This is gonna be a weird episode because I'm gonna keep running with this analogy that we were talking about yesterday. You got two kinds of board games, right? You got the kind of board game that's like risk, or I don't know, insert whatever game where you try to defeat your enemies. Maybe you have friendly or fun ones, but the point is still crush everyone and be the last person standing and win, right? And you got these other kind of games that have become popular in recent years. I mentioned a couple last time. There's Forbidden Island is one of these board games. Uh, another one is Pandemic, and another one, uh, what's it called? Like Shadows over Camelot. It's a beautiful game. It's kind of confusing and hard, but I used to play that one with my family as well. And in this game, you play against the mechanics of the board game. So the board game is the problem, and no one is the game. No one is your enemy. The situation is the enemy. And what's fun about this kind of game is everybody has to put their heads together and everybody brings their unique uh gifts or attributes that they're assigned as a character. They bring all of that to bear on this problem to resolve it together. And what it really is, these are two completely different things. I mean, they're they're both board games laid out on a table, so they look the same to the naked eye, just like going through life in the world system just looks like going through life. I mean, yeah, you eat, you drink, you sleep, you go to work, whatever, you have relationships in the Kingdom Kingdom. But when you really look at the nuts and bolts and the mechanics of it and the motives for the players, it's not the same at all. One is crush everyone, one is work together to defeat the faceless evil. And I think there are versions of Christian theism where we imagine the invitation is more like the risk version. We're gonna beat bad behavior, we're gonna beat the people who think the wrong way and vote the wrong way, we're gonna beat the people from the other countries, from the other religions, from the other 99.99% of Christian expressions that are all wrong, because ours is the only one that's ever been right. And it's this, it's this tension, this friction, this gauntlet we have to go through to defeat sin, to defeat wrongness, to defeat evil world systems, and that is what Jesus invites us to. Conflict. But what I am hearing here is Jesus putting the capstone on his list of you've heard it said, but I tell you that fulfillment of the law statements was something that doesn't look like we fight with the bad people at all. It looks like people who are in the kingdom care about the quote unquote bad people, care about the people who are wrong about the things, care about the people who hurt them. And I think what this betrays is the reality of Christ's invitation, he's inviting us to abandon the world system board game and to embrace this other one, which means that while there is certainly merit to the idea that a personal conversion according to the Bible, and this is usually drawn from later in the Bible, from the stuff that Paul writes that I believe is accurate and right as well. But usually the message of conversion is you realize you are bad, which is very Jesus, very biblical, very true. You realize that you cannot solve your problems. Oh, that's Matthew chapter five. That's right in there. That's great. And then you pray a prayer or you have a moment of encounter or conversion to God, and then you lead this life. And a lot of times that life is held out as a lifelong battle against sin, bad action, bad thought, and and even faceless evil carried out by all the people who are still bad who haven't become Christians yet. It's in there, and I see it, but I keep coming back to this. What is the invitation from Jesus? Well, you flip ahead just a little bit to right after he comes off the hill and he goes and he talks with this uh this tax collector, this Matthew character, and the invitation to him is unbelievably simple. In fact, it's two words in Matthew 9 9, right? I'm gonna read you some Bible. Follow me. That's it. That's that's the whole gospel message from Jesus. It's like he already summed up all the stuff about the values of the kingdom and everything in the Sermon on the Mount. And then he comes off the hill and he sees this guy who's super flawed sitting there and he's like, follow me. That's it. Follow him where, though. Well, it seems like obviously the invitation is to follow him deeply into this kingdom and the values of this kingdom, and to to use the expression maybe inappropriately, to get red-pilled, to have your eyes open to the truth that there is a lesser reality, which is the naturalistic world kingdom, live, eat, poop, work, die. That's the end of it, versus the kingdom kingdom, where you have a point. There is a purpose and a mission, and it involves participating in defeating the board game, with Jesus the King being at the front, leading the charge, even metaphorically, taking the shots on our behalf to allow us to participate in this victory over this lesser, less meaningful thing, and in bringing about this truer, more real thing. I just think the invitation, as we look at this, it's implicit still at this point in Matthew, but it is so much more transcendent. It's so much more transformative than just the intellectual ascent. I used to sign up for this set of ideas, and I was on this team socially, politically, religiously. Then I learned some facts, I assent to those facts, and now I sign up for this other team. And then there's a transaction that happened, or like I kind of have a handshake moment with God, and God is like, okay, you assented to the right things, you signed up, you said the right words, you now will be forgiven for your sin and you will not have to face eternal judgment. Transaction complete. Now just like, I don't know, mill around here, do some Christian stuff or something, and eventually die, and you'll see this all cash in. Again, what I'm seeing here looks like much more than a transaction. It looks like a wholesale, I want your heart, I want your loyalty, I want your obedience at the deepest level of your essence and your priorities. I don't want you to even think in terms of what's the least I can do to make it seem like I kind of tried to do kingdom-y stuff. I want you to think in terms of I'm all in, this is the truest, realist thing, and I'm a son, I'm a daughter, I'm an agent, I'm a participant in this thing, I'm an ambassador of this thing, I'm vested in it. I think the call is to vestedness, not just a transaction that relieves us from guilt and fear of death. And I'm telling you, that is way more interesting to me. In summary, this is what I see the deal be on with Matthew chapter five. It opens with a description of kingdom values. These values are upside down and backwards, and also beautiful and really appealing. Then it talks about the role that the person who decides to embrace these kingdom values and the king behind it might take on. And it looks like they're a preservative and illuminating factor. They stand out as a minority in society with this weird set of kingdom values, but there's something very redemptive and brave about that, even though you're going to take some lumps for doing it. Then people start asking the question, hey, what about all the religion, the law, and everything we already have? And Jesus, as we spent a ton of time considering, says, I didn't come to abolish it, I came to fulfill it. And then he fleshes that out, saying, Oh, the law is a real thing here. Anybody who breaks even the least of these commandments is least in the kingdom. And if you want to like be in the sweet position regarding the whole kingdom thing, you would have to have a degree of righteousness that surpasses even the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. You can't even get into the kingdom of heaven. And he's like, ah, you're speaking in riddles now. How does this work? And then Jesus goes on into the statements we just spent a bunch of time on, explaining one after the next how his teaching is the fulfillment of the spirit of the point of the Old Testament behavioral laws involving things like murder, squaring accounts, adultery, divorce, making oaths or even nonsense oaths, how to respond in terms of being wronged and wanting revenge. And ultimately, he caps the whole thing off with what we've been talking about, this idea of love your enemy. And there's one last nugget at the end of chapter five that I think applies not just to this last thought on love your enemies, but I think it retroactively applies and reads back over the top of all the you've heard it said, but I tell you that statements. And that is this. So he says, if you love those who love you, what reward are you gonna get? Aren't even the tax collectors doing that. And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Don't even the pagans do that. That's verses 46 and 47, end of chapter five. And then the final one, be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. Like everybody cannot murder, everybody can theoretically not adultery, everybody can do the proper paperwork and get things made legal if there's a system that can accommodate that for you know a clerical fee. Everybody does that though. Those aren't kingdom values, those are world values in a slightly vaguely religious context. So in verse 48, when he points out that anybody does that stuff, you're not getting credit for not murdering, you're not getting credit for not adultery. He says, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. Two layers of meaning there that I see in light of what we just read contextually. One, you can't. So the only play you have left is not despair, but it is to cry out to the guy who's on the hill saying this stuff and be like, ah, okay. Well, you can do it, and you're in a position of authority to say it. So I guess I'm gonna need a hand with this stuff because I I can't perfectly not hate my enemies. I can't perfectly not lust. I can't perfectly think well of people. I I've indulged in hate, I'll do it again. I can't clean up the track record for the mixed motive stuff that I've pulled in the past. I can't be perfect. That ship has already sailed. So, on the one hand, it's supposed to prompt people toward a position of spiritual poverty and realizing my whole paradigm here is broken. I thought religion was about me being good enough to impress the deity on the other side, and the deity gives me stuff like forgiveness or eternal life or whatever. But that clearly is broken, which gets us to the second thing. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect, I think certainly acknowledges the ideal and the call to embracing these kingdom values deeply. But further, it hints, and we haven't fully resolved the thought yet, at the same thing that's hinted at in verse 20. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teaches of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. The idea being that there is a righteousness apart from the law, there is a righteousness apart from behavior that Jesus is referencing. And the concept is still floating around and taking shape in people's brains. But what he's hinting at is that there is something that is obtainable. The question that's floating out there is, okay, where do I get it? Since obviously it could only come from God. How does one access this righteousness of God? And if that feels like we're getting toward kind of deep water Bible theology stuff, it's because that's what's happening. But usually we skip to the end, we skip over these things and we just get right into the like here's this verse and that verse, and now we jump 50 pages that way, and there's that verse, and that is the story of how you do the salvation transaction. But as we actually watch the movie from the beginning together and try to remember what the audience knew so far and what they didn't, you're like, dang, he is layering this out artfully so that a person would ask the next logical question and the next logical question. And it's a pretty fun exercise for me to forget some of the stuff I know and ask the next logical question and the next logical question for myself. I hope you're doing that too. I hope you're having fun with it. I've gone a little bit long here. We're into chapter six tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's get on to the next block of thought from Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, Maniana. Catch you soon.