3: Oh, I love it. Hey,
can we just take a moment and celebrate the worship that we just got to
experience? Uh, listen,
can we just lift up the name of the Lord and like just with a,
with a shout of celebration for the opportunity to worship Amen.
And, and Hope Community Church at all of our campuses and those of you watching
online, it is great to join you today in worship. I am excited about this time.
Uh, if you have never met me, my name's Dwayne Calvin,
so I want to introduce myself just a little bit.
And I love to spend some time chatting with you. Any opportunity I get,
I'd love to do that.
And we're gonna jump into the second week of a series that we've been calling
trust issues in just a moment. But before we get there,
I kind of wanna start us off with a little bit of levity.
So I want you to watch this video, check this out.
5: Fall, and we're just, it'll be an exercise and building trust, uh,
between one another. So Harrison, if you don't mind going first, uh,
step up here on this chair and close your eyes. All right?
And then everybody fill in and we're gonna ask you
to fall and then they will catch you. So you have to trust us.
I'm gonna count to three. Just relax and fall. Okay?
1, 2, 3. No, Arizona.
3: So why did I put that up there? one because it is funny, like fell out.
That's just funny. Like he went the wrong direction on a trust fall. But two,
um, because I have done a ton of those, uh, those are called trust falls.
Now he got the object of it wrong.
The goal is to actually fall back into the people's hands. Uh,
and if you have anything to do with youth ministry,
if you've ever been around student ministry, uh,
I started in studio industry very early on in the 1990s.
And if you have ever been around them,
you know that trust falls are like just a part of the culture.
If you've ever done a corporate retreat,
maybe you've been asked to do a trust fall. Now it's really tough to do,
but it's really essential to the culture. Wherever you are working or serving,
uh, you're putting your trust in another person's hands and you're hoping that
they're gonna come through with you, right?
They're gonna come through for you in a moment where you need them to come
through for you. Now,
I remember stepping up on those podiums and doing the trust fall. And listen,
I got, I, I'm, I'm 200 something pounds. And so when I was falling backwards,
like I had some trust in the people around me and,
and some of them went well, some of them didn't go so well.
But what I learned in those moments is that as you closed your eyes,
you came to this reality and this conclusion that placing your trust in other
people,
even for a moment can be really scary.
Like, uh, he can be really difficult to do that.
And last week we heard from Clay about the idea of trust.
He began our series by laying out some simple truths about trust.
And here's the first one. This is our hard truth, right? Here's the first one.
We all have trust issues.
Like every single one of us has trust issues.
And what do I mean when I say that? Uh,
I mean that every single one of us has likely had our trust broken from another
person, or we have experienced what it feels like to break someone else's trust.
And the conundrum that that can be for our lives.
So all of us have trust issues. Here's the second truth.
It's just as difficult. Trust requires risk.
Like trust is hard to come by and it's risky business to step out and
trust people.
It's a risk to trust someone else because there is a possibility that at the end
of all of your trust in that person that you will probably be hurt.
And so all of us have trust issues and trust requires risk.
You know where I see the effects of trust more than any place else
that I've experienced in the world? You guessed it. The church,
there's a whole term that's called church hurt that permeates the culture of
churches. Like there's this whole thing that's creeping around with us.
Many of us carry baggage from other churches,
from other situations in our lives. And when we walk into a new church,
it can be really difficult to trust. Oh yeah,
I'm not gonna shy away from it at all.
There are a lot of challenges in the church. We got a lot of issues.
And here's what makes it really challenging, right? Uh, the church, uh,
the word that's used to describe the church is a word ecclesia.
And if you've ever heard it before, uh, it simply means the church.
And it doesn't describe a building at all.
Typically when we think of the church,
we think of the building with the steeple inside. There's the people.
But that's not what an ecclesia is at all. As a matter of fact,
it was never meant to describe a building. It was meant to describe a people,
a people who were connected like a family.
So not a collection of buildings, but a gathering of God's people, a family.
You know,
a few weeks ago our lead pastor Jason Gore talked about this and he talked about
how we as the church are a family of families and those families interact with
each other through this Christ-centered relationship.
And it becomes a part of how we live our lives.
That's what the family of God was always supposed to do. And b,
and our relationships are built on this foundation of trust in the church.
There are all kinds of relationships. As you become a part of the family of God,
you'll experience relationship with other people.
And those relationships have to be built on trust. You see,
it's trust that anchors the relationships. In truth,
trust is the currency that pays the cost of the shortcomings,
which will inevitably happen in our relationships.
But that currency, that trust is fragile
and it's oftentimes easily broken. When trust is broken,
especially as a part of a body of believers, as a part of the family of God,
it leaves long lasting effects.
So today the question will be addressing as we move through this trust
issues series is how do we live a life of trust
as a part of the family of God? Now,
to do that,
we're gonna be walking through a book of the Bible that's kind of a little known
book. Uh, as you've read the Bible all the way through,
you have certainly read this book. Uh,
it's not talked about a whole lot and it's probably not one that you would jump
into if you were jumping into a brand new Bible study. For instance,
if we were starting a small group and we wanted to jump into the Bible together,
most of us would probably select the book of John. Well,
nobody goes into the Bible study says, you know what? We ought to study,
we ought to study the book of Philemon. And I know what you're thinking.
Who's Philemon ? Well,
he is an essential part of the Bible and that's the book we're gonna jump in
today. So if you have your Bibles,
go ahead and open 'em up to Philemon where you are gonna start at verse eight.
But it's one of the shortest books in the Bible and there's a whole lot of
nuggets of wisdom that I believe can help us to go a long way when it comes to
this issue of trust.
Now a little bit about the book while you're turning there to Philemon chapter
one, there's only one chapter, right? Uh, verse eight,
Philemon is one of the shortest books in the Bible.
The book examines the relationship of two men who are both a part of the family
of God.
And the men are the apostle Paul who wrote a significant part of the New
Testament, but also this other guy named Philemon.
And he is the namesake of the book. It's also written in the form of a letter,
which is pretty normal for Paul. Uh,
he writes letters all throughout the New Testament of the Bible.
And one last thing about this is that Paul is actually writing in
prison.
He's been put in jail and he's still writing the people to encourage them
in the faith.
And it's important to note that he's not in jail for his brutality. You see,
early on in Paul's life,
he was known for rounding up Christians with the hopes of having them killed.
But something has changed in Paul's life.
He's had an encounter with Jesus Christ and has transformed him from the inside
out. So when he writes from prison, it is not because of his brutality,
it's instead because of his faith,
he's been changed by God and he's been locked up for
choosing to share the good news, what we call the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Well, from prison is where Paul writes to Philemon
Verse one and through verse seven, you get your typical Pauline greeting, right?
He thanks God for the people he's writing to.
He thanks God for the journey that he's on.
And that's the way he typically opens just about every one of his letters known
as epistles. He opens them up by saying, I thank God.
And can I just say this for a second? I'm gonna take a quick time out.
Can I just take a time out and say,
what if we wrote our emails and our text message and all of our correspondence?
What if our Instagram posts started by thanking God for what we are
experiencing in life?
And then by sharing with the other person that we wanna pray for them,
that we love them and that we thank God for them as well?
I think the internet would be a different place
because we typically start our texts and our emails and our Instagram posts
by saying, check me out. Look at what I'm doing.
Well, Paul is saying, check out God and look at what he's doing.
And when we get to verse eight, when he finishes his greeting,
which is where we're gonna start today,
the tone of Paul's message changes just a bit.
He begins to get to the meat of why he's writing,
and he starts verse eight by saying these words, you can read along with me.
Therefore,
although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what
you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.
It is as none other than Paul and old man.
I love how he describes himself and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus that I
appeal to you on behalf of my son animus,
who became my son while I was in change. Formerly he was useless to you,
but now he's become useful both to you and to me.
Now, he starts this dialogue here by unpacking two things. One is,
is the fact that he could have chosen to play the apostle card, right?
He could have demanded what he wanted. He could have chosen to just say, listen,
this is what I want. Go ahead and do it. But he doesn't play the apostle card.
He instead appeals to the heart of the man he's writing to.
And the other thing that he's doing is that he's introducing us just a bit to a
man named Onesimus. You see, Paul, he could have demanded what he wanted,
but instead he appeals to the heart and the humility of Philemon.
He appeals to him as a brother.
He's operating in this familiarity of a spiritual relationship that him and
Philemon have experienced,
and he's introducing him to a man who has been changed by God.
We'll hear more about that in a little bit.
It's like spiritual father to spiritual son.
And he's offering this greeting. You know,
years ago I used to fly a lot and travel a lot.
And when I would get to the airports, um,
I would always ask for an exit row seat .
And for some reason they would always give it to me.
I think this knew I was a big guy and they'd be like,
that dude needs a bigger seat, right?
But the reason I really believed that they would always offer it to me is
because instead of demanding what I wanted,
I would ask with humility.
I never played the military card or the pastor card. I,
I never played the guy who was like desperate.
I just came over and asked and greeted and said, Hey,
you think it might be okay if there's not a exit road person sitting in it?
You think I might get one? And almost time after time, after time,
I got a seat because I asked with humility
and I treated the people with dignity. Well,
this is the way the apostle Paul is approaching this in all his living and
learning.
He has learned to take the approach of simply asking with humility and care for
what he wants to happen. And so he requests what he wants, not by demanding,
but with a posture of love and of listening.
And he asks on the basis of that love, in verse 10,
he continues his appeal for animus. Here's what he says.
Animus had been previously I, I'm sorry. He says, uh, listen,
I'm gonna start talking about animus and share with you what's going on in the
life of animus.
And so there's a couple things that we need to know before we jump into that
part. First,
Onesimus had been previously in some form of slavery and his
master at the time had been philemon. Now a quick note here,
while the church will never endorse slavery,
the type of slavery that Onesimus is in was a little bit different than what
we've experienced in the United States of America.
The slavery that he's under is something called bond servanthood. Typically,
a person would owe a debt or their family would owe a debt.
And instead of them choosing to pay the debt because they couldn't pay the debt,
they would place themself under bond servanthood.
Oftentimes that bond servanthood ended as the debt was paid off and the person
would put a a wooden earring in their ear and that would signify that the debt
has been paid off, but they've chosen to stay and work for a wage. Well,
this is the kind of slavery that onus has been under and his master
was Philemon. And as a bond servant,
he would've been required to work his way through a debt for his freedom and
often bond service again would choose to stay with their masters.
So this was the nature of their relationship. And for whatever reason,
Onesimus and Philemon have had some sort of dispute and which has caused
Onesimus to run away. And when he ran away, he encounters the apostle Paul,
who knows Philemon, whatever has caused this conflict,
there's a conflict, there's a rift going on.
And what has happened as a result of that rift? You guessed it. Trust issues.
The trust between onus and Philemon has been broken.
This is a place of broken trust.
The relationship feels like it's ruined and neither one of the men are
sure that they can restore it. I mean, have you ever been there before?
You ever been in a moment where your trust has been broken
and you're questioning whether the relationship can ever be restored?
And this happens a lot in the local church.
I experience it when I talk with folks and what I've seen is that most of the
time it's not even a big issue. Uh, it's a small thing.
Remember I said earlier that trust, uh, is a currency that is very fragile.
Like it's really fragile, but sometimes it breaks apart as a part of an ecclesia
Because the people of the church spend close relationships together.
They spend a lot of time together and the smallest things can
cause a rift. And when that happens,
we find ourselves in the place of ESUs and Philemon.
It can be a simple conversation that goes off the rails where somebody's talking
a little too much with a little too much passion about something and offends
somebody in the room.
And all of a sudden you're not sure if you trust to sit in the room with that
person. It can be a secret that someone wanted you to keep,
that they shared with you in confidence and you knew that you had to share that
secret because man, even though it's a secret, you knew that if you kept it,
it'd be detrimental to the person. And for them they feel betrayed for you,
you feel like you helped them, that creates trust issues.
It could be simply a commitment that somebody said that they were gonna do.
I was gonna follow up with you, I was gonna call you and I didn't,
and there might be a good reason why I didn't follow up.
But still doesn't mean that trust hasn't been broken.
These are all things that break trust.
And these two men have had a similar experience. Their trust has been broken.
So Paul.
6: Who.
3: Is a spiritual grandfather in the faith,
he begins to plea on behalf of Philemon, uh,
and also on behalf of animus for them to somehow reconcile this relationship.
In verse 10, here's what he says. He says, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus.
He calls him his son who became my son even while I was in chains.
He goes on in verse 11 and he says,
formerly he Onesimus was useless to you Philemon.
But now he has become useful to both you and to me.
Here's what Paul knows. Something about Onesimus has changed
and the thing that has changed is because he's become a follower of Jesus,
he's been changed. And when we get to verse 12, Paul says,
I'm sending him, he calls him his very heart,
I'm sending you my heart, I'm sending him back to you.
And I would've liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in
helping me while I'm in chains for the gospel. Key statements here in verse 12,
I'm sending him back to you because he is like my heart.
He has been so helpful to me. But man, I gotta send him back to you.
Verse 13, he says, I wanted to keep him because he was so helpful.
Animus has come to the Lord and something has changed about him where he might
have once not been able to be trusted.
He is now trustworthy and Paul knows
it and he steps in
verse 14. He says, I would've loved to keep him with me,
but I wouldn't wanna do anything without your consent.
And I didn't want it to feel forced.
I wanted a favor of keeping him with you because he's my heart.
You know,
I love the way Paul approaches this as a spiritually mature follower of Jesus,
right? He has an opportunity in the middle of the mess to bring a little bit of
gasoline to the fire and go, you're right, that guy Philemon, he's horrible.
But instead he brings a bucket of cool running water
through the form of Jesus Christ.
And he's stepping in to try to reconcile these men to each other and to try to
restore the trust that has been lost.
And can I just say like we need more people in the body of Christ who are
willing to do that more people who are willing to step into the messy parts that
happen in the church where trust has been broken and it's hard to reconcile.
We need more people to step in and bring that kind of reconciliation
through the word of God.
And typically those folks are your spiritual fathers
and mothers, your spiritual grandfathers and grandmothers.
And can I just say like,
if you're skilled in this area and you know you're one of those people,
we need you.
It is also a thing that is not about age, right?
Spiritual grandfathers and grandmothers has nothing to do with age.
Oftentimes they are older folks, they've been walking with the Lord for a while.
We just need folks who have been walking with God for a long time who have lived
and learned just a bit about how to step in the messy situations.
Folks who have discipled other people, folks who have stepped in in the past,
in the middle of conflict and let everybody involved to the Lord.
We need more folks who have a heart for the next generation of the church.
We need you. You know, I think back to me as a young Christian,
I was a hot mess. My wife can vouch for it. I'm telling you right now,
if it weren't for the spiritual fathers and mothers and grandfathers and
grandmothers of the church, I'm not sure that I'm standing before you today.
You know, if you wanna know about more about how you can help in that way,
just reach out to your campus Pastor.
He would love to hear that Paul and pure
spiritual grandfather Fashionist steps in here and he shares that Onesimus has
changed. Onesimus has become a Christ follower.
And what Paul is asking Philemon here to do is to create an opportunity to
rebuild trust and rebuilding trust. If you've ever done it, uh,
it is hard work. It takes time. It is difficult, it is hard work.
But God can do anything.
You know, in the middle of this,
the two behaviors that I see that help to restore that kind of trust more than
anything else, this first one is really hard. It's just forgiveness,
being willing to forgive for an offense,
being willing to take a moment and say,
I'm gonna choose to forgive you even though I could choose to continue to hold
you hostage. See, the first one is forgiveness.
And then the second one, this takes time,
is offering the opportunity to rebuild trust
and offer. That opportunity is hard,
but it's necessary. See,
what I've learned is that forgiveness is not the same as trust, right?
Like we can forgive people but it doesn't mean that we completely trust them.
Nor should we probably do that.
But what forgiveness does when we start at the place of forgiving somebody is it
opens the door for trust to begin right? It opens the gate,
the prison that we have locked them in and it opens the door to forgiveness.
And what's on the other side if we choose not to offer an opportunity for
forgiveness, here's what happens to us.
We really kind of become bitter people because when we go through one trip to
shoot, we put a wall in front of us and then we say, I'm gonna be fine.
I'm just not gonna let anybody through that wall.
And then we put another wall up when another trust issue happens and we say,
I'm not gonna let anybody through that wall.
And then we put another wall up when another trust issue happens and we say,
I'm not gonna let anybody through that wall. And then we put one behind us
and we think that we're keeping out the possibility of being hurt.
We think we're keeping out the possibility of never having to trust again.
What we have actually done.
6: Is.
3: Box ourselves in what we've actually done,
is isolating ourselves.
6: For.
3: Any opportunity.
6: To.
3: Trust again. And I don't believe that's where God would have us to be.
This is not where the apostle Paul wants these two men to be.
So he offers and appeals to their forgiving heart.
He appeals to their opportunity to rebuild trust.
6: And.
3: He says, come on man, would you try it?
Would you trust again?
And Paul knows the same thing that the rest of us know
that it's impossible to build trust with someone who is consistently
untrustworthy. He knows that.
6: But.
3: He's offering an opportunity for these men to be reconciled
by the blood of Jesus Christ.
So what he lays in front of them is an opportunity. And in verse 15, he says,
perhaps the reason that he orus has been separated from you for a little
while, Philemon was so that you might have him back forever. You see,
he sees the opportunity that this is not just two men,
but this is a kingdom opportunity.
This is a thing where the trust will be rebuilt and the kingdom will benefit as
a result like every other relationship in the church. Listen,
when we start reconciling our mess, when we start moving past our trust issues,
the kingdom benefits.
Paul knows this. You know,
if I were the enemy and I wanted to take the church out,
I would hit him right where it hurts. I would punch him right into trust.
You ever been in a situation where trust was broken? You know,
I got a family like everybody else and I have a spiritual family that's a part
of the church and and I've seen how when these things happen,
it slows everything down. All of a sudden we don't want to be in the same room.
All of a sudden we don't wanna spend life or do life together.
All of a sudden we start separating ourselves from each other in a way that the
devil dances in.
And so the opportunity to rebuild trust
is a kingdom issue.
And I believe that this is the thing that a lot of churches struggle with.
6: And.
3: A lot of families struggle with in general.
There's never an opportunity to rebuild trust.
6: How do we.
3: Ever.
6: Reconcile? And.
3: So he offers these men an opportunity and he closes out the letter by
saying in verse 16, no longer a slave, listen,
he says, no longer a slave. He's not coming back to you as your slave.
He's no longer a slave, but he is better than a slave.
As a dear brother, I want you to receive him as a dear brother.
He is very dear to me,
but even dearer to you both as a fellow man,
as a brother in the Lord. So if you consider me a partner,
welcome him as you would welcome me.
If he has done anything wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.
I Paul am writing this with my own hand. I will pay it back.
Not to mention that you already owe me your very self.
I do wish, brother,
that I may have some benefit from you and the Lord refresh my heart
in Christ.
6: And.
3: I am confident of your obedience and I write to you knowing that you'll even do
more than I ask. And one more thing,
prepare a guest room for me because I hope to be restored to you in an answer to
your prayers.
I love how he talks in verse 21 where he says,
I'm confident of your obedience and I write to you knowing that you'll do even
more than I ask translation.
6: Brother.
3: You got this. I'm trusting that you got this.
I'm trusting that God will work in this and that you two will be able to
reconcile. I'm,
I'm trusting that God can do the work of allowing you two to choose to trust
again. Uh, he's saying that like as a part of God's church,
two men who may have offended each other and trust may have been broken.
But if you can uh, just rest in the Lord and let him rest and rule over you,
if you can let the word of God wash over you, I trust that you can do this.
And even more,
not only is he asking these men to choose to trust each other
and to choose to trust him as Paul,
he's also asking him to choose to trust God.
I told you this is a small book, but it's so powerful
and he knows that these men have work to do still,
but call Paul advocates for them to start the work of reconciling trust.
You know, in a rebuilding of trust.
What I've seen as the greatest weapon to help along the journey
is our simple dependence on Jesus Christ. You know,
I think oftentimes in the church we put things in such high regard, uh,
our relationships with people, our time, what we're doing, how we're serving,
where we're going, what's happening.
And sometimes we forget that the first element that should ever happen,
the first person we should ever trust is God.
And there's a reason why,
because God shows us how to trust and he
also shows us how to be trustworthy and,
and when we trust God,
he has this way of showing us what is right and what is wrong and where to go
and where not to go, and how to move and proceed through our trust issues.
He guides our steps. The Bible says that man makes his plans,
but God orders his steps.
And that comes with simple trust in Jesus Christ.
And so our focus should always be on Jesus.
Even as we move through these trust issues.
I don't believe that we can truly reconcile.
6: Without.
3: Our trust being in the living. God,
maybe you're here today and you have never accepted Jesus as your Lord
and Savior. Can I just say like,
would you please stop at one of our next steps areas and talk to somebody
if you have a desire at all to follow Jesus,
we would love to talk to you about that.
And here's what I know that some of you here you have carried with you into this
body of believers, some trust issues, maybe from your relationships,
some trust issues, maybe from a previous church
or maybe when you got here 'cause we're not exempt from the trust issues.
Maybe we somehow broke your church. Trust is the church.
Can I just offer to you an opportunity to rebuild that trust
by first relying on Jesus Christ
and then my second offering an opportunity
to do better.
Our trust was always meant to be in God.
And I know that sometimes this gets messy.
Anytime you let a whole lot of people into something,
you better expect it to get messy because we have a sin nature.
And the devil will love nothing more than for us to stop trusting each other and
to be stopped in the move of the church. Now listen,
God is sovereign and he is gonna do his work.
So the trust issues don't slow us down,
But there's work that needs to be done
and he wants to use us, his church to do that.
I told you earlier
that maybe the two things that are the best when it comes down to restoring
trust are first this posture of forgiveness.
And so just for a moment, as a pastor,
as a member of the body of Christ
and as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ,
I just wanna offer you the most sincere apology.
And I don't even know what may have happened in your circumstances or any could.
I don't know what has happened, but I can tell you like
we're sorry.
And I also want to encourage you
to maybe begin the journey again of rebuilding trust.
And that may mean that you start with a conversation.
We would love to have that conversation with you.
You could stop at the next steps area or grab one of our staff members,
let 'em know what you're walking through and they would do everything they can
to serve you.
Maybe it starts with some time of prayer before the Lord where you just need to
let something go that's been bugging you and you've been carrying it from church
to church to church.
Maybe it's time to lay it down at the altar and let Jesus do the work of
restoring trust in you.
Or maybe it's an opportunity for the first time
to accept him as your Lord and Savior
and let him do the work of restoring trust in your life.
Whatever it is. I want to encourage you today to take a step of faith.
I wanna take a moment now to simply pray for you. Father God,
I thank you for your grace and mercy. I thank you for your love.
I thank you God for your word because it reaches into the depths of our hearts
and it changes us from the inside out. Father,
this is hard stuff,
but if we as the church are gonna be what you would have us to be,
it's work that needs to be done.
So Father,
I pray for every person walking through trust issues in this very moment.
I pray for all of us as the church as a whole, not just this church,
this one expression, but the whole expression of the church, the big C church,
that we would begin to get this more right as we move forward.
Father, help us.
We want to have a body of believers
who walks in the trust of the Lord
And the trust of each other. And we need your power to do that.
We thank you in Jesus' name.
2: Amen.