Beth Moore - Is God Moving you Backwards? (02/05/2026)
Paul appeals to Philemon for Onesimus, his runaway slave now a useful brother in Christ. He urges reconciliation, voluntary forgiveness, and receiving him as himself. Slavery remains an atrocity today, but Christ catches us to set us free, and going forward sometimes means going back to own our past for real transformation.
Paul's Joyful Prayer for Philemon's Faith and Love
I'm really, really excited about what we're studying through this series. I want you to turn with me to the book of Philemon. The book of Philemon. Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy, our brother. To Philemon, our beloved fellow worker. And Aphia, our sister. And Archippus, our fellow soldier. And the church in your house. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints. And I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in you for the sake of Christ. For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.
Paul's Loving Appeal Instead of Command
Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you. I call myself an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus. I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. Formerly he was indeed useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.
I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel. But I prefer to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion, but of your own accord. Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever.
No longer as a slave, but more than a slave as a beloved brother, especially to me. But how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So, if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge that to my account.
Paul's Personal Guarantee and Reminder
I, Paul, write this with my own hand. I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me, even your own self. Slavery is an absolute atrocity. Not past tense, but present tense. In the multi-millions on the face of this globe, it is not better. It has not been curbed. This world is fraught with it.
I want to take you back to the time when this particular letter was written by Paul to Philemon. This was at a time when it was very much a fact of life in their society. They knew no other life. And what we are going to do as we look at this 25-verse letter is revolve around these three primary individuals: Philemon, Paul, and Onesimus.
Paul as the Mediator Between Philemon and Onesimus
So here is what I want you to see with me in our time together. Picture with me that Paul is in between these two. Here is Philemon over here, a wealthy man, and we will learn more about him as we go through the letter together. And then here we've got Onesimus way over here on this side. And Paul is right in the middle of the two men.
I wonder how current it would be to you to say, sometimes the people that we really like or really love do not particularly like or love one another. Can I see a hand from anyone? Does anybody know what I'm talking about? When you feel like you're constantly playing referee between two people who are about to go to fists with one another.
When you can't really even mention when you're having coffee with one that you've just been with the other because you already know the kind of thing that's going to bring up all the dynamics. Are you the person that really likes a whole lot of different people, but they don't like each other? Because he's in the middle of a conflict as big as it gets, as he is between Philemon and Onesimus.
I love what one commentator says. He was the common friend of the parties at variance. We have been in that situation many, many times.
Background: How Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus Connected
Let me give you a little bit of background on how they would have all met one another. So we would rewind the clock to a time probably when Paul was serving so long in Ephesus. Philemon would be from Colossae. That is the city to which the letter to the Colossians was written. So he's from that city. Very, very wealthy man.
And the likelihood is that the way they got to know one another was when he was doing business in Ephesus when Paul was there for about a three-year period of time. So he would have made very deep friendships in that particular city. So in that process of time, Paul led Philemon to faith in Christ. And they became co-workers in the Gospel.
He says it from the beginning: to Philemon, our beloved fellow worker. So they would have gotten to know each other really, really well. They would have served a lot together.
Paul's Imprisonment and Meeting Onesimus
Then, okay, time goes by. The travels continue. And then Paul gets in a ton of trouble in Jerusalem. And he knows when he goes to Jerusalem, he's going to get in that kind of trouble. The Holy Spirit has already told him, already warned him in advance. He does get arrested. He has a plot for his assassination.
He appeals to Caesar because he's got one thing on his mind. And this has to impress us all about the Apostle Paul because, listen, he doesn't care what it's going to take. I mean, go ahead and arrest me because I have one thing on my mind. I need to get to Rome because that's where I want to take the Gospel. All roads lead to Rome.
And so what would have happened here is that at some point in his first imprisonment, he meets this young man by the name of Onesimus. Now, how? Well, let's put some pieces together that we do know. He's a runaway slave without a doubt. And there's some thought, a number of theologians think, well, he probably stole some money. There probably is another complexity to it that is not obvious to us here.
But one thing we know for sure, he has landed in prison. Now, one little thing that might put it together for us is that, do you see in verse 23, look in Philemon and look at verse 23, Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends his greetings to you. Epaphras was from Colossae.
And so there is some thought that since Epaphras would have known all the believers there, he would have known Philemon, and he would have known who... Since there was a house church in Philemon's home, they met in homes, as large homes as possible in those days in the early New Testament church, that he would have known who his servants were, and he would have recognized him.
And so this was either Onesimus' worst luck ever or somehow providential in the work that God was doing.
Key Point 1: When Jesus Catches Us, It's to Set Us Free
I'm going to give you a couple of points to take down, and it starts right here. We'll have four of them, but I wanted to start right here. If you jot this down, if you're a note taker in life, this kind of thing. Number one is this, and I want somebody to celebrate it this Christmas.
When Jesus catches us, it's to set us free. There might be a whole lot of people that can catch you and catch me at various things. But when Jesus catches us, it's always for one purpose, and that is to set us free.
And I don't know what kind of good news that is to you, but you may feel like that somehow you are extremely unloved by God because you have been caught in a particular situation, and now you're in a mess. I want to tell you something. If you will meet Christ Jesus, you can count on this.
I say this to you from the authority of the Word of God. No matter what got you into trouble, no matter what has gotten you back into the corner, no matter what has you caught, I'm going to tell you something. If you will cling to the Lord Jesus with all of your heart, with everything you have got, I mean survive on Him, that you consider that every single moment of the rest of your life is dependent on that one Savior, I'm going to tell you something. He will have caught you to set you free.
Key Point 2: Sometimes Going Forward Takes Going Back
Have you ever known anybody that could stir up a mess and then just takes off? You haven't seen them in years. They turned your entire house upside down, and you have not laid eyes on them since that time. You know those kind? But we can do the same thing. We can like get in a whole lot of trouble, cause a whole lot of trouble, and then we're just like gone. We're just like gone.
Only in Christ, he's going, I think we're going to have to deal. Because sometimes what we want to say is this. Sometimes we want to say, well, you know what? All that was before I was really in Christ. Whether it's to say that I was saved, or you know what? That was before I was really serious about Jesus. All that now is water under the bridge.
We don't need to go back and do any kind of amends for that, because that was a whole different life. There have been so many twists and turns to I'm a new person. In other words, I don't have to take responsibility for anything I did before. And I'm a new person this week. I'm a new person every day. Anybody live with somebody like that? Because that's a really pleasant person to have to deal with in your home day after day.
That, listen, I'm not responsible for anything I did today is a new day. The Word of God would say, you're absolutely right. You are a new creature. It is a new day. And that is why, in Christ, you are called to go back and own up. Own up.
Number two, sometimes going forward takes going back. Say, for instance, we can see it so blatantly in Onesimus, because he is a runaway slave. He's been in prison. He has been caught. And now he's going to have to go back and face his master that he very likely at least stole from.
We'll get a little further into what he was like in just a moment. But that's enough for us to know. But for us, some of those kinds of circumstances are not our everyday things. For us, it may be a demotion at work. It may be a layoff and we end up going back to a position like... I mean, that was a lateral position to something we had 15 years ago.
Some of you feel like, wait, I'm starting all over in this field. I had gotten further than this. You feel like you're going all the way back. You've really made gains in a relationship. Something's happened. And now you feel like, I mean, are you kidding me? We are back there? Anybody just here recently?
I thought in a situation here recently in a relationship of my own. Are you kidding me? We're here again? I need to see if I've got any company in the room. There's just nothing like that feeling of, oh, oh, not here. I thought we had moved really, really far past this.
And yet, it's the most beautiful thing that sometimes in Christ, going forward takes going back. But if it takes going back, you've got to know you are always moving forward. I want to make sure you hear that, and I want to make sure you hear that all the way to your bones.
Because what's happening here is that when you trust Christ and you follow Him, even if it means what you feel like is moving backwards instead of forwards, no matter what direction you're going, if you are in Christ, you are moving ahead.
I need to say that again. It doesn't matter what kind of demotion you feel like you've gotten. It doesn't matter how far you feel like you've now moved back. It doesn't matter how you feel like you lost that position. You lost that ground. We see it as a loss of ground. I don't care how much it looks like where you've once been.
If you walk with Jesus, you're going forward. You're going forward. Look at somebody and say, you're going forward. If you're with Christ, that's all it takes.
But listen, you... Okay, you know what? This isn't in my notes, but I need to say this to somebody. If you're not walking with Christ, you can be going forward and going back. It's Jesus that keeps us walking with our faces straight ahead.
It's Jesus that no matter what we feel like is a demotion to us, we're still moving forward. We're still walking forward. We're still face forward. We're still gaining ground and not losing ground.
Listen. In Christ's economy, if He ever sends you back, it is to send you forward. Somebody's got to say to somebody, you've got a deal, Lucille. Somebody? Say to somebody, you've got a deal, Lucille. Because I didn't hear anybody say it. I need somebody to say, you've got a deal, Lucille. We've got a deal.
Because if we don't deal, then that same stuff is going to come out in us that we've just been stuffing down all that time. God wants to bring us healing. He's after transformation. See, our advancement will always be in transformation, not in position.
We advance when we're being transformed in one reflection of glory after another. If we're not changing, I don't care how big we're growing in our business, in our work, in our family, in esteem, in public platforms, in government. I don't care. Because if we're not moving forward in transformation, we're not moving forward.
This is what He's after. The Christ manifestation of total transformation.