Note: This transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for accurate information and meaning.
Introduction: Turning to Philemon
Thank you, Jesse.
Turn to a little book from the Bible. So little, it’s only one chapter long. If you can find it, Philemon. It’s right before a bigger book, Hebrews, if you have a Bible you’re looking through. If you want to just follow along in the passage that we have here in the—or in the bulletin that we have here, you can do that, whichever you’re comfortable with. And your device will get it if you just simply type in Philemon.
These last bunch of weeks, we’ve been looking at the ways that God communicates his grace to us. The way that he displays himself, the way that he makes himself known to us in greater, more tangible, more intimate ways. The premise we’ve been operating under is that God’s not trying to play hide and seek. God is not sort of, you know, “If you can find me, come find me.” He’s not wandering through the world hiding behind things, hoping you’ll bump into him randomly. That’s not how—at least, you know, that might be how spirituality works, but it’s not how the gospel works. It’s not how Christ works. He tells us the ways by which we can enter his presence, we can understand his grace.
Captivation vs. Consistency
Now, that sense of what we’re looking for, I think, when we want God’s grace, when we’re looking for God’s grace—I think there’s a sense where—and this again is how Christianity distinguishes itself from all the other religions—is that I think when we say, “I want to know God,” or “I want to explore God,” “I want to have more of his grace,” “I want to understand more of his intimacy,” we’re looking for a sense of captivation. We want that sense of gasp, you know, that “aha!” That sense of it’s all sort of making sense and that warm, fuzzy feeling.
That is not—that’s not controllable at all by doing the things that we’re saying. But that doesn’t mean that God’s not tangible. Okay? There’s a sense where when I—you know, I’ve been married to my wife for 40 years, but I’m like, every day is not like the first day. But we’re definitely more together, we’re definitely more connected and intimate. There’s a definite sense of knownness and a belonging that occurs over that, even though the relationship ebbs and flows. But I know how to connect with her in that capacity.
The same with a relationship with God is that he’s telling us that our relationship will ebb and flow in terms of captivation. It will ebb and flow in terms of warmth and love. It will ebb and flow in terms of that sense of euphoria. But here are the ways that you and I—there are known conduits through which I am giving you those opportunities to be filled with my grace.
He tells us over and over again, and we’ve followed some of those: the scriptures themselves, prayer, service, giving things. The early weeks, we talked about the ways that we sort of—are predominantly the ways that we receive or the ways that flow into us. And then these last few weeks, we’ve been talking about the ways that God gives us his grace by things that are predominantly sort of flowing away from me.
Last week, we talked about generosity. We experience God’s grace, we get more sense of intimacy with him by being generous, and that generosity is flowing away from me. We get more of God’s grace, we get a greater sense of his intimate connection and his love for me when I serve and when I have mercy, and that flows away. Today, we’re talking about another thing that generally flows away from us in Philemon, if you will, verse 4.
Scripture Reading: Philemon 1:4-7
Follow along as I read the section out loud:
“I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the heart of the saints.”
This is God’s word. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever. Let’s pray.
Prayer
Lord, be with us this morning as we contemplate your word. Lord, I pray that the meditations of our heart might reflect you, might become more like your character and image. I pray that you might give us a sense of your grace today. Even as we do, as we worship, Lord, you have chosen worship to be a place where we engage you, where you are present. You long to be with us. You desire the times that we can be with you and that we can have a sense of connectivity. Lord, our failure to—Lord, we put up with time with you sometimes, and Lord, you don’t hold that against us. But you’re converting us into people who just long to be with you. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
As I’m praying that, I’m thinking of my kids. Going, “You know, I love hanging out with my kids.” I don’t think they love hanging out with me as much as I love hanging out with them. And I’m going, “You know, isn’t that relationship the same way with God?” He honestly, he actively loves hanging out with his people, his children. And yet, it’s almost drudgery. “Got to spend time with God today. Oh, got to go be with God.” You know, it’s almost that way. And it’ll be different someday. Yes, it’ll be different when we see him face to face. It’ll be very different when all of the filters that get in the way, all of the captivations that get in the way, and my heart is bent towards myself rather than towards him.
The Great British Bake Off and Delivering News
Becky and I follow a show that comes out regularly from Britain, The Great British Bake Off. Is that what it’s called? The Great British Bake Off. And basically, it’s regular folk from Britain, from the area, who sign up and then you bake. Every week, you do a new baking challenge—several challenges. Each show is a different sort of thing. I think they start with like 12 or 15 or whatnot, and then they work their way down to one. Then that person becomes the champion of The Great British Bake Off. The kinds of things that regular folk—these aren’t professionals, these are regular folk who just have a hobby of baking—and they bake, is incredible to me.
But one of the things that they do every week, obviously, is there’s a winner every week and there’s a loser every week. They come out and the two hosts are comedic in some fashion. They come out and the one will say, “I have the pleasure of telling us who our champion is this week.” And then they say, “It’s Nigel is the champion for this week.” Great. And then the other comedian has to come out and say, “Well, I have the not-so-pleasant experience of telling you who the loser is and who will be leaving us, who will be leaving the tent,” because it happens in a big tent. “Leaving the tent today,” and then they tell the person who will be leaving the tent that day, and then everybody cries and they go off to their next piece. And they do that every week.
Which would you rather do? Would you rather be the one to tell the winner? Would you rather be the one telling the good news, or be the one telling the bad news? Do you like telling good news more than bad news? Which is better: telling the bad news or telling the good news?
I know several people who are long-time professionals in the HR department of their companies. They run the HR department. I know several people like that, and I’ve always marveled because I feel like that is a job where all you do every day is tell people bad news. You’re dealing with the bad news of situations. Now, that’s not the total job, that’s not the whole thing, but it’s often not good news.
And even the good news, you know, HR: “Got a great health plan going, happy to pass that out to you. Don’t forget to sign up, health plan.” It usually comes at more cost, though, or less benefits. So it’s like, good but bad. And so, when you get into HR, is that why you got into HR? So you could be—or if you get to be, you know—
I worked in retail for a bunch of summers, a bunch of years when I was in college. I did a lot of different things. They often would have me do the store announcements for obvious reasons. And then, every once in a while like at holidays, they would put me at the return section. I hated that. I hated it because it’s just bad news. It’s just always, “I’m sorry, we can’t take that back. I’m sorry that it got damaged. I’m sorry you didn’t get the product you wanted.” Generally, the people coming to the return department, they’re looking for good news, but they don’t want any good news—they just want satisfaction at some level.
There’s a sense where I prefer to tell good news. As a matter of fact, when I hear good news, it’s hard for me to keep it to myself. Some of you tell me good news, and you say, “But let’s just keep it on the down-low for the minute.” And I go, “Oh my gosh, are you serious? You’re in remission! Why am I waiting to tell? You got the job you thought you were going to get? You’ve got three job opportunities that are at your disposal? You got a windfall in some capacity? Your mother’s out of the hospital? You want me to what? You want me to hold—you want me to keep—how in the world? Why would you want—”
Now, people have different reasons, and I’m not telling you that—and I certainly do, if you tell me to keep it, I keep it a secret. I am a dead-end street when it comes to news. And I will ask permission, you know. People tell me good news. Somebody got pregnant the other time, and they said, “Just keep it because we want to…” You know, now don’t look around, it’s already happened in the past. And I’m not telling anything that hasn’t been—that you don’t already know. This is an old story. But there was a time where somebody got pregnant, they said keep it on the down-low. And I go, “Are you serious?” And they go, “You know,” and I go, “Can I tell Becky?” “Well, yeah, yeah, you can tell Becky.” Great! Fantastic! At least I can tell somebody! That’s just bursting out.
When somebody gets engaged, “Shh, don’t tell anybody. We haven’t, you know, we got the ring, we want to keep it on the, you know, this kind of thing.” Or, “In another six months, I’m to ask her.” Years ago, this happened. Some college student was telling me that in another few weeks they were going to ask somebody to marry them. “But don’t tell anybody. I haven’t talked to her family yet.” I go, “Oh my gosh, then why did you tell me?”
Because he’s living the very nature of what we’re describing here: good news wants to burst out. Good news wants to burst out. And why? Why? Ever thought about that? Why is good news—why does good news want to burst out? Why do you want to tell good news as opposed to tell bad news?
Because in the telling, you get something that you don’t get in the receiving, right? When you tell me the good news in your lives and then you tell me to keep it a secret, it doesn’t change the nature of the news, right? It doesn’t change—I mean, it’s all still very good. Somebody’s out of remission, somebody got a job, somebody got pregnant, somebody’s going to be engaged. The news remains the same. The news and the energy and what was infused in that seed, but there’s something about telling. There’s something about sharing it that just makes the whole other—it brings on another layer of excitement.
Why Teachers Teach and the Philemon Context
I think that’s predominantly also why teachers become teachers. Teachers become teachers because initially, they want to become teachers because they don’t know anything about teaching, what real teaching is like. Real teaching is a pain in the neck. Real teaching, to be a real teacher in a system of teachers, is absolute self-suffering. It is unconscionable. But when you don’t know that, you want to get into teaching because you want to tell something that you know to be true. You want to help someone get the same feeling.
When, you know, I remember sitting around a dining room table when algebra made sense to me. My aunt—and up until then, I was getting nowhere with algebra. Because algebra is when they start adding letters to math, and that makes no sense. And it didn’t make any sense to me. And then my teacher’s up there doing stuff. You know, now all the arithmetic problems, all the arithmetic rules like the transitive property and all the things that you couldn’t describe to me if I asked you today, they matter a lot. Because that’s what my teacher was doing up here. You got letters and numbers up here, and then suddenly down the bottom, all you have is a letter on one side and a number on the other side. And I don’t know how that happened. It’s because of all those transitive rules.
And I remember when it made sense to me, because my aunt was taking me through—it was a long, long day of tutoring, and she was so patient with me. And it clicked. It clicked. The click was, “Oh, so you put all the letters on one side, you put all the numbers on the other side. Oh my gosh, that’s fantastic!” And once I realized that you could do that, and that there were ways to manipulate the letters and the numbers so that the equal remains the same, it all made—oh my gosh! Then I was a math major. That’s what I ended up getting my degree in.
But it happened at a dining room table with my aunt, who taught me how to do algebra and unlocked the secrets, which weren’t secrets, but they were unlocked—the way that math occurred in my brain, and she helped me. Teachers want to have that moment with people. They want to tell people the good news. They want to tell something that they’ve had an experience of. Normally, teachers have been infected by teachers. And so, we want to tell something that’s good, what I find valuable. There’s something in the telling that isn’t there in the receiving.
And that’s what Paul, who wrote the book of Philemon—he wrote, and this is a personal letter. Most of Paul’s letters are letters to churches, they’re letters to churches he planted, some he planted, some that he didn’t plant. This letter is unique in that this letter is a letter that Paul wrote to one guy named Philemon, who was a believer.
And the reason he’s writing the letter to Philemon is because Philemon had a slave. He owned a slave in that context, and I’m not going to get into the whole complication of slave ownership in that day and age. Suffice it to say that the Bible is not against slavery as we understand it—it’s not against slavery as we would interpret it. The Bible is tragically—fantastically against it in every capacity. The kind of slavery, the Bible and the gospel is against all of that.
But the kind of what was going on here was that his slave, Onesimus—Philemon’s slave, Onesimus—had become a believer. And Paul is writing the letter to go, “Okay, how does the gospel relate to that relationship? You know Christ, Philemon. You know it as a wealthy man who has people who work for you. And Onesimus, he knows Christ. Now how does it affect the way we’re going to relate to each other in the future?” That’s really what the letter is all about.
But what he’s describing in this instance is the thing that he’s telling Philemon: “I thank God for you. Your faith is renowned. You’ve refreshed all the saints in this capacity.” But don’t lose sight of the necessity—I want you to grow in your ability to share, to share your faith.
Verse 6:
“I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith…”
Why?
“…so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing…”
In other words, that you’ll enjoy the good things we have in God, that you’ll be blessed by the good things we have in God, that in the sharing you’ll discover something that you don’t experience in the receiving.
Onesimus was a believer. He’s fleshing that out. I mean, Philemon, he was fleshing it out. He says, “I hear about your faith in the Lord and your love for all the saints.” Verse 7, “Your love has given me great joy. It’s an encouragement because you, brother, you refreshed the hearts of the saints. You’ve done this.” And this is all a reflection, so he’s living in that external way. He’s living in that “pass it on” way. He says, “But don’t lose sight, I pray that you would—that you’d be active in sharing your faith with those who don’t have it, who don’t share your faith.”
Share your faith because there’s something that you will receive. You’ll receive an understanding of God’s good things, grace. You’ll receive the grace of God—that’s another way of putting the grace of God. You’ll experience the grace of God when you share it with people who don’t already have it. Share your faith with the others.
The Nature of Sharing the Gospel
It’s like sharing good news, is really what he’s getting at. It’s like sharing good news, you know, because the word for sharing faith, the word for witnessing, for evangelism in the Scriptures, is the word euangelion, which means to resound the good news, to go on telling the good news. It’s good news. It’s like there’s a something that there’s something that’s happened that is good.
Now here’s the thing. There’s a way to share good news, right? Is good news always good? You don’t have to respond, just think about it. Is good news always good? Suppose someone says, “I just won the lottery!” Is that good news? Yeah, it’s great news—for one person. For that one person. But how does it come to you? How does it generally feel to you?
The way that we predominantly share things anymore—as a matter of fact, it’s called sharing—is by clicking that button, isn’t it? We share. What are we sharing? We’re sharing the good news. And I have friends who share their pictures in Europe. How does that feel? How does that sit with you when you get shared by them of a picture in Europe? Or the new car, or the new house, or the new experience that they had, or the opportunity that they went to. How is that good—and they’re sharing good news, right? Isn’t it good? Doesn’t it feel good all the time? No, it doesn’t. Why? Because the sharing—because sharing, you know, when Paul says, “Be active in sharing your faith, be active in sharing the good news,” there’s a sense where how we share it, when we share it, what we share, the context of who—who is it good for?
We’re good at sharing good news for me. We love sharing good news for me because I’m talking about me. And that’s basically what Facebook and Instagram and TikTok profiles are all about: good news for me. That, obviously, you want to know about, don’t you? That’s why you follow me. You follow me and you follow all of my stuff because you want to know about my good news, right? Even if my good news ends up being a great sandwich I’m eating at the moment.
But sharing the good news of the gospel isn’t predominantly that I found—it is about something I found, but it’s something that anybody can have that can be good news not just for me, but for you. Good news for you. That’s really the essence that the gospel is something that I’ve experienced.
And Paul says, “Share your faith.” When you share your faith, it is a personal experience. He doesn’t want us to share—he’s not sharing about concepts. He’s not sharing about the faith. Okay, there’s a difference between sharing about the gospel and your gospel. Okay?
I will sing the praises of—my son-in-law and I—my son-in-law bought a trash can for his kitchen that I ended up buying because it is the greatest trash can of all time. And I will sing its praises in terms of how just everything is ergonomically and this and the other and the thing, and the quiet and the virtue. It’s unbelievable. And he and I go back and forth with each other. “Did you know that this thing—and you know, they sell customized bags for this thing that are less costly than the stuff that I buy in the store. Oh my gosh!” And we’re just sharing back and forth about this great experience that we’re having. I’m not sharing about the thing, I’m not sharing about the trash can—I’m telling people about my trash can and my experience of that trash can. And that is a whole other animal. So Paul is not telling Philemon, “I want you to become active in sharing the faith,” a generic, outside-of-you, mechanical process. “I want you to share about your faith.”
Your faith. And that’s good, but it’s scary. Do you know why? And this is why—this is why the church gets a bad rap, and they get a bad rap for a good reason. The church—and not just our church, I mean the church everywhere—gets a bad rap because they’re mostly Christians mostly share about the faith, they don’t share about their faith. And there’s a difference.
Because the faith is about the specs part of the product description. How do you feel about the specs part of anything you buy on Amazon? You might look at it, you’re happy to know it, but generally speaking, you skip right to the reviews, don’t you? I do. Why? Because now I’m getting real-life, everyday, hopefully, experiences of people who’ve used it. The specs don’t talk to me.
But most of what the church universal does is talk about the specs. When Paul says that I get to feel God’s grace, I get to experience the wonder of his blessings when I talk about my—when I share my faith with you, my faith is different than the specs, than the faith. Here’s why, and the reason I say it’s dangerous, the reason I say it’s vulnerable, is because if you have to share about your faith, you’ve got to share about all the elements of it: the ups, the downs, the ins, the outs, the fuzzy aspects of it. And sometimes, I don’t have it.
That’s real Christianity. If you ask me how my marriage is, I can talk about the specs, or I can tell you about my marriage. And I can tell you, and I have told you, this woman’s the woman I love more than any other human. She’s also the woman I hate more than any other human. She’s experienced more hate from me than any other person on the planet. Because that’s the nature of intimacy! When you get let in, you get let in, and you get all the beauty and the love, but you get all the mess and the dysfunction.
And that’s the nature of a true faith, of a true relationship with Jesus. And the vulnerability of letting people—if the church were to be vulnerable like that, if the church universal were to be honest and share about their faith, I believe the culture would be far more attracted to Jesus. Because Jesus exudes that vulnerability.
The reason that Jesus was so—it said that he spent his time, he lived his life in the presence of publicans and sinners. That’s what he spent his time with. Why would they be so attracted to this man who’s the essence of holiness, who’s the essence of perfection, who’s the essence of a man so perfect, a man so glorious, a man so absolutely holy? Yet, when faced with publicans and sinners, they didn’t feel like they couldn’t spend time with him—they wanted to spend time with him. They longed to spend time with him.
Why were they so attracted to him? If there’s a person in your life who is the—who you would describe as the essence of holiness, the essence of perfection, do you want to spend time with that person? Not really. Why? Because they’re not being honest. They’re not being transparent about who they really are. I don’t want to spend time with a machine, I want to spend time with a real person who has ebbs and flows, who’s a real authentic human. And sometimes real authentic humans, real authentic faith looks messy.
And that encourages me, not because I’m encouraged in the mess, but I’m encouraged that my process—why was Paul encouraged by him? Because he was loving all the saints and he’s sharing that vulnerability with the people around him. And that’s the nature of what the church ought to be practicing: is sharing my vulnerable faith. And sometimes I love God with all of my heart and with a lot of my soul, but there are other times I just don’t love him. I just don’t want him. It’s just not convenient. And I sin, and I break, and I drag myself. That reality speaks. That reality expresses. You know what it expresses? It expresses that I am—having met Jesus, I am still a creature in need of Jesus. That although I have received the good news, I am still desperately in need of more good news, just like you, just like the world in which we live.
Getting Off the Treadmill
The other problem with sharing good news—you ever share good news that the people you share it with don’t think is good? You ever have the experience of trying to—that almost when you share it, you almost have to convince them, “Oh, no, no, no, it’s a good thing.” Yeah. “I’m going into HR. Hey!” And you go, “No, no, no, it’s a good thing. I mean that in a good way.” Okay?
The gospel’s sometimes that way because something that I receive that’s good for me, sometimes it doesn’t come across immediately as good news as a shareable moment with the people around us. And that’s understandable. And I think the church is caught in that capacity. The church universal is caught in that capacity where sometimes when we talk about the gospel with the culture, it doesn’t come across as good news for everybody.
And I think some of it has to do with the way our faith comes across. Here’s the thing. I’ll refer to the story of the Prodigal Son. Two sons, right? Father. At the beginning of that story, if you take all that we know at the end of the story and we infuse it at the beginning of the story, of the three, is there anybody worth emulating in that story? Of the three of them, only the father. Because the younger brother resented his father and left—at least he was honest. The older brother resented his father but stayed. And we know he resented his father because he says, “I’ve slaved for you all these years and you’ve given me nothing.” That kind of resentment is maddening.
The younger brother’s transition from running away to coming home, that moment for him was when he realized, “I could be home with my dad if I just was a slave. I should never have left, and the only way to get back is to go home and be a slave. Be more like my older brother,” who described himself as a slave. “I’ve been slaving away for you all these many years. I didn’t do what he did.” What turned the younger brother around, what became good news to him—here’s the thing—what became good news to the younger brother was the realization that “I can have what my father offers if I just become a slave to him.” And that was good news to him. The good news was, be more like your older brother.
But that’s not the gospel. The gospel is better than that. The gospel is what he got when he got home, which was, “You don’t have to do anything to be my son. You’re already my son because I’m going to make you my son. I’m going to turn you from a wretched rags-to-riches story. I’m going to do that. I’m going to give you a ring, I’m going to give you clothes, I’m going to give you shoes, I’m going to give you a feast. I’m going to make you something that you are not and have not lived right now.”
I’m going to make you something that you aren’t. The gospel isn’t to wretched, run-off sinners, “Be more like your older brother.” The gospel, the good news—see, if that would be good enough news, but it’s not the good news. It’s not really great news. In other words, the good news for the younger brother could have been understood as, “In order to have a relationship with me, in order to experience the things that I offer, just get on this treadmill of performance with your brother. And if you run as fast as he does, and you jump as high as he does, then you get all the things that we get as a family.” That’s what a lot of people think the gospel is! When what the gospel really is, is you can get off the treadmill.
You don’t have to run on the treadmill. The treadmill isn’t even the system anymore. You know what the system is? Just sit here and receive the gifts from me, and I’ll love on you. And I’ll love on you, and we’ll have this deep and utter relationship, and I will give you all the things that I require of you to accomplish in my world. I will give for you what you can’t give to yourself. I will be for you what you can’t achieve for yourself. That’s the gospel. It’s a freedom from—
Most of the time when people come into my office to talk about, you know, somebody’s dragging somebody into my office to talk, whether it’s a parent and a child or a spouse with another spouse or a work associate, and they’re trying to tell me, “Here’s the problem, and okay, pastor, tell them what to do.” And the first thing—and often the first thing I tell them to do is stop doing a lot of things. And I can feel the shoulders drop in people’s experience because they don’t need more to do, they need less. And the gospel is the essence of, “Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That’s the gospel.
Share it. Share it because in the sharing, you get something you don’t get in the having. You get to see the light bulb come on, you get to see the opportunities, you get to experience the joy of the rest in a new way that you never had beforehand.
Conclusion: Living the Good News
Thank you, Father. Thank you that you give us rest. Thank you that the news is good. Thank you that you are freeing us from the burden, and that there is—there is joy, there is encouragement, there is vitality, there is an experience of you and of your grace in a new and different, unique way when we express it to others, either through words, deeds, or activities. Lord, I pray that you—I pray that we all might be active in sharing our faith and coming to a full understanding of all that we have in Christ. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.