Hello, I'm Matt Whitman, and you are listening to the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. What I'd like to do in this brief introduction is walk you through an outline of today's conversation. We'll begin by discussing the larger Star Wars cinematic universe, which will seem entirely unrelated to the subject matter at hand. But as we narrow the focus on that down to Star Wars episode three and one particular dialogue exchange there, we'll then hit a silky, smooth segue into Matthew chapter seven and a series of comparative statements Jesus makes that both the original audience and the modern audience might find disturbing because of their absolute tone. Once again, my name is Matt, and this is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Welcome, friends, and let's begin. So we're watching all the way through the Star Wars movies with my kids right now, and my youngest barely remembers the actual films. We've watched the Clone Wars together, but we're doing it all in order right now. And so, of course, you have to start with the prequels to watch it in order, and those are a little tough to get through. And then we watched the Clone Wars cartoons and the Samurai Jack Clone Wars cartoons and Star Wars Rebels, which was difficult to get through, but it had its moments and it tried to have some thematic value. And then we went to queue up episode four, and I was like, oh wait, we got to do Rogue One and Solo. I think those probably happen right here. So we loaded up Rogue One on the Disney Plus, and I just remember thinking the one time I saw this movie in theaters, oh, I hated it. But now that I've seen the sequel trilogy, I'm like, you know what? That was actually kind of good. It was watchable by comparison. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a good movie, but the way it looks and the way it feels and the way it's paced, it's better than anything else that's come out since Disney has had it. And I don't know if that's as much a compliment to Rogue One as it is a criticism of what Disney's done with the whole thing. But in light of how bad this sequel trilogy has been, I not only felt a renewed appreciation for Rogue One, I even feel a little bit of a renewed appreciation for a few elements of the prequels. The dialogue, however, continues to be absolutely mercilessly awful in those. And one that stands out to me is the one where Obi-Wan and Anakin are fighting and they're arguing about some stuff. And Obi-Wan is like, only Sith deal in absolutes. And it's like, it's on, now I gotta cut off your arms and legs and leave you to be consumed by lava, even though we used to be best friends, and I'm not gonna put you out of your misery because you said something that sounded absolute. And if you remember when that came out, it was Gulf War, George W. Bush era, and there was still kind of this culture war raging about relativism or absolute truth, capital T, and you don't hear that stuff as much anymore. And so what Lucas did there, George Lucas, the guy who did Star Wars, was a little bit of a nod to the more enlightened side, or was it? Was he actually saying that Obi-Wan's comment, only Sith deal in absolutes, was in fact itself an absolutist comment, and therefore maybe he's the bad guy too. I don't know. Is it genius or is it stupid? You can tell me when we talk about this on the internet. But the point is, segue, Jesus is speaking in very absolute terms as we get toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7. He's putting forward a series of these pick one or the other statements, starting in verse 13 and on through to the end of the chapter, that box all of the listeners, both then at the time, and everybody who's read it since, and kind of you and me now as well, into a corner to say that not picking is a pick when it comes to Jesus. And so this series of comparisons, you can pick the narrow gate or you can pick the wide gate. You can listen to true prophets or you can listen to false prophets. A tree is gonna produce good fruit or bad fruit. And then he goes on to basically say there are true kingdom citizens in the passage we're gonna look at today, and fake kingdom citizens. And finally, in the passage we're gonna look at probably tomorrow, he says there's a true foundation and there's a fake foundation. And that's where he wraps it up. And it's not just a 2001 phenomenon that such absolute language would make people feel uncomfortable. But clearly, Jesus feels that his authority is such that he's shown enough, that he's done enough, that it makes sense at this point to bounce this decision toward people. So we've broken a lot of this down already over the last few episodes that you got a wide, obvious gate that goes to wide, obvious places. This is what most people are going to pick because it's the default setting of humanity. It's easy, it's obvious, it's clear. And then you got this narrow gate that is a little bit trickier. Now, every conspiracy theorist in the world imagines that they are choosing the narrow road. The narrow versus the wide is not defined by things we saw on Facebook and retweets and personal opinions and conspiracy theories. In this context, at least, the wide, obvious way where the majority go is defined by Jesus authoritatively, and the narrow little path is defined by Jesus in the context of what we've just seen in the Sermon on the Mount, not vaguely Christian-ish pseudoscience political things that sometimes the conspiracy crowd imagines is the narrow gate. This is not political, this is theological. So you got good road, bad road, pick which one you want to be on. Then you got the false prophets, good prophets. The good prophets are described somewhat implicitly until you get toward the end of this passage, but why am I not just reading this to you? So here's the first part Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Watch out for the false prophets, they come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they're ferocious wolves. By their fruit, you can recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that doesn't bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Okay, and now we're into the third. Pick one way or the other. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who's in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you away from me, you evildoers. Now again, we see the very clear, there are two things we can do here. One is be the fake disciple that says vaguely religious sounding things, or that makes their own plea or case for the nice things they did, and the other is the one that depends on Christ and is the kingdom citizen who is functioning out of loyalty to the king. That one will be received warmly by the king, the other just won't even be recognized by the king. And so what we're getting here is an image that would have been really familiar to the original audience of the idea of a guarded town gate. I don't know how many there were in Jerusalem, but there was a lot, and some of them had cool names like Dungate. And these different gates would be guarded by the king's men. And these guys didn't just check IDs, they also kind of knew who was coming and going. They knew what to look for, they definitely profiled. And so what Jesus is drawing on here is the idea that these gatekeepers would be representatives of the king. And if the king or the king through their proxy, the gatekeepers recognized you, you would have admission to this otherwise secured, desirable area to be in. And if there were questions, you might be detained or held up or rejected entry. And what's interesting here is that what would certainly come to mind for the ancient Near Eastern mind would be that the default setting here is outside the walls of this refuge, outside the walls of this keep or this inner city where the king rules and the king grants or denies admission. But the modern mind, the democratic one person, one vote liberal Western mind, and by liberal I don't mean like conservative liberal, I mean like liberal revolutions, America, constitutional, France, Republic, all of that kind of stuff. The classically liberal modern Western mind, who imagines that everyone is in essence one little part king themselves, hears this, and we automatically imagine that the default setting is inside the walls, and that it would be an act of aggression or punishment or detention proactively to send someone outside the walls. But that really isn't what the image is. The image is default out with invitation in. And so then the picture is people coming up and being like, I'd like to come in. Uh, I know the king from this place in this one time when we did this thing. And uh I've actually been out saying great stuff about the king. I tweeted a bunch of really nice things about this king. Should definitely know me. Do you remember Carl? Like Carl, we both I we both went to school with Carl, I think, or was it Ted? One of those guys. And the response then would be like, ah, that's none of that really rings a bell. And you might have said stuff about me or something, but we have no connection or association. And my riches and my wealth and my provision and my justice, uh, yeah, they're not really for you. Uh yeah, they're for people who are citizens of this kingdom and who I know and I don't know you, even though you may have mentioned my name at times. And so then to round out the analogy, that person is kind of aggressively shooed away from the door. Or in this case, I never knew you away from me, you evildoers. Yikes. And then the contrary positive idea is people coming up being like, hey, I'm a kingdom citizen and the king or the king's proxy, recognizing them and being like, oh yeah, obviously you are. Come on in to the place that is not the default setting, that is the unique set-aside place, the narrower of the two options, because you are indeed a child, a son, a daughter, an heir, an agent of the king and this kingdom. And time out. There's no way I can hide these rough cuts because they're just going to be very abrupt. I sat down and I worked through all the rest of the Sermon on the Mount in one big sitting. And so it is going to be very abrupt when we pick this thing up tomorrow and keep going right from where we left off here. Thanks in advance for being cool with a few of these clumsy transitions every now and then. You're awesome. I love hanging out with you. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do it again soon.