Okay, let's assume that you're not a racist, which should be good, because I wouldn't want you to be a racist. It's clearly, abundantly obviously an awful way to come at life. So let's say you're not a racist, but somebody comes at you and they start gossiping. Maybe you're not getting along with them at work or whatever, and they're like, that guy right there, that lady over there, big time racist. They're a racist. What do you say? By the way, is this uncomfortable? Because I mean, I don't know. We've just decided we're just going to talk about things on this podcast. And I'm trying to use an example that I think actually works here. Let's say someone accuses you of being something awful that you aren't, or thinking or saying horrible things that you haven't thought or that you haven't said, and you decide you're going to defend yourself, what do you say to such an accusation? Well, I suppose your head goes to a few places, right? Like you might start by going resume and being being like, well, if I'm such a racist and I just randomly hate people for where they're from or what they look like, why would I have done all of these things? That doesn't seem like the kind of thing a racist would do. I mean, that I think that's a pretty good response. It's at least to start. Maybe you would go and appeal to how other people treat you and what your interactions look like. And you could be like, well, if I'm a racist, then how come all of these people in my life who love me and who I love back, who would be pretty put off if I were a racist, how come they like me so much, even though they know me so well? What do you make of that? Maybe a third defense that you might offer if you were on the receiving end of such a brutal accusation and it weren't true, is that you might say, hey, well, if I'm such a racist, then why do racists hate me so much when I post things on the internet? Why are they chasing me down in every corner of the internet to say how stupid I am for not being racist and arguing that I should be more racist like them? I mean, that would be a pretty good counter argument as well. Number one, I want to applaud you for navigating that uncomfortable example with me. But number two, I think it's going to pay off because likewise, that's the kind of situation the Apostle Paul is finding himself in here in Galatians. He's getting it from all sides. The Galatians who got duped by the Judaizers, the people who came along and threw them into confusion. Yeah, they've been led to be angry and upset at Paul. Certainly the Judaizers, they're mad at Paul. And people, particularly Jewish Christians and Jewish non-Christians who had rejected Jesus as the Messiah, they didn't like Paul very much for his teachings on the Old Testament law and Jesus and faith and Abraham and circumcision. So Paul's been taking a lot of abuse, particularly for what he teaches about circumcision or lack thereof for adult male Gentile converts to Christianity. And it looks like here in the book of Galatians, Paul, as we talked about yesterday, is responding to all kinds of mean, nasty accusations that have been thrown his way. He's not a very good teacher. He wasn't very thorough. Maybe he bailed on you guys. Maybe it's something like, oh, he's licentious and just wants to get away with whatever dirty, naughty, secret stuff he wants to get away with. So that's why he's turned his back on the law of Moses. I mean, all of these you kind of just have to fill in the blank a little bit based on what Paul is saying in Galatians, but clearly people had said some pretty dark stuff about him. And also clearly they had lied at times and misrepresented his position. It looks like Paul had both been accused of being actually secretly pro circumcision and pro-Old Testament law by the Judaizers. And also he had been accused of being someone who rejects circumcision and flaunts the law and doesn't care about what the scriptures say. Well, which one is it? Well, in the midst of all of these swirling accusations thrown at Paul while he's not there to defend himself, coming from all different angles, many of which are directly in conflict with each other, we get a little line here in Galatians 5 where Paul has to do the thing I asked you to imagine doing earlier in the conversation. That is defend yourself against something that it's really hard to defend yourself against, and you almost look bad for even trying to defend yourself, but sometimes you got to defend yourself against these things. And Paul does so here in I think a really clever way. Galatians 5.11 says, brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? See, what this tells me is that some people in these Galatian churches had been led to believe that Paul actually was in agreement with the Judaizers, that you should definitely do the Old Testament law plus Jesus. You definitely needed to do circumcision because you got to become Jewish first in order to then become a Christian, and you have to submit yourself to all of the Jewish customs. So it looks to me, like here in the book of Galatians, Paul had been, again, both accused of being somebody who hated circumcision and just wrote it off completely, and that's a sign that he just doesn't care about the Bible or Moses or the law or anything. But he'd also been accused of being somebody who was actually pro-circumcision, and he was just a little bit bashful about it, and he had to leave early before he explained this all to the Galatian Christians. But now the Judaizers are here and they're saying, hey, you got to do these circumcisions to show that you're fully committed to the law, to show that you've become Jewish in order to become Christian after that. And if Paul had stayed longer, he's totally pro-circumcision. He would have got to that. He would have explained it for sure. And so Paul has to respond to this very difficult to answer accusation, and this is what I think he's doing here. He's saying, I'm not still preaching circumcision. I don't know where you guys heard that Galatian church, but that's ridiculous. Just stop for a minute and think in a dispassionate way about what everybody is doing here and what their character motivations would be. Okay, you ready? Remember when I was there and I had just been freshly hit with rocks by people in a neighboring community? Remember how I've experienced flogging and imprisonment and so forth? Do you remember how practically every time I go to a synagogue, it ends up there being a riot within a couple of days? Do you remember how I got dragged out of a city because I was so beat up people thought I was dead? Hey guys, if I were preaching pro-Jewish things that were basically just Judaism again, then why do my brethren, my Jewish brethren, keep inciting these riots and why do I keep getting flogged and hit with rocks and thrown in jail? Guys, think. If I were still preaching circumcision and strict adherence to the Old Testament law as a way to gain right standing with God, if I were saying the same things the Judaizers were saying, then the Judaizers and their ilk wouldn't be hitting me with rocks. I mentioned yesterday that I don't think these three little turns of phrases we get here at the end of this passage are actually that hard to sort out. But the challenge is that we're getting one side of the conversation, and so we have to do a little bit of triangulation. We have to do just a little bit of math. And I think if we're honest, we have to admit that when we're sorting through an interpersonal dispute, a disagreement between parties, this kind of logic really taxes our brain. It's difficult for us to think through. All right. Okay, party A wants the following. They represent the following. Party B is accusing party A of having these secret agendas and values that look like party D. Let's go back and see what party A has actually said and done to figure out if those accusations have any merit. It's burdensome. It's tiresome to sort through that kind of stuff. But you've sorted through it before. You've asked people in your life when you've been falsely accused of something to sort through such a thing, even though it's a bit tiresome for them as well. And you know that by just looking at track record and motivation, you can cut through a lot of blustering false accusations to get to the heart of the thing and say, what? No, what come on? You could accuse him of yelling too much. You could accuse him of preaching too long, but you can't accuse him of being pro-circumcision. Are you kidding me? That's like accusing Batman of liking crime or Hulk Hogan of being a communist or Greta Thunberg of burning all of her plastic trash in a burn barrel in the backyard. It's just a ridiculous, it runs counter to everything the guy stands for. And the crazy thing is, it can work to accuse people of being the exact opposite of what they are, standing for the exact opposite thing of what they stand for. And it'll work. It'll move the needle for 5, 10, 15, maybe 20% of people who are too lazy to sort it out, or maybe just lack the aptitude for abstract thinking to realize, wait, that doesn't make sense. You're accusing him of being the opposite of what he clearly is. And people who lie and manipulate and use these kind of tricks, they don't care sometimes if the most competent, most clever people can see through their ruse. If it works on simpler people or tired people or people who are beat down and just don't have the emotional bandwidth for this, hey, it still worked. So it looks like Paul has been on the receiving end of some lies, some accusations that are false that should be really easily debunked. And in fact, I would say he has debunked them with one simple half verse here in Galatians 5 11. Brothers, if I'm still preaching circumcision, why am I being persecuted? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, it doesn't make sense what they said about you, does it? No. Guys, it doesn't make sense. Okay, my bad. And then we're on with it. What I think we have here is a very efficient setting the record straight, being carried out and executed neatly by Paul, but he's gonna roll that into a bigger point about Jesus' work on the cross that we'll look at next time around. You're great. I appreciate you all so much. I'm Matt, this is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.