The theological context of Matthew is huge and it dates back to basically forever before existence as we know it. The story goes like this: God, who is pre-existent according to the Bible, decides that making an existence that involves the things we know is tangible and real and matter as we understand it, he decides that would be a good idea. And so he calls existence as we know it out of non-existence, which the implications of are absolutely mind-boggling. And it's one of the biggest reasons, frankly, that I am a theist is that I cannot account for why things exist instead of not existing. It seems like not existing would be way easier and makes way more sense, but instead there's stuff instead of not stuff. And the only explanation I can come up with for why there is stuff instead of not stuff is that something outside the system decided that there should be stuff. And that lines up really neatly with the whole account of creation in Genesis, no matter where you fall on the literalness or figurativeness of the timelines contained therein. Well, we get past the really difficult to wrap your brain around beginnings, Garden of Eden, the Ark, and all of that stuff, and we get into the more tangible history just about a dozen chapters into the book of Genesis. And by this point, what we have established is this idea that God created something that was in real good shape and that brought glory to himself. That would be his motive for creation, that he's the best thing ever, and making something awesome would bring attention to the fact that he's the greatest thing ever. That would be arrogant if you or I did it. But if you really were the perfect unlimited being, it would be the only natural thing for you to do. So God does that, and things go awry, because apparently in this most perfect version of reality, there are beings that are kind of like God that get to pick things, or at least it seems like they get to pick things, and they pick screwed up stuff. And so fallenness enters into the world. Sin is the word the Bible uses for this. Sin encompassing the stupid stuff we do, the stupid stuff other people do to us that we didn't bring on ourselves, and the faceless evil of the world that we have nothing to do with, a general state of fallenness is what we're talking about here. And God, rather than saying, Well, I'm done with this whole dang thing and just washing his hands of it, instead sets out on this remarkable journey, this story of redemption, and that's the narrative of the Bible. So by the time we get to Genesis, we've got a pretty clear notion of the character of God, but we don't have like the commandments or any of the stuff that we think of as being Old Testament. In fact, we really don't know who the human characters are going to be as the point of view characters for this story of God's redemption. But then in Genesis 12, this guy from modern day Iraq or Kuwait, he was from a town called Ur, Ur of the Chaldeans, this guy named Abram just gets picked by God out of the clear blue and is like, ah, you right there. Yeah, with the hat. You're the guy who is gonna be given this blessing of this great number of descendants, and I'm gonna carry out my redemptive story through all those descendants. And Abram's like, I mean, uh, okay, this is cool or whatever. And then God makes this covenant with him, an unbreakable, unconditional deal that goes like this. Genesis 12 is where we find this starting in, I'll pick it up from verse one. The Lord had said to Abram, Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I'll show you. I'll make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. And that's it. There's no thing at the end that's like, unless you say the F-word too many times, or you get a little frisky. There's nothing like that. It's an unconditional promise. And in fact, I'm sure Abram did go on to say the 22nd century BC equivalent of the F-word many times in ways that were inappropriate, because he did a lot of stupid stuff and he was a flawed character. But seeing the flawed nature of Abraham, well, Abram, who becomes Abraham, is part of the importance of the story because we get a sense of how people are flawed, and God is the one who's going to do the heavy lifting in this story right from the very beginning. So we got this unconditional promise to Abram. A bunch of generations come and go, and the descendants of Abram end up in slavery in Egypt, and then along comes Moses. And we talked about some of this stuff yesterday. I'm just giving you more detail here. And in Exodus chapters, I think it's roughly like 19 through 24. I mean, the Ten Commandments are chapter 20, so it's way too much to read. But basically, in these chapters, we get this big block of stuff that represents a promise that God makes out of the blue to Moses. Maybe the most telling verse is maybe here in Exodus 19. I put it here somewhere. Yeah, verse 5. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites. We get a more succinct version in chapter 29, is it? Uh 28, rather, of Deuteronomy. And man, what do I even read to you from this? I'm just going to read you some of it. It says, if you fully obey the Lord your God and are care and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God. You'll be a blessed, uh, you'll be blessed in the city and blessed in the country, the fruit of your womb will be blessed. There's stuff about baskets and um defeating your enemies and stuff like that. And then he flips it around and says, after 14 verses of that, however, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I'm giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. And it's a lot. You'll be cursed in the city, cursed in the country, your basket and your kneading. So it's all the same stuff, but it's the opposite. And so the idea here is that the second of these great covenants is God saying conditionally, okay, Moses, everybody's gonna know that you, this family, this nation that I'm making here are my people. And they're gonna know it one of two ways. They're either gonna know it because you're gonna do the stuff I want and I'm gonna bless you, or they're gonna know it because you don't do the stuff I said and I'm going to curse you. But either way, they're gonna look at it and be like, that is the true God. And the thoroughness of those implications is really fleshed out as we get further through everything that happens in the Old Testament. So there's not one smoking gun verse sitting right there. Fast forward like 400 more years, right? And now you got a situation where we have a monarchy, and the second king in this monarchy is David, like the bestest, favoritist king of all time. And there's a deal that gets made here. God makes a covenant with him after David says, Let me build you a temple. God instead turns that around and says this to him in 2 Samuel 7, 11. The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you when your days are over and you rest with your fathers. I'll raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He's the one who will build a house for my name, and I'll establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I'll be his father, he'll be my son. When he does wrong, I'll punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me, your throne will be established forever. And then Nathan, who got this, reported it all to David, and then David responds, like, That's awesome, and everything's done. I'm totally on board. David's a very complicated character. Moses murdered some dude. Abraham had all kinds of problems too. So these are conflicted characters, but God's promises are consistent. Now, this third promise, like the first one, it's unconditional. The middle one is conditional, but all of it points to the same thing that God has this big redemptive plan that is going to unfold. Well, the way it works out is the northern kingdom, then the southern kingdom gets defeated, they get taken away into captivity, they're almost entirely lost to history, and people rightly start to wonder how can God possibly keep these promises? There's not even a kingdom anymore for this line of kings to rule over. But there's some really crucial elements in the Old Testament prophets that give us an answer. Isaiah being the big one. And there's some huge passages here that you're going to recognize. But early in the book of Isaiah, we get this language: a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots, a branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of power and of knowledge and other stuff. And what it's saying is that that line of Jesse that was supposed to be wrecked, and with its wreckedness, that means that there's no hope for these promises to be filled. Hold on a minute. It looks like a burnout stump, but there's a shoot that's starting to pop out of that, and that thing is not dead. It's going to come back to life. And then in Isaiah chapter nine, we get this prophecy about what this hope is going to look like when it's realized. It says, The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light is dawned. You've enlarged the nation and increased their joy. They rejoice before you, as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing their plunder. For unto us a child is born. I skipped a couple verses for time, and to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he'll be called wonderful, counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And you've heard all of this language. It's the Christmas stuff. Well, then in Isaiah 7, we are given the distinct impression that this one who is to come, with whom all the hope is coming along with them, that this one's going to be born of a virgin, and that'll be assigned to you. And in Isaiah chapter 53, maybe the most quoted of these Old Testament prophecies, other than the one that I just gave you, because that gets read at Christmas all the time, is language like this surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. Yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We are all like sheep, have gone astray, each of us is turned his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Jeremiah 31 uses language about there being a new covenant that is going to come when God is doing all of this stuff through the servant that is being described. Jeremiah 31, 31. I know this is a lot of Bible. Hang with me. The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It won't be like the old covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them. This is the covenant I'll make with the house of Israel at that time. I'll put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I'll be their God, they'll be my people. And so what you have is something that looks like it is dead in the water, but is resurrected in the prophets. And so there's this lingering hope that all of the promises of redemption that God put out there, they're still in play. They're still gonna happen. But a lot of dark stuff goes on, and we talked about that yesterday in the historical context conversation. And so by the time we get to Jesus, people are beat down. They want to believe this stuff, and there are pockets of people who believe this stuff, but it almost feels like the stuff of legend and fairy tale at this point. And so when Jesus shows up and he starts ticking these boxes of all of these predictions, and I just gave you a tip of the iceberg, it would have raised eyebrows both from people who are hopeful and but from people who would be very threatened by that and have a lot to lose if such a messiah showed up, or if people came to believe that such a character was the Messiah, that would be dangerous for them. So Jesus attracts a lot of attention, but he's coming to a time that is a lot like ours where a lot of the stuff that's really hopeful and beautiful here feels like it was from a long time ago. Now it feels like we want to cannibalize each other and like everything is maybe just wrecked and ruined and broken. And so if you can understand now and kind of the theological context of this moment, I think you can understand a little bit about the theological context of the moment into which Jesus was born. Tomorrow we're gonna start on Matthew chapter one, and so all of this theological context stuff, if you feel like that kind of washed by you, don't be discouraged, because we're gonna revisit this and revisit this and revisit this as the backdrop of the book of Matthew. Thanks to everybody who supports the program at patreon.com slash the tmbh podcast. I'm putting your names down in the show notes. I don't know if you've seen that, but uh everybody who signs up, I'm putting you down there because you're making this happen and you're awesome. Keeping me energized. Thank you for making this go and soon enabling me to get a little bit of help, which is gonna make this way more sane on my end. This one was long, and I understand that, and I'm not gonna make a habit of this, but I really wanted to get it all into one episode so you could digest it in one day. With that in mind, I'll catch you tomorrow. Looking forward to doing more of this.