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_00Of the three Lord of the Rings movies, my favorite is the first one. I really like Fellowship of the Ring. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, by the way, it's fine. It's still going to make sense. It's going to work. But of those three movies, I like the Fellowship because it starts in the Shire. And the Shire is so quaint and beautiful. And I feel this romantic place in my heart for it. Not like romantic like boys and girls, but like romantic, like I just want to go to there because it's so pretty and idyllic and lovely and peaceful. And even as you meet the peaceful characters in the Shire, you hear rumors of war and tension far away, and you're like, oh, dang it. We're not going to be able to stay here, are we? There's a bigger thing going on. All of that's going to have to be challenged. This is going to become a much grander story that's going to cover the whole map. And sure enough, as the story unfolds, it goes out to all the corners of Middle Earth, and it needs to. The story wouldn't work if it didn't. But I also think the story wouldn't work if it didn't start in the Shire with these simple rural folk who you come to appreciate. And maybe there's a tight analogy here, maybe there's not. But likewise-ish, I think the same vibe is why I maybe like Matthew the most of the gospels, because it starts so small. I mean there's rumors that this is going to go huge. It opens with this grand genealogy, and you certainly get the idea from all the scripture that Matthew's pointing back to early on that this kid, this Jesus, is going to be a huge deal. But when you actually get into the story in the Shire era of the beginning of Matthew, it's in rural Galilee, and it's simple people in their little provincial life doing all of the little things that they have to do. And Jesus at that point, he's not challenging those in powerful positions or breaking the old rules steeped in tradition or tearing the holy veil away yet. None of that's happened. Right now he's just laying out the simple, beautiful values of the kingdom and calling a few simple followers to his side. Pretty much everybody he's talking to in the earliest conversations here are Jewish. They're having a little bit of an inside baseball conversation because they're all aware of the law and what God has done in the past. And you picture Jesus up there in his first public speech, his first public thing that he really does in the book of Matthew. He goes up to a mountain to teach his disciples. And I've been up on that mountain where that probably happened, and everything was in bloom, and it was so pretty, and the Sea of Galilee is stretching out in the distance, and it's blue and sparkling, and a little breeze rolls up off of there to take some of the heat of the afternoon off. It's just it's wonderful. It's lovely, it's idyllic, it's very shire-like. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, Jesus goes up there to teach his disciples. He talks about the values of the kingdom of God. And apparently it was really compelling because a whole bunch of other people had seen or heard enough in terms of rumors that they were like, I I want to go up on the mountain. I want to hear what Jesus has to say about these things. And so there's a whole crowd there, and they're all probably wondering if this is like a new religion or is this an old one? Are you gonna I mean this sounds great, but are you replacing the religion we already have? And Jesus settles that down real quick at the beginning of his speech, famously in Matthew 5.17, probably the key verse for the whole book of Matthew. He says, Don't think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I haven't come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. And then he goes on to talk a lot more about what that looks like in practice and at the level of the heart and in society, and even in your attitude toward your enemies, but also in your attitude toward God and toward the things that you do, the the rhythms of your religious stuff. I mean, it is a very potent speech, and it gets to the end of that three chapter speech, and it says when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law. And once again, in this idyllic, simpler time, the shyer era of the book of Matthew, if you will, it's all Jewish people, and that's kind of how most people would have thought of the blessings of God at this time. Yeah, there's some whisper in the Old Testament that this is going to go out to the nations or whatever, but the Romans are here, the occupiers, the nations have kind of come to us, and it hasn't been particularly a good experience. And so there is kind of an inside baseball vibe, and Jesus gets that, and certainly his message goes first to the Jewish people, but then Jesus comes down the mountain in Matthew chapter eight, and we get our first contact with an outsider, somebody from beyond the walls of the Shire, and they look different and they sound different, but Jesus doesn't run them off. The first hint we get that Jesus is interested in outsiders and people who just wouldn't be thought of as he comes off the mountain in Matthew chapter eight, is that a dude with leprosy runs up to him and says, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. And everybody would have been like, if you touch him, you're ceremonially unclean. You can't do any religious stuff for a long time. Don't touch lepers. And Jesus reaches out and touches the guy and says, I am willing, be clean. Not only does he touch the guy, but he miraculously heals him. And before anybody can make sense of the implications of what the heck just happened, both for the whole notion of the taboos of clean and unclean and all that, but also for the laws of time and space, before anybody can even make sense of that, along comes a Gentile outsider, a Roman, a centurion, a leader of the occupiers. And he comes running up and he says, Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed in terrible suffering. And Jesus says, All right, I'll go and heal him. But then the centurion gives his whole speech about, like, hey, I'm a man in authority. I got a bunch of people who answer to me. I know what a man in authority looks like. You're one of those. If you just say the word, he'll be healed. What is going on? This is the craziest day ever. We're already starting to feel the rumblings that things are changing here in the Shire and that this story is going to go much bigger. This Roman outsider is being received favorably by Jesus, and he's saying faith-sounding stuff to Jesus. And when Jesus heard this, he was astonished, and he said to those following him, I tell you the truth, I haven't found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then Jesus said to the centurion, Go, it'll be done just as you believed it would. And his servant was healed at that very hour. But did you catch what happened there? Again, that simple idyllic moment of we're all the same kind of people, we're all in the same boat, we all share the same story that goes back to time immemorial, and well, we all hope it'll get shaken up, but also we don't really yearn for adventure around here, and maybe it won't ever get shaken up. All of a sudden it is shaken up by the authoritative teachings of Christ, by him demonstrating his authority over leprosy, disease, clean and uncleanness, but then also demonstrating his authority over distance and disease by healing this servant, but maybe even more shocking is that he extends warmth and welcome and receptiveness and praise to a Gentile outsider. And then as we go through the rest of the book of Matthew, it's still mostly Jewish. It's still mostly Jesus hanging out in the North Country and Galilee, far from the more cosmopolitan, multicultural setting of Jerusalem. He gets there later in the book. It's dramatic and violent when he finally does. But there are all these little hints throughout the book of Matthew, just like the one that we get here in Matthew eight, when Jesus is remarking so positively about the faith of the centurion. There are all these little hints that Jesus is like, hey, this is going to be bigger than the Shire. This is going far beyond these walls. And here in what we just looked at in Matthew chapter eight, my goodness, he is saying loud and clear after everyone has already admitted he speaks with authority, and everybody's already admitted, we trust him, we're listening. He then flips around. It's like there's going to be people from all the corners of the earth, the east and the west, and they're all going to take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. Wow. Remember the last few days of our conversation? I mean, that's kind of the vision of Zechariah in chapter two and chapter 14. That's kind of the vision of Isaiah in chapter 56, 66, 60. That's kind of the vision of Jeremiah the prophet, that all the nations would come and that they would worship God and celebrate in that worship with Abraham or Abraham and his descendants. And now Jesus shows up and boy, he makes it clear that he's right on board. He's right in step with that theme from the Old Testament. And he even tags on a little bit of warning about people who you would think would be at that banquet, but who maybe might not actually end up being at that banquet. Dang, shot across the bow. And then, as I was hinting at a minute ago, as we keep going through Matthew, we keep seeing more overt hints about this, that Jesus has an eye beyond the boundaries of the Shire for the people who are currently not shirelings, who are outsiders to this whole message of God, message of the kingdom thing. But I mean, we're only four pages into Jesus saying stuff in the New Testament, and he has already interacted favorably with a Gentile outsider and made it explicitly clear people like this are going to be invited to the kingdom of God. Dang. Why are we talking about all of this? Well, because right now we're working on the book of Galatians and in Galatians chapter three and verse 14, Paul, the author of Galatians, writes, He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus. Now some of the critics of Paul might have tried to argue, oh, Paul's making new stuff up. No, everybody needs to become Jewish to be at the banquet of Abraham. And there's a lot of rules and stuff that you gotta do, but we just looked at the first chunk of Matthew, and that's not what Jesus is saying. Jesus seems well aware that the plan of God since the dawn of time was to include these outsiders to build this new and greater family of faith and for these ethnic outsiders to be included in this kingdom. So no, Paul isn't making stuff up here in Galatians chapter three, saying that the Gentiles are in, that the gospel is for everyone, that the kingdom is for everyone. Rather, Paul is demonstrating that he is right in step with the plan of God articulated throughout the whole Old Testament, which we talked about for like the last three episodes. And further, Paul is demonstrating that he is right in step with the teachings of Jesus himself, and we've only looked at the tip of the iceberg. Don't worry, we're probably not going to deep dive all the way into everything Jesus says on this topic, but we will do one more day, just one more day, where we look at this theme throughout the New Testament. Why? Because frankly, I don't want to just tell you the Bible says a thing and then be like, there you should believe me, because I bought a microphone and I have a podcast. The beauty of the medium like this is that we can take the time to do the work so you can actually see it with your own eyes, hear it with your own ears, and feel how often these themes come up throughout the Bible so that you own that. And you don't really have to take it on faith or just assume that probably I'm telling the truth or know what I'm talking about or that Paul's right or he knows what he's talking about. Nope. If we chase a one-week rabbit trail through the Old Testament and the New Testament together on something like this, you've seen it for yourself. You own that knowledge and that conviction for yourself, and you know nobody's making things up. What Paul is saying here is right. And we will take one more day just to go and grab some samples and do a little spot checking around the New Testament to make sure we are definitely hearing Paul write, that the message of the gospel is for everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, people of all social statuses. The invitation to the kingdom is for everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike. Now the only remaining tension is which musical Easter egg Jeff will go with. There's the obvious one, which is, of course, the metaphor that I went back to through the entire conversation. But there's the more subtle one. Did you catch it? What will Jeff do? Find out now. I'm Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.