Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour podcast. And I've told you about this guy before, but I'll tell you about him again. One of my favorite baseball players ever is a dude named Carlos Gonzalez. He's not going to the Hall of Fame, but he's just a legitimately solid ball player, good character guy through the 20 teens. Played for the Colorado Rockies for a while. I watched him in just a few games before that when he played for his previous team before he came over in a big blockbuster trade. And I remember thinking, wow, that guy is really vulnerable to a slider away or a slider inside on his shins. He is a sucker for that. Well, then he got traded to my team, and like, oh, well, that's oh, that's that guy. I remember watching him take those at bats and seeing him chase that one particular pitch. I wonder if that will come with him over here. And even though now I loved him and his identity as a ball player had totally changed from the Oakland Athletics to the Colorado Rockies, still the problem persisted. It doesn't matter what outfit you're wearing, like you still got that issue right there. You chase that slider and you get murdered by pitchers. Now, eventually he got better at this. I think I've told you about his development as a player before. But the point is his old problems reared their ugly head even after he made a big change playing for a different team. Likewise, here in the book of Galatians, we're into the really tender part of Paul's conversation with the Galatian church, where he's done all the work of the theology through chapters two and three and into four. And now he's into the identity part of his conversation, the part where he's fatherly and he puts both hands on your shoulders. He's like, hey, kiddo, listen to me on this. This is who you are. But then there's one more movement in that where he's like, and because that's who you are and you need to remember who you are, hey, this stuff that you're doing right now, it doesn't make any sense. We're into that part. He says in Galatians 4, I think very tenderly, formerly, when you didn't know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. Lowercase G there. In the larger context, I think what he's talking about here is a look back at the history of the people to whom he's writing this letter. They're Galatians. If you've been with me for any amount of time, you know where they were from. They're living in Greek territory in modern day Turkey, but they were from Gaul. That's why they had the name, Gaulatians. So these are European pagans who have collected all of the Western European stuff from when their ancestors were in Gaul wearing cool animal skins and fighting against the early Romans. I mean, those are pretty cool tribes over there. But also they've picked up the Greek pagan stuff, the Anatolian pagan stuff where they live now. Clearly, I mean, these people who were really, really soaked in paganism, and then the Roman Empire came along, and now they're even further paganized by the presence of that. Which means they've got a billion gods from at least three, maybe four, maybe more different religions, and they can remember all of the characters from this collection of gods, and then you got this totally other set of myths and gods over here, and you got this collection, you got that collection, now we have the new Roman collection of gods. They know all of that. They probably have a pretty good sense of what time of year you celebrate all the different gods, what kind of sacrifices all the different gods make, what the capital city is of all of those different gods, like Artemis just down the road and Ephesus. With European paganism, there's always a connection to astrology, the astral cycles, what's going on with the stars and constellations and what goes where, and then the cycles of the year in terms of the length of days, solstices, equinoxies, all of that kind of stuff. And I think Paul, in this reference to who they used to be, he's acknowledging, hey, you guys used to be into all of this stuff. You guys, you used to chase the slider in on your shins all the time. And there's kind of implicitly like a how did that work out for you? Because I've never seen you hit that pitch. It wasn't good, right? If it was working, why did you accept Jesus? So it looks like that's kind of the first little reference to that old life that the Galatians had lived. And he goes on. He says, But now that you know God, or rather known by God, that's capital G God, by the way. How is it that you're turning back to those weak and miserable principles? He's talking about the principles that enslaved them when they were still awash in this multi-deity, multi-religion mishmash at the cultural and religious intersection of the world thing that they were doing. There was an order to this. It was religious chaos, it was madness, it wasn't serving them, it didn't make any sense. And yet when the gospel showed up, they were like, dang, that is truth, that is clarity. I'm in, and they responded quickly. So now they've tasted of this great thing, but they're going back to this false thing from a former identity. Guys, why is this following you? Why are you still chasing that slider? Come on, you you know what makes sense and what doesn't. And in this case, it looks like the old habit that they have brought with them and maybe not totally shaken. Their old Achilles heel, ha ha, that had multiple layers to it. See what I did there? Their old weakness is being awash in a sea of conflicting made-up gods practicing five or six different pagan religions all mushed together at once, having their religious life guided by the cycle of stars as interpreted by these Eastern European deities and these southern European deities and those Western European deities and probably some Celtic deities all at once, that chaos, that's your old weakness. That's the thing that you're a sucker for, like Ron Swanson is for that dirty, dirty Tammy. So I think this next thing that Paul says in Galatians 4.10 is meant to be a shock to them. It's meant to stun them. They don't realize that by listening to the Judaizers and getting things wrong about the law and Jesus and how it all works, they don't realize that what they've actually done is reverted to their era of pagan madness. They don't realize they've actually gone back to what was broken about them in the first place, but Paul is gonna hit them with it. This to me seems like one of those stunning lines in the Bible, like where the David and Bathsheba thing happens in the Old Testament, and the prophet comes along and is like, This happened with this guy. He did all this, and David's like, something's gotta be done. Get him in here. And the prophet's like, You are that man, and David just goes pale. Oh, it's me. I think we get the same thing here from Paul. You guys have gone back. Listen to this, verse 10. You're observing special days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you that somehow have wasted my efforts on you. Look, one of the marks of the Judaizers is that they would go and they would connect with uh Gentiles, outsiders in particular, who had recently become Christians, and they'd be like, You're not doing all the Jewish things. Well, what's one of the five aspects of what was revealed in the Old Testament law? It's the feast days and it's the festivals. And so the Judaizers would come along and they would be like, You need to do these things as part of right obedience to the Old Testament law of God, and you guys aren't doing them. So you're gonna need to learn what they all are, what order they happen in. There are certain sacrifices and things you need to do that goes along with each of these, and you're gonna need to uh you need to get into that. And look, I don't think Paul is inherently saying that observing the festivals is somehow inherently bad. Rather, I think he's saying, Hey, remember how vulnerable you guys were to any outsider who shows up and is like, new set of gods, better honor all of these feasts and festivals. Here's how you dress up for each of them, just do them all. You remember how you guys were like that before you found out about the gospel? Yeah, that's what the Judaizers have lured you into yet again. They found your Achilles' heel, they found your vulnerability, it's being exploited. Are you guys still just the same old Galatians? Or are you what we just talked about a page earlier? Sons, daughters, heirs, no longer slaves, in a position of honor to be able to call God Abba, Father. Which one is it, guys? Who are you really? Do you remember? Are you the people who are suckers for any traveling religion salesman? Are you guys still in the market for a religion or are you off the market? Are you guys still looking for the one true God or did you find him? Are you looking for the one true message of salvation or do you already have it? There's nothing inherently wrong with the Jewish festivals then or even now. Clearly, those festivals still communicate the character of God. They shine a light on who God is and how the law works. You don't even have to squint that hard to read between the lines of those Jewish festivals to see the gospel in there. Paul's point I don't believe is don't ever do any of that stuff, suddenly flip from being necessary to now absolutely forbidden. I think what he's saying is what you're doing here with this stuff, why you're adopting it, your theological assumptions behind all of this. Guys, this isn't some kind of great enlightenment that you've suddenly stumbled upon. Rather, this represents a regression, a reversion to what you were before you met Christ. This isn't your Christian faith in its fullest form. This is a retreat to who you were when you did not know God, when you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. The next line in Galatians is going to be, I plead with you, brothers. Paul's going to beg them to get those scales off of their eyes and to think clearly about what the gospel is, who God is, what's happened in their lives, and who they actually are in order that they might get back on track. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.