Hello, my name is Matt Whitman. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. And I really like

to open these things with some kind of fun uplifting example where it's like, oh, I remember

that thing. Oh, yeah, I can relate to that. That's great. But that gets really difficult

when you're dealing with a passage like what we're dealing with right now in Matthew chapter

three, where it's just a pronouncement of seven condemnations against an establishment

against a group of people that nobody in the circle, nobody in the room is going to walk away

unscathed because the one person in the room who has the credibility to be like, you know what?

This right here, it's a clown show. And just so that you don't think I'm making general sweeping

observations, I'm going to go bit by bit through each element of the clown show. And I'm going to

point a very specific targeted finger at each and every clown contributing to the clown show

so that everybody knows exactly what it is that's going on here. And if you all choose to continue

to participate in the clown show, it's going to be with eyes wide open and everybody knowing that

now the thing has been said. And so it's really hard to come up with like a super fun happy

example that gets us into that. So let me just do this. I want you to go to a dark place with me

for just a minute. And picture the last time you were a part of a clown show. And by that, I mean

it worked family circle of friends, maybe a weird church thing, religious thing, institution,

social group, sports thing. I don't know. Like some sort of circle of social brokenness that you

were a part of. Maybe it was your fault a little bit. Maybe you were just the horrified bystander

who took the whole thing in and couldn't believe what you were seeing. Either way, just for a second,

go back to that place and think about all of the moving parts that you gradually came to recognize.

And all of the multifaceted dysfunction on small levels that added up to massive dysfunction

at the highest level. But also that thing that you were a part of that I was a part of,

...