One time when I was in college, somebody got a ticket from our little cute guard shack from our now defunct college. We made fun of the guard shack a lot because they had to enforce these rules and we were college kids, and of course we're going to be idiots. I don't think we're the worst idiots ever for college kids, but there's some dumb stuff that happened at my college. And the poor security shack guys, they'd have to go around and issue these impotent little pink tickets where they had to write descriptions of the police crimes that we committed around campus, and then they could give us fines of up to $20. And they'd tick the box and be like, that's a $20 fine. Think about what you've done. And there was one of these tickets that I remember that a buddy of mine got. He was also on the volleyball team. He got a ticket where the whole thing was just full of writing, his little pink slip. And it described in detail all the things that he did. And I wish I could remember it. I wish I still had a picture of it because it was the best ticket ever. It had the date, and it had the police, cop, security guy who was writing the ticket on it. And then there's boxes that you could tick on these tickets for all the bad things that are against all of the rule laws there at the college. And every box was ticked, like every violation, as though my buddy had set out to see if he could break every single rule. And then there's only like two or three lines to describe the offense. But in this teeny tiny little minuscule handwriting, each and every bad thing that happened, story style, was laid out. Offender rode on the hood of a car while his friends drove. He was shirtless and wearing only underpants. He was shouting the following words, and they were like starred and bleeped out and stuff. And it was just, it was ridiculous. I don't know if all of that happened or not. I don't think he should have done those things. It's very bad. But when you're in college, wowee, are you gonna laugh at a ticket like that that just has a litany of bad things on it? However, when you get older, then you start to realize that things have consequences and stuff sticks to you a little bit. You start to feel bad about more things. That long list can manifest in your own brain as a mental pink slip ticket for yourself of all the stupid stuff you've ever done. And right now in Galatians chapter 5, we are in the middle of a long list of all the stupid stuff or a lot of the stupid stuff that anybody could ever think of to do. Sadly, this isn't even an exhaustive list of all of the things that we can dream up to do that are destructive and not the best. But this list that we're looking at in Galatians 5, 19 through 21, is it's not like a new Ten Commandments, thou shalt not do all of these things. Rather, this passage treats it as though these things are just obviously bad. The acts of the flesh, the product of the flesh, the fruit of the flesh of the sinful nature, it's obvious. That said, even though this is a list that needs no introduction, every time anybody says now someone who needs no introduction, what do they do? They give them an introduction. So even though this is a list that needs no introduction, even though this is a pink slip ticket, with every box checked, we're still going to go through every single one of the boxes. The last couple days we spent talking about sexual immorality. That's the first thing on the list. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. Sexual immorality. And then the next two after that, impurity and debauchery, are also part of this first block or this first clump of fruits of the sinful nature of the flesh that all have to do with sex stuff. I mean, the first one's kind of, you know, it's the big umbrella term, sexual immorality, and we talked about a lot of that stuff. Impurity here isn't talking about necessarily ritual impurity like we get in other parts of the Bible. Contextually, it looks like this is talking about sexual impurity being morally sloppy or corruptible, and then debauchery is like, I don't know, sometimes that's a badge of honor in the age of Instagram and internet culture. Like, this is gonna be debauched. That's not actually good. Debauchery here intones the idea of a complete abandonment of that which is dignified or good or decent or wholesome and completely giving in to animal impulses in a way that you know oftentimes is even public and unapologetic. Certain pagan festivals really lent themselves to this kind of stuff. There's no mention of a festival here, a pagan festival here. So I don't know. We get the impression from some ancient Roman poetry and other sources that there wasn't always a need for a festival or an occasion to cause this over-the-top, debauched kind of public behavior in certain segments of the Roman Empire. So, I mean, it looks like again, remember this list is supposed to be obvious. It looks like what Paul is saying here is like, well, I mean, this is forward-facing, flagrant, over-the-top abandonment of all norms and decency at an animal-like level. Remember, guys, I said it was obvious. It's obvious. For a lot of people, I mean, you hear this kind of thing, and maybe your head goes right to what I was talking about at the beginning of our conversation, which is college. I don't know what the heck happened, but somehow this dignified idea of going to the university and studying hard to gain a career that will earn you dignity and respect, and also a place in a brotherhood or sisterhood of fellow students moving forward to be the future leaders of America. Somehow that kind of devolved into run up $150,000 in debt and make unbelievably bad and expensive decisions for four, well, it used to be four, now five or six years. I mean, there is this whole idea that college is like for some people, it's just this opportunity to completely indulge with no social consequences. I don't think that's ideal, obviously. Also, when you're a kid and that's what's held out for you, is this is just what you do during this time. It's college strugg. There's gonna be a lot of people who get out the other side of college and go, What the heck did I just do during that period of time? And it's entirely possible that when we talk about debauchery in a conversation like this that is thankfully anonymous, there's gonna be a lot of you who go right to stuff that happened during a certain age of your life, and you're like, yeah, debauchery isn't exactly the kind of thing I struggle with, but dang, if there wasn't a phase right there. And it's possible that like the stuff we were talking about yesterday, you drag that around with you. And if that's the case, well, same thing as said yesterday. All of this list, the the acts of the sinful nature, the acts of the flesh, is happening in the larger context of God redeeming at great expense the ugliest stuff from our worst day, the stuff that when our mind trickles back to it and we think of it, we feel shame and embarrassment and stupidity and to kick ourselves and can't believe we were ever there, or that this screwed up thing or that screwed up thing ever affected our lives. Yet, oh, life is long. You can't turn back time, there's nothing you can do about it, but God can do something about it. This list, once again, is not meant to make you despair. It's not meant to make me despair. Rather, the primary purpose is for Paul to spell out obviously, this is the fruit of flesh stuff. But a secondary purpose of this is if any of this again hits close to home, it's meant to push us back to Christ, the grace and forgiveness of God, which is real and which takes our absolute ugliest stuff, ugliest status, and flips it around to the status of son, daughter, child, heir, agent of the great king. So sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, those are the three boxes in section one of the pink slip here in the list of things that just obviously flow out of the flesh. And they're tough. They're gonna make a lot of us feel a whole bunch of things. And Paul's right, it's a tough list, but it's an obvious list. And also, as we get down further into the list, we're gonna see that there's more sex stuff coming up later on. Apparently, the very same thing that eats our lunch in modern culture also was a real vulnerability and real problem for people in Asia Minor in the ancient world. The next chunk of the list takes us in a very different direction, though, and we will get into the next part of the pink slip ticket with every single box checked next time around. Hey, once again, I want to say thank you to everybody who's jumped in here over the last week or so since I announced that we're moving quickly toward Philemon and that we're gonna be mailing out the Galatians Achievement Unlocked stickers soon. A handful of you come along and supported the program. Thank you. That is just ludicrously nice and encouraging in ways that are hard for me to properly express here. But I I'm just I'm very, very thankful. I'm very, very thankful that we get to do this in general. So y'all are awesome. Thank you. If you are currently a supporter of the program, it would be great if you could take a minute to go and make sure that your address is up to date as we're starting to fill out letters. I mean, we do this as a family, so it's just, you know, it's just kind of us chipping away at it over here at the house. But it it makes things, I mean, obviously, we'd like you to get these stickers. So if you can take a minute and make sure your address is up to date and everything, then we'll get it to the right place. That would be awesome. Okay, enough about all of that. Tomorrow we're gonna talk about more fun things like idolatry and witchcraft. Yep. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.