Advice No.5 Paul's Friends

I charge you, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not to me only, but also to all who have loved his appearing.

Be diligent to come to me quickly, for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica, Crescens for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry.

Antiochus I have sent to Ephesus. Bring the cloak I left with Carpus at Troas when you come, and the books, especially the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm, may the Lord repay him according to his works.

You also must beware of him, for he has greatly resisted our words. At my first defense no one stood with me, but all forsook me, may it not be charged against them. But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that the message might be preached fully through me, and that all the Gentiles might hear.

And I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work, and preserve me for his heavenly kingdom, to him be glory forever and ever, amen. Meet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus.

Erastus stayed in Corinth, but Trophimus I have left in Miletus sick. Do your utmost to come before winter. Iubulus greets you, as well as Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and the brethren.

The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, grace be with you, amen. There are some notes of this address available as you leave, if you want to take them. And also in a little while you'll be helped by an overhead outline.

It's good to get categories right in order to understand messages and various aspects of life. And here's a little quote which amused me the other day. Talks about made to measure.

My colleague, who had little experience in sewing, asked my advice about making a costume for her daughter's first school concert. The teacher's note read, dear parent, your daughter is a cabbage. Please see enclosed pattern.

Think it through. Well, what category do you find yourself in this morning in terms of Christian service? Do you recognize that one of the great descriptions of the church found in the Old Testament prophetically and in the New Testament is that the Christian community is a community of friends. There is nothing more wonderful than to work your way through the Old Testament and examine some of the close and intimate friendships that there are outlined there.

And when you move into the book of Proverbs, you get a case study of friends. If you have a computer, you can run a word search on the word friend and discover some very interesting things that are said. There is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.

A friend loves at all times. And in the authorized version of the Bible, or rather the NIV's rendering of there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother, you've got the alternative. He who would have friends must show himself friendly.

We have some intimation too that not all friendship is really good. Every man is a friend of him who gives gifts. The prodigal discovered that, didn't he, in the story when having squandered his father's inheritance, he discovered that his fair-weather friends were no longer around.

Proverbs tells us, perfume and incense bring joy to the heart and the pleasantness of one's friends springs from his earnest counsel. Well if you've got friends, you're rich. You really are very rich indeed.

There are friends, however, who perhaps don't really bear that description in terms of the category that ideally we'd like to put friends into. You take Job's colleagues, for instance. I mean there, if any man needed a friend, we find that's the case with the situation that confronts Job.

And yet, far from being ministered to, Job finds that his friends are actually no help for him at all. And in Job 19 verse 21, he says, have pity on me, all my friends. Now, why do I say all this? Well, here is the apostle Paul.

And as you go to the fourth chapter of this last epistle that he wrote, in fact, the final words that are on record the apostle ever wrote, you find that a lot of what he has to say just revolves around his need of friends. Says John Starr, the great apostle was also a creature of flesh and blood, a man of like nature of ourselves and like passions. Although he had finished his course and is awaiting his crown, he is still a frail human being with ordinary human needs.

He does need friends. You need friends. Last Sunday evening, I attempted the impossible.

I tried to speak on heaven and how one positions oneself for entering into heaven. And one of the questions that I raised and only partly answered, and I promised my older friends before I'm through here that I will bring a series and take it more leisurely into this subject area. But one of the questions that is often asked and I touched on last week is, when we get to heaven, will we recognize people? And the answer has to be yes, it's got to be yes.

Jesus told about a banquet which was spread, the banquet at which he would be the provider, he would not only be the chief guest, he would be the one who arranges it. And he says, from the east and from the west, people will come and Abraham and Isaac will be there. Tell me, how could Abraham and Isaac be there if you couldn't recognize them? What would a party be like if everyone was anonymous? One of the great joys of coming together in a church fellowship like this is not only to worship God, that's the chief objective, but the secondary blessing is to be with one another.

Everything that is good here will be raised to excellence there. And surely the good here, or part of that good, is knowing one another, loving one another, recognizing one another, enjoying one another's company. So I say in heaven, that is bound to be the case.

God has for us things that we can't imagine in terms of relationships and the quality thereof that we might enter into. Well, the Apostle Paul, he knows all this and he's got heaven in mind and he says, from the body is present with the Lord and I'm longing to go. But the glorious Apostle Paul, as he is there in Rome, also tells you that it's not just the joy of being with the church that's gone on before him that is attractive, he also is magnetically attracted to further fellowship here because, well, there were many, many people who graced the path of the Apostle Paul and anyone who suggests that Paul was an insular, cold intellectual really doesn't understand the man at all and can't have read his letters because time after time you find at the end of the epistles that he just gives a list of people that he wants to greet and there's a list of people in the area from which he's writing who also want to send their love to Christian communities to which he's directing his letters.

Well, here in this final note that he dashes off to his young friend Timothy, he's occupied with telling us about friends and there is here, if you please, a list of honor and also as William Barclay will tell you, a list of dishonor. Friends who have been good and fair-weather friends who, as far as the Apostle is concerned, have eventually turned on him and done him a great deal of harm. For instance, he makes reference to one by the name of Alexander, the metalworker, verse 14, the coppersmith, and although he came across the path of Paul, by no way, in no way did he help Paul's ministry.

In fact, it seems as though his objective was sinister. Alexander, the metalworker, did me a great deal of harm. The Greek there is very intense.

He was a conniver. He was acquittaling. I can't, with any dogmatism, set the context, but I think one could legitimately suggest it was in this measure.

Paul, towards the end of his missionary journey, finds himself in a place where Alexander is and Alexander reports him to the Romans. He becomes a bit of a quizzling, so to speak, as there were quizzlings amongst the French who cavorted with the Nazi regime in Europe in the 1930s. He did me great harm, says Paul as he's writing to Timothy.

I hope you don't have any more trouble with this man. The Lord will repay him because of his interference with the gospel. You too should be put on your guard against him because he strongly opposes our message.

When you're working for the Lord Jesus with a group of friends, the possibility is that amongst them there will be those who will serve you foul. The plaintiff cry of the psalmist as he imagines himself to be the Messiah in the psalm that speaks about the treachery that befalls Jesus has the Lord saying that the last hours on earth were particularly bitter. Why? Because in the house of my friends I was betrayed.

And you think of Judas and all that he did and the harm that he promoted. So Paul, when he's talking about those people who've crossed his path, because he's an honest man, he has to say, well, not everybody served me well, not everyone benefited from me. But there were those who were of great help and assistance to Paul.

But let's open up a little bit and talk more negatively for a little while and then we'll be very, very positive on one friend who reneged on Paul. Look at this man Demas, verse nine of this fourth chapter. Do your best says Paul as he's writing to Timothy.

Do your best to come to me quickly. I'm on my own. And Demas, Demas who might well have been my companion and helped me during these weeks that I am in Rome, he's defected.

He loved the world. He's deserted me and he's gone to Thessalonica. Interesting, isn't it, that when you first read of Demas in the scriptures, in the letter that Paul writes to Philemon in the 24th verse, Demas is referred to my fellow worker.

And then later on in the scriptures, you find him referred to as just Demas, Colossians and 4.14. And now it's Demas who has deserted me. It is possible to start at that level and drop down. Demas, my fellow worker, then just Demas and then Demas who has left, or seemingly so, the Christian cause.

Paul needed a strong friend when he was in Rome. We do need to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. We do need to be helping those who are weaker Christians and Demas had this opportunity but unfortunately he blew it.

He loved this world. Now don't put Demas down too quickly. Have a little compassion in your heart because maybe if you'd been around when Demas was around, you'd have done the same thing.

You see, it wasn't easy to be a Christian then, was it? I'm not suggesting it always is now. But then, well, who was in charge of the world, so to speak, the human level? And the answer was Nero. Was Nero the sort of man you'd have liked to have had breakfast with? Nero was a butcher.

Nero was a man whose great joy was sheer brutality. And living in the threat of Nero, no wonder there were Christians who defected. And here is Paul.

No defection ever crosses his mind. But he does need help as he faces Nero and Nero's rough justice. And Demas is gone.

How easy it is sometimes to slip from the high position of an evangelistic service and the full-throated enthusiasm with which you committed your life to the Christ. The years go by. Maybe the middle years come.

And the locusts, so to speak, eat away of your original commitment. And you find yourself once a friend, but now seemingly having gone into the wilderness. And Paul is left on his own.

Paul has his own Gethsemane. Paul, who in his first defense on the charges leveled against him, verse 16, looked for someone to come along to support him. But there were no friends.

And Demas, who could have been there because he was not legitimately engaged in Christian service. It is to his discredit he left Paul, the man who reneged. But then there was the man who remained.

I mean, having said all this, the apostle Paul is not negative by any means as he lists his friends and their activities. In fact, he says for some it was impossible for them to have been with him. Christians, verse 10, he went to Galatia.

Titus has gone to Dalmatia. Ah, but there is one man who remains physically. Verse 11, only Luke is with me.

You know, there are some beautiful personalities here in the tab whose faithfulness, as far as family is concerned, has gone down two or three generations. Utterly consistent. Always there.

It's of that stock that Luke found himself. You don't read of Luke as a preacher, though he was obviously quite an intellectual. He was a doctor.

The beloved physician is what the apostle Paul calls him in Colossians 4 and verse 14. My fellow laborer, he refers to him in Philemon 24. He was Luke and he was a medical practitioner.

Incidentally, don't you think that's a rather absurd term? Practitioner. I mean, quite frankly, I don't want my doctor to practice on me. I'd rather him be fully qualified.

Can you imagine getting on a plane at Heathrow and they say, you know, the captain's just come on board, he's practicing today. Well, thank you, captain, I'd rather have somebody else. However, we know what the term means even when it's double Dutch.

Dr. Luke leaves off being a general practitioner in order to be with the apostle Paul who does know a great deal of sickness himself. And so God has this man alongside Paul down the years of much of his ministry. And Dr. Luke is a man who's given to books, so he writes the third gospel.

And he brings together all the information he can gain from personal experience and by talking to other people so that there is a history of the early exploits of the Christian church. We call them the Acts of the Apostles. To whom do we owe this glorious account? And the answer is we owe it to Luke.

Who is Luke? He's a friend who remained. He was always there. If you read the latter chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, you discover that Paul is arrested.

He's carted off from the Palestinian coastline as a prisoner. Now, according to some, Roman tradition allowed a prisoner to take with him a slave. I can't say this dogmatically, but I can suggest to you that Luke actually became Paul's slave in order to qualify to be on the ship on that last, final, momentous, disturbed voyage on which Paul sailed and eventually came to Rome.

So here is Paul, and he looks back upon his life, and he's so grateful to the Lord that he's given him Luke. When you move into the second epistle to the Corinthians in the eighth chapter and the eighteenth verse, you read of someone, and they're described anonymously, the man who is highly spoken of in all the churches. And although I can't definitely say that this is the case, it seems as though the evidence points to Luke.

What a wonderful tribute to be spoken of highly. Why is he spoken of so highly? Well, because he's a friend, not a friend who reneges, but a friend who remains. When the chips are down and Paul is in need, he can look to Luke, and Luke is there, even during these last weeks as Paul stares into the jaws of death itself.

There was the friend who reneged, Demas, the friend who remained, but there was also the friend who returned. Look again at that eleventh verse, only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he's helpful to me in my ministry.

Let me give you a sort of colloquial translation from the original of that one. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he can turn his hand to anything. Isn't that nice? He can turn his hand to anything.

Do you know we have some of those at the time? We really do. We don't have as many friends as we need, but we could do with a lot more. A lot more willing friends.

But there are those who can and who do turn their hands to anything. But he messed it up to start with, didn't he? John Mark, I mean. Do you know the story of John? Well, he wrote a gospel as well, as well as Luke.

And Luke fills out from John Mark's account, for John was Mark's first name. Luke leaned upon John Mark. And very often in the writing of those days, if it was written anonymously, the author would write himself into a part, and that would become his signature.

You sometimes find a parallel in artwork, and if you're an expert, you can work out the artist, because somewhere he skillfully, with his brush, identified himself. Now here's the story of our Lord. He's in the Garden of Gethsemane, you remember? It's that awful night when what Judas has connived comes about.

Jesus predicts on that occasion, like Paul years on, he would be on his own. There's a young man, do you remember? A young man who's present, Mark 14, verse 51. And he gets so terrified.

You've got the idea of an adolescent boy who's prepared to risk anything, you know? A macho man? And then suddenly the furnace gets hot, and so he runs away. There's a young lad in the garden, and he sees the Romans. And he's afraid for himself.

He's got out of bed, and he's just wrapped a towel around him, and he's made his way down into the Garden of Olives. And in his fear, he drops his garment, and he runs naked away. And the suggestion is, and I think with a great deal of credibility, that that was Mark.

He has a propensity to fear. So do I. So I'm not putting him down. Now the next time you come across Mark, well, he's in Jerusalem.

Mark's mother, Mary, not the mother of Jesus, but there is some interrelationship here. She has a house, and that house seems to be the headquarters of the Christian community. It may even have been the house where the Last Supper was held.

It might even have been the house that the disciples went to on the day of Pentecost. And in that house, Mark was brought up. And when Paul, who's now converted, determines to preach the gospel outside of the Holy Land, Barnabas comes alongside, and John Mark.

And Mary must have been so proud of her lad. John Mark going with Paul. And there's great festivity, there's great happiness at least.

Festivity's too strong. Acts 13.5, they start off on this missionary journey. But by the time you get to the 13th verse, a lot is covered in the compass of those verses, geographically speaking.

John Mark has had a state of panic, a state of fear he's in. And he comes back to Jerusalem. And so upset is Paul about that, that when a similar situation occurs, you recall, later on in the 15th chapter, and Barnabas and Paul are going to go back.

And revisit the churches and establish more. Barnabas says, let's take John Mark. Paul says, not in your life.

I've been very fortunate. The people who've come with me to Africa and Asia from the tab here, they've always been excellent men. I don't say that patronizingly, it's been the case.

No one has ever been of handicap. No one has ever created any difficulty whatsoever. But I can see, even from my very limited experience in this sort of area, Paul's point.

You can't carry someone. When you're engaging in the front line of evangelism, when you're in difficulties, when your circumstances are not predictable, when there's not a hotel nearby or an airport or a train or what have you in the 20th century. Well, even worse in the first century, you can't cope with Mark.

So there's the great row, twixt Paul and Barnabas. And Barnabas goes off probably to Egypt with Mark and Paul with Silas. Well, he goes back and establishes more churches.

And that seems to be the end of the matter until when you get to Colossians in chapter 3 and verse 10, you find that the situation has changed. Mark is much more mature. Mark is referred to as a laborer with the apostle Paul.

And when Paul is at the end of his life and he's thinking about his friends, he says to Timothy, only Luke's with me. Now get Mark and bring him with you because he's helpful to me. He's a man who can turn himself to anything.

So what is Mark? Mark is a man who will tell you that no one needs to stay the way he is. If you've blown it, if you've failed, if one of the greatest problems you have to cope with is your own confessed weakness because you've let the Lord down or let others down at some time, then I give you Mark as a wonderful example. The man who fell from grace in the eyes of Paul, but when Paul is looking into the jaws of death, he says, I want Mark with me.

Thank God for those who pick up a second wind. Thank God for those who come to the forefront and you didn't realize there was this potential. You know, I've seen it in this church.

My crass insensitivity, you can push people away in terms of your evaluation and think, ah, you know, they can't really cope. And then something comes along and you find that they have a potential that you never knew, a potential that outstrips yours, and these people, they teach you and they humble you. Demas, the man who reneged.

Luke, the man who remained. Mark, the man who returned. These were all part of Paul's men, people who crossed the path of the apostle Paul and as he's towards the end of his life, he's so grateful to make sterling reference to some of them.

There's Crescens of whom we know nothing apart from another reference in the New Testament that refers to Crescens as my son. There are people like Priscilla and Aquila, the household of Onesiphorus, Erastus, Trophimus, and those who are actually enrolled in themselves, Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and all the brothers. Because here is Paul, you see, swimming in a mind that's full of memory, of people who he has known and people whose company he longs for, as well as Paul being absolutely honest, refers to people who have let him down.

I love George Fox. I like reading George Fox. He was a good, blunt man.

I like the story of George Fox when he saw Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was going down the mall with his carriage and his horses. George Fox, sort of George Verver 300 years ago, rushes across the mall and gives Cromwell a tract.

Fox says, my man. And George Fox, this peculiar guy who wouldn't take his hat off in the presence of other people because he believed that you should only honor the Lord, wore leather breeches and was, you know, he's a quintessential eccentric Englishman, of which we have many still remaining, probably one facing you. George Fox is, he influenced people for the Lord.

He was really a sort of charismatic evangelist. Three, four hundred years ago, the people who came to know the Lord, they grouped in little communities and they called them the Quakers. But that was a nickname, a slang term.

It's become more acceptable in the passing of the years, more sophisticated. But what George Fox called them was the Society of Friends. The Society of Friends.

When the Apostle John is writing his last letter, he sends greetings from friends and to friends. The Apostle Paul here sends greetings from friends to friends. Paul's longing for the appearance of Jesus.

He tells us that on two occasions. But you know, you can long for the appearance of Jesus and still believe in the communion of the saints. Paul longs to see Timothy, longs to have John Mark.

Oh, may God make this church a church of friends. A church where we don't push people aside because, well, they failed in some areas. Even Demetrius or Demas possibly came back.

I nearly gave you my reasoning for that in misquoting his name. Demetrius is a long name for Demas. Later on in the epistle of John, he makes reference to a Demetrius, who now has attained a spirituality that is commendable.

And it is possible that even Demas, the man who reneged, came back, had a similar experience of John Mark and becomes valuable. I tell you we've got places in this church for those people. I tell you that many of us have known what it's been like to be Demas.

Many of us have known what it's been like to be John Mark. But the door is wide open for people to come back through. There is a friend in Jesus Christ who receives sinners and broken people to himself.

That is why I refer to our tab as a community of failed people who come to the Lord Jesus Christ, find that he forgives us because of his great love, and tells us that Father still wants to embrace us. We're still part of the family circle of God. What a friend we have in Jesus.

But almost but not quite equally, what friends also we can be to one another. So I leave you with Paul. The last words that he writes, he speaks about a friend who reneged, a friend who remained, and a friend who returned.

May God increase the quality of friendship in this beloved church. Let's listen to an old hymn being played, and then we'll pick up the words in just a moment or two. This is number 33 in the supplement, Fairest Lord Jesus.

Stand and sing for a couple of verses. Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory There is a star in the blue, in which I rejoice Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer And all the angels tell Gloria, gloria Resurrection Appear Now I am the bread of life He who comes to me shall not hunger He who believes in me shall not thirst No one can come to me unless the Father draw him The bread that I will give you is my flesh for the life of the world And he who eats of this bread, he shall live forever He shall live forever Father, thank you for your son Jesus Thank you for the way that he gave his life for each one of us As we come afresh to remember this totally unselfish act Remind us through the power of your spirit of what he has done for us as individuals Father, thank you. Amen So the friends of the Lord Jesus are gathered together They were then, they are now And as ever he dictates the menu So a piece of bread is in his hands And he lifts up his eyes towards the Father And he blesses the bread and he breaks it And he gives it to his beloved friends Having said to them that I no more call you slaves or servants For a servant doesn't know what his master does But you know, therefore you are my friends And he gives them this broken wafer And he says this is my body which is broken for you This eat in remembrance of me Our gracious Lord, we thank you for the cross Especially at this time as we are coming up to Easter Lord, we pray that you as our friend What a friend we have in Jesus All our sins and griefs to bear And Lord, those words are so superb How can we ever be grateful enough Lord For what you did on that cross for us Your blood spilt, spilt that our sins should be forgiven And we are so grateful And we just want to stand here this morning and say thank you And we give you all the praise and all the glory Amen So let's stand in the company of our friend Our Lord Jesus Who gives us a cup from which to drink A cup that he drank of not only literally But also spiritually And for him it was the cup that brought the wrath of the Father Inasmuch as he took upon himself and consumed the cup of our sinfulness The cup of terror, the cup of anguish, the Old Testament calls it He did that so that we might have the cup of joy The cup of blessing, the cup of salvation This cup does not belong to us, it belonged to him And he gave it to us, part of our inheritance So our beloved Saviour says The cup which we bless, or the Apostle Paul says The cup which we bless, is it not the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ Which is shed for us Our Lord Jesus says this cup is the new covenant in my blood Shed for many for the remission of sins This to you as oft as you drink it In remembrance of your friend Will the people with the overhead projector find me 64 in the supplement please How pleased and blessed was I to hear the people cry Come let us seek our God today Yes with a cheerful zeal we haste to Zion's hill And there our vows and homage pay My tongue repeats her vows, peace to this sacred house For there my friends and kindred dwell 64, perhaps you can still stand and we get the glasses back And if you need to move at this point to get your children then You're welcome to leave 64 How pleased and blessed was I to hear the people sing Come let us seek our God today Yes with a cheerful zeal we haste to Zion's hill And there our vows and homage pay My tongue repeats her vows, peace to this sacred house For there my friends and kindred dwell 64, perhaps you can still stand and we get the glasses back And if you need to move at this point to get your children then How pleased and blessed was I to hear the people sing Praise to our God He makes us safe to have He makes us innocent And our poor souls rejoice with Him May we ever seek Thy peace Let us seek God