Philemon Bible Study

Bible Study – Philemon
It may seem strange that such a short and personal letter is included in the Bible however Philemon can be very useful for us (see verse 11)!
Paul probably wrote it at the same time as Colossians, about AD60, while he was in prison in Rome or Ephesus, and delivered it with the same travelers, Onesimus and Tychicus. The recipient of the letter, Philemon, was a member of the Colossian Church and a slave owner. One of his slaves, Onesimus, had apparently stolen from him and run away. Whilst on the run, met Paul and become a Christian.
Verses 1-3 Greetings
Q1 What does the greeting reveal about the kind of relationship Paul has with Philemon and his church?
Verses 4-7 Thanksgiving and Prayer
Q2 What two personal qualities of Philemon does Paul draw attention to, and why?
Verses 8-22 Paul´s plea for Onesimus
Q3 Why does Paul believe he has the right to order Philemon to do the right thing? Why does he choose not to exercise this right?
Q4 Why do you think the name of Onesimus is not even mentioned until verse 10?
Q5 What change in Onesimus’s life had enabled him to start living up to his name (which means ‘Useful’ or ‘Profitable’?
Q6 In what ways has our acceptance of the Christian faith made us useful (a) to those who helped us come to believe or (b) our employers and neighbours?
Q7 What do you make of Paul’s appeal in verses 12 to 16? Is he being manipulative or does he have a purer motive?
Q8 In what ways does Paul pile on the pressure in verses 17 to 22? How do you think you would feel if you received a letter like this?
Verses 23-25 Final Greetings and blessing
Q9 So how did Philemon respond? Does the fact that the letter was included in the Bible prove anything?
Q10 How can Christians challenge, correct and bring out the best in each other? Can this kind of activity only begin to take place in a mature Christian community, or is it the way to build one?

Philemon sermon

Philemon 1-21

Introduction
• Paul a thoughtful and prayerful leader & a good example
• Philemon = shortest of his letters in Biblel’
• A warm, personal letter which reveals his leadership style & priorities
• Full of faith, love and wisdom
• Paul tactfully deals with a sensitive situation
• He provides appropriate leadership which is both bold and humble

Background
• Addressed to Philemon, a ‘dear friend and co-worker’ with Paul, also to Apphia (Phil’s wife), Archippus (their son), & the church which met at their house.
• Written same time as Colossians, Paul in prison at Rome or Ephesus
• Situation: a slave called Onesimus has run away from his master Philemon, probably robbing him (18), or just failing to return from an errand, so ‘robbing’ P in sense of depriving him of his services
• Law: Anyone finding a stray slave was obliged to return him to his master or sell him and send the money instead.
• A returning slave would be severely punished, perhaps killed
• BUT while on the run O met Paul, became a Christian and a valued friend.
• Paul is obliged to return O to Phil but he sends WITH him this tactful and tender letter, appealing to Phil to receive him as he would P himself and to treat him AS A BROTHER.
• Paul also promises to pay anything O owes Phil and asks for continued prayer for his own release, so he can visit them.

Giving a dog a bad name…
• Onesimus means ‘profitable’ or ‘useful’ however he had proved to be anything but! Paul plays on this meaning in (11):-
Formerly he was USELESS to you, but now he has become USEFUL both to you and to me.
• Names are important in the Bible and for us today – we take great care naming our children and even pets, boats, churches. We give them A GOOD NAME TO LIVE UP TO.
• A baby girl born in Switzerland to ambitious parents was given the same name as a champion tennis player … and sure enough Martina Hingis followed in the footsteps of Martina Navratilova.
• Of course it doesn’t always work out! Not ALL of the current crop of babies called Leo will become great professional footballers!!
• I was born the year after Prince Andrew and look how I turned out!
• On the other hand you wouldn’t name your ship ‘Titanic2’.
• Giving someone a bad name can be dispiriting and self-fulfilling.
• How many people have been written off as Stupid, as a Failure, an Underachiever, a Liability, Useless… and how many of us have unthinkingly attached these labels to others?
• PAUL gives the people he sends AND the people he writes to a good name to live up to.
• Not flattery or manipulation – he just longs to see people fulfil the potential God has put in them.
• Nobody is Useless, everyone is created for a purpose and every life submitted to Jesus will be transformed by His Spirit and made useful and profitable.

Responding to grace
• Why is such a short, personal letter in the Bible? See verses 6 & 7:-
I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.
• Paul gives the highest priority to sharing the faith with others, and he knows this is best achieved NOT by telling people what to believe but by DEMONSTRATING Christian love.
• His appeal to Phil & his Church echoes words of Jesus in Jn 17
• Paul prays that the love at work amongst Christians will make their social status, slave or free, irrelevant, and will attract others to commit their lives to become followers of Jesus.
• Phil and co must have accepted Paul’s challenge, or the letter wouldn’t be in the Bible! We should also accept it:-
• By loving , serving and taking responsibility for each other in a way that demonstrates the life of Jesus
• By praying for the church and the world with thankfulness and hope
• By taking special care of the vulnerable and underprivileged
• By actively seeking reconciliation of any break in fellowship
• By helping each other to grow in godliness and Christian maturity.

I pray that this will be our story and that God will bless, transform and unite us as we journey together.

Sermon - The Magnificat

Luke 1.46-55
Introduction
• Protestants shy away from RC/Orthodox excesses, but M really is important.
• The Magnificat may be the Bible’s greatest song of faith and the clearest expression of the heart of the gospel.

What God has done for Mary (v46-49)
• Becoming pregnant as an unmarried teenager was no joke. M was also given a huge responsibility that she must have felt incapable of carrying through.
• Bitter, fearful and overwhelmed?
• No, she responds with praise and thanks, and an “unrealistic” confidence that God will bring about untold good through her:-
“From now on all generations will call me blessed.”

What God “has done” for others
• M also sees the wider implications of what God has done for her. She sees that God’s mercy will actually extend to all who fear (revere, respect) him for all generations.
• The series of past tenses in verses 51-54 seem puzzling/optimistic. Has God really scattered the proud, brought down rulers, filled the hungry etc?
• Mary is speaking prophetically, with the eyes of faith and with a deep understanding of God’s priorities and purposes – justice, compassion, a breaking down of pride/riches and other barriers to fellowship with God.
• Mary knows that SOMEHOW, the new life that God has put in her womb will bring about the answer to pain, suffering, evil and injustice.

How is Mary an example/inspiration for us?
• Mary’s relevance to those of us living today goes way beyond devotions to paintings, carvings or statues of an idealized, saintly woman. It comes down to our deepest fears, needs and insecurities and shows us the way out.

• Perhaps you can think of a time in your life when you were anxious, uncertain, overwhelmed. Perhaps something like that is going on for you now.
• When you are in that kind of place it makes a difference if you are a person who shares the faith of Mary. A person who can say “my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.”
• = A person who believes that God performs mighty deeds and fills the hungry with good things. A person who believes that God has put his new life in them, his Holy Spirit, to transform the way they act and cope and live.
• OR, perhaps you can think of an “insoluble” world problem – AIDS, economic meltdown, terrorism, the extreme poverty of much of the world’s population.
• When we think about these problems it makes a difference if we are Christians, people who share the faith of Mary.
• = people who believe that God is all powerful and that he values justice, integrity, peace and love above all things. That he has come into the world in the form of a human being in order to radically change the way things are and has poured out his Spirit to enable us all to live in a new way, a way which advances the influence of the Kingdom of God on earth, day by day. It makes a difference!

Not so easy?
• You might be thinking it is not so easy to have the faith of the New Testament’s Mary, or even the faith of a vicar, a religious professional!
• This is where the Church comes in. You are not alone! Mary herself had Joseph to support her and later, after the trauma of the cross, she was part of the earliest Church community (Acts 1.14).
• The Bible makes it clear that the Church is not just a random collection of individuals who happen to hold similar religious beliefs! We are here for each other; we are meant to be dependent on each other.
• I’m very happy to see this mutual support in prayer and action already happening fairly strongly at St G’s (…examples?) and I’d be happy to see a lot more of it!
• Together we can grow in the faith that Mary had in the Son of God who she was carrying in her womb when she sang this great song of praise.
• Together we can praise God for his past, present and future mercies and live in a new way which transforms the world into God’s Kingdom.

Let’s take on board the Magnificat as our song, our hope, our prayer by saying these words together now, with confidence… Luke 1.46-55!

New worship song - work in progress!

The Rich Fool - Luke 12.13-21

Luke 12.13-21

Jesus told this parable in response to a man who wanted more than his legal share of the family estate. The man tried to recruit Jesus as an ally of his covetousness – instead, Jesus warned of the danger of all kinds of greed. The words with which he prefaced the parable speak directly and powerfully to our consumerist, materialist society:-

“A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

One useful way of analysing the parable which follows is to think about what the rich fool remembered and what he forgot.

What he remembered
The first thing he remembered was himself! This was a man whose life revolved around himself, his comfort, his security, his possessions. We can see this simply by noticing in his little speech how often the words “I” and “my” come up. (Read vv 17-19). He planned for himself a life of ease and enjoyment, without any other consideration whatsoever. It has been said that Jesus came to abolish the words “I” and “mine” from life and replace them with “we” and “ours”. Through this parable Jesus condemns all for whom the word “I” is the most important in the language.

The second thing he remembered was this world with all its wealth and attractions. He had no concept of any other world beyond what he could see and touch. From that perspective his plan made perfect sense. Accumulate and store as much stuff as you can, then sit back and enjoy it for many years to come.

What he forgot
A clue to what this man forgot can be found in Jesus’s summary of the law (Matthew 22.36-40).

He actually forgot the most important things of all.

Firstly he forgot his NEIGHBOURS. Faced with the dilemma that his land was producing more crops than he had room to store, the rich man could have looked around and seen many less fortunate or capable people and shared some of his abundance with them. (Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan – anybody in need is our neighbour). But this idea was just not on his radar.




Again his idea of enjoyment was to eat, drink and be merry - no thought for feeding others, or bringing enjoyment to them.

Secondly he forgot his own MORTALITY. Dying that night was not part of his plan (nor anyone’s) but it happened to him and it could of course happen to anyone. He had lived as if he were immortal…

Thirdly he forgot GOD – he forgot who the giver is, who the owner is (our life and possessions are only ‘on loan’) and he made plans for the future without reference to God. We are reminded in James 4.13-15 of the foolishness of this.
As he sat back and poured himself another aperitif, he congratulated himself on his cleverness and good fortune – then to his surprise he heard God’s verdict on his life … “you fool!” and learned to his horror that his life was over.

Finally he forgot that a man’s life consists not in what he has but in WHO HE IS. He worked hard at building up a store of things he could not take with him beyond this life and neglected to develop the attributes which do live beyond death…
As we are reminded in Micah 6.8 “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”

Not just individuals
All of this warning against living a selfish and greedy lifestyle could be applied to NATIONS as well as INDIVIDUALS. If an individual can be a rich fool, so can a nation, or a group of nations, or a whole cultural system, a way of life.

Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions… Don’t the words of Jesus speak to us today? Has there ever been a society more anxious and obsessed about food, drink and clothing? A society which has rejected the truth that God is the provider; a society where people strive and struggle but are never satisfied. A society which exploits poorer and weaker societies by every means possible, but whose material riches are matched by its spiritual poverty.

Make Poverty History campaign reminded us that 800 mil people in the world go hungry each day and a child dies of starvation every 3 seconds (remember the powerful finger click illustration).
We may be poor and dreaming of a more comfortable life.
We may resent other people who have the things we deserve.
Or, like the man in the parable, our barns may be bursting and we may be considering building bigger ones – but surely instead we have a corporate as well as an individual responsibility to change things; by praying, by giving and by campaigning for justice.



There are encouraging signs of changing attitudes but we must not let them be a flash in the pan.

Remember, Jesus told this parable to everyone present, not just the rich. Because its not about what we have, its about what we DESIRE.

May we understand and truly believe that our lives do not consist of the abundance of our possessions.

May we be people who do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.

And may we seek first the kingdom of God and his justice.

Colossians 1.15-28 World Cup sermon

Colossians 1.15-28

Did anyone notice it was football’s WORLD CUP FINAL last weekend? Some of us may have been celebrating, others drowning their sorrows, some people in this region unsure whether to cheer or not (in spite of fact that more than half the players in the winning team came from a local club), others wondering what all the fuss was about! It was certainly a great sporting victory for Spain.

As always the match generated a lot of comment – much of it concerning the very rough, almost violent approach of the Dutch team. One headline writer called it a “Total Disgrace”, referring to the Dutch tradition of playing in an attractive style called “Total Football”. Ironically it was Dutch coaches, Cruyff, Van Gaal and Rijkaard who introduced and this style at FC Barcelona – so the Spanish victory was really “made in Holland”!

We’re not here to talk about football, but there is a lot about football in the Bible. Here are a few examples:-

Psalm 121.5 “The LORD is your Keeper.”

1 Samuel 16.17 “Bring me a man who can play skilfully.”

Proverbs 4.27 “Do not swerve to the right or to the left; keep your foot away from evil.”

Philippians 3.13-14 “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal…”

SOME GOOD THINGS ABOUT THE WORLD CUP
1. It brings people together – within divided countries to support their team AND brings different races and nations together on the field and in the crowd to enjoy sport together.

2. At its best, the “beautiful game” is a demonstration of breathtaking skill, courage and honest endeavour.
3. The World Cup gives hope and inspiration to millions of people around the world (a) because ANY country can win the trophy (in theory at least). (b) because any boy from the poorest ghetto of the poorest nation can dream of becoming an international hero with incredible wealth.

4. Football has filled the gap vacated by religion. Modern stadiums are architectural masterpieces – the cathedrals of our day – where people gather in huge numbers to sing, hope, dream, worship!

SOME NOT SO GOOD THINGS ABOUT WORLD CUP
1. Encourages xenophobia and disorder – an opportunity for racist violence and alcohol abuse – an excuse for all that is worst inhuman society.

2. Matches are a showcase for bad sportsmanship, cheating and deception of referees. Rich players can set an appalling example to our children all too often.

3. The World Cup hopes and dreams of most individuals and nations are doomed to failure. Even for the winners, the World Cup is unlikely to deliver any real or lasting benefits. England won in 1966 and look at us now…

ST PAUL enjoyed some success in his day, yet he considered all his worldly possessions and successes RUBBISH and longed for something BETTER, something REAL and PERMANENT…

So, what SHOULD people put their faith in today? Is the cross of Jesus Christ any more reliable than the crosses of Lampard or Xavi?

Our Bible reading from Colossians is, amongst other things, about IMAGE, about VICTORY and about PARTICIPATION.

Image
The first part of our reading is a wonderful poem about Jesus and was probably used as a hymn or creed in the very earliest days of the Church. It begins with the bold claim that Jesus is the IMAGE of the invisible God. But what does this mean?

If I tell you that my mate Geoff is the image of Brad Pitt, what do you understand by this? Probably that I think he looks quite like the film star – nothing more than this. But when Paul describes Jesus as being the image of God he’s saying a lot more. So do other Bible writers:

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. (Hebrews 1.3)

For Paul and the other NT writers, Jesus is not just a “lookalike”, his identification with God is total. He is God made flesh, He is God in human form.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him (Col 1.19).


Victory
Paul spells out what this means:

• Jesus didn’t just come into existence when Mary became pregnant, he existed before time began and was fully involved in the creation of all things (v15-16). He continues to create and sustain all life (v17).
• Jesus was fully involved in God’s victory over sin and death and his work of repairing the broken relationship of all his creatures with him, his work of bringing peace and reconciliation to all creation (v20).

Notice the repetition of the words all things which come up five times in these few verses. Paul is describing a TOTAL identification of Jesus with God, a TOTAL victory and a TOTAL reconciliation of all people and all things with God.

Paul describes a big vision and a big victory for Jesus, this man who is the image of God in the deepest and most intimate sense. But even as we sit like spectators at the world cup, celebrating the victory of Jesus and cheering, even worshipping our hero, we know that more is required of us.

Participation
Jesus is the image of God in a way that no one else can be, and yet that word image reminds us of something we’ve read before. In the very first chapter of the Bible we read this:

Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image… So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Gen 1.26,27)

God’s intention was clearly that not just one but all human beings would be his image. But we know from history, from the Bible and from our own experience that human beings are a selfish and rebellious lot and so surely this idea of all people being in the image of God is doomed to fail… but this is where the Church comes in.

As well as being the image of God , Paul describes Jesus as being the head of the body, the church … and the firstborn from among the dead (v18).

He goes on to describe how the Church is full of the life and power and potential of Jesus and how its purpose is to share this gift with everyone (v27).

Are we taking this seriously enough here at St George’s, here in Barcelona? Paul was prepared to suffer great hardship in the cause of the gospel (v27-28), but are we prepared to suffer even minor inconvenience?

Are we content to have a good image? Or will we strive with Paul to BE the image of God, the life-giving Body of Christ for the benefit of all people? As we saw in the pictures, what matters is not what we look like but how we show God to the world in the way we live.

If we join with Paul as wholehearted players in Jesus’s team, we can be sure of winning a greater prize than any world cup.

Gandhi II

We laugh at this but how many of us believe in a similar "Jesus II"?