You're listening to the Ten Minute Bible Member podcast. It's Fest Hun Free Daily Deep Night Bible. And right now we're talking about Galatians.
SPEAKER_00One of the things that I have fun with every year, rain or shine, whether it goes well or not, is part of the seasonal rhythm for me, is football. I enjoy football. It's fun. Uh I don't watch a ton of it, but I got a couple teams that I like to watch, and I always try to make a couple hours every week to get in the game. And when I was growing up, I did not get the memo that you're not supposed to be a fan of two teams on either side of a rivalry. So growing up watching college football, I always loved the Colorado Buffaloes and the Colorado State Rams. So they both have Colorado in the name. I'm from Colorado. Why wouldn't you root for both of them? Well, because they're blood rival enemies, apparently, and the rivalry keeps getting more intense. And so it breaks my heart every year when they play each other. I don't know how to root for it and I watch it and I feel weird. Whatever. Last year, as I'm recording this, the two teams played, and a lot had changed with those two teams, coaches and national spotlight, a whole bunch of stuff, right? And there's this great player who plays on both sides of the football for Colorado. As I'm recording this, he just won a Heisman Trophy, the highest honor in college football. And a really great kid. And he does something that pretty much nobody does, which is just play all the time, offense and defense. That's very unusual if you're not familiar with football. Well, Colorado State didn't quite have the spotlight on them like Colorado did. And so there's some rivalry and jealousy and words exchanged. And there's one play where this great player, his name's Travis Hunter, gets just crushed by a defensive player from Colorado State. I mean, lit up. And it took him out of the game, and people want to fight and everything. And it was just rough. It's like, you know, two people I love, two groups I love. And now they're all at each other. It's weird. And I just so badly wanted it to work out. Well, guess what? It did. Because with people throwing out death threats and crazy stuff on Twitter, getting way too worked up over football. Here comes Travis Hunter the next day, and he does like a live stream or something with the kid from the other team who hit him. And they're both like, hey, it's football. Maybe it was a little too much. All's forgiven, no big deal. And then they went bowling together to show everybody that they shouldn't be mean to each other and that all is forgiven. I was like, that's just awesome. And it was very important to me to know how that story worked out, to know that they had resolved things. I think it brought about closure. I think it was good for everybody involved to see that. Well, likewise, we've been trying to track down some closure as to how things worked out between Peter and Paul after this difficult and very public lunchroom incident in Antioch that Paul describes in Galatians chapter two. Now we don't get any description of this from Peter anywhere. We don't get any third hand account. So it's kind of interesting. Anytime you only hear one side of this kind of an interpersonal dispute, you sort of wonder, like, okay, well, you know, what exactly happened and where did everybody end up in terms of feelings? Is this going to be a long-term resentment kind of thing? Or is it going to be uh Travis Hunter and that kid from Colorado State who hit him real hard? All's well that ends well kind of situation. Well, I'm going to argue that all's well that ends well. And last week we talked about that being the case because it seems like Peter and Paul, from what we can glean from church history and the rest of the Bible, they still hung out with the same people. They were running with the same crowd. If there was some deep-seated rivalry here, you would think that Silas wouldn't be sitting there with a pen. Silas was a traveling partner of Paul on his second missionary journey. You wouldn't think that at the end of Peter's life, or close to it, that Silas and Peter would be hanging out together and Silas writing stuff down for Peter. I mean, Silas is the guy who put pen to paper for the book, the letter of 1 Peter. So one argument I got for saying that I think they worked it out is because all the players are working together. All of the supporting cast seems interchangeable between Peter and Paul. Seems like if they were still fighting, that wouldn't be the case. There'd be some loyalties there, and like, I'm sorry I can't hang out with you, kind of selling out my buddy, because uh, you know, I know how he feels about you. No, no, no, quite the opposite. Everybody seems to be good together. Then we talked about Peter and his relationship with John Mark, again, somebody who paled around with Paul and then had a weird falling out, but then is also paling around with Peter. It seems like everything is cool with them by the end of stuff. And it looks like Peter and Mark, who produced the gospel of Mark, are saying a whole bunch of theology stuff in there that points to the same things that Paul was talking about theologically in the book of Galatians, things that even he and Peter didn't totally see eye to eye on for a minute there in the lunchroom. So the book of Mark gives us the impression that things simmered down real quick after the lunchroom incident, and Peter really did come around and was like, yeah, my bad on that, and that he got right back on message. But then we look specifically today at the stuff that Peter said, and I feel even more optimistic that what we have here is a Colorado, Colorado State hug it out, let's go bowling together, everything's okay, it all worked out fine kind of situation. First Peter is written right at the end of Peter's life. Well, not quite right at the end. Second Peter is written closer to the end of Peter's life, but this is during the reign of Nero in the mid-60s A.D. There's a persecution that broke out in Rome in 64 A.D., where, I mean, as the story goes, Rome burned and Nero fiddled, and the people of Rome weren't happy. And so Nero was like, uh, it was uh not me, it was those dang Christians over there. And people were like, ah, all right, kill the beast. And they got at the pitchforks, and they were mean to the Christians, violent to the Christians. And Peter was in town while that was going on. So somewhere right in here, maybe just before that or just after the outbreak of that Neronian persecution, Peter is writing this letter. And in this letter, primarily, Peter is trying to encourage, I think, mostly non-Jewish Christians to stay strong. You're gonna suffer. This is gonna be difficult. Doing faith in Christ against the backdrop of paganism means you're gonna be under a lot of pressure. People are gonna be mad at you. They're gonna think that somehow your refusal to worship their ethnic local gods is gonna bring on the disfavor of the gods. They're not gonna like it. Stay strong. And one of Peter's central messages is if you get roughed up or you take a social beating or even a physical beating for stuff, let it be because you were following Christ. And don't let it be because you were being difficult or stupid or picking fights with people over dumb things. Whole lot of paraphrasing there, but you get the idea. In 1 Peter, specifically, though, listen to how he opens the letter. 1 Peter 1.1. And just have your antenna out for the stuff about being made right with God being by the work of God that was in dispute in the book of Galatians. 1 Peter 1.1. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithnia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood, grace and peace be yours in abundance. That sounds so much like stuff Paul says, and I think if Peter and Paul were still in a fight or had a grudge, Peter would have intentionally avoided that kind of language, because people would have come back at him and been like, oh, so uh you copying Paul? Or, oh, so I guess you're admitting Paul was right all along. No, they're just pulling in the same direction. Listen to the introduction of a book written by the Apostle Paul, probably just a couple of years before Peter wrote first Peter. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. One there is going to be capitalized in modern translations to make it clear that this is through Jesus. So what you're getting from both of these guys in their introduction before they even get into the meat of these two letters is this totally non-controversial celebration of the fact that it is God who does the work in the lives of people. It is option B that they are celebrating is not by stuff that people do that they are made right with God. It is by the work of God that you are made right with God. In both Peter's language and 1 Peter and Paul's language in Ephesians, God gets all the credit. It is by his power, his foreknowledge, he knew what he was doing. And you'll notice, okay, look, you don't have to be deep into the weeds of Christianity to know that there's a historical debate about this. The debate between whether God makes the first move, or people make the first move in responding to something that God has already offered. And did he just know in advance who would be a Christian, or did he decide in advance that everybody would be a Christian? It's something of a controversial debate. Sometimes you'll hear that framed in terms of Calvinism versus Arminianism. Catholic theologians have debated and discussed this as well, but this is the important thing for the conversation for you and me. There isn't a hint of controversy in what I just read you in 1 Peter or in Ephesians 1 about the reality that God owns salvation and forgiveness of sins, and that he knew in advance who he was going to give that to. They're not like, okay, I'm making an argument and making a point here. They're just saying, look, obviously, God is the knower of all things. God is the one who gives grace. It is by his grace that we are saved. And that is something that he chooses to give and that he is the owner of. And you'll notice there's no like, and you know, and so some people see it this way, some people see it that way, or no, like, and I'm sorry we believe this. I know that's weird and kind of controversial. No, no, no, there's none of that. It's just this is how it is. To the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given in the one he loves, to the praise of his glorious grace. This is awesome that it's option B and that it's all God, and that right standing with God isn't something we do, it's something he does. That's the language of Paul. And then you go over to Peter, it's the same thing. To God's elect, strangers in the world, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood. I mean, how about that language? If you're a Christian, you are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through the sanctifying work of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ. Peter is linking the idea of God being the one who does the work, not just to move an individual from not in right standing with God to a state of in right standing with God, but also through God's foreknowledge and power and his gift, he's also setting people up to do good works that he has prepared in advance for them to do, which again is exactly the kind of language that Paul uses back over in Ephesians in this letter that he was writing at about the same time that Peter was writing first Peter. Now we're back to Paul in Ephesians 2, 6. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, the language there is it's God, God did all of that, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. Same kind of language. God did this, praise God that he did it, and he's the one who did it. But just like Peter rounded out that thought by saying, All of this is God ordaining and setting it up for obedience to Christ Jesus, so Paul rounds out his thought back over here in Ephesians 2, saying, For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. So both Peter and Paul are saying God does all the lift. It's all him, it is not by human effort that people are made right with God, forgiven, justified before God. But they're also both in agreement that it isn't just that salvation works that way. It's also all the stuff that glorifies God that happens in the life of the believer after that. That was also ordained by God. And that is also by his power that that stuff happens, and he prepared that stuff that is good and redemptive that he enables Christians to do. He prepared all of that in advance as well. So we're getting really tight agreement between these two guys. And uh I wanted to do 2 Peter today as well, but we'll get to 2 Peter and land the plane on this whole thing next time around. Here's the bottom line. This had the feel of a great big public incident where now we got to have a rivalry and the two teams are gonna fly their colors and banners and rally behind their big heroes. But instead, it is looking more and more like these two guys, just like Travis Hunter from Colorado and other guy from Colorado State. It's looking more and more like they modeled resolution and agreement and burying the hatchet and moving forward with some sort of metaphorical bowling alley live stream to let everybody know we're on the same page and stuff's cool. I think it's amazing that these guys fixed it and I love celebrating wins like this. I also love the unity of scripture and how well the whole thing fits together, despite the fact that all these different people were used by God to write it. Okay, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.