Philemon | "Useless Turns Useful: The Impact of Conversion"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Well, on January 8th of this year, a law was ratified in Canada that will affect Christian preachers directly.

It's called Bill C4.

I'm sure you've heard about this.

It's intended to protect homosexuals and transgender people from attempts to convert them to heterosexuality.

The law criminalizes, quote, causing another person to undergo conversion therapy, promoting or advertising conversion therapy, unquote.

So that's the law.

You might say, well, what's conversion therapy?

Conversion therapy is where you try to use psychological techniques and spiritual intervention in order to make a homosexual person into a heterosexual person.

Now, what this looks like in practice and how most people understand conversion therapy is that these usually young men are sent off to a camp for a week where they are yelled at and indoctrinated and brainwashed and subjected to demon exorcism rituals and various other abusive practices that lead to emotional scarring and trauma and have proven over the years to be almost completely ineffectual anyway.

And so I commend a government for wanting to step in and ban the abuse of people, emotional, spiritual, physical, any kind of abuse.

But that's not what the law is actually banning.

If that's what it was banning, I think all Christians would be really proud of a government that came up with that.

The problem is that the bill then goes on to define conversion therapy as something different from what I just described.

And they broaden the definition.

This is a quote from the bill, again, bill C4.

The bill defines conversion therapy as, quote, a practice, treatment, or service designed to change a person's sexual orientation to heterosexual.

And then it goes on to say to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behavior, repress a person's non-cisgender identity, or repress or reduce a person's gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to the person at birth.

Unquote.

That's a lot of kind of legalese, but basically what it's saying is that it is now in Canada, all over the country, illegal to do anything to discourage a person from acting differently from the gender that they were assigned at birth, meaning what it, you know, what your parents called you when you were born.

So just to play this out, this Trojan horse that comes in as a way of saying, well, we're trying to protect people from abuse, it would, I mean, it'll have to go through the court systems, but I can't imagine it being anything else, then it would be illegal for a mother to tell her daughter, don't sit like that, honey, that's unladylike.

See, as soon as you tell somebody to express their gender in any way different than the way they want to, it's illegal.

If a person comes to a pastor for counseling and says, I'm struggling with same-sex attraction issues, what should I do, pastor?

And the pastor counsels him on how to take his thoughts captive and how to repent of lust and put on righteousness, that pastor could go to jail for five years.

This is going to happen.

Preaching on what the Bible teaches, in fact, the very passage that Webb read this morning from 1 Corinthians 6, you just read a chapter of 1 Corinthians 6 and you could go to jail for that.

And we'll see if that plays out or not.

And you must be thinking, well, praise God, we live in America.

Where we have freedom, where we have rights, freedom of speech, freedom of expression.

Guess again.

In California.

Now I know a lot of the country doesn't consider California to be an accurate representation of Americans.

I get that.

I've lived there, but it is.

In 2012, California passed Senate Bill 1172 banning, quote, gay conversion, unquote.

New York, New Jersey, and Nevada followed suit.

The bill stated that, quote, California has a compelling interest in protecting the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, unquote.

So the same thing is already available for the law to use in California.

And their reason is because the state has a compelling interest in protecting the well-being of homosexuals.

So I want to just be clear.

Christians also have a compelling interest in protecting the well-being of homosexuals.

Christians of all people have a compelling interest in protecting the well-being of all people.

But we define well-being as having a person in a right relationship with their creator and judge.

That is what's best for every human being on the planet.

That they are free from their sins and that they are in a right relationship with their creator, which can only come through repentance of sin and embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And if you don't have a right relationship with your creator on judgment day, you're in trouble.

And this is the exact reason why Christians preach the gospel of conversion to all people.

Not conversion therapy, conversion.

People have asked me in the past when they've heard me preach on topics like this.

So are you saying, just to be clear, are you saying that gay people go to hell?

And I say, you've completely misunderstood my message.

I'm not saying gay people go to hell.

I'm saying everybody goes to hell.

Everybody deserves hell.

Everybody is born in sin with a sin nature.

Everybody needs salvation from all the little sins that you think are so little that God thinks is so serious.

Everybody needs to be converted.

So this morning, what I want to look at from scripture is an example of conversion that we can apply to our lives so that we can see what conversion should look like for us instead of looking for what conversion should look like for a particular group of people in the country.

So turn in your Bibles to the book of Philemon, or as we say in South Africa, Philemon.

Philemon is uh the book just before Hebrews, between Titus and Hebrews.

It's usually just half a page in your Bible.

And as you go there, let me just remind you a little bit about the context here.

It's a letter that Paul is writing to a wealthy friend of his named Philemon.

It's about a man by the name of Anissimus.

Anissimus is Philemon's slave.

Anisimus has escaped.

And in his escape, he has encountered the Apostle Paul, who preached the gospel, and he got saved.

And so now what to do?

What to do with a runaway slave who's broken the law and a Christian master that Paul knows?

What's he gonna do?

Well, Paul sends Anisimus back to his owner, carrying a letter written by Paul, which we happen to have recorded in our Bibles.

So we can learn a lot from this.

Let me just read for you.

I'll uh from you know, from verses one to seven is basically some small talk where he's just greeting him, and then he plunges into the reason for the lesson in verse eight.

So let me read that for you.

Accordingly, Paul says, Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you.

I, Paul, an old man, and now a prisoner also for Christ.

I I appeal to you for my child, Onisimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.

Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.

I'm sending him back to you, sending my very heart.

I would have been glad to keep him with me in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I prefer to do nothing without your consent, in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion, but of your own accord.

This is perhaps uh for this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a bondservant or slave, but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.

If he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

I, Paul, write this with my own hand, I will repay it.

To say nothing of your owing me even your own self.

Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord.

Refresh my heart in Christ.

Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you.

Just until there, and we're going to look at three differences that salvation makes in a person's life.

Three differences that conversion will make in your life, so that we will be able to recognize conversion and maybe even tell if we are converted.

Firstly, the first difference that conversion makes is a family affection, will be a family affection.

Secondly, a relational obligation, and thirdly, a personal transformation.

This is an effect that conversion has in everybody's life.

So let's look at the first one: family affection.

If you look at verse 10, he says, I appeal to you for my child Onisimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.

And then in brackets it says, uh, formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.

And I'm sending him back to you, sending my very heart.

So Paul has sent this runaway slave who's now converted to Christianity back to his Christian master, holding this letter, and basically what Paul's asking Philemon to do is forgive Onesimus.

And he's kind of leaving up to him whether he sets him free or not.

But at the very least, forgive him, because a runaway slave in those days, the penalty for running away was execution.

You could legally be, you know, slaves were considered to be property and you could execute a slave for running away.

You know, in fact, it was usually done, that execution was done by crucifixion, so that the other slaves, who were the majority of the population at times in Rome, would realize I better not try to run away either, because if I get caught, I'm going to be crucified.

But there's something different going on here because these are Christians.

These aren't just Roman pagans doing their thing.

And so Paul is introducing a new standard that would have been extremely counter-cultural.

And he's he's sending him back.

It's interesting that he he doesn't say, well, you better stay here because if you go back, you're going to be executed.

I'm going to write to Philemon and send the message by someone else telling him, Listen, I your slave's now converted, I'm going to keep him here.

No, he says you need to do the right thing.

You need to show repentance of what you've done because you need to go back.

Now, just a little footnote because, man, the word slavery is like fingernails on a chalkboard for us, and it should be.

But just to tell you that the Bible draws a distinction between different types of slavery, and there's there's indentured servitude, and then there's kidnapping.

And the Bible outlaws kidnapping, stealing people, or what Paul says to Timothy is enslavers, people that would enslave somebody against their will.

That is that is outlawed in scripture.

And so that when you're thinking of slavery in the history of America, for example, and the history of Europe, and that type of slavery is wrong.

And the Bible outlaws that.

But indentured servitude was a situation you would get yourself into because you had run up a debt that you couldn't pay.

There's no such thing as just being, you know, hounded by the debt collectors and eventually put on a blacklist.

No, if you ran up a debt and couldn't pay it back, you went to jail until somebody paid for it for you, or you could choose to pay it off yourself by being a slave and contracting yourself for a few years.

It could be that you had in a civil lawsuit, it had been ruled against you that you've done something so grievous to someone you could never pay them.

They didn't have insurance for that kind of thing, legal insurance.

And so you would now be this person's slave for life.

And you just had to do that.

And it was either that or you get executed.

It's your choice.

So this is obviously a situation where this man, Philemon, has not kidnapped somebody, but has found himself in a relationship with the Senesimus, this household slave, that he has, you know, he's paying off a debt and he needs to do it.

And Paul will play on that theme when later on in the letter where he talks about well, if we're going to talk about who owes whom and what, you kind of owe me your soul, don't you?

I mean, I'm the one that led you to the Lord.

You owe me your own self.

We won't even talk about that.

So Paul could have been a writer for Hallmark.

I mean, he's just laying on the sentimentality so thick in this epistle.

Oh, he's my son, I'm his father.

Um, you know, I could, I could, I could tell you you have to do this as an apostle, but I'm not going to, I'm going to leave it up to your free will.

I know you'll do the right thing.

And listen, if he's wrecked up any kind of financial debt because of this, I'll pay it out of my own pocket.

Look, I'm in jail and I'm an old man, but I'll pay it.

Except let's not forget that you kind of owe me everything because I'm the one that brought you the gospel.

Anyway, but I won't mention that.

You know, so I mean he's really setting up Anisimus for success here as he goes to Philemon.

Anisimus is only mentioned one other place in the Bible, in Colossians.

This is the church of Colossae that he's from.

And uh the church met in Philemon's home.

So Philemon is a wealthy man, he's respected in the Christian community.

He it's his home that everyone meets in.

They didn't have church buildings.

And so there's a lot at stake here.

But Paul's love for Onesimus is clear.

Paul often called his converts his children.

He calls Timothy that as well.

This is my child in the faith.

But why is it that Paul has a family affection for Onesimus?

And why is it that Paul is playing on Philemon's need to have a family affection for Onesimus?

What do they have in common?

Do you think that Paul and Onesimus were friends because they hung out at the same country club?

They had the same hobbies, they supported the same sports team, they went to college together, they had the same education or background.

No, they have nothing in common.

They have nothing in common except one thing: Jesus Christ.

And when you have Jesus Christ in common with someone, that's enough.

That's everything.

That makes you part of the family, and there is a family affection that comes from that.

Christians love other Christians.

I mean, just look around here in this church.

Do you know everyone in this church from work?

Do you know everyone in this church because uh you're all part of the same club or something?

No, you know people from church because you're you're in the same church.

You have Christ in common.

And you're all here singing together, sitting together, breaking bread together, worshiping the same Savior, listening to the same sermons, reading the same Bible, and that's what you have in common.

And friends, the thing is that you have more in common with each other than you do with your own blood relatives if they are not believers in Christ.

That's a difficult concept for us to get our minds around, but Jesus said, I didn't come to bring peace, I came to bring a sword, and sometimes that sword is going to cut between a father and son, a mother and daughter.

Because your loyalty to Christ is the most important thing about your identity, and sometimes your own flesh and blood will reject that.

But here they're all part of the family now, and so Paul is telling Philemon to act like it.

Now, when I traveled to um Russia, I got there.

We uh Russia's like it's kind of like North Dakota, the way it looks, because everything's just white.

Um I love being in North Dakota, by the way.

I mean, when I left Mobile at 4 30 in the morning, it was too hot for me to wear my jacket.

It was quite humid, actually.

I literally had the windows down when I drove to the airport at 4.30 just a couple of days ago, and then I got here and realized we're not in Mobile anymore.

Um but I like it.

I think God has blessed you um because I'm sure this is why most people in North Dakota are so healthy and and live longer lives than we do down in Mobile, because meat is preserved in the refrigerator.

Everybody knows that, right?

You guys are living in a refrigerator, and it's gonna take longer for you to go off.

Um but my first time ever into a place that had snow on the ground, uh that that was a uh a land of snow was when I went to Russia, it was 40 degrees below, and I got off the plane, and this big uh Russian man walked up to me with his big beard, and he grabbed me by the shoulders and he kissed me on the mouth.

And then the next Russian man came and kissed me on the mouth.

Um, this was before COVID.

I don't know if they still do that or not, but I've never ever had someone with a beard kiss me.

It was weird.

But I learned that that is how Russian men greet other men in their family.

And these Christian men that met us at the airport, we were going there to minister to this church, had never met me.

We'd never greeted each other, we didn't know anything about each other, but they considered me to be family.

And I've been to many countries in the world with my job as a short-term missions coordinator of Grace Community.

I went to all sorts of different countries, and every country I went to, every church I was in, whether it was in Japan or Bhutan or Russia or Nepal or South Africa or North Dakota, every church I've ever been to, the people treated me like family.

Even if they'd never met me before.

This is a real thing.

This family affection, and this is one of the great marks of conversion is that when you become a believer in Jesus Christ, you love Christians.

And you might think that's obvious, but I've met so many people who say, Oh, yeah, no, I'm a Christian.

You know, I'm trying to evangelize someone.

They say, Well, I'm already a Christian.

I say, What church do you go to?

That's always the next question.

Someone says a Christian, I say, What church do you go to?

And they say, Oh, I don't go to church.

Church is full of hypocrites.

I've been burnt by church, I don't like church people, they're judgmental, they're holier than thou, whatever it is.

I don't like Christians, but I do like Christ.

Friends, that's ridiculous.

That's like me saying, I really like you, I just don't like your wife.

I don't like your bride, so I'd love to have you.

Imagine you got an invitation.

Please come over, we're having some friends over, we're having a barbecue.

Um, please just don't bring your wife.

I hate her.

She's so judgmental and holier than thou.

But you and your kids are welcome.

Would you be like, sorry, honey, um, I'm gonna take the kids, we're going out to our friend's house, they don't like you.

No, that's ridiculous.

We're one flesh.

You can't say that you you love me and hate my wife.

We're a package deal.

You can't say I love Jesus and I hate his bride.

You think Jesus is okay with that?

Okay, well, you and me, we have our thing, but we'll just leave the bride out of it.

No.

The only way that you can be sure, not the only way, one of the ways that you can be sure that you're a Christian is that you have an affection for the bride of Christ.

And it's absolutely beyond me how sometimes you'll find Christians on a Sunday and they're doing stuff with their unbelieving friends.

The unbelieving friends invite them, hey, we're gonna go do this, we're gonna go to the lake this weekend, or we're gonna go and uh we're going in Alabama, it's always fishing.

We're going fishing Sunday morning.

Early or whatever.

And so, yeah, they go out and they do their hobbies with their friends, their unbelieving friends, rather than their friends of church.

And I'm like, that doesn't make any sense to me.

Oh, well, we'll talk about the Lord while we're there.

I'm going to evangelize them.

Listen, what message are you sending the unbeliever?

You're sending the unbeliever that, listen, I'm with you.

I don't know.

It's easy for me to skip meeting with my family.

No, I think you send a far more powerful message when you say to the unbeliever, Oh, I'd love to come fishing with you, but it's church that Sunday.

And we never miss church.

Because that's our family time.

That's when we encourage each other in song and prayer and fellowship and learning.

And I want to learn what they're learning.

I want to be on the same page.

I want to talk with them, and I want to serve them, and I want to be served by them, and I want to find out what their needs are so I can meet them.

And yes, some of them are super irritating.

Because that's how family is.

You don't pick your family.

But you know what?

They're family.

They're closer family than family, family.

We see in Galatians, for example, Galatians 3.26, Paul says, For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

There's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female.

For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you're in Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.

What he's saying is that once you are in Christ, and Christ is your central identity, nothing else matters.

You don't have another identity.

You might be a slave, but to Christ that doesn't matter.

You're now a Christian.

You might be free, but don't bask in your freedom, bask in your Christianity, because you are now a Christian.

There's no such thing as, well, men and women and the battle of the sexes.

There's no men and women in Christ.

We're all one family.

We're all equal before Christ.

Just a little footnote.

Of course, there's different roles in society.

The teacher, you know, the 14-year-old kid doesn't tell the teacher, you sit down and be quiet.

I'm going to teach now.

We're all one in Christ.

We're all equal.

That's not what it's saying.

It's not saying everyone has equal roles in society and in church and in family.

But what it is saying is that everybody has equal standing before Christ, and that that's the core part of your identity.

That was Galatians 3.

Second Corinthians 5, 17 says that in Christ you are a new creation.

You expect there to be this newness, this difference in this conversion, this new family affection.

1 John chapter 3, verse 10 says, By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

1 John 3:10

By what how can you tell the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian?

Here's an evidence.

1 John 3 10.

Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

Nor is the one who does not love his brother.

And in John's writings, the word brother and sister means other Christian.

You're a child of the devil, according to that verse.

John 13, 35, by this all people will know that you are my disciples, Jesus said.

If you have love for one another, speaking to the apostles of their Christian love.

So my question is, do you love spending time with believers?

Do you love coming to church to encourage and to be encouraged to fellowship?

Do you want to be with God's people?

Not because you're earning brownie points, but because you you have a desire to.

Are you willing to forgive people and restore relationships?

This is the family affection.

It's a sign of conversion.

Here's another one.

Relational obligation.

You become a Christian, there is a relational obligation.

Not only do you like other Christians, but you actually owe them something.

Look at verse 14.

Paul says, But I prefer to do nothing without your consent.

In other words, I have the authority as an apostle to tell you what to do here, but I'm not appealing to you on base of my church-given authority, my Christ-given authority.

I'm appealing to you on our family obligation that we have, a relational obligation.

He says, I prefer to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion, but out of your own free will or your own free accord.

Verse 18 says, if he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

He means financially.

I Paul write this with my own hand.

This is legally binding.

I will cover his charge.

And then he says, This, I will repay it, to say nothing of you owing me even your own self.

So here, this is why he's laying it on so thick.

There's a lot at stake here.

He says, The man's life is at stake.

And Paul's sending him back, and he doesn't even say, I'm going to hold up the bylaws and show you who's in charge.

We learned that yesterday at our men's conference, didn't we?

Authority is like a bar of soap.

The more you use it, the less you have.

The more times you have to pull rank on someone and tell them you have to obey me because I'm in charge, the less they will want to obey you.

The less they will respect you.

The less they will want to follow you.

If you aren't having someone follow you because of the relational obligation and you're going to the legal obligation, there's a problem there.

We applied this in our men's conference to husbands and wives.

Anytime a husband has to remind his wife that he's the head of the home and that's why she should submit to him, he's been doing something wrong.

Because she should want to submit to him.

She should want to follow his lead.

She should want to respect him because he's respectable.

It's the same in church leadership, it should be the same in government leadership.

We should respect those over us and they should be respectable.

And so Paul here does not want Philemon to do the right thing legally, he wants to do the right thing with this relational obligation.

If you're a true Christian and you've been changed, Philemon, then you now have a relational obligation to this Christian who's been changed.

And if you don't have that conversion in your life where you suddenly feel obligated to your brothers and sisters in Christ, maybe that's a sign that you have not been converted.

Now, the punishment for a runaway slave, the reason, as I said, is execution is because if you don't kill the slaves that run away, the other slaves will say, Well, we're gonna run away too.

And so now, you is Paul's asking him to forgive this slave.

If he's got other slaves, the other slaves are gonna think, well, that was easy.

I know I'm gonna try runaway too, and you know, if I get caught, I'll just come back and try again later.

This could start a revolution.

And even if Philemon doesn't have any other slaves, what about what will the neighbors think?

What will the people in Colasse think?

You can't have somebody breaking down the norms of society, and yet Paul doesn't care about the norms of society.

Everything Christians do is countercultural.

We do what's right according to what the Word of God says, not according to what the neighbors will think or what society's gonna think.

We just do what's right.

One commentator put it this way: what Paul is asking Philemon to do is nothing other than to act like a Christian.

A Christian in love with Christ.

Not to calculate his losses, not to consider how others might view his actions, but to act in holy love.

Paul clearly doesn't feel he's asking Philemon as much as he's giving to him an opportunity to do something beautiful for God.

I'm not gonna ask you to do this favor for me.

I'm gonna give you the opportunity out of your own free will to do the right thing.

And if it doesn't work, Onesimus will die.

But I have full faith in you.

Because we're family.

And there's a family obligation here.

There's an obligation you have to me, there's an obligation he has to you, and an obligation you have to him because we're in the family.

And friends, Christians live in this way, don't we?

We have an obligation to each other.

If there's someone in the church who is poor and can't put food on the table, that's our problem.

We help them.

We put food on the table.

Somebody who gets sick and needs help, we help them.

If there's somebody in sin and needs confronting and restoring, that's our job.

You know, our our church has a very high view of membership.

And sometimes people come in and they say, Oh, I want to be a member of the church.

And we say, That's great.

Step one is to watch nine hours of membership videos.

And I love saying that to people and just seeing their eyes widen.

No, I thought I just I just wanted to sign up.

I just want to sign up.

Yeah, this is how you sign up.

When we teach them what we believe and what the privileges are of being a member of the body of Christ in Mobile.

And then what the obligations are.

And one of the obligations is there's no spectators.

It's like fight club.

You show up, you fight.

You show up to church, you serve.

Every member of our church has to serve.

It's a rule, it's a requirement.

Because it's a biblical requirement.

And nobody except our members are allowed to serve.

And so sometimes people get all upset because they want to sing in the Christmas choir and we say, Well, you're not a member, and then they leave the church.

Okay.

You see, becoming a member means that you are joining a family obligation to one another.

No matter what happens to you, we're there for you.

Part of that is when we take communion together as Christians, and I've been all over the world and taking communion with Christians all over the world, and like I say, there's this family bond there.

And one of the things about taking communion is that you are in good standing with your church.

And so we say that.

We say, uh, anyone is free to take communion if you are a believer and are in good standing with your home church.

And I know different churches do it differently.

Some people have closed communion, and I understand why they do that.

But the issue with communion is you may not take communion if you are in conflict with another believer.

Did you know that?

That's another whole sermon, but go read 1 Corinthians 11.

You need to be right with the other believers.

So we do communion once a month in our church, and we say, you can take communion if you are in right relationship.

If you are in conflict with another believer, especially in our church, just let the elements pass.

It's a sign of maturity.

A sign of maturity is that because nobody's perfect for your whole life, there will be times in your life where you are in conflict with other believers or you have some unrepentant sin in your life.

Don't take communion in those times.

If you've never ever let the elements pass, I would question your understanding of how important it is that you take communion in a worthy manner.

Everybody at times shouldn't be taking communion.

But keep short accounts.

If you let the elements go past you two months in a row, you're not doing something right.

You've got to go make it right.

You've got to forgive the person who sinned against you.

You've got to go and ask forgiveness of the person that you've sinned against.

Matthew 6, 14, if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

Isn't that interesting?

Basically, what that's saying is if you're not willing to forgive other believers, then you're obviously not a believer.

Because who are the only people in the world whose God doesn't forgive their trespasses?

Unbelievers.

So that's one of the tests of your salvation.

Are you in the family?

Are you willing to forgive one another?

Christians have that obligation.

So that's that's the second transformation that a conversion will make in your life.

Firstly, is uh family affection, which we see in the fondness of Paul for Onesimus.

Secondly, is a relational obligation, seen in the expectations of Paul that he has that this is gonna work out.

And thirdly, the personal transformation.

This is seen in the change in Onesimus himself, because if you look at verse 10, it's kind of hidden there in the Greek.

We're gonna put our little Greek glasses on and help you out here.

Verse 10 says, I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.

Formerly he was useless to you, but now indeed useful to you and me.

Okay, so you can't see it in the English, but um there's a little hidden gem here.

Now, it's not always good to mention Greek.

You know, uh as Jason said, I'm I'm busy studying some Greek at the moment, and my supervisor said to me, Remember when you're preaching, Greek is like underwear.

It's there for support, but no one needs to see it.

So, yes, the preacher is translating in the Greek and getting the nuggets and building it into the sermon without letting people see it.

But this one I think you're gonna enjoy seeing, this little glimpse of Greek here, because he says, I appeal to you for my child Onisimus.

Now, Onisimus in Greek, it's it's the guy's name, but it's the word that means useful.

That's his name.

So this slave's name is useful.

And so that might be strange to us, like, really?

But um in South Africa, this is very common because a lot of the people that uh in South Africa will name their children um a word, an adjective or or a noun.

Um it's just part of the African culture.

So uh in the Zulu culture, for example, I mean, I knew people in my high school, um I knew a guy named Innocent.

I used to call him not so innocent.

Um Precious.

We had a gal in our class called Precious.

Uh I met a guy called Good Enough.

In fact, he was a pastor in our town, pastor Good Enough.

And so if somebody was looking for a church, you know, he was the Anglican pastor, we were the Baptist church.

So I said, Oh, you're Anglican?

Well, you're welcome to come to our church, but if you're looking for an Anglican church, there's a good enough one down the road.

Um and then when they went there, they would get the joke, you know.

Uh there was a guy in our church named Rich Man.

Um Rich Man.

Um his mom named him that in hopes that he would become one.

Um then there was a lady very dear to us who named her fifth child enough.

Yeah.

And I asked her, why enough?

And she said, eh, because it's enough.

So this kind of thing is a little bit more common in their day.

Um so when you see here, it's the same in Greek, you get this, uh his name is Enesus.

So now let me read it for you this way.

I appeal to you for my child, useful, whose father I became in my imprisonment.

Formerly, he was useless, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.

So Paul's, there's a little play on words here, but he's saying, listen, I know this guy was useless.

This guy called useful was not useful.

Um, and Paul would probably not pass any counseling exams here.

You know, this is not a good uh self-esteem technique here to call a person useless.

Maybe if you come to our men's conference, you get a little bit more used to being called a loser, but that's basically what we're saying.

We know this guy, we know anistemus, you know him, I know him, the guy's a loser.

I get that.

I mean, think about it.

He's he's probably a slave because he was so bad with his finances that now he's a slave.

And he can't even do that right because he's escaped.

So this is a useless slave.

But he has become useful.

He's gonna be useful to you, he's gonna be in the Colossian church now, he's gonna be a servant in the church.

There's no slave and free in the church.

You know that slaves in Christian churches could be elders, they could be the leaders of the church, while their master, their owner, is you know, sitting in the pew and the slave.

It's amazing how Christianity can do that.

Just remove those social barriers, take away the barriers of race, take away the barriers of economic status, take away the barriers of education differences, cultural differences, language differences.

It's amazing.

And so this is what he's saying.

This guy is now useful.

He's useful to you, and he's useful to me.

He's been ministering to me.

So salvation changes people.

That's what conversion is by definition, is you convert.

Imagine you went and you went to the the dealership and you bought a car and you say, Um, I'm leaving North Dakota, I'm moving to Mobile, so I want a convertible.

And then he just sells you, you know, a Jeep.

And you're like, okay, how do I take how do I take the top off?

Well, you don't.

Well, then it's not a convertible.

The whole point is that it needs to change, right?

And so here, useless has changed.

He's converted.

This isn't conversion therapy.

This is just conversion.

And if you don't have a conversion story, then maybe you're not a Christian.

If your life looks exactly the same as it did before you became a believer in Jesus Christ and he set you free from your sins, what are we even talking about here?

There needs to be a change.

2 Corinthians 5.15.

And Jesus died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him.

Ephesians 4.17.

Now this I say in testifying the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do.

1 Timothy 1.12, Paul describes himself, he says, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent.

But I received mercy, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me.

So there was a formerly, and a, but now I was this way and now I'm different.

I once was blind, but now I see.

That's a drastic change in lifestyle.

Your behavior is going to start changing, your tastes are going to start changing, your dress is going to start changing, your speech is going to start changing, your attitudes are going to start changing, your relationships will start changing.

If that change doesn't start, that's a red flag.

You call yourself a Christian, you call yourself a convert?

What have you converted from?

What have you converted to?

And there's people that you meet and they say, yeah, I'm a Christian, but you know, the guy's sleeping with his girlfriend.

I'm like, well, how's that different from an unbeliever?

Or a man who divorces his wife for no biblical reason whatsoever, just like the world would?

Or a guy at work who's uh using shady business practices to make a little bit more profit, just like the unbelievers do, or the guy that's been cheating on his taxes, and so he just keeps on doing that.

And well, you call yourself a Christian, but you're doing everything the world does.

What's the difference here?

What where's the conversion?

I had a friend um in high school, my best friend, um, growing up, and his family had a certain physical attribute.

Uh they all had big noses.

Like a schnauz.

And um one of the the brother had a a particularly big nose.

And when he was uh just out of high school, he decided to get a nose job.

And everybody was like, Yeah, it's time.

And so the guy goes and he gets his nose job.

And we're, I mean, this is the first person I ever knew that had a nose job, you know.

Um I'm in high school, and so the brother comes home and I and his face is swollen and he's got the big bandage over his face, you know, and they're like, okay.

The next week I come by again, he's still got the bandage over his face, and then my friend tells me, Oh, you want to come today because he's gonna take the bandages off, we're gonna see his new nose.

So we do, and I come over, I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna see his new nose, and you know, they peel off the bandages.

I wasn't there for the part where it's coming coming off.

He was, you know, in the bathroom, and all I heard was, what?

And he comes out of the bathroom, and his nose looks exactly the same.

I'm not making that up.

It looked exactly the same.

As if nothing had ever happened.

I mean, maybe there were subtle differences, but it wasn't this is not what I paid for and went through all that pain for and the recovery, and it didn't even change anything.

I think he had to go back a second time or get his money back.

I don't know what he did, but eventually it changed.

But I I just thought, what a waste that would be.

Imagine you spent all that money and went through all that pain and discomfort to see a change, and then there was no change.

Well, that's exactly what happens when you become a Christian.

You are saying that's what baptism signifies.

I'm dying to the old ways.

I'm dying, I'm being buried with Christ.

He took my sin away from me, and I'm being resurrected with Christ, and now my life is hid with Christ.

I'm a new.

Creation.

I have new desires.

I have new priorities and attitudes and behavior and speech and dress and everything about me changes.

But imagine you came out of the water and you're like, okay, I'm just going back like a dog to its vomit, to my sinful ways.

I still get drunk, I still cuss, I still steal from my employer.

I'm still addicted to pornography.

What are we doing here?

Why even call yourself a Christian?

Just take Sundays off.

If you're not a Christian, you're not a Christian.

Why act like one?

Why call yourself one?

Why go through the pain and discomfort of it?

Just sleep in.

Skip Sundays.

That's what the unbelievers do.

So how about you?

Do you c do you claim a conversion in your life?

Do you claim that that's happened, that there's been an actual conversion?

And I must say that at this time in our nation's history, it might be time for us to consider the way we use the word conversion in conversation with unbelievers.

You understand what it means because you've just heard a sermon on it.

But now that conversion therapy has been banned in Canada and it'll eventually be banned all over, you might not want to use the word conversion when you speak to an unbeliever.

I I thought about another word you could use in maybe metamorphosis.

That hasn't been banned yet.

They'll ban that eventually, but they'll ban everything Christians do eventually.

They took our rainbow from us, right?

At least they tried.

Anything that Christians do, they want to take from us, but but you can't you can't talk to somebody without explaining that there's going to be a change.

So you use the word metamorphosis.

That's the word, that's the biological term for when a you know a little caterpillar spins a cocoon and then it's in there and then it comes out, and what is it?

It's a butterfly.

And when a little green, chubby, grub caterpillar comes out of its cocoon, you don't expect it to be a stripey green caterpillar?

What a spotty yellow caterpillar?

No, it's a butterfly.

It's a completely new creature, really.

It's got wings.

It's got little insect legs.

It's its attitudes have changed.

It's I mean, I don't know about that, but it's maybe.

I I would be more optimistic if I suddenly was a butterfly.

But um certainly its tastes have changed.

It stops eating the lettuce in your garden and now it eats pollen?

I don't know what they eat, but surely something sweeter than the lettuce, okay?

They're eating stuff in flowers now, honey-ish type stuff.

And and they they look different and they they act different, and they they don't hang out with the other grubs.

They don't go hang the butterfly, you never see the butterfly with the caterpillars.

The butterflies with the other butterflies.

There's been a metamorphosis.

That's the standard.

Now, just one closing application.

Obviously, the application here is that your life needs to have changed since conversion.

But the other thing here that Paul is asking Philemon to do is to look past Onesimus' past.

He wants him to look past his before Christ life, his life BC, and say, yes, he was useless to you.

But now I want you to look past it, I want you to look at the new creation who's useful to you.

And so there's another application.

Not only should we be new creations that have gone through a metamorphosis and a conversion, but if you are somebody with a past, there's hope for you.

And if somebody comes into your midst who has a past, you need to treat them the way Christ does.

Think of who Christ gravitated towards Zacchaeus the tax collector, Matthew the tax collector.

Think of the woman at the well, the Samaritan in John 4, the woman caught in adultery.

Jesus understood that there's a past and a and a future.

And we need to focus on our futures.

And if you're here today and maybe you've done something horrible in your life, maybe you there's a past that you're extremely ashamed of.

I don't know.

Maybe you maybe you were a gang member, maybe you've been to prison, maybe you you've had an abortion, maybe you've done something that's heinous.

You can be a new creature in Christ.

That's the hope of the good news.

Paul says, But such were some of you.

He lists a whole lot of sins, and yes, maybe one of them is homosexuality.

You were a homosexual.

But such were some of you.

You've been washed, you've been cleaned, you've been created, you're a new creature.

There's always hope in Jesus Christ.

Whatever it is that you've done, maybe you're somebody with a temper, maybe you're someone with a drinking problem or a porn addiction or whatever it is, you can change that today.

Today could be the first day of your new life.

Turn your back on your sin, repent, embrace Jesus Christ.

And the good news is that you are then one with Jesus Christ and you can die to that sin and live for him, that you can be set free from the sins and live a life of freedom, that you're no longer shackled to these sins that will drag you to hell.

Because Jesus has now rescued you not only from the consequences of that sin that would drag you to hell, but from the sin itself so that it no longer has a pull on you.

And all of that is true because Jesus Christ is God incarnate and lived the perfect life where he never sinned in thought, word, or deed.

And he lived a life that you could never live.

And he died the death that you deserve.

And then being risen from that dead, he conquered it once and for all, so that whoever believes in him trusts in him only, not in their own cleaning up their act, self-conversion, DIY project, but trusting in him to do the work.

Anyone who trusts in him will be forgiven, will be saved, will get an inheritance, will be adopted into the family.

And when you're adopted in that family, well, yes, that comes with affection for you, other brothers and sisters.

That comes with obligation to your other brothers and sisters.

And of course, they will rejoice as they see the changed life in you.

Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the good news of the gospel that we can be saved of our sins, that we can be forgiven from all that we deserve, we can be cleansed from our unrighteousness, that we can be made into new creatures.

Lord, I pray for anyone here today, especially if there's somebody here that has same-sex attraction difficulties or confusion.

I pray that what they heard would not be offensive, but bring hope.

That all of us have sinned in many different ways.

And all of us are guilty.

And yet all of us who place our faith in Jesus can be forgiven and have a new life.

I pray for anyone who's caught in any kind of addiction or secret sin that has not come to light, that they would be done with that sin today.

That today would mark the first day of their new life living for you.

You would save them from that sin, set them free from it.

And Lord Jesus, we look forward to living together with you in glory forever and ever.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.