[19] I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. [20] For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. [21] For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. [22] But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. [23] I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me, [24] and I trust in the Lord that shortly I myself will come also.

[25] 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, [26] for he has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. [27] Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. [28] I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious. [29] So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men, [30] for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me. (ESV)

The New Testament scholar Gordon Fee called this passage “the stuff that makes a letter a letter.” We are reminded by looking at verses like these that Paul was a human being, writing to other real human beings, living in real circumstances, interacting with real people and interacting with other leaders. This gets personal and intimate concerning the story of this letter, and some of the church’s leaders in that day.

It was a challenging sermon to make, simply because this is a personal part of the letter. Sometimes I wonder if Paul and the other apostles would be surprised at how we treat some verses like these, especially like Philemon – these are highly personal portions, written from one human to another.

However, I want to step back a bit, and look at the bigger and larger picture, and really help to place this personalized portion of this letter in a greater worldview. This sermon will be connected to last week’s sermon, as we visit leadership structures in the local church, and how you and I are to aim to reflect them as they are found in Scripture.

However, even the Bible is found written to specific people living within a specific worldview, and Scripture has always served as a body of text inspired by God that confronts and challenges that worldview, entering into it with a correct view of God and his Son Jesus Christ. Two clashing worldviews, the true one inbreaking against the corrupted other.

I’ve tried to give everyone here a basic understanding of Roman social structures and hierachies in this sermon series, and I hope you see how crucial it is to understand them if one is to understand why Paul wrote what he wrote to these Roman Christians living in Philippi. We’ll once again touch on some of them this morning.

But more importantly, as we try to build the bridge from this personalized text to our day today, we need to do some worldview work ourselves. You and I also live in a specific time and place, and it is so hard to imagine life in a different social structure that we find ourselves in.

Answers of meaning and purpose, of success and failure, of reasons to follow and reasons not to, about how things work, how businesses and your work – and yes, even church and its leadership and organization – is largely defined by our modern capitalistic world so well critiqued by a German sociologist named Max Weber. Weber was a sociologist who lived at the turn of the 19^th to 20^th century, and in our rapidly industrializing world, he foresaw the impact of it all on our day to day reality. Now known as modernity, Weber said that within this newly built modern world of machines and factories and assembly lines and bureaucracies – largely a product of capitalism and the industrial revolution of the late 1800s – there would generally be a three-step process in our approach to industry and vocation:

1) Method

2) Reflection

3) Calculation

Bureaucracies exists to create the method, workers reflect and carry out the method, and the method then is calculated concerning its success, which is usually given by its profit and growth. This basic process is defined by Weber, and in it we find the blueprints for almost every business practice and approach in our nation. However, I wonder if he would have been aware just how far reaching this would be into us, into our understanding of ourselves – and our very identity as people.

If a business can produce profit through efficient methods and proper reflection increase efficiency, then you and I can begin judging ourselves up and against such a paradigm and formula for success. Suddenly you and I feel the need to also enter into a machine like method of living that will, upon reflection, hopefully contain some calculable results – you “fit into” this America method of success, and now your identity is wrapped up in whatever calculable result it brings.

It’s really the same way we judge the value of a machine – when I use my oven, I turn the knob every time to start the burner – the method. The result is that the flame start. Even though our oven is brand new, it is perhaps the worlds worst oven, and it is the most inefficient oven I’ve ever used. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes just to get anything working on it. So upon calculation this new machine has little value and I love to complain about it to others.

You and I often approach everything with this mindset, as if everything, including you and I, are machines to be finely tuned to produce greater results. This is how we approach education, how we approach our vocation, and the experts tell us that we should approach our daily habits like this as well – you want to grow as a person? Finely tune your habits to increase your efficiency to get more things done. To get that machine working more efficiently. Milking every hour of the day for productivity.

Therefore, the result of this mode of thinking is valuing what is most efficient – what brings about the quickest results. That receives our stamp of approval.

In the past 50 years, this has entered into how we understand church. We’ve slowly allowed the Church to be developed into its own profession and industry, to become it’s own machine with standards of success and excellence, and systems that can produce in an efficient manner calculable results. The pastors study has become an “office,” church meetings are called “business meetings” and the things accomplished in them “business items.”

The church’s product has become people – how do we get them in these doors? Our method is “church marketing” and “getting the word out,” similar to a small business. As more people come in, finances increase through tithes and offerings, and if both of those things increase, the machine known as Immanuel Church has the appearance of success.

Listen, I do not know all the answers, but I can tell you this at minimum – this was not always the case in church. It’s somewhat of a modern day phenomenon. Before our modern era, church was not understood this way or approached this way. It is all a product of “modernity,” the church becoming a machine, a factory to be finely tuned for greater results.

Why did I go on this tangent? Because what will see in this passage is Paul recommending to the Philippian church two men for leadership. I was once again stunned through a slow process of reflection at why he was recommending them, compared to why I often here leaders recommended to churches today. Paul was not a modern. He didn’t live in a world of machines and factories and assembly lines. He didn’t live in a worldview of capitalism. However, his recommendations of these two men and the reasons why he did so supersede cultural values, and represent God’s heart of how he values church leadership. And by implication, not just church leaders, but all Christians. It was a direct challenge up and against the Roman worldview. And it is also a direct challenge up and against the American worldview. You are not a machine. Your value is so far above whatever achievements you made through finely tuned methods and training. And I hope that we can see these things this morning, as once again – hopefully you are seeing it by now – as a Christian, by his Spirit you are IN Christ. You are IN Christ. And being IN Christ, you have been brought into participation of our Master Story that we saw in Philippians – that although Jesus was in heaven, receiving all the honor due to his divinity, he set it aside and took on the form of a poor, slave-like human on the bottom rungs of society. And although he was God, the creator and giver of life, he even became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. He did this because he did not consider his own interests before others, but even considered others as more important than himself – as Paul explicitly says was the mind of Christ that we are to join

The Christian life, after you believe and after you realize that Jesus has saved you from your own sins and has delivered you from the domain of darkness through his obedience and through his death and resurrection to His Kingdom, becomes one of continually looking to this Master Story, and knowing that this is our new way of life in Christ. The Holy Spirit is always working and working and working to turn our eyes towards it – are you living for yourself, or for God and others? Are you clinging to any sort of status and leveraging it over others, or using your status to love and serve others like Jesus? Our participation in it always seems to flip modern worldviews upside down in unexpected ways, and it’ll be happening again today. Paul recommends these two men not for their glories of “success” of charismatic leadership and high church attendance and increased tithing, not because of grand accomplishments in ministry and book deals and speaking tours – but rather, he commends these two men for leadership at the Philippian Church because of their evident participation in the Jesus story through the living out of their allegiance to him. Paul is absent and in jail, and he is combating a cult of personality within the church, and knows that they do need leadership – and he wants the church to know the kind of leaders they need, which may different than what they expect. Let’s dive in and see how Paul does this and look at verse 19-24:

19: “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 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.

Paul uses very strong language to describe Timothy, remarkably strong language. Paul says that no one is like him, and the greek literally says that Timothy is “one in soul” with Paul’s ministry of the gospel. He lists four specific things concerning Timothy and his ministry:

- he is genuinely concerned for their welfare

- He does not seek his own interest, like other church leaders

- Rather, he (by implication) is seeking the interests of Jesus

- He served as a child does with a father alongside of Paul, becoming a “slave” for the Good News of Jesus Christ

Now once again, Paul intentionally brings us back to this Master Story text that we talk about every week, found in Philippians chapter 2. Jesus and his patterns of living continually inform us on the patterns for our own lives. Jesus, being the True Human, shows us how humans are to live in this fallen world. It is described in 2:4 as a human being who does not look after his own interests, but rather after the interests of others – the same attitude that is found in Christ.

By Paul not being able to physically be there with the Philippians, he knows that they indeed do need a leader. They need someone to lead. Therefore, Paul was on the hunt to send someone to assist and to help. In the Roman culture it was very easy to raise up a leader within a specific group as someone to be honored up and above the rest, and in the infant church of the day, every church being less than thirty years old in the world, Paul could have easily taken advantage of that as the one who was almost alone responsible for all the new churches directly or indirectly in the Roman Empire. Yet here he is, trying to delegate such honor to other leaders in his stead. Again, here we see Paul fighting against the Roman tendencies of his day.

So as he recommends Timothy to them, we need to look at what things he found that were worthy to mention, things that would qualify him for such a leadership role at this church in Philippi.

HIS MIRRORING OF JESUS’ LIFE

Paul wrote this letter very intentionally, and he places this personalized portion of the letter where he did for a reason. He wanted first to describe the idea of Jesus’ pattern of living before he lists these two church leaders and describes them, because he wants the church at Philippi to know that if they are to embrace any other leader, the primary filter by which their acceptance of these leaders are is their participation in the Jesus story. Do they resemble Jesus? Do they lead like Jesus?

Timothy will be genuinely concerned for their welfare. Timothy has submitted himself as a slave to the Gospel and his labor and ministry. These are words that Paul used to describe how Jesus lived – and Timothy’s participation of it in his own life is exactly why Paul recommends him.

Keep these things in mind as we now examine Epaphroditus.

“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 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.”

A little background on this guy:

Most scholars believe that this was the person who delivered the letter to the Philippian church. In chapter 4, we will learn that Epaphroditus had actually been sent to Paul from the church to deliver a financial gift of sorts. But, it seems that Paul is sending him back prematurely, and Paul felt the need to give some sort of explanation as to what exactly is going on.

On the way there, or maybe after he arrived where Paul was, he got sick. We don’t know from what, or the nature of it. Death was close, yet he survived. God had mercy on him, and also on Paul since he didn’t need to lose his close friend. Paul specifically in verse 30 says that Epaphroditus “drew near to the point of death,” once again stealing language from the Master Story we find in Philippians 2. Epaproditus had participated in that story by risking his life for Jesus, just as Jesus risked his life for us – or rather, even gave up his life for us.

Other mentions and descriptions of this remarkable man are:

1) He is mentioned as Paul’s brother
2) Fellow worker

3) Fellow soldier
4) Messenger (literally, apostle)

5) Minister – this word is not like how we use minster today, but rather is more likened to one who serves, like Jesus
6) He risked his life to complete in what was lacking in Paul’s service to the church.

He requests that they receive him in all honor and in all joy, showing that maybe they would have been offended at him for returning so quickly from Paul. They sent him over to minister to Paul, and Paul is basically saying “yes! Thanks. But you need him more than me, so he’s coming back, and be happy and not mad, he didn’t abandon me, I’m sending him.”

Now, we can sum up these two early church leaders as people who participated in the Jesus story – people who were known for mirroring the patterns of how Jesus lived and served and ministered. This is what made them recommended to serve the church by Paul. As we mentioned earlier, all of this was up and against Roman cultural norms. Paul should have been aiming to secure his own honor – and not to give it away to others. If Paul was a good Roman leader, he should have been establishing his own leadership even at a distance and ensuring everyone kept honor for it – yet we see him encouraging others to fill in when he cannot. Paul is continually challenging their understanding of the world, of people, and of leadership – and continually pointing them back to Jesus.

Jesus Story as “True North”

The story of Jesus and his life, death and resurrection, and the idea of “although I have this status, I do not consider it as something to exploit, but rather to be willing to set it aside to serve others” become our compass for living. Jesus and his story becomes our “True North.” If we ever feel lost or like we are wandering, Jesus becomes the continual compass by which we will always be able to reorient ourselves.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, you and I, far from living inside of the Roman culture and worldview, nevertheless have our own. I am going to do a little bit of an argument from silence here, but I still think that it is worth doing.

I tried to imagine this passage if written purely within our current worldview in modern times. I think it would have sounded something like this:

“I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him who can draw a large crowd through his charismatic and humorous preaching, not like the other preachers stuck in small churches with little crowds. You know Timothy’s proven worth, through his many seminary degrees and book deals, and how like an intern he had served alongside of some of your favorite celebrity pastors and has been mentored by them. I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me.

I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus by brother and fellow author of books and fellow preacher who has toured with me and done many conferences with me around the country, for he has been longing for you all, to see your numbers grow and your church to change the world and become a major influence in your region, just like his church was that he started years ago. Indeed, in his continual book tours and conference preaching he got sick, but God had mercy on him. Therefore, I am eager to send him to you, for he nearly died touring his last book, but is now not as busy as before to be able to pastor you and serve you right now for a bit in between speaking tours.

OK, you know that is a bit tongue and cheek. I want to clarify: God does raise up some people to be these things, to be conference speakers and authors and more national leaders overseeing other leaders. He does train up men and women to reach large swaths of people, and there is nothing wrong with that. I’ve benefited from those people, as many of you have as well, and we need them.

What is wrong, however, is if we look at these things as if they are the measuring tape of SUCCESS, if we look at such resumes and say “well, that church is special because their pastor has that resume. That church has arrived. That church has made it, and we have a while before we could have such a leader. And I’ll never be such a successful person in the Christian world, doing such work for the Kingdom unless I can reach that status.”

Please notice how Paul described these two guys: they SERVED the churches. They lived like Jesus, even sharing in the harder more suffering based patterns of Jesus’ story. And in Paul’s mind, those are the things that qualified them to lead. Those are the things that gave them the qualification for Paul to say “these are the reasons why I’m sending them to you.”

When you or I look at ourselves and other leaders and names according to their accomplishments and all the accolades they have received in life and finding our sole value from them within it, what we are doing is placing value on them through the lens of modernity. We are seeing this as a “method” or formula of success that gives calculable results, and like a factory or assembly line, we try to output more of these leaders, thinking that if we can do so, then we are being successful. Or, we try to place ourselves next to them, and compare how we have lived, its methods and its calculable results through reflection, and we think “oh wow, what have I done with my life? What have I accomplished in my life? Compered to these men and women, apparently nothing!

We feel weak. We feel insignificant. We think Jesus has some extra loving for those men and women, but for us mere regular people, he’ll shuffle in quietly into heaven but the trumpets of announcement wont sound when we arrive like they did for Billy Graham or Mother Theresa. He’ll look at us and say, “oh its you? Get in here. Oh, there’s Mother Theresa! Welcome good and faithful servant.”

This is not the case; not even close! This is what makes this text so powerful today for you and I. We are given new standards by which to understand what kind of leaders the church needs – people who pursue living like Jesus. That’s the standard. But wait! That’s not for just leaders. That is for you and I as well.

You want to know why people are so burnt out today? Because we’ve bought into this lie that we must live to accomplish BIG things, and we spin ourselves into a frenzy trying to do so. Schools treat their students like products on an assembly line, training them to “reach the stars,” that the point of education is to get a skill based job and make money, and we as parents think that they must also receive expert sports and musical lessons beginning at five years old so they can be the next Cal Ripken or Paul McCartney. Our schedule maxes out as we’re run from this place and that place, entering into the machine of productivity and accomplishments, hoping that the result will be some achievement that will give us greater status or more money so we can find more meaning and purpose in our own.

Timothy and Epaproditus were well known by how they served Jesus, and served the Church. Not by their book deals, or the number of attendees in their churches. Not by the crowds they drew. This is crucial. We MUST pull ourselves from modernity, and this idea of a method that brings grand calculable results that are profits – or in church terms, high attendance, high giving and lots of baptisms. We must stop holding this as some formula to achieve at all costs. These sort of achievements and accolades are not your judge of worth, is not Immanuel’s judge of success.

You and I all are given a resume when we become Christians. Did you know this? We are given a declaration, a sheet of paper that says this: Jesus accomplished a righteous life on your behalf. He has perfectly pleased God on your behalf. He has accomplished a perfectly righteous life before God on your behalf. Because of what Christ has done for us, God loves you. You already have supreme value before him, because Jesus has supreme value before him. Jesus’ resume becomes your resume. His worth becomes your worth. And as a Christian, Jesus invtes your life to “be in his life” through his Spirit. He wants you to be in union with him spiritually through allegiance to him as your Lord and King.

Because of all he has accomplished for us, He wants us to have new eyes to see all people as those who are also in great need of him for their own eternal salvation. He wants you to see that the grandest and mightiest work to be done on this earth right now is mostly going to be found in the mundane tasks of sharing the Gospel alongside of hidden works of love and service. It is mostly found when we are on our hands and needs serving others, not climbing mountains or getting that book deal or Ph.D. Some of us will have that work, most of us will not. But you are not any less valuable. Our highest concern is the participation we have in Christ now through allegiance to him as King – why Timothy and Epaphroditus were recommended to this Church by Paul – and to allow God to bring us into whatever role it will on this earth.

For most of us, this work of being in Christ and participating in him will be mundane. You know who one of my favorite people are in the entire Bible? Rufus’ mother. You say what? Who is Rufus, and who is Rufus’ mommy, and why is she your favorite? I can almost guarantee that you’ve never been to a Bible study that focuses on Rufus’s mother, no books have been written on Rufus’ mother, and I’m sure you’ve never heard a sermon about Rufus’ mother. But I love the single sentence devoted to her, and can’t wait to meet her one day.

In Romans 16, Paul mentions Rufus, and his mother as someone to be greeted. He says that Rufus’ mother, unnamed but apparently known to the rest (oh yea, we know Rufus’ mom of course) – he says that she had been a mother to him as well. In other words, during Paul’s travels, Paul had a surrogate mother when he was away from his.

Anyone else ever had a surrogate mother during college, or during other parts of your life when you did not have access to your own mom? I’ll tell you what surrogate mothers are good at: caring for you. Making sure you have a full belly of food. Making sure you are properly clothed, have a bed open for you to rest on when needed. Surrogate moms make sure you are eating right, that you have good patterns of living and working. They actually nurture you and watch out for you as if you are their own son or daughter, giving you counsel on good decision making, they follow up with you, they give you a surrogate home that you feel welcome to, by extension they have given you family love when you are aware from your own, or when you don’t have your own. My mother in law has done this for me as I no longer physically live close to mine in Georgia.

I love that verse, because work like this is often the real work of Jesus’ Kingdom – the mundane kind. I know for a fact that many surrogate mothers line these pews right now, many of you have extended your own motherly love to adopted sons and daughters that have come through even this church, or through one of your own children and their friends who needs one. God saw fit that Rufus’ mother would be in Scripture, mentioned forever for her surrogate motherhood. The world needs surrogate mothers for sons and daughters who are wayward and need one, for sons and daughters who grew up without moms, or who are away from their moms and need the help and leadership that only a caring mother can give.

How awesome is that? Is that a worthy occupation? Oh, you better believe it is. Do you see how mundane something like that is? Do you see how “regular” that is? Do you see how such a life of service is Kingdom work if done in the name of Jesus? She enabled Paul to minister and she cared for him as he was out and about, doing his thing.

Friends, we must adjust our understanding of value in Jesus’ Kingdom, and the kind of work that we attached the words of “value” and “success” to. All of this is upside down. This is what we can draw from Paul’s recommendation of his friends Timothy and Epaphroditus, and I pray we can as a church understand these things as we enter into this next chapter at Immanuel Church.

As we close, let me ask a few questions:

1) I’ve heard from so many, including so many of you sitting in this room right now, telling me quietly, because of the sensitivity for many who have indeed suffered greatly during this pandemic, that actually for you and your family this pandemic has had the opposite effect – that your family has flourished during this time because you have more time together as a family. Busy schedules came to a halt. Family meals have become more regular. Time slowed down for walks, for more hiking trips, or family movie nights, for quality time together for family worship.

What does this mean about your life before? Why were you so busy before? Could it be that you were spinning your wheels in the cogs of our machine like world, trying to achieve grand things or get your children to be experts in sports or this or that through the abundance of practices and game at the expense of family flourishing? Are you more concerned about your twelve year old developing his or her college resume now with good grades, rather than ensuring your schedule allows for family meals more often than not?

2) Often times our greatest insecurities lie at our lack of achievements in America, or our greatest pride come from what we have accomplished. Could it be that we must look to Christ first, recognizing that if there is any achievement that matters before God, any achievement at all that truly brings about meaning and purpose, that it has already been accomplished on our behalf? And that if you or I want to experience now the fullness of joy, that we called in allegiance to participate in the patters of which Jesus lived while he was here? Who cares what your neighbors think! Or family, or friends. And what if you pursued such a life and didn’t tell anyone, but quietly loved and served others in the name of Jesus? Here is where you will find flourishing, and happiness and satisfaction.

3) As we aim to restart and recultivate life here at Immanuel, I want to learn from Paul’s words here, look at Timothy and Epaphroditus, and raise our goals to what we see here. Numbers may come, tithing may increase – but like Timothy, who was in Christ and mirrored the attitude and work of Christ – are we more concerned about one another’s interests rather than our own? Like Christ have we become a “slave” to the Gospel? What about Epaphroditus? Are we risking our necks for one another, if necessary, like Jesus who gave himself up for us? We are being called to step into this, and to make disciples of one another who grow into these patterns of living. In the eyes of God, this is how our church’s lampstand shines brightly – whether it be by 50 people or 500, whether our budget is massive or skeleton – may Christ help us pursue these things today. Let’s pray:

Romans 16:25–27

Doxology

[25] Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages [26] but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—[27] to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. (ESV)