Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and I've been automating my studio lately. I've been slowly buying Wi-Fi switches and lights so that I can control all the different things that I do in here because I have a bunch of different tasks that I do in my little workspace. And I thought that's a lot of time I'm wasting flipping switches and dialing in the lighting for this kind of video or that video again and again and again. So I just automated it all. I bought an Amazon device that I can control with my voice and I can link everything to. And then I just bark out orders, you know, like if I want to do a podcast, I can be like, hey, engage podcast mode, or if I want to shoot a video, I can be like engage light video mode. Or if I want to listen to something on Spotify, I can be like, hey, Alexa, play 1,000 fart sounds on Spotify. And then, oh, I should have thought of that. My voice command may have just inadvertently activated 1,000 fart sounds on your Spotify account wherever you are. That's really unfortunate, but we're in the middle of something, so I don't think it'd be appropriate for you to take time off to go and correct that. Let's just let that run in the background until we're done with our conversation here, because this is about the Bible and it's pretty important. Today I was working on a YouTube short, and the YouTube short was about this guy named Alexamenos. Somebody made a mean graffiti, a graffito, I guess is the singular, about him a long, long time ago, shortly after the time of Jesus. And they drew a mean, crude picture of Jesus and a mean crude picture of this boy. I think it's a super interesting artifact from ancient times because it's the first surviving image that comes down to us of Jesus. And it's a slanderous one. It's it's fascinating. I made a video about it around a year ago. That was a long form video. I made this short form video about it here today. So I kind of had to revisit it and think through what do I want to say? I've had a year to think about it. If I had to do this real short, how would I want to communicate this? But it was funny because every time I would on the video, I'd play myself while editing, and every time I would say Alexa Menos, it would activate my Amazon Alexa and just issue bizarre commands. Finally, I got up from my desk and had to turn that thing off because it was getting totally out of control. The point I wanted to make though is that coming back to something I did a year ago today was kind of interesting because I've had more time to think about what kind of videos I want to make, and I've had a lot of time to kind of stew on that and think like, oh, well, what would I want to say if I was gonna take another run at that or if I were gonna cut away some of the bloat and just do the essentials? You know, having time to reflect on something after you've already commented on it or made something like that once is a really good thing. I mean, last year I made a video for one audience, today I made a short video for a different audience. Likewise, yesterday we were talking about two books that have a whole lot in common. The book that this season is about, that being Galatians, and a book that maybe some future season will be about, not next season, because next season is going to be about Philemon, but maybe some future season will be about, and that is the book of Romans. Galatians is the urgent, earlier, faster version of a lot of this material. Romans is the less urgent, slower paced, more fleshed out version. And even though we've been working on the trimmed down expression of a lot of those ideas here in Galatians, I've also found a lot of benefit in cheating and going over to Romans to see what's happening there. So I've been teasing this for a couple days. I want to catch us up on some Romans thoughts that I think I can offer mostly without comment. They kind of line up with the last few chapters of Galatians. So I am going to pick it up in Romans 7. Romans 7, 7. You're going to hear themes in this reading I'm going to do today of Paul dealing with questions he has no doubt been asked several times. He's going to talk about the law in general. He's going to talk about this idea of life by the Spirit and what that looks like in contrast to the idea of life by the law. So, with that said, I'm going to read some Bible to you. Get comfy. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? No, certainly not. Indeed, I would not have known what sin was except through the law, for I wouldn't have known what coveting really was if the law hadn't said don't covet. But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. I think the point there is the law didn't teach him how to covet, sin taught him how to covet. But the law helped him understand what coveting was and that it's wrong, that it is sin. He keeps going, Romans 7 9. Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life, and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me. And through the commandment put me to death. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. Did that which is good then become death to me? No, by no means. But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. We know that the law is spiritual, but I'm unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. Do you hear him wrestling this through, articulating it a little bit differently now that some time has passed and the urgency is not so much there from Galatians? He's talking to a different group of people in a different part of the world. The flavor's a little different, but he's dealing with the exact same themes here. People have the same question. Why is there a law then? Did the law make me a sinner, or did sin make me a sinner? Well, he's really nuancing that out. He goes on, verse 15. I don't understand what I do, for what I want to do, I don't do, but what I hate to do. And if I do what I don't want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it's no longer myself who does it, but it's the sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature, for I have the desire to do what's good, but I can't carry it out. For what I do isn't the good I want to do, no, the evil I don't want to do, this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I don't want to do, it's no longer I who do it, but it's the sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? But thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself, in my mind, am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the spirit. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires. But those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of the sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God, it doesn't submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit. If the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone doesn't have the Spirit of Christ, he doesn't belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body's dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who lives in you. That's a lot. You might need to listen to it twice. You might need to go and read that on your own. But let that just marinade a little bit in the background of what we've been doing in Galatians, and let it sit there a little bit as we move forward into the home stretch of Galatians, and we'll bounce back and reference back to this flow of thought from Paul as we move forward. Of course, I'm tempted to double the length of this episode and offer all kinds of comment on that and thoughts that I have. But no, no, we're just gonna let that sit there and let it be, and bounce back over to Galatians Manana. All right, I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon. And Alexa, play in the light by Charlie Peacock.