What's the thing that you want that is so good and so beautiful and so perfect that you almost hesitate to let yourself believe it could ever happen? You've got something like that, right? I mean, I gotta think everybody's got something like that. And I'm not talking about stupid, greedy stuff that you know you probably shouldn't want, but I'm talking about stuff that you're pretty sure you want the right way and for the right reasons. I'm talking about the stuff that is stitched into the level of the heart for a person, like the person who doesn't have kids but wants to have kids. And it's almost too difficult to even allow yourself to hope that that's gonna happen. Or the person who's alone but feels like they'd be great at being in love with somebody and wants to experience that, but it just hasn't happened. Or the person who's got a friend or a loved one who's in a bad way and they want to see that person come around and things work out for them. Or the person who has aspirations to contribute something or do something, maybe it's a career or a way of life or whatever it is, or the person who has a vision for the world and helping the stuff that's broken and the people who hurt, but there are obstacles and you don't know how to do it. That kind of stuff. I have stuff like that. I think everybody has a picture of something that would be good and beautiful that maybe in the super secret quiet places it's okay to long for, but you're almost afraid to even articulate it out loud because it seems like too much to ask for or too much to hope for. I don't think this is a modern phenomenon. I don't think this is an ancient phenomenon. I think this is a human phenomenon. Because life is bittersweet, it's beautiful and it's painful. And if it was just one or the other, that would disabuse us of any of these notions of hope. But it's stinking both, and therein lies the problem. We can picture what love and compassion and peace and beauty and optimism and meaning and rightness and justice and mercy look like, but we can also picture what the exact opposite of all of those things look like. And even when we do experience all of the awesome stuff, there's also this obnoxious lingering thing in the back of our brain that says, oh yeah, also though you're gonna die. You're going to get older, and your body is going to be able to appreciate and engage with these things, these moments of beauty and transcendence less all the time. So there is this kind of strange bitter sweetness to life. We can picture something better, we know what it is to hope for something better, we can write fantasy and fiction about something better, but we also are all acutely aware of what it is to hurt. Matthew's original audience, just like you and me, had private personal hope. Matthew's original audience, just like you and me, also had a larger cosmic hope or yearning for something better. Every one of us is hurting over how broken and stupid and busted up the world is, and every one of us has some vague ideas that maybe would sort of work and maybe we know sort of wouldn't for how to make it better. And every one of us can look at history and see all the places where people have tried and failed and make a little progress here, but take two steps back there. But there is this hope that everything could be made right. And that hope is stitched into the lining of the Old Testament because there are all these little thin spots where we see the supernatural intervention of God. And so, well, particularly for Matthew's original audience, as we're looking at Matthew chapters one and two, they would have had this vague recollection of all of that stuff, and they would have thought to themselves, How come that isn't happening more? And if it could happen that much, what would it look like when we see this thing fully in fruition? Will I get to see it in my lifetime? Is that something I can even allow myself to hope for? Well, the Old Testament, in so many words, says, yeah, hope for it. In fact, it doesn't just say hope for it, it says to expect it. There's all this language in the Old Testament about this coming king and this coming kingdom, and how this king and this kingdom, like we talked about in the last conversation, are gonna be different because they're gonna rewrite the rules of everything about uh authority and benevolence and what a king and what a kingdom can be. And so this language is expressed poetically and prophetically in passages, very famous ones like Isaiah chapter 35. And I'm just gonna read you the whole thing right now. And as I do, try to think a couple layers deep into the metaphor that's used when we're talking about the land and the people and the nation, because we're really getting into the level of the human soul and the human problem. It says the desert and the parched land will be glad, the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus it will burst into bloom, it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way. Say to those with fearful hearts, Be strong and don't fear, your God will come. He will come with vengeance, with divine retribution, he will come to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the death unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground, bubbling springs, in the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow, and a highway will be there. It'll be called the way of holiness, the unclean won't journey on it. It'll be for those who walk in the way, wicked fools will not go about on it, no lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get upon it. They won't be found there, but only the redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord will return, they will enter Zion with singing, everlasting joy will crown their heads, gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. Jeremiah twenty three uses similar language, then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I'll set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord. And then more of this kind of talk in Daniel chapter two. And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. There is a ton more that I could read from the Old Testament that uses this language of stuff that is fundamentally broken getting made right. So when we get to Matthew chapters one and two, for you and me, it sounds like some familiar Christmas time religious language, but it's supposed to do a lot more than that. And I think the original audience has an advantage on us in this, in that it struck them cold. They weren't familiar with it, they weren't raised around it, and I think the implications would have popped off the page much more so for them. Hundreds of years earlier, even dating back to thousands of years earlier, these kind of claims about this king and this kingdom had been alluded to or even overtly spoken to, and all of the perfection and beauty that would come with this kingdom was spoken to. But then history happened. How do you even allow yourself to continue hoping in the face of history and the yuck of humanity? But people were barely clinging to it anyway. And then here comes this account of Jesus, and all of a sudden, that thing that is too good to even allow yourself to verbalize or to give in to hoping for, well, there's a credible claim that it might actually be happening, and that it might actually be happening right in front of their faces, and that it might actually be an inheritance that is theirs to receive. I'm guessing that just like you've done at times on things in your own life, you kind of pull back on the reins instinctively of that impulse toward hope because you've been burned too many times by nature and human history and maybe even by your own screw-ups. But Matthew is trying to give the readers of this document permission to entertain this hope, that comprehensive redemption for everything might be possible, that our sense of finality and determination with just how things are in this world might not be nearly as final and determined as we sometimes have been fooled into thinking. You can decide for yourself whether that hope is well placed or not as we get to know more about Jesus moving forward through the rest of the book of Matthew. I'm Matt, this is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.