"I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?" Galatians 3:2
Join us with our teacher Pastor Ryan Brown, as we continue to unravel the foundations of our faith with the third chapter of Galatians. As we explore the question Paul posits in chapter 3 verse 2, we'll look at the implications of Paul's teachings on grace, faith, and obedience, and how these can help us understand that God's promise does not depend on our efforts, but on our trust in Him.
Don't miss our thought-provoking discussions on the depth of sin, sanctification, and the function of traditions like baptism. We'll be analyzing the frightening implications of placing our trust in ourselves rather than in God and the anxiety and worry that inevitably comes from such misplaced trust.
Finally, we invite you to be part of the conversation as we share insights and wisdom about the faith journey and the importance of discipleship. So, grab a seat, grab your Bible and note taking gear, and tune in.
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
"I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?" Galatians 3:2
Join us with our teacher Pastor Ryan Brown, as we continue to unravel the foundations of our faith with the third chapter of Galatians. As we explore the question Paul posits in chapter 3 verse 2, we'll look at the implications of Paul's teachings on grace, faith, and obedience, and how these can help us understand that God's promise does not depend on our efforts, but on our trust in Him.
Don't miss our thought-provoking discussions on the depth of sin, sanctification, and the function of traditions like baptism. We'll be analyzing the frightening implications of placing our trust in ourselves rather than in God and the anxiety and worry that inevitably comes from such misplaced trust.
Finally, we invite you to be part of the conversation as we share insights and wisdom about the faith journey and the importance of discipleship. So, grab a seat, grab your Bible and note taking gear, and tune in.
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
You're bringing awfully quiet.
Imran:I'm just here to worship God. 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 live. Hello and welcome to Real Bible Stories. I'm your host, emron Ward. We're joined by Pastor Ryan Brown what's going on? Everyone and my wife, selena Cruz.
Selena:Hello man, we're really switching it up today. You ruined everything. No, I'm all jacked up.
Imran:You threw me off man, I just went left to right this time.
Ryan:That's probably what it is. You do know you always go left to right. I'm sitting on the left, not on the right, today.
Selena:Re-avange the whole office again.
Imran:Yeah, it is like that. Yeah, selena went on a whole rampage and rearranged the whole house. At nine hours I came home and I was like what is this? It's a different home, but it looks good. Good job, honey.
Imran:So if you're not tracking, this is episode three in our Galatians series. So I highly recommend, before we even get into it, that you go back, start with the intro to Galatians episode two episodes ago, enjoy that deep dive into the kind of some of the history of Galatia, history of Paul, and then last episode. We did chapters one and two and now we're about to slow it down dramatically with chapter three. I think we're just doing like 14 verses tonight. But before we even dive into it, little admin notes.
Imran:We do have our social media page. All of our social notes and pages are down in the description. We've got a Facebook page that you can go to. We also got a square site that we sometimes put t-shirts and stuff up on, so you can jump on that page and see the kind of like designs that we've got out there. And then also something that kind of came up was this Tik Tok account that referenced our podcast, which, for those of you that are here because of that? Real Bible stories. Tik Tok account. Welcome. Happy to see you, happy to have you here and joining us, but we are not that account.
Ryan:Yeah, we're nothing to do.
Imran:We're not associated with them in any way. They just have the same name as our podcast and then we somehow kind of got linked with their stuff on Facebook. But if that's the way the Holy Spirit pointed you to us so you could get a deep dive Bible study about his word, then thank you for joining us on this episode and I hope you enjoy. So with that, I think that's all the admin stuff. Am I missing anything? I mean, they can't see you shake your head, honey.
Selena:No, I was thinking, I think that's it All right.
Imran:good to go. All right, ryan. So now we're going into chapter three of Galatians.
Ryan:We are. So just very quick review. Chapters one and two was really Paul's argument against the Jerusalem church, right? So he kind of answers some of the criticisms against him personally that he's a people pleaser right, that he is. Just, he doesn't care about Torah and he's thrown it away and he's being a bad Jew. And he starts really going after the inconsistency of the Jewish leadership in the church, mainly in the fact that for the longest time they were all united in mission, they were united in message, they were united in love, they were united in all these things. He was affirmed and everything he was preaching and everything he was doing. Then, all of a sudden, when pressure kind of comes on from Roman authorities and Jewish, you know, non believing Jewish.
Imran:Jewish exception right Right.
Ryan:That when pressure started kind of getting applied and there's this massive influx of Gentiles coming in, that pressure starts getting put on, now everything starts shifting a bit. So he really goes after.
Imran:you know some of the Giants James, peter, right Mentioned by name you know, and with his Hebrew name and his, you said his Greek name, right. Yeah, he uses this and Peter, which is both the names of Peter.
Ryan:Right, I just talked about to the youth on this today. You see something similar in the story of John Mark in. Acts. You know it's kind of more developed.
Imran:But which is the book of Mark right. John Mark is the book of Mark right.
Ryan:The Gospel, Mark gospel and Acts. Particularly when John Mark is introduced in chapter 12 of the book of Acts it says in there was Barnabas's cousin, John, who was also called Mark. So that's showing a Hebrew and a Greek name and there's a couple of reasons, right.
Imran:So it's not a first and last. It's literally the first and first. We want to know, right.
Ryan:Just like Cephas and Peter right. So, the emphasis when you see that you know and it's really relevant in Acts is that you know you know, Hebrew thought we talk about this a lot. Right, the names that it's. It's not just, it's quantitative, it's idealistic, it is almost prophetic in a sense. So, I think I know you guys haven't you guys know what your name means?
Imran:Mine, no, I used to Do. You know what your name means.
Selena:Something with the moon, but I was named after a singer that passed away. Yeah, selena the.
Imran:Selena Quintanilla. Really yeah every girl you meet, named Selena.
Ryan:that was born after like what, 1994 or 1995, until like 1998, like they're all named for Selena Quintanilla, well, so mine, like my middle name means crown and my first name means little king, so like my name literally means the crown little king. Now tell us, that's just like we use names.
Imran:I should definitely learn what my name is a Hebrew name.
Ryan:Well, so my point being with it, though, is that to us it's just an identifier, right? Oh, that name sounds pretty, or?
Selena:you know, whatever.
Imran:Or airbase.
Ryan:sorry, but but Hebrew thought, though what was? Like I'm naming you this because this is my desire for you. It was meant to kind of push mission right. So when you have, when he uses a Hebrew name and a Greek name, the idea is kind of there that, like your name is being called up as both with a Hebrew and a Greek Means that you have a mission to the Jews and you have a mission to Gentiles.
Ryan:So when he starts, you see that with John Mark a lot, because one of the things that John Mark does is he leaves Paul and Barnabas, who's also referenced in Galatians yeah, one and two, this is his cousin but he leaves Paul and Barnabas when they go into Southern Galatia to plant these churches, and a lot of the reason we have to do that it's on its own week, but my view of that is that he probably belonged to the same circumcision group. He was a. They were Levitical Jews that they were really much in their Jewish identity they were responsible for, you know, maintaining that, the holy things of God, you know the temple and the synagogues and things like that. So going to the Gentiles, to Mark, was very radical to him and the fact that it points out his Greek names like hey, you have a Greek name, meaning you have a mission to the Greek people ie the.
Ryan:Gentiles and you're rejecting that part of your mission. And you see the same Paul do kind of the same thing with Peter in chapters one and two right, yeah. He calls Peter his Greek name, but also he's like so Peter, who was the first one to go to the Gentiles? Remember that, Peter. Now you're breaking fellowship with Gentiles unless they get circumcised, which means you are now rejecting your mission to the name that you were given. Yeah, peter, so anyways that's pretty awesome. That's like this whole thing with it.
Imran:I want to note that, like I hope that those listening are that are like oh my gosh, what is he talking about? It's because he needs to listen to the first two episodes. Yeah, Just make sure you jump back.
Ryan:This is not a study you can just jump in the middle of and understand it all. You, really it is very much built on top of each other, because, you know, I was just talking to Pastor David about this yesterday. They were on their cruise and they just got back and you know I was asking them, you know how it went and all that. He's like oh, I just I read Romans and I did it without any external influence, right, no commentaries. I had access to nothing because you're on a boat, right?
Imran:Yeah.
Ryan:So he was like it was just me in the Bible and he's like I fell in love with Romans and he's like but you know, everybody likes to rip Romans apart like one piece at a time, because Romans like Galatians is very dense it's more dense. I would actually even say and it's towards the end of Paul's ministry, so there's even more.
Imran:He's fully fleshed out, right? This is his first letter.
Ryan:This is probably like, with the exception of like the letters to Timothy, you probably you know when, his last, and so it's very dense, but he's like. But if you just kind of bring it out a bit, you, you, people, people look at it through such a microscope sometimes that they forget and miss the macro argument that Paul's making in Romans and that's actually what I have posited with this study in Galatians is that you can't lose sight of the larger argument that he's making right and that's ideally. Who belongs to the family of Abraham? Who receives the promise, inheritance or Gentiles a part of that? And if they are a part of that, what do?
Imran:they need to get necessary to receive that inheritance right.
Ryan:Which kind of leads into another point about tonight, which is much of what we're going to talk about. May seem like we're talking about elements of salvation, like what it means to be saved. That's not Paul's perspective or argument. His argument is who receives the inheritance? Right? So it's more about, or it's less about, who who can be saved, and it's more about how do you manage the inheritance that is given. So we'll get into it in due time. But really, what I just want to kind of open with, because, again, what's really surrounding this entire text is there's this, there's this thing, there's this doctrinal, theological thing that is starting to divide the church and in this particular case, it's the idea of circumcision.
Imran:Yeah, so he's going to start making some based on needing to prove to the Roman occult that these guys are claiming to do the exception To relieve pressures of persecution.
Ryan:Yeah, these guys are claiming to Jewish exemption.
Imran:Well, they've proven that. You know they're. They're actually trying to worship our God because they went through circumcision, right. So yeah.
Ryan:So Paul is going to be making a theological, doctrinal argument around circumcision, but I just want to kind of like pause because our arguments nowadays there is so somewhat of an argument about circumcision but it's not like a forefront thing. But we have plenty of things like it, and I don't even mean just corporately as a church, I'm like a universal church but I mean like individually. We all have things that we hold that are like this Right. Let's give you a few examples. These are things that over the years that I have seen people leave our church for. Okay, we had a guy leave one time because he we didn't preach from the King James Version Bible.
Imran:Really. One of the most inaccurate versions of the Bible academically proven inaccurate versions. Yeah, the word unicorns in there a couple times.
Ryan:There's this entire, I guess, culture, though you know from conservatively from a generation ago, where they believe that that was the only proper view.
Selena:Mormons hold the same.
Ryan:Mormons. If you're ever wanting to minister to a Mormon, you need to read from the King James, Because if you're reading from any other translation, they they're not going to accept that as truth.
Imran:But that like. What is the logic there?
Ryan:You think that's crazy because that's not your thing. But I promise you I mean you have your thing too, because I have my thing. Selena has her thing, right. We always look at other people's things, like, oh, you're just so lost, but then, when it comes to our thing, we get offended, right. So let me just go down this list, okay, because there's a few of these things, that this is what I would call the things that divide us.
Ryan:I also like to call it the the hills we die on, because the truth is that I would die on we all have a thing where we plant our theological doctrinal flag. We say right here this is where I'm taking my stand. For some people it's things like young Earth, creationism, Some people it's evolution, Some people it's some of the people who use the Church over worship music.
Ryan:Yep, that's another one we've had people leave because we don't do enough hymns or because we do contemporary songs. We've also had people leave because we do hymns and it's not all contemporary songs. I've seen people leave over theological camps.
Imran:It's like infant baptism or something like that.
Ryan:We're not a hyper Calvinist church. You could even argue we're not a Calvinist church at all, but we certainly have Calvinists that are in our family, but because we're not pushing Calvinism hard as a construct.
Imran:What does that mean? To push Calvinism hard? What would that even look like? What would I recognize if that's happening if I walk into a church?
Ryan:You would have to be kind of versed in the Like the, the construct of Calvinism. There's like an acronym they use. It's called a tool, it and stands for, you know, total depravity, limited atonement, irresistible grace, preservation of the saints, you know, etc. Like there's this whole.
Imran:It is simple file the works of John Calvin into well an act.
Ryan:Calvinism has always been around and it's it's not like it's new. I think Part of what I feel like has been happening within that camp is there's been this new zeal behind it to where it's almost so overbearing that it seems cult like in a sense, where it's like Like you just replaced Christ with John Calvin and that's like who the primary teacher is now, and you're like and if you're somebody, are they teaching from the Bible or the teaching from, like the books?
Ryan:They're teaching from the Bible, but they're viewing the Bible through the lens of this camp right, but we've had people leave before because we're not hyper Calvinist enough. We've had people leave before because when an individual who was teaching a Bible study was Calvinist brought up some Calvin istic tenants and they're they didn't leave the church. I'm sorry, I don't want to misquote that this person misrepresent them. They didn't leave the church, they left the Bible study, though Interesting. We've had people who have left because weren't they were essentially not Very ironically, with kind of the context where we're getting into with the Galatians, but we weren't Jewish enough, in a way like they're the ones that hey if you're a Christian, you and you've brought them to the faith you know you should start observing Torah and.
Ryan:The high holidays and eating kosher and things like that. We've had other people, because we celebrate Passover as a church, you know, think that we're being legalistic, right. So there's this whole. Everybody has their thing, right. Some of it it's a little bit more cultural. You know, if you were a church kid in the 90s, there were certain things that you were and were not allowed to to watch.
Imran:And it doesn't, so I never tell you. I think I told you about. So my parents were like you can't watch Pokemon because you know pocket monsters, you know that's demonic and and and that was. You know they heard that at church. You know you can't watch that and my cousins and can Think it's nevis, where my family's from. They couldn't watch dragon tales like the PBS show, because dragons are mythical beasts and stuff like that, Let alone Arthur and an epomorphic bear. But we're not gonna talk about that.
Imran:But um, but I was an eater and yeah, and we're not an art bark, I think oh, maybe it wasn't our. Yeah, yeah, arthur the art bark, yeah, yeah but um, but I was able to watch you, gio, and for those that know you, gio, and like shaman king, far more Demonic, far more crazy, down the rabbit hole. But my parents are like, well, they, it was Pokemon's what they, what the pastor said, so you can't watch Pokemon.
Selena:Well, it's like. So you haven't done any of your own research.
Ryan:You haven't done any of the work to actually understand this. Don't watch, you know. Watch or read Harry Potter or the Hobbit.
Imran:Oh my god, so the rings is fine, because you know they are token. As a Christian, oh my god, you have the same magic and the same general constant. You know why I was able to read Harry Potter was because of the accelerated reader program in my school and because Harry Potter books were like the Most points in the library. They were the biggest books in our elementary school library.
Selena:You don't watch it, though.
Imran:Yeah, because I had already read it. It was like it was an easy argument for my six year, my sixth grade brain to be like come on, mom like read the books. Yeah, you, let me read the books for the points you can't like, bring in Jesus now, but the point is everybody has something right Theologically.
Ryan:How about this? We'll get the things that split denominations. I think I said it in the first week, but really denomination is just the church's up term for division.
Imran:Yeah, mode of baptism God's when can you get baptized?
Ryan:How should you be baptized? There's things called open and closed communion, who can and cannot participate in the Lord's Supper? And we do take it, you know who's brought into that like there are many things and we all have those things right, we all have things that we think that this is an absolute.
Ryan:If you don't do it, I'm leaving right, and it seems that you leave the church for and not leave the church in the sense of, like, I leave the faith, I'm just never going back to church, but you leave a specific church. Do you all want to know? Go to it. Do you want to know what?
Imran:Ryan's thing is, because I know what Ryan's thing is my thing.
Imran:Smoke machines. Oh, we got a smoke machine. He has told me in the last two years that I've known this man. He has told me at least Five or six times because I do, you know, I do sound and lights and like I brought up, like we should get a, we should, we should get a smoke machine and he's like I will leave the church. Yeah, I will never show up again like he has told me this multiple times with all the conviction in his heart that I Will stop going to bombs.
Ryan:Some of that was hyperbole. I want to make clear of the sense. I just wanted him what you know my disdain for it.
Imran:I don't know. He raised his fist at me. It was really aggressive he was. He was yelling and shaking violently. It was kind of crazy, yeah, but everything has their thing right and and that.
Ryan:And here's the thing, and we learned this from last week is Peter. And when the thing Paul calls him out and he says I, you know, call Peter out to his face Because he stood condemned, he stood guilty, what was Peter doing is that when the Judaizers, right, the people from the circumcision group, the people from James, showed up preaching a gospel of circumcision, peter then began retreating away From the fellowship table of the Gentiles in other words.
Ryan:What he was saying is that this thing was enough for you to say I'm gonna break fellowship with this group and only maintain fellowship with this group. So it's talking about this division that's occurring and and to Paul is like there's not gonna be. There should not be multiple families. There's only one family, one family of God.
Selena:There's only one.
Ryan:So if you can't have a Jewish believing family and a Gentile believing family to Paul, that that was complete heresy. So the thing that you have left churches over for whatever reason, to go to a different church, what you're essentially saying is this it's beyond just preference, right, it's. It's things that are like. This issue was enough for me to say I'm going to break fellowship with this group of believers To go find, you know, a different fellowship group who thinks the way I do or who worships the way I do right, whatever yeah maybe, and you know it's so easy to do, particularly in the West, because there's so many options, right, yeah, so, but this, that whole idea, was very offensive to Paul.
Imran:I want to just kind of clarify and this kind of thought just popped my head there there's a difference between a Denomination and a church that is teaching like a false gospel, and so what should be a line where we're like Nope, I'm not standing. This church like do you know, do you know off the top of your head of like something that you've heard in a church that it's like if you were there, you're like this is not what the Bible says at all and you have to like run away from it.
Ryan:I Mean, I think there's a lot of churches out there. You know there was a church you know I went to in Colorado and you know it was very, I guess, shallow. You know it was milk, in the sense that it would take first or two, and then you would ramble on for about 30 minutes of just thoughts surrounding this. One or two verses With no context, with no you know, I mean like just you know you, so I feel good.
Ryan:But then what eventually happened like you can't let go much further below that right and what ended up happening is I Wouldn't. I just checked in on them, like you know how are they doing and you know what service like now they didn't even open a Bible and they're just talking conceptually. Hmm, yeah, it was just like. So you're not even Came a call this preaching.
Ryan:Right like you that this isn't even. This isn't even preaching anymore. You're not even opening a Bible and and reading from Bible, you're just talking about God, right, and so some of those things to me are red flags. There's some obvious ones where you know certain positions that people hold in terms of sex and marriage and you know things like that that you know. You start hearing that get preached from the pulpit. You're like, yeah well, usually, when they preach it though, they're not actually quoting any scripture, or they're they're quoting a certain scripture and twisting it without taking the holistic word into account.
Ryan:You know, and this is why it's important to be equipped in your Bible, right, because you need to test those people, and this is a promise, by the way. Paul warns it, and Timothy Christ warns of it says there's gonna be people who are going to come in who are gonna be smart enough, right, they're gonna be smart enough to almost seem like they know what they're talking about, because they know a lot of Bible. Right, so you need to be equipped and literate enough To be able to call them out on their crap, right. Like what's be very clear, satan is very biblically literate.
Ryan:Yeah very biblically literate. We know a lot of some of the interactions Christ has with some of the demons. They quote scripture. Satan quotes scripture to Christ when he's tempting them.
Ryan:You know, I mean like Saint, is very biblically literate, so anybody could be biblically literate and be able to Twist it to be to match whatever personal agenda you have, right? Yeah, and the thing is that when you, when you start separating yourselves from you know a church over this thing, right, in this case, with circumcision, what you're essentially saying is that this position that I hold is worth more Than a relationship with you people, right, so I come, which?
Imran:I would argue, is probably fundamentally correct. If, if your, if your reason for leaving this group of people is because whatever they are doing is damaging your relationship with God, based off of yeah your own, study your own, like that that well, okay, let's be clear.
Ryan:We're talking about non-essential things. We are talking about things.
Imran:Well, well, my question was like what is that? What are those essential things that we should?
Ryan:push away that group of people. That's part of the fight that Paul's argument is is that this is when they are shaping what those essentials are Right To. Paul he and we get into it. He's going to make it very clear what is essential and what's not so, so that I think we'll get kind of defined as we start reading here.
Ryan:And so, if they're, if they're, I wanted to bring in an introduction To have people to start thinking about. What is something, maybe a position or something that they hold, that that may be a reason that you cut off fellowship with somebody or or a church as a whole because of this one position? Right, like music, the music types or Bible version. Right, like the things that we had brought up. If you go into a church and they're proclaiming that there are multiple ways to heaven and Christ is just one of a way, yes, cut it off right but, we're not talking about those things.
Imran:We're talking about Well we're about to define some of those things in chapter 3.
Ryan:We are so with that, I would actually. Selena, you want to work?
Imran:so we're gonna go because on this podcast we do open our Bible and we do read from it.
Ryan:We do Going through verse 1? Through what verse?
Imran:14 14 chapter 3 of Galatians, verse 1 through 14.
Selena:Yeah, and I'm today. I'm reading from the. English standard version.
Ryan:Click it off.
Imran:We lost all the Mormons.
Selena:It's unfortunate oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Then we ask you only this did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain? If indeed it was in vain, does he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
Selena:Faith, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Selena:Now, then, that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham, and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the gentiles by faith, preaches the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying in you shall all the nations be blessed. So, then, those who are of faith are blessed among with Abraham. The man of faith, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written. Curse it be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. Now, it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteousness shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written curse it is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that, in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of spirit through faith.
Imran:So a lot there, obviously, oh yeah there's like my third or fourth time reading it, because I Read through Galatians. When you told us we were gonna go through Galatians and it was like, oh my gosh, this order understand.
Selena:Yeah, you even got a Bible. Yeah, so yeah, and I was in.
Imran:Georgia I bought any Bible so I could read on the airplane.
Ryan:This is like a pocketable size, that's nice, yeah, other bound, yeah, that's I brought my brother Bible as well.
Imran:So, yeah, and I was the same week that he reached out saying that he was gonna Try starting a Bible study group based off our power, our podcast with one of his friends. That's right.
Ryan:Yeah, that's cool Well so one thing with here so chapters one and two Paul goes after his. One of his frustrations, beyond just defending personal attacks against them and showing the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the church in Jerusalem, is now he begins to shift to the Galatian church themselves. Part of the thing that that was frustrating Paul Was that you have this new, young church, and young in terms of faith, who is needing real discipleship, and they're being caught in the middle of this theological doctrinal debate and, and he's like they don't need any of that. They need real discipleship. So he goes after the leadership in the way they've handled these churches right now.
Ryan:Now he shifts, though, because you could almost get from chapters one and two almost like this Poor Galatian church. They just can't catch a break. Everybody doesn't like him. And now, in order for them to be accepted and be brought into the cool kids club, they have to get circumcised and oops, right. So now he's gonna start shifting to them and and really, what's kind of powerful about it is that he says look, you may be young and you may, you may not know a lot. You may not know a lot of and this is true of many you know younger, immature believers in faith.
Imran:Not younger in age, younger and younger in faith and immature in faith.
Ryan:And I don't mean immature to be to sound like in a negative sense, I mean literally not yet mature.
Imran:Yeah, like if you were just saved within the year.
Ryan:You know what I mean Like you're not going to have this full biblical literacy and knowledge of Scripture, right? So just, you know people who are like that. He's gonna say look, it's one thing that you don't know, and he essentially says Gulation Church, you do not know enough yet to fight the argument against circumcision. You don't know. So you got me who came in who told you Gospel of grace. You have this group coming in from the church in Jerusalem giving you a gospel of circumcision. You guys don't know enough yet to be able to argue this one way or the other. Right, and he, almost, like, recognizes that. But what gets him, though and it doesn't matter how you know new and young in the faith you are his whole thing to them is that they know enough. They know enough to realize that this is not okay. Even the very little that they have is enough, right.
Ryan:So what he really does is he kind of asks a series of six questions. The first thing he says you foolish Galatians, right. So first, to start off like you fools Now, and this is just. I mean, there's probably a lot of his cultural too. But imagine bringing in a younger believer nowadays, when they kind of fall into a temptation or something like that, and it's just like oh, but they're young in faith, you got a disciple and be patient If you, instead of like you, fool. Yeah, he called it by the way is less like foolish is kind of like a softer term that the English uses.
Ryan:It's the Greek is actually stronger. In the sense it's more like saying you morons, you idiot.
Imran:Yeah, like you idiots. But it's kind of funny, though, from another perspective, because you mentioned last week when you were like Paul comes in, says this is the gospel, people are saved. And then Peter comes in later or John comes in later and they're like no, no, no, you got to get circumcised. And then they get circumcised and they get slated from Paul later and they're like oh man, I did. So, it's like and then, on top of the oh man, he's calling me an idiot for getting circumcised.
Imran:So you're there recovering and you get this letter and you're like oh no. Yeah Well it wasn't so it was an idiot. You got circumcised. It wasn't John or Peter coming in doing it.
Ryan:It was somebody else coming from the church, somebody, james. What happened was like Barnabas and Peter were starting to kind of they weren't being courageous and pushing back against this faltering to. You know that agenda, but so you foolish essentially you morons, you idiots, right.
Ryan:Who has bewitched you? And that that is why, when you start looking at people, even as they mature in faith, and they start making faith and our life and freedom in Christ about so many other things and it's not, it is a very valid question to come ask them who has bewitched you? Who has gotten you away from the grace to which brought you into the faith to begin with? Why have you now made this about something completely different than what actually brought you into the first place? To him, there's only one word.
Imran:It's like oh man say you've been deceived, you've been bewitched?
Ryan:Who has done this? Who has bewitched you to start thinking this way? Because I know that didn't come from me, right, it's essentially what Paul's saying. Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. So this is a very interesting statement. If you remember, at the end of last week he talks about that how he was crucified and resurrected with Christ so that he was able to, through the law, die to the law so he could live for God, right. So what does this mean then? That he is clearly portrayed as crucified?
Ryan:This is one of those instances, as we've talked over the last couple weeks, of Paul referring to himself in the state, his physical state and condition he was in when he came and brought the gospel to the Galatian church. So we were talking about how he was beaten, he was stoned, he was in prison. They were not in good physical condition here. What he's essentially talking about is because I have died and been resurrected with Christ. All the sufferings that I've had on behalf of Christ is just another portrayal of Christ crucified for your sake. So it's just kind of a roundabout saying you've seen the suffering that I brought to just to bring this gospel to you. You've seen Christ crucified. You've seen the cost of what it means to fall Jesus.
Ryan:Remember, the big fear was in the temptation for the Galatian, the Gentiles, at least in this church, was well, look, if we don't get circumcised, we're not going to be accepted into the synagogues, which means we're not going to be under the Jewish exemption, which means there is now legal justification for the local authorities to persecute us heavily. And what he is saying? You have already seen Christ crucified and portrayed before you. You saw it in me and Barnabas when we showed up to you, the sufferings that we went through to bring this gospel to you. Now that you've received it, you've accepted it. Now, when your time of possible trial comes to you, to maybe suffer similarly, you guys are trying to to back out right, you've seen him clearly crucified before you, and what the expectation is.
Imran:Which is interesting, that circumcision is the easy way out from, compared to whatever persecution they would have faced, which is a whole other thing to think about. But I guess Rome is also the nation that crucified sinners and not sinners crucified Christians and used them to light their parties.
Ryan:That was Nero and Ceci. This was probably about 15 years before then, but like a nation capable of such things Because they were probably already doing it to other people. They knew what crucifixion was.
Imran:Yeah, they already doing it to other people Exactly.
Ryan:This was no secret, right, and so the fear was very real. So I love this next piece here, Verse two. I would like to learn just one thing from you Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by believing in what you heard? There are a lot of people that need to hear that right now. Right, let me just ask you this one thing Did you receive the spirit by doing something, by certain works, or by simply living in the pistice of what you heard? Right, we were talking about pistice, the Greek for pistice, that faith but, like a faithfulness driving from a belief.
Ryan:Right, did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by believing in what you heard? Kind of plug in your thing there, right, like you know. If your thing is hymns, right, you should only, church should only do hymns Did you receive the spirit?
Ryan:by the hymns. Did you receive the spirit? Right One thing to ask you did you receive the spirit by listening to hymns or by believing what you heard? Yeah, did you receive the spirit when you had constructed a theology on predestination in election, or by believing in the grace, in the gospel of Christ? When did you receive the spirit? What was essential and necessary for you to receive the spirit?
Imran:Now, I think this is specifically says by believing what you heard and what he's talking about what he heard is the message that Paul gave to him. Yeah, so to say, when you, when you learn the gospel and you believed it the gospel that Paul presented right, A gospel of grace.
Imran:What I mean to bring it to today, like someone or through your own reading, brought you the gospel and you believed it. So if you're saying something other than that is what is birthing the faithfulness out of you, then that's a. That's something you need to continue, yeah.
Ryan:And so he talks about here in a second.
Ryan:Some of the fruits of the spirit, the works out, the miracles that were done among them. Right, they saw the effects of the spirit, right. But I think it's important that when we talk about particularly the spirit as it comes to us, it's not just what the spirit does, it's not just that the spirit is powerful, that the spirit convicts and that the spirit gives special gifts and enables you to produce. You know the fruit of the spirit that Paul talks about later in this letter. But remember Paul's larger argument who belongs to the family? Who receives the inheritance To him? It's what the spirit signifies.
Ryan:And if you receive the spirit by faith, and faith alone and not by doing any works of the law, then what that signifies is that you have received the inheritance of the promise given to Abraham, right? So the spirit not only is what it does, but what it signifies. And what it signifies is that you are now part of Abraham's family and you were brought into that family. You were receiving that inheritance before you did anything with the law, right? So does that make sense.
Imran:Yeah, that kind of brings up. I remember we talked about in the past that we may be surprised who we see in heaven because of like this point here. It's like one of the three men on the cross was saved by Jesus on the cross as he was dying and he's, like you will be with me in the kingdom. That guy didn't have a chance to do any sort of works. All he did was put his faith in Jesus right there as he was dying on the cross, and he didn't even get baptized.
Imran:Oh yeah, but it's like that applies even today. It's like there are people that have never had the opportunity to live out a life of faith, but they received Christ and truly believed the gospel presented to them, and that is what the requirement is.
Ryan:Well, I think one of the things just to think about with us too, is maybe scoping this to essentials not essentials, but let's just scope it to church fights, right? Why do we pour in so much time Like? Why do we commit a Sunday night to doing a podcast? Why do you put so many hours into serving the church? Why do we do that? Why are we there in the first place? Because we've received the Spirit, and that happened before we ever had an opinion on all these other things.
Ryan:We start seeing these little tips and fights in church. It's like look, was this an important thing to you? Was this necessary for you to be brought into the faith? Or did you come into the faith by the grace of God, excited, full of joy, full of peace, full of all that? Before you ever had an opinion on what color the carpet should be in this sanctuary? Right, and it's supposed to really anchor you on why you're here and what's important. Right, from the big things all the way down to the smaller things. So then he continues on as questioning right? Are you so foolish, right? Are you so stupid, right? Why are you getting circumcised? Are you that stupid? After beginning by the means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by the means of the flesh? So if you start with the Spirit, why are you now trying to end with the flesh?
Imran:Yeah, it's like trying to say oh no, I have to do these things to keep my salvation.
Ryan:Well, I, but this is how many Christians end right, there are many Christians who die by means of the flesh and, in terms of, they've developed this entire. You know all these dogmatics around their faith that they now think right, you see this all the time. You see, like everybody has probably stories like, if you're from a family of faith, stories of their grandparents, like almost enforcing certain rules. If you go to grandma's house, you know grandpa's not going to let you in the house with your shorts that short, yeah. Or you're exposing your shoulders in that dress. I remember my mother telling me about her grandfather, so my great grandfather. But she's like, yeah, like you know, we weren't allowed to play with dice or cards. If we went over to the house, yeah, right, there's these dogmatics that start getting built right Around, like if I gamble then that's the, that's the end.
Imran:All I remember growing up it's actually reversed, because at my church we actually don't dress really nice dress up to the nights to go to church, but my parents actually made us wear whatever new clothes we got. We had to wear it to church first to give thanks to God for, you know, our new clothes, and then we would, and then we could wear it whenever we wanted. So we would get like some new clothes and it didn't matter what it was. So I remember I got this like flame, like in like seventh, eighth grade, like when it was fun to have like just flames all over your clothes and go into church with like fire over my shirt. And no one really commented on it there. I'm sure somebody's. Once my mom was like what's up with the flame shirt, but but like every time we got a new piece of clothing we'd wear it to church first and thank God for like our new clothes, and then we could wear it whenever we wanted. But just, it just led to wearing a lot of weird stuff to church sometimes.
Ryan:Well, and some of that was awesome. I did that too. I tried to wear a hat to church one year, but one week my mom's like you can't do that. I'm like God doesn't care about what I wear on the outside, he cares about the heart I bring. She's like you're absolutely right, take the hat off, but no. So I would ask this you know when, when you came into faith and the joy that you felt, the peace that you felt the contentness that you felt, the security, that you felt all those things right, why did you feel it then? And do you feel that same now in your dogma? And I can say generally, you don't. It's. It's always when you're closest to grace that you feel that. And this is like the irony of it, right, which is like you know, and obviously we need God's grace every single day. I've yet, in my single journey of faith, have I ever had a day that I've lived perfectly, where I haven't had a thought, said something, reacted a certain way?
Imran:You know what I'm saying, like I was like in a comatose state post surgery or something for 24 hours and I think that's. I think that's how I'll get it.
Ryan:But even then, you're still probably have certain dreams that you're like when they hit you with that good stuff where you just go black and you're like, not a person. That's what I'm talking about.
Imran:Yeah, process, and then they like they bring me back after 24 hours and like congratulations, you live the perfect day, but what's?
Ryan:interesting is that you know, there's been times, though, where, like you come into faith and you're saving, you're on fire, and then it gets a little stale, and then you mess up because you got complacent, because, in a certain sense, you almost got bored, and then you have this big mess up, like a real big mess up, and then you almost having this question of, oh man, like I'm, like I am a Christian, I am, I am a disciple.
Imran:How did I end up?
Ryan:here. How do I hear like am I even saved Right? And you start having those crazy thoughts of Satan putting these lies into you. And that's when it kind of the spirit comes in over the top. It's like, yeah, you messed up. But you get to fall into God's grace and then you're like, oh man, god's grace is amazing Because you know a lot of times like my biggest sins were far ahead of me after I was saved. You know what I mean. Some of my biggest failures were ahead of me. So when you fall into that and you fall back into God's grace but it requires more grace than what I ever previously experienced what that then means is that it instills and I feel a greater sense of love being received, which instills in me a greater love for him.
Ryan:So it's like you feel, and what's born out of that is faithfulness. Right, and I guess my point is is that you feel more In line with the faith. The closer you are to grace, the further away from it.
Imran:So, when you start drifting away from grace, that doesn't mean go, since you can get grace. No, no, no, that's not what we're saying.
Ryan:That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is that people will start thinking, okay, I'm in grace, okay, let me. And I start kind of veering off and chasing the extras, right, and I want to make something clear. What we're not talking about is sanctification. To be very clear, jesus saves, the Spirit sanctifies, okay. The church does neither. The church does not save, the church does not sanctify. That is solely on God. Okay.
Ryan:What the command for the church was is to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey Right. So the role of the church is to teach people how to be faithful to the things that the Spirit leads them into, right? So, all right, like, because we all have our junk, right, and you start getting convicted by the Spirit. You need to fix that. Well, how do I obey the commands of the Spirit?
Ryan:The church is there to come in discipleship, in the sense teaching you how to be faithful and obedient to that right. So the church doesn't sanctify, the church doesn't save. So anytime that you're in a church where it starts having those dogmatics that these things are essential, right to be in our family, right, that's what we're talking about. But there's also a natural sanctification process where, like, okay, I need to, and for each individual that's different. You know one of, I believe it's Romans 13, 13 or 14. Okay, one of the biggest things for me when Paul writes there, I'm a very black or white person, right, in terms of like, particularly morality, right.
Imran:Because you're racist.
Ryan:There's things, oh my gosh we all need to go like Selena in between.
Imran:Oh, she's Mexican, not mixed, but it's all right, I know, I'm just saying, besides the point, you guys can't see Selena, so what I'm talking about makes absolutely no sense to them.
Ryan:I'm sorry he's blushing yeah no, what I'm saying, though, is that I always just thought that there were things that were right and that were wrong, and one of the things that Paul writes in Romans is he's like not only is salvation by faith, but so is sin. So, in other words there, are things that you believe to be wrong, which may not be wrong, but because you believe them to be wrong, to then do it out of, essentially, your belief, out of your faith in that Interesting.
Ryan:It is sin so for an example. So in other words, it's kind of relative and this was a hard thing for me to accept, right.
Imran:This is about the hard thing for me to comprehend. Well, let me just say I'm confused, I'm waiting for it. I'm confused, but I'm ready, to be like what.
Ryan:Some people think that a Christian should never drink. Some people think that it's okay in terms of temperance. All agree that you shouldn't get drunk right, but some think that you know you shouldn't have a drink at all right. Why even open the door to any sort of temptation going down a road of being Right? That's some people's view right Now. If you're somebody who thinks that you should never have a drink of alcohol period as a believer and you have a drink of alcohol, you're in sin Because you believe that to be true.
Ryan:Now, the true principle right may be more of temperance. Where it's like no, you can have a glass of wine or, you know, a beer or two.
Imran:It's like you put that additional fence and wall around yourself. And because you believe it to be true, because you know your own temptations and you know what you.
Ryan:I could feel that, so I was leading to a point with that, though, which was that, but because it's a little bit more relative right, which was a really hard thing for me to like, oh man, so things that I think are wrong may not actually be wrong, but because I think I'm wrong, I'm condemning myself when I do them right. Yeah, it's just this really Right. It's hard to kind of understand that, but my point is that when you start kind of painting those things like around you know, like description, we start adding things on. You, in a sense, begin condemning yourself more, because when you start falling into the dogmatics and this is what Paul is about to talk about here in the law, when you start adding more things onto it, you have to hold yourself to that law, right?
Imran:It sounds like you're telling me that if I don't know anything about the law, I'm good. If I don't know anything about the law and I just know that God saved me, I'm just gonna no, because the Spirit's gonna tell you to do things Again.
Ryan:It's not the church. We all get the Spirit. It's not like I got a special dose of the Spirit than you got. We all got the Spirit and the Spirit's gonna start beating you up. The problem for the believer, particularly when you're new, is learning how to be obedient to it. If you never go look and get taught how to be obedient to the direction of the Spirit, then you're just gonna get beat up left and right and you're never gonna be able to progress beyond that right. So I have a Marine.
Imran:That actually kind of. Maybe this is where she falls into, because I've told you she's super angry about with God and she's angry in her relationship with God and she believed God's ruined her life because of some of the stuff that happened between her and her mother and her sister. But she grew up in the church but I don't think she fully understands what the Spirit's asking her to do or what that feels like. So she's being beat up, she feels beat up.
Ryan:She's never been discipled.
Imran:Yeah, I don't think she's ever been effectively discipled. But you have to think on that some more. But I think you're triggering some stuff.
Ryan:Yeah, yeah. So the Spirit, so one Christ saves us, in fact. But in Paul's terms, it is our identification through Christ that gives us our inheritance, because he is the promised seed to receive that inheritance. That's why we're called co-heirs with him. Christ is the one who receives the inheritance, our association to him as his bride right, I think, biblically, to become one flesh. Right, so if I'm dead to self, I live to God, I become one with Christ. Right in terms of this marriage covenant. Right. So if Christ receives the inheritance and I become one flesh with him in terms of a marriage, then I receive the inheritance too. Right, so Christ is the one who gives the inheritance. The Spirit, then, is the one who teaches you how to manage that inheritance. Right To not ever be taught, how to be obedient to what the Spirit is trying to sanctify you in. Right. That's where you start going to write. What he's saying here is that it's not the Spirit telling you to go get circumcised, it's men telling you to go get circumcised.
Imran:He's like so you start with the whole. It's also kind of out of their fear too, their reaction to it in that way.
Ryan:But Paul's like you receive the Spirit. Now men are telling you to get circumcised, and now you're going to go do things with the flesh that the men are telling you, even though you started with the Spirit right. This is why he's saying you may not know a lot, but you know enough. You know enough to know you shouldn't be doing this, because it's not coming from the Spirit, it's coming from men. We'll keep reading here.
Imran:Do you know how long Paul stayed with the Galatians to establish that church and taught?
Ryan:them. That whole mission strip, I'm going to say was two to three years, I think. Okay, yeah, with him and Barnabas.
Imran:That helps give some context. Yeah, like when he says you know enough, it's like was he there for a few weeks.
Ryan:But his whole idea, though, that why are you trying to?
Imran:finish by means of the flesh.
Ryan:Like that's like that's okay, you've inherited this mansion, so why are you now trying to go shopping for the dumpster? Right, like, why are you trying to end where you started with so much better? Right Like, you never hear you know the when a team wins the Super Bowl. Right, you don't hear Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes stand up there and say, yeah, this is a great Super Bowl win. But what I'm most excited about, that, this is really going to prepare us for our first pre-season game here in August. You know what I'm saying? The Super Bowl is the Epoch, it's the apex. Yeah, the Super Bowl is the best thing out there. You've received it. You received the spirit. Why are you now trying to go and strategize of trying to play for the pre-season win?
Imran:Yeah.
Ryan:You just won the Super Bowl, right. So why are you starting with the spirit but trying to end with the flesh Right?
Imran:You're saying it makes no sense Like we can finally achieve our highest potential, our final point, winning in the pre-season, and it's like huh.
Ryan:Right, exactly Right. So verse four. He continues. Next question have you experienced so much in vain, if it really was in vain? So again I ask does God give you his spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Which, sorry, which verse was that? That was verse four. Verse four Okay, holy moly, we have 14 verses to get through.
Ryan:So again I asked does God give you his spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? In other words, if I could maybe just frame it this way, think about your God moments, right? The God moments, the times that God had came through in your life, times when he was faithful, times. Maybe it was your point of repentance when you were saved, maybe times that you've felt immensely loved or blessed by him, times you felt comforted by him, right, did God do all that? As a response to some, new position or some thing you did?
Ryan:did you go like, okay, you know I had this tumor and praying for God to heal this tumor, but it was only once I finally gave that $5 to that homeless person on the side of the street and then all of a sudden the tumor went away? Or did he work miracles within your life? Did he move and have those moments of view in your life because you did something or because you just, you just simply put your faith in him that he would heal it.
Imran:This is spitting directly in the face of TV evangelists, where people are like you know.
Ryan:Donate $5, we'll say a prayer for you and that sickness will go right away. We'll send you this hanky and you rub that. You're right. Yeah, all of that stuff. I just blew the COVID out of the country. Do you see that guy? He's got his name.
Imran:Oh my gosh, and it's like and if it didn't blow the COVID out of your life? It's like you just need to give $10 and you know we'll pray some more for you and you'll be good. And it's like hold on a second, that doesn't sound right. Right, yeah.
Imran:Doesn't work that way so right, but now I have that much because that's like I already knew that didn't feel right, but I didn't exactly know where to go to point to why it doesn't feel right and it's like boom right here, galatians 3. This is where you can go to have those types of conversations and arguments.
Ryan:Do those things in your life as a response to something you did, like some works right, or was it because you simply disbelieved and put your faith and trust and hope in him Right? Was it that moment of desperation that you said, lord, this situation is so big for me, it is too much for me, it is too complex for me. It seems to be too complex for the doctors, or too complex for my boss, too complex for my bank account, whatever, it is so big and beyond me that I have nothing left other than just to trust you. And then that's when he comes through. Did he come back and say well, first what you need to do is tell me your view on open or closed communion?
Selena:Yeah, Tell me right.
Ryan:Or you know what. What Bible version did you read when you did your Bible study last night? Or did it come simply in the faith and the belief and trust and hope in him?
Imran:Right it really also reminds me of the prosperity gospel stuff where they're like God wants you to have that mansion, god wants you to have that promotion, god wants you to get to accomplish all the dreams in your life. You just have to do X, y and Z, insert X, y and Z here, whether that's give money or give time or donate X, y and Z or do these things, and it's like wait a minute. That is a problem. Paul makes it very clear, right, and we do this chapter one.
Ryan:That's why it's directly in the face of those things are in response to God's faithfulness to us, not in order to receive. Yeah, right. So in other words, I give money to God's kingdom in response to the faithfulness that God has demonstrated to me, right, yeah, I don't give money to God's kingdom, so God will bless me. It's in response to his blessings.
Imran:Amen. So you know, you told me that motivates you. It does. It sure does Keep it going, amen.
Ryan:But you know the other thing let me ask you this another thing about the Scott experience. Okay, Just one other question. Do you think that God came through in that situation, that moment that you know, whatever your thing is, whatever your God moment that you're thinking of, did God come through in that time, just so you can murmur or complain and argue about whether you should be allowed to wear sandals in church, or whether it's acceptable to have… Pro tip, they were probably wearing sandals in church, in the first entry church …coffee in worship right.
Selena:Yeah, good point Right.
Ryan:So is that why? Is that why he came in to rescue you from that situation, so you can argue and complain about that Pro tip? They were also… or maybe it was just so you can be in that same peace, joy and freedom to go worship with other believers, right? You know, if you really just look at what God asks, it is not that hard. It is actually very simple of what he wants. We're the ones who make it very complex, we're the ones who make it somewhat… Super conditional… …conditional confusing.
Ryan:You know like I have to navigate this theological map trying to figure out right, because we're the ones who have distorted it what he wants is actually pretty simple. Right, like he's like I saved you because I love you, you're in my grace In your response, go worship me with other believers who I've also rescued and who are wanting to worship me in response to that, and just get together. But, lord, what about sandals? Like, just go worship, right Again, this is Holy Spirit inspired. Yeah, you fools, how you morons, how stupid are you that you're arguing about sandals when you're there to worship and glorify me for the mess I rescued you from. And you're really making this about coffee and sandals, and you know what I'm saying. Yeah, those things.
Imran:But he continues…. Now I feel even more sure that we need to do the episode on worship with Jared one day than that, all Because people's response to like okay, I've been saved. What does it mean to live a life of Christ? What does it mean to worship how? You know how often, why, when, like they have all these, all these questions.
Ryan:And Paul addressed that here and when we get to the fruit of the spirit piece, which is a list of about 18 things, well, there's the fruit of the spirit and then there's acts of the flesh. You were there that week, I remember, and we're probably going to do the same way.
Imran:He's pointing at Selena, yeah.
Ryan:We're just going to go down that list and probably do the same thing, but it is very clear of like well, how do I know? Like what is my metric? He's like the fruit, here's the fruit, right, but before we get there, we got to finish, you know chapter 3.
Ryan:Right, yeah, verse 6. So also, abraham believed God and was credited to him as righteousness. Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Right, it's supreme point. Faith that is how you are brought into the family is through faith. That is how you receive the inheritance is through faith.
Imran:That's how the family was established. It was through Abraham's faith that the family was established, and so, through that same faith, we're right.
Ryan:So this isn't the chapter was established through faith.
Imran:The promise wasn't established through something Abraham did Right.
Ryan:And he's going to continue on here and talking about the law with it, right. But the one thing that with here, though, just again, this chapter is less about well, how do I get saved? What does it necessarily get saved? It's more about kind of talking about how God's promise, of how Abraham would get his family Right. How does Abraham get his promised family that was given all the way back in Genesis 15? How does he receive his promised family?
Ryan:By being faithful to the promise and this is what Paul was saying, though, is that's through Christ. Yeah, this is. Christ is the conduit of how Abraham gets his promised family of not just the Jewish people, but the Gentiles as well.
Imran:So it's interesting too, because after God gave, after God gave Abraham that promise, he then screwed it up and slept with his servant to because he thought his wife was too old.
Ryan:We get to talk about that, yeah, next, either next week or the week after, yeah, but it's like even, even tried to, you know, fulfill God's promise through his own works, but did it incorrectly and wrong and didn't trust God to fulfill his promise, and what Paul's going to talk and refer to that in Galatians is is that you have a child of the promise, like this promise of Abraham Mm. Hmm, you're going to have a child of the flesh ish, male.
Imran:Yeah.
Ryan:And there's this whole thing around it.
Selena:Like I can't get into that now. Okay, yeah.
Ryan:That's going to be literally, it's its own week, but first scripture first saw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham All nations will be blessed through you, right? So again, what is the good news? What is the gospel? What is? What is the thing to Paul that says this is what the good news is. The good news is that Christ has ascended and in his faithfulness has now, in faithfulness to the promise of Abraham that all nations would be blessed through him, and also faithful to the promise of Isaac that both Jew and Gentile would be brought under this seed. Okay, so essentially what he's saying, the good news is that this is a fulfillment, it's a Christ, is a demonstration of God's faithfulness to the promise to Abraham All nations will be blessed through you, so that those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith, right? So one thing about that like why is this such a big deal though? Right?
Ryan:Like and I think we don't see the big deal in it because we live in a very fragmented faith in the sense that we do have multiple denominations. We there's not one church in any given city where everybody goes.
Selena:Yeah, yeah.
Ryan:In our small town of what 30,000 people? There's 45 churches Right so, which I think Paul would go ballistic on.
Selena:I think he would just be like right, he would not be to him.
Ryan:He like that is not okay, right, that is not Um, and ultimately, paul is not who we serve, crisis, who we serve. I'm just saying I think Paul, who was very zealous for this um, if he would lose his mind, and I think it fends Christ, right, because unity, right, and I was looking, thinking about this when you start thinking about a family, this in a family sense, right, and we talked about this. But you want in a family, you want unity right.
Selena:Mm, hmm.
Ryan:When my kids are all fighting with each other. It drives me crazy.
Selena:Right.
Ryan:And you start, you've you, you learn your little like like you start doing these corporate punishments, things like you're like I, I'm so, I'm so exhausted. I can't even be a good judge on this matter. You guys are all just you're all grounded. All go to your room, yeah.
Imran:Everybody go to your room. We'll figure this out tomorrow. You're all grounded.
Ryan:Everybody. Go to your room separate from each other. You're all fighting separate. Go to your own room, right? Um? But when my kids are playing in unity, like I'm taking videos look how adorable they are Look how cute. Look how they love each other and when they're playing together. It makes me, as a father, happy.
Selena:Yeah.
Ryan:It's when they're fighting that I you know what I mean. That starts irritating me and getting on my skin, right, I think the same thing goes with us, um as children of God children of God.
Ryan:Right, like. He doesn't want us fighting, he wants us united for the same reason. Look how they love each other. That's what Jesus says. This is how they know you are my disciple, how you love each other. Right, like, look at them, look at them united. Look at them united in their worship and their love for people and their love for me. Right. And then when we see, start bickering about these little things, it probably drives them crazy, right. Oh yeah, um, verse 10, for all who are why Splitting up my kingdom, for all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. As it is written, curse is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of law. So remember, this is like his third time now referring to the curse. Right, the curse we're referring to is that curse of Deuteronomy 27 through 29. Right, the current, present evil age and there's this.
Ryan:That's a curse time, he says. Um, for those who are allowing the works of the law are under that curse. They're still living back in the past. They're. They're living pre Christ. Right, he says. Curse is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law. Um, I just wrote this how easy it is for God to rescue us out of a situation and we choose to still live in that past situation that we were rescued from. Right, we want to camp there, Right, we, we, we, we want Because we're comfortable, we're used to it, yeah.
Ryan:Yeah, it's almost like he comes and he opens the cell door and we come out like, oh, thank you, you, you, you rescued me, you freed me. Thank you, hugs, kisses, you're great. And then you go, we're all walking right back to yourself.
Ryan:At the right, Right, and then maybe in the day you kind of wander out of yourself. At night you go walking right back to that cell. You want to keep walking back into the past, to which he rescued you from, and that's part of the these. You know, the Judaizers, the circumcision group. They're living in their past situation still and have yet to fully understand the true gravity of what Christ has done, that we're not living there anymore. He's rescued us. There's been a new exodus. We have been rescued out of the slavery of sin and the slavery of the law. So and I just want to kind of say this though, curse is everyone who does not continue to do everything right in the book of the law, One thing that Paul recognizes is that there's no such thing as partial Torah fulfillment, meaning never have there ever been this idea that you're going to do a little bit of the Torah and be justified.
Ryan:He says if you think that it is still required to follow Torah, then you can't just follow part of it, you have to follow all of it. You're either all in or all out with Torah. There's no in between. It makes no sense. Yeah, Um, because the Torah itself says you must do everything in here If you're going to follow any element of Torah you must do all of Torah, all right.
Ryan:So for him it's you're either all in for Torah or you're all in for Christ. There is no in between. You can't be partial to either one or the other. You're all in for Christ or you're all in for Torah, and I think he very much for sees where this was going to lead. That, if they so, so why? Why is Paul, you know, hearing of this compromise to try to maybe save people from persecution, to kind of ease tensions? You know you very well, could have made an argument out of love, out of love for the Gentile believers, out of love for the non Jewish believers out of love for everybody, just go get circumcised, Right?
Ryan:Why is he so like adamant, no capital, H heck no right? Because I also think he understood what that would ultimately lead to.
Imran:You gotta, you gotta beat down the uh, the small nails before they become big nails, Right.
Ryan:And he's like okay, so they tell you to go get circumcised. Then what? Then they come back two years later. It's okay, now you start need to start eating kosher. Okay, then they come back a little bit later. You need to start observing the high holidays and they come back a little bit later. Okay, now you need to start looking at meal preparation. Okay, now you need to stop eating shellfish Now you gotta do it Now.
Imran:You're in the sacrifice system, now you gotta do all the sacrifices Right.
Ryan:So now you have to do it before you go into the temple and all this stuff, Because there is no such thing as only being um a little bit partially fulfilled in Torah or justified in Torah. It's either you're all in or you're all out, and that's why he says so. Christ has either fulfilled Torah and you're all in for Christ, meaning you don't need to follow Torah, or you need to be all in for Torah and then Christ is meaning for you.
Imran:This is interesting because now I'm thinking it's like God didn't just save me from um, from my sinful ways, and turned me towards a purpose. He also saved me from the needing to live under Torah perfectly to meet his requirement. Like he saved me from that, like that truly sounds like a curse. Because you're, because?
Ryan:you're under Christ faithfulness and God's grace.
Imran:Yeah, being justified through him and being able to live a life of faithfulness and and point towards him and do all the, all the things that I try to do, is so much more fulfilling than being constantly dealing with the weight of oh, but did I do tortures right today? Did I, you know, um? Did I do my sacrifices? Did I do my readings? Did I, you know, eat and dress the way I'm supposed to? It's like I would be more, I would have more anxiety about that than about living a life of faithfulness with Christ and growing that way. Yeah, so it's like at that point, it's like what was I saved from? I went from one torment of sin to a torment of trying to live perfectly under your and that's why you call slavery.
Ryan:Yeah, and you're going to hear Paul refer to that as slavery. That's why he presents this as like a new exodus. Just as the Hebrews were in slavery to Egypt, we were in slavery to sin and the law right that we've been rescued from. There's been a new exodus out of that right.
Ryan:Um, and I just want to make this kind of point do not confuse honoring portions of the Torah, um, or doing portions of the Torah as being legalistic. Um, so, like Messianic Jews, for example, um, you know, many of them may still choose to eat kosher and practice high holidays and celebrate Passover and, um, you know, do certain elements of the Torah. That isn't. He's not saying just, you shouldn't be doing that at all. You know, in terms of honoring, or even our own church, we do Passover every year, right, um to participate. The difference is and this is where the danger is right, as long as nobody is saying you have to do that to be brought in to the family of Abraham, ie to be saved, as long as long as you're they're not doing that, you're good right Um, but many people choose to eat kosher, but nobody, at least in our church, right?
Ryan:Who or that's true of will say that you have to eat kosher to be, to be saved or to even be a mature believer, right, some choose to, but there's not like this hierarchy of yeah, but only the mature Christians don't eat kosher or eat kosher right. As long as that's not being pushed, it's not legalistic. It becomes legalistic the moment that they say, no, you don't have to eat kosher. But if you're, you'll mature into that fate eventually, to where you will eat kosher as a right. That's when you start getting legalistic, right. So what we're talking about is not it's not um saying that we're under Torah because we celebrate Passover. We celebrate Passover because we see Christ played throughout Passover and it's a cool um way of telling that story right, the grace of Christ.
Imran:Then the question that would come back to me is like so then what? What am I to follow as a citizen of the kingdom?
Ryan:What the spirit? That's the point. You're being led, not by Torah. You're being now led by the spirit. That's the point he's been making. Did you receive the spirit before or after doing works of the law?
Imran:And so how?
Ryan:do I know I'm being led by?
Imran:how do I know I'm being led by the spirit, though, especially if I'm young in my faith? How do I know I'm being led by the spirit and not by my.
Ryan:they're going to have to keep listening until we get to the fruit of the spirit. Okay, I can't hear oh, that's why he hits the fruit of the spirit arm with this how you know.
Ryan:Yeah, so the the ladder end of Galatians, it kind of the apex, is chapter four. At the end of chapter four, where he kind of leads them to an ultimate decision. That's kind of shocking. Then after that he now kind of gets into the pragmatics of all right, this is how you do this. Right, now that I got that all out of the way, this is how you live a life led by the spirit. Let me actually start discipling now and start teaching you how you live a life of the spirit how you walk in the spirit.
Imran:Okay, because I was. I was going in my head, I was going on the rabbit hole of like. Well, is that the case that, like the more, the more mature in my faith I am, the more I'll end up just living Torah? No, because I don't even know Torah.
Ryan:Like that, the more mature you are in faith, the more you demonstrate the fruits of the spirit, the fruits of the spirit, closer and more the magnitude of recognition to God's grace.
Imran:So you know that you're living in the spirit, based off of the fruits of the spirit, and if you're not seeing the fruits of the spirit, then you're falling under acts of the flesh and you're not in line with the spirit. We'll get to it in that week, okay.
Ryan:I'm. I'm looking for actually maybe two weeks, now that I think about it. I think it may be. I think one week we do the acts of the flesh, the other one we do the fruits of the spirit. I'm ready. I'm ready Cause I was like, oh, my goodness, this is sending you a connection, not a connection. What a conundrum.
Imran:All right, verse 11. I didn't understand it without the context, without Ryan, no, no, no, no. Without the context, welcome to the Bible stories where we, you know, dive into the context.
Ryan:Verse 11. Clearly, no one who relies on the laws justified before God because the righteous will live by faith. The law is not based on faith, on the contrary. So notice what it says, what God has said from the very beginning, when he had announced his gospel in advance in his promises to Abraham and Isaac. Right, this is just follow. Paul's argument is that from the very beginning, he said not only will all the nations be blessed through you and all the nations will receive this inheritance of this promised seed, but it will be by faith. The law then comes in after that promise is made. Right, the promise was made before the law. Remember that the promise was made to Abraham before there was a lot of Moses right.
Imran:Faith was more foundational to the promise than the law.
Ryan:What scripture says is that the righteous will live by faith. It does not say the righteous will live by law. But on what this one says, law is not based on faith. On the contrary, it says that the person who does these things will live by them. In other words, the righteous live by faith. Then there's those if you're going to follow Torah, you live by Torah, not by faith, but by Torah. So you're not living on faith, you're just living off these works of Torah he's like.
Ryan:None of that is actually based on faith, and what has always been attributed, even as regards the family of Abraham, is that it was by faith that he was given and handed over as righteous Right. So verse 13. So Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming the curse for us, for, it is written, curse is everyone who is hung on a pole or a tree. He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith, we might receive the promise of the Spirit. Okay, so I could just simply kind of conclude this with Paul's argument on this section here.
Ryan:Yeah, if to argue that somebody needs to get circumcised or needs to do this other thing to be brought into the family means that you are then anchoring, or really just anything works related. Right, yeah, to anchor anything on the works, then anchors that on me. The other one anchors it on Christ. Right, you're either all in on Torah or you're all in on Christ. Anytime you try to start making it about other works, what you're really doing is removing the power that God brings to your situation in your life. You start relying on your own capacity, right? So why is no one justified by the law? Because if you follow the law one, you believe that you're still under the curse of Deuteronomy 27 through 29.
Imran:And therefore you're not aware of that curse. It's like, as I'm learning about, I'm like, oh, thank goodness I'm not under the curse. Oh man, just having to follow Torah perfectly would be awful. That would be so difficult.
Ryan:Right so but if you believe, though, you have to do essentially, if you believe you have to do certain things or do certain acts, then you're not redeemed Christ again, this is what he talked about last week. Right Then Christ died for nothing. Yeah you're not redeemed. He has redeemed you from nothing.
Imran:Even something as simple as getting baptized, because that if you're saying that you have to be physically dunked in water in order to be saved, then you're missing the point.
Ryan:Yeah, not to be saved, you get baptized as a public proclamation of your salvation right.
Imran:And so it's not a public internal process.
Ryan:You're saved, you're brought into the family. We need to tell the world, and the way you do that is through baptism. This is what we were told to do. Go, get baptized in his name to the world and out of your love, you're like let's do it right.
Ryan:That's one thing, it's another thing to say all right, I'm glad that you believe in Jesus now, but we need to go get you saved or baptized now, just in case you die tomorrow. Because that's why infant baptism is meaningless to me. It's meaningless because, if you that, that posits that you have to get baptized to be saved yeah, and it also implies that the baby chose to be saved, which hasn't happened yet.
Imran:So, redundant or different, it does nothing, I guess, just does nothing fancy word for it.
Ryan:The other thing, too, that I think one of the shocking elements to the Jewish believers about Jesus and what he exposed and and and really in his coming, and what they realized was that they were in much deeper sin than they realized they were in the Galatians, the Jewish believers they were in a much deeper sin than they thought they were to be.
Ryan:And this is what I know is true of me the closer, the more I've matured in faith, the more I've learned, the more. How would you say? There was a time in my life when I was in deep, deep, deep sin, right to where I mean, if you heard me say a cuss word like that was the least of your worries about this spiritually right, because I was in so much right so, but now I've been being sanctified, I've been growing and growing. If there were to be a time like I don't know, I stub my toe when a curse word comes out, like there's convict you bam power conviction.
Ryan:Right, and it's like man, like I feel so much more conviction on such smaller things now than when I was deeper in my sin right. And the idea of like maturing into that right is that the more you mature, as you also start realizing how sinful you are yeah like. Part of your maturing in faith is recognizing how deep in sin you're engaged, how broken you truly are how much you really could.
Ryan:how much you really could, so it is right, how truly you could not have saved yourself Right, and part of the reason that a lot of these Jewish teachers are coming in trying to still push Torah is because they still haven't recognized the depths of the sin that they were in.
Imran:Because here's the thing they are in.
Ryan:Right, they are in because it will. In other words, if I could say, a lot of it is in pride is the idea that if you you start following dogmatics, or the law you're essentially saying is you don't think your sin is bad enough to die for that. You didn't really need a Messiah to save you personally from this right, because your sins not that bad right.
Imran:At least you thought you were doing enough to outpace your own right.
Ryan:And it's a rejection of understanding the depth of your own sin. And Paul's whole point here is like and he makes this last week right- People make that point all the time.
Imran:They're like what do I need God for? I'm good enough, you know. It's like it's like they're a good enough person, does that? It's like they should get into heaven. They did a lot of good things and it's like, no, that wasn't.
Ryan:that's never the gravity of their own sin and that's the thing when people are in faith long enough.
Ryan:You've been a believer for a while you almost start thinking yourself to be in a sense, more sanctified than you are, right Like because I'm not doing the bad things I was rescued from, because I'm not that alcoholic or that drug addict anymore, because I'm not in a pornography like I used to be, because I'm not. You know, I've been faithful to my wife, you know, for the last two decades where I used to be a womanizer and always cheating, because I'm not doing those things anymore.
Imran:I must be good the idea is.
Ryan:The idea is like I've made it.
Imran:And that's exactly when the demons come in. No, no, no, no you.
Ryan:We've had victories there, but we still don't have your, your mouth, under control. We don't have your eyes under control. We right, there's all these things of spirits like I still need to lead and sanctify you in but we almost get in a prideful sense that we made it.
Imran:So you start making dogmatics, not even just dogmatics. You can stop progressing forward in the sanctification you can be like well or you hit that as a fine good and it's like boom as soon as you start thinking I'm good Now.
Ryan:It's like now you're not moving forward anymore, you're not getting closer to Christ anymore, you're not getting more sanctified, and to the point of, like Paul, right, so you start with the spirit but now you've ended with a flesh right, and that kind of leads to that whole thing. The other thing I'd wrote here too is why is no one else justified by the law? And then kind of in Paul's view that that would then posit that Jesus's faithfulness to the law was not enough. And I think a modern way we kind of approach that in situations is that we tend to start thinking that God's not big enough, smart enough, strong enough or loving enough for him to interview and resolve certain situations. So I need these extra things tacked on to earn his love, or I need God's power, with my power applied to a situation, to have enough power to get through it right.
Selena:Because we don't think it's enough.
Ryan:So, yeah, christ's faithfulness is part of it, but I need all this too to kind of get me the rest of the way. And no, you are solely reliant, independent on the sufficiency of Christ, nothing else right. And the last thing I would say to live out of the law means that you'd be living on your own faithfulness to the law. So you essentially then start becoming less dependent on Christ's faithfulness to the law and his grace and your faithfulness to and when I say law, I mean I say that loosely, like I'm talking about the law we build around our own life, the dogmatics right that we build around our own life Defenses.
Ryan:we put on, put up right, and you? You begin to essentially then think yourself higher than you are, or you begin to mistrust God less. Therefore, you have to start relying on your own intelligence, your own capacities to get through certain secrets.
Selena:And that's really.
Ryan:I just want to say. That's to me really the definition of stress, worry and anxiety. Stress, worry and anxiety is the outcome of your mistrust in God, and now having to put your own trust in your own capacity and when you get situations or you have, you're so overwhelmed with life and you recognize my capacity is not enough to handle this right. It's not enough to handle all of this. That's why I worry, that's why I'm anxious, that's why I stress Really, what you're lacking is that you know in your right, like if you're you are putting your faith and trust in your own capacity, you should worry.
Ryan:Yeah, you should be stressed and you should be anxious. Right, that is a very logical outcome. When you're putting more faith and trust in yourself, then you should be and not enough into God. Yeah, right, you're not handing that over enough. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think it was GK Chesterton. He wrote, and we still hear this trope today, but it's the idea that all you got to do is believe in yourself. Try this If you just believe in yourself, you can do it. You can do anything, you can do Anything Just believe in yourself right you can be anyone.
Selena:And that was popular back in, like the early night, oh my gosh. So I have a journal. I love journals. Okay, my journal says believe in yourself. I crossed it out and what verse did I? Put Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not be on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your path.
Imran:Cute journal, but I had to remind myself yeah, when you got that journal, you did that. Yeah, that's like the first page of the journal, or is that on every page?
Selena:No, it's on the first page, the first page of the journal is believing yourself. You crossed that out. Yeah, he's just right. He's just right.
Ryan:What's hilarious about this is because what GK Chesterton says, that is wild.
Imran:This is also the journal that Selene is taking notes in right now. So, that like was so relevant.
Ryan:But his point right, which is kind of to the point of the scripture you wrote, is that the last person you should believe in is yourself. Yeah, like, why would you believe in yourself? Your yourself is broken, your self is a fool, you're stupid, you're full of sin, you're full of pride, you're full of all these things that would actually restrict you from living to the purpose in the life that. God has for you Don't believe in yourself. Believe in Christ, right, and it's that same idea that your anxieties and worries and stresses.
Imran:If you were good enough, then you wouldn't be in the situations you're in in the first place. You know, it's like I think about like pornography, because it's so easy. It's like I can sit here and be like I'm good enough to not watch porn. It's like that doesn't make any sense Because yesterday I wasn't good enough. The day before that I wasn't good enough. The day before that I wasn't good enough. So what? What changed about today? Oh, because I believed in myself. It's like that doesn't make any sense Because I was it, didn't have the capacity not to do it before, and all those other things. It's like what changes? Like God knocked me down and was like, hey, son, you won't do that anymore. And and then it's just been a journey since then of like okay, I will point towards the spirit, and it's just, and it's or him changing. How many people?
Ryan:trust him changing that in myself, trust our salvation and eternity with God, but we don't trust our finances with him, or we don't trust our daily, our daily bread our sex with him?
Ryan:right, Just very less right. Like what? What if Christ came and said, hey, I have freed you from the chains of money, right, Great, but that's temporal. What about my eternity? Right, that would be our new stress and worry that we'd who got to hand that over to right? He came and gave the biggest need I handled your eternity, I handed your salvation. But when it comes to all these other things, we have a hard time trusting him. So how do we trust him with our salvation, but not with when he tells us like here's the financial model, you should be given money back, you should be trusting that model. I don't trust that right. Or I don't trust you're really your design for marriage or your design for sex, but I trust you with eternity. Just not that Like why do we?
Imran:We're saying it doesn't make any sense.
Ryan:Because really it's in our own sense.
Imran:We don't want to right, that's still we treat God like the government, because it's like I don't trust the federal government to come in and tell me how to do all the little things in my life, but I trust them to defend the nation.
Ryan:Yeah, exactly, it's like.
Imran:I'm paying my taxes so you can defend me from China. I'm not paying my taxes so you can tell me what to do with all my daily stuff.
Ryan:Right, yeah, but the big takeaway with this, though right, is that any of those things?
Ryan:the things that are divided that's what we meant the things that divide us in church, right, how silly they can be when you start looking at the big scheme of what God has done for us. But it Further argument into that, though, and it's not even saying those things aren't even important. It's just saying that they're not necessary for fellowship and Any of those things that you are maybe trying to anchor on. You're trying to plant that hill. Right, we talked about the hills Like right here, bible translation, that is the hill that I will die on, and or you know, harry Potter over here, or I plant my flag here, Younger's creationism.
Ryan:That's where I'm gonna plant my flag. To be clear, the only place you should be planting your flag that you live or die by is Calvary, and that's at the cross of Jesus right faith, not by works anchor your, your, your life on the grace of Christ and on nothing else right. Nothing else so. And that we're gonna get deep into the law, I think on our next one. So I know you've been very anxious to understand what is the point of right.
Imran:I yeah, oh, yeah, I'm ready, but, um, is that all for today before I? Okay, because I have so many questions all the time and yeah, I mean, y'all are hearing me. I'm hope, hopefully, that as we're going through and I'm throwing out questions, y'all are like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, I was thinking that as well. But if there's other questions that I am not bringing up or Selina's not bringing up Because you know Ryan's very big, big brain that sometimes he's just up at a 10 and we need him to be down to the three to be with us commenters, so we can understand it.
Imran:But, um, put those, put those comments on our Facebook page. Reach out to us. You can reach out to us on pause Baptist churches page or on on the real Bible stories page directly. All those links are down in the doobly-doo in the description of the podcast, wherever you're listening. But this has been awesome, this has been dense, and if you're feeling like your brain is fried, I've read chapter 3 at least four times up to this point and it's just starting to make some sense. You know, like when sleep, when you've read it this time I was like, oh yeah, I know some of those words Like it's hard to make make some kind of sense. And then Ryan going in, diving into a whole bunch more.
Ryan:It's helping and, if anything, if I could just ask three questions right, whatever, your thing is right. Did you receive the spirit before or after that thing became a thing in your life? Did you seek out, work, miracles and demonstrate his power? Right, those God moments, did you have those God moments before or after that thing in your life Was the thing in your life? The third thing I would ask, because this is also part of Paul's point One they don't know a lot. They know enough, right, and his frustration, the Jerusalem church, that they weren't pot properly discipling them. Maybe just pose it out there.
Ryan:But you know what are some things. If you're a young believer, a new believer that you wish, that you want to be discipled in, or you have questions on, or if you're a mature believer, what are some things? Looking back, do you wish that you would have been discipled in that you weren't? Yeah, right, because I look back and, like you know and now I think about it, when I started getting into the things I was discipled in, like it wasn't really addressing what I actually needed, it was all these, this other stuff, these white or I was getting discipled in areas of the person who was discipling me. That's like what they were growing in. So that's what they were trying to disciple me in, right, and it was like, look, that's where you need to grow, but that's not where I need to grow right now. I need to grow it from here, right, yeah, and just kind of making sense of being taught how to obey and make sense of what the Spirit tells me, because we also a lot of our dogmatics.
Ryan:By the way, I'm sorry, I know we were trying to close this out, but this is a point that wanted to make earlier that I didn't many of the dogmatics that we build around our lives or that we try to impress on people, or Directly from something the Spirit has told us to do in our life.
Ryan:So if, for example, you have a drinking problem, the Spirit's gonna come in and his sanctification and say you need to stop drinking. Period, no drinks, not even a sip, right. And what we do is we'll take that and say, okay, well, the Spirit told me that and I stopped. I was faithful to it and look, I'm sober now, I'm alive, right. Therefore, everybody shouldn't drink, right? Or maybe the Spirit told you that because it was a problem for you and the only way to break that for you because God knows you better than you know you Was to have a complete cold turkey cut off right. Yeah, so my point is is that many of the dogmatics we have, we feel justified in because there were things that the Spirit led us to do For our faith?
Ryan:in our, our spiritual journey right in our walk, but that. But we all have different walks, right. So, like my, what I'm curious in and what are some of the things, even from the mature believer side. Maybe these are things you could just read right in the comments, right, yeah. But what are some things, though, that you wish that you would have been Discipled in earlier or initially, that you weren't. And now that you kind of grown and it may be matured in faith a bit, you look back and recognize man. I really wish this was Brought into this.
Ryan:The other thing I also asked people to do share some advice that you received when you were young Mm-hmm. Faith, but some good advice you got. What was some good discipleship you got that you would love to share. Right, just put that in the comments like that, yeah, how cool would that be Just to see a bunch of wisdom from a bunch of believers and saying, hey, this was some great advice that I received. Or here are things that I wish Somebody would have told me that didn't. We'll share it now because there's some.
Selena:Younger believers who can go look and read that. Yeah, man.
Ryan:We did this when we did in the Bible study and we had all the groups compile them. They came back the next week and it was great like we spent the first year. I don't maybe weren't there that week. We spent the first like 15 minutes just sharing, sharing wisdom, sharing wisdom like man. This is something that I've learned that I wish I would have known, or been decided in.
Imran:That's truly awesome, and I hope to see some comments down there with that. This is also particularly relevant to Ryan, as he is a youth pastor as well, so maybe you'll give him some good ideas to bring down to the youth of our church over here in a sunny 29 poms. But um, thank you so much for tuning into this episode and I think that's the perfect closeout, so I don't need to say anything else here. I'll see you in the comment section, I'll see you in the Facebook messages as we we hang out and learn more about God, and I love all of you all and we'll see you next week.
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 poms, california. If you would like more information or want to check out archive sermons and Bible studies, please check out the church website at palms Baptist church comm 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.