Hey everybody I'm Matt and this is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast this time around

it's brought to you by Dwell. It's an audio Bible

app that's very customizable that I super like. You can check out the show notes for more

information on that. You know what absolutely kills me emotionally and I know no matter how tough you try to act come on you've all got like something

That when you see it it makes you irrationally weep and for me one of like four or five that I have

Are the reunion videos between people who are in the military and their kids,

and the kids don't know they're coming home, and they come home, and the kids like, what, my dad, and my mom's

home, and they cry, and they hug, and then I cry and everybody feels things, and it's just cool to see that distance

resolved and those people who need each other and love each other put back together.

I'm getting squishy already. Here's a thing.

When we get to the beginning of Matthew, you've got a Jewish audience to whom this book was written who felt this way about their God, estrangement. It had been forever. And this isn't like you or me where it's like, I haven't gone to church for a while and I kind of miss it and I like the rhythms and I'm sad about that. Maybe I should go back. This was different. They were the chosen people of God and these people grew up on these stories of God showing up in

gigantic break the laws of time and space and physics kind of ways. They were

constantly receiving feedback from God in terms of they screwed stuff up.

Well, God would punish them. They got stuff right. God would bless them.

And there was an intimacy and a connection there that it seems like had been largely lost.

The prophets for several hundred years hadn't been communicating the stuff of God in the same way.

It seems like the people of Israel, the Jewish people are kind of adrift on the tides of history over those 400 years and no doubt tons of people are starting to despair

It'll never be the way it was again. It'd be great if I could know a God. Like the people before said they knew God,

or like, read about in the books or whatever,

but it's just not how things are.

But maybe in the back of their brains,

they'd still allow themselves to hope a little bit,

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