see going on in the heart attitude of a committed follower of Jesus? What should it look like for that person to be completely given over to Christ in every aspect of life? And specifically for our context, what does Healthy Discipleship look like in a highly educated community of mostly career focused professionals? What does that mean? What is it? What does it look like for a community with an influx of young singles every year, apparently, who flood into this place? Young singles, young families who come because of the medical community here. Not that the character qualities of Christ change from culture to culture. They certainly do not, but they are exemplified in different cultures in different ways. And so what does it mean to be a committed, growing disciple-making follower of Jesus here in Rochester? I wish Rochester was mentioned in the Bible, but I looked and it’s not. However, we do have everything we need. What we need to do is look very carefully at the faithfulness of the men and women in Scripture. Those people who love Jesus, who love the Lord, and are following faithfully after them. We need to look at at those folks and find out the commitments and values that they held and then apply those to our Rochester 2022 context.

We’ve been doing that actually throughout this letter that Paul wrote to the Philippine church. If you’re new to the church, we encourage you to go to our sermon archive on our website and check out the past sermons in this series. You can kind of catch up with us and see what we’re talking about. When Paul talks about the love he has for the Philippine church, he’s only describing his own love. He’s describing his personal feelings. And yet at the same time, he’s giving us insight into the kind of love that we’re supposed to have for each other. And we know that when Paul describes his own faithfulness, he actually means to be an example to us. In another letter, 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul ends a section of teaching with the very clear statement ‘Be imitators of me as I am of Christ’. Last week we heard Paul say in Philippians 2:17-18, ‘I am glad and rejoice. And likewise you should rejoice and be glad with me’. And when Jesus himself told us to love one another as I have loved you. So part of the way we learn to walk faithfully in Christ, part of the way we grow as Christians is by watching the examples of others who are faithfully following Jesus.

Probably you have some people in your life who act as guides for you; people that you look to for guidance. And that is a good thing. That’s part of how the church gets it done, is that we model Christ-likeness to one another. That’s not to say that we should imitate everything that we see in other Christians, even Christians that we look to for guidance. Certainly when Christians stumble, as all Christians do, we shouldn’t follow them right over into the pit, right? We’re there to help one another out of sin, help each other out of that pit. But examples of faithfulness help us to understand what it means for us to be faithful. And Paul himself said, I want you to follow me, but follow me as I follow Christ. So when I am faithful, when I am following Jesus faithfully, that’s when I want you to see and follow after me. Because I’m living in an example of biblical principles. I want to show you how that works, and that’s what we should be doing for one another.

We’re going to look at two examples of this today. Paul is going to introduce us to two young Christian leaders, one we know very well, because he’s mentioned several times elsewhere in scripture. In fact, two of the letters Paul writes were to him specifically, and the other one isn’t mentioned anywhere else in Scripture. Only in this passage here. I want you to be inspired by two faithful men this morning who embody the character of Christ. We’re going to begin in flipping to verse 19, so you can go there if you want to. First, we’re going to look at Timothy, Paul’s well-known partner in ministry, and then we’re going to look at Epaphroditus, who is the messenger that the Philippians sent to Paul to help him out. He’s not mentioned anywhere else in Scripture, but he nearly dies helping Paul. We’re going to look at him as well. And with each of these guys, we’re going to draw out a few characteristics of faithfulness and what that might look like today for our church. Let’s start with Timothy. ‘I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too, may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served me with me in the gospel. I hope, therefore, to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me, and I trust in the Lord that shortly I myself will come also.’ So Timothy is a young leader who Paul met on his second missionary journey through the heart of Turkey. If you read in Acts 16, you’ll see that Paul tells us that he heard a lot of good things about Timothy. He’d gotten the word from a couple of communities that this is a guy that you probably want to spend some time with. And so he brings Timothy along with him on his missionary journey, kind of like an apprentice. And so Timothy works alongside Paul on that journey. Eventually, he becomes the guy that Paul sends out to encourage other churches. One example of this is Paul sending Timothy to the church in Corinth to remind them of the example that Paul had set for him. We read that in 1 Corinthians 4. He also leaves Silas and Timothy behind in Berea to continue the work there while Paul goes on to Athens. We read about that in Acts 17. Timothy gets sent to the Thessalonians, he gets left behind in Ephesus to take care of things there. Timothy became the guy that Paul would send to get things done when Paul himself could not be there. That’s how faithful, that’s how integral to Paul’s ministry Timothy became. And that’s what he’s suggesting that he wants to do here. He hopes in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to the Philippines.

Now before we look at Timothy’s character, let me just dwell for a minute on that phrase, hope in the Lord Jesus. This hope that’s being mentioned here is not the hope of salvation that we read about so much in scripture. This is this is something Paul hopes to get done. And he hopes in the Lord Jesus, it will happen. What does he mean, “hope in the Lord Jesus”? Well, you may remember back in chapter 1 that Paul starts this letter off by saying, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you”. And and at the time, I talked about what I call weird vertical Christian thankfulness. Remember that? This strange concept, Christians, Christians aren’t just thankful to people, right? We’re not just thankful about that person. We are thankful to God for that person. It’s this strange triangulation that all Christians have in the way they see the world because we know everything comes from God and everything is directed by God. And so if you do something to serve me, I am thankful for you. I am. But I’m also thankful to God that he made you and gave you the skills and the love for me, that caused you to serve me in that instance when I’m thanking you. And so I thank you and I thank God for you. That’s that weird triangulation. That same thing is happening here, only this time it has to do with the future. You could call this Paul’s hope a weird vertical Christian hope if you want to. It’s weird because generally this is not how people hope for something to happen. We just we don’t hear this very much. My kids often hope we’ll get ice cream. I don’t think they hope in the Lord Jesus we will get ice cream. I don’t think so. I mean, maybe. My wife does. I know that.

Christians who believe in the sovereignty of God, that He is in control of all things, they recognize the future is in his hands. So the thing I hope will happen, I know, is actually ultimately in God’s hands. And so I hope in the Lord Jesus, I hope that the Lord, my Savior who is guiding and sovereign over all things, is in control and will lead me in this particular direction. And that kind of hope is restful. It’s a contented place to be. We know that. What we hope for is contingent on what God is working out. So we aspire, we make plans, we work on those goals. But we know full well that our hope may not be God’s plan. And we rest in that, and we hope in the Lord Jesus that it will happen. But we rest even if it doesn’t. That’s the way Paul hopes to send Timothy here. He’s planning on it, but it’s really not going to happen unless the Lord Jesus decides that it’s going to happen.

Okay. So the reason he wants to send Timothy is so that they can hear a good report, so that Paul can hear a good report back from Timothy about how well the church is doing. This letter that we’re reading now is sent to the Philippians by Paul in the hand of Epaphroditus, who will meet here in just a minute. He’s telling the church that he hopes to send Timothy too, so that Timothy can report back, as he always does, the progress of the Philippine church to Paul. So I think based on some of the potential dangers listed here in the letter, Timothy would be sent to help encourage the Philippians through their difficult time and then report back to Paul. And then what Paul is saying here at the end of this passage is that he hopes to come later once he’s free from prison, according to verse 24. I think that’s the scenario that he’s drawing up here. But more important than the logistics of this is Paul’s reason for sending Timothy, and this is where we get some incredible insight into our own growth. There are two-character qualities that Paul mentions. The first thing is that Timothy is genuinely concerned for the welfare of the people of the church. Did you know that there are people in the church today, even people who have been following Jesus faithfully for most of their lives, even Christian pastors of the church who do not genuinely care about the welfare of the church. Did you know that? Paul’s description of Timothy here probably should be more concerning to us than it is on first read. We might read that, and think, well, you know what? What he’s saying is that Timothy is just a caring individual and that he’s going to do a good job. And that’s true. That’s true. But it’s not all he’s saying. It’s not quite right. Paul is saying that Timothy has genuine care for the spiritual state of the church, as opposed to the others who are in a similar ministry who actually are not genuine in their concern for the church. He’s saying that concern is rare. I have nobody else like him. It’s rare. Don’t read that like Paul is skimming Timothy off the top of a whole bunch of other people he could have sent. Like this is my best. I got a lot of people just like him. No, I got no one else like him. Remember, Paul is aware of a number of other Christian preachers and leaders. We learned about that back in chapter 1:12-18, where he says some people are preaching Christ because they genuinely want them to know Jesus, and some of them are actually preaching it out of rivalry with me. And Paul said, I don’t care why they’re preaching it as long as they’re preaching Christ. But there is a a Christian community Paul could have drawn from to find more leaders, to plant churches or to visit suffering churches. He could have raised up more Timothy’s, but there’s a reason he consistently sends this one guy, Timothy. Timothy is one of those rare leaders that deep in his soul cares about the people of the church. He doesn’t just show concern when he’s supposed to show concern. He genuinely cares for the people of the church, and he wants to make sure that they are not in danger from the pressures of their city, or from false teaching, or from the disunity that can grow within a church community. Why is that rare? Why is that rare? Why? Why does he have no one else like him? It seems like the church should be brimming with folks like this, right? Why doesn’t the church have more leaders like this? We’ll look at Paul’s contrast. Look what he says. ‘For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.’.

I think we need to take a minute here on this. If we were a football team, I’d have you all take a knee. We’re going to we’re going to dwell on this here just for a minute. The interests of Jesus Christ are the mission of the church. If you want to know Jesus interest, just go to the Gospels and listen. His interests are the mission of growing up in the Gospel, pursuing righteousness, being fully engaged in the mission, of sharing the Gospel boldly, sometimes in the face of opposition. These are the interests of Jesus Christ. It is easy to take the interests of Christ and His mission for the Church and turn these things to serve your own interests. So that instead of being genuinely concerned for the health and well-being of the church as a whole, you’re actually only serving yourself because of your commitment to your own preferences. I’m going to give several examples of this right now, and let me just say up front, this is going to hurt a little bit. But it’s because I love Jesus and I love you. As a pastor, I could care mostly about my platform. In my public persona and the little tiny, tiny, little bit of fame that I get and use that as a way to stroke my own ego. I fight that all the time. Elders in the church could make decisions using their power to create the kind of church that they like best, instead of constantly asking what is best for the whole church. Some in the church want everything, every program, every service to be locked into exactly what they like, not thinking deeply about what would be most effective for fulfilling Christ’s mission today. We’re just beginning our search for our next music leader here at Calvary, and I’m already a little concerned for him. I’m already a little concern for him because I don’t even know who he is, and he’s already got a mountain of expectation in front of him. I can assure you that I and the search team will be making a values driven decision, not a preference driven decision. By God’s grace, with Spirit’s leading, we know that the Lord will lead us to just the right leader. And when inevitably you feel like we should have gone a different direction and things just aren’t going or just aren’t the same as they used to be, just remember that our intention was not to please everyone, which is impossible, by the way, but to set a course that will make us the most effective God-honoring disciple making church that we can possibly be. Brothers and sisters in Christ, you can use the church to propagate all sorts of things that are not in the interests of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You can use it for all sorts of things. You can turn the church community into a platform to get votes for your political agenda. Plenty of people have done that for certain. You can use the church as a client base for your business. I knew a guy one time who always had a business card on him. Oh, you’re new to the church. Guess what? Do you need a plumber? It was always one of those sorts of things. Always, always pressing. You can use the church to build a little community around your preferred secondary or tertiary theological commitments and debate anybody who disagrees with you. I was sitting in a coffee shop writing this sermon. Literally these words I am saying right now. I was this week writing this sermon, and a woman approached me and asked me if she could introduce me to her best friend with a little tract. And I actually love it when this happens, when someone approaches me to do evangelism because I appreciate that boldness. I thought that was pretty cool. And so she started to share with me and I said, You know, actually, I love Jesus, too. And I’m the pastor over at Calvary Evangelical Free Church. And she stopped. And the next question out of her mouth was, what bible do you use, King James? She wanted to debate me right there at Scooter’s. Right in that moment. There is no end to the ways you can focus on your thing. On your preferences, on your needs, instead of being sacrificially concerned about the needs of others. But that’s our goal, Calvary, to consistently grow in our genuine concern for the welfare of the Church and its faithfulness to Christ in all things. Here’s another characteristic. Paul knew Timothy would genuinely care about the church and the Philippines, knew he would genuinely care for their welfare because he had proven his worth. He’d already proven himself, Paul says to the Philippians, You know Timothy, you know him. You know he served with me. You’ve seen his service. He served me like a son serves a father. And I love that imagery of you. If you’re a dad or a mom and you’ve ever had your son or daughter right there with you doing a project with you and they’re learning the skills from you, you know how rewarding that is. And that’s what Paul is saying about Timothy here. He stood by me. He stood by me. He learned the job. He knows how to get it done. Because he has the right heart now. He has the right skills, the right. The right goals. He learned them from me, and he’s demonstrated them to you. Philippians. That’s what Paul is saying here. There’s something to be said for faithfulness in ministry over time. Faithfulness in ministry over time. Part of effective ministry is demonstrated faithfulness. Basically you get more responsibility. You get a higher degree of trust when you demonstrate your faithfulness over and over again. And by the way, there’s a reason for that. It’s not just because you’ve got to pay your dues or whatever it is. There’s a reason for that. It’s because as you serve over time, what gets displayed is your heart. What you actually care about, what you love, where you are in Christ, your commitment. All of those things are displayed over time in what you do. Timothy doesn’t just say he genuinely cares about the church. He’s proven it in his ministry.

If you’ve ever moved from one church to another, you’ve experienced the loss of proven worth. You might be an established leader in your church, but then you move to a new town and then to a new church, and you start over again in that community. No one has yet seen your commitment to Christ. I mean, you can talk about it, you can say where your commitments are, but it takes time for them to see that demonstrated within the community. So your heart is evident to them. I’ve known really solid Christians who are frustrated by that, but it’s just a fact of the matter, it takes time. It takes willingness to serve in small ways. One of the reasons Timothy could go serve this church in such an important way was that he was willing to serve under Paul for such a long time to slowly build and cultivate his love for the church and then displaying that in his ministry to the Philippine church. All right. Let’s turn to the other guy briefly. Let’s go and look at Epaphroditus, the other man Paul mentions here. “I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier and your messenger, and minister to my need, for he has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed, he was ill near to death. But God had mercy on him. And not only on him, but also but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious. So receive Him in the Lord with all joy and honor such men. For He nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me.” So this other man that Paul mentions is Epaphroditus. Now, we don’t know much about him at all because he’s only mentioned here in this letter. We don’t have him anywhere else in Scripture. And he is the messenger that the Philippians sent with the financial gift that helped Paul out. We’re going to read more about that financial gift in Chapter 4. He also updated Paul on what was happening back in Philippi, which is why Paul is able to speak about the things that are happening back there. So he got a message from them, so he knows where their struggles are. He knows where the pressures are coming from the community. But Paul says two things here about Epaphroditus that should shape the character of followers of Christ. And the first is that this guy, Epaphroditus, is a fellow worker and a fellow soldier. He’s a fellow worker and he’s a fellow soldier. That’s actually pretty close to the second character quality that we saw in Timothy. Right. He’s Timothy had proven his worth. And so now Paul is showing what that worth for Epaphroditus means. Here, the focus isn’t so much on the past as it is on the present. We don’t know how much Paul knew Epaphroditus before this visit from him. But since he came, Paul sees in him a man who is dedicated to gospel ministry. He’s a fellow worker, which means that he’s referring to the work of ministry that they have to do together. He’s a fellow soldier, meaning in the difficult battle of ministry, in the face of opposition, in the face of hardship, Epaphroditus has shown himself to be committed. He does not back down when advanced upon. He continues to do the work. He doesn’t stand by when there’s work to do. He doesn’t back down when things get rough. Paul points to two roles Epaphroditus has served in to prove that loyalty. So these first two words that he uses here, fellow worker, fellow soldier are references to these two ministries he’s done. He calls him your messenger and a minister to my need. So in other words, he’s telling the Philippians he was faithful in what he did for you. Your messenger did exactly what you called him to do. And he’s done everything that I’ve needed him to do. He served with me in that way.

If you think about the mission of the church, it’s both a job and a battle. You can see what Paul is saying here. Anyone who’s ever poured themselves into the work of church leadership and disciple making and missions or really any other ministry, if you’ve ever been engaged in ministry, you know that it is exhausting. It is difficult. Most people do it in addition to the other job that they do. I’m always blown away by that. You’ve got a full-time job, plus you’re also engaged in doing ministry. The Epaphroditus almost certainly is not a professional messenger service. He’s not like a FedEx worker who just augmented his route to get out to Paul. This is something he’s doing in addition to whatever it is that he does to take care of himself and his family. And then on top of that, the work itself is done in opposition to the hatred of the world for Christ. And so it’s not just a job, it’s not just this laborious thing that he’s engaged in to help out the church, it’s also on top of that, a battle. Ministry is caring for people as they are being dragged away in a direction away from Christ. So anytime you’re in ministry, what you’re doing is you’re trying to help other people pull against the stream of your culture. It requires battling false teaching, chasing out enemies, helping people face down sin, constantly working to present a defense for the hope that we have in Christ. Paul needs fellow workers and soldiers.

And so do we. All churches do. We all know churches can’t accomplish Jesus’ mission for His church alone. But we also know that we cannot do it with uncommitted folks who take a casual approach to the mission. If you just kind of, sort of want to follow Jesus, like maybe a ten a couple of times a month at church, don’t get too serious about it. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s not get away with, let’s not get too involved. You should ask yourself why. You should ask yourself why that is your attitude. Why is that at your approach? Why do you lack the worker soldier mentality when it comes to your commitment to Jesus? Because these metaphors come from Jesus. Paul didn’t make these things up. Paul is echoing what Jesus said. Jesus is the one who said his church would charge the gates of hell. Jesus is the one who said he’d build on the foundation of the Gospel, and that his church would be built up with workers. I’m not saying you have to do more. You know, when you start talking like this, a lot of times people who do a lot of things in the church, they tend to go, you’re right, I’m not doing enough. Oh, I need to do more. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m actually not even asking you how much you’re doing. I’m asking you a hard question. I’m asking you to search your heart and ask yourself whether your goal is to be a worker and a soldier as much as you can be for Jesus. And if not, why not? The second thing. That we see here is that – let’s look at this last characteristic is the way Paul describes a Epaphroditus willingness to serve Christ, even to the point of death, if that was necessary. That’s how Paul puts it in verse 30. He nearly died for the work of Christ. Paul sends Epaphroditus back because God had mercy on him. He healed him. And now Paul wants to get him back because Epaphroditus is stressed out. The Philippians are concerned about him and Paul just wants to put all that to rest. He’s going to get a Epaphroditus back to him, to them. And Paul is saying he needs to come back, he needs to take a rest, and he needs to alleviate everybody’s concern. And while he does that, when he when he gets back to you, Philippians, what I want you to do is I want you to honor him, because he did ministry exactly the way you’re supposed to do it. Does this sound like it went off exactly the way it was supposed to go? Does this seem like, oh, yeah, that was very successful. very good. If I took you on a mission trip and you got deathly ill to the point of death, and we had to get you back to Rochester, would you go well, that went exactly according to plan. I would be wondering what went wrong. What did we do? What did we not plan for? How did this happen? Paul sure didn’t want it to go like this. He said he would have had sorrow upon sorrow if a Epaphroditus had died, and the Philippines would have had that same, same sorrow. But we honor people like this because when they serve to the point that it could cost them even their lives, they show us what’s more important than life. He’s an example of what is more important than life itself. Church, I’m not saying that all ministries should risk our lives in service to Christ. I’m not saying that. The opportunities like this where you could even die doing ministry are actually pretty rare in our country. I am saying that the ministry God has for you will include pouring out your life for him. That what God has for you to do in the context of His Kingdom is more important than physical breath. If you ask the question, how far should I go in my faithfulness to the Lord? The answer that you should strive for is up to and including my life, if that’s what faithfulness requires. Would you pray with me?