Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour podcast, and last week was a weird week of podcasts because it was a two-person program. We don't normally do that, but I'm really grateful to my buddy Jeff, who edits the show and who does the music for it. Grateful to Jeff for jumping in and lending another brain to what is a very pivotal and very important part of this letter that we're studying, the book of Galatians. And I thought he did a great job, and I'm super thankful to him. So I hope you enjoyed our time with Jeff as well. I'm not going to make a habit of that, not because Jeff isn't great. Jeff's awesome. And not because I'm insecure. I don't mind Jeff showing me up every time he comes on. That's cool. Guy knows what he's talking about. But rather, I like the format and I intend to stick with the format, which is good for Matt.
SPEAKER_00Oh. Oh. I did not even write that down in advance. That wasn't even from a joke book. I literally just thought of that. For those of you who don't know, my name is Matt, and I said format.
SPEAKER_01Oh, you had to have to rewind it and see if you catch it on your second listen. Oh, I'm sweaty. That's so good. That's why I have so many friends. It's stuff like that. I just, ah, man. No, we're going to stick with this format though, where pretty much it's it's me and the Bible, and we co-host the thing. I understand that's not entirely equitable because the Bible's from God and everything, and I'm some guy. But still, I think it's a fun dynamic. And for those of you who are maybe just jumping in, and maybe you jumped in last week and you're like, oh, it's two dudes talking podcast. It's not. Just every now and then I like to have Jeff's brain on things. No, normally it is a one dude talking podcast where you and I process through entire books of the Bible together, and we take as much time as we need to to work through those books of the Bible. In this case, we're in season five of the program. We're on the book of Galatians, down to the last page of the book of Galatians, and it's taken 190 some episodes. And I don't feel bad about that at all. Because what we get to do on this program with 10-ish minutes of content every weekday, what we get to do is we get to run down all the things that come up in sermons where the pastor is like, there's this other super important thing. We should go to this other part of the Bible, and I should tell you about this history thing, but ah, you know, because of time, that'll have to be a conversation for another day. Well, here it's always another day. So we run down all of it and take our time, and I rather like it that way. Further, I appreciate how flexible y'all are in just rolling with me as we do this daily podcast in real time against the backdrop of a real life with me and my family. Sometimes I record this when my feelings are hurt, or I am grouchy, or I am discouraged about the world. Sometimes I record this when I have really fun, exciting things on the horizon, and I'm brimming with optimism. Sometimes I record this when I'm just busy and frankly don't have much time to do it. And every other emotion in between, but how's that different from your experience, right? It would be stupid for me to wait until I feel the perfect way to do this so that I can what show just exactly the right vibe every time? Well, it's dumb. That's not how you encounter the Bible. If you're around the Bible every day, you bring to the table what you are that day. And it seems like the Bible and the God behind it can handle that. So I like that that is the tone and that is the style that we get to take as well. And from time to time, well, that means you might get something weird. So at any rate, there we are. I am on the last page of Galatians. I turn over to Galatians 5, 18-ish. I'm staring down the barrel, being done with this thing. And that means we're going to make a season pivot to season six, which is to the book of Philemon. So for those of you who are new, we have a little system around here that we do where we commemorate the conclusion of a season of a book of the Bible by celebrating the fact that you put in the work to learn about this thing and to be a part of the conversation and to have a Galatians, not just podcast season, but a Galatians season of your life. If you're anything like me, you can picture where you were when you heard a song for the first time. Or, you know, when I was doing that audiobook, I was driving across Nebraska and Iowa. And now every time I drive across Nebraska and Iowa, I think of that audiobook. Or every time I go around that bend, I think of that song that I heard the first time right there. Or, you know, when I was doing the project working on the back deck, that is when I had Galatians in my life. So I want to commemorate the seasons that we share together on this stuff, both because we accomplished something, but also because it is a season of your life. And I genuinely think it's important to mark that. So my friend Bethany makes these cool stickers that have a thematic image for each book of the Bible. And they're like achievement unlocked stickers, or like stickers that you put on your helmet if you make a bunch of great plays and you play college football, or awards that you get if you play video games for doing something really difficult or something that's hard to unlock. They're achievement unlocked stickers meant to celebrate, meant to commemorate, meant to acknowledge that, hey, you went out, put in the work, and took a season of your life to get Galatians in your hip pocket. So as we wrap up this season on Galatians, I'm gonna send out a sticker. It's got a cool gold outline to it. And that gold outline, Galatians sticker, is going to everyone who is supporting the podcast on any platform at any level, doesn't matter, even if it's just a tiny little bit. If you're current in the mailing list because you're somehow participating and supporting this thing and making it happen, I want to say thank you by sending you that gold outline sticker. There are a few of you who go way above and beyond to degrees that don't totally make sense to me. And I like to do something a little extra to acknowledge that and say thank you. So I also make up the super limited edition hologram, they're very thick, heavy-duty versions of the stickers, almost like metallic, almost more like a thick, like magnet kind of feel. They're really cool. And I'm gonna send those out to those of you who've gone way above and beyond, and you know who you are. So if you want to be on that mailing list and you want to get one of those Galatians stickers that are gonna go out here in a little bit as we get to the end of this book, you can check out the link that Jeff puts down in the show notes about supporting the program or whatever. Also, it's totally cool not to, and I have a white outline one that we just sell on the website. If you're like, ah, come on, it doesn't make I don't want to support a podcast. Like, I just don't want to do that for whatever reason. It doesn't make sense for me right now. But you want the sticker to commemorate it, cool. You can still buy one. They're not super expensive, and it usually takes us a little bit to send them out, but we will send it to you. That is a lot of reset and getting everybody up to speed, but there is Bible stuff we need to do today as well. So we're Galatians 5, 16 through 18. It's stuff we were talking about last week, but I got a little more on this. So I say, live by the spirit, and you'll not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is, I turned two pages, I just second, contrary to the spirit. It desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They're in conflict with each other. So that you don't do what you want. But if you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law. It seems like we're getting into conversation here in chapter five about how you live and what you do, obviously, how you respond to the temptation, what's going on inside the nature of the individual. That's what we talked about all last week with Jeff. And in that conversation, Jeff used the word sanctified to talk about this process by which the life by the Spirit happens in the Christian and the sin is defeated, it diminishes, it becomes not the thing that dominates your life. You know, we talked about that in terms of church history and Bible and all kinds of other stuff. And you can kind of hear in the word sanctify, you can hear sanctus or sanctuary. And the root there is it's just holiness, it's being set apart for God. So how does that happen? Okay, well, pretty obviously from what we're reading here in Galatians, it happens by the spirit. You don't sanctify yourself. It might feel like it, like I was saying last week, but ultimately it is the spirit within us, and by that I mean the Holy Spirit, God the Spirit within us, that gives us the capacity to not sin or to choose not sin. We receive that new nature when we become Christians. So, right here at the end of that little passage, just right, Galatians 5.18, we're just getting another contrast between the law and another good thing about the Christian life. Earlier on in the book of Galatians, the contrast was almost exclusively regarding right standing before God or salvation, to put it very bluntly. You're not gonna earn right standing before God through self-discipline and adherence to the law. Isn't gonna happen. Curse is anybody who doesn't keep every single thing written in this book of the law. Nobody can keep every single thing written in this book of the law. The only way to right standing with God is through faith, just like it was with Abraham. That contrast runs through most of Galatians, but we get here, and now Paul is shifting into this. So what do you do now? And how's it supposed to feel now? And how's this supposed to work now? He's dealing with the question of sanctification, life by the Spirit. What does it look like? So here we have just another contrast dealt with more quickly than the right standing with God contrast from earlier in Galatians. But this other contrast is which one of these two things gets you to a place where you're resisting sin. Well, it's not the law that does that, it's not purely human will that does that, but ultimately it is the spirit who makes sanctification possible. It's the spirit who guides us in that. And when that happens, it really kind of flips the whole equation for why Christians do the stuff they do that is good and resist the stuff they don't do that isn't good. And tomorrow we're gonna talk about that flipping of the equation. Once again, thank you to all of you for being here. Welcome to everybody who's new. Congratulations in advance on getting real close to the finish line here with the book of Galatians. And once again, if you want to be a part of the sticker thing, we'll have them for sale that you can just buy the white outline ones on the website here in not too long. Or if in any way you're supporting the channel at any level, you're gonna get at least one of those gold outline ones. And just like it's been in the past, for those of you and you know who you are who've gone way above and beyond, you're gonna get the cool limited edition hologram ones as a way of saying thank you. It doesn't measure up to what you've done at all, but hopefully you get my meaning from it. Whether you support this ridiculous thing or not, the fact that you're here is awesome. I'm grateful for all of you. Thanks for making the Bible a part of your daily rhythm with me. It means the world. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible Hour Podcast. Good seasons.