Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we are not having fun because we are in the middle of reading through all of the sin lists of the New Testament. And we're trying to be clinical about it here. I don't not well positioned to solve all of this for you. I don't even know that I'm doing a terribly good job of solving it all for myself. This is hard. This is difficult material. I get that. What we are trying to do is just take a good, honest, clinical look at what all of these lists look like in the New Testament and then see it all big picture-wise. We started on that exercise yesterday. We're going to pick it up and keep going through more of these lists today, and this is going somewhere. Thank you for hanging in with me. I'm going to have Jeff play some music. We're going to get after it. Ephesians 5. My joyous romp and lilting tone as we read these lists is simply a function of diction and cadence, not of thinking these things are just delightful. They're not, and I'm so uncomfortable. Let's keep going. Ephesians 5, 3 through 5. But among you, there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity or greed, because these are improper for God's holy people, nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure, no immoral, impure, greedy person, such a man as an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Well, now that's a very different list than we've seen so far. Apparently the Ephesians struggled with exactly the best way to employ the tongue. I like that he uses the phrase there, which are out of place, indicating that they were saying things that might have a place somewhere. But the people Paul's writing to at least lacked the shrewdness to read the room and were guilty of deploying such things out of place. Again, every one of these passages begs for so much more nuance. And hey, if we have enough time to go through the whole Bible together eventually, we'll get to all of it. Colossians 3 5. There we go. That's kind of that same theme of the flesh we've been looking at in Galatians. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. It sounds like exactly like Romans 1. And I think it's a worthwhile note that here in Colossians 3, we get the same kind of mirror bad list and good list that we get in Galatians 5, which we're working on, because in Galatians 3:12, then you know, just a preview where you get, therefore, it's God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved. Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive. So a lot of these lists that we're just flying through here, bear in mind that the beautiful converse is right there in the context as well. But again, we're doing a thing here and we're gonna get to it. All right. First Timothy has a couple of these. Let's do the one in First Timothy one first. I overshot it by a mile. Here we go. Um again, this is a letter here, First Timothy, where Paul is writing to a guy. This guy, Timothy, was working in the church at Ephesus, but this wasn't a letter written to the public at Ephesus, so it has a little bit of a different tone. This is Paul coaching up his protege on how to handle the problems of the community he's working in. Uh 1 Timothy 1 9. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous, but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers. Ooh, patricide, matricide. That was one of the most detestable things a person could do in the ancient world, and indeed still is, but wow, for that to even be an issue that had to be spoken to, my goodness. For murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine. Isn't it interesting when we go through lists of very bad things, by the way, that some of these, for the moment we live in in the unfolding of humankind, we hear certain ones where we're like, yeah, slave traders. They're the worst. And well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm glad that's on the list. Also, I've never traded a slave. I've never come close to trading a slave. I've never bought a slave, I've never owned a slave. I've been loudly in favor of freedom and not slavery for my entire life. So I love that one. Cause I'm like a zero percenter on that. But lots of the other stuff on these lists, those hit closer to home, and that's where I want to start using weasel words more to sort them through. Funny. All right, 2 Timothy 3, 2 through 5. We're almost done for what it's worth. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying its power, have nothing to do with them. That list has such a different rhythm to it, because it's all rooted in this contrast between what is loving and what is not loving, and misdirected love being something that's an evidence of the flesh. These lists, the point is they aren't all the same, right? They've all got a different texture, a different character. They all clearly, if we had more time to get into the context, they all clearly are sitting somewhere different in each of these letters in terms of the prose and the imagery that Paul is drawing upon, and even the language that Jesus was using and the stuff from the Gospels. Yet, I think we are seeing some patterns here and some real commonalities between all of this. All right, what do I have next in order? I guess it would be Titus. Yeah, there's a little one in Titus. I didn't write down where it is. Hang on, it's toward the end. This is bad internet right now. I just could have just written it. Here it is. At one time we two were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. I mean, that that was uh Titus 3.3, by the way. But how about that list? Here, Paul is lumping himself into it. I was this, I was this, we were this, we were this, we're all in this together. But here, Paul, in this letter to Titus, which is again one of his pastoral helpers who was working on the debauched island of Crete, here in this letter, Paul's lumping everybody in. We were this, we were this, we were this, we lived this way. But then the next verse, again, I'm telling you, they're they're contrasts to all of these contrasting statements. Here's the ugly, here's the good. Well, this is how it goes in Titus. But when the kindness and love of God, our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we'd done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior. I'm gonna keep going. This is so good. So that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs, having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these sayings so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone. I think Paul is talking about both parts of what he said when it's he's saying it's a trustworthy saying, and it's true, and say this with confidence, young protege Titus. The bad stuff that I said that is what we were, the flesh stuff, that's true. It's a trustworthy saying. Also, all the stuff about who we are now in Christ, that is true. That is a trustworthy saying. It's a package deal. I get that we like half of the package of the package deal better than the other half, because one makes us feel good and the one makes us feel bad. But why would we want the one that makes us feel good if we weren't aware of the one that makes us feel bad? I don't think we'd ever even care about it. Am I stalling? What do you think I'm some kind of amateur? I don't know how to make a podcast. Yes, I was stalling. You caught me. First Peter 2, one. Now we're on to a different author. This is Peter writing at this point. He says, Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. And now here's the contrast. Love this. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk so that by it you may grow up in your salvation. Now that you've tasted that the Lord is good. I like it. Peter's saying, get rid of all this stupid stuff, this flesh stuff, this stuff from the old life. This stuff is destructive, but then he gives them something to do. Crave pure spiritual milk. Kind of that life by the spirit constructive proposal that we get from Paul with a little different language and a little different emphasis. Pretty cool. I got just a little bit more sin listing, but we are at the home stretch here. And so tomorrow we will round out the last of the sin list, and we will get into the what do we do with it and the round the corner stuff into the I mean what we want to get to, the the hope, the atonement, the how do you solve it? Okay, great, we get it. This stuff is a mess. What do we do? Well, that's where it's headed tomorrow. So we're gonna pause there and we'll pick up where we left off then. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible Hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.