Tychicus

Ephesians 6:21-6:24
21Tychicus, 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. 22I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you.
23Peace to the brothers, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 24Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.

Tychicus sounds like a man who could be trusted and counted on and was serious about serving God. How many of you had even noticed that there was a Tychicus in the Bible?

My point today is that there are many, many people like Tychicus serving in local churches. I want to give an example of just one regular faithful person who lived much more recently - Edward Kimball:

By all accounts, Edward Kimball was really an ordinary man. He worked at a regular job and attended a local church. He even faithfully taught a run-of-the-mill Bible study Sunday school class.

One day a young man named Dwight visited his class. It was clear that Dwight knew little about the Bible. One Saturday, as Ed was preparing his Sunday school lesson, the Lord put a burden on his heart to visit the shoe store where Dwight worked and to share the gospel with that young man.

That day, a Boston shoe clerk to surrendered his life to Jesus. The clerk, Dwight L. Moody, eventually became an evangelist. In England in 1879, DL Moody awakened an evangelistic zeal in the heart of Fredrick B. Meyer, pastor of a small church.

F. B. Meyer, preaching to an American college campus, brought to Christ a student named J. Wilbur Chapman. Chapman, engaged in YMCA work, employed a former baseball player, Billy Sunday, to do evangelistic work.

When, Billy Sunday held a revival in Charlotte, North Carolina, a group of local men were so enthusiastic that afterwards they planned another evangelistic campaign, bringing Mordecai Hamm to town to preach.

During Hamm's revival, a young man named Billy Graham heard the gospel and yielded his life to Christ. This shows that we can never know how our own small service to God will affect the kingdom of God in the future!

How very important are the Tychicus's and the Edward Kimballs in the church… But, they often do not appear to be important or significant men or women in the kingdom of God.

We often hear about the Dwight L. Moody's, the Billy Sunday's, the Billy Grahams… but the Tychicus's, the Edward Kimballs?

Well, the Tychicus's and Edward Kimballs faithfully plug away behind the scenes and out of the spotlight. There are millions of faithful servants in the church who receive little attention.

However, if you were to ask most of them living and serving in local churches today, they would say that they like it that way.

Attention is often turned to the great evangelists like Billy Graham. A great deal of time is also spent focused on mega-church pastors such as Rick Warren.

We need to remember that the servants behind the scenes are the fuel of the church. Churches are filled and fueled by the many who are faithful and can be counted upon week after week, month after month, year after year.