back to indexBerean Community Church Wednesday Night Bible Study 4/26/23 Philemon
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Okay, good evening everyone. Let us go and take our seats so that we can get our hearts ready to sing together and get started with Bible study. 00:00:14.000 |
Okay, let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we want to gather our hearts to lift your name on high. To God sing praises to you and continue just to strengthen our faith. 00:00:42.000 |
Lord God, we do believe that you are worthy of our time, of our full attention and consideration. And what's more, Lord, we do want to hear your word so that God it would guide our every step. 00:00:55.000 |
And even down to some of the more private decisions we make, some of the way that we interact with our loved ones and in our lives. 00:01:05.000 |
And I pray that the gospel, the presence of Christ would continue to affect us in every way. 00:01:12.000 |
Lord, we want to always thank you for the opportunity to gather in this way and we lift this time up to you. It's in Christ's name. Amen. 00:07:54.000 |
So while we're here together, a few announcements for us for this weekend. 00:07:58.000 |
So I know there are a good number of you who are pretty new to the church. 00:08:02.000 |
If you have time, we want to warmly invite you to a special luncheon. 00:08:07.000 |
That's going to happen in the cry room, which is the room adjacent here. 00:08:11.000 |
This Sunday, I believe it's going to start around 1245 or 1. 00:08:17.000 |
Sorry, I had it pulled up, but I think it's 1245. 00:08:21.000 |
Get there, we'll say hi to you, and then lunch will probably start at 1. 00:08:24.000 |
But we want to again introduce a lot of maybe like answer some questions, 00:08:30.000 |
introduce you to some of the core members, etc. 00:08:33.000 |
But another big announcement is as you guys know, we've been saying it a bunch, 00:08:40.000 |
Please make sure you take time to sign up for that. 00:08:43.000 |
This Sunday is April 30th, and then starting Monday, if you register after that, 00:08:49.000 |
the prices are going to go up $30 per participant. 00:08:53.000 |
So make sure you sign up, check your schedules. 00:08:56.000 |
If you have questions, please just email me directly, and then that will be squared away. 00:09:01.000 |
The other thing I want to highlight is that Men's Ministry is having our next meeting on May 13th. 00:09:09.000 |
So for all the men in the room, please make sure you sign up for that. 00:09:11.000 |
It will be a sweet time of learning, fellowship, discussion, and lunch together as well. 00:09:16.000 |
Okay, please go ahead and go into your discussions. 00:55:55.000 |
Okay, could I please ask the people in the room to come on out and once you come, 00:56:03.000 |
we'll start our Bible study review of the passage, verse 4 through 6. 00:56:09.000 |
So those of you guys in the room, if you guys can make your way and get situated. 00:57:25.000 |
Alright, let's go before the Lord, ask God to bless us as we review once more this passage, 00:57:31.000 |
verse 4 through 6. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, God, taking a look at your word, 00:57:39.000 |
we ask questions, we discuss, and then we go over it again. 00:57:45.000 |
And our prayer, Lord, is that you would help us to really cling to every single word 00:57:51.000 |
that you have given to us. Help us, Father God, not to just know the content of the text, 00:57:58.000 |
but truly be convinced. Help us to be convicted. And as always, Lord, as you say, 00:58:04.000 |
your word is living and active, and God judges the intentions, the thoughts, and our practices as well. 00:58:10.000 |
So would you grow us, mature us in every way according to your word, it's in Christ's name. Amen. 00:58:16.000 |
So, last week I gave the overview, and another kind of good way to think about the overview 00:58:24.000 |
is you want to do an overview from different angles, and I hope I try to encourage you to do that last time. 00:58:30.000 |
You can do an overview from the angle of just Philemon receiving the letter, right? 00:58:36.000 |
And then you place yourself in a position where, what if I was asked to give this kind of forgiveness 00:58:43.000 |
and acceptance to an individual who has offended me, somebody who is technically beneath me, 00:58:49.000 |
has offended me, and yet I'm supposed to give this kind of grace. But another angle is to just see it 00:58:54.000 |
from Apostle Paul's lens, where he is the one who is trying to make peace. 00:59:01.000 |
He's both making peace between the two individuals, but also in the recipient, Philemon's heart. 00:59:08.000 |
And so that's why I use the Matthew passage of "Blessed are the peacemakers," right? The Beatitudes. 00:59:15.000 |
They're thinking about how blessed it is to have a heart of love that seeks to bring reconciliation, 00:59:21.000 |
even amongst just two individuals who happen to be very, very far in terms of proximity from Apostle Paul. 00:59:29.000 |
And so as the letter is Paul's personal and powerful appeal to Philemon, 00:59:35.000 |
what we get in this passage, verses four and on, is Paul's just thankful and prayerful heart. 00:59:42.000 |
It's very, you know, comes from the lens of ministry. It comes from the lens of one who's shepherding, yes? 00:59:49.000 |
And so we kind of want to get our minds in that frame. Let me take a moment to read for us this text. 00:59:55.000 |
"I thank my God always, making mention of you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith 01:00:02.000 |
which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints. 01:00:06.000 |
And I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective to the knowledge of every good thing 01:00:11.000 |
which is in you for Christ's sake. For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love, 01:00:17.000 |
because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother. 01:00:21.000 |
Therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what is proper, 01:00:26.000 |
yet for love's sake I rather appeal to you, since I am such a person as Paul the aged, 01:00:32.000 |
and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus. I appeal to you for my child, Anisimus, whom I have begotten in my imprisonment." 01:00:41.000 |
Okay? So that's the section where if we were maybe outlining it by just a holistic thought, 01:00:49.000 |
we should take all the way up to verse 10 into consideration, verse 10 being the appeal. 01:00:54.000 |
But for today, our sake, we're studying verses 4 through 6, and what I've done is I've divided it into two major segments. 01:01:03.000 |
What I saw was Apostle Paul talking to Philemon in a way where he's saying, "I am so thankful to God for you, 01:01:09.000 |
and I pray for you, because I hear of your faith." 01:01:13.000 |
So the beginning portion of verse 4 and 5, I would summarize as, "This is the thankful heart of Apostle Paul." 01:01:20.000 |
And then verse 6, you have him saying, "I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective 01:01:26.000 |
through the knowledge of every good thing which is in you for Christ's sake." 01:01:31.000 |
And he just has a comment of the way that I try to outline. 01:01:36.000 |
As you guys know, I just love outlines. It forces me to review, review, review. 01:01:41.000 |
But the way that I outline is by clause by clause, seeing the relationships between, 01:01:46.000 |
he is very thankful because of the love and faith, this love and faith which he has for the Lord. 01:01:53.000 |
He is praying that the fellowship of the faith may become effective, and that this effectiveness is through, 01:01:59.000 |
and that's going to be something of a discussion later, through the knowledge of every good thing, 01:02:04.000 |
and that knowledge which is already in you for Christ's sake. 01:02:08.000 |
So, as a way of kind of like an overview rundown of that little section, verses 4 through 6, 01:02:15.000 |
I would summarize it holistically as, "These are the thankful prayers of Apostle Paul." 01:02:20.000 |
Thankful for Philemon's love and faith, praying that his faith be more effective, 01:02:25.000 |
knowing that even all that he's saying now is leading up to this great, great appeal. 01:02:32.000 |
This great appeal saying, "I'm already so thankful for the love and faith you exercise, and I hear of it." 01:02:40.000 |
And then you can almost see the appeal coming. And so continue. 01:02:44.000 |
Or praying that his faith become even more effective than it already is. 01:02:48.000 |
He's already had such an impact, he's causing people to be joyous. 01:02:52.000 |
He's refreshing people, and yet he wants it to be more effective, and this leads into the appeal, 01:02:58.000 |
and therefore, do this thing which is going to be proper and appropriate to love. 01:03:03.000 |
Now, as we then walk down these two segments of thankfulness and prayer, 01:03:08.000 |
the first section I want to highlight to you is the thankfulness. 01:03:12.000 |
So, his attitude, he says, is thankful always to God, making mention in his prayers. 01:03:18.000 |
And as I just take a moment to think about that, there is nothing within verse 4 and 5 that requires like, 01:03:25.000 |
"Oh no, I don't understand the interpretation of what he's saying." 01:03:29.000 |
It's so apparent to us, his heart's so thankful for this dear brother who's very, very active in the ministry. 01:03:36.000 |
As an encouragement to you, whenever you come across passages where it's so straightforward, 01:03:41.000 |
just jump straight into meditation, where it allows your heart to be exposed to the passage, 01:03:50.000 |
As a quick encouragement, every time we do inductive process, there should be an observation, 01:03:55.000 |
where you're asking just, "What's here? Is it right? Is there evidence of this in the whole letter? 01:04:01.000 |
Is there evidence of this in the rest of scripture?" 01:04:04.000 |
And then you're asking interpretive questions, "What does this mean? Is my conclusion correct?" 01:04:09.000 |
But sometimes, it's just plain, and you can meditate very deeply on, 01:04:14.000 |
"Am I doing this? In what way do I fail to meet this?" 01:04:18.000 |
Or, "How am I encouraged?" Meditating on, "How does this look like right now in my life?" 01:04:25.000 |
So the way I would do it is, I'm taking a look at this, and I'm thinking about the thankfulness of God, 01:04:29.000 |
or thankfulness of Apostle Paul to God, making mention of you in my prayers, that kind of thing. 01:04:35.000 |
And immediately, just sharing with you my own meditation as I sat there thinking, it's like, 01:04:39.000 |
"Oh man, for a lot of you guys who know me, sometimes I'm just scatterbrained, 01:04:44.000 |
and honestly speaking, if you are out of sight, you are completely out of my mind." 01:04:54.000 |
I am very tunnel-visioned, and whatever's in front of me, I'm talking to you, then I'm talking to you, 01:04:59.000 |
but rarely though am I thinking of the people because, sometimes actually though, 01:05:05.000 |
I'm challenged that I know when I see people where their consideration of their loved ones 01:05:14.000 |
They're at the store, and then they're thinking, "Oh, this would be so good for so-and-so." 01:05:18.000 |
I'm always like, "That never crosses for me." How do you make those connections? 01:05:24.000 |
And then I realize that's something I actually need to grow in. 01:05:27.000 |
Here's another one. Not only am I remembering and making mention of people, 01:05:32.000 |
but genuinely, this whole paragraph highlights the thankfulness Apostle Paul has in his heart. 01:05:40.000 |
And so there's this question in my mind, immediately for myself, it's like, 01:05:44.000 |
"Do I have an attitude of thankfulness when I think about the individuals that I'm counseling, ministering to?" 01:05:51.000 |
Or, as I meditate on this, do I sometimes think that people are problems to be solved? 01:06:00.000 |
They're like projects to be attended to, you know? 01:06:03.000 |
Is there a gratefulness in your heart for even the little amount of faith you see in people? 01:06:08.000 |
Or is there this constant grumbling like, "Why won't they listen to what I say?" 01:06:13.000 |
Those are just some meditations you can have immediately. 01:06:17.000 |
Here's another thing I had. One of the things I realized, just a danger of being in ministry, 01:06:22.000 |
is I'm constantly talking to people or talking about people. 01:06:26.000 |
"How do I take care of this person better?" You know? 01:06:31.000 |
"If this individual is struggling with this, what do I do?" 01:06:33.000 |
And there's this constant just like, mulling over people. 01:06:36.000 |
That is not the same as praying for them before God. 01:06:41.000 |
And that's one of the meditations I wrote down for myself. 01:06:44.000 |
Mark, just because you ruminated about what you're going to say, 01:06:48.000 |
just because you practiced how to give advice, 01:06:54.000 |
I'm not sure ever if you guys have fought with somebody, 01:07:00.000 |
and then now you're prepared with things to say. 01:07:03.000 |
That's still different from praying about it. 01:07:06.000 |
That's still different from going to God, relying, and saying, 01:07:09.000 |
"This reconciliation that needs to happen, Lord, help us to exercise the gospel of Christ in this." 01:07:24.000 |
It's like, "Yes, after each counseling session, after each meeting, we pray." 01:07:30.000 |
But even just taking metrics, if I say, "Oh, yeah, I'm praying for you." 01:07:35.000 |
When was the last time I actually took a metric survey? 01:07:42.000 |
And I don't know. It's just maybe a convicting thing. 01:07:45.000 |
Okay, moving forward, I wrote and tagged this. 01:07:48.000 |
I guess you can say labeled this as inspiration 01:07:51.000 |
because he says, "I am praying for you because I hear of your love." 01:07:56.000 |
And I realized, "Huh, that's really interesting." 01:08:01.000 |
Do we only pray for crisis situations, tragedies, and heartache? 01:08:06.000 |
Or when you hear somebody is growing and bearing fruit, does that inspire you? 01:08:10.000 |
Be like, "I want to pray for you so that you can bear more fruit." 01:08:14.000 |
You're on my prayer list because you're actually growing. 01:08:17.000 |
Or do we think, "You're fine. I don't need to take care of you." 01:08:23.000 |
We're going to let you just run and spread your wings at church." 01:08:28.000 |
He says, "Actually, no, because your reputation is going out 01:08:32.000 |
and he's hearing of his consistent character of love and faith for everybody, 01:08:45.000 |
He says, "This love and faith that he has is clearly for the Lord Jesus Christ 01:08:52.000 |
And I think that's--there's not necessarily like a whole lot I'm going to ask about this, 01:09:06.000 |
Just recently, we had a new member come in, and it was awesome 01:09:09.000 |
because on his factoids--you know how each person comes in and has those factoids on it? 01:09:14.000 |
He says, "I love Jesus and I love my family." 01:09:24.000 |
It's proper because the priorities are right. 01:09:29.000 |
And I remember kind of thinking about that and said, "You know, 01:09:32.000 |
we do live in a generation where the priorities are upside down. 01:09:35.000 |
I'm not going to say too much about it, but nowadays we do live in a generation 01:09:40.000 |
where people just love and care about the world so much. 01:09:49.000 |
And a lot of times, the way that you see it is the greatest fear they have 01:09:57.000 |
So much so, a lot of Christians are tackling and bombarding each other 01:10:05.000 |
The flip side of that for us should be we're so in love with Jesus. 01:10:13.000 |
So much so that we actually prioritize not offending our fellow brothers 01:10:17.000 |
and so much so that we kind of forget about the world. 01:10:23.000 |
We love God so much, we would dare not offend our own brother and sister in Christ, 01:10:27.000 |
and the world we almost forget, their third thought. 01:10:34.000 |
So here, all I want to say about this first section is what we kind of see 01:10:37.000 |
coming out is Apostle Paul's great attitude of thankfulness. 01:10:41.000 |
And for part of meditation, it's kind of like sometimes if you-- 01:10:48.000 |
maybe you've been trying to minister to people, you run into walls. 01:10:52.000 |
We can have a situation where there's lots to be thankful for, 01:10:55.000 |
but we're seeing all the problems, and you can be discouraged. 01:10:59.000 |
A quick challenge to you directly from this passage is 01:11:02.000 |
are you being inspired and thankful because of the faith you see 01:11:08.000 |
And if you're not seeing that and your heart's not thankful, 01:11:11.000 |
what is that saying about your heart currently? 01:11:13.000 |
What is that saying about your eyes currently? 01:11:18.000 |
Next we have the second portion where it is the prayer for effective faith. 01:11:25.000 |
And he says, "I pray that the fellowship of your faith"-- 01:11:29.000 |
so he's praying for his faith and the fellowship of it, 01:11:32.000 |
and we're going to maybe discuss that a little bit here-- 01:11:34.000 |
"that it may become effective through the knowledge of every good thing 01:11:42.000 |
We definitely think about this section, and then we probably ask the question, 01:11:46.000 |
"Why does he describe it as fellowship of faith?" 01:11:57.000 |
"I pray you apply more of Scripture in your life." 01:12:07.000 |
This idea of fellowship, koinonia, probably you've heard that term before, 01:12:11.000 |
already multiple times in your Christian life, 01:12:14.000 |
talking about how this koinonia has with it a sharing from one to another, 01:12:19.000 |
a fellowship with, but it has even, I guess more you can say, 01:12:23.000 |
an active element to it, which is that we are participating in something. 01:12:32.000 |
And so when we think of fellowship, I want to ask the question of, 01:12:36.000 |
"So how can we apply that when we think about fellowship of faith 01:12:49.000 |
A fellowship of faith means, "Hey, we have this one agenda, the faith, 01:12:59.000 |
And in that way, maybe we could even ask the question, 01:13:02.000 |
"Is there currently for us, when we think about fellowship, 01:13:07.000 |
typically we should always actually be thinking about fellowship of faith. 01:13:11.000 |
And in any way in our current Christian practice, 01:13:14.000 |
is there something that needs fine-tuning or deficient?" 01:13:19.000 |
And I do want to say, I do think that maybe if you look at letter B, 01:13:27.000 |
CFC, you'll see it typically when I write notes, 01:13:34.000 |
and it's a little wayward, and we need to correct it a little bit. 01:13:37.000 |
Fellowship in the broadest sense most people use as when we're all together. 01:13:43.000 |
And right now, a lot of times when people say, 01:13:45.000 |
"I can't find fellowship here," what they're kind of talking about actually 01:13:48.000 |
is, "I can't find people like me who will sympathize with me, 01:13:54.000 |
And in that sense, fellowship means more like identity, 01:13:59.000 |
We share or we talk, and we have like interests, 01:14:06.000 |
But fellowship, the way that the Scripture describes it, 01:14:08.000 |
almost is as though you don't need to be together. 01:14:12.000 |
You don't even need to be in the same room to just talk all night 01:14:19.000 |
That stuff is now frowned upon. Please continue to do it. 01:14:23.000 |
But if that's all in our heads fellowship means, 01:14:30.000 |
Because fellowship to the Apostle Paul and to the early saints, 01:14:33.000 |
this is our participation in this great cause of our devotion to Christ, 01:14:39.000 |
to the love of the brethren and evangelizing of the lost, 01:14:43.000 |
that you can be in different countries and have fellowship. 01:14:48.000 |
We don't actually even have to be in the same space 01:14:51.000 |
to have this fellowship together, this koinonia. 01:14:54.000 |
And that's the beauty of the Gospel and the purpose that God has given us. 01:15:03.000 |
"This partnership in the faith, I want it to be effective." 01:15:07.000 |
Now, in this then, I just wanted to make mention, 01:15:13.000 |
we realize just from the overview and thinking about it, 01:15:16.000 |
we mentioned how, think of all the ramifications 01:15:34.000 |
and then truly accepted Onesimus as repentance 01:15:39.000 |
I kind of wish that the letter had like chapter 2, 01:15:47.000 |
there was tears in his eyes, there was open arms, 01:15:53.000 |
But we take it by faith, most likely, that that happened, 01:15:55.000 |
because I kind of mentioned to you that church history has it, 01:15:58.000 |
that Onesimus ends up becoming really effective, 01:16:02.000 |
and he's mentioned various places in the ministry. 01:16:05.000 |
But the reason why I bring this up for the purpose was 01:16:08.000 |
just imagining the consequences and ramifications for the ministry 01:16:39.000 |
we talked about even later on we have this creed, 01:16:43.000 |
you know, that we, Apostles' Creed, that people recite all the time, 01:16:55.000 |
which is to say that Philemon following through with this, 01:16:59.000 |
it's going to bear its fruit and be effective 01:17:05.000 |
So, the next portion I want to highlight this is, 01:17:09.000 |
notice how it says he wants this faith to become effective, 01:17:14.000 |
and then I took through the knowledge of every good thing 01:17:25.000 |
And well, of course, it is a theme within the Scripture 01:17:28.000 |
that trying to overcome your sense of justice, 01:17:36.000 |
trying to overcome this huge hurdle of the fact 01:17:42.000 |
that's something that the Spirit has empowered us 01:17:48.000 |
And so in this way, we could totally understand 01:17:55.000 |
But, if you looked at the other translations, 01:18:07.000 |
and the NIV said, "In deepening your understanding 01:18:26.000 |
you're going to be made more effective by this knowledge, 01:18:40.000 |
That you're doing this because you're going to be 01:18:57.000 |
I'm just kidding, we're not going to take a vote. 01:19:03.000 |
"Hey, what's interesting about this is sometimes 01:19:05.000 |
the scriptures doesn't have another part of that verse, 01:19:09.000 |
but what's very clear is there are other portions 01:19:16.000 |
who because of practice have their senses trained 01:19:26.000 |
is all about the need for every Christian to mature, right? 01:19:30.000 |
And within it, he says, "Beloved, we're convinced 01:19:37.000 |
for God is not unjust so as to forget your work 01:19:41.000 |
and the love which you have shown towards his name. 01:19:44.000 |
In having ministered and still ministering to the saints, 01:19:48.000 |
and we desire that each one of you show the same diligence 01:20:10.000 |
You have everything that you need for life and godliness, 01:20:18.000 |
"I want you to grow in the fullness of the knowledge," right? 01:20:27.000 |
like Romans chapter 12, the renewing of your mind, yes, 01:20:32.000 |
is going to help you discern what is the will of God. 01:20:38.000 |
this knowledge of Christ, it's going to bear its fruit in you. 01:21:19.000 |
definitely not because we sat under a seminar for it, 01:21:33.000 |
He wants us to actually experience a lot of things. 01:21:58.000 |
Apostle Paul says, "I want to share in the sufferings of Christ 01:22:06.000 |
and having to forgive and be pushed to do things 01:22:09.000 |
far above and beyond what you think you're capable of. 01:22:32.000 |
but rather than saying, "I don't know if I can," 01:22:36.000 |
we can say, "By obedience and by simple faithfulness, 01:22:45.000 |
Lord, we thank you that as you are the perfect Father, 01:22:57.000 |
we know, Lord God, that ultimately you will bear the fruits 01:23:03.000 |
and what's glorifying to you is ultimately good for us. 01:23:12.000 |
and decisions they have to make that seem completely 01:23:18.000 |
I pray, God, that by doing what you have placed before us, 01:23:27.000 |
but what's more, truly prove you to be right in every scenario, 01:23:35.000 |
and what's more, God, you will use all of our experiences 01:23:44.000 |
Okay, so next week is verse 7 through 9, okay? 01:23:50.000 |
And you guys probably have noticed that verse 7 01:24:01.000 |
that we can do really like close inductive study. 01:24:15.000 |
So Apostle Paul is going to mention just a couple things, 01:24:18.000 |
and then that's going to all build to his appeal, 01:24:20.000 |
so you want to list those things and delineate. 01:24:26.000 |
how can we be more thankful for the believers around us? 01:24:38.000 |
what does that tell you about your own heart? 01:24:42.000 |
where you were challenged to do something not required, 01:24:54.000 |
And what is the difference between knowing the Bible 01:25:01.000 |
what is the difference between knowing what to do 01:25:03.000 |
versus growing in your knowledge of the good things 01:25:09.000 |
Okay, you guys are, please go into your discussion.