Revolution Church

We finally made it to Galatians 5! This study is never ending this year, but we’re not complaining! Is Galatians the greatest letter on grace? We certainly think so! Something very strange happened in this talk, well not strange maybe, since it’s not strange for people to pop up in chat to troll or argue—so maybe kismet is the better word to use. Why we say that is we had some viewers in chat that were very much all about the law and following the law, especially those found in Leviticus. Laws that have been fulfilled if you believe in the New Testament and the Jesus story. What makes it so kismet is that Galatians 5 is about freedom from the Law and how Jesus sets us free from that yoke of slavery! We couldn’t tell you why these people waited until today, maybe they were waiting for this chapter? Maybe it’s coincidence? But either way kismet describes it best. Remember that Revolution is a place for everyone, and everyone is welcome! All walks of life, political beliefs, orientations, creeds, races…and the list goes on. But we do have to also remember that the safety of the community is paramount to all things, and so we have to show grace and humility and remember that arguing solves nothing…and also that arguing and disagreeing are not the same thing. You can do one without the other. There is a lot to say about this talk because it is very good, and it’s really interesting how the topic and the current reality Jay found himself in while giving the talk really coincided—so, even though there is a lot to be written in the description, maybe we just leave it here and let the talk speak for itself!This talk was given on April 14, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94

We’re back!...and we’re still in Galatians 4! Can you believe it? Out of any chapter, we’re still here. It’s been quite the journey from a section of the letter that we used to rush through to now being a part of the letter that we are enjoying enough to devote a few weeks to it—We’ll finish it up today so that next week we can start on Chapter 5! In today’s talk Jay spends some time talking about the importance of context when it comes to Biblical scholarship--Knowing when things were written, to whom, why was it written, and what the cultural dynamics of the time were. We live in different times now. Or course this doesn’t mean everything Paul said was okay. We have to remember that it is okay to disagree with Paul! Agreeing or disagreeing, it doesn’t change the fact that context is important. What does Paul mean when he says to die to our flesh, and to pick up our cross? Did it mean something different back then than it does today? Is salvation a miracle? Does who we are play any role in our salvation? This talk addresses these and more! This year our Galatians series has really been cooking, and we’re so very excited about it!This talk was given on April 7, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94

It’s Palm Sunday and we’re still on Galatians. Still in Chapter 4, even! This is something new for Revolution because this was a chapter that Jay always rushed through in the past. But even now, with decades of studying Galatians under his belt, Jay is still learning more and more about this letter that Paul wrote. And this year Jay saw this chapter in a whole new light—so it’s worth talking about for a few weeks! That’s why having good scholarship so important, because there is always something new to learn, and deeper depths to dive to, when it comes to the Bible. Because context matters. And learning all of that context helps us better understand scripture—especially when it comes to the letters of the New Testament. In order to have proper theology, we need to have proper scholarship. And if we want to make changes to the system, we need to learn the system better than the people teaching us. That’s how change is made, and old systems are broken. This talk is proof of that because spending two weeks on Galatians 4 isn’t something Jay ever saw coming, and yet here we are!This talk was given on March 24, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94

Jay has been battling a cold, but all the same he’s excited to get back into Galatians! Revolution has always tried to be a place to help those who’ve fallen between the cracks—We’re excited with the work Revolution has done so far, and we’re inspired to continue to try and be Peace Makers. We finally made it to Galatians Chapter 4! It might have taken us the longest to do this year, but it’s our most in-depth study so far. The main take away of this talk and Paul’s whole letter to the Galatians was that everyone is included. He was trying to bring the community together. He wanted them to see that they are all one. And you can almost see Paul’s frustration in some of the writing in this letter. We’ve all been adopted into Grace, it’s for us all, no asterisk. Sometimes it feels like exclusion makes people feel powerful. To be on the inside of the in-crowd. To be separate. Maybe that’s why it happens, because people would rather exclude others instead of seeing all humanity as precious. It seems like somewhere along the way we lost sight of the real message of grace, but instead have stayed under the law—treating Christianity more like sin management, rather than loving one another, friends and enemies alike. We’re all guilty of it, and will fail at it again, and again after that. But soon, we’ll see each other as one, we’ll include others. And we’ll see just how precious it all is. This talk was given on March 17, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94

No Galatians today. Instead, Jay has been inspired to talk about peace and about making peace. We need to be aware of what we put out there. What we are quick to fire off in a comment, a DM, or a text. In arguments and off-the-cuff comments. Because not every victory means we’re winning, is fighting the good fight any good if we’re not changing hearts? How do we move on from things without destroying them as we leave? Why is there so much anger in Christianity? Are we walking the second mile that Jesus tells us to? And if we do, what’s our motivation behind it? Today Jay looks at a few places throughout the Bible. Both Old and New Testament. It takes a combination of both for us to come close to understanding what it means to have a peace that transcends understanding. Because anger and violence very rarely brings about any growth or any peace…or any understanding. But it’s more than that, there needs to be self-reflection in all of us too. We need to look inward and make sure the things we do and say don’t contain violence, because sometimes they do and we just don’t realize it. And when enough people are doing that all at once, not realizing it, well, that’s how we end up where we are today, and why we need talks like this. This talk was given on March 10, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94

It is tricky on whether to treat this as a stand-alone talk, or part of the Galatians series because it can easily be both. And it sort of is. You’ll get what we mean when you listen. This talk focuses mostly on just one verse in Galatians—Galatians 2.38. We feel it’s a good verse for how divided we are now. In this talk Jay discusses how it trying to bring people together takes patience. We have to let go of the feeling to want instant gratification, and brace for a longer haul. Patience and persistence. We have to ask ourselves who we love when we love God. In this talk Jay calls contradiction a beautiful truth. And he’s not wrong. Diversity is also a beautiful truth in that regard too. Unity through diversity seems like a contradiction, but really diversity is what is needed to have unity. Diversity of people, and diversity of the mind. Compromise and Tolerance are not bad words. They are strength and they are love. And it is all of these things together that tell us what fights are worth having, and how to fight them with what’s left after we die to ourselves. This talk was given on March 5, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94

Here we are back in Galatians...sort of. If last week was Part 5 maybe we should call this one 5.1 or 5a because it is a bit of a curve ball. It fits together with the end of Galatians 3 where things get a bit more uncomfortable, but stick with us. It feels important that we talk about peace these days. It feels really really important. Because as Jay puts it in this talk we all seem to be stuck in a state of monologues, preaching to our own personal echo chambers and stating our views and then being done with it. But how can we switch from monologues to dialogues? How do we build a community? How do we disagree well? Today Jay brings in ideas from John Hume and MLK and what they did for civil rights and sort of applies it to what Paul writes about here in the end of this chapter. We want to try and heal, but all heal together. We want to die to ourselves and our own identities and see others as worthy of being human, just like us. Sometimes it feels like we're all a long way off from that reality, but we can't stop believing that it's possible, because we really do think it is. We can do it and do it together.  This talk was given on February 25, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94

We’re back in Galatians again for the next in the series. We’re in chapter 3 today! This is the longest we’ve taken to go through this study—and we’re excited about that! Context is important. We like to really dive in, go over it with a fine-tooth comb. We love seeing all the ways that the people Paul was writing to were just like us, having the same struggles with faith, grace, and humanity. But we also see how much we’ve grown and evolved since then. An interesting thing about this chapter is how it shows us that people debating grace vs. law vs. works is nothing new. It was seemingly happening back then the same as it is now. So, in a lot of ways maybe we haven’t grown and evolved. Or maybe it’s a bit of both. This talk and study have been bringing up a lot of interesting discussions—is faith a gift, or something we earn? Does good scholarship lead to heresy? Is grace a slippery slope? What is counterfeit law? What is counterfeit love? This book and this study have been opening up a lot of new avenues for understanding Paul’s writing more and more. We know he’s not always the most popular guy in some Christian circles these days, but we think understanding the context of Paul as a person, and the time he lived in, can help clear up a lot of those misunderstandings. This talk was given on February 18, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94

Our Galatians study has been so in-depth this year, and so jam-packed with new scholarship, that we’re taking a break this week. This way the other talks can settle, and Jay can get back to studying. But even though we’re taking a break from Galatians, that doesn’t me that Paul won’t still be present all throughout this talk. Today Jay is actually going to go through some scripture and verses that he just straight up does not like. Verses that that rub him the wrong way, or we at Revolution feel have been misrepresented. Mostly it’s scripture about conformity and nonconformity and what that means. What does “sober judgement” mean? What does Paul mean when he’s warning us about being self-important? Do we need to be part of groupthink in order to be part of that group? Does our misunderstanding of these passages accidentally make Jesus’s death in vain? What this world needs more than anything is love, and more love on top of that. But how can we make sure the love is real and not counterfeit love? Here at Revolution, aside from our love of Galatians, we feel strongly that the shift in a lot of todays culture gives Paul a bad rap. When he’s held to today’s rules and standards, he can seem problematic, for sure. But what happens when we add context and nuance back into it. What happens if we just let Paul be Paul. Is it too late to reclaim him? Because things are getting out of hand. We need to be the voices calling out in the wilderness if we want to see real change. We need to stop making our politicians into gods and we need to stop building our spiritual beliefs based on a certain party and their stance. Because that’s been the way of things for too long now, and society seems to have gotten to a place where we know more about what the church is against, rather that what it is for. And…well, that’s not very good news at all. How can we fix this?This talk was given on February 11, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94