Hey everybody, this is Jeff. Matt is traveling right now, so it's up to me to do a little quick intro about where we are. Yesterday Matt started a conversation about a list of very bad things from Galatians chapter 5 verses 19 through 21, which reads Thusly. The acts of the flesh 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. In yesterday's episode, Mac got as far as the first item on that list, sexual immorality, and we're gonna find out how much farther he gets on that list today. My guess is not much farther. So I'm gonna play some music and we'll find out together.
SPEAKER_00I get that probably a majority of people have pretty significant insecurity and hurt in this area. I also get why in recent years there's been an interest in reimagining parts of the Bible where God seems to be speaking very directly to his commands and his expectation, his ideal for what sex is. Look, if you have weird sex stuff, if you have screwed things up, if you have been hurt or you have hurt, or the idea of sex and sexuality or your past or whatever, if that makes your compass spin and it's hard and it's something that you feel guilt about or anger about or whatever, man, do I have empathy and patience and compassion for you? I'm not bringing up this passage, like this whole season wasn't just a game to get to that two-word phrase, sexual immorality. So I could be like, there, now I get to lecture all my friends on the internet about how the things ought to be. No, at least for me, that's not the point at all. This is one of those things that is so vulnerable, so fragile, such a sharp instrument that's so hard to wield properly, that I think it's the kind of thing that rather than pointing us toward running away from God and trying to reimagine what God wants so that it kind of fits with our particular version of brokenness, I think instead the reality of the pain, the insecurity, the difficult things that can come along with questions about sex, sexuality, sex stuff is the kind of thing that's supposed to send us running to Jesus and running to the gospel. That this thing that for so many feels like there's just there's no putting it back together in a way that makes sense, or there's no feeling right or total clarity about this, that kind of thing is exactly the kind of thing that the gospel, that the work of Christ on the cross is meant to redeem. It's exactly the kind of thing that the flesh doesn't just fix by its own willpower or fortitude. No, rather the grace that is needed in this very vulnerable, very delicate, but also very beautiful, very life-giving, literally aspect of life. The grace that is needed is multifaceted, not just for scandalous stuff or embarrassing stuff, but for far more subtle aspects of the heart strings as it pertains to this area of life. The grace that is needed is only found in Christ. The peace that is needed, the clarity that is needed, that is to say, the things that sex and sexuality can bring to the surface, are one of many reasons in the human experience that there is a cross, that Jesus did what he did, and that this whole thing exists. I don't think that what we're doing here with this particular passage is coming up with a list of things where we're like, hey, if you've ever been touched by any of these things, if you've ever been a perpetrator of any of these things, well, I mean, the whole thing just be done here. What are we even doing? Like you're you're damaged goods. There's nothing that can be resolved. I mean, you can't go back in time and fix it. So you're out of luck. No, all of this conversation is happening in the larger context of actually you're in luck because God is gracious and good and loving. And whatever things that you or I have been a part of that were destructive and dumb and backwards and sinful and broken, he knew that those things were coming before he ever made the world, and he made it anyway, because he knows everything, he sees what's coming, and he decided to make it all anyhow, and he decided to bake in a redemptive mechanism to offer atonement and to make things right that we can't fix that we get wrong. No, when we go through a list like this of the acts of the sinful nature that are obvious, what we're getting here is Paul clarifying, look, this is the fruit of the flesh. If you see these things, they're not born out of the spirit. If you see these things, they are born out of the flesh. Now there's a corollary list coming up that says, but the fruit of the spirit is that starts in just a couple verses, and then he's going to list off all of this awesome stuff that can't help but come from the spirit in the same way. Destructive stuff is the natural byproduct, the natural outgrowth of the flesh stuff. The point of the list is for clarity. The point of the list is for taxonomy, for us to be able to look at these things and say clear-mindedly, okay, well, that is where these bad things come from. This is where these good things come from. Let me be clear on that. The question of right standing before God, though, has already been spoken to throughout the book of Galatians, and it is not achieved by never doing one of the things on this list. It is achieved by the work of God through faith. Just like Abraham. That's how it is. So I kind of figured I would get to all of that stuff, like why this list is in here and what we do with it, and knowing that I mean, this is a blunderbust of a list. It's firing in a very wide spray. Even if this isn't pointed right at you, you're gonna catch astray here. If you are a human and you have lived, there's gonna be stuff on this list, either very scandalous sounding, like sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, orgies, or something that isn't so scandalous that you can hide using your own social sophistication, like discord or jealousy or selfish ambition, stuff that you can be sneaky about. Either way, something from this blast of ick stuff that is the product of the flesh that Paul is firing off here. Something's gonna get you. Something here is gonna sound like you. Something here is gonna be the kind of thing that you've stared down the drain of the shower and thought about, whether it's on the scandalous side of the list or the more discreet side of the list. Either way, it's all the acts of the sinful nature, it's all the product of the flesh. And thank goodness, we're in the middle of a Bible, we're in the middle of a grand story, we're in the middle of a particular book of the Bible that describes an antidote to this sickness and to this disease. So let us not read this list of the acts of the sinful nature and despair without hope and despair as though there's nowhere to go with it. Instead, let this list, if any of this hits home and sounds like something that has got you before or eaten your lunch, let this list be the kind of thing that again, as it comes to our mind, pushes us back into the arms of God, pushes us back into being dependent on the grace of Christ through faith. Well, okay, good. We got that. We still got to go through the list. So uh we we got one down here. We're I'm gonna try to move a little more quickly through the list of bad things because I'm really eager to get to the list of good things and the fruit of the spirit, and we'll keep working that way tomorrow. All right, that's good for now. No, not quite good for now. Let me remind you on the way out the door. If you're in Christ, you're a new creation. Old is gone, the new is come. And the forgiveness of God is so significant as to be imagined as as far as the East is from the West, we are from sin that is forgiven by God. Our worst day, our stupidest stuff is not the final word on the matter. It is not the final word on us. God gets the final word on that. And in Christ, the word is grace. In Christ, the word is forgiveness. In Christ, the word is he accepts the responsibility and the punishment and the weight of those things that have at times made us stare down the drain of the shower in our own lives. Thank God for that. Okay, now that's all I wanted to say. I'm Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.