Hey Dylan, are you listening? Is that weird you out, Dylan? I I don't mean you, Dylan, not that Dylan, the other Dylan. DJ Weaver29, that Dylan? Yeah, you said something really smart in the subreddit buddy. It was a great question. And I'm going to read that question right now, and then we're going to talk about it as we're processing this whole Matthew chapter 4 thing. So here we go. You asked Dylan, hey Matt, and others. I was wondering what your thoughts were about the writing of Matthew chapter 4. With previous chapters, things were of public record or had other witnesses. But with this chapter, it's just Jesus and Satan. Do you feel that this was a story Jesus told his disciples? Was it passed down through the Spirit? Basically, how did this very personal and scheduled event make its way into Scripture? Secluded event, excuse me. I understand from a literary perspective why it's here, but I'm struggling to grasp the mechanics. I like this question. Also with the vagueness of Satan, the serpent, Lucifer being really unclear in the Old Testament, did Matthew have a real understanding of what was going on here? If things are inspired by the Spirit, did any of the authors fully grasp what they were writing? I realize it was going to be speculative, but I'm still interested in your thoughts, as well as any helpful church tradition. Thanks a bunch, Dylan, or DJ Weaver29, as he calls himself on the Reddit. Dylan, nice question, man. We're going to take a whole episode and talk about that right now. And by we, since you addressed it to Heymat and others, I mean me and my buddy Aaron Utecht. Aaron, I got you there? I am here. Tweet. Not everybody might know my friend Aaron Utecht, but I you know how all of you probably have somebody who you call when you have windshield time and like your area of specialization and what you think about, and you call them up, you bounce ideas off of each other. If you don't have that friend, you should get one, but you can't have Aaron. He's already taken. He's the guy I call to process all of this stuff behind the scenes with the Bible and theology and all of this. Okay, so Aaron, what do you say to Dylan? How did this stuff get recorded from Matthew chapter 4, where Jesus is out in the wilderness monoimano with the devil?
SPEAKER_01Uh that is a great question. I have not ever thought about that before. I think it's in a category, though, of uh uh like at the end of Deuteronomy, or it records the death of Moses. And clearly somebody has um somebody has come along and put those together, but Moses is still credited with it. It seems like it's kind of in that category. Like there will there will there's obviously private moments that somehow got brought to light. What I would assume in this case is that Jesus is uh explained this to his disciples who probably took notes on a lot of stuff along the way and uh and then wrote them down in various various forms and various gospel accounts.
SPEAKER_00Can I ask you questions to push back on this to make the conversation more fun?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Please do.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and to be fair, like uh everybody needs to understand Aaron was not prepped for any of this. I told him two minutes ago, hey, uh, I'm gonna turn on a microphone. I want you to answer a question. So so I'm being rough on you here, but I know you're good for it. Do you think it would be arrogant of Jesus to sit his disciples down and be like, yeah, I'm the humble son of man and the suffering servant, and uh my bow, my burden and yoke, you know, they're not so heavy or anything. And also, here's some awesome stuff I did to crush the devil one time. Or do you think they were like, oh, tell us tell us a story again, Jesus, about the time you kicked the devil's butt out in the desert in that verbal sword fight? Is that arrogant of him to tell this story?
SPEAKER_01Uh that's an interesting question. So I think the answer has to be no, but how do you arrive at that? I think there's an interesting uh okay, let me so let me back up. If if you take the if you take the Bible's narrative that it presents Jesus as the Son of God, and so Jesus, what what's true of God then is also true of Jesus. Now, one of the things that's interesting is you go through like the Old Testament, the records of God, he is infinite, he is infinitely loving, infinitely just, um, infinitely powerful, um, also infinitely merciful, and he's he's infinite in all these different directions. And I think one of those interesting juxtapositions that isn't always talked about is that God is uh for his glory, but also humble. And so, like if you look at Psalm 113, which it seems like the Lord our God who sits in front on high, but stoops down to lift lowly. That that word is the same word used of Jesus in um in the Greek Old Testament that that Paul uses in 14th chapter 2, where he humbled himself or stooped down. So is it arrogant of him to talk about that in that moment or from that moment? I think he's giving them a record of this cosmic event. And even though sometimes Jesus points to his glory, he also is probably the most deferential human ever. Is that overstating it?
SPEAKER_00Well, certainly in relation to awesomeness level.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like it like it's not a big deal to be deferential if you're terrible at everything. I mean, it's it's certainly a bigger deal to be deferential if you're the best at everything ever. Like I'm assuming Jesus would have been the best at like golf and juggling and yoga, probably also as well. Because of him being God in the flesh and everything. So yeah, I uh I I I support your statement.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Okay, all right. So and and side note, uh I think you quoted that verse exactly right, dude. Uh Psalm 113, 5 and 6, who is like the Lord our God, the one who says enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth. And yes, I had to look that up. So nice job, props to you. Um okay, so we're in agreement that uh barring some kind of uh supernatural revelation that happened after the fact, this must have been something that one of two entities told others. It was either the devil or it was Jesus. And since the devil comes off looking horrible, we don't have any other record of him showing up to inform the narrative of scripture with its authors, we're going to assume it must have the leak must have been Jesus, right? Fair assumption?
SPEAKER_01Uh I think so, yes. And the motivation for that isn't so much his telling his story as it is telling the story of the universe. Like this is how this is going down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and the story of his father, right? I mean, the you say he's deferential, and in a lot of ways, you know, the way I framed it, I'm like, oh, look how awesome I am in what I did. But really, if you look at the story, Jesus doesn't look that awesome at all because he's weak, he's frail, he has to be attended to by things that his father provides. And uh all of his his references are to the word of God. He doesn't say even to the word of me, he's deferring to God the Father from that. He deferred to God the Spirit and even going out into the desert in the first place. So really, even telling the story is an act of presenting to others what proper deference to God looks like. Yes. Which is weird because if you or I do it, it's got all kinds of weird mixed motives, and here it doesn't seem to be the case.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that's what we'll say.
SPEAKER_00I think the weakness of the this was revealed independently by the Holy Spirit prophetically to is there's uh there's some reference to the temptation in all four gospels? Let me see. Definitely Matthew, Mark, definitely in Luke. Does John have a reference?
SPEAKER_01Um I am in my office if you let me flip. I can share I'm I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00Like the only part of the Bible I've read are the first four chapters of Matthew. So I I I have no idea what happens after that.
SPEAKER_01No, it does there is I don't think there is because it jumps it jumps right from the prologue, which is kind of detached esoteric language, and then it jumps right into the record of meaning uh John the Baptist and John the Baptist's testimony.
SPEAKER_00So it seems like yeah, and then he calls disciples, and then we're right into miracles and public ministry. Yeah, you're right. So for the sake of time, I think we're both comfortable saying that it would be not in keeping with the way the information in the gospels is assembled to imagine that the Holy Spirit separately and miraculously appears to Matthew, Mark, and Luke individually to give them this one nugget of detail. It looks like they're drawing on a common source. And and in this case, I I would speculate Dylan, the the common source is Jesus or the Christ of Nazareth, who was explaining what happened out there, and I don't think he was explaining it arrogantly. I think he's explaining something that really needs to be known for people to understand that he does pass all the tests, that he is the Son of God, that he is the promised uh Redeemer, the promised king who would rule forever on this throne of David. And obviously if the whole Bible is happening and the whole redemptive plan is happening, he wants people to know that so he would want to communicate it. So here's my question to you, Aaron. How do we know he's telling the truth? Like he's Jesus, so I mean we like him and we automatically side with him. But if you're reading through this document for the first time and you don't know what to make of it, why would you assume that a pretty outlandish sounding story like that would be true and not that Jesus was just making stuff up?
SPEAKER_01Um you can look to internal tests, you can look to you know the people who wrote it and say, are they trustworthy? Um, but ultimately I think it has to be um it has to be, I'm gonna accept this. And that and that's a little bit how God what puts it. You know, will you trust me? You know, faith, faith like a child in Luke uh 18, I think it is.
SPEAKER_00Which you know is hard for me. Like yeah, that's hard for all of us. On a completely not screwing around, not joking level. Like, look, I I want people to know who they're hearing from here. I have faith. I am a Christian, I believe in God. I believe that he's behind the Bible and the Bible is accurate and saying what it means to say. I don't I don't not claiming I understand it all, but faith like a child, that's not really in my wheelhouse, man. I I I it seems like there's a place in this whole story and this whole Kingdom of God thing for Thomas's and people who kind of poke and prod at it a little bit more. And yeah, um, I'm wired like that. I I I know there are people who are listening who are wired a little more like that too.
SPEAKER_01Uh oh, there are people you're talking to that are wired like that. Yeah. Uh it's a big part of my story, actually, when I was in college, sort of feeling like God owed me an answer on all my questions. And um I had to kind of relinquish that right uh for me personally. And uh and I and so for I don't think it means that everything has to be blindly accepted. It means you have to kind of know who's God and who may have prerogatives that I don't fully know on the front end. I think that you can really overapply that verse um about faith like a child, but it it is core. I think it's it's about uh knowing that I have a a place. So back to your question uh in Matthew, how do we know that this isn't just made up somehow, that you know that just the apostles made it up uh after the fact and stitched the story together? Well, ultimately, I mean you you can there's there's there's good reasons to believe that that didn't happen, and reasonable people will come to different conclusions, but ultimately you're gonna have to say, you know, everything points to this this document and the people who uh put it together seem like they're all internally consistent and they're all going in the same direction, and they don't have they they would lose too much by trying to make it up. Um I think you know there's an element of faith that that comes to play in it, really.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's compelling to me as well. And and I would I would just add to your list, I guess. I mean, you got these accounts about Jesus, you have reason, you have philosophy, you have the scriptures, you have the old testament. There's there's a whole lot of stuff that goes into deciding whether or not you believe Jesus told the truth about what happened out there. If I saw this story in isolation and somebody named like Gary was out there and is like, hey, guess what's who I just ran into after 40 days of going on a vision questing devil? I'd be like, Okay, Gary, thank you so much for your feedback, sir. And then I would move on from Gary. And and and with no other context, I'm sorry, Gary just doesn't sound very credible there. But but with Jesus, I feel like this is one of those places where the more clear of all the other stuff about him and his character and what he did and his motivations, all of that informs whether we can trust him to come back and tell us what actually happened out there in the desert or not.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I I'm good with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And it's a collective argument. You know, you you say, okay, he does this, okay, he's he's obviously not, you know, not trying to lead rebellions, he's not claiming wild things to try to make money or get women, you know. I mean, uh all of the collective story, it's uh there's a collective weight to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And for me, as I work through the New Testament, if I were to run into an account or an issue that would cause me to say, I don't know if I can go there, it wouldn't be this one. It wouldn't be, did Jesus report this accurately or not? Um and at this point, you know, we don't have time for me to disclose what the harder parts are. So for me, it'd be somewhere else. And as we get to those things in the text, it'll be fun to break them down and talk about the challenges that come with it and also the awesome stuff that comes with it. Dude, you just jumped on the phone with me with no preparation and completely crushed it. It's as though you're good at this stuff. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Uh it's fun to talk and think about. I have no idea if it's profound on the other end or not, but it's fun to do.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Aaron, for jumping on. Uh Dylan, nice job. That was a fantastic question and hopefully scratches a mental itch that some other people had as well. If anybody else wants to jump in on the discussion like that, you can go to reddit.com. You can make an account, it's free. You can be selective with what you do or don't do on there. And our our discussion subreddit is called the R slash TMBH podcast. There's a link to it always in the show notes. It says discuss this episode here. You can just click on that, buzz into Reddit, see what people are talking about, throw out good questions, and we'll talk about them from time to time right here because we can go as slow as we want. And I rather enjoy that, and maybe even abuse my privilege. All right, hey, I'm gonna let you be. Thank you so much, Dylan. Thank you everybody for being a part of this. Thank you, Aaron. We will catch you tomorrow with more on this whole Matthew chapter 4 temptation thing. I'm Matt, it's 10 minute Bible hour. We'll catch you soon.