The Intercessor #2

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time. So let's get right to it.

Open your Bible as we join Don now in The Truth Pulpit. Thirdly, there's one more person that we need to introduce as we get acquainted with this letter, and that's the person of Onesimus. Onesimus. And Onesimus is the man who is the central concern of this letter in one sense, and what you can do as you read this letter is you can piece together his history simply as we follow the text of Philemon. I realize, once again, I realize that if you just read Philemon quickly through, you say, who's Onesimus? Why does this matter to me?

And it's easy to just kind of put it aside. Well, we don't want to do that here today. If we just read the text with a little bit of care and time, we start to see this man emerge from the page. There is a sympathetic figure that rises from the page of Scripture to the mind of our understanding, and you should see in Onesimus a picture of yourself before God, a picture of your former life, a picture in which reminds you that you yourself have committed sin and guilt and wronged people in profound ways, and yet somehow God had mercy on you if you were in Christ.

You should be able to identify with Onesimus and say, wow, I was like him. I had wronged people. I had lied. I had manipulated. I pretended to be somebody that I wasn't, and I hurt people in the process.

I was like that. I ran away from my responsibility. I ran away from what was right.

I stole. I thieved. Every one of you should feel something of that identification with this man, and no one should say, well, that's not true of me. No, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3.23.

There's none righteous, no, not even one. And so we come to Onesimus with a sense and an expectation that we're going to understand where he's coming from in the midst of this. And what can we say about him? Well, first of all, we're just going to go through the text as it applies and addresses Onesimus. First of all, as we come to this letter, Onesimus is now a Christian. He has been saved. He has been born again. And the sweetness of this is that the Apostle Paul led him to Christ while Paul was in prison. Look at verse 10. Paul, who is the I in this verse, I, Paul, appeal to you, Philemon.

So there's first person, second person, and third person in this one letter. He writes this letter and he says, I appeal to you, Philemon, for my child, Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my imprisonment. Now, he has to be talking about spiritual birth here, right? Because he wasn't Philemon's biological father. And Philemon didn't become an adult in the two years of Paul's imprisonment in order to go back to Philemon. He's talking about Onesimus was converted under the influence of Paul while Paul was in prison. He, as it were, he gave birth to Onesimus. God gave birth to Onesimus through the ministry of the Apostle Paul while Paul was in prison. And so this is a very special conversion that has taken place.

And we see something of what happened after that conversion. Somehow Onesimus found his way to Paul. Paul brought him to Christ through a faithful proclamation of the gospel. Onesimus was born again and his life changed. And he started to serve the man who had brought him to Christ. What a sweet thing that is when that happens.

In Philemon chapter 12, the Apostle Paul speaks of this. And he says, I have sent him back to you. I, Paul, have sent him, Onesimus, back to you, Philemon. I've sent him back to you in person, that is, sending my very heart.

And the text reads, him who is my heart. He says, I'm sending you a man that all of my affections reside upon. This is a man that I care greatly about, he says, but I'm sending him back to you. I'm sending him away from you. Verse 13, he says, I wish to keep him with me so that on your behalf, he might minister to me in my imprisonment on the gospel. But without your consent, I did not want to do anything so that your goodness would not be in effect by compulsion but of your own free will.

What's he saying here? He says, I'm sending this man back to you. I preferred to keep him with me. I would rather have had him for myself because he is such an encouragement and he serves me and he is such a help and a blessing to me. But I send him back to you anyway. Contrary to my own self-interest, I return him to you.

Why is he doing that? Well, we'll get to that in just a second. But for now, what I want you to see is that Paul led this Onesimus to Christ. They developed a relationship following his conversion that became one of very close friendship. When men are in ministry and young men come and serve them and love them and learn from them there is an affection that develops very quickly between them that is remarkable, that is beyond horizontal human affairs.

Because there is a commonality in Christ, there is a common affection, and there is a love that flows from the man to his so-called son in the gospel that just generates this profound affection that is unlike anything found in the merely human realm. That is what Paul and Onesimus had together. And Paul, as it were, wounds himself in order to send Onesimus back after their fruitful relationship and their close relationship together. Why would he do that?

Why not just keep him here? Philemon had no doubt moved on with life. And why does Onesimus need to go back to Philemon?

Well, just keep reading. Onesimus had a sinful past, just like you do, just like I do. And as we read this epistle, we see a little window into his past. He had been Philemon's slave. He had duties and responsibilities and legal responsibilities to his master, and yet somehow he had run away. Look at verses 15 and 16. The apostle Paul says, For perhaps he was for this reason separated from you for a while, that you would have him back forever, no longer as a slave.

There you go. In times past, Philemon had Onesimus as a slave, which was perfectly proper under the conditions of society in the first century. This was an accepted human relationship at the time.

And Onesimus had violated that. He had apparently run away. And Paul says, I'm sending him back, and now not as a former slave. I'm sending him back to you with another relationship, having developed. Look at verse 15 with me.

16, I should say. No longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me. But how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord? And based on what Paul says a little bit later, it seems like Philemon had perhaps been wronged by Onesimus. Maybe Onesimus had even stolen from him as he left the household. Look at verse 18. Paul says, If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

And so here's the situation. In years gone by, most likely, two, three, four, we don't know, maybe longer, Onesimus had been a slave to Philemon. And he had run away, probably taking some of his master's goods with him and absconding with them. And most scholars believe that he went to Rome in order to blend in with the crowd where he wouldn't be caught and returned to his master, as was the legal situation for men like him, where he would have blended into the crowd. And so, he left under a black cloud of guilt. He wronged, he stole from his master, it's safe to assume, and he goes to Rome and he's a fugitive on the run.

A fugitive not only from Roman law, not only from a fugitive from his master, he is a fugitive from a holy God in his sin. And what did God do for him? What happened in his life?

Somehow, he met the Apostle Paul in Rome and Paul led him to Christ. And Onesimus was showing the fruit of repentance with his change in life. He had begun to serve Christ and they had developed this close affection with one another. That was all great, but there was a problem. There was a lack of reconciliation in a relationship. There was a broken relationship left over from the past of Onesimus. He had stolen, he had wronged, he had not made restitution to his master.

He had not made that right. And here he is as a Christian and probably over time, you know, I mean, Paul, they talked. And Paul said, where did you come from? I don't want to tell you right now.

Well, tell me where you came from, tell me what happened. And Onesimus in the overflowing of confessing sin, in the overflow of an affectionate relationship with a man who was probably old enough to be his father, Onesimus starts to say, well, here's the thing. And he laid out in truth what he had done. He did not try to hide it under lies.

He did not try to obscure the truth or misdirect or blame somebody else for his conduct. He said, Paul, here's what I did. I stole from my master and I ran away. And this friend led me to you. And you told me about Christ and I realized my guilt and with tears running down his face, he said, now I belong to Christ and that's my whole story, Paul.

That's the truth about me. I'm a thief and I'm a fugitive. And Paul, in gracious compassion, as it were, puts his arms around him, takes him into his care, protects him and with his affection, fully engaged, tells him, Onesimus, you have to go back. You have to make this right.

And here we'll pause. Here we'll step way back and look at what the meaning of the gospel is for every sinner who would come to Christ. See, we come up to that point where I've done wrong, I'm guilty before God, and Christ, I come to you. What is it that makes Christ so beautiful, so magnificent? What is it that so captivates our affection toward him? Christ doesn't look at us in that condition and send us off to a holy God and say, you're going to have to account for yourself.

You're on your own, buddy. Christ says, I'll receive you. My Father loves me. I'll bring you in my own merit to the Father so that you can be reconciled and forgiven. Christ doesn't send men to work out their salvation in their own works. He brings them and carries them to God on the wind-filled sails of his own righteousness and shed blood and says, I love you.

I'll receive you. I'll take you to God. And that is the only way that any of you became a Christian was that Christ had mercy on you like that. We saw it from Matthew 11 a while back.

No one knows the Father unless the Son wills to reveal it to him. If you're in Christ today, it's because out of unprompted love, he showed grace to you like that and said, I'll take you in your guilt and wash you with my own blood and put my own clothes of righteousness on you and in that condition, I'll now present you to my Father. We're speaking a bit metaphorically, you get that, but that's the overall picture of salvation. Christ brings a sinner to a holy God. Go back to this letter of Philemon and realize what Paul is doing here.

This is so precious. And you can see when you're mindful of the fact that in Paul's mind were the great themes of Ephesians and Colossians and the glory of Christ and reconciliation. You can see how it fleshed out in his own mind. He took the spirit of Christ and exemplified it to the benefit of Onesimus. When it came out that Onesimus needed to go back and be reconciled to his former master Philemon. Watch this.

This is everything. Paul didn't send him off and say, you got to go make that right. No, no, Paul said, let me take up your case.

I'll take up your case for you so that you don't have to say a word. He says, I know Philemon, which had to shock Onesimus if you think about it. He comes to Paul, he doesn't know Christ and he doesn't know that Paul knows Philemon. He said, you know my master?

Oh, are you kidding? I love your master. I've known him for years.

He's a man of character. Let me take a pen and write to him. And I'll write you a letter of introduction that explains everything so that Philemon will receive you favorably. Oh, would you do that for me? You, the apostle of Christ, you do that for me?

A fugitive? Of course. That's what a Christian does. And so Paul, out of sympathy for this beloved disciple that Onesimus had become, wanting to do everything that he could to guarantee his safe return, wanting to bring about reconciliation in a fractured relationship between two men that he had loved, says, I'll intercede here. I'll put my own credibility on the line.

I'll put my money, I'll put my wallet, as it were, where my mouth is. Onesimus, I'm going to cover you. And now, and you can almost picture Paul with the mixed emotions as he sends Onesimus out with Tychicus. He says, take this letter and go back to your master. A master who had a right to punish him under Roman law.

A master who had the right to deal with him in severity because he was guilty, just like God had the right to deal with you in severity for your sins. And Christ brings you to a holy father. Now Paul, he couldn't go personally, but he sends this letter. And this letter, as it were, drapes the credibility and the love of the apostle Paul all over this fugitive, and he stands before Philemon and they read this letter together with Tychicus. And so Paul sent him back to make things right.

And as this letter is read for the first time by Philemon, in all likelihood, Onesimus is standing right there watching him, watching him read it, realizing that his future is in this man's hands and all that stands between him and judgment is a letter written by his friend, the apostle Paul. Wow. Think about it, beloved. I realize we're kind of going on two parallel tracks here. That's okay. What does a train do?

It runs on two parallel rails, right? We're talking about Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus. We're talking about you, God, and Christ at the same time. You, as it were, were approaching a holy God with nothing to plead on your own. What stood between you and eternal judgment? What stands between us now, between that and eternal judgment, except the love, the righteousness, the shed blood of Jesus Christ, which drapes us, which covers us, which envelops us in a way that makes us perfectly acceptable to His Father.

And let's get something straight here and just remember something that I said, but it'd be easy to pass over it. Jesus isn't trying to convince a reluctant father to receive you against His wishes. God the Father loves you. God the Father has His own love, invested fully in the eternal purpose of salvation. When Christ brings you to God the Father, as it were, He's not trying to overcome the Father's reluctance to accept you.

He is appealing to divine love, which pre-existed the beginning of the time. And He says, Father, yes, this sinner is before you. Father, I cover him in My righteousness, in My shed blood. Father, I appeal to your love to receive this one, everything that would have otherwise kept him from you, I paid for. And God the Father, if you remember the picture from the parable of the prodigal son, throws a party, throws his arms, welcomes him, oh, my son! How glad he is. How heaven rejoices when a sinner repents and comes through Christ to God.

We're seeing a picture of this. All that protected Onesimus was a simple letter that the apostle Paul had written. And what did Paul do?

He invested Onesimus with his full credibility. He says, and now we're just kind of summarizing here, Paul tells Philemon, I know this man and I love him. He says, he's my child, I've begotten him and I love him and I love you and I want the two of you to be brought back together. Appealing in love to both sides, as it were.

One who had the right of judgment, the other who was defenseless and helpless before a law he had broken. And what does Paul do? Look at verse 18. It'd be easy to just make this the whole message on Philemon, but I'm not going to do that.

We'll rehearse these things two or three times because these themes are too great to hurry through. Look at what Paul does in verse 18. He speaks to Philemon on behalf of Onesimus and he says, if Onesimus 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. He says, Paul takes upon himself the debt that Onesimus had and said, Philemon, don't let that debt interfere with reconciliation. I'll pay every last drop of it. If he's wronged you, I'll pay it. Beloved, in the presence of God, do you understand and see that that is exactly what Jesus Christ did for you? He brings you, as it were, to the Father fully conscious of your debt and your violations against God's law. And he says, Father, I'll pay that debt. If he's wronged you in any way, my Father, you who call me your beloved Son, Father, in love, I tell you, I promise you, I'll cover that debt so that there's nothing to hinder this full reconciliation between you and the sinner before you. Wow, that's what Christ did. Paul knew to interact with Philemon and Onesimus this way because he understood the gospel.

This was a gospel act that Paul was doing in the letter of Philemon. And so, I think we're going to leave it there for today. And we'll save the introduction to the letter for next time. Beloved, a couple of things should be clear in your mind.

One is just a basic structure, outline of what's going on in Philemon. Paul, a prisoner, advocating on behalf of someone that he had led to Christ to someone that he had earlier led to Christ and working out the difficulties that would have otherwise hindered their reconciliation even more as you walk out today. You should have such a profoundly elevated view of Christ, such a profoundly grateful view of Christ, and such a completely humbled view of yourself. There should be no one walking out of this room today with a sense of pride and self-righteousness in light of what you've heard today. You were the guilty one before a holy God.

You had nothing to commend yourself. And yet Christ, the intercessor, steps into the gap on your behalf and says, I'll cover it for you. Father, if he's wronged you in any way, charge it to my account. The Father says, I did that at the cross.

There's nothing to hinder the reconciliation. Enter into the joy of your Master. That's what Christ did for you if you're a Christian. That's what Christ offers to you if you're not. I will fully reconcile you to God. Simply confess your fugitive, law-breaking status. Give yourself to me, and I will reconcile you to God. He's the great intercessor.

Let's close with where we started. Go back to Hebrews 7. And as you're turning there, what should be beating in your heart, what should be pounding in your spiritual veins, is, oh, I love this Christ! I love him profoundly because of the mercy that he had on my soul when I had nothing to commend myself. He interceded for me. And how did he intercede for you? Look at verse 27 again. He did it once for all. Hebrews 7, verse 27.

He did it once for all when he offered up himself. He went to that cross to be your intercessor with a holy God. And if you're in Christ, you love him. If you're not in Christ, he calls you.

The way is clear. And to spurn the one true intercessor in a hardness of heart that says, I would continue in my sin, beloved, understand that is a great, morally culpable act on your part. And if you walk out of this room not belonging to Christ, refusing the call of the gospel, your guilt is immeasurable to reject such a gracious offer as what's been presented to you here today through God's Word.

Christ is all and in all. Christ, we love you. We adore you. We bow before you. Christ, our intercessor, our perfect avenue to a holy God.

Do you know him? Let's bow in prayer. O Lord, if our heart and our eyes were not so dried up and sinful, there would be rivers of tears of gratitude and joy and repentance flowing down our cheeks right now at the sweet love of Christ poured out at Calvary for sinners just like us. Lord, we thank you that you are the perfect intercessor. And we pray that as we study Philemon in the days ahead, Father, that we would see Christ rising out of the pages as he has today to make himself known to our souls, that we would love him and adore him and thank him more deeply than we ever have before. And Father, we thank you that 2,000 years ago in real time this played out in real human relationships between a master and a slave who had been a fugitive, who had been a thief. We thank you for the reconciling power of the gospel, that the gospel cannot only reconcile men to God, but it can reconcile men to each other when they approach on a common ground of the cross. Father, what's missing in our world today is not economics or human accommodations. What's missing in our world today is the reconciliation to God that is found only in Jesus Christ.

For if men were reconciled to you, they would be reconciled to each other. Father, we lay our lives before you. We lay our sinful souls before you. We lay our young church before you. We lay our passing lives before you and approach you solely through our great Intercessor, the Lord Jesus Christ, and ask you to have like mercy on us.

Just as you've had mercy in the past, have mercy on us going forward. And for those that are here without Christ, O God, save them. Incline their hearts through the power of your Holy Spirit to be reconciled to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It's in His name that we pray.

Amen. My friend, I want to let you know of a special ministry that we have at thetruthpulpit.com that's very near to my heart. We have a ministry to those who are in prison.

And in the nature of life, sometimes we have loved ones that go astray and find themselves behind bars and spending significant time in incarceration. Well, we have a ministry to them. We send them transcripts of messages that I've preached from the Pulpit of Truth Community Church. We do it on a weekly basis.

They get mail every week. If you have a loved one in prison that you would like to have us reach out to in that way, do me a favor. Go to our website, thetruthpulpit.com. That's thetruthpulpit.com. Click on the link that says About, and you'll see a drop-down menu that will take you to our prison ministry. You can fill out the form, and we'll be happy to respond and then join in with you in ministering to that one who is outside the normal course of society. So that's thetruthpulpit.com, the About link, for our prison ministry.

That will do it for today. We'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.