Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And I think today we're going to round out this side quest, this mini quest that we've been on to try to understand the concept of the authority of the apostles in the New Testament. Paul alludes to that in Philemon verses 8 and 9, when he says, Therefore, although in Christ I, Paul, could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. Paul is setting aside some kind of authority here that Philemon assumed he had, and that clearly Paul assumed he had, and he's foregoing that in the interest of the whatever happens here happening on a voluntary basis. That's what we've been working on for the last few days. That's what we're going to land the plane on right after Jeff plays some music to get us into it. Master and Commander with Russell Crowe. There's a scene where uh a dude, we talked about this a while back, didn't we? Oh well, I'm telling you again, there's a scene where a weak officer who's becoming resented and reviled by the crew who's you know thinking of mutinying, he's weakly walking across the deck, and one of the grumpy, low-ranking sailors gives him the old shoulder check. And the weak officer just snivels. Sorry. And, you know, it's pathetic. But Russell Crowe, the master and commander, he sees it. And from across the ship, he snaps his fingers. You there! He points right at him. Master at arms, clap that man in irons. And then he straight up whips him later on. Look, I don't like you know, ick, but you don't keep order on the high seas. I think really bad things happened. And I imagine Paul and Peter and John and really all the authors of the New Testament being like Russell Crowe's character in that moment. Like, no, no, no, no, no, not an inch. That message doesn't work. That message is for the power of men. That message is a fraud. That is not the real thing. Master at arms, clap that message in irons. They don't tolerate any of it. John checks that kind of stuff with an apostolic authority that is very gentle. Peter is more brusque. His language is big and bold and burly and Peter like. Paul is very analytical and wordsy and is going to outmaneuver you intellectually as well as spiritually with the authority of Jesus behind him. Now I say again, the truth of the matter is that because of weird experiences we've had with twisted up versions of culty Christian adjacent controlling stuff, we understandably might feel a little bit gun shy about language like what we get here in Philemon verses eight and nine. Like, whoa, wait a minute. Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, hold on, Paul. I don't think anybody orders anybody to do anything at church, especially American church. Or maybe you haven't heard about how America is. But the truth of the matter is that's our own gun shyness coming through. And if you think the Bible is even a little bit reliable, if you think it's even kind of good, if you think it's even sort of from God, I happen to think it's very reliable, entirely good, and totally from God. But even if you think it's good enough to justify listening to this podcast, then implicitly there, what you are accepting is what the original Christians in the New Testament accepted, which is there are people who are qualified, who are called by Christ, sent by Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit miraculously, with visible, physical, miraculous confirmation, not cable TV Christian channel miracles like legit miracles. There are people who are commissioned to speak authoritatively and to lead the church. And at least in part, if you think the Bible is reliable and from God, well, that structure is part of how the Bible happened. It's why the original writings were regarded as being authoritative and speaking with the apostolic authority that we've looked at in these different passages that was handed on, how that is distributed or administered now, how such authority has been handed down through the ages. Yeah, different groups see that one a little bit differently, but what all the groups agree on is that it is still here, is that the true message that was handed down to us is still in place. So all the way back now to the question at hand, which is what the heck is going on here with Paul's appeal to Philemon and the way he frames it on the front end in verses eight and nine. Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul, an old man and now a prisoner of Christ Jesus, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. Now I go all the way back to what we were talking about a few days ago with the the Patriot and the dynamic between the dad, who is an officer, played by Mel Gibson, and the kid, who's an enlisted man, played by the late great Heath Ledger. As those two interact in a military context, there's always a need for extra clarification between them as to what is a dad and a son talking and what is that's an order soldier. And when they are both in that military context, the default setting is, if I say it, it is an order. That's the de facto, that's the default, that's the consistent setting. But anytime that Mel Gibson, Benjamin Martin, the swamp fox character, wants to switch that and set a different set of ground rules, like you and I are talking about our family now. Well, he clarifies that in one way or another. So is the deal here. Both by what he says overtly and by what he implies, Paul has clearly thought very clearly and prayed very sincerely about how to handle this delicate situation in Colossae. If he gets it right, it will bring about a flowering of the church. It'll be an object lesson for the gospel that will be wildly effective and will cause the church, the gospel, Christian faith to take root deeply in the very strategically important Lycus Valley that includes not just Colossae, but the up-and-coming great cities of Hieropolis and Laodicea. Now, Paul knows that this is a really big deal from a big picture point of view. He knows it's a really big deal from the point of view of two people he cares very much about, Philemon and Onesimus, and also peripheral people like Aphia and Archipus, who he cares very much about, and Epaphras, who he cares very much about. There's so many ways to get it wrong, but Paul has come up with a way that it could work and it could really work, but it's all predicated on him making it very clear that this time around we're not doing it the way we normally do it. We're not doing the apostolic authority thing. The Holy Spirit did not tell me prophetically to make you do this. In Paul's mind, in Paul's heart, his deepest conviction is that the only way to get this right is that it would be a voluntary movement of the heart in Onesimus and Philemon, that we would take something that feels like it's going to be a legal issue, a giant social issue, a falling out, and we're going to turn it into an object lesson about reconciliation, about the elimination of status in the kingdom of God. And we're going to flip this L into a gigantic win, but it has to be voluntary. So in those two little sentences right there, Paul isn't, in my opinion, trying to manipulate or trick Philemon. He's not trying to guilt trip Philemon. Rather, he's reframing the accepted ground rules that everybody is operating by. We went and did the work the last few days. Everybody's operating under the assumption of apostolic authority, and Paul has a ton of it, but Paul has to reframe that for this to work, and that's why we get those couple of lines there, not as a dirty manipulative gimmick. I think it's genius. I think it is maybe the stroke of genius of the entire letter. I think all of the awesomeness of the rest of Paul's appeal flows out of that little move that he did right there at the beginning, and we'll unpack that more over the next few days. As I'm so fond of saying, when we conclude a little arc in this program that could cause people to feel hurt or offended as we talk about things from different Christian traditions, grace and peace to everybody. When I say things that are, in your opinion, dumb or mistaken, please credit it to me as incompetence, and please give me the benefit of the doubt that it is not malice. Y'all are great. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.