If you're listening to the 10-minute Bible number podcast, it's best on the free daily deep minute Bible. And right now we're talking about Galatians.
SPEAKER_02Dude, we're in Acts chapter 15. I love this book so much. It's so fun. It's so colorful. There's so many layers of so much history. I want to act very, very hard for a gajillion episodes, but we're not gonna do it. We're only hitting on the stuff that is super needed to set up Galatians. We just did the prove it deal trip. That's what we're calling the first missionary journey. Is this thing actually for the Gentiles or is it not? It's pretty controversial. It's a pretty big deal. It's kind of a dividing line for a lot of people, it's a stumbling block for a lot of people. Well, the church in Antioch, they're pretty sure this is for the Gentiles. They're pretty sure the Bible has always said it was for the Gentiles. And so the message of Jesus goes out with Paul by the commissioning of the church in Antioch, where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. And what do you know? Yep, it is for the Gentiles. It's inarguably for everyone. There's really not a lot left to argue about at this point, other than just how do we move forward in peace and get on the same page with what God is obviously doing. So the prove it deal worked out, a short-term contract for relatively low risk and low cost. Massive returns came in for that. Now we got to get back to the table and we got to discuss the implications. We've got to negotiate what happens next. That happens in Acts chapter 15 with the council at Jerusalem, and all the heavy hitters show up. I'm just going to read you the beginning of this. Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved. Whoa, well, that's exactly the same thing that prompted the writing of the book of Galatians. Like exactly the same thing. Jewish Christians or certain Jewish people who really are having trouble accepting the idea that the Gentiles are in. They keep showing up in places where church is going great and Jews and Gentiles alike are rallying together in this new family of faith of the church. They keep showing up and be like, no, no, no, uh-uh, break it up. No. Stop with all the fun and happiness and joy and effectiveness and meeting each other's needs. None of that. We gotta talk about your pain of skin. And in fairness to them, I'm minimizing it a little bit because the circumcision thing was a really big deal. It seems like a very strange mark to choose when you look at it through modern lenses, but this was the mark of the people of God. This is the mark of the descendants of Abraham. It was something unique that set them apart. And it was sort of coded and built, something that would make a lot of sense in the age where it was initiated. And it was very difficult for this particular distinctive, this identifying thing. It was very, very difficult for certain Jewish Christians to let go of that and say it doesn't look like there's any obligation from the teachings of Jesus or the Bible or common sense to say that these outsiders have to have some sort of adult procedure to be made physically right to be accepted into the family of faith. Paul has been making the case, nope, circumcised, uncircumcised, it doesn't matter. There's this new family of faith. So the problem tracks the Christians down in Antioch. And now because of that, and because we're coming off the prove it trip, it just has to be addressed. So this brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. To be clear, Paul and Barnabas are on the same team here. They agree that circumcision is not necessary for these Gentile believers to become. I'm sorry, every time I talk about circumcision and Gentiles, I just want to bumble up and say genital. And I don't know how many times it's like it's just it's a cruel joke that in the English language, those two words are so close in how they sound and how they look on the page, and that they're so close in terms of ideas when you're working through this stuff. At some point, that's probably gonna get through the editing filter, and I'm gonna do it, and you're gonna be like, ha ha ha. That was a good joke. You are very funny. But whenever that actually happens, it wasn't a joke. I just got to go and it just happened. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about the question. Oh, this is a big deal. Okay, we're getting everybody together. The church sent them on their way. So remember, Antioch commissioned them on the prove it journey, the first missionary journey, where a lot of Gentiles became Christians, and now they're commissioning Paul and Barnabas to go and represent them with the heavy hitters back at the home office in Jerusalem. As they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. And this news made all the brothers very glad. Why wouldn't it? When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders to whom they reported everything God had done through them. Notice how far we've come since the last time Paul was down there, and people were like, I don't know. You remember the stuff you did, and everybody was wary, and he had to leave under some pretty difficult terms. This is pretty amazing the healing that has happened here. Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, Whoa, now hold on a second. There are Christians who are still part of the political party that put Jesus to death. Wow. But that had to make for awkward thanksgivings. As we read this passage, if you are a Christian, you gotta understand these guys are presented as being wrong, but they're not just called some men. Like earlier on, remember, some men came down from Judea to Antioch. It doesn't even clarify that they were Christians. You kind of get the impression they weren't, because then we come over here and these Christian Pharisees who are arguing the same position, they're called believers. So if you're a Christian, these are brothers, but wow, do they say weird stuff next? So they stand up, these uh Christian Pharisees literally stood up and say, The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses. Well, surprise, surprise that that is their opinion. Who could have seen this coming? And I like the way the text doesn't really give even any more screen time to them. It's like, okay, that's what they said. Of course, that's what they said. They're NPCs, they're programmed to say a certain thing. If they get met with this move politically or hear this phrase, they say the following thing. They acted NPC-ish and they NPC-ishly just said the thing they're supposed to say. Okay, great, fine. That's adorable. We don't even really take you guys all that seriously, but thank you for your input. Well, we're gonna talk about it, not just because you Christian Pharisees are grumpy. And so the apostles and elders met together to consider the question after much discussion. Peter, okay, so wow, we got Paul, we got Barnabas, we got Peter, we got probably Nicodemus. I mean, was that the Christian Pharisee we were talking about? I don't know, he was that, right? I mean, he was a part of the religious-I don't know, but somebody, but Peter gets up. We haven't heard from him for a long time, so dang, like this. I'm kind of freaking out. It's a collision between the A plot and the B plot here. We got Peter and Paul in the same room and part of the same discussion. It's like when all the Marvel movies came together and we got the first Avengers one, like, dang, I don't know what to do, we're all together. Brothers, you know that some time ago, Peter said, God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 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's through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are. Golly, I love that. It's so satisfying to see all of Peter's bravery and brashness and courage tempered and refined and targeted toward exactly this moment. He came through in the clutch. This is a great character payoff moment for Peter. And he's exactly right, and he doesn't duck it and he doesn't cower. Now, look, there's some moment that we're going to get to in Galatians that Paul is referencing about Peter kind of wobbling on this a little bit and feeling some social pressure and kind of not wanting to sit at the table with the Gentile Christians. And Paul calls him out. We don't know the exact timeline on that. We'll work on that later on. So I'm not even saying, you know, maybe this happened before, maybe this happened after that incident. I don't know. I'm not saying Peter's a finished product. He probably never was based on how he is. I'm certainly not, so I'm in no position to judge Saint Peter for crying out loud. But he is the point of view character of so much of the story of the New Testament, and it pays off right here. He nails it. I mean, I even think it's important that it says after much discussion, Peter got up. Peter never would have sat around until after much discussion before. He let everybody say their thing. He waited, he held this shot in reserve, but when he takes it, wow. Well, then the whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul. Ooh, there we were the A plot, now we're to the B plot again. They're together telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up. We haven't really heard a lot from James up until this point. This is an amazing mashup of everybody. Brothers, listen to me. Simon, he means Peter, has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this as it is written, quote, After this I'll return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things that have been known for ages, unquote. James goes on. It's my judgment, therefore, oh wow, so James is kind of the guy there. I mean, now that he's speaking up, he's apparently the one who's in a position to be the decider, and he's about to issue his decision. It's my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, and from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times, and it is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. Then the apostles and the elders of the whole church decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They choose a guy named Bar Sabbas and Silas, who is a common traveling partner with Paul from here on out. They send him with a letter, and the letter basically says the same thing that the Jerusalem Council says: hey, this is resolved. This is what we're doing. We are not going to heap a whole bunch of burdens on the Gentiles. Welcome aboard. We're all Christians. We're all followers of Christ. We're unified in this thing. Hey, here's some things that we do think transcend the Old Testament law. These are things that seem good to us and to the Holy Spirit to carry forward. And so they outline those caveats again if you want to know more about what maybe they were thinking there. We talk about that over in the YouTube series that I did years ago. And Paul and Barnabas are sent off with that letter to Antioch where they gather to church together and they read it. And then everybody is glad about it. And then Paul and Barnabas, they stay in Antioch for a while, and then eventually they're like, we should go back out on the road for a second journey. But they can't agree on exactly what they want their roster to be. So Barnabas goes back to Cyprus, and Paul goes back to the what I guess you would call the southern half of the hourglass Galatian churches, right back to Derby and Iconium and Pisidian Antioch. And along the way, he picks up a new character in this story named Timothy, an enthusiastic, virtuous young Christian who's half Jewish, half Greek, and who plays a very important role in the rest of the Bible and in the rest of the unfolding of the early church. The first 15 chapters of the book of Acts spend a lot of time dealing with this difficult question. What's the fate of the Gentiles? What do we do? Do we make them get circumcised? I don't know. People didn't know what to do. It was hard. But after the Jerusalem Council, we see that tension taper off dramatically, and we see the key points of tension shift quite a bit. But I love the way this meeting went. I love the payoff on Peter's character. I love the resolution. I love the spirit of unity and energy to go out and do more stuff coming off of this, even in the face of disagreement between Paul and Barnabas. Yeah, they're fine. They're going to go different ways, but they keep doing the same stuff. There is serious momentum to the Jesus thing, the message of Jesus, the message of the kingdom coming out of Acts 15. And I don't think that momentum has ever slowed. Not for the rest of the Bible, not for the rest of time, and I don't think it will. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.
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