Hey, when you were in high school, did you get the talk from your mom or dad or maybe both about managing your reputation and being smart about who you hang out with? I think that's a pretty standard issue talk. I mean, we're already doing that with our kids, and they're certainly not in high school yet. I think the line of thinking, if I remember right, went something like this: you can't control what other people do, but everybody has a reputation and you just have one. And if you associate too much with people who are doing really destructive things, outsiders might look at that and associate you with those things, and it might cost you opportunities. I think it is really good advice, but then I would get that advice from mom and dad, and then we go to church and we would celebrate all of these stories about Jesus going and hanging out with bad people. And it was kind of a mixed message. And my parents are wonderful parents, so they were wonderful parents, they are wonderful parents. I think this is just one of those places where there's some good practical life advice going on, which is hey, you don't want to set yourself up to own other people's mistakes, so that it does limit your opportunities because of that. But also, well, if you're a kingdom citizen, you've been given grace, you've been given forgiveness, you got to give that away. And if you're gonna give grace to people and you're gonna be redemptive, I mean, that's gonna involve hanging out with other people who've got problems, maybe a different list of problems than yourself. It's just one of those things that requires a whole lot of nuance to really sort through. And the conventional wisdom, I suppose, is if you're a public figure and you're trying to manage your reputation well, you just gotta be really, really smart about who you talk to and who you don't talk to. And so you look at, you know, the laundry list of people who are associated with some pretty monstrous characters who've been in the news lately for doing awful, awful things to others. And it's like this celebrity hit list of like, here's a picture of so-and-so hanging out with this monstrous guy who did these awful things. And oh yeah, well, here's somebody from your team hanging out with that awful guy. And now everybody's trying to run as fast as they can to explain what their association was and why they were in that one photo with this horrible guy who was into trafficking and did it. Why am I not saying his name? I'm not, it's like it's like saying Jeffrey Epstein's name is somehow bad or something. I don't know why I'm avoiding it. But you know what I'm talking about, right? People are going into hardcore reputation management mode as the fallout from the horror that is the behavior of Jeffrey Epstein and his associates continues to unfold. So, okay, what I'm trying to set up here is an understanding that who Jesus hangs out with in the Bible is not as simple a question as, well, just hang out with the bad people because it's a noble thing to do. Because theoretically, he could shipwreck his effectiveness if he seems to be endorsing things that are bad or if he doesn't thread this social needle the right way. So there's a lot of nuance when we get to passages like the one in Matthew 9, where Jesus is strolling along and he sees one of the most detestable people in all of society, the repugnant cultural other, the publican, the sellout, the snitch, the stooge, the one who sides with the oppressor instead of his own people, and he's like, hey, follow me. And then Matthew got up and followed him. Okay, that's a risk to Jesus' reputation right there. What he's doing is aligning himself with someone whose reputation is gonna be contagious. That could rub off on Jesus. There's not a ton of strategic advantage if you want to climb the social ladder for signing a guy like Matthew up. But what happens next gets even crazier. Now think about the social space that Jesus is occupying here. Think about the niche that he's trying to get into if we're gonna use market language. He is one of many claimants to the messianic throne of David, but Jesus isn't like them. He's rising above them because he's the total package. He's doing miracles in front of people that are inarguable, he is compassionate socially, he's on point, he seems to have a really clear understanding of what's going on with everybody. He isn't getting into dumb political situations that are gonna shipwreck him early in the game. He seems to want to steer clear of all of that. So there's this tremendous spiritual focus on his part. And he actually has a vision, he has a plan. You go and read about other messianic claimants from around the time of Jesus, before the time of Jesus, there was no game plan. It was like just give some people to click subscribe and kind of follow or hang out or something. Like, we're not going anywhere. Well, Jesus was going somewhere. There's a kingdom. The kingdom is different from the kingdom that you live in. That's a fake kingdom, it's a lesser kingdom, but there's this truer, realer kingdom, and you're invited to it, and this kingdom is here now, but it's gonna be fully here later on, and you get to be ambassadors and citizens and sons and daughters and heirs of this thing, agents of this thing. I mean, there's a call to action here, and it's working and it's catching on. So if Jesus is gonna be in this religious space, he's gotta be sensitive to what people expect there a little bit, right? Or they're just gonna be turned off and not follow him. So when the call of Matthew wraps up, and then we get to verse 10, and we got Jesus going over to his house, things are gonna get weird in terms of branding for Jesus. It says, while Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and quote unquote sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and quote sinners? It's really interesting to me that Matthew is best translated as putting the scare quotes around sinners. I don't know that those actually exist in Greek, but clearly this is a term that had been hurled at Matthew an awful lot, and he and his compatriots knew how to wear it. So you got this really weird meal going on. You have someone who is implicitly claiming to be the son of God, the Messiah, the heir to David's throne, the heir to the throne of the eternal kingdom. And he's right there, just did a bunch of miracles and stuff, and everybody knows what he's about. Then you have a tax collector, RCO, who just signed up to follow Jesus. Then you have a whole bunch of other RCOs who are buddies with the tax collector, and they haven't decided if they're going to sign up to follow Jesus yet. So they're still doing all the stuff they were doing before with no pretense of reformation from them. And then you've got the enemies, the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, the most legalistic conservative types. And so this is like your Facebook nightmare. Like if all your friends on Facebook from all of your different communities, the really conservative ones, the really liberal ones, the ones who were super mad about things from this tribe and super mad about things from the other tribe, like here's a living nightmare for you. Imagine that all of those people came to dinner at your house at once. And then you talked about transgenderism, Trump, police brutality, and race issues in America. That's gonna be awesome, right? No, it's gonna be absolutely horrible. You do not want that dinner, and that's exactly what this dinner is. It's the most volatile possible combination of people that the original audience could have imagined. And of course, the most conservative people in the room are like, hey, what are you doing here? Is your hanging out with these people a tacit endorsement of their lifestyle? So what the Pharisees are really driving at here is something that people still drive at today. When you go and try to do jeezuzy things around people who aren't very jeez, sometimes other jeez people look at it and they're like, hey, what's your stance? Clarify your stance. Where are you on this thing? I mean, I get this kind of pushback when I hang out with people on the internet, do projects with people on the internet who I don't agree with, either people who are religious or very not religious. Why do I do that? Because I'm trying to imitate Jesus here. Do I always get it right and thread the needle as well as he does? Well, obviously not. And so today we've got this precarious balancing act between maintaining this squeaky, clean image and never associating with anything in any way naughty, and going and actually talking with the people who see the world differently and who see the question of God, Jesus, and eternity differently. And, you know, the idea here biblically is that our world is supposed to cross-pollinate with the world of people who don't see it the same way. And the idea that the Jesus thing is so true and real that that needn't be threatening or weird, and that some really beautiful things might come out of that. But that same difficult balancing act between those two things existed all the way back in the first century. And clearly there were people in the room who were like, Jesus, you need to play by the rules and maintain the squeaky clean image, or we definitely cannot endorse you. So if you want our endorsement, you can't be endorsing these bad people. Which is it gonna be? It really is an implicit ultimatum about what Jesus' game plan is going to be. This isn't just about do you hang out with naughty people or nice people? This question is a referendum on Jesus' entire strategy, his entire plan for what he's trying to accomplish with the kingdom. What they want to know is is this kingdom meant to slightly improve the already awesome people? Or is this kingdom meant to throw the gates wide open and invite everybody in, kind of like what we're seeing at this weird meal? And they're asking it incredulously because they want the answer to be it's for the squeaky, clean, good people like us. And we're gonna explore this answer more next time around, but this is what Jesus says. On hearing this, Jesus said, It's not the healthy you need a doctor, but the sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I haven't come to call the righteous but sinners. I guess there's a preview of what's coming up, but there's your answer. Jesus isn't trying to polish up the already impressive people. He's trying to connect with exactly the kind of broken, flawed, marginal, outside RCO types that are at this meal. And it's not really hard to do the math on this one. Clearly, Matthew is presenting this as being exemplary and a model of what kingdom citizens are supposed to do. Go be with, be around, invest in, show care and decency to people who are in a completely different place socially and in terms of belief, and we'll see what comes out of it. In this case, something amazing came out of it. Matthew and the book that Matthew produced. Last thing, and this is just a straight up request, and you totally don't have to do it, but if you listen to the podcast and you sort of like it, or maybe even kind of really like it, would you mind going and doing the rating and review thing? It is amazing every time you guys go and do that in any kind of bulk, a whole new group of people come into the conversation, and every new group of people who've come into the conversation, I I like them. They're cool and they make this whole thing better. So thank you a ton to everybody who has, and thank you to all the rest of you for thinking about maybe doing something like that. And that's where we're gonna leave it for now. I appreciate you a ton. Um Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.