Book of Philemon - Vv. 23-25

Park Meadows Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:00

Let's finish Philemon here. All right, let's start at verse 23.

00:09

I'll wait for Ash to walk in. Hello. Oh, you're not late.

00:17

We were just fixing the mics three seconds ago. Huh? I didn't hear you.

00:28

Okay. Okay. All right. All right.

00:35

That's definitely goofy. All right, let's turn to verse 23 and finish up this study today.

00:47

It says, well, I'll just say really quick, we didn't finish this kind of subtopic or subcategory that we're on, which is accountability.

00:58

We're talking about the motivations of one that forgives and specifically accountability from the brethren being one of those motivations.

01:07

We were right in the middle of that when we stopped last week. So that's where we are. In verse 23 says, there salute the

01:14

Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellow laborers.

01:25

Now, earlier in this study, we talked a bit about the blessing and importance of Christian fellowship in general.

01:33

Back when we were talking about Paul, I'm sorry, Philemon being refreshing to the saints and his love toward them and all of those types of things, we talked about how important fellowship is in being that, in edifying others, in refreshing others and things like that.

01:52

But certainly in the context of the local church as well, it's very, very important.

01:58

Fellowship is very important. Assembling together weekly is very important for so many reasons, but one of those being we can be refreshed by one another.

02:06

So we talked about that way earlier in this study, many, many weeks ago. Now, there are very important reasons why the

02:12

Lord tells us to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, which he tells us in Hebrews chapter 10.

02:18

One of these reasons is that being together, and this is really important, being together increases the desire to be obedient because of the accountability that we have.

02:30

Being together increases our desire to be obedient to God because of the accountability that we have.

02:37

How many times have we referenced what Dad has said all throughout the years where every time he'd get together with Otis, he would just want to be a better person, want to be a better, more godly person after being with Otis.

02:50

And it was because of the fellowship, and it was because of the accountability that Otis brought to the table, and vice versa for him as well.

02:57

And one of the biggest reasons why I believe we are given that clear instruction in Hebrews to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together is because when you are not together, if you are just kind of out there by yourself, it can be a problem.

03:18

Paul, in telling Philemon that these brothers send their greetings, because look at all the names that are listed just right there at the very end.

03:25

You've got Epaphras, Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas. He names all these guys.

03:30

Why is he doing that? Well, in naming all of the guys, reminding Philemon that these brothers, in addition to Paul, are sending their greetings, what this is doing, as Philemon is reading this, is it's just tearing apart any idea of Philemon wanting to be self -centered, self -focused on his part.

03:56

In other words, he's not going to let all of Paul's words become in vain.

04:01

He's not going to let himself and his own selfish desires to not forgive in this context overtake everything

04:09

Paul is telling him. Why? Because he's going to be held accountable by Paul and by all of these brothers.

04:15

There's no type of individualism here in the negative sense on Philemon's part, because Paul is saying that not only is he accountable to God, not only is

04:27

Philemon accountable to Paul, but these brothers in Christ, he is accountable to them as well to do the right thing and to forgive

04:36

Onesimus. Now, this is, again, very important. How can we apply this to ourselves today?

04:42

Well, as a Christian, you never want to live your life on any kind of foundation of self -concern or isolation.

04:52

Because without fellowship, without going out there, without spending time with your brothers and sisters, having coffee with them midweek like Dad has done with Otis and with his men all throughout the years, whether it's having

05:03

Bible study throughout the week, in -person fellowship, it could be phone calls as well, making sure that y 'all are kind of keeping tabs on one another and then ultimately kind of reaching a peak each

05:20

Sunday when we're all together. All of those things, without that, without that kind of fellowship, any individual is a breeding ground for sin at that point, including bitterness, obviously, which

05:33

Paul was protecting Philemon from here, that specific sin. But any sin, any pet sin that any person has, anything they struggle with, and maybe things they don't even know that they struggle with, perhaps bitterness is one of them.

05:47

If you are isolating yourself and putting whatever your schedule is and your comforts, and maybe you just don't feel so great, so you don't want to go spend time with anybody or that sort of thing.

06:02

Obviously, there is a time and a place where you got to rest if you're really sick or something like that. But just in general, if you isolate yourself from the brothers and sisters, from fellowship, from the assembly, you are a breeding ground for sin because you're no longer held accountable by your brothers and sisters.

06:17

You think, well, all I need is God. All I need is God to hold me accountable. Well, He will hold you accountable, but keep in mind that one of His methods in doing that is through His people, through your brothers and sisters, and specifically your local church family.

06:34

Thankfully, we can have family and friends that aren't necessarily church family that can encourage and can bring edification and hold us accountable as well, but it's magnified to a great degree when it comes to your church family doing these things for you.

06:51

I think that what is happening here is Philemon is being told by Paul, you are being held accountable by me as well as these great brothers in the

07:04

Lord as well, and so you need to do the right thing. You don't need to harbor any bitterness toward Onesimus.

07:10

You need to forgive him for all the reasons I've laid out, but in addition to all those reasons, we're coming.

07:16

We're going to hold you accountable ourselves. But as far as practical application goes, it could not be understated, or I'm sorry, it could not be overstated, how important it is to have constant fellowship with your brothers and sisters to keep yourself from falling into habitual sin especially, but really any kind of sin.

07:39

It's really amazing the way that the Lord worked it out that way, where we can actually be sanctified through our brothers and sisters.

07:50

Theoretically, yes, you and the Holy Spirit are in that together, and you are being sanctified through Him, but the

07:57

Lord ordained it to where you can also be sanctified by just being together, because you're not going to be tempted to sin.

08:06

Right now in this room together, as we have the word open, we're talking about the Lord, we're talking about heavenly things, and all of these great wonderful things.

08:14

We're not going to be tempted. Now, the devil will try to throw things in your mind and kind of get you off course a little bit, but it's still not the same as when you are by yourself, tempted by anything and everything.

08:26

I think you'll know what I'm getting at there. Just being by yourself is not good. You weren't intended to be isolated.

08:33

I say by yourself. It could be you at home with your family as well, maybe you and your spouse, but you and your spouse need to go out and have that fellowship and partake in the assembly and things like that, because the principle still applies.

08:48

Anyway, I could talk about that a lot longer, but we'll move on. So who are these guys exactly, though? Who are these four or five guys that Paul tells

08:59

Philemon? They send their greetings. They know about this whole situation. They send their greetings too.

09:05

So remember that. You're being held accountable by all of us. Who are these fellows? So Colossians, you don't have to go to all these places, but I'm going to just shed some light on who these guys are.

09:15

Let's start with Epaphras. If you go to Colossians 4 and look at chapter 12, it says,

09:20

Epaphras, same guy, who is one of you, a servant of Christ. Remember that word servant?

09:28

Doulos, a little bit more literal translation would be a slave to Christ. It's a little more powerful. A slave of Christ saluteth you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers.

09:39

So this is a guy that had a wonderful prayer life. He was constantly thinking about his brothers and sisters, in this case, the members of Colossae.

09:49

He's always laboring fervently for you in prayers. That is the kind of guy you want in your corner.

09:54

That is who Epaphras was. That ye might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.

10:00

That is really powerful. It's a great lesson not only in prayer, because Paul is pointing out that through Epaphras' fervent prayers, you might become complete in the will of God.

10:12

So we think about our own prayer life to God and having the Holy Spirit intercess on our behalf so that He can actually enlighten us into how we should pray and how we can pray so that we're in line with the will of God.

10:29

But here, Paul is saying through Epaphras' fervent prayers that you might be complete in the will of God.

10:36

So this was a very powerful Christian man whose prayers were a big part of his life, a big part of his ministry.

10:44

That's who he was in verse 13. He says, for I bear him record. So Paul says, I know this to be fact.

10:50

I give testimony. I bear record myself that he hath a great zeal for you in them that are also in Laodicea and them in Herpoleus.

10:59

So he's talking about multiple churches now, not only Colossae, but those in Laodicea, those in Herpoleus.

11:05

So Epaphras here has multiple churches in mind, essentially all of the first century churches.

11:12

I mean, if you think about it, there weren't all that many of them. He lists three of them here. Epaphras had a strong, fervent prayer life for all of these.

11:19

This is the same guy that is sending greetings to Philemon. What about Marcus?

11:25

Well, we're familiar with Marcus, or Mark we're more familiar with. He wrote one of the

11:30

Gospels, arguably the oldest of the four Gospels. This is the same Mark. And in Colossians 4 .10,

11:36

it says, Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, saluted you and Marcus, sister's son to Barnabas, touching whom ye received commandments.

11:45

If he come unto you, receive him. Now, just a quick note, we know in Acts, there was kind of this weird thing between Paul and Barnabas.

11:52

And Mark went with Barnabas. Well, probably a good reason is because they were brothers -in -law or let's see here, or maybe uncle and nephew, sister's son.

12:02

Yeah. Okay. He was Barnabas's nephew. And then in 2

12:08

Timothy 4 .11, it mentions Mark again. It says, only Luke is with me. Take Mark and bring him with thee for he is profitable to me for the ministry.

12:17

So you had to be a pretty standout Christian and to have a lot of Christian character to be profitable to the apostle

12:27

Paul's ministry. So Mark, another guy that sends his greetings to Philemon, very strong Christian guy.

12:34

Then we have Aristarchus. In Acts, well, first of all, it mentioned Aristarchus as well just a second ago when it mentioned

12:41

Mark in Colossians. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner. He was a fellow prisoner with Paul. He saluted you and Marcus.

12:48

And he goes on from there. That was to the Colossians. In Acts 19 .28 through 30, it says, and when they heard these things, they were full of wrath and cried out saying, great is

12:58

Diana of Ephesians. These are pagan worshipers here that just heard Paul and they're all out of sorts.

13:04

And they say, great is Diana of Ephesians. And the whole city was filled with confusion and having caught

13:10

Gaius and Aristarchus, this is one of the guys we're talking about, men of Macedonia, Paul's companions in travel.

13:18

So these are guys that were traveling with Paul throughout his ministry, throughout his mission work, throughout Acts. They rushed with one accord to the theater.

13:26

And when Paul would have entered into the people, the disciples suffered him not. So Aristarchus literally saved

13:32

Paul from a rabid crowd that was all totally out of sorts after Paul had just preached and they were pagans and there was confusion.

13:42

It was going to be a riot. And Paul was about to walk into that, the apostle Paul. And that's an interesting lesson there.

13:48

You think, well, there are some guys that are so spiritual just at the top of the pyramid that they have all discernment and everything.

13:55

Now, I'm not saying Paul didn't have discernment, but in this moment, he was about to walk into a theater and it could have cost him his life.

14:02

But he had brothers with him. He traveled with these guys. They held him accountable too, and they protected him and they grabbed him and they pulled him out of that.

14:10

Isn't that interesting? So Aristarchus, one of the guys that is sending greetings to Philemon, was with Paul.

14:16

He was a constant travel companion. He protected Paul in this case. And then finally,

14:22

Lucas, Luke, he wrote the gospel of Luke. So two of these guys that send greetings to Philemon were two of the gospel writers.

14:30

It says in Colossians 4 .14, Luke, the beloved physician, remember he, well, this is how we know that was one of his professions, but we also know in his very technical writing in the gospel of Luke and in the book of Acts, he used very technical terms, a very complicated

14:47

Greek. And at times when he, for example, when he was describing the virgin birth, he was very intentional in using very technical terms to prove that it was a legitimate birth and not just a miraculous boom, there's a baby there.

15:07

Because there were some, the Gnostics and others that challenged whether or not

15:13

Mary actually gave birth. And even the Catholics today talk about the perpetual virginity of Mary.

15:19

Well, okay, that would be impossible if she actually gave birth normally, like normal childbirth.

15:27

And so if you go to Luke, the gospel of Luke, and he talks about the virgin birth, you have the physician that is using these very technical medical terms to describe the birth.

15:37

And there you can actually get testimony that, no, Mary had legitimate physical birth, but in her virginity.

15:46

So that's kind of neat. So this is the Luke we're talking about. This Luke sent greetings to Philemon. Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greets you.

15:53

And in 2 Timothy 4 .11, it says, only Luke is with me. So Luke was very special to Paul.

15:59

Luke was loyal to Paul. And he was there with him when others weren't, when he didn't have other disciples to lean on at that particular time.

16:12

And by the way, 2 Timothy, that's the last letter that Paul wrote. That's the very end of his life. So you have the very end of Paul's life.

16:19

He doesn't have anyone with him except for Luke. So Luke was very special to Paul. Luke sends his greetings to Philemon as well.

16:26

So these are all the guys. These men were very loyal to Paul, but they were also great friends of Philemon as well.

16:33

Paul wanted Philemon to remember that these brothers were there for him. They were there for him just as much as Paul was there for him.

16:41

And by default, that implies that they will hold Philemon accountable to God because that's how much they care about him.

16:47

They're going to hold him accountable to his obedience to God, in this case, to forgive for all of Paul's exhortations to him.

16:54

They were going to hold him accountable. Paul was going to hold him accountable in doing the right thing. Now, there was one name that I left out of that list.

17:04

It says in verse 24, Marcus Aristarchus Demas. I didn't talk about that guy. We're going to save that for a future study, and we'll talk about Demas as an individual later.

17:15

But all of those other guys we mentioned were very key, very strong Christian men that were there to hold

17:22

Philemon accountable to do the right thing. All of us need that. We all need that. We have it within our church family.

17:28

We have it from our mentors. We have that every week when we meet and we assemble. We are held accountable for the way in which we are living our lives and in obedience to God and so on and so forth.

17:42

And then let's look at the last verse here. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we're back in Philemon now, the grace of our

17:48

Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. So finally, any divine attribute that believers are commanded to imitate, especially when it comes to forgiveness, will not be possible to do that alone.

18:04

How does Paul end all of this? It requires the work of grace from the Lord in order to do it.

18:09

We've been talking a lot about forgiveness. It's not some light subject. It sounds light.

18:15

You think, oh yeah, forgive. That guy told me off one time. I forgive him. We're all right.

18:20

We're cool. Let's go shoot some pool. That's what we think of when we think of forgiveness.

18:26

It's just this kind of, I don't even know, just this casual thing. But true divine forgiveness as it flows from God, as it is an attribute that we emulate from God, that is no light thing.

18:38

In fact, to such a degree, it is not possible to do without the grace of our

18:43

Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. So when we talk about forgiveness, you have to remember something.

18:50

It's not going to be easy. It's not meant to be easy because we are fallen creatures. I say it's not meant to be easy.

18:57

What I mean by that is because we are fallen creatures, it's not. I guess you could argue it should be easy because we were created perfect, but we fell into sin.

19:05

Y 'all know the story. So it's not going to be easy for us. To forgive is not going to be easy ever because we are fallen creatures.

19:12

And because it won't be easy, it's only possible to do in conjunction with the grace of Jesus Christ and Him giving us that grace and it being with our spirit.

19:25

Literally, that's what Paul is saying. That's how he ends the whole letter. We have to remember that. We can't do it alone.

19:30

That requires prayer. It requires us fervently praying like Epaphras to the

19:37

Lord, asking Him to help us and to give us the strength to forgive even when we don't want to.

19:42

That's what Paul is ending with is you need that grace. You need the grace of Jesus in order to do this.

19:48

The fact that this story filled with all of the godly Christian character of Philemon. Remember, this was a man whom we ourselves could strive to imitate.

19:56

Yes, Christ is our ultimate example, but Paul says, do what I do. Other apostles said that too.

20:03

We can look to men like the ones in the New Testament testimony as examples of how to be godly

20:09

Christians ourselves. And Philemon was one of those guys. We could look at all of the commendations that Paul gave him throughout the letter, at the beginning especially, and we can say, yeah, we could imitate this.

20:19

He's a good example to follow if we want to be strong Christians. So he had really strong character.

20:29

And even with that, or because of that rather, because of who he was, the fact that this little letter, only 25 verses long, found its way into inspired scripture indicates that he did follow through with forgiving

20:47

Onesimus because the story ends here. This is where the letter ends. This was the initial letter sent to Onesimus.

20:52

We don't have scripture that fleshes out the whole rest of the story.

20:59

However, the fact that this letter is in the Bible, the fact that it is an inspired letter, is testimony that Philemon did follow through with all of Paul's exhortations, with being held accountable, with having those motivations, with putting his character into practice.

21:16

It wasn't just good character, but it was good character that turned into actions on his behalf.

21:25

So the fact that this is an inspired letter indicates that he did follow through and he did forgive

21:30

Onesimus. The Spirit solidified his character into this inspired letter, which certainly would have been a testament to Philemon's actions after he received it.

21:40

The Holy Spirit, as he moved the Apostle Paul to write this inspired letter, had

21:46

Paul put in all of these awesome things about Philemon. And so it makes sense that he would follow through with all this and that he would put all of that character to action.

21:56

According to some of the earliest church fathers, and this is really interesting, this is not scripture, this is a little bit of church history, and so take it for that.

22:07

Take it for what it's worth there. But this is cool, and it's likely, according to some of the earliest church fathers,

22:15

Onesimus, the slave, the one that ran away, that was in Rome that Paul converted, that he sent back with this letter to Philemon, Onesimus became the bishop of Ephesians later in his life.

22:28

Timothy was the first bishop of Ephesians, of the Ephesian church, the church at Ephesus. And Ignatius and Jerome later said that Onesimus succeeded

22:39

Timothy. Timothy was the young kid, or at least young man, that Paul was writing to, obviously, in his two letters to Timothy.

22:48

They were the final letters of Paul's life. That was the end of Paul's ministry. He's handing the baton to Timothy. Timothy becomes the bishop of the church at Ephesus, and then according to some of these early church fathers,

23:00

Ignatius and Jerome, Onesimus succeeded Timothy. And we do know a lot about Timothy, which is pretty crazy that he would have been, or could have been, his successor.

23:14

And they also said, according to the testimony of Ignatius and Jerome, that Onesimus, as the bishop of Ephesus, fervently preached the gospel until he was eventually martyred.

23:30

Now, of course, we are, again, that's not scripture. That is just some church history, testimony from church history.

23:37

Onesimus was a very common name. However, knowing the way the

23:42

Lord works, and knowing how much Onesimus, this particular man, meant to Paul as he is telling

23:51

Philemon all these things to take him back, and so on and so forth. It doesn't seem like it would be all that out of question, out of the question, too much of a stretch to say that the same man succeeded

24:06

Timothy, who was also close to Paul. So, you know, there you go. There's Ignatius and Jerome's testimony of what happened to Onesimus after this letter took place.

24:17

He later became a bishop and was eventually martyred. So, in conclusion, with this little book, the underlying theme of not only

24:26

Philemon, but also of scripture in general, is that we are never closer to emulating

24:32

God, to imitating God, than when we forgive. And such forgiveness should come easy because we ourselves have been forgiven.

24:40

That was one of the ideas that we started with in the very first lesson in this series. We've learned that a needed requisite to being a forgiver in the imitation of God is to first be a

24:53

Christian. How can you imitate God's attributes if you are not one of His own? How can you ever truly forgive from the heart, in the truest sense, where you no longer take account the wrongdoings of the person that did you wrong?

25:07

How can you do any of that unless you are a Christian, unless you're one of God's own, unless you have the grace of Jesus Christ bearing with your spirit like Paul ended the book of Philemon with?

25:19

So we learned that the first step is to be a Christian. The first step in imitating God's attribute of forgiveness is to be saved, to have great

25:28

Christian character, and to be willing and eager, not just willing, but eager to forgive our transgressors.

25:35

Of course, we got an example of that in the Prodigal Son parable as well. We have learned that the actions of a godly forgiver, what they look like, we've learned what those actions look like, namely that they will receive the wrongdoer back into fellowship after they have returned, asking for forgiveness, certainly, but also in the case of Onesimus, a changed, converted man.

25:58

He was now a brother in Christ. He was no longer a slave. He was no longer just a person. He was now a brother in Christ to Philemon.

26:06

That is one of the ways in which our character, our desire to forgive, actually flows into actions is to receive that person back into fellowship, which is exactly what happened in the case of Philemon and Onesimus by all accounts here.

26:20

We have learned that the forgiver has great motivation in forgiving as God has forgiven them, such as being held accountable by God and by their brothers and sisters in the

26:32

Lord. It's one thing to remember the fact that we were forgiven for the very sins that sent

26:40

Christ to the cross in the first place. If God can forgive that, surely we can forgive the things that people have done wrong to us, but just as a little bit of extra checks and balances, that is true.

26:55

The Holy Spirit is our ultimate teacher. We know that, but God also gave us other checks and balances as well, one of which being the accountability of our brothers and sisters, being together, fellowshipping, talking through things, and getting some counsel.

27:10

Everyone needs it, and the Lord ordained it for that for good reason. Given the scriptures that we've examined in this study, we've determined that it would be impossible to rejoice in the

27:20

Lord while simultaneously having a heart of intentional, and that's a key word there, intentional unforgiveness, because that inevitably leads to harboring bitterness in our hearts, which is a grave sin, and it can be a cancer to our souls.

27:34

We've talked about the fact that bitterness can actually change a person's physicality after so many years.

27:40

That's one of the things that makes it really sneaky. It's not like you are a little bit bitter towards someone, and then you look like the

27:47

Wicked Witch of the West the next day. It takes time, and it's sneaky, it's subtle, and it's sometimes decades later.

27:55

I told you all a story last week about a particular evangelist, remember, that talked with that prisoner, gave him counsel.

28:01

Y 'all remember that story? Well, in the same book where that same counselor was just giving other examples of his ministry, he talked about the fact that there were, in some cases, people that he worked with and counseled that were harboring bitterness toward a particular person for 40 years.

28:20

So 40 years later, there's going to be some change in a person physically, and it'll be noticeable.

28:26

He pointed that out. He talked about how it makes a person look different.

28:32

What's interesting is those same people that he would counsel with, he would walk them through a lot of what we've talked about in this study, and give them counsel, tell them to confess the bitterness to God, and to get rid of their own sin.

28:45

It's one thing that the person did wrong, but don't join them. Don't match their sin with your own.

28:52

Confess the sin to God, and he would send them home with some homework, like, you need to go read these passages, you need to go consider these things, contemplate these things, meditate on the

29:01

Word of God, think about what we've talked about, bring your troubles to the

29:06

Lord, and let's talk tomorrow. And he gave multiple cases where he would do that with someone who had been bitter for decades, and you could just see it on their face.

29:15

By the next day, he said, in some cases, I did not recognize the person when they came back to me the next day to talk about the fact that they had confessed their bitterness to the

29:24

Lord. And so those are anecdotal, obviously, but I think it is a powerful testimony as to what bitterness can do.

29:31

We don't want it. We want to get rid of that. It's not necessarily easy, but it is easy. It's not easy in the flesh, but it's super easy in the

29:39

Spirit. With the grace of the Lord, as Paul ends the letter with, it can be as quick as that, and by the next day, you have a total change in not only your spirit, but in your physical appearance as well.

29:50

And so, again, just to rehash a little bit what we just said, what we've determined is that it is really hard, if not,

29:57

I would say impossible, to have true joy in the Lord moment by moment, rejoicing in all ways. And again, I say rejoice if you have bitterness.

30:05

Now, if you know about it, and it's intentional, that is kind of what

30:10

I'm getting at. There could certainly be some cases where you may not have even realized, you know what, this happened a while back.

30:17

This person hurt me, and I didn't even realize it, but I guess I haven't really, truly forgiven them.

30:26

And in that particular case, perhaps it's not the extreme example, where it's intentional, and you know you haven't forgiven them, and you don't want to forgive them, and then bitterness flows from that.

30:38

You can still fix it either way, and it'd be taken away in the Lord, supernaturally, because that's what it is.

30:46

This is a divine attribute we're talking about here. It's not some work you can work up in your brain. The Lord can supernaturally change your heart and give you the ability to forgive.

30:57

In Hebrews, in fact, why don't y 'all turn with me here? We're almost done, but in Hebrews chapter 12, the writer of Hebrews, presumably

31:06

Paul, gives us a little bit more insight into what bitterness can do if we don't take care of it with the

31:15

Lord helping us out. He says in verse 14 of Hebrews 12, "...follow

31:21

peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord."

31:26

Without that holiness, without that peace, no man shall see the Lord. And then look what he says next in verse 15, "...looking

31:33

diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many..."

31:46

That's not just you anymore. "...many be defiled." First of all, consider the analogy that Paul or the writer of Hebrews uses here.

31:54

A root. A root of bitterness. What does a root do? It hides under the ground for a long time, soaking in all the water, soaking in all the nutrients.

32:03

And what is bitterness? What are the nutrients in the water for bitterness? It's taking account. It's taking account and having those hypothetical debates in the shower and the hypothetical arguments with the person and thinking about things and having vain imaginings that at this point didn't even happen.

32:18

All of that is watering that root that can be within you, just like a root deep in the ground.

32:24

And then someday though, what happens? That root springs up and people see the plant.

32:30

People see the manifestation of the bitterness, and that is when our physical appearance starts to change.

32:38

When we let that root within us get watered and get so much nutrients that we start to change ourselves, and then all of a sudden it's not inside anymore.

32:46

It's also outside as well. So what is he saying? Let's read 15 one more time. "...looking

32:51

diligently lest..." So being diligent. There's a key word. "...looking

32:57

diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled."

33:07

But look at 16. "...lest one morsel of meat sold his birthright."

33:15

That's a really interesting parallel that the writer draws there in the context of talking about bitterness.

33:21

Let's look at one more really quick passage. In this one, go to Ephesians chapter 4, and we actually looked at this at the very beginning of our study here, but this one is a little bit...

33:34

So Paul is kind of bringing the hammer down in that Hebrew passage. Again, presumably

33:39

Paul. And we should take his words to heart there, and that should...

33:45

I mean, Hebrews has no shortage of warnings in it, and this is another warning. "...be diligent lest any root of bitterness spring up trouble you, and thereby defile many."

33:55

So that can make... that can convict any one of us. There's not a single person alive that hasn't at some point been a little bit bitter about something.

34:03

So it's not like I'm up here being preachy, telling you guys that you need to fix it, or anyone online, or anyone listening to the recording 30 years from now.

34:11

This is something that can be very... it can be very subtle, and it can sneak up on anybody at any given time.

34:17

So we read this so that we have this ammunition, and we're ready for it. When it does begin to take root, we can quench it.

34:24

So there's that in Hebrew, but take a look... in Hebrews, but take a look at Ephesians chapter 4. Look at verse 29, and think about the positive...

34:32

some of the positives that are in here, mixed with the bitterness.

34:39

It says, look at the context, "...let no corrupt communication..." This is one of Dad's recent big aha moments, not that long ago, that he had that he shared with all of us.

34:50

"...let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers..."

35:02

And then look at the very next verse in that context, "...and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed into the day of redemption."

35:09

So how do we grieve the Holy Spirit? By not doing what

35:15

Paul just said in the previous verse, by letting corrupt communication proceed out of our mouth, by spewing words of division, by wanting to sow discord among the brethren.

35:26

That will quench the Holy Spirit. And then in verse 31, in the same context, listen to this, "...let

35:32

all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice..."

35:40

And then listen to how it ends, and it's so beautiful, "...and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."

35:50

It's the opposite. It's two ends of the spectrum. He gives you the first one in verse 31, the other side in verse 32.

35:57

One end of the spectrum is evil, bitterness, anger, clamor. Put all that away from you and replace it with what?

36:07

Kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiving one another, and then he finishes it just to really hammer it home, just as Christ, I'm sorry, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

36:18

So we're reminded one more time we need to do this because we ourselves have been forgiven, and we can do this, and that's the beautiful part.

36:26

It seems like a tall mountain to climb sometimes, but it actually isn't with the help of the

36:31

Holy Spirit. Imagine it being a mountain, and you're like, there's no way I can climb this, and the answer is it's true.

36:36

You can't climb it by yourself, but if your heart is in the right place, and you pray, and you bring these things to the

36:43

Lord, he'll pick you up, and you'll just kind of float to the top of the mountain. You don't even have to worry about climbing it. You just get to the top.

36:48

You're at the bottom, and then boom, you're at the top, and you have a heart of forgiveness just like that. So in this brief letter, we're given an example of what true forgiveness can look like, but we're also given another great example of Christian relationship dynamics, and that is

37:04

Paul is resorting to love over authority. He's resorting to friendship over rebuke in this particular context.

37:13

That's important to remember as well, because remember, he did not bring his apostolic authority necessarily onto Philemon.

37:23

He came to him as a loving brother, friend, companion, brother in Christ. So we can learn a lot from that.

37:30

We can learn a lot from Paul's approach, understanding that Philemon was a brother, that he had a great testimony.

37:36

Does that make sense? You got to remember both though. It's not just that Paul would go to anybody like that.

37:43

He certainly didn't. Paul rebuked left and right when it was necessary, but he went to Philemon differently because of who

37:50

Philemon was. So you got to remember, who is it you're dealing with? If it's a brother who you know and has a wonderful testimony, wonderful Christian character, but you need to help him out a little bit with this situation, perhaps you approach it like Paul did to Philemon.

38:04

If it's another group of people, perhaps you approach it like Paul did the Corinthians or how he did talking about certain situations with certain elders when he's talking to Timothy and things like that.

38:16

You got to remember the context that you are in as well. But the common denominator in this relationship is that both men, both of them, were

38:26

God -fearing believers in Jesus Christ and conducted themselves accordingly. Both of them did that.

38:31

It's very important to remember. We can approach tough situations between us and other brothers or sisters in Christ in a similar fashion.

38:39

We can do it with love. We can do it with meekness, carefulness. Paul was certainly careful throughout this letter. Commendations for their strengths and soft exhortations for how they should be handling certain situations, especially when they've been greatly hurt by it and why, by the world's standards, or when by the world's standards, they could be bitter about it.

38:58

Remember, the world says, sure, you're justified. Be upset. You don't need to forgive that person. They did you wrong. By the world's standards, they may have that fake right, but you can help them get past that.

39:10

And you can do that by emulating Paul in the way he approached

39:15

Philemon in this letter. We will end it there. If you guys have any thoughts or anything like that, I think once again we have like two minutes to spare.

39:23

So for the next 20, let's talk about... I'm just kidding. So while you've got

39:49

Philemon who's going to be held accountable to forgive Onesimus as he comes back, that keeps

39:54

Onesimus safe in going back, right? There's safety for Onesimus there, but there's also safety for Philemon because Onesimus will be held accountable to his new walk as a believer to come back and in a sense kind of make amends and do the best he can.

40:13

In other words, Philemon doesn't have to feel like if I let him back, I'm going to get taken advantage of again.

40:21

Won't happen because now these same minutes of accountability, they're going to be keeping him accountable, but Onesimus is a brother.

40:29

They're going to keep him accountable as well. So it's kind of like there's safety on both sides there. No doubt.

40:35

And I think Philemon would understand that while he's reading the letter as well. Remember, he's a veteran

40:40

Christian at this point. He had been under Paul's teaching for at least two or three years perhaps.

40:48

And then he is the household host of a church, one of the earliest churches.

40:54

So he was a mature Christian. So he probably was putting a lot of those pieces together too. And I do like that idea of Paul is sending his greetings as well as the greetings of these other brothers as a form of protection for Onesimus.

41:07

He has all of our stamp of approval. We all bear witness and testimony that he is the real deal.

41:13

He has been converted. He is a follower of Christ now. So in that sense, there's protection. But yeah, no doubt that Onesimus himself would have the same accountability.

41:21

That's a good thing to bring out for sure. Great thoughts.

41:27

Yes, sir. I think it's neat that history tells us that Onesimus became a pastor of one of the greatest churches that ever existed ever since I was a kid.

41:38

It makes sense if you think about it because Paul was evangelist. He traveled. He became a pastor.

41:45

But Philemon was a pastor. And so that means he stayed with him for years.

41:53

He discipled this young man so that he was able to pastor that church eventually.

42:04

And I think that proves, you know, without that, Philemon accepted him back.

42:12

I agree. Not only that he accepted him back, but that he accepted him back as more than a slave accepted him back into ministry.

42:21

He discipled him. And, you know, when John writes the letter, writes the revelation in, we would believe somewhere around 90

42:31

AD. It's not out of the question that when he wrote to the church of Ephesus, or I should say when

42:36

Jesus wrote to the church of Ephesus in revelation, that Onesimus was already the bishop at that point.

42:42

And Ephesus was one of the churches that got some really powerful words from the Lord. He said, you forgot your first love, but he gave them way more commendations prior to that.

42:53

And I believe one of the reasons they may have forgotten their first love is because it says they have been, essentially, they were at the front lines of thwarting false teachers.

43:04

The church at Ephesus, the members, and certainly the bishop, were not putting up with false teachers at all, which, of course, is a good thing.

43:16

And so you might think, well, how did they lose their first love? Well, maybe part of it was they were distracted with these battles they were fighting, and they forgot.

43:23

You know, we need to get back to the pure worship. Who knows? I don't want to have too big of a rabbit trail there, other than to say

43:29

Onesimus very well may have been the bishop of Ephesus at the time Jesus spoke to them and told them all those amazing things about that church later.

43:38

So that is really cool. Well, yeah,

43:52

I didn't know what to do with that. That was pretty funny. This last part, this kind of summarizing all, it really hit home for me.

44:17

Like, you can be in a situation where it's another person doing the wrong actions against you, and so you feel vindicated in feeling whatever you're feeling, and then going over and over and over things in your mind, and it just brought back one of the most impactful periods of my life.

44:46

Personal was a period where I was just wrong for a period of time, and six weeks into me, it felt like a year had gone by without being patient, and I was unfortunately in a state of low, low, low, and around midnight or 1 a .m.,

45:05

or just in the middle of the night, which was the bitterness, and I had to literally get up in my truck and drive and see the person, and it was in the middle of the night.

45:18

It was so weird, and I just knocked on the door, and we just had each other drive for a very long time, right at the bottom.

45:25

I mean, my role in that was holding it against the person, and being better than them, not communicating, and not showing love and kindness, and all the things that you guys are telling me to do, and it's so weird how that can be on both sides of the equation.

45:48

It doesn't matter the other side, and if you're living in that place, it's just a heavy place of sin, and you have to confess that.

45:57

You get right with the Lord on it first. Right. Well, I'm glad, and I think one thing that has hit me is how interesting and how much it makes sense that our culture does want to vindicate the bitterness.

46:15

The world system, and obviously the devil through that, both want everyone to feel vindicated when they have the bitterness within them, because the devil knows it's killing them slowly.

46:29

The devil knows that relationships can't be restored through that or in that particular state, and so you hear, again, at the beginning of this thing, words like bitterness and forgiveness were just kind of, they just had this almost casual connotations to them, just like, these are just normal human emotions.

46:47

You forgive people for saying something that was a little hurtful, and maybe you're a little bitter about the situation, but in going through the study myself,

46:56

I've realized how powerful both of those things are, and how the devil is harnessing that bitterness as an attribute of him, and he wants humans to experience that to the nth degree, and to the point where culture glorifies the bitterness.

47:13

Remember, we started with that. We live in a culture that glorifies vengeance, and it glorifies getting people back in retribution, and being bitter because you were wronged first, but we have to get rid of all that, or else we know what the consequences are, as we've discussed already, and forgiveness is the other side of that.

47:33

Did you have a thought, Ash? Yes, I was thinking about augmentedness, and the likelihood that he was received, and you know, the kind of happy ending, and you know, if you can assume that maybe there was some conversation between the two of them, maybe they talked some things out, but I was thinking about this verse, or these two verses.

48:00

Now we exhort these brethren, warn them that are unworthy, comfort the feeble -minded, support the weak, be patient for all men, see that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves and to all men, rejoice evermore, without ceasing, and every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

48:27

Quench not the spirit, and it goes on. Um, I just thought it was interesting to me, because yes, it's all great when you have reconciliation, but within the church, sometimes you have to support a weak, and it's not just like a, oh, we handled this, and it's behind us, and we can all move on with with this happy lovey -dovey, like sometimes when you're leaning on those things that, where those who are maybe more immature spiritually, are needing a lot of patience from others in the church, or friends, or whatever.

49:24

Well, yeah, that's a great aspect of it as well, is that it's one thing to say, you can't forgive without the help of the

49:31

Holy Spirit, but you can also have help from your family as well, the church family, spiritual family, in knowing how to work through it, because we have the practical steps in the

49:43

Word, and so being able to have us walk through that, where our blinders are off, and where our brain may be a little bit muddled because of all the things that have been happening, getting, having someone being able to clearly go through it, having not been involved in the situation that perhaps brought on the bitterness, and the lack of forgiveness, and things like that, can help us for sure.

50:08

The Holy Spirit can work through that person, and things like that, so that's great.

50:14

That is definitely an applicable passage that you covered there, for sure. All righty, guys, well, let's go ahead and wrap it up, and we will press on.

50:23

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day, for bringing us together, and for allowing the fellowship that we have together, and getting to talk about your

50:31

Word, and for this study that we just concluded, and for just the wonderful lessons and truths that we have gleaned from it.

50:40

We ask that you give us the strength to take the truths that you teach us, and to put them into practice, just like Philemon was able to, and the way that the

50:49

Apostle Paul would want us to, the way that you would want us to. We ask you to give us that strength, and to give us your

50:56

Spirit, in a way where we are one, and we are walking with you. We are in the new man, so that we have the power that we need to imitate your attributes.

51:06

So, we thank you for all of that. Thank you for the things we learned. Thank you for what today will bring, for our fellowship, but also our being able to come and partake in the

51:18

Lord's Supper together, and what that signifies. We ask you to be with the rest of our services, and we ask all these things in your name.