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Three Angels Fellowship SDA Church

A Slave's Redemption

Garhett Morgan

A Slave’s Redemption Part 1

A Slave’s Redemption Part 2

Father in heaven, you are our God, you have called us to be your people.

And Lord, we're about ready to look at spiritual things and our brains can't comprehend them.

No matter how smart we believe that we are, when it comes to things of you, they go right over our heads.

But Father, you said that we can understand if we read this in accompaniment with your spirit, and so we ask for it this morning.

We pray that the words of life that are given here today would not be marred by a sinful man like myself.

Speak as only you can, Father, and Lord, may we leave this place more in tune with you than before.

For those of you that weren't here last week, I'll just do a little bit of a review.

The book of Philomene was written by Paul, and Paul wrote this book, as with a few others, while he was in prison.

Paul was in prison in Rome when he wrote this book, And he was awaiting his eventual execution when he wrote this book.

And so Paul is getting a little bit up there in years.

He's the leader of the Christian church still.

He's 1 of the last apostles that's around.

This letter in Greek is only about 350 words, in English it's a little bit longer but it's still relatively short, it's 1 chapter.

Now last week we looked at this and we'll review.

You have Paul who we just talked about who writes the book and then you have Philemon or Philemon depending on how you pronounce it, who this letter is addressed to, and then you have another guy by the name of Onesimus.

And Onesimus is, or Onesimus, he is, he's a slave.

And he has been born into slavery and he was owned by Philomenes.

And since then, Philomenes has become a Christian, Onesimus has become a Christian as well, and Paul meets up with Onesimus after he has run away from being a slave, owned by Philomenes.

So there's this story behind what this book is all about.

We kind of unpacked that a little bit last week, but this week we're going to be taking a look at what it means to us.

And it's a very, very simple message, and I pray it makes sense to you.

Take a look here at verse 10 as we begin.

Verse 10 says this, and it's Paul writing, "'I beseech you, Philomenes, for my son, Osimnaeus, whom I have begotten in my bonds.'" Okay, so here you have Paul, and he says, "'This slave, who is just a slave to you, and by the way, if you remember, his name means useful.

So imagine your entire life being dedicated to serving somebody else.

Now put yourself in the place of Onesimus for just a minute here.

Imagine that your entire life that you were born into slavery, your mother was probably born into slavery, You were not named after your grandfather.

You're not named with a name of honor or some useful name, but you were named after your occupation, which was simply someone that was valued as nothing.

Your name simply meant you're useful to me.

You meant nothing to anybody else because you were a slave.

And by the way, if you run away from your master back in the time of Rome, if you were found, what would happen to you?

So you run away from your master because you being a slave is that bad.

And so you risk your life in running away, and you're successful in running away.

And you run away to Rome because in Rome there's like 1000000 people there and you can be anonymous in Rome.

And so you've blended into the crowd and then you meet this guy, his name's Paul.

You were once a really bitter slave because of all the abuse that you had taken.

And if you haven't figured it out yet, you probably will.

But when things happen to you, when you get beaten down in life, it's really easy to become resentful, isn't it?

It's really easy to get angry at the world.

It's really easy to think that the world owes you something.

It's really easy to play the victim or whatever it might be.

But Onesimus, he has been beaten down by the world and he's probably bitter.

And he finds Paul and Paul is like, but there's this guy and his name is Jesus And He can take all that from you.

And this slave not only is introduced to Paul, but he's introduced to Jesus.

Even though I'm in prison, I adopt you as 1 of my own.

And So this relationship between Paul and this slave and Jesus grows, and eventually, we don't know how, the book doesn't tell us, but this slave comes clean about his past.

And we don't know how this happened, but eventually Paul must have asked him, well, who was your master?

And the slave says, well, his name was Philomene.

Paul had actually worked with him to begin a new church.

Paul, a few years earlier, had introduced Philemon to the gospel as well.

And so Paul is like, I know exactly who that is.

He's a wealthy man, but I introduced him to Jesus and he started his own church within his own house." So Paul introduced the master to Jesus, and Paul introduces the slave to Jesus.

Both of them, Paul has been instrumental in introducing them to Christ and the gospel, except both of these men, now that they're converted, the master and the slave, they don't know each other post-conversion, right?

They just know each other prior to Jesus.

The slaves remember the abusive master, and the master remembers the, well, useless slave.

You have revealed all of your cards to Paul.

And so he's your adopted dad, and now you've met Jesus.

And imagine you come to the prison 1 day, and you come to him, and Paul has a piece of paper in his hand, and he says, I have a letter, and this letter is for Philemon, your old master.

And I have it and I want you to take it and I want you to go back.

Now If you're Osimius or an Isimus, what's your answer going to be?

Like, good luck with that, find somebody else.

But he does, he takes the letter and he goes and he delivers it to his old master, which is a massive risk because he is putting his life in the hands of Paul and trusting what Paul has said is going to happen.

And by the way, that letter that Paul hands to Onesimus to go to his master, that's the letter you hold in your hand.

This is the book of Philomenes right here.

And he says in verse 11, which in times past, talking about Onesimus, which in times past was to you unprofitable.

So Paul says, I heard Onesimus' story, he told me, and he said he was a really bad slave.

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Series

A Slave's Redemption

A Slave’s Redemption Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Does God Care?- Part 2

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Unstoppable Chaos: Where is God and How to Prepare for What’s Next?

39m

Christian Service

Completely Clean

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Through the Tomb

34m

Prayer by Pavel Goia

05 Questions & Anwers about Prayer

40m

A Slave's Redemption

A Slave’s Redemption Part 1

33m

Lovely Lord of the Lord's Day

8 - Seal of Love

28m

The Death of King Uzziah

50m

Learning from MRSA

47m

Apologetics

Ellen White and the Spirit of Prophecy

1h 3m

Sound Doctrine