Hello and welcome to Amen Podcast. I'm looking on in your host and today my husband Alex is preaching about relationships going to be a four part series in the book of Philemon, one of the shortest books in the Bible and be really exciting and hopefully help you know how to have hard conversations, know how to be a better relationship partner and know how to, um,

navigate the drama that can come with relationships at times so excited about this. Me too. Well, I'm going to read the verses. Um, first, I just want to say that we're grateful with for our relationship with you.

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Let's read from Paul and Jill for preaching the good news about Jesus Christ and from brother Timothy to Philemon are much loved fellow worker and to the church that meets in your home and to apaphia our sister and archipists who like myself is a soldier of the cross may God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you his blessings and his peace.

Amen. So the story behind this short letter is one Paul probably wouldn't have wanted us to read it, but the Holy Spirit did so sometimes God makes public private means because we handled them right to sleep.

So this is something that Paul is talking to his friend Philemon about and it's a relationship issue between him and a slave that ran away from Philemon named Onisimus.

Onisimus like any slave wanted to be free and so he did and then when he ran away, he ran to Rome and when he got to Rome, he heard a prisoner preaching and that was the Apostle Paul.

And so when he heard Paul, he was converted. He believed in Jesus and then he realized like most of us do when we become Christians, I need to mend some of the relationships that I messed up.

And so that's what he does and as he's going home to talk to a slave master, Paul says, hey, by the way, I know you're a slave master. I know Philemon. He helped me plant a church in Colossae and he's a good friend of mine. I got a letter for him. Take this with you.

Now without getting into all this stuff about slavery and stuff, it was a different time back then and of course there was evil slave masters but there were slave masters who were converted in kind like Philemon.

But there was still the cultural aspect of how to navigate this relationship because of what the world says about slaves and masters and stuff like that.

And then what crisis? What does Christ say? There's no slave or free. We're all slaves to Christ, but we're also completely free at the same time. And so we're all on the same level here. And so you might be thinking, well, how is this going to help me with my relationship with my girlfriend or my relationship with my boyfriend or my husband or my kids or my wife or whatever.

Whatever all relationships are based on all good relationships are based on friendship. And so whether it's a romantic or a business or a professional or you and your kids, if there's no friend aspect of that relationship, it's going to fall apart. It's going to be miserable to be a part of.

And so what we're going to look at is how does Paul deal with drama and his relationship with Philemon and he wouldn't have wanted us to read this because it's a personal matter.

Right, but it's been made public for us for our benefit. We know it's personal because of how he starts off in verse one, he says from Paul in jail for preaching the good news of Jesus Christ.

So there's three P's I want you to look out for in these three verses. If you want to heal your relationships, grow in your relationships, have good relationships, you have to be one of prisoner to polite and three peace loving in verse one, we see he's a prisoner.

And he doesn't start all of his letters this way. Most of your new testament is written by Paul. And a lot of them, he says Paul and Apostle, what's an Apostle and Apostle someone that has been met with Jesus himself in physical form.

So you hear these guys on YouTube podcasts, other places saying I'm an Apostle Meredith from Wisconsin, whatever. No, you're not.

And Apostle, someone that's been met by Jesus in physical form. So the 11 disciples, because we took Judas out of that, they met with Jesus and they were called by Jesus in physical form.

Paul was met by Jesus on the road to Damascus. Jesus came down, stopped his donkey, made Paul blind and said, you're going to work for me now. And I want you to stop killing and persecuting my brothers and sisters.

And so he usually starts his letters this way. This time, he says, I'm a prisoner. I am a slave to these change, but they're the chains of Christ. He's saying, I'm not, I haven't been put in prison by the Romans, haven't been put in prison by religious people.

I've been put in prison by Jesus. If only we could look at our situations that are bad that way that God has sent this to me to teach me something.

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