A couple episodes ago I mentioned the TV show Breaking Bad in Passing and fully acknowledging that I know that's not for everybody. I also have to say I think that's

some of the best storytelling I've ever seen in the history of TV. The plot seemed completely not

interesting to me at all and then you pick the thing up and you realize the

characters are just so perfectly written and frankly it's enormously biblical in terms of its

understanding of how the human mind works and good and evil and all of that stuff

I appreciated it I know not everybody appreciated it. That's totally cool. We can agree to disagree on what stuff we like to watch on the TV's and on the movies is. So here's the deal. In that show, in the relatively early going to help the viewer understand the stakes of crossing a certain enemy,

we see that certain enemy deal with a lesser character who crosses them and we realize

oh my these stakes are high and you kind of start to think, oh, I think our main characters, our point of view characters,

might encounter something like this unless they find a better way to deal with this than the character who suffered that tragic fate when they had the run-in with this

bad guy. I think that's the storytelling

technique that Matthew is employing in Matthew 4

in verse 12 when we get this little dozy of an aside.

When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee.

Two reasons this matters.

One, John is a very important person.

I argued in a recent video on the 10 minute Bible hour

YouTube channel that I think he's the second most

theologically important character in Christianity Christianity and then lots of people

disagreed with me and they all made really good points and maybe they're right and I'm wrong

But that's what I made the video about so one the fate of John the Baptist, is at stake.

I mean, this is Jesus' cousin, this is his wingman,

his hype man, this is the guy who just baptized Jesus,

...