on the page, do we have a page? I heard 847. If you have a Pew Bible on page 847, Isaiah 52, and we'll be reading verses six through 12 together today. Shall we begin? Therefore, my people shall know my name. Therefore, they shall know in that day that I am he who speaks. Behold, it is I. How beautiful upon the mountains that the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns. Your watchmen shall lift up their voices. With their voices, they shall sing together. For they shall see eye to eye when the Lord brings back Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together. You waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations. And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Depart, depart, go out from there. Touch no unclean thing. Go out from the midst of her. Be clean, you who bear the vessels of the Lord. where you shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight, for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. And the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word. You may be seated. It's good to be back, and it was great to know that we were in such good hands last week, and I thank you, Brother Craig, for ministering the word so faithfully to our people. We're blessed, we're very blessed to have those amongst our congregation who are willing to pick up the word and to preach the word of God, so I would like you, if you would, to turn with me in your Bibles to Colossians chapter four, and we'll be looking at one of the last sections of the book, Colossians chapter 4, and we'll be looking together at verses 7 through 14. I know your bulletin says through 18, but there's a few verses at the very end that we will finish up on, Lord willing, next week. Colossians chapter 4 and we will be looking again at verses 7 through 14, following as I read from the New King James translation of the scriptures. Tychicus, a beloved brother, faithful minister, and fellow servant in the Lord, will tell you all the news about me. I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that he may know your circumstances and comfort your hearts. With Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you, they will make known to you all the things which are happening here. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you. with Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, about whom you received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him. And Jesus, who is called Justice. These are my only fellow workers for the kingdom of God, who are of the circumcision. They have proved to be a comfort to me. Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has a great zeal for you and those who are in Laodicea and those in Hierapolis. Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea and Nymphus and in the church that is in his house. This is the word of the Lord, let's pray together. Father, thank you for these words of encouragement and comfort to see your people working together. Though they are just the end of a book that has great truths concerning the nature of Christ, yet they are important to us. We pray that we would flesh out that importance today, that we would be glorified and that there would be a solid lesson learned that we can apply to our lives and the way we interact and work with our fellow believers in Jesus Christ. We give you the praise and glory, amen. A lot of times when we come to the end of a book like this, it's sort of like a genealogy in the Old Testament. There's a lot of names thrown out there, and you're like, okay, is this just the part that we're supposed to skip? And maybe it seems that way, but it was put in the Scriptures for a purpose. And this section here is the acknowledgement of the Apostle Paul's team that happened to be working with him while he was in the city of Rome, in one of his final imprisonments. This was his entourage, these were the individuals who were humming in and out of the house wherein he was in captivity. And though these words may seem rather flippant, they have purpose and meaning and hopefully again we will be able to draw them out this day now if you would just hold your spot in Colossians and turn with me all the way to the very back end of the book of Acts this would be in Acts chapter 28 so keeping your finger in Colossians turn over a few to Acts chapter 28 where we see the final words of the book of Acts It's a picture and a portrait of Paul and what Paul was actually doing at the time that this was written in the book of Colossians. It's sometimes good to tie the scriptures together and to see what was going on in one reference while the epistle is being spoken in another. And that's just the case. So if we just look at the final two verses of Acts chapter 28 verses 30 and 31. It says this, then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house and received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence. So Paul is in bondage in Rome. And in this case, he's been spending two years in a rented house. Previously, we established that he was likely chained to a Roman guard, but has some relative expanse of freedom. The history behind how Paul gets here is very interesting. And we'll go into that a little bit more detail as we open up the lives of some of these characters that we find. But let's put it this way. Paul's life was filled with conflict. Have you noticed that? Conflict after conflict. What brought him to Rome was a conflict in Jerusalem where he and his buddies were essentially on the assassination list. He had to be escorted out of Jerusalem by 200 soldiers on horseback because 40 assassins were out to kill him. Brought to a place where he could appeal to his Roman citizenship and have a trial all the way in Rome from Jerusalem, quite a distance. In process he of course sails as a shipwreck and we'll talk about that. Life was not easy for Paul but here he is, he's making the best of it. He's in prison waiting for a trial with Caesar in a rented house And he's looking for doors to open where he can minister the gospel of God. What does it say there? It says he was preaching the kingdom of God. That was his topic. If you look at the end of verse 31, here's Paul. He's preaching the kingdom of God and he's teaching things that concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, forbidding no one. This is what he's doing. He's about the business of the kingdom of God. God's kingdom. He has a band of brothers. Oftentimes, the end of his epistles, there are women who are involved as well. Paul worked with a variety of individuals. There were women who ministered to various needs, and so even though this group is all men, it doesn't mean that there were not women who served. and who were greatly influential in the early church. It just happens that this group of brothers coming to and fro and working with him as a team were, in this case, all men. They were working on those doors of utterance that would open. And from a home base of a rented house in the boisterous and bustrous, I don't know, other B words to describe what Rome was, it was just busy. It was busy. One to two million people, no automobiles, tons of animals, just imagine. Quite the wreck. A lot of things going on in the city of Rome. That's where he was planted. That's where he was going to minister. There was this team, of course, ministering to not only Paul's needs, but assisting in the ministry from this home base. There was a Roman church, the Church of Rome, there was a church established, and we try to get the picture of the day-to-day, and I'm not sure, you know, we can paint a, they're not all sitting around doing nothing, right? This team is working together, they are aiding in ministry, and they are about the kingdom of God. That's what Paul was teaching, he was preaching. Individuals would come in, maybe in an audience, and he would preach and teach the kingdom of God. What is that? What was he talking about? Paul's preaching the kingdom of God. What was the content? What was he describing to people? Ever wondered that? When somebody says, hey, we preach the kingdom of God, what do you mean by that? What is the kingdom of God? Well, if you keep your place, and you turn over to Acts chapter 1 so we're kinda jumping around a little bit but if we go to the very beginning of Acts we see that when Christ is recorded as ascending into heaven and he's talking to his disciples at the very beginning remember this is between his resurrection and his ascension We'll read in verse one, I'll just start reading a little bit. The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to both do and teach until the day in which he was taken up. He's talking about the book of Luke. This is now the book of Acts. Until the day in which he was taken up after he, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen. To whom he also presented himself alive, and after suffering many infallible proofs, being seen by them forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." So this was the topic of Jesus' ministry. He was preaching the kingdom of God while he was here on earth. By the way, the parables often focus on the kingdom. Christ's theology was the theology of the kingdom. And as he moves on, and he's dealing with the apostles in this kind of this intermediate phase, he's teaching and speaking of the kingdom of God. So Christ taught about the Kingdom of God through the Gospels, and he continued to do so in the book of Acts. If you look with me at Acts 6-11, 1-6-11, we see that the Scriptures say, Therefore when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore your kingdom to Israel? So the disciples had been receiving teaching regarding the Kingdom of God all through their life, and They ask him before he ascends to heaven, they say, are you gonna restore your kingdom to Israel at this time? He says to them, it's not for you to know times and seasons, which the Father has put in his own authority, but you will receive power from the Holy Spirit, who's come upon you and you'll be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. So the disciples had a question, it was a good question. Okay, you've been teaching about the kingdom of God. Is it gonna happen? He says, wait, guys, listen. There's this gospel era, there's this thing that's going to come. Don't be worried about this kingdom, this physical kingdom. I want you to focus on a gospel kingdom. And of course the scriptures in Acts go on, when they had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up, a cloud received him into heaven out of sight. And while they looked up steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them who appeared. And they said, men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing into heaven? This same Jesus who has been taken up from you will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven. So here we have this introduction to the book of Acts. We see that Jesus was teaching and continuing to teach about the kingdom of God. The disciples were wondering when it was gonna happen. You know, the physical kingdom is kind of the idea they have in their head. Christ says, hey, don't worry about this. The angel finally says, listen, guys, stop standing, gazing up in heaven. The Lord will return. That's on the timetable, that's coming. He's gonna come back and he's gonna come back in the clouds. He ascended in the clouds, he's gonna come physically back in the clouds. There's no way to get around that. You can't jostle that, you can't hyperbolate that, you can't make it something that's mystical. He's coming back in the clouds. That's just a part of what he is. And certainly when Paul, when he was teaching about the kingdom, Jesus taught about it, certainly Paul had part of his focus on this future coming of Christ. We see it in the scriptures. So when Paul was teaching about the kingdom, He had an idea that there was a future aspect to it. We see that all through Paul's writings. In Philippians, Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven. This is Philippians 3, 20 and 21, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord, Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that may be conformed to his glorious body according to the working by which he is able to subdue all things to himself. for Thessalonians 1, 9 to 10. For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, this is Paul again, and how you turned to the God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. Paul is waiting, the early church was waiting, they were waiting for Christ to come back. and certainly that's a part of the kingdom to come. We'll keep going here. Paul says in another, he says, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He was looking for that. 2 Timothy 4.1, Paul says, I charge you, to Timothy, before the Lord, God and Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at the appearing and his kingdom, okay? There's a future aspect to the kingdom of God. But is that what Paul was teaching? Was that the focus of what he was teaching? As he's teaching in the house, people are coming to him and they're wondering, okay, what are we learning about? There's something more than just a future aspect of the kingdom. There is a present aspect which Christ clearly taught. And when we look at the gospels, remember from the time that Jesus began to preach, it says in Matthew four, he began to say, repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's right there. It's right around the corner. In Luke's gospel, it says, now when he was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them and said, the kingdom does not come with observation. Nor will they say, see here, see there, for indeed, the kingdom of God is within you. There's an aspect that's deeply spiritual about the kingdom of God. Yes, physical, no doubt. Jesus clarified often that the kingdom of God is not just a future physical reign, but also a present spiritual reality, where Christ reigns in the hearts of the believer. In Mark's gospel, we read, now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe. It's present, it's here. Jesus connects the present reality of the kingdom with the message of the gospel. In Romans, Paul does the same thing. Romans 14, 17, he says this, the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but it's in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Paul speaks of the kingdom of God as a present reality. Colossians, this is our book, right? We probably missed this a little bit. Maybe we hit it when we were going through the chapter one, verse 13. Paul says that he has delivered us from the power of darkness and he has conveyed us into the kingdom of his dear son, right? 1 Corinthians 4.20, the kingdom of God is not in word, but it's in power. Acts 8.12. But when they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the Kingdom of God, Philip was preaching the Kingdom of God. Remember, Philip, our deacon, our multi-talented deacon that is preaching and teaching the Ethiopian eunuch, and he's preaching the Kingdom of God in the name of Jesus and Men and women wanted to be baptized because they trusted Christ. So there's this present aspect and a future aspect to the kingdom. I'll wrap it up with Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 28. It says, therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. Did you know that the kingdom of God is, it will come. It'll come physically, Christ will come. Did you know that? There's no doubt. Scriptures teach it. But do you know that there's a reign of grace right now? Did you know that? Don't you love that joy to the world? He rules the world in what? In truth and grace. There's a reign of grace and it's right now. And where does it start? It's in the heart. Let me ask you this, does Christ rule with grace and truth in your heart? Is he reigning in your heart? He rules the world. Is he reigning in grace? And when I was very young, I ran across this Baptist preacher named Abraham Booth. He was kind of a disciple of John Gill, lived about probably 40 years, he was probably 40 years his junior. And Ruth wrote this little book, I wish I, I found a sale on it about three years ago where I bought like 10 or 12 of them. It's called The Reign of Grace. Beautiful book. Read it when I was in my 20s, impacted my thoughts. The doctrine of the kingdom is the teachings of God's grace through Jesus Christ. It grows, it starts small and it grows and it grows in the heart. Christ rules and he reigns in righteousness. Someday, by the way, all things will be subjected unto him. Things visible and invisible in heaven and on earth. It's coming. It's always the way that the scriptures teach this. I know we get off focus, right? All we argue, is it kingdom now, is it then? It's both. It's both. It's powerful. Now you're probably saying, why are you teaching on the kingdom here? Well, that's because that's what they were teaching from Paul's house. They're in this house, and Paul's teaching the kingdom of God. People are coming in, and he's got this team, right? This wonderful, crazy, diverse team. And the true word of diversity, right? We've taken and hijacked that word. Diversity is a very good thing in Christian faith. Did you know that? And even tolerance, right? Did you know that we're to love our neighbor as ourselves, right? Did you know that that doesn't matter? It doesn't matter. That's all man. Who is your neighbor? Who is your neighbor? All my fellow men, that was the question. Of course, we can't take out from the Christian perspective, sometimes the ideas of absolute diversity, there's this desire for an unequivocal acceptance of unrighteousness, right? I don't know how to quite say that. But it's not just about accepting and loving, it's like there's this desire that everybody believes that every behavior is right, and it doesn't stop until it forces us to come to that. That's really not diversity. Did you know the kingdom of God is extremely diverse? Every nation and culture and people. But did you know that when we come into the kingdom of God, there's a righteousness? We don't come into the kingdom of God not seeking the righteousness of God and the righteous. We can't combine those things. Diversity is actually a very good thing. It's a good word. Our people who are in the church, we need to be a diverse people. We need to be able to culturally Well, there's a lot of things, by the way, that go into diversity, right? Differing personalities, perspective, backgrounds, cultures, race, experiences, different pathways to Christ. Those things are very much a part of the kingdom, did you know that? And you see it because you see this entourage, these people working with Paul, they're all over the board. That's the beauty of the church. His people are all over the place, but they come together under the most beautiful thing, right? They come together under these doctrines of God's grace and His mercy in Jesus Christ. You know, the world has given us a lot of tools in the modern day to show how different we are. Personality tests, by the way, these things are not new. I don't know, if you work in a corporation or some big company, even when I taught for about a decade at a Christian school, they had all the teachers take these personality tests. We did this disk profile, it was called. You know, that's not new. You know, that goes back. You go back to Aristotle, he wrote a book called the Nicomachean Ethics, where he developed these stock characters. like observing different people, like, oh, there's people who act this certain way, and there's this category here. Way back, if you go even further, Galen and Hippocrates developed four different personality types, choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholic. All the way back, these are the ancient Greeks. People have been doing this forever. The DISC profile that I took, I think there's, oh, four different personalities. Dominance, influence, steadiness, conscientiousness. There's a Myers-Briggs one that has extroversion and introversion, sensing and intuition, thinking, feeling, judging, perceiving. Okay, so all these different categories. You could probably make up anything mathematically. You could have a lion, a bear, a camel, but anyway, the math behind it is the same. One thing that you learn from this is people are just different. People are different. We perceive things differently. The place I work, apparently, on one of the personality profile tests, 70% of the people were on this disc profile and this C category, analytical, detail-oriented, and systematic. 70%, you know, a bunch of engineers and scientists, right, they're all, of course they're gonna be that way, right? Now listen, in the church, we have a lot of diversity, a lot of different giftings and talents and personalities. It does some use to see those differences. It's actually helped me a little bit, even though I told one of my bosses at first, I said, I'm not really a believer in this. She allowed me not to take it, and then finally I did take the test, because you can find out what you are, maybe, and then you can kind of make excuses and say, well, this is what I am, so I'm just gonna act this way. The problem with just seeing that you're different, there's no direction for that. If you were a D, in this case, with the disc profile, you're just dominant. So you say, I'm just dominant. I'm just gonna be belligerent and treat people rudely. Well, I mean, that's usually not what happens, but it's possible. But the thing with God is that he just doesn't leave us there and say, hey, you're just different. He says this, you are my children, and you're a part of my kingdom. Right? You join me in righteousness. I will change you, Christ says, into my image. You're going to be built into something different than what you are. There's a standard. It's not just like, hey, I'm this. I accept it. That's the way it is. But there's some benefit, right? We do perceive things differently. And it does help when you're trying to understand a brother or sister who's coming at something from a different perspective. Okay, what's going on here? I've asked that a lot. Okay, I get it. They're different. They're thinking differently. Believe me, it happens. We perceive things differently. You know, sometimes I've asked myself, how do Christians that are so diverse accomplish anything together? Have you ever wondered that? How does that happen? Well, here's how. And by the way, this passage is the example. Christians unite under an immortal anthem. There's a drumbeat. It's the reign of grace. I tell you, it is. It is the kingdom of God. Christ rules in the hearts of men and women. We mutually yield to something greater than us. These guys that are working with Paul, they're not sycophant followers of just Paul. They have something greater. Right? You're not just followers of a man. Please don't. Please don't. Not if it's me. Please. We are followers of a greater our Lord Jesus Christ. We are tying into a kingdom that is great. There's a lot of disconnections and pathways that are untangled by a common, beautiful goal, God's kingdom. Now it's interesting, as we start to look at these different personalities, a kingdom ministry is a shared ministry. There was a primary preacher, that was Paul. Most churches have a primary speaker, but there's a lot of other men, there's a lot of other teachers and preachers in a congregation, right? Paul shared in the ministry. He's got this group of individuals, some of them were probably just as talented if not better preachers than he was, and he was finding outlets and venues for them. and they were serving the Lord. There was a shared leadership. Did you know that that is not a foreign thing? Even Charles Spurgeon, at the great Metropolitan Tabernacle, if you're kind of in the Reformed Baptist camp, you know about Charles Spurgeon. Toward the end of his life, he co-pastored the church with his brother James. Charles's health was not great. James was often the main speaker. It's not unusual for churches to have a variety of giftings, and a lot of individuals who are using their talents for the Lord. Even though historically, for continuity, there's often one preacher, right? Paul was able to share in that work and that ministry. That's very important. He wasn't hoarding it. Somebody, I was listening to a sermon on this and said, oh, here's Paul's secret, he was just good at delegating. Really? This was not a top-down hierarchy, I don't think. Maybe, maybe some could argue that. I think what he did is he found these various giftings that these men had, and they were able to use their gifts and their talents for Christ. They were like a good old sled dog doing what it loves, right? Run. A sled dog isn't happy unless it's running. You know that. It's like a horse. It loves to run. The kingdom ministry is always filled with humility, and we're going to see that, right? If you're going to be the greatest in the kingdom of God, what do you need to be? At the very least, you go for the very least, because you want who to be exalted? Christ. You lift him up. So we're gonna meet some interesting people. I know it's running late, but just bear with me. They're so interesting. The first is Tychicus. Take a look at verse, let me see here, verse seven. Tichicus, a beloved brother, faithful minister, and fellow servant. We're back in Colossians, by the way, just so you follow the transition here. We've turned over to Acts. We're back in Colossians chapter four. Here's a man by the name of Tichicus. Tichicus is one who's willing to find a place to serve. Just willing to fill and find a place to serve. He's a beloved brother, Paul says, a faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. And we'll tell you the news about me. I'm sending him to you for this very purpose that he may know your circumstances and comfort your hearts. He's just a multi-talented generalist is what I think he's willing to fill and find and do. Just do something for the Lord. Do you know that that's one of the most When I talk to employees at the place I work at, and they're coming in, and they're gonna work as a technologist, I'll say, listen, find something, take hold of it, do something. A lot of times, these technologists end up creating their own work. They latch onto a scientist, and they see their worth and their value, and they're like, man, you have a skill, or you find some area, and you're like, I wanna develop that. Nobody else is doing it. I'll do that. I'll take it up. I'll learn it. This is Tychicus. He was willing to do. He's willing to be a messenger boy, but he's also able to speak and communicate. He's going to take the letter back from Paul to the Colossians. He's willing. He's a close associate of Paul. He has qualities of faithfulness, dependability. He's diligent. He's mentioned many times through the scriptures, ironically. You wouldn't think so. Have you ever heard of Tychicus? When I was at a retreat one time, a men's retreat, they had us sit at these tables, and they had the name of different biblical characters. I sat at this table of Paul. It was very nice. There was a table that was called the Table of Tychicus. And they couldn't figure out how to pronounce the name, so it was kind of the joke all weekend. Is it Tychicus? Sometimes they didn't see the C in there, Tycheus, they kind of joked about it, I'm not sure, and I'm not sure how that name rolls out, but he was one who over five times is mentioned in the New Testament as faithfully serving with Paul. I look at him as one who was just willing to do, willing to do. One thing I love about us as people here, I just love the willingness to just serve the Lord. The group of men and women that we have, I just see that. This might be a bit of a Marine thing, Kurt and Tom, right? Next man up, right? The next thing, right? You do it. The job needs to be done. Let's figure that out, get it done. He was willing to serve. I have a lot of passages that have him mentioned. Just know he was mentioned about five times. Take a look at verse nine as we go on and we look at this team surrounding Paul. What's bringing them together? The gospel of the kingdom. That's uniting them. Here is Onesimus. Look at verse nine. With Onesimus, a faithful brother who is one of you. So he's gonna travel with Tychicus back to Colossians. It says, they will make known to you, second half of verse nine, all things which are happening here. Onesimus, you scratch your head and say, that sounds familiar. Where did he come into play? Well, he happens to be the, I don't know, the subject of, sort of, more like the inferred subject of the book of Philemon. So in the church at Colossae, There's a church that probably meets in the home of a man named Philemon. Onesimus was a slave. Now, we talked about slavery extensively. The Bible does not teach that that's a good thing. It teaches against it. It works against it. And we put it into the context of the Roman culture, which was very striated, almost like a caste system, right? Remember a couple weeks back when we were going through that, and this is like the lowest rung of the Roman society, okay? This is not a referendum on slavery, this is just the facts of the scripture. Slavery is wrong in every context. But he had left his home. Now, there was a church meeting there, so he obviously got to see something. If there's a church meeting in your house, and that's your household, there were probably some of these same guys that were around. He probably saw Paul and knew him. Well, he ends up running away from Colossae to the city of Rome. He runs away. What does he run there for? Well, probably to hide. There's a lot of things a young man would be enticed by in the city of Rome. Sinful loss solved that, okay? And you can just imagine. Who does he stumble across? Probably one of the guys he saw with Paul, right? Oh, Onesimus! How are you doing? Good to see you. I remember you, you know. Long story short, he is converted to Christ. So he's working with Paul in this house. He becomes a Christian. He becomes a Christian. He's a faithful brother, and by the way, the title for this point is a kingdom ministry is composed of ministers who are transformed. We're all transformed people, right? We're like an SMS. He's transformed by the power of the gospel. He's born again. God changes him. And what happens? He serves with Paul, and now he's going back to Philemon. I wanna read the note that Paul wrote to Philemon for Onesimus from Philemon. Paul says this, he says, I appeal to you my son Onesimus, or I'm sorry, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, whom I begotten while in my chains, who once was unprofitable to you, but now is profitable to you and to me. I'm sending him back. You therefore receive him, that is, my own heart, whom I wished to keep with me, that on your behalf he might minister to me in my chains for the gospel. But without your consent, I wanted to do nothing. That your good deed might not be by compulsion, as it were, but voluntarily. For perhaps he departed for a while for this purpose, that you might receive him forever, no longer as a slave. but a beloved brother, especially to me. But how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord, if then you count me as a partner, receive him as you would receive me." That's Paul's instructions to him. It's powerful. By the way, church history has Onesimus, this is from Ignatius of Antioch, becoming an elder or pastor at the Church of Colossae. So quite a turn of events there, right? Here's Philemon, this young man runs away, converts to Jesus Christ by the grace of God and comes back and eventually serves the Lord in ministry right in the very home that he left. That is transformation. You know, the kingdom of God is about ministers, and that includes us. We are the king, we're part of that. If you're a part of the child of God, it's transformed lives, right? You and I are part of that. Now, this next one, I like his name. Aristarchus, verse 10, it says, my fellow prisoner greet you. That's verse 10, that's all we can read of that. Who's Aristarchus? Oh, this is an amazing man, just amazing. The kingdom ministry is composed of ministers of men and women who are steady and courageous. Aristarchus was with Paul all the way from the riot in Ephesus, all the way back to the middle part of Acts, all the way to the Roman imprisonment. It's said of him that he latched himself onto Paul, and no matter what happened, no matter how bad things became, he was there. He just rolled along with it. You ever met someone like that? The worst things can happen, okay? Calm down. What are we gonna do now? The Lord's with us. This is the sky right here. If you look all the way back, and you don't need to turn there, but Acts chapter 19, we first meet Aristarchus when the whole city of Ephesus was filled with confusion and they rushed into the theater with one accord. They grabbed Gaius and Aristarchus, both Macedonians, Paul's traveling companions. They grabbed them and they rushed him into the theater. Can you imagine that? This massive crowd that's being threatened, right? Their idolatry was being threatened. The temple there, I think it was to Diana, and they grab these guys and they are rushed into the theater. They want to basically do away with them. Fortunately, there's an interception and the Lord delivers them, but that's where we meet them. And then we see him again in Acts 20 when Paul's getting ready to sail to Jerusalem. And all those prophets are saying, Paul, don't go to Jerusalem. You go to Jerusalem, bad things are going to happen. You're going to have to go to Rome and all this. Paul says, the Lord wants me to go there. I'm not listening to this. I know what he wants me to do. So in Acts 20 verse 4 it says, and Sopatero Berea accompanied him to Asia, speaking of Paul, also Aristarchus and Secundus of Thessalonia, and Gaius of Derbe and Timothy. So in Acts 20 we see him getting on the ship, he's sailing to Rome. In Acts 27 we see, so entering a ship We put to sea, meaning to sail along the coasts of Asia. Aristarchus was with us. So he's in the boat. Oh, by the way, that boat on the outskirts of the island of Malta gets caught into some severe weather. The ship runs aground and gets dashed to pieces. The Roman soldiers are like, let's kill all the prisoners. Paul says, don't do it. Don't do it. They don't. He goes through a shipwreck with Paul. He gets toted away in a riot, right? And Jerusalem, by the way, was even more hair-raising. When they went to Jerusalem, it was a very difficult place. And here he is, he's with Paul, he's in Rome. He's sticking with it. It's like this guy can just, you know, he's just that steady person, the pom-pom, right? The Lord is there. I don't know, there's courage. There's courage in his heart. And this is a part, they're kingdom ministers. Now notice, as we continue on in the text here, we see John Mark. The latter part of verse 10, it says, Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you with Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, about whom you've received instructions if he comes to you. Welcome him. Who's John Mark? He's a little more well known. He has a little bit of a clarifying piece there. He's the cousin of Barnabas. Who was Barnabas? He was Paul's first traveling companion. Missionary trip number one. Oh, Paul and Barnabas had a little bit of a dispute over John Mark. Apparently, John Mark bailed on the first trip. They get ready for trip number two, and they have, well, the scripture says it like this. It says, now Barnabas was determined to take with them John called Mark, but Paul insisted they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia. He had not gone with them to the work. Then the contention became so sharp that they parted from one another. And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus. So this was early on. Paul and Barnabas disagreed over John Mark. And John Mark apparently left them, had to go back for some reason, and it wasn't suitable to Paul. And now, of course, we see there must have been something that happened in between here. There's some restoration that occurred. So John Mark is this example, by the way, of an individual who has dealt with a lot of things. He's dealt with rejection. He didn't make the team. He's also maybe struggled with his commitment. He probably has some regrets about that. Barnabas and Paul go toe to toe. And a lot of commentaries won't really say who's right or who's wrong on this. I don't know, I was looking at dozens of them. I was trying to find somebody who would weigh in on it and say, yeah, they're like, ah, these sorts of things just kind of happen, maybe. At the end of the day, it was good that Barnabas took Mark, wasn't it? If he didn't, I wonder if The rejection would have been too great. You wonder what Mark's future would have been. Barnabas was a consoler, a son of consolation. He took Mark and really worked with Peter. We saw that from the other epistle of Peter, 1 Peter. And somehow Mark, by the way, found his way back into the graces of Paul. And there's restoration, a beautiful picture, a beautiful thing. Paul's a hard charger, Barnabas is a merciful consoler. Probably need both, don't we? Right? All we are is a bunch of hard chargers. It's gonna be pretty tough when everybody gets cut off the team but you, right? It's pretty tough. to go it alone. In Paul's older age, he comes back and he says, you know, John is useful to me. By the way, Mark wrote the gospel of Mark. It's thought that he worked with Peter and he wrote a gospel geared toward the Romans, a shorter gospel. There's redemption in this. The church is filled with this sort of thing. Do you realize that? And we have to sometimes maybe say, like Paul, I don't know if it's a good idea. Going on a mission trip to Africa, and I'm not sure that this is the right one. But if you sit there and you destroy the life of an individual and make it so they can't serve the Lord, then that's not good either. I'm very glad. At the end of the day, they were able to reconcile and come to their senses. Now as we work through these, I notice our time is coming to a close, and there are a few other characters which I think we'll pursue next week when we talk about the Holy Scriptures and the very end of the book of Colossians. But we're reminded, as we summarize things for the day, that Jesus Christ, in presenting the kingdom of God and passing on those instructions for us to preach the kingdom of God, that he allowed for this binding principle that pulls us together to be something greater than our differences. You know, when we work as a team together, when we serve the Lord together, we have individuals from very diverse backgrounds. Some coming out of sinful paths. Some coming out of having been rejected. Individuals who maybe they just are eager to serve. We could go on as we do in the passage, but we'll truncate it today. You know, the Lord, as we work through through these ideas it's important that it's important that we keep not just the fact that there have been individuals who have been faithful we're gonna skip a few characters but I wanna go to the very final one take a look down in verse 14 and we see the last name mentioned here In verse 14 we see of course Luke the beloved physician and then finally you see the word Demas, the name Demas. Not a lot is written on Demas. Paul says he greets them, Demas was with them, he was present. Apparently, apparently on the team Demas was one who ended up in a different spot. The other men seem to be able to come alongside and use their talents and their giftings, keep on course with the Lord, and serving Him. But Demas, when we look further into the New Testament, in 2 Timothy chapter 4, we see Demas forsook Paul, it says, because he loved the present world. And he departed for Thessalonica. And we don't quite know what that means. Did he depart totally from the faith? I don't think so. A lot of commentators don't think so, but what they do see is suddenly something became more valuable to him than the kingdom of Jesus Christ. This has happened. This can happen in your life, and it can happen in my life. Something comes up, And it's something in life. It can be a pursuit. It can be wealth. It can be life, the world. And we go after it. But in that going after it, it's almost like we're making a decision. Serving the Lord or I'm doing this. You know, there's only one right decision in that, right? That it's always to serve Him, always to seek Him. There's a story in the Old Testament of Elisha, and you know the story of the man Naaman who came to be healed. He was Assyrian and he wanted to be healed, and he was. He had to dip in the Jordan seven times, you know that story. And he offered Elisha tremendous riches. Elisha would not take it. You can't buy the work of the Lord, right? You cannot buy God's work. He sent him back. Elisha's servant Gehazi was watching. Now this is the servant who was being brought up to kind of be the next prophet, right? He was the servant. He sees what Naaman had. And the scriptures say, In 2 Kings chapter 5, it says that it's almost like he pictured the things he could buy with that. Livestock, servants, vineyards. He saw a lifestyle. He pictured it in his mind. He goes after Naaman, lies to him, and says, hey, lies just changed his mind. He'll take the money, all right? Elisha, of course, confronts him and Gehazi, if you know the story, he's the one who ultimately comes down with the leprosy. That story is very pivotal. It's pivotal because as we serve the Lord, we do have decisions that we make daily. We make decisions for his kingdom and sometimes against it. Sometimes these big overarching temptations in life, and this doesn't mean that, by the way, working a job or trying to better your family, that's not saying it's evil, but you know it can be. It can be if it's in direct opposition to doing the work that the Lord would have you to do. If it pulls you somehow from his reign of grace, and we know that that's not possible in terms of final perseverance. but it certainly can knock one off the horse. People can stray. There are Christians who have fallen and pursued things that are outside the sphere of God's kingdom. We hear this all the time. Men, women, pastors who fall, it's frequent, right? It happens in real life, not in just the ministry. Individuals make decisions, and those decisions are being directly confronted by the Kingdom of God. So here we are, and I think as we look at this entourage of men, we're reminded at the very last, the final one, how important it is to keep our sights focused on God's reign of grace, His work in the kingdom. Appreciate you all for listening today. I know we're gonna be transitioning and thinking on the Lord's table, so let's pray together as we begin to meditate in our hearts and minds on this table before us. Let's go to the Lord, our Father. There's so much in your holy word. Sometimes we ambitiously try to maybe teach a little too much and take big chunks that take too long, but Lord, I just thank you for these truths. They are planted in our souls. Lord, I pray that we would be people of the kingdom. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Lord, help us to do that, and all these things will be added to us. Lord, keep our minds set upon you, Jehovah, the Lord Jesus Christ. As we begin to contemplate your table this day, reminded that this is the way we enter into the kingdom through the cross of Jesus Christ, and we remember the cross at the Lord's table. We pray these things in the name of Jesus, amen. Well as the deacons prepare for communion, if you would stand with me please, our communion hymn today is hymn number 278, Beneath the Cross of Jesus. Hymn number 278. The cross of Jesus thy fame will take my stand. The shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land. A home within the wilderness, a rest upon further side. The darkness of an awful grave that creeps both deep and wide. And the air between us stands the cause, two arms outstretched to say of Jesus, mine eye at times can see the very dying form of one who suffered there for me. And from my spitting heart with tears to wonders I confess, I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of His face, content to let the world go by, to know no gain or loss. I sin for self-might. Amen. Please be seated. Beneath the cross of Jesus. Some of the hymn writers have such a rich tradition in the words that they express through poetry. As we contemplate the Lord's table today, I invite those who are believers in Jesus Christ and who are in obedience to him to partake with us. We always recommend that we do some self-examination and then we lift our hearts up in praise to the Lord Jesus, the Lord of glory as we stand and wonder at what he did for us on the cross of Christ. One of the hymn writers that has frequented my thoughts, and probably I'd say he's probably my favorite one, was a man named Isaac Watts. Some of you have heard of him. He was a prominent English hymn writer and theologian. He also wrote a book, believe it or not, on logic. But as he wrote hymns, He was known as the father of English hymnody, and he was credited with writing over 600 different hymns. He modeled his style, if you will, after the Psalms. It used to be that, in a lot of churches, they still sing what's called the Psalter, and probably some of you have been through different churches and different backgrounds. A lot of times, what I've tried to do for us is we read from the Psalms on a Sunday morning. You know, we're reading from that. Didn't today, we read in Isaiah, but it was more applicable to the passage. Watts wrote over 600 songs. He called them hymns of human composure. They were hymns that had such rich theology and rich love for the Savior. Included were Joy to the World, Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past, and the one that I really like today, and I'd like to read you some of the lyrics, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. There are hymns that are just so poetic and powerful, but they set the tone and they say what needs to be said as we begin to think on this and as you begin to meditate. Let me read these verses to you. When I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, but poor contempt on all my pride. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, save in the death of Christ my God. All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood. See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet or thorns compose so rich a crown? We're the whole realm of nature mind that we're present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all, when I survey the wondrous cross. At this time I'd ask some men to stand if they would. ask a brother Chris if you would ask a blessing on the bread this day. All of us, hopefully, have softened hearts. Once we have hardened hearts, then we will let the heart speak. In accordance with the scriptures found in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, where Paul recounts the Lord's table, the apostle said this, for I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, take eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me, shall we remember together. Brother Kirby, would you lead us in prayer? Dear Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for this day, this opportunity to come and pray. It's like all you've done is filling the blood on the cross. It's very simple. It's extended to all of you. We're thankful for this time together. Lower your head. In the same manner also, he also took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, shall we remember together. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, You proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. Amen. We have proclaimed his death. If you would stand with me, please. Our hymn of response today is hymn number