Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. And what could be more fun and energizing and uplifting than starting our conversation today with a quote from George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984? This is the one that describes this place where a party takes over a whole country and they control people and weaponize them against each other. And it's absolutely horrible and terrifying and exactly the reality we don't want to live in. And as you read the story, you're like, well, thank goodness we don't live in that reality. But then I think part of what Orwell is going for is that as you get further into the story, you're like, oh, but there are little bits of that reality that we kind of do. And one of the little bits of reality that hits a little too close to home, regardless of at what point in history you're reading this book, is the idea of the lies that are accepted as truth, lies that you just have to play along with. Now, I'm sure a lot of you in your brains right now are like, oh, he means this. I don't mean that. Whatever you're thinking, I don't mean it, I don't mean anything. I just mean as a matter of practice, there are social pressures that exist at any given time that cause us to look at a thing, see how the thing is, and say that's not actually how the thing is. The quote that is most famous in terms of epitomizing this reality from 1984 goes like this: The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. And if all others accepted the lie, which the party imposed, if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth. And as the story unfolds, there are moments in the protagonist's life, in other characters' lives, where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. Everybody's cool with playing along with this lie or that lie, just to get along, to avoid putting someone else in a bad situation, whatever it might be. They're largely harmless lies about who got how much chocolate or what the chocolate rations were last week. And so people do play along. But eventually something happens, and people are in a place where they're like, no, in this moment, everything that matters to me is in play. And I'm not going with the lie, I'm going with what my eyes actually see and what my ears actually hear. And as for how that actually plays out in the book, you'd have to read the thing for yourself to find out, because it is a book I don't want to spoil, and I think you really might appreciate it if you were to read it. But my point is if you want to get past all of the neat, tidy little social lies that we tell ourselves and that we tell others for whatever reason we might feel like we need to, just look at something that really is a matter of life and death, a matter of essence. In that moment, we will go for the thing we actually believe at the deepest level of the self to be true, to have the potential to deliver. And in Matthew chapter 9, all of the little social lies, all of the little things that you just need to say to play along and get by in the first century Galilean political, social, religious reality of this little community of Capernaum, all go out the window for the ruler of the local synagogue, a guy named Jairus. We learn that from the corresponding passage over in Matthew chapter 5. When his kid dies, his daughter, like we talked about last time around, dies. And just down the street, there is this politically loaded thing that's unfolding. It's like a protest and an election and a riot and a hippie counterculture party all rolled into one thing. In terms of implications, it's the hot button thing of hot button things. And in that exact moment, Gyrus' daughter dies and the rubber meets the road. Will he play along with the lies or mostly true things that he's been saying and doing that are part of the social niceties that he just needs to do to get by? Or at that moment where his heart and everything that really deeply is true about him and what he really cares about is all laid bare, will he turn to the thing that he thinks actually could do something about his life and death situation? And so he goes down the street and he busts into that party, knowing exactly what it's going to mean, and he says the following My daughter has just died. And then he talks to Jesus and he says, But come and put your hand on her and she'll live. This is career suicide. This is social suicide. This guy was brilliant. Come on, look at what his job was. He could lick his finger, put it in the air, and tell exactly which way the breeze was blowing. He knew there would be consequences for making this decision. But I don't know. Do you have a little girl? Are you somebody's little girl? Because I've got a couple of those. And if you want to get to the truest level of who I really am and what I really believe, what I would do anything for, you start talking about those little girls. To say that my heart is soft for them is such an understatement. I I didn't know what it was to truly and completely unequivocally love something outside of myself at that level of compassion and care and nurturing and gentleness until they were born. I love my wife in a different way. It's it was a new thing that was awakened in me when those girls came into the world one at a time, and that has never changed. It's only deepened. And if I were in this guy's spot, truth would happen really, really fast. Now I watched my dad walk through losing his baby boy in an obviously unexpected, horribly tragic car accident, and what I saw come out of him was the conviction that to him the truest, realist thing, the highest priority was the kingdom. And I k will never get a better litmus test as to what my dad really honestly thinks and believes than how he responded, and I think responded rightly to that tragedy in the midst of that tragedy. But at the same time, I've been around death a whole lot, and I've seen other people who say they think something, and I can't judge them one bit under the duress of loss and pain when uh it maybe looks like the stuff they say is their top priority, maybe isn't in the face of difficult stuff. And I reiterate, I can't judge them or be harsh about this, but I want to linger on this moment about this guy, because this isn't just some dude who casually walks up to somebody else, like, hey, I got this thing going on, is there anything you can do about it? There was a momentary calculation, and in that moment of calculation, this person said, I would trade everything I've built, everything I have, everything I've earned socially. I would trade my name for my daughter, and I believe that the truest, realist, most likely route to resolving that is not the stuff that I've looked at with my eyes and ears and then casually been a little dishonest about to play the game. It's in that guy. That guy right there at that party, at the deepest level of me, I'm pretending to be gyrus right now. I believe he can do something about death. That is the only thing. Not my religion, not the stuff that I peddle or profit from, not the stuff that I help make happen. Maybe he thought there was truth to that. Maybe he thought that that truth pointed to Jesus. Maybe he came to that conclusion in the moment. Maybe he thought this for a long time, but just couldn't bring himself to a place where he could admit it. And now the circumstances have forced his hand. I don't know exactly what his process was. I only know the result. Again, I don't know how Jairus got to where he was or arrived at this, but in this moment, as he bursts in like a grieving crazy man in front of all of his peers and classmates and people who look up to him spiritually, and he goes to Jesus, not the religious leaders, what you're seeing there is truth. What you're seeing there is the purity of heart that we talked about back at the beginning of the Beatitudes. So Jairus, under the enormous duress of the situation, has looked with his eyes, he's listened with his ears, he's consumed the empirical data, he's done the math in his head, and now in a moment of decision, he is ready to say, I think that might be God, or at least God's guy. And I think I'm maybe incredibly lucky to have that guy here right now, but if he can do all of this other stuff, what about death? And so maybe it's desperation, maybe it's calculation, maybe it's just the truth being forced to come out in a beautifully honest way, but he bursts in at great cost to himself, he says this thing, and then verse 19 says Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples. And on the way there, somebody else in another desperate situation for a different desperate reason is going to see the procession and jump in in almost as bold an intervention, and we'll see how Jesus responds to that desperate interruption as we go along tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is the 10 minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.