Philemon

Philemon encourages us to apply the grace of the Gospel into personal relationships especially when things are tense!

@klarckorver
@bobbiekorver

@erclosangeles
www.erc.la
info@erc.la

Transcript

 Welcome to the Wake Before the Day podcast with my parents, Klarc and Bobbie. We're excited to talk about the Bible and the Holy Spirit Adventures. Thanks for listening.

• We're gonna dive into Philemon. Guys, are we doing Philemon too?
• Ha ha, Bobbie's got jokes today.
• It's just funny you guys because it's like, oh wow, this is it, this is it, Philemon, chapter one.
• One chapter, one chapter long.
• One through 25 verses. Let's break it down, so you're a bear.
• All right, so Paul is writing from a Roman prison and he is writing--
• It's a Christ.
• What's interesting, verse one, is that he considers himself while he's in a Roman prison, a prisoner of Jesus Christ. And so he disabuses himself in totality being owned and purchased and indebted to God. And he's basically saying, my life is yours. Basically, when it comes time to die, I don't fear that. In fact, I think it's better. I look forward to being reunited fully with my resurrected Lord and Savior.

And so as he's writing this letter, he's writing this letter to a pretty tense situation. I don't know if you've ever been wronged in your life by someone, like really wronged, slandered, someone's betrayed you or stolen something. Like, you don't have to reenter that if it gets too dark, but imagine the tension, the frustration of that moment and situation. And Paul's writing into a situation similar to that.

And so you'll notice, depending on what translation you have, Paul's writing to this guy named Philemon in his household on behalf of an indentured servant/slave named Onissimus who did something wrong and then ran away. He fled and got connected with Paul somehow in Rome. Bobbie will probably talk more about that in a little bit.

So when it comes to slavery or indentured servant, just a couple kind of statements that disclaimers even. Slavery in general was absolutely never part of God's intention or part of the created order. - Yeah. - God didn't desire anyone, Lord over anyone else. We're all called to be free and to seek the wellbeing of other people. And the ancient world, slavery was very different than it is today, like from what you and I know.

And when it comes to slavery, slavery is often, in this time, people could give themselves to slavery. Like if they were in debt, they couldn't feed themselves, they're going to die. They could go to a wealthy person and say, "Look, I'll make myself your indentured servant or slave. Can I work for you?" And when you feed me, give me housing, these kind of things. And often you have the ability to pay off your debts and then get back into freedom, which is different than what maybe you and I have in our mind.

It was also a distant fight, like impoverishment. Sometimes people were literally going to die. And so slavery or servitude became a gift to them for them to escape. Now the tricky part here is in Rome, especially in this like world at that time, when you did give yourself to a servant, they really did own you. Like you didn't have to live at their house, sometimes you got paid. But if you did something wrong, the ramifications and the consequences of your wrongdoing could be great. Like people could be put to death. People could be given extended times of enslavement or indentured servitude. So it's a tense situation. And what's happened in this letter, we don't know the details, but this Onissimus guy has wronged Philemon. And Philemon has legal right to punish this guy. And so that's the situation that Paul is writing into.

• Well, I mean, the one thing that I was just bringing up was like how curious is it that, you know, Onissimus just happened to run into Paul? Cause that's the thing we don't know the details. And so if it's me sitting alone, contemplating with this, with the Lord just wondering like, I wonder how you like, did he go visit Paul in jail? Like, I don't think so. I think in my own thought, again, this has no backing. Like, I wonder if he was in jail. And this is, and Paul's in jail too. And this is, you know, Q Holy Spirit moment in, you know, chains. Cause that's what Paul says. So I'm reading like verse 10, this is the NIV. I appeal to you for my son Onissimus who became my son while I was in chains. So you just have to think about that. And what, and the reason why I was encouraged to think about that is because a lot of times in this setting, you kind of wonder like, who are you gonna meet in there? You know, it's obviously people have broken the law and some or have been, you know, imprisoned for some reason. Like Paul for the gospel.

Anyway, and then Paul just puts his neck out for this guy. Like, so he becomes a brother in Christ, obviously. He has this deep, he literally calls him my right arm or my heart that when he, the letter continues to go on. Anyway, so number one thing that I was taking away before I get too deep in it is just kind of like, where am I at? What's my setting? Whether it's maybe something that you didn't choose, like in chains, like Paul, maybe it's something you didn't choose, like it's your work cubicle or I don't know, but literally Paul, because he in the big picture sees himself as a servant to the Lord, then that place becomes holy ground. That place, that prison, like we've heard from Paul so many other times, my goodness, becomes holy ground. And not only does he meet this guy and hopefully, hopefully is able to reconcile him with Philemon, but more than that, he has actually reconciled him unto God because of his soul. And so anyway, just interesting.

• Yeah, I'm trying to envision that in my head though. Like you're in the clink, you got your wrists and your ankles locked up. You're looking at the guy next to you, so like, hey man, what'd you do? Paul's like, oh, I'm a Christian. I tell people about Jesus and that's what I got thrown in for, for loving people. What'd you do? Oh, I stole something from my master. Who's that? Philemon, oh Philemon, Colossae, oh, I helped him become a Christian. You know my own master? Yeah, well, hey, let me tell you about this Jesus. Like what a small world. How funny is that? That's wild, but what you see in the rest of Paul's writing here is you to see the gospel.
• Yeah, and I think that's one of the, like why is Philemon included in the canon? Why is Philemon in the Bible? And I think that was what you were talking about. It was just like, it is just so gospel oriented.
• Yeah, because Philemon sounds like a good man, a godly man who's been very generous and kind to the Lord's people and to the church and has supplied people with what they've needed to survive and maybe even thrive. And so when he's writing to him, his motivation in verse nine for talking to Philemon is for love's sake, I appeal to you. For love's sake, I appeal to you. And then what he says to him in verse six before that is he says, I'm praying. Like my motivation here is love, my prayer is that the sharing of your faith would be effective. That the sharing of your faith would be effective. That's a power prayer. And that word sharing there is also used later on as Koinonia and it can be talking about spiritual fellowship and sharing. You can also be talking about material fellowship and sharing and clearly Philemon has met the needs of other Christians and has been doing well.

And what Paul's saying to him in verse six and also in verse 17, if I could jump ahead, he uses the word partner. He says, so if you consider me your partner, receive Onissimus as you would receive me. So if we're called to share and a partner, Paul's saying have a bigger view, have a kingdom perspective of people and of situations, especially when they've done you wrong. Because God's saying the unity of the church is supposed to be one of the markers that helps us stand apart from the world. And so he's encouraging Philemon to do this. And if you keep going to verse 18, he has another kind of odd comment. He says, if Onissimus has wronged you at all, which he has, or he owes you anything, charge that to my account. I just start laughing 'cause Paul's in prison. I don't know if he has an open tab with Philemon, or like charge it to my account. What do you mean by that? I don't know if Paul has the means to pay off his servitude. I doubt it. So it's almost as if Paul is saying to him, hey, remember what I did for you, including you and inviting you to Christ. Remember what I did for you? Like how awesome is that? That I introduced you to the gospel. Okay, because of that, then welcome this man back and give him that grace. And so he's applying the grace of the gospel to the situation.

And really, that's what God did to us. Say, hey, remember what I did for you? While you were still sinners, I died for you. Remember what you deserved as a sinner? The wages of sin is death. Uh-huh, yeah. And what did I do? While you were sinners, I died for you. I'm inviting you into this better