Good morning, good news. During my childhood, there was a person that I knew who was not very good at apologizing. She typically never would apologize or, you know, admit that she was at fault for something. And then if someone like backed her into a corner where she absolutely had to admit fault, you know, like where you just, you know, you're explaining stuff and you're like, well, no, no, you did this thing and you said you did it. And when I did it to you last week, you said it was wrong.
So it's wrong that you did it to me. Like once you got it where there was no way of getting out of it, the way she would finally apologize is she would go, well, you'll have to forgive me. And people did not like that. Okay. People did not appreciate it. It seemed like the people were, you know, just like their reaction was, you know, like, no, I don't have to forgive you. And I think, I think the reason why it wasn't accepted very well is it's sort of like a command, right?
You're telling them what they have to do rather than like requesting forgiveness from them. You know, and I thought about it, like the words, will you forgive me? And the words, you will have to forgive me. Like those two sentences aren't far apart. Like they're only two words different. And yet like those two words make a huge difference, don't they?
It makes all the difference in the world. So I guess at some point I learned that apologies are somewhat of like an art form and you can do them better or worse. And sometimes it pays to know how to do them well. So we are continuing our series called How to Handle Relational Drama. We are now in part four of it. And for those of you who are new around here, I'd like to review a little bit of how we got to where we are.
But even for those of you who have been here, I wanted to explain to you why we are covering the topics that we are covering in the order that we are covering them. So if you go back three weeks ago to part one, the very first sermon in the series was called The Foundational Rule. And we started with that one because it's foundational. Like I think it is the foundational rule. The foundational rule being love your neighbor as yourself. That Jesus gave this rule for relationships.
He actually was quoting the Old Testament when he said it. He was giving this command for relationships that all the other commands about relationships really hang upon. It's the foundational. In fact, he said it's the second most important command overall, second only to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength. And then the second most important command, love your neighbor as yourself.
And so we said that's foundational. It seems like that, you know, the principle behind that is going to find its way like underneath, I think pretty much every sermon in this series. So then we moved on to part two. Part two was about being difficult to offend. You remember that? Okay, and the reason I did that one and kind of early on put that one in is I knew that we would be getting to the topic of confronting at some point.
Like at some point we'd look at what the Bible says about how to confront someone when they sin against you. And I thought being difficult to offend would be something that's important to cover before teaching people how to rebuke each other. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. You gotta be careful about teaching easily outraged people how to rebuke, right? Because they might overuse it. So we did that one first. Then we moved on to part three, which was on confronting. That was last week.
And last week, we looked at what Jesus said to do when someone sins against you. And, you know, we talked about how to rebuke. So that was last week. So now it seems to me after part three, which is where we are now, after talking about the topic of confronting, it seemed to me there were sort of two different ways, like two different directions we could go next. Okay. Like two, probably more than two, but there were at least two potential directions that we could go in.
One of them I was thinking was we could just remain with the perspective of the confronter and just talk about what the next step is. Right. Okay. So you confronted the person. Now imagine they say, gee, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Will you forgive me? Right. Then what, what is the next step from the point of view of the confronter. And the next step would be forgiveness. And so I thought, well, the next sermon after last week's sermon could be a sermon on, well, how do you forgive?
However, I also thought to myself, well, but another way you could do it, you could actually put that off for a sec. If you're going to talk, if there's going to be a whole sermon on confronting someone, you could also have a sermon on the other side of the coin. What does it mean to be confronted? Like how can you receive a rebuke well? And so I realized like, oh, we could go in either direction.
So here's the plan. I decided we will set aside next week for the topic of forgiveness, like from the point of view of the confronter. Okay. So they, if they repent, how do you forgive? That's the plan for next week's sermon, if the Lord allows. And this week, we want to cover how to handle being confronted. Okay. How, how can we, how, what does the Bible say about receiving a rebuke? And the reason that I wanted to cover this, I want to make sure it fit in somewhere.
And I figure now's as good a time to do it since we just talked about confrontation last week. The reason I want to talk about being confronted, first of all, because it's really important. It is going to happen to all of us. Like, this is not one of those topics where you go like, perhaps at some point in the future, this might relate to me.
Like, there's no way that's going to happen, right? There are going to be many, many times between now and the day you die where someone is going to come up to you and say, I'm offended. Why did you do that? You owe me an apology. How dare you? Like, that's going to happen. It's going to happen to you many times over the course of your life. So, we might as well know, what do you do about that?
The other reason why I really wanted to cover it and make sure this ended up in this series somehow is because I have never covered it before pretty much whenever I've done series on this topic every time I've ever done series on relationships and conflict I always have left this out even when I wrote the book on it that's available in the lobby I did I left this out it's not in the book it doesn't talk about how to receive a rebuke and I think I think the reason that I have left it out
every time that I've taught on this. Is because there is no extended passage in the Bible that addresses this, right? There is no place, well, let's go to the passage that says that. There is, it's not in there. That doesn't mean the Bible doesn't address this because the Bible does address this. I'm just saying there's not like a chapter that's on this.
Some, like the way that this topic finds itself, I think, in the Bible is you see it not in like, here's the book of the Bible about, you know, receiving a rebuke. What you see in the Bible is like dribs and drabs here and there, little pieces of things in the Bible that if you take all the pieces together, you take all the threads and combine them, you come up with, oh, this is what the Bible says about this. That's not how all topics in the Bible work.
Some Bible topics are just covered in whole paragraphs or even whole chapters. Like if you want to know what the Bible says about marriage, or you want to know what the Bible says about sex, or you want to know what the Bible says about divorce, there are literally places in the Bible you can turn to, there's a whole pair of sentence after sentence after sentence talking about that topic, right? But not all Bible topics are like that. In fact, not even all important Bible topics are like that.
Let me give you an example, okay? The topic of angels and demons. Angels and demons is a topic in the Bible. Like it is indisputable that the Bible teaches about angels and demons and that it's important. Like what the Bible says about the supernatural world that we can't see is important. The Bible talks about an important topic called angels and demons. And yet there is no chapter in the Bible you can turn to, to go, this is a chapter about angels.
Oh, let's go to second demons, chapter five. We'll learn about temptation. Like that's not in there. The only way to know about it is to look in the Bible and notice there are dribs and drabs here and there, little threads, different places where it's mentioned in this story, in this book, and you bring them all together to go, okay, this is what the Bible teaches on this. And that is the same thing we're going to have to do when it comes to receiving a rebuke.
We're going to have to go all over the Bible and bring the threads together. It wasn't obvious to me to do that originally, but at some point I realized we got to do that. And so today's that day. My outline is simple this morning. I just have two like headings, okay? And the two headings are if they are wrong and if they are right, okay?
You know where I'm going with this, right? If somebody confronts you, it could be that they are wrong in what they are saying, or it could be that they are right. Can we recognize that, right? It is possible that they come up to you and they falsely accuse you. They misunderstand something. Somebody misquoted you and they are wrong in what they are saying. And there's also a possibility that they are right. I mean, is that true?
Like, is it possible you have at some point in your life done something wrong and someone noticed it and correctly communicated it to you? Is it possible that's ever happened? Yes, yes. So either one of these is possible. So I want to go over both of them. For under if they are wrong, I have one verse that I want to teach you for how to handle it if they are wrong.
And then when we get to if they are right, I actually have four steps, four points that I would like to go through for what's important for you to do if they are right. So let's start with if they are wrong, right? I want to start with if they are wrong because, I mean, this is the one you most need to know, right? I mean, after all, when people rebuke you, most of the time they're wrong. Doesn't it feel that way, right? It feels that way. Most of the time they're
wrong. So that's the one I really need to know. Okay, good. I got you. So if they are wrong, this is the verse I want to share with you. It's Proverbs chapter 15, verse one. A gentle answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath. A gentle answer turns away anger. If someone falsely accuses you, if someone misunderstands a situation, right? And now their anger is coming in your direction, you are to respond gently. This will turn down the temperature of the conversation in a good way.
The thing is, it's hard to do this. It is hard to do this because when we are falsely accused, we are often tempted to like, to offend back, right? Like when we are falsely accused, it is offensive, right? It offends us to be falsely accused. So it feels just to offend back, right? It feels fair. Like you shoot an arrow at me that I didn't deserve. I shoot one back at you. You strike me verbally, I strike you back. I put you in your place. It feels right.
You have said something, it has offended me. So now I offend back. Romans chapter 12, you can read this on your own time. Romans chapter 12 teaches us to take no revenge and to leave justice in God's hands, right? It's not that God doesn't care about justice. He just says, you don't need to do that. Leave justice in God's hands and take no revenge. So when they pour like undeserved wrath on you, you respond with a gentle answer and trust God for that which is fair.
I've also noticed that this strategy works when the person who is rebuking you is right, but is handling it in the wrong way. Have you ever had that happen? Where the person is talking to you and technically the things they are saying are factual, but the whole way they're going about it is wrong. And that's offensive sometimes. Even truth sometimes is offensive when the person is kind of, it's like right content, but wrong tone.
Have you seen this? And so they're saying true things, but because their face is red and they're screaming and they're cussing, You know what I mean? It's offensive. And here's the thing. Some of us in this room, in fact, I bet, I bet you this is true. Most of us in this room will dismiss truth if it is packaged in a terrible way. We just will. It could be true and it doesn't matter. The way they said it was so offensive. I don't care what they had to say, but you don't want to dismiss truth.
You don't want to dismiss it wherever you find it. Do you realize that? Like if truth is healthy and good, then you can't, you can't get in the habit of dismissing it, even when it's found in the bottom of the trough and it's gross. And that's not the way you wanted to hand it to you. It doesn't matter if you find it at all. You got to grab onto it if it's true.
So, if the person confronts you with wrong content, right, that stuff they say is not true, or even right content, but the wrong tone, a gentle answer turns away anger. All right, now let's move on to if they are right, okay? It's a possibility. If they are right, in fact, I don't even want to just say if they are right. I really want to make sure that we get this. So, I want to add something to this to just make it really clear. If they are right or even partially right.
Okay. I want to talk about if the person who confronts you is even partially right. And the reason I want to specify that is because there are some of us who, if a person confronts us and they are like 80% right and 20% wrong, we will dismiss the whole thing. Isn't that true? Some of us do that. Some of us do that. We will, we will look at a situation.
Some will bring them. They say this and this and this and this and this, and I'll look at it and go, well, yeah, I'm yes, yes, but no, I didn't say it that way, no. And then it's like, we can get rid of the whole thing. Some of us are more extreme. Some of us are so extreme. If the person is like 99% right and 1% wrong, we will hang on to that one thing and be like, okay. And we will use that to dismiss everything they're saying.
And we have that attitude. I like my rebukes like I like my ivory soap. Okay. 99.44% pure. I respond to nothing less. And that's not going to work. Like that's not real life. In real life, people misquote, people misremember, people don't get everything right. You can't have that as the standard. So what do you do when someone brings something to your attention and they are even just partially right? And so I have four phrases for you. Here's the first one, accept it, okay?
And by it, I'm talking about the part that they're right about. If that, whatever the part is that they said that's true, okay, this is wrong, you did it, that part, okay? Accept it. This is Proverbs chapter 13, verse 18. It says, poverty and disgrace come to those who ignore discipline, but the one who accepts correction will be honored. The one who accepts correction will be honored. Actually, I looked this up. You can do this too.
You can go on the internet and look up and see like what the Hebrew words are that get translated into the English words in our Bibles. And it's interesting. This word correction can also be translated rebuke, A rebuke. Like the New King James Version translates to the second half of this verse. He who regards a rebuke will be honored, right? It is honorable to accept a rebuke. It is important. If someone brings something true to your attention, you accept it.
Two other Proverbs that are on this topic that I think rounded out would be this, these two. Proverbs 29.1 says, one who becomes stiff-necked after many reprimands will be shattered instantly beyond recovery. Whew, isn't that graphic? When you are stiff-necked after many reprimands, right? And this person said it, and this person said it, and this person said it, and you just sat there and went, no, you're wrong, and you're wrong, and you're wrong, and you're wrong.
It's crazy. What a crazy world we live in that everybody's wrong but me. Living that way is gonna destroy you. Proverbs 9, 8 and 9 is also good on this. Don't rebuke a mocker or he will hate you, right? You go to rebuke someone that isn't prepared to take it. It's not going to work, but look at this. Rebuke a wise man and he will love you. Why will he love being rebuked? That doesn't seem right. Let's keep reading. Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still.
Teach a righteous man and he will learn more. Wise people learn to love and accept truth and correction. So that's the first point. Accept it. Here's the second point. Repent. Okay. If they are partially right, you accept it and you repent. The word repent means to turn. Okay. So here, so I'm facing this direction. I just repented. Okay. Do you see that? Repent is to turn. I was going in one direction.
I'm now moving in a different direction. If the person brings up this thing, hey, this is the thing you did wrong, then you don't keep doing it. You turn away from it. That's what repent means. And the fact that repentance is the response to a truthful confrontation, I think is very clear in the Bible. One of the places it's very clear is Luke chapter 17, verse three. So we're going to put that one up on the screen. It says, be on your guard. If your brother sins, rebuke him.
And if he repents, forgive him. Interesting Bible verse. This is Jesus Christ who is talking here. I read this verse to you two Sundays ago, and I'm bringing it up again now. Jesus, when he was talking to these people, this is what he said. He said, if your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. Now, this is one of those things where I said, you got to grab it wherever you can find it. This particular verse obviously is written from the point of view of the confronter, right?
Jesus is not in this verse trying to address how to receive a rebuke. He's trying to address how to give one, right? The person sins, you rebuke. And if he repents, what's the next step, forgive him, right? Which is the, that's what we're planning on getting to next week, right? If the Lord allows, that's the plan. But I want you to see what's implied in this verse. Do you see?
Even though he's talking about the confronter, do you see that there's something that's assumed about the confrontee, right? If he sins, you rebuke him. And then what's, and if he, what's the word? Repents. In other words, like if this is going to get forgiven and reconciliation is going to happen, the confrontee is going to have to repent. Like Jesus, like it's just assumed in the words of Jesus here, that repentance is the response to a truthful correction.
All right. The third point is ask for pardon. Ask for pardon. When you sin against someone, I believe that you should ask for forgiveness from them. In order to talk about this concept, let me go ahead and begin by looking first at scriptures about God and how we are to ask God for forgiveness when we sin against him. I have three verses we're going to put up on the screen. The first one is Psalm 25, 11. It says, because of your name, Yahweh, forgive my sin for it is great.
This is David. Okay. Psalm 25 is a Psalm of David, like King David from the Old Testament. And he is asking for forgiveness here. I mean, yes, these are lyrics to a song, but it is nonetheless a prayer, right? Yahweh, forgive my sin for it is great. So this is David asking for forgiveness. Now here's another character asking for forgiveness. But the tax collector, this is Luke 18, 13.
But the tax collector standing far off would not even raise his eyes to heaven, but kept striking his chest and saying, God, turn your wrath from me, a sinner. So the character in this verse, the tax collector is the one who is asking for forgiveness, right? Now this is, the tax collector in this verse is a fictional character. As best as I can tell, Jesus made up stories about people that didn't exist, right? He would just say, there was a king, there was a man, there was whatever.
So there's a time where Jesus is telling a parable and he makes up two characters. One's a Pharisee, one's a tax collector, tells a story about the two of them, okay? This is what, these are the words that Jesus puts into the character's mouth. This is what Jesus has the tax collector saying. The tax collector standing far off would not even raise his eyes to heaven, but kept striking his chest, which is a posture of humility, right? A posture of humility before God. And he says what? God.
Turn your wrath from me, a sinner. He acknowledges he's a sinner. And when he says, turn your wrath from me, I think that's another way of saying, pardon me, like forgive me. And if you read the rest of this, if you read the rest of this parable, you will see that this is the good guy. Okay. Like when Jesus does this parable, the tax collector and the Pharisee, the good guy is the guy that does this. The third verse that I wanted to read to you is a really, really famous one.
Okay. It's Matthew 6, verse 12. And it says, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Okay. You've heard it before? Yes. Cause it's one of the most, it's from one of the most famous portions of the Bible, the Lord's Prayer. As Jesus was teaching his followers how to pray, he gave them like a training prayer. Okay. Here's how you talk to God. Say these words. Okay. And the words that he gave them were to ask for forgiveness, among other words to ask for forgiveness.
So we clearly see that when we have sinned against God, we should ask for pardon. Okay. Well, what about humans asking other humans for forgiveness when they sin against them? Well, there are examples of that in the Bible as well. I will talk, I'll read to one of them. This is Genesis chapter 50 verses 16 and 17. So they sent this message to Joseph.
Before he died, your father gave a command. Say this to Joseph, please forgive your brother's transgression and their sin, the wrong they caused you. Therefore, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father. Joseph wept when their message came to him. If you do not know the story, I'll just give you a quick rundown of it. Joseph was the one that was in charge at this point and his brothers had sinned
against him terribly. They had betrayed him awfully back when he was younger. At this point, the brothers who share a father with Joseph, the brothers were concerned that after their dad died, Joseph might want to take revenge on them. So after their dad died, they send a message to Joseph and they basically say this, hey, we just wanted to let you know, dad's dying wish, okay? Like right as he was about to die, he said, tell Joseph to forgive you, right?
That's the way they basically present this. In fact, I don't even know if it's true. Like it almost seems like they were just lying, but that's what they said. They said, hey, just so you know, just before he died, dad asked you to forgive us. So will you forgive us? And Joseph did. There are other examples of this in the Bible. That's not the only one. There is an occasion where Pharaoh asks Moses for forgiveness. I did not remember that. It's Exodus chapter 10. I've taught through Exodus.
I did not remember, but Pharaoh asked Moses for forgiveness. Saul asked Samuel for forgiveness in 1 Samuel 15. Abigail asked David for forgiveness in 1 Samuel 25. Although in that case, she was essentially asking on behalf of her husband. He was the offender in that case. The apostle Paul requests forgiveness from Philemon on behalf of Onesimus in Philemon 16 and 17. So there are a lot of different cases where we see humans, you know, asking for forgiveness from another human.
However, one thing I thought was interesting, and I guess I did not know this until this week. I didn't know that these examples were in here. And I also, I mean, I don't know, I guess I'd not thought about it. As far as I know, I could not find this week anywhere in the Bible where there is a command that says, when someone sits against you, you must say, will you forgive me? Okay. If you know about it, feel free to let me know. I could not find it.
I cannot find a place where the Bible specifically says, you must ask for pardon when you sin against someone. So, but this is what we do have in the Bible. We have scripture indicating that we should ask God for forgiveness when we sin against him. Scripture indicating how God's people are to forgive each other. Examples in scripture of humans requesting forgiveness from other humans.
And so I will leave it up to you to determine, does the fact that the Bible does not spell out, say, will you forgive me when you sin against someone? Is that because you don't need to do it? Or is the principle of asking for pardon something that is implied and obvious? I think it's implied and obvious. All right, here's point four. This is the fourth and final point under if they are partially right. Take responsibility. And I put underneath that, if possible,
make restitution. And I have two verses here for you about taking responsibility. The first one is Luke chapter 15, verse 18. It says, I'll get up, go to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. Here we have another fictional character. Jesus is telling the parable of the prodigal son. As far as I know, the prodigal son did not ever exist in real life.
But the way that Jesus told the story is there's a father and a son and the son betrayed his father terribly, disrespected him awfully, went off, lived on his own, squandered all of his money, ends up in this dead end job. And then at some point says, I should go back and reconcile with my father. Right? He even says like, I don't even know if I can go back and be his son, but maybe I could be one of his slaves, one of his servants.
That would be better than the life I'm living now. So I guess I'll go back to dad and apologize. And so he rehearses like, okay, well, when I get there, what am I gonna say? This is what I'm gonna say. And this is that part. This is the part of the story that Jesus is saying what the prodigal son was saying as he was rehearsing what to say. I'll get up and go to my father and say to him. Father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight.
The way Jesus tells the story is the prodigal son takes responsibility for what he's done. He recognizes he's the one who's a sinner. In fact, he's a twofold sinner, which is interesting. You see it in here and it's something you see in other Bible verses as well. He says, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. Like I committed two sins. Do you see that? And this is a character, this is like a concept that we see in the Bible, that every time you sin against
somebody, you actually committed two sins. Have you ever thought about this? Okay. I mean, this is terrible. Like you're, some of you are going to find out today you are twice as sinful as you thought you were. Because every time you sin, you sin twice in a sense because you sin against the person that you're sinning against and the God who made them and you, right? And so every, it's like, it's for every one sin, you need two apologies, right?
One to God and one to the person that you've offended. But either way, that's taking responsibility, okay? The other one, and I really like this verse for this point. When it comes to taking responsibility and if possible, making restitution, look what this one says. It says, this is Luke 19 verse eight. But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, look, I'll give half of my possessions to the poor Lord. And if I have extorted anything from anyone, I'll pay back four times as much.
Now this, in this story, this is the story of Zacchaeus. And this is, Zacchaeus is not a fictional character. He was a real person that Jesus spoke to. And after this part of the story, Jesus says, salvation has come to this house. So Jesus believed that Zacchaeus was doing the right thing, saying the right thing. He was like a child of God. And what's interesting is Zacchaeus says, and I really want you to notice this part.
He says, if I have extorted anything from anyone, and I think he probably said that because he at some point had extorted some things from some people. And he says, if I have extorted anything from anyone, I'll pay a pack four times as much. Where did he get that idea from? Where did he get the idea that he needed to take responsibility? He needed to make restitution. He had to fix the damage he caused. And where did he get the idea to do it at a quadruple rate? Anybody have an idea?
I think it was the Old Testament. I think that's where he got it from. Where did Zacchaeus get this idea? In the Old Testament, if you go on your own time, you can read this. Exodus chapter 22, and you read the first six verses of Exodus 22, you will see that there are various laws in there about restitution. When someone has damage. Someone else is something. This is what you are to do.
And there's different laws with different like penalties and different ways to handle it, depending on what was done, depending on if the thing was done. But, you know, was it a severe crime? Was it done a long time ago or recently? Was it intentional or on accident?
And so if you read through the first part of Exodus 22, you'll see, I think if you steal your neighbor's sheep and you've already eaten it, you have to pay them back four sheep, which is probably where we have this Luke 19 coming from. Is that another ambler. That happened in the first service too. All right. I'm going to pray real quick. Dear Lord, I know that those situations don't come, those things don't come to our phones because something good happened.
And so I just pray for whoever that family is and that you would do your will in their life and they would be restored. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. All right. So Zacchaeus, I think he gets four times as much because that's what you were supposed to do when you like purposely stole somebody's something. However, there were other times where if you stole someone's sheep and you hadn't eaten it yet, you only had to, I think you only had to pay double in that case.
And then if you accidentally burned down your neighbor's wheat field, you didn't have to pay them back four wheat fields worth of wheat. Like if there's an accident, I think you only had to pay them back one wheat field worth of wheat because you didn't burn down their wheat field on purpose. So my point is there's different laws in the Old Testament for different situations of how to handle restitution.
But what it seems to me they all have in common is the people were supposed to take responsibility for the damage that they had done.
Now one other thing I think is important to point out it seems to me that you cannot make, restitution for all sins like some sins you can't make up for it have you ever thought about that before in the old testament it does not seem to me that every single sin was always this is what you have to do that to make up for this one like that wasn't for every kind of sin and it seems to me because there are some that you can do this for and some that you can't some sins are more like
financial in their effect. And so restitution can be made. You know, you key your ex-girlfriend's car, you can pay for a paint job, right? Or you steal your brother's sunglasses and you break them, then you buy them another pair of sunglasses. But there are times where the person you hurt, you didn't hurt their bank account, you hurt their feelings. And there's no dollar amount that, you know, can fix that.
And so it seems to me for some sins, all you can do is accept it, accept the truth, repent from the behavior, and ask for pardon. And you can take responsibility like verbally and emotionally, but it seems to me you can't always pay them back. And then while we're on this topic of taking responsibility, I want to show you one other verse. I referred to it earlier, but I want to put it up on the screen now. It's Philemon chapter one, verses 17 and 18. It's my favorite verses from Philemon.
I say Philemon chapter one, Philemon only has one chapter, so you don't even have to say it. You can actually just say Philemon 17 and 18. So I'll read it to you and then explain it. The apostle Paul says, so if you consider me a partner, accept him as you would me. And if he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge it to my account. This is my best understanding of what was going on in the background when this letter was written.
There's a guy named Onesimus who was a former servant or a runaway slave of a guy named Philemon. Okay. Perhaps Philemon was a rich man that had multiple slaves and servants. I don't know, but for sure had one, it seems from this letter. And Onesimus was this one and he is no longer with Philemon. He runs away or gets away or whatever it was, but they are now apart from each other. And the relationship between the two of them is now strained.
It seems it is strained to the point that Onesimus is not going to go back home and meet up with Philemon unless a letter of recommendation is sent with him from someone who Philemon will care about. I think that's what the book of Philemon is. It is the apostle Paul's letter of recommendation sent with Onesimus as he goes back. And it looks like in the letter, as you read it. It looks like Onesimus may have done something to cost Philemon something.
The reason why I say that is because obviously before this letter was written, Onesimus and Paul had to have had a conversation. And then Paul wrote this, accept him as you would me. Like take him back, take him into your life like someone you're not mad at. And if he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to my account. It seems to me that Paul recognizes that when damage is done, typically it should be repaid. Do you see that assumption there?
And what seems to me is happening here, this is in this particular case, and this is just a guess, but I'm telling you, I think the guess is that Onesimus in this situation was unable to repay. And so Paul offers it on his behalf. I think Paul would understand under ordinary circumstances, the person who has done the damage is the person who should offer the restitution. I'm guessing that what happened in this case is Onesimus wasn't able to do that.
He wasn't able to make it right. And Paul said, well, but I could. So I will do that on your behalf. If he owes you anything, charge it to my account. Does this concept remind you of anyone? Like, is there any other character in the Bible who paid a price for sin on behalf of someone who couldn't or didn't pay? Who was it? Yes, Jesus Christ. And this is why this is my favorite verse in Philemon.
Jesus Christ, by dying on the cross for our sins, was essentially saying to God the Father, if you consider me a son, accept them as you would accept me. And if they have wronged you in any way or owe you anything, charge that to my account. That's the gospel. Isn't that awesome? All right. So let's wrap it all up. In summary, when confronted, if they are wrong in content or tone, remember that a gentle answer turns away anger.
If they are right or even partially right, Accept it, repent, ask for pardon if appropriate, make restitution if possible. And maybe another way to summarize it would be to say this, when you're confronted, be peaceable, be teachable and take responsibility for your actions. Lord willing, we'll get to more next week. Thank you for listening. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for including so much in your word about so many human interactions and things that we need to know.
Thank you for helping me discover what I was able to discover this week. Thank you for what you have helped the people in this room be able to discover in their lives. I pray that your word would be imprinted in our lives. I pray for those of us who are not good at accepting truth when it's packaged in a bad way, that you'd help us to be able to value truth, enough that we don't reject it. I pray that you'd help us to be people who are acceptors of truth.
I pray you'd help us to be people who repent who turn from our ways when we realize they're wrong. Pray that you'd help us to reconcile with one another and ask for forgiveness and grant forgiveness. Pray you'd help us to take responsibility for what we've done and make restitution in the cases where we can and we should. Forgive others in places where they can't make restitution. So thank you, Lord, for what you've said and thank you for what you're doing in our life.
And I ask in advance as this goes out among us, I just pray that you'd help us to be the people you want us to be. We thank you for the gospel, especially. Thank you, Jesus, that you would charge to your account the sins that we were absolutely doomed in and had no way of like making up for. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for dying on the cross for our sins. We love you and we worship you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Let me end with these good words from God's word. This is Ephesians five, starting in verse one. Therefore be imitators of God has dearly loved children and walk in love as the Messiah also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. That is good news.