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The Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast
GAL125 - No Ex Post Facto Laws, Even for Pickleball
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Foreign. Hey, everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. And do you remember the thing from your civics class? Well, if you're an American, at least that. That talked about this provision in the supreme law of our land about no ex post facto laws. Remember that one? I think it's one of those. It's just got such a nice rhythm to it. It's Latin. Sticks in your brain. Maybe you forget a lot of the other things, but ex post facto. You sound real smart and it's like, ah, I remember that one. If you remember it, you know that the deal with the Constitution prohibiting ex post facto laws. The deal there is that you can't go and write a law after the fact, and now somebody's guilty of that law that you just wrote. So let's say that I don't like pickleball and I become the president of everything, and I get a Congress and a Senate who's willing to play ball with me. And I'm like, we're gonna retroactively make pickleball illegal forever, because I hate that noise. Also, you're taking up all of my tennis courts. So passed a law. We got a whole bunch of sad tennis players gathered around me in the Oval Office who are disappointed by the effect that pickleball has had on their lives. And they're all clapping together and they're wearing their headbands and their wristbands and their short shorts and everything. They got weird bulges in their pockets where their tennis balls are. But they're all really excited because I signed the law that makes pickleball illegal effective forever ago. Well, you can't do that. Our Constitution makes it so you can't do that. You can't make people guilty of a law that hasn't happened yet. Likewise, we are in the middle of a little aside in Galatians, chapter three, where Paul is using an example from everyday life, the example of a contract, a deal that is binding to find a touch point, a common point, for his audience to be like, hey, we all understand how this works. We're talking ultimately here in Galatians about what the deal is between God and man. And there's a couple of really big deals that are in view anytime we have that discussion. It's the covenant that God made with Abraham, and then 400ish years after the fact, it's the covenant that God made with Moses. So Paul's getting relatably esoteric here in Galatians 3:15 yesterday, we imagine that he's flipping his Hat around backwards in his chair. And he's sitting there like the cool youth pastor, the cool teacher who just wants to keep it real for a minute. And he's going to this very real life example to say, let's use some common sense about how deals work, about how contracts work. And he's assuming that everybody understands that even if your constitution doesn't expressly forbid it, it makes no sense. You can't have a society if you're allowed to write laws that retroactively make people guilty. If you did something and it wasn't illegal at the time that you did it, A law written later doesn't suddenly make you guilty of violating a law. It wasn't illegal when you did it. This is just common sense. And Paul specifically is looking at more of the civil law aspect of this. If you make a deal, a covenant, a contract, well, it applies to the time span and the participants, the parties specified in the contract. So let's track with Paul's argument here and let's take it forward to the end of it. Today he says in Galatians 3, 15. Chair flips around, hat flips around. Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. And everybody's like, okay, yeah, right on. I mean, those are the rules. That makes sense. No exposed facto laws. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The scripture doesn't say and to seeds meaning many people, but and to your seed meaning one person who is Christ. What I mean is, the law introduced 430 years later does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. Okay, simple logic here. Remember yesterday I was telling you about my Altel contract that I got in the early days of cell phones and all the people at all the Verizon stores, whenever they pull up, my account would be like, oh, you are on that sacred, precious, unbreakable, enviable Altel contract. Never let that go, man. Two hands on my shoulders, deep penetrating eye contact. Never let that go. I had that sweet contract. Well, it was with Altel. I didn't even know what Verizon was. And some other company called Verizon comes along and they're like, we own you now. We bought your thing. Now you work with us. I'm like, okay, well that's cool. But both parties agreed, like just because you did some paperwork or an acquisition, or just because you guys did a business deal or Whatever. That doesn't negate a contract that I still have. Your thing came later and does not negate or abridge or change the deal that I have in writing and that I'm locked into with the sacred, precious, unbreakable Altal contract. Common sense to you and me and common sense to Paul's original audience here in Galatians. Pick up his reasoning again. What I mean is this. Paul's saying the law introduced 430 years later doesn't set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. Okay, God made a deal with Abraham. That was a real long time ago. 400 plus years before God made a deal with Moses and introduced the law that we keep talking about. Well, how was Abraham made right with God under the terms of the deal that God made with him that was going to go forward into foreverziz. Faith. Believe God, it'll be credited to you as righteousness. Okay, well, that was for Abraham, but what about his kids and stuff who lived before the time of Moses? Yeah, same deal, Isaac, same deal. Believe God, it'll be credited to you as righteousness. Those are the terms. This is generationally transferable and that's how it's laid out. Yeah, but what about like Joseph and Benjamin and Judah and all of that crowd? Yeah. If any of them were going to have right standing with God, same ground rules. Faith. Believe God. God does the heavy lift here. It's always been about God's power, his forgiveness, his thing, same deal. Well, then 430 years later, new terms are introduced, not terms that replace the old terms. Nobody in this audience, none of Paul's Jewish buddies who were trained under the law, would be like, yeah, the Mosaic Law was God taking the promises he made to Abraham and wadding them up and chucking them over his shoulder because he just didn't like how that went. And now he wanted to try again with a fresh deal, but maybe it'll work out better this time. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You and I went through it. We looked at it with our own eyes. We listened to it with our own ears. Remember the plan. The promise is still in place all the way through the Old Testament, all the way through the New Testament. Nothing has changed about the unbreakable deal. Even though the world has changed a whole bunch of now. There is one covenant, Paul is saying, that set up the basic terms of relationship between God and man. That's the deal with Abraham. And then there's another covenant later that is specific to a group of people who God is going to demonstrate his character in front of the whole world through his relationship with them. And the law isn't just for that. The law reveals the character of God, the law of good, as a way to live in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, for sure. I mean, there's great things about the law in terms of just practically speaking, today you do better with that than you would with a lot of other approaches to things. Also, the law had that whole set of ideas about clean and unclean. All of that is meant to highlight the holiness of God and an imperfection that humanity suffers from that is bigger than volitional. It's not just about naughty and nice good decisions and bad decisions. The fallen nature of humanity, the fall of creation, touches us all in ways that we choose, in ways where we tried to get it right, but we got it wrong. In ways where we're victims and other people do bad things to us. In ways where it's nobody's fault, it just happens. The world is broken. The whole clean and unclean aspect of the Mosaic Law highlights the holiness of God, highlights the imperfection of people, and shines a bright spotlight on the gap between those two parties. Here's the problem. This is the issue right here. This needs addressing. Now, ultimately, the whole thing just puts the Jesus deal right up on a T. I was like, that's clearly going to be the solution. Jesus ticks all the boxes. We need someone like that to truly fix what's wrong, to truly fulfill, to truly complete the law. What Paul's doing here really is working for me. I'm grateful for this. Brothers, let me take an example from Everyday Life Tone that he's striking here. I think I'm getting it, honestly. I think this passage is coming more into focus than it maybe ever has been for me. Of all the times I've read Galatians ever. But I don't want to rush through to the finish line. So we're going to go into suspended animation here for one more episode on this little passage that is Galatians 3, 15, 18. And we'll land the plane on this next time around. And then we're just going to push forward. We're really taking ground here. This is crazy. I don't know what to do with this pace. Okay, so we're hitting pause there. Thank you so much for being a part of this thing. I gotta think of new ways to say it. I gotta think of new ways to express to you how much I appreciate you, because, golly, I appreciate you. This is so meaningful for me. It's so fun to know there are other people who care about this and want to try to understand this thing. It's so meaningful to know there are other people who think these are the words of life and there's truth in it and even the hard things like little tiny details about whether it says seed or seeds in the Old Testament that stuff matters and it just takes a minute to think about it and the text expects that will take a minute to think about it and I feel like with you I found my tribe. Other people who see the stakes here and care about it as well and also are willing to have a laugh about stuff and not take themselves too seriously and make some fun of themselves a little bit. Maybe the occasional fart joke. Okay that is plenty. I'm gushing. I really do appreciate you. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast. Let's do this again soon. Sam.