Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: The very nature of the Apostle Paul was that he was a spiritual mentor. He was a spiritual coach. He always took these young guys with him and he poured himself into them and he discipled them and he turned them loose and they did amazing things for God's glory.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Joy. Let's listen in as JP gives us part one of Philippians 2:19 through 3:1.

JP Jones: Here is a second observation from Paul. Paul modeled a team mentality for ministry. He modeled a team mentality. You open the letter in the book of Philippians and he says, "Paul and Timothy to the saints at Philippi, to the deacons and the overseers." Right away he says it is from Paul and Timothy because when he ministered to this church, he came in as a team. It was Paul and Timothy.

When he writes this section that we are looking at, breaking it down, Paul speaks about his love for them and his concern over them, so much so that he sends Timothy and Epaphroditus to check in on them. Timothy and Epaphroditus were co-workers with Paul. Paul isn't teaching here about the Body of Christ and the team concept of the Body of Christ. He does that in Romans chapter 12, Ephesians chapter 4, and 1 Corinthians 12. This again is one of those things where it is caught more than it is taught.

Put yourself in the position of being one of the Philippians and you're reading this letter. You realize what Paul is saying is that Paul has a heart and compassion and desire to minister to us, but he can't do it because he is in prison. He is sending Timothy, and Timothy isn't enough, he is also going to send Epaphroditus. The concept is: we're all in this together. We're all connected together. We are all part of the Body of Christ and we serve together in the Body of Christ.

In fact, much of this section that we read in Philippians 2:19 to 3:1 is Paul detailing the resume of Timothy and Epaphroditus. He is talking about how these guys are spiritual studs. You're not getting second-class servants just because I'm not coming there. You're getting the cream of the crop when Timothy and Epaphroditus come to give you some encouragement. Paul deeply understood the team concept of ministry and the team concept of service.

Here is our application. We need to see how God has called us to serve with one another in the Body of Christ. We need to see how God has called us to serve with one another in the Body of Christ. When Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus in Ephesians 4:15 and 16, he said, "Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the head, that is Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work."

So here is Paul teaching on the Body, which is his primary analogy for describing the church. Christ is the head and we are speaking the truth, we're growing up into Christ who is the head. But not only are we growing up into Christ, Christ's life is coming into us and we're like different ligaments that support the joints that make up the whole body. What is necessary is for every part to do its part in order to be a healthy body.

When I teach on this whole concept in my theology classes at Biola, I will make much of this analogy of the human body. Paul picks it up in Romans chapter 12, Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12. Like I said, it is the primary analogy for the church. There are always students in my classes that are nursing majors and sometimes some biology students. I will just ask, "How many bones in the human body?" They had to memorize all that stuff. You remember all the useless stuff you had to memorize when you were in school? They know all that stuff. So they tell me how many bones there are, how many organs in the body. They will say that.

Then I will say, "Now, if I said to you that my body is 99% healthy, 99% of me is fully functional and doing exactly what it is supposed to do. The only problem is just one little thing: my liver doesn't work at all. What would you say about a person whose liver doesn't work? How would you describe them?" Sick. If it didn't work over time, dead.

I will just let that be out there as I'm talking to students. I will say, "The Bible says the church is a body and every member of the body is connected to the body. Every member is necessary for the body to be the body. Just like in the human body, if there is a part that's not working, it's not 99% healthy, it's sick. We've got a bunch of sick churches, but we don't even think they're sick because we think they're mostly healthy."

God's goal, God's design, God's call isn't for us to be mostly healthy. It's for us to be healthy and it gets broken down to the individual part. I am a part of the body. I have been gifted. I have a place of contributing to the body. When I am contributing to the body, it helps the whole body be healthy. If the parts aren't all connected and contributing, the body is not healthy.

Every person here, you are needed. You matter to God and you matter to this church. You may be here for the first time, but if this is going to be the church that you want to be a part of, you are necessary. You're needed. We need you. God needs you as a part of this church because the body is a whole. That's the whole principle that Romans 12, Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12 is talking about. That's something Paul isn't teaching here, it's not being taught, but it's being caught.

The Philippians understood: Paul ministered as a team. He's not there alone. He's there with Timothy, he's there with Epaphroditus. We're part of that too and every one of us is part of it. Every one of us here is part of the Body of Christ and we serve together. I shared with you last week of being in Northern California and talking to my folks and talking to my mom. One of the things that I shared with my mom is that she needed to find a good church. I said, "This is what you need to look for. You need to find a place where you can be growing spiritually and a place where you can be serving and making a contribution."

That is something I share with people all the time. It is something I share with you. Every person as a follower of Jesus, we need to find a body where we can connect with a community of believers where we can connect that helps us grow and there is a place for us to contribute and to serve. Paul modeled a team ministry, a team mentality for ministry. Each of us needs to see how God has called us to serve with one another in the Body of Christ.

In fact, that principle was woven into the whole dynamic of how we started Crossline. The other day we were having lunch together as pastors. We were over at Taco Mesa and we're having lunch together. It was Darren who sat down and just said, "Well, this is where it all began." We all looked at each other and remembered back a little over four years ago where we were sitting at Taco Mesa and I said, "I really believe that God has called me to start a church." All the guys said, "I'm in. We want to be a part of it."

It was definitely a team effort from the beginning. Those of you who were with us, a handful of you remember when we started the church, I had back surgery. We used to have staff meetings at my house because I was reclining out. I couldn't even do anything. So everybody had to pitch in and do different stuff. We met in a home. We met at the Seizemore's home for Bible study and prayer. As a team, we all went through all those passages of scripture together in the New Testament that talk about the church. As a team, we formed the values of this church. I didn't show up one day and say, "This is going to be the vision of our church and these are the values that we're going to operate on." We all did that together.

From day one, it's been the collective effort of volunteers. I mean every week now, hundreds of volunteers make all of our ministries—men's and women's and youth and children and missions and Team Nehemiah and what we do on Sundays and what we do all the way through—that's how we're able to be the church that God has called us to be. As we look forward to the future, there are more volunteers and servants who need to get into the game because ministry service in God's economy and kingdom is a team ministry.

So every person here, there are two takeaways from this. If you've yet to follow Jesus and cross the line, you need to join a team. If you've made the commitment to open up your life to Christ and you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you need to play your position. Join the team, play your position, because ministry, serving Jesus, is a team effort. That was just modeled by the way Paul lived his life before the believers at Philippi and he writes about that here in Philippians chapter 2.

Here is a third and final observation from this passage. By the way, Paul relates that to having joy. When we give ourselves to serve with other people, we get joy. It's a win-win because people get served, ministry happens, and we find joy in contributing to the kingdom work of Christ. Here is a third observation: Paul had mentored and reproduced himself spiritually in key servant leaders. The very nature of the Apostle Paul was that he was a spiritual mentor. He was a spiritual coach. He always took these young guys with him and he poured himself into them and he discipled them and he turned them loose and they did amazing things for God's glory.

So here is Paul in prison. He can't go visit the Philippian church, so he takes a couple of guys that he has been mentoring, that he's been training, that he's been discipling, and he sends them to go do ministry at Philippi: Timothy and Epaphroditus. This is what he says about Timothy, by the way: "I have no one else like him." That's what he says in verse 20. "Timothy takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know that Timothy has proved himself because as a son with his father, he has served with me in the work of the gospel."

Then he says, "It's not enough just sending Timothy, I've got to send Epaphroditus also." This is what he says about Epaphroditus: "I think it's necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker, fellow soldier, who is also your messenger whom you sent to take care of my needs." Epaphroditus actually came from the Philippian church. He was sent by them to go check out Paul because Paul was in prison. Now Paul is saying, "I can't stand it being here and not being able to see you and find out how you're doing, so I'm going to send back to you Epaphroditus."

He says this in verse 26: "He longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill. And indeed he was ill. He almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. Therefore, I am all the more eager to send him so that when you see him again you may be glad and I can have less anxiety. Welcome him in the Lord with great joy. Honor men like him because he almost died for the work of Christ. He risked his life to make up for the help that you could not give me." That's the kind of guy Epaphroditus was.

These men were servant leaders in the kingdom and Paul had a ministry of spiritual reproduction in their lives. He poured his life into them. He taught them all he knew about God and then he empowered them, encouraged them, and released them to go do ministry. Here is our application. Remember, it's more caught than taught. We need to give away to others what God has given to us. We need to give away to others what God has given to us.

Every person here, God's given something to you. Today might be the first day you've ever been to church in your life. Guess what? What you learned today, what you received today, is something you can give away to others. You may be brand new in your following of Jesus and all you know is that Jesus died for your sins. That's all you know. You know what? You can give that away to someone else. Others here, you've walked with the Lord for a long time. There's been a lot of good stuff built into your life by different Bible teachers and mentors and parents and friends and small group companions. There's been a lot of stuff that God's built into your life. Give it away.

God did not design us to be holy receptacles who just keep taking and taking and taking and taking and taking and taking and taking. We're to give away and we're to pass on to others what God gives to us. Paul said this in 1 Corinthians 11:1, "Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ." He gave away his life just as an example. "I have a life that's pointed in the direction of Christ. Just align your life with mine."

1 Thessalonians 2:8, Paul says, "We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of God but our lives as well because you had become so dear to us." Paul says it wasn't about getting notches on his Bible because he discipled the most number of people. It's not about that. This isn't a competition. Paul says it wasn't about just trying to give away content like the gospel blimp flying around and dropping tracts all over neighborhoods. It's pouring out my life to people. I didn't want to just give away a message. The message is important. The message is life-giving, but I wanted to give the message through the context of my life. I wanted to give you my life. My life is the message. There's nothing more powerful than a changed life. There's nothing more impacting than a transformed life.

Then in 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul lays it out so clearly. It's one of my favorite passages. He says, "The things that you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." Paul says it's like spiritual generations. There's this spiritual reproduction. There's Paul, there's Timothy, there's faithful men, there's others. It's that spiritual relay race. Paul passed on to Timothy what God had built into his life. Timothy passed that on to faithful men, and faithful men passed it on to others.

Guess what? The fact that we're here this morning means somebody passed it on to us. We have the privilege to pass it on to somebody else. To give it away. That was one of the things that was just really powerful last night at this ceremony with Noah's rite of passage as Greg got up and just as only Greg can do out of his heart, just shared with full emotion his love for Noah and his desire for Noah to be a godly man. Then to see Noah's response, see this young man thirteen years old stand up and address his dad and his mom and all of us and just share from his heart that he had committed his life to follow Christ, and that his dad was the person in his life who taught him more than anyone what it meant to be a follower of Jesus.

I tell you, it doesn't get any better than that. It does not get any better than that. We have the privilege as followers of Jesus of giving it away. It's like that rock that splashes in the pond. It's got to start first with husbands to wives and wives to husbands and parents to children and in the family. Then with the people that we're in a small group with and then with our neighbor and then with people in the body and then in the larger context. But it's got to start with those people that are the closest to us, the dearest to us. It's got to be real and authentic with the people who really know us. We give away what God has given to us.

Paul says all this in the context of experiencing joy. We find joy, deep, satisfying, overflowing joy when we build close relationships with people, when we do life together with people, and we give our lives away to others in the service of Christ.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP Jones provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250.

For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, Facing Goliath. Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a minute, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. We're in this study in the book of Philippians. We're talking about the whole theme of joy because that's the theme of the book: how to have joy in the Lord, how to have abiding, overflowing joy in the Lord. Paul gives us several spiritual principles as he's writing to the Philippian church. In Philippians chapter 2, what he's talking about in verses 19 to the end of this chapter is the relationship that he had with both Timothy and a man named Epaphroditus. These were fellow workers with Paul, fellow soldiers with Paul. They were teammates with Paul in this apostolic endeavor of preaching the gospel, planting churches, making disciples, helping to fulfill the Great Commission.

What Paul does here is he models team ministry. He says that the Christian life is not something that we live in isolation or we live in aloneness, but we live in relationship with other believers. It's really out of those relationships that we find real joy. In fact, the spiritual principle in this passage is that Paul found joy in the Lord as he served God not in isolation, but as he served as a team, as he served with fellow believers. We will find our joy in the Lord when we experience Christ with others, when we practice all those "one anothers" in the Bible.

If you think about it, the Bible is filled with these commands that speak to one another: how we're to love one another, serve one another, pray for one another. There's no way we can do that unless there is a one another. There has to be someone else in our life that we express the love of Christ towards and that we receive the love of Christ from. It's in that kind of relationship that real joy is experienced. Paul modeled that. He said he had that with Timothy and he had that with Epaphroditus. As a team, they served God. They were about the business of preaching the gospel and making disciples. In the midst of that, because of their relationship with each other, they found real joy.

Let me ask you: Do you have those kinds of relationships with other believers? Is your marriage a relationship where you are knit together at the deepest level in Christ? With your family, are you in connection with one another and with Christ? Are you experiencing real spiritual life together? Are you in a small group in church where you're sharing your life with other believers and you are both giving and receiving the love of Christ? Are you involved in the community in relationships with people where people are experiencing and seeing and feeling from you God's love and out of that intimacy expressing back to you God's love?

You see, that's what the Bible talks about when it speaks about the community that we're to have as followers of Jesus Christ. That's what Paul is describing here in Philippians chapter 2 that he had with Timothy and Epaphroditus, and it was that very relationship that gave him a deep, abiding sense of joy. One of the great truths of the Bible is that we experience the joy of the Lord when we are in community with other believers. That means we're to do what Jesus said. We are to love one another. In fact, Jesus said, "By this all men will know that we are His disciples, by the love that we have for one another."

Would you ask God to bring people into your life that you could love in this way and that they would be people who would love you in that same way, and out of that relationship would come real joy? God, we thank You that You've saved us by grace. You've called us into a community, the church. You've built into us the love of Christ, and we're to give that love away to brothers and sisters and we're to experience in those relationships the joy of the Lord. I pray that You would give us that kind of joy from honest, open, committed friendships and relationships in Christ. I pray for that in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.