All right, we have two more sessions after this. We have this and then next week we're going to finish up the letter. And if you've already read ahead, basically the division between this week and next week, I mean, we could have just done it all together, but we divided it because this week is Paul's companions that he's addressing and saying hi and that's fellow workers.

And then next week he's basically greeting the people who are there in Colossae. And then the week after that, we're going to basically summarize or just kind of overview study. And then after that, we have a small group leaders, I think dinner fellowship. And then we have a break.

And during that break, I think the sign up for next Bible study is going to start pretty soon. And so when that comes out, please sign up as soon as we can, so we can organize it. But there is a, there's a long break during the summertime. And during that break, we may have different activities based upon your life stage and different things.

But as far as a formal Bible study, there's going to be a break during the summertime. Okay, so let me pray for us and then we'll jump right in. Heavenly Father, we ask for your help and guidance. Give me strength, Lord God, to be in your word and to disseminate your thoughts and that we may have a deeper understanding of who you are and how you have been working.

We ask Lord the study of these different people, fellow workers of Paul that you've placed around him or got to support, to encourage, strengthen, and to run together that you would give us insight as to the early church, Paul's ministry, who you are, and ultimately Lord of your sovereign grace over them.

So we ask for your blessing over this time in Jesus name we pray, Amen. Alright, so I hope you took some time to study before you came and look through the names. You know, typically when you're reading through the Bible, when you get to a passage like this, it's just kind of flip over, right?

Because you probably don't recognize the majority of them and out of maybe about six or seven different names, you might have remembered some of them if you've read the New Testament before, maybe Paphroditus and maybe Onesimus, but because you're not familiar with the names, you think, well, it's kind of hard, I don't know anything.

And then you could easily just kind of bypass this chapter. But if you were there with our study with the book of Romans, when we got to chapter 16, there was so much of the church history stated in the names that are mentioned in the book of Romans. Remember that, right?

And this is no different. When you actually study the names and who these people were and how they were involved and how God was using them, it basically gives you a glimpse of the New Testament in a different light, right? What God was doing. And you have a picture of Paul in prison, but when you see these names who are surrounding Apostle Paul, you get a completely different view of what's going on, right?

Okay, so we're going to jump right in and then I'm going to give you, I don't know, I'm going to give you a little bit more time to study or take some time with your small group. But again, Colossians 4, 7 through 14. First of all, what I want to do is just, I'm just going to go down the list of these names.

Okay. Oh, it's not the beginning. Let me start this over because there's a passage that I wanted to look at. Not connected to the Wi-Fi. It is connected. Sorry, let me pull this up. Forget it. Okay, well, it's not here. But before I get into that, where is Paul writing this letter?

Do you remember? In prison in Rome, right? Remember we studied in the Book of Romans? In the Book of Romans at the tail end, Paul asked for prayer. Remember what he prayed for at the tail end? He prayed that he may be fruitful, that he may be safe, that God would save him from that.

He may be able to come to Rome to be able to minister to them in joy. Remember that? Anybody remember that when we were studying the Book of Romans? And so he asked for prayer so that he could get to Rome in safety to be able to minister to them.

So remember when we were studying, we looked at Paul's ministry journey where I think he begins... He goes to Jerusalem, preaches the gospel, and a riot happens, and they come, and they basically want to kill him, and the Roman guards come and they protect him. So they hated Paul so much that a bunch of men took a vow that they weren't going to eat until he got killed, but because of the Roman guards, he was protected the whole time.

But before he comes to Rome, remember he's sitting in Palestine for two years because the governor was hoping that Paul would give him a bribe. Do you remember that? So he stays in two years under the guard of the Roman guards, and the brothers in Jerusalem are able to come to him and fellowship with them, reconnect with them the whole time, while being protected by the guard.

And then finally, the trial begins, and then he begins his journey to Rome as a prisoner, completely under guard of the Roman soldiers. While he is on the way, he gets shipwrecked, and during that shipwreck, he gets bitten by a scorpion and he doesn't die. And they looked like they were going to die, but Apostle Paul gets a vision from Christ and saying you're not going to die, and so the whole ship gets saved.

So by the time they go to Rome, Paul is a celebrity. Remember that? He comes to Rome and everybody's, who is this guy? He gets bitten by scorpions and we were going to die, but his God saved us. And by the time he gets to Rome, there's a stir about what's happening to him.

And so as a result of that, what happens? He gets to rent the house. He's still a Roman prisoner, but under the protection of the Roman guards, he spends two plus years there having the Roman, the Jews, because they heard about him, coming to him asking, "Who are you?

What is this gospel that you're preaching?" So during the two years that he's in prison in Rome, under the protection of the Roman guards, he's freely able to do ministry. And so while he is in Rome, he writes Philemon, Colossians, Philippians, and Ephesians. And not only does he write it, there's a history of the ministry that he's doing.

And Onesimus is one of those guys that got converted while he was in Rome. So we're going to go over that. So this is one of the letters that he writes under imprisonment. So everything that he prayed for at the end of the Book of Romans is fulfilled, and this is one of the books.

Just to give you the context. So Tychicus, he's a carrier, right, of the letter to the Colossians. Tychicus is mentioned in Acts chapter 24 as one of the several companions of Paul doing ministry in Macedonia. So he was the carrier. In fact, Tychicus is mentioned in two or three other epistles where he's the carrier.

So it seems like that was his job, right? Maybe he was a skinny guy who liked to run. I don't know what his gift was, but it seemed like he was a designated guy who carried different letters. So he's mentioned there, and again, he's the one who brought the letter to the Ephesians church.

And there's a, in Ephesians chapter 6, 21 to 22, Paul describes Tychicus almost identically to what he says in this passage. The beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord will make everything known to you. I have sent him to you for this very purpose so that you may know about us and that he may comfort your heart.

So those are the two letters that we have, and he has an identical description of Tychicus, but I have a feeling that this was a cut and pasting that Paul did whenever Tychicus went somewhere. Right? I know he didn't have a computer then, but it seemed like, because it's identical what he says, almost exact.

And so he's known to be the carrier of letters, and so that was part of his duty. And that's why, again, Apostle Paul, though he was sitting in prison, part of the reason why he was able to do what he was doing is because of guys like Tychicus, who devoted himself, went to Paul, "Do you have a task for me?

Take this to Ephesus." He would run there, give the report, come back, "What else do you have?" Right? "Well, take this to Ephesus." And then he would take that and go to Ephesus or Colossae. So that was this guy, Tychicus. Onesimus, right? You've heard his name before. There's a whole letter written because of this guy.

He was a runaway slave that met Paul in prison and converted to Christianity. So he's a guy, I don't know how he ran into Paul in Rome, so if he was a slave in Colossae, he probably went to Rome because that's a place to go if you're going to be runaway and you don't have a job and you want to make money.

Right? So if you're a slave in Alabama, you want to run away to make a new life, where would you go? To the big city probably, right? To New York, California, wherever that may be. And so Rome was the New York of that time. So he probably went there as a runaway slave and probably was intrigued, "Who's this guy that everybody's going to?" And he has some new message about this Jesus who's resurrected.

Onesimus meets Paul, gets converted. His owner Philemon, to which a letter is dedicated to restore him back to the former master as a brother in Christ and it says Onesimus is one of them, meaning that this is where he ran away from. So think about that. Think about what this is.

So Philemon is a letter written to his former master asking to forgive Onesimus for the damage that he's done to restore him back. So in Colossae, he's one of the carriers of this letter, but he's going back home. Right? So Onesimus and Tychicus probably had Philemon on them when they came to Colossae.

The way you're looking at me, you have no idea what I just said. You know the letter Philemon, right? Most likely this is where he gets reintroduced to his master. So his name is mentioned kind of in passing. It doesn't say here that he was a runaway slave, but he probably had that letter with him.

So think about Onesimus' mindset as he is going to Colossae. If this doesn't go right, he can get killed. And so he said he's one of you, but he's being sent back as a brother, even though he was met as a runaway slave. Right? So again, these are things that if you don't pay attention and you don't study this, you're going to completely miss.

These are powerful things of the New Testament. Ars Tarchus. Okay, so those two are people who were the carriers of the letter. They were the messengers. He was mentioned as a man from Macedonia, from Thessalonica. Remember anything about Thessalonica? Right? That's the city that Paul was at before he goes to Berea.

In Thessalonica, he was only there for about three, maybe a little bit more than that, preached the gospel, but there was a revival that broke out there. And because there was a huge revival, there was a persecution that was so intense that Paul had to leave. So it looks like Ars Tarchus may have been one of those converts there, right?

In the midst of huge persecution. He was with Apostle Paul when the Ephesian mob seized Paul. Remember in Acts chapter 19, right? In Acts chapter 19, the mob was like so intense that they basically dragged people out on the street and was beating them. And it says that Ars Tarchus was with him.

So he was a very close companion. He's a guy that Paul suffered together with in ministry. Again, he was mentioned to have been with Paul when he set sail as a prisoner to Rome. Now this is really interesting because he calls Ars Tarchus a fellow prisoner. So he's sitting in Paul.

So he was with Paul the whole way, right, in his ministry. And then when he gets caught, Ars Tarchus is also in prison, but he also goes to Rome as a prisoner. So because of that, Sir William Ramsey, who's known as a world-renowned archaeologist, believes that Ars Tarchus may have made himself a legal slave of Paul to travel along with him in the missionary journey, right?

Because Apostle Paul had special privileges because of his Roman citizenship and his status, in order to get to places with the same privilege that Apostle Paul had, Ars Tarchus may have deliberately made himself an indentured servant of Apostle Paul. And he believes that that's the reason why he's a fellow prisoner of Paul, that he was with him and then he was caught with him and why he was being dragged along all this time, because he was probably a very close companion of Apostle Paul.

But it had to be more than just a companion, right? He was somehow tied to Apostle Paul. So that's why William Ramsey, considering that this was a common practice back then, that maybe Ars Tarchus did that, that in order for him to commit to this gospel ministry, to come in and out of places that only a Roman citizen could have, that he may have made himself...

Again, this is just an educated guess, but it's really interesting that these people literally gave their lives and literally, possibly, made himself a slave in order for him to preach the gospel, which is not unheard of. That sounds like something crazy in our generation, but remember at that time, people were getting circumcised and not circumcised and doing crazy things for the gospel, right?

Mark, everybody knows Mark, right? John Mark. Mark sometimes called John Mark. He was the cousin of Barnabas, the son of encouragement. Because a long time ago, when we were studying the book of Acts, we did some study on him. He seems like he came from a wealthy family, right?

Because Mark's house was where the apostles gathered together. And he says many of the disciples gathered together at his house to pray on a regular basis. It should be 44, 36, 37, okay? Not 436. There is no 436. Chapter 4, 36 and 37, and in chapter 12, verse 12, he is mentioned twice in the beginning.

And again, he is the cousin of Barnabas. Some think that he might have been his nephew, but Barnabas is the one in the early church where he sells his possessions and gives half of it to the church, right? So Barnabas, Mark, that family seems like a very wealthy family.

So it wasn't like just the poor people who had nothing to lose that attached themselves to Apostle Paul. People were very wealthy. They got convicted and they gave everything, literally their lives, right? So this idea that the gospel began to spread in the rural areas where people were hungry, they were poor, they were prisoners and slaves, and that's why they were so bold, because they had nothing to lose, does not fit the biblical narrative.

Because people from all walks of life, once they met the resurrected Christ and they were convicted, they gave everything to follow Christ. And Mark was one of them. If you remember the story of Mark, Mark accompanied Apostle Paul and Barnabas in his first missionary journey. But when they encountered intense persecution, Mark basically took off and ran, right?

And so they don't see him again until they come back and they're ready to go back to the second round, but Mark comes back and Barnabas wants to bring him again. Remember that? So Barnabas and Apostle Paul had a complete different take on what to do, and basically Barnabas, you know, he's the son of encouragement, but it also makes sense if that was his cousin, right?

And maybe his nephew, maybe. His sister would kill him if he didn't take him, maybe. There's something going beyond that, because they're family, right? And so because of this sharp disagreement, and you can understand Apostle Paul. It's not that he was just a sharp man. I mean, he's literally risking his life.

He got stoned, dragged out to the city, walking back in, and he's risking his life to spread the gospel, and we can't have somebody on the team that we can't rely on. Get stoned, and then I get dragged out, and Mark's gone. So how can we rely on this guy, right?

And so they ended up splitting, but later on, Mark becomes a very important disciple. In fact, Peter calls him his son in the faith, and that possibly Mark came to faith because of Peter's preaching, and he became the Timothy for Peter, as Timothy was to Paul, right? So he was the messenger.

He was the right-hand man, and so we know that Mark is also the author of the gospel of Mark. This is the same guy that at one point, early on in his faith, that Apostle Paul just wrote him off, right? Thankfully so, right? Because on his first missionary journey, he literally was stoned to death and got back up and went back into the city, right?

He was that guy, but later on, the Apostle Paul says, "Mark is very useful to me," and now he's one of Paul's companions, right? So just the people who are surrounding him, if you see what's going on and who is around him doing the work, is a powerful testimony of the gospel.

I mean, anyway, you can imagine Paul being resentful of Mark for taking off, but now they're working together, and Paul introduces Mark, right, as a faithful brother. So that's Mark. Okay, Justice. Where am I? Okay, Justice. And Justice's name basically is Jesus, right? So Justice, his name is Jesus, but you know what's interesting is if you think that the Son of God was going to come, even though he's humble, you would think he would have at least a different name.

You would think he would be like, I don't know, Roman, something that's, "Oh, that sounds like a name of the Messiah." But he came like everybody else, John, Peter, Alex, just like anybody else. So his name Jesus, like obviously people don't use that name unless you're Spanish, right? They have Jesus.

But outside of that, typically we don't use that name because of the significance of that name. But at that time, Jesus was a very common human name. It was nothing spectacular. It was a very ordinary name. So even in his name, Jesus was like everybody else, right? And again, we don't know a whole lot about him.

And all we know is that Paul says that he was a big encouragement to him while he was in prison. So while he was in prison, he was being ministered to, right? He was not alone. He had a lot of companions who were coming and going over there and ministering to him in his first imprisonment, right?

We're not there, but later on when he is in prison writing 2 Timothy, the story is very different. This is his first time in prison. And it's almost like it's exciting because Paul's in prison, but he's not that bad, right? Because he's God answered prayer. He's being guarded. He's probably eating what he wants.

The Jewish leaders are actually coming to him and he's sitting at home preaching the gospel and he's doing this for two years. So you can imagine the Christians at that time thinking like, "Man, Paul's in prison, look at the way God's protected him." But by the time he's in prison, the third time and then he gets executed in 2 Timothy, the story's very different.

You remember 2 Timothy says, "They've all left. Nobody's here with me." Because that time it looked like he was going to... That was a real imprisonment that most prisoners experience and then eventually he got beheaded after he wrote 2 Timothy. So the attitude was very different. But this time as he is in Rome, he has a lot of people coming to him ministering to him.

Now if you see under his name, Paul emphasizes that these are the men who are of the circumcision group. And again, this is just conjecture from Adam Clark and he says that the circumcision group simply was to point out that these are the only ones who are left of the circumcision group.

Possibly. But he's not just identifying, "These are the Jews and these are the Gentiles." That he may be identifying that by this time, the circumcision group is starting to wane. In other words, the Jews who were supportive, eventually they were starting to get divided. The Judaizers and then the true gospel.

Again, this is just educated guess, but Adam Clark believes that possibly that's the reason that he's identifying and separating the Jews on his team and the non-Jews for that reason. Epaphras. From here are the list of Gentiles. He calls them the bond servants of Christ. And again, this is a phrase that Paul often uses, an indentioned servant, literally a slave.

He's a co-slave of Christ. His ministry is highlighted as being earnest in prayer. So I'm sure they all pray, but when Epaphras is mentioned, Epaphras says, "Always laboring earnestly for you in his prayer, that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God. For I testify for him that he has deep concern for you, for those who are in the Odyssean Hierapolis." Part of the reason why maybe Epaphras was a fervent prayer warrior for them is because he was from there.

He loved these people. And typically our prayers are more powerful when we're praying for people that we love, that we care about. When we're praying for things that we're indifferent for, I mean, we pray like it's a chore, but you don't pray earnestly. Everybody prays earnestly if somebody that you love gets sick.

And so that's the thing that when we pray, to pray for things that God has placed in your heart and pray fervently. So again, Epaphras is known as a prayer warrior. Epaphras is another brother from Colossae who deeply loved them and those of Laodicea and Hierapolis. Luke, the physician.

Luke is the author of the Gospel of Luke and what other book? Acts. Okay. Tell me if I'm wrong. Are the two letters, Luke and Acts, put together longer than all of Paul's letters put together? One of the passages. I remember reading that, but I'm not 100% sure. No?

Pastor Peter? Think of all the chapters, put it together. Think of all the chapters of the epistles. If it's not number one, it's number two. So either Luke's writing, the most writings in the New Testament is from Luke or he's number two. In other words, Luke is a very significant figure in the New Testament.

So God used this man who was a physician who probably was detail-oriented as a physician and took detailed records of what happened in Jesus' life. And there's more mention of Jesus' humanity in the book of Luke than any other gospel. And then he was very meticulous to record the early church.

What happened? Who, how did it spread? Where did it go? Who took it where? Paul's missionary journey, when did he do it? I mean, he was meticulous. And so Luke, God used Luke, the physician, to do that. He was a physician who was traveling companion of Apostle Paul. My guess is that Luke probably was their personal physician.

A lot of times people kind of describe the early church as magical things happening all the time. When somebody falls sick, you know, Paul lays hands and they rise up and, you know, like that was just an everyday occurrence. And that's not what we see in the New Testament.

Because Paul says to Timothy, what? To drink some wine to take care of his stomach problems. I mean, that sounds like a, you know, that sounds like a very ineffective way of dealing if he could, he just laid hand and made him well, right? There were spectacular things that did happen as a sign that they were apostles, but that was not the day-to-day life, right?

So probably God gave Luke as a physician. So you can imagine all those people traveling and then Paul sitting in prison, he gets sick, right? Physician Luke is right there to support them. Finally, Demas, not a lot of mention, not a lot is mentioned about Demas. He just says, and also Demas.

Where does Demas come out in the New Testament? In 2 Timothy, right? Remember I mentioned by the time Paul writes 2 Timothy, the mood is very different. Demas is mentioned as a companion of Paul. Again he's in Philemon 1.24. But in 2 Timothy 4.10, Paul points out that Demas had forsaken him, having loved this present world and that he had gone on to Thessalonica.

So he was abandoning him, right? So Paul lists a bunch of names in the front and a bunch of names in the back that was abandoning him and the reason why he's writing the letter to Timothy is saying, "Make sure this doesn't happen to you." And so 2 Timothy 2.2, when he says, "These things you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust the faithful men who will be able to teach others." He's not just telling Timothy a general rule.

He's telling this because a lot of people that he's invested in have backslidden. So he's telling Timothy, "Make sure that you invest in the right people." Right? So he was, again, he was just like a pastor like anybody else. He spent a lot of time ministering, discipling, shepherding and there are certain people who are just kind of dropping out and he's warning his disciple Timothy, "Make sure it doesn't happen to you, but make sure that when you invest, invest in the right people." And that's what 2 Timothy 2.2 is coming from.

So Demas was one of these guys who abandoned him. Now we're going to get to the second part next week. And I've just kind of given you the surface overview of who these people were in the background. I don't know about you, but every single one of these names, it highlights what was happening in the early church.

Right? I mean, it's one thing to see the gospel. It's like, well, the gospel is this and the gospel establishes this and gospel has done that. But the reason why our personal testimony is so powerful in the gospel is because it gives the flesh, that it's not just a presentation of facts that you believe.

Right? So when we present the gospel, the most powerful way to present the gospel is to present your testimony when you present the gospel, because it gives the reality of what the gospel is capable of doing. And that's what these names are. That this is how God is working in the early church through these people.

And even though they're not giving their testimony, we see what was happening in the early church. Right? Okay. So for the questions, I don't have the questions up here, but if you look on the bottom, what are some observations you can make from the list of these names? So again, instead of me telling you, I'm going to ask you guys in your group, maybe you've already done some of that.

Right? And again, about Paul's ministry, what does this tell you or some insight into Paul's ministry? What insight do you get from about the gospel through these names? About God himself? Right? What does it teach you about the early church? I mean, there's a lot in here. Right? I mean, you have a runaway slave being restored back to his master.

You know, Jews and Gentiles in the same place. So what are some other things that you notice about the early church through that? B. Esther actually asked me this question, and I thought that was a very good question. If you were in prison, who would you call to come and minister to you outside of your immediate family?

Right? She asked me that, I think, this morning. So I said, "Oh, that's a good question. I'll put that in." So if you were in prison, and again, outside of your immediate family, so you can't say your wife or your children or your dad or mom or uncle, brother, outside of your immediate family, who would you call?

And then, C, if someone was in prison, who would call you to come and minister to them? Right? Who is titch-a-kiss to you? Who is Onesimus, Aristarchus, Mark, Justice, right? Epaphras, Luke, Demas even. Who are they? Are you any of these people to somebody? Outside of your immediate family.

Who would call you to come to them because they need your encouragement, and you're the person that they would call? And then, D, how do you think the people you are doing ministry together with would describe you if they wrote a letter like this? Right? And I know that you guys are probably going to be like typical Asians and say, "Oh, no, you know, they're going to think I'm lazy, I'm this and that." And it's like, be honest.

I'm not saying boast. I'm not saying like, this is what I think they're going to write. Write an honest description if they were to describe you. If Paul was to describe you, right? If Paul was to describe you to somebody, and I'm not, again, I know this is tricky, right?

Because you know why. Okay? This is tricky, but it takes some time to think about it. If Paul, if you were a companion of Paul, how would he describe you? Okay? Yeah. I'm going to leave it up to you to figure that out. But I hope that you guys can be mature enough not to simply say nothing.

Right? Not to simply say nothing, but to really think like, "Oh, you know, I try." Even though you may not be there, it's like, "I try to be this. I try. I may not be perfect and maybe I'm failing, but this is something that's really important." Like, I'm titchicus, right?

I have people at this church, and even in this room, who has told me, "I'm a horse. They want me to work." Meaning that they're servants. Right? "I can't lead, and I'm not good at this, I'm not good at that, but I can work, physical labor." So, it's like titchicus.

Where do you want me to go with this letter? And don't tell me that all of you are titchicus. There are some titchicus. Right? So, take some time to pray over that and to discuss that in your small group. So let me pray for us and then we'll dismiss you to your group.

Heavenly Father, we pray for your blessing over our time, and we ask Lord God that in our small groups, that even in the small things, help us Lord God to search you, to know your heart, and that we would draw closer to you as a result. So I pray for your blessing over this time.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.