Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And if you did not listen to yesterday's conversation about the narrow gate and the wide road and American gladiators, like if none of that is ringing a bell for you, then what we do next is going to be utterly baffling. So you might want to go back and catch that. And then I'm just going to play some intro music right now, and then we're just going to abruptly pick up right where we left off on yesterday's stuff. Look at what's being said by the person who points toward this road or that road over there. And consider what those words produce in terms of action, in terms of character, in terms of reason. But then that of course raises the question: well, what actually is orthodoxy? How do you know which thing is true to even compare what different road pointers are saying to know which one is real and which one is fake and bad? And as we try to track down an answer to that, just no, it was a problem back then. People didn't always get it right, and they lived really close to the time of Jesus. I mean, this is Galatians 1:6. Paul's writing to a church or a collection of regional churches, we're not quite sure which, and he says, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned. So, wow, strong words. Okay, but what is that gospel? Well, I'll give you some more homework. Go and read through Galatians and you'll get a pretty good sense of that. Or go and read through Ephesians and you'll get a pretty good sense of that. So Paul's reminding people, hey, Jesus is the centerpiece. The gospel is the story of the initiation of the kingdom by his work and all of these other competing pseudo-Jesus messages. Be careful of that. Well, he doesn't say be careful of that. He says, out and out reject it. I don't care if an angel shows up and tells you something different, reject it and cling to this thing that has been handed down to you and that is true. So just me acknowledging that historically during the New Testament, it was a problem that people got confused on the gospel and got derailed by American gladiators. But right now we're trying to answer the question of how do we know what the message is? What is the true thing? So you can tell the difference between who's pointing you down a true road and who's pointing you down a weird road. And so far, all I've done is point out that this was a problem at the time and that Paul spoke vigorously to it just a generation after Jesus. And then all I've gone on to do is tell you, like to read some stuff that Paul said and given you my own summary of the message, but that doesn't totally answer the question of how you would know, how you would be able to sort that out. And to tackle that, we are going to do more Bible. Romans chapter 12 gives you a little bit more of a roadmap for how to tell the difference between a teaching that is a wolf in sheep's clothing and a teaching that is a sheep in sheep's clothing. It says, therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Don't conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. Oh, well, that's actually like a smoking gun verse right there. Okay, don't be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world. Okay, there's the big broad road, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Ah, so you do that, so you can identify which is the big broad road and who the American gladiators are that are trying to get you to take the big broad road. And then if you do this renewing of your mind, which we're going to need to break down more in a minute, then you will be able to test and to prove what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. Ah, okay. So the idea here is that somehow, by God's grace, kingdom citizens develop the ability to sort this stuff out a little bit. Now, if I'm outside looking in, I'm like, okay, then why do you have 40,000 denominations or whatever ridiculous number it is? Great theoretical question, theoretical person. And to that I would say, well, first of all, those denominations overwhelmingly agree on most stuff. They've arrived at the same things. And those Christians who look at the really explicit teachings of the Bible and consider it with reason, look at it and go, okay, yeah, I think I'm with Paul on the whole Jesus is the centerpiece. He went to the cross to resolve sin, to initiate this kingdom, to make it possible for flawed people to be in a flawless kingdom with a flawless God. Yeah, that's pretty much the centerpiece. And if you add stuff to that, it starts getting weird. Most Christians would agree with that. They might disagree about how it gets dished out. Catholics are gonna see the church as playing a bigger role in how that grace gets dished out. Orthodox are gonna define what Jesus did on the cross a little bit differently. Protestants are gonna sound, well, I'm a Protestant, I can't help it. We're gonna sound a little bit more like how I just described it because I am one of those. But what you're getting there is a whole lot of agreement on that one fundamental central aspect of what Christianity is and where Jesus fits into that. And I mean, founder and initiator of the whole thing, and where you might hypothetically fit into that. So yeah, 40,000 denominations is a ton, but there's a lot more continuity there than not continuity. At the same time, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that at times I find it really troubling that all the way back to the beginning, good people will look at the Bible and come to very different conclusions. People who don't seem to want to wrong me or do bad things are saying things that seem like they're American gladiators and they want to wreck stuff, but they they're not on steroids and they're not wearing spandex and they don't have giant sticks with the big fluffy things on the end. They don't have a tennis ball cannon. It seems like they just want to do things that are good. So yeah, that can be difficult. It can be hard to sort through. As we get into Matthew chapter 10, there's gonna be more language that I referenced two days ago about God, about the Holy Spirit opening the eyes and helping your brain to think more in kingdom categories so that you can discern stuff better as you go along. Again, at the end of Matthew in chapter 28, Jesus is gonna say, I'm gonna be with you always to the end of the age. So the Christian belief, the biblical, historical, orthodox Christian belief across pretty much all expressions of this faith has been that this isn't deism. It's not that God set this up and initiated it, and good luck using your brains to try to figure it out, hope that it works. No, it's in keeping with the passage we looked at in Matthew chapter seven just a little bit ago, about, you know, hey, the father's looking out for you, he's a good dad, and he wants you to hit the pitch. That is the Christian belief that in some way, God's presence persists through time, and God is present with the person who is a kingdom citizen. And even though that might be hard to wrap our brains around, and even though we might see inconsistencies in the behavior of the kingdom citizen, that is the Christian teaching. So that ultimately this is not an entirely cold intellectual exercise of evaluating things, determining which things we find to be legit, which things we find to be wanting, and therefore academically sorting out those who are wolves in sheep's clothing and those who are sheep in sheep's clothing. Though that is part of the deal, well, a big part of the deal, there is also this historical notion, this biblical notion of God's actual presence in the life of the kingdom citizen in helping them to sort that stuff out. Not gonna lie, I feel tensions there, and maybe you do too, but they're tensions that I have a lot of reasons for being at peace with. But we're getting way too far into this, and I'll be able to talk about some of those reasons later on. To wrap it up, what we have going on in this passage is first of all, what looks like an invitation, maybe it's all predetermined in the mind of God. I don't know, it looks like an invitation here. Pick this route instead of that route. Implicit in that is that you need to be able to tell which route you're actually picking, the kingdom route or the world route. And that might seem easy, but there are people, the text says, who are going to try to wreck your ability to tell the difference between the two. That makes the obstacle course that much more difficult, but we can bounce right back to the previous passage to be reminded that Jesus, God, the Father, wants you to hit the pitch. They want you to be able to tell this stuff apart and figure it out. And so here is a very practical test for telling the difference. And if you're like, hey, why wouldn't we get to 19? Verse 19 seems to fit in with all of this. I don't know, because of time. So we're just gonna have to get to that next time around. If you still have questions, awesome. So do I. I think as we move into the next couple of verses, that will read back onto these verses and lend more clarity to them, just as these verses have read back onto the last couple of passages and lent more clarity to them. It's just kind of how this thing works. I feel like this is one of those episodes that I need to wrap up by saying thank you because I know this stuff is hard. Some of it is intellectually hard. But I mean, you're like smart, you're up for this kind of thing. But some of it is intellectual honesty hard. Some of it you feel like, okay, I need to come to these conclusions because of things that I already believe. And then you sit here and you honestly wrestle, and it can be a little bit uncomfortable. But you're here, which says a tremendous amount about you. And it says that whether you ultimately do faith or not faith, or some partial measure because you're trying to figure out what to do and it's difficult to decide, it tells me that whichever of those you do, you're gonna do with eyes wide open, and not for silly externality reasons, social pressures, or because your whole life is a quest to prove whatever you thought about things when you were 18 right. So thank you for gracing me with a community of people who are willing to think about this honestly and difficult. I'm not trying to entone that other people don't. I just like that we get to do this together. It means more to me than I've been able to articulate here on the way out the door. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do it again soon.