Look, I can't judge him at all because everybody tattles a little bit when they were a kid. But my little brother, like one of the things that pushed my buttons a lot about him when we were kids hanging out, is that if anything went wrong, he felt like his only recourse was to go and tell mom. And so he told mom a lot. He grew out of it and he was an awesome kid. He got to the point where he could beat on me a little bit and that gave him another recourse. And then he didn't seem to feel the need to tattle quite so much. But there were times where he would tattle and I'd be like, I don't, I don't get it. I just don't see it right there. But then there were other times where like I'd do something pretty mean and he'd be like, I'm telling mom. And I would go to get upset about it, but I'd just be like, Well, I mean, yeah, obviously you're gonna go tell mom. Yeah, that what else would you do? What else would anyone do? You probably should go tell mom, I will wait here for my punishment. Likewise, when we get to the end of Matthew chapter 9, verses 18 through 26 that we were looking at last week, there is that one little verse at the end, 26, is just tagged on there, that is effectively the tattling part, or maybe the positive tattling part. Tattling has such negative connotations. So you remember what we've been looking at, right? It's another one of these demonstrations of Jesus' authority coming off of the Sermon on the Mount thing. And here we get the double story at once of the unlikely person bursting into the party and being like, Jesus, I'm grabbing for the rope that I trust most. It is you. I don't care what it costs me. My kid is dead, but I think you can actually fix it, and I know dang well that we can't fix it. So if you would please come to my house and even put a hand on her, I know she'll get better. Dang, bold move, brother. At least as bold a move, maybe bolder, is the lady on the way to the house who sneaks up behind Jesus, real crafty like, and she touches the hem of his garment, and Jesus is like, Whoa, what's going on here? And he says, Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you. She gets better, the kid gets better. The people who are skeptical and reject the repugnant cultural others and are grouchy about the whole thing look like great big idiots. Jesus looks awesome. These people's lives are changed forever, and it's great. And then in verse 26, we get the inevitable telling of the story that is just as inevitable as the one that when I was beating on my brother in our basement was gonna happen because he was gonna go tell mom. Of course, people were gonna go tell everybody else. News of this spread through all that region. Well, what else could people do? Let's step back from everything, my friends. And whether you are somebody who's just like me, who's been kind of up and down on the faith thing, and is a long, difficult process of untangling the Christmas tree lights of childhood faith to come back to the whole adult thinking eyes wide open faith thing, or whether you are somebody very different from me because you have never had a doubt or a question about this thing from day one, and I am not mocking you for that. I am jealous of you for that. I think that is awesome and beautiful if that's where you're at. Or maybe you're different from me because you don't believe there's a God behind any of this, but you just like to think outside yourself, or maybe you hope that there's something true behind this. So you're up for hanging out with me anywhere, whoever you are, wherever you are in the equation, let's think about two things. One, why this news spread and what it would have sounded like to the people in the original audience. And two, what this news does for us as it strikes our ears, regardless of where you fit in that list of potential audience members I just described, or even people outside any of the templates that I mentioned. So, first, how would this have come off to the original audience? Well, think about what they just saw. All right, you got this ancient religion that you're a part of that dates back to Foreversville. And I don't know, it seems like really real because you don't really hang out with people from other religions very much. You got these Roman occupiers, that's not much fun. You've got these stories, some of them are kind of legendary, some of them are actually like in your scripture, and you believe them deeply about all of these ups and downs that your people have been through, whether they're miracle stories of your relationship with your God, or prophecies about things maybe getting better someday, or really ugly stories about your relationship with neighboring countries, which occasionally went well, but mostly went pretty badly from your perspective if you're in the original audience. It looked like you were gonna have independence again and maybe build a whole new kingdom, and things were gonna work out, but the Rome came along, and now you're a subject state again and it's depressing and miserable, and the world just feels utterly broken and like nothing could ever make this better. The problems are just too big, people are too stupid and dug in on their dumb, impossible ideas, and things are just destined to continually decline toward worseness. And then you hear from somebody very credible who is not given to making crap up, that they literally had a guy in their town, and his name's Jeff, and Jeff has leprosy, and like his digits are rotten off and stuff. But then there's this guy who's been going around and he seems like another one of these messiah claimant types, except this one, he's really smart, no formal training, but brilliant. He says all this stuff, and then Jeff just like stumps over to him with what's left of his limbs, and is like, Hey, did you fix my leprosy or whatever? That dude touches him and he gets better. Now, what do you make of that? Well, if you're hearing this secondhand in you know, the time that Jesus is doing this stuff, you're probably like, ah, I mean, I I I wish things like that happened. Who doesn't wish things like that happened? But hey, come on. But then you start hearing more stories, and then eventually you hear the story of a religious leader who's on team religious establishment enlisting Jesus to heal his kid, and it worked. And you're like, all right, enough. I can take a couple days off from work for that. I'm gonna go find out what the actual deal is with the kid coming back to life. And so you heard the news, you hike down there, you're like, Hey, uh, is Gyrus home? Oh, yeah, hang on just a minute. And gyrus comes to the door, he says, Yeah, what's up? I was sorry, I was just hanging out. What do you need? And then you're like, Hey, I heard your kid died, super sorry. But then I heard they got better. So I guess congratulations. Can I just talk to your kid for a minute? Oh, yeah, sure. Brandy, come here. And then Brandy comes over and you're like, Hey, were you dead or anything? She's like, Yeah, weirdest thing I was. I don't really get what happened there. It was pretty crazy, and this guy came in, and then it's like I was asleep, and then all the professional mourners and flute people went away, and I've just been hanging out since it's been fine. I feel like it's gonna stick. People would go vet this stuff. They would talk to eyewitnesses, they would talk to the people to whom this happened, and it's compelling. And to be honest, it's probably compelling in a way that is very different than the way it's compelling to you or me, because we can't go talk to the original audience. We're dealing with secondhand accounts, but still, this is getting through the armor for people and it's popping up in the news. You ever watch the movie or a TV show? And crazy stuff happens, like aliens or car chases or explosions, and it's just like nothing really changes, nothing really happens in the news. People in the next scene are just still like all the extras or walking around on the street, and you're like, I don't know. It seems like stuff would be different. If aliens exploded some things like they just did, well, your narrative spidey sense there is doing you a solid. There is something wrong with that picture, but there is something right with this picture. Jesus does stuff that not only breaks the laws of time and space, but does it in the context of claiming stuff that has unbelievably huge implications for literally every human ever, of every persuasion and stripe. And so people are gonna take notice. Which gets us quickly to that second question I wanted to ask. What are they taking notice of? Or maybe more importantly, what are you and I taking notice of? Well, I can say this much for now. I think I can tell with pretty much certainty what Matthew is trying to get us to take from it. This is what I think he wants you and I to read from what we're seeing in these successive anecdotes as Jesus has come off the Sermon on the Mount. He throws down the gauntlet saying that, let me just read it to you. When Jesus had finished saying these things, that is the Sermon on the Mount, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law. Gauntlet is thrown down, and let me show you what that authority looks like. And he lumps together these anecdotes. And I think the culminating one is the one we're looking at right here, at least for a 21st century audience. Dang, death? Are you kidding? You can beat that? Okay, I'm listening. So obviously, Matthew again wants us to see this and say, all right, Jesus has the authority to back up the claims he made in the Sermon on the Mount. He has the authority to maybe even be what we were intoning at the beginning of the book of Matthew, which is the Messiah. And the implications for that would be huge, and they'd also kind of speak for themselves. If he is this king, this authority figure, if he is master of a kingdom that has an open invitation for people to sign up for, if he is the messiah, it would make sense to jump on board with that. That pretty logically follows from what we see Matthew doing here. But I don't think Matthew is trying to get you and me, the modern audience, the modern reader, to look at this and see a formula for what we can get out of God. I think instead, what we're supposed to see here is that he has the authority and credibility to fix the stuff that is totally broken, to genuinely take the unclean stuff about you and me and cleanify it. The unclean stuff that is a result of other people inflicting it on us, the unclean stuff that it's a result of our own messes that we just can't kick and we can't get rid of and we can't get out of our head. There's a cleanifying that comes with that. Jesus has the authority to do it. He's trying to get us to see that he has the authority to genuinely comfort. Take heart, son, take heart, daughter. It's not just, hey, I'm gonna flex my muscles here, but he actually gives a rip about the people who are below him, his subjects, the people who are hurting and screwed up and anathema and broken and repugnant cultural others. And he gives a rip, therefore, by proxy, we can reason to the assumption that he gives a rip about you and me, regardless of which kind of audience member you or me might be. He has the authority needed to solve the human problem. That's what we're supposed to take from all of this stuff. Will that ultimately be something that you look at and are like, yep, he definitely does, and I am 100% in? Or will it be the kind of thing that you look at and say, I wish that I could believe that and I wish that he did, and ultimately I am not in? Well, I don't know. I'm not in charge of that. I like you either way. I hope that you see that there's truth in it, because I mean, that's kind of part of the exercise for me. I think there's truth in it. I think there's hope in it. And ultimately, uh no, I like all of you and respect you wherever you should choose to land. And that's something you can figure out for yourself. This is kind of a review/slash don't miss the forest for the trees or trees for the forest. I never remember which way that goes, kind of thing, where we're trying to get the big picture before we move into the last of these little anecdotes in Matthew chapter nine, and then on into something very different in Matthew Chapter 10. I'm Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon it