Do you guys have the expression, to what do I owe the pleasure? It's a thing that people say where I live. If you don't know, to what do I owe the pleasure just means what is the occasion of the telephone call? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the greeting part. Nice to hear from you. It's been a while, but uh, what are we gonna be talking about here? Well, we are to the part in the letter to the Galatian Church from Paul, where we get to the to what do I owe the pleasure part? Now it's a letter, so Paul's not hearing back from them. He's writing to them, but it's not too hard to imagine the social beats of this thing when it was read aloud. And we got to remember the whole time we're going through this thing, it was read aloud. Surely this letter was meant to be put up in front of the whole congregation, and the chief elder or whoever, the leader of that community, is gonna stand up and they're gonna read this letter from Paul. And it's gonna start with a hey everybody, how are you doing? And there's some ominous stuff in the hey everybody, how you doing part that we've been talking about for the last week. And as we've discussed, the hey everybody, how you doin' part goes a little bit longer than it does in all of the other letters. He uses that same phrase that he uses with everybody, Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Except in this greeting, he says, Who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. There were probably a few of the really socially astute people when they got to that part in the little greeting who were like, huh, it seems like you're kind of lingering on that forgiveness, gave himself for our sins part. I suspect that might be what this letter is about. But in true upper Midwestern, Mountain West social norms form, the greetings are the greetings, and then we get on to what do I owe the pleasure? So implicitly, the crowds all gathered together. The elder gets up and starts reading. We got a letter from Paul. Some people would have been like, Yes, great. I love that guy. Do you remember when he came through here before and we didn't really understand what he was talking about? So just to be safe, we hit him with rocks until he seemed dead enough that he could be dragged out of the city. That was great. But then he came back on his next trip, and that's when I started to think, you know, that guy might be all right. And now I got a letter from him. Paul's super. Some people were no doubt really excited to hear from their spiritual mentor who had invested all of this in them. I bet there were other people who felt that little gross queasy feeling in their trousers, like you feel when you know that this isn't going to go well for you, and finally the gig is up, and your shtick is about to get called out, and it's about to get called out very, very publicly. So he pivots to what do I owe the pleasure? Everybody's waiting with baited breath in the room. And then Paul's letter, being read aloud, says the following Galatians 1, 6. I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned. As we've already said, so now I say again, if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned. When you ask somebody, to what do I owe the pleasure? You hope it's something like, Well, the wife and I had a bountiful year in the garden and we have some extra squash. So here's some squash. And you're like, Great. Squash. But you're always kind of afraid that it's gonna be like, hey, uh, I heard the thing that you said, and I'm mad at you, and now we're gonna have a fight conversation. Well, it's a fight conversation here in Galatians, and now we know exactly what the tone of the letter is gonna be. We had hints. It seemed like Paul was swinging around that apostle word a whole bunch and really lining up the authority. It's Paul, an apostle. This letter's also from Jesus and God, and it's from all the brothers. And also, let me just remind you of basic fundamental theology that we all believe. You know, it looked like it was shaping up to be tough, but now he goes full tone. To what do I owe the pleasure? Maybe this isn't going to be a pleasure at all. I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Who's the one that's being deserted here? Is Paul saying, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting me by the grace of Christ and returning to a different gospel? Or is he saying, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting the one who called you, that being God by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel? Well, the two themes are a little bit interwoven as we go through the letter. Paul definitely is taking their rejection of his teaching personally, and I guess he hasn't spoken totally to what all of the false teaching going on in this church is yet, but you and I have talked about it. It's the Judaizers, it's the hyper-religious, hyper-conservative, Jewish sort of Christians, maybe not Christians at all, who've come up to churches that are doing great and are full of Gentiles, and they're like, uh, cool. Well, you're not actually Christians unless you also become Jewish and do all of our Jewish things. And it's making a mess of these churches, and that's why Paul is writing the book of Galatians, and that's why the Jerusalem Council happened in Acts chapter 15. Again, we've talked about it a ton, but as we read through the letter, you're gonna see that Paul is expressing quite a bit of personal hurt and disappointment. Like, I loved you guys, I invested in you guys, you accepted who I was and what I was doing and why I was there. You've changed your lives over it. I mean, at certain points in this letter, he's gonna be like, if I needed new eyes, there was a time when you guys would have ripped them out of your head and given them to me because you loved me that much. But to accept this teaching from people who don't love you and are just there to cause you problems, what are you doing? It's personal. And so you could read this opening to what do I owe the pleasure statement that we've looked at today, verses six through nine here, and be like, oh, okay, he's talking about how disappointed God must feel. It's kind of a proxy that Paul is using his personality in that way. And maybe that ambiguity will hold for a few verses, but I'm just telling you, as we get into this letter, you're gonna see, no, it's personal. And that happens when you work at church or do ministry things. It's a cool job, it's a noble job, it's a meaningful thing to do with your life. But uh, you know, go ask anybody who you know who has done that for a long time and tried to lead a church or start a new one. There's a lot of beautiful things about it, and they'll tell you a whole bunch of awesome stories, but you get them warmed down enough and tired enough, and they'll break down and they'll tell you, hey, some of this is just heartache, too. From the outside looking in, it might just feel like, oh, well, somebody just embraced a new set of ideas that are kind of a different religion, but still vaguely Christian. But that's not really how it works. I mean, there's this one central message that Paul was alluding to in the how you doing part of this. It's about Jesus and God and forgiveness and what God is doing. And when people go in a whole new direction but still try to put it in a Jesus or Christian costume in a church setting, that's really, really hard on their spiritual mentors, their shepherds, the people who've invested in them. And it the tone that you're getting from Paul as this letter goes on, which is one of disappointment, deep personal hurt, also massive frustration and irritation with these selfish people who came in and wrecked this church that was going along well. That sense, yeah, it didn't go away with the writing of the book of Galatians. That's kind of been the other side of the coin for a long time when it comes to church. Maybe you didn't know that. If you didn't know that, hey, I'm just gonna tell you, it's a tough job. And the people who serve you in that way, they go through the ringer. It's a lifelong thing. It's very, very difficult. And the pain that you're gonna hear from Paul through this is a pain that if you go to church, if you have a pastor or a leader or somebody who's invested in you in this way, that's a pain that they've felt before as well. So this is a very human letter, and we're figuring that out. I mean, Paul can barely contain the tone as we're cruising along here, that he is personally offended, put off, hurt, wounded, and frankly, shocked that this church that was fine like five minutes ago when I was last here could so quickly be thrown into basically another religion, a made-up, brand new fake religion that isn't anything at all. He's shocked that they could fall for it so quickly. And it's not just like, oh, well, they got you one thing wrong about what words you should say during baptism, and I think you should say these words. No. What we're gonna find as we unwrap the book of Galatians is that they were getting wrong. The most fundamental, important, basic thing of the entire thing, such that if you don't believe that thing, you're now practicing a different religion and worshiping a different God. And it took no time at all for people to come in, not be loving, not give a rip about these people, and to apply all of this pressure on them to walk away from what they had signed up for, what they came to believe in, and they fell for it so quickly. Paul is legitimately mad, but he also legitimately cares about these people. He's taken the time to write the letter, and he's having to take them all the way back to basics, which he is going to patiently do, even though you're also going to hear a whole lot of humanity through this thing as it happens. The thesis of the letter, the to what do I owe the pleasure is right here. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into conversion and trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. There you go. That's the argument. That's the occasion for the letter. You guys were on the right track. You fell for something really destructive and really stupid. It's hurting you. It is false. The people who are peddling this to you do not love you. And we're gonna go back to basics and I'm gonna remind you of what the message of Christ and the values of the kingdom actually are. And also, as a side note, I'm hurt. Yeah, I guess that's the quick version of the to what do I owe the pleasure. Now, there are probably gonna be some of you are like, oh dang, this isn't it's not fun anymore. Matthew is happier. I mean, somebody got crucified at the end of Matthew, but Matthew is happier. This letter sounds like it's gonna be yelly. And well, yeah, it's part of the Bible, and actually I'm kind of energized by it, and I'm kind of here for it because what we're seeing here is exactly what the Bible holds itself out as being. Inspired by God through human authors, and the humanity of those authors is going to come through. Well, God, Christians believe, is communicating exactly what he wants to, and behind the tension that made this letter happen is a whole bunch of really deep, rich, meaningful stuff for the person who just casually wants to understand the flow of the Bible and how it works, but even richer and deeper and meaningfuler if you actually are trying to follow God and figure out what it is to be a Christian follower of Jesus. So this is gonna be rich and it's gonna be fun, and it's also going to be very human, and it's going to be touched by hurt, and I think that's okay. That's a feature, not a bug. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.