Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And when I was growing up, I used to watch The Simpsons. It was a little risque, so my parents they kept a close eye on me while I watched that. But it was clever. And it was my first introduction to, I don't know, not sarcasm. What do you call it? Satire, I guess. I mean, they made fun of everything. It was really fun. That was a pretty influential show for me when I was a kid. And one of the things that I think was very clever about it is that they set the show basically nowhere. They set it in the fictional town of Springfield, right? But where is Springfield? Because there's a billion of them in the United States. And so throughout all the course of all the episodes and everything, you can try to triangulate which one you're talking about, but you never know because it's just such an interchangeable town name. Well, I think one of the real interchangeable town names from New Testament times was Antioch. Also Caesarea, also Alexandria. Really, any town that was named for some really big, important historic character was probably going to have other towns named for it because it was a big important character. And how are you going to satisfy the ego of somebody who has enough appetite to want to name a whole bunch of towns after them? So when you say Alexandria, you always picture the one in northern Egypt, but there's a bunch more. When you say Caesarea, we're usually talking about the one on the coast that was the seat of government power for the Romans in the time of Jesus, but there are other ones. And when we say Antioch, we're usually talking about the town pretty much directly north of Jerusalem on the east coast of the Mediterranean. Back then it was in Syria. Now it's in the corner of modern day Turkey. But that's not the only Antioch. There are a bunch of other Antiochs. And the second most famous one is the one we're going to talk about today. It's Pisidian Antioch, which is one of the four towns that I think it's most likely that the book of Galatians was written to in the first place. It is also the fourth town that we're going to go visit and see what we can dust off and dig up to try to answer the question Did Galatians work? Well, in Derby and Lystra, it looks like Galatians worked, but those were really little towns. So there's not a lot of evidence left there. But what we do see certainly gives the strong indication that Christianity stuck for a long time. In Iconium, where we've been hanging out for the last couple days on this podcast, just unequivocally, Galatians worked, Christianity stuck, and even 300 years after they received the book of Galatians, either directly or maybe they were the second people to get it, we've got writings from an ancient bishop from there that is directly referencing Galatians. So not only did Christianity catch on in Iconium, not only did the book of Galatians take root in Iconium, but they are still directly referencing it and bringing what Paul wrote in Galatians to bear on local theological crises and things like that. So it's a definite yes on Iconium. But the last of these four towns that Paul visited on his first missionary journey is one of these Antiochs, not to be confused with the Antioch in Syria, that was the home base of all of Paul's missionary journeys. This is Pasidian Antioch that sits right on the border between Galatia and Phrygia and Pasidia. It's uh what can I liken this to? Pick a place on a map that is close to where you live or somewhere that you know really well, where three provinces or three states or three countries have one shared little intersectional point. Maybe you might imagine something near Pickwick Reservoir on the Tennessee River, on the perfect T that is created by the north-south border between Alabama and Mississippi and the southern border of Tennessee. Like if you just make a timeout symbol with your hands, that Pickwick Reservoir and Pickwick Dam, it's pretty much right there at the intersection of those three places. Now, in modern times, we draw our boundaries really tight. So that is technically in Tennessee, but in ancient times, when the boundaries moved a little bit, I don't know, maybe somebody could have said, yeah, it's you know, it's basically in Mississippi. Somebody maybe could have said, yeah, it's basically Alabama, whatever. Well, in Roman times, Antioch at any given time might have been in Pisidia, Phrygia, or Galatia. It's just right there in the middle. And what that tells us is that I can kind of picture how the people there looked. This is fun. Did you know that the Phrygians, that's a PH Phrygia, did you know they had iconic little hats? They you can always tell a Phrygian sculpture because they have cute little hats. They had smurf hats in Phrygia. I just think that's absolutely delightful. Like pudgy little hats that kind of roll over. They're called a Phrygian cap. Then, because of some stories we're not going to get into, that little cap throughout history with the little cute, adorable little like turnover, it kind of like rolls over in the front, like a little smurf hat. It kind of looks like a, I don't know, like a wave or a dollop of cream on top of something. I I just drew it here on this sheet of paper. Those cute little floppy puffy hats came to be associated with freedom and liberty. And they were popular during the French Revolution as a symbol of liberty and fighting against the age of absolute monarchs and bringing about the liberal revolutions of the West. So a lot of times you'll see imagery from the American or particularly French revolutions, where there's like somebody drumming or waving a flag intrepidly in the face of the imperial monarchial forces, and they're often wearing these floppy little hats. That goes all the way back to this little region called Phrygia, which is right next door to Pisidia, which is right next door to Galatia. And so I have to imagine that when Paul in Acts 13 went to Antioch in Pisidia, not to be confused with other Antiochs, that a whole bunch of people there were probably wearing these cute little smurf hats. And I just think that's fantastic to picture that. Well, in Acts chapter 13, Paul arrives there for the first time, and he gets through one of his longest recorded sermons without getting interrupted. People really like it. Apparently, he was talking to mostly Jewish people there initially, but he gets up and he gives a whole overview of the whole history of the Bible, basically, and ties in the Old Testament to the New Testament. I mean, really, what Paul does here is he kind of imitates what Jesus did at the end of the book of Luke with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, where he, you know, opening the scriptures explained the whole thing from the very beginning up until now to how Jesus was the fulfillment of all that. Peter, maybe a little clumsily, does the same thing on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two, and in keeping with that tradition, Stephen did the same thing in Acts chapter seven, and they hit him with a bunch of rocks and killed him for it. And you know what? Paul was at that speech. He heard that whole thing, and then he held coats and gave approval to the people who killed the guy who gave that sermon with rocks. And now here we are just six chapters later, and Paul is giving the exact same kind of sermon, and he's fixing to get beaten and hit with some rocks. So Paul gets all the way through it, and he's like, Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the stuff of the Old Testament. David pointed to him, and now we're here to proclaim Jesus to you. And the people of Poseidon Antioch with their little floppy hats. I mean, maybe the Jews in the synagogue didn't have the cute little smurf hats, but the people of Pisidia and Antioch were like, Great, this was super. Can you come back next week and do it again? Then Paul was like, Yeah, that's I mean, obviously that's why we're here and everything. And they're like, Okay, yeah, we just wanted you to know we liked it. And Paul was like, Yeah, okay, I get it. Yeah, we'll come back. That paraphrase is mine. But in that week in the interim, the Jews who did not like Paul's message got really worked up, and they showed up the second Sabbath that Paul and Barnabas were there in Poseidon Antioch, and they made a great big fuss and caused a lot of problems, but still the Gentiles listened. So check this out here. Acts 13, 46. Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly, that is, the Jewish critics. We had to speak the word of God to you first, since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life. We now turn to the Gentiles, for this is what the Lord has commanded us. Quote, I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth, unquote. When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord, and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. As is so often the case, there's more work to do on Passidia and Antioch for you and I, and I'm not gonna rush it, but I can just tell right now that we're probably setting up for a triple episode, triple episode on Poseidon Antioch, and that's great. But I'm sensing right now that we are gonna be able to make some very clear proclamations in answer to our question, did Galatians work or not? When we're done looking at the details of how things worked out in Poseidon Antioch, a pattern is taking shape. This is starting to come into focus, and I'm looking forward to making those grand important pronouncements at the end of either tomorrow's episode or the one after that. So I'm gonna pause right here and then we'll pick up where we left off, continuing to look at this stuff about Psidian Antioch. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.