I didn't get to take a car to college with me in my freshman year, which looking back on it is absolutely fine. But at the time, in my infinite 18-year-old wisdom, I was a little put off by this. I understood my parents didn't really have much in the way of money back then. We were sharing vehicles. My younger sister was driving by then, and my little brother was going to start driving soon. Yeah, they can't just be throwing cars around willy-nilly to every single kid who goes to college. Times were tight. So I didn't get a car. They also told me, you don't need a car. Look at this beautiful campus you're going to here on the North Shore of Chicago. There's so much to do here. All the students are here. Just be here and be present. And they were right. That was absolutely the right call. I met my wife on my first day in my first class. I met a whole bunch of friends in the first couple days just moving in. And they were they were absolutely right. It was great to just be there and be present. But sometimes you want to go do stuff. I mean, you're in Chicago. And I had one friend, we all had one friend who had an automobile. His name was Bill. And Bill drove a Ford Fiesta. It wasn't terribly nice. It had tiny little tires that were skinnier. I mean, it was almost like bike tires on this thing. It was an ultra-compact car. And it had blue and pink lines, mauve lines painted on the side. They were kind of curly and decorative. I think maybe this is what the good people at Ford back then imagined that a Mexican fiesta color palette might look like. Sort of like Taco Bell colors from the 90s. I don't know. I didn't care because it rolled and it got places. It had gas pedal and it had brakes, and you could sit in it and it would move you at high speed from one place to another. And, you know, those Chicago roads and everything are a little bit stressful, but so what? It worked. And also we're all kids and we're not thinking about any of that stuff. So it worked. Well, then sophomore year comes around, and so more people have vehicles now. And whenever we go somewhere as a group, y'all decide who's gonna drive what. Then junior year comes around, and now people are starting to get kind of nice vehicles that their parents are giving them and stuff. And we'd decide where we're gonna go. And what would happen is everybody inevitably, you know, would start volunteering to drive or whatever. And Bill would be like, I'll drive. But then people who used to love to ride in the Ford Fiesta suddenly were making up excuses about how they don't want to ride in it anymore. They're like, Oh, you know, safety-wise, it does it really have enough seatbelts. I'm just concerned, does it have anti-lock brakes? I mean, is it the weather being the way it is and whatnot? You frauds. That car was absolutely fine for you two years ago. You didn't care about anti lock brakes. What are you talking about? You just want to ride in Kyle's car because it's a brand new Mustang and it looks way cooler, which is completely defensible. But just don't hit me with this fake stuff about being too good for the Ford Fiesta because you weren't too good for it two years ago. If you had problems with the safety standards on the Ford Fiesta, you should have brought that up two years ago, but you didn't because it was the only option, and deep down in your heart of hearts, you thought it was absolutely fine. And this is all perfectly logical to you because you can see all of the psychology and everything that's going on here. Likewise, the Apostle Paul brings up a buddy and a traveling companion of his named Titus in Galatians chapter two. And in this metaphor, Titus is Bill's Ford Fiesta. Paul and Titus, they had all kinds of adventures and travels together, and Titus was rock solid, absolutely reliable. There's a book of the Bible named after him. And Titus went with Paul to Jerusalem on one of these trips. And apparently, Titus, if you didn't catch this already, that's a very Gentile name. I mean, Titus, ironically, is the name of one of the two guys, him and Vespasian, who would destroy the temple in Jerusalem just a few years after the writing of the book of Galatians. So it's a very Gentile name. And Titus went to Jerusalem, and apparently he met with both of these two camps from the Jerusalem squad, those who were inclined to support Paul in saying, yeah, the gospel is just for the Gentiles and they don't probably really need to do anything, just accept Jesus, you know, bend the knee to Christ as Lord and move forward. But Titus also apparently met with a bunch of the Jewish Christians who later came up to Galatia and caused these problems in these churches because they wanted all of the Gentile Christians to get circumcised. And remember, Titus is a Gentile Christian. So think about what a weird trip that must have been for him. You go to Jerusalem, it's foreign, everything smells different, the food is different, you're from a totally different culture. And on top of that, everybody's constantly pestering you and wanting to know the status of your genitalia. You saw you uh you're from Greece then? Yeah, yeah, man. Is it nice up there? It's just, yeah, it's absolutely beautiful. They got a lot of olive oil, right? Yeah, really like the most extra virgin olive oil. It's really, it's really great. That's awesome. That's awesome. You still got your foreskin on there? What now? I mean, really weird trip for this guy, but it seems like Titus endured it very dutifully. And it would seem that all of the Christian leaders from generation one, the original followers of Jesus, they didn't bring anything up. They didn't have any complaints about Titus. It didn't come up at the Jerusalem Council. They weren't like, hey, you know, just like one other quick note, you're gonna need to get circumcised, or you're not a real Christian. I mean, in fact, the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, with Titus in the room, ruled in the opposite direction. You remember the findings of the Jerusalem Council, right? I mean, Titus, remember, he's here for all of this. Uh, let's just review it real quick. Acts 15. Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers, unless you're circumcised according to custom taught by Moses, you can't be saved. Well, this brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, we learn later that that was Titus, uh, to go up to Jerusalem and see the apostles and the elders about the questions. So the church in Antioch sends them out. They go and they travel there, and the apostles and elders met to consider this question in Jerusalem. This is all Acts 15. And then after a bunch of discussion, Peter gets up and he's like, Hey, you brothers, you know, a lot some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that they were saved just as we are. Then the whole assembly became silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done on the prove it journey, the first missionary journey, probably where the Galatian church got established. And when they finished, James spoke up. Brothers, listen to me. Simon, that's Peter, has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. And then he quotes some stuff from the Old Testament, and he says, It's my judgment, therefore, that we shouldn't make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted to idols, from sexual immorality, and from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. It might seem like a weird list to you, but that was the list. I talk about it in another series somewhere if you want to know more about it. Then the apostles and the elders of the whole church decided to choose some of their own men to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas to paraphrase his mind, share the good news about this resolution, and let them know that, hey, we're moving forward. This is great and this is exciting. That's it. That's what happened at the Jerusalem Council. Well, there were two parties at the Jerusalem Council from Jerusalem. You caught that, right? There were the people who went and threw everybody into confusion, who caused problems in Antioch. These were Jewish Christians who were like, hey, you're not Christians unless you're circumcised. People were coming up to them in Antioch and being like, oh, you're Christian. I'm a Christian too. I'm Barnacles and I'm Testocles, and we're two very Greek people with very Greek names, and we're not circumcised at all, and we're also Christians. Bring it in. Let's do a big Greek hug. Popsicles, bring it in over here. We're like, we're all hugging with the Jewish and the Jewish Christians in this hypothetical situation were like, no, we're not doing any hugs because you're not real Christians. Because of your genital status, you are not circumcised. You get out of here, you fake. You're not even real. This is stupid. And so then up in Antioch, they're like, well, we got to do something about that. And so they have the Jerusalem Council. The Jerusalem Council rules unequivocally in favor of Paul and Barnabas and the Antioch Church and Peter and James. Everybody's on the same page. There's no debate. There's not even really any compromise. And so in the room here are generation one of the disciples, at this point, all of whom, but what, James? Or is it still alive? Or is it James? Yeah, James would have been executed already by this point by Herod. So pretty much all of them would have been there at this point. And then also in the room are the agitators. I don't know what else to call them. At times they get called the Judaizers. These are the people who went to Antioch and caused a problem in the first place for Barnacles and Testocles and Popsicles and said that you guys aren't Christians because you're not circumcised. Then this same ilk, after presumably the Jerusalem Council, is like, well, we'll just go a little further out. We'll go further afield. And they go against the wishes of the Jerusalem Council and travel all the way up to Galatia, probably, if I've got my timeline right. And they pick the same fight there, hoping they'll get away with it for that. I mean, it's just what is your weird obsession with this? You guys are being super, super weird about things and culty. And so now Paul in Galatians 2, which it occurs to me that I've still not read to you at this point, Paul comes back at them and is like, hey, do you remember when the metaphorical Ford Fiesta that is Titus came down to the Jerusalem Council? And we put him right in front of all of Generation 1 of the Christian leaders, all of the big pillars of the faith. And nobody had any problems with him then. Nobody was like, oh, you know, the tires aren't thick enough. That's not safe enough. I don't like the painted Mexican taco bell stripes on the side. That's no good at all. He's not circumcised. What's he doing here in this meeting? James didn't say anything fussy like that. Peter didn't say anything fussy like that. In fact, they said the exact opposite. It was you guys who were putting all kinds of pressure on him on just a simple vacation, like a work trip. You're putting all this pressure on him to make part of his work trip agenda being adult circumcised. You guys don't think that's a little bit weird and a little bit pushy? And you push that agenda out in front of everybody, all of Christianity, and you got told no. You got your hand slapped. And it happened in writing too. And now you guys are still at it? Come on, now you guys are coming up here to Galatia and you're trying to tell these Christians, these Gentile Christians up here in these churches that I just got done planting, these fledgling Gentile Christians who we should be helping. Now you guys are coming up here and you're like, well, actually, uh, we talked a little bit more uh with some of the most important Christians down in Jerusalem, because that's where we're from, Jerusalem. It's very important. You might have heard of it. And they were like, Yeah, it turns out the circumcision thing actually is a problem. And we just needed to kind of walk that back a little bit. We do have a problem with a lot of you Greek types pretending like you're Christians. If you're not circumcised, you're gonna have to actually get circumcised. And they they bought it in Galatia, and that's part of why Paul is so mad. But here in Galatians too, Paul is like, no, no, no, no, no, wait a minute. Does this pass the Ford Fiesta and whether or not you will ride in it in your junior year of college now that there are nicer vehicles to choose from, test? No, it does not. Titus was there the whole time. Some of them raised objections. Those are the guys who got their hands slapped and are throwing you into confusion, Galatia. And the other people who met with Titus, the pillars of the faith, they didn't say a dang thing. They didn't raise any objections. There was no problem, so there is no problem. And now I've done it. I've gone off, I've burned all of our time cracking jokes about fake Greek names and talking about circumcision. And now I didn't read you the part of that's actually from the Bible. We did Bible today, and we did Acts 15, so that's pretty good. But I gotta actually read you Galatians 2 and break down what Paul actually said and how he actually employs Titus as a test case here. I should have done this the other way. I probably should have done this the other way. Whatever. We are what we are, and here we are. So we're just gonna pick it up right where we left off tomorrow. We're gonna look at Galatians 2. We're gonna see how Paul articulates all of this. I bet it's gonna be a lot more efficient and have fewer juvenile, infantile jokes than I had, and we will just go from there. All right, I'm uh hip pause. We're coming back tomorrow. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.