Chapter 2, verse 25, this is God's Word. I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker, and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need. For he has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed, he was ill, near to death, but God had mercy on him, and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious. So receive him in the Lord with all joy. and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we come to your word and we ask that we would truly honor you Father, in this moment, in this time, together around the fellowship of your word. Father, grant us ears to hear, grant us eyes to see, and a heart to believe, and a life of obedience to follow you all the days of our lives, Father, in all that is found in these brief verses. We ask, Father, hear us for these things. In Jesus' name, Amen. We come to what again seem like kind of just very common quotidian words from the apostle here. He has talked about in the beginning of chapter 2, something very weighty of course, the call to be humble, the call to not do anything for our own interests, to not be puffed up with selfish conceit, and he tells us that the model of such a life is, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who, although he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but humbled himself and made himself nothing. Some translations say he emptied himself, but it's an emptying that happens by taking on things, right? He doesn't stop being God or stop being divine, but rather He is God in flesh, taking on our flesh, our body, and our blood as we've just sung in the hymn, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. And then, of course, because of that, in light of that, Paul tells us in verse 12 and following to serve God with fear and trembling, to remember that sanctification is a call to work in obedience to God, and, of course, to do all things without grumbling and questioning, verse 14 and following, to be joyful lights in a dark and perverse world. And then, of course, he comes to Timothy, and now he gets to Epaphroditus. And I want you to see what's happening here, because it can seem like these are kind of throwaway verses. This is a travelogue. You know, Paul is just writing a letter. He's trying to update the Philippian church as to what's going to happen. Who's he going to send? When is he coming to Philippi to visit them? And we can miss something truly, truly true in these verses, which is this. That in the ordinary course of serving Christ, we are called by Christ to live lives full of risk. And lives full of Christian risk often bring us into Christian suffering, into hardships, into risky situations in the service of God and his kingdom. And yet, when we find ourselves confronted with danger, confronted with death itself, what does God call us to do even in those times? to live by faith and to live in His providence, in His care, in His provision, in His goodness, in His wise governance, which is what providence is, His wise governance over our lives. Because, you see, it is God who uses all things for our salvation and for His glory and honor. So that's the point. That's the thesis. I'm giving it to you up front. Once more, in the ordinary course of serving Christ, we live lives full of risk that often bring us into hardship and risky situations in the service of God and of His kingdom. But God calls us in these times to live by faith in his providence. Let's look at the text and see how this is worked out by Paul. First of all, who's Epaphroditus? Who's this man, Epaphroditus? Well, he's a pastor at the Philippian church that was sent by that church to Rome to be with Paul. He had worked with Paul in the past. Paul knows him, Paul knows him very well. He says in verse 25, Epaphroditus is my brother. my fellow worker and my fellow soldier. We have labored together in a common work, in common danger and toil." And the Philippian church, when they hear that Paul is going to be sent to Rome because he's under arrest by the Roman authorities way back in Jerusalem, he was arrested and he was brought, he had appealed to Caesar and been brought to of Rome. When the Philippian church hears that Paul will be sent to Rome, they send Epaphroditus to Rome to minister to Paul under house arrest. If you look over at Philippians chapter 4 verse 18, there you find something that complements our text. It says there Paul saying there, I have received full payment and more. I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God." He had been sent to Paul with a financial gift. Obviously, Paul was going to undergo many expenses, being under house arrest, having to pay his way through life in Rome. And yet, the church in Philippi sends Paul, this man, this minister, Epaphroditus, to give him a financial gift, and more than this, in verse 25, to minister to my need. He's a brother, a worker, a soldier, your messenger, and minister to my need. Here, Epaphroditus is just offering God and the church, ordinary Christian service. This is what Christians are called to do, to serve God and to serve one another in times of need. This church, I want to point this up a little bit for our purposes here. This church, Philippi, and this minister have a great sacrificial nature. The Philippian church loved Paul so much and loved the mission of the church so much, and loved God so much, that they sent one of their pastors to Rome, 2,000 miles away. A six-week long trip, this partnership occurred Way back, beginning in the beginning of Paul's ministry in Philippi. That's what Paul says in Philippians chapter 1 verse 5. And Epaphroditus has a sacrificial nature. He undertakes this 2,000 mile long trip, this 6 week long trip to Rome to serve Paul, to serve the church, to serve Christ. He was serving Christ by caring for the apostle. And he was, as it were, doing what the Philippian church could not do in verse 30. that these are kind of awkward sounding words to our ears. He says, Paul says, "...for Epaphroditus nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me." Paul here isn't sliding the Philippian church, but what Paul is saying is that you lacked the opportunity, even though you didn't lack the desire to serve, But Epaphroditus has taken your place. What you couldn't do, the entire church in Philippi couldn't go 2,000 miles over to Rome and minister to Paul. What they couldn't do, Epaphroditus did. And he rendered to God and to his fellow minister, What in verse 25 we find is translated by the word minister. He ministered to my need. And then in verse 30, it's the same word. He served me what was lacking in your service to me. This is an important word. The word here in Greek is simply liturgia or liturgia. from where we get our modern English word, liturgy. Liturgia, however, doesn't just mean the order of service in corporate worship in a church on the Lord's Day, on Sunday morning. Liturgia has a broader meaning. Liturgia is the ministry of service of the saints that Epaphroditus here is rendering to God and to the apostle and to the church at large. Beloved, we're called to liturgia. Even though most of us are not ministers, most of us are not officers of the church, we are called to serve others in their time of need. And when you serve other believers in their time of need, whatever that need may be, whether it be material or spiritual, you need to know that you are serving Christ. When you love others with material goods, with your presence, with your friendship, with your help, You are serving Christ. This is no small matter, brothers and sisters. This is the ordinary life, the ordinary calling of the church. This is, as some commentators have noted, the priestly offering and service by Epaphroditus to God that is to characterize all of our lives. That's why Paul can say in Philippians 4.18, the verse we looked at just moments ago, that it was a sacrificial offering. It's priestly language that's being used to describe the ordinary life of the believer. And yet, something goes sideways. Something is not well with Epaphroditus, and that's also in our text. somewhere, somehow, along the 2,000-mile-long, six-week-long trip to Rome, Epaphroditus falls deathly, gravely ill. And news gets back to the Philippian church of Epaphroditus' sickness. They become worried for their pastor. The Philippian church perhaps didn't know how bad it was, so Paul mentions it three times. In verse 27, he says, Indeed, he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him. And not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow." And then again, twice in verse 30. For Epaphroditus nearly died for the work of Christ. He risked his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me. Epaphroditus had been close to the gates of death. Epaphroditus would have died in Rome. He would have been buried in Rome. And yet, verse 27, God, but God, had mercy on Epaphroditus. He had mercy on Paul. He had mercy on the church in Philippi. Such that Epaphroditus recovers. And now Paul can send Epaphroditus back to the Philippian church. And he says that twice over. I look forward to sending him back. I am the more eager to send him back because he has fulfilled his mission with great distinction. I want you to see though, what I mentioned at the outset here. That in fulfilling his ordinary task, Epaphroditus gets deathly ill. He falls sick. It was just a trip. It's a trip that many people had done in the ancient world. It's 2,000 miles. Okay, it's a little long. Six weeks to get from Philippi to Rome. But again, many people had done this trip. It wasn't unknown in antiquity. It's an ordinary service to God. and to the church, and yet in fulfilling His ordinary service, Epaphroditus is at the gates of death. And this tells us something profound, beloved. that there is risk baked into the Christian life. There is risk baked into life in a fallen world. You can't escape it. It's not that you have to go out looking for it. It's that it's already here. God brings us into danger and into hardship. He brings us to and through the valley of the shadow of death. One commentator, Sinclair Ferguson, says in his comments on this verse, on this passage, our tendency is to say, if it hurts, it cannot be truly spiritual. But Paul's tendency is to say, if it is spiritual, it may well hurt. And when the risks of living for Christ ordinarily, there's nothing extraordinary here, Nothing above and beyond the call of Christ. When those risks embedded within the Christian life turn into Christian suffering, you need to know, we need to know, how to suffer. You are to suffer as a Christian. Which is to say, you are to suffer neither as a fatalist or as a stoic. Fatalism, stoicism, they're 10 cent words, and they are kinds of philosophical schools in their own right, but they are against biblical Christianity. Fatalism says that life is guided by impersonal, blind forces, by chance, and thus we should do nothing. Fatalism denies the divine character of God, our Father, who cares for us, that He is all-powerful. It denies that He is all-knowing, that He is wise beyond the wisdom of man. That God is our Father who works all things together for our salvation. That's fatalism. We cannot suffer as fatalists, but neither can we suffer as Stoics. Stoicism says that life should be lived indifferent to suffering, to the suffering of the world, the suffering of others, and even to our own suffering. Fatalism says we should do nothing. Stoicism says we should feel nothing. And fatalism, while it denies the character of God, the biblical character of God, stoicism denies the biblical character of man, biblical anthropology. That we are men and women, not unmoved, unfeeling stones who cannot feel pain, anguish, and suffering. I want you to see in the text how Paul here is no stoic. and how all those concerned are not stoic in their suffering. Verse 26, we're told that Epaphroditus has been longing for you all and has been distressed. He has been in anguish because you heard that he was ill. He's been distressed for the sake of the Philippian church because they have been consumed with worry for him. And then the Philippian church as well. In verse 28, Paul says, I'm going to send him back that you may rejoice at seeing him again. Epaphroditus' return to Philippi, to the Philippian church, would bring them joy. Why? Because they were saddened because of what they had heard about Epaphroditus. What about Paul, the great apostle? Is he a Stoic? No, he is not. Verse 27. God, but God had mercy on him. Not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow." Paul already had sorrow. His life was full of sorrow. He's the apostle who in this letter says, rejoice, again I say rejoice, but it's not like his life is just full of unending brightness. He's under house arrest, he's been slandered, he's been falsely accused, he's been the victim of injustice. His life is already full of sorrow, but he would have had more sorrow had Epaphroditus died. And then in verse 28, Paul says, I'm going to send them back. I look forward to sending Epaphroditus back. So that not only may you rejoice, but that I may be less anxious. What honest words from the apostle. What an open heart the apostle gives us here for our lives. And yet we could say, but Paul, you had just said, you had just said in chapter 1 verse 23, 24, 25, that to depart and be with God is better. Isn't that true, Paul? Yes, it is. And yet, that statement in chapter 1 does not preclude this anguish and sorrow of heart and soul in chapter 2, that God is pleased to bring into our life Paul was worried. Paul was sorrowful. He is concerned about Epaphroditus' health and well-being. He is concerned for Philippi. He is full of emotion. And yet he's trusting God in the midst of trouble. I want you to see here that Epaphroditus and Paul share something profound about the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. We are called to risk. Why? Because we've been called to Christ. We've been called to the cross. When Jesus Christ comes and tells you to follow him, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say, he's telling you to come and follow him and die. And oftentimes this death is not just, it's obviously self-denial, but sometimes it's full of great physical distress and hardship. Epaphroditus and Paul are sharing in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings what Paul will talk about later on in chapter 3. Paul here very self-consciously uses the same words that will be used of Jesus in Mark chapter 14 verse 33. Verse 33 of Mark 14 says that Jesus began to be greatly distressed and troubled. Jesus says, my soul is very sorrowful. What can we say about Jesus, our Savior? What can we say about the suffering servant, the man of sorrows, who was acquainted with grief? Was he an unfeeling, unmoved stone? Far from it. Jesus was the true man. Think of this. Think of this. Jesus wept at the tomb at the grave of Lazarus. What a profound truth for us in our suffering. Jesus wept knowing that he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. Jesus wept. Jesus agonized at Gethsemane even while He knew His Father's will was His greatest desire. Even while He resolved to go to the cross to die for our sin. Jesus was greatly distressed and troubled. His soul very sorrowful. And here we find Paul and Epaphroditus and the Philippian church living the Christian life. That is to say, they're following Christ in taking up their cross. Epaphroditus and Paul and the church and the church today and you here. We have all been called to be in the crucible with Christ, to share in Christ's sufferings, to bear up the cross of Christ. As Calvin and others have said, Paul is not here a man of iron and exempt from human feeling. Enduring the cross is hard because there's pain and sorrow in it. And yet you need to know that any burden the Lord calls you to bear is not a burden that you bear alone. You don't carry the cross alone. You bear it with God your Father caring for you. You bear it with Christ your Savior alongside of you. And you bear it in the power of the Spirit who indwells you, who indwells His church. More on that in a moment. That's our text this morning. That's the sermon. What's the lesson here for us? Beloved, there is no other way to live except to follow Christ and His Word. For there is salvation in no one else. But following Christ necessarily means living a life full of risks. Again, it's just baked in, it's embedded. It's not a bug, it's a feature of the Christian life. Life in a fallen world is risky. The world we live in, however, as we've mentioned in times past, preaches us and preaches us all a false gospel of safety, not of salvation, of safety. The world we live in wants to remove all risks from life. This is an impossibility. You can't ever do it. You can't ever have it. Your COVID numbers can never be zero at this time, ever, right? It's a utopian fantasy, but it's the world We live in the world that preaches worship safety. Safety first. I saw a t-shirt the other day. I thought it was funny. Instead of safety first, it had a guy riding a grizzly bear like a horse with his cowboy hat, you know, kind of saying, yee-haw. Safety third, it said. Beloved, you don't need to be a missionary living in a faraway land to walk with Christ in the life of the cross. Living an ordinary Christian life means there will be hardship, there will be sickness, there will be hostility, there will be death. Epaphroditus was just bringing a gift to Paul. That's all he was doing, right? It's kind of just very common quotidian activity that Christians do. He was going to spend time with the apostle, right? This is my brother. He's being imprisoned. I'm going to be with him. And yet, amidst the ordinary service he's rendering to God through the church, he falls deathly ill. And it's the same with us, beloved. You're called to live for God in the ordinary moments of life. to be different and to live differently from those around you because you belong to Christ. Ordinary activities like sharing Christ with your neighbors, with your family, with the fearful in the world, with the lost, the dead and the dying. To take up new conversations about Christ with familiar faces that perhaps you haven't shared Christ with. They might not even know you're a Christian. You refuse to adopt the modern way of living because you belong to Christ. You refuse to abide by the tyrannical overreach of the state. You seek to get married in Christ. You seek to have children in Christ. You seek to raise them in Christ and homeschool them. It's the ordinary Christian life, right? Nothing above and beyond. No martyrdom, right? It's just ordinary Christian life that God has called us to. And yet, When you live for Christ, you need to know not only that your life is embedded with risk, but sometimes your life doesn't always turn out the way you thought it would. Our plans don't always pan out. Right? I don't know if you have any plans in your life. It's good to plan. It's good to plan humbly if the Lord wills, James tells us. And yet it's good to plan, to prepare our home before we build it, right? To have blueprints for what we want to do. One year out, three years out, five years out. And yet our plans don't always pan out. That's one of the points here of our text. Paul knows this lesson. Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. He had had a ministry with great openness for about 15 years. Right? And yet, at God's appointed time, what happens to Paul? He's arrested in Jerusalem. He's put on trial a number of times while in Jerusalem. He appeals to Caesar, and he's shipped out to Rome under house arrest. Paul thought one thing. God thought another. And we see this in our own lives. I said to someone recently, I think the angel of death, God has been pleased to send him our way in recent times. You know about Pastor Rick Miller, a good friend of mine. If some of you take books that are giveaway books, not all of those books are giveaway books, but you might find a little stamp inside on the front, inside front cover that says, belonging to the library of Rick Miller. He gave me hundreds of books over many years. And yet in a moment's time, he contracted COVID and died. and his wife, and his children, and the church survive him. Some of you know from last week, our brother who was here preaching for us about Aaron Vasquez, a 14-year-old boy playing basketball. After a game, a travel game, he was playing a pickup game. Last Saturday, I was in Montana. I got the news. Saturday afternoon, he had collapsed. Saturday evening, he was gone. He had passed from this life to the next. He was a member of the Grace OPC Church. Our close friends, our family die. Our work changes. Some of you are feeling that even now. You're being threatened. Your work, your jobs are being terminated. The world grows hostile against Christ and church. It's not the script we would have written. It's not the life we would have planned for ourselves, and yet in the midst of all of this, what do we do? What do we say? What do we believe? Everything's going to be okay because I have a feeling it's going to be okay? No. When we are called by God to suffer, and we will, We need to remember verse 27, but God, but God. In all that Epaphroditus had gone through, in all that Paul had gone through, all the distress, all the anguish, all that the Philippian church had gone through, Paul remains a faithful Christian. Epaphroditus remains a faithful Christian. The church in Philippi remains a faithful Christian church. They are not fatalists, they are not Stoics, they are not atheists. When we suffer, we do not suffer as those who don't have God, who don't have hope in this world. But God, Paul says, had mercy on Epaphroditus, not only on him, but on me also. It is God who chooses to have mercy. It's God who sometimes withholds mercy, but it is always God we have to deal with because it's always God who is present. It's always God who upholds us. It's always God who intervenes in our life. It's God who always is bringing us to His desired purpose, whether in life or in death. It's always in Christ. And so when we suffer, we thank God, not for the evil that's being perpetuated in this world, not for the suffering, but we thank God for God, for His goodness, for His abiding presence, for His wisdom. Beloved, you have been saved by a sovereign God who is your caring, loving, all-powerful, all-wise Father. And in the words of Heidelberg Catechism 26 through 28, I'm going to read these words. You can follow along. They're printed on the back of your card. Consider what is to be our stance. Consider what is to be our heart and our life always. The Heidelberger asks, question 26, what do you believe when you say, I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, that the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence, is my God and Father, for the sake of Christ his Son. I trust God so much that I do not doubt He will provide whatever I need for body and soul. And He will turn to my good whatever adversity He sends upon me in this veil of tears. He is able to do so, to do this because He is Almighty God. He desires to do this because He is a faithful Father. Question 27, what do you understand by the providence of God? Providence is the almighty and ever-present power of God, by which God upholds, as with His hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty. All things in fact come to us, not by chance, not through fatalism, some blind determinism, But by His fatherly hands. And then question 28. How does the knowledge of God's creation and providence help us? I love these words. We can be patient in adversity. We can be thankful in prosperity. And for the future, we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father, that no creature will separate us from His love. For all creatures are so completely in His hands, that without His will, they can neither move nor be moved. Beloved, we are completely in the hands of God, our Father. There is nothing that occurs. There's nothing that happens that's outside of His fatherly oversight. And because of that, beloved, we can rest in God. Not as stoics and not as fatalists. We feel plenty and we are called to do plenty. But we rest in God, and we trust God, and we can do what God places before us to do our duty and our obligation in the ordinary course of our Christian lives. Why? Because God is with us, and because we are with God forever. Beloved, under the sovereign providence of God, their Father, The Philippian Christians can send Epaphroditus to Rome. Under the sovereign providence of God, his father, Epaphroditus can suffer great physical distress. And under the sovereign providence of God, his father, Paul can undergo house arrest and eventually be martyred by Rome. Because God the Father is with Him. Because God the Father is with us. God the Son is with us. God the Spirit is with us. And people of God, God will never abandon you. God will never abandon you. You need to know that. God will never forsake you who are in Jesus Christ. but God rather will work out all things for your good and for your salvation and for His eternal glory and honor. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we praise You and thank You for Your Word. Father, I hate death. It is such an enemy, and I thank you, Father, that death has been utterly defeated by Jesus on the cross and in his resurrection, and yet it is an enemy still. Father, you will bring us through this life with all the hardships. You're pleased to visit us. into that eternal communion that is ours with you, with your Son and Spirit, that even now we partake of through your power and through your Word. Father, uphold each person here that as you have called us to endure suffering, that we would do so, Father. not just with great anguish, but Father, with great faith in Christ and confidence that He is working all things out for His glory and honor and for our good and our well-being. Father, hear us for these things in Jesus' name. Amen.