Moy Thai. Moy Thai. Moy. Moy Thai. Moy Thai. Okay. Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And you ever noticed that when you watch a movie with a great soundtrack, there's not just one song, right? There are lots of little themes that go along with different characters or different settings or different moments and the action. And then they help tell the story. Maybe most famously, you remember from your elementary school music appreciation class, the uh Peter and the Wolf, right? All the different characters have different instruments and different themes that go along with them. Like if you hear dun dun da, you know, oh, I know who's on screen, I know what's going on right now. With all the great epic movies, it's the same deal. I mean, you know, Indiana Jones is doing something heroic when you get the dun, dun-da-dun, dun, dun-da-dun, bum, da, dun-da-da. And you're like, oh, this isn't a moment where Indy is in peril. This is triumphant. This is the great moment when you get the Raiders march. You know, he's escaped from the bad guys, or found the thing, or defeated his foe, or whatever it might be. Maybe the most, most, most famous example of this would be Star Wars. You get the Jedi reflective theme. And of course, you've got the iconic Star Wars theme, like the over-the-top, gigantic, symphonic, triumphant Star Wars theme. The one that everybody knows, right? At the beginning of the third movie from the original trilogy, Return of the Jedi, there's this scene where two of the good guys are imprisoned by this gangster from this sand planet. And here comes the Jedi, Luke Skywalker, to free his friends, right? He comes incognito. It looks like his plan isn't working out. Then he has to go through a tremendous adventure, all kinds of peril to free his friends and do this big, crazy, heroic jailbreak escape. It's this gigantic sequence that the whole movie opens with. Very, very famous. Throughout the early going, you know, this is the third movie to come out. People are excited to see what's going to happen next. And you're kind of hoping to get some of that big explosive Star Wars heroism. John Williams, he's the guy who composed the music for all the Star Wars stuff. He teases you a little bit through that opening sequence with little hints of the Jedi theme and little hints of that Star Wars theme. And you're just begging for the big, exciting, triumphant arrival of the music that you know and love that tells you that things are gonna be okay. And then finally the tide is turned and you get the Star Wars theme. It's only a few measures here and there through that whole sequence, but you know this is triumphant. Finally, all of the tension is being resolved because we get the cue. Likewise, I think we get the beginning of the big triumphant theme that has been hinted at through the first four chapters of the book of Galatians here in Galatians 5, 1. So as I read this, I just want you to picture whatever your favorite movie soundtrack is, whatever movie you've seen so many times you've internalized the music, that you feel the music, that you can even kind of picture the teases that you get in the music, where there's like a tension version of that magnificent, grand, victorious theme that you find yourself looking for. And then I want you to picture the moment where the great big theme finally plays. We've had tiny little hints of this theme, minor derivations of this theme, all the way back to chapter one, where Paul is giving his brief little introduction, but it never feels quite right or triumphant. You can tell there's tension behind his voice, and then we get into the really tense stuff. I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and returning to a completely different gospel, a different gospel. I added completely. I don't know what I'm doing here. And then we s maybe they're feeling like we're gonna get our theme in our triumphant moment as we get into chapter two, but no, it's a lot more of Paul grinding through resume stuff and timeline stuff to counteract to the arguments of the bad guys, the agitators. And then we get into chapter three, and it feels like maybe now we're gonna get it, but no, Paul takes us into a lot of tense and complex theology, and we have to navigate all of this. We're working, we're putting in energy, it feels like we're in a fight to get through this stuff and internalize it and understand it. Chapter 4, maybe it feels like now we're finally gonna get the big grand theme, but we don't. We get an emotional appeal that is sort of the capstone on top of all of that theology, but it feels like the theme is building, like we're getting close to the payoff. Maybe it'll be now. No, we take a step back into the distant parts of the Old Testament, and we get the stuff about Sarah and Hagar and Jerusalem and slavery and all of this. But as we get to the end of that in chapter 4, the music builds, the music builds, picture your favorite theme ever. And now we get the payoff moment. Galatians 5 1. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Just let the triumphant music ring, whatever that is for you. And from this moment to the end of the book, you can just let that theme play in your head because we're in the big final movement and things are resolving all around on multiple fronts. But what's happening right here? It's for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Two movements. Movement number one, freedom itself is an intrinsic good, according to this passage. There'd be a lot of people in this original audience who know what not freedom feels like. Slavery was pervasive in the Roman world. Then just down the road from the churches that received this letter in the church at Colossae, we know that there was a whole gigantic issue with slavery in the church and how to work that out. We know that slavery touched the church because the book of Philemon exists. That might be a good book for us to go and do at some point. It's short, it's interesting, it deals with some fascinating stuff that would play off of Galatians very nicely. Hmm, mental note on that. We have all kinds of original sources, extra biblical sources about what slavery looked like and how many people's lives that touched. We also know that it was possible for a person in one lifetime, even somewhat common, for a person to experience both slavery and freedom and to know the difference between those two states of social standing. Paul is saying that freedom is an intrinsic good. This is revolutionary, the idea that someone would come along and write that freedom in and of itself is good and superior to slavery, and in doing so to even hint that maybe slavery wasn't the best idea. I mean that's a sacred cow in Roman culture, in ancient culture, in every culture in this whole distant past part of the world. Heck, in almost every culture that's ever existed in the world, to suggest that slavery is bad and freedom is the ideal state of being, and that a god would want to bring freedom to the slaves, that's pretty wild. But there's another layer to this as well. I mean, think about what we just looked at back here in Galatians 3 and Galatians 4. Slavery is what Paul is likening to the law. The law was your tutor, it was a harsh master. And the law comes with a curse. Cursed is anybody who doesn't obey the whole thing. Being freed from that burden, a burden that Paul said to Peter, that even we Jews, we can't bear this thing. Peter, I mean, you're like the best. You couldn't bear this thing. Why are we trying to put this yoke of slavery on these Gentiles? It doesn't make any sense. Paul is arguing for the last two chapters, Christ is doing more than just bringing about a social revolution, though that would come out of this, and Paul seems to be in favor of it as well. But much more so, Paul is saying that this state of spiritual freedom, freedom in Christ, isn't just a side effect of being a Christian. It's built into the whole theological redemptive work of God. That's one movement that's happening here in this grand da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I went to Willow right there. Did you hear that? That's my favorite theme ever. That's the one that plays in my head when amazing, transcendent, awesome things happen. He says, also, stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Go back to that Return of the Jedi sequence that we were talking about at the beginning. Luke Skywalker imperils himself. He goes into Jabba's palace. He's got friends in there who are held captive. He goes to all kinds of trouble. He has to fight a giant monster, blood is shed, there's straight up swashbuckling going on. And imagine if in all of that chaos, Luke did all of that, faced all of that peril, and now Han and Leia are free, and he's like, Let's go! Jump on the skiff. It's time to get out of here. And they were like, no. They actually made some really good points here at Jabba's Palace about the important role that crime lords play here on Tatooine. And I just don't think it would be the best. I I don't I'm not sure it would make the most sense. I know you put a lot of work into it. I know that you're into things like freedom and not being chained up in a slave girl outfit and stuff, but I think I might just stay put and see how it plays out. And then maybe Han would be like, actually, I was wondering if you could freeze me back into that carbonite because I don't. There were some advantages to being in there. I mean, it would just be idiotic. You would be baffled to see your heroes, people with common sense, responding to their opportunity at freedom in such a way that they would choose slavery back over it. I mean, in a way, think about what Paul's doing here. He's referencing this whole Hagar and Sarai and deep Old Testament stuff. What happened right after the Exodus, right after the Hebrews got freed from slavery in Egypt? A bunch of them were like, we don't like the food out here. It was better in Egypt. Let's go back to that. And maybe this is even meant to be reminiscent of how insane that came off. No, when your freedom, your hard-earned freedom, has been made available to you, everybody knows that the thing that you're gonna do is you want to take advantage of that, seize on that freedom, and don't let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Everything we've looked at in Galatians has been good. This is important stuff, but also there are payoffs in the Bible, just like there are payoffs in movies. And congratulations, we just got to the beginning of the payoff. Man, I wonder what Jeff's gonna do. I I wish today I had done something, anything, to give him some sort of opportunity to do what he loves to do so much, which is to flex his musical muscles and do things that he thinks might delight you, the good people who listen to this program. But I just I didn't really set him up for success here. If only I could do more to give him opportunities or excuses to make musical magic for you and I.