THE MARKS OF THE TRUE CHRISTIAN.

Ephesians 6:21&22 “Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you.”

Let me begin with two little points that I found fascinating. An insignificant human omission and a perplexing divine transcription. First the omission; Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s sermons on Ephesians published by the Banner of Truth, which have been my companion over the last couple of years, come to an end unexpectedly with the twentieth verse. That seems strange; I am looking forward to preaching on the final verses next time, But Dr . Lloyd-Jones’ sermons on these last four verses are omitted from his eight volumes. I learned that there were in total twenty-two of his sermons of  Ephesians which he decided not to include in the series that have been printed. Dr Lloyd-Jones considered that those twenty-two were not sufficiently an exposition of the text. Amongst them was our text today about Tychicus, and then Paul’s last words in his final benediction.

Second, the transcription; this other point is more mysterious from a biblical perspective, and it is simply the fact that these words of our text are almost identical to verses in the last chapter of the letter to the Colossians, a virtual word by word transcription; “Tychicus will tell you all the news about me. He is a dear brother, a faithful minister and fellow-servant in the Lord. I am sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts” (Cols. 4:7&8). Thirty-two words in the original Greek are in verbatim agreement; there is the addition of the words “what I am doing” in our text in Ephesians. That duplication is not unique in the Bible; Psalm 14 is repeated in Psalm 53; Isaiah 2 is repeated in Micah 4 - so good that men wrote it twice. I wonder what is the reason for this repetition in Ephesians and Colossians? Did Paul copy these words about Tychicus from his earlier letter to the Colossians? But after ignoring that letter for six entire chapters, not copying anything from it, why copy such an innocuous phrase here?

It’s not necessary to conclude that Paul copied from the one to the other, rather that he customarily thought and spoke of Tychicus to everyone visiting him in this way, “our dear brother Tychicus . . . the Lord’s faithful servant . . . telling people everything about me so that they know how I am and what I’m doing . . . I send him to various congregations for them to know how we are. It’s such an encouragement to them.” And so when he wrote from Rome in the middle of Italy about Tychicus to the Colossians and also to the Ephesian church (in what is today northern Turkey) he slipped into his familiar paean of praise about his friend . . . “dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord.” Tychicus was a model Christian in four ways.

1. CHRISTIANS ARE LOVING BROTHERS.

The prologue to John’s gospel is one of the most majestic statements as to the nature of God and the incarnation of his Son. There we are told of Christ that “to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12). You have to receive Christ in your life in order to become a son of God. You open every door and turn the light on in every room. He is coming in to stay. A man refuses to receive a girl into his heart and so there is no marriage. An alien is not received into a country and so there is no refuge there. A whining puppy is rejected by a family and so it has no home. An orphan is not adopted by a father and mother and so lives on in an orphanage. If a man or woman will not receive Christ into their lives then they don’t become the children of God. Becoming a Christian consists of receiving the Lord Jesus as the great teacher that he is, to tell you how you should live, to answer your profoundest questions, to explain who your neighbour is, what is the good life, who is God, what is death and what lies beyond it. You receive this teacher to be your own instructor. You receive him as the Lamb of God who takes away your guilt and shame. You receive him as your good Shepherd who protects and provides for you. I am saying that it is in the act of receiving this Christ that you are given the entitlement from God to be his child. “My beloved child!” God says as he smiles and smiles upon you.

There was a Scottish Christian whose name was R.S.Candlish who thought and wrote much about the Scriptures. He once stirred the church in Scotland when he was speaking about the glories of being a child of God. Candlish said that the only difference between us enjoying all the privileges of our sonship and Christ enjoying all the privileges of his sonship was this - Christ enjoyed them before we did! We have the same privileges as sons of God as Jesus Christ himself has. That was Candlish’s claim. He said that we are loved in the same way as Christ. We expect the same inheritance as him; we are going to the same place; we are going to be seated in the midst of the throne with the Son of God. We shall know the joy of the welcome that he knew there.

That is the privilege of every single Christian - not merely the Master Christian but the apprentice; not merely the aged saint but the beginner; not merely the super-fit athletic Christian but the limping, staggering, dying believer. John cries, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (I Jn. 3:1). I love the repetition of those pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us.’ It was John who wrote those words, the mighty apostle whom Jesus loved, who had shared in the Last Supper sitting next to Jesus, his head on Christ’s bosom, the one to whom Jesus entrusted his own mother - what a super saint! Yet John says to all the readers of his letter, “that we . . . we should be called children of God!” All of you - and me too - are truly God’s children. What a status we have! What provision God makes for us - supplying all our needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. What a destiny is ours!

The great consequence of our sonship is membership in the same family. We are brothers and sisters. We are family; my brother and my sister and me. We share the family likeness. We are all being led by the Spirit of God on the narrow path that leads to life. We can all run into the presence of the mighty Creator and look up into his big smiling face cry to him, “Abba! Father.” We all have the inner witness of the Holy Spirit of adoption. John Wesley’s father Samuel was speaking to him one day and he said to him to make sure that he had this as the real proof of Christianity. We all groan about the same sadnesses, our own failures and the pain of this sick world. We as a family are reflecting the family likeness of our Father and our elder brother. So we accept one another, and expect affection from one another, and depend on one another. You know how a family grows up together, and then the children go off to their places of employment and marriage setting up their own homes. Then when the parents get older they often move to live nearer their family because that’s where they can expect concern, and understanding, and support, and love. They value that more and more as the years go by.

That family feeling of being in the household of God must characterize the Christian church. That is what we see here in the attitude of Paul as he says, “Tychicus, the dear brother.” Not just Paul’s brother; he doesn’t say ‘my brother’ - “the brother.” If there is any Christian who needs a brother he or she will find it in Tychicus – the model brother. Haven’t we all had the privilege of meeting Christians like this, beloved by every member of a congregation? The dear brother to us all! Paul is being theologically correct, of course, because all Christians are brothers, but there is much more than orthodoxy in this phrase. There is warm affection. – “beloved brother!”

Who was Tychicus? There are a few references to him in the New Testament. He was originally from Asia, possibly from Ephesus itself. He became one of Paul’s helpers, going with him in his travels. I imagine Tychicus making the practical arrangements for the journey, getting a place on the boat, bringing food and bedding, providing for Paul his meals, washing his clothes, finding lodgings and so on. He was the one who carried this letter from Rome all the way to Ephesus and also the letter to the Colossians. There is also mentioned another letter he took to Laodicea in Colossians 4:16, but that may be another name for the letter to Ephesus - the two communities were in Asia Minor . Perhaps Tychicus was the first man ever to read this letter through aloud when he arrived in the congregation in Ephesus .

But we know more about Tychicus. There was once a runaway slave named Onesimus who had become a Christian while he was on the run and had become a means of helping Paul. The apostle had told him that his duty was to return to his master Philemon and face up to the consequences of absconding. Paul wrote a famous little letter and sent Tychicus with the epistle to be with Onesimus and talk to Philemon on Paul’s behalf to plead for kindly treatment to the converted slave. Tychicus was obviously much respected, full of wisdom and grace if he was brokering the return of the runaway.

Then in his middle age Tychicus is far from his home in Ephesus across two seas and Greece in Rome, visiting the prison each week bringing all the creature comforts to Paul that he needed to stay alive, healthy and warm while chained to a soldier in the dungeon of a Roman jail. Maybe he acted as Paul’s scribe and wrote out this letter which we’ve been studying as Paul dictated it. There are four of Paul’s letters in which at the end Paul himself takes the pen and adds the closing words in his own handwriting - “see, I write this in my own hand.” Maybe he was doing this here in verses twenty one to the end. “Tychicus is my beloved brother,” writes Paul.

You might think that these verses about a fringe character in the New Testament could have faint relevance to us today. I’m saying to you that isn’t it significant, after all we’ve been reading of the lofty theology and the stringent ethic, and the description of family life and the Christian warfare and armour that one barely-known individual should be introduced to us? Individuals count to God; Tychicus is a living illustration of what this high theology accomplishes, and how this stringent ethic is lived out, and that this was a man who dressed himself daily in the Christian armour and attempted and accomplished great things for God. He is a working model of everything Paul has been writing in his letter to the Ephesians.

2. CHRISTIANS ARE FAITHFUL SERVANTS IN THE LORD.

“Beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord” (v.21). So Tychicus had at some time received Christ and been adopted into the family of God and knew all the blessings of God as his Father and fellow Christians as his brothers. At that same time he had taken up his cross and denied himself and begun to follow Jesus Christ as his Lord. That again is another definition of a Christian. He is a child of God, and he is also a servant of the Lord, and Tychicus served the Lord faithfully. He had become a decisive Christian. He was a determined disciple of Jesus. From the time he received Christ into his life he became committed permanently to serving the Lord. Some of our forefathers in Christ had a high view of their calling to serve the Lord. Their diaries would sometimes contain vows or covenants that they made in writing to the Lord. Before him they would renew their promise of service - kneeling in his presence, and rededicating their lives to him, again and again during their lives. They would say to God, “Here am I send me.” William Booth was the founder of the Salvation Army movement in the 19th century. He was once asked about the reason for his tireless vitality in Christian work. He replied, “There was a day in my life when I vowed that God would have everything there was to have of William Booth.” Years went by, and after his death his daughter was reminded by a friend of that commitment he’d made. She thought for a moment and she replied, “You know, that vow on its own wasn’t the real secret of my father’s life. The real secret was that he kept his vow.” Booth kept giving to God everything he was and had. He was a faithful servant of God.

I was just quoting from the call of the prophet Isaiah in the sixth chapter of his prophecy, “Here am I send me.” He had been a blessed man, seeing the Lord high and lifted up and his train filling the temple. Do you remember the significance of the actual year when he’d had this sight of the Lord? It was in the year king Uzziah died. What a contrast, king Uzziah and prophet Isaiah. Think of the lives of these two men, both beginning so promisingly, the king and the prophet. We are told about Uzziah, “He sought God during the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God. As long as he sought the LORD, God gave him success . . . His fame spread far and wide, for he was greatly helped until he became powerful. But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the LORD his God,” (2 Chrons. 26:5, 15&16). Uzziah wasn’t faithful, but the prophet Isaiah who began his ministry in the year was faithful to the end.

Tychicus was a faithful servant in the Lord. When his favourite preacher Paul was thrown into prison and he couldn’t accompany him any longer evangelizing Jews and Gentiles Tychicus continued to serve the Lord. When his own health was uncertain, and his worse fears were fulfilled, he still served the Lord. What motivated him? His love for Christ, of course, but also his deep conviction that the gospel was the power of God unto salvation to all who believed. That was kept him a faithful servant through thick and thin. Let me illustrate that in a famous incident that took place before the War in San Francisco .

Harry Ironside – what a wonderful name for a preacher and evangelist – was minister in Chicago at the Moody Memorial Church before the Second World War. He was visiting San Francisco on one occasion and he was asked to take part in a Salvation Army open air meeting. A bystander shouted out and challenged Harry Ironside to debate the subject “Agnosticism versus Christianity.” The man who issued the challenge was a well-known socialist in San Francisco . This is what Ironside said:

“I will be glad to agree to this debate on the following conditions: namely, that in order to prove that Mr. ________________ has something worth debating about, he will promise to bring with him to the Hall of Science next Sunday afternoon two people whose qualifications I will give in a moment, as proof that agnosticism is of real value in changing human lives and building true character.

“First, he must promise to bring with him one man who was for years what we commonly call a ‘down-and-outer,’ a man who had been under the power of evil habits from which he couldn’t deliver himself, but who on some occasion entered one of Mr. _______________‘s meetings and heard his glorification of agnosticism and his denunciations of the Bible and Christianity, and whose heart and mind as he listened to such an address were so deeply stirred that he went away from that meeting saying, ‘Henceforth, I too am an agnostic!’ As a result of imbibing that particular philosophy he found a new power had come into his life. The sins he once loved he now hates, and righteousness and goodness are now the ideals of his life. He is now an entirely new man, a credit to himself and an asset to society - all because he is an agnostic.

“Secondly, I would like Mr. ______________________ to promise to bring with him one woman . . . once a poor, wrecked, characterless girl, in bondage to greed and lust, the willing collaborator of man’s corrupt living. She too had also entered a hall where Mr.____________ was loudly proclaiming his agnosticism and ridiculing the message of the Holy Scriptures. As she listened, hope was born in her heart and she said, ‘This is just what I need to deliver me from this deadly life.’ She followed the teaching and became an intelligent agnostic or atheist. As a consequence she revolted against the degradation of the life she’d been living. She left the brothel where she’d been bound so long; and today, rehabilitated, she has won her way back to an honoured position in society and is living a clean, virtuous, happy life, all because she became an agnostic.

“Now,” he said, addressing the man who had presented him with his card and the challenge, “if you will promise to bring these two people with you as examples of what agnosticism can do, I will promise to meet you at the Hall of Science at four o’clock next Sunday, and I will bring with me at the very least one hundred men and women who for years lived in just such sinful degradation as I have tried to depict, but who have been changed through believing the gospel which you ridicule. I will have these men and women with me on the platform as witnesses to the miraculous saving power of Jesus Christ and as present-day proof of the truth of the Bible.”

Dr. Ironside then turned to the Salvation Army officer and asked her, “Captain, have you anyone who could go with me to such a meeting?” She said with enthusiasm, “We can give you forty at least just from this one corps, and we will give you a brass band to lead the procession.”

Apparently the man who had made the challenge had a sense of humour for he smiled wryly and waved his hand in a deprecating kind of way as if to say, “Nothing doing!” Then he edged out of the crowd. The gospel changes lives; it had changed the life of Tychicus’ pastor Saul of Tarsus. On the Damascus Road Christ had met with him and had transformed his life. He became humble, gentle, kind and good, but he was no mere milksop. He lived a life of high adventure, traveling the world, meeting kings and soldiers, shipwrecked and imprisoned for the convictions he had, changing lives for the better of thousands of people. That is what a servant of God achieves. So a true Christian is a brother and faithful servant in the Lord.

3. CHRISTIANS ARE SOCIAL BEINGS.

I didn’t know quite how to say this. Christians are not loners. They are gregarious. Remember the famous words of John in his second letter, “I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.” (2 Jn. 12). Paul couldn’t say that he hoped to visit them and see them face to face, in fact he never visited them again. They had wept on the quayside in Ephesus when they had bade him good-bye because they knew that  was the last time they would ever see him in this world. That was a sadness to Paul and to the Ephesians. So Paul did the next best thing, he sent to them a mutual friend, a servant of God who would represent him. Christians are aware that they have to share in the lives of their brothers and sisters, and they give themselves to their fellow believers.

Listen again to what Paul says here because it describes what I am trying to say: Tychicus “will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am, and what I am doing. I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are” (vv. 21&22). I love the humanity of the apostle Paul here. He was no distant ivory tower academic theologian. Here is a man who wanted a congregation almost a thousand miles away to know his affairs, how he was and what he was doing. He didn’t apologize for that. He wanted Tychicus to tell them all the day-by-day details of his life, of what his prison cell was like, what he ate, did he get outside into the sunlight at all, what were visiting hours, did he have a bed to sleep on, who did his washing, what was his health like. The Ephesians wanted to know all these details, “How is Paul? What is he doing?” They needed to learn all the theology of grace, and Paul put that down in this letter. They needed to learn how to live a life of gratitude to God, and Paul put that down in this letter. But they wanted to know how Paul was coping in prison; what was his daily life, and Paul didn’t put down those details in the letter. He sent Tychicus to tell them that and answer their questions. Paul didn’t charge Tychicus with silence about all those private details. He did not say, “Just tell them the theology.” He gave Tychicus carte blanche to share with the Ephesians everything about prison life; he “will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are.”

Maybe it’s a cliché to say that caring means sharing, but there is a truth there somewhere. Some Christians are more lonely than they might me, or need be, because they don’t give themselves to others. They don’t let themselves be known by other Christians. The mark of real Christian humanity is the open heart. It is very impressive to realize at the close of this epistle which has been speaking so much of the Christian being in the heavenly places in Christ, how truly human one has to be to attain that position. Life in Christ, the true spiritual life, is never remote and unapproachable. The life of prayer when it’s real and true encourages a spirit of true humanity. Paul was concerned for these Ephesians and he prayed for them regularly. He told them what he was asking God to give them. He was thinking, “They are concerned about me. I am giving them worry and I am sorry about that, so I will send Tychicus with this letter and he will give them the kind of details that I can’t write out.” It was a very Christlike spirit wasn’t it? We sing about the name of Jesus that it soothes our sorrows, heals our wounds and drives away our fears. Our Saviour does that, and we whom he has saved must also do it.

There is a spirit of tender care and mutual consideration breathing through these verses telling us what real Christianity is all about. Christians use the word ‘fellowship’ very much; we have ‘fellowship lunches’ and the main room in some church buildings is called ‘fellowship hall’. The congregation is defined as the ‘fellowship of the Holy Spirit.’ Then we must consider the example of Paul and this spirit of concern to share his life with other Christians. We must ask are we doing this wisely and with the right motive - not to burden others by dumping all our cares on them - “Cast your care on the Lord” - but to help allay their fears and increase their joy by what we say. We want to forge strong and enduring bonds of love and support. We want to encourage a mutual ministry of help.

There were some occasions when Professor John Murray would tell me about himself. I would bump into him in a corridor and he would ask how my family were back in Wales and then he would tell me about his two sisters and brother, all unmarried, living in the family home in Badbea in Sutherland, to whom he wrote each week. He stopped me one day and said, “You are a Welshman and Welshmen like music. I learned this new tune in church yesterday,” and he sang it to me with delight. Of course that action drew me emotionally to him. Here was a humble, pure man who felt he could share something as simple as that with a student. I thought he was a giant. I once was seeing Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones off on the London train from our station and he said to me, “The train from Llangeitho would pull into that platform, and we children would be on the Sunday School outing once a year, and I would jump out of the carriage and run with my bucket and spade along the street to the beach.” What a wonderful picture of the little boy. I loved the Doctor more after he shared that glimpse of his boyhood trips to Aberystwyth. I have also run to a beach with my bucket and spade. I remember telling him that my mother and father were selling their home in Barry and coming to live around the corner from us in Aberystwyth and his face lit up with delight. Is it any wonder that people lined up on Sunday after the service to talk to him? Am I the sort of Christian that a man who had failed in life would instinctively think, “Oh, I could never confide in him”? Think of the prayer letters that stir us the most to pray, when the missionary doesn’t merely send us a timetable of his events in the coming two months but shares everything with us and tell us how he is and what he is doing.

You know what the alternative is? If we are not the kind of fellowship where we can express “how we are and what we are doing” then people will gravitate to the Students' Union bar or to any one of the 25 pubs in the town. There they will look for escape rather than reality. They will share with others the mess of their lives, amongst a group of people who are permissive and accepting and unshockable and non-directive in their counseling. They will tell intimate secrets to other people who often don’t pass them on because they really don’t care very much. That is life and there is nothing anyone can do. Christians should care. Christians do care. On Tuesday one of the men in the prayer meeting told us about his sister-in-law who has been converted in the last year and now she would love to marry a Christian. Would we pray for her? Two people in the time of prayer did, thoughtfully and earnestly. They understood this problem and they brought it to God.

4. CHRISTIANS WANT TO ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER.

Why did Paul send his right hand man all the way to Ephesus , missing his friendship and ministry for a year? One of the reasons was this, “that he may encourage you” (v.22). They were getting discouraged in Ephesus because the greatest of all Christians was locked up in prison in Rome and the months and years were going by and he was not being released. Didn’t God know that Paul was needed in many places? They were getting weaker without him. God had opened the doors of the prison when Peter was locked up, why hadn’t he done that for Paul? Was he powerful in Israel but not in Rome ? The devil was using Paul’s incarceration to discourage the Christians and so Paul sent Tychicus to encourage them.

Encouragement features prominently in the New Testament. The entire letter to the Hebrews is defined as a word of encouragement by its writer (Hebs. 13:22). A man very much like Tychicus, named Barnabas, had this reputation in the book of Acts that he was a son of encouragement. He would move in to a wilting congregation and so speak and preach to people that they were greatly encouraged. He had an inspirational ministry. In all of Paul’s letters - the one exception being his letter to the Galatians - Paul begins with words of encouragement, how he thinks of their love and faith and evangelism - he spells it out to them - and he gives thanks to God for them. The Holy Spirit himself is the Spirit of encouragement. He builds up our morale; he makes us feel that we can cope with what he in his providence has brought into our lives; we can be more than conquerors through his help; he makes us see the grandeur and competence and sufficiency and unflappability of our Saviour. Christ knows what he is doing; he is building his church. You think of the ways in which God the Father encouraged his Son, telling him that he really loved him and that he was so pleased with everything he had done. He sends an angel to encourage him after one mighty struggle.

So we all have this calling ourselves to encourage one another. Let’s all keep a watch on our lips. Let’s have no Sunday confrontations, rather let’s consider how we may spur one another on. Where are the sorrows and burdens and lack of assurance and real needs in the church? Let’s help one another. Let us share with one another how we are coping, how good God has been to us, how he has answered our prayers and kept us through a tough week. Let us comfort one another with our words. Let us think of the person who is struggling under the biggest burden in the congregation, and maybe that person is me, or maybe it is you, and let us seek to make them feel really good, assuring them about God’s love for them, the Spirit indwelling them, all things working together for their good, how much we love them and depend upon them.

God doesn’t want anyone here to be overwhelmed with feelings of self-destruction and despair, and we are to assure every Christian that they really matter to God, and they really matter to us. The world may despise them but to us they are important and valuable and we praise God when we think about them. The Lord Jesus made the outcasts and lepers feel loved and useful. The devil wanted them to feel useless rubbish but we are to show our affection for them. Let us spur one another on. Let us do what we can to encourage one another. “Go on brother! Hang in there sister! Good on you! I’m praying for you.”

Earlier this year I suggested that we try a new way of reaching out to people, booking a meal in a function room in a restaurant and inviting our friends along to it, eating together and I would open a discussion. Nobody opposed it. No one said it would be too expensive, or that it wouldn’t work. We did it this past Thursday, and you encouraged me greatly by getting involved and taking part in the discussion, and giving me money to pay all the cost before the night was out. Someone from that meal was here with us for the first time this morning. Let’s encourage any form of biblical outreach. How can encourage one another more? How can wives spur on their husbands more and husbands their wives? How can we encourage our children? Let us make sure they know that we really love them and more and more as the years go by.

Let us make sure that we don’t neglect the meetings, the Sunday morning encouragement, and the Sunday evening encouragement, and the Tuesday night encouragement. God help me to inspire you, and make you feel your competence, and importance. You’ll never get feelings like that in the world, but one consequence of us meeting together on Sundays is that we feel the struggle is really worthwhile, and we in our town of Aberystwyth can really achieve something for God. Let us make Tychicus our example and freely share the good news of how God is helping us day by day with one another, and so encourage one another.

26th March 2006         GEOFF THOMAS