Here's a pretty fun fact about me. I have never been to jail. I've never been arrested. I've been to jail. Like I've visited people at jail before, but I've never been the one that's in jail for the police crimes. I got nothing. I got some traffic tickets, maybe a parking ticket, like a campus parking ticket once. Now I got a pretty boring record. But I wonder what the closest I've ever been. I should have thought about this beforehand. Now let's do this game. What is the closest I've ever been to jail? I guess I guess just a speeding ticket. You can probably go fast enough when you're a teenager that they put you in jail. No, no, no, no, no, no. Lake Forest, Illinois, in college. That's the closest I ever came to jail. We used to go down to the Lake Forest Beach there in the North Shore, fancy North Shore of Chicago when I went to college there, back when my college was still open. And one time we were going down there and there was a street sign in the gutter. It wasn't like a normal street sign. It was like a construction orange temporary street sign or something. It was just in the gutter. There were leaves and trash on it. I don't know why I was there. But I saw it and I thought, I should pick that up. And then I thought, yeah, but why? I don't then I have to carry it. I don't that wouldn't be great. And but then my buddy, he's like, I'm gonna pick it up. And he did, and he carried it around on his shoulder, like hacksaw Jim Duggan, eh, you know, thumbs up and everything. We went down to the beach and he still had that sign from the gutter, and we were super well behaved. There were no shenanigans at the beach. I mean this was like, you know, really well-behaved Christian college kids. But the cop came down and shined a flashlight on us. He was like, You there, you're under arrest for police crime. You're coming with me, Buster, and he arrested my friend. It could have been me. That's probably the closest I ever came. I could have picked up the sign, but I didn't pick up the sign. I guess I feel pretty good about that. I've never been to jail at all. Not trying to make you feel bad if you ever went to jail. I am sorry that happened. That's got to be a pretty jarring thing. I can't imagine how I would feel if I ever went to jail, but I have dreams about it all the time. I have guilt dreams, like sweaty guilt dreams sometimes where I do something real bad, but it isn't me. It's just a dream. And when I wake up, I I feel amazing that I didn't do the thing and I'm not actually in trouble with the law and I'm not actually going to jail. I think it'd be very hard on me emotionally and psychologically. If I did something bad, I and I got a ticket one time as a kid. I had I went and did the court appearance thing. I think my parents just wanted me to learn about that. And they said, this is state of Colorado versus Matt Whitman. It was for like an eight miles an hour over the speed limit ticket or something. But still, that phrase, ah, it was so jarring. Even if I went to jail for something that I didn't do wrong or the government's wrong and I'm right, I still think it would rattle me big time, which is why I don't know how Paul kept his head straight for all the times that he got arrested because that cat was in jail a ton. And in Philemon, I've told you this already before, but you know, maybe you're just jumping in here. And this is your first episode on Philemon with me. So this will be news to you. In Philemon, Paul alludes to the fact that he is in jail while he's writing this letter in literally one out of every five verses in the entire book. Five mentions of being in jail out of 25 verses. That's very impressive. Now, we've talked before about why he would do this, and I think clearly it's a way to, you know, well, who's in chains? Slaves and people in jail. What's the letter about? Maybe letting somebody out of slavery chains who shouldn't be there. Well, what authority do you have to speak about that? Paul, well, Clink, you know, he raises up his wrists, like, I got these chains here. I know a little bit about what it is to be in bondage, Philemon. So maybe you could cut my buddy Onesimus a break. I think that's why Paul keeps bringing it up. But the funny thing is, Paul was a veteran of jail by the time he's writing Philemon and, you know, whatever. We're guessing early 60s, maybe 62 AD. And Paul leads with that detail right out of the gate. Philemon 1-1, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy, our brother. I mentioned the other day that that language, a prisoner of Christ, is something that appears all over the New Testament. We tracked some of those down. But that phrase, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, is something that Paul could have written a lot. Well, how many times do we actually know how often Paul was a prisoner? Because maybe he'd sound like kind of a baby if he's like, I got arrested one time for political persecution. Now I'm writing this letter. You know, he might come off as soft, but I think he'd been in jail already really a lot at this point. So let's go and check out Prison Paul's prison cred record here. Act 16 is the first time that he ends up in prison. This is his second missionary journey. They went to Philippi. Philippi, that name should pop for you. That town is named for Alexander the Great's dad. And they have this crazy encounter there that takes us a little ways into the world of Greek thought and mythology, stuff that the Colossians would have thought about a lot too. There was a girl who was possessed by a pythonic spirit, that being the spirit of Python. Python, this is from memory, so if I miss something here, you can correct me in the conversation on Patreon or Spotify or wherever we're talking. But I think, if I recall correctly, Python is like a deity or a dragon half-deity thing that was some sort of guardian or presence at the shrine at Delphi. Delphi was the place where the oracles lived in the movie 300, which is, I find to always be the most common touch point. We were trying to talk about the golden age of Greek history. Everybody's like, I remember that one, you know, Gerard Butler and the underwear and everything. And Delphi is where they went to consult those weird, freaky Oracle ladies. I think Delphi, which is a place I have visited myself, is I think there's like some kind of gas or something there that I maybe remember hearing used to emanate out of some, you know, Yellowstone-like fissures in the earth, and people could huff it, and then they'd say goofy, quixotic stuff that other people would interpret and assign meaning to, and the oracle thing just became like all the different city-states and everything would fight in Greece, but the one thing they could agree on is that the oracle there was kind of like this neutral party that would just tell you stuff, and corrupt people would hear what they want to hear, and it was kind of a way that the gods would play tricks on mortals. But there's a spirit there of Python. Maybe the Python god thing or creature guarded the underworld or guarded the access to the oracle or something like that. And so there's this slave girl, and I mean the Bible treats it like it actually happened, which is, I mean, it's kind of weird, but it treats it like she actually had this pythonic spirit and could actually, you know, tell the future, and that was worth a lot of money. Some slave owner guy, interesting that we're back to that subject matter, figured out he could exploit this kid and her, I guess you'd call it demonic possession. So, probably right now, if you don't remember the story, you're going, how does this end with Paul in jail? What I just don't see the clear pathway to this, but well, here's the story. By my count, this is the first time we're sure Paul ends up in jail. Once, when we were going to the place of prayer, the reason we're using the language we there is because Luke, the author of Acts, is with Paul at this point. We were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, These men are servants of the Most High God who are telling you the way to be saved. Dang, I mean that's kind of wild, right? I mean, the behavior here is like how the demons behave when they encounter Christ in the gospels, right? Like they they recognize Jesus for who he is. So, I mean, that's kind of a fascinating thing to think about in terms of what we do with Greek and Roman lore and things like that biblically. Interesting. She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the Spirit, In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her. At that moment, the Spirit left her. And when the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them to the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice. Well, the crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. Now, this playbook we've seen a lot. People whose business is threatened by Paul and the message of Jesus get real mad. They make some sort of public appeal. They say, you know, this is going to upset the balance of things. And then Paul gets a whooping and sometimes arrested, sometimes hit with rocks. This same kind of situation is going to repeat a couple pages over. Sorry, I bumped the mic in Ephesus. At any rate, here's how it played out. After they'd been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in stocks. Okay, this is complete bull crap, by the way, because Paul is a Roman citizen. You can't just flog people without a trial. Everything here is way out of whack. The original audience would have caught this. Immediately, red flags going off the same, like when you watch a football game and you're like, hey, hey, hey, hey, the play clock ran out. That's a delay of game. Where's and then the flag comes in and you're like, yeah, there, I told you. That's how you can't do that. People would have been doing that with this treatment of Paul here. Joke's gonna be on them. He's a Roman citizen, but either way, here he is in jail, maybe for the first time in his life. And will he just absolutely crumble like I would if I were in jail, or is he gonna handle it? He handles it. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. And then suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose, and the jailer woke up, and then the jailer goes to kill himself, and then Paul's like, Don't do it. We didn't even run away. And then the guy's like, What do I have to do to be saved? And he becomes a Christian. And then after that, there's a reckoning the next day when it's daylight. You know, the everything gets sorted out, and the jailer reports. And then Paul says to the officers, hey, they beat us publicly without a trial, even though we're Roman citizens, and they threw us into this prison. And the magistrates are like, Yeah, and you guys can just go. Uh, you can go in peace. And Paul's like, No, huh? No, no, we're gonna need you to put on your little outfits, your little beating outfits. You're and you're gonna just have to march us through town, and uh, your leaders here are gonna have to escort us out and acknowledge their mistake. And so the officers reported this to the magistrates, and when they heard that, they were like, Oh no, and that was not good. And they did. They came out and escorted Paul and Silas. That's to me the most interesting prison stay that Paul has. This is not the prison stay. I mean, this is just overnight. This is not the prison stay that the letter of Philemon is born out of. But what an interesting thing that the first time you get thrown into jail, God miraculously breaks you out. People become Christians because of it, you're vindicated, the Greek gods, the law, nature, God himself, everything is saying, Yeah, this is my servant. He's saying things that are true. This guy's right, these clowns are wrong. Bottom line is this Paul was really good at being in jail and he had a lot of practice at it. Also, God kept showing up when he faced these circumstances, and Paul learned to be content under this kind of pressure in that kind of environment, and he kept a level head and produced a whole lot of what we call the New Testament while he was in jail. The rest of the jail stories are gonna get a quicker treatment, but this kind of gives you a sense of where Paul's headspace would be when he was writing from jail, and Philemon is a letter from jail. Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother. Hey, we got most of a verse done. I feel really good about that. Jail's a tough deal. If you've been there, I don't envy you. If you're there right now, I'm sorry. I hope it is what it needs to be, and I hope it is over as soon as it can possibly be. Grace and peace to everybody in whatever circumstances we might find ourselves. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute bible hour podcast. Let's do this against me.