A Concern To Be A Blessing (Philemon 7)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/5/2017 10:45 PM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus: A Concern To Be A Blessing

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Philemon 7

            Message of the verse:  “7 For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.”

            What I am about to write I don’t know if it is accurate or not, but I was wondering if perhaps Paul knew that Philemon would forgive Onesimus and I also wonder if Paul had an idea of whether or not this letter would be a blessing to all who would read it, and to help those who perhaps were on the fence as to whether or not to forgive an offender.  He may have had an idea, and may not but the fact still remains that his letter to Philemon has probably helped millions of people throughout the church age thus far.

            As we look at verse seven we can see that Philemon had a reputation for love a fact that Paul brings up as he writes “much comfort in your love.”  We can also see that “the hearts of the saints” had “been refreshed.”  John Macarthur writes that “hearts” “translates splachna, which literally means ‘bowels.’  It refers to the seat of the feelings.  People struggling, suffering, and hurting emotionally, had been refreshed by Philemon.  Refreshed is from anapauo, a military term that speaks of an army resting from a march.  Philemon brought troubled people rest and renewal; he was a peacemaker.”

            As we have been looking to what we might entitle the introductory portion of this letter we may conclude that Paul was kind of “buttering up” Philemon, but I don’t think that is the case, but I believe that he is just telling the truth about him.  A story comes to my mind that perhaps does not fit perfectly in here but at any rate it is a good story nonetheless.  One of the presidents of the Moody Bible Institute was being investigated by a private detective at for unworthily reasons to try to pin something wrong on him.  The report from the detective came back to the person who hired him and it was found out by him that he could find out nothing bad about him at all.  I am sure if someone would have been investigating Philemon they would not come up with anything either.

            Philemon was probably a business man, not a preacher, teacher, or deacon, and this makes the story that we read about him even more impressive.

               John MacArthur includes the following poem in his commentary written by Coventry Patmore who was a 19^th century English poet.  The poem is entitled “The Toys.”

My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes

And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,

Having my law the seventh time disobey’d

With hard words and unkiss’d

-His Mother, who was patient, being dead

Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep

I visited his bed,

But found him slumbering deep,

With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet

From his late lobbing wet.

And I, with moan,

Kissing away his tears, left others on my own;

For, on a table drawn beside his head,

He had put, within his reach,

A box of [tokens] and a red-vein’d stone,

A piece of glass abraded by the beach

And six or seven shells,

A bottle with bluebells,

And two French copper coins, ranged there

With careful art,

To comfort his sad heart.

So when that night I pray’d

To God, I wept and said:

Ah, when at last we lie with [tranquil] breath,

Not vexing Thee in death,

And Thou rememberest of what toys’

We made our joys,

How weakly understood

Thy great commanded good,

Then, fatherly not less

Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,

Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,

“I [forgive] their childishness.

            “If God can so tenderly forgive us, can we not, like Philemon, have the character that forgives others?”

7/5/2017 11:21 PM