Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And in my country, we have a show called Saturday Night Live. It's a skit show that does a lot of parody and live comedy stuff. So it's fun to watch because everybody in the country is watching, or at least they used to. Nobody really watches that much TV here anymore. Now everybody streams stuff. But back in the day, people used to watch it all the time, and it was something to talk about on Monday morning. And they do some risky humor and it's live, so they might screw stuff up, and that's always fun to see. But this show, it opens with a cold open most weeks. In other words, you're just watching TV on NBC, and then something comes on, it looks like more TV, but you look a little closer, and even though it looks real, you're like, hey, I know those actors, those are all actors from Saturday Night Live. And so this is going to be a parody of something. And usually, or very often, that cold open is a parody of American politics, particularly presidential politics. And all through the years, I think SNL's been running for 50 plus years, they've had an actor to who specializes in imitating whoever is the sitting president, and then they make fun of the sitting president. And I don't remember if they did it with Carter or Reagan, that predates me a little bit, but definitely George W. Bush they made fun of. And Clinton and George H. W. Bush also starting in the late 80s. And then they made fun of Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump again. And, you know, I suppose anybody could look at it and squint and be like, oh, you're harder on this team than that team. Maybe, but at some point they've made fun of everybody. And I like it. I like that we live in a country where we make fun of our leaders. Our country is sort of founded on the idea that we're supposed to be suspicious of government. Our systems are all built to separate power apart so nobody really has too much. So in the American political system, where we have freedom of speech, something I really like, even when it hurts my feelings, it just doesn't seem that weird to us that we would make fun of our leaders a lot, like witheringly. Now, in other countries where maybe you don't do the freedom of speech thing, or you have a little different history where really having that role on a pedestal is very important. I know it's confusing and weird, but hey, you know, we're all different. That's part of the beauty of history. But speaking of history, along the way, there's always been this question societally of how much mockery of the king is okay. And usually the answer has been, yeah, pretty much none, except for maybe a designated court comedian, a jester, who is allowed to show to model with his uniform that he is a clown and a fool. Sometimes they would get called a fool, and not to be taken seriously, but also wink wink to be taken seriously a little bit. And an excellent comedian back in the day in the court of a king, or a comedian today, they can get away with jokes that criticize people or even that criticize the audience sitting in front of them. They can get away with that if it's funny. They can't get away with it if it's not clever. And so jesters throughout the ages could keep their heads, I mean, literally, and stay in that role for a long time, if they could figure out how to make fun of the king in a way that would make everybody laugh, but that didn't feel like it was overtly undermining the king. We've always had this impulse to want to mock and ridicule our leaders, and societies have always had to wrestle with exactly what the right level is, what the right balance is there. However, there is one king who is just simply unmockable, and all the normal rules societally of mockability sort of go out the window when we talk about this king. And hey, hey, hey, in true youth pastor fashion, you can see the way I set this one up. I've got the chair turned around backwards, my hat is backwards, I'm leaning in, I'm really connecting with the youngsters here. That king is God. Did you see it coming? Maybe you saw it coming. The difference is that human kings are dumb and stupid and do dumb things. The difference is that human kings are flesh, which means that even if they're very nice and moral, they still have all of the weaknesses of flesh like you and I do. That is, they forget things sometimes, and forgetfulness is funny. Also, sometimes they get the poops just like you or me. And it's kind of funny to think about the president having the poops. You can get all dressed up and have a big fancy office all you want, but sometimes you get the poops. The point is, they are the flesh, just like you and I are the flesh. And it means it's pretty easy in our brains to project on them the flaws that we have, the inconveniences that we have, even some of the darker impulses that we have, and have a laugh about it and ridicule a little bit. But with God, well, he's really not the flesh in the same way that we are the flesh. God is real, God is tangible, God is spirit, but God is not flawed. God is flawless, God is master of everything and sustainer of everything. And so when I say the equation about mocking God is just a different equation than the one about mocking people, I guess here's what I mean. God, though I guess you could say mean and mocking things about God, it doesn't really work. God can't actually be mocked because there's nothing mockable about him. He's perfect and he's above it. And we're gonna flesh out this idea a little bit more here in a minute, but let me read you the verse that we're actually talking about. That's a long time to get to the verse. What is it? I mean, six minutes over here talking about Saturday Night Live and stuff. It's ridiculous. Galatians six and verse seven says, Don't be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Now, in the grand context of Galatians, I think I see where this concept is fitting. Uh, I mean, Paul is talking about personal responsibility in the church. He's talking about taking ownership of your own actions, I mean even your own mistakes. He's talking about patching things up with people when things go sideways. He's talking about exhibiting the fruit of the spirit. And he just got done yesterday in verse six, talking about taking care of the leaders in the church, people who teach them. Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor. But then he pivots to this don't be deceived. God cannot be mocked, a man reaps what he sows. Okay, why would he say this here? Maybe because there was concern on the part of the Galatians who had done the right thing even when it was hard. Maybe there was a concern that, like, hey, we went to Crazyville for a while here. People made weird rules, things turned insane and controlling, and people got self-righteous and bossy and were trying to make everybody do everything their way, which was really demanding. They were placing a claim on other people's bodies and insisting that you do this thing to your body or you can't participate in the church. And maybe there were people who didn't fall for it, and maybe they were thinking to themselves, okay, well, Paul, all this forgiveness stuff sounds nice and restoring each other gently. But what the heck? There was a lot of bad stuff that happened, and you only gave us like a paragraph of sorting it out, and you didn't really name names or anything. And how do we move forward without all of that being, you know, adjudicated? Again, remember, Paul is writing this letter from a disadvantage strategically. He's far away, he's trying to outmaneuver a whole bunch of people in the church and outside the church here all at once. And this to me, a little bit strategically, in addition to the theology importance that we're going to talk about more in a second, strategically, this feels like a preemptive strike to just be like, look, I know that a lot of you are going to be mad that I'm not calling out and addressing by name all of these controlling people who got way out of hand and went into this circumcision panic and started doing crazy stuff to their bodies and demanding it of other people's bodies as a condition of further participation in church, but we're not going to do it. God sees it. God isn't being fooled here. God isn't being tricked by any of the little stunts or the little gossip or the stupid stuff that you guys have pulled in church. He saw all of it. He isn't tricked. The field is tended. He will deal with that and resolve it. I mean, Paul literally says a man reaps what he sows. So at least in this moment, Paul is giving this little proverb to say God can't be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. It kind of seems like he's offering both the warning and the encouragement here. Now, I don't think this is him saying, well, everything else I've ever taught in the whole Bible about grace and forgiveness and how that works, that's all out the window. God doesn't forgive anymore. He stopped forgiving right here in Galatians 6, 7. No, I don't think that's the case at all. I think in part what he's talking about is like stuff comes around. You sow certain things, you grow certain plants. I mean, what's the saying now? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. But also that a man reaps what he sows thing has a positive connotation, even though it sounds kind of scary in this context. I mean, generally speaking, if you sow something good, did I say sow and reap backwards a second ago? Whatever. Generally speaking, if you sow something good, then you're going to reap something good later. So sow good things now. To me, this most of all feels like Paul is talking about the order of things as God made it. Whenever we run into a proverb in the Bible, we're talking about how things generally go. So a man reaps what he sows would be how things generally are. Also, the Bible laments that sometimes the wicked prosper, at least in the short term. And that's where we come back to the whole God cannot be mocked thing. Surely there were people in Galatia who were demonstrating false signs of repentance because a minute ago, when the breeze was blowing towards circumcision, they were like, Well, I think that now. That is the thing to think at this moment. And now Paul's letter has come in and the breeze is blowing the other way, and all of a sudden they think what Paul thinks. That is the thing to think at the moment. And surely there were going to be some who are like, that's not real repentance. I don't believe that. Again, this would be a reassurance to them as we're putting back together the pieces of the Galatian church. This would be a reassurance to those who are suspicious of the blown around by every breeze crowd, the maybe false repenters, that hey, yeah, you might be right. That guy might be a fake. God sees it, God will deal with it, God cannot be mocked. At some level, we can pick up the pieces and put it all back together and adjudicate everything, but also at some greater level, you just gotta trust that God is different than normal human rulers and he's got it. He'll sort the thing out. So I'm not satisfied that we fully got through everything that I wanted to process here in terms of the whole idea of God cannot be mocked. And ended up taking the second half of our conversation to get through the stuff about what might have been going on here dynamically and why this is in the passage. So I want to think more about this very big, bold claim. God cannot be mocked. Well, dang, every other ruler I've ever seen or heard of certainly can be mocked. I want to pull more on that thread of why God can't and what happens when people try. Yeah, that'll be fun. I've got boxes of stickers coming in. They're Galatian stickers. They're cool. I've got the super fancy hologram ones already in my possession. I'm also including a couple of nifty bonus stickers for those of you who will be recipients of the Hey, thanks for going way above and beyond Wink Wink, you know who you are, hologram sticker recipients, as a celebration for our soon-to-be completed journey through Galatians. I think on Monday I'm supposed to get in all the rest of the amazing-looking Galatian stickers. I got these awesome gold outline Galatian stickers. And everybody who supports this program in any way, at any level, on any platform, you're getting not just a sticker, but I made a couple of bonus ones. I'm going to send them to you. So you're going to get some cool bonus surprise stickerage with this one as well. It's going to be rad. If you want to get the season sticker when we mail it, and we are very close to mailing it, then you need to make sure your address is up to date on whatever platform you support on. If you just happen to send something my way, we saved that. We documented all of that. So we would have you on a list to make sure to get you this as well. And if you want to jump in, hey, last minute's fine. If you want to jump in and support the podcast at Patreon or wherever there's a link down below, you can do that. And if your name is on the list and we send out the things, you're getting one of the things. All right, more on that later. I'm Matt is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.