SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/19/2017
9:17 PM
My Worship Time
Focus: The
Importance of Maintaining Fellowship
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Philemon
23-24
Message of the
verses: “23 Epaphras, my fellow
prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you, 24 as do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke,
my fellow workers.”
When one becomes a believer in Jesus Christ they will
soon learn that the Christian life is not lived in a vacuum. Believers are not to act alone, independent
of the fellowship. So now at the end of
this letter, as in many of Paul’s letters we find a list of names, names that
Philemon would truly be familiar with.
There may be a special reason that Paul included these names in his
letter to Philemon, and that would be that he did not follow Paul’s message to
forgive Onesimus that these men would also be disappointed, thus we see the
body of Christ at work. Paul had the
right to bring Philemon under discipline if he so desired.
We have just concluded the book of Colossians not long
ago and these five men were mentioned in that letter too. However Tychicus who was mentioned in
Colossians is not mentioned in this letter.
Tychicus was the one who would be delivering this letter to Philemon and
the letter to the Colossians. He could
give his own greeting to Philemon.
I want to briefly go over these names beginning with
Epaphras who probably came to know the Lord under Paul’s ministry. He was the one who founded the Colossian
church as we learned in our study of Colossians. Epaphras was probably the one who was the
pastor of the Colossian church that meet in Philemon’s house.
Next we look at Mark, Mark who wrote the gospel of Mark
as he undoubtedly had both Peter and Paul help with his gospel. There is much to say about Mark in the New
Testament, things like he went back home before he finished the first
missionary journey and thus Paul did not want him to go with him on the second
one. Later on Paul writes that John Mark
was valuable to him.
Next is Aristarchus who was a Jewish believer which
during this time of the early church was not likely to happen since Paul
ministered to the Gentiles and they were actually in Gentile territory, and according
to Acts 20:4; and 27:2 he was native to Thessalonica. He was with Paul when the riots happened in
Ephesus and with Paul and Luke during the most difficult sea voyage to Rome.
Demas is mentioned next and with that we have a sad story
as Paul wrote to Timothy that Demas had left as he was lured by this present
world.
Luke is number five and we know a lot of Luke as he, the
doctor, who was probably the first missionary doctor, wrote the book of Luke
and also Acts. Paul has much good to say
about Luke as he should.
We have one more very short SD on the last verse in this
letter to Philemon and then we will look mostly what John MacArthur writes as
the conclusion to this letter.
7/19/2017 9:40 PM
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