“Refresh My Heart”

the following message by aleister begg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthforlife.org i invite you to turn to philemon the tiny letter in between titus and hebrews we come this morning to our third and final study in what is this tiny letter very important letter uh right here towards the end of the new testament first of all i'd like to read verses 17 to the end in the translation that most of us have in front of us then i'm going to invite you just to sit and listen as i read the entire letter again in peterson's paraphrase in the message verse 17 so if you consider me a partner welcome him that is onesimus as you would welcome me if he's done you any wrong or owes you anything charge it to me i paul i'm writing this with my own hand i will pay it back not to mention that you owe me your very self i do wish brother that i may have some benefit from you in the lord refresh my heart in christ confident of your obedience i write to you knowing that you will do even more than i ask and one thing more prepare a guest room for me because i hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers epaphras my fellow prisoner in christ jesus sends you greetings and so to mark aristarchus demas and luke my fellow workers the grace of the lord jesus christ be with your spirit and now let me read the whole letter for you as it is paraphrased and you will see why it is that we don't study from this because he takes liberties at certain places but i read it just because we get a general sense in a way that i think is quite helpful i paul i'm a prisoner for the sake of christ here with my brother timothy i write this letter to you philemon my good friend and companion in this work also to our sister appiah to archipelas a real trooper and to the church that meets in your house god's best to you christ's blessings on you every time your name comes up in my prayers i say oh thank you god i keep hearing of the love and faith you have for the master jesus which brims over to other christians and i keep praying that this faith we hold in common keeps showing up in the good things we do and that people recognize christ in all of it friend you have no idea how good your love makes me feel doubly so when i see your hospitality to fellow believers in line with all this i have a favor to ask of you remember we said last week that he wasn't asking him for a favor that he appeals on the strength of goodness be quiet just read the letter all right in light in line with all of this i have a favor to ask of you as christ's ambassador and now a prisoner for him i wouldn't hesitate to command this if i thought it necessary but i'd rather make it a personal request while here in jail i've fathered a child so to speak and here he is hand carrying this letter onesimus he was useless to you before now he's useful to both of us i'm sending him back to you but it feels like i'm cutting off my right arm in doing so i want it in the worst way to keep him here as you're standing to help out while i'm in jail for the message but i didn't want to do anything behind your back make you do a good deed that you hadn't willingly agreed to maybe it's all for the best that you lost him for a while you're getting him back now for good and no mere slave this time but a true christian brother that's what he was to me he'll be even more than that to you so if you still consider me a comrade in arms welcome him back as you would me if he damaged anything or owes you anything chalk it up to my account this is my personal signature paul and i stand behind it i don't need to remind you do i that you owe your very life to me do me this big favor friend you'll be doing it for christ but it will also do my heart good i know you well enough to know you will you'll probably go far beyond what i've written and by the way get a room ready for me because of your prayers i fully expect to be your guest again epaphras my cellmate and the cause of christ says hello also my co-workers mark aristarchus demas and luke all the best to you from the master jesus christ well i think if we were summarizing the message of this letter as we've said before we would employ just one word and the word would be reconciliation reconciliation calvin says that the gospel is the embassy of reconciliation between between god and man if you think of uh the embassies of the world either in washington dc or if you go to european cities in london or in prague or elsewhere and you go down embassy row you find that the flags are flying outside of all of the embassies identifying themselves with the nation from which they've come and identifying themselves with the characteristics of all that that flag represents and the notion is that uh flying as it were from the portals of the church of jesus christ is this flag which speaks of reconciliation bringing god to man and man to god and men to one another all in the wonderful evidences of god's goodness and the more i read this little letter the more i wondered whether paul had something of second corinthians 5 in his mind where in the second half of 2 corinthians 5 he speaks about the message of reconciliation that it has been entrusted to him and to his colleagues reminding his readers that god has not only reconciled him to him as to himself but has then committed to as a ministry of reconciliation so that in the same way that john writes dear friends since god so loved us we also ought to love one another here in emblematic form in this letter it becomes clear that we dare claim to love god whom we cannot see if we're failing to love our brother who stands before us plain as day and in the case of philemon of course this was concrete in the life of anessimus let me let me just reinforce this and you can turn to two corinthians five if you choose i want you just to point this out to you in verse 16 of second corinthians 5 paul says from now on since we've been reconciled to god it not only changes our relationship with god but it changes the way in which we view the world the way in which we view everything and everyone so verse 16. so from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view though we once regarded christ in this way we do so no longer therefore if anyone is in christ he is a new creation the old is gone and the new has come if you put that in terms of this little letter that we have before us what it means is so from now on we don't look at onesimus the way we used to we used to look at him simply as someone who was a general nuisance and who had broken the law and had run away and stolen his master's possessions but we no longer look at anessimus that way nor does anessimus look at philemon the way he used to look at him and the reason for the transformation is that both onesimus the slave and philemon the wealthy owner of the slave and the prosperous homeowner both of them have been made new in the lord jesus christ and it is on account of that and on the basis of that that paul is able to make his appeal in the writing of this letter in the interests of clarity and brevity i want to gather our thoughts simply around four imperatives uh which make up paul's appeal and the first of these is welcome onesimus welcome onesimus if your eyes are open at your text you will see in verse 17 he says so building on what he's already written so if you consider me a partner welcome him as you would welcome me the word there uh for partner is coin unknown and it is directly tied to verse 6 where you will remember in that difficult verse we noted that this idea of sharing in the faith the word there for sharing is koinonia and in keeping with that paul now addresses philemon on those same terms and he says our partnership is something that is very deep it is very significant we share in the faith it is the faith that has been given to us in the lord jesus christ and so if you consider me as one sharing in that faith with you then i want you to welcome onesimus back in verse 13 onesimus is said to have fulfilled the role of philemon to paul and here he is now fulfilling the role of paul to philemon i know i can't get there to receive the welcome you would give me so give it instead to onesimus if i were to show up philemon i know you would give me a big welcome and i'm not able to show up at the moment but onesimus is going to and therefore i want you to give the hug that you would give to me to him now this all may seem very straightforward and and and almost sort of easy so let me put it in far more concrete terms for us since none of us are able to identify with philemon as a wealthy slave owner nor with anessimus as a slave what has happened here is that it has been a breakdown in their relationship a significant and deep uh breakdown in their relationship onesimus has offended gravely and significantly against his master he has run away from his master his master has every reason to be offended by his actions and to show him no encouragement upon his return and yet this letter calls for philemon to do something which is frankly supernatural and indeed asks of anessimus an action which he would not naturally have been interested in performing have you ever been deeply offended by someone has anyone dreadfully wronged you emotionally physically financially have you forgiven them from your heart are you reconciled to them at the deepest level of your life or is it simply that you have allowed the passage of time to as it were cover over a multitude of sins and so you think that because you've managed not to bring it up or not to mention it over a period of years that it is dealt with but inside you know that it isn't and at your core you remain unreconciled to that individual at the very heart level of life forgiveness is not the marker and the bible calls for each of us who are in christ to welcome one another with the same level of welcome that we have received from jesus it's not easy in fact it's impossible apart from the empowering grace of god when our children were small we used to urge them always to be reconciled to one another especially before they went to bed and we would uh force them to hug each other whether they wanted to or not i want you to say sorry or i want you to say forgive me and then i want you to hug your sister i want you to hug your brother i'm sure that you do the same thing if you don't you should institute it and one of the three who was never particularly keen on the moment of reconciliation when it came time for the hug this tiny little person that she was and is she would stick out her our stomach like this she make herself as big as she possibly could thereby preventing any kind of closure with her sister she they could touch belly buttons maybe but that would be all that would happen but there was and we would say no no no no no not like that a pro a proper hug a proper hug because that will mean that she needs to become more convex than concave if she is to welcome to herself the one with whom she is in need of reconciliation in the early 70s when we were in scotland and working in edinburgh we worked in a church plant out from the central church in a housing area of government housing where many young people over a period of just a few years were radically and wonderfully converted and the church grew very very quickly and many of these young men had been particularly tough characters in gangs in the suburbs of edinburgh many of them bearing in the scars on their faces and hands the evidences of their fights with one another and therefore it was all the more compelling to be amongst them as a group and to have them singing songs that we weren't singing in the larger and older building and i still have a strong uh sense of wonder when they would sing to each other i love you with the love of the lord and i love you with the love of the lord and many of these really hard bitten guys would turn and face each other people who had been their enemies and tangibly convey that to be reconciled to the living god against whom they had offended so incredibly it was imperative that they lived in reconciliation with one another is there anyone that you are unprepared to welcome you profess faith in jesus you remain unreconciled to your brother or to your sister refuse to forgive them from your heart i guarantee you to the extent that we are willing to do so it reveals that we have minimized our offense against god and we have maximized their offenses against us secondly not only welcome onesimus but i want you to charge it to me charge it to me if you consider me a partner and he does and if he's done anything wrong verse 18 and he has then charge it to me charge it to my account it makes you think if you know your new testament at all of the parable of the good samaritan how the good samaritan when he came to the man who had been beaten on the roadway poured in oil and wine and bound up his wounds and set him on his donkey and took him to an inn and took care of him there and then in the king james version uh it says and on the morrow when he had when he departed he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said take care of him and whatsoever thou spendest more when i come again i will repay thee take care of him and i will make sure that all the charges are covered you see there is a sense in which it was for paul a great challenge to send anessimus back he wanted to keep him for himself he's letting him go because it's the right thing to do but he doesn't simply say that he says and when you welcome him back any wrong that he's done any charge that he has accrued you can charge it to me to my account in other words what's he being like he's being like jesus he's being like jesus because that is exactly what jesus says when he sends the sinner as it were back to his father he says father charge all of their indebtedness to my account charge it all to me 2 corinthians 5 again that he wasn't counting men's sins against them because he was counting men sins against his son and christ bears all of the punishment that sinners deserve this my friends is the gospel this is the gospel the gospel is not do you have issues in your life jesus takes care of issues the gospel is not do you need to know how to fix your finances we can do that the gospel is not how to deal with relationships interpersonally the gospel is is none of that those things are all fruits of the gospel but let me tell you what the gospel is the gospel is the story of what god has done historically in a moment in time for those who had turned their backs on god namely all of us in our sin it is the reminder to us that we have been alienated from god by our sins and he from us by his wrath so there is a double alienation we alienated from god who made us on account of our sins walking off in our own way and god alienated from us on account of his wrath which is meted out against sin and which must punish sin so if reconciliation between the sinner and god is going to happen god must be able to look on the sinner without displeasure and the sinner must be able to look at god without fear question how can that possibly happen how may we stand before god without fear and how may a perfectly holy god look on us as sinners without displeasure the answer is that that transaction has taken place in christ as in his death god's wrath is turned away from us and our sin is cancelled as it is imputed to christ and it is this great exchange that lies at the very heart of this doctrine of reconciliation and it is when the wonder of this great exchange truly grips and changes a life that such an appeal as this may be responded to on account of the difference that this grace makes in a life so he says here is my i o you that's what he's saying verse 19 i paul i'm writing this with my own hand the legalities of rome demanded that an iou be written in the hand of the one who was covering the promissory note so paul is at where it takes the pen from the hand of his secretary and he says let me write this part it is important i paul i'm covering this charge this is my iou to you you will see that it is written in my own hand i have signed it in my own name any debt that has been incurred i will cover and then almost humorously at the end of that verse he says now i'm not going to mention the fact that you or me your very self and by not mentioning it of course he mentions it i don't want to mention this he says thereby mentioning it he knows what he's doing he never expects to have to pay the charge because philemon understands that that which he owes to paul is his very life and this is the verse that makes clear to us that paul was used not only to see onesimus become a follower of jesus but also to see philemon become a follower of jesus and what paul is saying is i'm sure that i can appeal to you on this basis and i want you to know that i will cover everything but i'm not going to mention the fact that really when push comes to shove you or your entire existence to me your eternal destiny under god is tied to my account and so in a sense what he's saying is i led you to christ and here's your chance to repay me welcome him charge it to me thirdly refresh my heart refresh my heart verse 20 i do wish brother that i may have some benefit from you in the lord yes brother is how the greek begins yes brother it's almost as if uh he is uh thinking as he goes along and he says what he said and then he says yes brother gathering up all that is gone before what i would like is is some benefit from you i'd like some benefit from you interestingly the word here for benefit on nate on i men is the is the cognate is derived from the same root as the word for the word anessimus okay if you think about it onesimus means useful onaiman means benefit and so he is continuing his pun he's already said uh onesimus whose name means useful was useless christ has made him useful again and he's coming back to you and by the way i would like you to give me some benefit and i am appealing to you as my brother as my brother as a partner verse 17 as a brother this is the christian family loved ones this is what it actually means to be in christ we it's not a private matter to be in christ it is a personal matter but it isn't private when we are brought into christ we're brought into a whole family of people and they are our brothers and sisters funny ones weird ones nice ones ugly ones distasteful ones all kinds you know whatever cap fits put it on at whatever hour of the day we are family in christ and that's why the ideas of sort of superficial expressions of friendship will never match what the bible is calling for and indeed such things are are are hardly anywhere close to that which god intends for us but the idea of a brother is important or a sister i never had a brother but i had friends with whom i was so close growing up as a boy that they i would gladly have had them as my brothers and they me sometimes we went to the extent of actually taking a pen knife and nicking our thumbs and uh and uh rubbing our thumbs together like this and declaring that we were in it with one another thick and thin there were things that we weren't going to tell anybody and so on all the times that we slid down the sliding roof of that lady's shed to to gather up her ruber and take it up and sit on the shed thinking we were so smart and then just making ourselves totally sick to our stomachs but it was a it was a wonderful experience and we were in it we were in it together just like this well that's exactly where philemon and paul are but it's much deeper than this because philemon and paul are brothers because they have been redeemed by the precious blood of jesus christ and their relationship with one another is a blood bought relationship they are tied together in the bonds of the gospel bonds that cannot be severed neither by time nor through all of eternity so he says i wish brother that i might have some benefit from you in the lord why don't you do for me what you do so well and in verse seven remember he had refreshed the hearts of the saints now says paul i'd like you to refresh me as well and notice what he says refresh my heart in christ back up a line some benefit from you in the lord in christ in the lord these are favorite phrases of paul and they're not filler they're vital his appeal again and notice it is on account of the fact that philemon is in christ 2 corinthians 5 if anyone is in christ he is a new creation the oldest gone the new has come what is anessimus he is in christ therefore he says onesimus i'm going to send you back to philemon philemon is in christ philemon i'm sending anessimus back to you he's not the the one that left he's a new anessimus he is in christ and philemon while you're at it would you refresh my heart in the lord would you refresh my heart in christ every real and lasting benefit that as a christian you will ever know comes to you in christ it is always increased us o christ in you my soul has found and found in you alone the peace the joy i sought so long the bliss till now unknown now none but christ can satisfy you see and all of the refreshment that you bring to me and i may bring to you is always in the lord and in christ you see at a superficial level all of these pleasantries and friendships and familial aspects of things that make up life and make it lovely as a result of god's common grace are engaged in at multiple levels today throughout the entire nation people getting together i see friends greeting friends you know saying how do you do i i see them saying i love you and i think to myself what a great country what a wonderful place isn't this all fantastic but the christian no longer views people from a worldly point of view there is a sadness in it all for the christian because the christian knows that without christ all that camaraderie comes to a crashing end with death all of the meaningfulness and joy of relationships and family life and gatherings for celebrations are ultimately an expression of futility when we confront the radical fact that one out of one dies therefore you will notice how carefully paul addresses his remarks and why i take care to point it out to you well finally he says and i want you to prepare to prepare a room prepare a room welcome onesimus charge it to me refresh my heart and prepare a room verse 22. there's perhaps a gentle sense in which he's saying and by the way i'm coming to check up on you and um i just want you to know that and so i'd like you to prepare a room i hope to be restored to you in in answer to your prayers he's already confident verse 21 that philemon will step up to the mark that he will do this in fact he says i'm sure that you will do even more than i ask paul has been praying for philemon the church in philemon's house has been praying for paul and somehow in the mystery of god's purposes the prayers of his people inspired and answered by the living god will bring about the restoration which paul anticipates and so he sends his greetings and the greetings of his fellow workers there in verse 23 epaphras the one who had preached in colossae at the very beginning he sends greetings so demark aristarchus demas and luke my fellow workers note in passing that paul was no one-man band he had a significant role he was uniquely used by god but he recognized that he was part of a team and every member of the team was important earlier this year i think i may have told some of you in speaking to a group of businessmen out in the northern california i was part of an evening in which and one of the businessmen present gave gave a talk he was a stockbroker somewhere in silicon valley and owned the san jose sharks which funnily enough the event with a dinner was taking place in the uh um aquarium in um in carmel and uh so it was we literally you were eating your food with a shark just swimming along beside you and then he was on about the sharks it was it was rather scary but anyway they they um he said he wanted to show a video clip of the san jose sharks which is fair enough and he asked us all to watch number 19. and so we watched number 19 for about two minutes the clips came from a game another game another game another game but it was all 19 19 19 19 and then he said i have one question for you tell me tell me what stands out about number 19. and the answer was he assisted in every goal he assisted in every goal his was the final pass that led to the goal he actually had 90 assists in two seasons breaking all the records in the in the league in in ice hockey for such a part and the point the man was making was there were no goals scored without number 19 but number 19 didn't score the goals most of us are number 19s what a privilege to be a number 19 to be an assistant to be assisting in the work of the gospel to be playing our part let me conclude with a warning that is there in one name and an encouragement that is there in one word the name is demas and those of you who don't know the bible will not know this but by the time paul writes his final letter demas has forsaken him demas has gone off he's fallen in love with all the things that are on offer outside of the framework of jesus and so calvin makes this comment if one of paul's assistants became weary and discouraged and was afterwards drawn away by the vanity of the world let none of us rely too much on our own zeal lasting even one year but remembering how much of the journey still lies ahead let us ask god for steadfastness let us ask god for steadfastness and demas name is there as a warning to all of us who grow presumptuous who begin to think we can do it on our own who think that we no longer need to rely on the power and enabling of christ and in a moment in time we may be down with our face in the gutter a warning in one name and finally an encouragement in one word and the word is grace grace notice verse three he began he began the letter with grace verse 25 he ends the letter with grace all of the benefits and blessings undeserved and unearned that god pours out upon his people in the lord jesus christ all of that is necessary and it is this that he prays may be with your spirit verse 25 the year there is now back in the plural we said when we began that the majority of the letter is in the singular addressed to philemon to be listened to by others here he is back in the plural the grace of the lord jesus christ be with your spirits in other words he prays that the church that meets in philemon's home may be marked by the grace of god now think about this as i close paul had asked philemon paul had asked philemon for a superhuman task a task that involved it involved heartfelt a reconciliation that involved forgiveness that was at the very core of his being he asked him to do something which is not natural to do he had asked onesimus to do something which is a runaway slave he would be by nature afraid to do and unwilling to do so both of the parties in the reconciliation have only one hope and that is the grace of the lord jesus christ enabling the one to go back and say i'm sorry and enabling the one to whom he returns to say in the lord jesus christ i forgive you now let me come back again to this there may be a husband or a wife here you may not even be sitting together you may be sitting together but your hearts are not together and the reason is that you're alienated from one another on account of sin whoever the offending party is or isn't is unknown to me and known to you and the message of philemon is a striking reminder that if you are in the lord jesus christ if you are in christ then that which god calls for he provides enabling you to look into the eyes of the one against whom you have offended and say i ask for your forgiveness and enabling the one who has been offended to say and i forgive you from my heart and since god has by his grace put our sins as far as the east is from the west whereby he will remember them no more reconciliation means that drawing on the resources of god's grace we pledge to one another our desire and our commitment to do the self-same thing do you see what would happen in the we church in philemon's house because the community would be searched that everyone would have known onesimus has made a run for it people at the marketplace did you hear what happened to philemon no yeah onesimus took off where did he go apparently he went to rome then at the marketplace at the beginning of a new week somebody meets his friend and says you know you told me that onesimus i'd run off to rome you're wrong because i was at the the uh the the praise time in philemon's house and onesimus was there and he wasn't just there there there he was singing he was actually he and philemon were sitting right next to each other they were singing the songs and then participating in the whole thing and the person on the street says no there is no way in the world that that can happen that can't happen oh yes says the person it can happen and it did happen because onesimus met jesus and jesus changed him and philemon met jesus and jesus changed him and they are united together in jesus now loved ones that is supposed to be a hallmark of the family of god that the things that are representative of an absence of reconciliation that the aspects within our culture that are representative of alienation between people or races or intelligence factors or social strata all of these things are completely collapsed in the discovery of the amazing grace of god so let us pray that where we are aware of the absence of this kind of reconciliation that we will under god commit ourselves to be the very agents of reconciliation whatever it takes however hard it may appear to be whatever people may think of us that we will be the initiative takers always because love always takes the initiative love never says well if they want to talk about it they can come and talk about it that is not love love always takes the initiative help me to live a life that's dependent on your grace let us pray our god and our father we thank you for this little letter for the message that it brings so forcibly home to our minds i pray for some who as yet have never come and bowed their knee to you the living god and confessed their sins and asked you to grant to them forgiveness i pray today that there will be some who receive the reconciliation that you have made available in the cross of jesus i pray too that those who are living at odds with one another whether within their home or even estranged by distance may in christ and in the lord being able to do what you call for them to do and we pray for our church family not selfishly but purposefully that whatever this means in all of the ramifications beyond our ability to even quantify them now whatever it means that you will immerse us in the reconciling grace of god and so that when our country is facing the possibilities of all kinds of fracturing that you will find among your people here a willingness to say i love you with the love of the lord and i can see in you the glory of my king and i love you with the love of the lord may this grace the grace that paul prayed for the church in philemon's home the grace of our lord jesus christ the love of god our father and the fellowship of the holy spirit rest upon and remain with each one who believes now and forevermore amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with aleister begg visit us online at truthforlife.org

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 27,784

Rating: 4.8669133 out of 5

Keywords: Fellowship, Forgiveness, Gospel, Grace, Reconciliation, Restoration

Id: XH9zObEcD84

Length: 43min 39sec (2619 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021