Book of Philemon - Vv. 19-22

All righty, well everybody's gone, so I guess I'll start. I'll do just a tiny bit of review because it has been about a month since we were last in this study.

It feels way longer than that, but I think it's only been about a month. We'll pick it up in verse 19.

We are in Philemon still, but we are very close to finishing off this little book that we started at the end of December.

It's taken a good while. Of course, that is including the weeks off, but still. So Paul, at the very end of the letter, this is essentially where kind of he starts rounding things out and is going to finish out the letter with a couple of last thoughts.

The end of the letter is actually the beginning of the final kind of natural section of the book, if you want to divide it into sections.

We've looked at it a number of different ways. We looked at the salutation first, but then section one was the characteristics of one that forgives.

Remember, we honed in on Philemon's Christian character, and then that segued into a second section that we called the actions of one that forgives.

So we looked at the action steps that Philemon needed to take in order to actually practice, put into practice, what

Paul was exhorting him to do. And then you get to this final section that closes out the letter, which we'll call the motivations of one that forgives.

In other words, what actually gives a Christian person the motivation to go out and obey the commandment to forgive, the imperative to forgive like God has forgiven us?

What are the motivations to actually do that? So that's going to be what Paul's closing of this letter covers. And he takes an interesting turn at the very end of this letter, and we talked about this a little bit as we closed our last lesson about a month ago.

He's essentially about to cap off all of the positive things he's had to say about Philemon with a reminder of a very important aspect of the

Christian faith, and that is having accountability from our brothers and sisters around us, having accountability from the brethren.

That's a very important aspect of just Christian living, good Christian living. You're not going to be a very successful, you're not going to have a very successful Christian walk if you have no one to hold you accountable to fulfilling the various commands, imperatives, exhortations that were given throughout the

New Testament. We can just kind of cherry -pick what we want to obey and what we don't. By the way, any

Christian would do that unless they are all held accountable by a church body, by friends, by elders, family, just brothers and sisters, regardless of where they're at, holding them accountable to stay on the straight and narrow.

And so Paul is going to end his letter to Philemon reminding him of the importance that accountability has in motivating us and keeping us straight when it comes to actually obeying and fulfilling some of these things, such as forgiving one another, even as Christ has forgiven us.

In other words, even as awesome of a person as Philemon is, that Paul is letting us know about.

Paul understands the flesh, and he understands that someone even as good as Philemon will struggle with his flesh, just as Paul himself did.

Take a look at Romans chapter 7, and we know the kind of battle that Paul himself had, the kind of struggle that he had with the flesh, warring with the flesh, even though he is arguably the greatest

Christian that has ever lived. And so Paul understands that. He has a very, very potent awareness of that.

And so he knows that Philemon will struggle with that, too, and even though he is a standout Christian, standout brother in every sense, in fact, someone so good that he could be an example even to us.

Sure, we have the Apostles as examples, but we have other great Christians of the faith as well to follow. Philemon would be one,

Priscilla and Aquila would be a couple more, and there's others that weren't necessarily apostles but were absolutely exemplary in their

Christian living. Timothy, Titus, a number of other guys. Philemon was one of them.

But even with that, Paul knew that he was going to struggle with the flesh because he was still in an earthen vessel.

And he's going to give Philemon some checks and balances, if you will, to top off all of his commendations and all of his exhortations that he's given him up to this point.

Does that make sense? So he started with commending him for being such an awesome guy. He exhorted him to embrace

Onesimus back to forgive him, but now he's going to, again, cap off this letter with reminding him about who exactly will be holding him accountable to do all these things.

So let's look at verse 19 and we'll pick it up from there. I, Paul, have written it with mine own hand.

I will repay it, albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.

Now this, again, is still just a little bit of review. I think we covered up to verse 19 in our last lesson, but what we're about to read for the remainder of this lesson was actually written by Paul's own hand.

Now interestingly, and we did cover this last time, but Paul's normal procedure for writing his letters was to actually dictate it to someone that we might refer to as a secretary, essentially a secretary, or something like that.

And then at the very end of the letter, he would take his pen or the quill or whatever they were writing with at the time, and he would sign his own name to it.

And we see examples of that at the end of Colossians and in other places as well. So these final thoughts, starting at verse 19 and down through the final verse,

I believe is verse 24, these were so important, these final thoughts were so important to Paul, that in order to show that, in order to round out this letter, he's going to stop dictating at this point.

He picks up the pen himself, and he's going to begin handwriting the final part of this letter himself.

He says, I have written it with my own hand. Now, if you keep that in mind, in the context of verse 18,

Paul is stamping his promise of paying Philemon back himself with his own name.

If you guys recall, in verse 18, which we remember was a great example of, it was an imitation of imputation.

Y 'all remember that? That's what we covered last time, it has been about a month, so I forgive you if you don't.

But, verses 17 and 18 actually give us a great example of Paul imitating what Christ did on the cross for us, and imputating his righteousness to us, and our unrighteousness to him.

Paul says in verse 17, if thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself, that's the positive, that's a picture of the positive righteousness.

If he hath wronged thee, or o 'er thee ought, put that on mine account, that is a picture or an example of the negative imputation, the negative aspect of imputation.

So, keeping that in mind, that's the context going into verse 19 when he says, I have written it with my own hand,

I will pay you back. So, Paul is just stamping that one final time and saying, this is, you know,

Philemon, you know me, but I'm gonna do this anyway, I'm telling you in all, including all the formalities

I could include, I am gonna pay you back. And so, that's really interesting. I will repay it, he says in verse 19.

He begins by telling us that one of the greatest motivating factors for forgiving is to, is to realize that he, that being

Philemon, himself owes a debt that is too great to pay back.

One of the greatest motivating factors for a forgiver to actually forgive, to actually do the actionable process of forgiving, is to remember that he himself, and this applies to all of us,

Philemon, but all of us as well, that he himself or herself owes a debt too great to pay back.

So, think about what's being said here. The wording, it's a little bit awkward in verse 19, mainly because of some of the old

English, but another way to read verse 19 is this. He says, I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand.

I will repay it, not to mention that you owe me even your own self as well.

So, he's doing a couple of things here. He's saying, look, I'm, again,

I am writing this with my own hand. I'm saying I am going to pay you back. That is a promise. That's a promise

I'm not going to break. And all of that is to say, without even mentioning the fact that you,

Philemon, owe me even your own self as well. You owe me your life.

That's what Paul is telling Philemon here. So, it's a kind of a funny combo of Paul sincerely telling him,

I'm going to keep my promises, but you better keep your side of this as well, because you owe me your life.

And so, Paul is, even though he has approached this entire letter so carefully and with the intention of keeping things friendly and reminding

Philemon that they are close, they have that bond, they have that relationship, he throws in a couple of things here and there to really kind of stick it to Philemon in the sense of, you need to remember how serious this actually is.

I'm being friendly about it. I'm not even using my apostolic authority to command you to do this, but I'm not going to let you forget the reality here, and that is you owe me your life, and now

I am asking you to do this. So, you've got a big old I owe you that you need to cash out on anyway, and you're actually never going to be able to cash out on it because you owe me your entire life, but you can at least do me this.

You can at least receive Onesimus back. That's what Paul is getting at here. What could Paul possibly be talking about other than the fact that he owes him his own life, and why does he owe him his own life?

It's because it was his very conversion, Philemon's conversion into Christ that will give him eternal life, that Paul was the instrument by which

God used to bring that about. Paul was Philemon's spiritual father. Remember in verse 10, if you want to just look up a little bit, he says,

I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds. He is using terminology to describe

Onesimus as his son, but earlier in the letter, and with some other contextual things as well, is that Philemon was a convert of Paul too.

So, if Paul is going to use that kind of language to describe his relationship to Onesimus at this point, he is my son,

I have begotten him in a spiritual sense, would that not also apply to Philemon? He did the same thing to Philemon just a few years prior.

So, if Onesimus is Paul's son, if Paul is Onesimus' spiritual father, using the terminology that Paul uses, is not

Philemon also Paul's spiritual son? And so, he's saying, you owe me your life, and it's because Paul brought

Philemon to a saving knowledge, to a saving faith of Jesus Christ that has now blessed

Philemon beyond all comprehension. And Philemon knows that, and he knows that he owes

Paul his life for that reason, but Paul's reminding him anyway. Now, Paul doesn't let

Philemon forget that while Paul is willing to absorb all of the debt for Onesimus, Philemon still owes

Paul even more. Now, going back to the theme of forgiveness, it's really important for Christians to remember that regardless of what others owe them, and let's think about this for a second.

Remember, we started this study with kind of giving it a foundation, understanding the doctrine of forgiveness, the reality that forgiveness is a needed attribute of a professing

Christian, but think about the worst -case scenarios of the ways in which you have been wronged the most in your life.

And there's a lot of people that using human logic purely can drum up a fantastic case to justify why they should never forgive the person that did them wrong.

It was so bad that I have the right to not forgive them and to harbor some bitterness toward them because they're a terrible person and they they did the worst thing imaginable to me.

However, when we look at the parables on forgiveness, and when we look at the principle of forgiveness throughout the

New Testament, Paul covers it in Colossians. Dad will get to that eventually. He does it in Ephesians. He does it in Philippians.

And then you look at the real -life Christian living, as practical as it gets, aspect of forgiveness throughout this letter.

What we learn is that we have to remember that no matter how wrong someone did us, we did

Christ that much more wrong when we sent him to the cross, and yet we were forgiven ourselves.

And so to be an affront to the Father to such a degree that he had to kill his own son, that helps put in perspective that we need to emulate him.

We need to imitate him to the best of our ability. In fact, we are told to imitate him the best we possibly can, and that means that even when we don't quite understand it, and even when it doesn't necessarily feel all that great at the moment, we need to go for it.

We need to forgive. But when we do that, it's okay, and it helps to understand that it's okay when we also understand that we ourselves owe an enormous debt, an unpayable debt.

You know, I could use the example. I'll just give you an example from my own life.

So Paul is saying, Philemon, you owe me an unpayable debt.

You owe me your life because I was the instrument by which

God used to bring you to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, saving faith.

And of course, we can go out, and we can witness, we can evangelize, we can spread the gospel, and we may be the instrument for someone else.

And then they would owe us their lives in the same sense that Paul is talking about here. So for me personally, mom and dad are the ones that brought me to a saving knowledge of the

Lord. They're the ones that raised me in the admonition of the Lord, and at the age of seven,

I was converted. So in the exact same sense that Paul is talking to Philemon here, in that Philemon owes

Paul his life, I owe my life to mom and dad. So before I am so quick to go out there and start justifying any particular person or any reason why

I shouldn't actually need to forgive someone because they did me so wrong,

I need to first remember the reality that, well, they may owe me some kind of weird debt, whatever it may be, but I also owe someone else an even greater debt, and that debt is my whole life.

The fact that I will not spend eternity in hell. Now you'll think, now Ben, it was not your parents that saved you, it was the

Holy Spirit. Yes, but as we've talked about so many times, the Lord ordains the means just as much as he ordains the end, and the ordained means in this case was mom and dad being the instrument to bring me to a saving knowledge of the

Lord. Paul was the ordained means to bring Onesimus and Philemon to a saving knowledge of the

Lord. So in that sense, in a very real sense, I owe them my life,

Philemon owes Paul his life, Paul owed Jesus his life, and so on and so forth.

We can just, we could keep coming up with examples like that all day every day, but just remember, it's very important for Christians to remember that regardless of what others owe them, they owe someone else an enormous unpayable debt themselves.

So we're no better than anybody, we owe a debt far greater than we can pay, God forgave us regardless of the fact that we send a son to the cross so we can forgive others, and there's a story, a really amazing story,

I guess I'll go ahead and throw this in there, that I read recently. There was an evangelist that was doing some prison ministry, and a man came up to him and he says, what can

I do about bitterness? What can I do, what would you do about the fact that a man, what would you tell someone whose three -year -old son was beaten up by an adult man and that person cannot forgive him for doing that?

And the evangelist gave the very practical stuff that we've been going through in this study, and of course you think of an example like that, you think, well it sure is hard to follow through with some of the imperatives that were given in regard to forgiveness, and he says, you need to forgive them for the same reason that we forgive, and he says, and the evangelist told him, you need to go tell him that you have forgiven him and then you need to share the gospel with him, and he said, well

I can't because he's dead, and the evangelist said, he's dead, and he said, I killed him, and that's why he was in jail.

So what happened was the man that was in jail had a three -year -old son who was beaten up, he was beaten so bad that he was hospitalized for a long time, and to avenge that, the dad beat the perpetrator to death.

He killed him, he murdered him, because he was so upset about the situation, and even with that, even with him justifying it and saying it would be worth spending however much time

I need to in jail to, how much, what did I just say? However much time

I need to spend in jail that it's worth killing this man, and yet what he found himself with was years later, still in jail, now away from his family, he was still bitter toward the man he murdered.

The man was already gone. The vengeance had already taken place. He had already avenged the beating that that man had done, and yet he was still killing himself with the bitter that was within himself.

The murder did not do anything. What does that tell you? It's a great example for a couple of things. Number one, when

God said, vengeance is mine, He didn't say that for no reason. Vengeance is mine because we can't perform a perfect vengeance, and even if we do, even if we murdered the person that beat up our kid, it's not a perfect vengeance, and it's not going to right any of it.

It's not going to right any of the wrongs, because only God can right wrongs perfectly, and so when

God says, vengeance is mine, you step back and you let me deal with it. You have to obey that.

You have to understand He did not tell us that for no reason, because you're going to still have your own problems, even when you put someone else in the ground for wronging you to the fullest extent.

So that's the first thing we can learn. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, but the second thing we can learn is that bitterness is so strong that it transcends any other action we could possibly do in place of forgiveness.

Does that make sense? Think of anything you possibly can, insert that into the equation in place of forgiveness, and the bitterness will still flow.

The bitterness will still be there, and it will still hurt you years later. So at this point, the evangelist had to tell him, you have to confess your bitterness to God.

The bitterness is your sin. His sin was his sin. Your sin is the bitterness.

You cannot blame him for your sin. Your sin is the bitterness, and it's killing you slowly, and that's why you're coming to me for help years later, even when your actions didn't actually cover the things you wanted it to cover.

So the prisoner did that, confessed his bitterness, it saved his life, and, you know, so it goes on from there.

But forgiveness is not replaceable, and the antithesis of forgiveness is bitterness, and so without one, you're gonna get the other, and so don't be bitter.

Forgive, and understand that even when it doesn't make any sense, and you think it just does not feel good,

I want to beat this guy for doing such a bad thing, and for hurting me and my family to such a degree, you could do it, but it's not gonna change a thing, and it's gonna make you feel just as worse, or just as bad, and it'll actually be worse, because then you'll be in jail away from your family, and you won't even get to, and you'll miss out on all that life has to give outside of the evil act that took place.

Vengeance is mine, and he tells us that for a reason. We could talk about that concept for a long time.

It's very hard for us to understand, but we have to understand that when God, one thing we do have to understand is when

God tells us stuff, it's not arbitrary, and that though we may not yield the good feelings and the fruit, if you want to call it that, and the understanding, we may not yield the understanding immediately, even in our obedience, weeks, maybe months, maybe years, maybe even decades later, we'll look back and we'll say, okay, that is why he told me to obey that.

That is why I needed to forgive that person as bad as it felt, as much as I did not want to do it.

I forgave him. I asked the Lord to give me a heart of forgiveness. I asked him to cleanse me of my bitterness.

I confessed my bitterness to him, and that person remained a jerk for two more decades, but you know what?

Now they're a converted brother or a converted sister, and it was because of my action 20 years prior that they saw

I was different, and that I became a witness to them. That's a hypothetical, but that's a very real possibility of how all of this can work.

So just remember, even when it doesn't feel great, you don't have all the information yet, and you don't know how the

Lord is working, so just be obedient. You can definitely do that. You can't understand why you're in the situation you're in, but you can be obedient, and forgiving is one of those imperatives that we need to obey.

Verse 20 says, Yay, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord. Refresh my bowels in the

Lord. One of my favorite new phrases. Got to love the KJV. Refresh my bowels in the

Lord. It is the appropriate translation, by the way, but we already discussed that. One of the greatest desires of the believer should be to be a tremendous, refreshing blessing to others, especially fellow believers.

I believe it should be the case for everybody, but especially your brothers and sisters in Christ. You need to be refreshing to them and a blessing to them all the time, and that is what happens when one forgives.

That's what Paul is saying will happen to him when Philemon forgives. If you forgive, Philemon, if you do this, if you forgive

Onesimus, yay, brother, let me have some joy in thee and refresh my bowels in the Lord.

You will be refreshing to me, Paul the Apostle, if you will go through with this act of forgiving

Onesimus. Paul is telling Philemon here that his forgiveness will bless

Paul in the Lord, or to put it another way, Philemon would be refreshing Paul, kind of in a spiritual sense, so as to receive joy so that Paul would receive joy in Philemon in the

Lord. Paul will actually be able to be joyful in Philemon as a person, as a character, as a man, as a brother.

He will have joy in him, kind of like a father having joy with a child. I will have joy in you in the

Lord when you do this thing, so do it, Philemon, do it so that I can have joy in you and that you will be refreshing to me.

Now, I want to take a look at one other context where Paul was brought joy so that we have an even better idea of just how significant

Philemon's forgiveness was to Paul. In Philippians, if y 'all want to turn there, we'll just read a couple of verses, but I do think this is an interesting parallel.

In Philippians chapter 2, let's see here, the first five verses say,

So, the context here,

Paul is talking about unity. Fulfill ye my joy, so there's the parallel I'm looking at there.

So, Paul is saying, do this thing so that I can have joy in you, Philippians, those in Philippi, the church of Philippi.

Do these things so that I have joy in you. Remember, Paul is telling Philemon, do this thing so I can have joy in you.

So, what are the things that make Paul joyful? In the context of Philemon, it's when a Christian forgives another brother.

In the context of Philippians, it's unity, having fellowship of the Spirit. Fulfill ye my joy that ye be like -minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.

So, unity in a church body is also something that brought Paul great joy.

Now, we can understand the significance there, being one that went and planted churches, that helped start a lot of these churches, and that was one of the great spiritual guides to the earliest years of these churches.

So, it makes sense that them having unity would bring Paul great joy. And yet, at the same time, what brought

Paul just as much joy is when a brother forgave another brother. It's the same wording, it's the same language that he is using here in verse 20 back in Philemon.

Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord. Refresh my bowels in the

Lord. So, back in verse 7, if you guys remember this in Philemon, we're back in Philemon now.

In verse 7, Paul said this, For ye have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed in the brother.

So, in verse 7, Paul reminded Philemon that he was refreshing to the brethren. But now, in verse 20,

Paul is saying, it's my turn to be refreshed. It's my turn for you to refresh my bowels. You've already refreshed the bowels of the brethren, the seat of our deepest emotions, but now you're going to refresh mine.

It's my turn. And this will happen if Philemon forgives.

It will happen by Philemon's act of forgiveness. Verse 21 says,

Having confidence in thy obedience. In every word here, so meticulous, pay attention to each word.

Having confidence in thy obedience, I wrote unto thee, knowing that thou wilt also do more than I say.

So, here we have yet another added dimension. Since Paul didn't command Philemon to do the right thing, remember in verse 8, he says,

Wherefore, though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient. That is Paul saying,

I could hold you up against my apostolic authority. I could say, I am the

Apostle, you will listen to me now. I could have done that. But then he goes on to say,

Yet for love's sake, I am telling you these things. So, we can learn a lot from that right there.

But Paul didn't command Philemon to do the right thing. He didn't come down on him like he would do with some of the churches that he had to rebuke.

For Philemon, he said, No, I'm not going to command you to do this. He's talking specifically about his confidence that Philemon will obey

God. He didn't have to come at it with this harsh command because he is saying,

I have confidence in your obedience to God our Father. Obedience to God will be a prime motivation of a

Christian forgiver. Remember, we're talking about the motivations. What are some of the things that would motivate us to forgive someone that did us wrong?

And one of the the main motivating factors we have is simply obedience to God. He told us to forgive.

Therefore, we should be motivated to forgive for that reason. Even though, at times, the believer may need to be reminded of that.

And that's why Paul's writing the letter. Philemon knew that to forgive someone would be obeying

God. He knew that. And yet, our flesh can get in the way, and it can make us forget from time to time the things that we need to do.

So Paul is giving him a little reminder. Look, I have confidence in your obedience to God, but don't forget about it.

Don't forget about your obedience to God. But notice also that Paul said,

That will also do more than I say. What's that about? Well, the more here, it's not exactly spelled out for us.

Paul doesn't tell us exactly what he means by that. But we could infer a couple of different things as to what

Paul is talking about. Number one, it could be a similar thing to the parable of the prodigal son.

In other words, just as the father in that parable eagerly ran to his son with forgiveness already in his heart, and then threw an elaborate celebratory feast on his behalf, so too might

Philemon welcome Onesimus back. Maybe it was something like that. Maybe the more that Philemon would do is not just receiving him, but receiving him in that kind of manner.

Celebrating it, going all out, eagerly running to accept Onesimus. Maybe that's what he's talking about.

Maybe that's what Paul is talking about. But a second option could be a reference to Philemon, and this is the most likely thing.

Philemon not simply reconstituting Onesimus to his normal service.

What was his normal service? Being a slave. That is what he was when he left.

It technically was when he came back. But perhaps Paul here is throwing yet one more nod at Philemon, saying, look, he's different.

So I know you're obedient, and I know that thou will do more than I say.

You will do more than just forgive him. Perhaps you won't just forgive him and then reconstitute him to his normal service as a slave, but rather to service in the ministry with Philemon.

Now, we're going to look at this in a little bit, but there's some possible external evidence throughout church history that we'll look at in a little bit that may be a result of this action right here on Philemon's part.

In other words, doing more. Not just forgiving him, not just welcoming back, but welcoming back and actually putting him to work in a greater sense in a ministerial capacity.

Not simply welcoming back, welcoming him into the ministry, and that of course would be a massive step after forgiving

Onesimus of his original betrayal. We'll look at something interesting as we round out the whole study as to what

Onesimus' life after all this took place. Verse 22 says, But withal, prepare me also a lodging.

Think about what Paul is saying here for a second. It's quite funny. But withal, prepare me also a lodging, for I trust that through your prayers

I will be given unto you. Paul's saying, I'm coming back. I'm going to come see you.

Now, it's a very funny verse in a lot of ways because after spending the majority of this letter commending

Philemon, reminding him of his own character and his own capacity to forgive, reminding him of his service to other brothers and sisters, and laying out all of the reasons why

Onesimus should be forgiven. Namely, the fact that Onesimus has now been converted and he is now a brother in the

Lord. That's why he should be forgiven. Paul is now giving Philemon a little note that before long,

Paul himself is going to be there at his house. Now remember, what's one of the little mini sub themes that we're talking about here as we ran out the letter?

Accountability. And this is one of Paul's ways of saying, I'm going to hold you accountable. Prepare me a lodging and pray that I come soon.

Think about what Philemon was thinking about reading this here. Think about the thoughts that would have been going through your head if you were in Philemon's shoes for a second.

Most likely, even if you were already convicted at this point, even if Philemon was already convicted at this point to forgive, he now knew that he couldn't just sit around and mull it over for a little while either.

There's no time to waste. He may be feeling convicted. He may think, okay, I'm going to forgive, but I'm going to go have some quiet time and just really think this over and whatever.

There's no time for any of that at this point because he was about to be held accountable by Paul himself in person doing all these things.

But here's the real kicker in the part that makes the verse kind of funny. As if Paul's impending visit wasn't enough,

Paul wants Philemon to be active. He wants Philemon, the one that he's kind of given this little warning to, to be the one actively praying for this to happen sooner rather than later.

So he's saying, I'm going to come hold you accountable and I want you to pray that that happens quick. I want you to be the one praying that I get out of my bonds and that I get to come to you again.

And in this, Paul gives us an excellent lesson on the power of prayer and its role in God's sovereignty.

In fact, I want to read something really quick. You don't have to go there, but if you want to, it's in James 5.

Because prayer is a really interesting thing. One of my favorite sermons of dad ever, and one of Ashton's favorite as well, was dad's sermon on the

Romans 8 prayer. And that is a great, helpful concept for understanding the role that prayer plays in our lives, in our

Christian walk, and our relationship to God. We know that prayer is important, while at the same time understand that God is totally, exhaustively sovereign.

So what's up with that? Our prayer is actually going to change the unchanging

God and his unchanging plan for the universe. Well, it's a big question, obviously.

He commands us to pray. We know that. But he also tells us in a number of places how exactly the prayer works.

And this is one of them, with regard to the importance of it. In James 5 .15, it says, "...and

the prayer of faith shall save the..." This is hilarious, Dave. I promise I had this in my lesson prior to our recent breakfast.

This came up in a recent discussion. "...and the prayer of the faith shall save the sick, and the

Lord shall raise him up. And if he have committed sins, they shall be given him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain.

And it rained not on earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit."

So God, it goes back to the same concept I started with earlier. God ordains the ends.

That's the sovereignty of God that we typically look at and study. But he also is sovereign over the means to the end.

And so our prayers is one of those means. And in this little verse, by Paul saying,

I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you, Paul knew that God had the time and the day picked out when

Paul would be released from his bonds and be able to return to ministering to his churches. And yet he says of Philemon, I want you praying that this happens soon.

So there was no problem with Paul who understood the sovereignty of God better than we ever could.

He laid it out for us in pretty simple terms so that we could understand it, but he understood it like nobody's business.

And at the same time, he had no issue with telling his brothers, pray for me that this may happen soon.

So we have a great lesson on prayer just in that one verse right there. The lesson here is that God works with and through his people.

That's the means to an end that I'm talking about. He works with and through his people. Paul is reminding

Philemon of that in verse 22. And if you want to go read the Romans 8 prayer that I'm referring to that dad has preached on, it's

Romans 8 26 through 28, and you'll get a great idea of the dynamic between our prayers to the

Father and the Holy Spirit's role in between the two. Paul wants

Philemon to be obedient to God and to pray for Paul's physical arrival in which Philemon will be held accountable.

Paul even implies with the way he exhorts him here that Philemon's prayers are the needed component for Paul's very freedom from prison.

That's what I'm getting at here. Paul understands that even in the sovereignty of God, he works with and through his people.

So he's telling Philemon, start praying because that may be the very thing that gets me out of here sooner so that I can come to you.

It's really neat. Verse, well let me think here. I need to make a call at this point. We have two minutes left.

Do you guys have any thoughts that y 'all would like to share? I think I'll end it there and we'll finish the book next week.

Y 'all have anything y 'all like to share in our final minutes here? Well, it is and we're going to talk about that a little bit in our conclusion to the book because, yeah,

I mean it starts with Paul's personal approach to handling these kinds of situations with brothers and sisters.

It's really interesting the way he handles it, the way he chose. If there was anybody that could have just brought the hammer down, it was

Paul. We know that there are a lot of Christians that are eager to bring the hammer down at every little thing, whether they be a pastor or not, whether they be just a layman that loves feeling holier -than -thou and is eager to find opportunities to bring the hammer down.

Paul actually had the prerogative to do that, and he told us that he had the prerogative to do that earlier in the letter, and yet he chose not to.

So, yes, Dave, it's a great it's a great example of quote -unquote selling. You know, well, it's a great literal selling, but also figuratively speaking as well.

He got me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's finally thinking, you got me. There's no going back now.

I'm gonna do this, and Paul's gonna be here to make sure I do pretty soon, but it's pretty amazing stuff from that context for sure, and we'll kind of talk about that idea a little bit next week as we finish up finish everything up here.

All righty. Positive way to think about how people think, what's going to be effective, and not even if it works, but Paul has the level of ability to think through all of that, recognizing that his own debt to Christ, and it not be like,

I'm trying, I'm trying to get what I want, but I don't know what's best for you, so I'm gonna do, I'm gonna think through what's gonna work, and say things that way, and I think you can, you can think to yourself, well like, you know, one thing that I've been studying, or listening to sermons about is just communication between husband and wife, and knowing an effective way to communicate something to your husband, and, you know, there's little disclaimers thrown in there about, not, like, it can be manipulative, you can be inviting, saying things to try to get what you want, but if you love someone, you want to communicate things well, and just like, the difference there is being vividly in Paul, even though he isn't being assertive, it's a good self -letter, but he's humble and genuine, all the things he does.

Right, yeah, to summarize Ashton's point there, is that Paul had the humility to understand, it takes wisdom to think through how to handle these situations, it's not just a, a cookie cutter, righteous indignation, regardless of what the situation is, and would be a really interesting study,

Ash, what I was, what I was thinking through as you were saying all that, is it would be a really interesting study to go look at the ways the apostles were fulfilling the wisdom literature of Solomon, that, because Solomon is the one that lays out in Proverbs, and in Ecclesiastes, how to handle situations like this, and here you have the apostles doing it, and so that would be really cool to look into that, and, and just look at, you know, go through the

Proverbs, and then you see Solomon saying, here's how you handle conflict resolution, or whatever it may be, and then you go over, and you see

Paul doing what they're doing, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, what Solomon said to do, through the wisdom, the supernatural wisdom, that God gave him, and so Paul is showing us a master class of wisdom here, he's saying, he's telling us, and again, we'll cover this next week in our conclusion, but he's telling us handle this humbly, with meetness, with love, and the

Holy Spirit will direct exactly how you should approach it, and how you can adapt to the situation you're dealing with.

So that's pretty fascinating. It's interesting that both can be effective.

Slimey Salesman obviously get their sales or they wouldn't be doing it, but what are the lasting impact?

What's the lasting impact? What are the lasting, what are the eternal ramifications of the approach that you choose to take?

And one is a witness, the testimony of Christ's grace and His forgiveness, and the other is a master class of the depravity of man.

Yes, ma 'am. Well, that goes back to the parallel that we were looking at Philippians.

That was one of his greatest desires, was the unity of the brethren, to be like -minded, to be of like -mind, and loving spirit, and all of those types of things.

And so I agree. I think the approach he's taken with Philemon is just an offshoot or an extension of that main idea, main desire that he has, the unity, the like -mindedness, because in approaching things this way, that will happen.

Yes, sir? I think, if anything, it would stop me from saying what

I had to believe, currently considering that verse, because I really think it's hugely important in life.

But what happens if you have a person, I mean, I was going to ask anyway, if you have a person that you have used that verse,

I don't know. What I'm going to say is, if you don't have any heart, don't do something to the person.

But if you don't trust the person, and who knows if you'll be forgiven or not.

I mean, I've got, you know, one or two people that I'm not sure

I've forgiven, but I'm not trying to hurt them. If I turn them over to the Lord, I say, Lord, you saw what they did.

You know their heart. You know what to take care of. You know what to do with their heart, or whatever.

But I don't want to be around them. I don't want to do anything with them, ever again, until we have that mercy.

Anybody have that? Or did I just forgive everybody? No, I would say,

I would say... No, I've definitely had that happen. And I think the reason

I kept having, like, those conversations, there's just something there.

Well, God gave me the opportunity to, in love, after a long time of not seeing or talking to this person, and me thinking, like, studying about, like, thinking, ugh, if I had said that at this time, that,

I mean, that was the truth that I just wasn't equipped with at the time. And he worked on me for a long time with a way to get out the door, and I confronted it much better the second time around, with intel, and it was not received.

And then he said, that maybe... Maybe you're better about that now. And he, he read it from me, he helped me, and he was like, what does it say out there?

For a long time, if ever. And I said, I have peace with that.

And I truly do. And it, so for me, for a long time, it was like,

I would kind of, I would, be okay with it in one sense, but in another, except,

I kept getting a little fired up, but I felt like it's because, not because I wanted to go out and do something to this person, but I didn't do enough for this person.

Because that wasn't where I should have been spiritually, but this all blew up, you know? And so I think sometimes there's something more, and in love that you should do for the person, what it's called, let her, the first time hasn't been so perfect.

Maybe for like, you know, well, this is inspiring.

So it wasn't perfect, but, sometimes we need to do more. I do agree that that is a fantastic real life example of, you know, the

Lord being gracious and opening up a door to get that peace later, when it wasn't perhaps approached perfectly the first time.

But let me end with this, going back to what dad brought up, going back to that story, because I don't think there's a single person that would look at the dad, what he did and not say, go get him, tiger, you know, not, not say go avenge your son and have the desire for him to do that as well.

The point that I was trying to make up here is not that, you know, we, we shouldn't, we shouldn't, we need to just be better.

We need to be above any violence. We need to be above any of that. Look, here's what happened. The guy took things into his own hands.

And by the way, they're a very important thing to remember is capital punishment. One of the ways in which

God vengeance is God's is by giving humanity the blessing of capital punishment.

So imagine if the guy had restrained himself, the guy that beat up his son may have still gone to the chair.

He would have still earned what he should have gotten, what was coming to him. But it was through God's means, which was through the government via capital punishment.

And then this man's hands are clean from the blood of murder and not now in prison away from his family after all that.

So that's one dynamic that everyone should keep in mind. But secondly, dad, it's interesting because the man in the story was not going to the evangelist because he felt guilty about the murder.

He, he, it was the bitterness was eating him alive. And he was saying,

I am still bitter toward this man, even though I put him in the grave myself. And so I, yeah,

I want to kill him over and over and over again, but I could only do it once. What do I do about it? Because this is killing me.

So, so the point in telling the story, listen, I am not,

I am not wise enough or strong enough as a person yet to be able to address the actions of the dad, especially as a dad, to address those actions and to delineate all of the various dynamics going on there.

And to be like, what on earth would you do in that situation? I don't even really want to touch that part of it. The part that I want to hammer home for everyone here, including myself, is the bitterness, which is the opposite of forgiveness.

You can't have both at the same time. It's one or the other. And that bitterness can change you as a person.

And we talked about this several months ago. Bitterness can actually change the physical appearance of a person. It can change the, it's a spiritual thing, but it can change the physical appearance of the physical feelings of a person.

And that's an example of the power of it because the actions of the dad did not replace the bitterness.

Only forgiveness can replace bitterness. Now I know it's hard. I don't disagree with you, dad. Everyone in here raised their hand.

Yes, everyone has had situations where they struggle greatly to forgive someone for the wrong that they did.

So it's not, certainly not like I'm up here saying, you need to look at me as the example. I'm just saying

God tells us this and he tells it for a reason. The reason is we will be eaten alive by the bitterness, and he gives us the antidote.

It's he mercifully gave us the fix for ridding ourselves of the bitterness.

And then a point that dad made that was fantastic is leave the person to God.

So do what you need to do for yourself. And dad, that may require some forgiveness. If there's bitterness there, then forgiveness is the cure to the bitterness.

But that person is still left to God. So the point here is leave the person to God.

He will deal with them. He will punish accordingly, discipline accordingly, convict accordingly, bring them through trials and tribulations until they humble themselves.

He will do all of that to the person. So divorce yourself from it. But don't let bitterness be present during that time.

And don't let bitterness keep you from doing what he does have something to do with.

So let me add to that. Like I said, turning over the

God part, I did it. My conscience is clear that I did it. And then when you said divorce yourself from it,

I think I've done that too. I just don't want to be around the person, and I'm not going to be around the person.

Yeah. Well, so the last step is, and this is something that every person needs to examine in their hearts, is the final step is to ask yourself, do

I have those hypothetical arguments in the shower? Do I still dwell on that person even though I've divorced them from it?

And if so, that is a telltale sign of bitterness. Bitterness is a sin. We're going to look at some passages on that next week.

Well, there you go. If you don't have bitterness toward the person, Dad, well, here's the thing.

If you don't have the bitterness, and that means you did forgive, in your mind you said, that's history,

I love the person, I hope I see him in heaven, but I'm not going to be around him until then. If there's no bitterness there, then forgiveness in some form or fashion probably took place.

But, if bitterness is there, if it is present in any way, you do need to take care of that. Because it will hurt you.

And God doesn't want us to be hurting. He wants us to be joyful. You can't have joy and be bitter.

You can't have unforgiveness and rejoice in the Lord. Sorry, go ahead. Bitterness may be

God's. It may be, like, part of hell. I mean, we're discussing it right now, but obviously there are, like, you know, different situations.

What was I going to say? That's okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, but, like, there may be an instance where, if you don't have peace about divorcing yourself from it, maybe it's that God didn't allow you to do that.

Oh, yeah. So, if... Then I'm divorced from it, and God's saying, I'm not going to let you do it that way.

Yeah, if you have peace about divorcing yourself from it, that's a good sign that that's what the

Lord wanted. But if not... Careful.

Good catch. Good catch. Yeah. Let's end with Mimi here.

We cannot, in our own human capacity, have that kind of forgiveness. It only comes by speaking to the

Lord. It is a supernatural forgiveness. The difference between both of those is that we're commanded to do one of them.

But it's a supernatural forgiveness, to your point, Mimi. So, I agree. I've been there where I can only forgive somebody because...

Through His grace. ...He gave that to me. Right. Well... Well, we got one more week worth of thinking through it.

And we'll finish it up next week and round it out with some final thoughts. But this has been a wonderful discussion.

I'll pray, and then Brother Paul's got to book it up here to get us started. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day, for bringing us together, for the fellowship we've had, and for the opportunity to go through your word, word for word, verse by verse, and to glean all of the amazing truths that you have given us there, like unearthing treasure that is life -changing and that will have lasting impact on us even in the next life.

And so we're thankful for these realities and for your blessings and grace there. We ask all these things in your name.