Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is a ten minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we are in the middle of a double episode on this passage here in Galatians five, thirteen through fifteen, that goes thusly. You, my brothers, were called to be free, but don't use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command. Love your neighbor as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, or you'll be destroyed by each other. It's a pretty stout warning. This is Paul speaking to the reality that the churches he's writing to in the book of Galatians were feuding. This stuff had turned weird, uh toxic if we're going to use that word, gossipy, no doubt, factions had formed, and Paul's trying to pull them out of that spiral, out of that ugly stuff, with the very same life-giving, eternally true theology that should also pull them out of the weird pro-circumcision group's false teaching and the false belief that they can earn favor with God. The same theology is going to help with both of those things. And we started processing that yesterday. If you didn't catch yesterday's episode, this is one where you probably ought to go and get that before you do this one. And then we're going to talk a little more than usual today about what we do with this timeless passage, because I think this one kind of gets into our business a little bit, no matter who we are, where we're at in life. I think this has something very practical to say to us. I'm just going to try to game that out like a human here at the end of this conversation. All right, Jeffrey, I'll have you play some music and we're going to get after it. So this little passage right here, I guess you could call it an aside, but more so I think this is Paul just kind of acknowledging, hey, you guys have ownership of this. You are getting it wrong. This is sinful. This is not reflective of life by the Spirit. Speaking of life by the Spirit, guys, this isn't reflective of it. Speaking of people coming in and cutting other people down, hey, in the same way that if you're trying to impress God and so you just keep circumcising forever, eventually there'll be nothing left. So if you keep tearing each other up and cutting each other down, eventually it'll be cut down to nothing, and you will destroy each other. Implicit here is a question. Do you guys want that? Do you want to be right that much? Do you want to win that bad? Can you not remember who that person was to you when I was there? Can you not remember who that person was? Do you not remember what they did for you when you were in need? Do you not remember how you served them? Do you want to destroy them now? I mean he kind of hints at that question earlier when he's like, have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? Guys, are you all each other's enemies here in the churches in Galatia? You need to stop it. You can't keep taking these shots at each other, or there's gonna be nothing left. You will destroy things you once loved, and you will regret it. There's obviously a lot of paraphrase and reading into it from me there, but what I'm saying is from the rest of the Bible, and it's also coming from my own experience. So I think this is pretty important stuff. Obviously, this is a very theological book, but it's also a practical book trying to get things straightened out at a church that apparently had bigger problems than just some people came along and said wrong things. There's also some stuff wrong in the church. The Bible's never secretive about the reality that that can and will happen. And thankfully the Bible, by you know, choosing to be honest about that, being a thing that can happen, also anticipates it and gives us guidance for what to do when that happens. And this is Paul weighing in with that right here, trying to save this thing before they completely wreck it with this kind of fighting. Of course, once again, what is going to be the contrast to this biting and devouring and cruelty and all of that? Well, it's going to be life by the spirit again. You know the ground rules. For the most part, I don't try to tag on a whole bunch of, and everyone, here's your lesson for today, kids, everyone ought to do this. But sometimes the text, it's speaking to us, and the instructions, the behavioral instructions that were given to them, they're timeless. They're for us as well. And this one's got to hit, look, uh two levels here. One, if you're going to church right now, there will always be this temptation to join a righteous crusade to straighten a thing out. There will always be language that is invented about why this person's bad or these people are bad. Usually, if we're really honest, it just comes down to certain preferences, or you and your team think it would be more strategically shrewd to do this, and somebody else in their team thinks it would be more strategically shrewd to do that. You're both pulling in the same direction, but you just disagree about how to do it. Well, especially if you live in my part of the world, passive aggressiveness can be sort of a thing, and those conversations sometimes they break down very quickly. And once the conversation and goodwill goes away, it gets replaced with sometimes things that twist up into something that's pretty gross and pretty ugly. I think you and I are supposed to read this passage and say to ourselves, um, I think I'm supposed to take off ramps for that. I think if I'm doing this kind of stuff, anything that could be described as biting or devouring, even if I have some ostensible, noble, spiritual, very righteous rationale that I can defend, if I'm doing anything that involves biting and devouring, I'm probably getting it wrong. And I probably need to find another way to work out whatever my frustration is at church, or just drop it and go deal with my own business and my own problems for a while instead of worrying about what's wrong with everybody else. This stuff is extra icky when it happens in church. It does take a chunk out of your soul. And further, you might get better later, but it can take decades out of the middle of an otherwise thriving Christian walk when we let ourselves get sucked into these kind of things, whether the motives are just entirely bald-faced, selfish, or whether they're ostensibly righteous, either way. It just takes a chunk out of your soul to play this game. And we're all tempted to play it at one point or another in our lives. And I think this passage is just a very helpful reminder for me. Maybe don't do that. Try to be shrewd about how you handle disagreement and what you do. I would reference all of us back to Matthew 18. Jesus himself gives us guidance about what to do when we don't like what's going on with somebody else or somebody sins against us or something like that. So there's that. Practical thing number two. If you've gone to church for any amount of time, amazing, great things have happened there. Cool relationships, meaningful exaltation of God. You've probably learned stuff about God in the Bible. You've met people you wouldn't have met otherwise. You've been put in positions to serve other people. There's all kinds of great things that happen at church. Also, you've surely been hurt at some level if you've been in church. I mean, church aside, you're around other people, you're in each other's business a little bit, you're working on the same project, you're going to irritate each other. And for whatever reason, irritation sometimes can morph into something more than irritation and into hurt. Everybody at church has been hurt. Some of those are cataclysmic, and I know those exist. I'm not talking about those situations here. I'm talking about the disappointment that comes with I thought it would be better and I thought this wouldn't happen here, but it did, and we were mean to each other, and now I feel gross and I want to run away and hide. That disappointment is overcomable. And the very next verses here in Galatians 5, 16 through the end of the chapter, they talk about how to overcome it. Paul's going to paint a big contrast between stuff that is selfish and exploitative and hurtful toward other people and the fruit of the spirit. Nurture this stuff. This is what comes when you live life by the spirit. So there's growth here, there's hope here, there's a roadmap towards something way, way better. And the other thing is at church, we have a secret weapon that we don't have in other places where we get hurt, and that is forgiveness that is more than just a platitude. Because the whole thing is predicated on Christ forgiving us when he's way, way, way better than we are. And the offense toward him, the gap between him and us is way bigger than any offense that would ever exist or gap between us and another person. Because the forgiveness of God through Christ is the starting point of the entire Christian enterprise. Forgiveness is not just a platitude for us. There's actually power in it. It's substantial. It means something. We are imitating Christ. We're imitating the impulse of the kingdom. And it is possible to achieve real reconciliation. And as far as the East is from the West with other Christians, it's sometimes it can't be reconciled, but you can still release people from their spiritual debt and the guilt, whatever you feel like they might owe you, even if you can't be reconciled, because of the mechanics of the cross and what Christ has made available in forgiveness. So here's a point. If you've been hurt by church, me too. You've probably done some hurting in church also. I have too. If you go there for a long time and you're a part of it and you try, look, you're going to be there on your best days, you're going to be there on some of your crappiest days, your stupidest days, your least thoughtful days, your selfish days. People are going to get things wrong toward you in church. You're going to get things wrong toward other people in church. Forgiveness is tremendously powerful, and there is hope for growth and improvement too. And we're going to look at more of that stuff here in Galatians with this idea of life by the Spirit. The point is this don't give up on each other. Don't give up on church. The whole reason that we need a cross, the whole reason there's a Bible and we talk about any of this stuff is because we're broken. The disease of sin is on us and it's very real and it's a very real problem. But there is more than just human nature. There is life, there is growth, there is transformation, there is being remade in the likeness of God, coming to value and imitate the priorities of God and the values of the kingdom. And that's kind of where Paul takes us here in the home stretch of Galatians that we're getting into right now. So here's my super preachy stuff for me, for us, for everybody that I don't normally do that we're taking from this. One, at some point, like you just got to stop, even though maybe it's hard and you're in the cycle, you gotta stop biting and devouring each other. We just can't do it, or we're gonna destroy beautiful things, things that we love, things that we shouldn't destroy and don't want to destroy. Two, if stuff starts to spiral, there you feel that impulse toward dark stuff in church, just being generally difficult or contentious with other people. There's tons of stuff in the Bible to go and look at. Matthew 18 comes to mind, teaching directly from Christ. Three, if this has gone wrong and you've been hurt by church or you've hurt other people in church, that's why there's a cross and there is forgiveness. And also there's guidance in the Bible, including the stuff that we're about to look at for where to go next and how to live out life with other people in the Christian life in a way that is looks more like what the kingdom values are and what this whole truist realist thing is about. That was a lot. It felt like the text took us there. Thank you for indulging me. I'm gonna shut up now. Uh, Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.