Sermon Tone Analysis

Colossians 4:7-18

 

I trust many of your are familiar with the life of Jim Elliot, missionary to Ecuador who, along with 4 fellow missionaries, was killed in 1956 by the Indians that they were seeking to minister to.

His journals have been published; the story of the experiences of his missionary team in /Through Gates of Splendor/; my favorite is his wife’s biography of him that pieces together journal entries, letters, and her memories.

That book is called /Shadow of the Almighty/, and I highly recommend it to you.

In that book we have recorded for us this prayer from his journal: “Father, make of me a crisis man.

Bring those I contact to decision.

Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.”

He wanted to live such a Christ-centered life that anyone who came in contact with him felt pressure to either live in the reality of Christ or reject Him.

Jim Elliot was that kind of man, and his life testimony still presses people to live in the reality of Christ.

Through his journal entries and letters the Lord has used his life to push me to live in the reality of Christ.

I think I can honestly say that outside of the Bible, /Shadow of the Almighty/ has been the most life-changing book for me.

So God answered his prayer and made him a man who showed off Christ and pressed others to live in the reality of Christ.

The apostle Paul was also that kind of man.

Obviously we have seen in Colossians his passion for the supremacy of Christ in all of life.

His teaching and his life pressed other people to live in the reality of Christ.

Colossians 4 gives a few glimpses at the kind of changes God brought in people’s lives through Paul.

We are tempted to breeze through this list of names at the end of this letter and pay little attention.

But these people that Paul mentions are the people that Paul is influencing.

These are the people who are hearing and seeing this message of a Christ-centered, Christ-dominated life in Paul.

We need to be like these mentioned here in Col 4, who gladly gave themselves to fully living out a Christ-centered life, even when it meant radical changes in their lives.

We need to be like Paul – like Jim Elliot – a crisis man or a crisis woman.

People need to see Christ in us and feel the pressure to join us in loving and serving and delighting in Christ.

They should feel the pressure to live in the reality of Christ.

So let’s pay close attention to this inspired list in Colossians 4. These people give us clues, personal illustrations, of what a Christ-centered life looks like.

*Who are these people?

What do we know about them?*

 

Tychicus –       

· Jew; is from somewhere in Asia Minor near Colossae; Acts 20:4 he was traveling with Paul toward the end of his third missionary journey.

This may be because he was one of the men bringing a gift to the church at Jerusalem from the churches in Macedonia and Asia.

· Eph.

6:21 “But that you also may know about my circumstances, how I am doing, Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will make everything known to you.”

Does this mean that the Ephesian and Colossian letters were written at the same time and taken by Tychicus?

If this is the case, then he may have taken Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and the Laodicean letter on the same trip!

There is mention in II Timothy of Paul sending Tychicus to Ephesus.

That might be this trip, or it might be another trip later on which he took to Ephesus.

· Titus 3:12 tells us that Paul may have also sent Tychicus to Crete to help there.

· Colossians is written long after the third missionary journey.

This means that Tychicus probably stayed with Paul through many months of that journey until they got to Jerusalem; and we know that when Paul gets to Rome, Tychicus is there with him.

It is likely that he has been with Paul all along, a time of several years.

· And here in Col. 4 Paul calls him a “beloved brother and faithful servant and fellow bond-servant in the Lord”

 

Onesimus –

· We learn about Onesimus from the letter to Philemon.

Onesimus was a slave of Philemon who must have run away.

He might have stolen from Philemon or in some other ways done damage in the process (v.18).

And he ran into Paul in Rome and received Christ (“my child … whom I have begotten in my imprisonment”).

Once Onesimus comes to Christ he has to turn from his sin and make those things right.

And part of that means he needs to go back to Philemon.

Onesimus comes to the conviction that this is what God wants him to do, and Paul writes a letter encouraging Philemon to receive Onesimus not as slave again but as a wonderful Christian brother.

Here in the letter to the church Paul calls him a “faithful and beloved brother.”

So Onesimus travels with Tychicus.

Tychicus has the letter to the Colossian church, which meets in Philemon’s house, and he has the letter to Philemon about Onesimus.

Aristarchus –

· was from Thessalonica; Acts 19:29 tells us that he was one of Paul’s “traveling companions”; with Paul in Ephesus on the third missionary journey, dragged into the theatre and just about killed by the mob (Paul was not there, though he tried to go in) Acts 27:2 tells us that when Paul left for Rome, he was accompanied by Luke and Aristarchus.

So apparently Aristarchus stuck with him no matter what; through the 3rd journey, the trials (including 2 years in jail in Caesarea), the travel to Rome (including shipwreck!), and the imprisonment

· In the letter to Philemon Paul calls him a “fellow worker,” here he calls him a fellow prisoner.

Mark

· Barnabas’ cousin; while we know quite a bit about John Mark, we aren’t told enough about his connections with Paul to really draw any conclusions about Paul’s influence after the first missionary journey.

Jesus~/Justus

· this is apparently the only mention of him in the Bible (though there are two others with this same name).

Epaphras (accent on first syllable: Ep´-u-frus or Ep´-u-fras)

· “one of your number” Look at 1:7 “You learned [the gospel] from Epaphras, our beloved fellow bond-servant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf.”

Maybe Epaphras was from somewhere else but he came and started the church in Colossae; or maybe he was from Colossae and became an important church leader and teacher there.

Paul must have had a close relationship with Epaphras, because it was Epaphras’s report to Paul that prompted the Colossian letter.

(Col.

1:8) It is possible that at some point Epaphras was in prison in Rome with Paul, but that is not 100% clear.

Luke

· You have probably heard that Luke, who wrote the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, was a doctor.

We know that because of this verse in Colossians: “the beloved physician sends you his greetings.”

Luke apparently accompanied Paul on 2 of his journeys, assisted the church in Philippi, and stayed with Paul toward the end of his ministry even when others had deserted him

 

Demas

· a coworker of Paul’s (Philem.

24) who later left “having loved this present world.”

(II Tim.

4:10)

 

Nympha

· only ref.

In NT: apparently the church in Laodicea met in her house

 

Archippus

In Philemon 2, but the relationship is hard to discern.

Could be a relative of Philemon, but regardless he is apparently a church leader in Colossae.

Some of these people are in Colossae; same are in Laodicea; some are in Rome with Paul; somve have just traveled from Rome to Laodicea; all have come under the influence of Paul and His message of the surpremacy and centrality of Christ in all of life.

Side note - Nympha: one of 3 references to house churches in the NT; this one in Laodicea; the one in Colossae (Philemon 2); the church in Priscilla and Aquila’s house in Rome (I Cor.

16:19; Rom.

16:5); along with the mention in Acts 2:46 of breaking bread from house to house.

We don’t have any record of church buildings in the early church until the third century.

Nearly every church in the early church was in a house.

This doesn’t mean that church buildings are bad, because they are very important and useful tools for ministry.

But this does remind us that the church is a body of people, not a building.

While many will tell you about a particular building which they walk into and out of each Sunday, that is not the same thing as telling you which church they are a part of.

You may go to a church building and attend a church service each week, and not be part of a church.

If you aren’t part of a group of believers who are functioning with one another like the NT says, you aren’t really part of a church.

*What can we learn about living in the reality of Christ?*

 

1.

Living in the reality of Christ means faithfulness.

Paul says Tychichus is faithful; he says Onesimus is faithful; he says Epaphras is faithful.

They were trustworthy, reliable, consistent, firmly devoted to the faith.

Does that describe you as a Christian?

Reliable – consistent – firm?

In chapter 3 he talked about stability; being firmly rooted; being established or anchored to the foundation.

Anyone living the in the reality of Christ is faithful; reliable, consistent; trustworthy; firm.

Onesimus showed his faithfulness by going back.

He knew what God wanted Him to do, and though it was extremely difficult he did it.