Calvary Bible Church of Kalamazoo, Michigan

Have you ever met anyone famous?  Did they measure up to your impression of them?

I don’t know what it is about us as people, but we love to make people into heroes.  We idolize them, setting them on a pedestal apart from mere mortals. We love hearing details about their lives. And we act as if we know them personally, but the truth is that they seldom measure up to the idyllic picture we have in our minds. Reality can be disillusioning.

That disillusionment happens to children as they grow up. At some point, they begin to see that mom and dad aren’t perfect.  Our three and a half year old daughter just reached this point. We try to train our children to have good table manners—to not chew with their mouth open and to keep their elbows off the table.  Our daughter loves pointing out those times when I forget my manners.

Sometimes the same thing happens in church. People can develop an idyllic image of their pastor. But eventually they come to realize that he has flaws too.

Because we tend to exalt people like this, the most powerful examples for us aren’t our heroes, but our friends, normal everyday people.  We place our heroes in a different category.  In our minds, we couldn’t possibly follow their example.

Think about it. If you were going to learn golf, would you want to learn from a world renowned professional whose life oozes with a seemingly innate talent and ability – someone like Tiger Woods? That sounds intimidating. Or would you rather learn from a friend who knows the game, but has had to work through the same flaws that you have. When someone like that accomplishes something great, we view it as something achievable – something that I could actually do myself.

For those of us who love the Bible, it’s hard not to look at the Apostle Paul as one of those heroes. He seems like the Super Christian. We’ll see next week that he had the perfect background in religious training. In his conversion, Jesus Christ actually appeared to him. His life was marked by the utmost in spiritual devotion and commitment. God even allowed him to see a vision of heaven.

As much as we talk about Paul as an example, I think we all suspect that we could never attain to his level of spirituality. That’s not true.  Paul certainly had flaws, but it’s hard for us to keep from looking at him as one of the super heroes of the Christian faith.

Today our study of Paul’s letter to the Philippians brings us to a passage of Scripture that speaks of two different individuals who are background characters in the life of Paul: Timothy and Epaphroditus. They aren’t stellar heroes like Paul. You may not even know them, but that makes their example all the more compelling.

Timothy and Epaphroditus display many of the characteristics we have discussed thus far in Finding Joy: We have talked about how finding joy starts with being saved by God’s grace. We’ve seen how joy is experienced as we love people and live out God’s mission to lead others to become followers of Jesus Christ. We’ve seen how joy flows from having hope beyond death and a significant role to play in life today. We’ve seen that we experience joy as we let go of our attempts to control life and as we relate to God as obedient children. As we get to know Timothy and Epaphroditus, we find that they are normal people like us who genuinely lived out these characteristics that we’ve discussed.

Timothy

Paul speaks about Timothy in Philippians 2:19-24: “But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, so that I also may be encouraged when I learn of your condition. For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare. For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus. But you know of his proven worth, that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel like a child serving his father. Therefore I hope to send him immediately, as soon as I see how things go with me; and I trust in the Lord that I myself also will be coming shortly.”

Obviously, Timothy was a very significant co-worker with Paul.  Who was he?

Timothy was from a town called Lystra located in what we now know as Turkey. The town grew up around a Roman military garrison, so there were a mixture of Romans and locals. We don’t know if Timothy was born there, but we do know that his mother, Eunice, was Jewish and that his father was not. Jews weren’t supposed to marry Gentiles. It seems that Eunice must have fallen in love and rejected her heritage for a time.

When Timothy was born she didn’t follow the Jewish custom of having him circumcised eight days after his birth. Maybe her husband objected to it. We don’t know for sure, but I think it’s safe to assume that this intercultural marriage left Timothy in an awkward position. He wasn’t fully Jewish to integrate into whatever Jewish community may have been in his town. Neither was he fully Roman, so he may have been looked down upon for his Jewish descent.  He very well may have been a misfit.

At some point, though, Eunice, probably at the urging of her devout mother, Lois, began to take a renewed interest in her Jewish faith. She relearned the great stories from what we call the Old Testament. She cultivated a knowledge of who God is and what he requires of his people, and she passed on this knowledge to Timothy during his childhood. Timothy knew the Old Testament well.

Timothy probably began to learn a trade as he grew, although we don’t know what it would have been. In his teens, something dramatic happened in Lystra. There was a man whose feet and legs had been deformed from birth and every day he sat out in the town square waiting for people’s handouts. Then one day two men came to town, one called Barnabas and the other named Paul. They spoke about a man named Jesus who was crucified but rose from the dead. They claimed that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah and that through his death all people, Jews and Gentiles, could be forgiven of their sins and reconciled with God to have hope and eternal life. To prove that what they said about Jesus was true, Paul looked over at this poor handicapped man and told him to stand up. And he did. His legs were healed.

The people in Lystra were amazed. The locals thought that Barnabas and Paul were incarnations of the gods Zeus and Hermes. They even tried to offer up a sacrifice to them. It took a lot of effort and some quick talking on the part of Barnabas and Paul to restrain them. But a few days later some Jews came from some neighboring towns and stirred up the town against these men. Paul went from being a god in their eyes, to being a criminal. The Jews sought to have Paul killed by stoning. He was so injured that everyone thought he was dead, and that may well have been true. The people dragged his body out of town and left it for the animals. But God did something miraculous again. Paul revived and came back into the city healed.

With this incredible evidence and the great news that Jesus could save both Jews and Gentiles, Timothy found something to devote his life to. He became a disciple of Jesus. He accepted the saving grace of God and found a joy that had been missing throughout his life. All of the teaching on the Old Testament from his mother and grandmother prepared him well. All the pieces fell together. Timothy was saved, born again as a child of God.

Timothy began to live out what we talked about last week.  He began to work out his salvation, growing in obedience to his Heavenly Father. Even though he was a young man, he was well respected among the new group of Christians there in Lystra and also in the neighboring town, Iconium. His faith was genuine and sincere.

A few years later, Paul returned to Lystra. When he heard about all that God had done in the life of Timothy, he was impressed. He invited Timothy to join him in his travels. The leaders of the church in Lystra laid their hands upon Timothy as a symbol of their support as they sent him out to accompany Paul on his missionary journey. But one crucial detail had to be taken care of. Because of Timothy’s Jewish heritage, Paul felt that it was only right for Timothy to be circumcised.

Timothy traveled with Paul through Asia Minor. He was with Paul when Paul received a dream calling him to come to Macedonia. He went with him through that region. Paul was always in the spotlight and became the target for any hostility. So when things got too hot and Paul had to leave town, Timothy was able to remain behind to keep encouraging the new believers wherever they went.

Even when Paul was taken prisoner in Palestine, Timothy continued to carry on Paul’s ministry. When Paul was taken to Rome, Timothy went too. He was always by Paul’s side.  He had fully embraced Paul’s evangelistic mission as his own. He saw first hand Paul’s joy even in the midst of trials and suffering.

We get the sense from some of Paul’s correspondence with Timothy that Timothy may have struggled at times with fear and timidity. He was a young man with a heavy load of responsibility. Paul encouraged him, “Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe” (1 Tim 4:12).  On another occasion, he said to Timothy, “God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline” (2 Tim 1:7).

Timothy wasn’t a superman. He had weaknesses. The stress of his responsibilities seems to have taken its toll on him. In 1 Timothy 5:23 Paul says to him “No longer drink water exclusively, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.” Maybe Timothy had an ulcer. He wasn’t a man of steel.

Nevertheless, Timothy’s commitment to Jesus Christ was a huge encouragement to his mentor, the Apostle Paul. Look in Philippians at how Paul speaks about Timothy.
V. 20 – Paul calls him the one person who had a “kindred spirit”.
V. 21 – Paul implies that Timothy truly serves with Christ’s concern.
V. 22 – Paul says that Timothy was committed to spreading the gospel, just as he was.

You get the impression as you read Paul’s words that he and Timothy found great joy in their relationship with one another. Their commitment to Jesus Christ, bound their hearts so closely together that they related to one another as father and son.

As an awkward misfit, timid and plagued with ulcers, Timothy actually lived out the Christian life we’ve talked about. He not only knew God’s joy in his own life, he played a huge part in contributing to Paul’s joy. If Timothy can do it, so can we.

Epaphroditus

We move on now to someone even more obscure than Timothy, a man named Epaphroditus who’s only mentioned in Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Paul speaks of him in Philippians 2:25-30 “But I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger and minister to my need; because he was longing for you all and was distressed because you had heard that he was sick. For indeed he was sick to the point of death, but God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, so that I would not have sorrow upon sorrow. Therefore I have sent him all the more eagerly so that when you see him again you may rejoice and I may be less concerned about you. Receive him then in the Lord with all joy, and hold men like him in high regard; because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was deficient in your service to me. “

Who was Epaphroditus?

His name may be a good place to start. The name Epaphroditus was probably taken from the name of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the goddess of fertility, love, and sex. The Romans called her Venus. Mythology is full of tales her seductive infidelity. Those who worshipped Aphrodite did so by engaging in sexual intercourse with a temple prostitute. The parents of Epaphroditus may have been worshippers of Aphrodite. He may have even been the child of a temple prostitute. There’s no way to be certain about the family history of Epaphroditus, but I think we can say for sure that his family didn’t worship the true God.

Some of us can identify with that. There are things in our background that we wouldn’t want any one to know. I find it interesting that Epaphroditus didn’t change his name. Most of us would probably want to cover up that kind of heritage. Perhaps he kept the name because it was a powerful symbol of the grace of God—that God could save someone even from a pagan background.

We don’t know for sure when Epaphroditus became a Christian. We know that Paul came to his home town, Philippi, around 12 to 13 years before this letter was written. While Paul was there, a woman named Lydia became a Christian. Though she wasn’t Jewish by birth, Lydia had converted to Judaism worshipping every Sabbath day with a relatively small group of people down by a river since they didn’t have a synagogue.  That was where Paul found them and shared the message that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah. Lydia believed that day, and it seems that the first church meetings in Philippi may have taken place in her home.

One of the next believers in Philippi was the town jailer.  Paul and Silas had been beaten and imprisoned for stirring up a commotion in the town. At midnight, the town was struck by a miraculous earthquake that jarred open all of the prison doors. The jailer was ready to commit suicide, thinking that all the prisoners had escaped, but Paul stopped him.  None of the prisoners had left. This dramatic show of God’s power in the earthquake and Paul’s integrity prompted the jailer to ask how he could be saved. Acts 16:31-33 says “They said, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’ And they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house. And he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and all his household.’

These were the kinds of people who were part of the church in Philippi of which Epaphroditus was a member. In fact, Epaphroditus was probably one of the key leaders in the church. The church had sent Epaphroditus out on a mission to carry financial support and encouragement to the Apostle Paul while he was in prison in Rome. That’s why Paul calls him, “your messenger and minister to my need.” This journey was roughly 700 miles by land and sea.

Epaphroditus completed the mission, but somewhere along the way he became sick or injured. His affliction was so bad that Paul feared that Epaphroditus was going to die. Somehow word of his sickness had gotten back to the Philippians and they were worried about him.

So as Paul writes, he is getting ready to send Epaphroditus back to Philippi. Listen again to what Paul says about Epaphroditus and the Philippians.  It gives us more insight into finding joy. “Therefore I have sent him all the more eagerly so that when you see him again you may rejoice and I may be less concerned about you. Receive him then in the Lord with all joy, and hold men like him in high regard; because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was deficient in your service to me” (Phil 2:28-30).

What’s the connection with joy here? Why would the Philippian Christians rejoice when they see Epaphroditus?

First, they would have rejoiced that he was simply back with them. He was a part of their fellowship, their brother in Christ. They had missed him while he was away on this long journey.  They would receive him back with joy.

Second, they would have rejoiced that he had completed the mission. They had all sacrificed to gather money to send to Paul. In seeing Epaphroditus, they could rejoice in knowing that the mission had been successful.  Not only had their financial gift been delivered, but Epaphroditus had encouraged Paul to persever in the midst of trial.

Third, they would have rejoiced to have his ministry and influence in their lives. Paul indicated that he would be less concerned about the Philippians knowing that Epaphroditus was with them. He was an influential leader in the church. He provided spiritual stability to that group.  I’m sure people looked to him for advice.  His return gave them more security.

Do you see a pattern here similar to what we saw with Timothy?  As Timothy’s devotion to Jesus Christ became a source of joy to the Apostle Paul, so Epaphroditus’ devotion became a source of joy to the Philippians. Even though Epaphroditus came from an ungodly heritage, he was being used by God in the lives of people. He was loving people.  He was living out God’s mission. He was letting go of his agenda and his own personal health and security in order to go on this crazy journey to minister to Paul.

This kind of lifestyle leads to joy.

Conclusion

I love to hear stories of normal people accomplishing great things. That’s what we’ve heard today in the lives of Timothy and Epaphroditus. We didn’t really add any new lessons to our list in regard to finding joy, but we see that this kind of lifestyle is not for the spiritually elite.  Every one of us can be used of God to accomplish great things, not because of our abilities and skills and wisdom, but through God’s power and strength.