Bible Guys Classics: Galatians 2

Well, today Paul gets crucified with Christ but not really. But for real kind of yes, well he says it, not physically, that's what we're talking about today. He's Chris. I'm Jeff and where the Bible guys? So Chris, you know, I'm constantly looking for trustworthy sources of news and information. Sure you are. And the Babylon B which is one of my favorite. Hey, it's just as good as all the other ones, by the way, I would say, But the Babylon B, which is a satire page. For those who don't understand, the Babylon B's not real. They've had a whole bunch of things get quoted by CNN and MSNBC and different organizations quoting them like it's real news, and then later on people have to come back and go, it's just satire, right right, So anyways, the Babylon B they did a blind taste test, and here's the headline. It says, blind taste test finds most people can't tell the difference between candy corn and an orange crayon we found in the junk drawer. And here's the news article says, a fascinating new study has revealed that the vast majority of people, when presented with a blind taste test, can't tell the difference between candy corn and the dusty, old orange crayon we found in the junk drawer. According to researchers, people who were fed candy corn and people who were fed the old orange crayon that had been stowed away in a drawer for the last seventeen years had the same reaction. Quote this tastes like a waxy blob of nothing, and my life is much worse for having places repulsealrojict in my mouth. End quote head of hey, I reject all of that candy corn A lot ahead of research doctor science. It's the science, Chris, the head of research doctor Gorbo Lindfield said. Quote we had theorized that at least twenty percent of those surveyed would be able to detect some kind of flavoring candy corn. So we were shocked to find that over ninety five percent of people had the same instant negative reaction to eating candy corn, so full they did the chewing on the old dusty crayon. Now listen, he says it right here. It's proven in the article. Quote the science is settled. Candy corn is just as tasty as a crayon forgotten in a cabinet for decades. It's sophisticating here, isn't it? So, he says. Further research showed that over ninety percent of people couldn't tell the between marshmallow peeps and a piece of cotton, both from an ivy pro from bottle. Okay, so let's let's talk about the candy. You know, Circus peanuts, it says, says, you can't tell the between Circus peanuts and eraser from one of those giant novelty pencils or dots and stale gum that's been stuck on the underside of a table. Down. It flows, It flows, diners. Yeah, yeah, listen, I just I just want to go on record and say that I think candy corn is phenomenal. Are you serious? Oh? Yeah, I love candy corn. What yeah, Chris? And by the way, so does the catapillar. Okay, I questioned your judgment on everything else in your life. Remember the Canabi statement, Yes he's going in the circus and he goes, oh, candy corn. Let me hope you do finish it. You like candy corn? Oh? I love it? Okay, kids, after Halloween this year, just bring all of your candy corn and dump it in Chris's office. Oh don't do that, Oh please. I didn't say I would eat it. I just love it. It's disgusting. I just don't eat a bunch of candy. Hey, by the way, real quick, real quick, what is what is your favorite Halloween candy? My favorite Halloween candy. Well, chocolate is by far the most important thing. So it's kind of a mix between KitKat and Snickers, one one or the other. Either one of those. Those are my two favorites. So it's Snit snut. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah? Or Kickers Yeah maybe Kickers. So so what do you mean you just meant. Either one, either one? Yeah, those are your favorite. Like I pile those two up. Kind of like a concrete mixer, yeah or something. And then racist peanut butters. Yeah. So here's the thing. I agree. I think that. Uh uh, you know, I don't. I'm not a lover of chocolate. I don't love chocolate. Again, you like candy corn and don't like chocolate. I don't love chocolate. Hey, this is this interview is don I'm leaving. So it's terrible. Dude, I could only eat chocolate one of your friends coupled with I never said it was your friend. You know, it would be nice. It has to be coupled with something else, so like peanuts or you know, like like, I'll be honest with you, if I eat a Snickers bar. By the time I get done with a regular sized Snickers bar, I'm done with. The chocolate part of it. Wow. Yeah, yeah, I like the stuff inside it more. Yeah. Well that speaks volumes about you, your character, Yeah, your lack of humanity. Yeah, that's unbelievable, man. Yeah, yeah, you know what I think. I told you the reason why I don't. So if you had a choice between candy corn and the Snickers, you would choose candy corn. It depends on the mood, but I would say I could easily choose candy corn. That's disgusting, Okay, Yeah, listeners were sorry you had to go through that. Yes, it's and horrifying. Don't look down on him otherwise, he's a pretty decent human. I think, thanks, Jeff. Yeah, I appreciate your buddy question your judgment though, What in the world what did your parents do to you as a child that made you not like chocolate and like candy corn. So we don't. We don't celebrate Sweetest Day a lot doing sweetest Day. My wife and I do, okay, every day. Oh Jess. Never Jim carry on dumb and dumber and he goes like this like this, So basically, my wife sent me a bunch of chocolate when I was in Bible College, like a huge, huge, massive things of chocolate. It was a it was a box this big. I kid you not. It was like it was like a foot and a half by For our listeners, it's a foot and a half by foot and a half. Yeah, So I just said it way to be late and and I and it was filled with her she's kisses and everything else. And I ate the whole thing within like a week, and I got sick on chocolate. Huh And ever since that day. I don't think that's possible. Yep. I actually have not loved chocolate since that day. So it's been you know, like a long time. Well, thanks Liz for ruining him for life. Yes, wow, that's. What she's Okay. Well, I'm glad that segment's over because there's just some things we don't want to know about you and that's that's one of them. So, oh, my goodness, that's terrible. So we are continuing in the Book of Galatians. So remember we're reading through the Book of Acts and the spread of the Gospel, and throughout the Book of Acts, Paul pauses and he writes these books back to the churches he had just helped start. So the churches that he had on that first journey that he and Barnabas has helped start in Iconium and in Lystra, Derby and antiog Pasidia, these towns. Now he's writing a letter back saying somebody has come in, these Judaizers have come in, and they're perverting the Gospel. And he's given some credibility, a little bit of his resume as to why you can trust the fact that he has authority to teach the Gospel. And so we're going to pick up there where he's already talked about his zeal Judaism, it beliefs that he had before he became a Christian, and all those things. And then he says in chapter two, verse one, then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas, and Titus came along too. I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. While I was there, I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the church and shared with them the message I had been preaching to the gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement, for fear that all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing. And they supported me and did not even demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a gentile. Even that question came up only because of some so called Christians. They are false ones really, who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Jesus Christ. They wanted to enslave us and forced us to follow their Jewish regulations. But we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the Gospel message for you, and the leaders of the church had nothing to to what I was preaching. By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites. Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle of the Jews, also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles. In fact, James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the Church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and Me as their coworkers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews, and their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which have always been eager to do. But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians who were not circumcised. But afterwards, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn't eat with the gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from those people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish Christians followed Peter's hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. When I saw that they were not following the truth of the Gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded Jewish laws and are living like a gentile, why are you now trying to make these gentiles follow the Jewish traditions? You and I are Jews by birth, not sinners like the quote unquote gentiles. Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we've been We have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we've obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law. But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ, and then we are found guilty because we've abandoned the law. Would that mean that Christ has led us sin to sin? Absolutely not. Rather, I'm a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down, For when I tried to keep the law condemned me. So I died to the law. I stopped trying to meet all its requirements so that I might live for God. My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I did not treat the grace of God as meaningless, for if keeping a law could make us rite with God, then there was no need for Christ to die. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, man, there's some great stuff in there. Yeah, there's a lot as opposed to some of those bad chapters that we've read, but this is a really good one. I found myself saying there's some really great stuff there, and I thought there's great stuff in every chapter we read. Ok. Yeah, Yeah, that's funny. You know, it's it's a it's a it's a it's a funny thing how Paul is writing for a specific purpose because of what is happening, happening specifically in that city. But at the same time, the content in which he is writing applies to us today, which is what I love about God's words so much. I mean, you know we all understand that. Well, let me we're phrase if you've been a Christian a while. Isn't it interesting how you can read one verse one day and it applies to what you're going through, and then maybe down the road you read that same verse and you get something completely different out of it. Is that ever happened to you? Yes, many times where it's like. The same verse applies to it. And so it's just so cool for me because there's a practical sense of what we're reading, and you and I are sort of talking about that practical sense. We're talking about, Oh, this is the reason why Paul's writing these things, and you know, he's writing it specifically for these reasons. But let's not forget that. Because it's a living book, because it's the inspired word of God, because God had Paul write these you know, letters and and and that we believe that it's inspired by the Holy Spirit, and so we believe it is the Word of God. And so Paul is writing it for a specific reason. So God used human authors to pen his words, and so let us not forget that. Because the truths that that that that only apply to the culture and to the specific context that they should be taken, you know, with that in mind, But central truths like this apply to us today because Paul is talking about, you know, very plainly, the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And by the way, we just talked about this last Sunday at our church, where we talked about treasures being both old and new. We shouldn't discard one for the other, but we should try to understand the old in light of the new. And that's what really Paul is trying to say. He's trying to say, like, those those laws that you have obeyed for centuries aren't to waste. In fact, the law points me toward Christ. And if not for Christ, then then it's good for nothing, because I've died to the law. They're important, but I now understand that it all points me to this one thing, which is Jesus Christ. The sacrificial laws, those all represented the cost for sin, how to cover over sin, redemption, all those kinds of things. The societal laws, those really they set apart the Jews from the rest of the pagan cultures at the time. But most of those laws also had some significant benefits to them. Right. The don't eat pork law was there were you know, pigs normally and naturally carry a lot of diseases. Of course, now you know we treat those things and so it's a little bit different. But back then it was highly probable that you'd get ringworm or some kind of disease like that. The idea of building latrines around your homes. Everybody else it was just on the ground or out in the rivers or whatever. But for them, they would have latrines that would manage their waste and it would provide a better healthy lifestyle for them. Not keeping allowing any vermin, rats and things to be in their homes. They'd keep cats or whatever to keep them out, would prevent a lot of the spread of diseases. So there's lots of. Lots of Just to be clear, you're voting laws that were given. To the Jewish. Yea, I'm quoting all these laws that God had given to the Jewish people. That they began to look at it that by keeping those laws they get to go to Heaven. They by keeping those laws, they please God, and God likes them, as opposed to God saying I gave you these laws for your benefit. So they shifted it from the benefit of their lifestyle of being healthier and better to this is how we please God. This is how we get into eternity. This is how we earn his blessing. Expand on that whole like latrine thing of bearing it like they didn't understand it, but then modern science tells us what. Yeah, yeah, I think I talked on one of the older podcasts about this. That so really funny passage in the Book of Deuteronomy, which is the whole book is just laws, six hundred and seventeen laws or something. There's two verses, the funniest verses in the Bible. God says, when you need to do your business, he said, first of all, go outside the camp, turn over a hole in the ground, do your business, and then cover up that hole. And then the next verse says, because I the Lord, your God, walk among you in the camp. It's such a funny verse. Right, he doesn't say much else about it, but so God says, you can do your business. Do your business in a hole, right, a little hole. He's not talking about necessarily digging a pit, but at least the hole. And it was thousands of years before we discovered it was in the mid or the early twentieth century before we discovered that in the top you know, twelve inches or so of soil in most places in the world, the micro organisms in those top few inches of soil will break down human waste and the negative sides of waste in a matter of hours days, you know, two days or so. Whereas if you do your business on top of the ground and just wait for to naturally dry out or whatever rain comes winds up ruining the water things, it can be weeks that the negative impact has on society or on the world around us. And so all the water ways are polluted. All these things happen so God, they didn't know when God gave that four thousand years ago to Moses. They didn't know about micro organisms, they didn't know about germs, they didn't know about those things. God didn't even take the time to explain it. God just gave them a law and said, if you obey this, your whole community will be more healthy. And how many times you and I, You and I've been in places where I was in Africa one time in the massive cholera outbreak, dysentery. There's several things that wind up happening because water gets polluted from human waste because they're not managing it well. So God doesn't explain every little micro organism detail. He just says, trust me. And so if you're looking at the laws of God, just to trust me. I'll take care of you if you follow me. That's very different than what the Judaizers were doing. The Judaizers were saying, if you don't first convert to being a Jew, you can't become a Christian because Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. So the first thing we have to do is you need to be all the men have to be circumcised, which, by the way, circumcision being a requirement for joining the church would really limit membership. I would think I would think so too, Yeah, wouldn't you think. But they that's what they were requiring, was you have that all the men have to be circumcised, and you have to convert to Judaism first. And Paul want wait a minute. That was never the purpose we thought that was the purpose of the law. That was never the purpose of God's laws. Yeah. And by the way, the whole circumcision conversations just hilarious. The fact that most people, and I would say, you know, probably upwards of ninety high ninety percent of people are circumcised males. When they're born right in the US. In the US. Yeah, that's actually a really good point, and it's become sort of a practice and people know that because when they have children. It's just something that just happens. Right. But people don't necessarily connect it to the Bible. Right, they don't connect it to the Bible. There are so many things in our culture that exists that are around us today that we don't necessarily know or understand that it's connected to the Bible. It's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah, So now there's health benefits in that, you know, you can look all that up to This is in a biology lesson necessarily, but there are a lot of with regard to the transmission of diseases and other things, there are some health benefits to it. But this was a command from God to Abraham, and from that point on that was the main symbol. It's not the only thing, but it was the main symbol of the fact that people have converted from whatever their religion was into Judaism was that issue. And so Paul saying, hey, even Titus was along with me, and we were with Peter, James and John and they did not demand Titus, who's a gentile. They didn't demand that he get circumcised. They recognized that he was saved, They recognized that he was truly converted Christian. They didn't recognize it. But then some people snuck in found out, and then we're pointing fingers at Titus and even Peter James and John went, that's not necessary. Just make sure that you are being generous to the poor, make sure that you're living for Jesus, make sure that you're honoring Christ with your lifestyle. But they weren't requiring that he convert to Judaism in order to be a Christian. So Paula saying, if Peter James and John didn't require it, and their message of my message lined. Up, it's the same. They did correct anything between us, So the founders of our faith, Jesus being the founder of our faith. But these these early leaders in the church, they didn't correct it. Why would you then allow some radical fringe group to come in and ruin the freedom of the gospel when there's no reason to do so. Yeah, and you know, it's not like God doesn't want us to try to obey every single law. But there's a big difference between you know, getting to heaven based on doing good. So yesterday I was actually called over to a good friend of mine. His aunt is in hospice. She doesn't have long, you know, to live, and so they said, can you come over and meet her before you do her funeral? So last night I went and I stood by her bedside, and the whole family was there, and we prayed and laughed and talked and and it was so weird for me knowing as I said goodbye that the next time that I was going to see their family again was going to be for her funeral. Right anyway, all that to say, I asked her and I said, are you scared about going to heaven? And she says, well, I think I've been a good person. And so it's one of those things where the majority of people focus on salvation is dependent on obeying the laws. This is really what we're talking about here, the rules, right and so, and you mentioned Deuteronomy. I don't know why I know the numbers, but it was actually six hundred and thirteen laws, two hundred and forty eight thou shots and three hundred and sixty five thou shot knots. Don't know why I remember that, but people think like, if I'm a good person, I obey all of those rules, then I'll go to heaven. So I was able to tell her, I'm like, well, let me ask you a question. What do you believe? And I found out she believes in God. She believes in Jesus Christ, you know, given and resurrected, you know, he died, the cross, resurrected. She had faith in all of that, and so I believe she was a Christian. She just didn't understand the clarity that Paul's trying to. Somehow, some judaizers had come into her life and told her what you. Got to do is be good, right and so and the best part for me was is that I'm explaining it to her, but really I'm explaining it. To everybody in the room. Yeah right, So those with the gift of evangelism or like, you know, a passion for evangelism. I'm just loving it because I'm explaining to her and I'm thinking, I know who's zooming in here. I can see the guy in the back couch and he's pretending to, you know, look away, but i know he's listening. Yeah, you know, it was good. So it's it's so important for us to differentiate between faith and works. James in the book that we mentioned before that James wrote doing the same time, James says, you can't separate faith from works. Right. Faith will always lead to works if you really have faith that lead the works. But you can't get saving faith by doing good works. Right, there's a differentiation there. And then the last thing. We kind of blew over this, but I mean, it's really really clear what happens in the second half of the chapter. Paul has front Peter because even when we know it, sometimes we have a hard time living it. We get embarrassed being around to other people. So some Christians came in who were surprised that Peter was at living like a gentile at this point. And so then he retreats back, and so does Barnabas. And Paul's like, oh no, I'm not going to allow that to go on. You're not going to minimize or shame these gentiles because there's some other Jewish Christians around. He said, God doesn't have any favorites and so either you are or you or not. But he said, here's the deal, don't try to add to their faith something that some kind of requirement for law, either you're free from the law or you're not. And by the way, and Peter accepted that correction. I was going to say, you know, by the way, that's because we talked about Peter before. I remember heard the dream and God showed him that gentiles were not unclean. And yet it says that really he fell into good old fashioned peer pressure. That's right, because he was eating with gentile house and then all of a sudden, when when the elders came in and when these other church leaders came in, he felt pressure, and then he stopped eating with them. And there was this whole like, you know, like, why aren't you sitting at my lunch table anymore? Kind of thing, right, and and then and then Paul says, I'm the one that had to come and correct him. Hey, real quick, I know we're out of time, but I just we have so much to cover because it's the whole chapter. But when it says I am crucified with Christ, therefore I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So now I live in this earthly body, trusting the son of God who loved me and gave his life for me. I love that verse. It's it's a verse that a lot of Christians memorize. And really what he's saying is, even though he's not physically crucified with Christ, he's saying, I tried to keep the law, but he said, but the law condemned me, So therefore I am crucified with Christ. He's given. It's such a great word picture of giving your life, giving your body, you know, and and understanding that Jesus died for your sins. It's just a beautiful, beautiful picture that all Christians can relate to because we are crucified with Christ because he died first. Since so I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That's a great place to end today. Yeah, well, okay, we'll see you next time. I'm the Bible, guys,