You know what makes me kind of sad is malls. You go to malls now, and almost all of them are dreary and awful and terrible, and there are stores in there, and like taekwondo clubs and stuff that never could have existed in a mall, but it just tells you how undesirable that property has become in most indoor malls this day. You walk in, and even though there might be some stuff in there that you want to buy at a couple of those stores that still linger around that sell good mall clothes, for the most part, the vibe is death. The vibe is ugh, this isn't going anywhere. This is not built for growth. This is in institutional preservation mode. This is in hang-on mode. But you go somewhere that's really popping. Uh a great business, a great chain, a great real estate development. You're like, dang, the end is nowhere near in sight. This could grow and grow and grow. And whoever's behind this, clearly from the beginning, they were thinking, let's grow as long as we can grow this thing. Likewise, the whole Bible, the whole message of Jesus, the book of Matthew, Christianity, like the whole dang thing about God and the world and the thrust of the religion, or what we've been calling the kingdom to use Jesus' terminology, is built for growth from the beginning, built into this thing, hardwired into the DNA of the whole religion, of the whole exercise, is the idea that this is for everybody. Remember back in Genesis 12, you've got the part of the Bible. I mean, I have a Bible, it's a 10-minute Bible hour. We look at the Bible, and I know where Genesis is. I'm just gonna read it to you. In Genesis 12, you've got Abram, who would later become Abraham. This is like God's first deal that he makes with the people who would eventually become the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Jewish people. And the language of God's covenant with Abram that he's making here, that starts the whole trajectory of the story of the Old Testament, God dealing with his own people. Look closely at this thing and you'll see this outward trajectory. I will make you, Abram, into a great nation, says God. And I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. It's like, oh, okay, God's chosen people, the Israelites. I get it. Yeah, that's how the Old Testament kind of rolls. I will bless those who bless you, and never curses you, I will curse. Oh, okay, yeah, it's also like the blessings and curses of the Old Testament. Sometimes the God's people, they do good things and then good things happen, and they win in battle or they get blessed, and other times they do awful things and they get punished. But oh, wait a minute, what's this little addendum at the end? And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. This thing was always meant to go global. From the beginning, it was meant to go global. And we see flourishes of that throughout the rest of the Old Testament. But then when we get into Matthew, dang, it's all over the place. I mean, you got Gentiles appearing in Matthew chapter one in the genealogy of Jesus that you and I looked at forever ago. Why are they in there? Well, because of the trajectory of the whole thing, it's always been built for growth. This isn't a shopping mall that's dying, where the only thing left in it is one of those nunchuck and American flag outlets and a pretzel place and an arcade that just has the two-screen X-Men game, but only one of the screens works from 1991. This thing is not that. It's not dying, it's thriving, it's built for growth. It was always in expansion mode. And we're reminded of that the second that we hit Matthew chapter one. In fact, maybe it's a reminder that was long overdue because maybe people had kind of forgotten about it because the world had come to Matthew's audience and it hadn't been a really pleasant arrival. It'd been bloody and ugly and weird, and they'd had their own government, but that didn't go very well either. And maybe it feels like the impulse at the moment in history in which Jesus is on the stage and Matthew is writing, it's more of an impulse to like hunker down, like right now, right? Everybody's a jerk, everything's weird and mean and backwards. It's a great time to get with your tribe and get small and build up the walls and the defenses, but no, no, no. That is dying mall mentality. What we're seeing here is go get them mentality. We're going out right now at a time when everybody else thinks the market is shrinking. We're going out with this thing. And so it's not just that a few Gentiles pop up in Matthew chapter one, reminding us of the outward focus of the kingdom and the whole redemptive story of the Bible. Then the heroes of chapter two are three Gentiles who shouldn't get this at all. But they just looked at some stars and they were like, oh, I think I see what's going on here. We should go and find that baby because he's going to be a big deal. But the guy who should have got it, the king of the Jews, didn't get it at all. And he wanted to kill Jesus, the culminating character in the whole redemptive plan. And then remember, we get over to chapter three, and John the Baptist is arguing with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and he's like, nope, you guys need to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And don't think that you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. So if he wants to, he can make a family of faith out of anything. This is no longer just a single monoethnic religious experience. This is for the whole world because this thing is growing. It's not a dying mall. And then we go through chapter four and into chapter five, and there's all this language about things you wouldn't expect to be blessed, being blessed. And there's all of this language about what it is to be right with God, to sign up, to participate. Then we get to the Lord's Prayer in chapter six. And this is how you pray. This is what it is to orient yourself rightly to God, Jesus is saying. So there again, it's very outward-focused. Then what does Jesus do after he gives this great description of the kingdom? He goes all around talking to people and doing miraculous stuff and effectively opening the doors to the kingdom. He's doing the thing that the coolest people in middle school did. Do you remember the people in, say, eighth grade who were so secure in their own skin that they didn't play the social game? And they were the ones who were just nice to everybody on the fringes, and they were the ones who always would open up the circle and be like, well, these people want to sit at the table with us, they can sit at the table with us. And all the people who are like middling or lower social class just loved that one popular person who was always nice to everybody and not playing the let's hunker down and keep our popular tribe popular and keep everybody else out game. Jesus is the cool kid at the lunch table. He just keeps broadening the circle. Like, no, I'll let these guys in. No, no, no, they can come in. Yeah, but they're weird. No, no, no. I want the weird people. They can come in. Come on, stand over here. Here, sit by me. I got room. He's that guy, and it's amazing. And he's not just that guy to one group of people and their fringes. He's that guy even on the other side of the lake as he goes to the place where the people aren't even theoretically, ethnically Jewish, or even descended from Abraham, or even looking for him. And then we get to the end of chapter nine. He sees the crowds, the crowds who are not always nice to him, but he feels compassion for them because they're harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. And then he says to his disciples, Hey, the harvest is plentiful. Look at all this that's out there. But the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers and do his harvest field. Or a really ugly 1990s middle school paraphrase might be Hey, I'm gonna open the circle to these people, but I can only open the circle so much because it's just the one me. So uh we're gonna need more people to open the circles if we're gonna do real actual acceptance and change things around here. So we need to get some other people who are cool to opening their circles to people who right now are on the outside looking in. It's a beautiful impulse toward growth and inclusion, but at the same time, Jesus is drawing on this language of the harvest. And this is not the first or the last time that he's gonna use this language of the harvest, the grain field, bringing in fruit, producing fruit. I mean, we already looked at one place. I mean, what was I just talking about? Matthew chapter three, where he uses that language about producing fruit that is in keeping with repentance. Oh, okay. Well, he's drawing on the exact same stuff. And then we get to Matthew 13, and we're gonna get to one of the most famous parables ever here in a little bit, where he is talking about the guy who goes around with a bunch of seed, the parable of the sower. And he scatters the seed around, and some of it lands on dirt where it takes and it grows up into this great plant, and it reproduces itself 30 times, 60 times, maybe a hundred times over. But then some of the other seed lands in places where it looks like it's gonna work out and it eventually doesn't. Some of it lands in a place where it doesn't look like it's gonna work out, and then predictably it doesn't. So what we're seeing in Jesus' impulse to broaden the circle of the kingdom, to bring people in who it doesn't make sense to bring in, to open the wall and let the wildlings cross over. That impulse is not only gonna be scary, it's gonna be out and out enraging to some of the people, to the Pharisees and the Olies of the world who were scared of or hurt by people outside their already in-place circle. That's like a murderable offense to open your circle or open your doors to let them in. But Jesus is going to do it anyway, knowing that it's going to awaken that murderous impulse in his enemies. And further, he's going to do it indiscriminately. Again, we're going to see this much more when we get to Matthew chapter 13 in that parable of the sower. But the sower's just chucking seeds everywhere. It's the worst, least efficient plan of all the plans. Like that's like a basketball court. Jesus, I don't know if you want to, it's blacked. Okay, well, oh, well, there goes all of that seed. That I guess that's fine. I don't know if you want to do that over there. That's that's a Walmart. It's just linole. Oh, okay, though. There that goes. The indiscriminate distributing of the DNA packet of the values of the kingdom. The metaphor of this seed is something that Jesus is doing everywhere. He'll open this circle to literally anybody who sees him for what he is, king, who wants to be a part of the kingdom and be a part of the values of that kingdom. And that is what we're about to transition to narratively as we get into chapter 10. Through nine chapters, we've seen the birth narrative and the questions be raised about who is Jesus. Could he actually be the one that fixes all the stupid stuff? I mean, not just like who is Jesus to the original audience, but who is Jesus to us is the question that gets thrown out. Is there someone who could make this better? Then it transitions into him describing this amazing expression of reality that's hard for us to even fathom. But when you sit and think about it, like all politics and religion, and uh, I'm mad at my dad or my youth pastor, something went weird or wrong in my past. You set all of that aside, and it sounds pretty dang appealing. Now there's still stuff to sort through after that, like, well, who is the character in charge of this kingdom and what do we make of him? Which is what we've just dealt with over chapters eight and nine. We've we've looked at his authority, we've looked at his enormous compassion, that his attitude toward people with problems seems to be take heart, take courage, stuff's gonna get better. I'm the kingdom is on its way, I'm the great king. This is gonna be incredible, it's gonna be great. Forgiveness is at hand, the stuff that nips at your heels, that can be dealt with and resolved. But now as we get to chapter 10, the focus turns more outward. He's about to, in keeping with the heart that he put on display for expanding his circle when he had compassion on the harassed and helpless people without a shepherd, in keeping with that, he's about to take his very raw, very green disciples and give them instructions for what it looks like for them to go out and try to play their part in this. And that has a ton of implications that we're gonna have to break down. But the biggest thing for us is we are seeing here a Jesus who will let the wildlings through the wall. A Jesus who is not sitting in the back corner by the musty old restrooms and the trash dumpsters out back by the five empty storefronts and the old nasty mall office trying to figure out how to keep his property alive for another year or two. We are in a full growth, full expansion. Go get people, bring them in, invite everybody, kind of growth phase with Jesus here. And that pivot point is gonna happen in 10. We're going from he's pretty regionally famous to now we're getting very aggressive in terms of we want to invite people and expand our circle. And the stakes are about to get upped dramatically, and that's where we're gonna pick it up tomorrow. Also, quickly, it's been I don't know, maybe like a couple weeks since I've said thank you to all of you who support the podcast at patreon.com slash the tmbh podcast. You don't have to do that. It's free, it's always gonna be free, but it's just really stinking nice of you. And thank you. It is why the podcast is happening. So you guys are awesome. Hi five, more on this stuff, manyata. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.