Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and this is the last week on Philemon. We only have four more episodes after this one. That's crazy. That went fast. At least it felt fast to me. I heard from a couple of you who are like, too much history. It probably didn't feel fast to you. Thank you for bearing with me on that either way. But 80 episodes on Philemon. That's what we're going to end up on. It was a blast. And we have a little bit of work to do yet this week that is still very important. So we're not done and we need to get into that. But a couple of reminders. At the end of each season, I mail out really cool little commemorative stickers to celebrate our time together working on a given book of the Bible. And we have Philemon stickers that are set to go out here at the end of the season. Those go to literally anybody who is supporting the podcast on any platform at any level, as long as your address is up to date. And of course, as always, I've got some special, super special edition hologram versions of those that I'm going to mail to a handful of you who have gone wildly above and beyond. I'm so grateful to all of you. Those of you who support the program, those of you who have supported it in the past, thank you. That is not forgotten. I'm so grateful. And those of you who don't, you don't have to support podcasts. You can just listen and be here. It counts. You're a part of the thing. This is great. But this exists because you're all here. It exists because some of you support it. I'm really thankful for that. As we are here in the home stretch of our season on this little book of Philemon, which brings me to this. We had a big windstorm here a while back, and big is an understatement. I think this wind storm represented the most intense sustained winds in the history of South Dakota. And we got just drilled by it. We lost a big, beautiful tree out of our yard that fell into our neighbor's yard and took out the big, beautiful tree that was on his side of the fence that beautifully framed up that side of our house. It just stunk. And it cost a lot of money to cut out all of the trees. So not only did I not get the trees anymore that I loved, I had to pay to take their corpses away. It I did not like that one bit. But in the process of this, my neighbor, who's uh just an absolutely brilliant dude, a Jewish guy, he and I, when we talk, you know, it gets deep. He thinks very complex thoughts about the world and God and fate. And we were talking about how crazy it was that these trees, and these were not small pine trees, these were ancient pines. They fell on both of our properties in such a way that nothing got broke. You know, a fence got damaged, but it didn't fall through his cars or his house or my house. And in the end, you know, everything was okay. We were talking about that today, and we were musing about why these kinds of things happened. And he was saying, you know, I really, it's very humble of him to say this. He was saying, I hate to thank God for that tree falling just where it did, because any bit to the left, right, or any other direction it could have gone, and it would have been disastrous, but it fell just in the perfect place. But I hesitate to thank God for that because I drove around town and I saw people for whom the trees fell in the wrong place. The one place that it could have fallen on their property where it would do massive damage. And we had fun talking about why and gaming that out. I guess I kind of made a case for the rain falls on the righteous and on the wicked, but anything that's good we should give thanks to God for. And, you know, we verbally high-fived and congratulated each other on another enjoyable conversation, and we'll be looking forward to the next time we chat. But that why question, you've asked it, right? You've run the what-ifs, you've run the retrospectives on a situation where you try to make sense of why an outstanding moment in your life went down the way it did. And of course, there isn't just some clear final answer to that. I don't know why my brother died in that horrible accident all those years ago. Of course, now I can look back and see what came of it. And if I really want to write a narrative back onto it, I can. And that narrative is true. To be clear though, I also think that narrative is kind of after the fact. I guess what I mean by that is even though we can never say for sure why. Like here is why God in his providence, or if you're not sure if you believe in God yet, here is why fate allowed for this thing to happen, but not that thing. It's not science, right? We can't lock that down. But we can speculate about it, and I think sometimes our speculation might get pretty close, especially when you hang out with God and the Bible a lot. And gradually you start to see what God does in different situations, and then maybe patterns emerge a little bit. And even if you're wrong in your assessment of why a thing happened, even the speculation, if it is occurring in the context of the character of God and how God seems to work at times in history, I think it's worthwhile speculation. And indeed, the Bible has moments of speculation like that. It doesn't look like it's ever frowned upon. It looks like it's perfectly reasonable for the characters in the Bible to ask the same kind of questions that you and I ask when the tree falls here instead of falling there, or when something tragic befalls our family or somebody we love, or when we see something go down in the news, or we see something that missed by inches or hit by inches. That why question, at least based on what I'm seeing in the Bible, is a reasonable one to ask. Here's why I'm bringing it up. Because as Paul gets to the end of his appeal to Philemon to receive his runaway slave Onesimus back as more than a slave, as a dear brother, he does the why question a little bit. And I think this is really smart. I think he knows that we all run on narrative a little bit. And I think he imagines, you know, Philemon is probably trying to make sense of what has happened here. He's going to be trying to make sense of this request. And Paul, without claiming supernatural revelation or anything, just throws out a theologically informed speculation as to why this difficult episode may have taken place or how God might use it. Here's what he says: verse 12. I, Paul, am sending him, Onesimus, who is my very heart, back to you, Philemon. I would have liked to have kept him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I'm in chains for the gospel, but I didn't want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced. Perhaps, here we go, this is it. The reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good. No longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He's very dear to me, but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord. Okay, if I'm tracking with Paul's reasoning here, he seems to be suggesting Onesimus was going to run away. That ship had already sailed, he had decided that was going to happen. In his heart, he had already willed to it, he'd created a plan, he was willing to steal, probably. It looks like that's what the text suggests, and he was gonna run away either way. But this short separation caused him to run right into the arms of Christ. He ran into me, Paul, and I pointed him to Jesus, and now he's a brother in Christ, and now there's a pathway to you getting him back, but not getting him back the way it was, getting him back, but better. You keep the relationship, you keep the usefulness, but now he's a brother, not a slave. Now, in fairness, there are some people who read this phrase and they're like, no, Paul isn't in any way intoning that Feinleman should free Onesimus, but I just don't buy that. To me, this sounds like Paul is doing everything short of saying, free him, dude, free him. I mean, look what Paul's doing here. He's speculating about the invisible hand of God who is maneuvering around these characters in this story like chess pieces in God's celestial redemptive chessboard. And the reason that all of these moves are happening is so that you, Philemon, could have Onesimus back, but not as a slave, as a brother. And he just got done saying Onesimus is useful. That's both his name, but that's also like his big trait and characteristic is dude gets things done. He's infinitely competent, he has a willing spirit. Of course, you want him back, but you're getting back a profoundly upgraded version of the man, and potentially you're getting back a profoundly upgraded version of the relationship. Not only do I think that Paul is strongly intoning, inceptionizing even to Philemon, the idea that he should free Onesimus, but I think Paul is employing this uh what fancy philosopher types call this counterfactual, this speculation, this what if kind of language here to get Philemon's wheels spinning, to get him thinking about what his options are and thinking big picture. Like, why did this happen? And in light of that, what is the win that is in front of me for the taking right here? I mentioned a minute ago that this kind of speculative language happens around the Bible. We're not going to do a deep dive into that. We're in our last week of Philemon here, but some examples of that quickly. Uh, how about the middle of Esther, where Mordecai is talking with Esther in ancient Persia in the capital city of Susa, and evil Haman has conspired to cook up this plan to kill all of the Jews, and Esther is the only one who's positioned to do anything about it. And Mordecai and Esther are speculating. And who knows whether you've not come to the kingdom to your throne for such a time as this? It's really very similar persuasive language to what's being employed here in Philemon. In both places, one party is trying to persuade the other to do something a little bit outside the social norms, but something that would be really good for the redemptive plan, for the kingdom of God, for other people, for people in low and vulnerable positions. And both times the one doing the persuading employs this kind of thinking where they say, Hey, maybe something big is happening here. Maybe this isn't just the normal routine of life, but maybe what we're seeing is the invisible hand of something bigger. I suppose Joseph kind of uses this same line of thinking toward the end of Genesis when everything gets reconciled between him and his brothers, and he's like, Hey, you guys shoved me into a pit and left me for dead and sold me to slavers. You meant it to be evil, but God meant it for good. There again is this idea, this sort of tapping into the bigger work of God, and I think somewhat reasonably speculating about what God might be doing in an otherwise very difficult situation. There are more examples from around the Bible, but I think you get it. It's time for us to wrap it up today and then direct our attention toward the actual request that Paul makes. I read it to you here earlier today about how to receive Onesimus back. And then we got to work toward considering whether or not this appeal was effective and what Philemon might have done with our remaining four episodes in this season on the Book of Philemon. I say again, thank you to all of you for being here for this, for the podcast in general. And thank you so much to those of you who have gone out of your way to support this thing in the past or even right now. We are already cooking up a mailing list for the Philemon achievement unlocked stickers for everybody who supports at any level on any platform. And if you want to get in on that, you can still sign up. There is still time. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.