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Miles City SDA Church

Diego Silva

The Proper Use of Authority- Part 1

This morning we're going to study a little book in the New Testament, the smallest book in the New Testament actually.

1 of Paul's letters, 1 of Paul's many letters.

14 of the 27 books of the New Testament are Paul's letters.

And this is the smallest and 1 of the most unique of his letters, the book of Philemon.

If you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and turn there.

And if you don't have your Bible, you could just open your pew Bible there, and it's not an easy book to find, so I'll just give you a moment to look for it.

Philemon, this is 1 of Paul's letters, the smallest of the letters he wrote to a Christian from the little city of Colossae.

It's unique because Philemon was a Christian slave owner.

And before we get into the letter, let me just remind you where Kalesi is.

If you look in the map, in modern day Turkey, Kalesi is located in the southwestern part of that country.

And in Paul's day, it was a small town in the Roman province of Asia Minor.

So this letter even though it's addressed to Philemon who was a Christian that lived in this city, it was sent to Colossae, which was 1 of the cities of Asia Minor that Paul wrote 1 of his letters to.

So let me just give you some background into this Very interesting little letter in the New Testament, 1 chapter, shortest of Paul's letters.

First of all, Paul wrote this letter from prison.

When Paul wrote this letter, he was in prison, and you find that in verses 1, 9, and 10.

You get little clues throughout the letter that Paul was in prison when he wrote the letter.

It was primarily addressed to this man named Philemon, but in Paul's introduction, he does give a hint that it was more than just a personal letter to Philemon.

Because if we read in Philemon chapter 1 and verse 2, it says, and to our beloved Aphia, who many believe to be Philemon's wife, and Archippus, who might have been Philemon's son, perhaps someone from his household, Paul says, our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house.

So this letter was addressed to Philemon and to this person named Aphia and Archippus and to the church that met in Philemon's house.

So as it was back in the New Testament times, There were not churches like we have today, buildings like this 1 where Christians met.

And Philemon was probably a wealthy Christian, he was a slave owner, and we'll get to that in just a moment.

And there was a congregation, a group of Christians that met for worship in his home.

We get that clue as we read the first verses of this letter.

It appears that a church met in his home.

As we continue here looking at the background, Paul refers to a man named Onesimus.

And this is an important name that we're going to come across as we study this letter.

Onesimus apparently was a fugitive slave that was converted through Paul's ministry.

This is what makes this letter very unique.

You have Philemon, who is a Christian to whom Paul is writing, and then you have this man named Onesimus who Paul mentions in the letter and it appears that he was a slave that belonged to Philemon that ran away, he was a fugitive, and while he was in Rome he was converted through Paul's ministry to Christ.

Paul's focus in his letter to Philemon is on the themes of acceptance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Just a real short summary, Paul is writing this letter to Philemon in order to help Philemon understand the very important principles of acceptance, forgiveness and reconciliation.

It was with Onesimus in mind that Paul writes this letter.

It's a letter of appeal for Philemon to forgive and to accept and to embrace this fugitive slave.

And many consider it to be a gem of Christian love and tact.

The most impressive thing about this letter is the way Paul addresses Philemon.

As an apostle, having the credentials and authority of a leader in the Church of Christ, the way Paul addresses Philemon is really an incredible example of how to properly use Christian authority.

That's why the title of the message is the proper use of authority.

Let's talk about the issue of slavery for just a moment.

You know, the Book of Philemon has actually been much debated because of the issue of slavery.

And so Let's just get a background here into the issue of slavery.

Paul's letter to Philemon played a prominent role in the heated debates over slavery in Great Britain and the United States during the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Can you understand why this book would have been used in the very heated debates over slavery a few hundred years ago.

Paul never explicitly condemned slavery in his letter to Philemon.

He's writing a letter to a slave owner and he doesn't ever say that slavery is wrong or that to own a slave is a sin.

As a matter of fact, Paul talks about slavery in other epistles and we're gonna find out that in any of his writings he never addresses the slavery issue in a condemnatory way and that has led many to conclude that somehow slavery is justified based on Scripture.

Well, let's just consider slavery in the Greco-Roman context.

Was it any better than slavery in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries?

Approximately a third of the Roman Empire consisted of slaves.

A substantial part of it depended on the institution of slavery.

Slaves were an integral part of the social structure and in some cases were considered members of their master's households.

Not all slaves were treated inhumanely, but most were.

Some slaves were trophies of war, while others were enslaved because they could not pay their debts.

It wasn't based on the color of your skin, had other factors, but it was very similar to the institution of slavery that we do know from modern, more recent times in this country's history and other countries' histories.

Still others were doctors, teachers, clerks who were taken to serve a master and had no rights.

They were not always viewed as less than human.

According to Roman law, masters possessed absolute power over slaves and over the life and death of their property.

Severe laws were enacted to prevent escape or revolt and punishment for running away was often death in order to instill fear in other slaves.

Slaves owned no property, they could not legally marry, nor could they appeal to civil court for justice.

Does that sound like the kind of practice that God would be in favor of?

So we're going to just talk a little bit about slavery for a moment.

It's impossible to really study the Book of Philemon without taking a hard look at the issue of slavery.

Let's just compare slavery in Rome with slavery in the United States, and let's understand better the big debate that took place in this country back in the 19th century that led to the Civil War that took hundreds of thousands of lives.

Here's a look at how the United States were divided back in the 1850s.

The states in green, such as New York, Pennsylvania, California, they were free states.

Those in red were slave-owning states, such as Texas, Florida, Alabama.

You know, we take for granted today, but, you know, it wasn't as simple of an issue to debate and to come to a consensus on as we would expect from our perspective living in the 21st century.

Among the various issues that led to the Civil War, slavery was the most prominent.

And here's the point everyone, that I really want us to understand.

Biblical arguments were at the root of Southern Christianity's defense of slavery as a morally sanctioned practice that should not be abolished.

The Bible was used, it was appealed to in order to justify the institution of slavery.

Christians in the South defended their position based on scripture, and the book of Philemon was definitely referenced often in those debates.

Southerners considered the abolitionist cause as unbiblical, as progressive, as liberal, okay?

You had prominent Christian writers and clergymen in the South, for example, James Thornwell, a famous Southern Presbyterian minister, theologian, religious writer, and professor of theology in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in South Carolina, in Columbia, he wrote, the parties in this conflict, the conflict over slavery, are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders.

They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins on the 1 side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other.

In other words, for them it was very black and white.

If you're a Bible believing Christian, then you must accept slavery as a divinely established institution.

If you are against slavery, then you are a liberal, progressive, atheist that rejects scripture's authority.

Because if you want to gather all the evidence from the Bible, you will come to the conclusion that slavery was something that God endorsed, condoned, and wanted.

Henry Hopkins, an influential Episcopal bishop, he was a pro-slavery advocate and he said that anti-slavery campaigners were delusionary and engaged in a willful or conscious opposition to the truth.

Charles Hodge was a distinguished representative of the Princeton School of Theology.

In his Bible argument on slavery, article published in the monumental 900-page pro-slavery volume, he wrote, we recognize no authoritative rule of truth and duty but the Word of God." So they were appealing to the Bible to justify slavery.

Let me just show you this clip from a movie entitled 12 Years a Slave, based on a true story of a man named Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was sold into slavery.

He wrote a book, of course, back in the 1860s, and a movie was recently made.

The Proper Use of Authority- Part 1

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