

        <cite>unknown</cite>
      <time>0:07</time>
      <p>
          Mm-hmm.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>0:27</time>
      <p>
          Surge protectors are an interesting concept, right? I&#39;ve got one right over here. I&#39;m looking at it right now. It&#39;s plugged into my wall, and then my computer is plugged into that. And it has a little red light that tells me that it&#39;s on and everything is working. And the idea of a surge protector is that it&#39;s like a power strip. You know, you get more outlets, it&#39;s convenient and everything. But it&#39;s built with some sort of sink. It can absorb a power surge. So if something goes wrong with the grid, your place gets struck by lightning. I don&#39;t know how to power surges happen. Then rather than the delicate items like a computer or something really valuable that is plugged into that surge protector, rather than those delicate items that can&#39;t handle the surge, getting hit with the full power of the surge and just exploding or frying or whatever, instead the surge protector takes it. It absorbs the damage. Maybe it even destroys the surge protector in the process. Maybe it&#39;s a single-use kind of thing, but it protects fragile things that can&#39;t handle that sort of shock, that sort of power from having to absorb it by standing in the way. What an interesting thing. I was talking with an electrician the other day who&#39;d worked on a property where they put in a whole home surge protector. Did you know that was a thing? I didn&#39;t know that was a thing. You can connect it or tie it in somehow to the electrical panel. And I guess the ideas of something went wrong with the grid or there was a big burst of power, rather than that going through the whole house and just wrecking everything, all these fragile little things connected to your home power that can&#39;t handle that. Instead, it goes into that surge protector, explodes it. I don&#39;t know exactly what happens to it, but it somehow goes there. And the curse, you can see where I&#39;m going with this metaphor, of that power is absorbed into that whole home surge protector. Interesting. I was talking with the same guy, and he&#39;s like, well, you know, grounding rods and lightning rods, they kind of do the same thing to an extent. The power, that electricity and the law of conservation of energy, it has to go somewhere. And so with this technology, which is very old technology, we just run it into the ground because the ground can absorb it, the ground can handle it, really no consequence at all. So I was looking at this guy&#39;s property and thinking, now that&#39;s really interesting. There are three different defenses against a surge in power like this. I wonder what parts of the property and the yard and everything are protected, and I wonder what parts aren&#39;t tied into that. Now it looks like that little garden shed over there, it looks like that&#39;s not tied in. If that got hit by lightning or something, you&#39;re not getting any help from the whole home surge protector or the wall surge protector or a lightning rod or grounding rod or anything like it. It&#39;s just gonna, I guess, get cooked or explode. I don&#39;t know, it&#39;s a garden shed that can&#39;t be good for it to get struck by lightning. And these items over here and these things over here, they&#39;re not a part of this protected grid. They&#39;re not a part of what&#39;s going on. If there&#39;s some kind of surge there, they&#39;re just gonna have to eat all of that and it will destroy those things. But, you know, this little thing over here, that outlet over there, that computer there, that TV there, all of that is protected because if a power surge happens, something else is going to absorb the curse of that surge. Likewise, and you saw this one coming from a mile away. Likewise, we&#39;ve got this concept of a curse, a power surge, a thing that humans are just too delicate to absorb for themselves. This concept runs through the whole Bible. It comes up in Paul&#39;s letter here to the Galatians in Galatians chapter three. The curse of the law, the curse of the judgment of sin that all people are under because all people sin is a surge in power that is it&#39;s terrible. It&#39;s ferocious. Nobody can withstand the judgment of God, the curse of the law, the consequences of the weight of our own imperfection. It&#39;s just it&#39;s too much. And that curse, that power, it&#39;s gotta go somewhere, law of conservation of energy. But the idea is that Christ becomes a curse for us, and he becomes that grounding rod. He becomes that surge protector that absorbs all of that power to protect more delicate things on the other side for the advancement of the redemptive plan and for the glory of his father. It&#39;s a pretty sweet arrangement. I love it. If you&#39;re the computer, you love being on the other side of the surge protector. If you are a person who does bad dumb things sometimes and is part of the fallen world and makes mistakes and has bad, dumb things happen to you, you like being on the other side of the metaphorical surge protector who is Christ. Maybe that analogy comes up a little bit thin, but again, I think you understand what I&#39;m driving at. But there&#39;s a further question as you look at the Bible and you think about the implications of this surge protection concept. And it&#39;s the same question that I asked to looking around this property. What is within the boundaries of that surge protection? And what is outside the boundaries? What isn&#39;t protected? Well, throughout the Bible, and specifically here in Galatians, the question we&#39;re asking is what about the Gentiles? What about the people who have not been God&#39;s chosen people historically throughout the Bible? What does it look like for them to get on the right side of the surge protection that is Christ? Are they in or are they off of the protected grid? And if there&#39;s a surge, I&#39;m like, sorry, you&#39;re just not tied into the grounded surge protected grid. You&#39;re gonna have to bear the full brunt of that power yourself, and you can&#39;t, and you&#39;re just gonna get sizzled. Are the Gentiles, the non-Jews, included in Christ&#39;s curse absorption, or are they on the wrong side of that surge protector? Well, Paul is obviously vigorously making the case throughout Galatians that the Gentiles are in, they&#39;re on the right side of the surge protector, that Christ becoming a curse for us, that Jesus who knew no sin was made by God to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. That&#39;s 2 Corinthians 5.21. If you don&#39;t know that one, that&#39;s also by Paul. Paul is unequivocal in saying if anybody&#39;s in Christ, if their faith is in Christ, it doesn&#39;t matter what they look like, it doesn&#39;t matter where they were born, it doesn&#39;t matter who their parents were, it doesn&#39;t matter if they were slave or free or what language they speak, male, female, anything. They are in. The surge protection of Christ is more powerful than the surge, and it&#39;s undefeatable. But Paul isn&#39;t just making this up out of thin air. Paul is consistently appealing to a whole bunch of stuff in the Old Testament that says the same thing. Now, understandably, a lot of the Jewish Christians or just Jewish people in general in the first century AD, because of what had happened historically and politically and militarily and all of that, they didn&#39;t really fixate, it looks like, on these passages in the Old Testament that we&#39;re gonna get to tomorrow that point out that God&#39;s plan from the beginning, God&#39;s plan always was to allow the Gentiles to be on the right side of the surge protection. You know, I get it, I understand how Jewish people in the first century could kind of miss that and lock in on other passages and other parts of the narrative. But I am telling you, my friends, and I&#39;m not just gonna tell you, I&#39;m gonna show you tomorrow, that from basically the get-go of the establishment of the family of Abraham and God&#39;s chosen people all the way through the whole Old Testament, this idea that God was going to be for the Gentiles too, and that God&#39;s redemptive plan would include the Gentiles too, I&#39;m telling you, it&#39;s everywhere. It&#39;s all over the Old Testament. This isn&#39;t some new theological innovation or convenience that Paul is whipping up here in the first century A.D. to be like, oh, we got to make this thing more popular. We got to get our numbers up. Let&#39;s open it up to this new market, this new group of people who&#39;ve always been excluded. And then we can get enough momentum to overtake the old guard and win this thing. The idea that the Gentiles are in is not theological innovation on the part of Paul. It&#39;s not theological innovation on the part of Jesus. This isn&#39;t novel at all. This idea has been in plain black and white since forever, since the beginning of the Bible, the major prophets, the minor prophets, the narrative stuff, the Moses stuff. Heck, even the Psalms all have made it abundantly clear without the whole Old Testament that the Gentiles were always in view, and that God always intended to enable them to be on the right side of the surge protector. And I&#39;m gonna leave it here as a little teaser for tomorrow, but Galatians 3 14 says, 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. Tomorrow we&#39;ll follow the breadcrumbs that Paul&#39;s laying down there in that verse that I just read, Galatians 3.14, and we&#39;ll go check in on a bunch of the places in the Old Testament where it&#39;s made clear that that blessing to Abraham and his descendants was going to be extended through Christ Jesus to people who aren&#39;t part of Abraham&#39;s family, to the Gentiles. And just one quick personal final thought here before we wrap it up. It&#39;s pretty cool to be on the right side of the surge protector. I mean, we&#39;re talking about a bunch of academic things and running around looking at Bible verses and stuff, but personally, this promise that I&#39;m reading in Galatians 3 is a huge deal for me and for everybody I love. And frankly, for people I probably don&#39;t even like that much. The idea that the curse, the power surge, the thing that I&#39;m far too fragile to absorb for myself and the thing that is coming down the pike, the idea of being on the right side of that surge protector, the idea of God and his wisdom sending his son to absorb that, to become a curse for us, to become sin for us, so that we might be the righteousness of God, so that we might have right standing with God. I don&#39;t want to get flippant about that. I don&#39;t want to become complacent about that. That is a gigantic deal and ripe with hope. And the reality of what we&#39;re talking about right now in the Bible, this reframes everything about life, death, existence, relationships. I&#39;m accountable to God. I&#39;m accountable for my sin. And this is a vivid, clear, understandable, sensible description of what he&#39;s done to absorb my guilt and replace that guilt and the consequences that come with it with his righteousness and with life. We&#39;re going to talk about that a lot more on a personal level as well, moving forward. But for now, that&#39;s plenty. I&#39;m Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let&#39;s do this again soon.
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