Hey my friends, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and there's no way to hide it. I am feeling some stuff today. We did my kiddo's first ever job interview. My little girl went and got a job. She nailed it and she landed the position. Somewhere maybe on the drive home, it occurs to me that I was irrationally sad. Like obviously I'm super excited for her. Like that's that's great. That's a rite of passage. It's a gigantic thing. I think it's just a grief over the end of an era. I loved little kid time with her. I loved preteen pal, throw on the ball cap, go in the backyard, hit wiffle balls, dig around in the mud kind of era with her. And now we're into the young lady, go out and get a job and take responsibility and handle this stuff on your own phase. And I'm excited about what's next. I've loved every phase with her, but my dad heart is a little bit squishy right now because I'm I'm sad about the passage of another era. And I didn't really work ahead or anything for what we were going to talk about today, but I promise I really do have a plan here, and there is a point to me telling you all of this. And that is that, you know, when I got home from that conversation and started looking at stuff here today, I was like, oh, I we're kind of in the same transitional pivotal moment in the evolution of the people that Jesus was investing in in Matthew chapter 9. And so it's kind of a cool coincidence that happens to come up today. I find it oddly encouraging that we're talking about this end of an era in the growth of people Jesus loved and was investing in, and in whom he had great expectations for their future at the same time that I'm going through the same thing with my kid. So here's the deal. The book of Matthew breaks down thusly so far. You got the opening stuff that is the birth prologue. It raises all the questions about who Jesus is. Could he be the Messiah? It's terribly interesting, and it certainly would have piqued the interest of the original audience because it looks like he might be the Messiah. And then there's some pretty interesting stuff in his early adult life, public life, that is, that we see in his baptism. We start to get a sense that he's going to have some opposition. He calls disciples early in the game. He passes a huge test that anyone claiming to be the Messiah would have to pass. And then he gets up, and now we finally get to find out what he thinks. And what he thinks is that he's the king of this great kingdom with beautiful values that would be beautiful regardless of who you are or what you think. It's what everybody wants deep down. Everybody knows this stuff is right and good. It's baked into nature and into who we are. And he lays all this out and talks about assuming the right posture before the king, and that being how you enter into this kingdom and participate in the kingdom. And then it gets done with that sermon that he gives in chapter 7, and right at the end, it's like he did not talk like people everybody was used to hearing at that point. He spoke as one who had authority. But still the questions would have abounded. How much authority? Can he really deliver on all of this stuff? Can he beat evil in the world? Can he beat the human condition? I mean, politicians say things like, I'm gonna beat poverty, and they can't necessarily even do that. Can this guy beat death and suffering? Uh okay, well, I'll keep watching. Well, then as we get into chapter 8 and chapter 9, the disciples who went up on the mountain with Jesus for that big speech we just talked about are now treated to a front row seat of Jesus going on this crazy teaching miracle authority demonstration tour where he goes around and just proves, like, yeah, I got authority over everything. I got authority over sickness, disease, distance, uh, the weather, even death. And yeah, I even have the authority to give the blind the ability to see things that are true, not just physically true, but spiritually true. And I have the authority to give people who can't speak words and the ability to speak. And we get done with all of this stuff, and people are unhappy about it. Some are cool, some are irritated. The disciples look at it and probably felt a little bit discouraged by the response, but you know, they're green, they're new at this stuff, they don't know how it's gonna work out. Surely they're still picturing some kind of reckoning. I mean, how are kingdoms established, right? Like it's not very often that the revolutionary story of the establishment of a new line of kings is, and then somebody came along and he was homeless, but he was really good at being homeless. And everybody else was like, that guy should be in charge now. No, it's just not how this stuff works out. It is blood and fire, Targaryen style. But Jesus still isn't given any hints that he's gonna do that. He feels compassion on the people who don't like him and maybe even want to see him dead. He views them as harassed and helpless, not pure untamable evil. He sees something that's redeemable here, and then he looks to his rough around the edges, still don't really know what we're doing here, disciples, and he's like, hey, it's time to turn the page. We're done with the little kid thing, and we're moving on to the next phase of maybe young adulthood, metaphorically here, because it's time for you to ask God to put people together to go out and do something about the situation that the world is in. The harassedness, the helplessness, the sheep without a shepherdness, the leaderlessness. You guys are gonna be the ones to take this baton and get after it. And I even wonder if years later Peter looked back on this moment and recalled this quantum leap that happened here when Jesus was like, surprise, all right, you saw some stuff, you heard some stuff, now you're gonna go out and do it. Get ready. I wonder if Peter recalled that when he was saying, you know, later on in a letter, you know, like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk so that by it you can grow up in your salvation. Because Peter certainly is on a trajectory here, and this is not gonna be the last growth moment for him and his buddies, but this is a pretty big one because this is the first job interview. This is Jesus handing off authority and sending them out into the fray. It goes like this Matthew 10, verse 1, very pivotal moment in the narrative of Matthew, very pivotal moment in the lives of the disciples, very pivotal moment in the unfolding, the revealing of what Jesus' master plan is going to be. It goes like this. He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. Oh, I mean, that rings a bell. Remember all of that stuff that we read in Isaiah, like chapter 53 and 6, and all over Isaiah. We've seen this language about the Messiah showing up, and when he does, broken stuff is gonna get fixed, and the blind are gonna see, and the deaf are gonna hear, and the lame are gonna walk, and all of this stuff is gonna happen. Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a little different than the anticipated game plan for the Messiah, and this isn't probably what other messianic claimants were doing. I haven't heard of any other messianic claimants who came along and bequeathed their authority, gave some degree of their power and even their credentials, their banner, their name, their reputation to underlings who followed him around. I mean, these aren't acolyte sycophants who are going around wishing they could be Jesus or just wanting Jesus' power. I mean, maybe sometimes they are, they're not perfect. These are people who've assumed a right posture before the king. They know he's always going to be the king, they're never going to be the king. And I wonder if they ever anticipated that they were going to play this role. So it's kind of like a dad who puts, I don't know, 13 or 14 years of effort and training and equipping into a kid, and then with a soft heart and keeping the misty tears out of his eyes, or at least keeping her from seeing him, drives her down to the place where she wants to get a job and hands her off and trusts that for at least this job and this initial foray into the brave wide world, she has what she needs. Well, they've been given what they need. They have the authority of the king. They have an authority that isn't just, hey, we're his bannermen and we represent him. They have an authority that goes even further, like we can manifest this right now. I don't know if this happened forever with them. We see more of it later on. We'll have to game that out a little bit later. But at least in this moment, in this pivotal, unique moment in history, Jesus sends them out with something that will cause everybody to say, that looks just like Jesus' thing. Now, it's not just the miraculous stuff, though, that they're going out with that looks just like Jesus' thing. They've also got all the values of the kingdom. And so when they do the upside-down kingdom values routine, theoretically, if people have seen enough of what Jesus is about and his regional fame has escalated enough, they'll look at that and be like, okay, that that's what I've heard. I might not know exactly what to make of it, but yeah, sure, that that's on brand. That is what I've heard is supposed to happen with Jesus stuff. But here's a question for us to wrestle with maybe a little bit more next time around. Why have help? If you are the sovereign of all of existence, if you're the king of everything and you're in charge of everything, you could just do this. And look, there's not some like trite little answer like, ha ha ha, I set you up with a question, but there's actually an answer, and I'm so wise, thank you for gathering at my feet, I'm not the dispensary of wisdom. No, it's an honest question. Why wouldn't you just do it yourself? Because he could, and I think it would have been effective, yet, if in the mind of an infinite God, and that is the kind of God that is described in the Bible, every possible permutation, every possible version of reality has been thought through, gamed out, and all of them but one, it looks like, got rejected. At least we know he picked at least one of the things he thought of in his infinite mind for what he was gonna do with reality, and he picked one, an actualized one, that is this, that has Peter, you know, the mangler of ears, and Thomas, the doubter of resurrection. These guys are on the team. Judas even is on the team. Are you kidding me? What are we doing here? Why wouldn't he just do it himself? We're gonna game that out next time around and see if there are any clues to that that we can find. There probably could have been a pretty good version of reality where he didn't take the kids down to the metaphorical store and have them go to the metaphorical job interview and have them get a metaphorical job and have them metaphorically wade out into the great wide world. But again, he did, and I think that has very interesting implications for us. Last thought. A few weeks back, there was this flurry of reviews that came in for the podcast. That was really nice of you. That's weird, I I don't understand the algorithm or how podcasting works necessarily or anything, but what I know is that like a couple thousand more people suddenly jumped in after you did that. I just cannot thank you enough. But taking the time to rate and review this thing, as much as it feels kind of scabby to ask, apparently it really super helps. That is such a cool solid that you are doing me there, and of course you don't have to, but it's just crazy nice. I know it's more time out of your life to do it. Uh, but thank you to everyone who did that. And especially thank you to BPate96, who wrote a really clever review which says, This isn't your dad's 10-minute Bible hour. And then in parentheses, unless you're one of Matt's kids, that is. It's just a nice day to read that review. Thank you. And also thank you to Yatriquaquirti, 12345, 12354321. Suspect that might be a throwaway account. I can't say for sure. But it says this is the first review I've probably ever written of anything. I had to Google how to leave a review. And they just go on to say a bunch of really cool stuff that might make somebody else want to listen to the thing. That's really nice of you. It's above and beyond. Thank you to all of you who have rated or reviewed the program. Uh, it makes a big difference. All right, I'm gonna go sit on the back porch, watch the kids play in the backyard, and think about life a little more. We'll catch you all soon. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast.