Are you prepared to dig deep into the heart of Galatians and unearth its profound meanings with us? That's exactly what we set out to do with our teacher Pastor Ryan Brown. We're going behind the layers of Galatians, breaking down the complexities and deciphering the narratives to reveal the Real Bible Stories that are often misunderstood or overlooked.
The first stop on this journey takes us through a contextual introduction. These steps pave the way for a more insightful and comprehensive exploration.
Over this introduction, we scrutinize the impact of the Reformation on Galatians, examining the implications of the relationship between the church, salvation, and politics. Navigating through the often murky waters of the church’s history, we delve into the role of Paul and the significant question that he is trying answer in his letter to the Galatians. The balance between Jewish and Gentile believers comes under focus as we dissect the concepts of unity and division. We aim to encourage you to ponder upon the importance of unity and freedom in faith, providing fresh perspectives and interpretations of these concepts.
Wrapping up, we delve into the unique relationship between the church and politics, the government, and the world at large. We also take a closer look at Gentile believers' balance and the often misunderstood concept of unity and freedom in faith. Our teacher Pastor Ryan, shares his wisdom and insights, assisting us in making sense of these complex matters.
So, prepare your hearts and minds as we undertake this exploration and tune in to enrich your understanding of faith.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealBibleStories
Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
Website: https://real-bible-stories.square.site
Check us out on these Streaming Platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1912582/share
Are you prepared to dig deep into the heart of Galatians and unearth its profound meanings with us? That's exactly what we set out to do with our teacher Pastor Ryan Brown. We're going behind the layers of Galatians, breaking down the complexities and deciphering the narratives to reveal the Real Bible Stories that are often misunderstood or overlooked.
The first stop on this journey takes us through a contextual introduction. These steps pave the way for a more insightful and comprehensive exploration.
Over this introduction, we scrutinize the impact of the Reformation on Galatians, examining the implications of the relationship between the church, salvation, and politics. Navigating through the often murky waters of the church’s history, we delve into the role of Paul and the significant question that he is trying answer in his letter to the Galatians. The balance between Jewish and Gentile believers comes under focus as we dissect the concepts of unity and division. We aim to encourage you to ponder upon the importance of unity and freedom in faith, providing fresh perspectives and interpretations of these concepts.
Wrapping up, we delve into the unique relationship between the church and politics, the government, and the world at large. We also take a closer look at Gentile believers' balance and the often misunderstood concept of unity and freedom in faith. Our teacher Pastor Ryan, shares his wisdom and insights, assisting us in making sense of these complex matters.
So, prepare your hearts and minds as we undertake this exploration and tune in to enrich your understanding of faith.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealBibleStories
Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
Website: https://real-bible-stories.square.site
Check us out on these Streaming Platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1912582/share
That is like legit good though.
Selena:Yeah, we're gonna be like oh this, this bun cake is soft, try that red, red one.
Imran:Hello and welcome to Real Bible Stories. Join us as we deep dive into the historic, religious, cultural, political and emotional context surrounding the real lives of real people in the Bible and the stories we've all run to love. You're hilarious, so you never get to really hear what's happening prior to the episode starting. But before I even get into what happened prior to this episode starting, I'll say welcome, welcome, welcome to Real Bible Stories. I'm your host, emre N Ward, with Jo and my wife Selena. Hello, and our teacher, Pastor Ryan Brown. What's going on everyone? Yeah. So, as the opening was rolling, ryan's like I'm just gonna start doing things to stress him right now and he starts shaking the microphone.
Speaker 4:I'm like oh, no, oh, no this mic falls over or something we're done.
Imran:We're gonna have to redo this beginning.
Speaker 4:You also didn't get to see how big his eyes got.
Imran:Yeah.
Speaker 4:It was a real, you know, annoyance.
Imran:Immediate, I was like, I'll just ignore it. And then I couldn't immediately.
Selena:I couldn't ignore it. Ryan, stop touching everything. Yeah, exactly.
Imran:Make sure you're speaking into the microphone, please, and not next to it. But I also wanted to. Well, what I actually wanted to say for the opening was we're enjoying our well, my first Bundt Cake this week.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we've upped our game. It's not just coffee anymore, now We've got Bundt Cakes.
Imran:Yeah, I don't know if we talked about how weirdly bougie me and Selena's coffee game is, but we have like a weird coffee subscription for beans every other week that come here and Selena does some fantastic work brewing up some coffee before we get started. And then Ryan's talked to us about this magical thing called Bundt Cake before and I had no idea what it was. No idea at all.
Speaker 4:It was actually in the study we're about to get into right the series rather is one of those weeks, I think we were doing the Bible study outside around the bonfire and I brought it up as a illustration, for I can't even remember what it was. But you're like, what's Bundt Cake? You guys don't know what Bundt Cake is, and you like stopped the the Bible saber or second. Like you don't know what Bundt Cake is, Just to scold you about how your?
Speaker 4:lack of knowledge of Bundt Cakes. Yeah, and I'll just set the picture for you.
Imran:We're sitting around the fire with like 20 to 30 people and I'm and Ryan's teaching and I'm literally sitting in front of him, as any good student should, and he just berates me in front row, front seat just berating me in front of these other people.
Imran:They're like man, what's this relationship? But man, but it is delicious. I'll tell you that much. It is delicious. We were down the hill and we're able to snatch up some from a fantastic bakery out there. Nothing Bundt Cakes. If you're in desert, what is it that city that we're in? They're everywhere, they're changing, they are.
Selena:Desert.
Imran:Palms, at that point, desert Palms yeah, it was a so good stuff out there if you're in the local area. But this week, on Real Bible Stories, we were actually finally getting back into the actual mission of Real Bible Stories. So we spent the last couple of months answering a lot of questions about the faith and now we're going to deep dive into the book of Galatians. So Ryan just finished up this series. It was like your fourth quarter once he did like last November, december timeframe January timeframe.
Imran:And so now we're bringing it to the podcast with some expanded concepts that you don't. You can't really fit into the kind of one way Bible study discussion that we kind of have at the church. So we're about to deep dive into that book. So if you've got your Bibles and you've never read through the book of Galatians before, here is your time. I think this week we're hitting the introduction.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we're doing a contextual introduction, which is something typical I always do whenever we dive into a deep Bible study of any book, because it's important right. We always say context matters, right, exactly, it's why this podcast exists. I would say Bible studies kind of like art, in the sense that if you think of, like you guys know the statue David by Michelangelo, Right, so that stuff just blows my mind when you see it.
Imran:Like if you've ever been to Europe and you've seen, those like the fact that you see, or I guess, get there and it's not in a military context.
Speaker 4:But like you have, like this artist who has this block of stone and this like block of stone, they're able to envision right. Like this art, this figure, you know whatever they're doing, like in this case, michelangelo saw, you know, the statue, the famous statue of David, and that he's able to chip away right.
Imran:Yeah, cause it's not additive. It's not additive. He's not building up a statue, he's taking away to reveal this statue, which I would argue is probably way harder to do, Cause once you chip it it's gone. You can't like put it back later. You make a mistake and it's like all right, I have to kind of reform how this is built out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I would say Bible studies kind of that way, right, cause you get to these like books or these texts right, in this case Galatians and it's like this big block of stone. You're like man, there's just so much here. How do I make sense of it? What is he saying? Right, like there's so much thing, so many things are loaded behind, particularly the New Testament letters, so much going on that is assumed in their time that we completely miss right.
Speaker 4:So what ends up happening is that, you know, bible study kind of like Michelangelo chipping away at that stone to make the statue David. We got to chip away at that stone and the context kind of really understand what's going on?
Speaker 4:And the problem is, over the years and as you get so many people who have chipped away at it, you almost end up chipping away too much right, and sometimes you kind of got to go back reset and say, hey, we're going to. You know, try to restore this back to what it was originally meant to be.
Imran:I fully, fully agree with that. There's sometimes I get a sermon that is, and I would argue, an extreme oversimplification of a sentence. Or when I say a sentence, I mean like a verse or two taken out of context in the Bible, and they're trying to extrapolate some new point from these two or three sentences. It's like, if you read this this way, you can get that. And it's like, well, if you read it the way it was written, you get the actual point and you're not supposed to get this whole other thing out of it.
Speaker 4:And that's also kind of the challenge and the joy, though, of diving into the word right.
Imran:Yeah, really doing good study of what was going on in the history and all that.
Speaker 4:And there's things like there's been times where I've spent hours in a study and I'm like man. So much of it came to life, and then, a couple of years later, I learned something new. I'm like I had no idea that that was a thing and I'm like wait a minute. Well then, that would apply here.
Imran:And that completely changes. I remember you talking about that when you actually went to Israel, and then it's like you kind of see, this is where the mountain was that Jesus crucified on, this is where the grave would have been, or this is where the grave is, and the proximity of different things kind of changed your perspective on the text. Yeah, or?
Speaker 4:even things like I was just in a study on Joseph for the youth and I went on. This whole chased, this entire rabbit, like an hour and a half of just learning about Egyptian beauty.
Selena:And the philosophy of.
Speaker 4:Egyptian beauty and cause that is so loaded behind that text. I never realized it before and I'm like but that changed the way I saw so much of what was being said. It was being assumed behind that right. That was written in that time. It made complete sense to them and especially to. This was in Genesis, where Moses is writing to a group of people who just came out of Egyptian culture. All assumed they would have understood this right. We don't right, we don't assume, I mean we will have to do it some way.
Speaker 4:I can't chase that now, but I'm just saying that as an example, right Like that was. So you?
Imran:know Galatians. I think ultimately that comes back to the richness of the word. Like people talk about the Bible as it's, like it's this old, dead text that's not relevant to today and it's like that's an insult to the glory of God, that's an insult to an all knowing God that sees and lives all time at the same time. It's like this this and it's why there's so much more, and it's why I like when and reveals so much more.
Speaker 4:Like being, you know, in charge of discipleship right, and I always drove all the the discipleship ministry leaders crazy with this. But I re refused book studies in place of Bible study.
Imran:So a lot of times they'd be like hey can we want to do this.
Speaker 4:You know this book, or this book, and you know we read it together. Come together as a group and it's not like book studies in themselves are wrong, and it's not like having Christian books is wrong. Right, my whole thing is this you can start meeting as a group discussing this book, because that's just a book club at that point. You can't call that Bible study right. Once you exhaust, and have fully exhausted, everything the Bible offers right, then to me that's when it's appropriate to move into that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but you know you and this is one of the things that we learned as a gap. I mean, you start seeing the same books being taught over and over, because that's the only one people are comfortable with, and you're like, hey, or it's what's popular in the day or something, or what's just the most.
Imran:this is the best seller. Or is it more palpable?
Speaker 4:This makes me feel the best, and you know it's like oh my gosh, you know. So you're like hey, explore everything scripture has like. Nothing is able to usurp God's word right and like dive into it deep right, like to exhaust it, and you'll find that it's inexhaustible right.
Speaker 4:I was just telling you guys before. I was in DC last week right For work and had all these problems in the airport. You know, long story short is that I showed up at the airport at seven minutes past my check-in time for bags and they would not let me board my first flight, which delayed everything by like 12 hours by the end of it. Ended up being on a plane in Phoenix by 11 pm, flying into DC at seven am to go straight to the convention center to work full day right.
Speaker 4:But in that whole time I did tons of deep study right and I wrote and I think it was given us David and Goliath was one of them right and I was like man from this I was able to pretty much there was like about four different sermons I was able to pull from this.
Speaker 4:But then I look at you know, for youth I'm like, oh, but for youth it would go from this. I could literally just from that, spending about eight hours of just doing study on that one story and that entire piece of text. I could be in that piece of text for, you know, about two months, all with different points. Right, I could say you just you can't exhaust it enough.
Imran:But yeah, so to that point, like because which is the beautiful? It's such a beautiful thing about it.
Speaker 4:It is, it is. Yeah, I get excited.
Imran:The first time you read the Bible you get, you'll get this story Like I think of, like Mark, like the C, jesus, c, jesus, run, gospel. And you read it and you're like, all right, I get it. And then you get some understanding of, like, the history, the context, you understand a little bit more about the nuance of the old church and old Jewish tradition, all that. And then you read through Mark again and you're like, oh, I see new interactions of like, like how Jesus was acting in the synagogue would have been insulting, or maybe it would have been, he would have been elected to speak. Like we talked about one of the earlier episodes.
Imran:And it's like then you get more knowledge about what's going on and more of that context. And you read through Mark again and you're just like, boom, boom and it happens over and over and over again where it's like the deeper your understanding of the faith goes, and it's like now you have a deeper understanding of Jesus, you have a deeper understanding of God, you have a deeper understanding of all these things. It's like you can't. You can't just say like, oh, it's an old, dead book, like you can't do that.
Speaker 4:And in that spirit, right as we dive into, probably, it's gonna be about a episode kind of, maybe even more than that.
Speaker 4:It's a podcast and we talk a lot, so but at least an eight episode series in Galatians. If you've read Galatians before a lot of times, people think they maybe have it figured out. I would say that there is so much to explore here. In fact there is so much context that's loaded behind this letter. Now we're committing this first week to the big contextual and kind of the big, I guess, overarching points of Paul, but then every week we're adding more and more context to what he's talking about. So one of the things with the Galatians that we're going to hit is, you know, kind of talking about that marble piece, right that almost too much has been chipped away. We're going to try to reclaim some of that back. I feel like a lot of what happens is people understand context but they're seeing it through the lens of, maybe a certain theological camp or the way it was explained to them one time long ago.
Imran:When they were a kid.
Speaker 4:Right, and they never been able to grow past that. So I have a good illustration here, right? So my son I'm not trying to pick on him, I just thought this was hilarious and very cute, but he, for history, had to write an essay not like an essay essay.
Speaker 4:This is just an excerpt from it, but he had a right on. Essentially, I think. His question was about the Boston Tea Party and if you were to participate in the Boston Tea Party, you know how do you think that would go for you kind of thing, right? So this is a good example of, I think, the way commonly.
Speaker 4:And for those, maybe for some of the listeners, who you know are not American, aren't familiar with this portion of American history. The Boston Tea Party was one of the significant events that kind of started in the snowball effect of the. American Revolution right. Essentially, I think it was eight. I think it was eight who were killed by British officers.
Imran:No, clue no clue.
Speaker 4:Some say it was like a snowball was thrown at them, but some say it was actually laden with rocks. I don't know. But besides the point, they needed a killing a bunch of citizens of Boston that led to this.
Selena:I don't know if there is any death that's needed to me Well so this is thought they threw tea over the side.
Speaker 4:Now, is it so? This was supposed to be his essay to kind of, you know, test his knowledge of the event. Right, and this is just an excerpt from it. But this is what he wrote. He said if I was inviting people to the Boston Tea Party, I would invite George Washington, benjamin Franklin, paul Revere, john Hancock, john Adams and Thomas Jefferson. I would not invite King George III because he is evil. I would have the Tea Party at Bunker Hill. You know about Bunker?
Speaker 4:Hill right we would have the Tea Party at Bunker Hill. When we sat down I would make them sit down next to me and I would hire someone to pass out the tea and pass out food. I would expect they would ask how was your day? And I would talk to Thomas Jefferson a lot Before we drank the tea. We would say a prayer and I would say dear God, I hope we have an outstanding time drinking tea, amen. Then we would walk up, talk about the war.
Selena:That hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 4:Afterwards. Afterwards we would go in the water and go swimming and after swimming we would go back to the Tea Party. I bet it would be fun and I wish it would happen in real life and it would just be incredible. I wish I was there to meet my cousin John Adams, which is true. My like 12th, 13th generation great grandfather His cousin was John Adams. Nice, we actually helped write the First Amendment of the Constitution. But the size point. I'd like to meet my cousin John Adams and Thomas Treverson and John Hancock. It would be a cool Boston Tea Party.
Imran:So how old is your son again?
Speaker 4:For that. Yeah, when he wrote that. Oh, when he wrote that 11. Okay, 10 or 11. So the point is this right, I liked his story Right. So, did he understand the context of the Boston Tea Party? Did he get the concept? No, we kind of went back and said, hey, let's readdress this right.
Imran:Yeah.
Speaker 4:He understood context right Like he understood characters.
Imran:Standard American story Right he understood the characters.
Speaker 4:All those characters were correct. He understood places. Yep, bunker Hill, that's a real place, right. He understood the war right.
Imran:He understood that was a war that existed.
Speaker 4:There was a war that was existing, but he kind of missed the overarching concept of the Boston Tea Party. Right, and that's how I feel many have approached Galatians is that they get the people right, all right, and there's a lot of big names that are just the Bible that way. Well, that's what I'm saying, but, like, galatians is specific. Okay, we're talking Galatians because we're doing a Galatian study.
Speaker 4:Yes yes, there's some big names that are dropped, Like you got James. Paul calls out Peter, Like he scolds Peter in this letter. You got some powerhouse names right that we all recognize some of the same places right. A lot of those things people get, but they don't understand how all that came together to the largest point in concept of Galatians right.
Speaker 4:So that's really what I'd like to at least center us on the macro level of just not just context and what the supreme problem is, but what Paul was really addressing. Okay, so to the point of context, we kind of have to fast forward from Paul's time to when the letter was written to medieval Europe. Okay, so we talk about the Reformation a lot and what the Reformation had done theologically and in many regards, right. So there's this interesting problem that had occurred. Okay, so, when the what would become Protestantism? Right, but when you started having this separation of people splitting off from the Catholic church, there was a lot of things that the reformers rejected, right, in terms of the Catholic view of things.
Speaker 4:So one was like the sacraments, you know, believing that baptism and Lord supper, and like the other nine other things that they call sacrament. Sacrament means saving grace, it means that you have to have it to be saved. They said, nope, those are symbols, you do not need those to be saved. Right, that was one of the things that they had rejected. Transubstitiation, that's the view that when you take the Lord supper, that you're actually physically taking the bread actually becomes the body of Christ.
Speaker 4:Right, that was something that they had rejected. But the biggest thing that, as applies to Galatians and how many theologically have interpreted this comes out of their belief in purgatory. So one of the things that the reformers also rejected was the concept of purgatory, which was like this, holding right this intermediary place between heaven and hell, where it's kind of like hey, you're saved or a believer, but you've done a lot of bad things as a Christian, so you don't get to go straight to heaven, you have to go to purgatory, you have to kind of pay a little pentance there and earn your way kind of into heaven from there. Right. And they said no, like that, that is not the gospel, that is not grace, that is right. So they rejected the idea of purgatory. Now, in modern, at least Protestant circles, like we're like hey, we applaud that, we we right.
Imran:But I mean some of that you still hear about like Catholics and it's still believed by them, right.
Speaker 4:But on the Protestant side, though, like we look at that, as many look at that as like they applaud it, it doesn't bother them, right? But in their day, for the reformers to reject that created a big pastoral problem for them because most like the idea of purgatory, the idea that you were either all in or all out, it's kind of scary was very scary for them so the question that had a had arisen was how can I be assured of my salvation?
Speaker 4:And what Luther did is he went to hearing Galatians, particularly Galatians two, and he used this as a proof text to assure them of their salvation. Right, so it is through Christ it's called some of the five reformed solas, but justified by faith alone.
Speaker 4:So by faith there's a bunch of different fallows grace alone, faith alone there's this whole list, but faith alone, you were justified by faith was one of the big things that Luther had gone to and said right here you're justified by faith, and faith only. So if you have faith in Christ, you are assured of your salvation. Right? So that was a proof text. He used to solve the question of his day, to assure those that you don't need purgatory. This is how you are assured of salvation. Now, that's great, right, and I think that was proper. I don't think there's anything proper with that in his time. The problem with what's happened, though, is because we put so much emphasis on reformed theologians. We've talked about this before, but theologians are theologians. They are not prophets. So they're one. They make mistakes, right. They're not perfect. They don't have all the answers, right, they are not authoritative.
Imran:Scripture, right, and because we're back to the books as well, for the same kind of point where it's like sometimes a book written by a theologian or a pastor is helpful in helping understand, but that does not mean that what they are saying is gospel or does not equate to them being like Isaiah. You know. So, even our conversation here, I always say do your own study, do your own research. It is your faith.
Speaker 4:We are trying to explain to you some take ownership of it, and yeah, it's your own journey and we all benefit and piggyback off the work and the faith of others, right, yeah, but I would just say, collectively over the years. But has happened is that we've almost, I think, elevated certain theologians, at least the reformers, to a position that is probably improper, right, yeah, where there's actual entire sections of the faith Lutheran Church Calvin.
Speaker 4:This church and because we've done that, what we've also, then, have adopted was the point of certain texts or scriptures are to answer a question that the reformers were answering in their day, not recognizing that that's not necessarily the question that Paul was answering when they wrote it, when he wrote it at that time Right.
Speaker 4:So Paul is answering it. So my point is this is that many people view Galatians through the lens of simply salvation. This is a book about salvation because that's how the reformers had done a lot of work on, because of the question of their day how am I assured of salvation? But that wasn't Paul's question he was trying to answer, and the reason I chose to do Galatians was because I actually think that the question Paul was trying to answer is more relevant to the least American Western church today, more so than the question that the reformers were answering.
Speaker 4:We're trying to answer and I don't think there's.
Speaker 4:I mean, people still sometimes doubt it. You still have people who struggle with you. Know how? Am I assured that I'm saved, like I was saved? I repented, but then, man, all my greatest sins were ahead of me. And you know when I came to faith in Christ, you know, 10 years ago, but that was like before my affair, and that was before I started struggling with alcoholism or my drug addiction or you know whatever. So am I really still saved, right? So people still struggle with that question. But I would just say, corporately, that is not a theological problem for us. We all know you and there is still debate, right? There are certain circles who think you can lose your salvation. I'm not part of that camp. Yeah, I think that if you could lose your salvation, you would Right. And if I couldn't earn my salvation, then why would God then give me responsibility to maintain it? Right?
Speaker 4:Because the very thing that made me lose it to begin with would be the same thing that would make me lose it once I had it. You know what I'm saying. Yeah so. I think we are completely secured right, and that's my view, and to not have that would be extraordinarily stressful yeah, stressful.
Imran:Right Exiting it would make it hard to have actual love, loving life with Christ. It's like if there wasn't a marriage contract and every day you were just like living with this person. At any point they could just leave. And you've now merged finances, merged home, kids and all these things and it was easy for them to just leave. Like that that's exceedingly stressful. So like for people that choose like, oh, we're just going to live together and not get married, I was like that's so much worse.
Speaker 4:And you're starting to tap into a big theme of Galatians, which is freedom in Christ. What it ultimately hurts when you're living that way is how free you live in Christ. Now, that doesn't mean you're free to sin We'll get to this in due time, right. But one of the big themes of Galatians is your freedom in Christ. But Christ has freed you and it keeps you from living in that freedom, right, because you're stressed or anxious, like constantly, every day, you're constantly trying to be perfect for with like marriage.
Imran:you're constantly trying to be, maybe, perfect for this person, because you're constantly stressed that they can't just leave, but you're not actually be you now, exactly you can't be free in that, in that marriage, by being married now, you're more free.
Speaker 4:It's actually interesting to see it kind of play out Right, because now you're really you. You have them, the commitments been made, you're right. So you're like. You know.
Speaker 4:everybody who's married knows this right, yeah, but it's hard to understand when you're dating every time you go out right Like she's looking her best, she's smelling her best, I'm looking my best, I'm smelling my best. You get married. You're like so you're just going to be in PJs all day, not even attempt to brush your hair you know like it's just right, but like my point that this was me the whole time.
Imran:We'll get to this in due time in this study.
Speaker 4:I just want to make clear now, though that doesn't mean you were free to go sin and just you go, be you in your sin.
Imran:That's not what yeah, we'll get to it in due time. Yeah, it's like you're not free to just be your whoever you want to be. It's like there's still things that you owe to your spouse, but you're better for it if you're doing it well.
Speaker 4:So, but to this point, though, right. So, then, is my salvation secure? Am I assured of my salvation? That was the question the Reformers were answering. What was Paul trying to answer, and really what Paul is? There's two. There is the problem set. There's this thing that centers what Paul is trying to do.
Speaker 4:The problem, you could say, is circumcision. Right, it is a theological debate about circumcision, but it's not really about circumcision. What it's really about is unity in the church, and the question that Paul is trying to answer is what is the church? What does it mean to be the church? What is church? And, more precisely, to put it in Paul's theological construct, right in the Jewish construct, who belongs within the family of Abraham? Who are children of Abraham? Right, like, who does that belong to? Because, even within that context, right, like God told Abraham go, get circumcised. This is the symbol of my covenant, right? And there's this big debate around it, right? So we'll get to that and do time. But the first thing I would just ask, though, is I wonder what Messianic Jews think of that today.
Imran:But we'll get to that in due time. Yeah, yeah, well, we have plenty.
Speaker 4:We have plenty of time. The first thing I would just say, then, is then Galatians is not really about about sotriology, it's about ecclesiology. Those are million-dollar words. Yeah sotriology is the study of salvation, ecclesiology is the study of the church. Okay, so Galatians is an ecclesiastical book. It is not a sotriological book. Now, salvate, you cannot understand the church without understanding salvation, because your view of salvation is going to paint and construct your view with the plan of churches. All right, so if you have an improper understanding and view of salvation, you're going to have an improper view of what the church is, and vice versa.
Speaker 4:If you have an improper view of the church, that's going to feed into your view of salvation. And you see this play out with a lot of people when you're just like in conversation, right? Oh, my goodness, there's a very low view of church for many in this country, right? Now. They don't think they need it, they don't think it's essential for their own quote. Unquote personal relationship with Christ.
Selena:Yeah, it's become a negative stereotype.
Imran:It's superficial. I don't necessarily would say it's negative. I don't think people have a negative view of church, but it's like if I'm going to go here on a Sunday morning to listen to some music, well, I can do that on my drive to work. I could do that and be more productive. It's like if I need to go to church to listen to a sermon, well, I can do that with a podcast, I can do that on YouTube. So why do I need to physically go to this place and physically meet with these people? If.
Imran:I can easily just get the music, get the message online.
Speaker 4:And I'd also say, though, to Selena's point, though, is that the second you actually start being the church, particularly when you come into, like, talking about accountability of each other, right, like you get confronted like, hey, what you're doing is not okay, it's not God honoring you, right, and you're like, who are you to judge me and why are you being so intrusive into my private life? Right, like, yeah, in that sense it becomes so, churches are afraid to actually be the church because the view of church is not proper, because their view of salvation isn't proper, or vice versa, right. So, if I could say it this way, the church in a very I guess just overarching statement, that the church is salvation's public display. Right, so it's obviously nested, they're together, right, but how you view salvation, that's going to be how it manifests and displays itself in the church. If you believe salvation is a very private, individual thing, then you're going to have a very private, individual approach to church right.
Speaker 4:If you believe salvation is a corporate thing.
Imran:Approach to your spiritual life as well, which is only to the detriment of those that are not saved around you when you're called to go out and tell and teach, so that right, because because if you have, like, a very communal view of church or salvation, right, then you're going to have a very high view of church, because that's community right.
Speaker 4:And when we start talking, really what Paul's talking about, talking about who belongs to the family of Abraham, and that's you're saying, that's the question, it is a family. The whole contract for them was the family of Abraham. Who belongs to the family? Who does not belong to the family? But if you're in the family, you're in the family. But what is a family? The family is corporate, it is community A family. You know what I mean? Yeah, um, yeah.
Imran:It's not just an individual kind of walk on your own thing. That's the opposite of what a family should be, should be.
Speaker 4:Right, Exactly so. But it's not just. But what happens in families, right, If you, you know we think about, like some homes on Thanksgiving for some it is very exciting. They're like oh, I can't wait to get the whole family together and around a table. For some it's a very blessed and joyful time. For others, they dread it.
Selena:Yeah, it's like a burden.
Speaker 4:Right, or or, or you get the. Yeah, I just I can't wait to go. I just I hope that my uncle, whatever, is not going to be there, because he shows up drunk or he, or or he's going to bring up politics with you.
Speaker 4:Know, like my other, on the other political end of you know, my aunt or cousin and they're just going to go at it and I'm going to throw food at each other and they're going to come in a fight because they're not mature enough to handle the conversation and just becomes a thing. Right, that's a family and that's what you experience in church. Right, but because people don't view church as a family, they viewed church individually. The second somebody comes in and says well, I think this and they're like all right, I'm out.
Imran:Yeah, I'll go find a different church that thinks what I think or believes what I believe and it's like, no, that's not how it works.
Speaker 4:But I would ask this though, and and I could say this as a father, and I think you guys could probably say that this would be a desire from um, if you look at your, your parents and grandparents, right, but the desire for most families is you desire what?
Imran:Community love, love, peace.
Selena:What's that the best for one another. Care.
Speaker 4:You want them to care for you, and care of each other.
Imran:I'd say trust too, Like when things go bad. I I know that if everything went to crap, I could go back to my mom's house, and even if she didn't have a room, she would find a bed. She gave to shield, she's given me my, she's given me her bed, and slept on the couch, like when Selina and I had to visit and we didn't have a place to stay. She was like take, take my bed, right, you know? And.
Speaker 4:I would say, ultimately, I think what it like, that all gets kind of wrapped up in, right, I think, one concept which would be unity. Right, you want to united family, a family who is united together and living life together, right.
Speaker 4:So, good times, bad times, bad times we take care of each other. Good times, we celebrate. To get you know what I mean yeah, you want unity in a family. So so the supreme I, I for Paul, like, as long as it's not compromising to sin um or it's not defaming the blood of Christ, right, the supreme principle that he concerns himself with is unity. He wants unity in the family and the problem was in this time, particularly as we have Gentile believers coming in, is that a lot of the on the Jewish side did not think they belong to the family. Right, you ever have like I don't know, like a cousin, sibling somebody, marry somebody, and they're not really accepted into the family or at least maybe initially you know what I mean and or know somebody where this is the case right Like yeah, I've never really been accepted into this family Like they they.
Speaker 4:I'm there, I am married, but they don't really want to be there.
Imran:They don't go to the events and they don't, they don't uh, pull me into the conversation, or or they don't go to the events and I don't even know. I see that more with your family than with my family. We've got, um, a few individuals that just don't come to things. They uh stay away from being with all the aunties. I guess it's more with your uncles, because your aunties always get together, your mother's sisters always get together, but not as much with the uncles.
Speaker 4:But like the point though, like some families, though, like there there's certain people that sometimes come in and you're like ah, we don't really accept them as part of us, at least initially. You know what I mean. And that's kind of what's going on with the Gentile believers by some of the the Jewish believe. They're like, hey, you're bringing them in and they're saying you're saying they're part of this family. Yeah.
Speaker 4:But we're not seeing a whole, and we'll get to it here in a second because I'm going to break it down. But, um, just on this point of unity though, right, so, if you think about, if you believe, we receive the Holy spirit right Now, a common old and new Testament, um, symbol for the Holy spirit is fire. Okay, what we even talked about I think it was a John the Baptist baptism by fire. I baptize you with water, but the one comes after me will baptize you with fire. Right, yeah, I mean, baptized with the spirit is one of the consuming fire.
Imran:The Holy spirit is one, it's one of my favorite Bible studies you've ever given is talking about fire and the how it purifies.
Speaker 4:Yeah, how it purifies how it destroys. That means it requires destroying something to purify something right Um, which means things in your life will be destroyed to become pure right.
Speaker 4:To be sanctified. So, thinking about it in terms of a fire, right, If you receive the spirit. And one of the the biggest arguments that are being made in this time for Gentiles coming into really at that time a Jewish church was that I understand that they're not circumcised. I understand that they don't know Torah. I know that, right. I know they don't observe the high holidays, but they received the Holy spirit and that should be confirmation enough. Right, they have the fire.
Imran:They are believed and have faith.
Speaker 4:And I just want you to kind of think about maybe church as each one of us holding our own individual torch, right, our own spirit. You know fire torch and I could walk around with that torch, but when we come together right In unity, if I unite my torch with your torch, with your torch, how does that fire become Huge, massive, it becomes big right.
Imran:See it from space.
Speaker 4:Exactly so. If you have a united church, all-caring individual fires, and you bring it together, you have this massive bonfire, right yeah. So now you've got this massive fire. That is like you said you could see it from space. It is, it is huge, it's effective, right yeah. And what you kind of see happen, you know, over the years, you know we call them denominations. That is our way of churching up, like my pun churching up. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Um churching up. We call it denomination, but really all denomination is is a church term for division. Yeah, it's a split. You know what I mean. And and what you have now is, like across any community, a bunch of individual churches with their individual torches trying to come together and they have these individual bonfires right. Where really the whole idea? And you know Paul's like, we need to be united in this fire to create this massive bonfire that's going to consume the world. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Right, the idea I mean, even symbolically, within revelation, when it talks like God will destroy it by fire. I mean, there's certain views that they think that's actually what that is referring to is more the Holy spirit find just consuming and taking over the entire planet earth, that, at at at one point, the entire spirit is going to be finally spread right across all planet earth. That's just one view. My point is, though, is that the idea of unity, the idea of bringing in joining your individual, you know torch, into a collective sense, or, if I could put it this way, the Holy spirit is far more relevant, is able to act more strongly, quickly, when people are united.
Imran:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Then when you're divided?
Imran:when his, when his people are united right.
Speaker 4:So when you're united, you're far more effective to the gospel. When you are divided, it becomes harder, it becomes segmented. It's not as because you don't have your bonfire right, you just not as big.
Imran:And I want to arc two points on here. One I remember we talked before about if we have the ability to resist the spirit and that that we do. We have the ability to resist because that kind of like is the monocle of free will. Arcing back to our earlier episode about do we have free will, but it's like the spirit wants unity. The spirit wants unity in his church. God wants unity in his church. Our resistance to that is is hurting what the spirit wants to do with his church because we are resisting. What the spirit wants is unity as church, and I just thought practically what that could look like.
Imran:When we were making the new church sign. This is a few months ago now I had a long discussion with Pastor David about if we should put Baptist on the new sign, because there were people that would hear that Palms Church is a Baptist church and then they wouldn't even want to consider coming to the church because of some other associations that they already had about Baptist as a denomination and so so that was something that he really struggled with, like should we put back? Should it just be Palms?
Speaker 4:Church. Should we put back to the church? We had a weird meeting on that. Nice yeah To make that decision. And you know, it's not that we're ashamed to be Baptist, it's, but it is a dividing factor. It is Exactly.
Speaker 4:Look, I didn't go to this church for the longest time because it was a Baptist church. Right now I fully associate because the more I've learned and become educated, like that's just where, theologically, I'm like yep, that's. And to be completely honest with you, most you know, quote unquote non-denominational churches are really Baptist theology anyways. They just don't put the association right. Yeah, but it's not really about being Baptist, it's about being disciples of Christ, right, Exactly, and what we're, what we realize.
Imran:Reaching to unity piece is like being so focused on. Well, I'm not going to go to this church, I'm not going to become a part of this part of the family, because this part of the family is Baptist.
Speaker 4:And people are misjudging us that way.
Imran:He was creating a barrier, it's an improper interpretation of the church and it's like I should be able to go to a Presbyterian church and still feel the spirit. I should be able to go to a Calvin church and still feel the spirit, because the point is not, and he says that stuff, it's the spirit he says in Ephesians you know, for there is one baptism, one faith, one Lord, one God overall, one spirit.
Speaker 4:Right, it's not like those other denominations receive a different Holy Spirit than we do.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's like they're still your family, right, exactly, and and that was like but that whole decision, right it is.
Speaker 4:It was a barrier, and some, you know, and that wasn't proper for people to judge off that right, but they were, and we, you recognize that where, where you're at right, If somebody was looking for a Baptist church, they would be able to find this as a Baptist church.
Speaker 4:We weren't hiding it, but we wanted to, initially, though that not to be a barrier, because, I mean, the reason I didn't go to a Baptist church, because I thought a Baptist church for the longest time was suit and tie, stiff, just very, you know, yeah, and I'm like, oh, this church isn't like that at all, right, and obviously fallen in love with it, right, but besides the point, yeah, yeah, yeah. The idea, though, is that you need to unite to ignite. If we want to ignite the spirit in our community, unite this, ignite the spirit within government and within all of our social circles, and actually start changing the world, we need to be united to do that Right. So anything that comes in to divide the church, right, anything that comes in to divide it to him is just atrocious, like that also hurts dramatically.
Speaker 4:And that's that, that's Paul's view. So what he's addressing in this letter is a key issue that is keeping the church divided for a time. They're not as united as they should be. And he kind of sets his battle line where and we'll talk about why the compromise would have almost felt naturally more sensible and even in a sense of out of love, you could have gone with this compromise that we'll talk about in a second. But Paul's like he sets the battle line because he knew what it would ultimately lead to. So let me just kind of very quickly, because we're going to talk about it a lot in the study, but you need to kind of understand the overarching structure and this concept of family, the family of Abraham, how Jews viewed this Right. So all the way back to Genesis three we'll frame this as the problem.
Speaker 4:Okay, adam and Eve sinned. There was a marring that occurred during that. In that sin there was a separation that occurred. The image of God was marred and from that moment on I mean you talk about God comes down and meets him and he, immediately he gives them the plan of action Right.
Speaker 4:When he speaks to the woman and he did he gives the curse to the woman, but also a promise. The promise is that, though that through you you're going to have a seed, and in the seed is going to crush the serpent's head, he's going to strike his heel, but he will through you, eve, she wasn't Eve yet, she was just woman. Adam renames her, eve as the mother of all the living, after this promise that God gives them and God promises that through your seed he will destroy the serpent Essentially gives her the promise that through you, though I'm going to resolve this, the solution will come. So from the very beginning, you see, the seed that is promised to Eve gets Adam. So you know I'm excited that he renames her. You are Eve because you're going to be the mother of all the living, right, because of the seed that's going to come from her. Well, who's the seed?
Speaker 4:Jesus we know that ultimately to be Christ, right. But now let's think about Jewish perspective before Christ. They didn't really have all this put together yet, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So, so he gives her the promise, right. So there's the problem, but also kind of the promise, right there. Then God comes and makes covenant with Abraham to set that sin of Adam right. Right, and you see this, what I would call like more cohesive plan, this is Genesis 15. But this is when you know. God essentially tells Abraham I'm going to give you so many descendants that are more numerable than the stars, right? Yeah, he starts laying out this plan and then we're going to talk about that, because actually that whole thing plays a big piece later here in Galatians. But but then you get to Genesis 26. Abraham's son, isaac. God makes a promise to him too, he's. But he more specifies he says through Isaac's seed, all the nations would be blessed. Okay, so now the same seed that's coming from from Eve, right. And then he goes to Isaac and says now, through that same seed, that same family, all the nations of the world are going to be blessed through this seed. Okay.
Speaker 4:So then we have the rest of Genesis, goes on. You have the Exodus story that are brought out of Egypt, and then Moses is preaching, which is the book of Deuteronomy, which is the book of Deuteronomy. And then he goes to Isaac and says you know you're going to have a big family. You're going to have a big family Moses is preaching, which is the book of Deuteronomy, which is about a series of five sermons of Moses before they enter the promised land. Right so, moses and Deuteronomy, 27 chapters 27 through chapters 29,. He gives essentially a warning. He says if you become unfaithful to God in the while that you just received, then the nations that you were supposed to be a light to, that you were supposed to rule over, will now rule over you. Yeah, so now there is also this expectation that not only are we going to be given this promised land and that we have this promised seed, but the seed is going to rule over all the nations and in our unfaithfulness the nations were meant to rule over will rule over us.
Imran:And then when you read through like judges and kings and chronicles, and you kind of see that play out in Israel as well too.
Speaker 4:All the way up into Christ. And that's that's the big piece with Paul, because Paul says we are in the Deuteronomy 27 through 29 phase. We are in the unfaithfulness stage where the the nations, ie Rome, who we should be ruling over are ruling over us.
Imran:Before that it was the Greeks. Yeah, well, even before the Greeks, I'm trying to think back to judges and who started the P. There's a whole series of them, yeah, so that's fair.
Speaker 4:You got yeah, I mean the Assyrians, you got the Babylonians, you got the Persians, you got the Greeks you got the Romans right. So, there's a few of them, but yeah.
Speaker 4:So to Paul, israel is in that Deuteronomy 27 to 29 frame Okay, we are been unfaithful to God in the law, we're being ruled over. That's how he recognizes himself. Okay, in keeping with what Moses had warned. But then in Deuteronomy chapter 30, moses also gives an assurance Okay, and this is what he says in Deuteronomy 30, essentially that even if though you become unfaithful, if you are unfaithful to God and his law, he assures them that God's faithfulness, that God will continue to be faithful to them. Okay, so the idea is that when you are unfaithful, god will remain faithful and in that time there's this promise that you will still prevail, you will still eventually rule over all the nations. Okay, now to just track with me, because this is all the theological thought of not just Old Testament right Theology developing, but how it kind of fed into Paul. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And how they expect it right. Okay, paul's argument, kind of like his gospel, is this is that we have been and you call it the the evil age, essentially, but we're in the time of Deuteronomy 27 through 29. But what Christ? The relevance of Christ on him coming that he has now ushered in the new age and this new age is essentially the transfer from Deuteronomy 29 into Deuteronomy 30, that God's faithfulness has now prevailed through Christ, that has ushered in the coming age and has brought us out of the present evil age. That is the gospel to Paul that Christ is the manifestation of God's faithfulness on planet earth and has ushered in us out of Deuteronomy 27 through 29, and has now brought in Deuteronomy 30.
Speaker 4:You fast forward to Psalm chapter 2, so we're talking time of David. God expands this promise. That says that now, not only the family that comes out of Abraham through Isaac and his seed now it's again a seed, singular, paul makes that point later in Galatians but out of the seed in Psalm 2, it then says that the inheritance that is promised to Isaac extends now to the entire earth, the idea being that because, in terms of family and ancient families, you would have this idea of inheritance going all the way through. So the question then, kind of to maybe frame it even more beyond what is the church or what is the family of Abraham? It's more appropriately who receives the inheritance of Isaac? Who receives the inheritance Now? Out of Psalm 2, it says the entire earth is going to receive this inheritance now.
Speaker 4:So you see how this is kind of wrapping together because you need to understand Paul's theology about it not everybody else. So that is the kind of the theological construct. Right Is that Israel's sin and unfaithfulness has made a situation where the nations that they were promised to rule over are now ruling over them. But Christ, coming being the manifestation of God's faithfulness, has brought them out of that era and ushered them into the new era, and he is the promised seed of both to Eve, the promised seed of Abraham, the promised seed of Isaac and the inheritance, then who belongs to Christ?
Speaker 4:Christ receives that inheritance, and that's when the big. But now, in our association to Christ, we now receive that inheritance too. So, and his whole point, right Paul will spell out, is that the Gentiles, while are not part of Abraham's family, have been brought into Abraham's family as per the promise that all the nations of the earth would receive this inheritance. Right, Because it's through the seed of Christ who has now extended it outside the traditional family. Right, Hence they should be brought into this family. Does that make sense? That's kind of like the big theological thing.
Speaker 4:It gets a little hairy as we get because it'll be fun. But that's kind of the matter. I want to kind of ask two questions.
Imran:So before we jump into it, can you give a brief summary of who Paul is? And then who or where and what is Galatia?
Speaker 4:I don't think you understood what you just asked on that second question there. I'm sorry, I was going to reserve that one for when we get into chapter five, but I more than happy to answer it here.
Imran:Yeah, like one minute version, because as you go into it's like I need to know why it was a no.
Speaker 4:This is going to blow some people's minds that this is even in their Bible, but I'm getting excited.
Imran:I'm getting excited. We'll start with who Paul is. Okay, so Paul for the uninitiated.
Speaker 4:So if you remember Paul Paul, his name is actually Saul. He is from the tribe of Benjamin, hence his name, which is very interesting. So Saul was the one who was persecuting the church heavily. So there's a good piece in the book of Acts that is committed to Saul's persecution. So, like Acts, chapter seven, chapter eight, then he has the Damascus road conversion, which he references in Galatians. He talks about his conversion, he references it a lot actually, and what we actually learn from Galatians.
Imran:And the conversion was him getting knocked down, blinded.
Speaker 4:Blinded correct. And he goes to Antioch, but before he even gets into ministry, though, he talks about how he spent years in Arabia contemplating everything where he seemed to have on his own, just after he had this really crazy he's trying to. How do I make sense of this? This changes everything and took years working through this before he even got into active ministry.
Imran:Oh, okay, we'll learn this. That's interesting because we don't see that gap between Acts and Romans.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he goes to I believe it was Damascus, and that's when God sends somebody to heal him. They're like the one who was just person-cuting the church, right. And then he starts going right into ministry in Antioch, which was kind of your first Jewish Gentile blended church, yeah, and he's in ministry there with Barnabas and a bunch of powerhouses, right. But yeah, you don't see the gap of time. What we learn here is that he actually spent before that and how Acts kind of painted this kind of almost immediate before that he spent years just studying, learning, receiving revelation and formulating what this all means, before he even got into ministry. So by the time you see him show up on the scene, he gets it. He's like Because he wrestled with it heavily for years and now he's on a warpath for the gospel.
Imran:Yeah, he's on purpose.
Speaker 4:Right, he studied. So he's from Tarsus, but Tarsus was like a town that was highly educated. There's a lot of different schools, particularly philosophy, but also a lot of Jewish schools. So Paul is a very well educated individual and we'll talk about this a little more because he refers to this of himself. He says, like in Galatians, he's like I was advancing well beyond my years, right, like he's saying, for a man of my age I should not have had known as much as I did. I was not smart, I was not a zealous. Generally for people like he was thought very highly of.
Speaker 4:He was a Pharisee right he belonged to the Pharisees. He's very zealous. He says that he, as a stone Stephen, that he watched the garments of the men who stoned him. Wow, so this is his name, saul. And what's very interesting about this too, when you kind of look at biblical Old Testament Israel history, is that there had always been kind of this rift between the tribe of Benjamin and the tribe of Judah. So, if you remember, king Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin.
Speaker 4:And then here comes David, who essentially took the throne back from Saul, who is of the tribe of Judah right.
Speaker 4:And they call Christ the lion of the tribe of Judah, right, that is his tribe. So there's almost this sense, almost like, of this tribalism. That kind of was going on, where you have Saul from the tribe of Benjamin, now you got the tribe of Judah saying, hey, the Messiah has come, not just to see the Messiah, but he's got himself and he's from the tribe of Judah Right. So that probably brought a lot of that.
Imran:So the tribalism. He also had the Pharisee piece as well.
Speaker 4:Right there's a lot of there. That just made Paul like all right, I'm going after him, Right? Which also makes his conversion a little more dramatic, right? So, now with that. Galatia was a town in southern what is modern day Turkey, but it was called Galatia, okay.
Speaker 4:Now the diaspora, the Jewish diaspora. So Jews who lived outside of Israel were kind of everywhere. There were synagogues everywhere. That's how you have the Pharisee synagogue system. So you had Jews in this church, but they were predominantly Gentile. And this church was established and you can read this going from Acts, chapter 13. That's when Paul and Barnabas decided to go into Asia Minor to start planting churches to the Gentiles. That's when John Mark leaves them. We need to do that week, some week, because I think part of the reason that Mark I think left him was because John Mark was not on board with bringing the gospel to the Gentiles. They bring the gospel to the Gentiles and they're vastly successful. We came out of costs. Paul even references it in the letter to Galatians of how he was physically beaten, stoned, thrown in prison. He talks about how he still bears the marks of bringing the gospel to this church.
Speaker 4:Now he's writing this letter after that, but that's how that church was established. So Galatia itself, though it was called so Galatia, or the region of the Gal. Now, this is going to crack some people up and this is why I love the Bible, and if you are a little bit of a prude, I'm just telling you that the Bible is not as prude as you are. The term Gal and this feeds this whole thing later, when we get to Galatians 5, you'll see but the term Gal essentially means rooster, but it's a euphemism for male appendage. So if you think about what is a different name for a rooster, yeah, that we use now in our current day, you see what I'm saying. That's essentially what this region was called the region of rooster or the region of.
Speaker 4:You know what I'm saying so, yes, you have a book in your Bible that's essentially called to the church of the region of Wieners. That's essentially what this term means, and how interesting is it that, within that, this whole central idea that surrounds this is the idea of circumcision. What is circumcision? Cutting?
Selena:the snip, snip of the Wiener right.
Imran:So, just how beautifully.
Speaker 4:God has such a sense of humor.
Imran:But why was it called?
Speaker 4:This was such an issue in this church. I mean?
Imran:why was the region called that? Why is Galatia called?
Selena:that.
Imran:How do you even get it, or are we going to save that for it? I'm going to save that for when we get into Galatians 5. We'll save that for Galatians 5. Because there's a big piece of that. Okay, so we can get back on track.
Speaker 4:Yeah there's a big piece of that. But so, with that said, let's just talk about then the context, the problem. Okay, why is circumcision such a thing? Why is Paul so angry about it? You almost sense in this letter his anger and his frustration with this. So let's talk about the church, because the reason I want me to just kind of close the circle, the reason I think this is a more relevant question of what is the church, or who belongs to the family, who receives the inheritance of Abraham and Isaac, right, why is that more of a do? I think that's more of a practical thing now than the question of the assurance of salvation.
Speaker 4:If you were to look just around your block, right, just drive around your city, you see so many different variations of church. You see so many different traditions, different ways people do church, different ideas of what church is right. If you were to ask, do a straw poll of 100 people, what is church to you, you'll probably get some general commonalities, but you're also probably gonna get a lot of different versions. You know what I mean. What is church? What does this mean? What is the family? What is the inheritance? What does this look like and what does? Or other further questions right. What is the church's relationship with politics? What is the church's relationship with government? What is it?
Imran:or what is it supposed to be? That's what I'm asking. I mean, I always think of when Jesus said give unto Caesar, give unto God what belongs to God when you're asking me about tax and stuff like that.
Speaker 4:I'm just saying, though there are some traditions that think you should be, churches should be very politically active.
Speaker 4:There's others like Baptist, for example, who are saying no separation of church and state. That is a Baptist concept. That in the Constitution is a Baptist concept that they put in because Baptists were being persecuted in North America because they weren't belonging to the Church of England. So that is a Baptist ideal that was written into the Constitution. And the separation of church and state Interesting and they hold true to that Like no, that's the state where the church were two separate things and there's this whole spectrum of that. What is the relationship between the church and the government and the church and politics? What is the relationship between the church and the rest of the world? Yeah.
Speaker 4:The non-believers. So there's all these questions that kind of derive from this right and you see those same relationships loaded behind the context of Galatians. So the first we'll just kind of talk about the government. Who was the government in Galatia? That they were operating within Rome, right? Because there was that time where Rome owned everything Right and now here's the thing the official religion of Rome was the Roman Occult.
Imran:Okay, they called the Occult the name Okay.
Speaker 4:So it really comes out of. You're talking about about 30 years before Christ. That's when you started introducing emperor worship with Augustus, so that you had a lot of temples to Augustus and then you had emperors after that kind of built their own temples, so it was adopting the gods, jupiter and Mars and all them, but also emperor worship, augustus, okay, essentially worshiping the state, okay.
Imran:So that sounds familiar.
Speaker 4:We'll talk about that in a second, because the problem is that and I'm not talking about North Korea, even with just.
Speaker 4:North Korea, even with and within you know the Jews in that time. Are they going to worship any other god except for God? No Correct Right. And there had been rebellion after rebellion. Every time they tried to force them to and Rome realized we were coming short of just eradicating the Jewish people all together. We are never going to be able to get them to worship our gods. So they made an exception for Jewish people. So if you were Jewish, they made an exception. They said you are allowed to not worship all the other gods and worship Augustus. You only have to worship Yahweh on one condition you have to pray on behalf of and for Rome.
Imran:Because to them it's interesting.
Speaker 4:To them saying, like bringing in another god is not a problem.
Imran:It's not a big deal for them because they're already multi. I don't even call that. We have multiple gods. It's polytheistic Right. So that's so, does that?
Selena:pray to your god.
Imran:I was like multi-class.
Speaker 4:They were more concerned about the state and the Rome and the glory of Rome. So they're like, hey, all right, we'll let you just be a people within our empire who are committed solely to the worship of this god Yahweh, but you have to pray on behalf of and for Rome and essentially, and as long as you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. So there's this kind of this drug deal, right? So they make this little pact.
Imran:You don't have to be for our gods, but we want your god for us, please, right.
Speaker 4:So that is an agreement between Rome and the Jews, the.
Imran:Jewish state.
Speaker 4:Okay, so, but then we talk about another relationship. Right, we'll talk. We'll just say culture or social circles Okay, the majority of Rome were not Jewish. They practiced the Rome and the Colt. They worshiped, they did emperor worship and they did all that right. But their view you have to kind of understand their theology of things. They thought, like if there was ever a calamity that occurred right, a massive earthquake, which happened a lot, you know volcanoes erupting, famine, you know, anything like that plague, if that ever happened to them, they took that to mean that we, that the gods, are displeased with us. Our worship hasn't been good enough, our service hasn't been good enough, our giving hasn't been good enough. Right, they're displeased with us. Okay, so now the idea that the Roman government makes a deal with the Jews and say, hey, you don't have to worship, you know, participate in the Colt, just worship your God on behalf of us, that made them upset. Right, this was not a popular political position. Oh, they did not like this at all.
Selena:See, it made the Jews upset. No, it made the Romans upset, it made the other.
Imran:Gentile like Roman, okay Because you think Rome was taking over other nations and then forcing them to follow their laws, follow their tradition and eradicating the history?
Selena:of Romans. They're upset that no, no, no.
Imran:Rome is Rome. Rome was conquering all these other nations that had to follow Rome, and now the Roman government is making an exception for the Jews. And you think of all these other conquered people and they're like Well, what about my exception? What about my religions, my faith? And it's like that, would that would be.
Speaker 4:Rome is a collection of a bunch of other country conquered countries. And I think there was a piece of that, but I would say the bigger problem was that the way they view this is that if we need to keep the gods happy, because if the gods are not happy, they're gonna punish us. That's what they believed. Mm-hmm. So for you not to be worshiping the other gods, right? That means, then, that that's like one person minus of worship, which means I have to pick up your slack. Jesus is coming down.
Selena:So if anything terrible happens, then it's like oh, it's obviously because of the Jews.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so they were. This was not a popular position, you know, for them, and they had no problem with them worshiping Israel's God, but they had never associated like calamity and bad things to Israel's God, so they did not fear him. All right, they feared their gods. So they're saying that that's great, you could go worship, you know, the God of Israel, but you need to be worshiping our gods too, because they're the ones who bring them down fury right. And for you not to be doing that means that that may make them upset, which means I need to do. I need to give a little bit more than what I otherwise would I need to make up for you.
Speaker 4:I need to pray a little more, I need to serve a little more Like they're gods right, More to make up for you. Okay, and that feeds heavily when a lot of the Gentiles start being saved. Okay, because now they're leaving the occult, Now they're like, they're stressed right. They think you're what do you mean? You're not worshiping the gods anymore.
Imran:Yeah.
Speaker 4:No, I belong to Christ. Yeah, he's the only one I serve. He's the only one I worship. Now they have to make up for that too. So when you start having this mass conversion of Gentiles, you see how it starts making them really like uncomfortable with this right. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So the social circles, they didn't like this arrangement to begin with with the Jews let alone once Gentiles start converting into accepting Christ. Right, so it was already not a popular view. In fact, when calamity did happen, it was very common for them to blame the Jews. Like that's because they're not worshiping, yeah, this earthquake cake, because they are not worshiping our gods, and you're keeping this exemption there, right?
Imran:It's crazy that, in terms of the politics, right In terms of the history of the Jewish nation. How consistent that is. Where they are constantly being blamed for the world's problem, which I guess God did say that would happen you know?
Speaker 4:Oh, I mean, those are God's chosen people. Who's saying it can attack?
Imran:Yeah. Right and so oh man. Yeah, that's a great one-cent summary there.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So if you got, so that's right. You got the government right. They kind of make this little deal. We won't bother you, you don't bother us, we'll give you the exemption. But you know, just kind of stick to yourself, pray on behalf of us. The social, the culture, right. The Roman culture was not happy with this arrangement okay. So then I'd call, I guess, the next relationship that you could have in church, which is the religious establishment, and this is what I would just call, you know, in general, the Jewish authority. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 4:Right, because, as we talked about last week, right, there was no separation at this time. Mm-hmm, you know, you know, christians were worshiping in the synagogue with Jews. Yeah. Right and Jewish understood. You know the Jewish authority understood very clearly, right, the sensitivity of this arrangement, that it was delicate right One, one mistake, one bad thing, then this exemption can flip on a dime, they can put a decree and say hey, exemption doesn't apply anymore, you must start worshiping, and to not, they would essentially receive the persecution.
Speaker 4:But, the Christians eventually started receiving, like under the Decian, persecution right that would have been on the Jews if this exemption did not occur, right. So that's why, like, like, when you look at the book of Revelation and it starts talking about this beast that it has political authority and this beast of religious authority. It's kind of talking about the relationship that eventually developed between Rome and Jewish authority, because to Rome they're like well, who's a Christian and who's a Jew? You get some of you all kind of look the same, but some of you don't look like anyone else, don't look like anyone else who's a Christian and what they were using was the Jewish authority to point out to the Roman authority that's a Jew, that's not.
Speaker 4:They accept Christ like that is a Christian.
Imran:I don't know what that is. Kill that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that is not a Jew, and that was then okay, go get them right In the source of persecution. It was coming through the council of the Jewish authority in that time. Now this is years later, right? My point being is that the Jewish authority was very, very concerned about upsetting this arrangement because they knew what that meant.
Speaker 4:It was gonna be very painful. So there's that sensitivity at play. Okay, the next group you have is what you would call other church people, right, and this is really what we're talking about the Jewish believers, because up until this point, it had really been a Jewish movement. It was a movement within Judaism about Christ as Messiah.
Imran:So you had your Jewish believers who were really, at this time, trying to make a case via Torah and the law to other Jewish believers, which is like what the book of Matthew really does Right and it's like, hey, your Messiah has come and it's Christ, Christ is the answer to the question that was promised all the way back when and where Right and if.
Speaker 4:I'm unbelieving. Like I don't accept Christ as Messiah you do, I would still view you as Jewish.
Imran:Yeah, you're still in the family. You're a Jew, you just accept.
Speaker 4:Christ as a Messiah. I don't right.
Imran:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So that's where that argument's being made. But now what happens when you start bringing in a bunch of Gentiles? So you have a bunch of Gentiles who are saying we're coming into this family, they're part of us too.
Imran:Yeah, but they have no context, they're not circumcised, no history.
Speaker 4:They don't know the law, they don't look Jewish, they don't act Jewish.
Imran:There's nothing about them, there's nothing about their language.
Speaker 4:But now you're saying they're Jewish, yeah. And now you're saying that they get to receive the same exemption as the Jews, mmm, right. So now you see what I'm saying. That's what you're saying, yeah. So you start seeing how this becomes a very delicate thing. So this massive influx of Gentile believers starts creating this huge tension between Jesus' followers and the Jews over this relationship with Christ. Because before it was just like okay, you believe he's Messiah, I don't believe he was Messiah. There have been many people before and after who had claimed to be Messiah. There's always debates about is this person Messiah or not? That wasn't new. But now this belief in Christ as Messiah has now bled into bringing in Gentiles and creating a pretty substantial political problem for the Jewish authority. That could translate into a very serious, like bloody problem. Right yeah.
Speaker 4:So they're walking that. And then the other group you have is just like, essentially people like them, you have the Gentile believers themselves. Okay, so they're stepping away from the Roman occult, right, they're stepping away from that paganism, the worshiping God and God alone in Christ, which is really upset their social circles and their culture, right, because now they have to pick up the slack, so you're not liked by them. Yeah.
Speaker 4:They're like you're going to make the gods mad. I have to do more to make up for your worship. That's no longer being offered Right. So now they're not being liked by their own social circles. This is the Gentile believers.
Imran:Yeah, and so they're trying to come into the Jewish social circles as well to get the knowledge that they don't have, but they're not accepted.
Speaker 4:And they're not accepted there either, because they're not kosher. What a nightmare. Yeah, they're not kosher, they're not part of the law.
Imran:What a nightmare to be filled with the spirit and wanting to know more about your relationship with God and to be ostracized by your old family and your new Right. What a nightmare.
Speaker 4:And so you got all the Romans. Now, legitimately not I don't want to say it's legitimate in the sense that they were, but they were like they were sincerely Is a better word I was they were sincerely concerned for their own safety, Like they thought there's mass influx of people leaving. Right, we are in danger. We are in danger. The gods are going to be mad. They're going to get retribution if we don't stop this. Right, Because all these people are leaving and they're going into the Jewish synagogues claiming the same exemption. So now the religious authority. They're like whoa, whoa, whoa. This is already sensitive. Now a bunch of Gentiles are coming in. They're not kosher, they don't know the law, they don't know nothing about them as Jewish yeah.
Speaker 4:Now you're claiming Jewish exemption. Yeah, now that's really going to start making the government mad. It's making the other Roman pagans mad.
Imran:Yeah, right so we don't like you, you're not a part of us, right? So you have that man. That sucks. What a nightmare.
Speaker 4:You could and right, because to them they're like.
Imran:I want to even like, bring that into today, like I think of people that are. We just had the Joshua Springs convention that they did, or crusade that they did.
Selena:Shout out to my shout out.
Imran:Thank you, sorry. Shout them out and crusade that they just did. And one of the people that came forward was homeless and and she was like I want to be saved, I don't know where I'm going to sleep tonight, I don't know where I'm going to be tomorrow, but right now I want to dedicate my life to Christ and that's what I want to focus on. And it's like and then you have people that you know, one of the pastors that spoke, she said she was a former prostitute and then she had this huge kind of decade long process where she kind of converted back to her faith and was able to kind of get renewed in it.
Imran:But it's like what if, because of this person's homelessness, they were ostracized from the family, which some people are? The Christians do that to people. They're like oh, you know, you smell whatever. And it's like or I don't want to be associated with you because you're a prostitute or you're, you've got these, you're, you're addicted to drugs or something like that, and now you're awesome, they want to know more, they want to come in, but because of you, because of your own preconceived stuff, you don't want to bring them in.
Speaker 4:But back to the point of unity right. Yeah. So okay, and I don't think people really do that. What they do, though, is they kind of keep them at a distance. Yeah and say hey, you're part of us, but you're not that much of a part.
Imran:You're not coming to my house and we do that to some family right now. Exactly that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4:And so, just if I can maybe just do a wrap up of the problem right before we kind of come in with the, so Gentiles are now stepping away from the Roman occult Okay Um, and worshiping the gods, and so that has made the um, the Roman pagans, right, scared to death. Um, but they do not carry the signature of the Jewish people, right, they're not circumcised. No kosher, no law, nothing of that Right, no Torah. So the Roman pagans are filling upset, they're filling threatened Um, they feel like they're in physical danger.
Speaker 4:Roman authority doesn't understand why Greeks who look Greek um, act Greek, are now claiming Jewish exemption and expecting Jewish authority now to explain it, especially because it's through the um, the access point is through um Jesus of Nazareth, who they don't even accept as Messiah at this point. Yeah, right, so then you have that going on. So now the Jewish authority already at tension with the Jewish um disciples of Christ, all right, they're already arguing about this, they're already at tension. So now um, the, you know, the Jewish who are already at tension with them and at tension with Rome, are now concerned about how delicate it is. How do we manage that? The Jewish believers are trying to manage this themselves. They're saying, okay, well, that's not like outside of the box for God to do, but, man, that's really upsetting this situation, which is upsetting that relationship, right.
Speaker 4:It's starting to upend this entire arrangement. Yeah, um, it's, it's, it's about to get pushed over the edge, right, um?
Speaker 4:the Jewish believers, now, then, are essentially having to give answers to the Jewish authority and why their own people are gentiles, are being brought in, yeah Right, and you need, and essentially, with all that said, what is the compromise? What, what? Where do people start landing on this? Um, they start saying, okay, hey, if Roman authorities need to see proof that they belong to us to get Jewish exemption, if you um Jewish authority need to see some sort of sign or prove that they are being brought into the family and they're willing to Um, and if we need to prove to the larger Roman culture that you're serious about this and you're not just abusing an exemption that's not really popular here we go. Go get circumcised, because that's a very extreme measure. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 4:Nobody looks at that and says, hey, um no, no man.
Selena:Okay.
Speaker 4:Um so no man would go willingly do that, especially as a grown adult. Yeah, it's really dangerous, unless it was still dangerous now.
Imran:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But just beyond that, I mean just the psychology of right.
Imran:Exactly.
Speaker 4:Um, no man would willingly do that unless it was for something very real. Yeah, right, yeah. So to them they're saying, hey, go, go get circumcised, that that will ease tension. Um, jewish authority will will be happier, they'll be going to be able to justify it. Now to Roman authority, the, the Roman culture, who already doesn't like this. But they're saying like, yeah, but dude, you see what they did, right, yeah, it's, this is real. To them, it's going to ease everything. But for you not to do that creates this entire firestorm and starts up ending this arrangement and it's kind of bad for everybody, right? So go get snipped, snipped, right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it can almost seem like a very oh yeah, that's the solution. That's a rational and this was being pushed by many in the church of Jerusalem Right. And then here comes Paul and says no absolutely not.
Speaker 4:Um, my, my, my battle line is is here Um, do not get circumcised, Do not surrender yourselves to get circumcised to that. And and we're going to start playing through it, Cause I always just think about, think about the cause they were. There were some who were already getting circumcised because Paul plants this church. A bunch of people come in behind them. They're called the Judaizers, yeah, or we sometimes refer to as the gospel of circumcision coming in behind them and saying hey, paul's wrong, um, you need to get circumcised.
Speaker 4:So some of them are circumcising, circumcised Right. Could you imagine like recovering from that procedure and then receiving this letter from Paul like, hey, don't do it, it's not needed. In fact, it's awful Right.
Selena:And then they're like oh what? The you know, yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 4:Uh, but um, so it creates this whole other tension that you see in the letter. Um, but that's essentially the problem, Right? Did I frame that? Fine, Like you guys kind of understanding the delicacies, right? So here's this compromise for a solution, and Paul comes in and he's like no, you are not doing that you guys need to stand firm in your freedom and who you are.
Speaker 4:And essentially he's trying to affirm the Jew or the uh, the Gentile believers and who they are and their identity in Christ. And they pretty much saying you belong in this family, and you belong in this family by the mark of the spirit, by the mark of your baptism, not by the mark of your circumcision. And if you they're like, and he will, we'll, we'll break it down as we get to it Right. So he lays out this entire argument. So the first bit of it, first couple of chapters, is really he kind of has this treatise against the Jewish church in Jerusalem.
Imran:What do you call it? You said treatise. Yeah, what's that? I never heard that before in my life.
Speaker 4:It's essentially like a an argument against okay like you, he pretty much lays out, let me tell you, while, because they're coming in to try to discredit him, like you kind of deduce a lot of this from the letter and we'll talk, you know, talk it with it in good time but essentially saying they're saying that I'm wrong. Well, let me tell you. Here's a history. I went to Jerusalem. I brought a Greek, uncircuitized Greek, believer with me, and this wasn't even a problem. Then I told them what my gospel was. They affirmed it. I spent all this time in arabia, all right. So he lays out his case of essentially why he can be trusted um, by that he, um how he was affirmed, and all this by that same church that is now saying you should get circumcised, right, and pretty much is starts talking about how well we'll get doing to do that. I don't, I don't want to because I could.
Imran:I could start going nuts on it, yeah but it's gonna be a good study.
Speaker 4:Um, I would say there's some shocking things in it. Um, the first two chapters is him defending himself as being essentially a people pleaser, which we'll talk about.
Imran:Um, and then or defend, defending himself against the accusation that he is a people.
Speaker 4:The first two chapters is really him defending himself, um, in an argument against that church. And then went in chapter three kind of starts all right now to you, gentiles in Galatia, and he kind of shifts focus right and then starts going after them, but ultimately though the climax, I think, kind of happens at the ladder in the chapter four and what we'll get to it. And again, good due time. But he essentially asked them to do something that would make many people feel uncomfortable Doing in church now as you say um, and so, yeah, it'll be good.
Speaker 4:Um, if I could just give you one last summary, sure, um, what to expect? Because it's all about unity, right, this whole thing, unity, freedom, who belongs to the family?
Imran:Okay, Yep freedom in christ, not freedom to do whatever you want, right.
Speaker 4:Freedom in christ. Um, you belong to this family and you need to be united as one church. Okay, yep, in that family, a united family. Um, so what he's gonna attack? Um, few things he's going to attack how you remove the source of division that keeps us off mission. The church is on mission. There's all these little sources that cause division in church and he says remove that source of fight, combat against it. In this particular case, it's circumcision.
Speaker 4:Yep saying this is a source that is going to create division. It's gonna create two different churches. There's not going to be a Gentile church and a Jewish church. There needs to be one church, yeah, so remove the source of any division that may exist that keeps the church off mission. The second Attack device of doctrine that profanes the blood of christ that's another big thing that he'll get into, that not only is circumcision not necessary, but it actually profanes the blood of christ. This is offensive.
Speaker 4:It's offensive to ask them to do that. Um. The third Um resist any position that would restrict ours or others freedom in christ. Um, you are free, go live free and don't you dare come in and try to put things on people that would restrict their freedom in christ. Yeah, um. And then, lastly, we need to anchor. Ultimately, on.
Imran:I think that we should have a whole episode then that defines freedom in christ, because there's almost an oxymoron. Yeah, if you're to the uninitiated that don't understand that. It's just like saying freedom in marriage would sound to the someone who's not married would sound like an oxymoron, but it's actually well.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a big thing. Good, we'll take it in stride though. Okay, you got it. We've got to take it in stride. Yeah, of course, but the last thing would be anchoring what brought and binds us all together in faith. Um, because, ultimately, it wasn't circumcision that saved anybody, it was christ who saved us. Yeah. Even he's making his argument to the jewish believers. He's saying were you saved because you were circumcised or were you saved because it's?
Imran:the same thing, like baptism today. It's like are you saved because you're baptized? And it's like, no, no, no, no Baptizes that outward expression of an inward process, just like circumcision, wasn't that's?
Speaker 4:why paul also talks about the circumcision with the heart. It's not about the outward circumcision, it's the inward circumcision, right? Yeah, so that's what we're. There's a lot that we could take. Of course, it's gonna be fun. Um, it's gonna be exciting. This is what I would also say, because I found this in the study. Um, you have, you have to take paul's argument Holistically yeah we're doing this piecemeal right.
Speaker 4:We can't do all of the book of galatians in one sitting, so there's gonna be certain sets that we hit that stand alone, without the context of everything else that we've already had or everything that he hasn't yet finished his argument on may seem a little like Well, that seems a little extreme. Or different, like well, if you're only taking that one set, you're right, you gotta take that set and what's talked about within the cohesive whole right kind of expects a point.
Speaker 4:Remember his argument and let him finish his argument before you start making judgments.
Imran:Yeah, this is kind of the arcs back to my point in the beginning, where it's like be be Be cautious of pastors that pull out one or two sentences out of a in this case, an entire letter to a church Um 2000 years ago, and then trying to say that this is what he meant. It's like then, I know you're extrapolating what you want out of these two isolated statements. You know, and you can do that with it. It's like I get pulled two sentences out of a book by by jk Rowland, one of the harry potter books, and extrapolate something completely different than the intent behind the, the story she wrote. So, um, just make sure you're taking that into consideration as part of your faith journey as well.
Speaker 4:So I hope you you'll join us next week. Um, I would say, have your bibles with you, because, if you can, um, because we were, the study is gonna be a little weird. Some weeks, like next week, we're probably gonna hit the first two chapters all in one sitting, but then, like, there's gonna be weeks where we're in one chapter for like three or four weeks, right, so you got to take it in the stride. Um, a lot of the context that that we're able to cover will make a lot of sense in those first two chapters. So as you read through it, you're like, oh, I got what exactly what he's talking about now?
Speaker 4:Yeah other ones require a little bit more, but new ones, we'll do this as we go. That's why it's a study.
Selena:So I'm excited. I really appreciated the introduction. Yeah laid out a lot of Like, yeah, I think I missed the intro week when you when you started it yeah we were somewhere, but um, but that helps, that helps on.
Imran:I love it. I love it's back into the spirit of exactly why I asked you If we could start doing this podcast. So I truly appreciate you, ryan, um for one, being willing to be as studious as you are with the, with the faith, because that's awesome. Most people do not make it to that level of Um uh, context that you have and in their faith they go, will go our entire. I would go my entire life without fully understanding, um, what I signed up for and I think I would fully understand it Infinite God and all that, all that stuff. But like the amount of depth that I've gotten in my faith in the last year and a half with your help has been incredible.
Selena:Yeah, like I didn't even see church as family until, like our last duty station when we were in camp Pendleton.
Imran:Yeah, and we started meeting in the small groups and they became and they were so so calling all the time in our, and they still meet with you.
Selena:Yeah, they still get calls.
Imran:Yeah, you know. So, um, I hope that you truly appreciate this episode of real bible stories and I hope you're happy and excited that we're back on on in the mission of like, specifically, I guess, what our podcast is trying to get after Um, but all in all, we we worship an infinite god. We worship a god that you can ever completely know not in this lifetime and so I hope that you're enjoying Um as we try and learn more about him and learn more about what was going on in that time when, uh, when the bible was written, so you can become a better christ follower today. All right, so with that, I'll see you all next week on the next episode of real bible stories.
Selena:Thank you for tuning in to real bible stories. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review, share and subscribe to be notified each week when we upload new episodes. Real bible stories is produced in partnership with palm church in 29 palms, california. If you would like more information or want to check out archive sermons and bible studies, please check out the church website at palmsbaptistchurchcom, or check them out on facebook, instagram or youtube. Real bible stories can be found wherever podcasts are found. Thank you again and we will see you next week.