This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Philemon” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 31, 1999.

This morning we begin our scripture reading in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 1. We begin with verse 1. This is God’s word. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, unto the Church of God, which is of Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia.

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort. who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer, or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope of you is steadfast, knowing that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye also be of the consolation. For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that were pressed out of measure, above strength, inasmuch that we despaired even of life, that we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver, in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us, he also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons, thanks may be given by many on our behalf. For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you were it. For we wait none other things unto you than what ye read and acknowledge, and I trust ye shall acknowledge even to the end, as also ye have acknowledged us in part, that we are your boast, even as ye also are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus.” verses four through six, I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my prayers, hearing of thy faith and love which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus and toward all saints, that the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.

Let’s pray with you. O Lord, as we have come today in expectation of your blessing, in expectation of the blessing from your word, so Lord, we would worship and we would pray in hopes for ourselves, but also for your people throughout the world, and especially for those that you would gather today into your fold, that these who have formerly walked in darkness and been caught in the throes of death might be delivered into light and know the life of glory. Father, be gracious to us But be gracious, O God, wherever your word is preached today, and may there be the gathering of the great harvest to your glory. For we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. I may need a refill before this message is completed, but I trust that your prayers for me are effectual and we will make it through.

To begin with, this morning I want to remind you about my approach to Philemon. I am treating the letter to Philemon as if it were a providentially positioned canonical reservoir into which all the other letters of Paul are flowing. It is the last listed of Paul’s letters in the New Testament. And being the last, my suggestion is that it is a providentially positioned, canonical reservoir into which all of the other epistles from Paul are flown. I am using Philemon, therefore, as a result of this perspective as a grand opportunity to look at Paul in depth, to consider not just Philemon, but his other letters as well, as they flow into Philemon.

And so far, again in keeping with this perspective, We have made a thorough study of the opening verses, verses 1 through 3, Paul’s greeting and salutation. We have made that study with a series of messages intended to capture the heart of Paul’s greetings and salutations per se, what we would find from him in all of his letters.

I gave those messages, you might recall, a common title. Greetings fit for this age, I called them. That title was meant to lodge in your mind the fact that Paul’s greetings are what they are because of what has happened to this world and to humanity as a result of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Greetings fit for this age, marked out now because of what has happened in and through Jesus Christ. Greetings fit for this age, an age defined by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Put briefly, Paul exhibits the attitude he does towards those to whom he writes in his greetings and in his salutations, because Christ died and rose again. Paul structures his comments about and to these people to whom he writes. He structures his remarks about the relationships he and they enjoy. because Jesus died and was raised from the dead. Suggestive is then that such greetings and salutations as you hear from Paul were not possible prior to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But now, They are so perfectly fitting, so wonderfully appropriate. The grace and the peace regularly spoken of by the Apostle in his salutation, he commends to these people to whom he writes as the direct result of what has happened to Jesus Christ. This grace and this peace belong to the new age that has come to pass because of what has transpired in and to our Savior. Again, to fill out the thought, such grace and peace as is now commended by Paul to the could not be commended prior to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. to the thanksgiving and prayer. The prayer in Philemon is properly verses four through six. We’ve read those this morning. And as we have seen, the prayer here in Philemon has the orientation we have already observed with regard to the opening verses in the letter. That is, Paul’s prayer and his thanksgiving are what they are because of what has happened to Jesus Christ. Paul’s prayer and thanksgiving are what they are because of what has happened to Jesus Christ.

This means, therefore, that it is not enough In fact, it is downright wrong to suggest that Paul is merely involved in time-honored Jewish piety, in the expressions of time-honored Jewish piety, or even in the time-honored Old Testament forms of piety and prayer. to be sure Paul’s prayers are sensitive to the Old Testament background, and we must not ignore that.

However, they are no mere extension of Old Testament prayer, rather they are a fulfillment of Old Testament prayer. They are no mere repetition of Old Testament prayer, they are what those Old Testament prayers could only feel after in keeping with the shadow world of which they were a part. Paul’s prayers belong to the new age that has come, that is distinctively marked out by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the accomplishment of redemption. So Paul, at prayer, is not merely repeating the prayers that he has learned in his rabbinical studies and exercises. He is not merely repeating prayers that he learned when he was yet a child. These prayers have been transformed themselves because of what has taken place.

By contrast, then, to the Old Testament prayers, Paul’s prayers are a perfection of a perfection of perfusion and perfect, persistent praise. There were a lot of Ps in that. Let me try that again. You can tell that I haven’t been all that well trained in rhetoric. But in contrast to the Old Testament prayers, Paul’s prayers have arrived at a state of They are a profusion of persistent praise, a perpetual offering, and a magnanimous expression of genuine thanks to God, a thanks that goes so far as to be profuse in its expression of thanks for other people.

None of these features belong to the Old Testament prayers as common distinguishing marks, which means, of course, that something so monumental has transpired, something so extraordinary has taken place, that prayer itself, together with all piety, has been altered, has been transformed. is now different.

We are not simply Jews at life and worship. We are Christians. So great is what has happened that prayer itself is now different. with a difference that demonstrates that prayer, as an act of devotion, is itself subordinated to the great event that has transpired. We at prayer are at prayer in context. in context of the great redemptive act that has been accomplished by our God in and through his Son. And this makes our prayer distinctive. Thoroughly Christian. The event that is central, as you know and as I have been emphasizing, is what has transpired in Jesus Christ.

His appearance together with the completion of his ministry means that nothing less than a new day of prayer has come. Now this new day of prayer does reveal itself in the teaching of Jesus himself. It reveals itself in his announcement of the unprecedented access to and intimacy with God, whom Jesus introduces to his disciples and to us the Church through them as our Heavenly Father. But further, Jesus sets the new day of prayer before us as one of unparalleled confidence. He says, for instance, all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive. Matthew 21, 22.

The Apostle Paul stands in this new day of prayer, and we do as well with him. The Apostle Paul gives his own testimony to this new day in various ways, and in ways that are of such value to us. One way this new day of prayer becomes evident through the Apostle is in his repeated reference from letter to letter with regard to his persistent, incessant prayer.

He tells us that he prays always, and here in Philemon 4, he makes mention of Philemon always being in his prayers. The perpetual character of Paul’s prayers finds their base and motivation in this new day of prayer, in the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom Paul, like we ourselves, is savingly joined. In the new day of prayer which Jesus has brought, Christ himself now, and his Father’s right hand in glory, prays always, and Paul, together with ourselves, savingly united to our word by faith, do the same. Christ, in glory at his Father’s right hand, prays always. Therefore, Paul prays always. And as Paul prays always, savingly united to Christ, who prays always, we who are also saving when united to Christ, do the same. We pray without ceasing.

But there remains another distinguishing mark of the New Day of Prayer when it comes to Paul’s prayers. And I have tried to emphasize that with you, specifically It is Paul’s thanksgiving for other people. Paul’s thanksgiving, his expressed thanksgiving, for other people. You will note his thanksgiving for Philemon, again in verse 4. But why would I say that Paul’s thanksgiving for other people is a hallmark of his appropriation of this New Day of Prayer? Isn’t thanksgiving for other people a characteristic of all biblical prayer? Doesn’t thanksgiving for other people find expression in the Old Testament prayers? in those from the days before Paul and before the formation of the New Testament Church?

Well, as a matter of fact, no. Search the Old Testament as you might, you will not find one expressed instance of saints giving thanks for saints. I will repeat that. Search the Old Testament as you might, you will not find one express instance of saints giving thanks for saints. But you object. Doesn’t Psalm 16 verse 3 come close? Close, but no cigar. Doesn’t Psalm 16 verse 3 come close?

That verse in its King James rendering reads this way, but to the saints that are in the earth, so says David, to the excellent in whom is all my delight. Could we not translate David’s delight in the saints into a thanksgiving, into an expressed thanksgiving for the saint?

But the Hebrew in this verse, and even in the previous verse, verse 2, is very, very difficult. So much so that the accepted King James readings, and I do mean plural there, King James readings, of that previous second verse vary as you move from copy of the King James to copy of the King James. And if you question me on that, you can pick up a King James book King James Pew Bible, and check it against what you find in the rendering that appears in the Psalter selections at the back of the Trinity Hymnal. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, has its own problems in translating verse 3 of that 16th Psalm into the Greek, and came up with something much different from what appears in our English versions. In the Septuagint, instead of the saints being connected to the psalmist’s delight, to David’s delight and his potential thanksgiving, as we usually see it, the Septuagint here sees the saints as the objects of the Lord’s pleasure and delight, making the verse to read quite differently. To say the least, Psalm 16 verse 3 is a disputed text.

However, the disputations aside, this verse does stop short, even in the King James renderings, of explicitly expressing thanksgiving by a saint for the saints. The vocabulary is not there. Now I might say, parenthetically, that it is not as if Psalm 16, verse 3, doesn’t have some bearing upon what Paul says in his prayers and even his thanksgiving for others.

But we have to reserve that for the end of the message. In our survey, someone else may suggest, well, if the Old Testament fails to provide an analog for Paul’s practice of giving thanks for other people, then at least Jesus Christ does, he must. But I’m afraid here, too, you will have trouble proving this point. But what about John 17, you object?

Jesus, I priestly prayer. Surely here, Jesus gives thanks for those whom the Father has given him.” Jesus does, in fact, have much to say about those whom the Father has given him, those who make up his beloved Church. He says, for instance, I pray for them, I pray not for the world, verse 9. Very striking verse. Later on, Jesus prays earnestly for his Church’s sanctification, verse 17, and for her unity.

And while his great love for his elect is powerfully evident in this prayer, lacking again is any explicit expression of thanksgiving to God by Christ for the elect themselves. But this being the case, neither the Old Testament nor Jesus himself providing explicit background for Paul’s practice of giving thanks for other people in his prayers, where then does this practice come from? Is it a pure innovation, something Paul hatched in his own little creative theological mind? Or does it have a profoundly deep foundation within the vast reach of the New Day of Prayer that has now come.

I personally vote for the latter option. But in unraveling this mystery of where this practice comes from, it may first of all take you to a church that may seem to be far removed from the point that I’ve been making. I ask you to look at Ephesians chapter 1 verse 18. Here Paul prays that the Ephesians may know what are the riches of that glory belonging to God’s own inheritance in the saints. It’s a very complicated expression, a very difficult expression that Paul uses here.

But in view in this verse are the riches which God delights in giving his elect. Ephesians chapter 118. Specifically, a gift which he makes of himself. He being the inheritance of his people. He being the wealth and the riches that he gives to his own people.

This verse then has in view the conveyance of the final delight that God takes in his saints by giving himself to them. A delight, however, reciprocated in the complexities of the covenantal relationship that God bears to his people in the gift which his people make of themselves to God in return. that eighteenth verse will cry out for its complement. Not only the inheritance which God is to his people, but the inheritance that the people themselves are to God. In the end, in the final analysis, Even as all things are concluded, it will be made abundantly clear to the people of God the marvels of the sublime covenantal mutuality that God and his people share. God is our inheritance, and we are his. That stands at the very center of the covenant and in the covenantal relationship that God and his people enjoy. And here as well, the very substance, the very substance of the eternal state of glory begins to open up for us to have God and to be had by Him, to possess God and to be possessed by Him. That is what is in view in the covenant And that is what is awaiting the people of God in the great day that is coming, so that the perfection of it will be seen and appreciated.

But now, what is so striking, what is so striking, returning to the problem of Paul’s thanksgiving for other people. What is so striking is that Paul speaks about the relationship between himself and others as similar to and against the background of this relationship between God and his people. You see what is going to happen here. What is striking is that Paul speaks about the relationship between himself and others as similar to and against the background of this relationship that exists between God and his people. In other words, as God and his people are portrayed as taking ultimate mutual delight in one another. So Paul speaks about the mutual delight that he and others take in each other.

Possibly the most instructive text along these lines is 2 Corinthians 1.14, which we’ve read this morning. Here, in deliberate language, intended to give us pause, intended to stop us in our tracks, Paul says, in the literal rendering of it, that he will be the Corinthians’ boast, that he will be the Corinthians’ glory. and they will be his in the day of the Lord Jesus.” The fourteenth verse of 2 Corinthians 1 is a verse that is regularly passed over by interpreters and preachers. because they don’t have the faintest idea of what Paul’s talking about. How can it be that Paul becomes the glory for these Corinthians? There is no glory but Christ, there is no glory but God himself. How can he speak so disrespectfully, so sacrilegiously, even blasphemously?

But here it is, 2 Corinthians 1.14, Paul stating boldly that he will be the Corinthians’ boast, he will be their glory, that’s the literal translation of that verse, and that they will be his boast and glory in the day of the Lord Jesus. Do you see what Paul is doing? He has seen the coming day, the coming day of glory. not only as a day for the consummation of the inheritance which God and his people have in each other, but also as that day in which all the saints, after the pattern of the mutual relationship between God and his own, have a mutual share in each other, in one another, each becoming the other’s ghost and lord. This is consummation in the estimations of the Apostle Paul, it will not be just you and God.

It will be you and God and all who are gods. And as you delight in God, and are compelled to do so, you as well are being constrained to delight in each other and to thank God for each other. You can see heaven from here, my friends. You can see it. You can sense it, and you can express it in your prayers for each other.

It is this very day this glorious day laid hold of by Paul, a new day of prayer that has arrived. It is this infinitely glorious day that forces itself upon Paul’s prayers as he in his present circumstance gives thanks for a man whose name is Philemon, even as he shall at the end boast about Philemon and glory in him. And so it shall be for him throughout eternity. You mustn’t think then that such thanksgiving as is expressed by Paul for Philemon is an affront to God because it robs God of that glory that is due to him alone. for nothing could be further from the truth. It is only because Paul imitates God, it is only because God lives in Paul. It is only because the God who boasts in his own inheritance lives in Paul that Paul boasts in Philemon in imitation of God and gives thanks to him.

In conclusion then, the new day of prayer has come, part and parcel of the new day that is coming at the end of all things. And this new day of prayer presently partakes of that new day of eternity in which the world of the sometimes gives way to the world of the always. Paul, in his prayers, expresses the very reality of this world by not only giving thanks always, but by giving thanks for other people always.

Just as he shall, always in heaven. And yes, I promised you something with regard to Psalm 16, verse 3. It’s not as if we haven’t been prepared for the remarkable substance of false prayer, even by Old Testament texts like Psalm 16, 3, regardless of which translation we follow, or even by Jesus Christ’s own high priestly prayer in John 17. For in heaven you can be sure that David, no less than Jesus Christ himself, will be always giving thanks for you, just as Paul, in his present circumstance, gives thanks for Philemon. But now, even as Paul gives thanks for Philemon as an expression in this world of life and the will to come, may we all here, today, commit ourselves to do the same with regard to each other.

Truly, if you have a heart to understand it and ears to hear, I am nothing less than your ghost and your glory in the day of the Lord Jesus, and you are mine. And may this be evident in our prayers as we give thanks to God. for one another. This is the covenant. And this is glory. And this is our life.

Lord, we remember the disciples who came to their son and asked them to teach them how to pray. And Lord, we would be instructed by him and further instructed by him from your right hand. And Lord, even as the Apostle Paul is conformed to his Savior, in the prayers that he offers up, may we be conformed as well. And truly, Lord, as it was Paul’s practice to give thanks for other people, those to whom he was bound in the common faith in Jesus Christ, may we be pleased, O God, delighted to give thanks for one another. As it is today, so it shall ever be. And Lord, even in our prayers, we are prepared

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