The Encourager #1

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in the Truth Pulpit. Well, we welcome you once again to our church, whether you're here in the room with us or over the live stream.

We're so glad that you're with us. We love God's words here. The reason we exist, really, is to proclaim God's truth and gather God's people around that, especially in days like what we're living in, to rally God's people around God's Word and have that come and instruct us. And we do that in the context of a local church, where people commit themselves to a body and gather together faithfully and are involved in each other's lives in different ways. And that's central to the life and the existence of a church, is the fact that we come not just individually to see what we can get out of it, what you or I could get out of being in this room in this hour, but we come being mindful of being part of a broader body, that we have responsibilities and opportunities and privileges that go toward one another relationally, and to have relationships that are meaningful and significant. And the concept of love and trust and truth are central to the proper functioning of those kinds of relationships one with another. And so we're here not just to be able to see what's in it for me, but we come with a mindset that we gather together to advance the common cause of truth and sincerity in relationships with one another, and to seek the spiritual well-being of those that would gather together.

We're not islands, we're not isolated, we come not as individuals, but we come as a body together seeking to be part of something that is larger than ourselves. And with that in mind, I would encourage you to turn to the text that we're studying this month, the book of Philemon, the short letter that Paul wrote to a man named Philemon some 2,000 years ago, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and writing to deal with a particular situation that had occurred at that time that we introduced last week, and yet being mindful that embedded in this letter are principles that are of timeless value, that have abiding significance for us as Christians in the way that we see our relationships and how we interact with one another. Last time you could say that we introduced the people that are in the book of Philemon.

We looked at the Apostle Paul and the fact that he was in prison. We considered Philemon, who was a man of some means, who was a noble Christian man, and was a person that was central in the functioning of the church that met at his house, and we also introduced Onesimus, who was a fugitive slave who had once belonged to Philemon but had run away, and now somehow had met the Apostle Paul in Rome and had been converted to Christ, and Paul sends him back because he had things that he needed to make right with his master, Philemon. So we saw the people in the letter as we met together last time, and we drew a parallel that I trust is still kind of ringing in your mind, that Paul was acting as an intercessor for Onesimus. He was interceding with Philemon. Onesimus had wronged Philemon. He had probably stolen from him and had broken the relationship and had wronged him and thieved from him, and Philemon, as the master of the slave, had a right to punish him for that misconduct. Paul, taking the role of an intercessor, gives this letter and sends Onesimus back to Philemon, and on behalf of Onesimus asks Philemon to receive him favorably and says, if Onesimus has wronged you in any way, charge that to my account.

I'll pay the debt. Just receive him back and forgive him so that you can be united together once more. And Paul makes that basis of the plea. We said that there is a picture there of what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us, I should say, what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us before a holy God. We were the one who had violated and wronged God the Father. We had broken his law. We had sinned against him. We were unfit for his presence. Worse than that, we were subject and liable to his just punishment.

We had nothing that we could say on behalf of ourselves. We had no righteousness of our own with which to approach God. And what did our Lord Jesus do except to come to earth and to live a life that met all of the demands of God's law? And then he offered that perfect life up on a cross as the payment for our sins. He interceded for us, and as it were, now brings us to God and intercedes for us and says, Father, I am here and I bring to you my own righteousness and my own shed blood on their behalf. I ask you, Father, as it were, to receive them based on what I have done. And we are reconciled to God. We have peace, objective peace with God. We have the forgiveness of our sins because Christ came as an intercessor and interceded on our behalf and did for us that which we could not do on our own.

We come, as it were, Onesimus, let's put it this way, Onesimus came to Philemon and in essence handed him the letter from Paul and that letter protected Onesimus as it appealed to Philemon's love and the principle that Paul would cover any debt. We come to God, as it were, not to hand him our own righteousness and merit, but as it were, Christ hands his own righteousness to the Father, hands his own shed blood to the Father and says, receive them on that basis. Receive them for my sake.

Receive them on my account. The Father being the God of love is happy now that his justice and his holiness have been satisfied. He can receive us and forgive us and we are welcomed into his presence.

Why? Because Christ interceded for us out of his love for us. What a wonderful picture of it is and it just kind of illustrates it and makes it so plain that we come into the Father's presence. We're reconciled to a holy God based on what someone else did for us because our Lord Jesus Christ interceded for us. There should be a great sense of gratitude that each one of you carry toward Christ for that if you're a Christian. And if you are not a Christian, the kindness, the love of Christ that would do that for sinners should draw you and draw you into a sense of, Lord, I want to give myself to you.

Do that for me as well. Bring me to God the Father through your righteousness and shed blood. Well, this week, today what we're going to do is we're going to move on and kind of do a quick survey of the opening section of Philemon's letter. Now that we've got the people out and introduced, I want to show you from the way that Paul addresses Philemon the principles, the spiritual principles that underlie this letter and then in the following week or two we'll look at exactly everything that Paul says to him.

But Paul addresses Philemon out of the overflow of certain spiritual characteristics, certain spiritual attitudes, certain spiritual principles that inform everything that he says in this letter and it all just kind of spills naturally out as he addresses Philemon in this opening section of the letter. I'm going to read verses one through seven here this morning and I encourage you to follow along with me as we read. Philemon, verse one, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon our beloved brother and fellow worker, and to Apthia our sister, and to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house, grace to you and peace from God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always making mention of you in my prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints and I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the knowledge of every good thing which is in you for Christ's sake. For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother. What I want to do this morning is kind of go through this passage really without the outline that I normally would give to you, but just to kind of walk through this section of scripture and then at the end draw out a few simple pieces of application that would help inform and to shape our life together as a body of Christ here in this local church and just kind of walk through the letter without some artificial structure being put on it, and realizing that Philemon would have received this letter and he just would have read these words from the hand of his friend, from the apostle, from his fellow Christian, Paul.

And so that's what we're going to do here this morning. Notice how Paul opens the letter in the custom of letter writing in that day. He identifies himself first.

We do it just the opposite. We say who's writing the letter at the very end, and the first century they did it just opposite, which I think actually makes a little bit more sense. Who is this letter from? Oh, it's from Paul.

I see it right off, rather than having to read all the way to the end to find out the answer to it. And Paul's opening here is a little bit different than what you'll find if you compare it with other letters that he wrote. In many of his letters he'll start out by saying Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. And he does that in the other letters to emphasize his authority as he writes. That as he writes to a local church, he is doing so as an authoritative representative of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose word must be obeyed, whose word must be followed, because he is giving the Lord's instruction to his church, and because Jesus Christ is Lord, we are under a responsibility to do what he says to do, to obey, because the church belongs to Christ. It is his by divine purchase. And so Paul often writes and opens up his letters appealing to his apostleship as the ground upon which he writes.

You know what? He doesn't do that here. And the difference is striking and gives you a sense that he is doing something different when he writes this letter. Notice what he says there in the opening verse, Philemon verse 1. He says, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy, our brother.

Notice this, beloved. He calls himself a prisoner, which in one sense is identifying his present circumstances. He says, I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus, by which he means that I am imprisoned by the will and direction of my sovereign master.

I am here suffering. I have lost my liberty out of my faithfulness to the ministry that Christ has given to me. And so Paul is sitting in prison writing this letter, and yet he writes not as an apostle saying, I have authority to write here, but he says, he describes himself, his self-description is, I'm writing to you as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. Why does he do that? Why does he make that kind of distinction? Why not, he has something that he wants Philemon to do.

Watch this, this is really important. He has something that he wants Philemon to do. He has a message that Philemon is to give heed to, but he doesn't appeal to authority as he does it. He is not writing as one commanding.

He is writing as one who is making an appeal. Look at verse 10 there, where you can see this. Actually in verse 9 as well, let's just for fun go to verse 8.

Kind of working my way backwards there. I want you to see that how Paul describes himself as verse 1 is consistent with the appeal that he makes later in the letter. In verse 8 he says, therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what is proper, he says, I'm confident of my authority as an apostle. I could tell you what to do. But he says, that's not what I'm doing here. He says, rather, for love's sake, I am appealing to you. I am treating you, I am speaking to you in deference. I am speaking to you as an equal. I am asking for you for something, not commanding you.

He changes the whole nature of the appeal. And he goes on in verse 10, and he says, I appeal to you for my child Onesimus whom I have begotten in my imprisonment. So you see the difference, you see the tone. Sometimes it's very important to notice these very basic fundamental facts so that you understand the entire spirit in which a letter is being written. This is not an apostle commanding someone to do something. This is a Christian who is suffering saying, I'm asking you to do something.

And you know distinctly, you know intuitively, you know by your own experience the difference that you feel when someone comes and insists that you do something and says, you must do what I say, versus someone who says, I'm appealing to who you are and I'm asking you to do something. The spirit of this letter is a request, not a command based on apostolic authority. And so here what you see is, and what makes this letter a particularly sweet part of scripture, is you see Paul writing a personal letter to a man that he considers a fellow worker and a friend and says, I'm appealing to you like that. In the context of the body of Christ, I'm writing to you to appeal in love to you. And so, picture yourself as Philemon receiving this letter. First of all, it's from Paul.

You've got an established relationship with him in the past. And Paul says, I'm writing to you from prison. Immediately, your sympathy is going to be out toward him. He is suffering for the sake of the gospel that saved my soul. He's suffering for Christ. He's suffering for my Christ. He's lost his liberty and he's writing to me from prison.

Your heart is going to be open and drawn to what he has to say to you. Just out of a matter of pure human sympathy, out of sympathy for the gospel. And so, immediately from the way that Paul frames it, there's this sense of warmth that is created in what is said.

Let's go on. Paul says, I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus and Timothy our brother. It's simply indicating that Timothy is with Paul as he wrote this letter. Timothy knew Philemon from prior experience, from prior relationships.

They had been together. And so, Paul is simply acknowledging that Timothy is with him. Note this. Timothy is not a co-author of the letter because as you go into the body of the letter, Paul writes in the first person singular, I appeal to you.

I ask you to do this. Philemon is my child, not our, not we. And so, the mention of Timothy is simply incidental, a courtesy to the fact that Timothy is with him, a recognition that Philemon and Timothy knew each other, but it's simply an opening courtesy, not an indication that Timothy was joint author with Paul in the letter.

Timothy was not an apostle and so he would not be writing in that capacity. He's not on an equal plane with Paul in terms of the basis upon which this appeal is made, but he knows Philemon and so just as a natural matter of course, you know, as Dane greeted us from Mexico in times past, Paul says Timothy joins in the greeting that I'm sending to you. Now, with that said, look at how he addresses Philemon there at the end of verse one. To Philemon, our beloved brother and our fellow worker. This is a private letter to Philemon and he's addressing Philemon from a posture, a position of appreciation and affirmation.

That's really essential to see. Paul here says, Philemon, I recognize you as a fellow brother in Christ. I recognize, Philemon, that we have worked together on Christ in the past.

We have a standing relationship, one of love, one of shared ministry. And so again, you see the way that he is addressing him is he is addressing him on a horizontal plane of equality, saying, Philemon, my brother, I write to you. Philemon, my fellow worker, I write to you. Philemon, I'm writing to you as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. And so what I want you to see is, and this is all going to inform our life and the body going forward, what I want you to see is that the skillful sympathy that Paul cultivates from the very start.

He shows respect, he shows deference, he declares his love, he declares his own personal circumstances. There is a whole lot of human warmth and relational attributes going on as we see this letter being opened up before us. As we read this, this is a letter between two friends. This is a letter from two fellow Christians, not from, between two fellow Christians that have shared life together. Now an issue has come up that needs to be addressed, and Paul appeals to the context of their relationship before he moves into what he wants Philemon to do.

Here's the thing. As Philemon is reading this, and again, just picture yourself receiving a letter like this from perhaps a spiritual leader that you've respected and worked with in years gone by, and he addresses you with that kind of love and warmth and respect. You're going to be inclined toward him.

You're going to be receptive to what he has to say. All of that contained just in that simple first verse. Now as the letter goes on, notice what Paul says here in verse two. Paul not only has acknowledged that Timothy is with him, he makes an incidental acknowledgement of the people that are with Philemon.

Look at verse two with me. He says, and to Apphia, our sister, she was perhaps, perhaps even likely Philemon's wife, given the order in which she is addressed here. She's a fellow Christian and likely Philemon's wife. And then he goes on and says, and to Archippus, our fellow soldier, some people think that maybe he was Philemon's son. Others think that maybe he was a leader in the church as well, and that he's writing to Philemon, but he's appealing also and recognizing that there is a pastoral leader in the midst as well that he should give recognition to. Whatever the case may be, he's simply acknowledging that other people are going to see this letter, and he greets them as a courtesy as he writes this private letter to Philemon. And then notice at the end of verse two, he says, and to the church that is in your house.

We talked about this last time. The believers in that city met in Philemon's house. He gave them the facility, the structure in which they were able to meet together and to honor the Lord and to worship the Lord and to meet for instruction. And so there's a group of people around Philemon that Paul incidentally mentions in passing, but then he moves on into a private address that he wants to make. Now I want to say something here to help kind of give you a sense of what I believe the right way to understand the letter is. There are those, and there are some good commentators who say, when you see verse two, what Philemon is doing is that he is invoking those other people, the church and Archippus and Apphia, he invokes these other people as a means of imposing accountability on Philemon to answer in the way that he responds to the letter. So the idea is that Paul has something that he wants Philemon to do, and he mentions these other people up front as a way of saying, Philemon, there are other people who are going to watch how you respond to this, and they are going to hold you accountable.

The expectation is that the public accountability will help Philemon do the right thing in case he didn't want to do it on his own. What should we say about that? I think it's kind of an important point.

I think that's unlikely. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's a proper way of understanding what Paul is doing.

And the distinction is important for understanding the spirit of the letter. Paul has said, as we've already seen in what I've said this morning, especially there in verses eight through ten, Paul has made it clear, I am not compelling you. I am not commanding you.

I am not asserting my apostolic authority in what I say here. Philemon, we're brothers. I don't need to. I don't need to bear the rod to you.

We're brothers. I can talk to you out of a sense of love, and I know what you'll do. I know that you'll respond well. Look at verse 21 of Philemon. He says, having confidence in your obedience, I write to you since I know that you will do even more than what I say. What's he saying? He says, Philemon, I have confidence that you're going to do the right thing, and I appeal to you as I'm writing to you.

This may seem incidental, but I think it's important. If Paul was going to use these people surrounding Philemon to be an element of compulsion for Philemon to do what he asked to do, it undermines the whole spirit of the letter. If he is going to use those people to pressure Philemon into doing what Paul asks, it makes the whole rest of his letter dishonest. As he's expressing confidence and trust and saying, Philemon, I know you'll do the right thing, so I just need to appeal to you in love.

If, while he's saying that, he's saying, and you other guys over here, make sure he does it. It conveys the entirely wrong sense of the spirit of the letter. And so I think it's better to simply say Paul knew that other people were going to be there as this letter was received. He acknowledges them, he greets them, but he moves on and talks to Philemon man-to-man. Look, Paul didn't need Apphia.

He wasn't hiding behind the skirts of Apphia to get Philemon to do what he wanted. He's talking to Philemon man-to-man. He's talking to him brother-to-brother. And you know that because as you go through the rest of the letters, you go through the body of the letter, Paul says, I, first person singular, talk to you, Philemon, second person singular. That's very clear in the original language.

This is one man to another man. And so the mention of these people here in verse 2 is merely incidental and a courtesy, not the enforcement mechanism of Paul's letter. If Paul wanted to enforce obedience, he could have done so with his own apostolic authority. And so I mention that simply to clarify and to help us see that the spirit of this letter is one of love and trust. And love and trust, the ability to trust one another, is essential to unity in the church. It is imperative that there be trust in the church, that we know that we can have confidence in how one another is addressing us. Well if Paul was using these other people to manipulate Philemon, then the whole pretext of the letter is lost. And so we set that aside and just say, Paul, and we follow as Paul deals with his brother in love. Look at verse 3.

He closes his introduction with this traditional greeting that is found often in his letters. Verse 3, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace brings peace. God's grace, the grace of Christ, brings peace in two different senses to us as a believer. In a judicial sense, it brings us an objective peace with God in the sense that our sins are forgiven and we do not fear the judicial punishment of God.

Why? Because that judicial punishment was fulfilled at the cross. God has punished Christ for our sins. Now he looks at us as believers and says, your sins and your lawless deeds I will remember no more. That is a gracious act of God toward us and it means that there is peace with God between us, between you and God if your faith is in Christ. God brings peace. There is no longer war. There is no longer wrath coming from God toward you as a Christian.

Why? Because you are declared righteous in the presence of a holy God. Now, along with that vertical alignment, that vertical reconciliation with God, there is the subjective sense of peace. We have this sense of wellness. There is a fullness of spiritual blessing.

Why? Because peace has been brought through the grace of God. You are declared righteous in the presence of a holy God. Now, along with that vertical alignment, that vertical reconciliation with God, there is the subjective sense of peace. We have this sense of wellness. There is a fullness of spiritual blessing. There is a rest and a calm in our souls that results from knowing that we have been judicially vertically reconciled with God, having that external peace. Now we have internal peace that shapes the way that we live our lives.

We live from a position of strength. And Paul says as he opens this, he says, Philemon, I grace to you in peace. He says, Philemon, he says, Philemon, I want you to walk in the fullness of this grace. I would want you to be utterly saturated with this sense of the gracious purpose of God and to have an experiential knowledge of the outworking of the vertical peace that is yours, having been reconciled with God. He says, I pray that God would give this to you. I pray that our Lord Jesus Christ would communicate this to you. Philemon, as I write to you, I write in a spirit hoping that you'll be enveloped in all the fullness of the spiritual blessings of God.

Wow. That's a pretty lofty way to enter into the letter. And so Paul writes wishing the fullness of spiritual blessing on Philemon, just as an introductory matter.

And so, step back for a moment. What do you see in that? You see the godly, loving, warm disposition from which Paul writes to Philemon. There is this overflow of wishing the goodness of God on Philemon that informs the entire spirit of his letter.

Everything flows out of that. That's why I don't believe at all for a moment that this could be Paul trying to manipulate others to get Philemon to do what he wants. That's not how he writes to him.

It's not the spirit of it. Well, my friend, thank you for joining us here on today's broadcast of The Truth Pulpit, where we love to be teaching God's people God's word. And I just want to send a special invitation to you. If you're ever in the Midwest area, come to see us at Truth Community Church. We're on the east side of Cincinnati, Ohio.

We're easy to find, easy to get to. We have services at 9 a.m. on Sunday and 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday evening for our midweek study. You can also find us on our live stream at thetruthpulpit.com. That's thetruthpulpit.com but we would love to see you. And if you do happen to be able to visit us in person, do this if you would. Come and introduce yourself to me personally. Fight your way through the people and tell me that you listen on The Truth Pulpit and that you're here visiting.

I would love to give you a word of personal greeting. So hopefully we'll see you one day in person at Truth Community Church. You can find our location and service times at The Truth Pulpit dot com. 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.