We have got a beautiful thunderstorm rolling through the mountains right now. And I could record later when everything is nice and quiet, but then you don't get to hear a thunderstorm. And who knows, maybe now we won't get any more big cool rolls of thunder, but if you hear it, that's what's going on here. And speaking of thunder, and no, this was not planned, which comes from Lightning. Did you ever watch American Gladiators, which I'm like 60% sure I hope had a character in it named Lightning?
unknownDid it?
SPEAKER_00I think it did. There's definitely a gal named Diamond, and she was just a monster. And uh Zap, I think Zap was one of the guys, like Titan or Colossus. I don't know. It's been a long time since I watched the show. But if you don't remember American Gladiators, it worked like this. You'd have pretty athletic normal people that they would pick to go to this studio, I don't know, Southern California or something. And they put them through the paces on these cool little obstacle course challenges. And that would be challenging enough, except then they would take these like roided up gym freak types. Nothing personal if you were one of those and you didn't do steroids. It looks to a weak person like that is caused by steroids. And then these people in spandex would just beat on normal people. And it was horrifying. And the obstacle courses were legit hard. Like these were things that would be very difficult to do just on your own without someone firing a tennis ball cannon at you or beating you with giant sticks while you're trying to focus on not losing your balance. You know what really messes with your ability to keep your balance? Getting hit with giant sticks, it's like they planned it to be difficult. And likewise, when you go through the book of Matthew, you get this characterization of the kingdom from Jesus. It sounds really good. As we talked about in yesterday's conversation, he gives you this warm, fatherly thing in verses 7 through whatever it is, 12 about, hey, it's not just a king and a servant, it's a father and a son, a father and a daughter. And don't fathers care about their sons and daughters, and all the more so. God is on your side on this. He wants you to succeed as a kingdom citizen. So be encouraged and you feel great about it, but you still come out of that in verse 13 of Matthew 7 being like, dang, like this is a pretty tricky road to walk. This is a different set of values. It's hard to sort out. The kingdom path versus the world path. How do I do that? And Jesus now is kind of going to do the old push it toward a choice thing in verse 13. He says, 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 is the road that leads to life, and only a few will find it. So I mean it really does kind of sound like old school American, it's time to ask if anyone out there wants to sign up to follow the Lord, kind of stuff. Except Jesus is doing it, so you can't make fun of it. And what he's saying is really clearly hey, there's this big giant thing that just seems normal, but normal takes you to where normal goes and it's destructive. But this narrow path over here gets you toward life. Now, as many of you know, I really like the fly fishing, not the normal fishing, that's fine too, but I really like the fly fishing. It's artistic, it's athletic, it involves outfoxing fish. And one of the things that you'll find if you do this is that the obvious water that everybody drives by and sees is not where you go to get the fish because everybody sees that. And so they take the easy path, and what they get is a day of pretty water and not fish. No, if you want to get the fish, you work, you get back into places that people wouldn't go or wouldn't see. You hike, you bushwhack, you battle to get to the place where the better things happen, and then you live it up, and it is amazing. Likewise, here the obvious thing leads to an obvious place. The not so obvious thing leads to something that isn't the default setting of human existence that's exceptional. And so the invitation is made present. Now, this is in keeping or echoes of the parable of the sower that we've talked about a whole bunch, and we'll get to that a little bit later on in Matthew 13, I think. And the parable of the sower, you know, is the one where the sower goes around and he's scattering seed all over everything, and he throws it indiscriminately on all the different types of soil, representing all the different types of people. And unsurprisingly, if you were to just go out and throw seed literally on every surface you could find, most of that isn't going to work out. It's not going to take. But 25% of the types of soil takes. And I'm not saying that's like a math figure where like 25% of people go to heaven or become Christians or something according to the Bible. That's just not what it is at all. What it is, though, is Jesus laying out the expectation at many turns that, hey, not everybody's going to sign up for this thing, just so you know, which really does lower expectations for the people who are seeing this. And they're like, this looks like the truest, realist thing. In chapter eight, we're going to see him break the laws of time and space in front of people left and right. And you'd think everybody's just going to rush to this and sign up for it because, well, I mean, look what he just did. But from the beginning, Jesus is always disclosing. He's always, I don't want to say lowering expectations, but let's put it this way: not lowering expectations about himself, but lowering expectations about how things are going to play out and about how flawed humans are going to respond. So the question is out there which one of these things do you want? Do you want the really easy route that gets you predictable things, or do you want the hard, difficult to identify narrow route that fewer people will take, but that has something really, really cool at the end of it? He's holding out an invitation here to say, hey, choose the narrow road. Verse 15, watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they're ferocious wolves. Well, wait a minute. This whole pick which road we walk down thing is hard enough to navigate the obstacle course. But now you're telling me that there are going to be people in spandex who are trying to hit me with sticks and shoot me with metaphorical spiritual tennis balls? This is way harder, and it was hard enough already. This is way harder. And let me tell you, I bet there are a ton of you who are listening to this. This was a two-way microphone, you would have all kinds of stories about how difficult it is to tell between very sincere seeming people who think very different things and are sure that everyone else in the world is wrong except for them, and to know which one is telling the truth and which one is pointing you toward the road that leads to destruction. How do you know? What if they're both good people? What if they both seem like they're telling the truth and have nothing to gain by telling you this? And they both want you to sign up for their thing and their ideas, you know, you tried the thing where it's just like everybody's right and all the things are true, but dang it, you're a logical being and you just can't help but acknowledge that both of those things cannot be true at once. They are diametrically opposed. The simple law of binary opposition says both of those two really nice seeming people can't be right about this thing. So which one is the wolf in sheep's clothing? It's frustrating, isn't it? And I think a lot of people walk away, not just from Christianity, but from religion in general, because they're like, I'm never gonna get to the bottom of this. I cannot tell which sincere person is telling the truth out of the 500 that are making claims, and I'm not prepared to call the other 499 liars. So I don't know what to do. Well, here's the thing: in this passage, watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. It doesn't necessarily suggest that they know what they're doing. Now, you could make the case, like, well, then how'd they know to put on the sheep suit? Okay, fair. Maybe this intones intentionality, but I think there's room to read this passage as also referring to people who really would like to get it right and they're trying to get it right, but then they just didn't. People like, I don't know, me, I want to get it right. I don't want to screw you up and tell you stupid dumb things about the Bible that aren't true. I don't want to mess myself up. I don't want to screw up my family. Like that's exactly the opposite of what I'm going for in life. But la di-da, aren't those nice intentions? I could still totally shank it. And what was it just yesterday? Two episodes ago? Yeah, two episodes ago. I was talking about the the whole part of the Bible where Jesus calls Herod a fox, and I had done my homework on that, and I really thought I was making a good point, and then I was right on this thing. And I was like, oh yeah, and Jesus used the you know, the feminine form of this. So he's making a point and really calling Herod something even worse than just a fox. He's calling him a female dog. And it just never occurred to me that Jesus didn't say that in Greek, he said that in Aramaic. And now I look like a great big idiot, and people are going around thinking that Jesus calls people bitch sometimes. Whoops! I met well, I'm really, really sorry. So the point is if you're just looking at motives and character, that is gonna get it right sometimes in terms of telling the difference between somebody who's telling the truth and somebody who's an American gladiator who's trying to derail you. And first John, I wish I had more time to break it down, really dives into that stuff about this threefold test. We've talked about it in earlier episodes for sorting out truth and falsehood. But I think Jesus' words here allow and experience dictates to us that there can be people who think they are right, mean to get it right, don't want to hurt anybody, and are getting it completely dead wrong. And if you do the stuff that they say or are suggesting, then you are on that big wide road that leads to places that are predictable with results that are predictable. So what's really happening here is Jesus is saying, you're gonna have to come up with some matrix, some criteria for evaluating qualitatively what people are saying. Oh, well, let's see what we get here. By their fruit, you will 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. That is a little bit of a mouthful, but I think what he's saying is very, very clear. Look at what's being said by the person who points toward this road or that road over there, and consider what those words produce in terms of action, in terms of character, in terms of reason. And again, I am drawing straight from the threefold test for orthodoxy that we get in 1 John. And if you want a homework assignment, that won't take you that long, you'll see it for yourself, crystal clearly. Just go read all of 1 John real quick. But then that, of course, raises the question: well, what actually is orthodoxy? How do you know which thing is true to even compare what different road pointers are saying to know which one is real and which one is fake and bad? The basic gist is Jesus is the centerpiece of the redemptive work of God. He is the initiator of a kingdom. You are invited to be a part of that kingdom as it stands for all humans outside of that kingdom. We are dead in our state of being as humans. We feel alive right now, but ultimately Father Time wins every battle. Our bodies are breaking down, entropy will win, we will die. And apart from being in relationship with, being under the care of the deity that initiated existence, we don't have any hope once we get beyond the physical reality that we are bound by. So you need that point of connection with the one being that operates outside of this physical reality. And that connection is made possible by the work of Jesus, who bridges the gap between our imperfection and the perfection of God. That is what Jesus established and made possible by going to the cross, dying as a sinless deity on a cross, God become man, all God, all man, and then being raised from the dead to prove that it was the real deal and demonstrate to use the biblical language that these are the first fruits of the victory over death, that this is the first return on a harvest of God for victory over death. And I know there's some of you who are outside looking in at this and you're like, that, and that is just where I get off the train. That sounds so insane when we are talking about this nebulous idea of a kingdom, and I don't know, maybe there's a God, maybe there's something after that, maybe there's not, but it sounds really nice ethically, and I can get behind that. It's when we start getting to the afterlife stuff and all of that that I know a lot of you are going to squint real hard to try to play along, but that really is just where it gets tough. And to you, I would say, I've been there. I get it. That is not a dishonest reaction, and I just can't fault you for it. I would also say that I think there's something to this, and you seem to be the type who are willing to sit and think it through and process it out. And at the end of that processing together, I think at the very minimum, you will have a much greater respect and appreciation for the people who think there's something to this. You will get how they think, and you'll have an easier time working with them and appreciating them, both the ones who are alive and the ones who are long dead. At maximum, you might encounter something that gives you plausible reason for legitimate hope beyond the things of the physical world around us. Okay, I'm looking at this, I'm thinking timeline here. There's no way we are gonna break down everything at the level I want to at this pace. So, this is gonna be one of those episodes where I just straight up suspend operations right there, cold, and tomorrow I will just straight up fire operations without a reset or anything. And this will all just be one big block split over two days. So hitting pause there, picking up right where we left off tomorrow. I'm Matt is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. More to come, and we're gonna get a little bit more than a little bit.