It's me, Matt Whitman from the podcast you're listening to right now, the 10-minute Bible Hour podcast. And you may have noticed that I'm taking a bit of a tone today. Well, that is because I am dealing with a frustration that involves you and me, and we're gonna have to deal with it together. Perhaps this is your first time here, and you're thinking, I don't understand why people listen to this program or why it has so many positive reviews because the host sounds so very, very angry. And I'm with you, new listener. I understand why you would be concerned or put off by this tone, but I think when I explain to you what has happened, you'll understand why this tone was necessary today. First, a bit of history. Earlier this season, a season on the book of Galatians, the fifth season in the history of this podcast, a podcast in which we choose a book of the Bible and then we chip away at it a little bit each day, and just whatever comes up next in that book of the Bible is what we talk about next. And we try to have a nice time and we try to take some ground and we try to do something fruitful here. We try to make the Bible a part of your daily rhythm. So this is a nice podcast where supposedly nice things are supposed to happen. Earlier this season, the season on Galatians, I received a white elephant gift from someone in my life. That white elephant gift was a small figurine depicting a cherub-like child wearing a snow onesie in a delightful, snowy, idyllic pose. It was perhaps ceramic or porcelain. I don't know what this material is. It's baked clay. And this line of cherished knick-knacks are called snow babies. I don't want a snow baby. I'm not a snow baby guy. That's not the kind of thing that would appeal to me. I like lumberjack things. I chop wood. I play sports. I fly fish. I don't want snow babies. What if somebody gives me a snow baby and then later, before I have a chance to throw it away or burn it, somebody comes into my office and sees that? Do you think that's going to improve their level of respect for me or diminish it? I'll answer it for you. Diminish it. So I received this snow baby. I was disgusted by it, as obviously I should have been. I talked about it on the program because we share a lot of our burdens together, and I ended up giving the snow baby away to one of the supporters of this program so that it would be gone from me, and whatever monkey's paw curse might reside upon it would now befall the household of that unwitting supporter of the program. So I, in a gesture of trust and goodwill, tell you, the listeners to this program, that I don't like snow babies. What then happens? Well, you would think everybody would look for snow babies at, say, thrift stores or garage sales, and just buy them and dispose of them, as obviously ought to be done. But that's not what's happened at all. Instead, many of you think it would be funny to buy snow babies in various different charming Americana poses and send them to me at my mailing address, which is 3213 West Main, number 101, Rapid City, South Dakota, 57702. Now, given the knowledge you all have that I don't like these, I can't imagine why someone would send me one. It's some sort of misguided prank, but guess what keeps showing up at my house? I go to my mailbox. I'm hoping to find maybe a friendly greeting card with a serene image of perhaps a beach somewhere with an inspirational Bible verse on it. That would be good. No, no, no. Just keep getting snow babies. Here's one. It's called Icicle Treat. It's got a little baby wrapped up in a snowsuit onesie, holding an icicle, licking it, sniffing it, praying to it. Hard to tell, it's not great art. But here it sits on top of a giant clay snowball, right here, on my desk. Here's another one. This one doesn't have a name. Looks like it's Officer Police Cop. This little snow baby is wearing an old style blue hat that a police officer might wear. And you know what's in this little snow baby's hands? This little snow baby wearing mittens all gussied up for a day out in the cold? An American flag. That's right, a real, functioning, waving American flag. You send this to me, you give this to me? Now I'm responsible for the maintenance of that replica American flag. Even though it's small, flag code still applies. You've given me a burden. What do I have here? Oh why, it's another snow baby given to me by a listener of this program. This one has a hose stuck in a pail. The pail is labeled water. The hose, which is a ridiculously large nozzled hose in the style that old timey firefighters might use, is being wielded clumsily by, surprise, a cherubic baby wrapped up in some sort of snowy onesie. And this snow baby is wearing a red firefighting helmet. What's this in my right hand? Oh, it's another snow baby holding a snow globe that has a penguin in it. If I shake it up, what happens? Oh, that's right. It's a functioning snow globe. It's a knick-knack within a knick-knack. Now, one thing I particularly appreciated about this snow baby is that the head has come detached. Perhaps that happened in shipping, but I prefer to believe that this happened and is some sort of meta play on the entire situation and the entire ongoing series of mockeries and humiliations that I'm enduring at the hands of those of you I try to serve with this Bible podcast. Let me just be abundantly clear. I don't want your snow babies. I am repulsed and disgusted every time I open one of these boxes. I'm not tickled. I'm not going to talk about it every time one comes in and describe it into this microphone as some sort of ongoing bit or joke to build camaraderie and have fun here. That's lowbrow internet. That's lowbrow podcasting. We don't do that kind of thing around here. So let me just make it clear once and for all, this is not funny. This is not charming. This isn't the kind of joke I appreciate. And I'm not staring at these and thinking about what kind of knick-knack shelf to build for them to display them in an ironic reverse flip joke play on the entire situation. No, no, no. Rather, I'm just plotting how best to dispose of them. Galatians 5. What am I doing? I'm in Revelation. Why would I be in Revelation? Well, we were doing the sin list thing. I'm in Revelation 22. For those of you who don't know, I read all the lists of all the sin lists, the big combo lists of all the bad things, very bad things, the acts of the flesh that happened in the entire New Testament. If this is your first time here, you missed all of that, but that's what we've done for the last week. It's pretty amazing. There we go. Galatians 5. We got a sin list. It says the acts of the sinful nature are obvious sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. We've been a long time on this sin list here, and mercifully, we're done. We worked the whole thing through very carefully. We didn't necessarily work it through like breaking down each bad thing on the bad list to get a really good sense of how it's bad, and to be like, tell me more about exactly what salacious badness that one is. Break it down. Describe it in more graphic detail so I can better understand how bad it is. No, we didn't do that. Rather, we just tried to work through why is this the list? Why I mean this isn't an exhaustive list here in Galatians five of all of the bad things, the stuff that is born out of the desires, the impulses, the state of being, the dark side. Rather, this is a list that we have here in Galatians 5 that has a lot of overlap with other lists, as we discussed yesterday throughout the New Testament. But this is the list that made sense given the problems that Galatians were having to say, hey, you know, these are the things you guys seem to particularly struggle with. Here's the list. But there's this one little line at the end. I warn you as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. That creates an apparent conflict for the attentive reader because just here in the previous pages of Galatians, over here a couple pages in Ephesians, there's a lot of language that seems to indicate that right standing with God is a gift of God, that faith is a gift of God, that salvation is the gift of God, and that ultimately that gift of God is not earned through exemplary behavior, but rather our right standing with God, our pivot from being slaves to death, outsiders to the kingdom to being included as sons, daughters, heirs, agents of the king. That pivot is the result of God's grace. God is the author of salvation. God is the one who opens eyes. It's a heavy concept. It's a lot to deal with. We're not used to this equation, and every time we come across this as we work our way through the Bible, there's something in our sense of what is fair and how things ought to work that is jolted by the reality that God is the giver of life. That this is the one thing in life that we don't earn, we don't buy, we don't manipulate to get it, we don't work the system to get it, we don't politic hard enough to have our group receive this blessing from on high from the state. Nope. This is a totally different equation than anything ever. Salvation is through Christ, by faith, the gift of God, so that nobody can boast. So then every now and then when we come across a line like this, it can be a little bit jarring as well, because this line here at the end of Galatians, the act of the sinful nature, the acts of the flesh list that I just read here in Galatians 5.21, it kind of sounds like maybe you do earn it. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this, that's the list of very bad things, will not inherit the kingdom of God. In fact, hey, you remember earlier when I was open to Revelation 22 from the other day? Doesn't that one kind of sound the same way? Um, behold, I'm coming soon. This is Jesus talking, my reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. And then there's the list of stuff. So what's the relationship here? The book of James explores this quite a bit, and I think James might be a book that you and I might want to tackle in the not too distant future. It deals with this particular question. What's the relationship between the gift of right standing with God that is given only by God, according to the scriptures, and obeying God after that? And well, the book of Galatians tackles some of that. I was talking with my close personal friend Jeff Foote, who does the music and the editing on this podcast, and we're trying to think like what's the most concise way to sum up sort of a broad New Testament view of the relationship between obeying God and you know not continuing to indulge the sinful nature and things like that, and salvation by grace. And I do not remember exactly how he turned the phrase, but it was a very good distillation. It was tighter than my own. He said something like Hang on a second. I don't I don't remember. I'm just gonna ask him. Hang on. He'll know. Hello, Jeffrey.
SPEAKER_01Hello, what's up?
SPEAKER_00Oh hey, buddy. Um, I have you on the phone with everyone from the internet. Okay. They say hi. Remember, we were talking about the Galatians 5 thing, about the the verse I warn you as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. And we were having a contest to figure out who could say it tighter, the relationship between obeying God and good works and God's free gift of salvation. And you won. What was your phrase? It was about like identity. You said it really well.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, what did I say? It was our identity. Our behavior does not create our identity, but our identity is shown through our behavior.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's why you won. That was better. And mine was like three times longer than that. Okay, so then, if that's the case, then what we're talking about here is that when we get these passages that are like, well, if you're doing all the stuff on the sin list, uh you're an outsider to the kingdom of God. What we're talking about here is the idea that if if this is the defining stuff of you, that is an indicator of your true identity, which is not someone who has life by the Spirit. Is that a fair statement of what your maxim here is communicating?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it what's gonna keep you out of the kingdom or get you into the kingdom is your identity, not your behavior. But you will recognize the identity of the people based on their behavior in the end.
SPEAKER_00Or God will be able to see through all of that when he sorts it out.
SPEAKER_01Correct, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, and that's how Paul's treating it in Galatians 5, right? These are identity markers. These aren't necessarily just a simple, naughty, and nice list, hey guys, try to do more of this, don't do this. I mean, that's kind of implicit in it. But from the perspective of the larger argument and point of the letter, he's trying to say these are the hallmarks of the flesh. The honest impulses of the flesh, the darker impulses of the flesh, the slave to the law aspect of the flesh, but this stuff, the beautiful stuff, these are hallmarks, these are indicators that you are in Christ. This is what life by the Spirit looks like.
SPEAKER_01In one of the lists you had in an episode about in these ways you used to walk, is and Paul himself, right? What ways did he use to walk? What was his behavior before the Damascus Road incident? So I think the argument in Galatians is it's the internal, it's the identity that needs to be fixed, and that's only fixed by faith. And you don't do that by fixing the outside, external through circumcision or whatever. So similarly, once that identity has shaped uh and then changed, now this is how we live. This is what it looks like to be a part of this new thing with the spirit. So it's just kind of equipping or explaining to the people before when your identity was X, your behavior was X. Now that your identity is Y, the behavior will follow to look like Y.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and same question that I've asked you at other times. What if it doesn't every now and then? Like what if somebody who demonstrates a whole bunch of the fruit of the spirit also engages in, I'm just gonna close my eyes and circle my pen and drop on the previous list, dissensions. Well, it was right between dissensions and drunkenness. What if that still happens at some point? What does that mean for their eternal fate?
SPEAKER_01I I don't think it detracts anything from the new creation or the new identity if we don't behave consistently with it. I think over the landscape of your life, by the power of the Spirit, you will see uh sinfulness reduced and the fruit of the spiritless increase. But it's not a one-to-one correlation because I did something foolish or fleshly or stupid or sinful, whatever you want to call it, that somehow I'm kind of kicked out because I got in by faith, not behavior, so my behavior is not gonna kick me out.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. I'm glad I called you. Your your maxim was way better than mine, and everybody just got roughly the seven minutes of their life back that I wasted on snow babies at the beginning of this conversation because we had you just say what the maxim was. Dude, I keep getting have we not talked about I keep getting snow babies. I just got three more snow babies today. So people think that's funny, apparently. That should be on the list of the acts of the sinful nature sending people snow babies when they say they don't like them.
SPEAKER_01You should have told everybody that you don't like, I don't know, signed baseballs by Hall of Famers or bars of gold. What yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, just Jeff, just edit out the part where you gave me that suggestion.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00You know, Jeff, the one thing I really hate are bars of gold. Then sign baseballs by Hall of Famers. Every time I get something like that, I'm like, oh stupid gold. This is the worst. This is the worst podcast. Yet here we are. Okay, that was fruitful. Thanks for picking up, Jeffrey. That was helpful. Enjoy editing. Anytime. All right, see you, buddy. Thank goodness for Jeff Foote. Where would we be without him? He just makes everything better around here. For those of you who are new, he does all the music that you hear here. It's all by Jeff. He's a good dude. All right, I think that's plenty for today. We're actually gonna start reading things from the good list tomorrow. And I've said that like nine times, but there's always been a reason. Tomorrow, we're actually gonna read things from the good list, and it's gonna be fun. All right, it's plenty. Uh, Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Do this again soon.