Our Old Testament reading is taken from 2 Kings, chapter 5, and we'll read together the first seven verses. 2 Kings, chapter 5, and reading the first seven verses. First Kings, Second Kings, First Chronicles. Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. Now the Syrians, on one of their raids, had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, would that my Lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria. He would cure him of his leprosy. So Naaman went in and told his lord. Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel. So he went, taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000 shackles of gold, and 10 changes of clothes. And he brought the letter to the king. You You You And now as we read through this long list of folk that were clearly very well known to Paul, you might ask yourself, well, what do you know about the 20 or more that are mentioned in Romans chapter 16? So from Romans chapter 16, we read at the beginning. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Saint-Cré, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well. Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who rest their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epineas, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me. Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ and my beloved Stachys. Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. Greet my kinsman Herodion. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphanea and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. Greet Asyncretus, phlegon Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them. Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympus, and all the saints who are with them. greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. Thus far in the reading of God's word, his name be glory and praise. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Well, before we come to reflect upon God's word together, let's bow our heads once more in God's presence to ask for his blessing. Let's pray together. Our gracious God and our heavenly Father, we are made deeply conscious that no man born yet was worthy of the task of making Christ known. But thou art pleased to take the weak and the feeble, to show that it is by thy power that a man or a woman, a boy or a girl is brought into the kingdom. And so we would ask of thee, no father, we would plead with thee that thou would use the foolishness of preaching and even the weakness of thy servant to show forth of thine own power to save. Be pleased, O Lord, even as we contemplate a small portion of thy word from Romans, to write it upon the fleshy tables of our heart. And grant that we may not depart from this place except that we were able to say that our gracious God had a word for us, spoke to our needs, lifted us not only in our thoughts but in our affections heavenward. For this we ask in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Well, by the time we get to Romans chapter 16, we've got to the end of his long and illustrious book written to the church in Rome. And as we have read together from the 16th chapter, it's filled with a lot of names, most of which we scarcely know anything about. They have, in that sense, been lost to us in the midst of time, and yet, We long for the day in which we will be united with our wonderful Savior. And in eternity, we'll get to know the very names that we have read together from Romans 16. Now, there would not be sufficient time for us to look at each and every one that is spoken of, but I want to bring to your attention this morning, Phoebe, who's the first one named in Romans chapter 16. She's first amongst that list of about 20 or more individuals and couples. And so as he begins to open up his greetings to so many, that Phoebe takes the front place. So we might ask ourselves, well, who was Phoebe? Who was she before, and what did she become? Well, I confess, I had to turn to the commentators and look to see what they had to say, and apparently, She's named after an ancient pagan goddess, Phoebe. And so the commentator drew the conclusion that because she was named after a pagan deity, that her parents must also have been pagan, so she was converted out of a pagan background. On the other hand, another commentator suggested that it's not uncommon to take well-known and pleasant-sounding names and just adopt them for your children. In the same way that the parents of Lady Diana Spencer, those of you who are old enough to remember who that was, who was engaged first and then married to Prince Charles, the heir to the throne of England at that time, And they would make the point that quite clearly it is as foolish to describe the parents of Phoebe as being definitely pagans as it would be to call upon the parents of Lady Diana Spencer and say, well, they must clearly have nipped down to the local Greek temple of a weekend and offered sacrifices to Diana of the Ephesians. So, she either was the daughter of a pagan or she might have been the daughter of warm-hearted Christian parents who just happened to like the name Phoebe. There are those that suggest that she was a wealthy individual. perhaps something akin to Lydia, the seller of purple, and she was headed off to Rome. And so she was being commended to the saints in Rome that when she arrived that they would receive her warmly. Well, no woman would travel the ancient world on her own, so she must have had an entourage of ladies-in-waiting and servants who would take care of her needs on the voyage towards Rome. So she was a wealthy individual. Or perhaps she was just one of the servants in the household of a wealthy individual and just accompanying her on that journey. You'll see in your ESVs that she is described as a servant. The word there is diakonos, which then would indicate that perhaps she was officially recognized as a deacon in the church that was now sending her to Rome, a deaconess ordained to that office. But then there are the other commentators who say, well, it's just an ordinary name for a servant and she didn't occupy any particular office at all. She just served God's people. And to declare my own position on this, I think it would be incompatible to call a woman the husband of but one wife. So there we go, not inclined towards holding that. So, what do we know about Phoebe? She was either a Gentile or she was a Jew. She was either wealthy or poor. She was either a slave owner or a slave. Well, I'm delighted to be able to sort all that out for you so that you're so much better informed now than when the sermon began. so many things, but on each one we could perhaps draw the opposite conclusion. Scriptures are not given to us so as to satisfy our curiosity. We may have all these questions that well up in our minds, and not just here, perhaps every time you open up your Bibles and you're just reading it and a thought occurs to you, I wonder why, but the Scriptures remain silent on the matter. And we might say that that's a blessing. Well, the obvious blessing is that our scriptures would be multiple volumes long and we'd never be done reading it, just satisfying all the irrelevant questions which occur to us in our minds. But then I think there's another reason why we can thank the Lord that we don't know much about the background of Phoebe. because it would distract us. The more information that we have about somebody, the more our minds are inclined to ponder who that person was and what she came from. And I think as we're looking at the story of Phoebe, the scriptures are not only silent, but they're silent for a reason. Because it's not so much important as to know where she came from, but where she was going to. And I'm not just thinking geographically. Who was this person? Is it so important to know what she was converted out of? Or is it more important to know what she was converted to? Well, let me turn to some other passages of Scripture. So if you have your Bibles with you, I'd commend that to you as you would turn with me just a few pages on 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and then we come to Galatians. Galatians chapter three and at verse 23. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So here in this letter to the church in Galatia, Paul himself is touching upon this issue, what we were before and what we are afterwards. So what was Phoebe before she was converted? I don't know, because Scripture does not reveal that to us. We might speculate, but we have to admit that it is just speculation, and Scripture does not tell us much about, if anything, about what Phoebe was before she was converted. And our response has to be, and it doesn't matter. It's not who I was, but who I am now. And although it's not a statement that is made there explicitly on the pages of Scripture, certainly by implication we come to the conclusion if God needed us to know what the background of Phoebe was, then He would have told us. But what her background was is not nearly as important as who she is now in Christ. And perhaps it also warns us about that sin of partiality, against which James himself wrote so firmly. You have somebody, a visitor comes to your fellowship, and because he's wearing a Rolex and there's a gold ring upon his finger, Wearing a nice suit, an expensive suit, you say, we have just the place for you. Come down to the front so you can experience the service to the full. But then somebody else comes and he looks as though he's been sleeping on a bridge last night. And he says, well, there is a screen down in the basement where the overflow goes to and you can find maybe a seat down there. We are not to show such partiality because we shouldn't be looking upon the outside, we should be looking upon who a person is, not his appearance of wealth. Paul describes us in 2 Corinthians as being new creatures in Christ. And perhaps even before we begin to reflect upon Phoebe, the very absence of so many of the things that we might like to inquire, who she was, what she was doing, did she have employment, was she like Lydia, did she have servants, or was she herself a servant? All these questions, but they're not answered for us in God's Word. When we think of the enemy of our souls, He's introduced to us in Scripture in the opening chapters. If the book of the Old Testament was written in the order in which it was set down, then the first book of the Old Testament would not be Genesis, it would be the book of Job. And right in the very first chapter, we are introduced to the enemy of our souls, and he is given a name. He's called Satan. And the name Satan simply means an accuser. And you and I know that he remains the accuser to this day. He accuses you of sin. Perhaps those sins of which he would accuse you are long since repented of. And yet the enemy of your souls has a way of creeping into your thoughts so that you are reminded of that conversation which you ought never to have had reminded of that action which you should never have committed, and you know it, and you have brought it before the Lord, even with tears, and ask God's forgiveness. But then some event or some conversation stirs up that thought within your mind, and it's just as fresh as the day in which you first repented of it. Well, I know that the name of John Newton will be known to you, perhaps one of our favorite hymns. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Why is it one of our favorites? Because John Newton encapsulates in a few verses the greatness, the depths of our sins and our wretchedness that arises out of those sins. that then points us to the grace of God by which our sins are forgiven. Not quite as well known is another hymn of John Newton, in which he deals with the very issue in which the accuser will remind you of some saint's sin. And the way in which he responds in that verse, and it's in your hymn books, that I may my fierce accuser face. and tell him thou hast died." There's the antidote. And few, if any, can state it better than John Newton in that hymn, that when we stand accused of our sins, Satan, the great accuser, brings it once more to our remembrance. Our response is simply this, Christ has died for me. He has forgiven me all my sins. And so when Paul writes into the church in Philippi, he speaks about he who began a good work. God has begun a good work in us. We're trusting in Christ. We know that our sins are many and great, but we have brought them before the throne of grace, that place where grace reigns. We have confessed them and asked for God's forgiveness and known that God has forgiven us our sins. But then some great calamity overwhelms us, as it does in this life. We are, after all, according to Scripture, making our way through the veil of tears. And I expect there's hardly a person here, certainly nobody who has been long upon the face of this earth that has not found himself, herself. Repeating those words of comfort from Paul's letter to the church in Rome, for we know that all things work together for good to them that love God with a call according to His purpose. Well, perhaps at times we are prone to rush ahead to the very words that bring the most comfort and forget how that verse begins. For we know. For we know. There's our hope that is in Christ Jesus in the gospel. that He paid the price for our sins. And we cast ourselves afresh upon His mercy. But even when we are remembering those words from Romans 8, chapter 28, we perhaps don't so swiftly pass on to the next verse, which tells us about the purpose of God. For all things work together for good to them that love God, who are the called according to His purpose. Pray tell me, what is God's purpose? The very next verse tells us to conform us to the likeness of His Son. Every sorrow, every heartache, every catastrophe through which we pass has a purpose, and that purpose is to conform us to the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps we're not as quick to seize upon that as we should be in our daily prayers. That not only can we have confidence in the midst of whatever trial through which we are passing, that this will work together for our good, but the good that God is working in us is to conform us to the likeness of his son. So perhaps we're not so surprised when we are looking at this particular chapter from Romans, the concluding chapter, that the emphasis doesn't fall upon who Phoebe was. It falls upon who she is. So it's as he begins to reflect upon who Phoebe is that we then get to know her a little bit better. She is our sister, our sister in Christ. Please receive Phoebe, our sister. And in the very way in which it is introduced in the original, not that I'm any expert in that, know enough to pass the exam, but that was last century after all. You remember how Jesus was declared to be the Son of God at His baptism. This is my Son, my only Son, the Son whom I love. There's the same sort of word order here in the original for Phoebe. Phoebe, the sister, the sister of us. Paul is telling us who she is now and is not concerned to dig up the past to tell you who she was or what her background was. But in that brief statement, he's really telling us all that we really need to know. She's one of the family. Whatever she was before, what she is now is a sister in Christ. And if you're weighing one against the other, surely you would have to say, if your mind and heart, as I trust it is, is informed by the word of God, your immediate response is, what she is now in Christ is infinitely, and I choose the word deliberately, infinitely more important than what she was. We are united in Christ. We don't do baptisms in private. We don't do communion in private for good reason. It belongs to the body of God's people. We join together as a body of Christ in this place. But as we think about these things, there is an implication, an application for us As we explore or at least would seek to come to a deeper understanding of what it means to call somebody a sister in Christ or a brother in Christ, is that just a formula of words that we use? It sounds at least a little bit pious, but is there a lot of truth that lies behind it? And I suppose each of us would have to say that on more than one occasion there's not as much truth lying behind it as there should be. Now if you speak to those who are of the Reformed persuasion, you ask them, what is it that defines a church? They will probably, most of you, perhaps all of you, would immediately be able to respond that a church is one where the Word is preached faithfully and correctly, where we have the correct administration of the sacraments, where we have church discipline. But ask yourself, what does the unbeliever know about these things? Would the unbeliever walking into our midst know the right preaching of the Word of God from a reading from the Yellow Pages, for those of you that are old enough to remember what the Yellow Pages were? An unbeliever doesn't know when the gospel is being faithfully proclaimed unless the Spirit of God writes upon his or her heart. Baptism? Communion? The right administration of the sacraments? One of those with whom we will spend eternity who would have a very different view of the sacrament of baptism. We love them as brothers and sisters in the Lord and yet we are not on the same page when it comes to baptism. The unconverted person walking in hearing that one of the marks of a true church is church discipline. Thank you very much, I'll see you whenever. But you know your Scriptures, and you know that Lord Jesus has given the mark of a true church that even the unbeliever, especially the unbeliever, will recognize. No knowledge of what faithful doctrine is, no knowledge of what the right administration of the sacraments is, certainly no desire for church discipline. as Jesus declared to His disciples, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples, by your love one for another. So if the unconverted person comes in, he or she does have a means by which she can discern whether this truly is the body of Christ in this place. Because you're not just calling one another brother or sister, but because you truly hold them as such. And as Paul said elsewhere in the book of Romans, we rejoice with those that rejoice, and we weep with those who weep. Why? because their joys are our joys and their sorrows our sorrows too. So Paul isn't so much concerned to tell you who Phoebe was as to tell you who she is. She's a sister in Christ. Now she is also described as a servant And we should all have servant hearts. Perhaps one of my most, one of my favorite, perhaps most staggering words of scriptures to be found in the Gospel of Christ by John, the 13th chapter. It's just before the administration of the first Lord's Supper. And as you know, be reminded, Jesus takes off His robe to wash the feet of the disciples. Now, I want you just to pause for a moment and think about what's happening there. Not to be too blunt about the matter, but there was no indoor plumbing in Jesus' day. Everything that you didn't want in your house, whatever form it might take, would be tossed out into the street, and your visitors would have to pick their way through that as they came to visit you. Now, in any household that had any degree of wealth, I had servants. Because that's not the world in which we live, we might be tempted to think, unless you've seen upstairs, downstairs. This is a trip down memory lane for a lot of us that remember upstairs, downstairs. There was degradation in the servants in the household. There was the chief butler, and then there was the footman, and he was way below the chief butler. Well, there was a similar gradations of the servants in any household. There would be one servant who was appointed over the rest, and then there would be the servant right down the bottom of the food chain. It was a servant who occupied the lowest position in the household, whose task it was that when a visitor came to the house, to stoop down and wash his feet. The task is not incidental. That person had the task of washing off anything that had been trodden in, anything that had still stuck to the feet, to wash it off. And Jesus takes the position of the lowest servant in the household. We can perhaps sympathize with Peter when he says, don't do that, Lord. Don't do that. No, but if you don't let me do that, then I have no part in you. Well, not just my feet, but my head and my hands as well. Peter can always be relied upon to say too much. So Jesus washes the disciples' feet. because he loved them enough to do even the most menial of tasks for them. So how will the unbeliever know whether you are truly a Christian or not? By your willingness to serve and perhaps take even the most menial of tasks because that's what your master did. we are called upon to love Christ. Paul is telling us that Phoebe is one of the family, and as she goes to Rome, she is to be received as such. This is Sister Phoebe. And that helps us understand truly when we talk about Christianity, is it just a code of ethics? A good rule by which you can live your life. Well, it certainly is that. And when we ignore the teachings of Scripture, we're only going to make shipwreck of our lives, but that's not the point. We are those who love Christ who first loved me. Well, no surprises when we're dealing with the book of Romans that other quotations from Paul's work should also bubble to the surface. When Paul defines his Christian understanding, he does it very succinctly. He speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he says it in just two very memorable phrases. who loved me and gave himself for me." And that's what it means to be a follower of Christ. You belong, belong to the family of God's people. And if you are not those who weep with those who weep and rejoice with those that rejoice, then bring your own heart before the Lord and ask for that humility of spirit that would put the needs of others before yourself. How can I encourage this brother or sister? What word might I speak? Even this morning, you go out and take coffee, wonderful, spend time. And there are so many things that you can talk about. But perhaps that question which would be most upon our lips is just simply, how can I pray for you? Now, you can't just leap into that with a complete stranger, although perhaps you can. but those beside whom you have sat in the pew for years, decades? And you have to ask the question because you don't really know. Or perhaps you know something of their burdens. And if you don't know exactly how you should be praying for a brother and sister, but you know something of their burden of heart at this hour, Perhaps all you can do and all you should do, all you can do, simply reach out and lay a hand upon a shoulder. No word spoken, but a recognition. I cannot take your burdens from you, but there is one who can. and I will weary God. Weary God? Book of Isaiah, that's what it says. Weary God with your prayers. For that brother or sister who is so sorely afflicted. And all it took for you to recognize that is place a hand on a shoulder, and the faintest recognition of the burden that is theirs. But there's something else that we can say about Phoebe. She was trustworthy. You might look at your Bible and say, well, how do you know that she was trustworthy? Well, some of the versions actually say that Phoebe was the one who carried the letter to the church in Rome, to Rome. And that does seem to fit in with what we're told here in Romans chapter 16. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in St. Croix, that you welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints. I don't believe it is stretching Scripture at all to suppose that now that Paul is getting to the end of his letter and commending Phoebe to the church in Rome, that it was by Phoebe's hand that the letter to the Romans was conveyed to the saints in Rome. Now just think about that. If you had in your possession the only copy in the world of the book of Romans, and you were entrusted with that to take it to the church in Rome, do you suppose that Paul didn't think that she was trustworthy? Well, our time has passed. What do we know about Phoebe? Not much about who she was, but a lot about who she is. A sister, a servant, yes. One worthy of trust, yes. Well, here's the challenge for us this morning. When the enemy of our souls is tempted to make all manner of accusations in our thinking and raise in our consideration those sins over which we have long since repented, that I may my fierce accuser face and tell him, thou hast died not. That's who I was, but I want to tell you who I am. And you? a brother or a sister, a servant, someone trustworthy to bring God's Word to another for their strengthening and encouragement. That was who Phoebe is, not who she was. And by the grace of God, may we find our identity in Christ. May we serve the people of God as our Master did, and may we prove trustworthy. to bring God's inspired Word to those who need to hear it. Let's pray. Our gracious God and our heavenly Father, we thank Thee for what the Scriptures do not tell us, that our minds are not cluttered with information about who Phoebe was, but that we are able to discern from the brief words spoken by Paul of who she became. And we pray, Father, that we may truly identify with Phoebe on every level as brothers and sisters in Christ, of those whose hearts have been touched by the gospel so that it is our longing and deep desire to serve others, and that we may prove trustworthy in our generation. To speak a word in season to those who are crushed by circumstances, burdened by afflictions, but also to take the word of the gospel to those of our neighbors, colleagues, friends, even members of our own family. and that bringing them to attend upon the means of grace, they would be able to see, even as they enter this place, that this body of believers in this place are clearly Thy people, disciples made known by their love one for another. Hear us, we pray. In Jesus' name, for his sake. Amen.