Message Info:
- Text: Philemon 8-16, CSB
- Series: Philemon (2020), No. 2
- Date: Sunday evening, January 26, 2020
- Venue: Trinity Baptist Church — Seminole, Oklahoma
- Audio File: Open/Download
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⟦Transcript⟧ So tonight we’re going to be in the book of Philemon. We’re going to do the second installment of this book that we started on the last Sunday night that we had services, where we looked at the first seven verses of the book of Philemon. And I told you this is, I think I told you, this is the shortest book in the New Testament.
And to really do it justice, I’ve divided it up into three sections just so we don’t. . .
Well, sometimes it’s easier to eat an elephant one bite at a time, even a small elephant. So we’ve divided it up into three sections just to get a handle on it. And today we’re going to look at the middle section, verses 8 through 16.
We started last week looking at this introduction to this letter from Paul to Philemon. And I kind of set up the background for you that Philemon was a Christian leader, possibly possibly the pastor. Almost certainly he was the one who owned the house where the church in his area met.
He lived somewhere around Colossae, Laodicea, that area in Turkey. And he must have been a man with at least some wealth if he had a house large enough for the church to meet in, because as I told you, they didn’t have dedicated meeting spaces. They didn’t have buildings that were built for the purpose of being a church building back then.
Number one, it was illegal. Number two, it was hard to afford because the churches were just getting started. And so they would meet in members’ homes. And so Philemon was wealthy enough to host a church in his home.
His wife was also a believer and his son. Paul called him in verse 2 a fellow soldier. And he addresses all three of them in the church that met in their house.
Also, Philemon was wealthy enough to own some slaves, at least one, but probably more than that. And I shared with you a little bit about why the Bible deals with slavery in the way that it does. Because we hear slavery and we are naturally horrified by that, given our country’s history of brutality in that area.
But what I explained, and I’m only going back over this because some of you may not have been here and because some of you may not remember. It’s been a couple of weeks. But slavery in the Roman world and slavery in Jewish culture were not always the same as what our country experienced.
Now, I don’t think slavery of any form is a good thing. I’m certainly not arguing for that. But we need to be clear about this because some people, especially today, take exception to the Bible as a whole because of the history that a lot of professing Christians, even a lot of people in our own denomination, the history that they have of misusing the scriptures to justify the practice of slavery, of race-based involuntary slavery in the American South.
The Bible supports nothing of the kind. As a matter of fact, the Bible doesn’t openly call slavery, even in the Roman or Jewish context, a good thing. But in some cases, people would voluntarily, I said in some cases, people would voluntarily enter into slavery as a way to repay debts.
There was no such thing as a bankruptcy court in that day. You were going to pay your debt one way or another. And sometimes people would go into debtor’s prison.
That happened in the early days of our country. That happened in the British Empire. People could sell themselves into slavery for a period of time to pay off their debt.
It was a voluntary thing. And the Bible never calls it a good thing, but the Bible acknowledges that it happened and set some ground rules. And we see this in other places as well.
You know, the Bible, for example, this is just the example that comes to me first. The Bible never calls divorce a good thing. The Bible, as a matter of fact, you’ll find the Bible discourages divorce. And yet God acknowledged the reality of it.
God acknowledged the fallenness of the human condition and the hardness of the human heart. And God put up some parameters around it and regulated it. Well, the same thing happened with slavery, where Christian masters were told to treat their slaves with kindness.
Christian slaves were taught to show their master’s respect. Because ultimately, what the Bible intended to do, especially the New Testament, was not to reform society, although that has been the result where the Bible’s truth has been lived out. It’s had a beneficial impact on society.
You know, just like people misinterpreted and misapplied the Bible to slavery, people proclaim the truth of the Bible in opposition to slavery. And whether it was in Rome, whether it was in the British Empire, whether it was in America, the end of slavery was largely as a result of the influence of Christians. In Roman society, the elevation of women from second-class citizenship, well, to any kind of citizenship, was largely due to the influence of Christians, the protection of the unborn, the rights of children, these things, basic human rights, these were largely due to the influence of Christianity.
And wherever we live out the truth of the Bible, it’s going to have a positive impact on society. But you have to understand, you have to understand that the main purpose of the New Testament and what it teaches is not the reformation of society. It’s the transformation of the soul.
All right. So why didn’t God just come out and tell them to set all the slaves free? I can’t answer that.
I’m not God, but I can tell you that the New Testament, the New Testament is there not to change society. It’s there to change us. But, but the end result has been that when God changes us through the gospel, that society ends up being changed for the better.
So I wanted to explain that again a little bit. I actually got through it a little shorter than last time, but wanted to make sure we understand that because anything where it looks like we are supporting slavery, and I am absolutely not, and I don’t believe the Bible supports it and says this is a desirable thing, but anything where we might be interpreted or misinterpreted as supporting that is such a delicate issue right now and can be such an elephant in the room. Why did God deal with Philemon this way?
Why did God use Paul to deal with Philemon and Onesimus this way instead of telling him just let Onesimus go, set them all free? There’s some thoughts as to why the Bible addresses the situation of slavery in the way that it does. But you know from last week, if you were here, or last time, if you were here, that Onesimus had escaped from slavery in the house of Philemon, and he had fled to Rome where he had gotten mixed up, for lack of a better word, with the Apostle Paul, and where he had become a Christian.
We don’t know what order those two things happened. We don’t know if he became a Christian because he got mixed up with the Apostle Paul and Paul led him to Christ, or if he went to Rome and became a Christian and sought out the Apostle Paul. Either one of those things, one or the other of those two things happened.
And so what we do know is that Onesimus has gone to Paul, finally has made his circumstances known to Paul, and Paul now is writing a letter to Philemon because he’s told Onesimus, you need to go back and get this right. And I’ve given the example of the young man in Arkansas that I counseled. He had come to faith in Christ, and then he told me one day.
Well, I’ve got warrants out for me in another county in another part of the state. And I said the words to him that he really didn’t want to hear. You need to go back and turn yourself in and get that taken care of.
I’m not going to turn you in. And maybe I was wrong in that, but I hadn’t seen the warrants. I didn’t know anything about it.
But if you’ve got warrants, if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, it’s time for, you know, you’ve been reconciled to God. Now you need to go get reconciled to your fellow man. You know, let this be a gospel issue.
And so he did. he went back and turned himself in. My father-in-law has ministered to people in our country, in the Hispanic community, and has found out that they were in the country illegally.
And when these people had become Christians, he said, okay, now you’re right with God, you need to go get right in these other areas as well. That’s sort of the thing that Paul has now sent Onesimus to do. Now you’re right with God, you need to go get right with Onesimus, who also happens to be your brother.
But I think Paul would have sent Onesimus to deal with Philemon, whether he’d been a Christian or not. I think Paul would have handled it differently. But the fact was Onesimus had done some things that he needed to make right.
And I shared with you last week, there’s also some speculation that Onesimus might have stolen some things from Philemon when he went. And so we get to verse 8 tonight, and he says, For this reason, although I have great boldness in Christ, to command you to do what is right, I appeal to you instead on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus, appeal to you for my son Onesimus.
I became his father while I was in chains. Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me. I am sending him back to you.
I am sending my very own heart. I wanted to keep him with me so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place. But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent so that your good deed might not be out of obligation but out of your own free will.
Perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time so that you might get him back permanently. No longer as a slave, but more than a slave. As a dearly beloved brother, he is especially so to me.
But how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. I’d like to go through and look at that piece by piece and then give you some closing thoughts tonight. Now that doesn’t mean I’m coming right to the close.
So in 15 minutes, don’t think, well, he lied to us. He mentioned closing. Yeah, I’m telling you, we’ll close with a closing when it gets to that point.
But he tells him in verse 8, I have great boldness in Christ to command you to do what is right. As an apostle, as somebody who had been given that authority by Jesus Christ, Paul had the authority to just command Philemon to do the right thing. He had the ability to tell this man.
Now, could he force Philemon to do the right thing? I don’t see any reason why he could do that. But he could tell him in an authoritative sense, you need to set Onesimus free.
You need to be reconciled to him. You need to do all these things. And remember, though, that he spent the first seven verses of the letter that we studied last time describing the love that Philemon had, describing these Christ-like virtues that were at work in his heart.
And he was reminding him of that because there are few times in life that we need those Christ-like attitudes and attributes more than when somebody has wronged us and now we’re being asked to forgive them. At that point, it becomes very difficult to act in a Christ-like manner. And we need to be reminded as we’re going through that, that the goal here is to be Christ-like.
Otherwise, it’s really easy to get caught up in the emotion and forget. So he said, I could command you to do what is right. I could just come out and say, you have to do what’s right.
He said, but instead you get to verse nine, I appeal to you instead on the basis of love. Now, Paul could not force him, but Paul could kind of pull rank. You know, Paul could say, I’m the apostle Paul and you’re refusing me.
I know I legally can’t make you release him, but you’re refusing me. Do you know how difficult I could make things for you? Do you know what I could tell people?
Paul had some levers at his disposal. He said, I don’t want to do that to you. Instead, I want to appeal to you on the basis of love. And really, love is a better motivator than consequences in many cases.
You know, we find this in dealing with our kids. We have to instill consequences for them to learn. But my goal in raising my children is to get to the point where they do what’s right out of love for us, and more importantly, out of a love for God, rather than out of a fear of consequences.
Because if we’re motivated to do the right thing out of a fear of consequences, that motivation only lasts as long as that consequence is there. But if we can grow to the point where we’re motivated by love, especially love of God, then there’s a motivation that never goes away. And so he appeals to him.
He said, I could appeal to you. I could command you. I could threaten you with the consequences, or not even threaten, just lay out for you what the consequences would be.
I could pull rank and say, this is what you need to do. He said, but I’m going to appeal to you on the basis of love, on the basis of your Christian love, on the basis of all the things that I’ve already talked about, the way you love others, the way you love your brothers in Christ, remember that in your dealings with Onesimus and who he is now. Because he says, I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus.
He reminds me, because it was very easy to look down on the slave. As a master, it’s very easy to look down on them as somebody who was worth a little less than you were or a lot less than you were. And so Paul points out that he too is in chains.
Now, Paul wasn’t a prisoner to a human master. Paul doesn’t even call himself a prisoner to the emperor. Paul says, I’m a prisoner of Jesus Christ. He was bound to Jesus Christ. Now, that doesn’t mean that he resented that in any way, shape, or form.
that just means he acknowledged that where I am where it appears that I’m stuck here in prison I’m really not here because the emperor wants me here I’m here because God has put me here I’m here because Jesus Christ has put me here where I am to serve him and so he’s identifying here himself with Onesimus and saying if you want to mistreat him or look down on him because of his bonds you have to realize that I Paul am in bonds as well I’m in bondage to Jesus Christ and he said I appeal to you for my son Onesimus in verse 10 I became his father while I was in chains now again we don’t know what order all of this happened he could be Onesimus a spiritual father in the sense that Onesimus came to him in Rome and he led Onesimus to Christ or he could be Onesimus a spiritual father in the sense of formation that Onesimus came to him as a brand new Christian and he didn’t lead him to Christ he was already a Christian but Paul taught him and discipled him and molded him.
Either way, he could rightly call himself Onesimus’ father in the faith. Now, Paul is writing this as somebody who’s invested in the life of Philemon as well. He’s saying, I invested in him very likely in the same way he had invested in Philemon.
But if they both belong to Jesus Christ now, if both Onesimus and Philemon belong to Jesus Christ, that makes them brothers in Christ. They’re no longer master and slave. That’s no longer the primary focus of their relationship. Now one is still rightfully the master and one’s still rightfully the slave, but ultimately their relationship has gone to one of brothers in Christ. Just like I’ve told my children.
I’m still your father and you’re my son, you’re my daughter, but when you trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, our relationship took on a new dimension as well because you became my brother and my sister in a spiritual sense. You became my brother and sister in Christ. And in that sense, we’re equals. We’re equals.
I am just as much in a relationship with God as you are. I am just as much bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ as you are. And even though in an earthly sense, there’s this hierarchy here where God has placed me in authority over you, in a spiritual sense, we’re equals.
And I have to remember that. Do you know how hard that is? Now, some of you raised children as believers, and those children became believers while you were still raising them.
And so you know what I’m talking about. But that’s hard sometimes. It’s hard sometimes for that dynamic to be there.
If you don’t believe me, think about this. If you’ve ever had to go back to your child as a brother or sister in Christ and apologize to them for you’ve done or said that was out of line. I can’t remember what it was.
Benjamin’s laughing over here. I can’t remember what exactly it was. I’m not asking.
So let’s not talk back to the pulpit. But there was something I got onto him for a couple months ago. And I just, I just let him have it with words, by the way.
I just, I let him know how displeased I was in that way that I have. I don’t normally scream, and yet there’s, you know, you know I’m upset. And then I found out a little while later he had nothing to do with it.
Some of y’all may think I’m wrong in my approach to parenting, but I went back and apologized to my son. Not only for the father-son relationship, but I had to ask my brother in Christ to forgive me. And that is hard for a 30-something-year-old to go and ask forgiveness from an eight-year-old.
But he’s my brother in Christ. And the Bible says that when one brother offends another, we’re supposed to deal with that, supposed to reconcile. And all throughout this passage, Paul is telling Philemon that he and Onesimus are now brothers in Christ. That doesn’t erase immediately that earthly authority that Philemon has over Onesimus. It sure changes the dynamics of the relationship.
Once he was useless to you, verse 11. Now, he may not have even been a really good slave. And like I said, there’s some evidence in here that he might have stolen from Philemon when he left.
But once he was useless to me, now he is useful both to you and to me. He said, since he’s come to Christ, he’s a changed man. He’s different.
He might not have been a great slave to you before. He may not have been a great worker in your household. He may have been unfaithful.
He may have betrayed your family and betrayed your trust. Because as I said, sometimes the slaves would be in positions of authority in the household. So we’re like David, or not David, excuse me, Joseph, when he worked for Potiphar or when he worked for Pharaoh. They would be in positions of authority in the household.
And Onesimus might have betrayed that trust. Onesimus might have been somebody who was trusted, who betrayed that trust and absconded with whatever he’d taken and ran off. Philemon might have been to the point where it wasn’t even about the expense of my slave. I paid all this money for him.
I want him back. He needs to come work for me. Philemon might have even been to the point where I don’t even care anymore.
I don’t want to see his face again. Let him stay gone. Some of us have been there, haven’t we?
But he says he’s a changed man. He’s no longer the unfaithful servant who ran away. He’s no longer the unprofitable, the useless one.
He said, I’m sending him back. The person I’m sending back to you is not the useless one who ran away. He said, the person I’m sending back to you has been useful to me and will be useful to you also.
And I don’t think he’s talking about in slavery at that point. I don’t think he’s talking about he’s going to be a useful servant in your household. I think he’s talking about his usefulness in the household of faith that Philemon was part of.
He’s useful. He’s going to be useful to you and to your family and to the church. He’s going to be useful in advancing the kingdom back where you are.
He said, I’m sending him back to you, verse 12. I am sending my very own heart. This wasn’t just a form letter of recommendation.
Sometimes people will ask for a recommendation. They’re applying for a job or they’re applying for credit or something. And somebody will send a form letter from their company.
So-and-so worked here, blah, blah, blah, would recommend. Paul’s not sending the guy, he’s not sending Philemon a form letter of recommendation about Onesimus. He’s saying, this is somebody that my heart has bonded with during his time here, and it grieves me to send him back.
Not because I don’t want him to be with you, but because I want him here with me. This is somebody that Paul was saying is so profitable to the ministry, I want to be able to keep him here. He said, and I think this is funny in verse 13, I wanted to keep him with me so that in my imprisonment.
. . I’m sorry, verse 14 is what’s funny, but we’re getting there.
I wanted to keep him with me so that my imprisonment for the gospel, he might serve me in your place. Okay, now we’re starting to get to the funny part a little bit because he says, I wanted to keep him here with me while I’m imprisoned for the sake of the gospel because I wanted him to be able to serve me and help me like you should be here doing, which is a real subtle, you owe me, is how I understand that. There are several places in this letter that Paul does one of those subtle or not so subtle.
I believe it’s Robert Jeffress who talks about somebody being as subtle as a sledgehammer. Some of those subtle or not so subtle, you owe me comments. But I think Paul also genuinely would have liked Philemon to be there with him.
But he says, I wanted to keep him with me so that in my imprisonment for the gospel, he might serve me in your place. In other words, serve me, work with me here as you would have. This is what I think is funny.
Verse 14, but I didn’t want to do anything without your consent so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but of your own free will. He says, I wanted to keep him here because you owe me, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to make the right choice. I think that’s funny.
He’s telling Philemon, I’m not going to make you leave him here. I’m not going to make you send him back to me. I’d like you to decide that on your own, that that’s the right thing to do.
And I recently talked to Charla about that with the kids. And if you ever think, why does he tell so many kids stories? Well, number one, because it’s such a big part of my life.
But number two, if I told stories about people in the church, y’all get mad at me. So you got to talk about the things you know and that are going on in your life. So I’ve told Charlo recently, sometimes you got to give him a choice.
Even if it’s not really one, it’s got to feel like a choice. And I remember when Benjamin was real little, I started out by saying, do you want to clean up your room or do you want to have a spanking? Then I got to thinking, that’s not the choice I want to give him.
And so I got to where I’d tell him, and this worked, I’d tell him, you’re going to clean up your room. Do you want to do it with a spanking or without a spanking? That’s the choice.
Sometimes I want my children to feel like they’ve got a choice. Sometimes I want to give them an actual choice, though, where I could easily demand that they do the right thing, but instead I want to give them the opportunity to choose to do the right thing. Now, if they choose not to do the right thing, then I still have the opportunity to shepherd them and guide them in that direction.
but I want them to choose to do the right thing. And Paul basically says that here. I’m not going to force you to send him.
I’m not going to force you to send him back to me. But it sure would be nice and I’d like you to come to that conclusion on your own. Maybe y’all don’t think that’s as funny as I do.
But I see those little things in there, just those little humorous things. People sometimes think that the Bible is boring. It’s really not.
When you start to see the personalities of the writers and the way God used each of them individually. And there’s some stuff in there that I see. That’s exactly how we would say it.
He said, I didn’t want to do anything without your consent so that your good deed, when you do eventually send him back to me, it would be of your own free will, not out of obligation. He says, for perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time. Because Philemon, especially if Onesimus had betrayed his trust, especially if this wasn’t just about a runaway slave, but this was about somebody who was part of the family, who was trusted, and he’s run off, and now Philemon and his family, they’re actually hurt by what Onesimus did, which again is not something we understand with the whole concept of slavery.
But if it’s a situation like that, Onesimus and his family very well may be saying, I can’t understand why this would happen to us. I can’t understand why he would betray us like this. I can’t understand why God would let this happen.
Have you ever felt that way in your dealings with other people? I can’t believe they would do this to me. I can’t believe God would allow this to happen.
Why am I dealing with this? Why am I going through this? Well, here Paul gives an answer to Onesimus in that kind of feeling.
Why have I had to go through this? He says, maybe the reason why you lost him temporarily. Maybe the reason why he was separated from you for a brief time is so that you might get him back permanently.
All of this happened. All of this happened so that you would lose a slave temporarily and gain back a brother permanently. God allowed Onesimus to run away.
God allowed Onesimus to do all the things that he had done. God allowed this rift to develop between Onesimus and Philemon so that Onesimus would find Jesus so that you might get him back permanently no longer as a slave but more than a slave as a dearly loved brother. And that’s Paul’s hope as Onesimus goes back to Philemon that he’s received not as a runaway slave but now as a dearly loved brother.
He said, he is especially so to me but how much more to you both in the flesh and in the Lord. And as I was rereading this passage this week it made me think of that song we sing at Christmas O Holy Night one of the later verses of that song says truly he taught us to love one another his law is love and his gospel is peace chains shall he break for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease and as we read here the change that Jesus Christ had made in Onesimus we realize that God is in the business of transforming slaves into sons. This is not a one-time thing.
God is in the business of changing people. God always has been in the business of changing people through Jesus Christ. It was through the gospel that Onesimus went from this runaway slave, this unprofitable person, to somebody who could now come back and be reconciled to Philemon and his family. Not only that, but be profitable to them, not only in their work, but in the advancement of the gospel and where Onesimus would go from this man who betrayed them into being their brother.
And as we look through the New Testament, we can see example after example after example of this transforming power that the gospel has. Look at the Apostle Paul, the one writing this. We remember who he was before Jesus Christ invaded his world.
I have called him at various times the Osama bin Laden of his day. If you think about it, he was a Middle Eastern religious fanatic who murdered people because their beliefs didn’t match up with his. I only clarify that because I made somebody mad one time that I compared the dear apostle Paul to Osama bin Laden.
But he himself said, I’m the chiefest of sinners. And the man he ended up being is not the man he started out being. Praise the Lord.
And the reason for that change is because he met Jesus Christ. Think about the thieves on the cross on either side of Jesus. One of those thieves went from being a criminal and a mocker to somebody who was humble and somebody who was repentant. What made the difference?
He met Jesus Christ. There are people all around us that we look at and we see all their problems. We see all the things they’ve done wrong. We see who they’ve started out being. and a lot of times it’d be real easy to go the route that Philemon was headed down of just writing them off.
And I want nothing to do with them. But we need to understand the difference that was made here. It’s the same difference that was made in the life of the Apostle Paul.
The same difference that was made in the life of the thief on the cross. The same difference that was made in so many of our lives that we’ve gone from being unprofitable slaves to being sons and daughters. simply because of an encounter with Jesus Christ that changed us, that transformed us.
And there again, we go back to the point that I made at the very beginning. The goal of the gospel, the goal of the New Testament, the New Testament is not ultimately to reform society, although that’s often a consequence of it. But the goal is not to reform society.
It’s to transform the hearts of men. And as we go about this coming week, we’re going to run into people that we put into that category of, I don’t want anything to do with them because we think about who they are and who they’ve been. We need to remember the difference that Jesus Christ can make and the difference that he will make if we take the opportunity to introduce them.
I thank God that somebody took the opportunity to introduce Jesus Christ to Onesimus. How about you? I thank God that somebody took the opportunity to introduce Jesus Christ to the Apostle Paul.
And I’m thankful that somebody took the opportunity to introduce Jesus Christ to each of us.
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