Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And some of you know this, some of you don't, but I've got a YouTube channel that I've done for going on 11 years now. That is a long time in the history of YouTube. And it's never been a big gigantic thing or been a YouTube channel that's gone nuclear. It's not very controversial. I don't really pick fights with people or anything. It's sort of a channel born out of my curiosity about the Bible and theology and the history of Christianity and other Christian groups and how they do things. And it's a little bit borne out of my desire to do funny things or things that I think are funny from time to time. So that channel, I've done a lot of stuff over there. Originally, it was called the 10-minute Bible hour. And on that channel, I worked through the book of Acts, kind of like this. Did you know that? That there's an 80 or 90 video series with a bunch of dumb jokes and everything else where I go all the way through the book of Acts like this. And some of you are thinking, wait, you did that in whatever it was, 80 or 90, 10 minute videos. And how many episodes, none of which are actually 10 minutes, has it taken to get through this little tiny book of Galatians and Acts as a big book? Yeah, that's right. I don't know. It just feels like we have more time here. So we take our time, we make the progress we make. But the first thing I did on the YouTube channel was I went through the book of Acts. And then I was like, well, let's talk about where the Bible came from. People seem to have questions about that. And then I was like, well, let's go talk to some of the people who see that differently. And so I started going to other churches that aren't like mine and started asking them questions about why they do stuff the way they do stuff. And that's been a blast. I some of those videos a lot of people seem to have really liked and they've kind of made the rounds. I think it's kind of a fun novelty sometimes for these different Christian groups of somebody who's coming in from the outside who is really genuinely interested in their thing to just come and look at it and notice stuff. I mean, it never feels crappy to have an outsider come look at something you care about and be like, oh, hey, I might not think it, but I get it. Cool. I see what y'all are doing. I think I understand. And so these videos are just a fun format. They're a fun thing to do. And I've done a lot of them. So hey, if you've never seen any of those, there's a whole playlist over there. And I don't know how many videos are on it, but at this point, I've been to a lot of churches and talked with a lot of people. Well, here's where I'm going with all of this. One time I went to a Presbyterian church. Well, I went to one and it didn't work. Uh, so I didn't publish that one. Sometimes they don't work out. Like I don't want to make people look bad, and it just didn't work. But the next time I went to a Presbyterian church, it went great. The guy was cool. His name is Ethan, and I think he's still at that church. And as he was showing me around the church, I was learning stuff about Presbyterianism and Reformed theology. That's a branch of Christian theology that Presbyterians espouse. It's often associated with the 16th century Genevan thinker John Calvin. It's okay if you don't know what all of that stuff means. But I'm going around the church and I'm feeling like, okay, well, you know, I kind of know some things about Presbyterianism. These seem like lovely people, and this is a cool church. But I was learning stuff too. And one of the things that I detected was that he was kind of embarrassed that they had some stained glass depicting Jesus. There was like one window out of 12 or however many around the sanctuary. And there was one there that had, I don't remember, like the crucifixion or something on it. Maybe another one that had Jesus and Pilate. Or I don't remember. It doesn't matter. The point is, Jesus was on there. And I couldn't understand why he was going to such lengths to explain to me, like, hey, we bought this building from other Christians, a different group. It didn't seem right to destroy stained glass. So we kept it. But you know, I know, I know some people aren't going to like that. And I'm going, what people aren't there's some fight here that I'm not aware of. And I just like I can detect that there's tension, but I don't know what it is. And he explained to me that some Presbyterians, some reformed theology types, they don't want any kind of depiction of Jesus or God. Oh, that's cool. Like they're, you know, in their mind, they're trying to honor the commands of God and avoid idolatry. And to them, that is akin to idolatry. They can say, you know, make their case better for it than obviously I can, because I don't think that. But cool. All right, I get it. Hey, I learned something. But there was a really interesting social moment there where I was like, oh, there's a tension present here that I did not understand and that I did not feel. Because to me, it just looked like cool church art depicting things that I've seen depicted before and that I picture in my own brain from the life of Jesus in the Bible. Well, likewise, sometimes when you're reading through the Bible, because of our conditioning or questions that have come up since the Bible was written, we can sort of inflict fights or points of tension on the text where I don't think there's actually that much tension. And I'm sure over the last few days, as we're here at the end of Galatians, there are some of you who are going, man, Matt, you're acting like there's real tension in this text here in Galatians between salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, through Christ alone, and doing good works. I'm sure there are a bunch of you who are like, I just, yeah, you, Matt, you took three days on it. Clearly, you imagine there's some kind of friction or tension here, but I don't that it just doesn't pop for me as I read through Galatians of the Bible. What is that about? And to all of you, I would say, great point. Yeah, you're probably right on that one. And this is probably one of those places where I do tend to overexplain a little bit whenever we get into one of these parts of the Bible that talks about something that I think is really obvious from the Bible, which is Christians should do things that are in keeping with the commands of Christ and that are good. Christians should do good things, and God wants you to. Yeah, that really shouldn't be controversial or surprising at all. That's all over the Bible. But, you know, coming out of, again, if you don't know all the history of Christianity and everything, that's okay. You know, we'll cover it gradually as we go along. But coming out of the Reformation and the 1500s and into the 1600s, there was some real tension about, hey, how exactly does somebody become a Christian? And, you know, some groups would say, hey, I think this other group is saying that you get there by doing enough works to impress God. And that violates the spirit and the, well, the not just the spirit, the overt teaching of the book of Galatians. And, you know, that was kind of part of the debate. How does right standing with God happen? And that debate was definitely a part of my upbringing. And well, quite frankly, I'm with the reformers who really put the emphasis back on hey, salvation is through Christ alone, by faith alone, by grace alone. You don't do anything to make this happen. This is all the work of God. And so, maybe like my Presbyterian friend who was kind enough to show me around his church back in the day and did such a great job with that. Maybe like him, I'm anticipating or feeling a little more of attention here than it actually exists or than you feel. But here's the thing about this podcast I am not a corporation, I am not a publishing company, I am not any, I'm just like I am some guy. And what we do with this is I try really hard to understand the Bible because I think it's from God and it's important. I want to try to understand it. And it seems like a bunch of you are into it too. So the pace at which we encounter this sometimes is informed by my quirks and the things that pop off the page for me as well. So, all of that said, is this passage in Galatians 6 controversial? Well, I would argue that it is not. Paul isn't acting like this is controversial at all. Like I might be a little bit sensitive here and there because of debates within the history of the church. You know, my pal Ethan might be a little sensitive about some stained glass that maybe isn't a normal thing that you would see in a building from his tradition. But Paul, he doesn't seem to be real sensitive about anything here in Galatians 6. I mean, for crying out loud, he's not being sensitive about it. He just told people to emasculate themselves. Sensitivity is not Paul's problem here. It's not what's really flavoring his writing or making his writing obtuse or hard to understand. Now, he's spelling it out pretty clearly, and he's not acting like this is something he should even have to explain because it is so self-evident and so obvious. And really, a lot of the stuff that you get from the parts of the Bible written by Paul, where you or I might go, Oh, some Christians see it like this, and some Christians see it like that, and there's some controversy here over this passage. You go and you look at the actual original text that Paul wrote, and he doesn't feel uncomfortable. Everything he's talking about, I mean, the good stuff is like, praise be to God for saving people this way. That's amazing. It's only way after the fact that we kind of argue about it and try to figure out what's going on there. You know, oh, these things are obviously bad. And, you know, it's only now that in, you know, with whatever modern sensibilities come up at any given moment in history that we look at that and we go, like, well, I, you know, it's that's pretty sensitive. Just look, Paul just wrote this stuff, and everything he's writing here seems to not have a lot of apologies attached to it. So at the end of the day, after, well, the end of three days that we've been talking about this, it seems like this passage is best to be received as something Paul thinks is absolutely obvious, absolutely compatible with his teachings about how one has right standing with God. That's just faith, grace, Christ alone. And something that Christians absolutely should internalize and take seriously. Let me just remind you of the passage. Don't be deceived, God can't be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the spirit from the spirit will reap eternal life. I don't hear any equivocating or like, oh, you know, you're picking up on some undertone here. He's just saying, You're Christians, you're a part of this other thing. You should live like it. You're not a part of this thing, you shouldn't live like that. Let's not become weary of doing good, for at the proper time we'll reap a harvest if we don't give up. Well, that makes sense. He's talking to people who are kind of forfeiting all of their sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. Just a few paragraphs earlier, he told them, like, this doesn't make sense. This is the acts of the flesh. Why are you guys doing that? Well, that's giving those things up are going to make them weird in Galatia. They're going to be cultural outsiders, and probably they're going to take some abuse. They're going to, I mean, they're going to suffer for not doing things the normal way in that culture. And so I think there's an encouragement here from Paul. So I know my tone has been kind of one thing the last few days. Like I anticipate some tension and some friction here. That said, I think we've had a pretty easy time sorting through it. But Paul's tone, even there, it's it's positive, it's forward-looking, it's an exhortation to something good. It's a, hey guys, hang in. You're giving up things that are pretty normative in your culture. You're gonna be outsiders. It might hurt to some degree, but there's this far greater thing that you're a part of, and this is far greater thing that is ahead. So keep your eyes focused on that. That's the payoff. The proper time will reap a harvest if we don't give up. So so good, reap harvest of good later. Come on, focus up, focus up. This is the stuff that matters. This is who you are now. This is what flows out of your new identity as a son, a daughter, an heir, an agent of the king. And really, the whole thing, frankly, is just massively positive and obvious and not controversial to Paul. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.