Models of Gospel Advancement

Mike Leake

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Scripture Introduction:

So I had been a children’s and youth pastor for only a couple of months. I was serving at a Methodist church—I’ve never been a Methodist but a professor in college suggested it as a good experience for me. So I dove right in and began doing ministry. One of our first big events was a progressive service. Now you need to know that the only two churches I’d been to in my life at this point were Baptist churches and a Christian church that my grandma went to. On this one night I’d be exposed to a Methodist church, a Lutheran church, an Episcopalian church, and what was completely foreign to me—a Catholic church.

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In each of these churches I didn’t know much of what to do. And when you’re in a new church what do you do? If you’re a guest here this morning for the first time you can answer that question well. There are things that churches do that are different from what you’re used to and strange to you. Your only hope to not look like a complete goon is to look around you and just do what everybody else is doing.

But what is really not cool is when you get to the Catholic church and have to sit in the front row. I didn’t have anybody to look at. (Which is why visitors and guests like to sit in the back and it’s a sign of hospitality not to fill those seats up). I was a youth pastor and didn’t know when I was supposed to sit or when I was supposed to stand. It was incredibly embarrassing. I could have really used an example—a model—somebody to look at.

The Philippians have just been charged by Paul to be shining lights. To be like Christ in self-giving love for one another. But they could also use living—touch with your hands—see with your own eyes—hands and feet of Jesus type examples. And that is what we have in our text this morning with Timothy and Epaphroditus.

Listen, to the type of example that these two men are.

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I think if you were living in the first century you might have been a bit surprised to see Epaphroditus on this list as an example to follow. Let me give you a bit of a backstory here.

The church at Philippi absolutely loved Paul and they were concerned about his well-being. So they decided to send one of their own, a guy named Epaphroditus, in order to give Paul some money but more than anything to serve his needs while he was on house arrest. He was given as a gift to Paul.

But something happened. Epaphroditus got sick. He got very sick. There was no way that he could minister to Paul’s needs. In fact he needed ministry himself. You could almost say that he was becoming more of a burden than a help. And he was missing his people in Philippi. It was much better for him to go back home. So what does Paul do?

If he sends him back it could do a couple things. First, it could be insulting. As if Paul was saying, “this gift isn’t good enough, take it back.” Kind of like what you feel like if you get a sweater for Christmas from your sweet Aunt Gertrude but the thing is hideous…you feel kind of bad sending it back. You certainly wouldn’t give it back to her and say, “hey can you take this ugly thing back to the store for me and get me something better?”

But we’re also talking here about a human being and not a sweater. Epaphroditus would have been hand-delivering this letter to the church at Philippi. It would have been a failed mission for him. If these words weren’t in this letter then the church would be incredibly disappointed in Epaphroditus. So Paul is also commending him.

Here is what we want to catch. The vision the Philippians had for Epaphroditus was that he would for a long time minister to the needs of Paul until he was either executed or released from prison. But he got sick and couldn’t complete the job—he couldn’t even come close to completing the job. Here is our question tonight. Was he successful in his ministry?

You see that is an absolutely important question for us as well.

It’s a bit easier when we’re talking about things like sports. You define success when you win. You can’t bat .180 on the year and say you had a successful season. Unless you did so blindfolded or something. At church camp this week our cabin was successful as we took home the golden tray once again. We got the most points. That’s an easy success.

It’s easier with businesses. Many jobs are measurable. You have a bottom line that you are shooting for. Did you meet the goal? If so, success. If not then you can’t say you succeeded.

But what does this look like when we start talking ministry. Lots of pastors or churches try to define this by budgets, buildings, and bottoms. But there are many self-proclaimed churches with massive budgets, million dollar buildings, that packs the house but they will not hear from Jesus, “well done good and faithful servant” because they’ve long ago abandoned preaching the gospel.

How do you define success in your Sunday school class? At our block parties? What about parenting? Marriage? Friendships?

What about counseling a friend? The worst fear for us as counselors is that we’ll “lose somebody”. You’ll have someone very depressed, you’ll try to help or get help. And they end up taking their life. You feel like a failure. But how do you measure success in counseling? Is it only if they are “helped” or “cured” or whatever word you want to use?

What about sharing the gospel? Are you only successful if somebody comes to Christ?

We learn from our text this morning that the measure of success is really self-giving Christ-centered faithfulness. But what does that even look like? We know that faithfulness doesn’t just mean “response to our preaching or efforts at discipleship”. If it was then we’d have to say that even Jesus wasn’t all that successful. I mean when he was crucified his following wouldn’t even have broken that magical 200 person barrier.

But I don’t think it’s quite right to say that we don’t care at all about response. I don’t think that reflects the heart of the New Testament either. There is something to be said for 📷, “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men”. We ought to work has hard as we can at what the Lord has called us to do.

I know that my faithfulness is not determined solely by the response to my preaching and efforts at discipleship. If it was, and we were to judge folks like Isaiah or Jeremiah (or even perhaps the Lord Jesus) by the same metric we’d have to conclude that their ministry wasn’t much of a success.

But I also believe that not really caring much about response doesn’t reflect the heart of the New Testament. There is something to be said for 📷, “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men”. We ought to work has hard as we can at what the Lord has called us to do.

Part of me wants to say that I measure success based upon whether or not I declared the truth. But then I think of Job’s miserable counselors and even someone like Balaam who declared the truth (at least in part)—but certainly weren’t to be commended. And so a bare declaring of the truth is not quite my measure of success.

So here is what I’ve come up with for myself as a pastor:

I’ll consider my pastorate successful if I have lovingly and winsomely declared the whole counsel of God’s Word to the people the Lord has given and in the season that the Lord has placed me.

I say “lovingly and winsomely” because this causes me to strive for saying things the best way possible. I don’t want to use the sovereign omnipotence of God as an excuse for laziness. Instead I want to be motivated to work as hard as I can to accurately deliver God’s Word in a way that matches the glory of God.

I say “the whole counsel of God’s Word” because this is our standard for truth. I get this from what Paul said to the Ephesian elders. He believed his ministry was successful because he did not shrink from declaring to them the whole counsel of God’s Word.

I say, “to the people the Lord has given” because I’m not called to shepherd someone else’s flock. God has sovereignly placed me here to shepherd the people He has given to my care. This means that I will “with all humility and with tears and with trials” declare the whole counsel of God’s Word to a real flesh and blood, warts and all, people.

I say, “and in the season that the Lord has placed me” because there might be seasons in which God’s Word will be used to harden instead of to harvest. If this is the case then I want to still faithfully declare God’s Word. This also means that if I’m behind a pulpit or standing behind a hospital bed, my mandate is the same.

Let me show you were I get this, then, from the text here. We see it in our two models of Timothy and Epaphroditus. Success is self-giving Christ-centered faithfulness. Or lovingly and winsomely being who Christ calls me to be and doing what Christ calls me to do.

I. Profile of Timothy

Look first at Timothy. Before we look at his profile here in want us to consider the rest of the picture about Timothy from the Scriptures. We know that he was young—probably in his thirties. He was also shy. As one person has said, “he seems to have been temperamentally self-effacing. When men passed comment on his youthfulness Timothy visibly wilted. He needed to be reassured and encouraged by Paul.” And he also seems to have had some health concerns. We read in that he had a weak stomach.

I don’t know if Timothy would have been a celebrity pastor in our day. He doesn’t really fit the profile. But he is deeply loved by both Paul and the church at Philippi because Timothy is incredibly faithful. And I’d just like to note a little side point here about the joy that was bubbling out of Paul. He’s confident that he is going to be released. He wants to send Timothy because of his desire to hear a cheering report. He’s not a micro-manager. He is one who trusts in the sovereignty of God and knows that God does good things amongst his people. He is confident he’ll hear a good report.

“I have nobody like him”. Paul is saying that he is equal-souled. This is one way of saying that if Timothy comes it’s as if Paul himself is coming. But he also is highlighting the self-giving nature of Timothy. He’s contrasting it with the “selfish interests” of others. Everybody else is looking out for themselves, but Timothy is looking out for the interests of Christ.

Does that sound familiar? It’s using language of Christ that we saw in the first part of the chapter and what Paul called the Philippians to do—consider others better than yourselves. Look out for their interests. Timothy exemplifies what Paul has been talking about. He’d be a perfect one for the Philippians to watch.

But this text raises an interesting question. Why does Paul say what he does about everybody else. Is it true that everybody else were just a self-centered goobers and Timothy was the only guy who cared about Jesus?

No doubt there was selfishness. And no doubt that Paul even had in mind some of the struggles at Philippi. But the way this is worded sounds so foreign to Paul. Not that he can’t bring it or that he doesn’t step on people’s toes. He has no problem speaking the truth in love. But it doesn’t seem to fit here in this letter to the church at Philippi. Such a statement wouldn’t be encouraging. And it might even seem like he is throwing a bit of shade on Epaphroditus. Such a thing would directly contradict his intentions. So what is Paul saying.

It’s possible that he is saying that the only people he has left are the type of people described in 1:15. Those who are self-centered and pursuing their own glory. It’s not that Timothy is alone in being selfless but that at the present moment all of the other helpers/missionaries are serving in other capacities and Paul is only left with the gnats.

I appreciate the way Ralph Martin explains it in his commentary on Philippians:

He doesn’t tend to talk this way. It’d be almost going back on what he said in the first chapter.

It says nothing about his fellow-Christians; but it is rather his solemn reflection when he remembers that, in a world of selfishness and self-seeking, it is such a rare thing to find a man like Timothy who is really anxious to promote the welfare of other people, and to give himself to a fatiguing journey and to the resolving of personal quarrels in the Philippian church. This would be a delicate issue to handle, calling for tact, wisdom and patience. No-one with any pastoral experience would deny that Timothy’s task will be unenviable; and especially for a young man (), physically weak () and temperamentally reserved (). His readiness to help, then, supremely exemplifies a selfless, altruistic spirit unlike that described in 2:1–4.

In other words it’s Paul’s way of saying, “I’m wanting to give you the absolute best person for the job. I’ve got nobody else like him.” We speak this way too don’t we. If I say, “nobody could dunk a basketball like Michael Jordan”. I’m not meaning to say that all the other basketball players are worthless and no good at basketball but I’m saying that he excels. Paul is doing something similar here—but he is commenting on our natural propensity to seek our own interests instead of the interests of others.

That word for seek is an interesting one. It’s in the present tense so it likely points to ongoing action. And it means to devote serious effort to finding or getting a thing. I don’t stop until I get it. But here it speaks of “our own interests”. I’m gonna get what I want and I don’t really care how I get it. I’m going to be devoted until I get it. But what Paul is saying is that we ought to have that type of devotion to the interests of Christ. That is reflective of the heart of Timothy.

So do you want to know what it looks like to be successful? Seek the interests of Christ. What is that? To glorify God. To increase the joy of all peoples in God Himself. To redeem people. To magnify the greatness of God. You get the picture.

I’ve come to give them life.

I’ve come to be their Shepherd. To lead people into joy in God.

I’ve come to destroy the works of the enemy.

I’ve come to seek and save that which is lost.

Father, glorify your name.

That’s the interests of Jesus. And that’s the interests of Timothy. This in part is what Paul is saying with the father-son language. It’s his way of saying that he knows Timothy is going to be an accurate representation of the message of Paul—which is an accurate representation of the message of Jesus.

If a father says, “Son, I want you to go ask your mother if she can come in the living room and help me with figuring these bills.” How do we determine if the son is faithful? Is it if the mother comes into the room to figure the bills? Nope. His job is to ask the mother if she would be willing to come into the living room. That’s all he is supposed to do. If he does that he is faithful.

Now if he asks in such a way that he’s rude to his mother is he faithful?

If he asks in such a way that he changes the wording is he faithful?

If he doesn’t ask is he faithful?

If he instead asks her to fix him a sandwich is he being faithful?

How was Timothy successful. Because he accurately represented Christ with his life and with his lips. He was concerned with the interests of Christ and not himself.

2. Profile of Epaphroditus.

I’ve already shared with you what has happened to Epaphroditus. He’s not one that you’d expect to get such glowing recommendations. But I think we’ve got much to learn here. In the remainder of our time I don’t want us to focus as much on what is being said about Epaphroditus but that anything is being said at all.

It’s all a great recommendation. He is saying that this man is also a model of what it looks like to follow Jesus. He is a success. He is a man worth following and learning from. First and foremost because he followed Christ in that Epaphroditus was willing to die if it meant others were served and that their joy in God would increase.

I heard somewhere, I believe jokingly, that Epaphroditus has been known as the patron saint of gamblers. It’s because the word there for “risked his life” is a word connected with dice. In fact there actually was a group of people who took the name Parabalani (the Greek word we have here). They were a group of Christians who risked their own life in order to care for the sick and give proper burial for those with diseases---even though it meant they themselves were at great risk of death. So you could say that Epaphroditus is a great model of taking a risk.

But I think he’s actually a better model for those of us who had great plans and it didn’t work out the way we thought it was going to. The missionary William Carey had as his motto, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” That’s great. But what do you do when you attempt great things for God and it falls apart?

I’d say Epaphroditus had terrific plans about what it was going to be like to go to Rome (if that’s where Paul was imprisoned) and do ministry there. But it didn’t work out as planned. You have those stories?

So what do you do? Do you call them failures? Do you give up? Do you stop trying? Do you say, “we aren’t going to try that again”! Or do you think maybe William Carey had a bit something more in that quote. What if “great things for God” means relentless self-giving Christ-centered faithfulness that sometimes looks really messy and sloppy and doesn’t match up to what the world might call success.

NEWTON ON THE LAST IDOL TO DIE WAS USEFULNESS

My usefulness was the last idol I was willing to give up; But now I thank the Lord, I can part with that also, and am content to be anything or nothing, so that His wise and holy will may be done! -Cotton Mather

John Newton had read that quote in his mid-30’s. At the age of seventy-five Newton shares the quote with John Ryland, Jr. and notes that he has been reflecting on this quote for the last 40 years. Newton is now an elderly man that is beginning to lose his health (mainly his sight) and thereby his “usefulness” to the kingdom. This Newton says is a trial that actually seems to require more grace than being active in ministry.

It is all too common when a Christian is mentioned by name to find fellow-Christians distancing themselves from him with critical words and, sadly, sometimes with a harsh and carping spirit. There is all too little generosity of heart in our praise of other Christians. We justify this by stressing the importance of not inflating the ego of a fellow-believer. But the sad truth often is that we are narrow-minded. We do not count others as more important than ourselves, but are jealous of our own reputation (see 2:3). By contrast, Paul’s words are a beautiful reminder of the gratitude and admiration we should have for the graces and gifts of the Spirit in the lives of our fellow-Christians”

Methinks if one ounce of grace, so to speak, may carry us on in active life, it may require a pound, to maintain a cheerful resigned spirit, when the Lord appoints us to sit still and be quiet. For in active life there is something pleasing to Mr. Self; he loves to see many eyes upon him, and to be followed by a crowd when he preaches. But he does not like to be shut up and in a manner forgotten.

What Newton is saying is that our level of contentment in the Lord and satisfaction in Christ alone is often displayed not in moments of activity but in moments where it seems like we have very little usefulness. Do I rejoice when others are serving God and their usefulness is quite prominent? Or do I wish that I was the one being “mightily used by God”?

Our goal is to be faithful. Let God determines what that means and what that looks like. But let’s also learn to celebrate. Let’s learn to celebrate the Epaphroditus’ among us. That’s not participation trophies. That’s celebrating faithfulness. Let’s celebrate the Timothy’s. I appreciate these words of Sinclair Ferguson:

Some might be tempted in a season when activity is required to check out and become passive. That’s why our definition earlier is important. We are to be faithful to God in the season in which God calls us. That’s the goal. He gives the marching orders. Our goal is to be faithful. Let God determines what that means and what that looks like.

But let’s also learn to celebrate. Let’s learn to celebrate the Epaphroditus’ among us. That’s not participation trophies. That’s celebrating faithfulness. Let’s celebrate the Timothy’s. I appreciate these words of Sinclair Ferguson:

I want to close by look at .

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

We, rightly, point to the nature of relationship here. What is the will of the Father? To know Jesus Christ. To have a relationship with God as we see in verse 23, “I never knew you”. But let’s not pretend like the “does the will of my Father” and “workers of lawlessness” aren’t connected. And note what he called “workers of lawlessness”. It’s prophesying in the name of Jesus, casting out demons, doing mighty works in his name.

So what’s the difference? One person is in the position of king and attempting to self-justify when he meets up with a bigger king. The other takes the position and posture of a humble servant, an ambassador, one in relationship with King who is about the business of doing what He calls them to do. This all flows out of relationship.

You don’t have relationship

You aren’t ministering out of that relationship

You are seeking self instead of Christ

So how do you determine success?

One of the questions that we want to ask ourselves in Bible study is, “why is this passage here”. I know that it’s here because God wanted it here—but why. What is going on in this passage. What happens if this were taken out of our Bible’s? What would we lose? How is it connected?

Why have this amazing beautiful hymn about Christ at the beginning of chapter 2, this great exhortation about shining like stars and not grumbling, and then all of a sudden travel plans? Some commentators have seen this and came to the conclusion that maybe Paul meant to end his letter here.

Faithfulness. Timothy and Epaphroditus serve as good models of this. Do we? May God help us.

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