Today is absolutely epic, Pastor John. This is episode number 300 in the Ask Pastor John podcast series. Episode 100, if I remember correctly, was a little less epic. Episode 200, I think, was pretty epic. But this is episode 300, and it is truly epic because today is the first round of March Madness, which begins in Dayton, Ohio.

And Pastor John, here is the question that millions and millions of people around the world want to ask you right now. Why, Pastor John, why do we love watching March Madness basketball? Okay, I'm the least likely person to say anything about college basketball. But here goes. I enjoy watching college basketball.

Yes, I do. More than football because there are no breaks between the plays. The action is fast-paced, more than professional basketball because their hearts seem to be in it more, and more than baseball. I don't want to offend you, Tony. I know you're a big baseball guy, but to me, that sport is just painfully slow.

And I have to admit, it's evidently the intelligent man's sport, but I'm not intelligent enough to be thinking deep thoughts about what might be coming with this pitch and what has happened. I'm saying, come on, come on, come on, get on with it. So anyway, I enjoy college basketball.

Why? And I think I'm probably typical in enjoying it. I'm going to download probably the NAAC, that's not right. That's the African American group, right? NCAA. NCAA, yeah, sorry. So anyway, I'm going to download their app because last year I knew they had an app and you could listen to every one of them free, unlike these crazy Olympic apps that don't let you watch anything.

So I don't have a television and I want to watch, so there's the app that'll let me peek in. Why do we like to watch this sport? Number one, we, I want to say we, love to see great skill. It's a form of beauty. We're wired to enjoy beauty.

That's the way God made us. Mainly so we can enjoy his beauty and all of its refractions in creation. And there are refractions of his created beauty in college basketball. There is individual artistry and beauty, the dribbling, the shooting. We love to watch the phenomenal dribbling around, around the opposition that drives and finishes smooth two points.

And by the way, I don't value dunking. I don't like to watch dunking to me. Dunking is not very artistic. It seems to be like it's mainly height and Hulk. Whereas an artistic smooth layup in an old traditional way, that's a lot more art about it than the smoshing dunks from halfway down the court.

It is pretty amazing, but it's just not as artistic. Second, there's team beauty, not just individual, but team beauty. When a defense is simply impregnable or an offense maneuvers so beautifully successfully, it looks like one single organism. And the best of all is when the individual and the team combine so that the players shine at their peak performances, but they're actually serving the coordinated effort of the team.

So all of that beauty falls under what I would say that the reason we like that sort of thing is the beauty of art, the artistic skill of players and teams. This is a God given ability, and it points the way to the way God is in his abilities.

He's beautiful in his skill, in his skill giving wisdom. Here's a second one I enjoy, I admire endurance. I love to watch sports that require enormous endurance. I love perseverance in real life. People that do something through thick and thin for decades and accomplish much by little steps, you know, like chopping down a huge thousand year old tree with a little teeny axe because you've hacked at it every day for 50 years.

That's a glorious thing for me. So I love endurance and I love sports that keep men running or working like the Tour de France or soccer or basketball that just keeps they run and they run and they run till they drop. I mean, I've played enough basketball and enough soccer to know this is incredible or biking for two weeks at hundreds of miles a day.

I mean, I just stand in awe because I admire perseverance in every legal sphere, especially in the relationship with God where we have to persevere every day. And the third thing I would say is I love to see David slay Goliath. I asked my wife about this. Why does she enjoy basketball?

And she said, "Me? I don't." And I said, "Why do you think people do?" And she said, "Because they like to pull for their favorite teams." And I said, "Oh, I didn't even think of that because I don't have any favorite teams. I don't have anything invested at all in this." And if that's what people are thinking about, I'll just leave that for others to talk about.

But what I do love is when a big cocky team, I'm tempted to name some names here, but I won't, gets taken down by this little college that nobody's ever heard of. I mean, there's glory in that because I love the biblical model that through weakness and smallness great evils are undone.

And the last thing I would say is that we enjoy this, college basketball, March Madness, and other sports because the pressure is off of us and onto them, and we're relaxing, right? We're sitting on our couch. We've put in a hard day. We've bent our brains to accomplish as much as we could in God's will, doing what he wants us to do.

We're tired, and it just feels good not to have to make this play happen. I am not the coach. I'm not responsible for this. I am not the key player. I don't have to make that basket at the buzzer. I'm just enjoying there acting with skill under pressure. In other words, sports have a unwinding, relaxing, appropriate function in the life of hardworking Christians.

So if my wife is right and the reason you watch is just because you want your team to win, I don't know how to relate to you. Okay, so will you fill out a bracket? No, I don't have a clue how to do that. Excellent. Oh, folks, so be encouraged.

All of you who can fill out a March Madness bracket but cannot arc the book of Romans, there is hope for all of us. Well, speaking of impregnable defenses, you don't want to miss seeing Pastor John suffocating defense on display by checking out a short video titled T4G 2012 Teaser, The Game.

You can find it if you Google it, T4G 2012 Teaser, The Game. There right at the beginning, at about the six-second mark, you will witness his shutdown defense on display. No joke. And speaking of phenomenal dribbling around opposition and smooth finishes to the hoop, at about the 30-second mark, you'll see that on display as well.

All right, we need to shut down this epic podcast before it gets even more out of hand. So I'll sign off with the wise words of a Major League Baseball Hall of Famer, one Leo Durocher, who once said this, "Baseball is like church. Many attend, but few understand." I'm your host, Tony Ranke.

I'll see you tomorrow. Leo Durocher, "Baseball is like church." I'm your host, Tony Ranke. I'll see you tomorrow. Leo Durocher, "Baseball is like church." I'm your host, Tony Ranke. I'll see you tomorrow.