wisdom and knowledge as Paul says in Colossians 2. But the letter of Philemon is really just an extension almost of that same letter as Philemon was a slave master in the city of Colossae that he was evidently a fairly wealthy man because we're told in the letter that he hosted the Colossian church in his house. The particular business we have here in Philemon is the relation of a slave to a master. Philemon is this slave master who has lost a slave named Onesimus who ran away. And that's the nature of this letter here. And what we find in this letter is how the wisdom of Jesus Christ, the actual practical wisdom of Jesus Christ, not just the idea that you should trust in Jesus Christ and be saved someday to go to heaven. but that the reality of who Jesus Christ is is a wisdom that applies to every area of life, even into the most small and insignificant letters such as this, that the wisdom of Jesus Christ is brought to bear, and Paul demonstrates for us to see in this public letter. So I invite you to look at this letter. We'll pick up at verse eight and see how Jesus Christ reforms things. And he does that by bringing actual reformation. That's what the word reform means. But reforming without God's reformation is, well, it's really nothing. It's more of a revolutionary force to make things happen in this world without actually changing people's hearts and nature. We find something very opposite of that in this letter. In verse 8, beginning, Paul says particularly, Speaking about Onesimus, this slave that he just met, and actually came to faith in Christ through Paul, he says, accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake, I prefer to appeal to you. I, Paul, an old man, and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus, I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and me. I'm sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel. But I prefer to do nothing without your consent, in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion, but of your own accord. For this, perhaps, is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever. no longer as a bondservant, but much more than a bondservant, a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. And if he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge it to my account. I, Paul, write this with my own hand. I will repay it. To say nothing of you owing me, even your own self." Do you feel like the economic relation there, the relationship of the people? Well, he's a prisoner. I have to pause, I can't keep reading. Paul's in prison, he pretty much might die. And he's like, I'll pick up his tab. We're like, okay, Paul. And he says, by the way, remember, you came to Christ through my ministry, so you owe me your eternal life. Balance, we can balance that book. Microeconomics is the sermon series. Charge it to my account. I, Paul, write this with my own hand. to say nothing that you owe me even yourself. And he says, yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ. This man's in prison. Confident of your obedience, I write to you knowing that you will do everything and even more than I say. At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you. Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, and so does Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow worker. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." See in Paul a very strong presumption on grace. He leans heavy on the grace of God. So much so, it's almost comical, there's something funny about grace. When we speak of what makes something humorous, people thought through what makes something funny and a pretty common consensus is funniness is incongruency. Something that going this way and then all of a sudden it changes directions and it goes this way. And that's the punchline. So you lean in this way and then you're building up an expectation that you're gonna continue speaking down this road, and then you change topics, or you change direction, you play on words, and that's the punchline, the incongruency. There's a certain humor, it's a deep love, a joy to grace. When you find Paul's letter, he says, now I don't wanna be bold, and I don't wanna impose upon you. I'd rather you be moved by love, to maybe we do this not under compulsion or coercion, But, you know, give me your slave and let him be with me." And, well, you know, whatever he owes you, I'll pay for it. But remember, you owe me everything. And then he says, and not if it's not too much of a problem, could you prepare a room for me when I get there? And I know you'll do more than I even ask. How, like, so this man, Philemon is, lost a financial reality that he probably paid off this Onesimus' debts in debt slavery. So he took on a large debt, presumably, and then the slave runs away. It's kind of like not paying for college loans in a sense, where you take up a lot of debt, and then you just run away. And you're like, hey, well, who's gonna pay for that debt? And Onesimus is like, free, and Philemon's like, can I get anything out of this? And then Paul sends a letter and be like, you know what, I think it'd be really great if Onesimus could stay to help me, because I'm in prison, and I'm sure you don't mind, but I'm not gonna force you in. Could you get a room ready for me as well? See, the beauty of grace in the Christian community, The reality is, if we're all being saved from God's eternal punishment and wrath, justly deserving us, and if that happened to us, like if you really understand what happened to us in Christ, everything else just kind of becomes a little funny. It's just not that important. that under normal circumstances, this letter wouldn't make sense. Why would Philemon, who's all financially bound up and being wronged and also being taken advantage of, Paul sends a letter to say, because we're full of so much grace, this grace that's been given to us in Jesus Christ, I'm gonna write a letter on how maybe you could even serve us both even more. And that was expected, that letter was just supposed to go to him like that. It's just, it's humorous, it's joyful. It's the kind of laugh that you get when it's funny at no one's expense. It's just funny because it's good. It's just funny because it's joy. It's the kind of laugh that children create in you. It's not a joke that's at someone else's expense or a joke that is a little... untoward. It's just the funny thing that children do when they put shoes on that are too big for them. It's like that deep joyous laugh that you get when, oh my gosh I was completely dead in my sins and trespasses and now I'm alive full of righteousness and glory and light and everything Jesus has given me is there. It's so incongruent, it's so not supposed to happen this way that all you do is just laugh. You just have to say this is remarkable. It's that idea that when Sarah was pregnant, Sarah was not pregnant, Abraham and Sarah, and they couldn't have a child. And she's old in age. And then God just shows up and says, you're going to have a child. It's so outside of her mind that she just laughs. And the Hebrew word for laugh is Isaac. And the child's born, the child of laughter. It just doesn't make sense that out of a dead body, a woman who cannot bear, would come life. And it's just, it's humorous. This is the kind of grace that changes all things, not just our individual lives on how we're to be saved, but particularly even down to an obscure, seemingly obscure letter about a master and a slave relating to one another. We find this in the way John opens up his gospel, where he speaks about Jesus Christ this way. He says that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory, glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. And from, he says, from His fullness, we receive grace upon grace. This is what changes the world, and particularly in microeconomics, the Christian family home, this is what changes everything. We've got a lot of rain lately, and here in our metropolis of Harrison City, that is, you see two roads crossing at a gas station, and there's the city. But it's not just that. Don't mean to make a brochure for travel agencies, but there's also a little river called Bush Run. I had to look it down. That's how significant it is. Bushy run behind the gas station. If you're driving around, you know what I mean. We have so much rain, right, that that river, that stream rather, let's be honest, flows. It flows with water, flows with water. We've been getting so much rain that it's flowing with water, but it's flowing with more water. It's grace upon grace. That's the image of what Paul is saying, is that this, this Resurrection, the glorification of Jesus Christ from His fullness, for in Him was all the fullness of deity. From that fullness as He resurrected in perfect righteousness and glory, He poured out not just grace, but grace upon grace. Because the law was given, John says, through Moses. And grace and truth has come through Jesus Christ. That is, there was a word given through Moses. God condescended and gave ten commandments, ten words. And it was gracious. And he gave us something true. And it was all based on the fact that he rescued Israel from slavery. Brought them on wings like eagles to himself. So He graciously saved them, and He gave them a word, and it was good, it was beautiful, it was filled with light. Moses' face shone from the glory of what God gave them in His immense grace. And then Jesus in all His fullness resurrected, full of all divine glory. And then from there poured out His Spirit, So that we're told that we are saved by grace upon grace. Grace even in more grace. That the headwaters of Jesus Christ's resurrection has poured out and gushed through all the tributaries into human existence. That there is grace filled into the Christian home. Grace filled into the family. Grace filled into the children relation. And even down here, grace filled into the slave relation. That God's grace pours out into every area of our life. that we as Christians are in this big lake full of grace. And when you fall in grace, It's funny. It's not tragic. It's like if you're walking around as a small child and you can't get your feet sorted out and you fall onto some hard concrete or asphalt, that's going to hurt. That's going to scrape up your legs. You're going to feel it. There's no grace there. There's no give. But see, we are bathing as Christians in this great pond of God's grace. It has been poured out upon us that it's only knee or thigh deep. That if you fall, you're falling in a whole entire ocean of grace, a body of water wrapped up in God's grace, that from the fullness of Him, He has poured out grace upon grace, that the tributaries leading into all of our lives are the grace of Jesus Christ. That is, a Christian home should be an experience of grace, and we know oftentimes it is not. But that's not Christ's fault. That is our lack of ability to see what He has done for us in His Son's name, what the Father has given us. That from His fullness, we have received grace upon grace. We can't complain that the river has run dry. We can't complain that it's in July and it's not rainy season. It is rain season. It is hurricane season. There is water, and it is flowing and flowing and flowing. There is no drying this up. If your marriage is having problems, there is a place to get grace. If you can't relate to the children right, there is a place to fix that. From His fullness, we have received grace upon grace. So this all becomes very real and practical as we see and we end here looking through Colossians and particularly Philemon today. That there's a supremacy in Jesus Christ in everything. That all things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. Christ's supremacy we find as we've read through the back of Colossians into Philemon. The reality of all these relations that God is reforming all the good things like marriage and family and children. And here is something we need to know, the church needs to see, is that God reforms things that aren't inherently good. God is in the business of reforming things that are not inherently good. Like slavery, for example. The gospel goes there. The gospel goes there. It's very hard sometimes for us to see the wisdom in this. Husbands and wives are restored, all at the headwaters of Christ. All things are reoriented by Jesus Christ pouring out his spirit. Wives submit to their husbands as is fitting to the Lord. Every time Paul speaks a commandment towards somebody in this family, he always references the Lord. Husbands are to love their wives as the Lord loves the church. Parents and children, children are to obey their parents as is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers are not to provoke their children, but are to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. And even lastly with slaves. He says slaves should be fearing the Lord only for the purpose of primarily serving the Lord. And then masters are to rule over their slaves and treat them fairly because they have a master in heaven who is the Lord. Jesus has transformed everything. And Philemon presents us with this complicated issue of a particular slave, Onesimus, who ran away from a slave master, Philemon. And what is so beautiful to see, what many people miss, is that the same solution that the gospel provides for a broken marriage, or the gospel provides for a broken family, is the same solution that God provides for a complicated, sometimes actual sinful thing that is not normal and not good, such as slavery. Complicated political, social, cultural issues The same solution. Put Jesus inside it. Let Jesus work it out, kneading it like dough. Like yeast working through dough, where it just expands and works into everything. was Jesus' metaphor for the kingdom. Let Jesus Christ work inside it and change it from the inside out. That is, there's no way to really have a reformation unless there is a true reality of Jesus Christ's power in a spiritual reformation of individuals at a microscopic level. And so here, in this micro letter, we find that microscopic principle being applied. See, unlike marriage or family, which is a clear, clean, positive, good, slavery, it is not clear it was good. It is definitely not clean. It was no absolute positive good on society. Many historians in the first century debate about how severe or unsevere first century Roman slavery was. And the reason they debate Whichever side you might find in their readings, the reality is they debate because it was complicated. There were many different types of slavery. It's estimated there were 50 to 55 million Romans in the Roman Empire in the first century. Of that 50 to 55 million, 10 to 20% were slaves. That puts us in the realm of 5 to 10 million slaves in this whole institution in the Roman economy, the Roman Empire. This large body of slaves is not naturally occurring. That is, it's not like a lake, like Lake Ontario or Lake Erie that just is there naturally. This was a man-made problem. And it has many tributaries of iniquitous tributaries that feed this massive thing called slavery, five to 10 million slaves in the Roman Empire. We've mentioned before that the reason people would become a slave in the first century could have been because of many sinful reasons. One would be a desire to have sin of a murderous heart. That is, many children in the first century that were not desired were exposed to the wilderness, to just die. And many people would come by and grab those children and make them slaves for their business or economy in their household. So slavery, no. It starts by a sinful heart. Or Roman slavery could have been from criminal acts. It was a matter of someone bringing restitution to a problem. That someone who did a criminal act could serve as slavery, not just be paid for in a penitentiary, right? We call them penitentiaries today. That the taxpayers pay for other people to sit in a penitentiary. The reverse, actually, as far as reform was that if you did wrong, you had to work to bring restitution to the wrong you did by providing value into the society you sought to steal value from. And so you became a slave. You had to work for free and then some so that you would actually make back on what you sought to take from society. In many ways, is balancing scales much more just, but still the heart of it was sin, crime, Another tributary that led into this great pond of despondency and slavery is man stealing, we mentioned. People would just take people and make them slaves. But the greatest, the most common reason that someone would find themselves in slavery was this massive sin of vainglory. That is, the vainglory of war. Rome was always at war for the glory of Rome. vain glory of Rome. They had the idea that they should rule the world and that they should take all the civilizations around them. And those civilizations that were conquered were all taken as prisoners of war and funneled into, as a big tributary, into this big messy pond called slavery. Just funneling millions and millions of souls into this thing called slavery. All on the backs predicated the glory of Rome. We must go to war to advance Rome, the idea of Rome, vain glory, war. That the economy of Rome had this rapacious appetite for refugees. That the very way the society worked and the way the economy worked was a need for 10% of the population to be indentured to work and be products of human property. All because of a need for war. This rested on the backs of refugees, but here you find in Philemon this tiny little letter of inconsequence is the reality that this macroeconomy of the Roman slave military industrial complex is being immediately undermined. Undermined by the microeconomy of Christ reforming one slave and one master and changing their relation entirely. And when this happened, no one else cared. But Paul did, and the Lord Jesus Christ was watching. Microeconomics. The most important verse in the whole letter is this. Paul says, perhaps, perhaps he's been parted for you for just a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a bondservant, but much more than a bondservant, that he would be your beloved brother. It changes everything. Everything that's complicated political infighting. We want to start, the church wants to bring a reformation. Let's make a big difference about all the different evils of slavery and how this shouldn't happen this way and how this should be changed and we can make a lobbying group and all these things. Maybe necessary, maybe good in some way, but it's pointless unless that verse is true. Unless the reality that a reformation can only really come by a reformation of the human heart. That what once was this hostile relationship between Onesimus and Philemon, whatever the cause of, we're not told. Enough that he would run away from his master. Was his Christian master beating him and treating him unjustly? Hopefully not. He's hosting a church in Colossae. I hope he wouldn't be that much of a hypocrite. But it's not hard to imagine Or was he one of those criminal slaves that liked stealing stuff and just took his master's stuff and ran and tried to make some profit? Whatever it is, we're not told. And we're not told principally by the inspiration of Scripture because it doesn't matter. What matters is the way it is restored. It's restored at the smallest level. That in some way, Onesimus was brought to Paul, whether Paul's in Rome or in Ephesus, most likely Ephesus, because it's much closer to the town of Colossae. That he was brought to Paul, and in some way, Paul became his father in the faith. Paul brought him to the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was changed. And because he was changed, that micro-relation, the whole body of slavery in Rome was not changed, but it was. In one way, between one slave Onesimus and one master Philemon, Jesus Christ changed slavery. The only reality is, no one else knows. It's micro, but it's not insignificant. This, this is the beauty of it. This is the wisdom we need to know as a church. Paul is doing nothing more than applying what he's been telling the Colossians to do. In Colossians 1.27, he says, This is the mystery hidden from the wisdom of ages of generations past, and is now revealed to the saints, as he chose to make known among the Gentiles the riches of his glory. which is the mystery, which is Christ in you, which is the hope of glory. That is, Jesus Christ is coming into the Gentiles. Jesus Christ is coming inside of Onesimus, inside of Philemon, and inside of their mutual relationship, no longer in a hierarchical status alone of master and slave, but brother to brother. He's restoring, at a small level, the state of nature in which one man should not be above another man. But because of all the wickedness and sin and sloth in the world, that never happens. Jesus promised you will always have poverty with you. Because you will always have people that live lives that lead to poverty. Not all of us are equal. But the gospel changes what the social gospel wants to have, what all the communists would like to have in our country. The gospel changes that by bringing the reality, the substance of true mutuality. That he now is your brother forever. That is transformative. That is transformative. That truly is a reformation. But it only can happen by a transcendental reformation of the human heart. That is what everyone who is involved in political sciences and trying to make changes in the world, that is not a Christian, cannot see. And no one could see this small letter, but here we are reading it because the Spirit of God is behind it. This is more than just one man and one slave. This micro-letter, Paul is applying this wisdom at a micro-level, that Jesus Christ is the wisdom, the wisdom to change it all. He's a mystery, that how would God rule the nations? He would do it this way, through Jesus Christ individually, one heart at a time. He says, I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in the faith. He's formerly useless to you. He was, for whatever reason, not working. going to work, punching the clock, collecting the paycheck, but not actually doing anything. Now, indeed, he is useful to you. I'm sending him back. He is my very heart. If he owes you anything, he says, whatever it was, we don't know. He might have stole something he might not have, but for whatever reason, he ran, and Paul wants it charged to his account. Paul's petition particularly to him, he says, I am glad to keep him with me, to serve me on your behalf. I prefer to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion. You see, no compulsion. See, revolution is compulsion. Revolution is forcing somebody to change by your own will, by your own force, whether it be the state or political fighting or lobbying or money. Reformation is preaching the gospel. Preaching the gospel and trusting the Holy Spirit to do His work with His spoken word. You see how Paul did that? I don't want to coerce you. I want this to be by your consent. I want you to want this. That's all Christians do when they preach the gospel. Jesus is Lord and I want you to want him to be Lord. He is Lord regardless of what you say, but I would like it if you would bow the knee and find him to be Lord. That needs a spiritual power that you and I cannot create. Perhaps, Paul implies again, he was parted for you for a while, that you might have him back forever. No longer is a bondservant more than a bondservant is a beloved brother. See the adoption, see the reformation, see the regeneration. He was once a child generated in sin and darkness, and now he is regenerated to be a brother inside the family, the kingdom of God. That translation, that reformation, actually changes everything. Now, the next phrase is so beautiful. He says this, he is a beloved brother to you. And now Paul says, especially to me also, the end of verse 16. He's also a beloved brother to me, especially to me also, but much more to you, Philemon. Why? He would be your beloved brother, both in the flesh and in the Lord. That is marvelous. that he would be your beloved brother in the flesh and in the Lord. Not sure what he meant by flesh. People debate on two particular ways. That he would be your brother in the flesh might mean that he, that fleshly, that present worldly relationship you have with him, master-slave relation, it continues. But he's now your brother who's also your slave. or particularly in the flesh, it might mean that he's physically present with you. That is, I'm sending him to you. You're gonna see him soon. Pretty soon, he's gonna stand right next to you. Now, he's not only your brother in the Lord, that is, covenantally, transcendently, united spiritually to Jesus Christ and his resurrection. All of us are brothers and sisters in the Lord that way. Across space, time, all the continents, and all the ages of history. Anyone who's a Christian is in the Lord that way, spiritually, federally, covenantally, propitiatory. and by imputation. That is how we're all united. But then also he's saying, but also he'll be there with you. You get to live with this brother. You get to do culture with this brother. That is, he is in the flesh. He's making tools with you. He's making gardens with you. He's making tables with you. He is doing worldly things with you in the flesh. And he is transcendently also your brother. That phrase, that phrase bridges centuries of debate in the Christian world. The Christian world has never lost an opportunity to debate on how exactly does it relate, the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, and therefore it applies to this present life. The phrase is, he is your brother in the Lord, Lord of all, transcendentally, spiritually, outside of all this temporal stuff. But he's also your brother in the flesh. Do you understand the lie behind separating those two? I have read Dabney, I have read Hodge, all the great theologians of the 1800s who debated on biblical grounds the need to keep slavery alive in the South. Oh, they cut those two right down the middle. Well, yes, we can all be Christians, but we're not the same in the flesh. We can all spiritualize our Christian ethic so that it doesn't apply here and now. Paul says, no, he won't have any of that. He's your brother in the Lord. He's also your brother today. He's your brother in the flesh. In no way are you superior to him, except positionally, as he would be a slave. But more importantly, he's your brother in the flesh. That changes everything. I always run out of time here. These were in my notes last week, and I'm going to do them this week. I didn't do them last week. And then we'll, maybe the Lord will come back or we'll have some coffee. The debate is this. Richard Niebuhr wrote a book in 1951, and it was entitled Christ and Culture. It was a kind of a monumental book that put up a little bit of a matter of debate a lot in the Christian community. And it's also set up a genre of Christian culture, theology, public theology debate in the church ever since. Now this was written in 1951. And if you think that we live in a consternating time in which of course we know we're in the midterms and then in two more years it will be the four year election and then I'm going to hear that everything in the church, this church is not political enough, this church is too political, why won't you say this from the pulpit, yada yada. The reality is the debate about politics is so far down river from really where the issue is. It really has to do with culture. Right now in the news outlets, we hear the phrase Christian nationalism. It's like a scare word of like, you know, we're going to start up a theocracy here in America. This is just the continuing conversation of always been the debate of Christ and culture. How do they relate? Well, Richard Niebuhr wrote this book back in the 1950s and he says, it is helpful to remember that the question of Christianity to civilization is by no means a new one. Christian perplexity in this area has been perennial. And that the problem has been an enduring one throughout all the ages of the centuries. So if you believe that we are in a very divisive age, because we are, that the reality of how the church relates to culture, and culture relates to church, and when is it too political, and why can't we be liberal, why can't we be conservative? Which is, what are you trying to conserve? And why can't you be progressive? What are you progressing toward? Who's defining the terms and by what standard? All these things are really more deeply defined as, how does Jesus Christ and his gospel relate to the surrounding culture at large? And Richard Niebuhr outlined this in a helpful way, which I summarized a little differently, as this. In his book, he lays out Christ as the options of this throughout church history. Christ relates to culture in these ways. Christ is equal to culture, Christ is over culture, Christ is against culture, or Christ transforms culture. Think about those categories. Christ is equal to culture, Christ is over culture, Christ is hostile to culture, or Christ transforms it into something different. He outlines, and this is where you'll see if this will be helpful to serve you to see, how do I think of this as a Christian? Liberal churches. This is Christ over culture. Christ equal in culture. Anytime the church is leaning toward compromising over truth. Compromising it every time over the human culture. It's like the church when it is a weather vane. Really just showing you where the cultural winds are going. They have no resistance. They have the theological rigidity and personal fortitude of wet rag. That is a lot of liberal churches. The main Methodist churches, Presbyterian churches, Anglican churches, they all are so liberal that they see nothing more than Christ is related to culture. And wherever the culture goes, we need to go. Whether it be the sufficiency of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, theological feminism, LGBTQ, critical race theory, all these things even most recently. It's always, this is a good idea. Let's do this. Like, they just think that way. Because they think Christ and culture are just really moving the same way. That Christ is just a synthesis in a historical dialectic that we would just continue down that way. That if this is the way the culture is going, this is the progression of human society, not knowing if the progression is going to the new Zion or off a cliff. It doesn't matter. As long as we're going somewhere, we'll be moving. That's Christ and culture. Just Christ and culture are the same. Now Christ over culture, Christ over culture typically has been put inside of what might be called the Roman Catholic view of things. Christ over culture is like this. It's saying that it's obviously true, there's a lot of truth to this, there's a lot of merit to this view, that Jesus Christ is over the culture. We would say that, we would agree, right? But then also in line of that is the reality that there's this dialectic in the Catholic Church. There's this difference of opinion. mostly started by Thomas Aquinas, that there's a certain type of knowledge and ability given to spiritual things, and there's a certain type of knowledge and ability given to secular things. That is, he can be your brother in the Lord, but he can't be your brother in the flesh. Right? This captures so well with natural type of thinking and with scripture. Scripture is good for the church, but if you want to run a government or economy or business, you need to not be thinking on biblical parameters. Right? It creates a two-tier like double-decker bus or a building with two types of floors in which one is spiritual and holy, that's where the priests are, that's where the Pope is, that's where we do the sacraments, that's where we read Latin, and then there's all like down here less stuff. If you're a businessman, you're less holy than a priest. If you are owning a company or being a teacher, if you're involved in culture in this kind of way, we can't even get rid of where the debate was getting rid of the Latin text because it's holy. It's artificially holy, transcendent. Christ is above culture and it creates a secular sacred divide in which it's not particularly spiritual for you to go to work tomorrow and do something in God's creation. It's less spiritual than reading the Bible or praying the rosary. That's not helpful. That's not at all the way Paul lays it out here. And then there's Christ against culture. You find particularly in the Mennonites. Menno Simmons in the Counter-Reformation. So we get the word Mennonite. That is, no electricity, no cars. No fun, maybe. No, it's a really beautiful thing they do, but they are not engaged in culture at all. That was their approach, you see. And you have to plot yourself on this. Where am I in this? How am I going to relate to culture? After the Reformation, there was a very strong counter-Reformation, in which there were radicals, Anabaptists, who were against culture dramatically. They actually took over one city in Germany called the Munster Rebellion, in which a man named John Lydon claimed that he was the king of righteousness. And he ran around the city naked and fell into a trance, claimed that the city was the new Jerusalem, started up a communist, theocratic, polygamous society. And if that was, and that's how you know it got out of control. Then they started baptizing adults. And that was really wild. A counter-reformation. The Anabaptists, the re-baptizers. That was so bad, so many people died from that, that the Anabaptists turned into the Mennonites, you see. They were so opposed to culture militarily, and so many people died from trying to make Jesus Lord of everything by force, that it produced the Amish and the Mennonites that you see today. They were against culture militarily, aggressively, then they became against culture passively, and divorced themselves from the world entirely. But here, as we have in this letter, in closing, for us to consider your life as we part this morning, is that you would see yourself in Jesus Christ's plan to transform culture. If there was ever great evidence for this, many places through scripture, I would like you to remember the letter of Philemon, that this whole letter is predicated on this assumption, that Jesus Christ can transform culture. He is the mystery hidden from ages to come. He changes everything. And you notice how he does it? Jesus Christ took it all. Paul says, if he has wronged you or owes you anything, charge it to my account. I write this with my own hand. I will pay it. But you see what Paul really did there? He internalized the gospel of Christ in his own life, and he transformed culture through that life. Because you know that you and I are saved into the new culture of the kingdom of heaven by nothing more than that same verse. Where Jesus has said to you, if you have wronged or owe your master anything, if you owe him anything at all, Jesus says to you, charge it to my account and I will write it with my own hands on the cross. Paul's doing nothing more than how Jesus chose to save the world. If we follow his model, live that way, self-sacrificial love to where it hurts, and pray down God's blessings from on high to change the heart, then Christ can transform culture. Because if he can do it with one person and one man at a micro level, it stands to reason it is never impossible for him to do it at a macro level. Dear Father God, we thank you that you've given us this wisdom. This is true wisdom. This is not just hypothetical wisdom. This is practical. You are the incarnated Christ. You are not a figment of our philosophical imagination. You are our brother in the flesh. Dear Lord, we pray, Lord, that this wisdom, Christ in us, the hope of glory, would be the wisdom to transform our culture. Lord, begin with us, our marriages and families, but even work, Lord, through the messy, convoluted, sin-filled world we live in, all its institutions, to bring true reformation by reformation of the human heart. Oh God, give your spirit for this. We will pray, we will rest, and wait for you to bring power from on high. In Jesus' name, amen.