It's the economy, stupid. I'm not calling you stupid. Don't hang up. Don't go. That's not it's a quote. I'm not directing that at you. I think you're smart. I think you have great taste in podcasting. No, it's the economy, stupid. The economy stupid. It's a quote by Jim Carville. And I didn't know that until recently. Maybe I had known that at some point or had forgotten. I in my head, I always have that quote attributed to Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton. But James Carville was and still is a Democrat strategist. I mean, he's always leaned left, but he's a little more agreeable guy a lot of the time. And so he gives, you know, really good sound bites. He's a pretty entertaining fellow, I think, whether you agree with him or not. Pretty smart guy, whether you agree with him or not. And I think he was right on this point. And back then in the early 90s, I was a kid. I couldn't vote back then. But I remember my dad explaining that quote to me. It's the economy, stupid. And what he was saying is that everybody talks a good game about all the things they worry about in elections and all the social issues and the personalities of the people in charge. But when you get alone in that ballot box, my dad was saying, people vote on the economy. That's the number one thing that causes people to vote. Is that candidate, you know, candidate A or is candidate B going to be a better candidate for the economy? Are they going to make us more stable, more rich, more jobs, things like that? And I think that has proved to be true for a really long time. Now, I don't know if it still applies. Maybe some of you are like, I don't know if it's still the economy stupid. And to that I would say you may have a point. I don't know what it is anymore. I think maybe we've gone through some very radical, directionless cultural revolution, and nobody really knows where it's headed yet or why. And I think maybe it's spite stupid might be the better quote for now, or it's fear stupid might be the better quote for now. Whatever the case. In the New Testament, there was a single issue that, like the economy in the early 1990s in American politics, emerged as the thing that was clearly on everybody's mind. And when push comes to shove, yep, there's lots of theology and social stuff and Bible stuff and all of that that everybody's very interested in. But the real question was simply, who is this for? How does Jesus, who is clearly an outflow of Judaism and the Old Testament, he's clearly the promised Jewish Messiah? He's clearly held out as being descended from David and rightly positioned to reign on David's throne forever. How does that relate with people who aren't ethnically or religiously Jewish? How does it work? How do they sign up? Do they have to convert and become Jewish first? I mean, the Jewish men had a ritual bodily augmentation they went through when they were babies. So now do adult male converts who aren't Jewish have to do that? It seems like it would hurt more when you're 40 than when you're eight days old. This is a pretty uncomfortable conversation, and you can understand why push comes to shove. That would be the it's the economy stupid of the first decade or two of Christianity, the thing that everybody worries about. But I don't think that's obvious to us when we go and read the Bible, because the issue is settled. It got debated so much in Bible times, and I mean according to the text, God, the Holy Spirit, made it abundantly clear what the correct answer to that question was. But I think just because it got so well sorted through in the Bible, in the book of Acts and in the book we're about to look at, Galatians, that modern Christians, by sheer numbers, most of whom are not Jewish, that modern Christians don't have to worry about that at all. It's not the it's the economy stupid for us when we open the Bible. And really, this debate was maybe the biggest threat to early Christianity. It wasn't persecution. Every time they got persecuted, they were like, sweet, I will bleed more. I am in for this. Christ died for me. The least I can do is give up my life for him. There wasn't much of a resistance to persecution at all. The blood of the martyrs was indeed the seed of the church back in those days. No, rather it seems like the greatest actual threats were from within. Now there's some lying and conniving and grifting that went on that was an internal threat early on. But Ananias and Sapphira, the first two people to try that game, died. They were smoted by the hand of God. So maybe if anybody else was thinking of doing it, they were like, yeah, but I mean they dragged their bodies out of church. I would hate that. So I guess we won't grift in church. But after that, the big threat is division. It's people getting after each other and fighting about these things and not viewing the church as God views it, which is a new family of faith, the completion of ancient promises made to and through the Jewish people to bring everyone to the throne of the one true king, for God's relationship with the Jewish people to be a guidepost, part of which the point was to point everyone to the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, when he showed up. And this plays out as we arrive in geographic Galatia, or right on the doorstep of geographic Galatia here in Acts chapter 13. But real quick note, before we read this, and it's going to be a lot of Bible here over the next few minutes, there is a pretty good chance that the people who are in view and the region that is in view here in Acts chapter 13 are the people, is the region to whom the book of Galatians was written. I mean, you'd think that's right there. These are the Galatian cities. This has got to be it. But yeah, maybe, maybe not. There are two theories about who the book of Galatians is written to, and we are going to attack that, but we're not going to sort that through right now. So for now, this might be the very beginning of the Galatian church, right here, that I am about to read to you. Or at the very least, it is the beginning of a regional movement that would carry over a little bit further down the road to the area that has the people in it that the book of Galatians ends up being written to. Either way, whichever group of Galatians the book of Galatians is written to, you're going to be culturally pretty much identical to what we're getting here. Acts 13, 13, a lot of Bible, here we go. From Paphos, Paul and his companions sailed to Perga in Pamphylia. Okay. Paphos is on Cyprus, so they sailed around the west end of Cyprus. Is it the leeward side? That'd be the windward. Dang it, I'm not very good at nautical things. Then they go north to the southern part of modern day Turkey to a city called Perga. And this is in a region called Pamphylia. Pamphylia is another region within Roman governance. And they go up the road from Perga. They went on to Pasidian Antioch. The Pasidian on the front end of Antioch is to distinguish it from the Antioch that is in Syria. On the Sabbath, they entered the synagogue and sat down. So this is Paul and his companions. So it's just like the story I told you that always happens. They go to a synagogue first. After the reading from the law and the prophets, the synagogue rulers sent word to them saying, Brothers, if you have a message of encouragement for the people, please speak. This is very interesting because either they didn't know that Paul was a Christian now, or maybe they did know and they were genuinely curious, you be the judge as it unfolds. Either way, I mean they give Paul the Mike. Standing up, Paul motioned with his hand and said, Men of Israel and you Gentiles who worship God, listen to me. Ooh, theology is already happening here. The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers. He made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt with mighty power. He led them out of that country. He endured their conduct for about forty years in the desert, and then he overthrew seven nations in Canaan and gave their land to his people as an inheritance. I think that's what the seven nation army thing is a reference to. Maybe not. All of this took about 450 years. After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people asked him for a king, and he gave them Saul, son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. After removing Saul, he made David their king. He testified concerning him. I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do. From this man's descendants, God brought to Israel the Savior, Jesus, as he promised. Before the coming of Jesus, John preached repentance and baptism to all the people of Israel. As John was completing his work, he said, Who do you think I am? I'm not that one. No, but he is coming after me, whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie. Brothers, children of Abraham, and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that this message of salvation has been sent. The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. This is such a clever move on Paul's part. I have to pause. See the way he's distancing the religious leaders in Pisidian Antioch from the decisions of the religious leaders in Jerusalem. He's not making these leaders own the Jerusalem leaders murderous decisions, but even if he were, he then, much like Peter did back in the conversation with Gamaliel and the Sanhedrin, he's letting them off the hook. He's like, hey, it's like it's okay, I mean, it's okay in the end, because this fulfilled what Scripture said. This had to happen. Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, I asked Pilate to have him executed. When they'd carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people. Look at how that's a really nifty literary follow-through on the theme, thesis, verse of the book, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And I like those little flourishes. I think that's cool. Verse 32. We tell you the good news. What God promised our fathers, he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm, you are my son, today I've become your father. The fact that God raised him from the dead, never to decay, is stated in these words. So it is also stated elsewhere, quote, you will not let your holy one see decay. Unquote. He was buried with his fathers and his body decayed. But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay. Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him, everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses. Take care that what the prophets have said does not happen to you. Quote, look, you scoffers, wonder and perish, for I am going to do something in your days that you would never believe, even if someone told you, unquote. And that's the end of Paul's speech. Two things that we need to do with this speech. One, we need to break it down because there's incredibly significant theology and Bible in there, and this is the message that the Galatians agreed to. Paul keeps referencing back to this in the letter to the Galatians. You're going to see this in a minute. And whether it was these Galatians or the bleed over that happened a little bit further north from these incidents that we're going to be looking at over the next few chapters. Either way, this is the message. This is what they signed up for. This is what they became Christians under. And Paul is referencing back to that in his letter. It's really good for us, therefore, to know what exactly is it that they agreed to in the first place. So we got to break that down. But then the second thing I want to break down is how did people respond? That was pretty bold. That was pretty confrontational. Will the Jews and the God-believing Gentiles who heard it receive it with enthusiasm? Or are we going to have a flogging or a stoning or something here? It's the economy, stupid, captures the political spirit of the early 1990s and what voters were worried about. That was the central issue of everything. And likewise, how does this work with the Jew and Gentile thing? How do we all follow Jesus together? Would seem to be the central issue of so much of the discussion in the early going of Christianity in the New Testament. And this is entirely relevant to you and me, even though we're encountering that question millennia after it was settled. Oh, I'm having fun. I like doing this. Thanks for hanging out with me. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.