My delightful wife, whose voice you often hear at the beginning of these episodes, is super invested in teaching English to people who are making their way to this country for the first time. She's part of the Literacy Council here in Rapid City, South Dakota, and she volunteers a bunch of time. And this year they gave her a special award at the Literacy Council picnic. It was a clock. It's a clock. This is something like the great job at helping people learn English award or something like that. It really was a pretty big honor. It was a very emotional thing to be there for the whole event and to hear people say wonderful things about a woman. Obviously, I think is wonderful. And one of the things that my wife does in the process of that is she does these conversation classes. And in the conversation classes, she takes a whole bunch of people from all over planet Earth, different ages and political views and socioeconomic status. People are here for different reasons. I mean, some of the people in these groups are here because they have unbelievable amounts of money and they've come here because of the incredible expertise that they have or their spouse has. There's a job opportunity here. Other people here are refugees from war-torn parts of the world. So there's all kinds of reasons that people would even show up at this class that they have called Conversation Class. And she's walking people who have close to zero English through the very beginning baby steps of learning this new language. These classes are a fascinating picture of the global community in which we live. And I'm so proud of what she does and how she handles these things. But one of the things when you get people together from all over the world that you're going to have to anticipate is that some of them aren't going to like each other because of tensions beyond their control in the larger world. For example, as I'm recording this, there's been a long-standing war between Ukraine and Russia. And it's been ugly. And those of us who are outsiders to that, I don't think we totally understand the tension there. It goes way, way, way, way, way back. I mean, the Ukrainians are the ancient Scythians, right? The powerful warriors, they were horsemen of the plains in Eastern Europe. The Persians, I mean, uh, Darius and Cyrus couldn't beat them. This is a proud, ancient people group that is also very mingled ethnically and linguistically with the tribes from further east yet, the Russians, and uh there's a fight, and it's a very old fight, and if you're an outsider like me, you're probably never gonna totally get it. So, what happens then when people from Russia and people from Ukraine both come to Rapid City, South Dakota, and they both are trying to set up a life here, and they're both here because of the same war, and they're both going through very difficult things, and they both need to learn English, and they both show up at the same event. It's probably gonna be a little spicy, right? And my wife, I think, has done a really good job of diffusing that and making it go, but at the same time, I think everyone involved, and there's been a lot of grace shown by a lot of people in in these classes, but I still think everybody involved would have to say, look, no matter how well it gets handled, you still had to know that tension was coming. There's no way that you were going to bring people from Russia and Ukraine because of the same war and put them at the same table halfway across the world and not have some of that carry over, not have some of that baggage and that history and that tension. Everybody's lost somebody, everybody's feeling massive pressure. There's plenty of blame for people to feel it's going to be difficult. It doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen. It doesn't mean that you cancel the class. It doesn't mean that it's not going to be totally worth it. But come on, any realist is going to look at that and say, there will be tension. It must happen. Likewise, there just had to be tension in the early church. It just had to happen. You and I are going through the book of Galatians, and maybe a little bit of the emotion that you're feeling as you're going through this is discouragement. Like, I want to hear about wins. I don't want to hear about Christians fighting Christians or Christians fighting sort of pseudo-Christians. That's not fun. I just want to hear the proactive positive stuff. And this tension is kind of actually a little bit deflating that we're hearing about in the first two chapters of Galatians. But I would put it to you this way: there is opportunity here in this tension that existed between the Jewish Christian world and the Gentile Christian world and the early going of Christianity. There's opportunity here for good and redemptive stuff in the same way that there's opportunity when you bring people from Russia and Ukraine who are on opposite sides of the same war, halfway around the world to Rapid City, South Dakota, and sitting down at the same table and start working on learning basic English phrases together, even though there's going to be some frostiness or some friction or even outright hostility. We're still at the table and we're still getting somewhere. And you'd have to be really naive to imagine that everybody would just be like, well, we're in class, so we'll just forget about it. No, it's a natural tension that had to occur. It has to be worked through if you want to move forward to the next beautiful thing. In the case of Galatians, the next beautiful thing is a really beautiful thing. If you've been with me since the beginning, we did the whole thing on the book of Matthew. Matthew dovetails beautifully with the Old Testament. Then we went through the whole Bible, one book per day in season two of this podcast, covering, as quick as we could, the whole big picture of the Old Testament. Why is it there? What is it doing? What are the tensions that it sets up? And what is the promise that carries over from the Old Testament to the New Testament? Well, what is that promise? It's a promise that there's going to be some new family of faith brought together by this great king who will reign forever on the throne of David and who will be the promised one of God, who's going to fulfill and complete all of the story and all of the law and all of the prophecies of the Old Testament, and this is going to be the centerpiece of God's redemptive plan, and it was always going to be for everybody. Also, if you went through that stuff with me, you knew that it was going to be hard. This wouldn't just be easy. There was a natural, obvious friction that was going to have to occur. After we got done with season two, we did season three and four, which kind of functioned together as a unit, where we covered Esther and Ezra and Nehemiah. And in those books, which represent the Persian age of the Old Testament, the very end of the narrative stuff, the story of the Old Testament, we see the Jewish people from a position of captivity and being a subject people group who had been owned by the Babylonians and now are being treated better by their new overlords of the Persians. We see them desperately trying to cling to, even recover their ancient identity, trying to hold to and clarify their bloodlines, trying to rebuild their destroyed ancient temple on the site of its rubble, trying to rebuild the soul and integrity of their people, trying to reconnect with the law and the prophets that made them who they were, and trying to finally line everything up almost through brute force. To try to once and for all, one last attempt, realize the vision that God had for them as a people who would honor God and keep his commands, and who would be a nation of priests to the whole world, so that in some way, eventually, as God blessed his chosen people, as he promised Abraham, that they would then be a blessing to all the nations. And the closing prophets of the Old Testament even visualize the idea of this nation of priests getting their act together, then taking the kings of the world by the hand and leading them into the presence of God, and everybody acknowledging the one true God. I am the God of Abraham, Yahweh, for the God that He is. And all of a sudden, all of these pagan people groups who worship their own fake ethnic gods, their little local, regional deities they made up, gods made of wood and stone, all of a sudden the scales are falling off of their eyes, and they're seeing the one true God, and creation really is ultimately redeemed in this moment. But the vision of the Old Testament that we saw as we went through that one book per day series, and as we went through Esther and Ezra and Nehemiah, the vision coming out of the Old Testament is that this was always for everybody. But again, if you happen to actually go through Ezra and Nehemiah and Esther with me, you could tell that there was just a lot of baggage, there's a lot of stuff happening, and this is not going to be easy. And sure enough, what do we find in Galatians? Tension right where it ought to be. Now let's go back to the conversation class thing with my wife. Let's say that I told you that my wife is just great, and she does a conversation class, and in that class, she's got people from East Asia and Latin America and all over Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa and the Muslim world. And also she's got a whole bunch of students from Ukraine and Russia, and they all come together and it's just been great and perfect. No tension whatsoever because she's such a good teacher. You would be skeptical of that story. You would be like, I know you love your wife. I know you're trying to be nice. I know she got the clock award, and that's a big deal, and you kind of want to brag her up and everything. But, dude, come on, let's exist in the realm of reality here. We know how hot-blooded the tensions, the war is between Russia and Ukraine right now. You'd be like, I refuse to believe that your wife has some magical power. That just when people walk into the room, they suddenly don't care about that anymore and they just forget all of it and everything's just totally fine. No, come on, Matt. There were tensions there, tell the truth. And you would be right. If I said there were no tensions, I would be lying because you're socially smart and you know where tensions must exist. Likewise, if there was no acknowledgement in the New Testament of the very notion of there being one true God who is the God of all things and not just an ethnic God, but a God for everyone who transcends all social and cultural boundaries. If there was no tension described in the New Testament of what it was like when that message went out for the first time, you would rightly be like, okay, so the Bible is Pollyanish. It's dishonestly just trying to put lipstick on the situation to try to make Christianity look artificially good. No, this is one of those tensions that you anticipate. Of course there was going to be friction. And even more so because of how isolationist, how set apart, how different, how really culturally weird and off-putting the Jewish people were to literally everyone else around them. All of a sudden now, this is for everyone else? I mean, do you remember when the people from the hill country back in around Jerusalem came to Zerubbabel in 538 BC and were like, we're gonna help you rebuild the temple? He's like, heck no, you're not. You have no part in this. You don't have the paperwork, you're not a part of it. Get out of here. And he was right, they were frauds. And then a couple generations later, Ezra did the exact same thing. Nehemiah did the exact same thing. No, you people aren't a part of this inheritance. You have no part in this. Get lost. And again, their judgment happened to be right on that as well. But I mean, to go from that tone of exclusivity to all of a sudden Jesus dies on the cross and is resurrected, and then this thing happens with Paul and the original disciples and Peter and the rooftop vision and Joppa and Cornelius and the Ethiopian eunuch and all of this stuff is happening, and all of a sudden, in like a very short period of time, this era, this set of assumptions that were ingrained for thousands of years, it all gets shaken up at once. Come on, if that tension didn't get acknowledged, if that there wasn't some sort of acknowledgement of the difficulty of that process in the New Testament, rightly, you and I would be like, this thing is a fraud. But instead, it did happen, it's recorded, and we're hearing about the tension, not from critics, we're hearing about the tension from Christians. We're hearing about it from the sacred text of the Christian religion, which is promoting belief in Jesus. So this is one of those tensions where everything is exactly where it's supposed to be. And the tension we're going to look at as we go through the rest of Galatians chapter two is more tension that is exactly where it's supposed to be. But here's the thing: that conversation class that my wife does, it's worked out really well. And I heard two amazing speeches in broken English, one from a Ukrainian and one from a Russian who participate in those classes just here a couple of months ago as I'm recording this. And there are messages of peace and friendship and overcoming. Yeah, there was tension there. There had to be tension there. It would have been ridiculous to the point of you'd have to assume it was a lie if we claimed there was no tension there. But the beautiful things that were on the other side are even more beautiful because the tension was right where it was supposed to be and is being worked through in meaningful ways. Same deal with what we're looking at in the Bible. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.