1. The LORD God declares He Himself will shepherd His sheep. He will seek them out. He will rescue them. He will save. He will gather them in. In other words, the Good Shepherd will take care of His own sheep.
  2. The heart of your sermon is the promise that God, in Jesus, has sought and found each of us. He receives us sinners and invites us to eat with Him at His table.
  3. This is why Paul is still an “example” for us. If this is what God in Christ can do with “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence," imagine what God in Christ can do with you and me.
  4. These words direct the people of God how to live in their identity as God’s children. We would say, this is the reality of our baptismal identity!
  5. Love bids us to choose life, always life, because the love of Jesus has already set us free for a life beyond our wildest imagination.
  6. The reason nothing can come before Jesus is because nothing endures beyond the grave except for Jesus.
  7. As the Spirit does His work, He produces new ways of living for individuals, households (like Philemon’s) and communities, that is, the Church.
  8. All of this is interesting and useful in preparing a sermon, however, there are no explicit words of Gospel in this text. How does one preach without shoe-horning the Gospel into the message, perhaps in an inappropriate or confusing manner?
  9. Love for the brethren should be the hallmark of the Christian Church. It is basic to our witness to an unbelieving world .
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