You're listening to the 10-minute Bible Hour podcast. It's fast fun free daily deep dive Bible. And right now we're talking about Galatians.
SPEAKER_01I have a son, and I love that I have a son. I also love that I have daughters, but it's hard for me to talk about that right now because as you might remember, they're both about to graduate from high school and it's murdering my heart because of how much I love them and how squishy my heart is for them forever. I actually did an earlier take on this episode you're listening to right now, about 10 minutes ago. And I was it was me convincing myself that I'm fine, it's fine, everything's fine, it's cool, like you know, kids grow up, whatever. And it sounded so fake and desperate and dishonest that now I'm back on the microphone to do this whole episode again and just be honest with you. It's murdering my heart that my daughters are graduating and I love them and I'm going to miss them so much, and I don't understand what happens next because I've never done it before, and this is really hard for me. And all of you have already been through it can laugh at me as much as you want. This is really hard for me. Also, my son is fantastic, and I'm thrilled that I have all of these additional years to invest in him as a kid, in my household. And one of the things that I've done over the last several years is really emphasize this idea that if you get given responsibility, that's a big deal. The more responsibility you're given, the more stuff you're invited to, the more work that you are included in, the more that's an honor. That's people saying, Okay, we see talent in you, we see integrity in you, we think you have something to contribute. Here's a little more responsibility, here's a little more responsibility. And one of the places where we've been doing this for a long time is with the evening lockup. I have a whole ritual that my dad showed to me for how we lock down the house, how we get things ready for bed. There's a bunch of settings, there's a bunch of things you gotta check to make sure stuff doesn't break in the night. And gradually I've been showing him how to do all of that, having him shadow me, kind of processing the day as we walk around and do that. And recently, I sort of handed over the keys. And I started toward my bedroom and was like, hey dude, why don't you just shut it down tonight? What? You know what to do. Just be smart about it. You're looking out for the family here, but why don't you lock it down tonight? And he did a great job, and that has been his responsibility since then. Initially, I sort of went around behind him and double checked a little bit. But now, you know, maybe it's a spot check at best, and he keeps passing the test. I'm really proud of him. I'm really impressed. You're smart, you see what I'm doing. I'm trying to move him from a place of thinking like he's a kid who just gets provided for and isn't really vested in his home or in what happens to him. I'm trying to move him from that to understanding that he is an heir to this house. He actually owns the house I live in. He just hasn't quite inherited it yet. Time needs to pass, he needs to grow, he needs to learn stuff about everything that goes into maintaining that kind of investment, that kind of responsibility. And I'm gonna teach him that. And there's going to be a moment that some point, hopefully far from now, where the home that is mine will somehow become his, will become theirs. Whether he understands the trajectory he's on or not, he's on a journey from being a kid who sees some of what's going on here to being an heir who gets it and takes ownership of the thing. Likewise, in Galatians chapter four, this is the analogy, though probably better put, that we're getting from Paul about this whole historical arc of everyone, of all of creation, of humanity going from a place where the law was our custodian to a place where in the fullness of time we are made sons, daughters, children, heirs, agents of the kingdom. So you'll recall, I've read the passage like ten times in the last two weeks. I'm gonna read it again. This is the end of Galatians chapter three. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. You know what? That reminds me, there's some stuff around the Bible about this idea of the clothes making the man and clothe yourselves in Christ. Let's just quickly run through every single one of those. No, I'm just kidding, we already did that. It took like a whole week. We keep going. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ to Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Now we're into new material, Galatians 4 1. What I'm saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he's no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He's subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive the full rights of sons. It's another one of those moments where Paul is maybe talking about complicated things for a while. He senses that that's about as far as his audience is ready to go without having it simplified a little bit. And he flips chair around backwards, flip the hat around backwards, gets real for a minute. He's like it's like this, guys. You know, those of you who have kids or have ever been a kid, who's that? Who's like that in the audience? He's like, oh, I'm not raising my hand for that. Like you know that that's everybody. Everybody has been a kid or has kids or stop it. Okay, so we're all on the same page. I see what he's doing. It's a good move. All right, so we all get that, and we all know that when you're born, you don't just get given your whole household. There's a growth process, and whoever's in charge of the household, they make the decision on what that timeline looks like. Now, in particular here, Paul is speaking into the Roman sensibilities of the Mediterranean world in the first century AD, where they didn't have a bunch of little houses like you and I think of houses. You have an adult and the kids grow up and they get married or they go out on their own, and then they get a house or an apartment or whatever. And everybody has a house. Everybody has an apartment. At least that's pretty much how it is in my country. Well, in the old world, it didn't work like that in certain parts of the world today. It doesn't work like that. It's a lot more economical, it's a lot more sustainable, frankly, to have a compound. Oh, that sounded gross. It sounded culty. Well, I don't know how else to put it. It's a domus, is what they called it back in the day. And this idea of a household meant there were a whole bunch of apartments and subhouses connected to this same collection of buildings on this workable land, usually. I mean, sometimes this would happen in an urban setting as well. Looks like John Mark maybe had some kind of domus for an extended family in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus and during the time of the book of Acts. And so that domus was like the smallest unit of civilization. It was governed by the head of a household. And when a child was born into that household, well, it was obvious they were in succession to eventually, to some degree, become an inheritor of that household, to have ownership of the business and the rhythm of that household, maybe even be the head of the household. I mean, that kind of stretches the analogy, but that's the way these things worked. Well, of course, nobody was getting born and then immediately commissioned to run the entire household. They're not literate, they don't speak a language yet, they don't have any idea what's going on. But from the moment somebody's born, they start being conditioned and trained so that eventually they can inherit this thing and there can be a real likelihood of success. It's a simple analogy, and Paul knows exactly what he's doing, and he's likening this era, this kid era, to the era of the law. Having a tutor, having a custodian, having a steward who carefully puts limits and boundaries on the kids of the household to say, right now you're gonna learn the rules. Right now you're gonna learn the expectations of the household from rules handed down by the head of the household, and you're going to learn your place, learn where you fit, learn how to conduct business here, knowing that eventually you're gonna grow up and you're going to have ownership of this household. You will participate in a greater way. So, what I'm saying is that as long as an heir is a child, he's no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. And he owns it, he just doesn't run it yet. The kid has ownership, he just doesn't have ownership of running it yet. He's subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. Again, all of this is common sense. So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. And now Paul is going to point to this grand singular historical pivot point. The moment that in whatever tradition you're a part of, whatever part of the world your family's from, everybody has a rite of passage moment where you go from being viewed as a kid, still in preparation mode and not ready to inherit, to being an inheritor, an heir, in some way having ownership, not just on paper, but in the actual day-to-day stuff of a household. There's a transition moment. Paul is describing the unfolding of history and the unfolding of humankind created in God's image as having this transitional moment, and the moment was Jesus. So also when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, a principle we're going to talk about more tomorrow, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law that we might receive the full rights of sons. Paul's tapping into the idea of everybody knows how kids are in relationship to a household. Everybody knows what a rite of passage is, the moment in any given culture, where you move from being a kid who someday to a young adult who's starting to participate now, or a full-fledged adult who has ownership and a role as an heir and a participant and an agent of the household now. He's tapping into this example. He knows everybody gets what it is, and he's saying that that harsh, demanding tutor that made us function almost similarly to the ground rules and constraints that are placed upon a slave, that was the law. But then God sent his son, born of a woman born under the law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive the full rights of sons. The restricted kid era is the law era. The full sonship, daughtership, ownership agency air era is the kingdom era in Christ. More on that tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.