Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we have a place in town that sells kitchen cooking, baking supplies, things like that. It's called Someone's in the Kitchen. And do you hear how happy that sounds? But just like do you picture somebody in there cheerily singing and whistling baking food for family, like maybe a little grandmolly type with the apple cheeks and a big smile and an apron. But whenever we go to someone's in the kitchen and I say it, I always say it like this. Someone's in the kitchen. Did you hear how that sounded horrifying? Then like taken with Liam Neeson or something along those lines? Some of these things, just in how you say it, things can turn real creepy real fast if you say it the wrong way. Likewise, I think we got a passage like that here in Galatians where Paul gives us this little hint about some very bad thing coming from somewhere else. Hey, the call's coming from inside the house. The call is coming from inside the house. It's that sort of thing. Here's the line I'm talking about. Galatians five, seven. You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion doesn't come from the one who calls you. Now let me just read that line a little differently. That kind of persuasion doesn't come from the one who calls you. Do you see how suddenly that sounds ominous and foreboding? Guys, could you be quiet for a minute? I can hear you talking while I'm trying to do this thing. Dad, I'm right here and I'm not talking. That sounds real real spooky. That's how I read this verse. That kind of persuasion doesn't come from the one who calls you. Clearly, what Paul is trying to do in this passage, the first twelve verses of chapter five, is he's trying to take the Judaizers, the agitators to task, the people who've come along and said, We're far more spiritual than Paul, far more reliable than Paul, we do more good, godly, law-abiding things than Paul, you should listen to us. They were apparently very impressive and persuasive and it worked. And now Paul is coming along to call them into question. These people aren't the real deal. And further, he's going to make the point that if they take their logical argument all the way out to its logical end, they're going to end up in a painful and absurd situation. More on that in some future episode. So this whole thing is Paul saying, You are listening to the wrong voices. I can't tell you exactly what you're hearing, but I can tell you this. These messages that you guys have been accepting and embracing that you think are from God, I just need to tell you very clearly. That's not God's voice you're hearing. You are hearing a voice, but it's not him.
SPEAKER_00Someone's in the kitchen.
SPEAKER_01Well, if it's a spiritual message and there's spiritual persuasive force behind it, and Paul's acknowledging that there is, it's a persuasion, and it's not from God, well then who could it be? It was very interesting. And it's funny because the modern commenters on this passage are very cautious about this little turn of a phrase from Paul. They read it as, well, you're not hearing from God, you're hearing from the bad people. And that is where the persuasion is coming from. But I don't read it that way. To me, even the first time I read this, way back when I was a kid, the way I've always read it, the way I'm reading it right now on this pass again, it feels foreboding. It feels like this one little line tucked in there to say, Hey, consider what kind of power you have tapped into here. Consider what forces might be at work in what this thing is. Consider for a moment that this isn't just some adorable little Christian theology spat where I make a point and then they make a point, and then I make a point and then they make a point, and we fire back and forth a little bit, and that was that. We all had a nice time. Consider for a moment that there is something darker at play, that there is a voice, a power in play that is not God, but that is powerful and that is real. I mean to me, this is one of those places where Paul is pulling back the curtain on the supernatural world a little bit. Now, if you've known me for any amount of time, you know that I find this kind of stuff in the Bible. The stuff about the unseen spiritual forces and the stuff in the Bible about demons and conflicts in the unseen realm. Man, that's tough for me. I don't I'm not saying I don't believe it. It's in here. I think I find the Bible to be enormously believable, and I believe in God. God is the spiritual being. God is bigger and more than just a physical body like you or me on this plane. So obviously, yeah, I'm a Christian. I think there is a spiritual world, but I don't get the ground rules. I know there are a lot of people who think they do get the ground rules, and they write books about it, and they tell you how the things ought to be, and you know what? They might be right. But also a lot of times when I read those kind of books, they seem a little bit made up. Just like there's true things in here, but it's also very speculative. Because I don't I don't know, it's maybe a spiritual realm. I don't know how demons do things. I don't know what the ground rules are of that. If I ever saw a demon, I think I'd real quickly go right back to what I've seen in movies or kind of what I vaguely remember from the Bible and the rebuke it and stuff. Fortunately, I haven't had a lot of experiences like that, save one that I always allude to that I don't know what to do with and that I continue to not tell you about. Maybe someday I'll tell you more about it. At any rate, to me, this is a place where Paul is saying, this is more than a debate. There is a spiritual power of darkness in play. That is biblical theology. It is from Paul, it is from Jesus, it is present in the Old Testament. We get some weird looks at it in places like Daniel. This is a thing to believe the Bible to be reliable and from God is to believe that there is a spiritual realm and that there are dark spiritual forces who are opposed to God. I think Paul is saying that this argumentation is born out of that kind of dark spiritual force. So I read a bunch of this recent stuff that is all so modernistic in its thinking. So if you're like me, or literally anyone who's alive on earth right now, who grew up after the Industrial Revolution, there's certain modernistic assumptions about the physical natural world being the very truest thing, and anything that goes beyond that is, you know, it's all theories or opinions or whatever, or not real or myths. And that's a very curious thing about trying to do Christianity in this age, is we've very much divorced ourselves from thinking about the spiritual realm and spiritual things like this. They're very disorienting categories for people like us, born when we are. So I thought, all right, I'm gonna go and dig back into the past to a time before the Industrial Revolution when people did think about things like this, and see what old Martin Luther does with this passage. So I've pulled this out right now. I have not read this yet. We're gonna open this together. This is Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians. I did find the reference. Uh, we are in chapter five. What is this? This is verse eight, where he says it. Okay, let's see if Martin Luther is like modern commentators who read this verse and interpret it as, hey, somebody's in the kitchen. Or, if he's reading it like I am, which is someone's in the kitchen. Martin Luther, German monk, 16th century, he writes, Paul explains how those who had been deceived by false teachers may be restored to spiritual health. The false apostles were amiable fellows. Apparently they surpassed Paul in learning and godliness. The Galatians were easily deceived by outward appearances. They supposed they were being taught by Christ himself. Paul proved to them that their new doctrine was not of Christ. Yeah, here we go. Martin Luther but of the devil. In this way he succeeded in regaining many. We also are able to win back many from the errors into which they were seduced by showing that their beliefs are imaginary, wicked, and contrary to the word of God. The devil is a cunning persuader. He knows how to enlarge the smallest sin into a mountain until we think we've committed the worst crime ever committed on earth. Such stricken consciences must be comforted and set straight, as Paul corrected the Galatians by showing them that their opinion is not of Christ because it runs counter to the gospel, which describes Christ as meek and merciful Savior. I'm going to keep reading, this is good. Satan will circumvent the gospel and explain Christ in this his own diabolical way.
SPEAKER_00Quote, Indeed, Christ is meek, gentle, and merciful, but only to those who are holy and righteous. If you're a sinner, you stand no chance. Did God not say that unbelievers are already damned? And did not Christ perform many good deeds and suffer many evils patiently, bidding us to follow his example? You do not mean to say that your life is in accord with Christ's precepts or example. You're a sinner, you're no good at all.
SPEAKER_01That was fun. Well, this is fascinating. So Luther is likening the Judaizer's adherence to the law. He says that that's, I mean, you're saying that's an a vulnerability to the spiritual attack of the great deceiver, Satan, who would come along to someone like the Galatians who wants to like Jesus and wants to be in relationship with God and wants to have right standing with God. Luther imagines this monologue from Satan that he whispers in the ear of the vulnerable Christian to say, Jesus said to obey him, and you don't obey him at all. You don't follow his examples well enough. You're a sinner, you're no good at all. And so Luther is imagining this being a way that Satan, through our own desire to uphold the law, would come in and drive a wedge between us and right standing with God through Christ through faith. Huh. That Martin Luther, there's a lot of reasons he's pretty famous, but one of them is that he's real smart. Fascinating. I think this passage is clearly someone's in the kitchen. I understand that somebody could read that differently, but the bottom line is that kind of persuasion doesn't come from the one who calls you. Okay, then who's it coming from? Where does truth come from? God. He owns that. He's the author of things that are true and right. Where do lies come from? The Bible calls Satan the father of lies. This is what he does. He's like a roaring lie, and he prowls around trying to figure out who he can devour next. He's solidly the bad guy. He's opposed to the things of God. The origin of lying is with this spiritual force of evil. I gotta think the Galatians had some clarity on that, like where Satan, the devil, fits into all of this. And just in passing, I think Paul is pointing them in that direction. This wouldn't be the first time in the New Testament that we see a prominent character saying to very religious seeming people, Your father is actually the devil. You are not in league with God, even though you hold yourself out that way. And of course, I'm referencing Jesus and the stuff that he says when he finally torches the bridge with the religious leaders toward the end of the book of Matthew, which is in chapter 23. It's a whole bunch of red letters with Jesus just lambasting the Pharisees, who are oh, so loyal to their father, but their father is not God. Okay, so bottom line in this passage, however you read it, Paul is making it clear that the Judaizer's argument is not, you know, maybe a different read on what God said. It is not from God. It isn't coming from the one who calls you. I think that intones that it is coming from the enemy, the father of lies. Read that how you will. In the next little chunk that we're going to read, he's going to talk about how pernicious such a lie, such a falsehood is, and how quickly such a thing can spread and metastasize into something far worse. Final thought. It took me a minute because I was real busy. I had to finish my manuscript I've been working on, and then I traveled to California to film a bunch of really cool videos last week. Jeff went with me. We filmed a bunch of videos at churches. They were great and really encouraging. I needed that, by the way. More on that later. But all of that to say, I've been busy and I've been running, and I just now, last night, was able to sit down and put together a little audition folder for those of you who are kind enough to reach out and say you might be interested in helping me with editing for the YouTube channel. I am so excited to get my YouTube channel out of Mothballs, grind through the algorithmic prison I've been in, find solutions to it, and make cool stuff, particularly cool stuff that helps people understand the Bible better and be more interested in reading it for themselves, and cool stuff that helps Christians understand other Christians better and maybe like each other more. So I'm asking for some help with that. If you've already emailed me, you should have a reply email with a little audition task that I'm assigning. I don't know, that sounded horrible, but you go read the email, it'll make sense. If that's something you've kind of been on the fence about and you would like to still throw your hat in the ring for maybe jumping in, helping out with some editing stuff, you can shoot me an email and I will still forward over to you what I sent to everybody else. Cool. That was fun. I hope you all have a great day and be careful out there. I hope you all have a great day. And be careful out there. It's just, it's so different from one to the other. It really is all it's all in the intonation. It's all in how you say it. I'm Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Do this again soon.