Know They Care, Care What They Know

Sermon Transcript

There was a saying I heard when I was a teacher that “No one cares what you know, until they know that you care.” In other words, the students didn’t care that I knew how to teach math unless they knew that I cared about them.

In the letter to the Colossians, we’ve seen that Paul is a guy who knows a lot. He knows that Christ is all that the Colossians need, so that they don’t need to follow a religious calendar or eat or not eat certain foods. He knows that since they’ve received Christ, they should “put on Christ” and put to death what is earthly in themselves. He knows that when they put on Christ, they should submit to God’s authority in the household of faith and share the gospel with outsiders. But why should the Colossians care what Paul, a prisoner who they have never met, has to say to them? Paul is concerned that the Colossians know that he cares about them, so that they’ll care what he knows. He wants them to know how hard he, like a loving father, is struggling for them and for the sake of the gospel, so that they’ll be encouraged to continue in the faith just as Paul is teaching them.

Today, be encouraged by your leaders in Christ. Paul gives us two ways we can be encouraged by our leaders in Christ: to know their struggle, and to receive their greetings. Then he gives those who’ve been encouraged a job: to pass it on!

 

Know their struggle

The first person we hear about in the passage is Tychicus, who would have come to the Colossians along with the letter. Tychicus is described as “a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant”. Paul didn’t just entrust any random guy to bring this letter to the Colossians, he sent one of his best guys. This is someone Paul loves, who’s reliable, who’s a fellow servant. This is a man who would be useful to Paul, even just in providing for his own needs while he’s in prison. And the journey he’s sending Tychicus on will take months, because he can’t just hop on a plane to Colossae. Sometimes I am too cheap to send a letter because stamps cost 73 cents. But Paul is willing to lose a beloved brother, faithful minister, and fellow servant.

I have gotten a couple birthday cards recently, and they make me smile because I know someone put effort into picking out the card, writing a note, and sending it to me because they care about me. I’ve never gotten a singing messenger, but that would make me feel pretty special. But Paul sends one of his best guys to deliver this message.

This is the message that is so important, that costs Paul so much to send: “I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts”. Paul wants the Colossians to know how he’s doing, and to be encouraged by that.

So how are Paul and his co-workers doing? Well, in verse 18 Paul reminds us that he’s in prison, so in one sense, he’s not doing great. We learn from the letter to Philemon, which was probably sent at the same time as this letter, that Epaphras is also Paul’s “fellow prisoner”. So basically, everyone’s in prison. Now, how is that supposed to encourage the Colossians? 

From a worldly perspective, Paul is just suffering, but from a heavenly perspective, he’s suffering joyfully for their sake. If you have your Bible open, flip back one page to Colossians 1:24. Paul says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church”. So Paul is rejoicing in his sufferings, because he loves Jesus, and he gets to work hard for the sake of Jesus’ body, the church. He adds in chapter 2 verse 1: “For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Paul even says that he wants the Colossians to know how hard it’s been, how great a struggle he’s had, because it will encourage them! Paul’s in prison, but he’s not thinking about himself, he’s working hard for the Colossians because he wants them to press on in their faith to know the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that they have in Christ. He wants the Colossians to know how much he cares about them, so that they will care what he knows: that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, all the fullness of God, is in Christ, and they don’t need anything else outside of him to be satisfied.

Do you know how hard your leaders are working for you to encourage you to believe that exact same message? Pastor Mark works 10 hour shifts as a physical therapist, then goes home and works hard for Cait and Everett and Charlotte and Rose, and then on his day off on Wednesday, he basically works for free for our church, praying for us, counseling members, reading books that will help him to help others. He works hard for us because he loves Jesus, and we’re Jesus’ body, and he wants us to know the treasure that we have in Christ.

Working in the office with Pastor Mike, I’ve gotten to see how hard he works for our sake too. He beats me to the office most days, and if he doesn’t, it’s because he’s meeting with someone. I often have to remind him that it’s time to leave at the end of the day. And when he goes home, he works hard at home to love Lorielle and Rowan and Miles and Olivia, and then sometimes after the kids are in bed he works hard doing marriage counseling, or at elder’s meetings. Frankly, he could be applying his hard work to getting a better house, having a nicer car, or living in a safer neighborhood, but he’s working hard for us. Mike works hard for us because he loves Jesus, and we’re Christ’s body, and he wants us to know the treasure we have in Christ.

Is there a brother or sister who is spending intentional time with you to read the Bible, pray with you, and help you walk with God? Let that person’s hard work encourage you! And it’s a totally attainable goal to become that person for someone else, if you’re not already. 

And it’s not just our own leaders that are working hard for us, but leaders and ordinary brothers and sisters at other churches! Many of you have benefitted from the CityKids events at Redemption City church, and that takes hard work! I know lots of women at our church have benefitted from Bible Study Fellowship – that takes hard work! Christ Church West Chester puts hard work into organizing speakers to come for their Sunday Night Theology events that many of us have attended – that takes hard work and sacrificial giving, and it benefits us! Our church wouldn’t be here at all without Citylight Manayunk, who sent members, money, and a great struggle in prayer to plant our congregation. Be encouraged by the struggle of others who are working hard for our sakes.

Be encouraged in your hearts, Citylight Church Center City, that so many faithful leaders have worked hard for us. Be encouraged to press on in your faith, because these beloved brothers and sisters have worked hard so that you might appreciate what you have in Christ.

Some of you may be thinking, “Wow, it would be nice to have someone who knows me and is praying for me and working hard for me.” If that’s you, let me encourage you in 2 ways.

1. There are things that you can do to seek out that kind of care. If you’re a believer in Christ, you should be a member of a local church where the leaders know who you are, or be seeking to join a church. I’ll even shamelessly plug our newcomer’s lunch after service today, and the baptism and membership class on July 13th and 20th after service – come get to know our church and decide if you’d like our church to know you as well. If you’re already a member of this church, I want you to know that Mike and Mark want to know you and especially to know how to pray for you. I know some people worry that our pastors are too busy, and that makes them reluctant to reach out for help. And it’s true that they are busy and working hard, but they’re working hard for your sake, so asking for prayer and help is actually the best way that you can be helping them. They work hard because they care about you, so let them know you.
2. If you want someone who knows you and cares about you to be praying and working hard for you, you can be sure that others feel the same way. How could you be that person for someone else? 

It’s true that if you’re not quite there yet, it can be frustrating, because it takes time to find a church worth joining, to find someone who can invest in you in a discipleship relationship, to start discipling someone else. But here’s something that you can do right now. You can go to your Father in prayer. Jesus actually tells us that our Heavenly Father already knows what you need. And from the time of creation until now neither Jesus nor the Father have stopped working. So go to the One who knows everything that you need, and remember the message that Paul was so eager to send to the Colossians, that in Him you have all that you need.

Receive their greetings

There are tons of authors, podcasters, and YouTubers vying for our attention every day. Many of them are even proclaiming the same message that Paul preached to the Colossians, that if they have Christ they have all that they need. I assume that many of them are working hard for the sake of the gospel. But do you know what none of these authors, podcasters, and teachers are doing? None of them are working hard for you. I’ve appreciated many of these people, but I’m most encouraged when I think about my own leaders – the people that work hard and know me. I feel encouraged to continue in the faith and growing day by day when I know that the people working hard to proclaim that message are thinking about me and praying for me. 

Starting in verse 10, Paul passes along greetings from 6 other leaders who are with him. These are brothers who aren’t just working hard for the gospel, but are thinking and praying about the Colossians, so they’re not going to miss this opportunity to say “what’s up?”. Aristarchus greets them. Mark the cousin of Barnabas greets them. Jesus who is called Justus greets them. Epaphras greets them, and Luke greets them, as does Demas. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a video call with someone, and then all of a sudden someone else you know pops up in the background just to say hi. I always appreciate that and am encouraged to know that they care about me. The Colossians get to know that these people popping up in the background of this letter like Aristarchus, Mark, and others, care about them and are thinking of them. We’ll look at a few of these individuals who greet the Colossians and take some time to reflect on the encouragement that they’re passing on.

Aristarchus, Mark, Justus: comforters to Paul

First, Paul passes on greetings in verses 10-11 from a group of three: Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus who is called Justus. These are the only “men of the circumcision”, that is, Jewish believers, who are with him, and Paul says that they’ve been a great comfort to him. Why would Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, be comforted by having these few Jewish believers with him? Well, based on the details we get about the false teachers to the Colossians, it seems that they were related to the circumcision party: these false teachers may have said they believed in Jesus, but they were telling the Colossians that they needed to follow Old Testament ritual practices like observing feast days and abstaining from certain unclean foods. So when so many of the Jewish Christians had abandoned their confidence in Christ by adding man-made rituals, it would have been a huge comfort to Paul that some of them had remained faithful and were his “fellow workers”! These were men that Paul, himself a Jew, could look at and think, “Christ is enough for these men, so I know he’s enough for me”. 

Walk long enough with Jesus, and you’re going to see people that you know and love walk away from the faith. Even Demas, one of those who greets the Colossians, later abandons Paul, and he’s described in 2 Timothy 4:10 as being in love with the present world. Paul knew the pain and sorrow of those he loved walking away from the faith. It can even be more heartbreaking if these people are like you in a lot of worldly ways – if you grew up in the same family, went to the same school, had a lot of the same experiences. Paul, a Jew himself, even says in Romans 9:3 that he could wish that he himself was cursed and cut off from Jesus for the sake of his people, the Jews, his flesh and blood. It really hurts, because it’s a tragedy when any person rejects the good news of Jesus, and it hurts even more when it’s someone that you know and love. It can even cause us to doubt: if Jesus wasn’t enough for that person, what if he’s not enough for me? What if they really found the thing that has made them happy and fulfilled outside of Jesus?

But we should never lose the encouragement of those who remain. Aristarchus, Mark, and Justus comfort Paul because he sees that Jesus is enough for these men. And we should be encouraged that even some who appear to walk away will come back. Mark had deserted Paul and caused a disagreement between Paul and Barnabas in Acts 15, but now Paul can be comforted by Mark’s restoration, and he can tell the Colossians to welcome Mark as a beloved brother if he comes. Aristarchus is walking so faithfully with Jesus and with Paul that he’s in prison with him. When you see some walk away from the faith, don’t forget to look at those who have remained. Who are the faithful brothers and sisters who are walking alongside you today? These are the ones who encourage us by the way they live their lives that Jesus is enough.

Epaphras: prayer warrior and hard worker

Next, let’s take a brief look at Epaphras in verses 12-13. “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis”. Epaphras is a prayer warrior, and he’s a hard worker. And he’s not just struggling for them aimlessly – his desire for them is that they are mature and confident in the will of God. He prays and works so that not just the Colossians, but those in nearby churches, will be confident in their faith in God. 

How comforting must it have been for the Colossians to know that Epaphras was fighting for them so hard in prayer, and working so hard for them, that Paul saw it and told them about it? How much of an encouragement must it have been for them to work just as hard for those things Epaphras was struggling for, that they’d be mature and confident in their faith, not being pulled here and there by the false teachings, but being steady in the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus? When someone prays for you, and accompanies that prayer with hard work, receive that as an encouragement that they love you! I’ve talked about Pastor Mike and Pastor Mark and their hard work for us, but I also want to bear witness to their struggle on for you in prayer. 

What’s stopping us from praying for others with the same fervency that Epaphras did? I am not there yet, but I want to become the type of person that prays for others so much that other people who are around tell them, and they’re encouraged in their faith because of it.

Pass it on

I guess a lot of kids today have iPhones, so if they want to share something funny with their friends in class they’ll just airdrop it. But when I was growing up, if you wanted to tell someone something in class, you had to hand write a note and pass it. At the end of the note, there was always an instruction: pass it on. 

After encouraging the Colossians by reminding them of his struggle and passing along greetings, he tells them to pass that encouragement along. He particularly tells them to “pass it on” to other churches. In verse 15, Paul tells the Colosians to send his greetings to the church in the nearby city of Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church meeting in her house, and to read his letter to the Laodiceans. Paul couldn’t just copy a bunch of people onto an email, so he had to resort to old-fashioned note-passing.

Obviously, we don’t have new inspired words of Scripture that no one else has, that an apostle has told us to pass along to another church. But what do we have from the Lord that we can pass on to other churches? How can we make sure that gospel-preaching churches have what they need to grow in the Word that’s already been delivered to us?

One thing we can send is preachers, not with a new word from God, but men with the ability to clearly explain the Word that we’ve already received. We want to be the kind of church that has enough men who can preach the Word that we can actually send them out to other churches, to encourage them. I am thankful to you all for giving me the opportunity to study at seminary, go to Simeon Trust workshops to improve my preaching, and for encouraging and giving feedback to me when I have the opportunity to preach here. Thanks for encouraging the men who went through the recent cohort that Pastor Mike led and who preached at the Good Friday service, and who’ve been preaching at the prayer services. All of us can be part of the work of training preachers by encouraging those who are developing the ability to teach, and by giving them helpful feedback (hopefully after also encouraging them!). And for some of you, if God has given you the aspiration and ability to teach, that’s a good aspiration to have! Not just for our church, but for the sake of other churches. 

We also have the opportunity to financially support other churches. God has, in his providence, blessed our congregation not just with enough to survive, but that we have an overflow to give to others, especially to other churches. So we use some of our budget to support Risen Christ Fellowship in Germantown, a church that is faithfully preaching the good news about Jesus in a neighborhood where members are giving faithfully but just don’t have a lot of financial resources. We can support a Citylight church plant in Manhattan, in the hope that they can grow in the Word. We support an organization called Good Churches that trains local pastors among unreached people in a country that formally opposes missionaries, so that pastors are equipped to preach God’s Word in their own language. These, and other gospel causes, are also ways that individual Christians can pass on the encouragement to other churches.

We can also be encouragers of Christians that we know in other churches. Paul tells the Colossians to “say to Archippus, ‘See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.’” We don’t know what Archippus’ ministry was. But do you know a brother or sister in this church, or even another church, who could use encouragement or a reminder to fulfil their ministry? Who would love to hear from you, “the work that you’re doing is important, and I’m praying for you to keep doing it.” As you’re encouraged in your own faith that Jesus is enough, who is someone else who needs to hear that same message?

The message of encouragement in Christ is never a message that we are supposed to keep for ourselves. It’s a note that we pass on to others, so that they can be encouraged too.

Paul concludes the letter by greeting the Colossians himself. He says in verse 18, “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.” Does that sound like an odd way to end a letter to you? “It’s really me writing this. Also, don’t forget that I’m in prison. Peace.”

Paul wants the Colossians to know a couple things. First, he took the time to actually write the greeting himself, as a sign of its authenticity. Paul didn’t just say to someone helping him transcribe the letter, “say hey to the Colossians for me.” He greets them himself.

And he wants them to know that even though he’s in prison, even though he’s going through it, he’s not thinking about himself, but he’s thinking about them. I’m sure that there are a lot of things Paul could have asked for that would have been helpful to him, but he just says, remember that I’m in prison but thinking of you and taking the time to write this greeting with my own hand.

Isn’t it amazing that, despite his own imprisonment, despite all the hardship that Paul is going through, that he’s not thinking of himself, but about the Colossians?

Paul can think of the Colossians despite his own imprisonment because as he asks the Colossians to remember his chains, he can remember the cross of Christ. As he reminds the Colossians that he cares for them and is suffering for them, he can remember that there is one who knows his name and suffered for him. Jesus tells us in John 10 that he is the good shepherd. He says that “the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.” Brothers and sisters, Jesus calls you and leads you by name. In the same passage, he says, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Jesus didn’t just intend those words for his disciples, but for all the other sheep who he knows by name that have not yet been brought into the flock, that he will bring in. He says, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” That’s the good news that gave Paul freedom even when he was in chains, and the good news that can give you rest. This is the good news that Paul was so eager for the Colossians to hear again that he sent his beloved brothers Tychicus and Onisemus to relay the message. It’s the message that’s so important that God sent his Beloved Son to bring it to us. So enter into his pasture of rest by trusting in him today, because Jesus is the good shepherd who knows your name, who laid down his life for your sins so that you can come into the pasture when you trust in him as the only door to enter by. There is no other shepherd that you need, because there is no other shepherd who has laid down his life for his sheep. Not even Paul, chains and all, could do that for us. We have all sinned and do not deserve to rest in his pasture, but he’s laid down his life for sinners so that we can rest in his finished work. So turn away from the ways in which you have sinned by not listening to his voice, trust in him alone, and know that your sins are forgiven because he’s laid down his life for you.

And do you know what our good shepherd is doing right now? Romans 8:34 tells us: “Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” Right now, the risen Lord Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God and interceding for all his followers. He knows your name, and he is working hard for you in prayer. You can be grateful that there are under-shepherds like Epaphras who are always struggling on your behalf in their prayers, but even more importantly, Jesus himself is praying for you. And he’s given us leaders simply to remind us that He is all we need. So let the struggle of Jesus, and the leaders he’s given you, encourage your heart. And pass the encouragement on to others as you work hard and pray hard for others, to remind them that Jesus is all they need.