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Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour podcast. And several years ago, I got asked to teach a bunch of homeschool parents, like a little homeschool get-together thing with a bunch of really talented moms and dads who were teaching their own kids. And they had sort of a little uh curriculum thing that they were using. It looked pretty smart to me. And they asked me if I would come and lead this sort of annual training event that they do with all of these homeschool parents and teachers. And for, I guess they call it a co-op for the co-op they were doing. And I said, sure, that sounds cool. Way to be proactive. That's very interesting. Sure, I'll do it. And they were like, cool, you'll just have to travel to this other city far, far away, and go to a seminar so that you can be taught how to teach us. And I was like, wait, what? But you asked me, I'll show up at your thing, but I don't want to go get trained how to teach you the thing you asked me to know. And to it was weird. I was like, all right, whatever. We'll just get out of town for a few days, I guess. I'll go give it a try. And it wasn't the best. It was not my favorite thing that I've ever sat through. And one of the reasons is because we spent so much time on basic outlines. I was like, I just I got things I want to do. I I don't want a full-day seminar on how to do an outline, and I'll never forget it. And maybe it was maybe it was super useful, and maybe other people appreciate it. Maybe I didn't pay attention well enough. Could be. But I remember them bringing us in, like all these other people who are gonna speak at this same event in other groups all around the country, and they're infantilizing us, like they're teaching us all talks should have an introduction. Looking around, waiting for the punchline, it never came. So we're gonna start by working on introductions. In the introduction, you should try to establish rapport with the audience and give them a sense of what you'll be talking about. I was like, yeah. I mean, yes, I know, right? Like we like, I think we all know this. And then after lunch, we did a whole big session on the ending. At the end, you should have an ending. And in the ending, you should try to re-emphasize the main points of what you said in the middle of the thing and the stuff you said you were gonna do in the introduction. And again, I thought, well, I might not always do this perfectly, but I I think this is intuitive. Well, whether that was time well spent or not, and whether that was indeed intuitive or not, I gotta give the apostle Paul props because his structure makes perfect sense to me in the book of Galatians. Maybe he went to this seminar. He's got a real clear beginning, and at the beginning he's like, I'm Paul, I'm an apostle, there's my authority and stuff. Grace and peace to you. What the heck is the matter with you people? I heard about what was going on. And then he has a clear outline where he defends his very aggressive thesis. Then he gets to the very end of the book in Galatians chapter six. He grabs the pen from the scribe and he does the ending part, the conclusion. And effectively, what we've been looking at for the last three days is Paul's conclusion and the structure of it. And I think it's just beautiful. It perfectly mirrors the structure and the order of the stuff in the actual book of Galatians, almost as though he were a super competent communicator under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who had his head screwed on straight and knew what he was talking about, and was writing something that would be really helpful, not just for the people of the Galatian churches, but also for people of for all time. So here's what we've seen so far. In the first line of Paul's closing summary, he says, See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand. He seems to be saying, This is indeed Paul who wrote this, and two, that's a big deal because I'm Paul and I have authority. Well, we go back and we look at the beginning of Galatians, and that perfectly mirrors the first thing he says at the beginning of Galatians. Paul, an apostle, sent not from men nor by men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers with me to the churches in Galatia. Grace and peace to you from our God and Father, Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. That is such not wasted material. And maybe it felt like just boring front-end stuff when we first started looking at this book. But now that we've done all the work and we've spent this time in his conclusion, like dang, that was really important because he's saying, just like in his conclusion, I'm Paul and I wrote this. Second, I'm writing this with real authority from Jesus and all the brothers. This is the consensus of Christianity. You are hearing what the church is. You are hearing the teachings of Jesus in this letter. And then he goes on, it just kind of flies past you because it just has such a lilt to it, but then he goes on to say that it is Christ who gave himself for us, and he did the rescuing of us from this evil age. So the emphasis right from the beginning, the thesis from the beginning is remember, this is the message you received. God did the rescuing. You didn't rescue yourselves. God gave you life. You were dead. You did not give yourself life from a position of deadness, you didn't will yourself to life. So the echo, it's just crystal clear. It's right there. The same structure is being followed. Well, for the remainder of the first couple of chapters of Galatians, I feel like Paul is fleshing out that claim to authority. It'd be weird if we got to the end here and it seemed like Paul was claiming authority, but he did the work. In chapter one and chapter two of Galatians, he covers any misconceptions about who he is, how he became a Christian, flipped to that from being a bad guy who persecuted Christians. He is addressing whether the Christians back in Jerusalem like him or not. He is addressing questions that might have circulated about he and Peter being at odds. And he flips those rumors around. He confirms the rumors, but he flips it around from a thing that is a weakness to Paul's credibility to something that demonstrates the strength of Paul's credibility. Yes, Peter and I were at odds. You heard correctly, because he was wrong and making the same kind of mistakes at their heart that these outside agitators are making. So I called him out and he admitted he was wrong, and we got it back on track. So the first part of Galatians corresponds really tightly with the first two points that Paul reminds us of. And then the next couple of points that Paul reminds us of are effectively the gospel, what the message is. And then we get to this next point that we've spent so much time on. I think it's really pretty simple and straightforward, but this is what he says next. Verse 14, Galatians 6. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Well, there we go. Now we're getting to the heart of the constructive proposal. Now Paul is reminding us of this. Hey guys, remember I demonstrated my authority, then I completely took to task the false teaching that you have heard. And then remember after that, I pointed you back to the true stuff, the real stuff, the stuff from Jesus, the stuff that affects how we live every day. Well, yeah, that's what Paul's reminder is right here. So again, the first two chapters is Paul covering the authority stuff, the resume stuff. Then in chapters three and four, Paul defeats the arguments of the Judaizers, all while pointing people back to the true gospel, which is faith in Christ. And you might recall that right as he's transitioning out of the resume phase and transitioning into the theology phase, he famously says, I've been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I don't set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. Then he goes on for the rest of the book. Remember, after that verse, it's Galatians 2.20. The rest of the book, he basically pays off those two things. I walk by Christ because of the work of Christ. I walk by Christ and I didn't earn it. I have life in Christ. I am a son of the king, an agent, an heir of the kingdom. I bear the marks of somebody who suffered for it, but I didn't earn any of it. It was all from God. I was the worst of the bad guys, and God gave me life through Christ. So for the rest of the book, the bad teaching gets crushed with good, patient, solid theology and a bunch of stuff from the Old Testament, but also the constructive proposal, which is we have life in Christ and we walk by the Spirit, is laid out. And that becomes really emphasized as we get to the home stretch, starting in chapter 5. I mean, effectively, Paul finishes his crushing of the bad guys in Galatians 5.12 when he says, As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. Then he pivots in verse 13 of chapter 5, saying, But you, my brothers, were called to be free. Don't use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: love your neighbor as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, or you'll be destroyed by each other. So I say live by the spirit. And then he goes on to talk about what comes out of a life not lived by the spirit, and what comes out of a life lived by the spirit. And that's your famous fruit of the spirit stuff. And then after that, he's into the home stretch that you and I have been talking about here for the last few days. So as I was saying at the beginning in the introduction, there is a way to give a presentation. You introduce the idea, then you pay it off with all the stuff in the middle, and then you come back to make sure everybody got it by re-emphasizing it at the end. Well, it would seem that Paul really understood and excelled at that structure because, as we have seen in the conversation today, Paul's final little remarks when he takes the pen pretty much exactly follow the outline of what he just got done doing throughout the entire book of Galatians. Meaning, Paul opened the book by saying, I'm Paul, and here's what we're about to do. Then he did that. Then he closed the book saying, I'm Paul, and here's what we just did. What do you know? It's exactly what I said we were going to do at the beginning of this letter. And I don't know about you, but as we're getting toward the very end of Paul's concluding remarks and using this as an occasion to think back about the structure of the whole book, I gotta say, I'm feeling pretty good about it. I hope you are too. I feel like this is coming into focus for me. I'm following the logical flow of all the argumentation of the book way better than I ever have before. I totally admitted to you in the middle of this season that dang, I'm getting bogged down. This is hard. I'm a little overwhelmed by what we're doing structurally. I mean, I can academically tell you, but there was a time in the middle of our conversations here where I would come to the mic and I'd be like, uh, I don't feel like I'm quite in sync with Paul. I don't feel like I'm quite flowing with the argument. And I got to admit that this little bit at the end where he summarizes it all back up is ultra helpful for me, despite having read this a whole bunch. And so I guess my final point would be okay, people who put on the thing back in the day that I was too good for and a little aloof about and that I thought wasn't maybe totally necessary. Okay, maybe you have a point. Maybe it is really important to completely ultra mega overemphasize, say what you're gonna do at the beginning of a presentation, do it, and then at the end, point back to what you did step by step at the end of the presentation, because that makes it make more sense even to people who've been around the subject matter for a long time. Perhaps I have backdoored myself into being humbled today. I don't like that. Okay, yeah, more of the home stretch of Galatians next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon,