Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And do you remember the 2000s? It was a couple of decades ago. There was this huge cultural shift away from the mainstream in terms of art and media and ideas and toward more highly valuing independent stuff. Stuff that didn't have that corporate film over the top of it. It happened in the early age of the internet where a generation, really probably my generation, older millennial, younger Gen X type people, started to figure out that, hey, all of our art and movies and TV shows and news and local news and newspapers and probably our politicians, all of this is owned by the same six companies. These same six companies own all the clothing stores in the mall that represent the 10 or 12 different character templates that I can go and buy with my mall clothing budget every month. All of this is trying to give the impression of variety, but it's actually all really the same thing. All of the musicians have to kiss the ring of one of these six companies and then do whatever horrible things these six companies make people do to get a record deal or whatever. And we all started to figure that out at once in the maybe early 2000s. As people in my generation figured it out, we found it to be gross. And there was this big apolitical rejection of mainstream corporate media stuff. And there was this big gravitation toward independent media, independent art. That happened in rock music. There was a whole wave of stuff called indie rock or independent rock that was a little more folksy and quaint with a little less emphasis on polish and style. There was independent media in the early days of YouTube, in the early days of podcasting. And I heck, what we're doing right now has no corporate mediator between us. That was a really exciting new idea back in the early 2000s. And so in this moment in the 2000s of this generation-wide rejection of corporate media and corporate art, there was a dark side to that. And the dark side to that rejection was sort of this arrogant haughtiness amongst those of us who started to see through the gross corporate media thing, where a lot of us started to dress and present ourselves in ways that would signal to other people who were in the know that we're totally not corporate anymore. Things like skinny jeans and ironic beards and bizarre piercings and huge thick-rimmed glasses and man buns for those of us who can grow hair. All of those things were sort of laughable, mockable stereotypes. Sometimes that was called hipsterism. For people who had sort of lost the plot during that age and were more interested in the independence of a thing than the actual goodness of a thing. Then the joke was that the hipsters, the people who were really into the independent stuff, they would love a band or a piece of art or whatever until it became popular. And then as soon as it became popular, they'd be like, that's stupid. It went corporate as sellouts. And of course, and very fairly, that kind of mentality was easy pickings for people who wanted to make fun of it. Well, if you have any recollection of the era of the early internet or the 2000s or the era of the rejection of corporate media and the era of the idealization of being the only person who ever heard of the music that I like, and if anybody else ever discovers it, I don't like it anymore, then I think you can kind of understand what's going on in Acts chapter 11. When Peter comes back to the Jewish Christians in the early church and is like, hey, I know this is gonna sound weird, but remember all the miracles that have happened that confirmed that Jesus is the Messiah and that God is still at work through the way, the Jesus movement that is happening. You guys remember all of that? And then all the early Jewish Christians were like, Yes, Peter, we remember all of that. Peter's like, okay, this is gonna blow your mind. But those miracles are also happening amongst not Jewish people and not just not Jewish people, but let me take it even a step further. The occupying Romans are also apparently now included in the Christianity thing. And this new family of faith in Christ is available to them as well. And I guess it's fun to imagine that all of these early Jewish Christians would be like, that's great, Peter. That's exactly what we had hoped would happen. Sure, that flies in the face of the narrative we've written for ourselves and the narrative that gives our lives meaning and structure of us kind of being a people set apart and unique and kind of a super minority within a big, weird, giant Roman corporate majority. But that's great. We want everybody to be Christians. We want God to open it up to everybody. That's awesome. But they don't initially do that. It's hard for them at first because the same impulse, as I said a minute ago, that existed and drove the culture of the 2000s, even among very good people, is the same impulse that existed amongst these people back then. They had a unique niche, small little thing that had been for a unique niche group of people. They found meaning in that narrative, and now it's going big. It's going mainstream, and other people are discovering it. I'm sure that there were some of the early Jewish Christians who felt legitimate theological concern about this move and needed clarification on why God would include Gentiles in his new family of faith. But I think part of the initial hesitation that the early Jewish Christians felt about hearing this news was just very human and psychological. Like, oh, this is kind of like our thing. This is sort of a magical, awesome time. And I don't know that I'm quite ready for this to make the leap. So I can relate to the hesitation, but also I gotta give these early Jewish Christians a ton of credit, because it only takes like half a chapter for the majority of them to come around. This is how Peter explains it. So Acts chapter 11. The apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. This is obviously a huge win. Why would anybody have a problem with that? So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him. Okay, circumcised, I don't know that we've talked about this yet. It really comes up in the book of Galatians. This was the old physical sign of the deal that God made with Abraham that we keep referencing in our conversations here, where God said, You're gonna be a great nation, I'm gonna give you a great name, you're gonna have a ton of descendants and a promised land, and I'm gonna bless you, and all the nations will be blessed through you. And the sign of that covenant was circumcision. Is that the sign that I would pick if I were God? I don't think so. I don't know, but you would not like it if I were God. So I have long ago made peace with just rolling with that is the sign that God picked. That is the mark of someone who is in on the covenant with Abraham, and all the Jewish men were circumcised. But the fact that this passage says there were circumcised believers would cause me to believe that there's also uncircumcised believers, that is Gentiles who are under apparently no compulsion from God to have that painful alteration inflicted upon their adult male body parts. Whew, man, that was a lot of euphemisms. So you kind of have two crowds developing. You have Jewish or circumcised believers in Jesus, but you also have non-Jewish uncircumcised believers. Remember, this isn't a new innovation theologically. This was built into the original promise that made the entire line of people who are the Jews in the first place with Abraham back in the day. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them? So here we're getting back into that idea of clean and unclean, the idea of being a separated people, set apart by God from all of the unclean non-believers who are out there. This mentality flows neatly out of the Persian era of the Bible. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you know, just real quick go and catch the seasons on Esther and Nehemiah before this. And what these people are saying is perfectly in keeping with the cultural and religious sensibilities of the day, of the first century. Of course, this is how they would respond. It would be unthinkable to go into a house of a Gentile and eat with them, especially of an occupying Roman. But the circumcised Christians who are criticizing Peter are still thinking in old categories. They haven't fully run the equation of what the Jesus thing means for this particular situation. Verse 4. Peter began and explained everything to them, precisely as it had happened. And then he goes on, he gives the whole story. I was in Joppa, I saw this vision, the sheet, and then I heard a voice saying, Get up, Peter, kill and eat. I replied, surely not. Don't eat impure things. And then the voice spoke from heaven a second time. It's really, it's just a recap of Acts chapter 10 here for several verses. I don't think that's Luke, the author of Acts being boring and redundant or trying to meet some kind of word count requirement put on him by Theophilus to whom he was writing this. I think Luke is saying, This is really important, and everybody needs to know that Peter exactly relayed to these critical circumcised Christians exactly what happened in Joppa and with Cornelius, the Gentile, the Roman centurion, that is. Luke's making it really clear. Now Peter told them everything, so let there be no question, he told them everything, and he told them correctly. And so then Peter goes on and he explains that three men from Caesarea showed up, and that the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, told him to go with them. And so he went with them, and then he went, and that the people in this Gentile household responded. And then verse 15, Peter says, As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came upon them as he had come upon us at the beginning. He's talking about the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. Then I remembered what the Lord had said, quote, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, unquote. Then Peter goes on. He says, So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God? What an interesting line right there from Peter. Because remember what Gamaliel from the Jewish leadership, the Sanhedrin, said earlier in Acts? He's like, Yeah, we probably better let these guys go. If it's not from God, it'll come to nothing. But if it is from God, we'd find ourselves fighting against God. I think this is a really clever verbal nod back to that, verse 18. When they, they being the circumcised Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life. So on the one hand, this is amazing. Think about how hard it is to overcome the narratives in your life, the narratives in my life. We all have these little identity stories that we tell ourselves. I don't mean the big story, like Jesus and Christianity or being a part of a family or whatever. I mean these little stories that we tell ourselves that maybe nobody else even really knows, but they give sense and order to our lives. In the 2000s, people who were hip on internet culture told ourselves that we were really enlightened and unique and not a part of the mainstream corporate system. That narrative was very important to us, even if it was a little haughty and a little bit silly and easy to mock. These people had an identity narrative for themselves and their little group that made things work for them. Something that God did challenged that. Peter and all the credibility that he brought with him explained to them in the face of objections hey, your identity narrative does not stand up to what is happening here with the work of the Holy Spirit. What God is doing is inarguable, and it is in keeping with exactly what Jesus said, what happened, and how Jesus said things are. So our little narrative that we like to hold on to about our uniqueness and our little tribe is gonna have to go because it doesn't square with what God is doing. And credit to them, according to this passage, everybody who heard what Peter said was like, Okie dokie. All right, great. I don't know about you, but I do not part ways with my identity narratives so easily. This is very impressive. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, there are people apparently who didn't hear what Peter had to say. There are other circumcised Jewish Christians around who were not persuaded by this and who did not so easily let go of this identity-building narrative they had about their uniqueness and exclusivity. And they are going to be the ones who cause the problems that throw the Galatian Christians in the book of Galatians into confusion, and they are going to be the ones against whom Paul is writing the book of Galatians. See how it all fits together? This is really, really fun. I was gonna tell you more about my video project that I have coming up with the first video coming out in a few days on the book of Genesis over on the YouTube channel. But yeah, and this is a long conversation. We covered a lot of stuff here. So I'll tell you more about it tomorrow. But hey, if that's the kind of thing that sounds interesting to you and you are not subscribed to the YouTube channel, there'll be a link down below. If you'd be willing to go and hit subscribe to that and maybe even click the little bell over there on my YouTube channel, then you will get a notification when the cool new Genesis video comes out that is the introduction to this whole big giant series that I will tell you more about tomorrow. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon, I'm not gonna have to.