Tweets From God (Part 2: Philemon) Series

Tweets from God: Philemon

Scott Bayles, pastor

Blooming Grove Christian Church: 5/22/2016

Last Sunday I began a series I’m calling Tweets from God. Like I said last week, with over 200 million users, Twitter is the most popular social network besides Facebook. But what makes Twitter unique is that it only allows you to create posts up to 140 characters longs (about a sentence or two)—no longwinded diatribes, no soapbox lectures. Your posts or tweets have to be short and to the point.

When we read lengthy books of the Bible like Jeremiah or Genesis, we might get the impression that God is a bit too long-winded for Twitter. But the truth is—some books of the Bible are actually quite short. Five of them, in particular, are only one chapter long and can be read in less than three minutes each. While they’re technically too long for a tweet, these five books are short personal messages from God to his followers.

Last week we looked at the first of these short messages, the book of Obadiah, which can be summed up: God always sticks up for his followers. The next one of these one-chapter books is Philemon. It’s found in the New Testament, nestled between Titus and Hebrews. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and open to it Philemon.

This short letter was written by Paul to, you guessed it, Philemon. Philemon is a good guy. He loves Jesus and the other believers. His kindness refreshed the hearts of those who knew him. He’s a church leader in Colossae. Paul even considers him a beloved brother and a fellow worker.

But he’s about to find himself in a very awkward situation.

Philemon owned a slave named Onesimus. But Onesimus ran away from Philemon, and apparently took some of Philemon’s stuff with him when he left. Onesimus fled to Rome, where I guess he expected to get lost in the crowd.

Roman society was built on the backs of slaves. Slavery was the accepted way of life. Estimates suggest that there were some 60 million slaves in the Roman Empire, men and women who were treated like pieces of property to buy and sell. The average slave sold for 500 denarii (roughly $22,500 by modern American pay scales). Highly educated and skilled slaves could go for ten times that. Slaves could buy their own freedom if they could raise enough money, but that didn’t happen often.

If the slave ran away, the owner would register the name and description with the Roman authorities and the slave would be put on the “wanted” list. A slave who stole from his master and ran away could be put to death according to Roman law. So Onesimus probably never planned on returning to Colossae and Philemon probably never expected to see his slave again. So you can imagine the look on Philemon’s face when Onesimus shows up on his doorstep with a note from the Apostle Paul.

Imagine that! In a city of over a million people, this runaway slave ran into the Apostle Paul! And wouldn’t you know it—Paul just happened to be personal friends with Philemon! I think this was more than just a chance encounter. I think God had a plan for Onesimus and He used Paul to totally transform his life.

As I read this letter I see four things Paul gave Onesimus that eventually led to his freedom. First, Paul gave Onesimus a message.

• PAUL GAVE A MESSAGE

Not just a message, but THE message—the Good News of Jesus Christ. Paul starts off this letter by identifying himself as “a prisoner for preaching the Good News about Christ Jesus” (vs. 1 NLT). Latter he says again, “I am in these chains for preaching the Good News” (vs. 13 NLT).

If you remember Paul’s story… He traveled to Jerusalem to preach openly about Jesus. Of course, the Jews in Jerusalem didn’t take to kindly to that name so a riot broke out and the whole city was in an uproar. Soon a Roman regiment showed up and arrested Paul for inciting a riot. Eventually, he was transported to Caesarea where he stood trial before the Roman Govern Festus. There, he appeals to Caesar and is sent to Rome to await trial there. In the meantime, Paul is kept on house arrest. For 24 hours a day Paul is chained to Roman soldiers, each serving a 6 hour shift. So every 6 hours a new soldier comes in and chains himself to Paul, ensuring the prisoner couldn’t escape.

That didn’t prevent Paul from continuing to preach the gospel, though. Paul saw this as a wonderful opportunity to tell the soldiers about Jesus. There was no way that the soldier could escape. And some of these guys actually ended up accepting Jesus and changing their whole lives. So long as he remained chained to a soldier, Paul could attend church and even preach in the market place.