If you're listening to the 10-minute Bible number podcast, it's best fun free daily deep minute Bible. And right now we're talking about collations.
SPEAKER_00Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Lover Podcast. And I don't know if you can hear it or not, but I can hear it because of the sensitivity of this microphone that I have right here at my desk. There is a low rumble of motorcycle noise in the background all the time where I live right now. And maybe it won't pick up for you, but wow, do I hear it and am I conscious of it? And the reason that we're getting that noise is because every year in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where I live, in August, we have a giant motorcycle rally that is centered around a town right next to where I live, a town called Sturgis. You've probably heard of this rally before. I think it's the most famous motorcycle rally in the world. It's the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. And they've done it for 80 plus years. For the most part, it's a bunch of people who increasingly are getting up there in years, who get their motorcycles and they come to Sturgis. We've got 200,000 people in the area. About 700 to 800,000 people on motorcycles descend on the area. So, I mean, you're good at math. It fundamentally changes everything about our community for a week and a half. And motorcycles, I don't know if you're familiar with them, but especially the road bike thing, they are not quiet. And motorcycle culture often really enjoys and appreciates the fact that the motorcycles aren't quiet. Can you hear that right now? Maybe you can't hear that. I can feel the rumble of that engine from hundreds of yards away. Pretty much all the motorcyclists who come to this event would say that this is a celebration of freedom. It's America, red, white, and blue. We're different than pretty much any country that's ever evered. And you know what? People are gonna ride motorcycles because it's a metaphor for American freedom. And I like that. You know what? Great, cool. But one of the things that was baked into the founding ideals of my country was restraint. The idea that you would have all this freedom, but then you got to use it responsibly. You have to use it with civic duty in mind, with a certain self-awareness and awareness of what's going on around you, civic responsibility, etc. And of course, over the years, you know, there's this other version of American freedom that's more up yoursy, two middle fingers to the wind, kind of no one can tell me what to do because I can do whatever I want, sort of thing, which I don't think is really the point of what we're going for or we're going for here with American freedom. Well, both philosophies show up and manifest with this Sturge's bike rally. You get a whole bunch of people, the vast majority, I would say, who show up with their buddies and they got motorcycles and they got the ladies on the back and they ride around, and yeah, their motorcycles are a little bit loud or whatever, but I mean, hey, it's a motorcycle. What are you gonna do? They go and they ride in the mountains and it's pretty, and maybe they fish or they camp and they have a nice time and they tell stories and they're thoughtful toward other people, and it's great. They use their freedom, but also they use it considerately toward other people. Great. The minority of people who show up view freedom as an up-yours to the rest of the world. That the way to flex your freedom or prove that you really have freedom is to be obnoxious and abrasive toward others, almost like you're bowing up on other people to kind of you know challenge them to stop you or do something about it. Probably a lot of you already connected the dots here on where I'm going with this and why I'm talking about this toward the end of a season that we're doing on the book of Galatians, but I'm gonna connect the dots right now. Likewise, there seems to have been a question in the book of Galatians about the relationship between the freedom that people had to, you know, in Christ and how to function in community. How does that freedom relate to what you do with other people? What is the point of the freedom? How do you exercise it? What opportunities come with it? And how do you have a functional community of faith without a whole bunch of rules, without a law to make sure people are in line and to restrict freedom so that people will behave well? Now, look, as we have discussed, when people talk about Galatians and you look big picture at it, understandably, the place where everybody's head goes is ah, you know, it's a book about the grace and the law, depending on the law, depending on Jesus for salvation. It's a book about legalism. You'll hear that get talked about a lot. And all of that stuff's come up in our conversation. Sure, that's there. But the occasion that prompted Paul to write this letter was really two things. One, as we've discussed at great length, agitators came up from Jerusalem and said you got to obey the whole Jewish law to be Christians. So all of you new Gentile believers in these Galatian churches, you're gonna have to start doing Jewish law things, including adult male circumcision and law. The law is going to be your hope. That is going to be your avenue to right standing with God. Paul obliterates that line of theological thought in the first four and a half or five chapters and change of this book. But then the second big occasion that prompted the writing of the book is what Paul tackles in the last chapter and change, and that is that the Galatians, Achilles' heel, is that they're really mean to each other, that they turn nasty in a hurry. And I was talking with my buddy Jeff about this the other day, and he's like, yeah, and further, you kind of look at what was going on outside of the book of Galatians when you go back and you look at the book of Acts and just see what it was like when Paul went through there initially, through this part of the world. I mean, they were awful. These people were mean, nasty gossips who got a B in their bonnet, and they would not let it go. They would chase people from town to town. And indeed, that's what happened to Paul. Kind of ironic, right? That he got chased from town to town by zealots who were mean and violent because he was chasing Christians from town to town early in his career. It's kind of a fun irony, I think. Fun little symmetry there. But whatever the case, the people in this region of Galatia, they were just awful in the book of Acts. And so you can see some of that stuff that was in their DNA, that Achilles heel of just being absolutely gossipy and nasty and willing to take that far beyond like mean middle school boy bullying or mean girls high school stuff, way beyond that level. That apparently was still in play in Galatians, and they hadn't figured out what to do with that yet. Well, maybe what we're seeing here is that some people who had become Christians in Galatia and were aware that, hey, we have this problem, they thought the solution to this was more rules. Like maybe there was an appeal to if we obey the law a lot harder, maybe then we can get this behavior under control. And how are we ever going to get this under control, apart from obeying the entirety of the law and using the flesh to defeat this fleshly, socially divisive stuff that we tend to do? But then Paul comes along in the last chapter and change of the book of Galatians, and he's like, no, life by the spirit addresses the problem without going back under the law and becoming slaves again to the law. Life by the spirit addresses the problem that is endemic to you guys as Galatians. And so with that in mind, we've been looking at the beginning of Galatians chapter six, but really everything from Galatians 5, 13 through maybe you could say the end of the book, but certainly for you know about the next 20 verses or so, is all Paul walking the Galatians through this idea of the relationship between their freedom, which they have in Christ that is real, and each other, and what they do with that freedom. He's trying to paint a picture for them of what it looks like to take the freedom you have in Christ without going back under the law and use that freedom to build each other up, to demonstrate the fruit of the spirit to each other, to not gratify the desires of the flesh, to not indulge stuff that is contrary to the spirit, and to instead live in step with the spirit and build each other up and function in humility, not because Allah is making you do it. Remember, you got the fruit of the spirit list here, and against such things there is no law. It's not a law question, it's something even bigger than that. It's a greater motivation than obey the rules or don't obey the rules. It's a heart level motivation that he's talking about here, where you have all this freedom, but then you use it in ways that look like God to build things that God is building and to build into other people with humility and compassion. And so this whole line of thought starts really, we can go all the way back to Galatians 5 1. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Okay, so Paul has put a bullet in the go back under the law strategy. We're not doing that. Freedom is inherently good. The freedom that is real is freedom that is is provided by Christ. It comes in Christ. And, you know, like so many others, you start talking about freedom, and people who are a little afraid of that idea will come back and be like, Well, what about this? Well, won't bad people just do this? You know, and that can be valid pushback. But Paul isn't talking to the whole world here. He's talking to people who had agreed to a certain set of values. He's talking to people who agreed to walk by the Spirit, he's talking to people who are in Christ. And surely some were saying, like, well, we just can't possibly get along without the law to make us behave well. Paul's painting a picture of them using their freedom voluntarily to be Christ-like to each other. So then he picks up the idea again in Galatians 5:13. You, my brothers, were called to be free. Ah, there's the freedom again, but freedom is scary. If there aren't rules and there aren't consequences to the rules, and it isn't a law that maybe even has salvation as the carrot and stick to make you do it. Will anybody actually do the right thing? Then he goes on. You, my brothers, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather, serve one another in love. That is your thesis statement. Right, in fact, I'm gonna hang on. I'm gonna write that. The sis. I wrote that in my Bible. This is my actual Bible that I use for everything. Now that's there forever. I just marked it. If you ever see me and I have this Bible, you can ask, and it'll it's written, it's right there next to Galatians 5:13. That's your constructive proposal here. That's your thesis. You guys were called to be free. Don't use the freedom as a two middle fingers to the wind up yours to everybody, like a small minority of the bikers who come for the Sturgis rally. Instead, serve one another in love. In other words, you are more freed up to serve one another in love under this system in the freedom of Christ than you would ever have the ability to serve one another in love under the law. This is better. The ceiling is higher here for how much you can get it right. So let's lean into that stuff. So then through the rest of chapter five, he unpacks all the stuff about so I say live by the spirit, you won't gratify the flesh. The acts of the flesh are obvious. Guys, don't do that stupid stuff, but the fruit of the spirit is this stuff, it's beautiful. Guys, there's no law against any of that. And then he unpacks this handful of specifics that I think were handpicked for this Galatian audience to deal with things that maybe were reported back to him specifically in a letter he was replying to here. But even if they aren't a point-by-point response, I mean it still kind of works to read them that way. And so what we're gonna unpack tomorrow is what specific instructions Paul is giving here in terms of how the Galatians, or probably any Christian, could use their freedom to maximize the fruit of the spirit, maximize walking by the spirit, maximize humility and love and grace and kingdom values and relationship with other Christians, and not to indulge that freedom in ways that are gross and that run counter to the values of God, to the values of the kingdom. So when we look at this tomorrow, what you're gonna notice is this stuff in Galatians 6, it's gonna seem like it's kind of a blunderbuss shot, like, yeah, here's like here's like eight different things that are all Christian and they're not related, but they are related if we think about that in light of what we just looked at today. That the whole big thesis here is you, my brothers, were called to be free, but don't use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather, serve one another in love. That's it. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.