Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And when I was a kid, my grandma sat me down one time and she was like, you know, grandson, sometimes you're gonna find yourself in difficult social situations and you need to develop social graces to help navigate those things and make other people comfortable. And if you ever start to feel weird or people seem tense, like a dinner party or something, you want to try to steer the conversation towards something that'll put people at ease, like race, ethnicity, and religion. And I was like, I don't, I don't know if that's the thing that you absolutely want to do. And grandma was very insistent, and I'm sure she was right. Therefore, today I'd like to talk about race, ethnicity, and religion as it pertains to Matthew chapter 8, and really the whole Bible in general, because we're into this super uncomfortable passage where a really neat thing happens. Jesus gives this great speech, everybody's all interested. He goes and he heals a leper, breaks social norms, he breaks more social norms by interacting positively with a Gentile and occupying Roman commander who represents everything that's gone awry militarily and politically for the Jewish people. And there's this healing that occurs, but right before Jesus pronounces the healing, which is apparently efficacious, which is sort of mind-blowing, there is this speech that Jesus gives that sounds incredibly mean and racially charged. And it comes on the heels of the centurion assuming verbally the right posture before the king, acknowledging that Jesus has authority and that he knows what to do. And Jesus is apparently very impressed by this. And he says, When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, That's funny, because the Bible said exactly the thing that I just said in my setup, but it still works. He said, Truly I tell you, I've not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then Jesus said to the centurion, as we already talked about, go, let it be done just as you believed it would, and his servant was healed at that moment. Today I want to break down the way this theme has been gradually unpacked through the book of Matthew. And to do that, we got to start by going all the way back to Genesis chapter 12. This is the very beginning of the Bible. This is the first really big deal patriarch. And I don't know that you really count Noah as a patriarch, so we're dealing with Abram, who becomes Abraham. This is the first legit patriarch of the Jewish people, the Israelites, the Hebrews, they get called different things over time. And so, if you remember correctly, this guy is living in modern day Iraq, Kuwait, in one of the ancient kingdoms that we now categorize into a big lump of kingdoms from way, way, way back, almost like bordering on the edge of prehistory that we call Sumer. And his particular kingdom was a city-state called Ur, and God picks Abraham for no apparent reason. And it's like, I don't know, I got a whole world of people to pick from or whatever. I want to start a new religion that's about me and a new ethnicity. I'm just, I'm gonna go with that guy right there. Nope, not you, Carl. That guy right there, Abram. And Abram's like, okay, I guess that's great. And so it sends Abram on this incredible journey, quest of discovery, and of God gradually revealing things to him and making a whole people out of a place where there wasn't a people before. It's a gigantic deal. It's a huge, cherished, important story to gazillions of people around the world and throughout history. And the call of Abraham unfolds over a few different chunks of the Bible. But the first batch of language, and the really concise batch of language that is described as the call of Abraham, the covenant that God made with Abraham, is in Genesis 12, starting in verse 2. Now I'll start in verse 1. It goes like this The Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. So a place is part of the promise as well as a people. And then in quotes, this is God talking now. It says, I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing, I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Now I understand that a lot of people throughout history, a lot of people right now listening to this, are gonna hear that and be like, Well, obviously, I don't think those words are from God. I think that is something that after the fact a people group made up in order to feel special, to assign some meaning or order or structure to their complicated history, to rally behind as a rallying cry. Maybe this is something that was inflicted on the text, it was a legend that grew. Okay, those opinions exist. There are other people who hear this and dogmatically would say not only are those the words of God, those are the words of God that established my people and that set the trajectory for all of human history. So acknowledging that there's gonna be a bit of a spectrum of response to this thing in any room, including in this conversation, let's just break this thing down for what it holds itself out as being. So promise number one is I'm gonna make you, Abraham, into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. So the idea is that God from the beginning is going to single Abram out and make his life better. And the idea is that he is supposed to make other lives better. He is supposed to be something that is a net positive for planet Earth because he has been shown something from God. Now, if you've been hanging out with me as we go through the book of Matthew, you're like, wait a dang minute! That sounds a lot like all of the Bible stuff that Jesus is always saying and where it's constantly intoned, like if you've received this thing, you have to give this thing away. Remember in the Sermon on the Mount, how we finish that section on prayer, and then we get into that little tag on at the end of Matthew 6 about forgiveness, and there's all of this stuff about like if you don't forgive people, like I've forgiven you, and you're like, whoa, you literally like a like a hallmark of being a follower of God is that you give away the things that God has given to you. And apparently that's woven into the DNA of the whole thing, whether you're doing the Jewish version of it or the Christian version of it, all the way back to the very beginning covenant with Abram, right here. And then finally it says, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Very important closing phrase. All peoples means even eventually and ultimately the people who were difficult for this great nation that is going to be established. I mean, it says all. What exactly does that blessing look like? What does that mean? That's something that we have to unpack over more time as well. So from the very beginning of the religion, we see this idea that it never was just about Abraham and his descendants. It always was about something more, it always was about the bigger picture. So now we jump ahead to the book of Matthew. 2200-ish years have passed, and as you recall, Matthew opens his document with a genealogy, and that genealogy has a huge list of names. As you also may recall, there are names of Gentiles in there. And as you also may recall, those names of Gentiles prove to be really important pivotal points. They were people who bailed out an important character. They were people who, if they weren't in the lineage, the lineage wouldn't have worked or it wouldn't have happened. And all of that stuff gets us down to a place where the great King David is mentioned, and there's great care being shown to demonstrate that Jesus is descended, both of Abraham, well, really of all the patriarchs, and of King David as well. So Matthew opens with this subtle but very present hearkening back to the final phrase of the opening covenant that establishes the deal between God and his chosen people. And that clause is you're going to be a blessing to all people. And look, they're even all people in the lineage of the individual who's going to be held out here as being the Messiah. Then we get into chapter 2. And who are the people who see the sign in the East? Is it like really, really good Jews? No, it's Magi, it's Gentiles. They're able to read the writing on the wall, so to speak, Bible pun kind of intended, and they make this gigantic trip to go and find Jesus, the implication here being that it was for Gentiles all along, and God is making it evident to Gentiles all along. This is contrasted with somebody who should respond well, the sitting king of the Jews, is discussed in the very next passage. But not only does he not get it like these outsiders do, but he actively tries to defeat what God is doing through Jesus, through the establishment of this king and this kingdom and the Messiah. Then we bump ahead to Matthew chapter 3, and you'll remember John the Baptist is doing all of this baptizing, and then the Pharisees and the Sadducees come out to see what the deal is. And John is not crazy hospitable. In fact, his language could be interpreted as something of a pushback on them. He says to them, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and don't think you can say to yourselves, here comes, we have Abraham as our father. I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Yikes! So again, here's this warning that says, Don't think that your ethnicity is all that there is to this equation. There is a tree, metaphorically, that has been raised up. The original audience would have recalled the imagery from Isaiah about the stump and the shoot coming out of the stump, the line of Jesse that produced David and would eventually produce the Messiah. And as we discussed with my friend Tuvia, there's even subtle language here about children and stones that looks narrowly interchangeable that suggests that God can make new kids for himself whenever he wants to, or could make a new family of faith for himself whenever he wants to. This is no doubt causing serious friction by this point, and that lecture, that warning that there is something bigger to the coming kingdom than just ethnicity, and that there's been something bigger to the coming kingdom than just ethnicity all along, is accentuated by the fact that in the very next passage, God shows up, the whole Trinity shows up, and affirms Jesus in his baptism. We get to Matthew chapter 4, and Jesus has a chance to go and recruit his wingmen for this new kingdom thing, his lieutenants, and he doesn't recruit any religious leaders or anybody who is part of the fancy Jewish tradition, the religious tradition. He goes and gets some guys, not even minor leaguers, just people who aren't even in the game, and that's who he decides he's gonna work with. Then he brings them up onto a mountain and starts teaching them stuff while the religious leaders are standing there as outsiders. And if you recall in Matthew chapter 5, that chapter wraps up with Jesus saying all this stuff about how he's gonna be the fulfillment of the law, and then we get this business about your righteousness having to surpass the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, or you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. Then as we unpack the rest of the Sermon on the Mount through chapter 6 and chapter 7, the foil, the opposite of the right way to do things throughout, is the religious establishment way of doing things. And then, of course, we get into Matthew chapter 8 and the passage that we're looking at right now, and the wild statement that Jesus makes, affirming outsiders and raising some real concerns about the comfort level of supposed ethnic insiders. And what we see is dating all the way back to Genesis 12, an unpacking of this idea that Jesus is king of a kingdom that is for everyone, that the stuff that happened in the past between God and the Jewish people was not the end game, it was the beginning game that God would apparently demonstrate what he was about and what he was like through his relationship with those people and through other nations' relationship with his chosen people, but that ultimately that would point to a fulfillment. Remember Matthew 5.17, Jesus is a fulfillment of the law that's going to include everybody. And this is not at the expense of the Jewish people. I mean, everybody Jesus recruited is Jewish, Jesus is Jewish, his mom's Jewish, he does all the Jewish things, he goes to all the Jewish stuff, he's very, very high on Jewishness and very excited, obviously, about what the kingdom means for his Jewish audience, but he's also pushing back on this smug, cold, external religious self-assurance that one's ethnicity or heritage or relational ethnic connection with the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, somehow means that you are in the kingdom. No, it is very possible, according to Matthew chapter 8, that someone could be outside the kingdom of heaven from a lesser kingdom if they should fail to recognize their king and assume a right posture before him. The original audience would have understood with crystal clarity that Jesus was saying that it is more important to assume a right posture before him, the king, than it is to be able to trace your bloodlines back to the right descendants. Well, I think Grandma was right. Nothing more unifying, peaceful, and fun for a backyard conversation, sipping on an ice cold lemonade, or driving in my truck through Yellowstone, sorry for the background noise again, than talking about race, ethnicity, and religion. But I'd like to think we've had a good time anyway. Tomorrow we're gonna switch it up a little bit and go and look at the corresponding account of this story over in Luke. We'll do a little comparing and contrasting and figure out how well these things line up and what we do with some of the apparent surface level contradictions. Consider yourself properly teased. I'm Matt, this is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. I appreciate it. Do it again soon.