For Love’s Sake!
Philemon 4-9
Introduction:
v.9 – Underline 3 words: “For Love’s Sake!”
Illust: Psychologists claim that the three greatest needs of a human being are…
1) The need to be wanted.
2) The need to be needed.
3) The need to be loved.
? Live in a world that is obsessed with this thing love.
• World sings about it – love songs.
• World writes about it – bookstores shelves are lined with romance novels, magazines, blogs.
• World’s airways are filled with it – podcasts & radio shows devoted to it, Hollywood movies inundated with it.
? World = obsessed with love but also disillusioned by it.
Quote: late Rock Star Tina Turner called love, “Nothing but a second hand emotion.”
? World = starving for love!
Illust: Atheist and activist Madeline Murray O’ Hare vanished in 1995… when her diaries were found… page after page revealed the emptiness in her heart and life… cried out in her words over and over again… “Somebody, somewhere please love me.”
The problem is that the love this world offers is shallow, sensual, and unsatisfying. It leaves those searching for it empty and unfulfilled and always wanting something more!
Good News = there is a love available to us that is real and genuine… it is deep & satisfying… it is an out of this world kind of love… it is the “agape” love of God!
Agape Love = GK word for love that was little used in Paul’s day. It is a distinctly Christian word. That pagan world knew nothing of their gods loving them
• Grace = sweetest word in the Bible.
• Love = greatest word in the Bible.
1Cor. 13:15 – “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
Agape Love = is the great theme of the little book of Philemon:
“Love” = 6x’s – [vv.1,2,5,7,9,16]
It is love on a higher plane! It is the divine love that God has for each of us! And the kind of love that we are to have for one another.
It describes…
1. The Savior’s Love for Us!
- Paul’s love for Philemon, Onesimus.
- Philemon’s love for Paul.
- Jesus’ love for every one of us…
Purpose = Paul’s letter to his friend Philemon was to make a request for him to forgive his runaway slave Onesimus.
v.8 – I could have commanded you on the basis of my authority.
v.9 – Instead I am pleading with you on the basis of love.
“For Love’s Sake!”
Paul = not referring to an earthly love (love of one human for another human) but a Heavenly love…
“Agape Love” = reminding Philemon of God’s love for Him! I want you to love and forgive Onesimus because Jesus loved and forgave you!
A. Its Without Limitations
“Boundless” = vast or unlimited… God’s love knows no limits.
God has not limited his for a select few… it is a love that includes us all.
John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world…”
Jesus’ love reached…
o A persecutor named Paul.
o A pagan named Philemon.
o An outcast runaway slave named Onesimus.
Quote: A.W. Tozer, “The Knowledge of the Holy” writes, “God does not love populations, He loves people; He loves not masses but men.”
God’s love is personal and individual. It reaches you and reaches me! No one outside the bounds of God’s love!
B. Its Without Conditions
God = doesn’t place any conditions on His love… not one of us are worthy of His love.
Why??? God loves us simply because He loves us. It is His nature to love.
God hasn’t just shared His love; He has shown it!
Calvary is the greatest display of love this world has ever known or ever will know. There God spared not His own son but willingly gave Him up for us all… Jesus showed His love for us by willingly going to the cross to give His life as a payment for our sin!
Love = great motivator!
John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Rom. 5:8 – “God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” = God did not love us at our best; He loves us at our worst. God loved us when we were the least deserving of His love.
Object: There is no way God could love me. You don’t know me, where I have been and what I have done. It is not possible for God to love someone like me. Friend, God knows you and it is not possible for Him not to love you.
C. It Never Changes
John 13:1 – “Now before the feast of Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.”
“Unto the end” = to the fullest extent – Jesus love for them never lessened.
During the Lord’s final hours…
• Judas sold him for 30 pcs of silver and betrayed him with a kiss.
• Peter denied him with oaths and cursings
• Rest disciples forsook and fled
•
**Yet Jesus loved them to the end!
Because God is unchanging, His love is unchanging. God’s love for us never wavers or fluctuates. God does not love us more one moment and less the next. No, God’s love is continuous, constant, unwavering, persistent, and steady.
Rom. 8:35 – “Who shall be able to separate us from the love of Christ?”
Answer: “nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God of which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Illust: times of hardship and heartache… devil whisper in our ears… God doesn’t love you or He wouldn’t let you suffer, hurt, face hardship or difficulty.
Two Truths:
1) God has never told a lie.
2) Satan has never told the truth.
D. It Lasts Forever
Jer. 31:3 – “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore, with loving kindness have I drawn thee.”
God is everlasting… His love for us everlasting!
Go back as far as you can into the eons of eternity past and you will never find a time when God did not love you… project yourself into eternity into the unending ages of eternity future and you will never find a time when God will not love you.
Poem:
“His love no end nor measure knows
No change can turn its course
Eternally the same it flows
From one eternal source.”
E. Its Without Understanding
Eph. 3:17-19 – “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
No one loves us the way Jesus does! It’s deep and abiding!
O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Conclusion:
2. The Saint’s Love for Others!
Look: v.5
Move from Christ’s love for us to the Christian’s love others.
Love is the hallmark of a follower of Jesus.
John 13:35 – “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
Love = greatest attribute of our lives.
Gal. 5:22 - 1st in the Spirit’s fruit – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…”
1Cor. 13:1-3 – “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”
v.13 – “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
Starting point of the Christian’s love…
A. Loving God.
Look: v.5 – “toward the Lord Jesus and for all saints.”
Philemon = had a passionate, burning love for the Lord Jesus.
Ought to be true of our lives.
1John 4:19 – “We love him, because he first loved us.” = Philemon had received Christ’s love and now he was reciprocating, returning love back to One who had saved him.
Cf. every day of our lives the first order of business for a Christian is to love our God.
Mark 12:30 – “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.”
Learned we cannot love God too much, but we can always love Him better!
Never love others the way we should; if we don’t love Jesus the way we should… greater our love for God… the greater our love will be for others.
B. Loving Others
Rom. 5:5 – “love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.”
We are to love with the same Calvary kind of love that Jesus has for us.
Philemon = embodied this love - 2x’s – “Thy Love” = vv.5,7 – what kind of love… not human love but a divine love… Agape love… a love outside of ourselves…
Two words: “To” (v.3) … “Toward” (v.5) – what had flowed into Philemon’s life was not flowing out.
Christian = is a channel not a reservoir – conduit through which Christ’s love flows through us into the lives of others.
Christ = loving through us!
Notice: “All Saints” = not just the ones that are easy to love.
Church wasn’t just in Philemon’s home… in his heart!
1) Shares (6)
“Communication” = sharing
“Effectual” = powerful… here it is availing or accomplishing something in the life the person loved.
“Good thing” = blessings, riches of His goodness that God had worked into Philemon’s life… God had blessed him… now he was to be a blessing.
Prayer = make me a blessing!
2) Refreshes (7)
“Refresh” = 2x’s – vv.7,20… I like that word don’t you?
Nothing like being refreshed… working outside on a hot day… sun beating down you, drenched in sweat… somone gives you a drink of cold water… nothing more refreshing on a hot day than a drink of cold water… does something for you.
What a refresher does!
Two Kinds of People:
Drainers = suck the life out of you.
Refreshers = revitalize, rejuvenate, reenergizes you.
o Life = drain you – struggles, trials, hardships, adversity.
o Sin = drain you
o World = filled with hatred, harshness, hatefulness.
o Satan = ultimate drainer – drains us of joy and every good thing out of life.
o People = drain you… never anything good, positive, always negative, critical… always taking… never giving.
Lord Jesus = great Refresher!
Matt. 11:19,20 – “Rest” = same word refresh.
Psalm 23:2 – “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
**It’s in the presence of Jesus that you find rest!
Refreshing = connected with the Lord’s presence.
Refresher = spends time in the presence of the Lord.
Lord = refreshes us so that we in turn can be a refreshment to others.
Acts 3:19 – “times of refreshing from the Lord” = when King Jesus reigns… sets the wrongs of this world right… peace and blessing… lion lay down with lamb… no more war, violence,
Can’t have rest or refreshment… can’t be a refresher where sin reigns.
Refreshing = connected with being right with the Lord.
More like Jesus we become the greater refreshers we will be.
Acts 27:3 – “refreshed himself” = Paul drained by the journey… sucked the life out the aged Apostle… got around Christian brothers, friends… refreshed him, drew strength and encouragement from them… reenergized him for the journey ahead.
Acts 27:21 – “long abstinence” = Paul was refreshing himself in the presence of the Lord… refreshed others on board ship.
Philemon 7,20 – nothing more refreshing than seeing the love of God in another person!
Be a Refresher!
Don’t suck the life out of everyone around you with an angry, harsh, hateful spirit, critical attitude, discouraging words… not careful we will suck the life out of our own selves.
Make it our business every day of our lives to be a refresher in the lives of others.
Attitudes we have
Kindness in the words we speak
Actions we portray
Ever been around another Christian and they are just a blessing to be around… see the love of Christ in them… encourage you, refresh, always seek to be blessing.
That is who I want to be… how I want to be remembered… just being a Philemon in the lives of those around me.
3) Forgives (8-10,20)
Bitter people don’t love… filled with anger, hatred, malice… not refreshers… drainers.
Bitterness = suck the life out of your marriage, family, friendships, church, workplace, school, etc…
Heb. 12:15 – “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;”
Life too short to live it as a bitter, angry person! People live their whole lives in bondage to anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, hatred, malice.
Why should I forgive??? v.9 – “For loves sake…”
Eph. 4:31,32 – “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”
