Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Matthew West is a Christian music artist.  Some of you may have heard of him.  He recently released a brand-new song titled “Truth Be Told.”  When I heard the song and went back and read the lyrics, I said, “Wow, this could be the theme song for our series ‘Cracked Pots: How the Glory of God Shines Through Our Brokenness.’”  The song begins, “Lie number one, you’re supposed to have it all together.  And when they ask you how you’re doing, just smile and tell them, ‘Never better.’  Lie number two, everybody’s life is perfect except yours, so keep your keep your messes and your wounds and your secrets safe with you behind closed doors.  But truth be told, the truth is rarely told.  I say ‘I’m fine, yeah, I’m fine, oh I’m fine, hey I’m fine,’ but I’m not.  I’m broken.  And when it’s out of control I say it’s under control, but it’s not and you know it.  I don’t know why it’s so hard to admit it when being honest is the only way to fix it.  There’s no failure, no fall, there’s no sin You don’t already know.  So let the truth be told.”  Isn’t that a great song and great lyric for the series that we’re in?  Because we’re talking about how we’re all cracked pots.

0:01:41.0

In fact, six weeks ago we began in 2 Corinthians 4:7.  Let’s go back there and remind ourselves.  And let’s say this verse together.  2 Corinthians 4:7, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”  Six weeks ago we started with the idea that God is the potter and we are the clay.  And even when you go all the way back to the creation story, you remember from Genesis that we were created from the dust of the earth, and God breathed life into us.  We are but dust.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  We are created out of the dust of the earth, but we are created in the image of God.  But in Genesis 3 sin entered into the world, and it broke the earthen jars that we are.  And the rest of the story from Genesis3 all the way through Revelation is the story of God’s redemption, His redemption story, and how He fixes what is broken and how He uses and finds useful and beneficial and profitable what is broken.  Because His power flows through our brokenness, and His glory shines through our brokenness.  This is the story of scripture.  This is what Jesus did for us at the cross by paying the penalty for our sins and forgiving us, and then picking us up, as broken as we are and using us.

0:03:16.4

Throughout this series we’ve landed upon the lives of various Bible characters.  And we’ve learned that, the truth be told, Moses was a cracked pot.  Truth be told, Jacob, Jacob the cheater…remember him?  He’s a cracked pot.  King David of all people, David was a cracked pot.  We also learned that Mary Magdalene…she had her demons, didn’t she?  Seven of them to be exact.  And she was a cracked pot.  And today we come to a character in the Bible that maybe doesn’t have a lot of name recognition, certainly n to among the Moseses and Jacobs and the King Davids.  But he is worth looking at.  And there is a wonderful gospel story to tell here.

0:04:02.5

His name is Onesimus.  And we learn about Onesimus in a tiny little letter, a very personal letter that the apostle Paul wrote to a guy named phi lemon.  Philemon was a member of the church in Colossae.  He was a wealthy businessman, and, yes, he was a slave owner, part of the Roman system of slavery.  And Onesimus was his slave.  Historians tell us that there were probably around 60 million slaves in the Roman system.  Onesimus was one of them, and he was a runaway.  And apparently, he stole from his master.  He not only ran away from his master, but he stole from his master.  And he ran all the way to Rome.  He just tried to kind of lose himself in the sea of humanity in that giant city.  But as providence would have it, his path crossed the apostle Paul.  At this time Paul was in prison.  He was under house arrest in Rome, and somehow Onesimus was brought to him.  And it shouldn’t surprise us, the apostle Paul led Onesimus to Jesus Christ.  And then he was kind of in a bit of a pickle because he knew that he should send Onesimus back to Philemon because Philemon had legal rights over Onesimus.  But because of Roman law, if he sent Onesimus back, Onesimus could be under the death penalty.  Philemon could require that.

0:05:37.8

And so what does Paul do?  Well, he writes a letter to Philemon.  And Paul could have used his theological mind.  He could have backed up the truck theologically and laid it on Philemon.  He could have used his apostolic authority to tell Philemon what to do.  He alludes to it.  But that’s really not his approach here.  In this letter than only has 25 verses in the New Testament, Paul takes a very personal and heartfelt approach.

0:06:08.4

He basically tells Philemon, “Listen, this man, Onesimus, who did you wrong, who stole from you, who ran away from you, who left you financially worse off because of what he did, he’s now a believer in Jesus Christ.  More so, he is a brother in Christ.”  And he appeals to Philemon on that level.  “Receive him back as a brother in Christ.  Forgive him, Philemon.”  It’s a powerful story.

0:06:41.2

Before we get to it all, we can say that Onesimus was, in fact, a runaway cracked pot.  And he was broken by the cruelty of Roman slavery.  He was also broken by some poor personal choices that he made that led to a life of thievery.  And so he was broken in a lot of different ways.  And you could say no wonder he ran away.  But yet he also made some poor choices.

0:07:10.3

But inherent in his name, the name Onesimus is the divine potential that God saw in him and that Paul saw in him because, see, the name Onesimus literally means “useful or profitable.”  Philemon could have argued, “Because of what Onesimus has done for me, I have no use for this man.  He is dead to me.  And I have the authority as his master to invoke the death penalty should he ever come into my presence again.”  But Paul writes to Philemon and says, “No, this Onesimus, he is useful to me.  He is now a brother to Christ.  I could use him right here in my ministry, albeit from prison.  But I want to send him back to you.  And, Philemon, he’s useful.  He’s beneficial.  He’s profitable to you personally, and to the gospel.”

0:08:03.0

Is there anybody like that in your life, maybe an Onesimus you need to forgive?  We’ll get back to that in a moment, but right now I want to dive into this very personal letter that Paul writes.  And I’m so glad the Holy Spirit chose to include this in the canon of scripture for reasons that will become obvious as the message goes on.  But this personal letter known as the letter of Paul to Philemon has 25 verses.  You could read it probably less than a minute and get a sense.  Again, it’s a very personal letter.  It has some theological overtones to it, but it’s mostly personal.

0:08:40.5

I break it into three parts.  In verses 1-7 or so, Paul basically says to Philemon, “I thank God for you.”  Let’s pick it up in verse 1.  It says, “Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister”—probably Apphia was Philemon’s wife—"and Archippus our fellow soldier,”—probably their son—"and the church in your house.”  As you see, Philemon was in the church in Colossae.  And part of that church met in their house.  We would call him today a life group leader.  Philemon is one of the guys in the church, and his wife and his family have made a home for part of the church in Colossae.

0:09:33.9

Verse 3, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers,  because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.  For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.”  Paul begins in a very heartfelt kind of way.  And he says, “Philemon, man, I love your faith, and I love what you’re doing in the church there.  And I love the reputation you have of being a refreshing influence in the body of Christ.”

0:10:24.9

There is another time in Paul’s writings, his second letter to Timothy, where he talks about someone who refreshed him.  He speaks of a guy named Onesiphorus.  I love that name.  It just sounds refreshing, doesn’t it?  It sounds like a day at the spa, Onesiphorus.  And Paul says, “He refreshed me.”  You have any refreshing people in your life?  This is the time of year to thank God for them.  Everybody needs a Philemon or an Onesiphorus.  Or I even think of Barnabas the encourager.  People who are refreshing to us and who are a refreshing influence in the body of Christ.  Be one of those people in your church.  Be a refreshing influence.

0:11:11.0

Paul goes on to say not only, “I thank God for you,” but now he says, “I appeal to you.”  And again, he is not going to appeal so much on the basis of theology.  He could back up the truck of theology.  We know Paul could do that.  Just read his letter to the Romans or even his letter to the Colossians or the Ephesians or the Philippians.  I mean, these were the prison epistles that Paul wrote, including this one to Philemon.  He can back up the truck theologically and then make it very practical.  He doesn’t take that approach.  Nor does he back up his apostolic authority and say, “Philemon, you better do this.”  But he says in verse 8, “Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus— I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.”  What Paul is saying to Philemon here is, “I led Onesimus to Christ.  He is now my child in the faith.  I’m his father in the faith.”

0:12:20.

And then he says in verse 11, “(Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.)”  A play on words here because of the meaning of the name Onesimus, which means useful and profitable.  Philemon might have thought, no, this guy is of no use to me.  He ripped me off.  He hurt me.  He left my business in worse shape, not better shape.  Paul says in verse 12, “I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart,” just dripping in personal adoration here.  “I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord.”  Paul is appealing to Philemon’s good nature.  “Philemon, you’re a refresher of people.  Certainly you’ve got enough goodness in your heart to forgive this young man for what he’s done, this young man who has now become a believer in Jesus Christ and is your brother in Christ.”

0:13:27.7

Verse 15, he says, “For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.”  Why was Paul saying, you know, “If you receive him back as a brother in Christ, you’ll have him forever”?  Because in the Roman slave system, a slave could actually, if he could raise enough money, purchase his own freedom.  He may not be in the slavery system forever.  And it was more like a system of indentured servitude.  A bondservant was somebody who willingly chose to attach himself or herself to a master.  There may be some financial benefit, some security for the family.  Some people have compared it to a contract laborer or a contract employee sort of relationship.  It was not without its harshness.  Some masters in the Roman system were very harsh, but many were very kind, perhaps like Philemon.  And it may be been that Onesimus, this indentured servant, had broken his contract, broken his obligation, and then stole from his master and ran way.  That seems to be the story here.  But if he came back and didn’t receive him as a brother in Christ, he may not have him forever.  He may have him for just a period of time.  And Paul was appealing on that level.

0:15:03.4

He goes on in verse 17 to go from, “I thank God for you,” and, “I appeal to you.”  Now Paul does something that shouldn’t be surprising, but it is.  He now says to Philemon, “I’ll repay you for anything this man owes you.”  Verse 17, “So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.  If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything,”—listen to this, five word—"charge that to my account.”  Are you kidding me?  “I, Paul, write this with my own hand.”  “Yeah, believe it or not, Philemon, it’s me saying this.”  “I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self.  Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord.  Refresh my heart in Christ.”  This is astonishing.  It shouldn’t be, but it is.  But here this Onesimus guy, broken his contract, broken his obligation, stole from his master, did his master wrong, comes to faith in Christ in Rome through the ministry of Paul.  Paul sends him back and appeals to Philemon and says, “Listen, out of the goodness of your heart, out of God’s grace in your heart, receive him as a brother in Christ.  And by the way, Philemon, charge anything he owes you to my account.  And I don’t want anything from you, Philemon.  This is not a quid pro quo kind of thing, except that what I would like from you is for you to refresh me.  That’s all I’m asking from you.  Just be a refreshing influence in my life.  As you receive him back, forgive him.  Give him a second chance but charge it to my account.”

0:16:58.3

Paul goes on in verse 21, “Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.  At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you.”  Remember, this was one of Paul’s prison epistles.  He wrote Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians—the letter of joy—under house arrest.  And then Paul…well, he’s got a plate full of his own troubles under house arrest in Rome.  He takes the time to address a very personal matter here.  Who does that?  Who does that?  And who says to somebody, “Here’s my credit card.  Put it on my account.  I’ll pay for whatever he owes you.”

0:17:53.5

Verse 23, “Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers.  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”  If you have any doubts that the Christian life is personal and relational, well, just read Paul’s letters.  Aside from the main characters in this letter to Philemon—main characters being Paul, Onesimus, and Philemon—I don’t know, I count three, four, five, six or seven different names, starting with Philemon’s family, his wife, his children, and then these ministry partners that Paul layers in at the end.  Yeah, Paul can back up the theological truck.  He’s precise in his theology about who God is and how He has revealed Himself in the pages of scripture.  He can scrape the Milky Way as he writes his letter to the Romans, the magna carta of the faith.  But he can get deeply personal.  Deeply, deeply personal.  And he does.

0:18:57.7

And that’s why it’s always important to remember (0:19:00.0) that, as you’re living out the Christian life, you can’t do it disconnected from relationships.  We make multiple ways for you to get connected with people in our church through life groups like the one Philemon and his wife and son led in Colossae.  Because while you have a vertical relationship with God and it’s personal, you know, it spills out into authentic biblical community and sometimes in the working out of friction in relationships.  That’s just the body of Christ.  That’s the family of God.

0:19:39.7

Now, we could finish right.  We could talk about some applications relating to forgiveness and second chances.  Maybe you’re thinking of an Onesimus in your own life who has done you wrong.  And you’re hearing the Word of God appeal to your heart to find forgiveness.  (0:20:00.0) Maybe it was a brother or sister in Christ who did you wrong.  Maybe it wasn’t.  But as somebody who has been forgiven so much in Jesus Christ—and that’s true of any of us—how could we withhold forgiveness from any Onesimus who has done us wrong?  It is inconsistent with the Christian life to be a recipient of God’s forgiveness… “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” …and then to withhold forgiveness from somebody else.  That’s a horizontal application.  It’s important for us to grab ahold of that today.

0:20:44.5

But there’s something more going on here in this letter.  And I refer to it as the gospel according to Philemon.  There is a gospel story going on here.  And I don’t know where Paul saw it overtly or meant it subtly, but the Spirit of God certainly inspired him to pen this letter and to include it in the canon of scripture.  Somebody once said that you can go to any place in the Bible, any book of the Bible, any chapter of the Bible, perhaps any page of the Bible, and you’re not far from the gospel.  You’re not far from the cross of Christ.  And that’s true in this letter.  We’re just a couple steps away from the cross of Christ and “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

0:21:31.0

So let me lay out for you what I call the gospel according to Philemon.  You know the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according Mark and Luke and John.  But here is the gospel according to Philemon.  Number one…And I borrow these words from the great reformer, Martin Luther, the protestant reformer.  We are all Onesimuses.  Say that with me.  We are all Onesimuses.  Personalize it.  I am Onesimus.  Oh, come on, say that with me.  I am Onesimus.  There you go.

0:22:07.9

Let’s begin in Romans 3:23. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  That’s a starting point in understanding our brokenness, our cracked pot-ness, all right, is that “all that have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  But to say that in a more precise theological way that relates to this letter, we are all Onesimuses in the sense that, apart from Jesus Christ who sets us free, we are slaves to sin.  Slaves to sin.  This is what the Bible says about us.

0:22:43.7

Now, this might be a good point to address a question that a lot of people have when they read Paul’s letter to Philemon and understand the background of Roman slavery and all of that.  They ask this question.  Why doesn’t Paul take the opportunity to rail against the Roman government and against the institution of slavery.  Shouldn’t he have done that?  Is he not implicitly giving advocation to slavery by not doing so, by remaining silent?  And there is a lot debate out there and a lot of discussion out there.  Some of it goes along the lines that, well, back then, unlike in America…let’s just think about that for a moment, the slavery history that we have, or even in Britain.  The name William Wilberforce…we talk about this British parliamentarian who spent his entire life railing against slavery in Britain.  And it took a lifetime for that British parliamentarian to finally topple the British slavery system.  In our country it took a civil war to break the bondage of slavery.  And even then, it’s taken generations more to introduce civil rights so that what is written in our constitution applies to everybody, that all men are created equal.  And those two examples are within democracies where you have the right to speak out through freedom of speech against your government.

0:24:21.0

But that wasn’t Rome at this time.  If you spoke out against Rome, if you spoke out against Caesar, it meant certain death.  And maybe, just maybe, Paul understood it would mean the gospel wouldn’t advance.  He always had a higher objective.  It was a gospel objective.  And Jesus understood, Paul understood that the answer to the injustices of the world are never political answers.  They are gospel answers.  You change hearts through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and you’ll change the injustices.  But if your answer is only political, it’s just a matter of time before the next regime comes and the injustice returns.

0:25:10.2

That may be one example or one rationale.  Another certainly is that in the Bible…and I’m speaking theologically here…slavery is a powerful, powerful metaphor to describe our condition apart from a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  The Bible refers to us apart from Christ as slaves to sin.  That’s a New Testament example from Romans 6.  But you can even go back into the Old Testament and to the slave system of Egypt.  And the Hebrew people were slaves in Egypt for 400 years before God told an emancipator named Moses to go to there and say to Pharaoh, “Let my people go.”  And you know the story in the Old Testament.  It took a lot of coercion and a lot of convincing before Pharaoh finally let the Hebrew people go.  And there is a gospel story in that.  The story of the Hebrew people and the exodus from Egypt, their freedom and their emancipation from slavery is a picture of our salvation, of coming out of the slave market of sin to be set free by the great emancipator who is Jesus Christ.

0:26:28.7

And so rather than railing on Paul that he didn’t give a political answer here, let’s just understand, first of all, there is a gospel answer to this.  And we start by understanding we are all Onesimuses apart from Christo, in bondage in the slave market of sin.  And it’s Jesus Christ who has come set us free.

0:26:55.1

But not only are we all Onesimuses.  The death penalty awaits us.  You see, you can start in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  But just a few chapters later, the bad news becomes worse.  Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.”  There was a death penalty that awaited Onesimus.  Paul knew that.  He was willing to appeal to the good nature and the godly grace of Philemon by sending Onesimus back.  But it was a risk, because under Roman law, Philemon had the authority to invoke the death penalty on Onesimus.  And from a biblical and theological perspective, apart from Jesus Christ we are under a death penalty.  The wages of sin is death, friends.  In fact, all the way back to Genesis 3, this grim reaper known as death came into the world through sin.  Death wasn’t part of God’s plan.  He is the creator of life, but sin broke us.

0:28:04.1

And death, if you want a technical answer, is the separation of two things.  Physical death is the separation of the spirit from the body.  When we die, absent from the body, we hope present with the Lord.  But the body goes into the grave.  The real you that is a spiritual person in a physical body, not a physical person who happens to have a spiritual side to them…no, you’re a spiritual being created for eternity that happens to be housed in a physical body.  Death is when the spirit, the real you, leaves and departs.

0:28:43.0

The Bible also talks about a second death in Revelation 20.  This is when those who have gone into eternity apart from Jesus Christ are one day separated from God forever in a place called hell.  That’s the second death.  That’s a result of sin.  And we are born into this world inheriting a sin nature and inheriting a death penalty that is upon us.

0:29:12.7

Now that’s bad news, isn’t it?  But here is where the bad news turns good.  Number three, our sin was charged to Christ’s account.  Look at Philemon 17-18.  This is where the gospel begins to emerge and the glory of God begins to shine through our brokenness.  Paul says, “So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.”  He’s a brother in Christ.  Verse 18, “If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.” Again, I say are you kidding me?  Who does this?  I’ll tell you who did it.  Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ did when He went to the cross.  And He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know now what they do.”  He in essence said, “Charge their sin to my account.”  He took our death penalty.  “Charge their sin to My account.”  Wow.

0:30:25.9

Imagine if you had a credit card, and you ran up a debt higher than a Montana or Texas sky.  I mean, you were just so in debt you couldn’t even see the possibility of paying off that debt.  But some wealthy benefactor who didn’t even know came along, put down his credit card and said, “I’ll pay for it.”  That’s what Christ did.  “Charge it to My account.”  Our sin was charged to His account.  2 Corinthians 5:21 says it a different way.  “For our sake he [that is, God the Father] made him [that is, Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Now, that’s deeply theological, but that’s the gospel in a nutshell.  He made Christ sin, who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.  That’s pretty powerful.  Let that sink in a little bit.

0:31:32.1

We are all Onesimuses.  The death penalty awaits us.  Our sin was charged to Christ’s account.  Fourth and finally, we are no longer slaves to sin, but we are…now, we could fill that blank in a couple different ways.  Let’s talk about this.  One way is to back up the truck theologically.  Now, Paul is gifted in doing that.  He says we are no longer slaves to sin.  But we could say we are now slaves to righteousness.  I am pulling language right from the text of scripture found in Romans 6.  Turn with me there.  You’ve got to see this.  From Philemon to Romans 6.  Here is where Paul is backing up the truck theologically, but not in a way we can’t understand.  He says very simply, verse 17, “But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.  And having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

0:32:50.4

You see, you can either be a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness.  One or the other.  And when Jesus Christ, the great emancipator, set you free from the slave market of sin, it frees us up to say, “I willingly of my own choice choose to be His bondservant.  And I willingly and gratefully give myself to my Lord and my Master, Jesus Christ,” who we always know will be kind and gracious and loving toward us.  In fact, He has already demonstrated His generosity.  So we could say theologically we’re no longer slaves to sin, but we are slaves to Christ willingly.  We’re slaves to righteousness.

0:33:47.3

Or we could fill in the blank another way, and this is really the direction that Paul goes.  We are no longer slaves to sin, but we are brothers and sisters in Christ.  This is the horizontal and very personal level to which Paul is appealing Philemon.  “Philemon, we’re brothers in Christ, and now Onesimus is a brother in Christ.  Can you not find it in the good graces of your gospel-filled heart to forgive him, to set him free, to give the man a second chance?”

0:34:28.3

And here is where the application, again, gets very horizontal and very personal.  I asked you earlier in the message.  Is there an Onesimus in your life?  Is there somebody who has wronged you?  Somebody who has maybe stolen from you?  Maybe somebody who walked out on a marriage?  Somebody who just did you stinking wrong?  And that root of anger and bitterness has been growing deep and deeper and deeper in your heart.  And maybe you fear even at holiday time that you might be staring across the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner table or Easter dinner table down the road from one of those persons that hurt you.  And you think that by withholding forgiveness your’e hurting that other person.  No, you’re hurting yourself.  Bitterness and anger and unforgiveness is sort of like drinking poison and expecting it to hurt somebody else.  It will rot your soul.  And that person who wronged you has probably long since forgotten.  They’re doing just fine.  And you think that by withholding forgiveness…You’re the one that’s in bondage right now.  You’re the one that’s all caught up in that.  And besides, it’s inconsistent in the Christian life to be a recipient of such grace and forgiveness and not to be a grace-giver and a forgiver.  Set the person free through forgiveness, and you’ll be free indeed.  Because right now you’re all bound up and in bondage.  And the way to that kind of freedom is through forgiveness.

0:36:16.5

Now, I will tell you, you don’t have…and neither do I have the human capacity to forgive that person that hurt you.  I’ve been wronged enough in my life, I could make a list right now.  And I know I don’t have the human capacity to forgive.  Not the way Jesus did.  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.  Charge it to My account.”  I don’t have the human capacity to that, and neither do you.  But Jesus Christ gives you a new capacity.  “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.  Old things are passed away.”  That old you, even the best, new and improved you that still falls short of the glory of God and can’t seem to find the capacity to forgive, old things are passed.  New things have come.

0:37:10.5

And now, maybe today, maybe this season is the time for you to find the grace of Christ and that gospel goodness in your heart to forgive some Onesimus who has wronged you.  That sort of forgiveness is not only good for them.  It’s really good for you.  It’s good for me.  Because now the poisons, the toxins leave, and now we’re free.  Now we’re free, and we’re free indeed.

0:37:41.7

Matthew West said the truth be told, you know, we’re all cracked pots.  But we come in, and we kind of act like we’re not.  “How are you doing today?”  “I’m fine.  Never been better.”  Liar.  Come on now.  We’ve learned better through Moses and Jacob and David and Mary Magdalene and now Onesimus.  And it’s time that we begin to embrace God’s diagnosis of our condition and tell the truth about ourselves.  Maybe tell the truth to somebody else in a confidential conversation.  And let the truth set you free.  And to let the glory of God shine through you, to let the power of God flow through that brokenness in your life, even if it’s a broken relationship over here.  It’s time for that.  And if we do that as a church family and as a body of Christ, this would be a healing place, a place of grace, a safe place for broken people.

0:38:58.4

I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of church I want to be a part of, the kind of church I want to serve as a pastor.  A safe place for broken people.  Because we’re all cracked pots, aren’t we, broken in one way or the other.  Sometimes by other people’s sinful choices that ripple into our life; sometimes by our own sinful choices.  But we live in a fallen world.  We’re cracked pots.  But Jesus died on the cross to redeem us.  Let’s let Him complete His work, right?  We’re saved, but we are being saved.  We’re sanctified, but we are being sanctified.  And day after day He is shaping us and molding us into the image of His Son, restoring, as it were, the image of God that was defaced, though not erased, all the way back in Genesis 3.  And the more we let Him do His work, to throw up the scaffolding in our lives and begin the tedious work of reshaping us and molding us…it’s a relationship here, it’s a relationship there; it’s a confession here, a confession there.  Let’s let Him do that work in us individually, in our life groups across the body of Christ here.  We become that kind of place, as Matthew West says, there won’t be any room in our church because people are lining up at the door to be a part of a place like that.

0:40:47.0