Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And you know what I thought would be super fun today would be for me to just read a list of really bad things to you and then talk about why all these obviously bad things are bad. I didn't just decide to do this. We're working our way through the book of Galatians, and we're to the part of the book of Galatians where Paul gives us a list of things that are bad. It specifically says in Galatians 5, 19, in the English Standard Version, it says, Now the works of the flesh are evident, then there's a colon and then there's a bunch of bad things. Or in the old New International Version, it says, the acts of the sinful nature are obvious and also a long list of bad things. Now I warned you yesterday as I was signing off that this list includes the O word. And if you were thinking to yourself, I'm I don't think there's actually a swear that is the O-word. You're right, it's not a swear, but it is. Um look, a little bit of content warning here. If there are conversations you don't want to have with your kids yet, there are some terms that are gonna come up in this episode that you just might I mean you might not want to do that, because well, you'll see in just a second. So I'm stalling, I'm giving you time to distract your kid or put on headphones, and here we go reading the text, Galatians 5.19. 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, oh word, and the like. It's not like I said, it's not a swear, right? It just uh that's just one of those words that describes a thing that you don't want to get said at Thanksgiving dinner or around your parents ever. That's just an awkward word that describes a thing. I warn you as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. Woo. Well, that was intense, but also I I guess pretty necessary, right? Because what are we doing here? I mean, Paul at some point can't just keep being like, hey, there are bad things you shouldn't do. And we all know what they are. Well, do we all know what they are? Okay, Paul says the acts of the sinful nature are obvious, so he's intoning. Come on, I shouldn't have to do this list, you guys should know. Also, think about where we're at in the development of the church and the history of everything. We have a clash of cultures here. You'd think everything on this list would be super evident to everybody. Paul's saying it should be, but at the same time, who are we talking to here? We're talking to probably ethnic Gauls mixed with ethnic people from Asia Minor, mixed with transplants from Rome and some Greeks mixed with some Jews who have made their way there as well. Look, that's gonna be a lot of different expectations of what is ethical and what is not. The Greeks and the Romans had some pretty screwed up practices when it came to things like how certain adult men mentored young men. This is pretty weird. When it comes to sacrifices and the role of sex stuff in religious practices, pretty weird. When it comes to marriage and adultery, look, there rich people in the Roman Empire they were getting married as unions of families. There's a lot of forced marriage, there was a lot of prearranged marriage, a lot of that had to do with political or economic motivations, and you kind of hoped that people would be in love with each other when they got married, but it was uncommon. In fact, Pompey, the great general and contemporary of Julius Caesar, who was around about a hundred years before Galatians was written, he was ridiculed by his contemporaries. He was treated as though he had this great Achilles heel, this great weakness, because he loved his wife. He is crazy about her, and he made decisions with her in mind and took time away from conquering things simply to be with her. And the fact that that was a point of ridicule in the Roman court is enough to tell you how unusual that was. So what was usually going on amongst especially powerful people, people of wealth, heads of households at this time, was that you had somebody you were married to to produce offspring and to bring union between two families for the sake of peace or economic growth or political advantage. But then I mean you just also had people on the side. And the wives might more discreetly, the dudes might less discreetly. But Roman culture, especially Roman political culture, just winked at this, even winked at it. I'm not even sure they were ashamed that this was the reality of the situation. I mean, it was a very naked reality of marriages and households and how that all worked. Well, that is not in keeping with God's vision for the household and marriage and how things work. So the point I'm trying to make is that to you and me, it might be like, oh, well, monogamy is good. And if you get married, you would want to keep those vows. And you I mean, the ideal would be that you would be faithful to your spouse publicly and privately. I mean, duh. But that wasn't apparently obvious to everybody in Roman culture because this is a widespread practice. So what Paul seems to be doing here in Galatians 5, 19 through 21 is saying, like, hey, just to be clear, let me spell it out. These are the things that are twisted up and backwards and that are products of the flesh, regardless of what your culture or your little pocket of things might be into. This is universal. This stuff is not of the spirit. Let me just make it obvious to you. So the acts of the sinful nature are obvious. Okay, well, like what? Sexual immorality. All right. This would be anything outside of God's design for sex between a man and a woman in marriage. That is clearly the model for sexuality throughout the Bible. There are moments in the Bible where people have sex outside of those parameters. And at the very least, it's treated with just no comment. Like that happened there, now you've been told the fact. But anytime the prophets or anybody, you know, speaking on behalf of God speaks into that stuff, well, that's not how it's supposed to be. Sex is supposed to be between a man and a woman in marriage, just all over the Bible. Now look, it's becoming apparent to me that we're not even going to get past the first thing on the list of the acts of the sinful nature, because I got to make a comment on this as well. I understand that sex is weird. I understand that it strikes to the deepest heart of identity. I understand that sex involves sensation and physical things that just don't happen in other aspects of life. I get that it is an incredibly vulnerable thing. I get that it is something that with only the slightest of nudges and the slightest twisting up can flip from something that is a beautiful expression of intimacy to something that is a massive expression of insecurity and hurt. I understand that abuse happens and that abuse draws out weird things that it can be really hard for people to sort through. I understand that hurt people hurt people. Like, look, just pulling back the curtain on my own life a little bit here. I've counseled for a very long time. I've worked at churches, I've heard the stuff. I was raised around the purity culture thing in youth group in the 90s, which was well intentioned and a lot of good came out of that. But also, there's just weird ways of talking about it that maybe didn't make the most sense and weren't maybe the perfect way to bring up such topics. This is complicated in terms of the reality of this aspect of the human experience. I get it. I get that probably a majority of people have pretty significant insecurity and hurt in this area.
SPEAKER_00Hey everybody, this is Jeff jumping in. Matt gave me kind of an extra long episode on this topic, and so we're gonna split it into two, and I'm gonna split it there because where Matt is gonna go next is gonna take us to a different tone a little bit. And so come back tomorrow for that, and we'll continue on this list of very bad things and why this list is in the Bible. This has been the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.