Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 23, 2016 | Route 66 - Philemon

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October 23, 2016 | Route 66 - Philemon · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Grace to you.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your pastor asked me to come and tell you my story.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I said no.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I always say no.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Telling my story means reliving my story, and uh, who wants to relive the hell I lived in?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Torture?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Weeks of weeks of nightmares, anticipating torture and certain death.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: No one wants to relive that, so I said no.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: But in the end, I said yes.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I usually do.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: In the end, I usually say yes because it's a story that needs to be told.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, I think some of you will realize that it's your story too.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Onesimus.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: But you can call me Nessie if you want.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just today, my master's wife used to uh have fun with my name.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: She would say, Oh, Nessie! You know, Onesimus, you know, so I know you want to do that too.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: So go ahead at the count of three.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can say, Oh, Nessie.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: One, two, three.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Nessie.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Get it out of your system.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's for today only.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: My master gave me that name when he bought me as his slave.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Slaves are a common thing.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, where I come from, one out of four people in the Roman Empire is a slave, and if you are well to do it all, then you have slaves that do your work.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was wishful thinking on uh Philemon's part.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's a successful businessman, and my name, the name he gave me, means useful or profitable, and I'm sure that he hoped, he wished, that I would bring him some profit, that I would be useful to him.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Little did he know that uh uh I would disappoint him and how much trouble.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Useful may have been my name, but trouble was my game, and I made sure that uh that he regretted ever making me his slave.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I found many ways uh to uh, shall we say, uh, let him down because of his business.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was a he was a successful uh built his business on clothing.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: In my day, almost everybody, uh almost all clothes were made out of sheep's wool.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in the part of Asia, we were far from Rome.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: In the part of Asia where I lived, there were a dozen sheep for every person.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And around our town of Colossae, you could see the sheep dotting the hills all around.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Philemon had built a very prosperous business because during shearing season, he would go out and he would select the finest fleece and give them to us, and we who were his slaves would wash the fleece and beat the fleece, and then dye the fleece, sort of an initial dyeing, and then we would uh we would pass them off to those who did the spinning and and those who did the knitting and those who did the weaving, and then we would take them back to finish them.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we would finish them well, and then we would we would dye them then white for the commoners and purple, or at least with purple stripes at times for the nobility.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And people would come from miles, even hundreds of miles, to buy Philemon's soft robes and tunics and togas and undergarments, for they were of the finest quality.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if they didn't come to us, Philemon would go to them.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: He we traveled to some distant cities so that uh he could sell his clothing.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it was on one of those trips that Philemon became a changed man.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was the year he decided to go as far away as the capital of Asia, the largest city, Ephesus, 100-150 miles away.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so he told us to get the horses and to hitch them up to the wagons and fill the wagons with uh with clothing, and and we did, and and we were off, and it took us days to get to Ephesus.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we when we went into that great, great city, um, we found that everyone was talking about a man, a man named Paul, a Jew.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, he was uh he was an Asian himself and a Roman citizen, but but he was born a Jew, and he'd gone down to Jerusalem because he was apparently brilliant as a young man, and he'd gone down to study, and somehow, uh, as part of his studies, he'd come across a Jesus, a person named Jesus, and he had believed in him, and now he was going around the world telling everyone that this Jesus had been crucified but risen from the dead, and that he was the world's savior.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so hundreds of people in Ephesus were becoming converted.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul himself had established a school in Ephesus and was there every day teaching.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And my master, being a sort of a religious man, was interested, and so he left the clothes in our charge, and he he went to see this Paul and to hear him.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we didn't see him again the whole time we were in Ephesus.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: He was very much taken, we heard, with this Paul.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we heard that when Paul told him that he needed to believe in this Jesus to be saved, my master gave up his Roman gods, Augustus and Jupiter and Diana of the Ephesians and all the rest, and replaced them with Jesus.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: We told each other, we slaves, that this was just a matter of a week, and when we went back home, he would be the same man.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: But we were wrong.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: We went back to Colossae, and Philemon was still bubbling over and telling everyone about Jesus.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he would talk to his wife, Aphia, he had a wife and a son.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, Archipus was his son, and when he told his wife and his son, and they could see the joy in his eyes and how it had changed him, they believed too.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, he was telling so many people that uh people were coming to the house, and he established a church in our home, which tells you how wealthy he was, that uh very few people had a home big enough to uh have a gathering in, but we had a large home and ten people, and then it grew to 20, and then it grew to 40, and they would come in on a Saturday night for dinner, and and it would, and the meeting would last all evening.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I would help prepare the meal and I would help wash the dishes unhappily, I promise you.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I resented it.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think I wasn't any different than any other young man.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to become who I wanted to become.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to go where I wanted to go, I wanted to do what I wanted to do.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I resented being a slave and having to serve a master.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted freedom.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to polish my own silver instead of polishing his.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I became a bit of a rebel.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would uh, we slaves could find small ways to sort of torture our masters.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: I would pretend to be sick, or I would drag my feet, I would drop an armload of fleece into the mud, I would spook the horses, and this would frustrate Philemon and his wife, Athia, even more.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would hear her at night, sometimes exasperated, say to her husband, you misnamed Onesimus, you need to give him a new name.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's the opposite of useful.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's useless, absolutely useless.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I would smile.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was a small victory, but it was a victory.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not much of a victory.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: We slaves had absolutely no power.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Philemon owned me, he owned me as much as he owned a sheep or a horse or his wagon or anything else.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: He could do anything he wanted with me.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: He could whip me, he could brand me, he could cut off my hand.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: I had seen what happened to slaves who disobeyed their masters or stole from their masters.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: If they stole, if they saw something and wanted and took it, their eye put out, if they weren't killed entirely.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I saw a slave with his lips cut off because he'd spoken back to his master, one with his ears cut off because he hadn't listened well enough.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Branded who stole the FUR for thief on his forehead, branded if you tried to steal.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you'd go down occasionally, you'd go down into the Colossae Town Square, and you'd see there hanging up on a pole, writhing in agony, a slave who was hung up there, nailed up there to die over the span of two or three days.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's a message to the rest of us, slaves.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what you get if you try to run away.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: The rest of my life willingly.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Even though one time when I went down to the square, I looked up and it was a friend.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was a slave I knew well.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I still hear his dying screams in my nightmares.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Once I was in the kitchen and uh the cook said to me, you know, we're lucky, Philemon is a good master.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I had to agree that as masters go, Philemon was good, and he had become uh even a better, kinder master since he had become a Christian.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you would think that it that would increase my desire or my contentment, but instead it just increased my desire to be free.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Any master was more master than I wanted.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted no master at all.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I began laying carefully plans to get away.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, one moonless night, I slipped into the house and I took the money box and all the silver that I could carry, and then I slipped out of colossae.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: The panic of knowing that you will be killed if you are caught paralyzes some runaways, not me.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: It made me run twice as fast and think twice as clearly, and I followed the Lycus River out of the valley and then went through the trees day after day, hiding, sleeping in places where animals slept and eating berries and hiding out until I got well away.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And made my way over to the to the water and found a boat and got in the hole and made my way over to Greece, where I knew that now I was probably free, that no slave catcher could find me there.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, something happened.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Every fiber of my body began singing.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm free, I'm free.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever felt that being trapped and then suddenly experienced freedom for the first time, knowing there's no one standing beside or behind you, telling you where to go.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I can go this way if I want to, I can go that way if I want to.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was a wonderful feeling.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I worked my way through the silver I had stolen and through the money as I hit out, taking back roads for the months that I headed to my final destination, which was Rome.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: True, Rome was 1,200 miles away so far, but every young man wants to go to Rome.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't very well stay in Asia.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: My master had been to all those cities.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to go far away.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to hide in the slums, to melt in with the gangs, and Rome was the perfect place for that.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: By the time I got to Rome, I had uh I'd finished all of my silver and all of the money, and I looked nothing at all like the Onesimus of my past.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had a long, unkempt beard.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had scars all over from animals and from being beaten when I was chased, when I had stolen something, but every scar made me proud.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was evidence, it was a sign that I was a survivor, that I was stronger than whoever would take my freedom.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I was right about Rome.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was a good decision.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: I melted into the crowd, into the slums, into the gangs.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Having been a thief, I became a pickpocket.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was good at it, I can tell you, I could recognize whoever was well to do.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were in Rome, in the crowds, you might feel a small bump, and then you would look down, and your purse or your wallet would be gone.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I had everything I needed.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was very successful, and I bought wine and I bought women and I lived any way that I wanted to.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I spent my money the moment I had it, but I always could get more.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: The strange thing was that having found freedom, I was not yet content.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had thought when I was my own man, could do my own thing, could go where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do, that I would be satisfied, that I would be content, that I would be happy.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it was as if having left the prison of Philemon's house, that now I was trapped in a prison of myself.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: One day I was in the Colosseum, I loved the gladiators, my hero was Spartacus, who had led a revolt of the slaves some years back.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was watching them and cheering when I thought I heard from behind me the word Paul.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I listened carefully, and sure enough, they said it again, Paul, and they said the scholar, and they said evangelist, and Jew, and they said that he was under house arrest.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, could this be the could this be the same man, the same Paul from Ephesus who had led my master Philemon to Jesus?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the way they talked about him, I thought maybe it's true, and the fact that he's under house arrest, he's he's my kind of man.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I left the Colosseum, I went on a search for him, and I found him.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, he was in a house, and he had freedom to speak with people who had come, and I went in.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I didn't tell him that I that I knew of him, that my master, I came from Colossae, and my master had met him, and that I had been there in Ephesus.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought, this is this is the Paul I've heard about.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was short and he was stocky, and he had no hair on his head.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: It had all gone down into his eyebrows, which were like paint brushes, and that would have been frightening on another person, but with his hooked nose, it just directed attention to his eyes, which were deep pools of intense, you know.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: But when he spoke, when Paul spoke of Jesus, his eyes were the eyes of an angel.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I began coming uh every week to listen to Paul and then to ask him questions.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, I'm uh not used to this thing.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have these back in Rome.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: So um and I would ask him questions and he would answer uh you know those questions, he had answers for those questions, but but he also had more.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: He had he had a savior.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he would speak of this Jesus and and and talk about this Jesus who who was full of love for rebels and full of love for runaways and full of love for lost people and forgave them.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um I felt my heart move toward toward this Jesus, and yet I I had a runaway heart, I had a rebel's heart, and I I resisted him.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was not about to serve anyone again until the day when when Paul said something that completely changed the way I thought about slavery and freedom.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was in his house and he had finished his talk, and we had spent time together, and now I was standing and I was looking out the window, and as I looked out the window, I saw a line of slaves that were walking out on the highway, out on the street there, led by their owner, and their eyes were down and they were downcast and they were submissive, and it made me angry.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I burst out and I said, Those slaves need to be free, those slaves need a taste of freedom.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it was quiet for a moment, and then Paul said from across the room, I would like for them to be free too.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Onesimus, but listen the purpose of life is not to find your freedom, the purpose of life is to find your master.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have found your master, then you will have found your freedom.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, uh it made sense to me.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, that's that's why I'm not content, that's why I'm not happy.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've found my freedom, but I haven't found my master.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I know if I have a master, I know what master I want.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's this Jesus.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I said to Paul, but could Jesus forgive someone who has done very bad things who deserves death?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul laughed.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: He said, No one has done things as bad as as I have done.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: I am I am the worst.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: I persecuted and killed every Christian I could find.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, Paul could.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Paul said, if Jesus could forgive me, he could forgive anyone.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you ask?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't tell him, but but in that moment, I believed in Jesus.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And my heart filled with gratitude for I had found my master, and I decided that I would serve Paul, and every day after that I came to Paul's house, and I helped fix the food, and I washed the dishes, and I did his laundry, and I was useful in any way that I possibly could be to him, though I didn't tell him who I was, I didn't tell him that I knew who he was.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: We became very close.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not name-dropping, I mean it that he became like my father, and I became like a son, more than a son, to him.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a great secret, but you also have a great friend, eventually you tell your great friend your great secret.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was very reluctant to do it, but one afternoon, as I was washing dishes, I said, Paul, I have I have something to tell you.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: He said, nothing.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I went on.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I I uh I come from Colossae in Asia.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Colossae, he said, I know someone from Colossae.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know a clothing merchant named uh Philemon.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I led that old boy to Christ in Ephesus.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yes, I I know.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: I know Philemon.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: I come from his household.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he said, are you related to him?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, I said, his slave.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you bought your freedom and came to Rome?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: He said, not not quite.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I uh sort of got away quickly one night, and and I took his money box with me.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he looked at me with pain in his eyes.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: He said, So you're a runaway slave and you stole his money?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: I said, yes.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: So you are under a sentence of death twice, he said.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I said, uh, but Paul, I would love to make it right.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to go back, but I cannot, I do not have the money to repay.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I can't go back.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: He would he would kill me, and and I'm while I want to reconcile, I'm not willing to die.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul just said what I was afraid he would say.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: He said, but you must go back.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No, no, you don't understand.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, he said, I understand, but you have no choice.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: You must go back.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Your conscience is more important than your life.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: You must go back.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you must ask his forgiveness, and whatever happens, happens.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I'll tell you what I will do.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll write a letter.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to command Philemon to do anything.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do that.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I will appeal to him for you.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you must take the letter back and you put it in his hands.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: That night I tossed and turned.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't sleep.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wondered, did I do the right thing by telling Paul, this place, living close to Paul, serving him?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: This was light, this was joy, this was everything I had ever wanted.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And now I had given it all up and I was going to have to leave.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: When I woke up in the morning, Paul was writing the letter to Philemon.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, This is a letter appealing to his sense of mercy.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he folded it and sealed it and handed it to me.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Put it in his hands, he said.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then he wrote another letter to the church at Colossae, and he folded it and handed it to Tychicus, who's uh one of one of his friends from Ephesus, who was, he said to Tychicus, take this and give this to the elders there of the Church of Colossae.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Go with Philemon, if you would.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then he came over to me and and and Paul gave me a strong embrace.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: He hugged me so close.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when he broke away, there was a tear in his eye.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I don't want to let you go either.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Anessinus, you are you are my heart.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: You are more than a friend.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: You are more than a son to me, but you must you must do this, and I will trust by God's grace that he will bring you back to me.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was it.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Tychicus and I left, and we walked down the path, and at the turn I looked back, and I have never seen Jesus, but I think he must look something like the rock that I saw standing at the door.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: My friend Paul.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then we went around the turn, and I have never seen Paul since.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that began the three weeks I told you about, the weeks of terror and the weeks of nightmares when the darkness descended upon me, when my feet grew so heavy, because every step brought me closer to certain terror, certain torture, certain death.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I found myself at night unable to sleep and in the day unable to eat, because I knew what it must have been like for my master when I had run away and stolen, that he had become, in the eyes of his competitors, a laughing stock, that he had not recovered either his slave or his money.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he had been humiliated, he had been shamed.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: I knew what my master's wife would have said and what she would have thought.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: I told you, I was sure she would say, I told you, Aphel would say to Philemon.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew that the only question in the minds of his friends and business associates when I stepped back into town was, well, will he kill him quickly and make him a public example?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Will he crucify him today, or will he keep him around a little while and brand him as a runaway and cut out an eye and shackle him for the rest of his days?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I felt as though I was leaving light and I was going back into darkness, leaving what had been heaven and going into hell.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And all too soon, those three weeks, I crested, we crested that hill I knew so well and looked down into Colossae and walked into town.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And almost immediately I could hear the whispers from both sides of the street, people pointing.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that Philemon's runaway slave, the one who stole his money box?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else saying, take some nerve to come back into town.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else laughing, saying, It's not nerve.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: He must have a death wish.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to get, he's going to get killed.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Tychicus went one way to deliver his letter, and I kept going down that road I knew so well and turned up the lane to Philemon's house.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there he was.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was standing at the door, looking like a wrathful God himself, a just God.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And as I grew close and he saw that it was me, the look of anger that crossed his face and he motioned for the man at arms.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: He said, seize him.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as they were grabbing my arms, I said, wait.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Philemon, Paul, I have a letter from Paul.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the best I could do is drop it on the ground.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he stopped and he came over and he lifted up the letter and he opened it and he began to read it.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was not a long letter.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: He read it over again.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Aphia came out the door.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: She said, How dare you?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: She said, What have you done with our silver?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Philemon said, Afia, Paul has written us a letter.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Look at this.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she came alongside him and she read as well.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I was picturing, I was imagining the torture that was about to come and perhaps the crucifixion.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, Philemon said, Let him go.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, what?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Philemon said, release him, and they released me.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, take him up to the upstairs room, the guest room.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And almost as in a dream, I was led up to that room, and then a slave brought me a pitcher of water and a basin, and I washed my hands and I laid down, and then they called me for dinner, and I went down and stood at the table to serve.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, he said, sit here between Aphia and Archipus.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I sat down between his wife and his son with Philemon across from me.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't understand.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You haven't read the letter.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: He said, uh, you need to read the letter.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: He said, in fact, I'll read it.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'll read it to you.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he pulled out the letter and he read these words, words that I'll never forget.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: He said, This is what Paul wrote me.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Dear Philemon, although in Christ I could be bold and order you, I appeal to you on the basis of love.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I, Paul, an old man and a prisoner of Jesus Christ, appeal to you.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: For my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Onesimus, both to you and to me.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am sending him, who is my very heart, back to you.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would have liked to keep him with me, but I did not want to do anything without your consent.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: He is no longer a slave, but better than a slave, a dear brother.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: He is very dear to me, but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he looked down again and he read, So if you consider me a partner, accept him as you would me.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if he owes you anything, charge it to me.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I, Paul, write this with my own hand.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: I will pay it back.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: You see, Philemon said, how can I put you to death for stealing from me?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Paul tells me that when he comes, he will pay it back.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Paul does not lie.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, as best as I can figure, you no longer owe me anything.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I ran away, I said.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how can I put you to death, he said, for being my runaway slave, because Paul asks me to receive you as I would receive him, and I would not put Paul to death.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would invite him to my table.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I can't even send you out to the slave quarters.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would not make Paul sleep in the slave quarters.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: I would have him sleep in my guest room.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: I would invite him to my table.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I would do for Paul if I'm to accept you as I would Paul.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then you must eat at my table.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you are no longer my slave, but my brother and my friend.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: I fell back in my chair and I stared at him with an open mouth, and for a moment I just gasped.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: I said, What about justice?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: He said, It has been overtaken by mercy.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I am not worthy.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, this is a trade, he said.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is the worthy one, you are not, but he has traded his worth for your debt.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I accept you.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I forgive your debt.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he laughed, and his laughter was like uh spring rain, but I broke into tears and and I sobbed weeks of tension and fear washing through me, and then like the sun coming out, I I felt a laughter rise inside of me.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe it.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: I said, listen, Philemon said, you need to understand something.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: This letter is not written just for me, it's written for you.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: For you understand that well before Paul made this appeal to me, Jesus made an appeal to his father for Paul and for me and for you.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was as if Jesus said to his father, charge their debt to me, accept them as you would me.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul and I and you have experienced God's forgiveness, that he in Jesus Christ took your debt, that he accepts you as he accepts his son.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if I cannot resist Paul's appeal, how can the father resist his son's appeal?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let me, after dinner, he said, let me explain it to you in another way.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: He said that you know of Augustus, our first and greatest emperor.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: In the days of your grandfather, in the days of my father, Augustus used to love to go out to the outposts of his soldiers and his army.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: He used to surprise them.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: He used to like to dress as a common soldier or perhaps a centurion and go out and visit the camps.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in one of the most remote camps where there were soldiers in Gaul, there was a young man, and this young man was the son of a friend of Augustus.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this young man had been in charge, had been put in charge of the money for the garrison, and so he paid the soldiers and he bought the supplies and he took care of all of the money.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: And like many young soldiers do when they're far away from home, he took to gambling.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And at first he gambled with his own money, but when his own money was all gone, he began gambling with the money that had been entrusted to him.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as he gambled that money and lost it, he kept saying he intended to pay it back as soon as he as he made a big strike.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then tragedy is what struck.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: One afternoon, he heard that the men were coming from Rome, the examiners and the generals, to see about the health of the garrison, and that the next morning they would be there.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he realized that they would be there not just to check the troops, but to check the finances.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so he ran to the hut and he opened the safe and he pulled out the money bag and he spilled it and he counted the amount of money that he had.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then he pulled down the ledger book from the shelf and he opened it, and he figured how much money he should have and the gap between them.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: He had no idea that he was so much in debt to the Roman government.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in desperation, he said to himself, tomorrow morning they are going to find out how much I owe, and they are going to arrest me, and they are going to put me in chains, and they are going to embarrass my family, and my father, the senator, will be ruined.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: The only honorable thing I can do is to take my life.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he brought out his sword and he laid it on the table, determining that when the sentry announced that it was midnight, he would fall on his sword, and he took a pin and he scrawled across the ledger book in impossible debt.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Who can pay?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And grabbing a wine bottle, he began to drink.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, drunk, he dropped his head on the table and cried himself to sleep.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sure enough, the Emperor Augustus was there.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was visiting, he was dressed as a common soldier, and he was speaking with some of the men.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And late that night, going back to his tent, he saw a light and a hut, and he walked to investigate, and he opened the door and saw this strange sight of a pile of money and a young man and a sword and a wine bottle.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he walked around behind him and immediately knew, as he saw the figures, he knew that this man had stolen money.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he was just about to shake him and arrest him when he looked down and he saw that it was the son of a friend.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Augustus stood there for a moment.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then taking the pen, he scribbled one word on the ledger book.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he stamped it with his emperor's seal.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he left.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: A few hours later, the young man woke up and realizing it was past midnight, he took his sword and prepared to fall on his sword and then saw a mark on the ledger book.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he he looked over at it and he saw that underneath his words, an impossible debt.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Who can pay?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: He saw the scribbled signature, Augustus.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: He recognized the handwriting.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: He saw the emperor's seal.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: He said to himself, could it be, could it possibly be that the emperor himself was here, that this friend of my father is making a promise?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: He walked over to his cot and he laid down.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in the morning, sure enough, the emperor was as good as his word and he paid the debt to the very last penny.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see, Philemon?
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you understand what Augustus did for that soldier?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's what Paul has done for you.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: He said, charge it to me.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'll pay it and accept him as you would me.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what Paul did for you, Christ did, Jesus did for you, and for me, and for Paul.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: He turned to his father, looking at us, and said, Charge their debt to me, I will pay it, and accept them as you would me.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do you understand?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I think I do.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I came to tell you.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's my story.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was never a certainly not a great person.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was a useless slave who became a thief and a runaway and a pickpocket.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was never a great Christian.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: But someone once pled for me.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Someone once made an appeal.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Someone once said, charge his debt to me and accept him as you would me.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that has made all the difference.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you realize why I said this is your story, too.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.