At some point here, I'm probably gonna grow out of it because uh I guess you you grow up and you do boringer things, but I really like sports. I still really like sports. And I especially like the kind of sports where somebody else tries to stop you. Team sports where you're trying to out fox an opponent or a whole slew of opponents. That's just a blast for me. And I've played all of them football, basketball, baseball, played a ton of baseball. And I played volleyball, which is weird because I'm 5'8 on a tall day, but you know, there are elements of that game that work pretty well for me. And I actually played college volleyball, and I wouldn't say I played it well, but I wouldn't say I played it terribly. I was serviceable at the things that I did in volleyball. But I really liked the game. And after all of those years of playing baseball and getting to a point where you know all the drills and all the rhythms of everything inside out, you know, volleyball had just been like a pickup game for me. And then I went to college and kind of fell in with the volleyball team, and I ended up being, you know, on the team there and you start going to practice. I've never been to a volleyball practice before. Well, what do you even do? And we start learning all these crazy drills, and I was like, I don't get it. It's like Mr. Miyagi with the waxing on and waxing off. I don't see how that'll make me better. But just like the deal with Mr. Miyagi, push comes a shove, and you're like, oh, I have that skill. I learned that somewhere along the way from all of these little odd, quirky drills that are associated with this one particular slice of life. Likewise, and there's always a likewise. It's the same thing not just with Christianity, but I think with religion in general. Every religion and every sub-expression of every religion has a list of things that you do. Now, usually in religion, the things that you do have some bearing on your ability to gain entry into that religion's version of paradise. You do enough things, you earn enough things, you bank enough goodwill with the deity or with the deciding forces in any given religion, and then you know, you gain status and eventually maybe you earn so much favor that you reach enlightenment or that you go to whatever their version of heaven is. But Christianity is kind of weird because, well, one, it's very, very diverse, and there are a lot of different things that people do. But theoretically, in Christianity, even though you do things as the act of practicing the religion, those things, according to the Bible, do not make you a Christian. They don't curry favor with God or earn one's way into heaven. We've been talking about that as we've been working through Matthew chapter five together here and looking at all of this stuff in that chapter that really opens and concludes with this riddle about nobody being good enough by what they do or what they accomplish to impress God or fulfill the law on their own. Somehow Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, and we're to place in the Bible where we're still trying to figure out what that means. But still, I mean, come on, whether you're a Christian or not, you'd know a bunch of stuff that different Christians do. And some of it probably seems really foreign and weird to you, and some of it probably seems really familiar. Like, for example, Christians pray, but not just generically pray, like Christians pray before meals, and that might be a little perfunctory at times. Maybe if it's a holiday or something, you pray a little harder, you think a little bit more about what you're saying. Christians pray with people when they're sick or sad or upset, or when they're anxious about something, we pray for ourselves or for other people. Christians pray to open events, Christians pray as part of a worship service. Collectively, Christians sometimes pray parts of the Bible, like repeating the words back to God somehow. But again, there's no thing in the Bible that's like if you pray this many times, then you cross the prayer threshold and then you get to go to heaven and God likes you. Now, there are religions where literally you have a device that keeps track of how much praying you have done or how much recitation you've done, and it becomes very important in terms of the end game and where you end up in eternity or whether or not you've done the things you're supposed to do as to how much you actually repeat those prayers or incantations or whatever it is. But Christianity is different. So you just you pray, I guess, to interact with God, I guess to petition God for things, but you know, if he's eternal and he's in charge of everything, I suppose he can say no. And so then the idea is maybe that prayer somehow adjusts your brain to the brain or the priorities of God. I don't know. We'll have time to break all of that down here in a couple episodes because we're gonna get to a passage that's all about that. But in addition, uh, come on, what else do Christians do? Um, they go to church, right? And when you go to church, it might look very different from place to place, but theoretically, most people on Sundays, a few people on Saturdays. You go to church, you hang out with other people, you probably sing some songs. That's something else Christians do, right? They sing songs. And why do you do it? Well, it's not if you sing enough songs or sing well enough or loud enough that you go to heaven. The idea is, oh, God is really neat, and I want to communicate all these things about God that He's communicated to us back to Him and to participate in all of creation, glorifying God. So you do that. Additionally, Christians read the Bible and study it and think about it, and Christians serve other people, and some Christians deny themselves something for a period of time, be it food or something else, to focus on God and spiritual things and important stuff. And the point is, there's this whole list of drills, if you will, that Christians and people in all religions do to sharpen the skill set, to be connected to the deity. And of course, as is the case with any drills, not all Christians are completely tracking with what the point is or the purpose is all the time. And of course, it's very easy to imagine that the religious activities are the point, when in fact, as we've discussed, and I think as reason dictates, and the Bible obviously supports, well, I mean, really, God is the point, the initiating force of all things is the point of everything. And the drills, you know, they serve a secondary purpose of training up the believer or of showing devotion or whatever it might be. But I think one of the inherently and eternally tricky things about doing religious drills or what some people call spiritual disciplines, is that you actually see those and you feel them. And though maybe at times people report feeling a closeness or an intimacy with God that maybe outstrips other moments in their lives, certainly I would attest to that. And there's a there's an abstract connection with God, but you don't see God the way you see prayer and singing a song and going to church and reading a Bible. Those things are very tangible. And as a result, I think it's pretty common for the drills to kind of become front and center at times. And apparently that was an issue at the time of Jesus in the same way that it's been an issue for all time forever. Because he goes from Matthew chapter five, and in that chapter, Jesus really drills down to the level of the soul. And he's like, I, you know, I want your heart. I want real obedience and real participation and loyalty and love and a fully embracing and selling out for this kingdom and not perfunctory surfacey stuff. Well, now in chapter six, he's gonna take that over to the next place. And again, I think Jesus is phenomenal at anticipating the next logical question. And the next logical question would be okay, this is all beautiful and abstract, and uh, you know, it gets to the level of the soul and the essence and everything, but like what do we do? So do we do church the same way? Or what about like praying and doing donations and going to church and doing other spiritual activities? Are we doing that right? Or do we need to do something different there? What does it look like to live out the values of the kingdom when we do spiritual disciplines or religious drills? And what Jesus is gonna drive at as we work through Matthew chapter six is this idea that whatever you really want is what you're gonna get. Whatever the point of your religious activity is, will be the outcome of that religious activity. And he seems to hold up two things that you're gonna see as a pattern here as we get into the next three chunks of the Bible. One option is that you do things to impress other people with how good you are at religious drills. And he says that if that is the reward you're seeking, that is that other people are very, very impressed with how religious you are, you will receive that reward in full. But implicitly he seems to be suggesting that if the point of all of these religious drills, the religious activity, is something deeper, something more kingdom-oriented, something more targeted at a heart level, essence-level connection with the first cause and with God Himself, well what he's intoning is you can have that. But what he's also intoning, which again, ironically, is something intoned by the aforementioned late great Mr. Miyagi, is that you can't have both. You can be on this side of the road, you can be on that side of the road if you try to go down the middle, squish like grape. And likewise, you can impress people or you can honor God with these religious activities. And so it is very important that we take this little break time in between chapter five and chapter six to reset things, to understand what the flow of questions is, what Jesus is answering next, and what the interpretive key, the interpretive theme is for us so that we catch it as it comes by. Once again, there's this great big important kingdom, and it's awesome and it's amazing, and it drives all the way down to the level of your soul and your essence. And God wants heart-level obedience and kingdom loyalty. That is the call. So, hey, I know you do all kinds of religious things. You're probably wondering what that looks like in light of those kingdom values. And I can just give you this as a preview. Whatever you're really going for, whatever the heart is really driving at with those religious drills and religious activities, that's what you're gonna get, whether it's something screwed up and weird and shallow, or whether it's something meaningful and transcendent. So next time around, we're gonna be in the beginning of Matthew chapter six, and we're gonna be looking at the spiritual discipline of donating money. And again, we're gonna run it through this formula of what does that look like in light of kingdom values? And I think that's gonna be really, really fascinating. All right, seems like a great place to hit pause. I feel like we are reset and ready to tear into Matthew six. I'm Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do it again soon.