a sacrifice, servant and soldier

 Philippians 2: 17-30

We find ourselves at this passage that we are looking at today, I would just remind you,  because we are studying through the book of Philippians as is our habit on Sunday mornings and this happens to be the passage upon which we next come.  I certainly would never ordinarily pick this passage to preach on otherwise.  In fact, I considered briefly that I might just skip over it and bet that no one noticed, but I dismissed that thought once I started to study it, because I believe there is much for us to learn here.

We come upon this passage after being introduced by Paul to the principle in ch.2:5  that we are to have the same attitude, the same mind as Jesus Christ.  That although Jesus is our sacrifice and our substitute, and only He could atone for the sins of the world, yet at the same time, Christ is also supposed to be our example, our pattern for how we are to live.  As Christ humbled himself to be obedient to the Father’s will – so are we.  As Christ laid down His life on the cross – so should we.  As Christ served the church – so should we.  If we are to one day be glorified with Him and reign with Him, then the Word tells us that we must also suffer with Him. Rom 8:17 “and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”

But there is a possibility that because Jesus was the Son of God, we might think ourselves excused of really trying too awful hard to follow Christ’s example.  After all, we might say, “I’m just human.”  Christ was Divine. Since I don’t know what He knew, and I can’t do what He did,  we might feel justified to let Christ do all the sacrificing and serving, and we’ll just settle down comfortably on the couch and let Him do all the work while we watch TV.

But Paul isn’t about to let that happen.  So in addition to Christ He gives us three earthly examples of humility and servitude and sacrifice.  Examples of men that lived like Jesus lived.  Of men that were purely human. (1)Paul gives us himself as an example of sacrifice.  (2).He gives Timothy as an example of a servant, and (3) he gives Epaphroditus as an example of a soldier.  And so we’re going to look briefly at the characteristics of these three men as their lives relate to the example of Christ.

First of all, Paul is presented as an example of a sacrifice.  Vs. 17 tells us that he was being poured out as a drink offering, a libation.  The drink offering that he is speaking of there is the wine that was brought with the burnt sacrifice in the Old Testament.  When they offered a burnt lamb for their sins, there was also the requirement that a certain measure of wine would be added to the sacrifice as well.  It was the crowning finish to their sacrifice.  God spoke of it in Numbers 14 as a sweet smelling aroma.   So Paul sees himself as something added to the main course, which is their sacrifice and service.  He was humble enough to recognize that he wasn’t the main thing, he was merely an instrument in accomplishing the finishing of their sacrifice of faith, being the aroma that is quickly burned up to bring them to perfection.

Paul speaks of this sacrifice in 2Cor. 2:14 “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.  For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing;  to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.”

So the purpose of Paul’s sacrifice is to enhance and finish the service and sacrifice of the church at Philippi.  And he not only is modeling it, he is calling them to it as well.  He is saying that the sacrifice he is making is his joy, and he is rejoicing in being found worthy to be offered in sacrifice.  He sees this sacrifice as an opportunity to better serve Christ and not a burden, and so he rejoices. Phil. 1:29  “For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me, and now hear to be in me.”

We see a similar example in Peter and the Apostles who were flogged and released with orders not to preach Jesus Christ in Act 5:41  “So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.”

So Paul also tells the Philippians in vs. 18; “You too, I urge you, rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me.”  Paul considered it a joy to be called upon by God to render service as a sacrifice, and he is telling the church at Philippi, that great joy comes through great sacrifice. In fact, the greater the sacrifice, the greater the joy. What a contrast to the message of the church today.  Today there is no mention of sacrifice.  Instead, the gospel is presented as a means of gain, usually financial gain.  “Come to Jesus and tell him what you want out of life and He will give it to you.” That’s the popular message today.  And if you preach that message, you can fill a football stadium with people who want to have their ears tickled.  But try preaching Romans 12:1,2, “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service,” and you will empty out the church.  And if any one is left, add the next verse;  “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  Folks, to be a disciple of Christ you are going to have to sacrifice some things, but Paul says thats where you find true joy.  The world tells us that joy is found in obtaining things.  Whoever dies with the most toys win.  But simply watch your children or grandchildren just a few hours after opening all their toys on Christmas morning and it doesn’t take much deductive powers to recognize that obtaining things of this world doesn’t bring joy.  Real joy, Paul says, comes from sacrificial living in Christ.

Secondly, starting in vs. 19 Timothy is presented as an example of a servant.  Timothy’s whole life had been spent in service to the gospel.  His mother and grandmother had raised him and taught him the Word of God since he was a small child.  And at some point at a young age, Paul leads him to the Lord, and he begins to follow Paul and serve in ministry with Paul.   Note vs.22  “But you know of his proven worth, that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel like a child serving his father.”  And I believe the emphasis there is on serving.  Serving Paul.  Serving the churches.  Serving the gospel.  This is a young man whose entire life is dedicated to the service of the gospel.  And notice the word “proven”.  That ties in with the verse I read from Romans 12, that you may prove what the will of God is.  Proven means to have gone through testing and come out the other side still believing, still faithful, still standing.  Timothy proved his faith by service to God.

As far as we know, Timothy did not have a wife, did not have children of his own, did not own  a home, did not have a career.  He left his home, his mother and grandmother at an early age and went on the road with Paul, serving Paul, learning from Paul, sharing in almost all of Paul’s trials and tribulations from Athens, to Corinth, to Thessalonica to even Rome.  He had proven himself faithful.

He shared with the Apostle in all of his trials, and all of his triumphs.  Look at vs. 20: “For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare.”  This last semester at my two older kids college, there is a weekend that is designated as parent’s weekend.  And I really felt it was important for us to go see them then and support them physically and emotionally.  There is only so much you can do by phone.  I think they were missing home a little by then, school was starting to feel a lot like work, and I felt  it was important for us to reaffirm their commitment by our being there.

But there were a couple of problems with that.  One, their school is in California, and secondly, there was the matter of my ministry here.  I haven’t been able to take a Sunday off in 7 years and so I knew that I couldn’t go.  But the next best thing to me going would be if my wife could be there.  And I thought then of this verse in this passage where Paul says, “No one else has a kindred spirit.  No one else is going to have the same degree of concern for their welfare like my wife.  After all, they are her kids too.  And so no one else could possibly feel the same way about my kids and look after my interests than my wife.  I knew she was the next best thing to being there.

And perhaps that’s as good an illustration as any of how Paul saw Timothy.  Timothy was as close as family to him.  And we need to realize that this illustration is an example to us of what Paul is saying should be the attitude of the church.  We should be so unified in our purpose that we have the same goals, the same kind of spirit, the same purpose.  We have to lose this type of modern mentality which sees a separation of clergy and laity.  The Bible doesn’t make that distinction.  There may be different functions, different roles, but there is one body and one purpose.  My hope is that as you spend time in the Word with me, spend time in this ministry with me, that you will adopt the same passion for this ministry as I do.  And that you will commit yourself to this ministry to the same degree as I do.

Unfortunately though, the modern church is only propagating this misconception of a church body that exists only to be served by the clergy, instead of being taught that their purpose is also to serve as the Bible teaches.  Our congregations in many modern churches today are practically anonymous, walking into a darkened auditorium, watching an entertainment driven spectacle on stage, and walking back out again blinking at the sunlight in a confused daze, wondering what it all really has to do with me.

Which leads the average churchgoer to think that Christianity doesn’t really have much application to real life.  It’s presented as some sort of experience where you go into a church, have some sort of emotion driven experience which they call spiritual, and then go back into the real world.  And that compartmentalizing of what is thought to be spiritual leads to living out our lives in a fleshly, selfish existence.

I was struck by the phrase, “I have no one of kindred spirit”.  Sometimes I get discouraged in the ministry when I look around at the lack of commitment, and also at the lack of men and women that are still standing true for the Lord after so many years of ministering in this community.  And it’s easy to get discouraged.  But in a way, this statement by Paul is an encouragement to me.  I’m not even 1/10th the man of God that Paul was.  And yet at this time in his life he has very little people around him that are still standing strong.  In 2 Timothy he says, “for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.”  Titus we know was a pastor.  But it seems that Paul is saying here that the lure of this world is so strong, and many people who start out on the journey don’t stay on the path.  They fall away.  And I guess the encouragement for me is that if Paul experienced this, then it should not be thought uncommon if I experience this too.  And instead I thank God for the people that are still standing firm as we continue to preach the Word, in season and out of season.

Far too often the state of the state of the modern church goer  can be summarized in vs. 21: “For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus.”  At best, Jesus is some sort of addendum that serves to help us achieve our earthly goals.  And that theology is in direct contradiction to the Biblical view that our earthly goals should be subjected to the service of Christ Jesus.  A servant is concerned first and foremost with his Master’s concerns, rather than his own.

And then the third example Paul presents is that of Epaphroditus as a soldier.  If Paul and Timothy fail to challenge us because we think they are something of giants in the faith, then Paul gives us another example who is simply a common man in the church. A man virtually unknown in history other than in these few verses.  And because of that he is really our best example.

So Paul describes Epaphroditus as a soldier, but he also calls him a brother, (in contrast to Timothy as his son) and a fellow worker, and a messenger and a minister.  Additionally, I think you can easily make the case for Epaphroditus also as an example of a servant as was Timothy, and a sacrifice as was Paul.  But I have chosen soldier as the best description of Epaphroditus because I think the position of a soldier encompasses all of these things.

The other night I went to the VFW to see a surf movie about Vietnam era surfers, which was actually my movie that I had loaned to a guy I know that was  a veteran of the Vietnam war.  And he liked the movie and wanted to show it at the VFW and invited me and a bunch of his surf buddies.  And as I looked around at the photographs in the VFW hall of past heroes and servicemen, and watched this movie about some of those soldiers service to our country, I was amazed at the level of sacrifice that many of those men were willing to make for our freedoms.  These veterans are worthy of our sincere thanks and admiration for their service and their sacrifice.   So I feel like a soldier encompasses so many of the characteristics that Paul wants to model for us.

Not a lot is known about Epaphroditus.  He is mentioned again in chapter 4:18 and it is clear from that verse that Epaphroditus was sent by the church at Philippi to minister to Paul by the means of a monetary gift for his support.  But vs. 30 of chapter 2 gives us a little more insight into what this mission cost him.  It says that he risked his life to complete what was lacking in the churches service to Paul.  What does that mean except that the gift that had been taken up by the church for Paul for his financial support could not exactly be sent by registered letter, or by Fed X, and so somebody had to be willing to travel from Philippi to Rome to take this money to Paul.  And they had chosen this man Epaphroditus as someone who was willing and able to make the sacrifice and undergo the rigors of travel in those days, and willing to leave his home and friends and family for the sake of the gospel.  I think the scripture is telling us that he went on this trip at some great risk to his own life.  Travel in those days wasn’t easy.  It was a long, dangerous trip.  He was carrying a good deal of money, and it would not be inconceivable to imagine that there would have been people who were willing to murder him to get their hands on that money.  And so he risked his life, perhaps traveling alone for a great distance, to faithfully bring this money to Paul.

I think the thing that makes Epaphroditus such a great example for us is his ordinariness.  He wasn’t a pastor.  He wasn’t an Apostle.  We never hear of him again.  And yet God used him in a great way and his name is preserved forever in heaven because of his service to Christ, to his Apostle and to his church.  So Paul calls him a fellow soldier.  Perhaps he had actually been a soldier.  We don’t know, but we do know that he was something of a risk taker.

In fact, vs. 30 uses a term for the phrase “risking his life” which was “paraboleuomai”, which during the days after the formation of the early church was the basis for a group who called themselves “The Paraboleuomai” which meant the Gamblers. They took as their hero Epaphroditus who gambled with his life. And it was their aim and their mission to visit the prisoners, to visit the sick, especially those with infectious, dangerous, communicable diseases. It was their mission to unhesitatingly, unflinchingly and boldly proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ in every environment without any hesitation.

Epaphroditus was a name that among Greeks was connected with the goddess Aphrodite,  and they called upon her for luck when playing dice games or gambling games by using the name Epaphrodite.  And so Paul is using a play on words here, saying Epaphroditus gambled his very life in service to Christ.  

Now whether or not Epaphroditus was somehow injured in this journey and his wound became infected and he almost died, or whether or not he put himself at risk in some other way to bring the gospel to people, we don’t know for sure.  But we do know that Paul tells us that he got very sick, unto the point of death.  Vs. 27 tells us that “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.”

And notice, by the way, that there is no mention of Paul healing this soldier of Christ.  By this time, this is nearing the end of the Apostolic period, a time when the Apostles had been given certain miraculous abilities for the confirmation of their gospel. 2Cor. 12:12 tells us that “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles.”  They were a miraculous attestation from God that He was speaking His gospel through these specific men.  But now it’s near the end of the Apostolic period and you begin to see these powers begin to wane.  Paul tells Timothy in another passage that he should drink a little wine for medicinal purposes because Timothy had stomach problems.  He didn’t send Timothy a special handkerchief that he had prayed over and told him to put it on his stomach.  Instead, he tells him to drink some medicine.  And in this case of Epaphroditus, we understand that God spared this man and he recovered from his sickness.  Paul seemed to have nothing to do with it.

But the thing we should take away from the example of Epaphroditus is this illustration of a soldier.   A soldier who was willing to give his life in service to his King, for the sake of the Apostle Paul and Timothy, his ministers, and for the sake of his church at Philippi.  Now that he is well, Paul says in vs. 25, I am planning on sending him back to you.  And Paul is obviously sending him back with this gospel, this Epistle to the Philippians.  First, Epaphroditus risked his life bringing this gift to Paul, he is injured and becomes so sick he almost dies, and now he is headed back there again, willing to put his life at risk once more for the sake of bringing the Word of God to his church.  This trip was about 810 miles as the crow flies, and would have taken between a month and two months to complete, including travelling part of the way on ship which could only be done in certain weather.  And so it was no easy task, and it was no small sacrifice.

John McArthur said and I quote, “ultimate joy comes from the ultimate offering of one's life to the will of God.”  God does not always require the ultimate sacrifice of losing your life for the sake of the gospel.  Paul and Timothy would eventually die in service to Christ.  Paul was likely beheaded, and his statement that he was being poured out as a drink offering was probably prophetic in that he was looking at shedding his blood for the cause of Christ.  Timothy would go on to Ephesus to be it’s first pastor, and while speaking out against a lurid worship of the goddess Diana he would be bludgeoned to death.  Epaphroditus we don’t know how he died.  We might assume that he died a normal death in his old age.  But one thing we do know, he was willing to lay down his life in service to the kingdom of Christ.   He risked his life repeatedly.

We may not be called upon to risk our life, but we are called upon to be willing to lay down our lives as a living sacrifice in service to the cause of Christ.  We are called upon to be a servant to the body of Christ.  And we are called upon to forsake this world and all it’s enticements for the austerity of soldiering in the service of the King.  Paul said in 2Tim. 2:3  “Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.  No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.”

Paul said to the Philippians concerning Epaphroditus, when he completed this life risking trip to carry the epistle back to the church at Philippi that they should “Receive him then in the Lord with all joy, and hold men like him in high regard.”  And this is the hope and joy set before us as well, when we are willing to live our lives like Paul, like Timothy, like Epaphroditus, Jesus promises us that there will be a day when we will be received in heaven with joy.  When the Master will say, “Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”