Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast. I got to take a week off last week, which is really nice because there's a lot going on in the world. And it gave me an opportunity to kind of think through how I want to respond with my family. And hey, elephant in the room. Pretty obviously, there's this coronavirus COVID-19 thing going on. And it's hitting a lot closer to home right now than it was a couple of weeks ago when we talked about this. And even than it was a few days ago when I published a video on that. I know we're all feeling the weight of it. I know there's a ton of questions. I know we all feel a little bit out of control. At the same time, I'm really grateful that there is some recourse, and that is to slow the thing down, flatten out the curve, do the social distancing thing that smart people recommend, give each other a little more space, move about a little bit less than normal, maybe a lot more space and move around a lot less than normal. And the result of that is that we have the ability to actually do something about the situation, which I find energizing. But we also have the ability, because of that recourse we've been given to sit tight and think on things and reflect on things, maybe more than we usually would. And so it seems like right now we kind of have the data in front of us and we know what to do. And what we could do with this time is process some more, just like we were doing before about the book of Matthew. If this book turns out to be something that was from God and that's true and reliable, then this might actually be one of the best ways we could possibly spend our time. And I think it's at the very, very least, for even the most skeptical person, fascinating to game out why this document has stood the test of time, why so many people have found it compelling, why people have found it even more compelling in times of great peril and difficulty, at times where we ask questions about mortality and what happens after you die and what the point of a person is. This has made a lot of sense and been very compelling in those moments as well. And so for some of us, it's that. It's a curiosity, it's an interesting book. And I absolutely love that portion of who's sitting here in this conversation. And I love and respect and get where you're at. And I'm excited to see how that plays out for you. Excited to hear what your thoughts are. There's also a bunch of people sitting in on this conversation who are like, hey, these are the words of life. There's a God behind this. Jesus is God in the flesh, the Son of God. And here we are in a situation where I guess we could wander out into the great wide world and see what's out there. But for you, you're thinking, man, well, to whom else would we go? You alone have the words of life. And by you alone, I don't mean me, I mean uh Jesus. And so yeah, I say let's charge ahead, uh Migos, and um we'll see what else we find out here. This is where I think we're at. We're coming to a place in Matthew chapter five where there's a next really obvious question in the speech that Jesus is giving that the people on the hill who were there listening to him in the first place would have been asking. What's effectively happened here so far is Jesus has done a bunch of stuff. There's a bunch of rumors and stories about his reputation. There are people who are making seemingly legitimate claims that there was something wrong with them physically, maybe even observably wrong with them physically, and that Jesus, in his very early travels, while he's still kind of a mystery, that he healed that stuff, that he said really smart and really compelling stuff. And his legend, I don't know if I want to use that word, but I'm I guess I just used it. His legend is starting to grow. People are becoming very curious. He's now attracting this big giant crowd. And probably real close to the town where he's working out of, a town called Capernaum. He goes up on this hillside and his disciples follow him up there, and he starts to teach his disciples, and there's this whole crowd that gathers around. And it seems like Jesus decides to take this opportunity to articulate a description of what he's going for, what this whole thing is about, the whole Jesus thing. And what he does is he holds out a contrast between two kingdoms. And the one kingdom is the one everybody already knows. You know the ground rules, you know how it works, you know how people function, you know how kings work and government works and war works and ideas work. But then there's this other kingdom, and these ground rules are a little more foreign. So Jesus puts more time into explaining the ground rules of this truer, realer kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven. And the values are upside down from a world that's all predicated on the idea that you live for a little while and you die and you try to find whatever meaning you can in the meantime. In this other kingdom, you've got this eternal king who's bringing about blessing and forgiveness and restoration and resolution to all the things that are broken. And you're invited not just to observe, but to participate, and not just to participate as a casual member of the crowd, but as a son and a daughter and an heir of this kingdom, an agent of this kingdom. And you're an agent of the values of this kingdom that Jesus starts describing at the beginning of chapter five when he goes through and he lists all these things that are blessed and the reward that goes along with this blessing. And it's all backwards from world values, but it would have made people really interested. And they'd be like, I you know, that sounds great. I would love to participate in something like that. And then he even goes on to say that these values are so in conflict with the world kingdom. He doesn't say it, I'm paraphrasing here, that you will experience persecution if you live by these values. So if you become a son, a daughter, an heir, an agent of this kingdom, it's going to cause friction. It's going to feel weird. At times it's going to hurt, just like it did for people who were sons, daughters, agents, heirs of this kingdom from the past, who uh everybody in the audience would have known were kind of rock stars and really got it right. Jesus then goes on to say that part of your role as a son, a daughter, an heir, an agent of this better, truer, realer kingdom is that you are light and you are salt. You are something that brings illumination. Doesn't take much of that to light up a dark place, and that you are a preservative. Your presence, even though it's small, mixed into this much larger world kingdom, flavors it with this truer, realer kingdom. And it brings about transformation and change in very subtle ways. So, hey, you got a job to do here. Now, the natural question that people would be asking next, I'm sure, hands started shooting up right after Jesus says, in the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. He concludes his first block of thought in this description of the kingdom and the description of what it looks like to participate. And I'm sure there are a whole bunch of people who are like, whoa, that sounded good. I mean, that just sounded like everything I would want. That's exactly how I hope stuff turns out. It even kind of sounds sort of Bible-y, like the scriptures and what was promised. But wait a minute. There have been a lot of people around here lately who've been like, I'm the Messiah of this, I'm the Messiah of that. Sign up for my religion, follow me. Also bring swords because we're gonna kill some people and overthrow the government. Ah it's like they're all doing their own thing. This guy sounds great, but is he doing his own thing too? Like, where is this all headed? Because we already have a religion, and we know it's from God, and we already have scriptures. Everybody on the hill would have been thinking this. We have a God, we have scriptures, we know that he's done things in the past. You know, he led the people out of Egypt, and he defeated the enemies, and he punished us to make a point and blessed us to make a point, and their promises about the future. We already have a religion. It feels like Jesus might be wadding up that religion and throwing it away for another religion that sounds really good, but we know all that other stuff is true. So maybe some hands start going up, and the question they're formulating is, but what about the religion we already have, the one that we call the law? And they use the term law, but it was really the description of the entire narrative and theological history that we see described in what we call the Old Testament. Well, Jesus anticipates that question and he says, Don't think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I haven't come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. My guess is that that would not have immediately made sense to everyone. Because my guess is that everybody had become accustomed to the idea that where things were at in the religion, where things were at in the relationship with God had been going on that way for so long that this is just how things were gonna be moving forward, and it would have been difficult for them to conceptualize it going anywhere else. Oh, there's a next. So I'm gonna hit pause there because I want to break down carefully the old testament background, the story, the narrative that would have been robustly playing out in the minds of all these people as they listen to this and wrestle to understand what on earth it would look like to fulfill the law. And as they would be asking the question, does it even need to be fulfilled? What are you talking about, Jesus? But there's way too much there to game out with the negative 42 seconds I have left. So I'm gonna hit pause there. We'll pick it up tomorrow. Hey, be safe, be careful, lay low. I'm sorry that we find ourselves in a weird situation where we're dealing with something that affects us all. But if there's any wrinkle of blessing to it, it's that it provides us time and opportunity to take stock of where we're at as individuals, where we're at as a people and a world. And I, for one, feel optimistic that uh that surprise blessings are gonna come out of the situation, that we're gonna discover that we care about each other a little more than we thought, that we need each other a little more than we thought. And I think this stuff we're talking about right here with Jesus and the gospel and this message of hope is unbelievably timely in this moment. And so I am excited to keep digging into it more deeply and to allow it to just kind of sit over the top of what feels like the biggest, truest, realist thing, which is a global pandemic. But I think with this thing sitting over the top, holding itself out as being actually the truest realist thing, that's gonna give us some serious food for thought about the big stuff. And I'm glad we get to spend time together this week doing that. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do it again soon.