Three friends die in a car crash, and they find themselves at the gates of heaven. But before entering, they are each asked a question.
“When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning you, what would you like to hear them say?”
The first man says, “I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor and a great family man.”
The second man says, “I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher who made a huge difference in the children of tomorrow.”
Finally the question turns to the last man “When you are in your casket, what would you like to hear people say?
To which the last man emphatically replies, “I’d like to hear people say HEY LOOK!!! THIS GUY’S STILL MOVING!!!!! GET HIM OUT OF THERE!”
So what do you think?
When you’re dead (and I’m hoping everyone is completely sure about that before moving forward), what would you want said of you?
I think we all want to end our lives with a sense that we have accomplished something. That we have achieved some level of success.
But what is success? What is achievement?
Is it how much we manage to get in the bank, or what college degrees we hold, or how nice our house is? Is it how much power we acquire, or how famous we become?
Is that what will matter when we die? What the world thought of you?
Will that really matter that much?
We’re going to talk about success and achievement a bit today as we read from Philippians Chapter 2.
And we’re going to try to define those terms.
Because it can be a little confusing. The world tells us one thing, and really pounds it at us day and night, but God tells something strikingly different.
And what’s really more important? How the world views success and achievement, or how God views it.
Ultimately, and both men and women of faith and those who reject God, will attest to this fact … how you define success will determine if you have peace and fulfillment or frustration and disillusionment.
Those who have tremendous amounts of fame and fortune and worldly success, but do not have God….are almost universally left empty and end their lives feeling like a failure.
But those who know the love of Christ and trust Him, and truly embrace all that he is and what he offers, are contented and secure. They lie down for their final rest assured of a live well lived.
Now certainly our reading today, doesn’t give the full picture of a live well lived, but it does examine some qualities of two men that Paul gives us as prime examples. And there are some important things to learn from them.
So let’s look at Paul, speaking about Timothy, and Epaphroditus in Philippians 2:19-30 [From the NLT – New Living Translation]:
19 If the Lord Jesus is willing, I hope to send Timothy to you soon for a visit. Then he can cheer me up by telling me how you are getting along. 20 I have no one else like Timothy, who genuinely cares about your welfare. 21 All the others care only for themselves and not for what matters to Jesus Christ. 22 But you know how Timothy has proved himself. Like a son with his father, he has served with me in preaching the Good News. 23 I hope to send him to you just as soon as I find out what is going to happen to me here. 24 And I have confidence from the Lord that I myself will come to see you soon.
25 Meanwhile, I thought I should send Epaphroditus back to you. He is a true brother, co-worker, and fellow soldier. And he was your messenger to help me in my need. 26 I am sending him because he has been longing to see you, and he was very distressed that you heard he was ill. 27 And he certainly was ill; in fact, he almost died. But God had mercy on him-and also on me, so that I would not have one sorrow after another.
28 So I am all the more anxious to send him back to you, for I know you will be glad to see him, and then I will not be so worried about you. 29 Welcome him with Christian love and with great joy, and give him the honor that people like him deserve. 30 For he risked his life for the work of Christ, and he was at the point of death while doing for me what you couldn’t do from far away.
So we can see that at least one of these men almost died prior to this writing.
But isn’t that the case with every last one of us.
Paul writes ” he almost died. But God had mercy on him” and that’s true for us every single day. We don’t know when our last minute will be.
It’s actually amazing that we survive to see another day.
And looking at that way, if your last minute is THIS MINUTE…are you confident in a life well lived? What would that life look like?
What does the bible us?
We start with some “givens”.
First, a life worth living doesn’t start until you trust Christ. Both of the men that we are going to talk about have trusted Christ with their very souls and their very lives. With out this, none of the rest is possible.
Those who have not accepted and trusted Christ have no real life in them. They are among the perishing and the power of God is not within them.
But that’s not true for these men. They have trusted Christ, and they are “born anew” into a whole new life.
So that is a given.
Like I’ve been mentioning in recent weeks … we find that none of the instructions and examples given in this text are of any real use to the non-believer.
Yes, they might be better person, in this life. These qualities might help them get along with people, and feel a little better about themselves. They may be of service to others if they follow a biblical example of behavior.
But without Christ, they’re lives are empty and shallow. They practice behaviors that have no real roots. They are not grounded.
So…bottom life…You might be a nicer guy, but you cannot be seen as righteous and justified in God’s eyes by being a nicer guy.
That justification comes through faith in Christ, and what he did for us on the cross.
A life well lived starts with trusting Christ.
But then what? And that is a vitally important question for all of us. Because trusting Christ is the not the end-all, it’s the beginning of all.
So, then a live well lived is one that grows in Christ, and one that will have compassion.
The world called J. Paul Getty a success. In his life he was the wealthiest man in the world. For many he epitomized success, not only by the money he made, but by what he donated, such as $7,000,000 for an art museum.
But with his family he was a tyrant. He changed his will 21 times to punish family members who crossed him.
And when his 12 year old son suddenly died he wrote in his journal, on the day of his burial, “Today was the day we buried darling Timothy, sad day.”
And that’s all he wrote about that before he went on in the same entry to outline the dozens of various stocks he had traded that same day. The stocks he had traded the day of his 12 year old’s funeral.
So, the bible tells us that you can be a success in everything else but if you have no compassion you’re a failure.
And Paul describes Timothy as a man with compassion.
He says he is, from the greek, isopsychos , or an “equal-soul.”
In other words, Paul and Timothy were on the same page. They had one mind.
Timothy was genuinely interested in The Philippians’ well-being.
Now, compassion is a tough one. The bible defines the opposite of compassion as people who are “all wrapped up in their own affairs.” And do you know another name for someone who is all wrapped up in himself? A mummy. And truth about a mummy is that it is dead; completely lifeless; stiff and just taking up space. That’s the complete opposite of who we are to be? In Christ, we are alive in Him, in every way. It’s easy to lose track of compassion because people all the time tell us to “mind our own business” and there certainly is a time for that. Paul even told us last week in our reading from 1 Thessalonians to live quiet lives, minding our own business. But fellow believers, fellow Christ-followers are also supposed to have compassion and sometimes mind each others business. A live well lived is shown in a person when they “genuinely cares about your welfare”
Secondly, A live well lived will have consistency and integrity.
Timothy’s name in Greek means “he honors God” and Timothy is living up to his name.
It has been said “people are a lot like teabags… you’ll really never know how strong they are until you drop one in hot water.”
Timothy’s consistency and integrity is evidenced over time. He has worked like a son with his father, serving together to spread the good news of Christ.
And he wasn’t one way, one day, and then another way, then next. He didn’t change who he was depending on the circumstance, or how he felt that day.
He is who is he is, with integrity, all the time.
Unlike this man in Southern California went through the drive-up window at a KFC in order to get a box of chicken for himself and the young lady that was with him.
It seems that the store manager had a habit of hiding the daily bank deposits in an empty chicken box and by accident an employee picked up this box, filled with thousands in cash, and handed it to this customer instead of his order.
When he and the lady went to the park to enjoy their meal, they discovered money.
In a rare demonstration of integrity and honesty, they went back to the store to return it. The manager was overjoyed, and offered him a reward, and insisted that the young man stay in order to be photographed, and started to arrange that he be interviewed by the local newspaper.
“Oh, no, don’t do that!” said the man. “Why not?” asked the manager. “Well,” he said, “you see, I’m married. and the woman I’m with is not my wife!”
Integrity, my friends, is not a sometimes thing. And the follower of Christ will live with consistency and integrity. That is a biblical definition of a life well lived.
Third, a live well lived will have cooperation.
Epaphroditus, whose name means charming, amiable, was cooperative in Paul’s work. He is described as “my brother, a fellow worker and a fellow soldier.
By mentioning these three, particularly brother, Paul identifies the Christian life is a family. Over a hundred times, fellow believers are called brothers in the bible. So in Christ, we’re related. We’re supposed to work together to God’s glory.
Not like these two men were riding a bicycle built for two and they came to a big steep hill. It took a great deal of struggle for the men to complete what proved to be a very stiff climb. When they got to the top the man in front turned to the other and said, “Boy, that sure was a hard climb. I’m glad we worked together” At which point, the fellow in back replied, “Me too, if I hadn’t kept the brakes on all the way we would certainly have rolled down backwards.”
So that’s a big question, as we examine a life well lives…are we struggling to peddle forward, while others are putting on the brakes, or are we all in this together, cooperating in God’s will.
Fourth, a live well lived will have commitment.
As a backdrop to our today, the people of Philippi knew that Paul was in jail. In an effort to help, they took up an offering to support him while he was under arrest.
We know this from verse that comes just before our reading for today. And then we know also that Epaphroditus was chosen to take the money.
His journey would not have been an easy one. It was a difficult 800 mile trip each way that that would take six painstaking weeks.
And besides that, sometime during this grueling journey, Epaphroditus became ill and almost died.
I tell you, our walk should reflect this type of walk. If we follow Christ, he asks for complete commitment. He laid His live down for us, and if needed, he asks the same of us. He asks us to be willing to pick our cross and follow him.
And that’s 100% commitment. Jesus didn’t just go part way to the cross for us. He gave his all. He asks our all.
And this commitment means following through, despite the cost, and following Jesus always has a cost.
God expects his people to be willing to step up and serve Him despite the cost.
And from this passage we read that a live well lived will have courage.
To be a success means to put our service of Him before our personal security.
According to the world, personal security is most important, and we would all take care to provide security for ourselves
We could do this by becoming financially independent.
You have to do this if we are going to take care of ourselves, so that we can become rich, and have complete control of our lives.
How has that work our for all of you?
Has money helped you have complete control of your lives?
The bible tells us we CANNOT take care of ourselves without God, and for those who follow him He asks instead that we give over the control of our lives to Him and trust Him … completely. And that’s quite a contrast to what the world calls success and accomplishment.
And finally a life well lives will be a life in which one risks it all, for Jesus.
Epaphroditus was such a man, a man of courage that Paul insists we should honor. Epaphroditus put his life on the line; he risked his life for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
There’s a board game our there called RISK, and in it you roll the dice and win or lose armies and countries, until someone controls the whole world.
And eventually the stakes are really high, because each roll can mean complete victory, or absolute destruction.
From our reading, the greek word that means “to risk” is a Greek gambling term that literally means to stake everything on just one roll of the dice.
And that’s what Epaphroditus was willing to do. Not on a roll of the dice, but rather he gambled with life itself, so that the Gospel would not suffer.
As an interesting aside , there were men and women called “the riskers” or “the gamblers” in the early church.
And it was their aim to visit prisoners and the sick, especially those who were ill with dangerous diseases, which was a huge risk.
In 252 A.D. plague broke out in Carthage, and the non-Christians threw out the bodies of the dead and dying onto the street and fled in terror.
Cyprian, the Christian bishop, gathered his congregation together and set them to burying the dead and nursing the sick in the plague-ravaged city.
And in doing this, they saved those who were left, but it was a huge risk. A huge gamble. No one knew what cause the plague, and the safest course of action what to stay away for the sick and dying. But it needed to be done. It’s what Jesus would have them do. So they took the risk.
And that begs us to ask “Are we willing to set safety aside and do what God wants”
Charles Hood, a Southern Baptist missionary to Colombia, was shot and killed April 21, 1998 in front of his home in Bogota. Mr. Hood, 44, left his home in the afternoon to go to the bank. His wife, Becky, said she heard gunfire and a shout. When she ran from the house, she saw her husband on the ground and a man speeding away on a motorcycle.
Jerry Rankin, president of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, said, “There’s no place in the world where the safety of a missionary can be guaranteed. But missionaries follow the call of God wherever it leads, even into dangerous places, because they value making Christ known ….”
And that was not the biggest risk Charley Hood had ever taken. It was just the latest one. And the last one.
It’s true that many people will never be asked to face a bullet, in serving Christ.
But every last one us is asked by Christ to lay down our lives.
Jerry Rankin continued to talk about the real commitment that Charley made. He said, “Charley did not die when he was gunned down in Bogota, Colombia, but years ago when he died to self and committed his life to follow Christ.”
Like Timothy and Epaphroditus we are to live that life. So that we may claim lives well lived; lives of compassion, consistency, cooperation, commitment and courage through the power of the resurrected Christ.
Amen
©2011 Timothy Henry