Good morning!
Here we are back together again! As I’ve talked with various people this week, I’ve heard a variety of responses to whether we’re feeling encouraged…or discouraged. I thought about having a quiz this week, but decided to let us all off the hook from coming to church to have a morning pop quiz.
If you’re just joining us, we are taking a four-week look at our need to Be Encouraged. Two weeks ago, I shared a little bit about how easy it is for me to get discouraged just through the events of life. As I’ve talked with friends here at church and friends at work over the past couple of weeks and mentioned that I’ve been preaching about encouragement, I have received several interesting comments. I’ve had three or four friends ask about reading my notes and asking more questions about being encouraged.
I’ve been prompted myself several times during this past week to email or call people to encourage them as God lays them on my heart. I even got a nice encouraging email back from my friend Bob…the youth pastor who we became friends with up in Michigan many years ago, after I had contacted him last week.
I hope that you too are finding people to encourage and that you’re being encouraged by others as well.
It seems to me that many of us may indeed face times where we are especially aware of our need for encouragement. If encouragement is a need for us, and if we are struggling with discouragement, a key question that we need answered is, “Where does encouragement come from?”
We are looking at the fact that “While God is the author of all encouragement, He chooses to use three main sources in the New Testament to encourage believers.”
God, His Son & His Word
God’s people in our local body
This week (and next week), we are going to look at the third way I see people in the New Testament getting their encouragement level recharged. That is through God’s messengers from other places.
While we can and should get encouragement from God and His Word and from our friends at church, God also knew that there are times in our lives when we need someone to come in with a fresh perspective and a different viewpoint to bring us encouragement. Perhaps it’s like a business realizing they need some help and so they call a consultant to come in and help them out. Or someone who is working on a special project finds a mentor who will come alongside of them to give them the guidance, direction, and encouragement to succeed in their task.
I may have mentioned this to some of you, but we didn’t have room in our kitchen or dining room for our family to sit together. So…we’ve torn out the wall between the two rooms and are fixing that and replacing the 35 year old broken cabinets and putting a laundry room in, and other such things. While Karen and I are pretty good at these things, we’ve chosen to have a contractor help us in the process. He is doing some of the aspects that we don’t feel comfortable with and then he’s giving us guidance and instruction on how to do other parts on our own. In that process, we’ve been really encouraged by how much work is getting done and the things that we’re doing…and of course the money we’re saving by not paying Steve to do everything.Steve has been an incredible encourager to us in this physical work project, but from my study in the Word, I believe that often times, we need that spiritual encourager to come and help us out!
As I mentioned during one of my other messages, we have 10 children: Caleb Daniel, Hannah Joy, Joseph Peter Johnmark Isaac, Sarah Faith, Elizabeth Hope, Benjamin Paul, Aaron Joshua, Samuel David, and Noah Levi. Do you notice a common thread?
Yes…they’re all Bible names! As we have named our children, we have worked hard to choose names of people who exhibited Godly character qualities and who were passionate about their walk with God.
Of course, as we’ve worked at naming our four little foster boys, some of the older kids have come up with goofy options for names from the long genealogical lists or obscure people hidden in some corner of the Bible.
It’s been interesting to me how there are some Bible names that are “acceptable” in our culture: Matthew, Mark, Mary, Joshua, Jesus, and John. While other names like Methuselah, Meshach, Miriam, Jezebel, Jehoshaphat, or Job just aren’t used nearly as much!
As I was working on this message, I found another one of those “little used” and probably “little known” names. As I searched the New Testament for the word “Encouragement” and it’s various forms, one name popped up about half a dozen times in Acts and the Pauline Epistles in relationship to being an encourager. That man’s name was Tychicus.
We are first introduced to him in Acts 20 where Paul lists several men who are traveling with him. In other parts of Paul’s epistles, we see him delivering the epistles of Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon. It is also likely that he spent most of Paul’s third missionary journey traveling with the Apostle, and then was with him in Rome at the end of his life.
Acts 20:1 When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said good-by and set out for Macedonia. 2 He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece, 3 where he stayed three months. Because the Jews made a plot against him just as he was about to sail for Syria, he decided to go back through Macedonia. 4 He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, Timothy also, and Tychicus and Trophimus from the province of Asia.
Based on information in the books of Titus and 2 Timothy and church history, scholars believe that he was also sent by Paul to replace Titus as the leader of the church in Crete for a while and at another time to relieve Timothy in Ephesus. So, he may have been one of the first interim pastors to help churches in transition.
As I explored more about Tychicus, I discovered that Paul trusted him with several very important tasks and missions. Paul had spent three years in Ephesus starting and providing the foundation for the church there. I encourage you to go back to Acts 19 and 20 at some point to refresh your memory about all that God did during Paul’s stay there. It’s also a church where Paul had strong relationships…especially with the elders there.
As much as Paul desired to go and visit and encourage the people there, he was unable to do so probably because he was imprisoned in Rome at this time. Instead, he sent Tychicus in his place to do that encouraging, someone he really trusted and someone who would really convey his heart and attitude as well as the words of his message.
Eph. 6:21 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. 22 I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you.
For whatever reason that we don’t know, the people in Ephesus were discouraged and needed someone to come and encourage and comfort them. Their hearts were troubled and they needed more encouragement than just that from their personal devotions or from others in their church. Evidently, even churches that are started by someone as great as Paul can come into times of discouragement and just need an outsider to come and remind them of God’s faithfulness and that God is in control of the things that were going on in Paul’s life.
Likewise, there were issues of discouragement going on in the church at Colosse. They too needed both a letter from the Apostle Paul as well as someone to come alongside of them to personally bring encouragement to them. Paul was still in prison when he wrote Colossians. It’s unclear as to whether Tychicus is sent on two different trips to deliver these messages or if he takes care of both on one journey.
I found it interesting as I reflected on these two passages that at a very similar time, two of the important churches that Paul had established were having discouragement crises! I think that one of the biggest issues with discouragement is that we often think we’re the only people (or only church) that is sad, discouraged, disheartened, dismayed or depressed.
I often have discussions with the parents of kids at our school about the need for their kids to get some friends outside of our school. Kids come to our school because they have major issues. So, if all of your friends are from a school where everyone has serious problems, they probably won’t be very helpful for you. I think it can be the same for us. If we’re depressed and we hang out with mostly depressed people, it’s going to be hard to be encouraged again. Isn’t it? If many people in a church are sad about a particular issue or situation, that can dominate the discussions and the whole spirit of the church for months or even years.
Paul evidently knew that this was the situation of these churches and he sent Tychicus to bring a message of encouragement to the people in the Colossian church.
Col. 4:7 Tychicus will tell you all the news about me. He is a dear brother, a faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. 8 I am sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts. 9 He is coming with Onesimus, our faithful and dear brother, who is one of you. They will tell you everything that is happening here.
If you remember the story of Philemon and Onesimus, Onesimus was a slave who ran away, became a Christian through Paul’s ministry in Rome, and is being sent back to Colossae to make things right with his master.
In this situation, Tychicus was coming as the outsider to encourage at least three different groups of people: Onesimus…he needed to return home, face the music, and get on with living out his new faith with his former master and his new family of Christians at First Baptist Church of Colossae. He needed to encourage Philemon to listen to Paul’s words and to accept Onesimus back…and as a brother in Christ as well. Thirdly, he was to encourage the Colossian church and help their hearts to move from being discouraged to being encouraged.
Now, as we think about this man Tychicus, we might wonder how it is that he knew how to go to a church and bring encouragement to them. We need to go back no further than to his mentor and friend, the Apostle Paul. Next week, we’ll look a little bit at the connections with Paul and Joseph to see how he learned how to be a great encourager to the churches!
Again, as we’ve been looking at these two opposites of being encouraged or being discouraged, I hope that you are indeed looking at ways to both be encouraged and to encourage others! My prayer continues to be that we will become people who are so encouraged ourselves that we will overflow with encouragement and love to others here in our area.
I wonder too if there are people that God is calling us to be a Tychicus to. As we talked last week about encouraging one another in our own congregation, are there ways that you can be a blessing to someone in another church or someone else that you know? Whose life can you graciously step into to share about what God is doing to encourage you? Who can you share something new that you’ve learned from your personal Bible study this week? Who outside of our church can you write a note to or even just put an arm around to be that Tychicus kind of encourager from the outside who can help someone else in the next seven days?
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