If you're listening to the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast, it's Fast Hun Free Daily Deep Dive Bible. And right now we're talking about Galatians.
SPEAKER_01You remember the G.I. Joe cartoons from the 80s or maybe early 90s? They were really just big toy advertisements for Hasbro so that kids would watch the cartoon after school for half an hour and learn the names of all the characters, and the parents, they're supposed to go out and buy the action figure. Same thing with Transformers. To me, those are the two big ones from my childhood that worked like this. And there was some kind of deal. I don't know exactly how it works. Maybe this is just a rumor, but I think it's true that the government would give a tax break to a toy manufacturer or cartoon production company if they could show that their program was educational in nature. And so G.I. Joe would have, at the very end of the episode, unrelated to the episode in any way, there'd be a little tag after the last commercial break. It was like a 20 or 30-second public service announcement where they'd have some kids in some kind of dangerous situation. And then a G.I. Joe guy would show up and be like, be careful, kids, that's dangerous. And I guess that was enough to justify the tax break. And a lot of these things were absurd. It would be like two kids in a mall, and there's an outlet that is lightly short-circuiting, and they're like, heh, let's put a fork in there. And then a G.I. Joe guy shows up fully armed and decked out in all of his war gear with like two bandoliers of 50 cal bullets slung over each shoulder and a four-foot-long light machine gun in his right hand in a mall. And then he would lecture the kids on safety for getting a little too close to a wall outlet that was shorting. And I don't know. When I was a kid, all of that made perfect sense to me. About 20 years later, in the early days of the internet, some very funny people took all of those PSAs and they voiced them over. They kept the cartoon basically as it was, but they voiced them over and made them offensive and deeply funny. Some of the funniest stuff that ever happened on the internet. We have talked about this before. I remember this. I think Jeff even did some music. Maybe he'll put the music for whatever we did on this one at the end. But there's one of them that has always stood out to me as being just delightfully funny and offensive. I don't recommend you watch any of this. But it's one that's set in a snowy environment, and some kids are out in the woods and they see a frozen pond. They're like, let's go out on the pond. And of course the ice breaks and one of them falls in, and the other kid's like, I'll just run out there and get you out. But then a snow G.I. Joe guy skis in out of nowhere and it's like, no. And in the original one, he's like, Don't crawl out there. Give him a stick and pull him out. But in the funny internet remastered parody one, the G.I. Joe guy keeps giving the kids conflicting instructions again and again. Let me tell you, this I'm doing a terrible job because this is not funny at all. But the original one that again I don't recommend you watching because it's offensive. So just imagine that the way I'm saying it right now is funny. But I think the reason the joke works when you actually watch the thing is that everybody knows the discomfort of being in a situation where it feels like you were given one set of instructions and now you're being given a conflicting set of instructions. And it's just very easy to relate to that sense of being completely off balance. Like, I don't, I don't know what to do. I'm kind of paralyzed. I want to do the right thing. No one wants to do the wrong thing, that I can't do both of these things at once. What do you want me to do? Likewise, Peter finds himself feeling like he is in that kind of situation in the vitally important watershed chapter that is Acts chapter 10. Because Peter, over here in the A-plot of the book of Acts, has been, I mean, he's been a devout Jew his whole life. He's ethnically Jewish, he's religiously Jewish, and the Jewish people dating Clearback to really early on in the Old Testament have dietary restrictions that are from God. God says some stuff is clean and some stuff is not clean. It looks like those rules from God served a practical purpose. In the age of modern medicine and how we handle food, there's a lot of that that we look back on and go, oh, dang, I totally see what God was doing there. I mean, science didn't catch on for the few thousand years, but oh, okay, yeah, I get why those would be the rules. So it looks like maybe some of the clean and unclean thing had to do with the standards of the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, and that if a given people group were to honor those things, they would be healthier and stronger and live longer. I mean, could be that, it could just be very strategic in that way. There's also, though, a theological element to the clean and unclean thing, with the whole idea that the Jewish people are set apart, a unique people unto God, this unique priesthood people group whose job it is to honor God and be God's chosen people, but also to be a blessing to all the nations and eventually to point people toward the one true God. And so this idea of being set apart, of being holy, is pretty important in the grand scheme of the whole narrative of the Bible. And the clean and unclean thing also factors in in that there's this idea of the approachability or unapproachability of God, and there's a big conundrum right at the end of the book of Exodus where God is starting to live among his people. There's this concept of like this tent where God lives, it's a portable temple, and eventually there'll be a physical landing spot for this, and God's holiness, his presence, dwells in there among his people, but nobody can go in because he's too holy, he's too pure, and people are not holy, people are not pure. And so, in the ensuing books of the Old Testament, God fleshes out the law and outlines these standards for ritual purity and ritual cleanliness to even be able to enter periodically into sort of the presence of God. And so there's all kinds of ritual cleansing and ritual dance steps that go into the clean and unclean laws, and part of that is being in a position to approach or be around God. So there's a lot of layers built into the mind of Peter in Acts chapter 10 related to the idea of clean and unclean, with diet being both a literal set of instructions, but also kind of a metaphor for those other layers of clean and unclean. Now you might be thinking to yourself, oh, we don't really have this concept right now. This is kind of hard for me to relate to, but really we do. There are things that you don't know why it's revolting to imagine eating them, but you just wouldn't. They're taboos in whatever culture you're from, things that you just don't do. That's an impure act in the almost hyper-germ aware post-COVID era. There's a heightened awareness of the order of operations for going to a public restroom and what you touch and what order you touch it in, and when you wash your hands, and then you use your paper towel to turn off the sink and to open the door, you use the foot kicks, you don't touch anything now that your hands are de-germed and everything. I mean, it's probably a good thing. The point is that is sort of a clean and unclean set of expectations and values that we have in our culture. Some people in some parts of the world might eat a venomous snake, but I was in a part of the world where an American killed a Gabon viper and went to eat this venomous snake, and a local saw it and vomited on the spot because it was taboo, it was unclean, it was unthinkable. So this concept is there, even if we have to scratch a little bit to think about how it applies in our society. Well, that is how Peter was with eating certain animals that for millennia Jews rightly believed God had said not to eat. So in this regard, Peter in Acts chapter 10 feels like he's been given a clear set of instructions for what to eat and not eat. But now in this passage, he's going to be given what feels like a conflicting set of instructions about what to do. Here's the quick version of the story, and then we'll unpack it more tomorrow. In the city of Caesarea Maritima, which is a coastal city north and west of Jerusalem. This is where the Roman governors had their palace. This is sort of the seat of Roman authority. There's a guy named Cornelius. He's a Gentile, but he is what's called a God fearer. He's curious about the God of Abraham and even acts in keeping with the instructions of the God of Abraham to some extent. He and his whole household. He's the commander of a thing called the Italian regiments. He's a Gentile. He's an outsider, but he's got a good reputation. And one day, according to Acts chapter 10, verse 3, at about three in the afternoon, he had a vision, and he distinctly saw an angel of God who came to him and said, Cornelius. Cornelius stared at him in fear. Makes sense. What is it, Lord? He asked. And the angel answered, Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who's called Peter. He's staying with Simon the Tanner, whose house is by the sea. So, like I would hope you or I would do, if something like that ever happened to us, Cornelius is like, I better do that. So he sends some servants to go and get Peter. And sure enough, Peter is in Joppa, where just a little bit ago he had been a part of the resurrection of Tabitha. So pretty exciting things are happening there. And Peter's up on a rooftop in Joppa praying. And then verse 10 says, Well, that's going on. He got hungry and wanted something to eat. And while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven open and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, Get up, Peter, kill and eat. Surely not, Lord, Peter replied, I've never eaten anything impure or unclean. But the voice spoke a second time. Don't call anything impure that God has made clean. This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back into heaven. While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon's house was and stopped at the gate. They called out, asking if Simon, who is known as Peter, was staying there. While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the spirit said to him, Simon, three men are looking for you, so get up and go downstairs. Don't hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them. Now tomorrow we're going to unpack where this whole pivotal, vitally important story in the whole unfolding of the Bible is going. But to wrap things up today, I want to express a little bit of empathy for Peter. I mean, this is tough. He's raised with one set of expectations for his whole life. Expectations he rightly believes are from God. And now it's going to feel to Peter like God's been saying all along, don't eat those animals. But now suddenly he's saying, Do eat those animals. And understandably, this is going to be confusing for him. It's going to be confusing for a whole lot of people in Peter's shoes. And this confusion and this difficulty, which needn't be that confusing, but it's understandable, is going to carry forward all the way into the book of Galatians. If the story that we just read together in Acts chapter 10 doesn't happen, Galatians doesn't happen. It doesn't even need to be written. And tomorrow we're going to see if we can connect the dots on how all of this fits together and why it seems like God is suddenly changing the rules here. Final thing, and I'm going to tell you more about it as the week goes along. I've got a really cool project I've been working on for over a year with a buddy of mine named Hunter, and it's just about ready to happen over on the YouTube channel. I'm very excited about it. I think it's the most ambitious thing I've ever done, and I hope you love it. And like I said, I'm going to tell you more about it as the week unfolds. And I'm hoping that when I actually hit publish on this thing, you might consider going and checking it out. I'm hoping that you will see what I'm going for, and I'm hoping that you like it enough that maybe you'll even consider sharing it with other people. More on what that is in the next few days. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.