I went back and listened to the last few episodes of this podcast, and I noted something, and I thought I should start today by speaking to, I guess, the tone of those last few conversations. I could see how it would feel to somebody listening to this, like I've maybe had out the big giant oversized clown hammer of forceful argumentation of late, the kind of clown hammer that has like the big long stick with two hands, and the head of the hammer is like the size of a watermelon. And when you whack it on things, it makes like bonky honky sounds and stuff. It might feel like I've been swinging the clown hammer of forceful argumentation quite a bit here toward the end of Galatians 2 on this issue of there being two proposed ways to have right standing before God, with one of those ways being the way you get most things in life, that being human effort and by doing stuff, and the other of those two ways being through no effort of your own, but by receiving right standing with God as a gift uh from Christ paid for by Christ. And I just wanted to do a little bit of relational maintenance here and say that if it has come off that way, like I think that the first of those two options is a losing proposition and does not work in any way. And if it's come off, like I'm saying that anybody who would tell you that that first way of having right standing with God is wrong and that the only right way to have right standing with God is by the gracious gift of Christ. If I have come off that way really forcefully, then I have come off exactly how I meant to, wielding bigly and loudly my clown hammer of forceful argumentation, because I am 100% with Paul on this issue. You who have hung out with me for a long time, you know that sometimes we come upon issues in the Bible where it's like, I don't know exactly what happened there, or we might not have enough data to get this little detail or that little detail. We have enough here to know. This is not one of those things where there's ambiguity about what the Bible is teaching. What the Bible is teaching is that there are two proposed ways to have right standing with God, and one of them is a dead end and does not work. It cannot be more explicit in its condemnation of that strategy for achieving right standing with God. And the Bible is teaching that there is one way to have right standing with God, and it is through Christ by his work. And I know there are some people who would even flip over to the book of James and be like, yeah, but over in the book of James, it says faith without works is dead, and it seems to really emphasize obedience before God. But over there in James it also says the same thing that Paul's saying here in Galatians, that anybody who keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of it all, guilty against the whole law. No, James and Paul, who were together at the Jerusalem Council, they're on the same page on this. They know that the law is a dead end and they're willing to fight for it. Now, both of them, as we're going to get to you know here in a minute as we work through Paul's argument a little further today, both of them absolutely believed that receiving this gift of Christ of right standing before God, of justification before God, will inevitably produce, to use Paul's language, fruit, fruit of the spirit, stuff that indicates that I mean the values of the kingdom are in you. This transformation has happened. You've been made new. The old is gone and the new is come, and now new things are going to come out of your life. Paul absolutely expects and even insists of those under his care that right action, that obedience to God would flow out of the transformation that God gives as a gift. And James says clearly the same thing. This stuff should be happening. There should be obedience to God. There should be an imitation of the values of the kingdom. They're on the same page here. And so, look, I just want to say right up front that this is not like some other things where I'm like, mm, the timeline's a little ambiguous here in terms of when Nehemiah made this second trip and how long it took him to get back. If we look at this obscure Persian source and consider the timeline and how long it takes to walk that far, maybe someone smart could argue that he made the trip in this year. Maybe somebody else could make the argument that he made the trip in the. Now, somebody put in front of me what I thought was a really helpful, a little written, what do you call this, flow chart or something by uh an old preacher who's been around for a while and is a very influential gentleman named Charles Swindah. I don't know Charles Swindahl's stuff super well, but uh this thing I got handed really impressed me. And I thought it might help uh to set up what we're going to be covering over the next couple of days. Swindah looks at this same stuff that we're looking at here in Galatians chapter two, and he's broken it down into a series of questions and answers. Galatians, remember, in this section, Paul is sort of recounting a dialogue, a back and forth, sort of a teaching technique by which you'll see, I mean, look at all the question marks in this passage, where he's asking a question and then sort of providing the answer that is obviously true to walk everybody, that is Peter and the Galatian audience and us as later audience members to walk us all through this line of thought so that for ourselves we can discover oh, yeah, it's way number one doesn't work. There's no right standing before God through human action. It must be from Jesus. He's trying to help us arrive there on our own. And so this is how Swindah breaks it down. Question number one, and this is the way it's phrased in the text 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. Okay, that's a lot of words. Maybe that could be a little overwhelming. Here's Swindahl's kind of paraphrase. He says, the implied question here is Hey guys, Paul speaking now, I'm pretending to be Paul. Did we Jews become Christians differently than the Gentiles? And then Swindle's paraphrase of the answer to that question is no. I mean, there aren't two ways of salvation, one for the Jews and one for everybody else. Everybody is saved in the same way, but through faith in Jesus Christ. Okay, I thought that was helpful. I'm gonna keep going with this thing that I've got in front of me that came from Swindle. We move on to the second question for the sake of discussion and clarity that goes like this All right, guys. So since we already had the law, why did we Jews then believe in Jesus? And the answer to that rhetorical question is well, because it's faith in Jesus that gives us right standing before God, and the law couldn't do that. We could only get it from one place, and it's through Christ, but not through the law. Okay, so now we got through two cycles of questions and answers here. There's a third rhetorical question here. It goes like this. Okay, well, on what doctrinal truth is this faith based? And the answer is well, it's on based on the truth that any person, Jew, Gentile, whoever, is only justified through faith in Jesus, and again, not by the works of the law. Okay, fourth rhetorical question then, since we're kind of on a roll now and we're getting these things all on lockdown. Now, Paul, paraphrasing here, would ask, okay, guys, then why is a person justified by faith and not works? What is the answer? Well, I'll just read you Paul's literal answer right out of the text. Because by observing the law, no one will be justified. Yeah. Guys, because it's literally impossible for the law to justify anybody, Jew or Gentile. So it's not like we got one path for one group of people depending on your last name or who you were born to, and then another path to salvation and right standing before God for everybody else. No, it is one thing. Dang it, we did not get to the big exciting follow-up question that we were going to get to today, but I'll, you know what, we're gonna do the teaser here. This is where we're heading next. Verse 17, this is where Paul goes with the argument. He says, Quote, if while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. So tomorrow, what we're gonna get into is Paul anticipating a question, or maybe he's heard the question, or heck, maybe Paul even asked this question himself to try to poke holes in Christianity back when he hated it. But the reasoning behind this question goes something like this Okay, let's just grant for a moment that you're right, and human effort isn't how we're made right with God. It is the gift of God. If we go with this free, gracious gift of God thing, isn't everybody gonna do super naughty stuff all the time and just blow off the whole law? Which come on, Paul. It's it's beautiful culturally at minimum. Like aren't people just gonna ignore everything and do bad stuff all the time? Because it's like, oh, oh, it's a free gift of grace. I'm forgiven by Jesus, so I don't have to worry about any of that stuff. Well, look, I spoke to some of that earlier in this conversation when I was talking about the James stuff and the fruits of the spirit, and we'll speak to more of that and see how Paul handles it next time around. Yeah, I got the giant clown hammer of whacking and forceful argumentation out. I understand that, but I think it matches the tone and the pace of what we're getting from Paul right here in the book of Galatians. And I think if we get this point right, the New Testament sort of snaps into place and makes perfect sense. And what we do with it in response to it snaps into place and makes perfect sense. If we get this thing wrong and make the same mistakes so many have made across the ages, I don't think any of the New Testament makes any sense. And I really, frankly, have no idea what we're doing here. So there might be a bit more clown hammer. I guess we'll find out. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon. Also, Jeff, don't you dare play that March of the Clowns. Don't do that at the end. Because everybody's gonna be like, it's making fun of like you can't, you gotta think of some other clown thing to do at the end. I'm sorry, I don't know what it's gonna be, but not that clown thing. All right, now that's it, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.