Book of Philemon - Vs. 6-7

Well, last Sunday of January. It's pretty crazy. Well, I guess we'll go ahead and get started since we're a few minutes after.

Let me see here. Where should I pick it up? We finished at verse 5.

Last week, we began the first little section, which is we're looking at the character traits of one who forgives.

Because Paul is beginning his letter, he's beginning his plea, his exhortation, all these things to Philemon by first reminding

Philemon of the kind of man he is. And so he's pointing out all of these great character traits that Philemon exhibits and that he does consistently.

And again, reminding him of these things so that he has a good foundation for what

Paul is going to be asking him to do. We kind of covered this last week, but there's no doubt that Philemon, at bare minimum, is very upset.

He may even be struggling with some bitterness for what his servant

Onesimus has done, which is, of course, betraying his trust. He left him, he stole from him, and he fleed off to Rome.

And so, again, best -case scenario, Philemon is hurt. He's upset, maybe a little bit depressed.

Worst -case scenario, he would be feeling those things, plus he may be harboring some bitterness toward what

Onesimus has done to him and to his family and all of these things. And no doubt

Paul is aware that these are some dynamics that are most likely happening going on within Philemon.

And so before, though, he tells him kind of the big news, which is, number one,

Onesimus is now a brother, a brother in Christ. And number two, you need to receive him back.

And not only receive him, but obviously forgive him unconditionally, regardless of the wrongs he has committed.

He's setting himself up. He's setting Philemon up for all of that by first beginning with these commendations.

And it's from these that we, again, get these character traits of one who forgives, a person that actually has the capacity to do that.

We read through verse 5, I believe, last week. And let's see here.

Yeah, we looked at Romans. Philemon also has a love and concern for people in verse 5 when it says, and this is in Philemon, in verse 5 when it says,

Hearing of thy love in faith. The love there is the Greek word agape.

And so this is an utmost love that he exhibits toward all saints, it says.

And so this is, of course, as Dad has mentioned many times, one of the greatest symptoms of a person's salvation is a love for the brethren.

Philemon certainly has that, and he has had it consistently. And so the first character trait that we determined last week of a person who forgives, who has the capacity to forgive, is a person who is a

Christian. And, of course, we fleshed that out a little bit last week.

It's one of those things that kind of can hit you a little bit wrong, perhaps, depending on a number of things.

For some people that may seem like a given, but for others who have perhaps close relationships with people, maybe even family that are unbelievers but are, quote, unquote, great people.

And I put that in quotes not necessarily because I'm making light of it, but because we know that our perception of good or great is not even on the spectrum of what

God would consider good, great, or righteous. And so it's a little bit hard for us, perhaps, to even grasp that.

Like, is it really possible just for Christians to be able to forgive someone? I mean, I feel like you don't really need to be a

Christian to be able to forgive someone. Well, remember, what we're getting at here is the capacity to imitate

God's forgiveness. Of course,

His forgiveness is infinite. It's perfect. All of His attributes are infallible.

And so in order for us to imitate that to the degree in which He commands us to, remember, we looked at the parables that Jesus taught.

He taught a couple of very well -known, very elaborate parables on the principles of forgiveness.

We know that it's a principle that permeates a lot of the apostles' work.

In fact, as we noted, I think, in our introduction, Paul is writing Philemon in parallel with a couple other letters,

Colossians, Ephesians, and at some point Philippians as well. And forgiveness is a theme that is in all four of those prison epistles.

And so it was something on Paul's mind. So we have the principles there everywhere. But as we've also noted, this particular letter takes it on an even more personal note.

But we have these commandments to imitate God in this way, to exhibit forgiveness in the way that God does it.

We are to forgive because He has forgiven us. It is only possible for a believer in Him to be able to imitate that to the degree in which we are commanded to do it.

Does that make sense? So, yes, an unbeliever can say, I forgive you, no doubt, and they certainly have.

There have been many who have. But in order to have an imitation of God's forgiveness, and in order for it to actually mean something deep down in the heart, in other words, an actual cleansing type action, a sanctifying type action, something to actually literally remove all accounting that has been done based on the wrongdoings of the person, in order for those things to actually take place, a true forgiveness, a genuine forgiveness of the heart, one needs to be saved.

They need to be a follower of Jesus in order to do that. So we kind of touched on that a little bit last week, but it was certainly worth repeating a little bit because it's very, very important.

So that's the first character trait. Let's take a look at verse 6.

And, of course, I say the first character trait. You could break that off into dozens of subpoints because being a

Christian, you have the fruits of the Spirit and all sorts of other things that follow. But that's the first thing there.

Let's go ahead and take a look at verse 6, and we will pick it up there and see how far we can get today.

It says that the communication of thy faith— you know what, I want to go ahead and I'll read starting in verse 4 through because it's actually one sentence.

They're broken up into verses, but it's one thought. So starting verse 4,

I thank my God, making mention of thee, talking about Philemon, making mention of thee always in my prayers, hearing of thy love and faith which thou hast toward the

Lord Jesus and toward all saints. Verse 6, that the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.

There is a ton packed into verse 6 right there. That the communication of thy faith may become effectual— that's something we're going to look at in a minute— by the acknowledging—that's another word we're going to look at in a minute— of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.

And that final phrase there is so interesting. I mean, there are so many things in the

Bible that are just incomprehensible to the human mind unless you have the

Holy Spirit living within you and giving you knowledge of what this stuff means.

I mean, think about what that could possibly mean.

Every good thing in you in Christ. In you in Christ Jesus. So in verse 6 here is another characteristic of a person who is able to forgive.

And that is that the forgiver will have a concern for fellowship.

So that word in verse 6, it says that the communication of thy faith— that word communication would be better translated for us present day as fellowship.

Obviously the old English meaning fits totally fine and carries some other connotations that it might not necessarily carry for us today, but that's what

Paul is talking about. He's talking about fellowship. So you could read it, that the fellowship of thy faith may become effectual.

So having a concern, having a desire for fellowship is another characteristic of one who forgives.

They have true saving faith, which we discussed last week in verse 5. They are a

Christian. Because they are a Christian, they have a true spiritual agape love for the brethren.

We also saw that in verse 5 last week. We just covered a second ago. But in addition to those two things, they have a desire for fellowship, which is what we learn in verse 6 here.

And as it says in verse 6, the fellowship is of thy faith. It says that the fellowship of thy faith may become effectual.

When a person has saving faith, again, coming back to the symptoms of salvation, one of those symptoms will be a yearning for fellowship, a strong desire that makes them feel off if they don't have that fellowship.

It really is often as they can get it, but certainly we have the Lord's Day for a reason.

The Lord ordained originally the Sabbath. There were multiple purposes baked in that.

It was for rest, no doubt. But think about what His people would do on that day as well.

They would worship Him, but they'd worship Him collectively, together. They'd be together. Once the

New Testament begins and you have John talking about worshiping, being in the Spirit on the

Lord's Day, Christians for the last 2 ,000 years have fellowshiped together on the day of the resurrection, on the

Lord's Day, and that carries so many purposes within it, one of which is giving them that ability to fellowship.

It's really interesting because when you think about the context of the global church, what

I mean by that is like Christians living all over the world, all over the globe, they have their own little churches.

If they can have one, Christians all over the world. When you think about Christians all over the world, and in many places not having the ability to do what we're doing right here as easily as we can.

A lot of people in America have been, I don't know, for lack of a better term, maybe desensitized to the importance of what we get to do.

You think about the things we get to do from being together every Sunday, being able to have the Lord's Supper kind of whenever we want.

We do it once a year for biblical reasons, but technically we can do it whenever we want.

We certainly break bread whenever we want. We do it every week. We have the Lord's Supper. We can be baptized and have that public profession of faith without concern.

We can do this. And then you think about Christians that are on just about any other continent.

I mean, in just a few decades ago, even in places like Russia, in the Soviet Union, people were having to hide to have church if they were living within some sort of atheistic, communist society without in order to avoid persecution, they would have to hide to have church.

They certainly didn't have the benefit of being able to break bread whenever they wanted to have the Lord's Supper, whatever it may be.

And so, all right, put yourself in their shoes for a second. I would say that everyone in this room,

I would say that everyone, part of our church family, has a pretty good appreciation for the fellowship that we get to have together weekly, at least once a week, if not more.

We have an appreciation for that. But put yourself in the shoes of someone that doesn't know whether they'll get to do that for the foreseeable future.

In other words, they're waiting for the opportunity. They're hoping that they will be able to gather with with some of their brothers and sisters in the

Lord anywhere. It could be a house. It could be a barn. It could be a basement. It could be anywhere they can get just to be together.

Imagine it like amplify our appreciation for fellowship by I don't even know how much in that yearning for fellowship that they have.

And then it starts to really make you understand how blessed we are in the fact that we do take for granted our ability to get together.

We expect that for one week from today, we'll get to do this all over again. We take it for granted. It's granted that we will we will get to get together one week from today, two weeks from today.

All the way, you know, as far in the future as we can see right now and that we will get to do this. But first of all, that's not necessarily the case.

We pray that it will be. But second of all, again, it kind of just dilutes a little bit.

And again, this is a church that I believe we have a good appreciation for it. I'm not like knocking us or anything, but it dilutes a little bit.

The specialness of what we get to do a yearning for fellowship.

It's one of the greatest symptoms of salvation. You want to be together. You want to worship.

Oh, I don't know. I guess it's not about just that whole.

It's like a repression. Right. If you miss it, there's something missing in your week.

Right. Like you said, I think the best word that I can think of for that is a journey to get to do that every week.

Sure. Right. So anyway, there's so much to that.

I think that everybody has or at least this church. We have so much more appreciation for it because of the perspective of what happened.

Mm hmm. So anyway, I completely agree.

No doubt. And one of the one of the things points Katie was making, there's the refreshing nature of it, which is interesting that you say that,

Katie, because we're going to see in a second that that is actually that is a part of it that Paul points out as well.

It is for the refreshing of our spirits, as he will put it.

Our bowels literally just aren't like as deep down as you can go. It refreshes us.

And Philemon was really good at making sure that happened, as we'll see in a minute.

But again, Katie's point was, you know, getting together, how refreshing it is, how it sets the tone for the week, and without it, it sets the tone, not necessarily in a good way for the week.

And just our appreciation here at Park Meadows certainly grew and I believe this would be the case for hundreds, if not that will probably thousands of churches across the country after the pandemic when you, you know.

You know, there are some churches that, you know, stayed out longer than others, just depending on the situation, depending on their congregation.

I know that many, many churches that had a primarily elderly congregation waited a little bit longer than others.

And so there were, you know, a lot of dynamics going on there and being able to get back and have the in -person fellowship again was just, it was huge.

Like I said, it was amplified, just like it would be right now for people living in different continents around the world that don't get to take it for granted like we do.

And so I totally agree there, Katie. It is refreshing. It's wonderful. And like I said, just to kind of get back on track here,

I believe one of the perhaps greatest symptoms of salvation is that strong desire to be with your brothers and sisters in Christ really as often as possible, but certainly on the

Lord's Day and being able to worship Him in the process. So fellowship, the word fellowship, again, in our

King James Bibles, it's communication. We're in Philemon. Larry, great to see you.

Philemon, we're going to pick it up in verse 6 today. And it says that the communication of thy faith, that word communication there, or fellowship as it could be translated, it's really even greater than the way that we would typically perceive fellowship.

It's a stronger, it's even stronger than the way we would typically think about it. It doesn't necessarily, like, you know, we think of fellowship as just getting together, hanging out, or I say we, you know, maybe the general thinking of it is getting together, hanging out, maybe breaking some bread, having great conversation.

And that is wonderful. And that is certainly part of it. But the Greek here, if you don't necessarily see this in Blue Letter Bible, but if you go use the software that Dad uses, breaks it down even more, and it gives you a whole bunch of, it gives you everything.

I don't even know how to describe it, Dad, but it's just like, yeah, that's it. It's just, it's like more comprehensive dictionaries and lexicons and things like that, that will go deeper and deeper and deeper.

And so you wouldn't necessarily see this particular thing if you did the quick search on Blue Letter, which is normally what

I do. If you go a little bit deeper, the word for fellowship here, it can mean belonging.

It means belonging. In other words, people that belong to each other. So you think about the relationship among family members or maybe spouse, spouses.

You think, you know, once that covenant takes place, from that point forward, they belong to each other in a very special way.

I mean, like they're, you know, they're inseparable, certainly in a spiritual sense. And it, you know, it's a very close belonging, right?

Well, that's what this word means that Paul is using here when it says, let the fellowship of thy faith become effectual.

In other words, it's people that belong to each other, the fellowship, the belonging. Now consider that for a moment.

All right. So think about that. Carrying that connotation of people belonging to each other in a very close, intimate sense.

Consider that in knowing what's going to come. And of course, we read through the whole letter of Philemon a couple of weeks ago.

We know what's coming. And that is Philemon is eventually, within a few verses, going to find out about Onesimus' conversion.

So at the time that Paul is reading this letter, I'm sorry, that Philemon is reading this letter from Paul, he's going point by point.

Paul is pointing out his characteristics and all these, you know, his positive character traits and all these things. And what

Philemon is about to find out is that his slave that ran away from him, that abandoned him, that stole from him, is now saved.

He's been converted. Paul witnessed to him and he came to know the Lord as his

Lord and Savior. But before Paul even knows that, I keep saying

Paul, sorry, before Philemon even knows that, Paul is telling him that the communication of thy faith, that it may become effectual, that fellowship, that belonging may become effectual.

The moment that Philemon finds out that Onesimus is a brother in Christ, can you imagine how that will resonate with him immediately?

So again, Paul is setting the stage here. He's really, he's just laying every possible part of a foundation for Philemon's just immediate eagerness, not only to forgive

Onesimus, but to, you know, embrace him. Because he will have that sense of belonging the moment he knows he's a brother.

He's not just a runaway slave, he's not just someone that he did care for, but he's now a brother in Christ as well.

When Philemon finds out about the conversion of Onesimus, that is certainly just going to like, it's like the analogy of the tuning fork.

It's one of those things where it's just going to like lock in immediately and really mean something to Philemon.

So to forgive in this context, what it does, when you've been greatly wronged like Philemon was, and we've been talking about forgiveness a lot, and when you're in this particular context where you've been wronged, and you forgive in that context, okay, you've been wronged, you've been wronged greatly, and yet you forgive in that context, it shows where your priorities are at.

Your priorities are not some postmodern sense of being individualistic, of wanting to isolate yourself to some degree, or isolating yourself to the point where you're kind of putting yourself up on a pedestal, and your feelings and your quote -unquote rights to be better or to be upset at the person, you put all of that up here above the rest of the plane.

When you forgive, it shows that your priorities are actually with the brethren, not focused on some individualistic idea of yourself.

If that makes sense. So you're putting the brethren above yourself.

You're not isolating yourself in the sense of putting yourself up on a pedestal or anything like that.

But your priorities, rather, are for genuine fellowship. When you forgive in the context of being wronged greatly, it's showing that one of your priorities is that you have a genuine desire for fellowship.

Well, of course, that would go hand in hand, because if something's off between you and another person, until that forgiveness happens, until the forgiveness in your heart happens, and then their desire to ask for forgiveness happens, the relationship is broken, right?

The fellowship is broken. That mutual belonging is broken. And so when you have the desire to forgive, it shows that your priorities are for mending that relationship as quickly as possible, not for isolating yourself and putting your individualistic rights, quote, unquote.

In other words, your right to be better toward a person because they wronged you, your right to be upset about it, maybe even your right to retaliate in some way.

We kind of covered that a little bit last week, too, which is that that's what's celebrated in our culture is vengeance, right? And so you put all of that aside, all of that aside, and what you prioritize is mending the relationship as quickly as possible.

And you do that because you have a genuine desire for restoring fellowship, that mutual belonging. You care so much about being with your spiritual kin that you'll forgive them on a dime, much like in the parable of the prodigal son, as the father was eagerly running out to embrace him, didn't even necessarily need an apology.

He just saw him coming and he went and he got him. So Paul here, he brings all of this out.

But let's hone in on a couple of other things here. He is also praying that Philemon will have a deeper knowledge of his new man.

OK, this is a concept that we're obviously very attuned to because we talk about that dynamic of the old man and the new man all the time.

Romans chapter seven is a fantastic example of that struggle within us constantly.

We have the new man. He's there. That's it's the real us. The one that has been regened and, you know, is a co -heir with Christ.

But we still have this inner battle with the old man. It's like that dead corpse that we're dragging around with us all the time.

And it can can drag us down from time to time. And so, Paul. OK, so first of all, think about Philemon.

He's a wonderful Christian man. We've gathered that so far. Right. Wonderful Christian man. He has all of the character traits of an unbelievable, you know, follower of the

Lord and one who even can disciple others. One that perhaps even has a leadership position in his little home church.

We don't know that for sure, but we know that the church at Colossae is in his house. He's a wonderful, wonderful guy.

And yet. He's been wronged and because he's human, he very well may be have been dragged down to some degree, maybe by his old man to harbor some feelings of bitterness and to be upset toward Onesimus and not willing to forgive him, at least leading up to the point he receives this letter from Paul.

So think about that. There's that inner battle going on within Philemon, no doubt.

And yet here we are. Paul is praying. He's trying to point out to Philemon to kind of have this deeper knowledge of his new man, to think about his new man.

He's saying that all of the good in him. Is by means of the new creature within him.

The Greek term for acknowledging. All right. So look at verse six one more time, that the fellowship of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you.

The Greek word for acknowledging there is epignosis, and it means a precise and correct knowledge of things that are ethical and divine.

So think about that for just a second. That you may have a knowledge, that you may acknowledge.

In other words, that you may have a precise and correct knowledge of divine things, is what

Paul is telling Philemon here. That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the precise, correct knowledge of divine things, or of the divine in the context of every good thing which is in you.

Now, how do you think that would be possible? How is it even possible to attain precise knowledge of divine things?

What do you guys think? Perhaps.

Dad says coffee with Otis is a pretty good start. I would agree with that. Well, one way, and that is hitting on it for sure, one way that you can attain precise knowledge of divine things is through the

Scripture, by reading Scripture. But what about attaining knowledge of divine things, as Paul says in this verse here, within yourself?

How on earth is that possible? Number one, how do you attain the knowledge? But number two, how do you have it within you?

How do you have anything divine? How could you have anything divine within yourself? I mean, it goes without doubt that it's within Scripture, but what about within yourself?

How do you attain that? Well, reading the

Bible, and that being saved would certainly be a prerequisite, because being saved, being justified, having

Christ's righteousness imputed into us is how we have that new man. So we already talked about the new man.

It's within that new man where the divine things reside. So there's the first key.

So that answers the question of how could you have anything divine living within you at any time, O wretched man that we are, wretched men that we are.

Well, the answer is through regeneration, justification, imputation, all of these wonderful parts, aspects of our salvation.

But then it begs the second question, though. How do we attain the knowledge of it? In other words, how do we have that precise, correct understanding of those divine things within us?

So we already addressed that Scripture is one way. Another way, though, is it would be known through experience.

So just think about that for just a second. You get saved. The moment you get saved, is that the closest you'll ever be to the

Lord? Most likely not. In fact, it most likely will be, I won't say farthest from the

Lord, because I don't like the way that sounds, but intimately knowing the

Lord, in that regard, it's probably the farthest from that you'll ever be.

You're close to Him physically, let's say. Imagine a sheep and a shepherd. So you're the little sheep, you're the little lamb, your shepherd is right there next to you.

So you're close immediately in that sense. But as far as having an intimate, loving knowledge of that shepherd, you're probably the farthest you'll ever be at that moment when you're first saved than you ever will be.

The reason is because of something called justification. I'm sorry, sanctification. I'm really mixing my terms today.

Something called sanctification. Say that again? Yeah, probably.

I'd have to be inventing words as I mix terms to fit that analogy.

It's through something called sanctification, and that is the experience that I'm talking about.

You learn about the goodness within you through sanctification or by experience.

Now, bear with me for a second, because I know when you hear things like the goodness within you, you start thinking that Ben is a lib or something all of a sudden.

I'm sure y 'all are all thinking that, right? But stick with me for a little bit longer here.

Through experience, you start to attain that precise knowledge of the divine that is within you, that goodness within you.

Now, when we forgive, we will experience a good thing inside of us, and that's kind of what

I'm talking about here. When we forgive from the heart, after first confessing perhaps whatever sin that we may have been dealing with initially, perhaps bitterness, and that's usually going to be it, after we confess that and agree with the

Lord that that's wrong, and we get that, we cast that out of our hearts, the next step, the next stage is to genuinely forgive the person that has done you wrong.

And when you do that, that is a good thing within you that you now realized.

You now know that that was in you when you did that. You have experienced something,

I would argue, that is divine within you. Now, contrast that for a second with the depravity of man.

We are born outside of Christ. Every human being that has ever lived is born outside of Christ.

And if you want to put it this way, kind of gleaning a little bit from Romans 5, you're born outside of Christ, but you're born inside of Adam.

In Romans 5, we learn that it's through Adam that sin entered the human race.

He was our first father, if you want to look at it in those terms. We're born outside of Christ, and under the wrath of God, we are born rebelling against him.

In that state, there is nothing good within a person. From the divine perspective, from God's perspective, there's absolutely nothing good within a person, as we know.

Anything that we would consider good is as good as filthy rags to him. But upon salvation, we are placed in Christ.

So we're born outside of Christ, but upon salvation, we are placed in him.

We are placed in Christ. We receive, at that moment, a new man by means of our regeneration.

And that man, that regenerated new man, has the capacity for good.

And here's the key. This is why I'm not being a liberal up here, and trying to talk you guys into understanding the good within you.

The key, and the reason there is good within you, is because that goodness is coming from being in Christ, which is what

Paul says at the end of verse 6. So read verse 6 one more time.

That the communication, that the fellowship of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging, that precise recognition, that precise knowledge of the divine, of every good thing which is in you, it is in you, that is a given, in Christ Jesus.

It's in you, in Christ Jesus. So the goodness within you is only there because it is a goodness, it is a divine attribute, or whatever attribute you're looking at.

The fruits of the Spirit have been placed in you, have been imputed to you, and you've been given the capacity to have those things, and to harbor those things within yourself.

But it's only possible if you are in Christ, which kind of goes back to our first point, characteristic of one that forgives is a

Christian. Well, it's kind of hard to exhibit a divine attribute if you're not in Christ, because that is from which the divine attribute flows.

Not actually from within just you, in and of yourself, but through Christ, through you, and then it pours out.

So we're kind of just a middleman when it comes to exhibiting fruits of the

Spirit, when it comes to living out a faithful Christian walk.

We're really just the middleman, because all of that is coming from Christ directly, and we're the ones that are living it out.

But it's only possible through Him. Now, again, it comes back to the whole topic of Him working together with His people.

That's the way He set everything up. It's really amazing that you have the concept of sanctification.

Think about, again, He does not do things the way we would do it. The way in which

God saves us is, yes, through immediate change, regeneration, justification, imputation, propitiation.

Those are things that happen immediately. But then it's not just one and done. The way

He designed salvation is that it's a continual thing, and only He would do it that way. And He did it that way because it's through that sanctification process that He's constantly working within us, working through us, to exhibit

His standards of living. And then, of course, it ends in the culmination of all of it, which is our glorification, when we actually kind of look like Him for the first time ever, which

Paul tells us in Philippians, I think, chapter 3 or at the end of chapter 2. I can't remember. We literally will have glory in the similitude of Christ Himself at the time that He comes.

All right, so let's take a look at verse 7 really quick. We'll end here. This ends kind of our first section of Philemon.

We did our introduction. We're finishing up section 1 now. And this goes back to one of the points Katie was making a minute ago in regard to being refreshed by that fellowship.

Verse 7 says, Now Philemon here had a great reputation for his love toward the saints, toward all of his brothers, those in his local church, but any brother he would ever stumble across, he had a great reputation for showing the love for those saints.

His reputation was so good, in fact, that it brought Paul a lot of joy. The Apostle Paul himself, as Dad has said many times throughout my life, perhaps the greatest

Christian that's ever lived, the Apostle Paul himself was edified and encouraged by the love that Philemon put on display.

So imagine how wonderful that it truly was, the love that he had for the brethren.

It was so amazing that even the Apostle Paul was edified. And remember at the beginning of the letter, he mentions that every time

I pray for you, I do so in thankfulness. I thank God for you every time

I think about you. That's how wonderful of a guy Philemon was. Now, most translations render that Greek word for bowels as heart.

So when it says, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed, almost every other translation will say, because the heart of the saints are refreshed by thee.

And that sounds a little more poetic, maybe. I mean, bowels is, you know, it's a pretty vivid picture.

It's pretty vivid. That's for sure. Yeah, it's not.

I mean, we definitely have some insights here.

But again, most translations make that heart. But the term is literally talking about their bowels, the

Greek word. It's talking about their most inward parts. This was meant to be a dramatic way to both the

Greek mind and the Hebrew mind to discuss the seat of a human's deepest emotions.

So this meant something. What Paul is saying here meant something not just to the Hebrew mind, but to the

Greek mind as well. Because when they would think about their deepest emotions, whether it be depression or whether it be just an incomprehensible love towards somebody, the deepest seat of emotions was the insides of a person.

The innards, the bowels, and that's literally what it's talking about. And that's what Paul was trying to bring out here.

The seat of a human's deepest emotions. So we learn here that Philemon quite literally refreshes their bowels as in the place where the saints were carrying their pain, the place they were carrying the depression that they may have had, the struggles they may have been going through.

When they would come into the presence of Philemon, he would refresh all of that and give them a restart, a jumpstart, which again kind of goes back to what we were talking about just in fellowship in general.

Katie was expressing that, getting that feeling every Sunday that we get together, every Wednesday night that we get together.

I certainly relate to that feeling. It gives you a jumpstart for the week. Anything that you may be going through, struggles, pains, depression, anything, think about a person that may be dealing with loneliness.

Perhaps someone who hasn't found their spouse just yet, a bachelor, a bachelorette. And, you know, church is where they go to be refreshed from anything that they may be dealing with in the week leading up to it.

The place where the saints carried their deepest emotions was refreshed by Philemon.

Consider the feeling of kind of stomach ulcers when you're stressed out. You can feel it within you. When you have these deep emotions, you can literally feel it physically.

It's a very strange thing. That is what's being refreshed by Philemon and what can be the case for us as well as we fellowship.

Every part of them is given rest by the love that Philemon shows them. It's not quite as poetic as perhaps heart, but it's even more beautiful when you consider how much he was there for his people, how deep it went, how deep that refreshing went for his people.

The kind of person that has an almost impulsive kindness toward others, toward his brothers and sisters, that has a concern to be refreshing to those around them is the same kind of person that has the divine capacity to forget, reminding

Philemon that he is that kind of man. He is about to get into the rest of the letter, which starts to flesh out why he's writing him in the first place.

All of this was the lead up. He's reminding Philemon that he's that kind of man. He is the kind of man that can refresh the brethren, that can exhibit a great love toward them, that has a faithfulness toward Christ himself.

But because of those things, he's the kind of man that can forgive even a person that stole from him, abandoned him, abandoned his trust, left his family, left him sad, perhaps even left him a little bit bitter.

So starting the next time we're together, we'll get into the next section, which starts to flesh out the story even more.

Do you guys have any other thoughts or anything before we close for today? I have one thought.

Sure. I like that you brought up the sense of belonging, especially in this story because you've got a slave who in a very real sense belongs to his master.

Right. The master, upon learning of the salvation of this slave, will feel a sense of belonging with the slave, which is an interesting dynamic.

Yeah, Dave's point is that legally Onesimus belonged to Philemon as his slave.

However, the belonging that Paul is talking about when he says, let thy fellowship be effectual, is that they are going to belong to each other equally, intimately, as brothers in Christ, which again will be news to Philemon when he finds that out.

At the moment, Philemon, as he's reading this verse by verse along with us, this letter from his friend, he does not yet know about the conversion of his slave.

He's already been reminded, though, about the belonging, the mutual belonging of the brethren, and how Paul is praying that his fellowship becomes effectual through the acknowledging of every good thing in him, in Christ.

So remember, he's wanting to put Philemon's focus on his new man, the new creature within him, because it's there where he can acknowledge all of the divine things going on within him, in Christ.

And that's going to be one of them is that just, again, that immediate recognition of the belonging between the two of them as brothers in Christ.

The moment he finds that out a few verses later, really special. All righty, guys.

Well, I will go ahead and dismiss this for today, and we will move on to the next service. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this great day.

Thank you for bringing us all together. And as we just discussed today, that we may never take for granted the fellowship that we get to have, the fact that we get to look forward to this on a weekly basis, in some cases more than once a week, and that all of our brothers and sisters around this country would do the same, that they would not take it for granted, that they would yearn for that fellowship that will refresh them, that will refresh their hearts, and give them just that jumpstart for not only the coming week, but from everything that they may be dealing with in their lives.

All of the various dynamics they're working through constantly, that the fellowship that they have with their brothers and sisters will be one of the catalysts for refreshing them, getting their mind set straight, and back to just living out their lives in honor and obedience to you.

We're thankful for the opportunities we have to do that here. We ask you to be with us as we continue into the next service, and we ask all these things in your name.