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"Men Merely Mentioned," a series of six messages by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. This is the first, titled "Archippus." The scripture reading for this evening is from Paul's letter to the Colossians, the fourth chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered seven. Tychicus will tell you all about my affairs. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister

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and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. And with him Onesimus, the faithful and beloved brother, who is one of yourselves. They will tell you of everything that has taken place here. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you, and Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you

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have received instructions. If he comes to you, receive him. And Jesus, who is called Justice. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me. Epaphras, who is one of yourselves, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always remembering you earnestly in his prayers, that you may stand mature and

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fully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Heriapolis. Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you. Give my greetings to the brethren at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans,

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and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea. And say to Archippus, See that you fulfill the ministry which you have received in the Lord. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my fetters. Grace be with you. And may God bless to us this reading from his word.

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Sometimes very brief encounters have the effect of changing our entire lives. They may be things which occupy only the moment, and yet we never forget them. For example, I remember once traveling by bus from Orly Airport in Paris to the heart of the city. I was on my way to the Louvre to spend the day there. And as we were riding along, in a very modern bus, something quite remarkable

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happened. This bus was very contemporary in design. It had two huge front windows which went from the floor to the ceiling. The driver, in other words, was sitting behind a wall of glass. And suddenly, as we were hurtling along the equivalent of one of our freeways or parkways, both of those two glass windows shattered into millions of pieces. I was sitting five rows back

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in the bus, and was covered with glass from the top of my head to the tops of my shoes. Glass flew everywhere. He never slowed down. Now mind you, he was sitting up there with a great wind blowing into the front of the bus, and he said to me over his shoulder, "Are you all right?" I replied, "Yes, I was all right." Then he said, "Come here and sit by me,

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and we shall proceed and enjoy the breeze." I've never forgotten that comment, because there had been various times since when I've been in explosive and shattering situations, and it's been refreshing and encouraging to remember this little Frenchman who said, "We shall proceed and enjoy the breeze." Our lives only touched for a moment,

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just a matter of minutes, and yet those minutes made a mark upon me. Now Paul, in his New Testament letters, sometimes alludes to individuals whom he mentions only briefly, just a phrase, sometimes a word or two. They are, to put it very bluntly, merely mentioned men. But there is oft times a message to be discovered, something of real

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worth in these very brief encounters. So tonight, and on the next five nights, I would like to think with you of six of these men whom Paul merely mentioned. And tonight let's talk about Archippus. Now Archippus is noted only twice in scripture. In Philemon, the second verse, Paul says, "To Philemon, our beloved fellow-worker,

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and Athia, our sister, and Archippus, our fellow-soldier, and the church in your house." And then in Colossians chapter 4, verse 17, Paul writes, and I read these words to you a moment ago, "Say to Archippus, 'See that you fulfill the ministry which you have received in the Lord.'" Now what was this ministry? Scholars differ on the subject, but the majority of them seemed to

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feel that it had something to do with the fact that Archippus was probably the pastor of the church at Colossae. That first reference to Archippus, which I shared with you from the letter to Philemon, describes Archippus as a "fellow-soldier," and that phrase was usually used by Paul to indicate a comrade in the ministry. So Archippus was probably a minister,

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and he was working at Colossae. Now one of the members of the church at Colossae was Philemon. In fact, we know from the letter to Philemon that the church in Colossae met in Philemon's home. Now you will recall that Paul wrote to Philemon about a slave named Onesimus. Onesimus had been a slave of Philemon, and he escaped. He ran away. He finds Paul in Rome, and Paul sends him back to

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Philemon, and he tells Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother. Now we know that Paul sent Onesimus back to Colossae, because we read in the Colossian letter, "Receive Tychicus, and with him Onesimus, the faithful and beloved brother, who is one of yourselves." We know that Onesimus came from Colossae, we know that Philemon lived in Colossae, and we know that Archippus was a pastor in

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Colossae. So what then is the special task that Paul gives to Archippus when he says to him, "See that you fulfill the ministry which you have received in the Lord"? Well, it's generally believed that he was given the task of uniting Philemon and Onesimus. Onesimus, you see, was returning to slavery. He'd made a break. He was in the midst of a kind of fugitive freedom.

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But Paul sends him back to his owner. But he also gives Philemon very specific instructions. He is to welcome Onesimus as a brother. Now, here is Archippus, the pastor in this situation, the one in a leadership circumstance. He knows both Onesimus the slave and Philemon the owner. So Paul says to him, "Archippus, see that you fulfill the ministry which you have received in the Lord." That is,

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"Do what you can to reconcile Onesimus and Philemon, to bring them together." Well, that of course would be a very happy task, because it is a beautiful thing to be a peacemaker, to assist people with the ministry of reconciliation. To be a reconciler, there are, I think, at least three basic characteristics that must be explored and developed. The first is,

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you have to have a genuine concern for the people you're attempting to reconcile. I mean, you can't just bounce off these people like billiard balls bounce off each other on a green felt tabletop. There has to be a real love for the ones for whom you are laboring. I mean, if you read Paul's letter to Philemon, you can tell in every line of it how much he cares about

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Onesimus, and how much he cares about Philemon. There is real care there. I remember when I was in the hospital for about seven weeks, this was a good number of years ago now, I had one doctor who, whenever he would visit me, never entered my room. He would always stand in the doorway. He would ask me friendly questions and inquire about my condition, which was in no way infectious.

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He was not at risk by coming into my room, but his idea of a visit was to stand in the doorway, and somehow that always translated to me into a lack of concern. If you're going to be a reconciler, if you're going to be a healer, you can't stand in the doorway. You've got to really care about people, and you've got to be willing to involve yourself in their lives.

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I'm sure you've discovered, as I have, that you can often find a lot of interesting history in epitaphs. One of the most interesting epitaphs I ever saw was in the island of Corsica. It was written in the 1600s. This is what it said, "Seafarer from the north, whoever you be, tell Wilhelm Lowenstern in Stralsund that you have seen the grave of his wife,

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who was sold into slavery in Africa, and then released, and who died here in June 1698. My son is still in slavery there; let his father come to deliver him." Then, later, written on the same tombstone, these words, "Whoever you be that look within this grave, know that G. Wachtendonck brought me news of my beloved Euthasia. I sought my son in Africa, and I found him dead. I have

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buried his remains here, beside those of his beloved mother." Well, three cheers for G. Wachtendonck. Because, you see, when he got the message, this message of reconciliation, to bring this family together to save the enslaved, well, no one knows how far he went, or how long it took him, or at what cost, but he cared enough to fulfill the task. He was willing

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to pay the price to bring these people together. You cannot be an agent of reconciliation unless you are willing to pay the price of caring. Now, the second characteristic of a reconciler is that he or she must be a vulnerable person. There's no place for some Mr. or Miss or Mrs. Ophiuchus, a kind of the fixate personality, who enters in and orders people around. Now, when you try to

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do that with people who are at odds with one another, you usually end up receiving some of the stones that they were originally hurling at one another. See, what you have to be willing to do is enable yourself to become vulnerable, to put your defenses down in the middle of the squabble. Now, by making yourself vulnerable, by putting your guard down, you model this kind of behavior

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to the two individuals who are in conflict with one another. When they see your vulnerability, they are more inclined toward vulnerability themselves, and out of this kind of openness, healing can come. A longtime friend, and a very dear friend in the ministry of mine, is Dr. Jerry Kirk, who is the pastor of a church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I preached his

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installation sermon in that church, and we have been in touch across the years since he began his very significant ministry there. He told me once about how just a few weeks after he'd started there, a woman in the church came in to see him, and she proceeded to confess a great number of sins, of which alcoholism was only one. She went on at great length to catalog the many inadequacies

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in her life. Jerry asked her if she had ever confessed these things to anyone else, and she said no, and then he said, "Well, why is it that you have felt led to confess them to me? I mean, we've only met for the first time, and I've only been here for a few weeks." She replied, "Well, in your first sermon, you told us about all of your inadequacies and all of your failures,

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and I just figured if you have so many weaknesses, well, then you certainly ought to be able to understand mine." You see what happened? In his vulnerability, he encouraged her vulnerability. This is what John means when he writes in 1 John chapter 1, "If we walk in the light as Christ is in the light, then we shall have fellowship with one another." Notice, the point is not that we

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shine the spotlight on each other, trying to reveal each other's inadequacies or failures, flaws. No, no. Each one is to walk in the light, look at himself, admit his own weaknesses, testify to his own inadequacies. When you do that, that makes it easier for the other person to be honest. And out of this kind of honesty comes healing. So the second characteristic of a

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reconciler is, she must be a vulnerable person. There's one last characteristic, and that is this, the effort at reconciliation must be Christ-centered. That is, when we try to bring people together again, people who have been separated by circumstances and sins, people like Philemon and Onesimus, we must do it not on the basis of our own authority, but on the basis

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of the authority of Jesus. You see, in a sense, a conflict is like a triangle, and each of the two sides of the triangle is a warring party. The base of the triangle of reconciliation must be Jesus Christ, if the reconciliation is going to be true. Now we, we're tempted to resort to our own authority. We know how much people seek authority. We understand, for example, that

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there are certain radio preachers who come off with all kinds of authority, making claims they have no right to make, oft times without any significant scholarship, announcing to the whole world their particular prognostication. And they do it with such authority that some people, looking for someone who's ready to give them all the answers, fall prey to their kind of really

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quite irresponsible preaching. Well, knowing that people tend to follow authority, we are tempted sometimes to resort to our own authority in the peacemaking process. We must not surrender to that temptation. Our dependence must be on Him. Our direction must be from Him. The glory in what we do must be for Him. Pittsburgh Steelers here in town are having a rather hard year,

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and that's not too surprising. I mean, they've lost some of their best players, hands like Lin Swan and linemen like Joe Green, and Franco Harris is gone, and of course, Terry Bradshaw, the outstanding quarterback for so many years, is gone. I was lamenting to one of my friends about the sad state of the Steelers, and he said, "Well, it's all right. They still have Noel,

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and he is the key." Chuck Knoll, of course, is the coach of the team. You know, that's a very sage remark, because the coach is the key of the team. That's absolutely true. His is the guiding hand. Well, what we have to remember when we're involved in the game of reconciliation is this. This player or that player may drop out. If we are relying on their authority, we're in potential

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trouble. But if we are yielding to the coach, if the coach remains the same, and if our response to his guidance is immediate and unquestioning, well, then we're still in competition. We still can bring about the Reconciling Act. You know, late in the 1800s, Chile and Argentina went to war. There was a land question over property called Patagonia. Finally, the United States envoy to Argentina got

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the two countries to agree to arbitrate their problem. And Edward VII of England was the one who was given the task of being the arbiter. He proposed a division of the lands they were squabbling over, and this agreement was entered into. It's known as the Treaty of Puna del Atacama. Well, on the border where the two pieces of land come together, at the place where the agreement,

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the arbitration, was signed and sealed, and both parties committed themselves to it, there they built a large and imposing statue of the Lord Jesus. You perhaps have seen a picture of the statue. It's called Christ of the Andes. At the foot of the statue are carved these words, "Sooner shall these mountains crumble into dust than that we should take up arms one against the other."

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Notice, please, these two nations of Chile and Argentina have not just made a promise to each other. They have made a promise to each other at the feet of Jesus, at the feet of the Christ of the Andes. You see, their reconciliation is Christ-obedient, is Christ-centered, so that it's more than a promise. It takes upon itself the dimensions of eternity. That's the

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reason that this covenant, from the day it was made until this day, has never been broken. Well, as I said, we're talking about some people whom Paul merely mentioned. One of those is Archippus, and all it says about him is that he was a fellow soldier of Paul's, a minister, and that he was called to fulfill the ministry he has received in the Lord. That ministry,

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was evidently to be a peacemaker between Philemon and Onesimus. He became an ambassador for the divine. His was a very great ministry, for remember what Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." Let us pray. Father, we thank thee for Archippus, and we thank thee for his ministry of reconciliation, and we thank thee

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that thou hast called us to be reconcilers. And we beseech thee that you will move in our hearts, so that we might be always obedient to Jesus, always vulnerable, and genuinely caring, as we seek to heal the hurts that exist between people. O God, use us to the blessings of others lives, for we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

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