I'm supposed to a new book this morning, the book of Philemon. It is the smallest letter written by the Apostle Paul. Under the inspiration of the Spirit, at least the smallest inspired letter that the Spirit chose to preserve for the Church. And so we have it before us this morning. It's likely that it was given to Ticacus, the man we've got to meet in Colossians that probably ministered at Paul sent out on many missions throughout the New Testament, and Onesimus, who were going to learn a lot more about in this letter. Because they're mentioned in Colossi as the deliverers of the letter to Colossi, and at the same time of the deliverer of this letter to Philemon, who was the one in whom the church met, his house, was where the church met. And they were also given at that time a letter to the church in Leodicea, which was mentioned at the end of Colossian, probably the letter to the church in Ephesus, which they would have already dropped off when they sailed from Rome to Ephesus, the port on Asia Minor, and then traveled and delivered letters to several churches in Asia Minor, where Paul had ministered, or in some places where he had just gotten word, from the ministers who were there as he and his apostolic office was caring for and seeing that the church was being built up. And so if you're interested, the time period is about the 60s, early 60s AD. Paul is in prison in Rome. He's waiting to hear his appeal to Caesar heard that we saw in the book of Acts, and something happens. A man is put in confinement with Paul. We're not told for what, but it turns out that he was a runaway slave from Colossi. And his name was Inesimus. And he was the slave of a Christian at Colossi, the Christian in whose house the church met, named Philemon. And in this event, in the providence of God, Philemon's slave, runaway slave Inesimus, comes to faith in Christ. Paul leads him to faith in Christ, and Inesimus becomes a Christian in the Lord. And now Paul is sending him back to his master Philemon, if you can imagine the nervousness of such a mission, to not only write the wrongs that he did to him there, that's part of it, but really the main reason is to get Philemon to authorize Inesimus for the ministry that Paul has found for him, that Paul believes the Spirit has found for him. And so that is today in the light of stewardship Sunday, when once a year we consider our stewardship before the Lord, I want us to notice the importance of our voluntary faithfulness to God as we serve him, that we are to serve him from the heart, not out of compulsion, but because we want to, because we count it a great privilege to spent and be spent for God. We have a duty to be faithful with all of our gifts, with all of our time, with all of our talents, but what pleases God most is when we seek to serve him with all of these things from the heart. And that's what I think we see in this letter, this example of how we are to serve God with our hearts. Let's pray as we turn to God's Word. Father, again, we thank you for your Word. We just want to pause a moment to ask you to bless it to us. We could study this Word, memorize it, know it well, even affirm the truth of it, and yet, unless your Holy Spirit writes it on our hearts, we will not be changed by it. And so, Father, we pray that you would remember your covenant and that you would send forth your Word into our hearts by your Spirit so that we would grow in your likeness to the glory of your Holy Name. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Here now the Word of the Lord, from the book of Philemon, in the only chapter that the book consists in verses 1 through 7, this is God's Holy Word. Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus and Timothy, our brother, to Philemon our beloved friend and fellow laborer, to the beloved Aphia, our Kippus, our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house. Grace to you in peace from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always mentioning you in my prayers, hearing of your love and faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints, that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you, in Christ Jesus, for we have great joy and consolation in your love because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you, brother. May the Lord establish this word in our hearts this morning, I pray. Amen. Well, I have to laugh when I read this text only because of a reminder that it makes to me at the very end when Paul, at the end of the verse that I read the last verse, verse 7, where he says in the pocket of in the Greek which means he's speaking directly to someone, brother, and I just can't help for some reason think of when I was a kid and we would watch television channel 22 and 53, because there was no cable. And we would watch these old wrestling programs and there was this wrestler named Hulk Hogan, you probably heard of Hulk Hogan, right? And he would always talk about how we have to work hard and we have to say our prayers and we have to take our vitamins and if you do that, God will bless you, brother. And he always would throw that brother at the end of the text and into this great emotional speech that he would give that was all part of the entertainment of that sort of activity. Well, I bring that up because in this letter like almost like no other, we really see the heart of the Apostle Paul. We see his heart in a way that is unique to this letter. In fact, in some ways this letter has been criticized because of this. And yet I think it's a powerful letter. It's probably skipped over by a lot of folks. There's not anything new in Philemon. And in fact, if you wanted to study pretty much any doctrine, you can do better in a sense. You can have more substance and more details in any other place than the doctrines that you can find in Philemon. And yet if you believe that we are to learn also by example, then I think there's no more powerful letter, no more powerful pistol, than the letter to Philemon where Paul shows us where the Holy Spirit shows us what it is to serve and to love as a Christian. And so I want you to notice first of all this morning, the church in the home. I want you to notice the church in the home. Jesus said he would build his church. He appointed 12 apostles to that end. They went out preaching the gospel, baptizing and teaching all that Jesus commanded them, and appointing other preachers after them. And they went out and established churches, also appointing elders and deacons just as Paul commanded Titus to appoint elders and deacons in every city, well elders in every city and by implication, I think deacons when they had diagonal needs. But he commands Titus to do that. And so the church itself really is God's idea and the structure of it, it's God's idea and that they were to lead these churches by the gifts and graces that the Holy Spirit gave to each believer, as each believer used his gifts for the building up of the whole church in holiness. And as we saw last time, the churches established on the Word of God, the foundation, right, of the apostles and prophets, which would be the Old Testament and the New Testament. Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone because Christ is the one to whom the whole Old Testament pointed and looked forward to and waited with shadows and types of Christ that showed them in a way what he was going to do. And then in the New Testament we have the explanation and the life of Jesus and we see how we fulfilled all those things and accomplished all the things that we needed in his life and in his ministry and in his death and in his resurrection and in his appointing and sending out the apostles. And so we have this word of God and that word was to be proclaimed and believed in and obeyed in individual congregations throughout the whole world. And these churches were to gather every Lord's day, at least for worship where the Word of God would be read either a portion of the Old Testament or one of the Apostolic letters which we saw at the end of Colossi where Paul says, read this letter, send it to Leo Decile, have them read it, give the letter I wrote to them, read it in front of you all when they were gathered for worship, when they would hear the Word of God, when they would sing praises to God, when they would have the sacraments, when they would be drawn together in prayers. And when they would lay an offering up on the first day of the week as Paul commands them to do in Corinthians, all these things the churches did and we see throughout the New Testament this activity of church worship, New Testament worship and we see it in the earliest extra biblical letter, literature, churches coming together, worshiping God based upon the Word of God that was proclaimed to them as they praised God and prayed to God and so forth. And I say all of that to point out that these churches that gathered together and met, met in the ordinary homes of ordinary Christians. And that's what we see right at the beginning here, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, I've already mentioned Paul's in prison. Two filemen are beloved friend and fellow labor, just two are beloved one, and fellow laborer to the beloved Afia, Archipis, our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house. There the your is singular and it clearly refers back to filemen. It's the church in filemen's house, you wouldn't get that in English, you might think maybe it's Archipis's house or maybe it's all of their house. It's a singular your and it's to filemen and many scholars. I think the best understanding is that Afia was filemen's wife because she's mentioned next and Archipis is their son who's also the minister of the church. Certainly that was a Hendrickson's position and others and it seems to be the most natural understanding of the text. Something maybe Afia and Archipis are husband and wife and they're living in filemen's house but it would seem then he would have mentioned Archipis first. So probably that's the case but whatever the case is, they're meeting in filemen's house. The church meets in their house once a week for worship at least. And that's not unique in the New Testament. We've already seen in the letter to the Colossians, the church in layer to see our men in Memphis's house. And then we saw that in the book of Acts there was a church that met in Lydia's house and there was a church that met in Galicia in Gaia's house. And Priscilla and Aquila had at least one house, maybe two in different regions at different times, where the church met in worshiped. And so also married the mother of Mark, the church met in worshiped and prayed and sang in Acts chapter 12 when Peter was in prison. And this is how the church worshiped. They gathered together in the homes of individual believers. In fact, there's actually no evidence that's existing that shows that churches ever had buildings, separate buildings that they gathered in, until the third century. And then interesting. Until the 200s. Now there's lots of reasons for that. The church was persecuted. Persecution breaks out shortly after this time. In the mid 60s against Paul in Rome and he's martyred as well as many other Christians who are crucified and set on fire by Nero. And that's a historical record. We know that happened. And there were persecutions that broke out throughout the latter half of the first century and in the second century. And all the way up until the edict of toleration in 312 by Constantine, at least ten major persecutions broke out against the Christians. No wonder they didn't have buildings because if they would have purchased one and gathered in it, the next persecution would have burned it down or confiscated it and turned it into some temple to some idolatrous false god. And so there are reasons why they didn't have buildings. But I think it's sad that once the church did get buildings, it didn't take long for them to fight over things in the building. And what was and what was not appropriate in the building. And to worry more in a sense about the building, which is not the church, then the people who are the church. And I can't tell you how many times I've been in debates or in squabbles or heard of squabbles where people have left because of the carpet in the church or because of the pews or the lack of pews. Or because of the decorations on the walls or the lack of decorations or because of the furniture or the lack of furniture or whatever. People thinking wrongly that somehow God has commanded us to build a new temple in Jerusalem and that there are exact commands for everything that needs to be done to the point where maybe even there are certain steps that certain people can't go on as if we have a new priesthood or something. And you know what's funny is if you were worshiping somebody's house that temptation would have never happened. I bet you would never have gone in and sat around a room and someone's house and said, you know, you've got to get rid of some of the furniture in this room because it's just not appropriate for me to worship God here. You know, if I was the host, I know what I would be saying. Well then you can worship God somewhere else because this is my house. If you imagine giving up your house every week for the church to worship and that's a sacrifice that Philemon did, that's a lot of work and effort to have people over every week to worship God. And what the people should be more interested in and whether or not the building is they think it ought to be is whether or not their building, their hearts are right before God. Or the work that walk into this building, we should be primarily focused on is my heart ready to worship the Lord. Is there anything inappropriate in my heart, not is there anything inappropriate that I think for some reason that the table should be shaped differently or the cross shouldn't be on the wall or the pulpit shouldn't be there. Or any of the other things that are not commanded by a scripture, right, but are part of the decorations of a house and that we should be more concerned about our hearts before the Lord. And whether or not we can get a building to look the way we think it should look. When this is not the new temple, this is not the new holy place, this is the building we thank God for it. And we want it to be clean and we want it to be nice, we want it to be as my wife likes to say, company ready, right? Sunday ready. That's what she says. Of course, we want all those things. But we ought not to think again and get caught up with the building. I thank God we have a building to worship. I thank God we have power today. We wouldn't be here. But the most important thing is, is my heart right before the Lord. If there's something in this room that was idolatrous that we were worshiping, I'd be the first one to say let's get rid of it. But we ought not to get caught up in these little things like that. The church met in people's homes. And there were decorations on the wall and there were things on the tables and they weren't caught up in that stuff. They were worried about lifting up the Lord. And that is what I think the healthiest churches do. Secondly, I want you to notice the God of love and faith. I want you to notice the God of love and faith. Verse 3 of our text, grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul begins all 13 of his letters this way. Grace and peace. Because that's the way every Christian begins. Every church begins that way. We begin with the grace of God. God and his grace sent his spirit into your heart so that you who were dead and sins suddenly became alive in Christ. And before that moment when you hated Christ and resisted Him and suppressed the truth suddenly you bowed the knee to Him willingly. And you embraced the truth. And God's grace created a new you. And because of God's grace you now had peace with God and that's why grace and peace is always pronounced by the apostles because again that's how we begin with grace and peace. By the grace of God we are alive in Christ and now we have peace with God because Jesus made the peace. He made it by His cross when He died on the cross for our sins and God poured all the wrath that His elect deserved on Jesus. And Jesus earned all the righteousness that we owe to God and so our salvation is complete. We have grace. We have peace right now. And it's that fact and that truth that God begins to give us our instructions. Marching orders come after grace and peace. Not in order to earn grace and peace. And so Paul begins grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now here it comes. I thank my God, verse four, making mention of you always in my prayers. I want you to notice Paul's thankfulness for Christians. One of the things that would bother me sometimes is a new Christian who was sort of prone to being way too judgmental was you'd hear people say, well, you know, I'm praying for you. I'm praying for you. You don't need to tell them that. Just pray for them. Isn't it more important that you pray for them than that you tell them. And if you never tell them and you pray for them, isn't that what's important, right? Because we want ultimately God to be the one who is going to do whatever we are praying for them to do. And that is the most important thing and I haven't changed that. And yet I notice in letter after letter Paul not only prays for people, but he tells them that he's praying for them. And so there must be something significant to that, isn't there? I thank my God making mention of you always in my prayers. He does thank God, but then he tells them that he thanks God for them. And so it must be a good thing for us to tell people. I thank God for you when I pray for you. What was the last time? Here's something interesting. When was the last time when you prayed for other believers that you thank God for them? I thank God for Terry Caldwell and his ministry for this church to actually thank God for him. I thank God for Jim Stewart in the many ways that he's blessed me in this church. Do you do that? When was the last time that you did that? That you thank God for the other Christians in the church. Paul does that. He lets them know that he's thanking God for them. I think whenever we pray for a believer, we should give God thanks for them. Why? Because the reason they exist is a believer is because of God in a double work as it were. He created them. That's the reason why anybody exists. And he recreated them in regeneration. That's the reason why they're believers. And so we should, we have two reasons to thank God for every believer. And Paul, thanks God for the things in Philemon in particular, his what? Love and faith. These are the things Paul, thanks verse five, hearing of your love and faith, which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints. Well, if this isn't one of those sort of implicit teachings of God's sovereignty, right? How can I thank God for the love of another believer, for the faith of another believer unless God is the one who gave them that love and gave them that faith? I used to, when I was first becoming convinced of what I just called Calvinism at the time, I started to mark in my Bible, a little purple letter, the places where you'd see things like this where God was the one who had to change the heart first. And at first I just had not too many purple here and there and then pretty soon page after page because if you do read this verse properly, it would not be right to thank God for the love and the faith of another believer if it was up to them, to at least even a little bit, give birth to that love and faith. It would be, well, I think God mostly for your love and faith, but I thank you that you made the right decision when God offered and he stepped back because he couldn't violate your will. Now the only reason I will to love God and the only reason I will to believe in God and to love others is because God changed my heart. And I thank God that he changed my heart or I would not be a believer and we need to thank God that he changed the hearts of other believers and Paul begins the letter with that. And this is the way real faith shows itself in loving other believers, hearing of your love and faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus, obviously the faith that's toward the Lord Jesus and the love that you have toward all the saints. If you're a believer in Christ, you will love other Christians and if you love anybody with real love, it's only because you're a believer in Christ. Only the Christian can actually love and every Christian will love other believers. First John chapter 4 verse 20, if someone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? That's a rhetorical question he can't. If I love other Christians, it's because my heart has been changed and if I don't love other Christians, then there's an clear indication that my heart has not been changed and I cannot have been born again. Love for God and force people are the necessary fruits of saving faith, even as love to neighbors and enemies but especially to other believers. Paul says in Galatians, do good to all but especially to the household of faith. Here Paul is especially thankful that he hears that Philemon has really loved other believers. If I would ask you this morning, how is your faith in Christ? If I would ask you the same question in a way that's more easily tested, more visibly tested, how is your love for other believers? Because if you have faith in Christ, you'll have love for other believers. And then I could say in a more graphic way, how are you loving other believers? How are you using your gifts in the church? What ministries are you involved in? How often do you pray for other believers? How is your giving when you give to the Lord and that blesses other believers? I think nothing shows our hearts more than what are we doing in the church. How are we serving God in the church? How are we showing love? Love is active, right? Love isn't just a feeling. Oh, I love you. Peace be warm now go and get out of my way. No, I love you. I want to do something. That's what love does. Love sacrifices. And this is what we see in our text. That Paul is lifting up the God of love and faith. If I have faith, I will have love and if I have love, it will show itself in the way in which I live before God. Actually, in the church, to bless other believers. Thirdly, I want you to notice the good that is in us. Notice the good that is in us. I know what you're thinking. Oh, right. It's lost it now. He thinks that there is good in us. Well, let me just read verse six. That the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. Well, there's some difficulty in trying to figure out exactly what Paul's saying in this verse. But I think clearly, he's saying to Philemon that there is good in you and that God wants you to use that. Now, this isn't the Disney. There's good in everybody and everybody's a good person and we just have to find the good in us and we'll be all good together. We know that we are dead in sins, right? In trespasses and sins that there is no good thing in us. And that by nature, we are in bondage to sin, cannot free ourselves, et cetera, et cetera. And yet, if you are a Christian, you're not dead in sin anymore. I mean, that's very clear in Ephesians. Paul says that we were dead in trespasses and sins, but now in Christ, you have been made alive, right? You were in bondage to sin, Paul says in Romans 8, but now in Christ, you have been set free. And yes, there was no good thing in you. There was nothing in you that wanted to even acknowledge God and to live for him at all, but now in Christ, you have a new nature. And that new nature does have love for God. In fact, the new nature doesn't have love for anything but God. You still have an old nature that still loves sin and because of that we're conflicted and we don't love God perfectly and nothing good, perfectly good comes from us. And yet, as Martin Luther said, the Christian does good works and only the Christian can do good works because he's been changed. It would be a denial of regeneration to say that there is no good in the Christian at all. Is the Holy Spirit not in you? Have you not been given a new heart? I know you can't do anything perfectly. No one can this side of eternity, but we have a new nature and we have been given the gifts of the spirit and food of the spirit. And this is what Paul's referring to, that God has changed you, Philemon. And I hear about that because I hear about your good works. And I'm not testing them in some super theological way and saying that they're perfectly righteous. Paul's not saying that but he's saying what? That you are serving God with real faith and with real love. And therefore, these are good works that God accepts because he accepts them through the blood of the sun. And they will be rewarded because of the blood of the sun, rewards of grace to be sure but they will receive every good work, will receive a reward. And I think that's what Paul is doing here in verse 5 and 6. He says what he's heard. Why does he thank God for Philemon? He's heard of Philemon's love. He's heard of Philemon's faith. And then he's also praying what? That that would continue in a sense. That Philemon's faith would continue to bear fruit. That it would continue to cause good to go to God's people. I think this is the very thing that we see over and over again in scripture where Jesus in the sermon on the Mount of Matthew 5, 16 says let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. He says that we are light, that we are salt. And therefore let that light shine, let that salt have its saltiness in the world so that people would see and that they would glorify God that it would become known. The acknowledgement of every good thing. You could even say the knowing of every good thing which is in you. That it would be seen. And it's only seen as we live out our faith. First Peter chapter 3, verse 15, the locus classicus of the apologetics that were all commanded to engage in sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meatness and fear. And then here's the next verse. A lot of times we don't read the next verse. Having a good conscience so that when they defend you as evil doers and they will. You hip a Christian, right? Those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. I think that's what Paul's praying for here. That the effect of sharing of your faith by the knowing of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus that it would become effective rather. That it would bear fruit. That you as a Christian would bear fruit in the church to bless others. Peter said a little bit earlier in first Peter chapter 2, beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul. And then he says this, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles so that when they speak against you as evil doers they may by your good works which they observe glorify God in heaven. The same thing that the knowledge of the good that is in you would bear fruit would be effective would be used by God to bless others in the church. And this is what God calls us to do. God has given us new life in Christ. I want you to think about it. He's given us good new life in Christ so that the good things that he is doing in us would come out and he would be glorified by that. That God would bring the clean from the unclean that he would do good through sinners such as us. Why else does he save us but that he would use us to be salt and light when we're not in and of ourselves salt and light and yet God is able to do that in and through us so that we who are in and of ourselves unholy would be the very means by which God would cause us. And others in the church to grow in holiness. Have you not grown in holiness by some of your favorite Bible teachers? I think of how God has grown me in holiness by R.C. Sproul. Was R.C. Sproul sinless? No. By no means. And yet God brought good from him in the lives of many because he was diligent to use his gifts and to love others and to pour himself out for others. And I think that's what God is calling us to do. That's what he's calling by Lehman to do. Fourthly and lastly, I want you to notice refreshing one another. Refreshing one another. Verse seven. Four. We have great joy and consolation in your love. Again, you singular. He's talking directly to filemen because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you singular brother. You know, I didn't get you. I didn't give you a lot of background in this letter. Did I to start off with? You know why? Because I'm going to do that as we go through the series. And I'm going to unpack the letter and the purposes of it and what it's about. And I want to do that because I think in a sense that's the way the letter itself presents its substance to us. It presents it in a sense by example, by way of application, by calling upon particularly filemen to do something as Paul shows him things and exhorts him and calls upon him to act from the heart. You know, this letter is noted for several things. It is as I said, the shortest letter of the apostle Paul that God, the Holy Spirit, preserved to the church. It's one of the most personal letters. It's the shortest letter and yet only one letter that Paul has written has Paul's name in it more than filemen. Three times Paul mentions himself by name. I, Paul, Paul, Paul, he says in filemen. Nothing's more concentrated because Paul mentioned himself in this letter. And yet not enough in a vain, glorious way, but in a humble way. And also the you singular is all over the place in this letter, probably more times than in any other letter. The other letters you know, I like to emphasize it to you, right? Paul always uses the you plural because he's talking to the whole church. And so you don't see it in English, but in the Greek it's very clear, you plural do this, you plural do that. I've heard of you plural and I give thanks for you plural. But here in filemen, it's you singular, over and over and over again, though clearly the letter is addressed to all three of the house, so we know all three were in the house, filemen, aphia, and archipis. But it's filemen's house. And filemen is the one who's called upon by Paul to do something in the house. And the letter is a personal letter from Paul to filemen. And you see a very humble plea throughout the letter. And why is that important to us? It's important because when we know the purpose of an epistle, we know the purpose of a book, then we have a very safe assurance in how we are to interpret it, right? If I can have a purpose statement in a letter, I'm writing this letter to you for the following reason. Well, then I know that everything in that letter should not go against that reason, right? We get a couple of those clear purpose statements in the Bible. In fact, one of the most famous is in the gospel of John, where John tells us why he wrote this fourth gospel. He says in John chapter 20, verse 30, the end of the book. And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written. These signs are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. That's why John wrote the gospel. He wrote about certain signs that Jesus did. In fact, he even numbers them. And this was the first sign that Jesus did. And this was the second sign that he did. So that you would believe. That's why John says he wrote. First John, the epistle that Dave's been teaching through, it has a clear state purpose statement. Actually has a couple, but the main one comes at the end of the letter. First John 5, 13. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God. So he's clearly it's a writing to believers so that you may know that you have eternal life. One of the questions that we ask candidates for gospel ministry almost all the time during their trials for ordination is if someone is struggling with his assurance. If they're struggling with whether or not they're saved, where do you take them in the Bible? And of course the answer, one of the best answers is other places you can go, but the entire book of first John. Because that's why John tells us he wrote so that you may know. I write to you who believe so that you may know that you have eternal life. How important it is for us to know that we have eternal life. Why does Paul write this letter to the book of or to this man, Philemon? Let me just say this about the letter. The early church accepted it. The Meuritorian canon, which I know I've mentioned many times, but it is the oldest surviving document which names the books of the New Testament as authoritative and received by all the church. Philemon is mentioned as one of them without any dispute. Also, we know that Eosibius who carefully explored these things, acknowledges that the book of Philemon is universally acknowledged as his phrase as scripture from the Apostle Paul. To roam the early translator of the Bible into Latin at the end of the fourth, early fifth century argues for the canonicity of the letter against some of those who objected to it. Do you know why they objected to it? Because according to them, it was beneath the dignity of the Apostle to write a letter like this. So personal, such a lowly thing. The letter is not quoted by many church fathers. Do you know why? Because in a dispute on doctrine, again, you can always go to a letter that's more clearly articulating some doctrine or other. And it's funny that there were some in the early church who didn't like the fact that Paul wrote such a lowly letter as it were. Because the liberal theological school that arose in the tubogen school in the 1800s by the infamous FC Bauer rejected this letter for the same reason. It is beneath the Apostle to write on behalf of a lowly slave that he would have done such a thing. But you know what's interesting about the letter? Because it is so short, because it is so personal, it's almost impossible that it was forged by a heretic. Because you cannot further any heresy with the letter of filemen. It's just not doctrinal enough. In fact, William Hendrickson notices this and he says this, quote, the very theme and substance of the letter is of such a definite and personal character that no good reason can be shown why a forge or would have composed it. If you wanted to come up with a fake letter of the Apostle to further some heretical doctrine that you had and deceive the church, you would not have written filemen because it's just not going to carry the freight for you. You need something more than this personal letter to this Christian who was so generous with his house and home and yet who had this runaway slave and Paul wanted to plead on behalf of this slave. If John Calvin says that Paul writes the letter, quote, in behalf of a man of the lowliest condition, he demeaned Paul demeans himself so modestly and humbly that nowhere else is the meekness of his temper painted in more in a more lively manner. If you believe that you need examples to learn, that you really need to have someone show you rather than instruct you in a classroom than this letter is for you. This is how we are to walk as humble servants of Jesus Christ and as servants in the church, nowhere else do we see such a thing. Paul in this text shows his love for a lowly runaway slave, a man who deserved to be condemned. Not that Paul winked if the man's crimes were thought we should just let victims pay for the crimes of criminals because love covers all. Paul does seek and we'll see that here to restore and the justice would be established, but Paul was refreshed by the real ministry of other believers. Onissimus brought refreshing to Paul. We're going to see that word come up later in the text, but right now he acknowledges that Philemon refreshed many of the saints and that the refreshing cost him something that he had to give up his home each week. And no doubt provide for the believers as they came, maybe traveled, probably had to stay all day. This isn't like, you know, just driving to the church and driving back. Who knows how far you'd have to travel to go to Philemon's house to worship with other Christians to pray, to eat. And Philemon did that. He was generous. He refreshed the saints and Paul was refreshed by Onissimus. And what's interesting about this text is that it shows us that Paul was more interested in people in the transformation of hearts than in the accomplishing of tasks. It is good and we want right things to be done, but what would it matter if we could get people to do the right thing hating God in their hearts? That would be nothing. Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians 13. If I had all knowledge and understood all mysteries, if I had all faith that could move mountains, if I made the most great sacrifices and gave my body to the poor but had not love in my heart, it's nothing. And what he's pleading for here in Philemon is for Philemon to act from the heart. And I think that in a special way, this letter is the Holy Spirit pleading with each one of us that we would serve God from the heart. Because that's what God wants from us. That's what pleases God. Martin Luther notices something about Philemon in his introduction to the book. He notices how because of his love for Onissimus, Paul lays aside his rights as an apostle, as it were, and intercedes for Philemon to free Onissimus purely for love's sake. And he says, this is exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ did. He laid aside his rights so he could come and die in the cross and plead before the Father to free us. Because the Father loves us. Luther says we are all Onissimus. And it is only because of the grace of God that we have become his children. Let's pray, Father, we thank you for this book. This book that is small in many ways, Lord God, and yet that is huge in many ways that are not always readily or apparently seen how we pray that you would give us eyes to see the love that you have for your people in this letter. And the love that we are to have for one another, that we are to serve and to spend for no sacrifice is worth anything that does not cost. And the greater the sacrifice that is from a loving heart, the more glory you receive when we do such things. Father, we thank you that you have given to us that we could give back how we pray that we would do so richly and generously seeking to bring you all the glory that we can for we ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.