Hey I'm Matt, this is the 10 minute Bible Hour podcast. There's this thing that the

sports teams do when they get down the home stretch, especially in basketball and

hockey around where I live.

And that is that they start jockeying for position right before the playoff starts.

So you got a big long regular season, the 82 games will usually... the

playoff starts. You got a big long regular season, the 82 games, well usually it's 82 games, and then you've got a bunch of

playoff series that are best of seven. So all of those games come down to

this effectively second season of playoff matchups and who you get as a first round opponent in the playoffs can really affect a lot.

And so teams will rest their starters, they'll somewhat

intentionally lose games to position themselves to get the first round

opponents that they want.

And when you go online you look at what people are saying about that and stuff, you know,

some of the fans of like the really good teams that maybe your team just avoided are like,

ah, that's so cheap and dirty.

I'm like, think about it, dudes. How big a compliment

is it that my team just intentionally lost at basketball so that we wouldn't have to play you in the first round.

You just got to take that to heart and feel really good about stuff.

Likewise, when we get to Matthew Chapter 9 and Jesus is looking out over the crowds of people who are not part of the kingdom.

And they're on the outside looking in.

Maybe their lives are going okay, maybe things are going rough, but either way he feels compassion on them and he's like hey all these

people out there who aren't a part of the kingdom I liken them to a harvest that is ripe

and ready to be brought in and he looks at his disciples like you guys should pray that God would raise up harvest workers

...