You're listening to the 10 Minute Bible Member podcast. It's best unfree daily deep night bible. And right now we're talking about Galatians.
SPEAKER_01Recently I was working on a project with a guy, and as we're getting into it, I'm like, hey, I would like to pay you for this. And he's like, oh, um, okay, cool. It's like, but I want to try something new. I went and bought a tube of these silver coins, one ounce each, issued by the United States government. They have you know all the markings on them and everything. And I would like to give you one of these coins to say thanks for helping me out with this little thing we were working on here. And he was like, oh, interesting. Okay, let's try it. So, you know, I gave him the coin. He's like, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna go sell it. I'm gonna go see if I can turn it into money. And I said, Well, you know, go to this coin shop here. And he asked the most logical question, which was, will they take it? I was like, Yeah, they will, because they'll know it's real. And then he asked the next most logical question, which was, How are they gonna know it's real? I thought, well, I'm so glad you asked. These people are real smart at coins. They can tell the authentic ones from the fake ones from a bunch of little indicators, the markings, the consistency. They got a little robot they can point at it, and it tells you what kind of metal is in there and what percentages. I mean, that is apparently pretty accurate. And I was like, no, they know this is what they do. They can tell the difference between real precious metal, like silver, and fake metal or, you know, a counterfeit. And so he's like, all right, I'm gonna go try it. And he went up there, and sure enough, it went exactly like I said, and they verified that as a real silver coin, and they gave him how much a silver coin was worth on that day. And it was really fun. But the key point of that story, for the purposes of our conversation, was that analysis part where the experts who can tell the difference between a real thing and a fake thing had a series of points or checks that they could send it through to make sure it was the real deal. Well, likewise in the book of Galatians, we have a bit of a conundrum. We have basically an accusation of counterfeiting being leveled by the Apostle Paul against a bunch of Judaizers, against a bunch of people who are coming up and saying, No, the gospel, the message of hope and salvation that you got from Paul, that was the wrong message. It's this other message, the true message, is there's some stuff about Jesus, but also somehow adult male circumcision fits in there, and you got to do some other things, some dietary stuff, you gotta do all of that, and then you're a Christian. Well, Paul found out about it, and he's angry, very, very angry. And he has said in the opening ten verses of the book of Galatians, which is a letter to these churches he founded, he has said that's a false gospel, and you need to reject it and go back to the true gospel, the one that you had in the first place. It's an accusation of a counterfeit gospel. Well, it begs the same question my buddy had about the coin. How would you know which one is fake and which one is real? And for the rest of the book of Galatians, what we're gonna get is an exercise in incredibly ordered thought from a brilliant dude who was at the top of his game and who is writing using logic and ordered thought and structure to undergird something he feels very, very passionately about. And so Galatians, in that regard, is an interesting mix because you do have this enormous emotional intensity coming from Paul. He feels things about this, but there's restraint here. He's not going to give himself over to just saying, I really feel a thing, and because I feel a thing, you have to agree with me. That's the kind of logic that you get from people in politics nowadays, and social arguments has a lot of that, but it's not really compelling if you think about it. That kind of argumentation has no staying power. That kind of argumentation is really just emotional manipulation to say I'm the most angry person in the conversation, therefore I'm the one who should be listened to. If you listen to me, maybe I might stop being so irate. It's kind of a way of holding people emotionally hostage. No, the kind of arguments that have staying power, the kind of arguments that cause people to give their lives and their minds and their hearts to a thing are the ones that make sense and have a degree of order and reason to them. So Paul's throwing down the gauntlet. He said, This other version of the gospel is a counterfeit, and you need to return to the true one. And so by doing that, he set himself up. Now he has to level-headedly defend that proposition. The fair question that the Galatian church would have been asking after reading the introduction would be, okay, but how do we know your version is right? Maybe we should know that, but walk us through it anyway. And Paul is going to start. His first point in supporting his argument is going to be that the true gospel that they heard back in the day and that they received back in the day is a gospel message whose origin is exclusively from God and not the invention of any man or any institution or any Christian leader. It is entirely from God, a gift from God imparted to people. So we're not just talking about two opinions that are in competition here. We are talking about one side that is a man-made opinion and is wrong and counterfeit. And the other side is not an opinion at all. It is the message of the grace of God. It is the true gospel. Galatians 1 11. Paul begins his support of his argument here. I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preach is not something that man made up. I didn't receive it from any other man, nor was I taught it. Rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the Church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age, and I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers, but when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I didn't consult with any man, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was. But I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. Then, after three years I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles, only James, the Lord's brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. Later I went to Syria and Cilicia, and I was personally unknown in the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard the report, the man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy, and they praised God because of me. And he goes on into chapter two, but that's the end of chapter one. I know that's a lot, and we're going to break down the supporting points of his argument one by one over the next few days. But basically what we're getting here is this. He is saying there is one true gospel and it's from God. Nobody invented it. All other gospels are counterfeits. Now he is saying that one of the ways you can know that that is true is because the true gospel didn't come from any man. Paul didn't invent it, no one else invented it and then handed it along to him. This wasn't cooked up by a committee and a long meeting to try to figure out a way to get people to sign up for your thing and make donations. None of that happened. This was revealed by God through Christ, and that is the true message. Paul is explicitly and implicitly telling the audience, hey, pull on the thread, follow it back to its origin. Go look at the one that I'm calling a counterfeit and follow this counterfeit gospel back to where it came from. What you're gonna find is that it started with some dudes who decided this would be a good religious belief that other people should follow because they want other people to follow it. You're gonna discover that it is man-made. Now, my friends, do the exact same thing with the message you received with enthusiasm in the first place. So the one that I'm telling you is real and from God. Pull on the thread, follow it back all the way to the beginning. What are you gonna find? It's not from man at all. It's directly from Jesus Himself. So Paul is going to open this little chunk that we just read saying, No unnamed dude wrote this thing up somewhere and invented it. Then he goes on to say, the churches in Jerusalem didn't have some kind of meeting and just cook this thing up out of thin air either. It didn't come out of their institution. Then as we get to the end of chapter one and into stuff we'll read later in chapter two, we're gonna see that he's gonna say that the key leaders in the church in Jerusalem, the people who everybody's name, you know, they would know, it wasn't them either. It didn't come from a few apostles who were very elite, who got together and were like, we're allowed to speak for Jesus, and we thought of this new religious message from Jesus, and we just made it up, and now we're gonna hand it off to you, all of our surrogates, go out and spread the word. Nope. Paul is saying it didn't come from a thing like that either. And finally, Paul is going to say in chapter two, it especially didn't come from Peter. He didn't invent this and make it up either. Now the central claim of this is very big, and all of these supporting claims are very big, but this is ordered thought. Paul has arranged this opening part of his argument in a way that makes it easy for you and I to shoot at it. For you and I to go back and do exactly what he's inviting the Galatians to do. Grab the thread of the counterfeit and follow it all the way back. Where did it come from? Why does this message exist? What is its origin story? And then grab the thread of the gospel Paul has been preaching and says is the true, real one, and follow that all the way back to the beginning. Do you know what I'm doing, by the way, involuntarily as we talk about this? I have a little imaginary thread in front of me, and I'm grabbing it between my thumb and forefinger on both hands, and I'm shuttling it along between my fingers, but there is no thread. It's a fake thread. I'm just I'm just doing that because apparently I'm very animated when we have these conversations. As an exercise, I gave my buddy a silver coin. I was like, go to this coin shop and see what they do to verify that it's real and get you paid. And he went and they did exactly those things, and they paid him because they determined it was authentic and not counterfeit. They could tell the difference. It took a little bit of doing, but they could tell the difference. Likewise, Paul is saying there's a real version of the gospel of Christ and there's a counterfeit version, and we should be able to subject those both to a few tests, and we should be able to know exactly which one is real and exactly which one is fake. And Paul is starting with the question of origin. Where did it come from? Where did these two versions of the gospel message come from? And we're gonna track those down along with Paul and the Galatians who are hearing this for the first time next time around. I'm Matt, this is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.
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