I really like Boardwalk Empire on HBO. It's another these long-form dramatic series set in the Prohibition era of Atlantic City. It's about running booze and stuff like that. And then predictably there's a lot of stuff in it that probably offend people. I don't know. Make good choices about what you watch or whatever, but I really like Boardwalk Empire. And one of the things that I liked about Boardwalk Empire, and frankly, one of the things that I like about watching sometimes programming that others might find controversial is that seems to be where people will really take the risks in terms of what they do with plot structure. Now, not every episode of Boardwalk worked this way, but a lot of them did. The thing that would happen at the beginning would match with the thing that happened at the very end, and the real point of the show that corresponded with the title of the episode would happen directly at the middle point of the episode. So all of the action from the beginning to the midpoint would rise to this epiphany moment that is sort of decoded by knowing the title of the episode. But then, and this is where it got interesting, coming back down the mountain from the peak of the middle of the episode to the end of the episode, things would happen sequentially that would correspond to the rising action the other way. And in doing so, this is a really interesting way to tell a story, and one that isn't super familiar and already, you know, tried and worn out for modern audiences. Well, there's actually a name for this type of structure, and it's called chiasm. And this chiastic structure is not an entirely Hebrew invention, but that's the place where we're most likely to come in contact with it today, because it pops up a ton in the Bible. Now, sometimes it's really, really glaringly obvious. Other times it's a little bit sneakier, but once you see it, oh my goodness, my friends, it is everywhere. Have you heard of uh Bader-Meinhof syndrome? It's the thing where once you see a thing or become aware of a thing, now that thing is everywhere. Like if you buy a, I don't know, like a Mazda or something, you're like, I didn't even know there were Mazdas on the road. This is a nice little car. All of a sudden, everywhere you look, surprise. Mazdas. Likewise, everywhere you look in the Bible, chiasm. As soon as you see it, it's not going away. So Psalm 46, here's one that might be somewhat familiar either way. I'm going to read it to you. It goes like this God is our refuge and strength and ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we won't fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, and the mountains quake with their surging. There's a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, shall not fall. God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall, he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see the works of the Lord, the desolations he's brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. Be still and know that I'm God. I'll be exalted among the nations, I'll be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress. Now I understand that you are probably right now wearing some sort of workout unitard and you're sweating vigorously at a club, maybe on one of these uh little treadmill kind of devices or one of these Peloton bikes that the attractive people are using these days. So understanding that you probably didn't break down all of that wall at text, just try to work with me here because I think you'll see it. So imagine a mountaintop. It's a very vigorous mountaintop, like an upside-down V kind of mountain, like the kind you would draw when you were a kid. The beginning of the action of Psalm 46 and the end of the action of Psalm 46 are identical. Think about it. God is our refuge and strength and ever-present help in trouble. So God is our refuge. And then the very end is the Lord Almighty is with us, the Lord, uh the God of Jacob is our fortress. Beginning of the mountaintop and the end of the mountaintop are both about God being our refuge. Verses 1 and 11. Now we're going to move up the mountaintop a little bit, both from the end and toward the middle point of the mountaintop from the beginning, and we're going to see there's another set of things that corresponds here. Verse 2 says, Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way. Verse 10 says, Be still and know that I am God. In other words, you're calm about things because God knows what he's doing. Aha! So the beginning and the end of the climb up and down the mountain match. Plus, like the first 20% has a corresponding thing as well. No fear, be still. Verses three and four and verses eight and nine correspond as well. So now we've moved a little bit closer up from the back end and from the front end of the mountain toward that peak in the middle. And we see in verses three and four the waters roar, the mountains quake, the river, streams, and all kinds of natural language, the mountains falling and stuff like that. The theme here being that nature is raging, but God is in control over all of that. And verses eight and nine do the same thing, except it's a little bit different. It's not about nature, it's about people and decision making. And it's about uh desolation and war and makes wars to cease and breaks the bow and the spear and burns the shields. So three and four correspond to eight and nine, where three and four say stuff's going crazy maybe with the physical world, but God's got it. Verses eight and nine say stuff's going crazy in the minds and hearts of men and women and politics, but God's got things under control. Then at five and seven, so now we're like the 80% mark going up the mountain from both the end and the beginning. And we see another correspondence. Verse five, God is within her, she will not fail, God will help her at break of day. Verse seven, the Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress. You see, God is present, God is present in both of these situations, so you don't have to hit the panic button. And then verse six represents the very, very tippy top of this mountain. We've worked our way all the way up in these corresponding footholds that match. And what do we have here? Well, we have the key thought. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall, he lifts his voice, and the earth melts. So there are two thoughts that make the tippy top of the mountain, and that is nations rage, but God speaks. All of these world things, these world kingdoms, they're own nuts, they're out of control. It seems like they're barely on the leash from your perspective or from mine. But the psalmist writes in a very clever way the thing that you need to take away from this is that God speaks. Where franticness happens in the world, God is completely in control, completely at ease, completely comfortable. Where there is franticness in the world, there is calm, where the nations rage, God speaks. That means that what's different about the way you and I would lay things out in terms of our Western Greek brains that we were raised on, is that here the meaning is kind of buried, and you sort of have to know the structure to be able to really see what is going on here. And I don't understand if you heard me say this and you're like, ah, it feels like you're reading a lot into that. This seems like a lovely poem, but I'm telling you, if you weren't in that unitard and you weren't drenched in sweat, and you could sit down and look at this text right now with me, it would be as easy as just drawing a little sideways mountain right here on the pages of the Bible because it is so glaringly evident. Once you see it, you see it. You remember those things that they used to have in the mall where you'd walk through and the guy'd be like, hey, stare at this weird pixelated digitally picture, and you'd be like, This is some kind of dirty trick. You're just trying to take my money. You'd be like, look at this point really closely. And then he'd move the calendar away from you and you'd be like, What the heck? There's a there's a dolphin jumping over a sunset in Hawaii or something. It looks like a waterbed commercial. Where'd that go? And then you look away from it, you look back, and it just looks like pixels and everything again. It's the same thing. This is actually here. And once you see it, you'll be able to let your eyes go in and out of focus just a little bit to grab that image once again. Why am I talking about this? Very, very simple. We are in Matthew chapter five. We are thinking about the structure of the Beatitudes. And yesterday we talked about three proposed structures of the Beatitudes, those being that it's kind of a corresponding Ten Commandments list. I probably poo-pooed that one a little bit too dismissively. I really do strive to be fair to perspectives and positions that I don't think are the strongest. I'll try to do better on that in the future. Uh, the second suggestion for what the structure is of the Beatitudes is that it's one progressive thought. We worked through that together and broke it down. I thought that was pretty interesting. Could be that that is part of the deal here as well. It does seem to work. And the third thing that we look at is it's just a simple two sides of a coin. The first half of the coin is about the vertical relationship between people and God, and then there's a pivot point, and the second half of the coin is about the horizontal relationship that is born out of that between people and other people. And all of these blessed R statements relate in one way or the other. This then would be a fourth proposal that what we're actually seeing here is rising and falling thematic action. We're seeing that upside down V, that mountaintop structure where the beginning of the Beatitudes would correspond with the end of the Beatitudes. And tomorrow we're gonna break down exactly what that looks like and consider what that might mean. The central idea of the Beatitudes are. In other words, we are fixing to crack the code. And everybody else before us was stupid and wrong about everything. And only here on this podcast with this thing that totally nobody else has ever thought. Okay, this is all ridiculous. Other people have thought of this, lots of people have thought of this. I'm just trying to explain it in a way that's gonna make sense for all of us. And I think this really is the strongest case. So we'll break it down further tomorrow. Thanks as always to everybody who supports the program at patreon.com slash the tmbh podcast. I saw a couple more people signed up today. I mean, it's like a buck or two bucks each. Um, I know it might not seem like uh a lot to you, but I saw that come through today on my email. It was really encouraging. So, anyways, thanks a ton for making this thing happen. Go ring out your Unitard, and I will catch you tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is a 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do it again soon.