When Religion and Real Life Collide, Part 2-Doug Crum

Sunday's sermon presented by Doug Crum 04/26/26


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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We are gonna have week two of Philemon. And so this one is a little different. Let's see if we can get this. This is where when religion and life collide. And so I want to give you a quick recap of what we talked about last week. We have a few individuals that we're gonna be focusing on. Philemon, to whom the letter is written to. Philemon lives in Colossae. He had a church that met in his house, and he had a slave named Omnisimus. We talked last week about what slave uh slavery looked like back then. So we won't cover that again. But this is who Philemon is. Now there's going to be another individual who's also mentioned. Uh he is the servant or slave of Philemon. Does anybody remember his name? It's down on here. I was trying to give you a hint. Onisimus. What do we know about Onisimus? We know that he ran away, and quite possibly, but based on textual evidence, that he might have even stolen some stuff from his master Philemon before leaving. At some point, he's gonna meet with Paul. He's gonna be saved by Paul, and he's gonna return to Colossae. And then, of course, we have Paul who was in prison, right? He met with Onisimus, and he is not only gonna save Onisimus, but then he's going to write a letter to Philemon urging him to take back Onisimus. So if you missed last week, I think that sermon was like 28 minutes long. I was able to do it in two minutes. So from now on, just think if I miss a week, I can get a recap and much faster. I would not plan on getting that. Okay, so this is where I want to nerd out just a little bit. I think this matters a lot. I mean, I think this matters a whole lot. And this may not mean a whole lot to you, but it does to me. Let's see how well. Okay, this is gonna work great. So what I did was we have this map that's generated that has the basic proximity of all the um places where Paul wrote to. Okay, so we'll start up here. Here's Rome. Uh, he wrote a book. It's called What? Okay, awesome. Okay, here's a place called Corinth, and he wrote a letter that we call. You guys are smart. What about that's a that's Linica? What's that book called? Yeah, 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Okay, so he writes a total of 13 letters. Some people say Hebrews, most people don't. So he's probably written 13 out of the 27 books of the New Testament, different places. Philippi, one of my favorite letters that Paul writes. Just phenomenal. We get to see a different side of Paul and uh Philippians, and we'll talk about that in just a minute. Here's Ephesus. He spent a lot of time in Ephesus, uh, both as a free man and in prison as well. There's Galatia right here. Uh, here's where he wrote to Titus. Now, and then right here is Colossae. And this is what we're focusing on this morning because, of course, this is where Philemon lived. This is where Onesimus had been for a while. So the question has been among scholars, and it probably means nothing to anyone for the most part, is where was Paul when he wrote the letter to Philemon? He's in prison. This is what we know. He wrote four letters while in prison, and so they have been given the name the Prison Epistles. Epistle just means letter. Okay. So he writes these four letters. This is uh Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Okay, so we have these four letters. So where in prison was he? Can anybody guess? Rome is most likely where he is. He's in Rome. Okay. Stick with me here. I know you're like, why are we talking about geography in the first century? This means nothing. There's been a lot of debate about this, and I've loved to think about this. But like I said, just until a couple weeks ago, all of a sudden it hit me, and I thought something is really important about where Paul has to be. So there's a couple of places we know where he was imprisoned. We know he was imprisoned in Rome. Okay, we also know that he was imprisoned in Ephesus. So the question then becomes as he is writing this letter to Philemon, and of course the letter to Colossi and Ephesus and Philippi, where is he in prison? Well, a lot of people, textual evidence seems to lead us to believe that he's in Rome. Okay, makes sense, right? However, there's some people that say, wait, he can't be in Rome, or there's a problem with him being in prison in Rome. You're gonna have to think really deep now. Why is Rome a problem when he's writing to specifically Colossae, the church in Colossae, and to Philemon, the slave owner who lives in Colossae. What's the big problem? Distance. Remember, now you say, wait, a letter can eventually get somewhere. But remember the premise of Philemon is what? Onismus did what? He ran away, and he's going to meet a guy named, he's not gonna meet, he's gonna see Paul. We believe that he knew him before. So here's the big issue here. As the crow flies, this is 827 miles away. Has anybody ever been on an 800-plus mile road trip? Anyone in here? Okay. Has anyone been on an 800-plus mile trip that didn't include some form of transportation other than possibly a sailboat? Anyone in here? This is where it becomes a real big issue. So always in my mind, as I'm reading Philemon, I imagine Onesimus has run away, he's bumped into Paul accidentally, right? And then they have this conversation, there's the conversion, and Paul's gonna say, okay, now you gotta go back. This is plausible if Paul is in Ephesus, okay? And Onesimus is in Colossae. That's about a hundred miles. It's plausible to think that he goes about a hundred miles, runs into his old friend Paul, and says, Man, I got it. You know, Paul says, Hey, where's Philemon? What are you doing here in Ephesus? Or are you running some errands? And he says, No, I'm I'm running away. That's plausible, right? It's not really very believable to think that we have right here, we have a guy named Onesimus who is a slave, is going to travel 800 miles as the crow flies. It's over a thousand. Potentially, if he has to come up through here and then come back down again, it's more than doubled his trip. So this is where we have an issue, which by the way, I just want to show you something else over here, just for fun, just so you know this. This is the area in which Paul traveled, right? We know he's been down to Jerusalem, Antioch, he's been this whole area. This area right here is where Jesus traveled. From north to south, a little under a hundred miles, is is this is where Jesus spent all of his ministry, right? Uh okay, so just so you know that this just gives you an idea of how far uh this this distance was and the likelihood that Onesimus just seemed to travel that way. Just so you would know uh how far 827 miles is, if you happen to be down in Houston and you say, hey, I'm going to take a trip. I want to go about 800 miles. I think I'm gonna travel to, well, Cuba. That would be great. But again, remember, you're not flying to Cuba. You're not taking a speed boat, or you are sailing to Cuba, or or you're walking all the way through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, you can cut through Georgia, skip that, Florida, go down to the very tip, and then you can take a boat and get you to Havana, okay? So just to get an idea of how far this is away. So now you're thinking, you've just wasted five minutes of my life talking about something that means nothing and I will never think about again. Maybe you're right. But but this has really bothered me. And I want to talk about this for just a second. In order for Onisimus or anyone to travel from Colossae to Rome, it's gonna take, I mean, non-stop, everything going great, about a month. About a month, that's how long it's gonna take. So again, my question is is it likely that Onesimus, a runaway slave, is gonna just happen to go over 800 miles and accidentally bump into a guy named Paul who's under house arrest in prison. Is anybody believing that story? Do you think he just accidentally did that? Okay, so if he doesn't accidentally do it, it means what? If he didn't do it on accident, it was on purpose. He was intentional about this. And this is where I want to spend the last few minutes that we have this morning is I want to talk about why in the world would Onesimus travel 800 miles to visit a guy who's in prison. This is what the book of Philemon is really about, which by the way, I just googled to find, you know, a background for Philemon. I love this picture because here we have in it the three main characters. And you can just figure out who is who. Remember, we talked about this last week. You know, at some point there was a knock at the door, and in comes Titicus. He's holding a couple letters. The letter to the Colossian church we called Colossians, and then we also have another letter that is Philemon, and it's written to Philemon. So this is Philemon, right? Okay, he's the one, and you see the look on his face, right? This is uh Tichicus would have been carrying the letters, but we're gonna assume this is Onisimus, he's the runaway slave, and you can tell by the haircut. Uh, he is now delivering this letter to um Philemon. And he's like, Man, I hope this goes over well. Uh, and he's like, What am I supposed to do here? And then not in the picture, but this obviously is uh Paul right here. You can imagine what Paul was like, Philemon, come on, like you know what to do. And Onesimus is like, please do something, you know, help me out. And Philemon is like, oh, I'm in big trouble. Like, how am I supposed to handle this? So, this is where we are. So, um, I I want to talk for just a second about who Paul is, right? And and this is really important. Uh, Paul is a little rough around the edges, to say the least. And it seems like Paul is almost always looking for a fight. Um, he comes by that naturally. This is his upbringing, his legalistic upbringing that he had. Um, he had no problems telling people that they were wrong. You go back and you read Galatians, he's gonna go toe-to-toe with Peter because Peter decides he's gonna stop sitting at the lunch table with his Gentile friends because his Jews uh showed up. Uh, and he says, Well, I better not hang out with these low-life Gentiles anymore. Uh and uh Paul says, I have no problem telling him face to face, Peter, you were wrong. And so we base who Paul is off of the letters that he wrote. And so the question we then should ask is, who did he write these letters to? He wrote these letters to churches who happened to be dealing with sexual immorality and division and disorder and false teaching and super apostles. These were some of the people that he was writing letters to. The church members that he was addressing the letters to, they were having affairs and they were bragging about it. They were getting drunk during communion, they were suing one another, they were demanding legalistic acts and they were denying the resurrection. That's just a few of the things that they dealt with. If you look at uh the church in Colossae, they had issues with legalism, they had issues with the supremacy of Christ, which is to say they didn't know if Christ was enough. Oh, and by the way, they also like to worship angels. Those were some of the issues that the church in Colossae had that Paul was addressing. Paul wrote strict and pointed and harsh letters because the situation demanded it. I want you to imagine that somebody were to pick up any correspondence that you had written and then determine the kind of person that you were based on that correspondence. What letters would you want them to read of yours? Maybe a letter that you wrote to your now wife when y'all were younger and you were talking about how beautiful and sweet she was. Probably not, probably not a conversation that they overheard you while talking to a telemarketer last week. Like, like those are probably two different parts of you. So my wife and I, I try not to brag too much about my wife because it embarrasses her. Um, but I I love my wife. We've been married for almost 28 years now. Um, I when I first went to West Texas, Sweetwater, I met one of the coaches there, and he saw me and he saw Jennifer, and he goes, dude, you outkicked your coverage. And I said, Yep, you're definitely right about that. She is she's beautiful, amazing, she's sweet, she's kind. She's also very shy. Um, she's an introvert, uh, which just means it doesn't mean she doesn't like people. It just means that she gets energy from being alone, not being in crowds. Uh, and I'm I'm the exact opposite. Uh, and so I love that about her. Uh, she does not want this spotlight, she doesn't demand the spotlight. If the spotlight is is here, she is back hiding over in the corner. She does not want to be um uh an imposition to anyone. And so, because of that, she's she's pretty quiet. Um, and and I'm the talker um of the family. I know that's shocking to you. Um, and so uh one time we had only been married for uh maybe less than a year, uh, and we were living in Mansfield, uh, and she needed something brought up to her school, or I was gonna do, I was gonna go visit her classroom. Uh, and it was gonna be for the first time. And so I was walking down the hall, and as I I'm getting closer, I start hearing one of these teachers just really having a very commanding, strong voice, telling their kids what to do, and I'm like, wow, that is one mean teacher. I mean, she's just she's making sure like they know who the boss is, right? And then I just I kept getting closer and I kept getting closer. I was like, man, I I recognize that voice. And then I realized I got permission, by the way, to tell this story. I want you to know that. So um don't don't go looking for a body later on. I think we're clear on this. So I I I I I turn the corner and it's Jennifer, like the very quiet, the one who just you know is very soft-spoken. She's in that room and she's telling these kids, you need to do this and you need to do that, and this is, and she she really is projecting her voice, and I'm just like, Who is this? And what have I done? Like, what happens if she starts using her teacher voice at home? Which we had kids later on, and and that voice would come out occasionally. I say all that to say that there's just a difference between teacher Jennifer and at home Jennifer, right? We all do this, right? And so I I want to suggest that there is a Paul going after the people who don't think Jesus is enough, or denying the resurrection, or they're suing one another, or they're sleeping with their dad's wife and bragging about it, or they're getting drunk during communion. This is riled up, Paul. This is, I'm coming after you, Paul. This is you better believe that Jesus is enough, Paul. And so those are the letters that we read. But what if, what if there's a different side to Paul that we don't get to glimpse very often? And I want to argue that it's hidden right here in this tiny little twenty-five verse letter to Philemon. Because the question is, why? Why would Onesimus travel eight hundred miles to India at the doorstep of Paul? Paul, the really just not afraid to come after you, apostle. Paul, the one who would write letters, Paul, the one who would go toe-to-toe with Peter, Paul, the one who would say, your doctrine is wrong, your theology is wrong, and you're wrong, and you better get it fixed. Onesimus is in the wrong. So why in the world would Onesimus travel for over a month one way just to see Paul?

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Why would he do it? I have a thought. I have a thought.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

I think Onesimus saw a side of Paul that we just really don't get to see. Paul was always writing to churches who were dysfunctional and crazy and divisive, and they were arguing all the time. I mean, like, we don't have arguments here like they had arguments there. Like we get upset about we went from pews to chairs. I get that, like it's a big deal, right? But man, they're talking about, hey, I'm suing the guy who's sitting across the room from me. And I'm, you know, having an affair with my dad's wife. Like, these are some crazy issues. I don't know about you. We just had communion. I maybe I missed out on something. He was dealing with, he was dealing with church members who were coming together and getting drunk during communion. Paul was up to here and said, we've got to do something about this. And so he's dealing with some really, really tough issues. But I think there was a really gracious and kind and loving Paul. And the reason why I believe that is why else would a slave who had run away, whose life was messed up, he was if he gets caught, he could be going to jail, he could be beaten, he could be stoned. Like all these things could happen. Why would he travel? I think because he Believed that Paul could do something. I think he thought on that one to two month journey as he's on his way, riddled with guilt, maybe a little panicked about who might see him, and wondering how Paul would respond, he thought maybe Paul will show mercy. What if Paul is compassionate? What if Paul, who sees somebody who is clearly in the wrong, and rather than swinging the hammer, rather than telling him he's the worst person ever, what if he just says, Yeah, you really messed up? But let me tell you about Jesus. What if, what if Paul could take someone who's bound for prison and talk about grace and love in a way that he would accept Jesus. Think about it for just a second. Think about you've got caught, you've done something really wrong, and you know that you're in big trouble. I mean big trouble. The list of people who you want to see and people you trust and people who will help you out gets really, really small.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Your marriage is falling to pieces. You got caught cheating on your kid, taxes.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

You got caught cheating on your wife. You're about to lose your job. You've lost your job.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

You might be going to jail.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

I just can't get over the fact that Onesimus in his worst moments in his darkest valley, he said, I'm gonna go see the apostle Paul. You see, I I think I think Paul had to be a little bit gruff and and and stringent. I mean, there were some people who were talking about circumcision, and Paul literally writes, I wish you wouldn't stop there, just keep cutting. That's what Paul says. We get this very gruff side of Paul. I think Onesimus saw something completely different. And because of that, he traveled on foot and by boat for over a month, just hoping to find grace in Paul. And Paul does not disappoint. And so we've talked about geography, we've talked about all these churches, we've talked about runaway slaves. Here's where I want to get out today. I know, I know we want to do things right as individuals, as a church, we want to get things right, we want to do things right, we want to think things right, we want to make sure that our worship is right and our doctrine is right and that we have everything cut and dry and everything's all together. But but what happens when people don't have everything right? Is it possible that we can live and think and love in such a way that when people are doing things wrong, the one person that they can believe in going to is you? Have we set ourselves up as a group of people that when people say everything in my life is torn apart, it's messed up, I don't know what to do, and they think, here's what I need to do. I need to go to church because that's where they're loving and that's where they're forgiving, and they will show me Jesus, and they will stand up for me. Paul writes a letter and says, Look, it's on my tab. I'll pay for him. I want you to know that I want you to forgive this man. Are we the type of people? Is this a beacon in our community when people say everything is going wrong in my life? If I can go to church, I will find people who will show Jesus and they'll show grace and they'll show love. That's what we're called to do. I want us to live lives in such a way that people with tattoos and nose piercings and failed marriages can walk into our church building and they can be loved and accepted, and they can find about Jesus. And we can say, Let me tell you about Jesus. Let me tell you about grace. Here's why I know about grace because I've been there too. I know what it's like. I know what it's like to be up at 3 a.m. crying and sobbing and guilt-ridden and saying, I will never ever get my life back together. I want to be a Paul to you here. And I need you to be a Paul in my life. That when my back is against the wall, I know I can come to you and say, look, man, things are really, really bad, and I'm messed up. And instead of getting this list of all these things that I do wrong, what if you said, let's talk about Jesus? Let's talk about grace and forgiveness, and let's talk about how we can fix these things. Paul didn't just say, Oh, Jesus loves you, you're fine. He says, Jesus loves you, and now you gotta go back to your master. But I'm gonna write a letter and I'm gonna put my name on it.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Because grace really matters.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

And so for you this week, my prayer for you is you continue living a life that welcomes in the broken. It welcomes in people like me, and it welcomes in people who have never stepped in a church building in their life. My prayer is that we will be a bunch of Paul's and we will go out and help people, and we live in such a way that people want to come in and say, tell me about Jesus. I need forgiveness. And here's the last thing I want to do. I want to extend this to you because there's some people in here who, for a few months, or a few years, or several decades, or most of your life, you have been angry or broken or hurt, you have been hurt by others, you've been hurt by your own decisions, and you think my life is no good, it's messed up. I'm here, but it's here out of obligation or out of guilt, and and I don't really think if I get into heaven, if I'm just barely making it in, but I'm not really sure about that. And I just want you to know, I want you to know that that those are lies of Satan that says you're not good enough. Because Satan wants to tell you that God giving Jesus to die on the cross wasn't enough. And we're just believing that story. And I want you to know that's a lie, it's not true, that no matter what is going on in your life, in your heart, in your mind, your brokenness, your addiction, what your history, whatever you have going on, I want you to know that there's a God of love, and his son Jesus is one of mercy, and he calls us to come to him and accept it and receive it and allow our lives to be changed. And I want to offer that to you this morning. Let's do that as we stand and sing.