Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast, December 15th. We hardly knew the, we hardly knew. Yeah. What? Happy December 15th it is. Kids' Christmas choir has gone off. They're going on tour. They're going on tour. It's been so popular. People are clamoring to see more of them. Everybody wants to see more. They're now on Ticketmaster. Tickets were initially on sale for $30 and now $600 a piece. So act now. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, by the way, force Frank is coming to to town. I saw that Angelo forwarded me. I don't know if it was Ticketmaster or one of those guys. Yeah. And I just thought, you know what, those seem like great prices, but I just know I'm not gonna be fast enough to get the tickets before some Scalper gets it and tries to resell it to me for thousands of dollars. So here's the thing, man, my kids already know this. We got them tickets for Christmas. Oh. They already know that because my two oldest are like, Hey. Mom and dad did you know, force Frank's coming back. Like they're just honest. And so they're like, did you get tickets? We're not gonna lie to them. So we did that as part of their Christmas gift. That's sweet. So we're going in August, but we have the same thing. So my wife jumped on right as tickets opened up, and she was like 2,600 people back in Q Wow. So she finally got to the place. We were able to get tickets. I jumped in because you can only buy six tickets at a time. And so our family of seven were like, oh man. Thanks a lot, Ticketmaster. So I jumped in, I was like 18,000 people back at that point. Yikes. But I was able to catch up and I was able to get a ticket nearby where the other ones you're just gonna sit by yourself. Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy. But I jumped on StubHub at the same time. Yep. As Ticketmaster was just open and people already had them up for sale on StubHub. Yeah. And they were marked up. Oh yeah. Dramatically. Yeah. They, at one point down in Austin, they had 108,000 people in queue on Ticketmaster. Yep. It's insane. Isn't that crazy? It's insane. The system is broken and it's, I have no idea how to fix it. I just choose not to fight it and buy no tickets at all. Well, and, to say you feel bad for the artist is a little weird because you know the, but all the fees and stuff of Ticketmaster, like ticket about $15 service fees for Ticketmaster. Yeah. Fort Frank came out and on his Instagram, the story, he was like, Hey, I just want you guys to know I have no control over the Ticketmaster fees. That's a contract between them and the arena. Like I can't change that. Yeah. But. It's nuts, man. I think the only ticket's still available, the closest to us at least is Kansas City at this point. Wow. So, wow. That's eight hours away. Yeah. No, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know how you fix that. 'cause they're not making the money off of those tickets, right? They're making something. Yes, because they're getting the initial price that they're asking for, but they're not making anything. The, whoever's reselling them are making multitudes of. Orders of magnitude more than what the initial ticket cost was for sure. So there's something inherently wrong with that. Actually, let me ask you that question then. If I'm an entrepreneur, young man or young woman, and I've got the skills to do said process, what's wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with that? It's capitalism. So I think it's a free market. It's a free economy to be able to do things like that. The ethics conversation is a conversation for a, probably a college ethics class to talk about, especially as Christians, if you're a Christian who's doing this, I think you've got additional ethic, ethical concerns perhaps in there. Depending on the markup. Is this your livelihood? Are you supporting your family this way? Is this the best, most responsible way for you to support your family? Is this good stewardship? Things like that. There's questions all around there, but I think people do that in other areas. They'll buy something, they'll ho hold onto it for a while, and then as it gains value they'll turn around and they'll sell it. Yeah. And it's not the same thing because it's not as public, but somebody's doing that on eBay with a baseball card that they pulled from a pack or whatever like that. I can't look at that and say, I think there's something wrong with that. They bought the pack to try to find the car to be able to then turn around and sell it for a higher value. You could argue you're taking tickets away from a family that otherwise would be able to go and you're marking up the value where they could have bought it from Ticketmaster and gone for what the original value was. I think that's where the ethics question comes in. I have to imagine that the artists themselves would not be okay with it. Assuming they could wave a magic wand and say, yeah, 'cause they're not making money off of it. Right? Well, on top of that, they're saying, look I want my people who wanna be there to be there. Right. And you're making it impossible for average John Doe who wants to go to be there because you're making the ticket markups excessive. And maybe that's a big part of the question too, is how much is the markup? Are we talking about 50%? A hundred percent. 120%? I mean, what is it, there's a lot of questions there. I, yeah, I'm surprised to hear you vocalize affirmation for it so agreeably. I'm surprised by that. I think, are you doing this? I'm not doing it, no. Is this your side hustle that you wanna tell us about? Yeah. Yeah. We have a new church now. I noticed because I bought some four Frank tickets and, well, I've only seen you with a ton of Mariah Carey tickets. I've been meaning to ask about them, you know, but I okay. I, things you're making sense. I like, yeah. Mariah Carey. Yeah, dude, it's nuts. Right now I just jumped on StubHub for global Life field and to buy seven tickets together. The markup is crazy. From what is the markup? What's your best guess on the Michael, because you know what you paid, so what's the rough and dirty Is this twice as much? Three times It's at least 35%. 35 to 40%. Wow. Yeah. Just looking at where some of these seats are and things and honestly though, they're to buy seven tickets together, which is what we would need as a family. There's only three sections left where you can even do that. Well, but then these guys, StubHub, Ticketmaster, or whoever allows for the resale. They're also getting a cut, so they're incentivizing doing this because it benefits them. It benefits them twice, right? They have the initial purchase where they get fees and they get the resale purchase where they get fees. So they're incentivizing. What do you call it? There's a name for that. When you incentivize bad behavior, negative incentivization, something like that. Yeah. In any case, it doesn't feel right to me. I couldn't tell you exactly why it's not a good move, but you're right. It's not entirely different from the principle of buying and holding a Beanie baby, you know, a princess Die Beanie Baby. And that was all the rage for a season. Right now they're basically worthless, but you get the idea. Yep. Yep, you do. And we need to get to the idea of Colossians and Philemon, because boy, how do we have a lot of territory to cover in the Daily Bible podcast today? Colossians Philemon, we're gonna be in first and second Timothy. These were written later on in Paul's ministry career. After, the events that we've seen in the book of Acts have taken place. And so we come to the letter to the church in Colossi and Paul, really in the letter to the church in Colossi. He's addressing a problem. And that is that the people there in Colossi were being encouraged or taught that there was an Uber Christian experience that they could have if they were spiritual enough that they could reach some next level version of being a follower of Christ. And so Paul really is writing to Colossians to convey to them that Jesus is enough, that Jesus is sufficient, that they don't need Jesus. Plus there's some elements of. A philosophy called gnosticism that Paul seems to be combating here. However, gnosticism really didn't come on the scene in earnest until the second century, and so Paul's writing before gnosticism was really even a thing. But there's the precursors of gnosticism in here. Gnosticism being that which is a philosophy that says that which is physical. The material being the material body is evil and the spiritual is good, is preferable. So if you can somehow escape the realm of the physical and achieve the realm of the spiritual, that that is where the better is. And the physical of bad. This led to some heretical movements in the church that even denied that Jesus. Came in true flesh, in true humanity. There was a heresy called doism, that is from the Greek word that means to appear or to seem. And the heresy taught. Jesus only appeared to look like he had a physical body, but he never had a physical body. 'cause physical matters bad. And that's some of what this is as Paul's writing to say, you've heard it say, abstain from these things. Don't touch, don't do this. Aesthetic practices pursue the spiritual side of things. Paul's writing the letter of. The of Colossians, in part, at least to say Jesus is all you need. You don't need any more than him. And that's why in chapter one, you've got the well-known Christological hymn, which be begins in verse 15. And I call a hymn because it was like likely that this may have been one of the earliest creeds of the church. And that's what Paul is citing here, and it's attributing to Christ the sufficiency. He is everything, the fullness of deity dwells in Christ that he is preeminent. In other words, that he might have first place in. Everything and that God has reconciled us to himself Again. That word reconcile, like we talked about last week on Sunday, I guess a week ago now the first week of our Christmas seus, that word reconcile means to close the gap, to make peace and this is where we see that he's made peace between us and God by the blood of his cross. All we need is Christ and the death of Christ to have that peace with God. Verse 15 says that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. I thought Jesus was uncreated. How is he the firstborn and uncreated? Yeah. So firstborn there, meaning firstborn in rank, not in chronology. So the firstborn in the culture of this time was considered to be the one who held the, as Paul says, later in this same creed, preeminent position, the position of first place in the family. If you think back to the parable of the prodigal son the prodigal son goes to his father and asks for his share of the inheritance. The inheritance would've been split and the older child would've gotten a double portion of the inheritance, the firstborn, a double portion of the inheritance, and everybody else would've had everything else split up between them. And so here. Christ is first in rank, not first in chronology. This is not implying that he was created. You say, well, how do we know that? Because of what the rest of the Bible teaches us, that he is the uncreated one that John one, one says in the beginning was the word in the beginning of what, the beginning of all beginnings before him. There was no other beginning. And so the rest of scripture testifies to the internality of Christ. Jesus himself testifies to the internality of Christ. So we have to say, okay, this can't mean firstborn in chronology. Is there something else it could mean? And there, there is firstborn in. In rank. I would also point to you also the immediate context. Look at verse 16. For by him, that is, by Christ, all things were created can't be a thing and be the creator of all things. Right? So he would, by necessity be someone outside of the thing. So amen to that. One more question at a Colossians. One that I know people might stumble over is verse 24, where Paul says, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake. And in my flesh, I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body. That is the church. I thought Christ's atonement, I thought his work on the cross was totally sufficient, but Paul here says that there's something lacking in that sacrifice. What is that? Yeah, so what was lacking is the spread of the gospel after the ascension. And so Jesus is going to go back to the right hand of the Father at in Acts chapter one, verse eight. We looked at that and our study of the Book of Acts, so he's no longer here on Earth. And so now the body of Christ is called that because that's literally what is it? It is intended to be. It's Christ's body here on earth. The physical representation of Jesus here on Earth is the church. The church is about doing the work of Christ, carrying out the mission of Christ. So what was lacking in his afflictions is the fact that his afflictions were in, in resurrection were powerful for those that were the eyewitnesses. But then for everybody else. Outside of that immediate circle of the eyewitnesses, they were still going to need to hear about that. And so the event itself of the death on the cross, that message needed to be carried out. And that's how Paul is filling up what's lacking in the afflictions of Christ. It's not lacking, the atonement is not lacking, but the reach of the gospel is what needed to continue to go forth. And that's why Paul is saying, I'm here to continue the work that wasn't finished at the cross. Alright. So just to be clear then, nothing is lacking in the atonement of Christ. Yes. Yeah, it is complete. It is final. It's full. Okay. Succinctly then, what is lacking in Christ afflictions? The reach of the nations to, to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. So, in other words the death is the parcel. But that parcel then needs to be carried out. That parcel needs to be delivered. And so what's lacking is the delivery of the parcel. So the death is sufficient. We're not tampering with the parcel. We're not changing the contents of the parcel. We're not dressing it up, but we need to carry that to the ends of the earth. Acts one, eight, you'll be my witnesses. And so being his witnesses is what's. What's lacking in the afflictions of Christ. And so we get to fulfill up what's lacking by going and being his witnesses. Being the church here on earth is what you're saying then that for those who desire to spread the gospel, that they will also. Be afflicted in relationship to Christ that they'll suffer persecution and affliction because of their connection with Christ. Sure. We see that testimony in Peter, Peter gives us that as, as well as as Paul tells us that in Romans chapter eight as well provided we suffer with him, we will also be glorified with him. So I think. There's that element. Jesus himself said that too. Anyone who desires to live a Galilee life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. They're gonna hate you because they hated me. It's a clear testimony in scripture that that's part of it. Yeah. Okay. So just as a principle then, when you're sharing the gospel, you should expect some measure of affliction. Yeah. Part of the territory here. Yep. Okay. Yep. Chapter two. He gets to the canceling of the record of our debts, which stood against us, which is one of my favorite pictures of atonement and what took place there in verse 14, where he says actually back up in verse 13, God made us alive with him, forgave us all of our trespasses by. Here's how, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with his legal demands, he set it aside, nailing it to the cross, that record of debt that, that what we owed, that insurmountable amount that we owed was taken and nailed, affixed to the cross so that we would be forgiven, our debt would be taken out and canceled. And we know from second Corinthians 5 21 that not only were we made right. To brought back to neutral, but we were actually given the riches of the righteousness of Christ. But I love that picture there in chapter two. Chapter three then is a great charge to the Christian to set our minds on the things above. And I think there's a little bit of a, not a word play but a tongue in cheek here because of the. Argument from those that were attacking the church saying you've gotta have these spiritual, mystical visions. Paul saying you need to set your mind on the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. And if you do that, then that's gonna transform your life. And here's how it's gonna transform your life. You're gonna put off all of these things that once belong to the old self and put on all of these things that now belong to the new self. And so there's a lot about. Sanctification, godliness even church life. In verse 16, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. That this corporate communal life that's built upon and marked by a saturation with the word of God that overflows into our relationships with each other. He addresses. The wives, the husbands, the fathers, the children, just the church in general. And remember, the church is still in its fledgling stage. Church, big C is still in its fledgling stage right now. And so Paul is giving them, this is what it looks like for you to live these things out. That's why when we see, we're gonna see an Ephesians tomorrow, there's gonna be similar instructions given in Ephesians and a lot of what we read in Colossians, because Paul is writing to a different church over an Ephesus. So there's some overlap in some of these epistles, and that's to be expected. As Paul was writing to these people in a historical timeframe, trying to help them understand this is what it looks like to be followers of Jesus. Chapter four Paul ends by encouraging them to be steadfast in prayer. Every time I read that, I'm convicted because I look at my own life and think, man I could do better in this area. I could be more steadfast in prayer than I am. Going through actually partners right now with my son. I'm going through partners with Josh and we're in chapter four, so we're talking about prayer and man, it's, it is just, it's such a good reminder and good refresher there of what prayer is and what it's about and what we should be doing, why it's so important, why it's so valuable, and the dangers of just kind of going through those rope prayers that we have. I remember growing up my, it was my job to pray for. Food. And so we would get sit down together as a family, and I would say, dear Jesus, thank you for this food. Amen. Because I was hungry and I wanted to eat what was in front of me, and I wasn't directing my thoughts to the Lord. I wasn't giving my attention to the Lord in those prayers. And so, even though I was saying things and uttering things, I wasn't doing what true prayer really is. And I think this reminder continue steadfastly in prayer because Paul goes on to say we need it. And the mission, it needs it. And we're desperate for it. If we're gonna be successful as a church, if. Paul saying, if I'm gonna be successful in my ministry, I need you praying for me. I need you praying for me for open doors as well. So we need that as a church too. Again, shout out for partners. If you haven't been through partners, I wanna encourage you to do that. Prayer is just one of the chapters in the whole thing, but it's powerful every time I take somebody else through it again I'm continually growing, continually learning. It's a good refresher to go through it too. So, if you haven't signed up for partners yet, this would be a great time to do it as you're thinking about getting into this new year as well. I just wanna point your attention out to a small detail that you might miss unless you're looking for it, is verse 10. He says, Arista, my fellow prisoner greets you. And Mark the cousin of Barnabas. So you remember how Barnabas and Paul had this falling out because of John Mark? Well, here maybe we have an indication as to why Barnabas not only was known to be a son of encouragement, but perhaps he was also a family man. He was loyal to his family and consequently maybe that caused him to want to stand by John Mark, who is his cousin in order to say, Hey, Paul, just give him another chance, you know, from this or that reason. But here we see there's a family connection behind that as well. The letter does sign off with personal greetings here, including to Luke, the beloved physician who greets you. So we just talked about this yesterday. Luke was with Paul, and here's another testimony of that here at the end of Colossians as well. Well, let's jump over to Philemon. Philemon's a short book. It is I guess you could say it is one chapter, even though I think a chapter implies more than one. It's just a letter. It's a number of verses here that we have. And so when you're looking up Phil Philemon, you're not gonna say, turn to Phil Philemon chapter one, verse 23. You're just gonna say Philemon 23. It's gonna take you to that verse. But. Philemon is a unique letter because it's a personal letter from Paul to Philemon. On behalf of somebody. Paul calls his child Onesimus in verse 10, who was a runaway slave, and this was somebody who ran away from Philemon. It seems as an unbeliever. But comes to faith in Christ. And now Paul is sending him back as a believer, such that Paul would even say, Hey, you know what? It may be that all of this happens so that you might receive him back and have him back in an even greater capacity than you once had him before. And that is because he's coming back to you now as a believer rather than being an unbeliever. So, just an interesting personal letter here in the corpus of the New Testament about reconciliation about. Even that, that change in status between believer and unbeliever, what happens when two people become believers? Notice here, Paul doesn't say Hey, Philemon, Onesimus isn't your slave anymore because he's a believer. So tough luck, man. He says, no, you should treat him now as a believer, but he's also sending animus back into that relationship. And so that informs some of our understanding of power structures and things like that during this time at least as well. So by means it's a unique letter for us, but I think if nothing else, it does speak to the power of reconciliation and especially amongst believers the necessity of reconciliation. Does this book support slavery? Not any more than Paul does or Peter does when they write about the master slave relationship, like we just wrote about in Colossians or when Peter wrote about it as we, we studied there, it's an in acknowledgement of a, of an institution that was widespread vast during this time in the Roman Empire, and really not something that the church had in its sights to try to topple at this time, including the fact that it was a different form of slavery than what we know to be slavery. Through our the eyes of Americans looking back at Civil War era of slavery. Yep. Anything more on Philemon? It's a good letter. It is a good letter. It is a good letter. Brief good though. Yeah. One thing just really quickly here I notice is Paul's tone. In the letter, you often wonder what it was like to be under Paul's leadership. But I think you get some hints. Obviously throughout his letters, you get hints of what he does. But he's a strong leader. I like the fact that he's both gentle. He encourages, he exhorts, but he's also willing to say, look I could command you to do this, but for love's sake, I'm gonna ask you to do it right. In other words, I could command you to do what I want you to do. I have the authority and the Lord to say what I need to say and to have you respond to that. But he instead beckons and he encourages. He's not willing, he's not unwilling to come down heavily. There are times when he does that, Corinthians is a good example of that. But I appreciate the way that he demonstrates for us what it looks like to lead people, to love people well, to use authority for their sake, for the building up of the body. And he's great at that. Another thing here, verse 23, I just wanna point out the names to you. Eris, mark, Aris Staris, Deus, that's an important name. And Luke you'll notice some of the same names that we just read in Colossians. And that's important because that's why this letter is here. And we suspect that Paul is around Rome at this point. Luke's with him and so are, so is Arista and Demis again. Demis is gonna be important in. A day or two. I'm not sure when we get to it, but just know, this is why we assume that the letters are written around the same timeframe because he's got the same companions. So those are some hints as to why we date it the way that we do. Nothing is a perfect science unless the letter itself gives us a specific point of reference. But those are some of the clues that you can look at in the text to tell you, oh, when did this happen? Well, there's his companions. That gives us a sense. Alright, let's pray and they'll be done with this episode. God, we thank you for your word and for our time in it today, though short for such a massive work like Colossians and even Philemon Lord, we are thankful that we get to, to read it and process it, digest it. And I just pray that those that are going through the Daily Bible reading Plan would spend some time here longer than we were able to give here in this podcast, but that they would give themselves over to reading and thinking and processing as they go through all this. And so we thank you so much for your word and we. To pray that we continue to learn it, process it, digest it, and apply it. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Keep reading your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. We'll see you. Bye.

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Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said