At church a few weeks ago, my husband took note of how our pastor, Nate Shurden, thanked God for the book of Philemon, calling it “this postcard epistle in the corpus of the canon.” It’s a little book that can get lost between the giants on either side, yet it has a powerful message.
Philemon also creates a challenge for Bible teachers in a time when, as a culture and as the body of Christ, we are dealing—perhaps like never before—with the lingering shame of chattel slavery in the United States. We want Paul not to just regulate slavery, but to call for it to be abolished. And yet he doesn’t.
In this episode of Help Me Teach the Bible, Nate Shurden, pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee, helps us deal with inevitable questions about slavery that might arise when we teach Philemon, as well as other books in the Bible. He also capably demonstrates numerous ways we can get to the all-important gospel from this “postcard epistle.”
Free eBook by Tim Keller: ‘The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness’
Imagine a life where you don’t feel inadequate, easily offended, desperate to prove yourself, or endlessly preoccupied with how you look to others. Imagine relishing, not resenting, the success of others. Living this way isn’t far-fetched. It’s actually guaranteed to believers, as they learn to receive God’s approval, rather than striving to earn it.
In Tim Keller’s short ebook, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The Path To True Christian Joy, he explains how to overcome the toxic tendencies of our age一not by diluting biblical truth or denying our differences一but by rooting our identity in Christ.
TGC is offering this Keller resource for free, so you can discover the “blessed rest” that only self-forgetfulness brings.
