Let me tell you, being a pastor's kid is a weird gig. It was mostly good. It really was. There's this whole reputation that we have, you know, for kind of being turds and doing like my dad's the pastor, I can get away with whatever I want thing. But I really don't think that was us. I've told you that before. My brother and sister are slash were awesome. That's weird. I've never tried to formulate that sentence before. For those of you who don't know, uh, my sister is wonderful and is thriving and momming and happily married, and she's just great. My younger brother passed away when he was 18. There was an accident. So when I say like, do I use the present tense? Do I use the past tense? My brother and sister are and were great. We're gonna go with that. We had a wonderful time growing up together, and we beat on each other and did stupid stuff, and it got out of control and everything. We fought like any siblings would, but I don't think we were pastors' kids turds. I think we were okay at the very, very worst. And for the most part, I think we were decent. Every now and then, though, we had to do weird pastors' kids stuff, like entertain other people's kids that were starting to come to the church who were maybe pretty frustrating to be around. And mom and dad and the the family that was there, their mom and dad, they'd just be like, go outside and play. And we knew what the expectations were on us. It was keep it together, don't be stupid, be nice to these people because it's right to be nice to people, and also because, hey, like we'd like these people to go to church and you know be a part of what we're doing here. And that's weird, admittedly, that's an odd pressure for a kid to have to bear, but I don't know. I don't think it was totally unfair either. Like, I think it's reasonable to expect a kid who's uh 10, 12, 14, 15 years old to be able to be nice to somebody else. And that's basically all that was asked of me. So we'd have these families over all the time. We were always doing hospitality, and it was mostly great. Like people come over, maybe we didn't hit it off and become best friends, but we get along and it'd be fine. But then some other times we just did not hit it off. We didn't just resonate with the other kids who came over or whatever. And I can't remember any out and out brawls, but I can remember some guest families coming over and the kids doing crazy crap. It's stuff we know we're not allowed to do, and it's dangerous. Like, we can't do that. Our mom and dad are gonna be real mad, you can't jump off of that thing. They're gonna be, you can't light that on fire, they're gonna be super mad. And don't get me wrong, we did a lot of stupid things on our own, too, but I can think of a few of these examples. And on one or two occasions, I remember some difficult family dinner visits, and we didn't get along very well with the kids, and mom and dad could tell it wasn't going well. And we said all of our goodbyes, and the guest family went away. And then the second the door would click shut, mom and dad would be like, What the heck, guys? What was going on there? Just tell me everything, what just happened. And we'd just barf out everything that everybody did and everybody said, and all the emotion would come out and everything. And mom and dad, to their credit, they were really good about it. They would listen and try to understand. You know, they didn't expect us to be perfect or anything. They were very patient with us. But eventually, they always did a great job of pivoting it away from whatever the other people did who aren't our family. Sometimes we were wrong, sometimes they actually were wrong. Mom and dad always did a great job of pivoting away from that and just kind of putting a stake in the ground of the conversation and being like, all right, cool. We're done talking about them. Sounds like they didn't have their best day. Those are all frustrating things. You're right to be frustrated. But now we're gonna talk about you. Yeah, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Guys, the stakes in the ground. Now we're gonna talk about you, Matthew. Do you think you could have handled that better? Yeah, probably. Okay. Walk me through how you could have handled it better and walk me through what you're gonna do next time. And and they would tease out of me an admission of my own shortcomings, my own failure, my own lack of judgment. And it was really good. It was really formative. And if anything about the way I just said that causes you to be like, I don't know, your parents seem a little then. I said it wrong. You should have been there. They did it really, really well. But that stake in the ground moment was so important. They let us say our thing about what went wrong, and they'd even acknowledge, no, those kids shouldn't have done that. That's not good. That's not good. But then once the stake is in the ground, we're just we're done. And the focus has got to pivot to us. Likewise, as we finish Galatians 5, that's right. We're going to actually finish Galatians 5 someday, possibly today. As we finish Galatians 5, we got to note that in the middle of this chapter is the stake in the ground moment of basically the book. It's where we go from focusing on the arguments and the behavior and the presence of the Judaizers, the people who came up to these fledgling Christians in Galatia and said, you all got to get circumcised and obey all of the Mosaic law in order to be an actual Christian. Paul was wrong, and we're here to straighten things out. Paul tackles all of that for four and a half chapters. And here is exactly the stake in the ground moment. And I think it just happens to be a delightful passage to read aloud. So I'm gonna. Paul hits us starting in Galatians 5:1. He gets us the whole thing, it's for freedom that Christ has set us free. Don't go back and be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. He points to circumcision, which was the big outward sign that the Judaizers wanted these new Christians to do, to prove, to do a blood ritual, to commit to this whole fleshly approach to earning favor with God. And Paul calls all of that stuff out really well. And it's like the most heated moment of the what's wrong with the outsiders part of the conversation is the very last moment. When he says in Galatians 5, 10 and forward, I'm confident in the Lord that you'll take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be. Dang, Paul, the dad tone going on there. Brothers, if I'm still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been abolished. But as for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. Now. Breath, stake in the ground. Everything that needed to be said about those guys has been said. And now we're gonna pivot to you, my brothers. We're called to be free, but don't use your freedom. You see what he's doing here? We got it all out of our system. We talked about the thing. Yep, that was bad. All the reasons it's bad have been addressed. All of the underlying analysis that needed to occur to really get to the bottom of what was wrong with what they did and what they said and how it was wrong. We broke it down fully. We did it. That has been covered. Now that we have that stake in the ground, Matthew, let's talk about you. What could you have done different? What could you have done better? And that's where the whole fruit of the spirit thing fits in. I mean, to picture this, just imagine that it wasn't a letter, but that Paul actually showed up at the church in Galatia. And in the room are the confused masses of the new Christians. And over here on the other side of the room are the religious leader, Judaizer, circumcision crowd, interloper, agitator types. And imagine that for a whole bunch, the majority of the first four and a half chapters through the middle of chapter five, Paul is looking at and pointing at and rebuking with quite the hefty tone the agitators and the outsiders, while only occasionally looking back over to the rest of the room who have been thrown into confusion. And he caps it all off by pointing right at him and being like, as for those agitators, boom, right there, you. I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. But now imagine Paul's body language changing entirely from that we addressed a problem to my dear children, body language. Guys, you, my brothers, you're called to be free. Imagine Paul's eyebrows are pointing down in the middle when he says the emasculation thing, but now the eyebrows are pointing up in the middle as he turns his shoulders and his body language to the confused, fledgling Christians who got duped with this stuff. And sure, they've got guilt in it all. But he's parenting them now. He's giving them the Matthew. What would you do different? What needs to be different? He's giving them the constructive proposal. What is it? So I say, verse 16, live by the spirit, and you won't gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature of the flesh, it desires what's contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what's contrary to the flesh, they're in conflict with each other. So you don't do what you want. But if you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law. The acts of the flesh, guys, the acts of the flesh are obvious. I mean, you don't need me to list them out, but I'll go ahead and list them out. Here some of them are. Some of these are going to sound a little familiar for you. You're not going to like the way this sounds, having this read aloud in church, because you guys, pretty much everybody here, you're all doing at least some of these things. And it's ugly. You're wrecking each other and you're doing stuff that's dishonoring to your body, dishonoring to God. Here, I'll give you a few examples just in case you don't believe me. But then after that list, I imagine Paul's softening even further. Guys, Matthew, the fruit of the spirit is it's none of that stuff. This is the stuff that you know is right. This is the stuff that you know is from God. How do you get it? You walk in the spirit. How do you get it? By doing a bunch of things? By making up a bunch of laws to just obey them to by cutting on your flesh, by doing this gyration or ovation or acknowledging this thing on the calendar just this way, come on. You got life through Christ. Your life is sustained and made to look like Christ by the power of the Spirit. And he wraps up chapter five, I think, still in this very empathetic tone, targeted toward these fledgling Christians who are thrown into confusion saying, Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature, the flesh, with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let's keep in step with the Spirit. Let's not become conceited, provoking and envying one another. Yeah, it's corrective, but it's pastoral and it's fatherly and it's tender. And he's not just doing a lecture, he's getting to the heart of why. And he's not just saying don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. There's a little bit of that, but more so, be this, be this, be this, walk in the spirit. This is available to you. He brings it all back with the, you know, you guys know you've been hard on each other. I've seen it, you've seen it, you know you've been too tough on each other. This walking by the spirit thing that is made available by the work of Christ, the that's the antidote to all of it. Tomorrow we're going to touch on a little bit more of what Paul says there at the end of Galatians 5, and we're going to start working into Galatians 6, where the same line of thinking continues. But from here on out, I think it's really important to note that pivot in tone and in audience. Paul has said his piece. The wrong people have been spoken to. He's not going to have a relationship with them moving forward anyway. Whatever. Bridges burned. If they want to come around and fully repent and I'm sorry, me a culpa, cool. Then there's a future. Probably they're not going to do that. Probably some of the people Paul offended were in on it when Paul got arrested and ultimately sent off to prison in Rome a little later on down the road, anyway. Paul knows that's not the place to keep throwing his energy and needs to throw his energy at these people who actually might walk by the Spirit and who could get it right. So I think it's important to keep that in the back of our brains as we work toward the home stretch in the final chapter of Galatians. That's fun. All right, there's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.
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