The Story Behind The Letter

Good morning, Good News Church. It's good to see you guys. If you have been

coming here for just like a week or two, I'll just introduce myself.

My name is Mario and I'm one of the pastors here and I was out of town for a

little while, but I am happy to be back.

Today we begin a new series on a book of the Bible called Philemon.

Philemon is about a runaway slave, at least probably, as best as I can tell.

The book of Philemon is about a runaway slave named Onesimus who lived during

the time period of the Roman Empire.

And I was talking with my family about it this week And my wife,

Heidi, said to me, she said, didn't you already preach on this before?

And I said, yes. Back when I was a youth pastor, I taught on this to the kids

in my youth group. And I think even at previous churches, like there was a church

I was on staff at in Texas and I taught this.

I said, but I haven't taught it here. I have not taught this in Ocala.

And I said, oh, since, I haven't taught it in Ocala since I taught it to the

youth group that I grew up in when I was 19 years old. I grew up here in Ocala and I don't know why.

When I was 19, they let me teach the youth group. That's crazy. But anyway, they did.

And I taught the book of Philemon and this was back in 1999.

So I said that and my daughter was there in the car at the time.

She's 12 years old. And when she heard me say, last time I taught it here in

Ocala was in 1999. She went, whoa, dad, 1999. That was back when the runaway slave was still alive.

Some parents would be offended at such an ageist comment. Not I,

I played along with it. I said, yeah, I brought him with me to youth group.

I introduced him to the kids. It was a great series.

So, our plan here this morning is to cover this book in three weeks,

and that should not be difficult because Philemon is one of the shortest books in the Bible.

In the rankings, it's third shortest. Only 2 John and 3 John are shorter than the book of Philemon.

Um, and so three weeks, I think should be enough to say everything that we need to say.

Um, Philemon is also one of the most obscure books in the Bible.

So if you are someone who has gone to church a lot, you've been coming to church for years.

And sometimes you think to yourself, I feel like everything they say sort of

sounds the same. Like I've been going to church for such a long time.

And I just, it seems like it's like, every time they say something,

it's like, yeah, I know, I guess I know, I guess I know all the Bible stories

and I know everything because everything they say is some passage I'm familiar with.

And so if you're in that category, I think this will be a good series for you,

because this is rarely taught on. I mean, there's probably nobody in this room

with like Philemon fatigue because nobody ever preaches on it.

I've never heard someone preach on it, not live. I've never been in the room

where someone preached on the book of Philemon.

Now people have done it, of course. Like if you go on the internet,

there's sermons out there on it.

People have written books on it. But I'm just saying of all the church services

I've been to, never has the preacher said, open up your Bible,

the book of Philemon, and talk through it.

So our plan for today will be pretty simple. We are mostly going to figure out

what is the story that is behind this letter.

And then on week two of this series and on week three of this series,

we can talk about like more about how it applies to our life.

But first, I just want to ask the question, like what is the actual Bible story that is here?

And the reason why we're going to spend a week on that is because the book of

Philemon was not written to tell a story. Did you know that?

Okay, it was not written to tell a story. In fact, not all writing is to tell

a story. Let me give you an illustration. Okay, two different types of writing.

A novel is a type of writing. A letter is a type of writing, right?

And a novel and a letter are not the same thing, but they have some things in common, right?

A novel and a letter, one thing they both have in common is they are collections of sentences, okay?

But a novel is quite a bit different than a letter. A novel is written,

to tell a whole story. Like the reason when somebody writes a novel,

there's a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The whole story is there. The purpose of writing it was to tell the whole story.

A letter, on the other hand, is typically a piece of someone's story.

There's stuff that happened after the letter was written. There's stuff that

happened before the letter was written. Okay? And then when you have a letter

that somebody wrote, you have just like sometimes a very, very tiny piece of their story.

A novel, usually it includes like all of the details that are necessary to make

sense of the whole story.

A letter does not do that. Often letters assume that the reader already knows

stuff before the letter was written. And so you have to just figure it out by what's implied.

And so what I'm trying to let you know is the book of Philemon is a letter. It's not a novel, okay?

No one is going to, like the very first time they pick up the Bible and read

the book of Philemon, no one's going to read these verses and get to the end

and go, oh, now that was a great story, okay? It's not, it wasn't meant for that.

So in order to understand this particular portions of scripture.

We're going to have to do some things, like in our minds,

in order to like figure out what things must be true based on what is said here,

what things are probably true based on what's said here, what are the things

that are true even though the book of Philemon does not outright say them, okay?

And I guess what I'm saying is for this particular series, we're going to have

to learn how to read our Bible and we're going to have to learn how to read

between the lines when it comes to Scripture. Are you following me?

And before you go, I am not a Bible scholar and I can barely figure out the

obvious things on the page.

I am not going to be able to figure out anything that's not obvious, Mario.

And what I want to say to you is, wait a minute, yes you can.

In fact, not only yes, you can, I want to say to you, you already do.

You already do that. If you picked up some other person's phone and started

reading through their text messages,

you would not go, I can't understand this. You'd actually go, ooh.

Okay, and you would start to figure out stuff, even though you don't know everything,

you'd start to figure out stuff just from the words, wouldn't you?

So I want to show you, not that I'm not even really teaching you how to do this.

I'm just going to try to point out that you already do this.

So our plan today, here's what we're going to do.

I'm going to start with a practice letter.

Before we read the book of Philemon, I'm going to read, up on the screen is

going to come a letter that was written to me, and we're going to practice on

interpreting the letter.

This letter that I'm about to show you was written, it was sent to me approximately

1996, okay? And this is obviously like back before cell phones.

In fact, that's why the letter was written to me.

Maybe some of you go, yeah, I've never had anyone write a letter to me.

Yeah, nobody writes letters anymore, okay? But this was back during the time

when people did write letters.

Right now, nobody writes letters to each other because what do we do instead?

Yeah, we text each other. So you don't need to write anybody a letter because

you can text. So this is before there was cell phones, before there was texting.

This is before there was internet, or at least before most people had internet.

And the little bit of internet there was, was like, it was crazy and noisy.

Okay, I don't know if you, you know what I'm talking about? Those of you who

are older, you remember how crazy it was at first? Those of you who are under

30, you're going to think I'm making this up.

But you used to not be able to get onto the internet in silence like you can now. Did you know this?

Like nowadays, you can just, it could be two in the morning and you can just

go on, press a button, no noises made. You can just get onto the internet in

silence, order a pair of socks on Amazon, go back to bed. You will wake up no

one in the house. No one will even know you did it.

That wasn't even possible in 1996. When you went on to the, you'll just have

to look it up if you don't believe me when you've been 1996 when you press the

button to get on the internet it the computer made a noise like this baby.

And then you were on the internet. Okay, who knows I'm telling the truth? Yes.

Now, if you were under 35, you're going to be like, there's no way.

You're exaggerating. I'm not. It sounded like two robots were scraping each other's faces off.

It happened at all of our houses, and you can look it up if you don't believe me.

So there was no secret sock purchasing, all right? Okay.

So back in that era, people actually hand wrote letters to each other and put

them on envelopes and sent them to people. And this was a real letter that was

handwritten and sent to me in the mail at that time. So here's the letter if

you put it up on the screen.

A person wrote me and they said, Dear Mario, thank you so much for the CD.

It's great. I've been listening to it nonstop for the last few days.

So how is the play going, almighty silver dollar Dan? Have you performed it

yet or are you still rehearsing.

This morning, I went and got my motorcycle permit, and tomorrow,

my dad and I are going to get my title and tag.

At work, I had been mowing the whole campus and all the sports fields,

and yesterday, started washing all the buses.

Well, I better go. I hope you have an awesome time in Sweden. From John, okay?

That is a real letter. I edited it for length, but that is a real letter that

was sent to me at that time, and I want to point out to you,

when you look at that letter, first of all, it does not, this letter does not

exactly tell a story, correct?

Correct? And yet, there are two people involved in it, the sender and the recipient.

And when you read it, if you just use a little bit of thinking,

you can actually figure out what we were doing at the time. Can't you?

There is a little bit of story there, even though it wasn't meant for that.

So with a little bit of thinking, you can figure it out, and we're going to

do it. We're going to practice on this letter, and then we're going to do it with our Bibles.

All right, so to practice this letter, let's see how you do.

I'm going to ask you a question. You can just shout out the answer,

okay? This is going to be interactive part of the sermon.

Can somebody name me something, based on this letter, can you name something

that probably happened before the letter was written?

Anybody? Okay, a CD. I gave him a CD. What else? Can you think of anything else?

Okay, graduated high school? No, I had not graduated high school yet. So what? Okay.

I did not go to Sweden before this letter because he says, I hope you have an

awesome time in Sweden. Maybe with this Bible thing will be a little more difficult than I thought.

So here we go. So we'll just go one thing at a time.

It's fine, it's fine. You know, we have two services for a reason.

We got the people that really excel in life. They get up early and then there's you.

I'm sorry, but if that offends you, you're not gonna last year long at this church anyway.

Go to the Lutheran church if you can't handle a little joke. Okay. So, um, so he says.

Dear Mario, good pastors don't just criticize people right to their face.

I should have, I should be nicer. I am sorry. I will probably repent this afternoon.

Dear Mario, thank you so much for the CD. Clearly that sentence indicates that

I had given him a CD. All right.

Um, we don't know if I was in a play yet or not because he asked,

have you performed it yet or are you still rehearsing? But apparently I had

been cast in a play and the character's name was Silver Dollar Dan.

I do not remember the lines at all, but apparently I was in that play.

He obviously got a motorcycle permit because he says he went and got one.

You can start to figure out some stuff that happened. If the Sweden trip happened,

it probably happened after.

Very good. Very good. It probably happened after this letter because he's wishing

me an awesome time rather than and saying I hope you had an awesome time in

Sweden. And so what you do is you pay attention to verb tenses,

and you pay attention to what's being said, and you can figure out some stuff.

Let me just try a few more questions.

I think you're gonna get this one. This person named John.

Does he own and or ride a motorcycle? Yes or no? Yes, he does. But here's the thing.

The letter doesn't say that. He doesn't say, I ride a motorcycle.

He just said that he got a motorcycle permit, and then his dad and he are going to go get a title and tag.

It doesn't say that he rides, it doesn't say he's a biker.

But you can figure out that he is, because there's no other reasonable reason

for him to say that they're getting a title and a tag and a permit.

It doesn't say that I sent him a CD, right? The letter doesn't say Mario sent John a CD.

But the fact that he's thanking me for it shows that I must have given it to him prior to the letter.

Here's one more question. It says what he's been doing at work.

Most likely, where does John work? Just take a guess. Where do you think he

works? Yeah, he works at a school. Why?

Because he's been mowing the whole campus and the sports fields,

and yesterday he started washing all the buses. He works at a school.

Now, this is what I want you to understand. You were able to figure out that

he works at a school without any special training, okay?

And yet, the word school isn't even in the letter.

The word school is nowhere in this letter, but you figured out he worked at

a school because of what it does say. So that's what I mean by being able to

read in between the lines.

My point here is simple. You can look at this, and even though it doesn't say

Mario's an actor or John's a biker or that he intended to go to Sweden,

it sort of does say those things because of what it says.

And so whatever your brain did to figure that out, that is the same skill that

we are going to use to interpret the book of Philemon right now, okay?

We're gonna read the letter, see what it says, and then figure out what must

be true based on what it says, okay?

So if you have your Bible, turn to Philemon chapter one, and we will begin there.

And I say Philemon chapter one.

There's just one chapter there. You don't even have to say chapter one.

It's literally this page.

Like what you're looking, what's in front of you right now is not even,

like there's more than just the book of Philemon here. This is a whole nother

book. just this part right here is Philemon. It's one page long,

and I'm going to read it to you now, starting with verse 1.

Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy, our brother, to Philemon,

our dear friend and co-worker. So we'll start there.

This letter was written by Paul.

You can tell because that's the first word of the letter. He starts with his

name because back then when people wrote letters, the sender put their name

first, like the author of the letter would identify themselves at the very beginning

of the letter and they would say their name first.

This is not unlike how we do nowadays when you get a text message.

Have you noticed when you get a text message, the person's name is first and

then underneath that is the text? Yeah, they were way ahead of their time.

Okay, so Paul puts his name first and he says, I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus

and Timothy, our brother. It looks like Timothy might be the co-author of this

letter, but if you keep reading it, you will see that Paul really talks a whole

lot in like the singular first person.

Timothy does not seem to be the co-author of this letter. He must just be a

teammate of Paul's who was with him at the time.

To Philemon, our dear friend and co-worker. Aha, so Philemon is the person who

is receiving it, because it says to Philemon.

Philemon is not the only recipient though, is he? It says to Philemon,

our dear friend and co-worker, and then it says to Aphia, our sister,

to Archippus, our fellow soldier, and to the church that meets in your house.

So this letter was written by Paul to Philemon, I think primarily.

I say that because he's the first name listed, and also as the letter goes on,

you can see it's mostly written to one guy in the singular. However,

it's not just him, because there's these other names. It's also are written

to Aphia and Archippus. Who are they?

The answer is, we don't know, okay? We do know that Aphia is a girl's name,

and we do know that Archippus is a boy's name, okay?

So he wrote it to Philemon, who's a guy, and then Aphia and Archippus, a woman and a man.

I would say probably most translators or most commentators, most scholars that

look into this, it seems to me most everyone assumes that Aphia is Philemon's

wife and Archippus is his son, perhaps his adult son that's still living in the house.

But we don't know that for sure. Aphia could be his mom, you know,

Archippus could be his nephew. We don't know for sure.

So we've got a letter that's written by Paul to Philemon and to another,

to some female and some male. And not just to them. It also says,

and to the church that meets in your house.

Okay, so Philemon is probably a Christian, right?

If he has a church that's meeting in his home, this is probably a fellow believer

that Paul is writing to. He's probably also a rich person.

Okay, you want to know where I get that from? Because you might look at the

letter and go, wait, but the word rich isn't in there. It doesn't say he's rich.

I know it doesn't say he's rich. Maybe he's not. But I'm just saying,

the church that he was a part of met in his house.

So back then, I think that means probably you're the person in the congregation

that has the biggest house.

At the time, at this point of Christianity, congregations, Christian congregations

were much smaller than they are now. It's particularly this one that I'm looking at right now.

I think your average church size back then probably was more like 30 people

or 40 people or whatever.

And when those people all met together, they would have to find some meeting place.

And early on, this really early on in Christianity, there were no,

like the system we have right now was not set up yet. There was no,

like we have a building right here that was like built for this purpose.

That had not been invented yet. The idea to build a building for the church gatherings.

So where would they meet? If they wanted to come together and read the Bible

together, if they wanted to come together and pray together,

like where would they all meet?

They'd have to find someplace where they could all fit at the same time.

So you look at the congregation and go, well, what's the biggest place we have access to?

If this guy over here lives in a tent, he might be a wonderful member of the

congregation, but we're probably not all gonna be meeting in his tent.

And this lady over here, maybe she has a one-room house, and that's great,

but that's kind of small, and we're not gonna all be able to fit in that one-room house.

And maybe this guy over here has a two-room house, and that's great,

and that's getting closer.

But what I'm thinking is Philemon probably had a big multi-room house.

And they said, hey, let's just all meet at Philemon's house.

And he said, of course, you know, we were all brothers and sisters together.

I think it is likely that the reason that the church meets in Philemon's home

is because he owns the biggest house out of anybody in that congregation.

And it's likely that he is the richest person in that congregation because of

that. Not for sure, but he's probably one of the wealthiest people in the congregation.

And that's why they're meeting in his home.

Verse three, grace to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

These are more signs that this is a letter from one Christian to another.

Verse four, I always thank my God when I mention you in my prayers,

because I hear of your love and faith toward the Lord and for all the saints.

I pray that your participation in the faith may become effective through knowing

every good thing that is in us for the glory of Christ. For I have great joy

and encouragement from your love because the hearts of the saints have been

refreshed through you, brother.

You can already tell that Philemon and Paul know each other,

right? Like they knew each other before the letter was written.

Paul is not introducing himself. Hi, my name is Paul. You don't know me.

I'd like to sell you a copy machine.

That's not what's happening here. He already knows the guy. They were friends before this. Verse 8.

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.

Oh, so this is not a random personal letter from one guy to another guy just,

you know, checking on him. This is not like, hey, thanks for the CD.

I hope you have a good time in Sweden. There's something else going on here, isn't it?

Right? Paul is trying to convince Philemon to do something.

That's what he writes the letter for. He says, I could command you to do it, right?

What is it that he wants him to do? What is right? We don't know what that is

yet, but there's something that he believes is the right thing to do.

And he's saying, I could tell you to do it, but I'm not.

I'm appealing to you instead on the basis of love. I'm not telling you,

you must do it. I'm just, I'm asking you for a personal favor here, man.

I want you to do this. So what is the this? We don't know yet,

but clearly it's not a personal preference thing.

Cause he says, I could command you to do what is right. So this is not like

you've got blue curtains. You should switch them out for yellow curtains.

This is Philemon has some sort of moral or relational dilemma.

And Paul is trying to get him to make a particular decision,

a particular choice. Paul is trying to get him to do the right thing.

Philemon has a moral dilemma, and Paul's trying to get him to choose the right thing.

All right, let's keep going. Middle of verse 9.

I, Paul, as an elderly man, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus,

I guess I'll just stop there so we can see now Paul's old at this point,

and he is in some kind of imprisonment.

That was actually mentioned earlier in the letter. This is, I think,

the second time it's come up. that I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus,

that Paul, when he was writing this letter, was imprisoned because he was going

around sharing the gospel, right? And this is during time period of the Roman

Empire. People didn't like that.

And he was telling people about Jesus. And so he says, I'm imprisoned at the

time I'm writing this. We do not know for sure which imprisonment this was because he doesn't say.

We don't know if this is the time when Paul was imprisoned in Rome,

because there was an occasion where he was imprisoned in Rome,

or the time that he was imprisoned in Caesarea, because there was a time where

he spent a few years in Caesarea.

Or if this is a time where he was imprisoned in Ephesus, we don't actually know

for sure that he was imprisoned in Ephesus, but some scholars,

based on some things that Paul did, wonder if he had an imprisonment there.

So we don't know for sure.

I would say most people say Rome. Like most scholars that look into this,

like the traditional view is that Paul wrote this particular letter from his

Roman imprisonment. But like I said, we don't know for sure.

He was imprisoned more than one time for preaching the gospel.

And this letter was written during one of those times.

Verse 10. So now a prisoner of Christ Jesus, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus.

I fathered him 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 as a part of myself.

Now he brings up the main person that this letter is about. I'm writing on behalf of Onesimus, right?

I want to talk to you about Onesimus.

And it seems to me that Paul is using some metaphorical language here as he

is speaking about Onesimus because he says he is my son and I fathered him while

I was in chains. I don't take that to be literal.

It seems that just based on what we know about Paul and even the rest of this

letter, it does not seem like it's possible that what Paul meant by that is

that while he was in prison, he impregnated a woman,

and then he waited for her to give birth, and then she gave birth,

and then he raised this child to adulthood while he was in prison,

and is now sending him to Philemon.

That doesn't match anything else. There's no way. What I think what's happening

here is I think this is a reference to mentorship.

He is saying, I met this guy named Onesimus, and we have become very close.

I am like a father to him. And then he says, now I want to talk with you about

him. And it's interesting, the way he says, he says he was useless to you,

but now he's useful. I'm sending him back.

So you can tell, Paul, this is not like some kid that he raised that Philemon doesn't know.

Onesimus already knows Philemon, and Philemon already knows Onesimus. Can you tell?

Because he says, yeah, this is the guy. Remember the guy that you considered useless?

Okay, that's the guy I'm referring to. The guy that was once useless to you,

which shows there was some sort of tension between Philemon and Onesimus before

this letter was written, right?

Some sort of kerfuffle happened to the point that Paul could just say,

you know, the useless one? And Philemon's like, yeah, yeah, I remember the useless one.

Okay, yeah, he was useless to you, but now he's not. Now he's useful to both

you and to me. I'm sending him, what's that word?

Back, which means obviously he used to be there. There was some point where

Onesimus and Philemon were both in the same town. Right now they're separated,

but at some point they were together.

And now you can't send somebody back if they weren't originally there.

All right, verse, what do we got, 12? Let's go to 13.

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 of your own free will.

So you can see that Paul here is really trying to get the guy to do something,

but he's trying not to force the guy to do it. Do you see that?

This is the second time this has come up.

He says, I didn't want to do without your consent, right? I want you to do it

of your own free will. And what is the it that he wants him to do?

He calls it a good deed. I want your good deed to be done. So he's trying to

convince Philemon to do a good deed. We don't know what it is yet.

He's trying to convince him to do a good deed.

Early in the letter, he had said, I could command you to do it,

but I'm just asking a favor. And this time he says, I didn't want to just go through with this.

I really want this to be something you choose. I want this to be something you

want to do. Okay, what is it?

Here we go. Verse 15.

For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time.

He, Onesimus, was separated from you, Philemon, for a time.

So that you might get him back permanently, no longer as a slave.

But more than a slave, as a dearly loved brother.

He is especially so to me, but even more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

So if you consider me a partner, accept him as you would me.

And this is the part where we figure out that Onesimus is probably a runaway slave.

Because he refers to the fact that he used to be a slave. And he's saying now,

I want him to be back in your life. But he mentions as a brother.

So, Onesimus is probably a runaway slave, and Paul, in this letter,

you can tell he's asking for a favor. He's wanting him to do something.

He's wanting him to do something. He finally gets to it. I think what Paul is

saying in this letter is, I'm sending Onesimus back to you.

Now, here's what I'm asking of you. Don't treat him like a runaway slave.

Don't beat him. Don't be mad at him. I want you to accept him back into your life.

Don't treat him like a runaway slave. In fact, he seems to say,

don't treat him like a slave at all.

Treat him like you would me, right? If you consider me a partner,

accept him as you would me. Paul's saying, I'm not your slave,

right? I never was, but I'm asking you to treat him that way.

When he shows up, treat him not like a slave, treat him like your good friend, Paul.

Treat him like your missionary partner, Paul. Treat him like a beloved brother in the Lord.

Because that's what he is. Verse 18.

And if he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

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

Not to mention that you owe me even your own self. Oh, this is getting juicy.

So he brings up this issue, and it's interesting because, remember how I told

you the letter doesn't say that I got him a CD? It just, you figured it out

because he said, thank you for the CD.

This letter does not say that Onesimus did anything wrong.

And so if he did anything wrong, we don't know what it is, because the letter

doesn't say he did anything wrong. But it sure implies it, doesn't it?

He says, if he has wronged you in any way, if he owes you anything,

why in the world would he bring this up?

I don't think he's just bringing it up randomly. I don't think he's just guessing.

Remember, he's friends with Onesimus. They have a father-son relationship.

Onesimus is probably standing there as he's writing this letter,

right? Like they've talked about Onesimus' backstory and his history and all

the stuff that got up to this point.

So he's not just randomly going, oh, and if he happens to have done something

wrong, I think they've talked about whatever the wrong thing was.

And he's saying, okay, so if he's wronged you or if he owes you anything,

I mean, at the very, very least, I think it's fair to assume Philemon thought

that Onesimus had wronged him.

Philemon thought he owed him something. And so Paul brings it up.

He goes, if that's the case, if he owes you anything, charge that to me.

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

So I don't think Paul's bringing this up out of nowhere. Onesimus probably had

done something until that conversation happened and Paul's going,

well, let's take care of that right now. I'll pay that off.

Now, what was the thing? What is it that Onesimus did? We don't know.

It's a letter, not a novel.

We don't know what it was that happened before this. Some people think that

it could be simply the running away as a slave, that that was considered the big thing.

Some people think that he maybe stole money on his way out of town when he left.

That would, I think, have been a common thing that would have happened at the time.

Like, if you were somebody's slave in the Roman Empire, which this is something

that was pretty common back then.

I know we don't have this, but in the Roman Empire, I think it was like one-fourth

or one-third of all the citizens of the Roman Empire, like all the people in

the Roman Empire were slaves.

And I don't even think it was always what we think of it. Like,

back then, you could be a doctor and be a slave, like if you were serving a

particular guy as his doctor.

You could be an accountant and be a slave, you know, and you're just running

the whole operation. So...

I think what happens sometimes is when someone was like, you know,

I'm over this. You don't give like two weeks notice when you're a slave,

okay? You don't announce that you're going to do it ahead of time.

It's just one day in the middle of the night, you leave.

And then everybody wakes up and you're gone the next morning.

And I think what would happen is not only would it be one day in the middle

of the night, you leave, but probably one day in the middle of the night,

you take stuff with you because you're obviously leaving for a reason.

You don't like these people. You never want to see them again.

You never plan on seeing them again.

And so you just take some stuff with you in order to fund the journey that's

ahead of you because you're gonna have to live on your own now and you're gonna

have to try to escape to a city that is far enough away that you're guaranteed

to never see those people again.

And so I think it would have been common back then to take stuff on the way out.

But that's just something that happened back then. The letter doesn't say that that happened.

We don't know what the thing was, okay? But it seems likely that Onesimus wronged

Philemon in some way, probably in some sort of financial way because Paul says,

hey, I'm willing to pay that off if that's what helps get this relationship reconciled.

And so I think what Paul is saying to Philemon when he finally gets to his point

is he's saying this, I want you to take him back.

I want you to treat him not like a runaway slave, not like a slave at all.

I want you to forgive him.

And it seems like Paul is, at this point, Paul is saying, and do not let money

stop you from forgiving him.

Like if money is the issue, we are Christians and this is not what it should be.

If he comes up and he says to you, I'm sorry, will you forgive me?

I don't want you sitting there thinking like, well, but what about this and

you owe me this and you need to buy me a new one of this. Like he's saying,

if the money is the issue, I will pay it.

Do not let money stop this forgiveness and this reconciliation from happening.

And then after he says all that, he says, oh, and don't forget, you owe me one.

I don't even know what that's referring to because it's obviously something

before this letter. I'm not sure what it is.

Verse 20, yes, brother, may I have joy from you in the Lord.

Refresh my heart in Christ. I think he's really saying like,

this is the Christian thing to do.

Since I am confident of your obedience, I am writing to you knowing that you

will do even more than I say. He's saying, I'm asking you for a favor and I

believe you're going to do it.

In fact, I believe you're going to go above and beyond what I'm asking,

which might be even a hint at like, let him not be your slave anymore.

I'm writing to you knowing that you will do even more than I say.

But meanwhile, verse 22, also prepare a guest room for me, for I hope that through

your prayers, I will be restored to you.

Obviously, there is some sort of closeness to them, right? He says,

hey, when I get out of here, I just want you to get ready. I'm going to be living

with you, right? I'm going to be staying with you for a while, right?

So they're not strangers to each other. He knows these people.

And in fact, it's a guest room.

Remember how I said, I think, well, Philemon probably has a multi-room house.

This is one of the reasons.

It's not like just prepare that place in the corner. Like you got all those extra rooms.

There's the room where the church meets in. There's the other room.

I would like you to set up some, I would like you to set up a guest room for

me because I hope to be through your prayers, I will be restored to you.

So apparently at some point, Paul and Philemon, like Paul's now in a different

city from him. Paul is in prison. Philemon heard about it in whatever city that he's in.

And Philemon starts praying that Paul will get out of prison.

And Paul writes him a letter and says, hey, let's go ahead and assume that your

prayers are going to get answered with a yes.

Okay? I mean, we don't know for sure, but let's hope that God answers your prayers.

And if he does, that means I'm going to get out of here and I'm going to be

hanging out with you, buddy, for a little while.

Verse 23, Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you.

This is the part of the letter where it's like, so-and-so says hi, so-and-so says hi.

In this case, Epaphras must be like a kind of a cellmate with Paul,

right? My fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus. Maybe they got arrested together for sharing the gospel.

He says, and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my coworkers.

They are not mentioned as prisoners, so they're probably just helping him while he is in prison.

Back then when you were an apostle or a missionary, and you're trying to tell

the whole world about Jesus, but you're stuck in a room somewhere,

you would have coworkers, I think, who would help you be able to do stuff.

They would assist him in things.

I think they would bring him food or bring him clothing or as he's writing letters

to churches or writing letters to individuals like Philemon,

like somebody's got to deliver these letters to the places they're going.

So he has coworkers that are there with him.

And then the last sentence of the letter is, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

And that's how he ends it. And that's the book of Philemon.

So, what is the story that is behind this letter?

Here's the story as best as I understand it, okay? In my own words.

Once upon a time, there was a guy named Paul and a guy named Philemon who really

did live in the Roman Empire, and they met each other and they became good friends.

Good enough friends that one of them could say to the other one,

hey, I'm going to stay with you for a little while, and it's just assumed that it's a yes.

They were obviously both Christian friends with one another.

I think it's very possible that Paul may have been the person who led Philemon

to the Lord, like told him about the gospel of Jesus Christ,

and Philemon became a Christian.

I don't know that for sure, but I just, one of the reasons I think it's possible

is, if you know anything about Paul, Paul told everybody about Jesus Christ.

Paul shared the gospel with like everybody he met, and the reaction to it was

usually one of two things.

There were either people who were like, yes, I believe you, and they became

Christians, or there were people that were like, we must kill you now,

okay? And he was a very, he was a very polarizing figure in that way,

that there was just like, yes, Jesus is Lord, and other people that are like, throw him in prison.

And so he went around telling lots of people about Jesus. I think it's possible

Philemon was one of them, but certainly Philemon is a Christian and so is Paul.

In fact, that one little line in there where he says, don't forget you owe me

one. Do you remember that?

I think that could be a reference to the like, hey, remember before I met you,

you were going to hell and then I came along and told you about Jesus.

Let's factor that into the favor I'm asking.

Okay. So Paul and Philemon become friends. They're in the same town.

They're hanging out. they're two Christians, it's going great.

Then they're separated.

Paul goes to a different city than the one that Philemon lives in and then gets

imprisoned in that city.

Philemon hears about it and starts praying that he'll get out, okay?

Subplot number two, there's also a relationship between Philemon and Onesimus,

okay? It's a master-slave relationship.

Onesimus is the slave to Philemon, and they have some sort of relationship,

and it looks to me like it is tense, that they have offended each other,

they've hurt each other, they don't like each other. It seems to me there's

some sort of kerfuffle that happened at some point between Onesimus and Philemon.

I say this because on Philemon's side, it seems like there's some bad feelings

there, right? Because he owes him stuff, and he even says, hey,

remember the guy who is useless to you? And Philemon's like, yeah.

So Philemon thinks this guy's useless.

And Onesimus probably also doesn't like Philemon, right? Because he ran away

from him, right? He got away and separated himself from him.

And so there's probably a lot of tension here. And then Onesimus travels from

whatever city Philemon lives in to the city that Paul lives in, and their paths cross.

And I don't know how their paths crossed. It could have been a coincidence.

Like it could be that just Onesimus was running away and he ends up in some

city somewhere and he bumps into a guy named Paul and then they become friends

and it's father-son relationship and he says, hey, what did you used to do?

Oh, I was a slave. Oh, really? What was the guy's name? Philemon.

Oh, I know a Philemon. Which was shaggy hair, room with a house with lots of

rooms. Yeah, yeah, that's him. Oh, I know him.

Like it could be that they just coincidentally crossed paths or it could be

that it was on purpose that Onesimus heard Philemon talk about this Paul guy and went and found him.

But either way, Onesimus and Paul cross paths, and it looks to me like Paul

becomes a mentor to him and leads him to the Lord, shares the gospel with him.

Why? Well, because he was formerly useless, and now he's useful,

and he says to Philemon, hey, he was, you know, I know he was your slave,

but I want you to take him back as a brother.

And so I think probably Paul leads Onesimus to the Lord. Okay,

well, then what happened?

So I guess a sort of awkward conversation took place. At some point,

after Onesimus converts to Christianity, Paul says, all right,

you're going to have to go back and apologize.

What? Remember that whole story you told me, Philemon, and this and that,

and you did this, and he said this, and you said this?

You're going to have to go back and reconcile. To which I'm guessing Onesimus went, uh-uh.

There's no way I'm going back and doing that. I don't know that for sure.

I'm just imagining that. But maybe he said, oh, yes. I would be really excited

to go back, but I'm guessing probably not.

Probably he said, there's no way I'm going to do that. He goes,

yeah, but here's the thing. You're a Christian now. You need to go back and

reconcile with this like fractured relationship that you've left in the past.

And I think Onesimus probably, I mean, he might've said, yes,

sir. But I could imagine he would have said, there's no way I'm going to do that.

He's going to be so angry at me. That is unsafe.

You are asking me to do something unsafe, Paul. Why in the world would I do that? Like, thank you.

Thank you for telling me about Jesus. I'm glad to know the gospel.

I'm glad I'm going to go to heaven when I die. I'm glad Jesus is Lord.

Very happy about all that. But this particular message is the dumbest thing

you've ever said to me. There's no way I'm going to go back into that.

And I think Paul must have said something like this.

Old Onesimus wouldn't go back into that, but you're not old Onesimus.

You're not useless. You're useful. You're a different person now.

You're a brother in the Lord.

And Philemon is a brother in the Lord.

God is the father of both of you. You're both in the same family now.

You need to go back and make up with your, not with your owner,

you need to go back and make up with your brother.

And I think Onesimus would have said, there's no way that I can do it.

He's not going to believe that I'm a Christian now. I think Paul says,

I'll tell him you're a Christian now.

Yeah, but he's, I just, there's no way he's going to, and I think at some point,

Paul must have said, listen, you're not, you're not old you, you're new you.

You're a Christian now, and this is what we do.

We reconcile, and I know you don't want to do it, but I want you to hear me.

I'm not just sending you out there to do it, and who knows what's going to happen.

I'm telling you to go find him, look him in the eyes, apologize to him,

ask him for forgiveness, and then you're going to hand him a letter,

from a guy who he respects very much, a guy who he owes a favor to,

and that guy is going to tell him to forgive you, and you're going to hand him that.

I'm going to write a letter that really lays it on thick, and there's a lot

of pressure. I could command you, but I'm not. I really want you to do it.

I know you're going to do it. You'll do even more than I ask.

I'm going to word it so good that this guy's going to know this is what he's

got to do. I'm going to address it to the whole church, so he has to make the

decision in front of a whole bunch of people watching.

I'm going to write a letter telling him to forgive you.

And so I'm not sending you empty-handed. I'm going to include an IOU.

I owe him so much stuff. You're not going to owe him anything when this is all done. I'll pay.

I'll give him the IOU. I will put my own reputation on it. I'm not going to

just say, like, you know, just forgive him. I'm going to tell him to treat you

like me. I'm going to include my relationship into this and say,

our relationship is part of this.

You're going to go back with a letter that tells him that he needs to forgive you.

And so my best guess is at some point, Paul looked at Onesimus.

He said, listen, I am going to tell Philemon what he needs to do as a Christian.

He needs to forgive you.

And I'm telling you what you need to do as a Christian. You gotta go apologize

and reconcile with this guy. And you know it's gonna be hard,

but you're a Christian now, and this is what we do. We reconcile.

We reconcile.

Isn't that a powerful story?

If the Lord wills, we'll get to more of it next week. Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you for this congregation. I thank you for this opportunity to

learn this obscure letter in your word.

I pray that you would apply it to our lives.

I pray the people that are in this room that need to forgive someone,

they would forgive them.

I pray the people in this room that need to go apologize to someone that they

would go apologize and ask for forgiveness.

I pray that if there's somebody in this room that like money is the thing that's

getting in the way, I pray that money would not be the thing that prevents them

from doing what you have called them to do.

I pray that you would allow us to come together next week and the week after

and to continue to learn from this book.

We love you and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let me end with these good words from God's word. This is from Colossians chapter three, verse 12.

Therefore, God's chosen ones, holy and loved, put on heartfelt compassion,

kindness, humility, gentleness and patience,

accepting one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against

another, just as the Lord has forgiven you. That is good news.