Who's on the right side of the surge protector? Is a question that would only make sense to you if you listened to yesterday's episode and is probably deeply confusing for those of you who are here for the first time ever. Hi, by the way, my name is Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. We're working on the book of Galatians, just chipping away at it a little bit every day. You're good at math. You can see that this is like episode 100 and something, something, and we're only in Galatians chapter 3. So it just takes a minute. I don't know. All the Bible is connected to a whole lot of the rest of the Bible. And so you start working on stuff, especially stuff that's dense theology, like what you get in the little book of Galatians. And you're just gonna, you can't help it. You take these little rabbit trails, these little side jounts all over the Bible, and so it makes it take a little longer. That's why we're only through uh two and a half chapters, and that's why we're only in the middle of chapter three here in episode 100 and whatever. 119? Is that what this one is? Or something like that. It's a lot. So we're all here. Thanks for being here. Whether you're new to the program, whether you've been here for a long time, yesterday we were using this example of a surge protector, right? What does a surge protector do? Well, you plug it into your wall and you turn it on, and then if you have delicate electronic equipment that's expensive, you plug that into the surge protector. And then if you get a lightning storm or something goes weird with the grid and you get a whole bunch of power that your delicate, valuable electronic items could not ever withstand, they get sizzled, they get fried. Instead of them getting fried, that surge protector takes all of that power, takes all of that punishment. It might get wrecked in the process, but theoretically, your computer or whatever is plugged into that surge protector is gonna make it because the surge protector absorbed the shock. Or to stretch the metaphor over to the Bible, it took the curse, it became the curse, it became the surge to protect the stuff that was on the other end of it. So the question we were talking about yesterday is who's on the good side of the surge protector that is Jesus? Because Paul is making it really clear here in Galatians that Jesus became a curse. Paul says as Galatians 3 10, all who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law. Well, clearly no one is justified before God by the law because the righteous will live by faith. The law isn't based on faith. On the contrary, the man who does these things will live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. If we are to survive that, we have got to be on the right side of the surge protector, so that the surge protector can take that one for us, or else we're gonna get sizzled. Paul is making the argument that everyone is inherently on the wrong side, the dangerous side of the surge protector by nature of being humans, by nature of the fact that we live in a fallen world and we do dumb stuff and we do willfully bad stuff and bad things happen, and we try to get things right, but sometimes we get things wrong. All of it, whatever kind of sin, whatever kind of failure you're talking about, it's on all of us. It's the human problem. We all start on the danger side of the surge protector, on the danger side of the curse, but Christ became a curse for us. What he did on the cross, dying on the cross, being raised back to life, just like he said was going to happen. He becomes the ultimate perfect sacrifice for the sins of humanity and absorbs the curse. He becomes sin for us, to quote the Apostle Paul from the book of 2 Corinthians, so that we might become the righteousness of God. All of that's amazing. Again, the verbiage might seem complicated, but when you really think about it, it's not that complicated at all what Paul is laying out here. But there's a question, and this is really kind of the question that all of Galatians is dealing with, and that is, well, who is on the right side of the surge protector? Who is all over there? And what do you have to do to be over there? And who's on the wrong side of the surge protector, and why are they over there? Well, now, in the 21st century, you and I don't think a whole lot about the ethnic division that was in place back then. I mean, it's just not how the world is now. Well, in the first century A.D. and the couple of decades after Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught and did miracles and died and was resurrected and ascended to the right hand of the Father. In the few decades after that, it was kind of confusing for some people in terms of what they made of that question. Who's on the dangerous side of the surge protector? Who's on the protective side of the surge protector? And Galatians is a book about that controversy. There were a whole bunch of people who were not ethnically Jewish. They're not a part of God's chosen people, they're not descended from Abraham, and yet they became followers of Christ. They received the Holy Spirit. There was miraculous confirmation that they were on the safe side of the surge protector. Well, it's very exciting. But then some people who were descended from Abraham, who were ethnically Jewish, came along. They're probably saying we agree about the Jesus thing, him being the surge protector, the one who becomes a curse for us, the one who became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. But we don't agree as to how one moves from the danger side of the surge protector to the protected side of the surge protector. These critics come in and they're like, the way you make that move from the one to the other, it's got to at least include a whole bunch of Jewish stuff. You have to do Jewish things. You have to augment your genitals if you're a man to get the sign of the covenant with Abraham. You gotta obey all of these festivals and stuff that are laid out, especially in the book of Leviticus. You gotta honor all of these civil and ceremonial laws that go all the way back to the earliest parts of the Old Testament. You also have to honor all of these more recent rules and regulations and stylistic decisions that we've come up with along the way. And if you're not doing that, then you haven't really become Jewish. And what it is to be on the protected side of the surge protector is to be in God's family of faith. It's to become adopted into his family. Well, Paul is coming along and he's like, no, you're just you're wrong. There is a new family of faith, and it's made up of all kinds of people Jews, Gentiles, men, women, slave, free, that dividing wall of hostility, all of that old division, that went away with Jesus. It ended with him. And it is not by becoming Jewish and doing Old Testament Jewish laws that one moves from the danger side of the surge protector to the protected side of the surge protector. It is by believing what you heard. It's by faith in Christ. Paul says one page earlier in Galatians 2, 15, we who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. Now it is completely understandable after a couple thousand years going all the way back to Abraham, that some Jewish people would struggle with this question a little bit. It almost feels like it's too easy. Just believe in Jesus. That's it. Have you seen our law? Have you seen how thick it is? Here, I'm gonna pick it up, I'm gonna drop it on the table so you can hear how thick it is. That's the Old Testament right there. It's a lot of stuff. And now we're just letting people in because of faith? I get it. That would be difficult. But here's the reality. This isn't a new idea. That is the idea that Jesus is for the Gentiles, it is for everybody. It's written all over the Old Testament. And indeed, it dates all the way back to the first Jew. Can you really call him that? Maybe that's not quite the right way to turn the phrase, but the father of the Jewish race, the father of the Hebrews, the Israelite people. It's Abraham. And sure enough, right there, all the way back at the beginning, in the very opening promise that God makes to Abraham, it makes it really clear this is going to be for everybody. Listen to this. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. Okay, so far this is all about Abraham and his descendants. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse. Okay, great. That's still all about Abraham and his descendants, but here's the final line. And all people on earth will be blessed through you. Okay. Well, now we're talking about everyone who isn't descended from Abraham, and it looks like God's plan to redeem is going to include everybody else, too, but it also looks like the descendants of Abraham are going to play a very unique and specific role in all of this stuff, and it's going to be quite the blessing to play that role. Flip over four books of the Bible to Deuteronomy 32. We've now fast-forwarded, I don't know, 800, 1000 years, something like that. Abraham's descendants are still on screen. They've got some stuff right, they've got some stuff wrong, they've gone through very difficult things. God is still leading them despite all of that. And in Deuteronomy 32, 43, yes, I was stalling a little bit there while I was turning pages and doing very poorly at Bible drilling. Deuteronomy 32, 43 says the following Rejoice, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will take vengeance on his enemies and make atonement for his land and people. Both are in view. There's his land and his people. We're talking about God there, but also rejoice, O nations, with his people. So everybody else is in view here as well. So we go all the way back to Abraham. Well, the whole nations, everybody, all the Gentiles, they're all in view. They're going to be an object of God's blessing and salvation as well, through the descendants of Abraham. Jesus, by the way, is a descendant of Abraham. Matthew 1, the first chapter of the New Testament, goes out of its way to spell that out really clearly. Well, now here we check in, whatever, the better part of a millennium later. That's a really long time. Think about what you were doing in 1025 A.D. And there's still continuity here. Nothing has changed. God's people are in view. We're going to make atonement for his land and for his people, but also the nations are in view. The Gentiles rejoice, O nations, with his people. Okay, looks like the rules are still the same. Looks like the plan is still the same. Nothing has moved. All right. Well, let's jump forward a little further in time, about another 400 years, and check back in and see where it's all at with the whole God's chosen people and the nations thing. Let's go to Psalm 22. This is the time of David, so we're around 1000-ish BC now, a thousand years before the birth of Jesus. Psalm 22, 27, in the middle of this song that David wrote, says, All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. If you remember anything from the Old Testament about King David, or you go and read the rest of Psalm 22, you can see, sure enough, God's chosen people as a unique instrument of God's redemptive plan, uniquely blessed, they're still in view, with King David, the probably greatest king that they ever had. But David himself, somebody who the Bible describes as a man after God's own heart, David is clear on what God said to Abraham more than a thousand years before David was alive. David is clear on what God said through Moses in that passage I just read from Deuteronomy 32, about 400 years before David was alive, and David is clear on what God intends to do in the future. This has always been a deal where God is going to bless his chosen people, the descendants of Abraham, but all the nations are going to be blessed through them. Every knee is going to bow, every tongue's going to confess at some point, and David can see that that is coming down the pike. Time-wise, this is such a big bite that I'm trying to take with this journey through the Old Testament, looking at how God's plan didn't change along the way. It's probably going to take us a couple more conversations to get through it. I'm not even going to try to cram it all into this one, so I'm just going to hit pause right there, and we're going to continue this journey next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.