Good morning.
My name is Matthew Capone, and I'm the assistant pastor here at Cheyenne Mountain Presbyterian Church.
And it's my joy to bring God's word to you today.
A special welcome if you are new or visiting with us.
We're glad you're here.
And we're glad you're here not because you are filling a seat,
but because we are following Jesus together as one community.
And we're convinced that because of Jesus,
there is no one so good that they don't need God's grace,
and no one so bad that they can't have it.
And so God has something to say to all of us,
and all of us need to hear what God has to say to us in his word.
Now, if you have been with us for a while,
you know that we're going through the book of Philippians.
And as I've said before, Philippians is a letter.
And it's a letter written to a church.
It's a church very similar to our church in a city very similar to our city.
And I've said that, but I haven't talked a lot about the mechanics of the fact that it's a letter.
So we've said that it's a letter over and over.
I've talked about what's going on in Philippi,
but we haven't talked about the letter part of the letter until now.
And so how do you think a letter would make it from one place in the ancient world to another?
Did Paul take out an envelope and stick this letter into it
and then stick a Roman stamp on it and send it to Philippi?
He did not.
As advanced as the Roman Empire was, they did not have that kind of postal service and system.
So they had great roads, but people had to carry letters from one place to another.
And so we're going to learn about some letter logistics today.
We're going to hear about a man named Timothy and a man named Epaphroditus.
And the reason we're going to hear about them is because Paul needs to tell the Philippian church
some very practical things.
Epaphroditus was from the Philippian church, and he traveled from Philippi to Rome.
And he did that for two reasons.
One, to give Paul a financial gift, which we'll talk about in a few weeks when we get to chapter 4.
Paul needed money. He was in prison.
The Philippian church supported him.
That was part of their partnership with him in the gospel.
But Epaphroditus was also sent to help Paul.
Paul is in house arrest in Rome.
And so they think, here's this great founder of our church.
Not only does he need financial resources,
he also needs someone who can come alongside him and assist him.
And so Paul has two main points that he wants to communicate to the Philippians here.
One, my friend Timothy is going to stay with me.
And point two, Epaphroditus, who you sent to help me,
I'm going to send him back to you instead of letting him help me.
So that's the point of this passage.
So we can end the sermon, we can go home.
Right?
No.
The question is, what do we learn from logistics like this?
What do we learn from these simple details,
these practical details about Paul,
and the fact that he has a friend coming to him,
the fact that someone needs to carry a letter,
the fact that there's all these logistics involved.
So many of you know that I go hiking a lot.
It's one of my favorite things to do here in Colorado Springs.
That'll be one of my first answers if you ask me what I do
when I'm not preaching and working here at Cheyenne Mountain.
And one of my favorite places to go is Cheyenne Mountain State Park,
which is just 10 minutes south of here.
Yeah?
And if you go on, if you're like me and you've done a lot of exploring,
you're familiar with the, I don't do directions super well.
If you're like me, if you've explored,
you're familiar with all the different trails.
And if you go on the Sundance Trail,
you know there's lots of different signs that you'll see as you go along,
nature signs telling you about different animals.
And my favorite sign is on the Sundance Trail,
and it talks about what animals do in the winter.
So there's different strategies animals have.
The bears hibernate.
Apparently the beetles hibernate too.
I didn't know that.
But if you go to the park, you'll see a lot of deer.
And there are mule deer apparently.
And the mule deer, they don't hibernate.
They migrate.
And so there's a little sidebar that talks about the mule deer
and what they do, and it says this.
Young deer learn the route to their winter range
by following their elders.
Then generally use the same route every year.
And so the point is this.
Remember last week we asked, how do we grow as Christians?
And we saw that it's God that works and wills in us.
And one of the ways that we grow as Christians
is by following other people who know the route.
One of the ways we grow as Christians
is by following other people who know the route.
And so explicitly, Paul is telling us about Epaphroditus and Timothy
because of the logistics of his letter.
But implicitly, they serve here as his sermon illustrations.
So Paul's been preaching this sermon through a letter
to the church in Philippi.
He hasn't used really any illustrations yet,
except we heard about the lights and the stars.
That was sort of an illustration.
But he doesn't need to tell us about these people
at this point in the letter, right?
He could have told us at the beginning.
He could have told us at the end.
But he presents Timothy and Epaphroditus to us
right after he's told us about the need for humility,
the need to grow as Christians.
And so we first saw Christ as our example
at the beginning of chapter 2.
And now Timothy and Epaphroditus
are going to serve as examples as well.
And so our question is this.
As we are following people who know the route,
what type of people should we follow?
Who should we look to as leaders in our congregation?
Who should we look to as people
that we want to learn from and emulate?
We're going to see from Timothy and Epaphroditus here
exactly the sort of people that we're going to go after.
Who do we want to learn the route from
so that we can follow it year by year?
We're in the book of Philippians.
We're in chapter 2 and we're going to start on verse 19.
It's going to be in your worship guide as well,
pretty close to the back.
And remember that this is God's word.
And God tells us that his word is more precious than gold,
even the finest gold.
And it is sweeter than honey,
even honey that comes straight from the honeycomb.
And so we're going to read it now.
Please read with me starting at verse 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.
Verse 23.
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.
Verse 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.
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.
Verse 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.
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.
Please pray with me
as we come to this portion of God's word.
Amen.
Dear Father in heaven,
we thank you for a sunny day,
for the sun that reminds us
that you are the one who provides us
with everything we need.
You're the one who sustains us.
We thank you for your word,
which we need to know you and your ways.
And we thank you that you've given it to us.
We ask that you would help us to understand,
that you would send your Holy Spirit
to do what we would otherwise be unable to do,
and that's to hear from you.
We ask all these things in the name of your Son.
Amen.
So who should we follow?
What type of people do we want to be looking to
and looking after?
Paul cuts to the chase pretty quickly.
He says he's going to send Timothy to them soon,
but not right away in verse 21.
And then we find out why right away in verse 20,
excuse me, verse 19,
and then verses 20 and 21.
He says,
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.
Does this sound familiar at all?
Remember we talked at the beginning of chapter 2
about Paul's command to seek the interests of others
above your own interests.
And here he says,
Timothy does just that.
He's genuinely concerned for your welfare.
He doesn't seek his own interests.
He seeks those of Jesus Christ.
He is, as we've talked about before,
Timothy is a question person,
not an answer person.
Timothy's the kind of person who's shown
that he cares about others more than himself.
He's willing to put the needs of the community first.
And he's done this for such a long time
that he has proven worth in verse 22.
Now what do we make of the fact that he says,
I have no one like him?
Is Timothy the only person
that Paul knows who models this character?
Is the only person in the church
who's able to seek other people's interests above his own?
Well, we find out in the very next section
that we also have Epaphroditus.
So Paul is clearly not saying literally
there's no one like Timothy.
He's using hyperbole here,
but he's making the point
that this is something that's rare.
It's rare to find someone
who's interested in others rather than themselves.
I had a professor who loved to teach about conflict,
and he talked a lot about the conflict
that would happen between people
who have very different personalities.
And he would go through
all different types of personality tests
and explain how this person
with this kind of way of viewing the world
would come into conflict with another person.
But then he would always provide this one caveat.
He would say,
but character trumps personality every time.
And then he would pause again.
And he would say,
but unfortunately,
character is in short supply.
And so what Paul is saying is this
when he talks about Timothy.
Character is in short supply.
It is rare.
It is difficult.
It's hard to find someone like Timothy
who's really willing to put the interests of others
above his own interests.
And so that's why he's the example here.
That's why Paul is talking about his character
and his life,
the fact that he's proven over time
that he is willing to sacrifice and to serve.
When I was in seminary,
so I have two professor stories for you today.
I already gave you the first one.
I had a professor who told several times
about his time in seminary.
He had a fellow classmate of his
and this classmate was incredibly dedicated.
And so when it came time for graduation,
you know, they give out the award.
Someone gets the theology award.
Someone else gets the church history award.
Someone else gets the Bible award.
And this student ran all of them.
He ran the whole track.
He won every single award.
So there was not a single award left for anyone else.
So of course people envied him.
They were impressed by him.
They admired him.
After graduation, the next week,
this student's wife filed for divorce.
And I'm not excusing his wife.
I'm not saying that was the right thing for her to do.
But the point of the story was this.
Knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient.
This student knew a lot of facts about Jesus.
He had a lot of things in his head.
He dedicated himself to memorizing and understanding.
But he had revealed in the way he'd behaved as a husband and a father
that he did not understand anything about Jesus.
He had the knowledge.
Factually.
But he had no real knowledge.
And it's not that knowledge isn't important.
It's necessary, but it's not sufficient.
Christian maturity does not come from winning awards in Bible knowledge.
It comes from selflessness.
When he says here,
I have no one like Timothy,
we could translate that as like-minded.
It's similar language to what we saw at the beginning of chapter 2.
I have no one who has the same mind as Timothy does.
And remember we talked about before
that this same mind is not that they agree about everything theologically.
We would assume that Paul has trained Timothy,
that Timothy agrees with Paul.
But it's that they have the same mind relationally.
They have the same mind towards other people and towards self-sacrifice.
It's possible to know the gospel factually,
but not know the gospel.
And we've already seen that in chapter 1.
Remember Paul told us that there were people
who were preaching the gospel accurately,
but they were doing it out of envy and ambition and selfishness.
Remember he said in verses 12 through 14,
he said they're preaching the gospel out of ambition and conceit,
but I praise God because the gospel is being preached.
And so we already have this category
that it's possible to know the facts about God,
but not to know God.
It's preaching the gospel accurately
versus living the gospel accurately.
And Timothy here has demonstrated through his selflessness
over time
that he knows the gospel.
He knows about Jesus' sacrifice
because he sacrifices.
That's the proof that he understands
the reality of Jesus and his death
and his resurrection.
There was recently an interview
with a man who's become famous just recently.
His name's Jordan Peterson.
I am not advocating his teaching by quoting him, by the way.
He has many things to say.
He's right about many things.
He's very wrong about many things.
And, spoiler,
most of what he says about the Bible
is very, very wrong.
Okay?
So I'm not endorsing him in any way,
but he had this fascinating quote recently.
A few months ago,
he was on Firing Line on PBS,
and the interviewer, Margaret Hoover, asked him this.
She said,
I want to ask you about your personal faith.
Christians who watch you
have listened closely over the last two years
about whether you self-identify as a Christian or not.
And just to provide some background,
Jordan Peterson has a lot of things to say about the Bible.
Most of them are wrong,
but since he has so much to say,
people are wondering about whether he's a Christian.
And here was his answer.
People think that what they believe
is what they say they believe.
I don't believe that.
I believe that what people believe
is what they act out.
And so I said,
I act as if God exists.
That's a sufficient statement
as far as I'm concerned.
You know, what's the old saying?
By their fruits, you shall know them.
Same idea, right?
It's a matter of action
and a matter of commitment.
And so as wrong as he is on many things,
Jordan Peterson has caught on to something
that what we believe is not so much
what we say we believe
is what we act we believe.
And this, again,
is not to pit knowledge against belief.
Jordan Peterson is not right
in saying that it's okay
not to tell people where he stands, right?
But he has hit something that's true,
which is that it's our actions
that reveal our beliefs
more than anything else.
And so that is what Paul is telling us
about Timothy.
Timothy's actions have revealed his beliefs.
And that's why we're told
he has proven worth.
And so if you remember last week,
we asked,
how is it that we're able to obey?
What does God do?
And we saw that he gives us
a new will,
a new ability to obey.
But one of the ways he does that,
some of that is through his spirit's work
directly in our hearts,
but a lot of it is from the people around us.
Paul's presenting Timothy and Epaphroditus here
as people that the Philippian church
can follow after.
And so part of God's work in our lives,
part of his working and willing
that we saw in verses 12 and 13
is the people who are around us right now.
God has provided people who know the route
that we can follow.
We can learn from those with proven worth.
And so if you want to learn
how to be an encourager,
then you should probably spend some time
with Paula Johnson.
If you want to learn
how to have empathy and compassion
for other people,
you're probably going to need
to spend more time with Mark Fairbrother
and Harvey Carlson.
If you want to learn
what it's like to persevere
and have faith,
then you should probably go
to Mary Vincent's Bible study.
Part of God's grace for us,
his ways that he enables us
and empowers us
is the people around us.
He gives us his spirit,
but he also gives us his church.
He gives us Timothys and Epaphrodituses
that we can learn the route.
We can learn the way
to walk as Christians.
And this is also why we need the church.
So sometimes you'll hear people
say something like this,
you know,
I have a Bible study
that I really enjoy
and I really like,
and you know,
that's really my church.
That's where I get my fellowship.
Those people are the,
I don't need to be somewhere
on a Sunday morning.
I'm in a college group,
you know,
with these other college students
and we worship together
on Tuesday nights,
and that's where my spiritual needs
get met.
But you know,
it's surprising how much
those groups look exactly like you.
People who are similar to you
probably believe the same things as you.
Where are you going to find
Timothy and Epaphroditus?
Where are you going to find
people who are different from you?
People who are different
in terms of their age
and their life stage.
People who are different
in terms of their knowledge
and experience.
It's going to be here in the church.
One of the things I love
about our church here
at Cheyenne Mountain
is the diversity we have
of ages and generations
and experiences.
When you come to a church,
you don't get to self-select
the people who are going to be
the Christians who walk alongside you.
But you get to come
where there's a group of people,
many of whom have walked the route
for a long, long time.
They have what Paul says here,
they have proven worth.
Verse 22.
You know Timothy's proven worth.
He has shown again and again
that he's the type of person
you should follow.
He's the type of person
you can learn from and model.
And so who should we follow?
What should we be looking for?
Who should we model ourselves after?
Who are the leaders of our church?
We should be looking for Timothys.
We should be looking for people
who give up,
who are willing to put others
above themselves
that are willing to lose.
If you know the qualifications
for church officers
that Paul gives in 1 Timothy 3,
there is basically one qualification
that has to do with any gift.
And that's the ability to teach
and it's the knowledge of right doctrine.
Every single qualification
he gives besides that
is a qualification of character.
That it is character,
not gifts,
that ultimately determine God's leaders.
And so if we're wondering
who we should follow,
it's the people of proven worth.
Those whose character
has revealed what they believe.
They have proved themselves
through their selflessness
rather than their rightness.
They proved themselves
through their selflessness
rather than their rightness.
Timothy is not the only person here.
We have Epaphroditus in verse 25.
And Epaphroditus gets a lot of titles.
Did you notice that?
Did you notice all the names
Paul gives him?
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.
In other words,
Epaphroditus is a team player
kind of guy.
Epaphroditus is a fellow worker,
a fellow soldier.
He's someone who works
alongside other people.
Epaphroditus is not a lone ranger
going out on God's mission
by himself.
He's someone who's worked
side by side with people in Philippi
and he's worked side by side with Paul.
And so Paul commends him for that.
And then we see Epaphroditus' love
and concern for the rest of the church.
He's been longing for the church
in Philippi, verse 26.
Background information,
Epaphroditus got very, very sick
as we see her on his way
to deliver the letter to Paul.
So part of the reason
he's sending Epaphroditus back
is everyone in Philippi
heard that Epaphroditus almost died
and so they've been praying for him.
They're concerned about him.
They want to see him.
And so Paul's modeling
selflessness as well.
This man Epaphroditus
who was sent to help him,
he out of his concern
for the church in Philippi
sends him back
so that they can be reunited
with Epaphroditus
and know that he's well.
And we find out
that when he comes back,
verse 28,
they're going to rejoice
at seeing him.
And so they should receive him
in the Lord
with all joy and honor him
because he risked his life
to complete what was lacking
in your service to me.
And so Epaphroditus here
is also modeling
the sacrifice that we saw
in Philippians 2,
verses 5 through 11
about Christ.
There's an echo of language here
that Christ gave up his life
for the sake of others.
And here Epaphroditus
almost lost his life.
That Epaphroditus too
is a fellowship kind of guy.
I've told you before
that the book of Philippians
is about partnership
in the gospel.
Epaphroditus is a partnership
kind of guy.
So Timothy is a sacrifice
kind of guy.
He's a selflessness
kind of guy.
Epaphroditus is a partnership
kind of guy.
He sacrifices as well,
but he is eager to work with
and alongside other people.
And so who do we follow?
What are we looking for?
We're looking for Timothys
who are selfless,
but we're also looking
for Epaphroditus'
who are workers,
who are partners,
people who work alongside
and with other people.
Those are the individuals
that God has given us
in our church
to learn from
and grow.
And so on the one hand,
we see Epaphroditus and Timothy
as our models here, right?
They're selfless
and partner kind of people.
But it might feel like here
that this is similar
to what we talked about
last week.
Remember we talked about
the lifting the car feeling,
the feeling that Christian obedience
is lifting a car
with no jack.
it's this great impossible task
that God's calling us
to things we're unable to do.
And we've talked about
the fact that
the traditionally religious person
says be good like I'm good.
It could feel a little bit
like Paul is saying,
okay, Timothy and Epaphroditus,
be good like they're good.
And it's the non-religious person
that says there is no good, right,
or find your own good.
But it's the gospel,
it's the gospel person
that's able to say,
no one is good,
only Jesus is good.
And so what Paul is saying here
is not that we pull ourselves up
by the bootstraps
to be like Timothy and Epaphroditus.
But Timothy and Epaphroditus
are examples of God
at work in people's lives.
First of all,
willing and working.
So if we want to know,
you know, there's lots of answers
we could give to the question
of how do we know God's real?
There are philosophical answers
we could give about
why does God exist?
And many of those are good and helpful.
But we also have
a relational community answer
that we can know God is real
and he's at work
when we see the lives around us
of people who have walked with God
for a long time.
And they can tell us,
hey, I used to be like this,
but now I've changed.
And the reason I've changed
is because God is at work.
And so what we see in Timothy
and Epaphroditus
are not these models
that we simply pull ourselves up
to meet.
But we see examples,
encouragements
that God really is at work.
He really does change people's lives.
He's done it for Timothy
and Epaphroditus.
And secondly,
he doesn't ask us
to walk the walk
of obedience alone
by ourselves.
He never asks us
to pull ourselves up
by our bootstraps.
But he gives us
Timothys and Epaphrodituses
to walk with us.
And so God's grace
comes to us
not just as he gives us
his spirit
to change our desires
and our abilities,
but his grace
comes to us
as he gives us
each other
as examples,
as models,
as encouragers
to help
along the way.
I can't imagine
that we would
do anything
but gain
from Timothy
if you were here
right now.
Here's a man
who's willing
to give himself up
anything he can do
for other people.
Timothy wouldn't be
someone to come alongside
and say,
be good like I'm good.
Timothy would be someone
who would be giving himself
to others saying,
no one is good
but Jesus is good
and I'm going to come
with you and walk with you.
And so that's what we do
as a church here.
That is how God works
in our lives.
And so that is why
we're not saying
be good like Timothy
and Epaphroditus
are good.
But Timothy
and Epaphroditus
show us
that Jesus is good.
They show us
the reality
that he has
in people's lives
that they have seen
what we saw
in verses 6 and 11
that Jesus gave up
his life
and that has changed
them as well.
In 2009
the naturalist
Tristan Gouley
went on a journey
in the Libyan Sahara
and he had two
nomads with him
who were guides
and he's kind
of a tracker
and so he asked
them,
he had two fears.
One,
he was going
to lose them
in the desert
in the Sahara
and his other fear
was that he would
run into danger.
And so at one point
he talked to
the older of the guide,
the guide's name
was Amgar
and he asked him
how am I not
going to lose you?
How am I going
to know
if there's danger?
So the guide
lifted up his foot
and showed him
the tracks
on the bottom
of his shoe
and then he pointed
to the tracks
in the sand
and he said
now
you will never
lose me.
And then later
along as they were
going he pointed
to some wavy lines
in the sand
which were the tracks
the pattern
left by a snake
that had been going
through the desert.
And he said
do you see those?
Now
you will have
no bad surprises.
And so Amgar
he never lost
Tristan never lost
Amgar in the desert
he just kept following
in his footsteps
knowing the distinctive
mark of his shoes
in the sand.
Brothers and sisters
as we're looking
and seeking
to live the Christian
life together
we look to the
distinctive mark
of those around us
who are selfless
and partners.
God gives us
to them
gives us to each other
to help us along the way
and show us
the route
so that we
will never get lost.
And so that as we
stick close
to those tracks
and they stick
close to God
we can make it
through
together.
and so those
are the tracks
that we follow.
Those are the people
we model ourselves
after.
Those are the people
we look to
as our leaders.
That's the grace
that God has given us
as we walk together
as one community
following Jesus
together.
Please pray with me.
Dear Father in Heaven
we thank you
for the grace
that you give to us.
First of all
the grace in your son
who came
and died for us
who gave up his life
but secondly
in the grace
of each other
that you've given to us
you've given us
the gift of the church.
You've given us
saints who have
proven their worth
who have walked
for a long time
and shown
that they truly
know you.
And so we ask
that you would give us
the desire
and the ability
to follow them
more and more.
We ask that you'd
build us and grow us
together
here as one community.
We ask all these things
in the name of your son.
Amen.
Please stand
for our closing hymn.