You're listening to the 10 Minute Bible Lower Podcast. It's fast on free daily deep dive Bible. And right now we're talking about Galatians.
SPEAKER_00Anytime I talk about my parents and my upbringing, in any way that could give any impression to the contrary, I just like to disclaimer on the front end that they're rad. My parents are great. They were great back then, they're great now, they're great. Also, sometimes they yelled at me. And usually I had it coming. There's a rhythm to how I got yelled at. My dad would send me down to my room and I would sit down there and just brine in whatever I'd done wrong for a while. And then he would come in and he would be scary calm. And he would walk through what I had done wrong. You deliberately disobeyed. You did that. You usually have like a little saying or a hook, depending on which kind of screw up I had done, like honesty and integrity, Matthew. Honesty and integrity. He'd say it a few times and my shoulders would slump a little bit more as I realized I couldn't argue with it. And then, you know, dad was a preacher. He'd get a little animated, he'd get a little bit worked up, and I'd have to endure the ebb and the flow and the ebb and the flow of the lecture that I rightly deserved from my dad. But then eventually it'd kind of wind down and I would sigh the sigh of relief and he would head for the door and I'd be like, all right, I deserved that. I had it coming. That was not fun, but I'm really glad it's over. But every now and then at that moment, Dad would think of something else and he'd wheel back around and be like, and furthermore, what this does to your mother. I'm like, oh man, I hadn't thought about that. It's actually probably good that I'm getting this additional yelling, but I really liked the idea that maybe we were done. We have a long ways to go here, don't we? There's a lot more yelling to go. Okay, I'm going to rebrace myself for much more scolding. If you've ever been in that situation, or you can visualize that vicariously through my story, then I think what's going on in the scene here is the letter to the Galatian church is being read is something that we're going to be able to visualize and relate to pretty easily, especially this gap between chapter two and chapter three. Why? Because it sort of feels like Paul might be done. And maybe he's heading to the door metaphorically with his letter. The first two chapters have been intense. And in the same way that my dad needed to scold me and was right to take the tone. It wasn't dad's fault that that scolding happened. It was my fault. So it's not the letter's fault that this is an uncomfortable situation. It's not Paul's fault that this is an uncomfortable situation. It's their fault. It's the Galatian church's fault and the people who led them into confusion. So the tension here is real, but it's a feature, not a bug. There should be tension. This should be a scolding. It should be a correction. These spiritual children of Paul, these children, these members of the new family of faith, these sons and daughters of the king, were deliberately disobeying. They were getting it wrong. It's an intellectual disobedience, but Paul is still treating it as absolutely a disobedience. And that's not just Paul's read on things. I mean, Peter and John also treat this kind of willful rejection of the gospel, this kind of heresy as disobedience, as sin against God. It sounds harsh, but again, not my words. This is just what's here in the text. So we got to envision the scene, though. To picture all of this and picture what I'm talking about with this dad's heading for the door, maybe the lecture is over, kind of lull that we get at the end of chapter two. The first two chapters of Galatians really maybe kind of mostly cover what's going on here. I mean, we're gonna see there's a lot of room for extrapolation coming up, but I could see how the people in this uncomfortable setting, as this letter is being read for the first time, might think and hope that maybe they've weathered the worst of it and it's over at the end of chapter two. Picture what this is like. Everybody gets gathered together. Hey, like everybody, I don't think people missed church back then. I think they were always there, but you know, everybody get together. It's the Lord's Day, we're having church, probably a buzz before everybody got to church, and then everybody gets in there, and the church is divided. It's a mess on this particular day of worship. You've got a whole bunch of grouchy people who are part of the agitator crowd. They're the ones who've been won over by the Judaizers. They're the ones arguing for a you-do stuff to earn the favor of God, false gospel that Paul has called no gospel at all. They are mad that not everybody is going along with their new enlightened way of thinking. That's actually an old, unenlightened way of not thinking. And then clear on the other end of the spectrum, you've got people who are sticking to the message that they all signed up for in the first place. One that says, All right, standing before God is a gift of God through Christ, full stop. You don't do things to earn it or to maintain it. These are fundamentally opposed ideas. I bet church was really tense that particular morning, and I bet it had been for quite a while. But those weren't the only people in the room. Think about who else was there. There are people, as there are in any organization or family who just want to get along. Every time these two factions argue, they just put their palms over their ears and close their eyes and rock back and forth and wish it would go away. They're like, I just hate listening to church mom and church dad fight. I hate this. I don't know who's right. My brain isn't geared to sort this thing out. I thought we had this on lockdown. Maybe we don't. I don't know. Everybody keeps coming and talking to me in their secret meetings and secret. I just, oh, I hate all of it. I want it to go back to the way it was. Those people were in the room. There are people in the room who are probably very simple and entirely blissfully unaware. There are other people in the room who are probably complete newcomers and they didn't even know that there would be fights in church. They didn't think that was probably part of the deal. But now today they're about to find out that whoa, this what am I signing up for? There's some pretty serious tension here. So this is a wild room. And then think about this. Somebody had to get up and read the letter. Who was it? Well, I imagine it was the elders of the church. I mean, in Acts, it says that Paul established elders in these places. That's what cements the church. It makes it a church. There has to be leadership that's left behind there. So maybe they all got up front together, but were the elders unified? I mean, how would the first reading of this book of the Bible that you and I are looking at sound if it was read by somebody from the Grouchy camp who were part of the Judaizers who were arguing for this gospel of salvation by stuff you do? Are they going to put their tone on the whole letter? Are they going to roll their eyes? Are they going to sigh? Are they just going to read it absolutely flatly and boringly like someone who's been forced to read a legal notice because they overstepped the boundaries of their knowledge and saying things in front of everybody and now they have to kind of eat their words and cover their butt? Or what if it's read by somebody who is Team Paul and team true gospel? Are they going to try to mute down their excitement at this long overdue correction finally rolling in? Or will their glee come through because of the joy they feel about the gospel and the truth of salvation and the reality that there really is hope because there is no hope at all, there's no gospel at all, there's no life at all in the law. Yeah, maybe they would be gleeful and maybe that would rub some people in the room the wrong way. Maybe there'd be a conversation after Galatians got read that, I mean, this is so typical. It always happens in any situation like this, where it's like, okay, well, that settles it. And you were right, but I didn't like how you said it. Maybe if the person reading this in front of everybody was Team Paul, maybe they had to be really cognizant of exactly their cadence and intonation and countenance to make sure they wouldn't leave themselves open to a but I didn't like how you said it kind of critique afterwards. Maybe they had whoever everybody imagined to be the most neutral, opinionless person in the whole church read the thing. Maybe the elders and leaders were in such disagreement that they had an outsider or the person delivering the letter read the thing. I think that's a pretty realistic theory right there as well. Whatever the case, what I'm trying to say is this is dynamic. Picture the room. This isn't a simple moment where everybody's on the same page and they're like, ooh, sweet, new Bible just dropped. Okay, I can't wait. Everybody gets situated and comfortable, and they pull the kids in and everybody's giddy and rosy cheeks, Norman Rockwell looking painting. And then somebody gets up front and it has pretty music in the background, and they have calligraphy on the projector screens that slowly writes out the beautiful words of new Bible, and everybody's like, this is great. We're so lucky to be here for new Bible. It wasn't like that. And I theorize there were a whole lot of people in the rooms that were listening along who were like, um, okay, I think we get the gist. Maybe people on both sides of the argument, even who were like, all right, that's plenty, Paul. We get it after two chapters. Thank you so much. Because Paul says a lot in these two chapters, and where it ends up really does feel like a place where you could maybe spike the football and just be done. There are questions lingering, sure, but listen to the way this ends and just think if this feels like a good cutoff spot for you, like a good place for dad to wheel and go to the door. Honesty and integrity, Matthew, and just leave you thinking with those thoughts. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. I mean, especially when I do that cadence, right? And I'm like, step it all down. It seems even more like this would be a really great place to wrap it up. But there is, like I said, an outstanding question. Even though rhythmically it feels like a good place to wrap it up, there's still the outstanding question of, well, what does it mean to be crucified with Christ and no longer live, but to have Christ live in me? It's a reference back to this idea that's been percolating in these two chapters of Galatians, the initial part of this scolding, this idea of life by the Spirit, life in the Spirit. This isn't just uh an ascent, a thing that you believe in and you sign up for, and now you're good, and that's kind of it. The Holy Spirit had revealed to these people back in the infancy of their church and in the infancy of their faith, a life that was much more abundant, much more robust than just, ah, I used to think these twelve things, now I think these other twelve things. I shall henceforth think the correct twelve things. No, the Holy Spirit indwelt them. Amazing things happened, miraculous things happened. These people were transformed at the level of their spirit, at the level of their essence. They had died to self and they were alive in Christ. That's a big idea, and that is so much more than just going through the casual paces of a religion. This is holistically transformative. And that's why, even if people were a little bit worn down emotionally from the scolding they got in the first two chapters, and even if they thought that might be a good place for Paul to wrap up, it actually wasn't a good place for Paul to wrap up, is that he needs to start building it back out toward the constructive proposal, helping people understand and see the beauty of this life by the spirit, and that as the true desirable alternative to this dead life by the law in which there is no life at all. So maybe people were emotionally taxed and they wanted it to be done, but it's not done. It's not even close to done, and the really juicy stuff is still to come. Sometimes my dad gave me a three-act scolding, and I was always ready to be done after the first one, but it was really good that there were two more acts because he knew what he was doing, and I needed act two and act three of the scolding. Same is true of the Galatians here, and we'll get into why and what it looks like as we move forward. Final thought: the majority of support for this program comes through a website called Patreon. A bunch of you support the program over there. You don't have to do that because it's free, and it's just incredibly kind and thoughtful of you that you would make this podcast happen by supporting it in any way. Some of you support on other platforms as well. But Patreon, in particular, due to pressure they received from Apple and the Apple store, they've had to make changes to how they build things out. I've told you a little bit about this before. The simple version is that for the longest time, this podcast has billed on a per week basis. So if you support, it's like five bucks per week. And then every Monday I run the Patreon thing and it's like, there's five bucks. And so most months it means you'll have four weeks, some months occasionally you'll have five weeks, but that's how it works out over the course of the year. 52 times, because 52 weeks in a year, you get billed as a patron of this program for buying that week of podcast, if you will. Patreon doesn't want to do it that way anymore. They're making everybody switch over to just a basic monthly number, which honestly, once it's all done, is probably going to be way easier. They're handling all the numbers and the switch over. However, it just isn't as quick as I thought. And now they have scheduled me for a week where that transition will occur. And it looks like they're actually going to make that flip in the third week of January, which as I'm recording this, is about a month away. So this is out of my hands. It's kind of a goofy situation, but I think I'm understanding why they need to do it. I think I'm seeing how it works a little bit better. So at this point, nothing has changed. About a month from now, we'll see that change come on. And really, ultimately, it should affect all of you in no way. It should all just calculate out so that whatever you were doing every month is still what you will be doing every month. But I just want to over-hyper communicate on that because I'm so grateful that you do this. And I just want to make sure you are in the loop on what's going on. So there you go. All right, more on Paul pivoting back into the room and continuing what he had to say next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.