“As to all my affairs, Tychicus, our beloved brother and faithful servant and fellow bond-servant in the Lord, will bring you information. 8 For I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts;”
Have you ever spent a private, contemplative time thinking specifically about what kind of legacy you will leave behind when you pass from this world?
Within just a few weeks of the time I was to begin preparing this sermon I had the honor of presiding over the funeral service of a 95 year old woman who had passed on as a follower of Christ.
As I sat at the front of the chapel watching people come in and find a seat, I observed the wide range of ages and took note of family members as they greeted one another and so on. Here was a woman who left behind quite a legacy. There were four generations of people who would not have been there if she had never lived. I saw a large number of senior citizens, some with canes, some with oxygen tanks, one in a wheel chair, and I thought about how many friends and family she must have seen come and go before her, since she lived for 95 years in this world.
Just for the sake of perspective, she was born 4 days before the sinking of the Titanic. Just imagine the changes she saw in her lifetime! Two world wars, the development of the automobile and other forms of transportation from their infancy to what they are today, 17 United States Presidents.
As I listened to family members stand up and pay their respects I heard everything from a 10 year old great, great grandson saying he’d miss her toast and syrup, but that he was happy for her because now she is in Heaven and will have no more pain, to an adult grandson praising her for her exuberant approach to life and the good example she left for all of her children and their children.
What will your legacy be? If you try to run your life through your mind like a movie, or maybe a kind of slideshow of still pictures, what about you has influenced people around you? What will they say at your funeral? More importantly, what will they say in private after your funeral?
I can’t remember where I read this, but someone wrote, “If you think you are an important person just remember that 30 minutes after your funeral your friends and family will be cracking jokes over a casserole”.
The fact is we all leave some kind of a legacy, whether for good or bad. Some will affect and influence very few just because of the quiet and unassuming and un-noteworthy existence they led, but even they will leave something behind for a brief time in the mind and heart of someone.
And let me go on to say that this is really true for most of us. There are comparatively few really famous and well-known people who pass through this world.
Most of us will pass away and all the focus will be on and about us for a few days. But as time goes by the memories will fade and people will be involved in their everyday life, and those closest to us will think about us off and on, but by and large, we won’t be remembered or thought of at all after any length of time goes by.
One thing that has occurred to me is that when we know anything about people who have been long dead in history, they are usually remembered for one particular thing. One thing they did, one thing they represented, one thing about them that stood out.
Lou Gehrig – Baseball player who died of what is now commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Amelia Earhart – female pilot who went missing
Alexander Fleming – discoverer of penicillin
Of course, more is written about these historical figures, entire biographies have been written about them. But if we know about them at all, those are the first things that come to mind when we hear their name. And for the most part, they are facts that come in most handy when watching Jeopardy or playing trivia games.
The truth is, this world is passing away and all those facts will pass away with it. None of it will be remembered in eternity; none of it will be pertinent.
The legacy that each of us leaves behind will either perish with the planet, or it will live on eternally because the way we lived and the impact we had was of an eternal value in that it impacted people for Christ.
If God were to write one more book of the Bible, titled, ‘Things Christians Are Remembered For’, when it came to your name, what would your brief paragraph say?
PAULS FRIENDS
Paul finished several of his letters listing people who had helped him in ministry, and in some cases, those who had hurt him. Not one of them could have imagined that people all over the world would be reading about them two thousand years after they lived. But here they are, in the Bible, in each case remembered for one thing. Let’s just move down the list today and see what one thing in each of them God saw as important to preserve for our benefit.
TYCHICUS
Tychicus, ‘…our beloved brother and faithful servant and fellow bond-servant in the Lord…’ That’s quite a resume to be preserved forever for all to know, isn’t it?
Beloved brother, loved by the brethren. Faithful servant, trusted, trustworthy. Here Paul says Tychicus ‘…will bring you information. For I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts.”
So Tychicus was trusted and able to do two very important things: Convey information accurately, and be an encourager.
Have you ever known someone you couldn’t trust to pass on a message from one hour to the next in a way that would bear any resemblance to what you told them to say?
Sure. We’ve all known people like that. Some of us are people like that.
Maybe you’ve played this game; I had to do it in a group setting in a sensitivity class all of the employees had to take at one of my jobs.
The group sits in a circle and the leader whispers a short story into the ear of the first person. That person then whispers in the ear of the next and so forth, until the story has been told around the room. The last person to hear it then stands and relates the story as they understood it, and if you have a group of more than 6 or 8 people you will usually find the final rendition hilarious, as it will seldom resemble the original story in any way.
So this is a very important thing to make note of here. Paul can’t travel, he knows that there are those who are distressed by their imaginations, knowing he is imprisoned but not knowing how he fares. Paul must be able to depend upon someone to accurately portray the circumstances he is in, to people far away, so that they will be encouraged as well as enlightened, and his man of the moment is Tychicus.
Paul says the same about him at the end of Ephesians. He is faithful, he is able to carry accurate and encouraging information from one place to another.
This is very important, Christians. The accurate verbalizing of information is becoming a lost art in our world.
We are not developing early in life the talent of deliberate listening, and for the most part when we hear someone recount an event or relay another’s words, we would be very wise to take it with a grain of salt until we can confirm facts for ourselves. Because in far too many cases what we hear from day to day is incomplete and inaccurate.
Why am I going on about this? Because, Christians, most people outside of Christ will never hear an accurate accounting of their need for repentance (turning) from sin and their need to believe the good news that Jesus Christ died and rose to life again for them, unless they hear it from the mouth of someone they know really cares about them. If you and I cannot accurately articulate the message of the Gospel then the church is truly dead to this world in regards to its effectiveness.
We need to be confident in our own minds that when presented with an opportunity we can clearly convey to anyone willing to listen, the encouraging news that Jesus Christ has won the victory over death and the grave and they can, by faith, receive eternal life and the gift of the Holy Spirit and that Christ can bring significant and positive change into their present and daily lives. We all need to be Tychicus-es.
ONESIMUS
“…and with him Onesimus,…” again, this one has the witness of being faithful and able to convey the truth, and notice how Paul refers to him as ‘one of your number’.
Onesimus was a runaway slave of Philemon who had been converted, and although he is still with Paul, Paul will now send him back with a letter to Philemon, asking him to receive Onesimus as a brother, and what a witness he will now be to the church there! He left an unbelieving runaway slave, now he will voluntarily return as a believer coming back to his master as a brother in the Lord. So Paul calls him ‘one of your number’. Isn’t that a great happy ending story? More than that, we can go and read the very letter Paul sends back with him to Philemon, just before Hebrews in your Bible!
This is all history, folks! It is real and this same wonderful God is still able to do wonderful things in your heart and life! By the way, Onesimus means ‘useful’.
ARISTARCHUS
…my fellow prisoner, sends you his greetings.
Now here is one Paul might have spent some time bragging up. But when guys have been in battle together for a long time sometimes there is much between them that they don’t feel they have to share with anyone else.
In fact, they don’t believe anyone could really understand what they’ve been through together and what passes between them when they look in one another’s eyes.
Aristarchus had been dragged off with Paul and others to be tried during the Ephesus riots that started because Paul’s preaching was hurting the pocketbooks of the idol makers.
Aristarchus had been shipwrecked along with Paul during their voyage to Rome, where they apparently spent a night and a day in the sea clinging to scraps of the broken ship until they could float to Malta. (2 Cor 11:25, Acts 27:42-44).
There is some confusion as to whether Aristarchus was actually a prisoner in chains with Paul, or whether Paul considered him a fellow prisoner because he had willingly given up all else to stay and tend to and minister with the Apostle. Either way, he is to be commended for his faithfulness to his brother.
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother”. Shakespeare
That’s the sort of camaraderie that should exist between Christians; not all the squabbling and fighting and division that we so often witness in our ranks.
In a war zone when things go quiet for a while and there’s no action and no activity pretty soon soldiers start getting itchy and fighting over petty matters. Officers start noticing un-shined boots and the need for haircuts. That sounds silly, I know, but I have witnessed it. Then there is action, an enemy attack, maybe some incoming explosive ordinance (rockets) and the little stuff gets dropped and everyone is watching out for everyone again.
Do you think that maybe our problem is lack of action? Too much comfort-seeking, maybe? Maybe things are just a little too safe for the church in our society. I do not wish for trouble, but trouble may be soon upon us, nonetheless.
Well, the next name we see is Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, and this is happy news, because at an earlier time Mark deserted the team on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:5), which later caused a bit of a rift between Barnabas and Paul (Acts 15:37-39).
Later though, we see Paul naming Mark among his fellow workers (Philemon 24) and as one who was a great help to him (2 Tim 4:11).
People in the church are often very quick to write someone off, especially someone in a leadership position, who has failed. I’m so glad that God does not!
It is my belief that God would have us be much more supportive and much more forgiving and willing to help a brother through to victory than we typically are in the church.
After everyone’s favorite proof text has been drawn like a six-shooter, and the debate has raged about what sin is unpardonable and what is not and all the finer points sharpened to a razor’s edge, I would call under heavy suspicion any doctrine that would render God impotent to reclaim, restore, reinstate. I would subject to strenuous doubt, any implication that God is less than absolutely willing and desirous of accepting the repentant unconditionally, whatever the sin in question, and putting him into full service for the Kingdom.
It is quite likely that Mark had come under the wing of Peter, himself no stranger to failure, and found his second chance there. It is so much easier to be compassionate with someone who has blown it when we remember the second chances that have been given us.
Next Paul names ‘Jesus who is called Justus’. Jesus was a common name, it means ‘savior’, or ‘salvation’ as does the Hebrew equivalent ‘Joshua’. His latin surname, Justus, means ‘righteous’. We aren’t told anything else about him; he is only mentioned here. But what do we see? He is one of the few of the circumcision, that is, of the Jewish believers, who stayed faithfully with Paul and worked with him. Paul has just listed them; Aristarchus, Mark and Justus, and they were an encouragement to him.
EPAPHRAS
Well, Epaphras, is mentioned several times in this letter. He was the teacher of the Colossians who had come to Paul with news of the heresies arising in the church.
It is interesting that here Paul sends greetings from Epaphras, indicating that Epaphras was not immediately returning to Colossae. He hadn’t stopped working for them though. According to Paul’s testimony the man was ‘laboring earnestly’ in his prayers for them. The language bespeaks of earnest, agonizing intercessory prayer.
Epaphras had a pastor’s heart for his church and while he was away from them his deep concern for them, and also for the church at Laodicea and Hierapolis kept him frequently on his knees.
Now here is a case where the minister is praying for the ministry. But there is also much to be said for the ministry praying for the minister. When God’s people band together to lift up their spiritual leaders in prayer, Heaven is listening and Heaven is concerned, and Heaven is acting.
It is a well reported fact that Spurgeon attributed the fruitfulness of his ministry to his ‘boiler room’. Spurgeon preached every Sunday to over 10,000 people. When someone would ask him to what he attributed this success he would take them to the basement of the cathedral where he preached. When he opened the door though, there was not a boiler, but hundreds of chairs. He explained that while he was preaching, over 400 people were in this room praying for the Word of God to reach the hearts of the people in his audience.
I wonder how much of the power of God would be manifest through our churches today and what great impact we could once more have on our society, if there was this kind of devotion to prayer and prayerful support of the Lord’s heralds going up from the lips of His people? Epaphras was an example of Paul’s exhortation in verses 2-4 of this chapter.
“Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.”
Well, Luke is mentioned, and we know quite a bit more about him, don’t we? Luke, the beloved physician. What a great help and comfort he must have been to Paul. How many missionaries have their own traveling doctor with them? And Paul especially needed that, didn’t he? The poor guy was a walking whipping post. Everywhere he went they were beating him to a pulp, whipping him, stoning him… even more than having Luke’s help in those times though, just the faithfulness of Luke to stay with him, accurately recording their journeys, had to have been a great encouragement to Paul.
Then there is Demas. Things didn’t turn out so well for Demas. His priorities were upside down.
2 Tim 4:9-10a
“Make every effort to come to me soon; for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica”
Even here in the Colossian letter, and I don’t want to read anything into it, but nothing is really said about Demas.
About all the others Paul has some thing to say about their faithfulness, their encouragement, their fervent prayer for their fellows, but what do we see here? “…and also Demas”
What about Demas? I don’t know… he sends greetings. Later, when Paul writes to Timothy, we get a sad sense of his feeling of desertion. He’s in prison, after all. “Make every effort to come to me soon; for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me…” Demas has left me.
What a legacy! You get one chance to get yourself recorded forever in the Bible, and it’s for desertion.
Let me bring an historically proven fact to your attention, fellow Christ-followers. You can spend a lifetime building up trust, building up a reputation for honesty and morality and strength of character, winning awards, earning degrees, establishing yourself in even the highest positions in society, and in five minutes you can destroy it all.
Within just the decade of the 1980s, for those of us who remember the 80s, we saw several world-famous preachers go down in flames over night due to bad choices and failure to remain faithful to their assigned task.
It wasn’t long ago that we witnessed the same tragedy in a church in Colorado Springs, and it was plastered all over the national news, because when a man of God trips on his face it comes as a shock to many and an opportunity to gloat for more.
There are so many Biblical examples. I’ll give you just one. King Uzziah had everything going for him; as one of the most powerful, innovative, productive leaders in the history of Israel, and in a self-serving, self-aggrandizing moment, deciding he could do the work of the Priests contrary to the commands and warnings of God, he threw it all away. His final days were spent in a small cottage at the back of the property, closed away with leprosy.
“Hey, remember ol’ Uzziah? Whatever happened to him?” Someone would ask years later. “Oh, he had leprosy”. What a legacy.
What would you be remembered for? What one line would someone be inspired to put on your tombstone based on what they know of you?
I heard of one over a grave somewhere in Scotland.
“Beneath this graveyard stone, lies stingy Jimmy Wyatt. He died one morning just at ten, and saved a dinner by it”
Now I’m sure that everyone who knew Mr. Wyatt would read that later and say, ‘You, know, that’s true. I knew Jimmy and he really was a tight wad’. I mean, there had to be a reason someone would put that on his grave stone, right?
But is that how you would want to be remembered or thought of every time someone passes your grave?
There’s one in Tombstone AZ that says, “Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a .44, no Les, no more”. What empty and pointless lives we lead when we are not all Christ’s and He is not all of us.
The positive side of the coin, believers, is that God honors those who honor Him. He does not forget His own and no life spent for Him ends less than filled up, pressed down, shaken together and running over. And I know I borrowed those words out of context from Luke 6:38 but I do believe they can be applied here also.
So here we have this mostly positive list of Paul’s, a list largely made up of unapplauded people; people remembered for very little, but remembered; and we only know of the negative side of Demas because of 2 Timothy.
Sadly, Paul’s second letter to Timothy was very near the end and there are some heart-wrenching claims there.
‘Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm’ ‘at my first defense no one supported me but all deserted me’ What a shame that such a great man, in his end days, would be left so alone and so betrayed.
But Paul knew who stood with him and brought him safely through it all.
“But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that through me the proclamation might be fully accomplished, and that all the Gentiles might hear; and I was rescued out of the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed, and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom; to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. 2 Tim 4:17-18
That can be the joyful, confident claim of every true believer who follows his Lord faithfully to the end. In Revelation 3:21 Jesus declares that to everyone who overcomes He will grant to them to sit with Him on His throne, as He has overcome and sits on His Father’s throne.
So there is an overcoming to accomplish, believers. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in the work of Christ alone, but once saved we are accountable to be faithful and do the work of ministry and finish the race.
There’s no place for Demas-es in the Kingdom, who love this world too much. But there is an eternal record of the Tychicus’ and the Onesimus’ and the Aristarchus’ and Marks and Justus’, the faithful pray-ers like Epaphras, the Lukes, and all who surrender all to Christ and take all of Him.
How does your legacy stand? If you were to go home to Heaven today, what one thing would stand out about you in the minds of those who knew you best? Is it helpful? Or is it harmful?
When they remember you, will they remember Christ?
“Take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you may fulfill it.” Col 4:17
Grace be with you.
