In all of my favorite stories, the good guy has problems, and the good guy makes mistakes, and eventually the good guy is going to have to slay the dragon within in order to slay the dragon without. I don't know if that's an actual saying, but it's something that I say a lot. And I think it kind of sums up the meaning of what I'm driving at, right? The idea is that every interesting relatable character in any medium of storytelling must have problems. And those problems have to be real. And they have to be problems that are keeping them from doing the good outside of themselves that they need to do. And with the help of friends and mentors, the hero can figure those things out. They can slay the dragon within. And then, you know, act three, the confrontation with the big baddie or whatever the external threat is, it's usually not actually all that tough because the real challenge was handled within. I love those kind of stories, and I'm always rooting for a story like the way Disney shows used to be when I was a kid, where you just get that clear redemption arc, and at the end of these kind of shows, everybody, of course, just accepts the apology on the part of the main character, and they move forward with forgiveness, and it just works. So the redemption is wholesale accepted by everyone. The forgiveness arc, the restoration arc is accepted by everybody. But I think if we pinch zoomed in a little closer on a lot of those beloved stories, what we would find is that some of the people who got wronged had a tough time accepting the redemption arc fully of the main character who did bad things and made mistakes and then came around. Because, you know, now you are, now I am, you get burned by somebody a few times and you're kind of suspicious. You touch the hot stove a few times, you become real cautious around stoves, fearing that it might be hot again. And I don't blame children's stories for sort of modeling the idea that we should just accept that the forgiveness is real and the repentance is real when somebody screws up and they feel bad about it and they come around. I get it. I mean, that is the ideal, right? To give people room to change, to forgive the way we hope that we would be forgiven. But my friends, we have all been in a place before where that was difficult, where somebody really did some screwed up stuff. They violated our trust a lot. They demonstrated a repeated pattern of deeply flawed behavior. And then they went through what seems like a genuine change and they said the right words and they did the right actions. And at some point, we were alone with our thoughts, up late at night, sitting on the toilet or staring down the drain of the shower, thinking to ourselves, why am I not happier about this? Why do I feel so skeptical? Should I feel guilty about feeling skeptical about this redemption story that is unfolding before my eyes? And my friends, at some point in our lives, we've been the one on the redemptive arc, and we've seen other people hesitate to embrace us. Well, like I said, I think the ideal is that everybody just totally bought into the idea of forgiveness, and you give people room to change and it all works out. But I think the reality is that it's okay to be a little bit cautious, too. I think that's kind of what the Bible teaches. Maybe you've been in a place where you're like, ah, I want to have a tough time. I look to the Bible for help and I go and try to understand what the Bible would have me do when I don't know what to do or how to feel. And maybe you found yourself in that spot and you went and dug through the Bible and you were like, all right, the grace of God is real. If we want to be forgiven by God, we have to forgive other people. It makes no sense to withhold forgiveness from others. To do so is to be like the guy in that parable that Jesus told that was such a powerful example, who got forgiven an unbelievable amount of money, but then he went and choked somebody who owed him the equivalent of like five bucks. Or was like, give me my five bucks. And you're like, ah, I don't want to be like the five buck choker guy. I've been forgiven much. I want to forgive much of others. And so maybe you read through a bunch of Bible stuff and you're like, all right, the Bible definitely wants me to just do wholesale, unqualified, no reservations, forgiveness all the time. But then maybe you read other parts of the Bible and you go, well, wait a minute, but this part of the Bible says to test everything and hold on to what's good and get rid of what's bad. And this other part of the Bible is, you know, it's got Jesus here in Matthew 7 saying that you shouldn't throw sacred things to people who act like pigs and dogs because they'll turn on you and devour you. You got instruction later in the New Testament saying, eh, you know, kind of keep an eye on what people are for a decent chunk of time before you put hands on them and raise them up to be leaders in the church. And you're like, okay, well, those teachings in the Bible sound like you are supposed to be kind of shrewd about this sometimes. So what gives? What am I supposed to do? If I withhold forgiveness, am I like chokey guy? If I immediately give forgiveness, am I like a Rube who is just setting myself up to get destroyed and obliterate my own effectiveness for things that are transcendent and important? What the heck am I supposed to do? And that takes me back to one of the passages in the Bible that weirdly is becoming one of my favorites ever. I find it so instructive. And I'd never really even thought about this verse as being one of my favorite verses until you and I processed it together a few years ago. So thank you for that if you were around for the Matthew thing. That is because going through Matthew together, there's a bunch of stuff that Jesus said that had never popped for me before. And it really popped when we did that whole season together. And one of the things that super popped was the idea that Jesus was constantly talking about shrewdness, reading the room, keeping an eye on things, having a sense of who you're talking to and where they're coming from. Jesus always knew people's motives. He knew what was in their heart, he knew what they were thinking. I don't totally have that ability, but if I'm trying to emulate Jesus, you know, hey, that kind of relational shrewdness is a good idea. But Jesus also keeps teaching again and again the idea of innocence and you know, in your shrewdness, you don't violate the commands of God or, you know, love your neighbor and forgive and all of that stuff. So it's a difficult tension, and the tension is summarized in Matthew 10, 16, which, as I mentioned a second ago, is becoming one of my favorite verses ever. Then this is the one where Jesus says to his disciples, who he's about to send out for the first time ever, and all they have is the message repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and maybe some promise of miracles happening, but uh they're scared, they don't know what to do. And Jesus kind of scares him even more by saying the following: Behold, I send you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves. Be smart and strategic with how you use your time and how you use your resources. In fact, Jesus talks about that a ton. But then he also goes on to say, but obey God. Do the things God said to do, proactively, reactively, the don't do stuff, the do-do stuff. What I'll hear a lot of times when that passage gets talked about, and I'm not trying to criticize anybody here, I have heard well-intentioned, intelligent people who maybe were in a rush or whatever, look at that Matthew 10.16 passage and suggest that there's some kind of slider. On one end of the slider is innocence, and on the other end of the slider is shrewdness, and in the middle is balance and what you ought to be. So be a lot innocent, but not so innocent that you're not shrewd. Good heavens, you wouldn't want to be that innocent. And be a lot shrewd, but not so shrewd that you're not innocent. I mean, you wouldn't want to be that shrewd. But if you look closely at what Jesus is saying in that passage, it's clearly no, there are two sliders. One is not shrewd on one end of the slider, and super shrewd on the other end of the slider. And then the other slider is not innocent on one end of the slider and super innocent on the other end of the slider. Jesus' teaching there is best to be understood as though shrewd and innocent are in no way in tension with each other. And instead, the expectation is they should both be slid to super shrewd and super innocent. You should be super doing both if you want to emulate the style of Jesus and if you want to obey Jesus and if you want to do things the way he did it with the values of the kingdom, the way Jesus does things. So all of this is to say that, yeah, it's challenging to know sometimes what to do with a redemption story, as beautiful as that is, and as much as we're rooting for a redemption story, sometimes it's hard and it feels a little bit unsettled and a little bit off when we're looking at that. We're like, okay, I forgive this person because forgiveness is absolutely mandatory. If you're somebody who follows the teachings of Jesus, you can't not forgive. You have to. Just you gotta give that away. But I don't quite know about reconciliation just yet. I'm not sure we're on the same page just yet here. And I feel some hesitation about that. It can be difficult to know what to do with that tension. I think at times it's possible that accidentally people who want to follow the stuff Jesus says are made to feel kind of guilty about feeling that tension and not knowing what to do. And I guess I would just like to suggest that I think it's an understandable tension. I think it's a reasonable one to grapple through. And I think sometimes it's not as easy as just saying, I feel 100% this way. Nah, sometimes common sense says, give this a minute. Let's wait and see here. Let's have a few conversations. Let's see where this is going. Let's see if this redemption story is real. Let's see if it has teeth, if it has bite. All right. So at this point, you're probably like, okay, well, that was nice. I mean, maybe that hit home for some of you. Maybe you're like, oh, yeah, I've wrestled that. That's interesting. But probably all of you right now are going, what are we doing? Because isn't this about Galatians? And aren't we going through Acts to get to Galatians? I mean, I'm for Jesus, and I that was good. That was Jesus' Bible stuff. It was cool, but how does this fit with what we're doing? Here's how it fits with what we're doing. The early Christians who had been persecuted by Saul are going to be faced with this exact scenario as soon as they find out that Saul has flipped, that he's gone from being the most lethal top agent of the people who want to kill the Christians and imprison the Christians. He's gone from being that to being maybe like one of their top allies, a promising rising star in this age of early Christianity. But some of these people are probably going to have scars literally on their bodies, dished out to them by Saul and his goon squad. Some of these early Christians who are hearing that Saul has flipped sides probably have loved ones who are rotting in a cell somewhere because Saul rounded them up. Probably some of the people who are hearing these redemptive rumors about Saul are friends and family members of Stephen who got hit in the head with rocks until he died. And Saul was standing there giddy about the whole thing and happy to make his own contribution to that. This is not easy for them. And I think it's okay that it's not going to be easy for them. And I think it would be weird if, as we're working through the story of Saul, who becomes known as Paul, who is the guy who wrote the book of Galatians that this season is ultimately about, I think it would be weird if the Bible didn't record that people had a few questions about this and that they couldn't just give themselves over immediately to trusting this guy and being like, well, he said some nice words. I guess he's reformed now. This is super. Common sense says you have had hesitations in situations not nearly as dire as this, but you have been in this position before. Of course, these early Christians are going to be in that situation right here. And the stuff that we're going to look at really over the next few chapters of this big fast overview of Acts, we're going to see that theme pop up again and again. Suspicion of Saul, who ends up going by Paul and the reality of his conversion and the reality of his authority to say anything about Jesus. I mean, he's the one who persecuted the way. There's going to be questions about that that are going to nip at Paul's heels for a very long time. And the reason we're lingering on this is because that heel-nipping suspicion is still going to be present. It's going to be in the background of everything we encounter in the book of Galatians. And so for you and me, getting a good sense of what that understandable suspicion of Saul slash Paul is is going to help us read Galatians better and understand that situation better. And further, it's also just a very human emotion and a very human tension and conundrum that these early Christians face. And I don't think any of us can blame them a bit for wondering about it. All right, that was a lot again, but I'm trying to get through the whole acts thing. You know, I want to get to Galatians. So I'm trying to take big chunks out of this story as we go. If those uh extra couple minutes that I went today are like the difference between you being to work on time or something, oh my goodness, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to do that to you. I'll tighten it down. Tighten it down. Tighten it down, Whitman. All right, I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.