Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and I'm going to read you a verse right now from the Holy Bible, and we're just going to see how it makes you feel. Also, I'm I'm not just, it's not fair for me to just ask you that, and then I don't speak to it. I'll tell you how it makes me feel too. The answer is uncomfortable, by the way. I'll just warm it up with that. Here we go. Galatians 6. We're going to start in verse 11. What's happening here is we're right at the end of the book of Galatians. Paul's writing this letter to a difficult situation at a little network of churches that he apparently had recently started, and then things got thrown into confusion. It's been rough. Paul, throughout this whole letter, apparently has been dictating. He's been pacing back and forth and he's had a scribe writing this stuff down. But now he gets to the end and Paul runs over and he's like, just you know, just give me the pen for this part. He grabs the pen and he takes it. And now he's writing himself and he says, See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand. So clearly he's making the point that he's the guy writing this. This is real, official, it's trustworthy. He also wants to make sure that they really get this last little bit of stuff that he's gonna write with gigantic letters. And he says this those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. But the only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Okay, I should have thought a little bit more about this verse before I set this all up because I didn't think about the circumcision part, and the obvious thing that this verse would make you feel is circumcision feelings. Like this is weird and uncomfortable. But just don't think about the circumcision part yet. Just think about the first part of the verse. How does that make you feel? Those who want to make a good impression outwardly. Dot dot dot. Where does that take your brain? Here's where it takes my brain. Right to the bleakest, saddest, most disappointing moments in my entire life with myself because it's insecurity. It's trying to save face. He's describing people who are trying to look cool and they're not necessarily doing the right thing or the good thing or the selfless thing or the principled thing. They're doing the expedient thing to try to look cool in front of other people. They're not operating out of conviction, they're operating out of fear and insecurity. And you know what, my friends, I don't think that's usually how I operate. But the moments when I have are the ones that I replay in my brain at night when I should be thinking about thoughts of gratitude toward God for the good things in my life or how to protect my family from bears. You can make fun of that all you want. But one time we had a real close-up dangerous bear encounter while I was holding my kid when he was little, and I successfully fended off the bear. So all of that laying in bed and thinking at night about what I would do if there was a bear totally paid off. But the rest of what you do when you think about just the negative stuff and the embarrassing stuff late at night, it's not particularly productive. That's a gross feeling for me. I have this incredible, uncanny knack for remembering every stupid thing I've said and done born out of insecurity in the history of my entire life. And for whatever reason, when my guard is down, right before I go to sleep, that's when I do it. Hang on just a second. My uh my son just walked in. Hey pal, um I know we've just got a couple minutes before company shows up. Can you get the bags of grass clipping and get them out of the back and then just do a quick sweep to put away tools and utensils and just wipe stuff down and just make it look good so we can use the backyard? Thanks, dude. Love you, proud of you. Are you stealing my popcorn? Okay. Well, we all make choices. Love you, buddy. I just told him some of the bear story. Put on the little. He's a really good kid. You can understand why I would lay in bed at night and think about how to protect my kids. But the point of today's conversation is not that. It's insecurity. You've got insecurities, I've got insecurities. They make us do funny things. I mean, a lot of the funniest stuff that I've ever done is also born out of insecurity. Funny, like where I'm the butt of the joke, in like a Michael Scott, Ricky Gervais, Tim Robinson kind of way, where the joke is, ha, something awkward happened, and I had two choices, and I could have just been cool and done the thing that was sensible and good for others. But instead, I chose to ramp everything up to 11 and make it weird for everybody in an attempt to save face. In this passage, Paul is accusing the people who've come up to ruin the Galatian church of duplicitousness. Why? Well, we get two reasons right here in this verse, and we'll deal with the second reason next time around, which is avoid uncomfortable feelings or getting picked on or persecuted. But the first is simply trying to save face, trying to make a good impression, being false and letting that falseness manifest in a way that in this case is really massively destructive. And when I think about insecurity comedy, which by the way, to me is just some of the very best comedy of all the comedy that comedies, I love the joke where you can see the exact moment where the character on screen realizes that they are in a bad spot or they've misstepped socially, or everyone's laughing at them a little bit, and they have the option to just go with it or do something insane, and then they do something insane. It makes my skin crawl to watch it, but I love it because I can relate to it, and maybe I like it so much because I look at it and like, well, I've I've never done it quite that badly. But another reason that I like insecurity comedy is that it tells the truth, and you feel empathetic toward these people because you're like, well, I mean, I just see the little boy coming through there. Yeah, that's an adult man in that comedy sketch, but I see the little kid heart that just wants friends and just doesn't want to look dumb in front of people and doesn't want to be the one who gets laughed at about everything. And he's not gonna disclose that that's his motive when he does this crazy, erratic thing born out of insecurity, but that's really what's going on. And I think that principle kind of carries over here as well. I mean, Paul isn't taking a very sympathetic look at these guys, but he's getting to the heart of what they're doing. He's stripping away all of the layers of theological pomposity or whatever pretenses out there for this is why we had to come up to Galatia with our circumcision kits to make all of this happen. It was out of a deep compassion for all of you. You think we like circumcising people? What with the body fluid and everybody watching, the discomfort, the odor? No, this isn't what we like doing. It's a service we offer because God has laid this on our hearts. They're trying to look cool, but Paul is stripping away all of that false, we're here to serve you nonsense. He's stripping away all of the false, this is just very important theology. We've read some very important books and spoken with some very important people. And in the name of truth, we felt we needed to make this journey up here with our circumcision kit and serve you in this way, simply to bring you into compliance with the truth, which is what we most deeply care about. What Paul's doing here in Galatians, and particularly now that he's writing in his own hand at the end of Galatians, is nuking all of that pretense from orbit. Come on, guys. You're not here because you love truth. You're not here because you love serving people. You're here because of your weird insecurity, your insistence on trying to save face. You're here because you kind of want a little bit of the Jesus thing, but you don't have the courage to take any abuse from it. And guess what? Paul is very qualified to call these people out for that because Paul has had the courage to take all kinds of abuse from people for it. Paul has said the true thing again and again without regard for his own safety. You know who would know very well that Paul has been willing to take abuse for the truth? The Galatian church. Because when Paul went there, people in these towns, when Paul first went and preached, they hit him with rocks until everybody thought he was dead and they dragged his body outside the walls so it wouldn't rot and spread disease in the town, but somehow he was still alive, maybe miraculously. And then what does Paul do? Yeah, I'll just hang around these towns a little more and let's just make sure they really meant no. And then churches are founded out of it. The contrast here between Paul, who is now writing in his own hand, maybe a hand that shakes and jitters when he writes because he got hit with so many rocks, maybe rocks thrown by the recipients of this letter. Paul writing with his own hand in just a few strokes of the pen is drawing this massive contrast between the agitators and himself. So, guys, you're insecure, you're afraid? Well, guess what? Everybody's insecure, everybody's afraid. But this farce that you're carrying out with what you've inflicted on this church as a way to contend with it, this isn't the way. You're false and you're cowards and you're hurting people, all while you try to get credit for all of that bad behavior. And again, if anybody, anybody is qualified to call that out credibly, it is Paul whose body shows the marks of his willingness to say the true thing and to actually serve people at great consequence to himself. Everybody's insecure. Everybody wants to save face, everybody wants to make a good impression outwardly. Usually, when we do things to satisfy those felt needs, it's trifling and mostly harmless, and the kind of thing that you can chuckle at. You know, you crack a joke at a party and it doesn't go over quite right, and you double down on it, and you're like, okay, I better just stop now. No harm, no foul. You're shooting the crap with your buddies, and somebody says something cool about you, and it's, you know, mostly true, and you just let it slide without correcting the record towards something more modest. Okay, maybe it's not ideal, but in the grand scheme of things, everybody's gonna live. We're gonna be okay. Lesson learned. These dudes were showing up and chopping on adult dudes' genitals, and that wasn't even the most problematic thing these agitators were doing. The most problematic thing is that they were wrecking the church, sowing discord, and throwing everybody into confusion about what the gospel actually is and who Jesus actually is and how one can have right standing with God. Paul, once again, is nuking from orbit the pretense that these guys showed up with about loving truth and being great dudes. He's saying, no, this is malignant insecurity and face-saving attempts. This is cowardice, this is an unwillingness to suffer for the truth. These guys are frauds, and they're putting you through something spiritually and your bodies through something physically to compensate for what's wrong with them. More on that next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.