Paul's fellow workmen

… I wanted Ian to go first because the Holy Spirit is certainly far more important than any human workers whom he uses. And our subject for the alternate lectures is fellow workmen or fellow workers with Paul. I'd like to look tonight at Barnabas, who was really Paul's mentor, the one from whom Paul learned, with whom he worked, and yet the time came when we no longer hear of Barnabas and Paul, but we hear of Paul and his company. And you know, it's an interesting thing and something very important when it comes to human relationships and working together. It may well be that there's an older person whom the Lord has been using, has been blessing, takes a younger person under his wing, and when does an older person like that step back? And what if the younger person outshines him? You know, Barnabas was a choice vessel for the Lord, but Paul was the one to whom God gives revelation and to whom God entrusts truth far beyond anything that Barnabas had. And you know, how does a couple of brothers like this, how do a couple of brothers work together? First of all, let's look a little at the character of Barnabas. He's introduced to us in the book of Acts at the end of chapter 4. And you'll have to pardon me, I can't talk quite as fast as Ian can. I hope I can jam Barnabas into 45 minutes, but it's going to be difficult. I'm not an Australian, and I did live in this part of the country for 12 years and learned to talk a little more slowly here, you know. Acts 4 at the end of the chapter, and I want to read, starting in verse 32. All the believers were one in heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and much grace was with them all. There were no needy persons among them, for from time to time, those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales, and put it at the apostles' feet. And it was distributed to anyone as he had need. Now here we come to Barnabas, Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. This portion here at the end of chapter 4 is really a highlight in the history of the early believers in the church at Jerusalem. The heart and soul of the multitude of those that had believed was one, and they pooled their resources. They didn't realize it, but the Holy Spirit, in giving this love in their hearts, that no one will call what he has his own and hang on to it selfishly, the Holy Spirit, in his wisdom, was also preparing for the future. It wouldn't take long before persecution would set in. They would have to flee in every direction, and they wouldn't have had time then to put a for-sale sign on the house, put it in the hands of a realtor, and dicker over price. It would have been too late. So here, selling things, pooling their resources, using them for the common good, was really not only the love that the Holy Spirit should have brought in the hearts, but also his wisdom. But here's a man, Barnabas, who comes to our attention. His name isn't really Barnabas to start with, but Joseph, or Joses. He's given the appellation Barnabas, son of encouragement, because he is one who stands out above all the others who are doing this. He's not from Jerusalem. He's not one who would have really been in danger of losing his property there a few chapters later. He's from the island of Cyprus, and evidently he has his property over there sold. He's one who, from the start, goes above and beyond what others are doing. What he does is a tremendous encouragement to the apostles, and they give him this name, Barnabas, son of encouragement. He brought the money, put it at the feet of the apostles here. It's at your disposal. We find in the next chapter, there's a couple who would like to be well thought of, and they're hypocrites. They pretend to do what Barnabas does. They would like this kind of recognition, but for them it doesn't work out that way. We've got to run along. Barnabas' notice was a Levite. People from the tribe of Levi had been set aside back in the book of Numbers for the Lord's service. They had taken their stand on the Lord's side in Exodus 32. The curse that Jacob had pronounced upon Levi that he would be scattered in Israel has turned to blessing for him because these Levites are scattered throughout the tribes. They're the ones who replaced the firstborn as the hereditary servants of the Lord. But Barnabas, born into this, we find through his actions, goes far beyond what a Jewish Levite would have done. The Jewish Levite was to live from the contributions of others, and the first thing we find Barnabas doing is selling what he has and contributing it for the good of others. He's given this beautiful name, Bill Weir. I've heard him speak on Barnabas a few times. He calls him Barney the Encourager. Now turn to chapter 9 of the Acts. Fortunately we don't have Barnabas from Genesis to Revelation like the Holy Spirit, so he is confined to the first half of the book of Acts, plus a reference in one or two other places. In chapter 9, Saul, the great persecutor of the Christians, has been saved. And he started right out at Damascus to take his stand for the Lord, be baptized, and preach Jesus that he's Christ. And there's a lot condensed into these verses in the middle of chapter 9. Galatians 1 fills us in on some of the details, gives us a little more clarity. Anyway, Paul was saved at Damascus. According to Galatians, sometime later he went to the desert of Arabia. He was there for about three years. He came back to Damascus and increased, really, in power, according to verse 22, and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this is the Christ. And the Jews are going to kill him. Saul just manages to escape. And this man who had gone there to persecute the Christians is very, it's a humiliation. He's let down over the wall like a big laundry basket by the disciples. They're holding the ropes and let him down safely. The man who had, at one point, wanted to kill them. Well, verse 26, having arrived at Jerusalem, he is saved to join himself to the disciples. He tried to join the disciples there. Somehow, in the process of leaving Damascus, he had neglected to get a letter of commendation, hadn't he? And I don't know, under the circumstances, whether it would have been so easy to write in one. But he tries to join the disciples, and it says, all were afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and related to them how he had seen the Lord in the way in that he had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus. And he was with them, coming in and going out at Jerusalem and speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. Barnabas is a man who is not only a big loving heart and generous, but he was a man who had an interest for the Lord's work. Others at Jerusalem don't know and don't trust this Saul. Some years back, he had been the ringleader in the persecution that they had gone through, and they just don't trust that man. But Barnabas has heard what God has done a hundred miles away at Damascus. And Barnabas doesn't hesitate to stick out his neck for this fellow believer. But he takes him, brings him to the apostles, tells them how Saul had met the Lord, how the Lord had met him in the way, and how his life had been changed, how he had been speaking boldly in the name of Jesus at Damascus. You know, we need brethren like this in our assemblies today. Brethren who will take a believer whom his brethren perhaps don't trust and whom he knows, and he knows that God has done a genuine work in this person's life. We need brethren who will take him and bring him and introduce him and stand fast and not take no for an answer. It's so easy to be like the Christians at Jerusalem who had had a bad experience in the past with Saul of Tarsus. And you know, years later, they remember that, and they're not going to trust that man. We need Barnabases who can break down that kind of distrust. And sad to say, in many assemblies, the initial feeling toward any believer that isn't really well known in that assembly is a feeling of distrust. You know, if he comes in here, he's going to spoil things. The assembly is not a private club. It's the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And we need men like Barnabas who can bring in those whom God is saving, introduce them, and help them to get established. Well, Barnabas goes on. In chapter 11, we read of him again. In verse 19, those who had been scattered abroad through the persecution that had initially gotten started by Saul after Stephen's martyrdom, well, they've gotten as far as Antioch. They've gotten several hundred miles away. And they're speaking the word first to Jews alone, then some of them get a little bolder, speak the word to Greeks. They speak of the Lord Jesus. They announce the glad tidings, the gospel of the Lord Jesus, emphasizes lordship. And God works mightily and he starts saving Gentiles at Antioch. Peter is the one who was brought before us as first bringing the gospel to the Gentiles in the previous chapter. And he had been called on the carpet for going into the house of a Gentile and proclaiming the gospel to him. And he really had to explain what he had done and that he had witnessed God working. It broken all the brethren's rules, but God had been the one who had been working. And Peter had been called on the carpet to explain this. Well, we find the Lord is working in other places too. And here at Antioch, the Lord has been working. And then interestingly enough, we read that news of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem. I like assemblies that have ears. And it's a very interesting expression, the ears of the church at Jerusalem or the assembly at Jerusalem. I don't know who functioned as ears there. The body, you know, is composed of many members and each one is necessary. And it's so important that an assembly have ears, an interest for the Lord's work elsewhere. And not only did they hear about this, but now they send out Barnabas to check things out. They've called Peter on the carpet for having gone into Cornelius' house. But thank God they send the right man to Antioch, who having arrived and seeing the grace of God, rejoiced and exhorted all with purpose of heart to abide with the Lord or to cleave to the Lord, to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. And then we read about what kind of a man Barnabas was. And you know, these are the qualifications that God looks for in a man whom he can use, in a man whom he can use to train and to encourage others too. What do we read about him? We read that he was a good man. Starts out with a good man. And then we read full of the Holy Spirit and faith. Now, it's hard to imagine a bad man full of the Holy Spirit. If there isn't some character, some evidence of goodness already. And God starts with one who is a good man here. And he's full of the Holy Spirit and full of faith. Now, there's sometimes an argument as to whether a Christian should be an optimist or a pessimist. And personally, I say a Christian ought to be a realist. But a Christian has no business being a pessimist. Because that would indicate that there's no faith there, is there? He's certainly not full of faith if he's a pessimist. Jesus comes to the place and things are so different from anything he's seen before. As a Jewish Levite who had been converted to Christ, a large company of Jews converted to Christ meeting at Jerusalem. And he comes to Antioch and a lot of Gentiles have been saved. He hadn't seen anything like that before. But he comes there and he sees the grace of God. You know, if we go somewhere different and people have a little different customs or their skin color may be different or their background is different or, you know, they wear beards and we don't or they don't wear beards and we do or, you know, whatever the situation is, we tend to get occupied with outward things many times. And Barnabas, the thing that strikes him is the grace of God. And what he, you know, he's a man of wisdom. And what lies on his heart, he encourages them that they should really stick close to the Lord. Sometimes when we go somewhere and we see things different, we see people, you know, acting in ways that we're not used to, we'd like to convert them to our way. And it's so interesting when you travel from country to country even. You see such different things and people get occupied with such small things. The important thing is to encourage believers, especially new believers, but old ones too, to really stick close to the Lord. And Barnabas was the kind of person who could be a help, a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. Well, if he's full of the Holy Spirit, he's not going to act on his own. He's going to be led by the Spirit, as Romans teaches us. Great number of people are brought to the Lord. And Barnabas isn't like some people today, especially preachers. You know, whenever they get called to another church, somehow it's always a bigger one that pays more salary, isn't it? Somehow it's always climbing up the ladder. Very seldom is anyone going to go down the ladder. That kind of a call isn't of the Lord, obviously. Well, Barnabas doesn't come here and say, this is a wonderful opportunity to become the preacher and to have a big congregation. These people need teaching and I'm just the one to do it. No, he sees they need teaching. And he doesn't tell them how dumb they are, how little they know and so on, but he takes off a few days, crosses the mountains, I understand it's about 80 miles and across a mountain range, and he goes to Tarsus. The Lord had said through Ananias, and this was a chosen vessel to himself, had told Ananias he was to carry his name to the Gentiles. And he goes and he hunts this man up. It says that he went to Tarsus to look for Saul and when he found him, often said, he I don't think he found him rocking on the front porch back and forth. He went to look for him when he found him. Later on, we find a letter addressed to the churches in Syria and Cilicia. We're never told how the churches in Cilicia started. I suspect that that's what Paul was doing when he was at Tarsus. He was busy for the Lord in the neighborhood there. I suspect that's why Barnabas had to hunt him up, but Barnabas brings him to Antioch and the two of them teach these Christians for a year's time. And it wouldn't surprise me if they had daily meetings with them. That's sort of, it doesn't say it in that many words, but that's the implication that we have here that they met with the church and taught great numbers of people. And here we find this combination, Barnabas and Saul beginning. Notice Barnabas, the experienced man, the man whom God has been using, is used now to unselfishly call Paul, a man whom, still Saul, a man whom he knew that God was going to use among Gentiles, call him to help teach. Saul had a tremendous understanding in scripture. It's not at the feet of the noted Jewish teacher of the day, Gamaliel. And he had spent several years in the desert with the Lord, being taught by him, no doubt unlearning a lot of Jewish tradition, learning how to apply the Old Testament scripture. We believe that he's the one who wrote to the Hebrews. He's certainly the one who wrote to the Romans and so many other epistles. Barnabas' understanding in scripture is tremendous, but here, these believers, most of whom had no background in spiritual things, contrary to the Jews who had believed at Jerusalem, they need to be taught from the bottom up. And Barnabas spares no effort to get the best man to do this, and they do this in fellowship together. You know, it's so nice when we study Paul and his fellow workers, we find very seldom does Paul work by himself. And you know, this is something that's sad to say we have lost sight of today. Most brethren who serve the Lord, among us at least, if I can use that term, tend to be one-man bands. There are some who can work together with others. But generally speaking, when you see two brothers coming at the same time to an assembly, it's because of some problem in that assembly. And it's not because the brethren, you know, are enjoying working together for the Lord. And you know, it's a sad thing when a brother has to be a one-man band and when he can't work together with someone else. And if he hears, well, Brother so-and-so is going there, he says, well, then I'll go that way. Here are two that can work together a whole year at Antioch. And the result is that the disciples are called Christians there. Well, and yet these Christians are growing. Others come and Agabus can stand up and give what the Lord has given him. There's that liberty. He doesn't have to clear it with Barnabas or Saul first. And the Christians are acting on the word that is brought before them. They hear of a famine coming up. We've gotten spiritual help from Jerusalem. We can send some material help to these poor Christians who have been persecuted, who have been scattered, who have lost what they had, and so on. And who shall we send it with? They couldn't write out a check and put it in an envelope, paste a 29-cent stamp on it or 50-cent stamp on it, you know, get it to a foreign country and have it there in a few days. Who shall we send? Barnabas and Saul. Can we spare them? They've been teaching us a whole year. Well, it's high time to put into practice what they've been teaching us. And they send these two brothers to Jerusalem. Both of them had relatives and friends there and it would give them a nice opportunity to visit. It's beautiful the way things are done. And when they finish their mission in chapter 12, the last verse, they come back to Antioch. You know, they hadn't left Antioch because somebody wanted to get rid of them or because they wanted to get away from there. No, they're happy to go back again. And this time they bring a young man with them, John Mark. And then we read in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers in chapter 13. God has raised up others in the meantime. Barnabas, he's mentioned first. He's probably the senior one, the older one. Simeon who's called Niger. Niger means black. Big city church. Antioch was the third biggest city of the Roman Empire at this time. Estimated population of half a million, something like Charlotte. Well, you would expect there'd be some black people there too. Simeon called Niger. Here's Lucius the Cyrenian from the present day country of Libya in North Africa. And Imenion, foster brother of Herod the Tetrarch, a fellow who had been raised in a palace with these corrupt Herods. And then there's Saul who later writes to the Philippians that he had been a Pharisee of the Pharisees. And you know, if he had had any choice, humanly speaking, before he was saved, now the Pharisees sometimes tried to avoid having even the shadow of a woman fall on them. And certainly Paul would have crossed the street to avoid having to touch Imenion with a 10-foot pole. And here they are, saved by the grace of God, these five brothers he's using in the assembly at Antioch, ministering to the Lord, fasting, denying self. And the Lord says, now separate me, Barnabas and Saul, to the work to which I have called them. He had made it plain to them what he wanted them to do. Now he makes it plain to the assembly. And I think that's the normal order, that God would show a person what he wants him to do, and then that he can make that plain to his brethren in due time. It doesn't say Barnabas and Paul went to the assembly and asked for a letter of commendation because they want to start serving the Lord now. They've been doing that a long time. But God makes it plain that he's going to use them in the regions beyond. And you know, we don't like to lose some of our most capable preachers and teachers, but God may want to use them elsewhere. And we find here that the Holy Spirit says, now how he said it, we're not told whether he said it through a brother, whether it was an audible voice or a conviction of heart that they all had, but it was plain, the Holy Spirit said, separate me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work to which I've called them, and they fast and pray, lay hands on them. Brother Raymond Campbell years ago said he figured they didn't just lay hands on them, but they also reached into their pocket, you know, to have something to help them along with. And I tend to appreciate that thought. But this is, they let them go. They let them go. And they're sent by the Holy Spirit, and they go. They go to the island of Cyprus, first of all. That's where Barnabas came from. And they start at one end, and they go clear through to the other end. They run into opposition from one whom Paul has to call the child of the devil, the sorcerer. Powers of darkness oppose, try to turn away the governor of the island from the truth. This magician sorcerer is blinded, the governor is converted, and the work goes on. They leave the island of Cyprus, and here we have a major change. Up till now we've read of Barnabas and Saul, Barnabas and Saul, and in verse 13, having sailed from Paphos, Paul and his company came to Perga of Pamphylia. Paul and his company. We don't read of a big argument between these two brothers, do we? Not at this point. We don't read of Paul asserting himself, trying to push Barnabas aside. We don't read of competition. We don't read of Barnabas asserting his seniority. I'm the older brother, I've been in this work much longer than you have. I'm the one who got you started. Nothing of the sort. Very quietly the spirit of God signals whom he is going to use in first line, and who is going to be background. Is it easy for those of us who are older and experienced to step back and let others whom God wants to use take the leadership? Can we work as helpers to those whom we helped to get started? This is some of the beautiful lessons that we learn from Barnabas. There's no friction between these two in this way at all. We simply are reading now of Paul and his company. John leaves them, he goes back. This we'll come back to, at least if we get to it tonight yet. They come to Perga, then to Antioch in Pisidia. Another Antioch, you know the Antiochuses, the Seleucid rulers had started, founded new cities here and there, and they were quite proud to name them after themselves. So there's an Antioch in almost every province. I found Danvilles in quite a few of the states in this country, and you know there are Washingtons in most states too, and so on. But this is Antioch in Pisidia. They go into the synagogue, and we find Paul does the preaching. They're told, men and brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, speak on. Paul gets up and speaks. Barnabas takes back seat here, and Paul is the one whom God is outstandingly using. But it's teamwork. And whether the one speaks or whether the other speaks, that's not really the point. They're working together in the interests of the Lord, and this is what is so needed today too. The first Sabbath's preaching produces a great interest. The next Sabbath, almost the whole city is gathered together, and the Jews are so jealous that they start the persecution. We don't want to go into all the details, but as we go on through chapter 13 and 14, we find conversions, we find persecutions. In chapter 14, when they get to Lystra, there was a Greek fable that had gotten started in that area probably a few hundred years before that the gods, a couple of the gods had come to earth once, and they were run out of town and couldn't get anything to eat. People were cruel to them, and they had changed that town that sat in a valley. Well, they had changed the valley to a lake and changed the people to fish, executed their judgment on the town. And as they had gone on a little farther, they had found an old couple, and this old couple didn't have much to give them, but had given them the bread and the milk that they had. And, you know, they had rewarded this old couple very wonderfully. Well, here Paul and Barnabas come into this area, and Paul heals a crippled man. And oh, these people, the gods have come back, and this time we're going to play it safe. We're going to worship them. And so they called Barnabas Jupiter, Zeus, he was the head god of the Greeks, the dignified old gentleman who heads things up. And Paul is called Mercury, or Hermes, because Mercury was the main speaker for the Greek pantheon. And Paul is the speaker. Paul is the one who tended to be forward and to do most of the preaching. And Barnabas was a dignified older man. And well, they have a hard time preventing these people from worshiping them. So what happens instead is some of the Jews come along, get the people stirred up, and when they start stoning Paul, they leave him for dead. Some people think it's altogether possible that the experience he mentions in 2 Corinthians 12, being caught up into the third heaven, not knowing in the body or out of the body, maybe it was at this time when he was stoned and taken out to the local dump and left there for dead. Well, God brings him back, and Barnabas and Saul, on their return journey, they stop in each place where they've preached the gospel, regardless of the persecution. They want to establish these new believers. They establish elders for them. And in chapter 14, verse 23, having chosen them elders in each assembly, having prayed with fastings, they committed them to the Lord on whom they had believed. And they go back to Antioch, and they call a missionary meeting, report what God has done with them, not what they have done for the Lord. You know, today there's great emphasis on reporting what I have done for the Lord, but they report what God had done with them. And they stay there a good while. And while they're at Antioch, in chapter 15, some false teachers come along, hey, we're glad that you believe in Jesus. That's well and good, but, you know, the rest of the story is, if you want to be one of God's chosen people, you'd better get circumcised. You'd better start keeping the law. This is what God commanded way back in Moses' time. And they come along with this kind of a line. So confusion, Judaizing teachers. It doesn't call them brethren. Certain persons, certain men, having some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers. Obviously, they're not brothers themselves, but they come down from Jerusalem, from Judea. That's where Christianity got started. They passed themselves off in that way. And Barnabas and Paul, or Paul and Barnabas, resist this. And rather than deciding the case independently, well, okay, if they want to believe that way in Judea, let them. We'll believe this way here, and we'll each do our own thing. No, we want to stay one in doctrine. There's no such thing as independent assembly scripturally. And they send Barnabas and Paul and some others with them to Jerusalem to talk this out with the apostles and elders. And we have this wonderful chapter 15 where they can discuss these things, and they finally can write a letter. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. And we don't have time tonight to go into how they arrived at this. But interestingly enough, after reading Paul and his company, or Paul and Barnabas, a number of times in this chapter, we find several times again Barnabas and Paul. When it came to Jerusalem, Barnabas was well-known there. Barnabas was well-trusted. Barnabas had introduced Saul. And Saul, in the minds of some, was probably still a somewhat questionable commodity. And we find in this chapter that at Jerusalem, we read Barnabas and Paul. If they're working together, well, there are some places where, you know, it's very normal working together for Paul to take the lead. This seems to have been his gift. But in some difficult situations, it's better for him to hold back and for Barnabas, the older man who's well-known, well-trusted here in Jerusalem, to take the lead. In verse 13, all the multitude kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul, relating all the signs and wonders which God had wrought among the nations by them, and so on. Well, the problem is resolved. There is accountability and openness toward their brethren, and the Lord gives the answer to the problem. Spirit-led conclusions in that letter. They go back to Antioch to share this with the assembly, and it brings joy to the assembly. In the last part of the chapter, we have a rather sad note. Barnabas and Paul were just as human as the rest of us. And after all this wonderful working together, we find Paul suggests, well, let's make another trip. Let's go back and revisit the places where we preached the word. We need to strengthen our brethren. Shepherd care was no doubt on his heart and teaching. And Barnabas says, fine, we'll do it. They're in full agreement on that. But Barnabas says, let's take John Mark along. Give him another chance. Paul says, no way. And they get into quite a quarrel about this. Barnabas, the encourager, he wants to give a young man another chance. For Paul, the work was first. He wouldn't take this one who had gone back and not gone with them to the work. As long as they were on Cyprus where there were relatives with a family, family connections and all, John Mark was happy for the trip. When the going got rough, John Mark had turned around and gone home. Paul says, no way. Barnabas says, but we will take him along, perhaps insisted on his seniority there. The upshot was they went different ways. Barnabas took John Mark, went back to Cyprus. And in the act, we read nothing further of their service. Paul, having chosen Silas, went forth, verse 40, committed by the brethren to the grace of God. And I believe the brethren at Antioch here made a quiet choice. Paul and Silas, they could commit to the grace of God. We don't read that they did this for Barnabas and John Mark. I would think they prayed for them. But I think they felt Paul is in the right on this matter. And I think we have to accept their judgment in the matter and the evident judgment of the spirit of God who does not go on with Barnabas' history for us, but who does go on with Paul's history in the following chapters where we see him used in his ministry for much blessing, not only to these whom he had reached before with Barnabas, but also to go on into Europe and to, you know, to reach out into new parts of Asia Minor with the word. But Barnabas does not sink into disgrace. Thank God for that. Paul refers to him very respectfully when he writes to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 9, verse 6. He speaks about, well, do Barnabas and I, are we the only ones who can't take a wife with us when we travel, who have to work with our hands, who can't receive support from others? Barnabas and I, he still associates him with him. Now, he writes the Corinthians hadn't been reached with the gospel at the end of chapter 15. Paul reaches them in chapter 18. So it's years later when he writes to them that he refers to Barnabas in high terms, respectful terms. This is not a quarrel that they could have no fellowship together, but each insisted on this way to do the work. And God used Barnabas too. John Mark is the one who writes the gospel about the perfect servant. John Mark, the one who failed in his service initially and to whom Barnabas gave a second chance and spent time with patiently. Paul later on writes to Timothy, bring Mark when you come, he's serviceable to me for ministry. It's beautiful to see that God continued to use Barnabas, not in the forefront, not in the limelight, in the background, to prepare other servants. And you know, God has a different ministry for each of us. But we might well ask ourselves tonight, how would Paul have gotten his start? How would Paul have become such a useful servant had God not had a Barnabas there to help him as he got started? But then the time came for Barnabas to fade into the background and for God to use Paul. Barnabas didn't write any epistles as far as we know. There is a letter in the apocryphal books of the New Testament called the Epistle of Barnabas. I doubt that it comes from this Barnabas, I think it's just been given his name. Well, may the Lord bless his word to our hearts and encourage us to be encouragers like Barnabas was. Shall we pray? Our God and our Father, we thank thee for Barnabas. We thank thee for how that it's used him as a blessing to many at Jerusalem, at Antioch, in many other places, and particularly how he was used in the life of that one who became the Apostle Paul. Our Father, we thank thee for the examples we have here of working together, of serving the Lord together, of helping others. …

… Last night we were looking at Barnabas, Paul's mentor as I've called him. He's the one who was a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and with faith, certainly was not a pessimist. He was one who would take time with individuals. He was one who had an eye and an ear for what the Lord was doing even elsewhere. He had heard of Paul being saved at Damascus and being faithful in preaching the word there and when everyone else at Jerusalem was afraid of this man who had at one time persecuted them, Barnabas was the one who would introduce him to the Apostles and Barnabas had a character that when he introduced someone to the Apostles and would put his character on the line for them, this meant something. You know it's not everybody that can bring a stranger and one whom the brethren may be suspicious of into a meeting and introduce him and make him an appreciated part of that meeting, but Barnabas had that character and he's one who quietly goes on in service for the Lord. He's the one who brought Saul to Antioch and worked together with him there for a whole year teaching these new believers. He's the one who could be sent out in service with Saul, Barnabas and Saul, Barnabas and Saul, and then all at once we read Paul and his company and he just beautifully steps back and lets the Spirit of God use the one whom he was gifting and both in the gospel as well as in the ministry of the truth of God. He could later on spend time with the John Mark for whom Paul after an initial bad experience really, well he just didn't, I don't want to say he had no use for him, but he certainly didn't intend to take that boy along on another trip when he had gone back when the going got rough. Yet thank God Barnabas could work with him in such a way, probably Peter worked with him too afterwards, but Paul could right toward the end of his life and bring Mark, he's serviceable to me for ministry. Well Timothy, we find another young person and one whom Paul takes, he's Paul's son in the faith and Paul really works with him, developing him as a useful servant of the Lord and we need this kind of, you know people talk about a Paul-Timothy relationship, and we need much more of that today. Last night we commented how too many of God's servants operate as one man bands and again in looking at Timothy and his relationship with Paul and we see that that was not God's intent. God from way back in the Old Testament always had the more mature believer take a less mature believer under his wing and train him and develop him and then God would in his time and in his way use him for service. We see Moses and Joshua and Elijah and Elisha, we can see a David and Solomon, I mean we can see this kind of a pattern and many times in the scripture where an older one took a younger one under his wing and really trained him for the Lord. Now as to Timothy's background, we see this in various places, in fact the life of Timothy is not set out in, you know, in two chapters for us in nice beautiful order, we've got to hunt across quite a bit of the New Testament to find it. We'll start in Acts 16, in Acts 16 Paul is on his second missionary journey, he's taken Silas, he's gone with the fellowship of the believers at Antioch and he's retracing part of the trip that he and Barnabas had made together, the part on the continent of Asia, what is now Turkey, and he comes to Derbe and then to Lystra and here in these places it says, behold a certain disciple was there. Now the NIV reads as if the disciple named Timothy lived at Lystra. In chapter 20 there's indication he may have lived at Derbe. Personally I've always leaned toward him being from Derbe but Lystra was close and it says that he had a good reputation, the brethren at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him, he had a good testimony there. And it's nice to see this young brother is known not only in his local assembly but in the neighboring assemblies as well. And remember these towns, while they may have been as close as some of our towns are one to the other, people didn't have the cars that we had to lay that distance behind them in a few minutes, but ten miles meant three hours and this type of thing. So Timothy here is spoken of as being of mixed parentage, he's the son of a Jewish believing woman. His father was a Greek and that's all that's said about his father. Scripture doesn't want to run him down but we never have any indication that his father was a believer. In fact when Paul writes to Timothy in the second epistle he refers to Timothy's godly mother and grandmother, the mother Eunice, the grandmother Lois, and these women had taught Timothy the holy scriptures. Paul can say in chapter 3 of that second epistle to Timothy that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. I don't think it was an easy, nice home background that Timothy came from. The father a Greek. Remember that back in those days marriages were very often arranged things, arranged between families. So I can't hold against Timothy's mother that she married an unsaved Greek. We don't know how much the grandmother would have been able to stop something like that. These things may well have been arranged among the men in the families and so on. Timothy grew up in a divided home situation obviously but a faithful mother and a faithful grandmother taught him God's word. Now simply to be taught God's word doesn't in itself do anything. The holy scriptures are able to make thee wise to salvation but salvation is through faith which is in Christ Jesus. The basis was laid there. There was a good background but apparently when Paul came on the first missionary journey with Barnabas, Timothy must have come to faith in the Lord Jesus then. Paul refers to him as my son in the faith and here he finds this certain disciple. I picture Timothy as being in his middle or late teens at this time, probably late teens. A disciple, one who is learning, one who is following, one who is going on with the Lord. He has a good testimony of the brethren in these new assemblies here, Lystra and Iconium, probably Derby as well. And it says him would have to go forth with him. Paul chose Timothy to go along with him. Why? Now we have some things told us about Timothy that are a bit unusual. In the second epistle to Timothy chapter 1 verse 6, Paul refers to something that I have read various things on it but I'm not satisfied that I can explain this verse the way I would like to. It says, for which cause I put thee in mind to rekindle the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. The only place that I read of in scripture where a gift of God in the sense is given by putting on of someone's hands. So in that sense it was something unusual. I mean it's not the way normally God bestows gifts by someone laying on hands. In chapter 4 of the first epistle, he refers to this again. He says in verse 14, be not negligent of the gift that is in thee which has been given to thee through prophecy with the imposition of the hands of the elderhood. Now here he doesn't say by the elders putting their hands on you. You know these verses have been used in Christendom to justify the custom of ordination and that you know when a man has finished his Bible school or seminary or something like that then he gets ordained and all kinds of ministers put their hand on him and somehow he's supposed to get God's gift that way. Now I don't read that in these verses. Paul speaks of having that Timothy had a gift which had been received through Paul and he speaks of the elders having fellowship with this but you know just how this worked in its detail I'm not going to try to say much more on but it was obvious that Paul mentions through prophecy it was obvious that God pointed out this young man to him as one whom he should take along, one whom he was to work with and God gives him a gift. Now whether he gave it to him just in a flash when Paul laid hands on him or whether this may have been something that was given over a period of time through Paul working with him I don't want to say but Paul identifies Timothy with him or identifies himself with Timothy and he takes him along. Now you know it's not an uncommon thing for a young person to go to an older brother or sister and say you know I'd like to be your understudy and I'd like to go with you I'd like to travel with you on a trip I've been approached by various ones who would like to go with me here or there or something like this. Well I appreciate this kind of a request and in no way am I knocking it but the scriptural order is really that the more experienced one pick the understudy, the helper or someone take them along and some of the experiences that I can look back on as a young brother that were tremendously helpful to me were a few days or a few weeks with an older brother. I remember helping brother G.A. Wisey, Raymond Campbell's father-in-law move from Michigan to Florida. He must have been 80 years old or so at the time past 80 I believe but it was a three-week process starting with helping him burn some of his papers and get his effects packed and then they had an auction sale and then their brother G.A. Wisey was a real shepherd at heart and we had to detour here and detour there and so on to visit isolated people and we came through Taylorsville with some very interesting memories connected with our stop here and on through South Carolina and finally to Florida. But the stories that brother could tell you know the things that you could learn in traveling with him. I remember a trip in the Caribbean, lower Caribbean with brother Mayhew meeting him in Trinidad spending eight days with him there and then going up to St. Vincent and then he gave me directions about going to St. Lucia and meeting him again in Barbados and spending two weeks in Barbados with him and so on. You share a bed with the brother and you're kept awake by the steel band at three o'clock in the morning because they've just had their first election and you know you there are things you talk about and you know there are things you do together. There are ways in which you learn and it's good and one can appreciate this kind of a thing for Timothy as well. Paul was directed of God really to take this young fellow along. He has the fellowship of brethren in not only his home meeting but in surrounding meetings with this and one other thing about Timothy personally comes out when Paul writes that last letter to him, a time when things are very discouraging but Paul mentions it elsewhere too. Timothy was a very sensitive and caring young man. Now Paul in writing to him makes use of a number of illustrations from the field of sports and with his father being a Greek one can imagine there must have been somewhat of a tug-of-war between dad and mom. Mom was teaching scripture and grandma was backing her up and dad of course was trying to influence his boy in another direction and well there's a place for all these things in life but by time Timothy grew up his direction seems to have been set and he cares about people. When Paul writes to the Philippians about Timothy he says I have no one like-minded chapter 2 of Philippians and I like the Darby translation there verse 20 I have no one like-minded who will care with genuine feeling how ye get on for all seek their own things not the things of Jesus Christ and if you want to serve the Lord normally service for the Lord is connected with people. Now there are areas of service for the Lord that are in the background and that may be connected with things. Now a building like this to build it to maintain it and so on this is very valuable service for the Lord but a building like this is used for people too and ultimately service for the Lord is connected with people and Timothy was a man who cared about people and who related to people this is what one looks for if one is going to to work with someone else and to train them for service for the Lord well what do you look for one of the things you look for is that they that they care about people and that they're sensitive to people. Now Timothy was perhaps a bit overly sensitive when Paul writes him the second letter he's got to stir him up things had gone wrong all those in Asia he says have left me have turned away from me and so on and Timothy was sort of letting his hands hang and Paul says stir up the gift that is in you God hasn't given us a spirit of fear of cowardice no he's given us a spirit of love and of power and of a sound mind and get going get moving over occupied you know we can we need to be occupied with people but we don't want to be so taken up with people that we get our eyes off the Lord and if people don't smile right and don't say the right things to us we get discouraged and we want to quit well what happens here in chapter 16 Paul's going to take him along and in verse 3 we read that he circumcised him because of the Jews that lived in that area for they all knew that his father was a Greek must have had some kind of a reputation the thing that stands out here you know a the Jews to this day a ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court a person is a Jew if his mother is Jewish doesn't matter what his father was Jewishness comes through the mother this was custom at that time it's been ruled on by the Israeli Supreme Court and they still trace their Jewishness not through the father but through the mother and for Timothy to be considered by Jews as a Jew because his mother was a Jewish and not to be circumcised not to have entered into that covenant relationship as one of the people of God one of God's earthly people this was offensive to the Jews this was a real stumbling block an uncircumcised Jew you know that was an anomaly and shouldn't be and Paul's custom was that when he came to a new town the first place he would ask for and head for was the Jewish synagogue if they had one in Philippi they didn't have one obviously and he went to where he would find any Jews that would be interested in the Lord's things found a few women at the riverbank for the Jews according to their customs even today to establish a synagogue you have to have at least ten males that have made their bar mitzvah that are considered adult responsible male Jews how gracious of the Lord to say that where two or three are gathered together unto my name and he doesn't specify male or female there there am I in the midst of them you know this is so gracious of the Lord but there wasn't a synagogue in every place but Paul would head for the synagogue and to take along a Jew who was uncircumcised this would turn off his audience from the start but God commanded circumcision to be done as a normal thing when the baby is eight days old and doctors say today that that's the safest and really the best time to do it God makes no mistakes but you know for a person a man to be circumcised as a teenager or as a full adult it's a painful operation it's not the easy thing Timothy had gotten along without it up to this point but you know Paul writes in later on thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ and here was perhaps the first test would he submit to this kind of an operation so as not to turn off Jews that they were trying to reach for the Lord Paul writes to the Galatians that when it came to Titus a Gentile Paul stood up against forcing him to be circumcised a Gentile didn't have to be but here he was leaning over backwards not to give offense to the Jews and you know a young person has to learn these kind of things if he wants to be an effectual servant for the Lord and if we haven't learned that when we're young we've got to start learning them when we get a little bit older but if we want to reach people for the Lord you know we've got to reach out to them we can't expect them to come up to certain standards so that the Lord can save them no we've got to do the reaching out and this is what we see here Paul took him and circumcised him because of the Jews and then when they would come places where the reputation of this family had spread it wasn't going to turn anyone off there wouldn't be any hindrance to this man's ministry and later on Paul you know oftentimes the epistles continue on with the practical things that we see exemplified in the Acts and again Paul writes to Timothy in his first epistle there's a whole chapter devoted to well practically a whole chapter devoted to his personal conduct as a servant of the Lord in chapter 4 and the central verse there don't let anyone verse 12 don't let anyone look down on you because you're young but set an example for the believers in speech in life in love in faith and in purity you know if a young person wants to be active in service for the Lord they've got the strike against them that they're young because many people feel well what's he what's he got to say why should I listen to her and so on well then it becomes even more important in this kind of situation that the life backs up the words and every aspect of the life you don't excuse certain things by saying well he's just young you know loose relationship between guys and girls for example well they're just young no that kind of thing does not add to a testimony but it can very quickly detract from a testimony and and so so Paul is careful he builds Timothy up he to me he takes Timothy along we don't read initially that Timothy is being put on the platform being asked to preach sermons this kind of thing first he accompanies the Apostle his life has to be in order his conduct he's got to be such that it's not going to be offensive to others he observes no doubt Paul writes about him to the Philippians where we were reading before he speaks of Timothy as having served with him you know the proof of him that as a child a father he has served with me in the work of the glad tidings you know a child helps a father how by taking over no by handing him a tool at his request by holding something dad says hold this put your hands here bring me that hammer go get this you know this is how a child helps a father and that's how Timothy got started in the Lord's work together with Paul and Paul writes to the Corinthians about Timothy also 1st Corinthians 4 verse 17 he says for this reason I have sent you to Malthus who's my beloved and faithful child in the Lord who shall put you in mind of my ways as they are in Christ according as I teach everywhere in every assembly Timothy is going to remind you of my ways when you watch him when you listen to him you're going to be reminded of me and I don't think Timothy is just going to say well Paul said Paul did and so on he would do that but Timothy in his ways would show forth the character of Paul he served with me as a child serves with his father he served with me in the gospel well as they go on I mean they they come to Philippi first of the places that we read any detail about on this trip they've actually gone through Phrygia the Galatian country they wanted to go this way they wanted to go that way and Spirit of God is directing another way and the Spirit of God sees to it that they are directed to to go to Europe and there they pass through the seaport city very quickly Neapolis they go on to Philippi the main city there in Macedonia Paul had gotten this vision of the Macedonian man saying come over and help us and he figures well we better start right in the main city and incidentally the strategy that Paul used throughout the acts was to hit the main cities with the gospel spend time in major cities get a work start there and you know major cities draw on the countryside roundabout Paul spent two years we read in chapter 19 in Asia actually refers to three years there later on and during that time all Asia the whole province hears the word of the Lord Paul is only in the main city but people come in people go out people market there people have relatives there and so on and the word spreads through the whole province in that time it seems in the course of time many missionaries have gotten away from that strategy and have gone and located in some of the most remote villages and when you reverse the scriptural strategy you find it doesn't work nearly as well scriptural strategy is to to be in the cities and to you know let the work work out from there rather than to start in a little village and you know eventually neglect the big cities all together I think that's one thing that impressed me when I went to Colombia the one and only time I've been there to see the missionaries each located in one of the major cities and the work spreading out from there I thought this follows scriptural patterns I'm glad to see that as many other places it hasn't been that way well as we go on Philippi Paul and Silas are thrown into prison Luke is obviously with them and Timothy is with them and God sees to it that Timothy is spared that experience at the beginning God in his wisdom knows just what a person can take and what he can't take but as they go on in chapter 17 they come through Amphipolis Apollonia then Thessalonica they're there only a few weeks and they get run out of town essentially and the Jews are persecuting them and in verse 10 the brethren immediately sent away in the night Paul and Silas to Berea who being arrived where I went away into the synagogue of the Jews and so on so Timothy seems to have been with them yet because after their experience there and in verse 13 when the Jews want to stir up the crowds there against against the missionaries well the brethren verse 14 immediately send away Paul to go as to the sea but Silas and Timotheus abode there now Timothy isn't with Paul he's with Silas Paul's associate and you know he can work together with him and certainly if one trains a young brother you know one has to be careful not to train him to simply be attached to you but that he can work together with others as well it may come the time may come when you have to be separated Timothy stays here with Silas and then when we get to the letter to the Thessalonians you know Paul was only in Thessalonica a few weeks three Sabbath days we read and he soon is writing these Christians an epistle a letter first Thessalonians is probably the first letter Paul wrote and he sends it by Timothy in first Thessalonians chapter 3 Paul was very anxious about things at Thessalonica and he says we're for being no longer able to refrain ourselves we thought it good to be left alone in Athens as it's just a little farther down the road and sent Timotheus our brother and fellow workman under God in the glad tidings of Christ to confirm you and encourage you concerning your faith that no one might be moved by these afflictions and so on when you read the first six verses of this chapter you see the tremendous Commission that Paul and trust to Timothy and notice how he refers to Timothy he doesn't say we sent our young brother Timothy he says we sent our Timotheus our brother and fellow workman under God you know it's one thing if Timothy would have called himself well I'm I'm Paul's brother and I'm his fellow workman but for Paul graciously to refer to him in this way to build up Timothy before the Thessalonians as he writes about him you know this this is a good way to do we don't find Timothy asserting himself and claiming special privilege because he was Paul's fellow workman no but Paul graciously calls him that and he sends Timothy there to Thessalonica a few months after perhaps only a few weeks after he had been there himself and what is he sending him for he's sending them sending him in verse 2 to confirm you and encourage you concerning your faith and in verse 5 he says for this reason I also no longer to refrain able to refrain myself sent to know your faith Timothy is the next verse having just come to us from you and brought to us the glad tidings of your faith and love and that you have always good remembrance of us and so on Timothy this young man sensitive to people had been sent to to do this for the Thessalonians so probably at first he had passed out gospel tracts he had you know whatever the equivalent of that was in those days shined Paul's shoes he had to fix the meals whatever but now Paul is using him as he grows and as he develops in much more responsible areas of service and this is in accord with the principle the Lord gives that he that is faithful in that which is little you know can be entrusted with things that are far greater but you don't start with the big things we don't read of Timothy on the platform yet in fact he never as far as we see in scripture he's never known for his great public preaching but he is known for his working with people and his teaching his confirming them in the faith is encouraging them is leading them is insisting on that which is right and against that which is wrong and so on well to the Thessalonians Paul sends Timothy he feels he's been there so short a time has the enemy been able to subvert the work was this a real work you know when the Lord told the parable of the sower he points out the four different kinds of ground that the good seed can fall on the seed is equally good whether it falls on the wayside the stony ground the thorny ground or into the good ground but you don't you can't tell right away what the effect has been see falls on the wayside gets gobbled up by the birds very quickly the seed that falls on the stony ground oh it seems to be productive in a hurry it really starts growing but then the Lord says the hot Sun beats down on it and because it has no depth of root it dries up and there was that danger Paul had been in Thessalonica just a few weeks he was very concerned about these Christians were they stony ground believers or had the seed really fallen into good ground and that's what he sent Timothy to not only to help them but to really check things out how are things going on at Thessalonica it's one thing to have a big glorious start a real interest apparently but some months later how are things going on it's interesting to read some of these men who claim to be evangelists who claim to be healers and they come to a place and they lay their hands on so-and-so many people and you know people are shedding their crutches right and left and so on afterwards you find some of these have been planted in the audience perhaps but there there has been a certain amount of research done in following up six months or a year later these people that claim to be healed in a healing service and generally speaking the results are very minimal and people who have you know come forward in large numbers in great citywide evangelistic campaigns when you follow them up a year or so later you find there's only a percentage that are going on with the Lord God uses his word he's promised to use his word to bless his word and I'm not knocking big gospel campaigns but we need to be careful to distinguish the fruit falling on the different kinds of ground and it's only that which falls on the good ground and brings forth fruit that is abiding and to God's glory well Thessalonica there were no major difficulties we find Paul has to write them a letter to explain some details as to the Lord's coming thank God we have this letter otherwise we sure wouldn't be able to distinguish the various portions of the Lord's coming if we didn't have the letter to the Thessalonians so we have to be very thankful for what people missed in the Apostles ministry and what they had to have explained to them a second time but at Corinth where Paul spends a year and a half later on there are some very severe and very major problems there and Paul writes them a letter also and again he's sending Timothy we read of that in 1st Corinthians 4 we might just turn back there a moment he says in a few verses previous to where we are reading that he's admonishing them as beloved children and he says well if you'd have 10,000 teachers or instructors in Christ you've got all kinds of teachers yes but you don't have many fathers in Christ Jesus I've begotten you through the glad tidings and he says be my imitators and then he says for this reason I've sent Timothy to you he's my faithful and beloved child in the Lord he'll teach you my ways and so on he doesn't say too much more at that point about Timothy but in the last chapter of the same 1st Corinthians he mentions Timothy again and notice what he says this time in chapter 16 of 1st Corinthians he says in verse 10 if Timothy comes see to it that he has nothing to fear while he's with you for he is carrying on the work of the Lord just as I am no one then should refuse to accept him send him on his way in peace so that he may return to me I'm expecting him along with the brothers. The Corinthians were quarrelsome people and they were taking sides and becoming factious and Paul is sending this young brother oh he's aged a few years in the meantime he's probably in his earlier mid-twenties by now and Paul is sending him to an assembly that's in trouble and he writes very stiffly here to this assembly don't you threaten him don't you tell him you're just a young twerp you're just a young brother what do you have to say to us he's older in the faith than any of you are Paul doesn't say that but it was true but he says don't despise him and see that he has nothing to fear he's carrying on the work of the Lord just as I am isn't this a beautiful commendation for Paul to give to Timothy he's carrying on the work of the Lord just as I am on the other hand if Timothy had written a letter to friends or to the assembly at Corinth and said you know I've gotten to the point where I'm carrying on the work of the Lord just like Paul is what would that sound like you know would be saying the same thing wouldn't it but it's one thing for Paul to say it about Timothy and another thing for Timothy to assert it about himself that was here that it wasn't my business to refer to an older brother as my fellow worker but if you want to call me that you know that that was a different story but it it was a very painful lesson to be learned but I had to learn it from the opposite direction as Timothy here later on well Timothy was to remind them of Paul's ways he was to give the same teaching that Paul had given later on he sent to Ephesus or left at Ephesus if first Timothy chapter 3 Paul writes to him and he says something Timothy may have grown a little bit older in the meantime we can't precisely date this epistle and I know most feel it's right near the end of Paul's life I'm not so sure about first Timothy in that way but Paul says the Ephesians are first Timothy 1 verse 3 even as I begged thee to remain in Ephesus when I was going to Macedonia is this possibly Acts 19 that thou mightest enjoin some not to teach other doctrines nor to turn their minds to fables and interminable genealogies which bring questionings rather than further God's dispensation which is in faith oh he had been left there to command to enjoin to insist that certain men don't teach false doctrines do you leave a young brother in an assembly to insist on the kind of doctrine that's going to be taught and not taught here was a young brother who was really growing and Paul leaves him there with that Commission and we you know traditionally refer to Timothy and Titus as apostolic delegates and you know we give them these wonderful titles and well Paul sent them as his delegates or left them as his delegates here or there but let's remember here was a very young brother Paul's son or child in the faith and he's given this kind of job and I don't think Paul got all kinds of complaining letters from these assemblies you know why did you send this kid here and what's he got to say to us and so on that you really play favorites don't you know here was a young man who had been trained to do a job and who was doing it and who could be entrusted with more and more in this first chapter why there are people who want to teach the law and insist on the law being kept so Timothy has to stand for purity of doctrine and conscience in the next chapter you have the question of prayer public prayer what to pray for who is to pray publicly the roles of men and of women and so that comes out Timothy is to teach and insist on certain things in the third chapter you have the question of elders and deacons who is qualified for these positions and so on in the book of Titus, Titus is left to appoint elders Timothy is not quite that specific but the qualifications for elders and deacons are very very clearly indefinitely spelled out in this epistle and the implication certainly is Timothy see to it that you pick the right men for those jobs and then his personal responsibility for conduct in the as the Lord's servant comes out in the fourth chapter his relationships with others in the assembly at the beginning of chapter 5 of 1st Timothy you know their rebuke not an elder sharply but exhort him as a father younger men as brethren elder women as mothers and Timothy obviously was not married at this time yet he's told the younger women as sisters with all purity there's no reference anywhere to Timothy's wife and family he may well have been like the Apostle Paul who forwent this forsake of the gospel now some I know feel that Paul may have been a widower during his ministry and that's altogether possible but certainly he forwent an active married life during his ministry and Timothy seems to have have been much the same way so the sixth chapter again there's the question of attitudes the question of money the good confession you know these are subject areas that Paul sets before Timothy for his ministry when we read most of the epistles that Paul writes he finds that we find that you know these epistles as was customary with letters in those days start out by introducing the writer you know you didn't have the envelopes that we have today with a return address so that you knew who the letter was from before you even opened it but the Roman form of writing a letter and I suppose it would have been the Greek form too was that the letter started out with the name of the person writing the letter and then next was who it was addressed to and then there was a salutation and then you went into the body of your letter and Paul writes a number of letters and in most of these letters he includes at least one or two other brothers he's teaching he's the Apostle he's really laying down God's Word but in the mouth of two or three witnesses every matter is to be established and so as a normal thing the epistles are written including another brother or two with him and the most common one that he includes with him is Timothy and you know this beautiful harmony between old and young nowadays it seems that many times there's almost a rivalry between old and young or between an experienced brother and this young upstart that's coming along that you know might become more popular than he is somewhere down the line or might be more gifted than he we saw last night with Barnabas that there comes a time when one may have to step aside and let the one whom God has chosen for a position or for you know whom he's gifted greatly given a job to let him take the more prominent part in Paul's lifetime and we don't find Paul stepping back and saying here Timothy take over but Paul is incapacitated from active service from traveling in the latter part of his life he spends a number of years in prison and during part of this time Timothy is free and able to serve and Paul is encouraging him and wanting him to go on in service for himself so we can learn from both these things the relationship of a Barnabas and a Paul and also the relationship of a Paul and Timothy. Paul includes Timothy in the heading of first and second Thessalonians and second Corinthians letters written before his imprisonment at Rome. He includes him in the heading of Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon during his imprisonment at Rome. Paul was or Timothy was evidently with Paul during part of that time. He mentions him in Romans 16 verse 21 and mentions him in first Corinthians as we've already noticed and Timothy it would seem was imprisoned for a while also because at the end of Hebrews which personally I would believe Paul wrote despite what some of my brethren may think to the contrary he speaks about to know that our beloved brother Timothy has been set at liberty and so on and they say that among the Jews there was a saying that as the teacher so the disciple or as the as a disciple so the teacher I forget which way it went but that this may have been a very veiled way of saying to them I'm free and I'm planning to come to see you Timothy's free he's at liberty and so on how does Paul worded exactly says know that our brother Timothy is a set at liberty with whom if he should come soon I will see you in other words I'm free to know first it's Hebrews 13 23 know that our brother Timothy is a set at liberty with whom if he should come soon I will see you and then at a time when things have really gone sour when Paul has to write all those in the province of Asia have forsaken me he can write the second letter to Timothy an extremely personal letter he can write to him how to conduct himself at a time of apostasy and faithlessness he's encouraged encourages him to use diligence when others are unfaithful he tells him be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus how to conduct yourself in a time of departure and that whole second chapter gives details he writes Timothy about the last days and what would happen what to expect the importance of God's Word at a time like that that's the the third chapter and then there's some very very touching personal instructions in the last chapter you can find out how Paul was suffering the cloak that I left at Troas at Karpis's house bring that with you when you come Paul obviously didn't have an extra cloak they often use those as a blanket to sleep under do your diligence be diligent to come before winter bring John Mark with you he's serviceable to me for ministry I mean one sees the the beautiful personal relationship of Paul and Timothy and how Paul can express things that are very personal to Timothy as you read the the second letter that he writes to him the first letter it's the admonition be an example don't neglect your reading don't to this do that and so on how to conduct yourself but in the in the second letter the personal relationship shines out and you know it's so beautiful when you see a warm intimate personal fellowship among servants of God particularly with what the world calls generation gap when that can be bridged over in this way it's a it's a beautiful thing to read these letters not just from the doctrinal standpoint which of course is the first line we read these letters for doctrine but when we can see these very personal things how to live as Christians you know there's as much that touches the heart well we'll stop with Timothy Bill has been kind enough to duplicate some of my notes here and I'll pass them out and both as to last night and what we've had on on Timothy today …

… Well, it was interesting, as Ian was speaking about grieving the Holy Spirit, one of the ways we can grieve the Holy Spirit by lying to him, the first public sin in the church was precisely that. And before starting on our subject of Paul's fellow workers, maybe we can turn just a little bit to Acts 5, I'd like to speak about a couple who served with Paul, Aquila and Priscilla, but let's just look at the other couple in the Acts to contrast them a little bit. This couple in Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira, we noticed yesterday when we were looking at Barnabas, how many of these early Christians were selling their property and pooling their resources, laying the money at the feet of the apostles and how this money was used for the common good. After mentioning Barnabas and what he did, and really over and beyond what others may have done, we read here, now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property, also. And it says, with his wife's full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet. It's interesting how much in conflict with what we've been seeing as to the spirit of God and his work, this couple are. Here's a couple that sells property, but they're going to hold back something for themselves. There isn't really that full commitment to the Lord, that full trust in him, and perhaps they said, well, we're going to see if this Christianity deal works out. We'll put some back for any day in the meantime, if things don't work out right. And so they bring this, or he brings it, Ananias, and Peter has to say to him, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you've lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received from the land? Now, he was pretending that they were giving it all, and the apostles were there, perhaps the saints had met together, and he brings the money, puts it at the apostles' feet, and he's immediately accused of lying to the Holy Spirit. You know, we often forget, I believe, that the Holy Spirit is personally present in meetings of the assembly. When the Lord's people are together, you know, each one indwelt by the Holy Spirit, baptized into one body by the Holy Spirit, well, certainly the Holy Spirit is present as a person. We think of what our brothers or sisters may say. We often don't think about the possibility of grieving the Holy Spirit, and certainly he was grieved at a deliberate attempt to lie, deliberate hypocrisy here. And Peter tells him, didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You've not lied to men, but to God. Now there was no compulsion on this giving. It was an absolutely voluntary thing, and yet, you know, when we see others doing something that's good, sometimes we feel under a bit of pressure, and no doubt this couple felt under a certain pressure, and they also wanted to be well thought of. Joseph had been given this added name, Barnabas, and Ananias and Sapphira, what are they going to say about us? And, you know, we like to be praised by men, and Peter confronts Ananias with this. What has been done so far is absolutely voluntary. You didn't have to give, you didn't have to sell your property in the first place, you didn't have to give any of the money, it was absolutely yours, but to give part and pretend that you're giving the whole. You've lied not to men, but to God, and when Ananias heard this, he fell down and died, and great fear seized all who heard what had happened. You find the young man coming, wrapping up his body, carrying him out and burying him. I've often thought this, even the wife wasn't told about the funeral, you know, no funeral ceremony, he just got buried apparently, and the wife comes in three hours later, her husband is already buried, and she doesn't know that he's dead, and Peter asks her right off, tell me is this the price you and Ananias got for the land? Yes, she said, that's the price, they had agreed, Peter said to her, how could you agree to test the spirit of the Lord? Look, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they'll carry you out also. At that moment, she fell down at his feet and died, and so both die and are buried that same day. You know, if God were working that way this afternoon, or if he had been working that way the past 40 years or so, how many of us would be here this afternoon? Have we ever pretended to be something that we are not? Have we ever tried to give the impression that we are more spiritual, more devoted to the Lord than we actually are? Have we ever lied to the Holy Spirit? I wouldn't be here speaking to you if, you know, if God were dealing in summary judgment in the assembly today. Here's a couple that was thinking of themselves. They wanted the benefits of Christianity, and they may have been true believers, and we have no real reason to question this, but they didn't realize that when we deal with God, when we deal with God the Holy Spirit, it's absolutely serious business. And you know, here it wasn't a matter of introducing serious false doctrine or something like that. It was just a plain, ordinary matter of life, a matter of honesty versus the type of partial honesty that we are altogether too prone to. The couple that we're coming to this afternoon, we are introduced to in Acts 18, and Bill hasn't duplicated the note sheet for me yet, so probably he'll get it this evening. The couple is Aquila and Priscilla, and they are really the contrast in so many ways to Ananias and Sapphira. Ananias and Sapphira have some property. Yes, they're going to give to the Lord, but they've got to reserve some for themselves. They're not totally committed. They're not really flexible. They've got their reservations. Paul is on this missionary journey that we had him on this morning already with Timothy. But here at this point, from Athens, remember Paul had sent Timothy back to Thessalonica, and in the meantime, he moves on from Athens and comes to Corinth. Corinth, a major commercial city, sits on the Isthmus where the Peloponnesian Isthmus runs off from the main peninsula of Greece, and I understand it's a little neck there about six miles wide. The Romans were talking about digging a canal across there because the trade, a lot of it came in on the one side at Corinth and had to be transported by land over to Cancria or Centria, however you want to pronounce the town, on the other end. In more recent times, in this century in fact, the Greek government has had a canal dug across there. They finally chopped that Isthmus off. So these two towns, one on either end of that little narrow neck about six miles apart, very important commercial centers. Being a harbor town, Corinth was very important to the sailors. The patron goddess of Corinth was Aphrodite or Venus, the goddess of love, and Venus was worshipped with public prostitution, and it was a very degraded town. Paul comes to this town from Athens, the university city par excellence in the Roman Empire, and Paul is alone. Very seldom on Paul's journeys do we find him alone, and I would like to emphasize in speaking of Paul and his fellow workers that the work of God involves teamwork. Now God uses individuals, and he may use individuals alone. There's an Elijah who for many years of his life and ministry was by himself, and being by himself, and facing the enemy by himself, eventually led him astray. And God had to remind Elijah when Elijah says, well I'm the last one left who's faithful to you, and they're trying to kill me, and so on and so forth, God had to remind him of 7,000 more that he had his eye on, and that Elijah was completely overlooking. And yet one of those was evidently known to Elijah because God simply has to mention his name, go up to Abel Mehola and anoint Elijah, the son of Shaphat, as prophet in your room, as your replacement, and so on. Well there we see the dangers of constantly working alone. We can get very taken up with ourself, with our work, with our suffering, with our sacrifice, and lose sight of what God is doing and how he's using others. And I appreciate it, to what we heard about the baptism of the Spirit drawing us, uniting us into one body with all believers. And you know we don't have the baptism of the Spirit for the brethren, and the baptism of the Spirit for the open brethren, and the baptism of the Spirit for the Baptists, and for this group, and that group, and some other group, there are not a number of churches that are being formed on earth, regardless of how men may look at it, but it's one church. And within this, God is looking for his own to work as a team. And it's interesting that the work that God gives is not all the same kind of work. Recently in Kenosha, in these weeks that we had the opportunity to spend there, I told the brethren, I said, I'm here because of my dad's needs, and I trust that you won't expect that I'm going to simply take over your assembly and minister every meeting and this type of thing. And I said, I just want to fit in as a brother in the local assembly during our time here. I said, sure, I can give some ministry, but I'm not going to, don't expect me to do this automatically in every meeting. So we enjoyed the Bible readings in Colossians 1, Paul was praying for these Colossian believers to the end that you may be filled with the full knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding so as to walk worthily of the Lord unto all well-pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing by the true knowledge of God. Bearing fruit in every good work. He doesn't write that letter to an individual. He writes it to an assembly. I don't think there's any individual that can bear fruit in every good work. But within the framework of an assembly, this can be done. And commented just that evening as we were studying the portion, if I were to go downstairs into the basement of the Kenosha meeting hall and sit down at one of those sewing machines that they have there, whatever the result of it would be, it would not be a good work. I don't know how to run those machines. But I know that there are some sisters in that meeting that come together every two weeks, spend several hours at those sewing machines, and they produce some very good work for the mission field. And there are, you know, in the framework of an assembly, there are brothers who minister the word publicly, and there are others who service as a quiet work in the background. One brother, retired brother from the assembly there, came every Tuesday to do mother shopping for her. And right now he's got the keys to the house, and he's picking up the mail, doing things like this. Well, this is part of the every good work that has to be done. He's a brother who is, we would regard him as an elder in the assembly there, and yet he has no gift for public ministry. But these kind of works need to be done too. And this is what we're going to be seeing, at least that direction is what we'll see with this Aquila and Priscilla. Paul comes to Corinth, and there he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tent maker, as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. So here Paul comes to a new city, and he's by himself, and he hears of this Jewish couple, at least the man is a Jew, I assume his wife was too, and you know they're so up to date, so cosmopolitan. There's some people who all their life, you know, never moved more than 10 or 20 miles from where they grew up, when we lived in this county. It was interesting, just across the county line, we were almost on the county line, just over in the next county, there were some people that I had the privilege of taking into Catawba County, on the other side of the river here, for the first time in their lives. And they were people that were considerably older than I. They lived in Iredell, I lived in Alexander, and I took them across the river to Catawba for the first time in their life. They hadn't been that far away from home in that direction. Well you know, there are people like that, and then there are other people, and our society today is that our roots do not go down very deep, and we move from one place to the other quite readily. This man was born in Pontus, if we had a map of Turkey, Pontus is the northeast corner of Turkey, up along the Black Sea. And in the course of his career, in the course of his business, he had gone to Rome and had lived there. And then came some problem that the emperor had, he was holding something against the Jews, and the emperor had great rights, and he kicked all the Jews out of Rome, expelled all the Jews from Rome. We don't read that this man was at fault, but he was a Jew, expelled from Rome. He comes to Corinth with his wife. Where he got his wife, we're not told, whether she was a native of Pontus, whether she was from Italy, or where, but we're given the names. Aquila, in Latin, Aquila means an eagle, an eagle. When you read it, you hear somebody's aquiline notes, it looks like a beak of an eagle. The name Aquila, in Greek, means immovable. I like to think of it in both ways, an immovable eagle. This man was really quite flexible. Priscilla is the diminutive of the name Prisca. Prisca is the real name, Priscilla is the diminutive, just like we have Susan, and we call her Susie, you know, something like this. And Prisca means old or ancient, it's the feminine, and the feminine diminutive there, Priscilla, really means a little old lady. Sometimes a teenager can talk about my old lady very contemptuously, and sometimes a very elderly gentleman speaks of the old lady, and it's with real love and affection. This is the meaning of the word Priscilla. And here they are, Jews of the dispersion, and they've been run from one place to another, and sometimes moves are based on economics, sometimes they're based on racial matters, sometimes on, you know, persecution. We have an awful lot of refugees in the world today. No children are ever mentioned for this couple. They seem to have been a childless couple. No children, no grandchildren ever mentioned here. And yet this couple is a couple that uses their home, whatever it may have been, for the Lord. And wherever we find them, their home is what they have for the Lord. There's a little course about Samson had, or Shemgar had an ox goad, and Dorcas had a needle, and the various things that different ones had. Well, this couple, wherever they went, they had a home that was open for the Lord. They were tent makers by occupation, and you know, Christians are spoken of as being strangers and pilgrims in this world. Well, here's a couple that certainly went from one place to another, even their occupation reminds us that here we have no abiding city. And they didn't put their roots down deep to try to build something for themselves. They weren't holding back something for themselves. They've just gotten to Corinth, and they've gotten started in this business. Paul hears about them. He goes to meet them, and something strikes, and he decides he's going to live with them. They invite him to live with him. Their home was open for the servant of God. Now, they had just gotten to Corinth themselves a short time before. Probably didn't have a big nice house, maybe a rented apartment or whatever, but Paul could live with them. They could work together, and it must have been a profitable time. As they worked on the tents, something like Madeline doing her knitting, I said not to click the needles too loud. Well, you know, making tents is not a noisy kind of work, and I'm sure they could carry on conversation in so doing, and Paul could help them, instruct them. We're not told at what point in their travels they had been saved, but when you read Paul's letter to the Corinthians, and he tells them in 2 Corinthians, be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, I don't think Paul would have gone into business partnership with a pair of unconverted Jews. I really believe that they had come to know the Lord perhaps before they got to Corinth. They're of Jewish background, or he is of Jewish background, but Paul lives with them, works with them. We're not told that they're saved through his ministry, but I believe they're definitely shaped and formed through his ministry and through their working together. And we're not told that they, you know, stood on the street corner together preaching, but here they were making tents together, and Paul writes to the Corinthians later and has to remind them that he had not received financially from them, but that he had supported himself. To the Ephesian elders he can say, these my hands have ministered not only to my own necessities, but to those that were with me. Paul was not ashamed, or he didn't feel it was out of character for him as a servant of the Lord to work with his hands to help to earn his support. And when you think of how he was, you know, going from place to place, how would the saints at Antioch have known where to send a letter to him with some financial ministry? You know, if he didn't work in this way, he would have been stuck, humanly speaking. I mean, God could take care of him, but there's some very practical wisdom in his ways. Paul stays with them, lives with them, works with them for approximately a year and a half, and there's some interesting experiences at Corinth. But I believe Paul was much more free to do his work for the Lord because he didn't have to worry from day to day about cooking meals and about where he was going to sleep and so on. He could work with them making tents, but I'm sure there were things that they took care of in the background. When Paul writes to the Philippians, we should really get to this tonight, but we've got a long list of other fellow workers that will take us past midnight tonight to get through if we spend time with it. He writes about those women that labored with me in the gospel at Philippi. Well there was a Lydia, and they walked together from her home. She had opened her home after she was baptized and insisted that they come there. And they walked from there to this place on the riverbank where the women would congregate for prayer. And you know, he credits fellow workers that we wouldn't think of. I've counted quite a long list of people that are regarded as Paul's fellow workers. We're just going into detail on a few of them. But here, this couple, they welcome Paul into their home. By their support, their background work, they make it possible for him, every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. And we find when Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. At first they seemed to have worked together, and then they just said, Paul, take all the time you need. You know, we're partners, and you do the preaching, we'll do the tent making. And they worked together. He was living with them. And it's beautiful to see how they are willing to help in their way in the work of the Lord. So, there are various experiences. Brought before the tribunal, Paul is at least accused. There were reasons why Paul would love to have left town and gotten out of there. And the Lord said, well, I've got a lot of people here in this town, and you just stay here, don't be afraid of anything. And the Lord took care of him. Later on in the chapter, we find that Paul finally leaves. In verse 18, Paul, having yet stayed there many days, took leave of the brethren and sailed thence to Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila. Oh, they accompany him. He's going on. He's headed toward Jerusalem. He's got a vow. And when he pulls stakes there at Corinth, Priscilla and Aquila go with him. They're a flexible couple. How flexible are we when it comes to the Lord's interests? They were tent makers. There was probably a demand for tents wherever they would go, but sometimes we get very attached to a place. We may get very attached to certain people. And there are those whom the Lord would leave all their lives in one place, and there are those who move periodically. Talking to a brother recently, a fellow from hospice who had come to visit my dad a few times, his chaplain with him, it turned out he was a lovely Christian, and I asked him where he was from. He said, well, he couldn't really say where he was from because his father had been in the army, and in the first 18 years of his life, he had lived in 18 different places. So he couldn't claim any one place as hometown or something like that. But we have all kinds of people. This couple, for the Lord's sake, was flexible. They perhaps felt they could be of some further service to Paul. And Paul's boat puts in at Ephesus, and there's cargo to be unloaded and other cargo to be loaded, and Paul uses the opportunity in verse 19. He entered into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews while the boat is being taken care of. He's using the opportunity, going to the synagogue to speak with the Jews. And he finds such an interest that they ask him to stay. We'd like you to stay, brother, and have some more meetings. And no, he says, I can't. I've got to keep the coming feast at Jerusalem. I've got a vow to the Lord to go there, and so on. I'm not going to rule on whether Paul should or should not have made this vow, but he feels he has to go on. But we read that he left them there. He left Aquila and Priscilla there. Doesn't say they decided to stay there. He left them there. Well, there's an interest, Aquila and Priscilla, why don't you follow up on it? And yet, as we go through these verses about this couple, there's no record of Aquila ever preaching a sermon. In fact, when we read the story of Aquila and Priscilla carefully, it would almost seem that Priscilla was perhaps the more active in the family, the more outgoing, perhaps the more gifted. We never read of Aquila preaching the gospel or doing any public teaching. But here they are, both of them, left behind at Ephesus, and it's not accidental, it's very deliberate, they're staying behind. They're going to follow up on some of this interest. Now they go to the synagogue, a little bit farther down in the chapter, in verse 24, we find here's a certain Jew, Apollos, from Alexandria in Egypt, the second city in the empire, an eloquent man, mighty in the scriptures, arrived at Ephesus. He was instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in his spirit, he spoke and taught exactly the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue, and Aquila and Priscilla having heard him, oh, they went to the synagogue, huh? I thought they were Christians. I thought they were in the assembly at Corinth. And here at Ephesus, they're going to the synagogue. They're going to a different church. They haven't separated. Boy, they're a failure, aren't they? You know, according to the rules that we draw up for ourselves, that Ian was speaking of, you know, well, we want to bear in mind that at this synagogue, there was an interest for the things of God. They had wanted Paul to stay. In the next chapter, when he comes back, he spends several months preaching in that synagogue, and then an opposition develops. And then, after an opposition develops, Paul separated the disciples, and they started meeting in the school or lecture hall of Tyrannus. They couldn't go on with opposition in the synagogue, but while there was an interest there, here they were. We don't read Aquila was doing all the preaching. No, they go to the synagogue, and here's a man from Alexandria, Egypt, holding meetings in the synagogue, and they hear him preach. You know, it's so out of character to a lot of things that we have developed rules for ourselves on, but this is where God uses them. They're attending synagogue service, they hear Apollo's preaching, he's fervent, he's giving it all that he has, but it's evident there's some things he doesn't know. He knows only the baptism of John. He doesn't know Christianity as such. So what do they do? Approach him after the meeting, grab him by the coat lapel, brother, you're all wrong. Don't you know this and this and this? Apollo says, why don't you come home with us and have dinner? I don't know where they were living at the time, but it says that they took him to them. And I understand that to be they took him home with them. They brought him over for a meal. And then we read here that they took him to them and while Priscilla was busy in the kitchen cooking coffee and making fine dinner, Aquila sat in the living room and explained everything properly to Apollo. Is that what it says? Well, isn't that the way it's supposed to be done? I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over a man, and so isn't her service in the kitchen and the man's service in the living room explaining the scripture? That's not what we read here. It's possible that it may have been that way, but that's not the impression we get when we read the scripture. Aquila and Priscilla, having heard him, took him to them and unfolded to him the way of God more exactly. And I'm reading this from Mr. Darby's translation, which we kind of use as a standard for accuracy as to a literal word for word translation. They took him to them and unfolded to him the way of God more exactly. I'm sure that after having been with Paul for a year and a half, having absorbed his teaching, Priscilla would take her role as a sister, Aquila would seek to take his role as a brother, but you know it's so beautiful to see how they can work together. This type of thing today is referred to sometimes as friendship evangelism. We don't read of Aquila preaching. It's not Priscilla preaching either, but they open their home, they get acquainted with people, and there in the quiet, in the privacy of their home, they together are helping this man whom God has been using, and whom God can now use in a much more mighty way. He accepts this help, and it says when he purposed to go into Achaia, the brethren wrote to the disciples, engaging them to receive him, who being come, contributed much to those who believed through grace. For he with great force convinced the Jews publicly, showing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. Oh, what's this? The brethren wrote. The assembly, as we know it, doesn't get formed until the next chapter, and the next chapter begins. It came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul comes back to Ephesus, and then the real work of the formation of a public assembly there begins, and yet it would seem that while Apollos was there, Aquila and Priscilla, their being there had borne fruit to the extent that we read of brethren who can write to those in Achaia, commending Apollos to them, and so on. So evidently something was going on. Perhaps it wasn't a full-blown assembly as we would look at it, and they certainly had not separated from the synagogue yet. Paul does that in the next chapter, but they're our brethren. They're people who have been saved, evidently, through the ministry of an Aquila and a Priscilla. They must be meeting there in the home. At least Aquila and Priscilla are acquainted with them, and when Apollos is going to leave, they can write to brethren at Corinth. Achaia was the province, you know, like the state today, and Corinth was the city. While things are not all as organized as we would want to see things today sometimes, we see there's a real work for God going on, and a work for God isn't dependent on whether it's, you know, all the P's and Q's are exactly in place the way we figured they ought to be. Thank God that homes can be opened and used for the Lord, and that brethren can be meeting together, whether they're breaking bread yet, whether not, I mean, what is an assembly, and at what point does a group that meets together become an assembly? And should we be that concerned about all these outward details, or should we be glad that the work of God is going on, and that there's growth and that there's progress? We see growth and progress here. Apollo's usefulness and sphere of ministry certainly expands, and this man who, shall we say, came into fellowship with Aquila and Priscilla and a few others who met in their home where there's no real assembly started yet, he is commended by that group to those in Achaia where there are some assemblies, and he's received by them, and he becomes a very useful brother in a public way, convincing these Jews, and so on. We have things in the book of Acts here that, sad to say, many dear brethren wouldn't tolerate among us today, and yet this is the work of God going on. Well, we had three mentions of this couple here in this chapter. Now there are three other mentions of this couple in scripture. We'll turn to 1 Corinthians 16, and you know there's a lot of helpful information in some of these chapters with names, if we don't mind reading some names. In 1 Corinthians 16, verse 19, Paul is getting to the end of the epistle. He says, the assemblies of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla, with the assembly in their house, salute you much in the Lord. Well, the first public meeting place of what became the assembly at Ephesus was this hall of Tyrannus, school of Tyrannus. In Acts 19, Paul is writing sometime later. He's still at Ephesus. He's saying in this same chapter, in verse 8, I remain in Ephesus till Pentecost, for a great door is open to me and an effectual one, and the adversaries many. So we would put this letter somewhere in Acts 19, historically speaking, where Paul is right in the swing of this great work at Ephesus. We find in the New Testament that assemblies generally didn't have big, beautiful halls that they built with thousands and thousands of shekels or talents or whatever, but oftentimes they met in homes, and because of persecution, for one thing, there was a whole lot less to lose and they were a whole lot less conspicuous, you know, not meeting in a great big cathedral somewhere. But here, this, first Paul is living in the home with this couple. Then we read of their welcoming Apollos, and we read of some brethren who can at least write a letter, and now Paul says, while he's still at Ephesus, the assembly with the assembly that meets at their home. Now the assembly may have been meeting in several locations in the city of Ephesus. It's somewhere, I believe, that Ephesus at that time is estimated to have had a population of 120,000, and remember, people got places by walking, most generally. So there may have been assemblies in several places in the town, but anyway, here is an assembly in their house. What does this involve? Well, when the assembly at Taylorsville started, it met in a house, and I can still remember, you know, there had to be a little cleaning done before the meetings, and often a bit of cleaning after the meetings. Kids don't always wipe their feet on a muddy day before they come into the house, and they're not always too careful what they might climb onto, and you know, things can get broken, and sometimes there are refreshments, and you know, before long, everybody's had their refreshments and somehow they've disappeared, and there's still a stack of dishes standing there, and so on and so forth. There's a lot involved in an assembly meeting in a house. There's a service for the Lord. These are Paul's fellow workers. He's left them there. They're able to carry on. He's back at Ephesus again, and he's sending their greetings to Corinth. They have happy memories of the time they spent at Corinth. They didn't leave Corinth because they got fed up with that assembly and thought they would start something else elsewhere. I don't think God would have blessed it in this way, but here in Ephesus, the assembly is in their house, and they salute you much in the Lord. Oh, they send lots of greetings. They send all their love, and you know, one can see the warmth of the relationship here. These are beautiful things to see, and here, it's a house. I don't know where they lived in Corinth, whether they had a house of their own. They had just gotten there. I can picture them renting a place for a while. They only stayed there a year and a half, then they had gone on to Ephesus. Where did they live originally? But at this point, they've got a house, but you know, the house isn't a decorative thing. It's just got to shine and be polished all the time, and you don't want to invite families with little kids over there because they might break something and so on. It's a house that is available for the Lord. It's used for him. Okay, Romans 16. Paul finally comes to the point of the letter to the Romans in the first verses where he commends Phoebe. Now, this is the longest letter of commendation that I've ever read. Occasionally, one hears a long letter of commendation, but not 16 chapters worth, but the commendation itself is passed over in two verses. This is Phoebe. Now, in verse 3, Where is this couple now? Back in Rome. That's where they had been driven out in the reign of the Emperor Claudius. All Jews had been expelled. They spent several years in Corinth. They've been several years in Ephesus. Now they're back at Rome again, and what's happening there? One of the three or four assemblies mentioned in this last chapter, or three or four segments of the assembly at Rome, depending on how much you follow the traditions that we've grown up with, was meeting in their house. The apostle isn't quite as careful as some of our brethren in the last century were about this. He says greet the assembly at their house. London was supposed to have only one assembly, although it met in 20 or 30 places, and they had to have joint brothers' meetings every Saturday night to try to regulate the affairs, and a lot of the divisions grew out of that kind of thinking, really. Here Paul recognizes assemblies in several parts of Rome, and yet the letter is addressed to the Church of God, the assembly at Rome. In one sense, there's one assembly, but they meet in various places. Among other places, this couple has come back to their home. Maybe they had to rent it out very suddenly when they left, but here they are back. It's open to the assembly. Nice to see that, isn't it? In the Derby, the very exact translation, this time we have salute Prisca and Aquila. She's getting older. She's not called Priscilla anymore, not called Susie, but Susan, Prisca, using the full name now. A little older, a little more dignified, but they're still the same couple using what they have for the Lord. What does Paul add? He says, they stake their necks, they risk their lives for me. We see a little bit of what this could be like in Act 17 when the apostle is at Thessalonica, and the Jews start a riot, and they don't find Paul, but they catch Jason, the man at whose home he was staying, and they haul him off before the tribunal. The man has to post-bound and so on in order to get free, and Paul, when the riots were raised in Ephesus, when Demetrius the silversmith raised the riots, perhaps it's at that time that in some way this couple risked their lives for the apostle. The fact of having a dangerous man like this at Thessalonica, he was accused of turning the world upside down. These men who turned the world upside down have come to us, whom Jason has received. This put them into jeopardy, and Paul commends this couple for whatever way it was, having risked their lives for him. When you open your home for the Lord, it may involve considerable risk in the long run. It doesn't only involve risk to those fancy pieces of china that may be on the shelf that some kid can reach, but it may involve a whole lot more. You put your home at the Lord's disposal, and well, what's going to happen? You're identified with his work in a way that may cost something. Paul says, I'm thankful to them, sure, not just myself, but all the assemblies of the Gentiles are thankful to this couple for having risked their lives for me. Remember when he was at Ephesus, he wrote and he said he had fought wild beasts at Ephesus. Whether he was actually in the arena fighting against a lion or a tiger is questionable, but this was the opposition that the enemy had raised up, and this couple with whom he would stay, they shared the dangers that he faced. Beautiful to see that, isn't it? We're thankful to Prisca and Aquila for what they did as fellow laborers of Paul. Turn to 2 Timothy 4, the last mention of this couple. Verse 19, salute Prisca and Aquila, and the house of Onesiphorus, Erastus remained in Corinth, and so on. Paul is writing to Timothy from Rome, and Timothy is evidently back in the province of Asia, Ephesus was a major city there, and so when Paul says, salute Prisca and Aquila, again they're gone from Rome, they're back at Ephesus evidently, on the move. Their roots were not deep here on this earth, strangers and pilgrims here on this earth, but he says, salute them. Earlier in this epistle, he had very sadly written, Timothy, thou knowest this, that all who are in Asia, of whom is Phygelus and Hermogenes, have turned away from me. And there's not a long list of greetings at the end of this epistle. These names are mentioned, a number of them because of their opposition and the problems that they've caused, and others that Paul knew, and he's reporting on their travels in different directions. But as far as giving greetings, most have turned their back on him. But here's a couple that have gotten older, the last letter that Paul writes, and he can say, salute Prisca and Aquila. They're going on, they're faithfully walking with the Lord, despite what others are doing. You know, sometimes what others do, and the unfaithfulness of others, is a tremendous discouragement for us. And we feel like throwing in the towel too. No, salute Prisca and Aquila. Just a few words. Nothing is mentioned as to a house, as to an assembly meeting at the house, because those at Ephesus by and large have turned their back on Paul by this time. But even if nobody comes to the house to meet with you, go on for the Lord. That's what this couple did. And Paul can say, greet them, salute them. It's nice to see they're continuing on. There are ups and downs in the work of God. We've traced Aquila and Priscilla over a number of years, in a number of cities, under quite different circumstances. But how good to see them going on with the Lord, despite what people do. And this is what the Lord looks for, for ourself. Their service isn't mentioned here, but their faithfulness shines out, doesn't it? And that's what the Lord is looking for. Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of thy Lord. Well, may we do likewise. …

… It amazed me when I dug into Scripture to see these people that Paul calls fellow workers, to see how many there are. And I've listed them in several categories. The first category that we come to are some of those that we've already been talking about in connection with the people whose lives we were looking at in detail. John Mark, a fellow who made a bad start. Everything went well as long as they were on Cyprus, where there were relatives. When the going got rough, he went home. And then he became the occasion for difficulty between Paul and Uncle Barnabas. John Mark was Barnabas' nephew. Well, we noted Barnabas took time with him, and he's the one whom Peter calls Marcus, my son. At the end of his first epistle, some have felt that as far as the human source of information for the Gospel of Mark, it may well have come from Peter, a man who was very blunt, very straightforward. And Mark, you know, writes the action gospel. His events are often connected by immediately, straightway, next, next, next, you know, it's how he moves it along. Silas, we've seen he was the one man whom Paul chose as replacement for Barnabas as far as traveling with him. Silas is referred to as Silvanus at the beginning of some of the epistles. It's the same name, Silas, I believe, is the Greek, and Silvanus is the Latin name. And Peter mentions him as a faithful brother. And you know, it's nice to see that some of these who worked with Paul for a while are fond with Peter. At other times, there are various combinations as far as these fellow workers are concerned. It's not a static group. Paul moves along from place to place. Sometimes he has these with him, then he picks up those. There are times when it's just himself and one other person, like Barnabas or Silas. There are times when it's a threesome, Timothy is along, then you come to a foursome, oftentimes there were four of them together, and then there's many as seven or eight at a time. You know, most assemblies today would be horrified if seven or eight brothers come at once, what are you going to do with that many? But of course, their working together in this way was not so much visiting assemblies as reaching out in the gospel, although both were done. Now Titus, we've mentioned him in Galatians 2. Paul points out that as a matter of principle, he would not circumcise Titus. Titus was a Gentile. The Judaizing teachers were insisting that Gentiles had to be circumcised and start keeping the law of Moses in order for their salvation to become complete. It reminds me a little bit of the Charismatic people or Pentecostal people who believe in the second blessing, and you know, it's well and good that you've gotten saved, but to really come into the full good of things, you've got to receive the Holy Spirit in ways such as Ian has shown us is not really according to Scripture, and yet, you know, they would make salvation a two-step affair. Well, these Judaizing teachers did basically the same thing, except they came from another angle that, you know, God's circle of His favor, as one of our hymns puts it, you enter that by being circumcised, and you stay in the good of that by keeping the law of Moses. And Paul writes about Titus, he says, 14 years later, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas, now the reference is to the trip made in Acts 15. He says, I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. Now here he adds some detail to what we have in Acts 15. In Acts 15, it's the problem with these Judaizing teachers, Paul and Barnabas have stood up against them, the assembly sends them up along with several others, here Paul is giving some added detail, he says, I set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles, but I did this privately to those who seemed to be leaders for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain. Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. And in verse 5, he points out, we did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you. Now here was the place where Paul would stand. Now if it comes to bending because of the consciences, because of the weakness of some, those who are strong will bend over backwards literally, but if it comes to standing for the truth of scripture, then we've got to stand firm, and Paul says the same to the Galatians in chapter 5 of this book, that we're to stand fast in the liberty wherein Christ has made us free, and we're not to be brought under a yoke of bondage. Again, it's important to distinguish between these things, and we see this in the way Paul treated Timothy and Titus, altogether differently. The one he would circumcise to really reach out to and try to win the Jews, and the other he would deliberately refuse to circumcise to stand up for the principle that Gentiles did not need to be circumcised once they were saved. So Titus is a helper to Paul quite a bit, almost as much as Timothy, although he's not quite that prominent. Paul sends him to Corinth. In 2 Corinthians, he brings, he's brought the report back that leads Paul to write the second letter to the Corinthians, and in chapter 8 of 2 Corinthians, Paul refers to this Titus as a fellow laborer, and so on, he has, he says, I thank God, chapter 8, verse 16, who put into the heart of Titus the same concern I have for you, for Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but is coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own initiative. Nice to see a brother with enthusiasm, isn't it? This chapter takes up the matter of this collection that was being taken up among the assemblies in Macedonia and Greece for the needy saints at Jerusalem, and here Titus was one of the brothers who was going from place to place and who would be carrying this collection to Jerusalem, and Paul says we're sending along with him the brother who's praised by all the churches for his service to the gospel, and so on, he mentions a third brother in verse 22. In addition, we're sending with them a brother who's often proved to us in many ways that he's zealous. Now, this brother is not mentioned, but he goes on to say about Titus in verse 23, as for Titus, he's my partner and fellow worker among you. As for our brothers, they're representatives of the churches and an honor to Christ. Therefore, show these men the proof of your love and the reason for our pride in you so that the churches can see it. So Paul is very wise in working together with others. We see that he builds them up, not with flattery, but he gives commendation. You never find him running down his fellow workers, but if he sends this one or that one, he will give some commendation as he sends them. Titus was left in Crete by the Apostle Paul to set in order the things that remained. If it weren't for the letter that Paul writes Titus, where he mentions that specifically, we would never know that he had gotten to Crete. There's a lot about Paul's travels that apparently is not mentioned in detail in the Acts, but we pick it up elsewhere. And there in the letter to Titus, he mentions at the end how he was planning another trip. The letter to Titus may well have been written between the two imprisonments of the Apostle Paul, but he says, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis. I've decided to winter there. We never read of him being in Nicopolis. Nicopolis is in present-day Albania. We never read of him getting that far otherwise, although he does write to the Romans that he had gotten all the way up to Dalmatia. Dalmatia is present-day Croatia, where a lot of this fighting has been going on, and Bosnia. Paul got all the way up there. When he got there, we're not told, but he writes to the Romans. Before he ever got to Rome, that he had gone that far in his travels in the Gospel. But, you know, you pick up little details about Paul's travels and about his fellow laborers in many of these places, often at the end of epistles. Paul writes to Titus with rather detailed instruction, and yet, you know, as you read the various references he makes to Titus, he's an honored and appreciated fellow worker. He's not some kind of a flunky that has to be bossed around all the time, and you don't find this kind of an attitude in Paul working with others. There are those, like Timothy and Titus, whom he would send from one place to another. The next man, Apollos, if you look in 1 Corinthians 16, we've talked about Apollos before, this man who was helped by Aquila and Priscilla, and who himself was a very fervent and gifted preacher. Paul respected and appreciated him. In 1 Corinthians 16, verse 12, he says, now about our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to go to you with the brothers. He was quite unwilling to go now, but he will go when he has the opportunity. Paul could send Timothy, he could send Titus, and yet he would strongly urge an Apollos, but he would take no for an answer. Here at Corinth, the Corinthians had formed factions. Probably like so many of us, I like Brother So-and-so's ministry, and I've gotten a lot of blessing out of So-and-so's ministry. He's a real help, he's an interesting speaker, and it starts out that way, and after a while here were parties forming under the name of certain brothers. Paul mentions himself, Apollos, Cephas, or Peter, and then there were those who were saying, well, you know, I don't follow men at all, I just follow Christ, and that's really the most dangerous party of all, isn't it? The ones that claim not to be following men, claim to be more spiritual than anyone else. Well, Apollos, while there were many at Corinth who really appreciated him, and God had used him much at Corinth, when Paul says, well, Apollos, you ought to go, Apollos has the spiritual sensibility, perhaps, to say, well, if some of them are calling themselves after my name, I'm not going to go there now. I don't want to become ringleader of a party. I don't want to go in there and, you know, and people think, well, I'm here, and now they don't really follow me. No, he says, Paul, I don't feel this is the appropriate time for me to go, and Paul accepts that. He says, I urged him to go, I accept that he didn't go. You know, this is beautiful to see about working together. On the one hand, it was a team, and normally we find Paul as the captain of the team, and he'll send, he'll leave Silas and Timothy behind here, he'll send Timothy there, he'll send Titus there, but then there's a real respect for fellow workers, too, and he may plead with an Apollos to go somewhere, but he takes his no. In the long run, the servant is responsible to his Lord, and that's the bottom line. Our responsibility to the Lord comes above our responsibility to any brother with whom we work. Well, there are others that are very specifically mentioned that we haven't talked about to any degree. Luke. Luke is the one who writes the Gospel, and then later on he writes Volume 2 of this set of books that he's writing, and he refers to his previous volume, and now he's going on the things that Jesus began both to do and to teach. And then in Acts, it's really that which, it's a continuation, but it's that which is done by the Holy Spirit through the Apostles. The Book of Acts is perhaps misnamed in our Bibles, and it's not the Acts of the Apostles, it's really the Acts of the Holy Spirit using the Apostles. Luke appears to be the only Gentile writer in the whole Bible. The other books of the Bible all appear to have been written by Jewish authors, but Luke was a Gentile, and he's a very careful, deliberate historian. You know, the people who study these things out are still finding Luke is extremely precise in his vocabulary. He uses medical terms like only a doctor can use, and also as a historian in writing the Acts. When Paul comes to this city, you know, Luke always uses the appropriate title for the officials, the government officials in this book. In Cyprus, the careful translations say that the Sergius Paulus was the proconsul of the island. Well, the Romans had divided, after the first emperors were in power, the Romans divided the provinces into provinces that were nominally under the rule of the Senate, and the more frontier provinces, or the ones that were rebellious, and so on, they were nominally under the rule of the emperor, and the title of the governor of the province, if it was under the Senate, was the proconsul. If it was under the emperor, it was the procurator, and, you know, there were different titles. Luke is always very, very precise in using the exact title, and some of his titles were questioned, and then as the archaeologists dig things up again and again, they, you know, I hate to say it this way because nobody can prove the Bible to be right, but as far as men are concerned, the archaeologists keep on proving that Luke was absolutely accurate in his writing. And he's the one who mentions at the beginning of his gospel that he had, you know, done some research, and his writing, as a result of that, he's writing by inspiration of the Spirit of God, yes, but that didn't mean that he just waited for the Spirit of God to come on him and tell him what to write without ever having done any research on his own. Luke joins Paul at Troas in Acts 16, and occasionally otherwise. Sometimes he's traveling with Paul, sometimes he's not, and the way we distinguish that in the Acts, he'll write, we went here, we went there, we went there, and then he'll write about Paul and Silas going here, or they went, they went, and Luke is one who always keeps himself in the background, and I think a good historian does that, but he keeps himself in the background, but you can tell when he was along, when he was an actual eyewitness of things, and when not. And Paul refers to him as the beloved physician in writing the Colossians. He had, the latter part of his career, when he was imprisoned and so, Luke stuck with him, and there are references on the sheets that you can look up on your own, I don't want to really go until midnight tonight, but it's interesting to trace out these things. One of the things that was interesting to me in studying for this is to see how different these various ones are whom God uses. God can use all kinds of people in various kinds of services, and as we come along here, there are quite a few sisters mentioned, as well as brothers. Now their ministry was different, no doubt, and yet it's all valued before God. The next fellow is really different, Onesimus. He was a slave, a slave to a man called Philemon, who had gotten saved through Paul's ministry, and I don't know whether the slave was already dissatisfied before, but probably to have a Christian master, and to have the meetings right in the house, and to have to go to the meetings and things like that made him still more unhappy. One day he runs away from his master, and evidently steals what he feels is a few years back wages, and takes some of his master's money with him, and as so many people today who run away from home or who run away, they head for the big city. Twenty-five years ago, the end thing was to head for San Francisco, and I think there are still people heading that direction. One of my brothers, when he left home and really wanted to turn his back on things, he headed for New York City, and that's where the Lord got a hold of him, and so on. Onesimus headed for the big city, Rome, and yet God, in his marvelous ways, crossed his path with Paul's. Paul was kept in his own hired house, apparently chained to a soldier, didn't have liberty to go anywhere he wanted in his first imprisonment, and the Lord can bring this Onesimus, who's running away from Philemon, he can bring him right across Paul's path. Onesimus gets saved, Onesimus starts helping Paul, he can perhaps run the errands for him, things like that, and he's doing things out of love for the Lord, and then Paul, contrary to what the Israelite was instructed under the law, sends this runaway slave home. The Israelite, under the law, was not to send a runaway slave who took refuge with him back to his master, and even under Roman law, this was a dangerous thing to do, because the master had power of life and death over his slave, his slave was property, it paid for him, it could have him executed, and of course the normal Roman punishment for a first-time runaway was to have him branded, either on the cheek or on the forehead, with a big letter F, and anybody that saw a man with an F knew that that fellow had run away once as a fugitive slave, and keep an eye on him, maybe if you don't know him, maybe you'd better check him out, this kind of thing. Well, Paul sends Philemon, sends Onesimus back to Philemon with a very personal, very beautiful letter, and that's a masterpiece in itself, to see how Paul approaches this subject, and he refers to Onesimus in his letter to the Colossians, because Philemon lived right near Colossae, he refers to him in that letter as the faithful and beloved brother who is one of you, he carries that letter along with the letter to Philemon. Well, the Tychicus, the next fellow on the list, is from the province of Asia, and he and Onesimus carry the letter to the Colossians together, Paul sends Tychicus to various places, and he says to the Ephesians, when Tychicus is to carry that letter to them, he says, Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am, and what I am doing. I'm sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you. And it's beautiful to see that Paul was not one who tried to live a real private life. His life was lived out in the open, and he would share things with his fellow workers. By inspiration of the Spirit of God, he writes the letter to the Ephesians, as well as other epistles, and yet there was a lot more that the Ephesians would be interested to know about Paul. And he says, well, Tychicus can tell you everything. I have no secrets from him. He can tell you everything that concerns me. A lot of the things that they were interested in knowing, we probably would be interested in knowing too, but God has given us, in his word, that which is necessary for us to know. And a lot of these other details, we may find out in the glory when the rewards are passed out, but they're not necessary for us to know here, and they might just cloud the issue. But the Scripture is complete, and yet there's always indication that there was much more as far as what people would be interested in. And Paul speaks of this Tychicus in this way. When he writes to Titus, he indicates he's sending him on another errand. He says, as soon as I send Artemis or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis. I've decided to winter there. In other words, I can send these men to you, one or the other, and they can replace you on this post, and you come to me then. But wait until someone comes. David, when he was sent by his father to his brothers, when Goliath was challenging the Israelites, is immediately asked by his oldest brother, with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? You've come to see the battle, and so on. Everyone sees in all this that there's an order, and you know, you come to me, but wait until so-and-so comes, he can replace you, and things are taken care of. That was in Titus 3, verse 12. Then Epaphroditus is the next man on the list, and these are not in any particular order, and the order is not of any consequence, it's just how I put them down. He's a Philippian, whom the assembly there had sent with a gift, and he had had to travel all the way to Rome to bring this gift to Paul. And while he was in Rome, or perhaps on the way to Rome, he got very ill. And he was so concerned, he didn't want his fellow Christians at Philippi to hear how sick he was, because he knew they'd worry about him. And he was a very self-effacing, self-sacrificing man in that way. He risked his life in bringing this gift to Paul. Paul says he was sick, nigh unto death. And you know, these are the caliber men that work with him, and Paul commends this man for approaching death in carrying out his ministry, and he commends him for his attitude that he didn't want to worry his fellow Christians about his own health concerns. He didn't want them to be grieved. Epaphras, I've heard brethren say, well Epaphras and Epaphroditus were the same person, and that one is the diminutive of the other. But Epaphras is said to be from Colossae, and he is the man who is known for his carrying the assembly at Colossae, and the neighboring assembly at Laodicea, and another assembly that met in the house of Onympus in that area. He bore these assemblies on his heart in prayer. He was a real prayer warrior, and Paul in writing to the Colossians, and that's the only letter where Epaphras is mentioned, really commends this brother for his labor in prayer. You know, many of us will pray for brethren in our home assembly, I hope we all do that, but do we really labor in prayer for them? Is it a burden? I think many times we, you know, rattle off our prayers rather than laboring in prayer. Now that's Epaphras' particular distinction. Trophimus, back in Acts chapter 20, as Paul is on one of his journeys, he has quite a number of companions with him. In Acts 20, he is going to go back to Jerusalem, he wanted to sail to Syria, but then he decided to go by foot partway because there was a plot against him, and so he goes back through Macedonia. In Acts 20 verse 4, he was accompanied by Sopater, son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, Timothy also, and from the province of Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus. So he's got quite a group with him there. This Trophimus goes all the way to Jerusalem with him, and when Paul is accused by the Jews of having brought a Gentile past the forbidden area into the temple, it's Trophimus that they're referring to. And it says that they had seen Trophimus with him in the city, and they jumped to the conclusion that Paul had taken him into the temple and had desecrated the temple. But this Trophimus is from Ephesus in the province of Asia, but he's with Paul here in chapter 21 verse 9. Do I have a wrong reference here? 2129, yes. And later on, Paul writes to Timothy that he had left Trophimus at Miletum sick. Now, this is a terrible verse for people that believe in divine healers. I mean, I believe in divine healing. God certainly can heal, but there are certain men that are divine healers that I don't accept. That's not a gift that God gives to people today to go around putting their hands on people and healing them. And Paul, who was used for the healing of various ones, we never find him healing a fellow Christian, interestingly enough. If God is dealing with his people, he may use sickness. And for me to interfere, even if I have a gift to heal, I'm interfering with God. I mean, these gifts, these signed gifts were given because of the unsaved, and really to catch the attention of the unsaved and to convince them that the message being brought was truly of God. But we never find the apostle using his gift of healing to heal one of his fellow Christians. And he mentions, Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick. Aristarchus, another one of these fellows mentioned in chapter 20, is traveling with Paul. And later on in the book, he's a fellow prisoner when Paul is taken to Rome. And he's mentioned again in Colossians, Paul refers to him in Philemon as fellow workman. So he's stuck with Paul a long time while Paul was imprisoned in Rome. Philemon, Paul refers to him as my fellow workman in the little letter that he writes him. He was evidently a convert of Paul's from somewhere right near Colossae, and he seems to have been a married man. The letter, since it deals with a slave that had run away, personal property under Roman law, and so is addressed to Philemon as well as to his wife, to his, it would probably be his son, Archippus, our fellow soldier. And then the church that meets in your house, the assembly would be interested, the assembly meeting in a man's house would be interested in how he treats this new brother who had done him such wrong in the past. Run away, stolen, and so on, yet the Lord had saved him, and Paul very carefully approaches this. He writes him a very touching letter, and he says among other things in verse 7 that he had refreshed the hearts of the saints, or as it's very literally put, the bowels of the saints. Would he do that with this new saint who had done so much to hurt him? Well, that's the question, and yet Paul expresses his confidence in him. He says to Philemon in verse 21, confident of your obedience, I write to you knowing that you will do even more than I ask. Some have questioned why the New Testament doesn't strike out against slavery, against the social evil, and they would ask why Christians don't strike out against all the social evils in the world. Well, it's through Christianity that slavery came to its end, and I believe that the letter to Philemon is quite a blow against slavery, although Paul doesn't attack the institution. But I think here when he says, knowing that you'll do even more than what I ask, he had asked Philemon to receive this runaway slave back as a dearly beloved brother, and to treat him as he would treat Paul, to whom Philemon owed his salvation under God. And so, well, what more could he do? Even more than what I'm asking, he couldn't do, but the only thing he could do beyond this would be to emancipate the man, to let him go completely, wouldn't it? And yet Christianity, in first line, meets the heart's need of man rather than striking out at all the institutions that sin has brought into the world. Well, there's a Jesus called Justice, a Jewish fellow worker who was a consolation to Paul during his time at Rome. You know, there are workers with whom you work, you respect them, you appreciate them, respect the gift that the Lord has given them, and so on, and there are others who really get close to your heart. And some of these that we read very little about, Paul is very human, and you know, these little touches, he's been a real consolation to me, shows Paul was not just hard and indifferent and pushing and going all the time, he had feelings too. And in working together, how we work together, expression of feelings, of interest, and so on, these things are all important, and it's beautiful to see this in Scripture. And then we see that not every fellow worker was a joy to Paul. He had had his disappointment in John Mark at the early part of John Mark's service for the Lord. John Mark was anxious to go along, and so on. He had turned back when the going got rough, and we find a Demas who is mentioned as a fellow worker in several of the epistles, and yet in his last epistle, Paul has to say about Demas, very sadly, that he's forsaken me, he's gone to Thessalonica, having loved the present age. He doesn't say he's apostatized from the Lord, and I think one has to be careful not to read more into some of these statements. I mean, brethren love to spiritualize all these things. These are, in first line, very human comments on individuals. Now, there may be various depths, various layers of meaning, application that we can draw from them, but let's remember, in first line, these are human beings. These are men who serve the Lord, and just as today, one can go on for a long time faithfully and apparently well, and then some trouble, some problem comes into the life, and you really get disappointed. Scripture tells us, back in the Psalms, 118th Psalm, very central verses in the Bible, verse 8 and 9, it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. For myself, I've often substituted the word brethren for princes. You work with anyone long enough, and you're apt to get disappointed. Now, here was one who had served the Lord a long time, and yet when Paul was in prison and when things were going rough, and all those in Asia had forsaken him, Demas decides to go to Thessalonica, something there that draws his heart. He loves the present age, loves to get ahead in the world better. There are those who love the Lord and who will find in heaven, but they love the praise of men, they love material prosperity or whatever it may be that the enemy can draw them away with. There are other fellow workmen mentioned with even less detail. The letter to the Philippians, you know, there was a little problem in the assembly at Philippi. Philippi, a wonderful assembly in many ways, but there were two sisters that were not getting along very well, and the danger was that the assembly would choose sides, and that these two sisters would be the cause of a local division, perhaps. And Paul comes so gently, so carefully, presenting the importance of unity among saints if the work of God is to prosper. And he gives them good examples of those who sacrificed themselves for sake of the work. First of all, the Lord Jesus, who made himself of no reputation, took on him the form of a servant. You know, usually if two people have a quarrel about anything, each is trying to assert themselves, not to sacrifice themselves. Each would like to knock the other, and so Paul starts with the example of the Lord Jesus, and then he goes on to himself, and to Timothy, and to Epaphroditus, and finally in the last chapter of the book, he appeals to these two sisters by name, without going into the details of their problem. Epaphroditus had probably told him about it, and he doesn't take sides, he doesn't try to be a judge, but he appeals to them to be of the same mind in the Lord. And he mentions Clement, he mentions a true yoke fellow, he mentions those women that labored with me in the gospel, I mean, he mentions quite a number of other workers there at Philippi without mentioning names. But here are two sisters, Euodia and Syntyche. One brother, I think it was Raymond Campbell, has mentioned them as odious and soon touchy. And you know, sometimes we can be a real stinker about something, that we can be soon touchy. Well, that's perhaps a play on their names in English, it's not the meaning in Greek. He mentions a Clement, a true yoke fellow, other fellow laborers. In the heading of his letter to the Corinthians, he mentions Sosthenes. Now when you go into Acts 18, you find that the Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed. And then there's another ruler of the synagogue mentioned, Sosthenes. And in all probability, he later got saved too, and is included by Paul, he may have been visiting with Paul, and Paul includes him in writing to the Corinthians. And he may have been a man whom they well respected, if he had been the ruler of the synagogue before, had gotten saved, had taken a stand for the Lord, well, Paul can include him when he says, you know, Paul and Sosthenes, and to the assembly at Corinth, and so on. In Romans 16, there's quite a list of names, and Paul mentions an Urbanus, or Urban, as a fellow workman in Christ. What he did is not told, but he's called a fellow workman in Christ. You know, if the Apostle Paul were writing me a letter and called me a fellow workman in Christ, it would be something to be thankful for, wouldn't it? Or, as the world would say, to be proud of. But God scatters these appellations throughout the New Testament epistles. There's a Tertius, Paul's secretary at Corinth, as he writes the letter, and Tertius adds one verse himself. As Paul is giving the greetings to the Romans in chapter 16, all at once you come to the verse that says, I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord. Tertius felt free to put his own greetings in the letter. It was the one verse that Paul didn't dictate, but Paul approved it, let it go, and Tertius writes it, interestingly enough. We have a Quartus, a brother Quartus, mentioned in this chapter. Quartus means number four. We have a Tertius, means number three. We have a Secundus, mentioned in Scripture, means number two, and the Romans often gave their slaves names, just numbered them like that, all right, one, two, three, just called them by those names, especially if they had quite a few. We don't like to be a number, we like to be a name. These names were really numbers, but the one name that we don't find in the New Testament is Primus, which means number one, because in all things he must have the preeminence. The Lord Jesus is number one, the only proper number one. You can have all kinds of numbers in his slaves, in his followers, but he is number one. Well, an Erastus is mentioned in Acts 19. Is he the same one as the Erastus who is mentioned in Romans 16, the city's director of public works? I read recently that the archaeologist had dug up something in Corinth that had the inscription with this man's name on it. This had been built under the freighter ship of Erastus, so his name has been actually dug up in Corinth, the same man that is mentioned here in Romans 16. Whether he's the one or whether there are two Erastuses in the New Testament is not altogether certain. We have the mention of an Erastus in the end of 2 Timothy, where Paul says Erastus stayed in Corinth. It may very well have been this man who had high office. Well, when Luke writes the Acts, he addresses it O Theophilus. When he wrote Luke, the first book in the series, most excellent Theophilus. It may well have been that Theophilus was a government official that got converted and that eventually lost his job because of it. Generally speaking, if you let your light shine for the Lord and you take a real uncompromising stand for Christ, if you're in government office, you don't stay in government office too long. In government office, at least in our own country, elective office is the art of compromise. And if you are a Christian, you may get into an office, but you really have to compromise to stay there and to get reelected. Now, there are others also mentioned in 2 Corinthians 8, which we read about, and then we have some occupations given us. These people in the last section here are not specifically called fellow workmen, but they certainly worked together with Paul. Some were hosts or hostesses. Lydia at Philippi, Jason at Thessalonica, Philip the Evangelist at Caesarea, Manasseh. Paul was to lodge with him when he came up to Jerusalem. He was an old brother, a Cyprian. Publius on the island of Malta, Melita, when Paul was shipwrecked. He was the chief man of the island. Paul healed his father, and this man Publius was kind enough to be Paul's host there. Gaius is mentioned here in Romans 16, verse 23. Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings. One of the older translations, Gaius my host and that of the church. So one of the assemblies in Rome met at this man Gaius' home. In the New Testament, among these Christians is the hospitality and how much various ones used their homes for the Lord. Here's a whole list of people who were either Paul's host or hostess, or they had the assembly in their home. This isn't the complete list. Some traveled with Paul or were with him when he wrote his letters, and they say, add my greetings. So Peter and Gaius, Acts 20, verse 4, they traveled with him. Paul is writing from Corinth to the Romans, and he's putting this long list of people to greet, and then there are a number of brethren standing around who say, send my greetings, and Tertius writes in, I greet you too, and somebody else, you know, he's the steward of the city, and it's so beautiful to see that, isn't it? Erastus, who is the city's director of public works, and our brother Quartus, who's distinguished for nothing but for being a brother, send their greetings. You know, the director of public works and the ordinary brother, a slave, number four, you know, the director of public works and number four both send you their greetings. Isn't that beautiful? He breaks down all these human distinctions that have come in. They're both brothers. They both love the saints at Rome. Probably neither has ever been there, but they're both sending their greetings. The house of Chloe. Paul had gotten a sad report about conditions in Corinth from this household, and when you read about the house of somebody in Scripture, especially in the New Testament, but even in the Old, the house of so-and-so normally includes the slaves. The family is different from the house. Now, with Abraham, you find this in Genesis 18, I know Abraham that he will command his children and his household after me to keep the way of the Lord. The household is something much bigger than the family itself, and Lydia had a household. We never read that she had a husband. We don't read that she had children, but she was a well-to-do businesswoman, and she had a household. She had servants there. The house of Stephanus. Beautiful thing. They're addicted, at least according to the King James translation. They had addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints. Lovely addiction. I wish there were more brethren who were addicted to the ministry of the saints today. Yes? Was that Philippian jelly Stephanus received? The Philippian jelly is never named for us. Oh, really? No. Stephanus, Achaicus, Fortunatus, these were Corinthians who had come to Paul and had carried a letter apparently to him, given him a report. Well, these are people that he has contact with. All kinds of people. When you read the list in Romans 16, how many there are there. We've skipped over some of the detail here. Phoebe we had touched on before. The letter to the Romans is written as a commendation for her. There's Triphina and Triphosa. I always figure that they must have been twins. They're beloved because of their work, and then there's the beloved Persis. Triphina and Triphosa who labor in the Lord, and then the beloved Persis who labored much in the Lord. Evidently, an older sister whose days of active ministry had come to an end, but Paul commends her. He speaks about the mother of a Rufus who also had been a mother to him. Had she sewed some buttons on his shirts? Had she fixed him a nice meal? Had she mothered him a little bit? All these things are possibilities. But there are so many ways to serve the Lord, and while Paul details many names, makes many brief comments about various ones, think of how much longer the list that the Lord is keeping, the list that's going to be made manifest at the judgment seat of Christ. Think of how much longer that list is, and how he notes every detail of our service for him. It's not just the big prominent preachers, but these dear sisters, these dear brothers in the background, number four slave, number three slave who could take down the dictation, and so on, all working together in the interests of the Lord Jesus. May the Lord help us to do likewise. …