Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we are in the epilogue section of season five of this podcast, the business at the end that we need to talk about as we evaluate the book of Galatians, which we just spent, I don't know, better part of 300 episodes working on. The big question that we're asking here is did Galatians work? Obviously, it's in the Bible. Anytime you write something and it goes in the Bible, I think you can call it a success. So that's been great. Galatians has obviously provided timeless value over the centuries within the Christian faith. So, you know, it certainly worked in that regard. You and I just looked at it. It's really good. So it worked in that regard. My question though is, did it work for the original audience and that did Paul's words win out? Were the churches that Paul was writing to bolstered and fortified? And were the agitators who came and tried to throw them into confusion defeated? Did they go away? One of the great mysteries of the book of Galatians, and that is the question of specifically who was it written to. There's one theory that says it was written to some churches and some towns that don't ever get mentioned in the Bible, up in the northern part of the province of Galatia. There are other theories that say it was written to churches we do hear about in the southern part of the province of Galatia, that being Lystra, Derby, Iconium, and Pisidian Antioch. And when I came into this, I was maybe a little bit on the fence between the two, but with more time to think about it and look at it along with you, I'm becoming pretty convinced, yeah, it must have been the southern churches that Paul wrote to because he was astonished that they so quickly had fallen off after Paul had just visited there on his first missionary journey and then made his way back to Antioch, and then he gets wind. Things are a mess over there. I was just there. What are you guys doing? We just talked. So if that timeline is the timeline, the churches that Paul is writing to in Galatians were founded on the first missionary journey. They immediately went into spiral and free fall when the agitators showed up shortly after they became churches, and then Paul quickly writes a letter to them right at the end of the first missionary journey. If that timeline is right, then the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 happens after the book of Galatians and affirms that Paul was right in what he wrote to the Galatians in the book of Galatians that we just looked at. So clue number one as to whether or not the book of Galatians worked is that the Jerusalem Council affirms Paul and affirms what the book of Galatians says. I mean, that that's a pretty big vouch. That's a pretty big deal. Thing number two has to do with a name you've heard of, a guy you've heard of before. How do I want to get to this? Uh, you know, back in the day, or maybe even still, when you're at a restaurant and somebody was like a waiter or bus boy or something's walking along and you hear a big loud crash and there's a bunch of glass and stuff. What does your grandpa yell? Do you remember? I remember. He yells, job opening. And it's like, hey, yeah, it's so uncomfortable. Also I love you, but I feel really weird. And now, as is so often the case on this podcast, I am going to explain to you the mechanics of a joke you clearly already completely get. The joke, or the attempt at the joke, is something went wrong, and there's gonna be a falling out back there. You can hear it because all the glass broke and everything, and we're gonna need somebody else to jump into that role now. Likewise, at the end of the otherwise glorious and delightful Acts chapter 15, where we get the aforementioned Jerusalem Council account. At the end of it, the bunch of scribes on our full fastest ships are sent out to the corners of the church world with this message, this little letter that's like, hey, we had a Jerusalem council, everybody was here. Apparently, there's been some confusion about what we actually are doing, what the message actually was from Jesus. Here is a very simple, like, uh, how many words is that? Like a hundred words, tops, little letter sent by trusted representatives of the actual church to tell you how the things actually are, and that Paul was right, and Gentiles are Christians, and you don't have to become Jews to be Christians, but they just say it real quick. And that kind of wraps up a whole moment in the story, and it feels really good. And then as that's happening, we cut back to Paul and Barnabas who went on that first missionary journey. The one I think resulted in the founding of the churches that the book of Galatians was written to. But Paul and Barnabas, they're having a problem. You might not remember this because we haven't talked about it for a while, but there was a kid they took on their first trip with them, a kid named Mark. Mark was very young. Mark flamed out early. He got homesick, and from Paul's perspective, abandoned them in Pamphylia. Pamphylia is maybe right on the border of Galatia territory, or it's even possible that in the era we're talking about everybody who would have just lumped Pamphylia in with Galatia, whatever the case. Right as Mark got to the churches of southern Galatia or the cities that would become the Galatian churches of southern Galatia, he got sad or mad or whatever, difficult. I mean, it happens on trips sometimes, and he left. So Paul didn't like that. That's stuck in his craw. He's like, well, can't have people like that around anymore. You know, they're not reliable. Well, obviously, Mark turned out to be reliable in the long run because he wrote something that went in the Bible too. Good job, Mark. Sometimes we screw up, then things get better later. It's probably good to be patient with people and not write each other off for our worst days. But also, I understand why Paul didn't want to take the risk on Mark. Well, Barnabas, whose name literally means like the son of encouragement, and he's always vouching for everybody, and he's helped Paul. He's a great dude. Barnabas, at the end of Acts 15, it's like, whoa, Paul, settle down. Like, hey, remember, dude? I mean, I don't he didn't say any of this. I'm just I'm paraphrasing it. I'm guessing what might have been said. But I wonder if maybe Barnabas was like, hey, Paul, remember when you did some bad things on a religious journey too? Like murder Christians? Come on, man, let's take Mark with us. Sometimes people get stuff wrong. We just keep going. I mean, maybe I'm being mean to Paul here, but I also understand Paul's perspective, which is laser focus. This is my calling. This has to happen right now. We can't have you know an albatross. We can't have dead weight with us. We can't have him do what he did again last time. Well, Barnabas sees in Mark some sort of growth, and Paul sees in Mark maybe not enough growth to trust him with something this important again. Maybe they're both right. Certainly the Bible doesn't treat either of them as being bad. It says it came into a sharp disagreement over the thing, which is a pretty interesting turn of a phrase at the end of Acts 15, because Acts 15 opens with the phrase sharp dispute or sharp disagreement as well. At the beginning, Paul and Barnabas are in sharp dispute with the agitators, the Judaizers. At the end, Paul and Barnabas are in sharp dispute with each other. Well, the one at the end looks like it's a lot more charitable. They agree to part company. Barnabas takes Mark on sales for Cyprus, and then Paul, with his new traveling companion Silas, who you've heard of, they go on the second missionary journey. Where do they go first on the second missionary journey? Well, they go right back to southern Galatia. They go right back to the three or four cities. I mean, I guess we only hear, I think, three of them mentioned, but they go right back to the cities where they got initially stoned and beaten and everything, and then eventually they made a church there and eventually probably wrote Galatians to there. What did Barnabas and Mark do? Well, they went off and did other stuff. They sailed for Cyprus, and they were, I mean, clearly successful and effective. And in the end, from my Christian perspective, I would say that God used this reasonable disagreement between reasonable people to actually multiply things at a quicker rate. So it looks like a fail, but I think this is actually a win, the parting of ways we get here at the end of Acts 15. So now here we are, pretty shortly after the Jerusalem Council, which is in, I've always heard it said 50. Some people now are arguing for 49 A.D. is when it happened. You know, whatever the case, Paul and Silas go on the second missionary journey and they go right back to Derby and Lystra. Remember, this is the region where Paul and Barnabas got mistaken for Greek gods, and then when they were like, no, we're not actually, then all the people who were calling them gods were like, oh, well then let's hit you with rocks until you are dead. It was a pretty rough start to the planting of the churches in southern Galatia. But here's how that second missionary journey with Silas is recorded as going in the early game. He, that being Paul, came to Derby and then to Lystra. Okay, so this is the first time Paul has been back since the letter to the Galatians have been read. That might be a little awkward. Hey guys, remember the letter? Oh, I see you two over there. Tony, Raul, yeah, I was talking to you two. Um yeah, I remember that I said the thing about maybe you should emasculate yourselves. Anyways, we're all in a room together. How's everybody doing here? They came to Derby and then to Leystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived. You've heard of him. Remember the job opening thing I was talking about a minute ago? And then you were like, why did you even talk about that? You didn't pay that off. Well, here's the payoff. Paul has a job opening. The mark roll is wide open and available. The young man to be trained up in sort of the Jedi and Padawan structure that so many of these Jewish Christians or well, Jewish thinkers in general have been raised in. I mean, Paul has an open roster slot right now, and well, it looks like Timothy might be a good fit. There's a part of me that wants to rush to the finish line here to get the whole Timothy thing into one conversation. But spontaneously, I think this is the moment where we need to talk about a potentially controversial thing regarding circumcision and Timothy and the book of Galatians and Paul's consistency, and that's gonna need a little more time. So this whole clue number two conversation is gonna get spread over two days. Just put a pin in it, pause in your brain right there, we'll pick up where we left off next time around. All right, good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon, and you can see that.