Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Have you ever had to teach something that you've known really well for a long time, but that you've never taught? Maybe it's something that you're a subject matter expert at. Maybe it's something that is just a talent, a skill that you've nurtured along the way. You kind of just learned it in the school of hard knocks, and now you've got it down. Like if that thing breaks, you know how to repair it. If this task needs to be done, you know how to do it. Yeah, but then somebody comes along and they're like, hey, would you teach, uh, would you teach me how you do that? And then maybe you've had a moment of pause right there where you go, huh. Well, I've never really tried to think about how I would say it to somebody else. I just sort of know how it works and kind of know what to do. And then when you go through the exercise of figuring out how to say it, you have to explore it all from a new angle. You have to explore it afresh and anew, and you discover a whole bunch of things about it that you didn't know before. Because I feel this, I feel this most of all with this, the conversations that we have here. This podcast makes me feel that way because I really like the Bible. I read it a lot. I went to school for this and everything, but man, then we start going through it. I turn on the microphone to sit and talk with you, people I respect, people I know to be profoundly competent. And I anticipate the perfectly logical questions that you would ask of a given text. And I go, I'm gonna have to think about that for a minute. I don't, I'm not sure I know enough to speak coherently about that. Let me think. There's a little passage here on the front end of Philemon where Paul just says a bunch of nice stuff about Philemon. And in the middle of that, there's a little statement of blessing or like a wish that Paul has for Philemon that he throws out in here that I think relates to the phenomenon I was just describing about having to teach stuff you feel like you have on lockdown because there's a blessing going over it all again. So here's the little passage. It is one, two, it's three verses. And maybe the cynic could look at these three verses and say, well, this is the butter-up part. This is the part where Paul tries to make Philemon feel good so that then Paul can ask for something difficult. Maybe somebody who's even more cynical could say, This is the first bread of the turd sandwich. Here on the front end, we've got the tasty, fluffy bread of nice compliments. Then in the middle, we've got the unpleasant turd, but the end there's more nice stuff like we were talking about yesterday. Like Epaphras is hi, Mark is here too, everybody loves you, prepare a room for me, it'd be so nice to see you. And you know, the fluffy, delicious bread on the front end and the back end of the turd sandwich makes the turd part go down better. Okay, that'd be one way to break down Philemon. I choose to believe that the whole thing is very sincere and forthright. I choose to believe that both parties, Philemon and Paul, know exactly what the exercise is here. I read between the lines and see a decent amount of history here between these two guys, such that Paul could write a letter like this and it wouldn't be weird or out of the ordinary. It's not gonna make their relationship weird. So because I read it that way, I think this little passage I'm about to read you is sincere. Also, it's probably strategic to some level in that even if you're great friends with somebody, it's kind of nice to just remind them, hey, you're killing it. You're awesome, you're great. I'm gonna say something that I don't know how you're gonna react to next, but I just want that to be said in the context of how much I respect you. That can be sincere and not a manipulative game. Well, you make of it what you will. Here's what Paul says in praise of Philemon. I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints. Okay, there's some stuff there that probably doesn't need a lot of commentary from me. You get it. Uh, I thank God because you're faithful. Sweet. Yeah, I get that. Uh what a beautiful thing to say to somebody else. What a beautiful thing to have said to you. Uh, your love gives me great joy because you're encouraging not just to me, but you're encouraging to other people I care about. You refresh the saints, that refreshes me. You're awesome. Thank you, Philemon. Those two sentences on the front end and the back end of this nice words for Philemon section here. I don't think they're very complicated. I don't think we need to dwell on that much. But this middle one, I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Now that's interesting to me because there's an equation here. Uh the benediction, the the blessing that Paul is invoking toward Philemon, the thing that Paul is asking God to give Philemon is an impulse toward sharing his faith with other people. Why? Well, you would think so that more people will become Christians, right? I mean, why do you share your faith with people? Let me help people know that Jesus is real to show them the truest, realist thing. I mean, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here. That would seem to me the to be the most obvious answer. You share your faith, so other people might become Christians. But Paul frames the outcome of Philemon sharing his faith a little differently. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Interesting. In other words, Philemon, I always thank God for you. You're great, you're awesome at being a Christian, dude. You encouraged the saints. Just 10 nice things, Philemon. Ten nice things. You are fantastic. Also, there's more. And I think the way for you to discover what more there is, is to stay very active in giving away your faith, in articulating faith in Christ to outsiders, to others. Keep telling people about it, and you will keep understanding it better. Well, now go back to that thing that you've been good at for a really long time, but then at some point you were called upon to teach it to somebody else, and it maybe gave you pause for a minute. When you thought long and hard about that thing you know well, and you had to figure out how to pass it along to somebody who's new to it, you learned new things about something you were already very familiar with. It's just how it works. If you really want to understand a topic, what do you do? Teach it. When I really wanted to understand Spanish better, I'd taken a whole bunch of classes and it was kind of clicking, kind of working. When I I kind of wanted to get over the hump in other things that I've tried to learn, what have I done? Well, I've taught it to other people. So I put together a little study group. This sounds like the plot of community, but it's not. You know, put together a little study group where I would tutor people in Spanish, and I learned so much from doing that. Same idea here. Articulating your faith to others will help you understand every good thing we have in Christ. But I think there's an academic level for that where Paul is saying, hey, keep articulating this and figuring out how to say it. I mean, probably Paul understands that if Philemon can say the gospel to a place like Colossae, a town in decline, but with seven to ten flags of variant cultural history flying over it. Like if Philemon can say it there and make it make sense to them, dude can say it anywhere. He's going to be a theological juggernaut. But in addition to that, I think there's another level here, and that is this New Testament principle of giving away the blessings God has given you. And it's so simple and yet so emotionally unobvious to characters in the New Testament, and at times it's emotionally unobvious to you and me. What am I talking about? I mean, for example, forgiveness. Forgiveness is a blessing that we receive from God, and yet we need parables and direct teachings in the Bible to remind us that if we receive forgiveness from God, the expectation is that we're supposed to give away forgiveness to other people. It doesn't stop with you. If you want forgiveness from God, give it away. I mean, heck, the golden rule is a teaching of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. The paraphrase of it is, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you like it when you receive love, give love. If you like it when you receive compassion, give compassion. If you want to imagine that other people might be forgiving with you, be forgiving with others. And this kind of works reflexively as well. And you know, maybe this isn't spelled out in the text, but I think it's really obvious. If you want to imagine that other people wouldn't always cruelly gossip about you and think the worst of you and wish the worst of you, then you've got to not cruelly gossip about other people and wish the worst for them and judge them and think awful things about them in your heart or around other people you like to gossip and complain with. It's a very straightforward principle throughout the whole, really the whole Bible, but throughout the whole New Testament, you've got to give away the blessings that God gives you. They're not meant to be held on to, they're meant to be passed along. And here it appears once again. Apparently, Philemon, who is a pretty impressive guy in the Colossian church, I mean, there's a church that meets in his house, that's pretty good. He's a big enough deal that Paul, Paul, would write a letter to him. And yet, apparently, he still has stuff to learn. I mean, come on, you know, dudes who are very leaderly and in charge of a lot of things and good at business and have money and influence, and people listen to them, and people kind of all everybody wants to be their friend and everything. You know, those guys can be pretty cool, but also they can imagine they are by default right about everything and know everything because of what they've achieved and the esteem they receive from everyone. And here Paul is giving the usual esteem to Philemon. You're great. I always thank God for you. You bless people, but also maybe kind of speaking in a way that would get through the armor to somebody like Philemon without offending his pride and saying, you know, turd sandwich within a turd sandwich, hey dude, you have things to learn. And the way to learn it is to be self-sacrificial in giving away your faith, to share with others, to put yourself in the shoes of people who are beneath you in terms of status, in terms of knowledge, in terms of aptitude. Figure out how to articulate your faith and express it and manifest it to people who aren't blessed with all the things that you are blessed with. And in doing so, I know this is a lot of paraphrasing, but I don't think I'm crazy here. And in doing so, you'll have an understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. In other words, dude, you've got a ways to go, and here is a way to get there. I like that. I think the obvious final thought for you and me as we reflect on that is to move past applauding Paul for what a good job he did of getting through to this slave owner, Philemon. We need to move past that and we need to think of ourselves as the recipient of this letter. I pray that you, whoever you Christian might be, who are listening to this, I know not everyone here is a Christian, but those of you who are, I pray that you, Christian, would be active in sharing your faith so that you'll have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Apparently, giving this away per the final commission of Jesus as he ascends to the right hand of the Father in the Bible, apparently giving this away is a blessing to others, but somehow in doing that is a blessing to us as well. And we experience the fullness of Christ when we put ourselves in the shoes of others and thoughtfully and creatively and generously give away what God has so generously given to us. Yeah, that's good for now. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.