Sermon Tone Analysis

Thank you _________________.

I want everyone to understand this:  *My father* was a good man.

He worked two, or sometimes three jobs all the time I was growing up.

He did that to pay the bills and keep food on the table.

I remember my dad as generous.

I can’t remember a time when I really needed something that he didn’t give it to me.

By his lights, he did what he thought was right, and he coped with my mother’s death back in 1971 the only way he knew how.

After my mother died, my dad crawled into a bottle and pretty much stayed drunk for the next 10 years.

Dad had a philosophy of parenting that went like this:  Mom’s job was to love us, dad’s job was to keep us in line.

Unfortunately, when mom died, dad had to try and do both, and he didn’t do that very well.

Actually he was a lot better at swatting us than loving us.

It was after my mother died, and I had been about a year out of high school, that my dad and my younger brother Kevin got into it.

I tried to get in the middle and stop it, and my dad whacked me good.

There were some words exchanged, and the next morning, at the young age of 19, I packed everything I owned into a laundry basket, threw it into the back seat of my ‘66 Corvair, *and I moved out.*

It was about a year an a half later, that *Jesus Christ moved in,* and He became the Lord of my life.

He changed everything.

By God’s good grace, He put me into an office with a Christian guy named Charlie.

And it wasn’t long before we started trading stories, and when Charlie heard mine, he started immediately encouraging me to reconcile with my dad.

You know I resisted that for a while, but I really knew Charlie was right.

If Jesus had forgiven me, I needed to forgive others, starting with my dad.

I also needed to *own what I’d done wrong*, not respecting my dad’s authority and not appreciating everything he had done for me, even after mom died.

So one evening I drove to my dad’s bar down on Route 1 in Alexandria – it’s the place he bought after mom died – and I asked his forgiveness, and I asked him if I could come home.

And of course he said yes, there was never any doubt about that.

But it wasn’t about moving into my dad’s house.

It was about trying to move into his heart.

Now that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t have a spiritual friend like Charlie – someone who could see things from God’s point of view, and help me decide to do the things that are hard to do:  to ask forgiveness; to give forgiveness; to make reconciliation more than something I talk about, but to make it a practice of the way I live with people.

Because *if my faith doesn't work in one-on-one relationships, then it really doesn't work at all.*

After all, how can I say that I have this great big faith, that believes that God could raise a man from the dead,  when it is not even strong enough to help me say “I’m sorry” when I step on your toes?

Let’s look at the perfect case study of faith in ordinary practice – in the *one-on-one*.

It’s Paul’s letter to Philemon – a beautiful little letter from Paul who is under house arrest in Rome, but still doing the work of an apostle and in this case, a spiritual friend.

What we’re going to see is someone like my friend Charlie – that’s the apostle Paul - helping two Christian brothers to do what is right in the push and pull of life.

Let me *set the scene* for you.

While in Rome, Paul is met by a slave named Onesimus, who apparently came looking for him.

Onesimus, which means “useful” in Greek, has apparently become “useless” by running away from Philemon, his master back Colosse, a city in Asia Minor – the modern day country of Turkey.

In this letter Paul will make an appeal to Philemon, asking him to accept Onesimus, now a Christian, and coming home to reconcile.

Paul wants Philemon to forgive Onesimus, and regard him no longer as a slave, but a Christian brother.

At least, that’s the way I piece it together.

Honestly, we don't know how or why Onesimus ends up with Paul.

I believe, as do many scholars, that viewing Onesimus as a runaway slave fits the very careful and even veiled language we’re going to see as we read the letter.

But however Onesimus got to Paul, one thing is clear:  Jesus got to Onesimus, that changed everything, and now Paul is encouraging both of them both to put their faith into practice.

HHH   ere *we see Paul*, negotiating through the thorny part of friendships.

We also see *Onesimus*, the offending party, who is responding in obedience and faith.

After all, he is carrying this letter back to his former master.

This letter seals either his condemnation, or his forgiveness.

Finally, we see *how Paul casts a positive picture in Philemon’s mind* of himself, doing what he ought to do.

This little letter gives a great snapshot of how Christianity is really supposed to work – encouraging, requesting and giving forgiveness in the thorny part of relationships.

So let’s read Philemon 1-3:  1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, *T*o Philemon our beloved /brother /and fellow worker, 2and to Apphia our sister, and to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house: 3Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, as we read through this letter, we will see that Paul is talking about some very personal stuff – but he writes it *to a whole crowd of people*!

Most scholars believe that Philemon is the host of a church in his house, perhaps even the Colossian church.

Apphia is thought to be Philemon's wife, and Archippus their son, maybe even the pastor of the church.

So the letter is addressed to Philemon… and everyone else.

It is like sending a email asking for some really hard things, and cc-ing the whole company!

Now, you and I might do that as a “power play” to force our point, but I think Paul has purer motives… and I’ll get to that later.

*Verse 4: I thank my God always, making mention of you in my prayers, 5because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints; 6/and I pray /that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the knowledge of every good thing which is in you for Christ’s sake.

Notice in verses 5 and 6 - our faith is toward the Lord Jesus, and this results in a practical love toward all the saints.

It’s not that we have faith in each other, as the New American Standard seems to say – that’s a very literal translation, or that our faith produces evangelism, as the NIV puts it, which is a translation that is semantically correct – /koinonia/ does mean sharing, but I thing that is contextually off target.

What Paul is *praying* is this:  *That Philemon would activate his faith and do what he knows he ought to do.

If he does, it will demonstrate to others that the fellowship they have in Christ is a whole lot more than the word they use to describe their meetings together.*

Fellowship is a bond of faith, and expressed in love that gets worked out in the mundane, normal relationships of life – and the conflicts that go with them.

It works through disagreements and things that split us up.

It is a faith takes the hard steps of reconciling broken relationships.

That's why I said, *"if our faith doesn't work in the one on one relationships, then it just doesn't work.

Period."*

Look at verse 7:   7For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.

When our faith is active and effects real change in our lives, then look what it does:  *it refreshes people*.

It is never a drain on them, it renews them and encourages them to stick through tough and the hard times.

That's what Philemon had done for Paul.

Imagine Paul, stuck in prison, but encouraged that all his suffering is worth it, if it produces believers like Philemon.

How many moms and dads in this room have toughed out through those teen years, and seen at the end that all your hard work, that it was worth it.

When you see your kids putting into practice what you taught them, well isn’t your soul refreshed?

Now let’s move on to verses 8-16:  8Therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you /to do /what is proper, 9yet for love’s sake I rather appeal /to you/—since I am such a person as Paul, the aged, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my imprisonment, 11who formerly was useless to you, but now is useful both to you and to me.

12I have sent him back to you in person, that is, /sending /my very heart, 13whom I wished to keep with me, so that on your behalf he might minister to me in my imprisonment for the gospel; 14but without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but of your own free will.

15For perhaps he was for this reason separated /from you /for a while, that you would have him back forever, 16no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Now Paul is getting to the thorny part of why he wrote this letter, and he is a master of tact and care in choosing his words.

Perhaps because, if this letter fell into the wrong hands, he didn't want Onesimus arrested, but also because Paul is going out of his way not to exert the authority of an apostle - notice he never calls himself an apostle in this letter.

He doesn’t want to compel maturity, he wants Philemon to choose it.

And so Paul makes an appeal, asking in effect for Philemon forgive and restore Onesimus, and *he asks based on* *three things*.

The first is because of their friendship.

As I said, Paul does not ask based on his authority as an apostle, but on the authority of a spiritual friend.

He is a friend because he simply loves Philemon.

He has authority because he is applying the Word of God in the situations of life.

He sees above the “who did what to whom,” and applies the truth of God’s perspective to help Onesimus and Philemon get through a difficult situation.

You see that friendship even when he uses a term like "confidence" in verse 8.

That word has the idea of frankness - open speech between two friends.

Paul could speak frankly and say, "You know, as an apostle I could order you to do this, but you and I go deeper than that.

Let me tell you as a friend what I really think you should do."

Paul also asks based on the mutual cost of discipleship.

Now, for a long time I thought of verse 9 as taking the Jewish mother approach, spreading a little guilt in with the request:  “I’m Paul, the old guy, and here I am in prison….”

But now I’m not so sure that’s what Paul had in mind.

It is probably better for us to see Paul as giving Philemon a reminder that an active faith is a costly faith.

Paul has done it, he’d rather keep Onesimus with him, as he says in verses 12-14 – but the cause of Christ demands that we act in the Lord’s interest, not our own.

And the Lord requires that we live in harmony and unity as the basis for any other good works we do.

The cause of Christ is not about us.

It is about the Lord, making Him known by showing an unbelieving world the difference Jesus Christ makes in the most basic part of our lives – how we treat one another.

So Paul asks based on friendship.

He asks,  based on the shared cost of discipleship, and then back verses 10-11, we see that he asks based on power of the gospel in Onesimus' life.

Onesimus was "useless," but all that is changed now.

He’s now a Christian brother.

He is valued by God.

He is valued by Paul.