I absolutely love the game of baseball. I love lots of sports, but baseball is a romance. It's different. It's got a texture and an aura and a smell and a feel and a time of year. There's just something magical about it. And part of it is the physical perfection of the dimensions of the game, at least the infield, and the variety of the different shapes of stadiums that you get with different outfields, because that part doesn't matter as much. But the thing that I think really makes me love baseball is dads and kids. And specifically my dad and me. He was tireless in teaching me how to play that game and love that game. And I remember the first time he hit me in the face with a baseball. I mean, he wasn't trying to, I just wasn't very good with a glove, but he was starting to show me a little bit of trust and get the ball to me with a little more zip on it. I just didn't make the play. And I remember his concern for my health, but also his concern that I just might not like baseball anymore. And it's this thing that is one of many things that binds us together. And there's so many lessons that I've learned in life from playing ball with my dad and talking about ball with my dad. And still, to this day, even as my dad approaches retirement and I am a dad myself, if he comes over and it's a summer evening, I grab a ball glove and we go and throw the ball around, just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and talk about the stuff, the big stuff, the important stuff, the little stuff, the things we've processed together as a father and a son since forever. I remember one particular point in the development of baseball with my dad, where I had an epiphany. We're out in the backyard. This was in Iowa when I was a little kid. And, you know, it's this perfect field of dreams night. And dad's got pretty heavy wiffle balls that he's throwing me in the backyard. They weren't the really thin-walled ones that would float around and were really easy to hit with the big red bat. I was using a regular baseball bat, and he was throwing these balls that perform like a regular baseball. And they were really hard to hit. And they had a little bit of movement on them because a wiffle ball, you know, kind of curves and rises a little different than a standard baseball. But it occurred to me after watching my dad really try to guide those pitches right into my swing plane, that he was trying to get me to hit the ball. I felt frustration because I'm striking out, I'm not getting the bat on the ball consistently, but he's trying to put the ball right where I'm swinging so that I will succeed. He wants me to hit the pitch. Likewise, as we are into Matthew chapter 7, we're getting toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount. This has been the proverbial drink from the fire hose for all the people on the hillside. I'm sure the disciples were like, I guess we want to do this, but that is so very, very much to think about. This is so very, very overwhelming. How am I supposed to do all this stuff? How am I supposed to change at the level of the heart and what I want and what I value and embrace the entirely other set of values and trade in a different set of currency? I mean, it all sounds really good and smart when you're saying it, but I just don't know if I can do all of this. And then we get here just at about what I think might be the breaking point, coming off of what I think is one of the most challenging teachings in the whole Sermon on the Mount, the stuff about dogs and pigs and pearls and what you do with all of that. And it's like right now, okay, you guys have seen the fastball. It's intimidating. It popped the glove. I understand it might feel like this isn't going to work, but this is the point where the coach, the dad comes over and is like, hey, I want you to hit the pitch. I want you to succeed. I'm going to set you up to succeed. I'm with you, and you got this thing. Here's how it goes in verse seven is people are no doubt starting to feel like, I just don't know if I can do this. Ask and it'll be given to you. Seek and you'll find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks, finds, and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, he's going to give him a snake? If you then, though you're evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? So in everything, do to others what you'd have him do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets. Ask, seek, knock. More intelligent people than me have debated whether this means a repetition of the same three probing impulses or three layers of depth successively as one asks and then seeks, which is a little more intense, and then knocks, which is like, all right, I'm there and I'm ready. The correct answer to this question and this debate is I have no idea. And I'm going to leave it to the people who are more intelligent than me to wrestle through that fine little nuance because I don't think it matters very much. I think the last passage was meant to be pulled apart to the nth detail to try to get down to a very difficult to discern meaning. And now we're getting the straight pitch right down the middle that is meant to be hittable, meant to be understood on its surface very simply. And it goes like this once again. The king who is telling you to do this is on your side. The king who is telling you to do this hard stuff is gonna come along a few chapters later in Matthew chapter 10 and be like, hey, you're gonna be in difficult positions talking to difficult people with high stakes. Don't worry about it. God is with you. I am with you. You're gonna be able to get through that stuff as you need to. The king who is asking these people to do this, commanding them to do it, at the end of Matthew, the very last stuff that Jesus says, He says, I will be with you always till the end of the age. The guy throwing the pitches wants you to hit them. Whereas the relational imagery throughout most of the Sermon on the Mount so far has been king and subject. All of a sudden it shifts to something much less intimidating, much more intimate. Father and son, dad and kid in the backyard on an Iowa night with lightning bugs starting to pop, trying to hit the wiffle ball in the backyard, and dad really wants to see that kid get it dialed and start putting the bat on the ball. He's invested in the kid's success. So Jesus is saying the Heavenly Father is invested in the success of his children. And he gives this very simple, easy to understand illustration, which is simply look, you guys are all flawed. We've agreed on that earlier in the Sermon on the Mount. People are flawed. But even you who are flawed, I mean, he uses the word evil here. It sounds a little harsher, maybe to our ears, than it would have to the original audience, or maybe he meant it to sound that harsh. Either way, the point's the same. If you who are so flawed would never give a bad gift to your kid, how much more so will your father in heaven, who is perfect and unbound and right in all of his judgments, give good gifts to you? And this, of course, is a continuation of what happened one page earlier in Matthew chapter six, where Jesus uses the same reasoning to say, you know, look at all that stuff in the field and the birds, and they get food to eat and clothes and everything works out great there. How much more valuable are you than they? Your father has got this, but he really leans into the father-son motif here with this rhetorical point, this rhetorical question, effectively, that can only be answered one way. Yeah, of course, your Heavenly Father, if he was willing to make this kind of effort to send his son to take on human flesh to do this stuff, even though the original audience maybe didn't have that quite dialed yet, if he's willing to bend over backwards like that, he's invested in your success. So if all of this seems intimidating and overwhelming, okay, it's all right to be a little daunted by the size of the thing. I mean, the problem that Jesus is derived to overcome is a really big problem. There's no minimizing it, but what an ally the kingdom citizen has. So this whole Sermon on the Mount thing takes this beautiful, warm turn right before the finish line, which frankly takes a little bit more terrifying. Take this seriously, think really hard about what you just heard turn. But in between, there's that last little bit that I just read. You've heard it before. I mean, this is one of the most famous passages in the Bible. This is the golden rule. And I could break down the morality of this ad infinitum, but come on, I mean, you're smart. It's exactly what it says. Do to others what you would have them do to you. This sums up the law and the prophets. It's a very simple, reflexive moral principle that even a little child can reason through. And I think this is here under the exact same impulses that Jesus changes the imagery up, goes away from king and subject a little bit, and leans harder into the father-son imagery. I think he's extending that thought here by saying, look, if all the morality here is confusing and overwhelming, and you're wondering, like, okay, I kind of get that the heart thing factors in and the values and the currency, but like, what do I do again? Real easy. Do to others what you would have them do to you. Oh. Okay. Obviously that requires nuancing. And if it didn't, then Jesus wouldn't say anything more about ethics or morality or how to treat people in the rest of the gospel, but he does. So this isn't to say that there's nothing more to think about ethically or morally, but this is meant to be the let me scoot in a little closer. Let me take a little pepper off this ball, let me put it on an arc that takes it directly through your natural swing path. And let's see you barrel up this ball and really tag this one. You got this thing. I'm invested in your success, daughter. I'm invested in your success, son. Simply put, these back-to-back, very famous, very encouraging passages toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount are meant to reassure the original audience and anybody who's sizing it up now that this is not rigged against you, though it is intimidating. If anything, it is rigged in your favor for the glory of the king who's behind it. Thanks for doing this with me. I know this has been deep water stuff for all of us. We've been in it for what, four months now? We've been working through this stuff. And it is difficult, it's challenging, it takes a long time. And I also know that in addition to the time, I know that this content is in your business. I know it gets to the very level of the soul. And it's weird, it's not really what a podcast is supposed to do. And it just feels kind of odd, I'm sure, at times to get this deep into it. All of that is to say, I hope you feel the same encouragement I do getting to this part of the text, because you're supposed to. It's meant for you too. I'm gonna leave it there for now. Next time around, we get into one of the most frightening passages in the entire Bible, and I will try to think of some fart jokes so that it can be kind of fun. I feel like that might not have been a very good sales pitch. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.