Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And if you've been hanging out with me for a while, you know what the drill is. We work on the book of Matthew, just a teeny tiny little bit every day. Today we're gonna be in Matthew 9, starting in verse 18, and we're gonna go through whatever we make it through today. And then there's some little story or anecdote or illustration thing that we do at the beginning, and it's like, oh, now we know each other better, and that was kind of fun. And then it helps us remember the bigger thing that we're talking about, and it's just the way I like to do it. This is not one of those charming little anecdotes. This one is horrifying, and I'm sorry for it in advance. I'm not proud of this story, even though I do acknowledge that the story is a little bit funny looking back. So if you are someone who does not want to hear a story that ends with a dead hamster, you might want to skip this one. If you listen with children, they might not want to hear a story about a dead hamster. So you could just jump ahead a couple of minutes or 10, or I don't know how long it's gonna take me to tell the story, but we'll get there when we get there. Here's the thing: when I was a kid, maybe 13 years old, I shared a basement with my little brother, and he had a hamster that he kept down there, and he was doing a science experiment with it, not on it, with it. He was measuring how much time every day the hamster would spend on the wheel or something completely innocent like that. But I really liked the hamster. I really liked the little furry creatures of the world, the little kitties and bunnies and things like that. When I was six, I found a little bunny that I was sure had lost its mom, and so I brought it home and I put it in a box and I fed it lettuce and carrots for a night. My parents were like, that bunny has to go back to the wild now. We still have a picture of me holding the bunny up to the camera with tears in my eyes because of how sad I was to let the bunny go. So you gotta understand, I am not some monster that likes to injure animals or something. I got a huge soft spot for the squishy little things of the world. And so I felt bad that the hamster had to live in this dumb little cage thing all the time. So I would get it out and I would play with it, and I would make little environments for the hamster. And eventually what I landed on with my buddy was that we could just pull the top blankets off of the bed, and there was this white sheet, and we could raise up the corners of the white sheet, and then the hamster would just scoot around, scoot around, scoot around in there like one of those motorcycles that rides around in that chamber, that barrel-style chamber, and they go faster and faster and they go up the edges. And the hamster just seemed to love it. And we loved it, and it was really fun. And I would roll like little marbles or super balls down in there, and he would interact with them as a great time. Well, one day we figured out that if we pulled the edges of the sheet taut at the same time, it would function like a trampoline and it would make the little hamster do like a little flip, and he seemed fine. The hamster didn't seem mad about it at all, everything's cool, so we did that twice. And we were like, oh, that's really fun. And then, to my unending shame, on the third time, we both had the idea to up the power significantly at once. Now, maybe if he had just had the idea or I had just had the idea, it would have been fine. But the combined power of our sheet tightening unfortunately rocketed the hamster directly into the ceiling. Now, that in and of itself may also have been fine. It was a very low ceiling. It even had some squishy, foamy give to it. But I had recently built a model of the solar system for science class, and I had made that out of balls attached to the ceiling by fishing line, connected to the ceiling by little finish nails, and I had taken down the solar system, but I hadn't taken down the finish nails yet. And I did all the moons and the asteroid belt. There were a lot of nails right in the middle of the room, and the hamster smashed into an orbiting nail of Jupiter, maybe Ganymede or Io. I couldn't tell you at this point. It lands back on the sheet and it's just laying there motionless, like the Lady of Shalot with this, in any other context, beautiful, perfect little circle of crimson under its baby hamster head. And I panicked in that moment, as like all at once my eyes were opened to the irrevocability of death and the consequences of what I had done. And I was deeply upset just at that concept. But then also it occurred to me, my parents are gonna find out about this. And the social consequences of what I've done are not something I would like to endure. So I quickly shifted from guilt to doing what any sane person in that situation would do, which is disposing of the body. So I took the hamster into the bathroom and I tried to flush it down the toilet. But, and I can say this with great certainty, that doesn't actually work on the first try. A chunky little hamster down one of those holes, like especially with basement level pressure, is just not going. And so it took three or four tank fulls of water and flushes and a ton of plunging, but eventually that hamster carcass went down the toilet. My family assumed that the cat ate the hamster, and for weeks I did not have to answer for that until eventually my conscience caught up with me and I told them, why am I telling you this mortifying story? Because two of the things that are most immovable in all of the human experience intersected in that one horrifying moment for me, that being death and social consequences. Likewise, those two immovable elements of the human experience both come up in the passage that we're looking at today. And this passage is something that is happening in the long alluvial fan that is trailing off of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus describes this amazing upside-down kingdom with amazing values, and that everybody could be invited to this kingdom and everybody could participate in this kingdom, not just as somebody on the fringes, but as a son, a daughter, a child, an heir, an agent of the kingdom. And then everybody's like, well, can you back that up? And Jesus backs that up in a collection of series of miracles that demonstrate his authority over a whole bunch of things. But as we were talking about last week, there remains one great big giant thing. It is the conqueror of all other authority and all other power, and that is death. If someone were to truly resolve the human problem and were to truly be able to deliver on all the stuff that Jesus is talking about, they would have to have authority over death. So when this comes up in the opening line of this passage in Matthew 9 18, the ball is getting set on the T for the biggest question of all regarding the authority of Jesus to be answered. So again, verse 18 says, While he was saying this, a ruler came and knelt before him. Well, while he was saying what? If you read the Bible in its original presentation, that would be really obvious because this would be built right into the previous anecdote. But because the Bible is divided up into chapters and verses, and now you've got all kinds of little notes and subheadings in there, it can be really easy to lose track of what was just going on. So what was just going on? Flipping back over. Aha! That's right. John's disciples in the previous anecdote come up to Jesus and then like, all right, why don't you fast like we and the Pharisees do? That's right. And then Jesus was like, no, it's the time to celebrate because I'm here right now. This is a very rare moment in history. Then Jesus gives the double example of the unshrunk piece of cloth being used to patch uh experienced fabric or the new wine and the old wineskins. And that still doesn't answer the question of where he is when all this is going on. So Jesus went from there, he saw a man named Matthew. Ah, I got it. Okay, that's right. Remember, he went and he talked to that Matthew guy, and then Matthew signed up to become a follower of Jesus. Then Matthew invited Jesus to a party at his house. It was a weird party with all of the repugnant cultural others and the religious elite of the day. And there's tension and friction, and Jesus is pushing back on the Pharisees who are pushing back on him. So we are still literally at the weirdest party ever. Then Jairus, the head of the synagogue, the ruler of the synagogue there in Capernaum, shows up at Matthew's house there on the Sea of Galilee in Capernaum, with all of these people gathered around, and he busts in. He's like, Hey, my daughter's just died. Whoa, that's staggering. Now let's just think about that. And this is a good place to probably land the plane for today. His daughter died. I don't know who the closest person to you is who's ever died, but I'm guessing everybody listening has experienced death. And you remember what it was like when that news got announced to you. That is a staggering, shocking, life-changing moment. And depending on how close that person was to you, or maybe the circumstances of their death, that might be the pivotal moment by which you measure time in your life. This is a huge phrase that just got uttered. But this isn't just some dude either. This is the leading religious official of the entire town. The ruler of the synagogue is like the MC of the synagogue. He's the guy who not only takes care of the building and the grounds and the administrative stuff and even has a hand in how all of the money things work out. But he is also the guy who handles who gets up and reads scripture when he organizes the services. This is the closest thing you've got to the local pastor in this small town busting in and saying his daughter has just died. And I just picture what that would be like for you. Maybe you don't go to church, but maybe you've got somebody else in your life who plays that kind of mentor role in your community. Maybe you can just picture your pastor or your pastor's kid. Now imagine that you're at this event and it's not just that you get the news, but the person who just experienced the loss minutes ago comes in in the emotional state you can expect them to be in, and he says this. The music stops playing, the tone immediately changes. Nobody knows what to do or say socially. This had been a jovial, bright event celebrating the transformation of the life of a repugnant cultural other. This jovial event had been peppered with a little bit of grouchiness, that that guy was getting off too easy for his new reformed life. And maybe things have pepped back up as Jesus wins the day with a parry and a thrust verbally defeating the verbal attacks of his opponents, and people are having a great time and maybe a little liquored up, and then this happens. That is what the moment is like. And again, this would be an emotional anvil falling on the room if it was anybody. But all the more so, the implications and the stakes are raised because of who it is. That guy should not be coming to Jesus for help. If his version of things will work, he ought to be able to take care of this himself. But the leader, the guy who is emblematic of what is shaping up to be the resistance to Jesus' ideas and his person and his authority and his kingdom, the rubber met the road in his life, he is facing this crucial, crushing, pivotal moment. And where does he go? He goes right to Jesus because he has seen enough from Jesus to think you could actually do something about this. And I'm more concerned about this most heartfelt desire to see my daughter spared than I am about any of the social, political, religious maneuverings that I have done or what this might cost me to go and make this play that I think is my best play in this moment. This went from goofy to dark to goofy to sobering. I don't know, this is kind of a weird one. I'm really glad that we have a little bit of rapport built up so that we can have conversations like this. We're gonna get more to the heart of what this anecdote means and what the far-reaching implications of it are tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.