Welcome to the Hackberry House of Chosun. My name is Bob. I'm reading today from a study of Galatians. It's chapter four, verses 12 to 20, that we will begin with. It's in section 10 of my book. By chance, if you have the book, I'm on page 91. Galatians four, verses 12 to 20, reads like this. I beg you, brothers, become like me, for I became like you. You've done me no wrong. You know that it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you. And although my illness was a trial to you, you did not despise or reject me. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. So what then has become of your blessing? For I can testify that if it were possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? Those people are zealous for you, but not in a good way. Instead, they want to isolate you from us so that you may be zealous for them. Nevertheless, it is good to be zealous if it serves a noble purpose at any time, and not only when I am with you. My children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone because I am perplexed about you. So he's showing his compassion here. What appeal is he making? He says, become like me. I'm free from the law. trusting totally in Christ to save me. If I do the old Jewish things, it's because I want to, not because my salvation depends on it. So become like me. After all, I became like you. You Gentiles were free from the law when I met you. I never once told you to subscribe to the law of Moses. Maintain this liberty that both of us know. Now where it says, you did me no wrong, that's a new sentence, but it's connected to what precedes. Luther points out that Paul is not angry with them because they hurt him, but because they're hurting themselves. He's leveled some angry comments at them, and this explanation may seem strange to them and to us, but Paul is showing the Christ in himself. coming out in a righteous, justified anger to some people who ought to know better. I see a typo there in my book. If you're reading along, the word should be no, K-N-O-W. Oh my, I should have proofread it one more time, right? They ought to know better. He hurts for them, not because of some personal injury, And so he proceeds, become like I am. I beg you. Look, I'm not upset with you because of any way you treated me. You were great. I'm not taking it personally. It's against me. No, I'm upset only because of your going back to the law. In fact, you treated me royally. He tells what he means next. First note the words of because of. I believe this is the more accurate way to express what happened in Galatia according to the Greek construction, not simply through, but because of my sickness. He's not just saying that he suffered while he preached the gospel to them. He's saying that the suffering caused his extended ministry to them. It would seem that he fell ill during his stay there. This might've been that thorn of the flesh thing, we're not sure. But for that reason, he needed some time to recover. He stayed and ministered while he recovered. That's all that that's saying in there. The trial in Paul's flesh mentioned here could be the same as referred to in 2 Corinthians 12. That thorn could be a recurring illness. Or he went through some serious troubles when he was in Galatia. and could be totally unrelated to the thorn, but whatever. You remember that the thorn was something he called a messenger of Satan to buffet him. It was an infirmity. Though some refer to verse 15 and his comment about them giving their own eyes to him to suggest that the light that he saw on the Damascus road affected his sight from that day, maybe. but that doesn't fit the imagery of a beating by Satan's messenger, if we're talking about the thorn in the flesh thing. Some believe he had epileptic seizures, which seems purely physical to the onlookers, but is often demonically engineered, and he is telling us up front it was a devil that was allowed to come and beat him. Something was allowed in his body that humiliated him before men. Epilepsy sounds quite right there, having had such a disease myself as a young person, up until my 30s actually, which now seems like another world. But as a grown man, I was still having these problems. Always connected with sleep, I wouldn't just fall down outside. Well, I did fall down outside because I had just gotten up real quickly from sleep. It was always connected to that. And there are different forms of epilepsy. But as I woke up from these things, it did feel like I had been beaten up and that I was in great fear and there was something demonic involved in it. Anyway, why does he call it my trial or my temptation in my flesh? Well, it was a test to him, for sure, and he asked several times for God to remove this thing, as I did, by the way, whatever it was. Was he disfigured in some way? Embarrassing to look at? The seizure itself, if it was a seizure, while it was happening, certainly would frighten some people. So it became their trial also? They would be tried or tempted or tested regarding his appearance or actions to the point where they might ignore his message altogether. But regardless of all of that, the Galatians refused to despise him or reject him. In fact, they listened to his message as though he were a messenger from heaven or Jesus himself. That's what he says in verse 14. And like Luther points out, they were in that class of people defined by Christ where he said, blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me. So why did they treat him so well at first? So why did you do all this? He asks, I mean, you would have given me your very eyes. Think back. What motivated you to be so sacrificially minded, so overlooking of my inadequacy, so hungry for the message I was giving to you? You knew you were being blessed by what I was giving to you. Why change now? That's verse 15. And now, why the persecution, or the perception, that is, that they had become an enemy? Why am I now your enemy, Paul says. My visits were profitable. They were friendly. His suggestion that animosity is forming can only be based on later correspondences of which we know nothing. For sure it is a letter that informed him of the apostasy of some. His own response to it may not have been first aired in this letter that we call Galatians, But here is the epistle, this one that we have, that the Holy Spirit wanted us to have for the church of all time. A clear exposing of a heresy and his emotional response to it, which should be our response to heresy also. Other knowledge he has, either implied or direct, the Judaizers are infiltrating the Galatian church with a passion. and a zeal to win converts back to Judaism, even if mixed with Christian thoughts too, which leads us to the question, how do false teachers operate? Galatians, they're doing all they're doing right now with bad motives and without you in mind, they don't care about you. What they have for you is not good, stay away from them. quote, they admire or they have warm feeling for you in no good way, end of quote. Oh, it's flattering to get all this attention, brothers, but the end product will be loss for you. You know what it's like when someone comes alongside you and starts whispering things about some word from God that you've never heard before? And you listen, your eyes light up, And then the flatteries begin. Oh, you're so mature in Christ. I can see it. God wants you to know that if you will believe what I'm telling you, he's going to prosper you in every way. Really? Me? Oh, yes. It's obvious. You are sincerely seeking the best from God. And now the next part of that verse doesn't seem to fit. Paul says, they want to exclude you This could be a type of threatening. Perhaps they were saying, if you don't follow us, you'll miss out on so many spiritual blessings and benefits. A trick that's played often enough through the years by all sorts of groups. There's another typo, but a quote mark after benefits. Follow us to the perfect path. Don't follow us and you'll be excluded from all the blessings that you could have had. You see, they will imply, God has a people. He has certain requirements that only the mature can hear about and follow. His sheep hear his voice. Can you hear what I'm saying to you right now? The effect of such a threat is often the slavish obedience of the threatened. that you may be zealous, Paul says. Same word as in the beginning of the verse, that you may be zealous, have warm feeling, be zealous for them. Paul commends zeal, warm feelings, and he asks the Galatians to direct their zeal or their warm feelings toward the good. Just the fact that you have zeal doesn't mean that your zeal is pointing in the right direction. Zeal is a neutral thing. It can go both ways, like religion. He suggests that he cannot be with them holding their hand all the time. They had zeal for him at one time and it was a good thing. That zeal, that zeal, they've got to hang on to now and not be distracted. So how does Paul express his parental compassion. He shows the passion of a mother. Usually the children passages of Scripture are from a father, as in 1 John. Here he plays the role of a mother in labor, and then he says, again. They've fallen from their first status, and he's laboring that Christ will again be formed in them, collectively, figuratively. Imagine giving birth to the same child twice, He's speaking of all the turmoil when he was physically in Galatia. And now the pleadings of this letter. Here he is again going through all kinds of trouble so that they will be born and grow and stop being distracted like little children. Such frustration is in this letter. He wants to be with them. He wants to be proved wrong or change their minds face to face. but as he's just intimated, that cannot always be. He wants to change his tone. Like a parent doesn't always like to be yelling or talking down to his children and correcting them. He wants to share the life in Christ, but for now, doubts prevail. He's heard this and he's heard that, and he knows that the Judaizers have been making progress, making inroads, just how far he isn't sure. Well, next time we'll talk about the bondwoman versus the free woman, a picture that he wants to put into their thinking to help them come out of this crisis somehow. Do look around the website while you're here. There are great men of God on this website, their stories and their words. I have North Korea audios, 400 plus in English, 400 plus in Korean. I have a North Korea photo album. Several of them do look at these and pray for this nation. I have a whole study on Quran, a study on Muhammad. I have end time prophecy studies through the whole Bible studies, question and answer. I have commentaries as the one we're doing now. There's a huge one on Romans that perhaps you'll want to look out for. And then books, several new books. The Greater Reset is out. The Romania book is out. It's happening. There's interesting things going on. Speak My Language about the King James Version, Controversy, that's out. All of these available at Kindle or at Amazon on the Kindle Store for $1 each. Or you can order them for pretty cheap prices. You will see that they're very reasonable. You can get all of them on a two-set, a two-disc set for just $10. And that covers everything, the postage and everything. And you just have to click on Store, click on Give. and then click on $10 and put your address in there. And I won't be sending you anything else, I promise you. Adjust the set. There's a blog now written right here every day. Sometimes it's about the very thing we're studying about, as it is now. And then Zoom. Man, you'll want to, really. You're not responding, please. You don't know what you're missing here. Click on, just send me an email. I'm sorry, bob.j.faulkner.72 at gmail.com. And you will be able to join a good bunch of men every Saturday night, seven o'clock central time. Send me an email with your testimony and I'll send you an email with the Zoom link. Gotta have Zoom on your app or that is the Zoom app on your phone. or your computer to join us, but oh, we would be glad to have you. You'd be amazed at how good a group that we have and what happens. We pray for each other, we read the scriptures. We're doing Galatians right now. We're way behind where we are on this site now because we're going into deeper detail as the men produce some ideas of their own, and you can do that too. Anyway, this is the Hackberry House of Chosin. Good you could be here, Lord willing. We'll talk again real soon. Bye bye.