Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And of all the people who are involved in this conversation right now, the one who knows the very least about martial arts, it's not you, Gladys, and it's not you, Glenda. I see with your hand up, but it's not you. It's me. It's me. I don't know anything about martial arts. I didn't do none of that when I was a kid. I saw people at the mall doing like karate in Taekwondo stuff, and they invited me to go there when they got their belts and there was a ceremony and they bowed and they had a sensei and everything. But I it looked real cool, but we didn't have any money, and so I just I didn't do I wasn't in any of that stuff, but it looked real cool. What little I do know about martial arts, I know from two sources 80s and 90s action movies and Street Fighter 2. And what I know from those two sources is that you got offensive kinds of martial arts and you got defensive kinds of martial arts, I'm pretty sure. On the defensive side, I seem to remember that judo is one of those where you use your opponent's momentum against them with like hip tosses and stuff like that. Sounds like something I saw in movies somewhere. Probably it's true. If it's not, somebody will correct me. And Aikido, Aikido, am I saying that right? That's the other one where it's so defensive and it's so use your opponent's energy against them that if they don't come and attack you, there's no fight. Nothing happens. I think. Just imagine this is true. And then offensively, I think the most offensive martial arts style from movies and street fighter is my tie. Am I saying that right? I don't know how to say it. There's like a sneaky U in the word my. So I don't know. It's but I think this is like the the guys that wear the real like short shorts, like the John Stocktons, and they tape up their fists with athletic tape and they tape up their shins because it's just all punching, it's all offense. It's like Sagat with the eye patch in Street Fighter 2, I think. And so one of those again, if everything I've gleaned from video games and 80s action movies is true, one of those represents the far end of the spectrum of I'm coming at you, and the other represents the far end of the spectrum of defense. What I'm trying to figure out here with this chunk of Bible in Galatians chapter four is whether we're talking about all offense Maitai from the Apostle Paul, or whether we're talking about all defense Aikido or Judo here. Is he on the attack against the agitators, the Judaizers who have come into the Galatian church and thrown them into confusion? Or is he responding at this point in this passage we've been looking at for the last couple days? Is he responding to punches metaphorically that the agitators have thrown and he's trying to use their own momentum against them? If I got all of that wrong, this whole thing I well, no, it's not true. This whole thing doesn't implode if I got all of that wrong, because you I think kind of get what I'm saying. Here's the deal. End of Galatians 4. Paul just got done making this emotional appeal to his audience to be like, I plead with you brothers, become like me, for I became like you. He goes through all the history with them. He's like, These other guys, they don't love you, they don't care about you, they haven't been through anything with you. They're trying to get you worked up so they can control you. Like you think straight, I'm perplexed by you. And then he goes into this next mystery part that we've been working on, where he goes and grabs this Old Testament story. It's roughly Genesis, what did we say? Uh 15-ish, 16. I'm not gonna flip back and look there. It's like 16 to 21 is roughly where this story happens. And it's the story of the beginning of Abraham's lineage. And Paul assumes some previous knowledge on the part of his audience, which there's an important point hidden in that assumption that we're gonna get to in a minute as to whether this is defense or offense that we're getting here. But he reviews the broad strokes of this story and effectively says one lineage of Abraham coming through the slave woman Hagar is representative of slavery, and the other is representative of the promise of God. It's really hard for me to even summarize this because it's such a complex argument that he's taking from this story. I've had a few days to think about what's going on here, and I think I've got a case for offense and defense. Let me read it to you again, I'm gonna make that case. Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it's written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. I'm reading fast because we've already read this a couple times the last few days. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way, but his son by the free woman was born as a result of a promise. Now these things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves. This is Hagar. Now, Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem because she's in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. For it's written, Be glad, O barren woman, who bears no children, break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains, because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband. I read that right. Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of the promise. At that time, the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It's the same now. But what does the scripture say? Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son. Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman. Okay, if he's making a Mightai offensive move here coming off of the emotional appeal part, then what I think he is saying is, ladies and gentlemen of the Galatian church and the agitators and anyone who's listening, we all know that just being the offspring of Abraham doesn't make you part of the promise because Ishmael isn't part of the promise, and that's his firstborn son. Remember the story? Think back on that. What are we even doing here? What even is this exercise? Why are we obsessing about exactly who's descended from who and these lineages when the very first kid born to Abraham wasn't even the inheritor of the promise? So it can't be just about blood, because in fact, the first kid born to Abraham isn't even a recipient of the promise and is likened to slavery. Frankly, right now, if you want to know who in this whole equation, I'm still offensively paraphrasing Paul here, right now, frankly, if you want to know who in this equation is acting like Mount Sinai is acting like they're still in slavery, it's Jerusalem. Right now, it's Jerusalem who is acting like that. Jerusalem being where the agitators came from. Okay. That would be the Mai Thai version. The oh, the bell rings and the fight is on, and Paul is all taped up with his John Stockton shorty shorts, and he's all taped up in the fists, and he's got the super swingy leg kicks that go real high, and he just rushes into the ring and starts firing these shots. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. In this situation, nobody brought up Abraham or Hagar or Sarah or anybody. Paul is just crafting this argument in his head, and he's coming right at the people who are wrong, and he's like, you know what? You know, speaking of Abraham back there from chapter three and that whole argument I made, the emotional appeal is now done, that aside is over. I'm going back to the Abraham thing, and I'm gonna land the plane on that offensive argument. Pop, pop, pop, pow. And here's the final knockout blow, pointing out that it never was about blood anyway, so what is this conversation even about? Did that make sense? I think that's the offensive version. Okay, let's flip it around. Now let's go to the other side and let's calm down. Now the bell rings, and we discover that Paul is a defensive fighter, assuming a defensive posture. He doesn't rush in, he measures his opponent, he moves about, seeing what moves his opponent might employ. I don't know anything about martial arts, and I don't know if this is how it actually works. But let's just pretend that it does. Yes, I am moving around back and forth in my little wheelie chair here, acting all of this out. It's probably a little bit overkill on my part. And in this scenario, Paul identifies some of the moves that his opponents are going to use, and he calculates in his brain how he might use that momentum against them, a keto style, which could be a defensive martial art, I think, if I remember the eighties movies correctly. So in this situation, then the way we would read this passage is as follows. Paul would basically be saying, Okay. So I heard that some of these agitators came to town, and they brought up Abraham and Sarah and their son Isaac, and the blood lineage that flows through Isaac and all the way down to them, thus giving them authority to say these things. And they point back to this grand and glorious moment. Well, let's consider a bit more carefully what actually happened in that moment, and how the story they used to make their big grand convincing point that you should follow them actually points the other way altogether. Boom, wrist grab, smash the back of the hand, slide you by, a keto move, defense, and now the Judaizers got like a broken, all mangled up arm and everything, and it was their own fault, because their own momentum got used against them. In this scenario, Paul isn't just randomly bringing up a story that seems to come out of nowhere. In this scenario, Paul is taking something he's heard that the central appeal of the bad guys was back to this story of Abraham and Sarah and the birth of Isaac and the lineage that comes out of it, and Paul is flipping around that argument to work against the very people who made it. That to me makes a little bit more sense. I mean, ultimately we end up in the same place in terms of the point, but in terms of what's going on with the structure of the letter, the defensive martial arts style here makes a little bit more sense because it does feel like a little bit of a departure from the flow of thought that all of a sudden, you know, we were talking about Abraham back here in chapter three, then there's we go away from that for a while in chapter four. Oh, and now we're back to Abraham again, and here's this super obscure story that probably only the Judaizers and the Jewish Christians are going to know really well. But Paul is citing this story from the distant, deepest parts of the Old Testament as though everybody in the room is fairly well versed in it. And I kind of tipped my hand to this a little bit with the way I said it the other day. So that causes me to think that all of the Galatian churches had recently become familiarized with this story because this story had been a point of debate brought up by the Judaizers to support their position. Ultimately, if this is a defensive Judo move on the part of Paul, then what he's done is to say these Judaizers who are like, you need Christ and you need the Mosaic Law, they're actually operating in keeping not with Isaac, as they claim, but they're actually the spiritual descendants of Ishmael and the slave woman, the one born by natural means and not by the supernatural promise of God. So they showed up trying to tout their bloodline with this story from the ancient past, but if we really think about what corresponds to what, we come away realizing that these agitators and most of the sentiments of Jerusalem in general right now more correspond with Mount Sinai and the law than they do with Jesus. Hey, by their own words they're condemned, by their own throne punch and its own momentum, their arm is now broken. Look, whichever fighting style Paul is employing here, the conclusion is the same. Appealing all the way back to Abraham to support the Judaizers' argument that salvation or right standing with God is a result of Jesus, plus obedience and adherence to the law, you half earn it, you half get it from Jesus. By appealing all the way back to this story, whether they brought it up and Paul's being defensive or whether Paul brought it up out of the clear blue sky and he's being offensive, either way, the conclusion is the same. The Judaizers look bad. The promise goes through Isaac, and just being a blood descendant of Abraham doesn't automatically make you an inheritor of the promise. Jesus transcends all of this stuff, and ultimately, right standing with God is Jesus plus nothing. And there's remarkable freedom in that. I think that's plenty for now. I'm Matt, this is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.