Everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And if you're just joining us for the first time ever, hey, that's awesome. Welcome. Thank you for being here. We work our way through the book of Matthew a little bit more every day. We just get as far as we get and then we pick it up the next day and do it some more on weekday mornings. So right now we are just getting toward the end of Matthew 9. If it's your first time here, you can just jump in with us right now. You'll figure things out as we go along. Or if you want to, you can go all the way back to the beginning and pick it up there. The thing works pretty well sequentially, or you'll be fine just rolling with us now. All of that said, let me tell you about one of the things that is among my least favorite social phenomenon of the last decade. It's the thing where you go scrolling through Twitter and you're like, there's a video. I shouldn't watch it. This is going to be a train wreck, but now it looks like somebody's getting kicked in the face or property's being destroyed, or somebody's being horrible to somebody else, or a kid's getting run over by a stroller by their jerk dad. I'm going to watch it. And then you click it and you see this horrible thing happening. And there's somebody there holding the camera because it's filmed. You know, they're staring at the event through their phone and they're like, oh my gosh, somebody do something. Oh my gosh. And then the horrible thing just unfolds. And the person with the phone never does anything. You're like, just you fix it. You're right there. I'm all the way over here on the other side of the internet. There's not a dang thing I can do, but you're standing right there. And what you thought would be your contribution to the situation was to point an electronic rectangle at the thing and shriek, oh my gosh, again and again and again. Well, it ain't helpful. I really like it when I see the videos where someone is sitting there shrieking impotently with their phone, pointing it at the bad thing that's happening. And then someone else comes into screen, usually without a phone, and they make the thing better. I'm rooting for the people who do that. I want to be one of the people who points my phone at things less and does things more. Here's what I'm driving at, though. The obvious nonsense of that situation that we have all seen unfold a bazillion times is that the person who has the capacity to resolve the situation that was a big enough situation for them to think to point a camera at it is the person who is doing nothing as a bystander, marveling at the horror of the event that they are in a position to fix. Likewise, when we get to the end of Matthew chapter 9, Jesus is going to employ some very clever mental ninja-ing on his still fresh, green, untrained disciples as they look at the situation in the world and they're distraught. I mean, they've just seen Jesus do two chapters worth of awesome stuff, fixing things that couldn't be fixed, bringing people back from the dead, healing stuff that nobody else could take care of, making the blind to see and the mute to speak. And what does he get for all of it? The blue check marks of the day come out and are like, hmm, I think it's by Satan that he's doing these good things. It's crazy. He does awesome stuff, and everybody's mad at him and yelling at him. What the heck is going on? So the disciples no doubt look at the world with all of these great things that Jesus is doing and all of the weird response, and they're downtrodden and frustrated. And Jesus sees the crazy, stupid stuff that's going on too. But rather than being mad or tweeting about how bad the world is now, or telling his followers that we need to hunker down and resist the bad people who think the wrong things no matter what, instead, he's like, Yeah, you know, that that's yeah, they said all that. All right. And then he just keeps doing exactly what he was doing anyway. He just keeps making things better. And he looks at the people who were mean tweeting at him and plotting his eventual death. And rather than being angry with them, his response is compassion. In fact, it says in verse 36 of Matthew chapter 9, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, I'll insert this next part, it's not in the original text, who were all gasping in horror while pointing their phones at the situation, all vertically oriented, by the way, hacks. Paraphrase his mind. Then he said to those disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Do you see what he did there? It's like, wow, yeah, you guys see, that's really bad. I mean, it's so bad that your feelings are hurt and you all knew to point your phones at it, but you just wish that somebody would do something about it, right? Yeah. Because things are so bad. You know what you guys ought to pray for. You should ask God to find somebody who can see that the situation is bad who would go and do something about it. If only God could find the right people who were in the right position, who could observe what's wrong. Maybe then something could be done. Hmm. Well, until then, I guess we'll just have to pray to God and hope that He raises up such people. Think about it, guys. If you pray this, you are the answer to the prayer. You're standing right there. You see what Jesus is seeing, you see the problem. Jesus is all on board with the proper orientation toward a world that's busted up and broken and stupid and dumb. He was there to redeem from the beginning. He knew before the foundations of the earth were put in place what each and every single one of those people was going to say about him, the stupid, broken stuff that was going to happen, the blood, the violence, the gross, awful secret stuff, the disgusting politics. He saw it all coming, and he feels compassion. Whereas the disciples, my guess would be, probably felt more just horror or shock or more overwhelmed. But Jesus doesn't lecture the disciples. He could have gone right through the front door and just balled them out for not solving the problem more quickly, but instead, he just paints a picture. There is this robust harvest just sitting out there. It's ready to go, it's been fruitful, it just needs to be brought in. Well, who's going to do that? You should pray that somebody will do that. I mean, think about the imagery that he's using there. The idea is that the majority of the fruitful good stuff for the kingdom is still out there in the field. It hasn't been harvested and brought into the kingdom yet. It's still potential. So let's take that to the next logical step and just think about world kingdom, kingdom, kingdom stuff here. Sounds like what Jesus is saying is we need what is still in that harvest field. Go and get that. Go and bring that in. That is supposed to be a part of the kingdom. Or to put it even more simply in 21st century terms, the modern expression of the kingdom of God, the church, needs the people who aren't in it yet. They are vitally important. They bring a ton to the table. They are needed in the kingdom. And the idea is the people who have already come to terms, at least on some level, with who Jesus is as king and what the values of the kingdom are, and setting aside all of the other stupid controversial stuff and the dumb social political fights, but focusing only on this eternal, meaningful truth, God, Jesus, Bible, and the kingdom, and kingdom values and all of that stuff, they're supposed to go out and bring in the harvest. Quick aside here, if I'm somebody who is not part of the kingdom and I come across this passage, or if I'm somebody who's not a part of the kingdom and I listen to this episode of this podcast, I'm like, really? That's how you view me. Potential energy in a field that needs to be harvested by people who have already been harvested? I don't know, that harvest metaphor, it sounds kind of dark. I'm not sure how I feel about being brought in or being the target of a church's harvesting effort. To you, I would say that is a very, very valid pushback. It is completely reasonable to look at something and be like, I'm not in the thing, and I don't really feel like being proselytized by the thing. Thank you very much. That said, if the thing happened to be true and it happened to be real and it happened to be good, and at the deepest, truest level, it happened to be the thing that most satisfies what humans were made for and all the things that we really deeply want that we try to get in other ways, and there really was the deity who was the first cause of all of existence behind the thing, then like it would be pretty cool for people to let you know in a way that is in keeping with the values of the kingdom. But let's be honest, and we'll talk about this more next time around. So often the way people communicate their version of religion, their version of Christianity is not in any way in keeping with the values of the version of Christianity that you're trying to convert people to. So this is one of those things that's been a little bit colored by history, a little bit colored by bad experiences. And again, we're gonna break all of that down more later on. But for our purposes today, what we've got here is a situation where Jesus' disciples were probably understandably very frustrated and disillusioned with what they were seeing going on around him. We're gonna talk more about how that image, that metaphor of the harvest is something that Jesus will draw on later in chapter 13 to lower expectations about how many people will sign up or what people are gonna do with this thing. Jesus is not surprised, apparently, by the fact that not everybody's into it and that even some people are mad about it. But what I think is the stroke of genius of this passage is that while the disciples are probably holding up the metaphorical cell phone in shock and horror at what is unfolding in front of them, Jesus is cool as can be. He's not holding up the phone, recording and gawking at what's going on. Instead, he just keeps doing good and redemptive stuff and then bounces it back to the disciples to be like, You're right, you see something that's pretty weird and screwed up here. And you're right, the values of the kingdom, they're beautiful and they're good for people who are wired like us and for people who are wired completely differently from us. And there's all this potential sitting out there right in front of you for good in the place where you just see destruction and chaos. Wow, you guys should totally ask God to do something about it, to raise up some people who have eyes to see, like we saw in that passage a couple anecdotes ago, and who have the ability to speak, like we saw in that passage two anecdotes ago, and who could go out and do something about the situation at hand. So you should just pray that God will find somebody just like that. Maybe you can do it while you guys are recording the situation on your phones right there and gasping about things. Brilliant what he does there to point out to them in a very subtle way without really berating them or shaming them. I mean, he wasn't nearly as snarky as I just was. Brilliant the way he points out to them that in this situation, their eyes are telling them the truth, but they are the solution to the thing they see in front of them. They are the answer to the prayer that Jesus is telling them to utter. And look, I usually try not to put a quaint little life lesson at the end of these things. You're pretty smart, you can connect the dots for yourself, but I just can't help it this time around. How much dumb stuff is going on in the world? I don't mean stuff that isn't like what your political party likes. I mean stuff that just involves people hurting and suffering and devouring each other, stuff that's violent, stuff that's not true, stuff that's not merciful, stuff that's not loving. We see this all around us, and that transcends party preference and our own political, religious, moral virtue system that we're so proud of and that we like to broadcast on the internet. We see the stuff. We've all got eyes, we've all got ears, we all have the ability to do something in some way. And part of what I like about this is really fun to look at this passage and be like, ha ha ha ha, take that, disciples, you guys are so dumb. While sitting here and doing nothing, when in reality, I think what we're supposed to do is read a passage like that and be like, oh wow, it's kind of like that be the change you want to see in the world thing that you get on bumper stickers these days. If in any way, regardless of what you'd say about Jesus or theology or anything, you embrace the values of the kingdom, well then you've been given something good. And also you've been given the sometimes dangerous responsibility of giving away that beautiful thing that you've received and that's been instilled in you. And it's another one of those places where I think if we all just kind of did that, some of the things that make us really sad and shocked and horrified that cause us to record things on our phone and gasp could actually be made better and redeemed. If I just took a tone there and that sounded preachy, like I know how the things ought to be and you don't, just forgive me and sort through that and try to get to the heart of what I'm trying to say. You guys are awesome. Thanks for hanging out with me. Thanks for thinking about important stuff. I'm Matt, this is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.