You all ever heard about cigarettes? You have those where you're at? Apparently it's a thing where you can pay somebody to take a sheet of paper and then they take some dried tobacco and they they put it in the paper and they roll it up and they make it stick together, and it's like a little tube, I guess, of dried tobacco, and then you light the one end on fire and you suck on the end that isn't on fire, and that kind of stokes it up a little bit. And then I guess the smoke from the leaves and the paper, it goes into your mouth or your lungs, and I apparently a lot of people really like it. It was very popular for a long time. I I think there are parts of the world where people are still really into that. When I was a kid, everybody in the movies they smoked the cigarettes, and so you'd watch that and you'd think, well, that seems like a good idea. It works for them. They look pretty cool when they do it. And I never did try out the cigarettes. My parents had a conversation with me when I was young, and they're like, we're not gonna do that. And I was like, okay. But some of my friends, they saw what happened to the people in the movies who smoked the cigarettes, and they thought, well, I want those results. I want pretty girls to want to smooch me in alleys behind dumpsters. So I I'm gonna try out the cigarettes. And one of my friends, his dad found out about that, and he did not like that idea. He'd read some studies that said that cigarettes give you cancer or something. And so he sat my friend down. He's like, Really, you like cigarettes? And my friend, I don't know what he said. I never did get the whole story, but then the dad was like, Well, if you like cigarettes so much, then let's just smoke one. And let's just smoke another one. And let's just smoke the whole dang pack, because if one cigarette is good and cool, then it might get you smooched in an alley behind a dumpster, then probably 20 cigarettes would be even better. Let's do it all, let's buy a whole case and just smoke them all. Then then I guess after that, uh that kid he didn't like the cigarettes anymore because it was just it was just too much cigarette. And I think the idea there is that sometimes if somebody's like, I think this is a good idea, and you're like, cool, well let's take that to its logical end and just let's go all the way with that. I never did muster the courage to talk to that dad, but with the luxury of hindsight and doing a little bit of parenting of my own, I think the point he was going for was, hey Junior, if a little bit of smoking is a good idea and makes you cool, wouldn't a ton of smoking all at once be way better? Let's just run that experiment and see what you think about it after we're done. And the idea is it would cause him to come to his senses and he wouldn't want to smoke anymore. Don't know if it worked or not. Likewise, the Apostle Paul is using that same kind of argument. Oh, you like this. You think a little bit of this is good? You think about 10% off the top is about the right amount to show God that you're serious and committed to the law in terms of adult circumcision? Sweet. Well, I mean, if 10% is good, wouldn't 11% circumcised be like even more holy and righteous? Don't you think God would like that even more? And if somebody does 11%, I mean, why not do 20%? That's so much more circumcised. And for that matter, if 20% is better than 10%, why would we stop anywhere? What do you guys say we just get the whole thing? You like cigarettes, huh? Well, let's smoke the whole pack. You like circumcision, do you? Well, let's just nip the whole thing off and see where we end up. You can be irritated by how uncomfortable this is, but it's totally Bible. Here's Paul's argument, Galatians 5, we're gonna go 7 through 12. This flow of thought simply works like this. These outside agitators came along to these Christians and said, you need to demonstrate just how serious you are about obeying the law, because unless you keep all of the Old Testament law and basically become Jewish, you're not gonna have access to Jesus. So we're here to help walk you through that. They even threw out some smoke screens and deceptions saying, Yeah, Paul's not here, but I think he'd agree with us. You know, if you were here to, I think, I think we're on the same page with Paul. And these poor Galatians are falling for it. Paul frantically writes this letter and is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not there. All I can do is send you this letter, but don't fall for it. Don't do it. This is a slippery slope. This is danger, danger, danger. Faith in Christ plus nothing. That is how you're made right with God. Not faith in the law and adherence to the law and the traditions, not through some physical external gesture to demonstrate just how serious you are about it. It doesn't work. And now Paul is pointing out the absurdity of this line of thinking, using absurdity in the same way that making a kid you catch smoking a cigarette, smoking an entire pack all at once. It's absurdity to point out absurdity. Here we go, Galatians 5 7. You were running a good race. Who caught in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion doesn't come from the one who calls you. A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough. I'm confident in the Lord that you'll take no other view. The one who's throwing you into confusion, whoever he may be, will have to pay the penalty. Brothers and sisters, if I'm still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been abolished. But as for those agitators, I wish they'd go the whole way and emasculate themselves. Okay, so look, you and I have hung around with Paul for a hundred and eighty-one episodes at this point. He's feisty. He sounds very different than, say, the Apostle John. John is very grandfatherly in his letters. He's got a real gentle touch to him. Peter is very brash and big and sometimes dumb and bumbling, but you get a real sense of his personality. Luke, in his writing, the greatest by volume contributor to the New Testament, he's very precise as one who deals with very precise instruments. He's very systematic in gathering his information, consulting his sources, organizing everything, and presenting it in an ordered fashion that you can understand. Paul is red-blooded and his heart beats fast sometimes. I imagine he gets a little sweaty from time to time. And the personality of Paul, just like the personality of all the other New Testament authors, it comes through in what he writes. Paul is feisty. I, for one, am glad to see that there is room in the big, grand scheme of things in the kingdom in the church for people who are wired a little bit feisty. It seems like God used this personality in very dramatic, very important ways over the course of the founding of the early church all around the Roman world and in the composition of scripture. That's awesome. But look, you can't have the Paul parts of the Bible without having some of the Paul personality as well. And what we get right here is a real close-up look at the feistiness of Paul. Yes, there's a theological logical point that he's making here, but also he's clearly just firing shots at these people who are getting it wrong. He's in a fight with them and he's calling them out, and he's doing so creatively and with a little bit of panache. Okay, but also he's doing it cleverly and he's making a point. You know, when it comes to comedy, what do they say? The difference between an offensive joke and a cutting-edge, smart, provocative joke is whether or not it's funny. Uh jokes deal with uh difficult subject matter. It's part of why they work. The difference between it being mean and petty and stupid and being funny and effective and the kind of thing that really makes you think, huh, he's got a point, is the execution. Is it well done? Well, Paul could just say something mean to these people who are doing mean things, and I guess it might be justified. But here he's coupling that with tremendous cleverness, effectively making the point of hey, uh what would be the right percentage of circumcision? If you guys like it so much, why wouldn't you do more? Why are you stopping short? If this is a right pathway to God, maybe you should just go the whole way and cut off everything. But the agitators knew, and I would imagine a lot of people who were receiving this letter knew that the agitators hadn't emasculated themselves. And Paul is cleverly and sardonically raising the question, guys, why haven't they? How seriously are they taking it? How much skin by volume or weight, like how many grams of foreskin would we need to cut off? Is it like a function of percentage? Is it a raw weight? How much do you need to do to really show God you mean it? To really show God how committed you are. And if a little bit demonstrates pretty good commitment, why wouldn't you give everything you've got? It's so clever. It looks like a cheap, churlish middle school dig, but this is not a throwaway line. It's the killing stroke. It demonstrates the absurdity and backwardness of this entire proposition that these agitators are bringing to the table by proposing circumcision. It also demonstrates how far they've meandered from the point of the sign of the covenant way, way back in the day, during the age of the law and the age of the patriarchs, the sign of the covenant that is circumcision that was given to Abraham. They've taken this to a very different place. They've assigned to it a very different meaning. Somehow they've attached to it pride, and in their lust for circumcising Gentile adult men, they're also undermining the entire theme of the whole Bible and the Old Testament that says that this was always going to be for everybody. Well, what was always going to be for everybody? Circumcision? Is that the thing that was always going to be for all the nations? Is that why God broke the laws of time and space to take on flesh and defeat sin and evil on the cross? Is that why the resurrection happened? Was it like can we just if we could only get the whole world circumcised? Come on. That's laughable. The Bible spells out, and reason even dictates, that the ambitions of God were much greater than to see if we could get all men on planet Earth religiously augmented in this way. Stop it. This is so much bigger. This is so much more. Paul is pointing to the transcendent by mocking these temporal, nonsensical, cultural human impulses that need to be made fun of. There's another layer of meaning here as well that I don't think it's too much of a stretch to read into, but time being what it is, we will talk about that one tomorrow. That's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.