Marks of Christian Love

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October 13/2024 | Philemon | Expository Sermon by Shayne Poirier

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca
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As we prepare to go into Philemon, I want to open with a couple of accounts from the history of the church.
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And I want to begin with the early church father, Tertullian. Tertullian once quoted a pagan observer of the
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Christian community in the 2nd century city of Carthage in North Africa.
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And this pagan writer, as he quotes him, as he watched the way Christians interacted with each other,
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Tertullian writes on his behalf, see how they love one another and how they are ready to die for each other.
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In a city and in a culture that Tertullian described as being full of hate, where the people of that city were more likely to kill each other than to love each other, the
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Christians in that city knew what it meant to live as Christ's disciples through their love for one another.
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Similarly, in the 4th century, fast forward a couple hundred years, we find another pagan, this time it was the
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Roman emperor Julian, who complained that the Roman gods were not getting their rightful honor because of the contagious love of Christians.
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In a manner that overshadowed the glory of the Roman pantheon, these Christians loved each other with such a fervent affection that it overflowed into the streets of Rome.
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With an attitude of disgust, you can hear it in Julian's voice as he says it, he says, atheism, speaking about Christians, atheism has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers and through their care for the burial of the dead.
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Listen to these inflammatory words, he says, it is a scandal that there is not a single
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Jew who is a beggar and that the godless Galileans, i .e.
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Christians, care not only for their own poor, but then for ours as well.
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And then in another period in the history of the church, one might recall the early Christian Lawrence in his interactions with the emperor
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Valerian in AD 258. The emperor Valerian called Lawrence before him and demanded that he hand over all of the treasures that belonged to the church.
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Lawrence had three days to comply and if he did not comply, Valerian was going to put him to death.
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So in haste, Lawrence took those three days to take all of the possessions of value that the church owned.
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He sold them all and gave them to the poor and then he entered on the third day into the presence of Valerian at his palace, followed by a train of the poor and the lame and the blind and the weak and he cried out defiantly to Valerian, these are the treasures of the church.
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Valerian was so incensed that he had Lawrence slow roasted to death atop an iron grill and I'm not sure if it's true or not, but tradition says that after a period of time on the grill,
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Lawrence said, I'm done on this side, turn me over. Now why? Why did
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Lawrence do this? Because for Lawrence, it was more important for him to love than to live.
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When one surveys 2 ,000 years of the history of the church, what we find again and again and again is a profound heritage of Christian love demonstrated by the church.
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In miraculous fashion, when God saves us, and many of you can relate to this,
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I trust, when God saves us, he not only delivers us from our sins, but he puts his love into our very hearts and at least at the beginning, this love burns with such intensity that love for God and then love for his people becomes very easy for us.
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I'm sure you can recount a time early in your Christian life where it came easy to you to love
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God and to be in the midst of his people. But there is, there's always a but, isn't there?
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But there is a common experience amongst Christians that many of us can relate to.
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Because of our remaining sin, because of our failure to keep a close watch over our own souls, because of our neglect in the ordinary means of grace, it is often the case that seasons of fervent
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Christian love in our lives are followed invariably by desolate and barren seasons of lovelessness and listlessness.
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Isn't it true in your own life that there are times when we are in the heavens, as it were, soaring in love and then at other times we can't even wake up our pinky finger?
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Christ warns us in Matthew 24 in verse 12 that at the end of days the love of many will grow cold and for some of us in this room we must confess that we know some experience of that.
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In Hebrews chapter 10 in verse 24 we're exhorted, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and to good works.
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And why is that? Because without this stirring up, our love grows stale and for many of us we must confess again that it has or consider,
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I think, perhaps the most poignant example of the
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Ephesian church in Revelation chapter 2. We can relate to the
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Ephesian church in Revelation 2, can't we? That they sought to uphold sound doctrine, they wanted to keep a purity in their belief and in their doctrine, but they lost the love that they had at first and Christ's warning to them was this, if you do not repent and do the works that you did at first, what did he say?
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But I will take your lampstand. I will remove your lampstand from you.
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It is not only possible, but it is always the case that we will lose the love that we have at first if we do not carefully cultivate it in our own lives.
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And the consequences of such a loss are devastating. Alexander Strauch, some of you know that name because of books that he's written on eldership and deaconship.
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Well, he's rightly pointed out that every church is faced with this ultimatum. He wrote a book with this title,
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We Must Either Love or Die. As a church, I'm talking to us, saints, as a church, we must love or we must become barren and fruitless.
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We must love or we must become hardened and stale. We must love or we must become a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.
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We must love or we must forfeit our lampstand and be relegated to the dustbin of dead churches who also have lost the love that they had at first.
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And so it begs the question then, how do we protect ourselves from such a tragic demise?
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This loss of love. We must be reminded time and time again of our standard for Christian love.
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We must be reminded of what biblical love looks like and then exhorted to grow and to increase and to emulate that love.
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And this afternoon, as we look at Philemon, this little book, we're going to see how it commends
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Christian love to us. Paul's letter to Philemon can teach us many things.
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You might find other sermon series on Philemon and the motto is something along the lines of Christian perspectives on slavery or biblical reconciliation or how
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Christians navigate conflict. But I would suggest as we look at this one book in one
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Sunday, is this, that perhaps the greatest contribution that Philemon gives us is that it shows us what true
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Christian love looks like within the church. At least horizontally.
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What it means to relate to each other as men and women in Christ. It paints a stunning picture of what everyday ordinary love between believers looks like in the ordinary affairs of life.
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The mundane, the difficult, the challenging, in the midst of conflict, in the midst of trial, on a
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Tuesday afternoon. Philemon shows us what love is all about in the life of the church.
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So if you haven't already, we're in Philemon. There's one chapter, 25 verses.
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I was going to read it for us, but I'd rather read it already. We will hit on some of the highlights. But what
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I want to do first of all is survey the book of Philemon. A 35 ,000 foot view of the book.
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In a moment we will look at how Philemon shows us at least five marks of Christian love, of true
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Christian love. But before we do that, we need to know what the book is about. And I would venture to guess that many
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Christians, maybe even many in this room, have no idea what Philemon is about. I remember the first time
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I heard a sermon on Philemon that the man said the word Philemon and I thought, who is that?
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I know Philemon, but who is Philemon? We're going to see what
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Philemon is about. This letter to Philemon was written, as we see in the opening verses by the
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Apostle Paul, around the time that he wrote the letter to the Colossians. Around maybe
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AD 62. Not far removed from his letter to the Ephesians, which we are now getting well versed in.
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And it's noteworthy that this is Paul's shortest letter. It's, in the original language in the
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Greek, is 355 words. It's also one of his most personal letters.
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People have looked at this and asked the question, why in the world is this tiny little book included in the canon?
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We're going to get to why that is as we move along. But what then is the occasion of this letter?
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Here we find the Apostle Paul in Rome. Likely under some form of house arrest.
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And to understand where this event took place in the chronology of Paul's life, it's important to note that we are now observing events that took place after the conclusion of Acts chapter 28.
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There's that church planning network, Acts 29. They're not Acts 29. This is Acts 29. And it appears that while Paul is in Rome, he's writing letters.
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He's writing letters to the Ephesians. He's writing letters to the Philippians. He's writing letters to the Colossians. You'll remember that he had been arrested in Jerusalem.
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That he had made it out of the conspiracy to murder him. He had made it through shipwrecks in the sea and now he finds himself in Rome.
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And it appears that while Paul was in Rome, a runaway slave named Onesimus or sometimes you hear people say
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Onesimus found him or was found by him in the city. And as God's providence would have it, this runaway slave actually belonged to a man named
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Philemon. And Philemon, interestingly enough, was converted through Paul's ministry likely somewhere in Colossae or some would say in Ephesus, but in Asia Minor.
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And from the details in this letter, we can discern that Paul developed a deep rooted relationship with this runaway slave
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Onesimus. It appears that while Onesimus was in Rome, he too then was converted under Paul's ministry.
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And these men became, we might call them fast friends. In verses 11 and then in verse 13, it seems to indicate that Onesimus was a tremendous helper to Paul.
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Remember, he is in prison during his imprisonment. And Paul became so close to Onesimus, we see this in verse 10, that he became like a son to this imprisoned apostle.
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We see that when he was about to send Onesimus away, he is sending his very heart with him.
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Paul understood that it was wrong to harbor Onesimus without Philemon's consent. And more than that, it was forbidden under Roman law.
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And so with this letter to Philemon, Paul is sending Onesimus.
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Interestingly enough, this letter was probably delivered by Tychicus, who also delivered the letter to the
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Colossians. And again, as the Lord's providence would have it, we're gonna hear all about Tychicus next week as we round out our study in Ephesians.
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And so with this letter and with Tychicus, Paul sends his beloved friend
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Onesimus back to the church in Colossae and back to his master, his owner by law,
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Philemon. But Paul makes this appeal and we've heard our brother read it. Not that Philemon would receive him back as a guilty slave, as a guilty, useless slave, but that he would receive him back as a brother in Christ and that he would free him with that status.
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And while there's much to discover in this letter, we're going to look, as I've said, at five characteristics of Christian love.
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I think hitting the main theme of the letter. The main theme of the letter is not
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Christian ethics of slavery. It is Christian love. And in that, we see how it interacts with slavery.
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And so let's jump in. I've talked enough about it. Let's get into it. The first mark of Christian love that I want us to see is this.
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Christian love gives thanks for the good seen in others.
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You'll see it in your bulletin in case you missed it. Christian love gives thanks for the good seen in others.
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And we see this in verses four through seven. And so let's look at those together. Paul says, I thank my
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God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the
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Lord Jesus and for all the saints. And I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.
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For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.
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In verses four through seven, Paul begins the body of this letter as he does with so many of his other epistles by recounting the good that he sees in his brothers and sisters and then by giving thanks to God for them.
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And as he often does, he gives thanks to God primarily for two signs of grace in Philemon's life.
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And these are captured together in a small chiasm in verse five. For our institute students who've been learning about these structures as we interpret scripture, there's actually a chiasm in verse five.
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And for those of you who aren't familiar, it's a literary device where the idea moves outward and then back inward.
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It's named after the Greek word ki, which looks like an English X. And so it moves out and then back in.
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And in this chiastic construction, we see that love corresponds with the saints, not faith in the saints, but love for the saints and then faith corresponding with Christ.
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And this is something that we see so much in Paul's letters. Paul is more than ready to recognize and then praise
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God when he finds other believers in Christ bearing fruit, or sorry, excuse me, believing on Christ and then bearing the fruit of a sincere love toward the brethren.
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Now some have accused Paul in their commentaries of flattery. After all,
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Paul is trying to make an important appeal. He is asking for something.
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And so some see this as Paul manipulating the will of Philemon, of buttering him up with complimentary words so that he can finally make his request.
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But I would suggest this goes only to show how far it is that we have fallen from the biblical idea that when someone publicly recognizes something good in another, immediately we suspect ill motives.
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To the contrary, Paul was familiar with the Old Testament Scriptures. He would have been familiar with Proverbs 26 -28 that teaches that a flattering mouth works ruin.
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In Romans 16 and then in 1 Thessalonians 2, he disavows flattery and he recognizes it as a form of deception.
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When it comes to Paul's words of Thanksgiving in verses 4 -7, what we see is what we get.
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And what we find here is that the Apostle is taking. He has taken a sober assessment of Philemon, of his character, of his person.
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And then, in response, he sincerely and genuinely identifies these good things and attributes the glory to God and not to man.
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This is what true Christian love in the church looks like. And yet, this seems like such a foreign idea to many of us today.
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In his book, Praying with Paul, it's a great book by D .A. Carson where he breaks down all of the
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Apostle Paul's prayers and shows us how we can be praying for each other. He says this,
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We say grace at meals, thanking God for our food. We give thanks when we receive material blessings, when the mortgage we applied for comes through.
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We say a prayer of thanksgiving after a near miss on the highway. We offer a prayer of sincere and fervent thanks when we recover from serious illness.
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But by and large, our thanksgiving seems to be tied rather tightly to our material well -being and comfort.
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And he says this, The unvarnished truth is that what we most frequently give thanks for betrays what we most highly value.
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Dear Christian brother, dear sister, what do you give thanks for the most?
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If you recount your prayer life, what are you thanking God for the most if you are thanking
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Him when you come before Him? And what does that say about what you most value?
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Perhaps it is the case today that we do not see good in our brothers and sisters and publicly share in this expression of thanksgiving because we do not value each other as we ought.
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Our love and our appreciation for one another has, to use biblical words, grown cold.
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We've lost some of the love that we had at first. Or perhaps we have been so conditioned by our culture to detest the good that we see in others.
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And you know this. This is that subtle feeling that sneaks in when you see someone doing something and they are better at it than you are.
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It's the age -old story of the man who invites another preacher to preach in his church and he wants him to preach a great sermon, just not a better sermon than he would preach.
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How many of us, instead of seeing our brothers and sisters in Christ excelling in their faith, pressing on in their love for Christ and for one another, how many of us look at them and instead of rejoicing in them and encouraging them, being a
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Barnabas to them, we harbor instead feelings of bitterness and jealousy? Well, here
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Paul gives us a sterling example to imitate. When we see good in others, dear
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Christians, recognize it for what it is. Acknowledge it.
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And then rather than responding with jealousy, go to that person and say, I see you doing this and I am so encouraged.
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And not only am I encouraged, I'm not here just to flatter you, but I don't give you the credit. All the glory and the praise and honor goes to God himself.
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And so let's thank God that you are gifted in this area. How many Christians go about their day discouraged, seeking to serve the
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Lord and know not whether they are useful or not to the Lord because no one is emulating the example of the
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Apostle Paul and coming to them publicly even and saying, I give thanks to God for you in this way.
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It is Thanksgiving today and many of us are going to leave immediately after the service. You have permission to do that and to give thanks with your families and to praise
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God for the many material blessings that you have. But no matter how fast you have to get out the door to go for dinner tonight, don't leave this room until you go to a brother or a sister and express to them how you are encouraged about some signs of God's grace in their life.
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Maybe perhaps, even as the Apostle Paul would do it, I see your faith and I praise
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God for it. I see the way you serve our church and your love for the saints.
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I thank you, but more than that, I thank God himself. Let's not leave it to one or two people in this room to be a
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Barnabas, to be a son of encouragement. But let us be week after week after week sons and daughters of encouragement so that not only do we look forward to coming for the fellowship of the saints, but we look forward to coming that we might receive some encouragement from the brethren.
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The second mark of Christian love that we find. Isn't that refreshing? That point was so short, wasn't it?
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Christian love deals gently with others. Christian love deals gently with others.
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In verse 8, Paul says accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake,
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I prefer to appeal to you. I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ, I appeal to you for my child
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Anesimus whose father I became in my imprisonment. In verse 8,
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Paul makes it clear he could have come with the big guns. He could have come with all of his apostolic authority and commanded
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Philemon. When Anesimus gets back to you, number one, you're to receive him as a brother in Christ.
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Number two, you are to release him. Number three, you are to pardon him from any legal obligations or any demands under the law.
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But is that what Paul does? Does he come with the big guns? He does not come to coerce
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Philemon, but instead he comes with gentleness. We see the word appear multiple times in those three verses.
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He comes to appeal. He said, yet for love's sake, in verse 9, I prefer to appeal to you.
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In verse 10, I appeal to you for my child Anesimus.
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And Paul appeals. We have to see that Paul is strengthening his appeal there.
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If we deny that, I think we're not seeing everything that Paul is doing. Paul is appealing, but he is adding to his appeal.
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And he appeals as an old man. Some scholars would say that he was about 60 years old at this point.
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But more than that, he appeals as an old man who is a prisoner, one who has endured great difficulty for the sake of the gospel.
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You can almost picture Paul in his imprisonment. He's much older now.
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He's endured years of persecution, affliction, and shipwrecks. He lives with the constant anxieties of all the churches.
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I can think of a few people in this room who can relate to that. These things have weighed heavy on him.
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And he comes not as Paul the Apostle, but he comes as each of us would come to one another, making an appeal as a
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Christian, one Christian to another Christian. John Calvin says of this portrait of Paul, he says, in behalf of a man of the lowest condition.
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Remember, Anesimus is a slave. Paul is getting off his apostolic footstool, not to make an appeal on behalf of a church or an elder or another apostle, but on behalf of a slave.
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He says, on behalf of a man of the lowest condition, Paul demeans himself so modestly and humbly that nowhere else is the meekness of his temper painted in a more lively manner.
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Here we have humility in technicolor, is what Calvin is saying.
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And see the gentiles, or sorry, the gentleness with which Paul approaches
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Philemon. One commentator says, this letter gives us a beautiful picture of the mutual respect that characterizes, love and respect that characterizes the body of Christ at work.
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Paul puts himself in the role of a Christian appealing to a fellow Christian. He wants
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Philemon to act out of love, not because he demands it. The decision to send him back to Philemon and to allow
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Philemon to make the final decision about his fate is a hard one. But the mutual love and respect between them is to govern the relations among believers.
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It requires it. If the apostle Paul was willing to come off his apostolic footstool, if I can call it that, how much more should we approach one another in humility and with gentleness and with meekness and with respect?
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How much more, and I'll just say it as it is, how much more should we, when we really want something, when we want it, we think it's the
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Lord's way, but we definitely know we want it our way, how much more should we approach our brothers and sisters and say, in meekness and humility, brother,
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I really desired this. I make my appeal to you.
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Would you consider it? I'm a young man. I'm an old man. I am what
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I am. But would you hear me? But more often than not, those in the church act like the believers that James speaks about in James 4 in verse 1.
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And he says what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?
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You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.
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And then he goes into a little lesson on prayer. He says, you do not have, because you do not ask.
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But we should go to the Lord. And then going to the Lord, if we still need to ask man, then we ask.
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If I can stretch that a bit. Winston Churchill, he had, in the words of C .J.
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Mahaney, who wrote a fantastic book on humility, he said he had a way of taking down his political opponents with these clever little sayings.
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Winston Churchill once described one of his political opponents as this, a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.
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How would you like being described in those words? Well, I'm going to describe you in those words.
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We love those clever, pithy, little political takedowns. But let's assess ourselves honestly for a moment.
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We too have so much to be modest about. We have so much to be humble and gentle about.
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For consider your calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of us were wise.
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According to worldly standards. Not many of us were powerful. Not many of us were of noble birth.
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But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. We are not apostles.
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God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. And what do we have that we have not received?
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So then, if I can say it this way, for those who this is true of, as humble
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Calvinists, as those who say, I can't even accept my own salvation as my own.
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I cannot come before God and say, well, at least, at the very least, I chose you.
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We can't even do that. And so what do we do? Well, we come to God, most certainly.
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But then we come to each other in gentleness and humility. And we become wise then in the exercise of Christian meekness,
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Christian gentleness, when we encounter someone who is difficult or someone who is not.
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And we say in our minds a gentle answer. A gentle answer turns aside wrath.
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A gracious word is like a honeycomb. It's sweetness to the soul and health to the body.
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Or in Proverbs 25, with patience a ruler may be persuaded and a soft tongue will break a bone.
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Or even as we enter into a matter of church discipline, like in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 1, brothers, if any is caught in a transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.
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Let us be students of gentleness, of Christian gentleness.
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And let us express our love through that gentleness. Third mark of Christian love that we find.
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Christian love forms deep bonds with others. Deep bonds.
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In verse 11, maybe just to borrow from verse 10, because that's important. Paul says,
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I appeal to you for my child, Anesimus. Now, there's a good reason that Paul might be saying child there.
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It might be because Anesimus came to faith through him. I'm not saying that's not the case. But it's the same language that he uses of Timothy.
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There's a closeness in the relationship there. I appeal to you for my child,
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Anesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. Formerly, he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.
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Verse 12, I'm sending him back to you, sending my very heart.
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I would have been glad to keep him with me in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel.
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Verse 11, when Paul speaks about Anesimus being useful to him, this is not to objectify
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Anesimus. I can picture some person, maybe an atheistic or an antagonistic person, reading this verse and going, useless?
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He was useless? Well, what this is, is a play on Anesimus' name. Anesimus means useful.
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It was actually a name that was given to a myriad of slaves in the Roman Empire. Why? Because they were there to be useful.
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And Paul says here that he was useful also to him. He speaks about how he is his child.
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If we hop back just for a second to verse 6, in fact, as Paul is speaking about Philemon, he too brings
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Philemon into this idea when he says, I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing.
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That sharing comes from that Greek word koinonia. And you've heard me talk before about koinonia fellowship, that we should not seek a shallow fellowship but a koinonia fellowship.
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So we see koinonia fellowship in Philemon. We see this usefulness in Anesimus.
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But then in verse 12, we really get to the heart of it. He says,
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I'm sending him back to you, sending my very heart. You're Christian.
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How bound up is your heart with the people of God?
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So that to send one of your people away as we just did our dear sister to Moncton, a little piece of your heart goes with them.
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And you might say that I am a partial resident of New Brunswick. That I have given,
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I'm not sought to protect myself, but I have given of my very self to God's people.
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Not to every person who names the name of Christ in every corner of the world, but at least to the local church that the
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Lord has put me into. This might be one of the most compelling arguments for church membership.
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There is. That we should be bound up one with another, not just on Sundays.
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We don't go to church. This is our church. This church is me.
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And I am this church. And so are you. I once heard a story about a new pastor who just before the beginning of his ministry received some advice from another seasoned pastor.
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You probably heard stories like this. And as these two men were interacting, the veteran pastor leaned in and said
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I want to give you, actually I believe it was the young pastor that said what's one piece of advice that you would give me?
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And the senior pastor, this veteran leaned in to offer the most potent kernel of truth that he had, this diamond that had been pressed in after decades of serving in the local church.
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And this veteran pastor said this to that young man. He said whatever you do, do not get too close to your people.
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If you do, they will break your heart. Don't get too emotionally invested in your people.
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If you don't get too invested, they can never hurt you. After years and years of ministering in the midst of God's people, that was the diamond that he had to offer this young minister.
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And let me ask you, is this the heart that the Lord would have for us in relation to one another?
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Now I do not have decades of experience as a pastor. I have nearly two decades of experience as a
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Christian. But I have an even better authority. I come with the apostolic witness of the one who speaks on behalf of God himself.
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Here we have words of wisdom from the man who wrote almost a quarter of our New Testament.
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And the words of the apostle Paul in verse 12. This is the example he gives us.
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You want sound wisdom as a Christian from an apostle?
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You want one kernel of truth for how you are to relate to your fellow man and woman in Christ?
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He would agree with that veteran pastor on at least two out of three points. You're right.
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Don't even give them a piece of your heart. Don't give them half of your heart.
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Give them all of your heart. That when you come back and be with Christ's people it is as if you are complete again.
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That your heart and your mind and your prayers and your affections are bound up in the very life of the church.
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He says I'm sending him back to you sending my very heart.
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So get not only to know one another but pursue a level of fellowship with one another that as you've heard me say before this world will look at and they will never ever ever be able to understand.
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Pray for each other. Bear up one another's burdens so that when that medical test comes back you are rejoicing as much as the person who gets the positive result back.
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Or you are as grieved as they are when it comes back and it's all bad.
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Take time and make the effort to know deeply the affairs of one another's lives.
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Love one another from a pure heart. Kindle brotherly and sisterly affections.
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Seek unity with such earnestness and fervor that our Lord's prayer for unity would be fully realized.
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That we would receive from that prayer more abundantly than we could ask or think.
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Invest your lives so deeply in the welfare of one another that when one of us moves away because of work or family or some other circumstance when that someone departs we must write a letter to that church and say to them as they receive them we are sending with you our very hearts.
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Peter says above all keep loving one another.
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There's not a period. Keep loving one another earnestly.
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For those of us who know this kind of love who knows what it means to give your hearts to God's people you will agree with this quote from the
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Puritan Thomas Brooks. He says, A greater hell I would not wish on any man than to live and to not love the beloved of God.
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It is perhaps the closest taste of heaven that we will know on this side of eternity to be with God's people worshiping
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Him hearts bound up with one another. And what a wasted opportunity it is that many have squandered away and buried this blessing to know and to be known by the people of God.
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Would that we would tear down the walls that we build around our hearts and let our brethren in and let them come into our lives.
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If you want to live a miserable existence in the church by all means refuse to forge strong heartfelt connections with fellow
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Christians. But from my vantage point that always seems to be and that always seems to be the case when
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I find someone who could give or take the church. But if you want to know and experience the church the life of the church as it was intended to be from before the foundation of the world then throw yourself throw yourself into the fellowship of the saints.
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Give them more and more and more of your heart and the experience that I have known and I didn't it's a shame
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I didn't experience this fully until I became an elder of a church but the more of your heart that you give you can watch as the
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Lord gives you more heart to give. The fourth mark of Christian love that we find is this
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Christian love willingly forgives the sins of others.
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Willingly is an important word and then forgives the sins of others.
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In verse 14 But I prefer to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord.
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For this is perhaps why he was parted from you for a while that you might have him back forever.
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No longer as a bond servant but more than a bond servant as a beloved brother especially to me but how much more to you both in the flesh and in the
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Lord. As Paul sends Anesimus back he knows what the possibilities are as we've said he has not brought out the big apostolic guns he instead has made his appeal but he knows what is potentially awaiting
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Anesimus in Colossae. Do you know what the penalty was for a runaway slave?
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Death. It was a capital crime. If you came back to your master they might just as soon kill you as welcome you back.
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Now slavery in this day and age that we read about here in Philemon was not like the kind of slavery that we picture when we think of 18th and 19th century
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North American or Western slavery an agricultural kind of slavery but slavery was quite different in fact in the
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Roman Empire it was one third of the population roughly 15 million people who were slaves in that empire alone and often times slaves didn't work those agricultural jobs but worked professional jobs you would have accountant slaves and teacher slaves and doctor slaves and yet it was still slavery to be a slave was to be owned by another man it was not to be your own it was not to dictate your own priorities your own agenda for the day your job was to be
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Anesimus to be useful and so here we see that Anesimus has run away he found himself in Rome now again by the amazing providence of God somehow becomes acquainted with Paul is saved and he is going back and what is he going to find?
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there is really only two options maybe three he is going to find death or more slavery or freedom and forgiveness and here
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Paul calls for the last of those options he says verse 16 to receive him back interestingly enough forever verse 15 verse 16 no longer as a bond servant but more than a bond servant as a beloved brother and then he gets himself in there again that bond especially to me but how much more to you both in the flesh and in the
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Lord some people have cried out this is a perfect opportunity for Paul to say very clearly in the
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New Testament in bold font with a period at the end slavery is wrong but Paul does so much more than that he explodes the whole institution of slavery one person says
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Philemon the book of Philemon contributes to the understanding of the
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Christian approach to slavery Paul does not attack the institution probably because the institution was so deeply rooted in the culture that to make such an attack was inconceivable and futile but what he does do is he makes clear that the conversion of Onesimus has put him into an entirely new relationship with his owner the nature of slavery the ownership of one human being by another would appear to be incompatible with the equality that is to mark
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Christian fellowship one commentator says the fuller implications of Paul's teaching here is that the
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Christian faith is incompatible with the ownership of slaves it brings us into an atmosphere in which the institution of slavery can only wilt and die
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Christianity is written undermine the evils of slavery by changing the hearts of slaves and masters alike
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Christianity stressed the spiritual equality of the master and the slave so here
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Paul is sending Onesimus to be forgiven many of us might miss this that here
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Onesimus in obedience to the law in obedience to the wishes of the apostle
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Paul you could say even in obedience to God's word he ran away, he abandoned
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Philemon a brother now in Christ he goes back as well to face the music here we see a picture of repentance the kind of repentance that precedes forgiveness a repentance that confesses sin and confesses sin not only to God but then goes to the injured party and confesses sin there as well at great cost even at the cost of death and we don't know what happened we don't fully know except that Ignatius, an early church father wrote a short time later at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century that there was a bishop in Ephesus named
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Onesimus and so one might conceive that Onesimus was himself forgiven but even though we don't know the end of the story, what we do know is this that we are to have this kind of heart of both repentance and forgiveness toward one another and there is a picture of this
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I think that is beautiful in its details many of us know
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Corrie Ten Boom she was a Dutch Christian who, her and her family helped countless
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Jews escape the terrors of World War II and if you know the story, what happened to Corrie Ten Boom and her family was that one of the neighbors or some of the neighbors betrayed them and let the
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Nazis know what it was that they were doing and the Ten Boom family was then carted out of their home and put in concentration camps
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Corrie's father died ten days into that concentration camp eventually they went from a political concentration camp to the
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Ravensbrück concentration camp where Betsy died and amazingly only, not only, but amazingly
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Corrie survived and following World War II wrote that famous book,
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The Hiding Place, some of you might be acquainted with that book, and after releasing that book, went on a series of tours speaking about her experiences in those concentration camps and one particular evening in 1947 after Corrie had spoken about the forgiveness that has founded
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Jesus Christ, she was at a church in Munich and she had a stunning encounter, some of you might know what happened as she was watching everyone file out after speaking about how the
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Lord forgives us fully and completely she saw a man walking towards her in the crowd and her own words capture this powerfully she says, one moment
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I saw the overcoat and the brown hat on the man, the next a blue uniform and a cap with skull and crossbones it came back with a rush, the huge room with its harsh overhead lights the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor the shame of walking naked past this man
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I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin
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Betsy, how thin you were that place was Ravensbrück and the man who was making his way toward me had been a guard one of the most cruel guards and as he approached me he approached me with his hand thrust out and this former guard looked at Corrie Ten Boom and he said a fine message
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Fraulein how good it is to know that as you say all our sins are at the bottom of the sea you mentioned
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Ravensbrück in your talk I was a guard there but since that time
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I have become a Christian I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things that I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well
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Fraulein will you forgive me and as the guard stood there with his hand outstretched,
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Corrie Ten Boom had her hand in her pocket clenched and she thought in her heart
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I cannot forgive this man she said
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Betsy died in that place could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking
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I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do, for I had to do it,
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I knew that, the message that God forgives has a prior condition that we forgive those who have injured us and still
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I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart and she says, and we would all be very well to heed these words but forgiveness is not an emotion forgiveness is an act of the will and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart
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Jesus help me, I prayed silently I can lift my hand I can do that much you supply the feeling so Corrie woodenly extended her hand and as she did, the most incredible thing happened, again in her own words, she said it was as if a current started in my shoulder and raced down my arm sprang into our joined hands and then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being bringing tears to my eyes and she said
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I forgive you brother with all of my heart for a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner
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I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then when
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I read this the first time I read I forgive you brother, I could handle that much but I forgive you brother with all my heart dear saints we must with hearts bound together forgive one another with all of our very hearts
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John Owen says our forgiving of others will not procure forgiveness for ourselves but we are not but our not forgiving others proves that we ourselves are not forgiven oh dear saints think of how we have been forgiven in Christ think of the debt and then extend that same measure of forgiveness to others and then the fifth mark of Christian love
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Christian love imitates Christ's mediating work in verse 17 so if you consider me your partner receive him as you would receive me if he has wronged you at all or owes you anything charge that to my account
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I Paul write this with my own hand I will repay it to say nothing of your owing me even your own self yes brother
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I want some benefit from you in the Lord refresh my heart in Christ some scholars have looked at this and said it's almost certain that Philemon stole something as he left first he is a useless servant and now a runaway servant and a thief to boot we don't know that for sure it's mere speculation but what we do know is this that did
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I say Philemon Anesimus likely stole but what we do know is that Philemon himself is probably a very wealthy man the church met in Philemon's home and an interesting thing about that is if you think the disparity in Canada is bad
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Rome was far worse the upper class consisted of about 2 % of the population the middle class only about 8 to 18 % of the population the rest of the 80 % were poor and slaves and the only person that could host a fellowship, an assembly, a church in their home was one of those who belonged to the top 20 % of Roman society so here
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Philemon is wealthy he is far wealthier than the imprisoned Apostle Paul than the man who is writing letters to Timothy later on in a future imprisonment to bring my cloak because it is cold and yet what does
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Paul do? Paul in his poverty stands between Anesimus and death he mediates between these two men
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Anesimus as I said rightfully deserved death, death at first sight one of the greatest policing occupations one of the most aggressive forms of policing in the
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Roman Empire were slave hunters, they went out they found runaway slaves they brought them to their owners and they crushed them but here
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Paul stands to mediate between the two between the two and John MacArthur says this the relationship between Paul and Anesimus and Philemon presents a beautiful illustration of Christ's mediation between the father and humanity
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Paul freely accepted Anesimus' penalty in order to renew the relationship between Anesimus and Philemon, his former slave.
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Some are going to ask 355 words, a very personal letter.
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Why in the world is this letter in the canon of scripture? Because saints it shows us how we are to love one another and if we're prepared to see it, it shows us again the gospel of Jesus Christ lived out in human relationships so that Philemon is not all about slavery it's not all about conflict this letter is about Christ Christ paid our ransom when we deserved death,
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Christ rescued us from slavery to sin and the grave it's Christ who has set the captives free and not only that, but now leads us in triumphant procession this is the pinnacle of Christian love displayed.
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Genuine Christian love lays down one's life, one's comfort, one's possessions, one's reputation, one's all things by this we know love,
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John says, that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers not only should we not be jealous of each other and giving thanks for each other, not only should we seek to be encouraging one another and binding our hearts with one another but we should be laying down our lives, this should be a church where you've got not just an every member ministry, but it's an every member sacrifice that we give real things for the good of each other and for the good of those might
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I say it, who know nothing of Christ our brother Sam sent me a fantastic story from a man named
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Dan Smith who wrote a book called Pilgrim on the Heavenly Way it was on the book table but you missed it and the
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Scottish missionary Dan Smith he tells his life story and we see in one of these stories what true
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Christian love looks like he was once a shy unassuming shipyard worker if you think
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I don't have an occupation, I don't have a skill set to become a missionary well
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I hope that this lights a fire in the hearts of some of you, he was a shy shipyard worker but partway through his life he sensed this irresistible call to the mission field and so he found himself preaching the gospel in India and Sri Lanka and China and England and Australia and Africa even made a trip across the ocean to Canada and during his time in Asia he found himself in a poor village amongst a group called the people group called the
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Laga tribe and he spent an afternoon with one poor man in the village who according to at least according to Laga standards treated him to one of the most lavish meals imaginable before he had
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Dan Smith into his home he spread pine needles, fresh pine needles all over the floor of his home and then he brought out his pot where am
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I in my notes? there we go he brought out a pot and served a dish of bitter buckwheat and Dan Smith ate with this tribesman and as he watched this poor man at one point he removed his sackcloth shirt and he saw the most grotesque scars on this man's back that he had ever seen and when he eventually inquired about it the man said that he had been flogged time and time again with a piece of firewood and this was his charge he was charged with the crime of in quotes bringing
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Jesus into the district but as this Laga tribesman told the story there was this curious gleam in his eyes eventually this tribesman took him through the village and showed him the chapel that the village had built with their own bare hands and took him down a gravel path into the chapel and he said to the man he said come
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I want to show you one of my very best friends and so they went into the chapel to the front of the building and there was an apparently wealthy
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Chinese landowner sitting at the front of the chapel and then that curious gleam returned to this this tribesman's eyes he said do you remember those welts on my back well this is the man who flogged me but I had my revenge
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I led him to believe in Jesus and then with a big belly laugh until there were tears in his eyes he said how stupid was the devil and then he explained him and the landowner what had led this man to Christ that as this
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Chinese landowner would flog this man with this jagged piece of wood time and time again the tribesman would praise the
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Lord and offer up prayers for that landowner even as he tore raw strips of flesh off his back and the landowner realized this poor man had something real something that he was willing to suffer for something that he was willing to die for and so as this man filled up the afflictions of Christ he presented the all sufficient atoning work of Christ for this man and the
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Lord radically saved him this is what
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Christian love at its highest looks like it imitates
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Christ it pays whatever the cost to the end that Jesus Christ alone would be seen and believed upon and magnified in the world and let me ask you how often do people when they see your life see the all surpassing worth of Jesus Christ these are just some non -negotiable marks of Christian love some have asked why is this brief and specific occasional letter included in the canon as we see because when we look at it as a whole it is an invaluable resource that teaches us how we are to love one another even as Christ loved the church and what are we to do with this letter
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I would suggest we are once again faced with that biblical ultimatum we can either love or we can die let's pray thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church if you would like to keep up with us you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church or our
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Instagram at Grace Church Y -E -G all one word finally you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca