A Peek at the Gift

The Gospel Reading: John’s Question from Prison

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And now, here's a message.

From Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 11th chapter. When John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another?

And Jesus answered them, go and tell John what you hear and you see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John. What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see?

A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings' houses. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.

Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.

For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus.

John the Baptist, Herod, and Cancel Culture

So in our gospel text we have John the Baptist, and I know some people will preach this text as if John is having a crisis of faith. He's near the end of his life. He's been arrested. In fact, let me give you the context.

In the same gospel, Gospel of Matthew, just a few chapters over, chapter 14, it says that Herod had seized John, bound him, and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because John had been saying to him, it is not lawful for you to have her.

Have you noticed this about pagans? You can't correct them when it comes to sins regarding sex. You know, the world that we live in, you'll note that if you're a conservative, and Elon Musk has now made all of this known, did you know, could you possibly believe that Twitter was suppressing those who were speaking conservative truth?

Right? I think of my friend, Pastor Phil Johnson, who was canceled on Twitter. Canceled for basically pointing out that having transgendered crossing guards was a way of grooming kids for something they ought not to be doing.

The state shouldn't be doing this, and he vocalized biblical truth regarding this, and Twitter canceled him. Well, good news is that Elon Musk is about to give him amnesty and bring him back, but all of that being said, you'll note that John the Baptist was canceled for speaking the truth about a sexual sin.

In this particular case, it's a heterosexual sin. Yes, it's possible for you to sin heterosexually as well, and in this particular case, think of it this way. Herodias is a gold digger. She likes power and wealth and things like that, and the man she married, Philip, well, he was only a tin penny, kind of low-ranking official, and so she formed the hots for his brother Herod, left her husband, and jumped in bed with his brother, and John the Baptist said, mm-mm-mm-mm-mm, right?

You'll note John the Baptist, in preparing the way of the Lord, was also preparing the way of the Lord for Herod. He wanted him to repent of his sins, too, and of course the world doesn't like it when you tell them that their favorite sexual thing is not proper and that it's sinful and wrong, and so Herodias bore John the Baptist a murderous grudge.

Herod wanted to kill him, too, but he was a little bit too afraid of the people at that time, so he had him put him in prison instead while he worked up the courage to put him to death. You kind of get the idea.

Talk about cancel culture, right? Back then, if you got canceled, they didn't block you on Facebook or Twitter. They took your head off your shoulders, right? So all of this being said, there's John cooling his heels, his work now of preparing the way of the Lord pretty much brought to an abrupt halt, and so he's got a little bit of business left to do because you'll note the text, our gospel text, says that John the Baptist had disciples.

Well, what's the point of having a disciple if you're not going to be breathing in a few weeks, right? So it's time to offload his disciples, and so he sends them to Jesus to ask this question, are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another?

Jesus Answers John with Isaiah’s Messianic Promises

And the answer that Jesus gives back is absolutely brilliant, brilliant on so many levels. It's fantastic. So let me start by giving this metaphor, if we would. Have you guys ever played a game where like you're on a computer and it says it plays like part of the lyrics or the melody of a song, and you have to like fill in the next stanza, right?

You know what I'm talking about? So if I were to go da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-my Sharona, right? It's what you're supposed to do, okay?

If you're to do it, so here's what Jesus is doing, and it's absolutely fantastic. He says this, he says, you go and tell John what you hear, you tell John what you see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them.".

That sounds like a very familiar list. You see, John the Baptist would have known his prophets, right? He would have known Isaiah. This is like invoking lyrics to a very popular song, but then not kind of filling in the rest.

And the whole point here is is that if you know what he's talking about, Jesus is giving huge encouragement to John the Baptist. Because we know then from the cross-references, and one of them is our Old Testament text, that Jesus was invoking the promises of the Messiah from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 35, chapter 61, and others.

And so chapter 35, you'll note here's what it says, "...the wilderness, the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus.". Oh man, have you guys ever been in a desert?

I raised my kids partly in a desert. It was really fun. It was like 115 degrees outside and totally dry as a bone. And the kids would go, it's 115 degrees outside. And I'd say, yeah, but it's a dry heat.

Like that made it any better. Don't worry, our air conditioning in our Smurfmobile went out one year. It was terrible. And the kids would always have, it was so hot and so arid that, you know, when my wife would take the kids shopping, okay, and we called it the Smurfmobile.

It was like a Dodge Caravan with kind of like a Smurf green thing. And anytime I had to drive it, it was always challenged my masculinity. I hated that thing, okay. But I kid you not, I let my brother-in-law borrow it one time to go to the airport.

And when he came back, the air conditioning was broken. It was, and it was going to be like $1 ,500 to replace the air conditioner. We didn't have $1 ,500. So what do we do? We just opened up the windows in this minivan.

But here's the issue. In that minivan, the back windows were these things that just kind of went out like this. You know what I'm talking about? And so there's my kids with their, like their hair stuck to their head because they're sweating profusely.

And Joshua would stick his face up against the window going, it's burning up in here, Dad. Okay, I can't help it. We can't afford an air conditioner. I'm surprised that CPS didn't come and take our children away.

Anyway, so this idea, this hot arid desert stuff, this is all going away. Have you looked at the planet? Like seen a picture of like satellite pictures of the globe? Have you seen the Sahara Desert? The thing like consumes like most of the top part of Africa.

That's going away. When Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, all the wilderness will be glad. The desert shall rejoice and it will blossom like the crocus. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing the glory of Lebanon shall be given to it.

The majesty of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. And then it says this, strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees, say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not.

Salvation as a Gift and a Glimpse of the World to Come

And here's kind of like the next way to kind of fill in what's going on with this text. These texts in Isaiah, what does the scripture say? That faith and salvation are a gift from God. This is what it says in Ephesians, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

This is not your own doing. It's the gift of God so that no man may boast, right? We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. That being the case, salvation is a gift. Now, I know a thing or two about gifts.

Now, things have changed since I've become an adult, but I remember when I was a kid, Christmas was like the day of the year that I look forward to the most, right? And I remember the Christmas season would kick off every Thanksgiving evening.

Now, I'm gonna age myself and some of you guys won't even know the reference, but in Southern California when I was growing up on KTLA Channel 5, in the evening of Thanksgiving, they played Santa and the Three Bears and that was the official kickoff of the Christmas season.

And from that moment until Christmas Day, it felt like it took a decade to get there. You know what I'm saying? Like everything that you were thinking about was all about Christmas. And back then, we didn't have the internet, so my parents wanted to know what kind of gifts I would like for Christmas.

And you know what I would do? I'd pull out the JCPenney catalog. Do you guys remember these things, right? That thing was as thick as a phone book, right? And I must say this, I recently came across somebody who was sharing photos from the JCPenney catalogs when I was a kid.

And if you've ever seen the men's fashion from that time, listen, just it's not canon. That fashion, you can just skip over it. I don't know what happened during that era, but you can just forget it, okay?

It was really weird, okay? Bell-bottom pants, weird colors, ties about as wide as a clock. Strange stuff, okay? And then did you see what like, did you see like the printed pants that guys would wear?

Anyway, aside from that, I'd flip through this catalog and I'd find, oh, I'd like a new Monopoly game, or I'd like this, or that thing, or maybe Stratego, right? And so you put this thing on the list, and then you wait, and you wait, and you have to go to school, and you wait, and you get homework, and you wait, and the only thing you're thinking about is the Christmas tree, and the Christmas presents under the tree, and it's taking forever.

Now, as an adult, things have changed, okay? People say something like this, did you know that there's only 60 shopping days until Christmas? Bite your tongue. Just don't even mention that. How dare you?

That's like mentioning snow here in Minnesota in the month of October. Don't you dare say that word. It's a four-letter word, right? And so as an adult, things are really different, but I've noticed this about myself, is that same anticipation, that same, oh, I can't wait kind of feeling that I had about Christmas, I don't have it about Christmas anymore.

You know what I have it about? The new earth, Christ's return, seeing my God face to face. You know, if you kind of think about it in those terms, everything's kind of shifted, but as I get older and older, and the difficulties of this life don't seem to get any easier.

The older you get, the more complicated it gets. As you get older, your health becomes more complicated. You got pills, and doctor visits, and you have pains, and things like this, and people's lives just fall apart in front of you, and then because you're a Christian, you have people persecuting you, and challenging you, and saying that's not right, and they want to take your head off, and so the sufferings of this world, and the darkness of this world, and have you noticed it's just getting darker out there?

All of this is making me have those same Christmas feelings about what is coming, and what is promised, and so my parents, I remember when I was a kid, they had a particular practice to at least release some of this intense desire that I had for Christmas, and that was on Christmas Eve, I was allowed to open one present, one present on Christmas Eve, and oh, that helped.

It really helped, but if you were to think of it this way, what we see in our Old Testament text, and other texts like it, where God gives us a glimpse of the world that is to come, when Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, and here's where we recognize, last week we heard John the Baptist tell us we need to repent, and we do, and repentance is the daily life of a Christian, daily confessing our sins, daily trusting that Jesus has bled and died for all of them, and he is the one because of his death on the cross, dying in our place, makes it now so that we can receive salvation totally as a gift, he's the one who's paid for it, but I see these texts, these passages, well, if salvation's a gift, it's almost as if God is saying, alright, salvation's a gift, let me give you a little bit of a glimpse of it.

Are you ready? Take a look. Okay, that's enough. Right? It's that kind of thing. So when we see this text, where it says, strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees, say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not, pay attention to what is coming.

I know this life is hard. I know it's hard for all of us, but know then what is coming is so far beyond our ability to comprehend it, but God knows that we need just these little glimpses of it, and so he says, say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, behold your God, he will come with vengeance, and with the recompense of God, he will come to save you.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy. I think of my friend, Justin Peters, very well-known.

This is a fellow who has been handicapped his entire life. He's never been able to walk normally. When Jesus returns, and he's raised from the dead like the rest of us all, he will finally be able to walk upright.

Johnny Erickson. Tata will no longer be in a wheelchair. I won't be overweight. I can't wait, right? It's gonna be amazing. Rachel will be able to eat cheese instead of kale. The facet, it's all going to be spectacular.

Those who are blind will see, those who are deaf will hear, those who are lame will leap like the deer, and here's the thing, you'll note this, that because the wages of sin is death, that when you die, your body is blind, it is deaf, it is lame, it is all of these things, and it falls apart like a leper, right?

That's what decomposing is, and so we recognize that each and every one of us rightly deserve the wages of sin, but God is not satisfied to give us those wages. Instead, Christ has paid the penalty for us perfectly, in way beyond what was even necessary, so that we can be raised from the dead gloriously in a new world, a world without end, where there is no disease, there is no death, there is nothing like what we have here, no suffering, no pills, no doctors, no bad diagnoses, just a world without end, perfectly seeing our God.

The waters break forth in the wilderness, streams in the desert, the burning sand shall become a pool, the thirsty ground springs of water, the haunt of jackals where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes, and a highway will be there, and it will be called the way of holiness.

The unclean shall not pass over it, it shall belong to those who walk on the way, even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. No lion will be there, nor there be any ravenous beasts that come upon it.

They shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there, and the ransomed of Yahweh shall return and come to Zion with singing, everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow, and sighing itself will flee away.

John the Baptist’s Greatness and the Kingdom of Heaven

When you consider Jesus's answer to John, what an amazing answer it was. By invoking the prophet Isaiah and all of the details surrounding the portion where Isaiah talks about blind eyes being opened, lepers being cleansed, the lame walking, all of that Jesus was saying to John, fear not John, I'm making all things new.

I know that you are in a dark prison and you will not get out of it alive. Do not fear, because what is coming is almost here for you. What words of encouragement Christ gave to John in a very difficult time in his life, facing his own death, needing to pass off his disciples to Jesus.

He finished his course and he finished them well, and Jesus had high praise for John, in fact the highest that any sinful human being can receive. What did you go out into the wilderness to see, Jesus asked.

A reed shaken by the wind? No. What did you then go out to see, a man dressed in soft clothing? No. Behold those who wear soft clothing are in kings houses. What did you go out to see, a prophet? Yeah.

And I tell you more than a prophet, this is he of whom it is written, behold I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way. And of those born among women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.

And I would like to say since then as well, none of us even compare to him. He was the one who prepared the way of the Lord, called the world to repent. He called us to repent last week when we heard his preaching.

And yet Jesus says the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he, pointing to the world to come. Even the least in the kingdom of heaven, because they are sinless and spotless, because they are purely righteous, and they have finished their course, the least in the kingdom of heaven is even greater than the greatest among us.

The days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent have taken it by force. It's kind of an obscure sentence, right? The kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force.

And I've noticed with that particular sentence, if you read five commentaries you'll get five different views of what that means. It's a tough sentence to crack, but I like the way the church fathers handled it, especially Ambrose of Milan.

Ambrose of Milan noted that this is probably best to be understood in this way, that just like the Gentiles conquered the kingdom of Israel, the Gentiles came in and seized Israel, took control of it, now the Gentiles have taken control of the kingdom of God itself, not by arms or military might, but they've come in and taken the kingdom of God by force by believing the good news of the forgiveness of sins offered in the gospel.

You'll note that I don't see many Jews here today, right? We're all Gentiles, and how sad it is that so many people who are the direct descendants of Abraham continue to reject Jesus, their true Messiah.

But we Gentiles, we've taken the kingdom of heaven by storm. We've taken it by force. How? By believing the good news. Christ has offered the gift of salvation to all of us, and we have responded in faith and said, yes, I believe.

Lord, forgive me of my sins, and He does. And along with that, He gives us the great and beyond comprehension gift of salvation and eternal life offered totally free to every one of us because Christ has paid for it in full with His own blood on the cross.

So indeed, we take it all. We take the kingdom of God by force, forcing our way in and saying, yes, Lord, forgive me, even me. And so it's here where we consider Jesus's other words, blessed then is the one who's not offended by me.

Not Being Offended by Jesus, Real Sin, and Forgiveness

And I would note that so many people are truly offended by the real Jesus that we must make note of that and that we must guard against being offended by who Jesus really is and what He does. Jesus has not come to save us from a time out.

I would note one of my friends in Ireland, I recently heard him preach a sermon, and he had this phrase that I thought was hilarious because I love hearing how the Brits and how people in Europe kind of have different phrases than we do.

So apparently if you're a school kid and you misbehave, right, they put you on what's called the naughty bench. What a name. Oh, you don't want to go to the naughty bench now, do you? Right, I can hear him saying this, the naughty bench, right.

And he noted in his sermon, so I have to give him credit, is that he said that Jesus didn't come to save us from the naughty bench. He came to save legitimately ungodly, unholy, defiled people like you and I.

He came to save us not from the naughty bench, but came to save us from the wrath of God itself. And what a great gift we have then in Jesus. And here's the thing, we human beings are always sizing ourselves up against each other, right.

And doing it morally, when we have no business doing that, well I'm not that bad. I'm not as bad as that person over there. At least I didn't do that. I have enough compunction to know that even that's bad.

I have common sense. And so it's this smug self-righteousness. Knock it off. Because people like that, when they hear that Jesus has forgiven legitimate ungodly sinners, including including Nazi war criminals, they, ah, no way, there's no way Christ could forgive a Nazi war criminal.

Well if he can't forgive a Nazi war criminal, I'm pretty sure he can't forgive you, right. But that's the thing. The fact that we are all sinners and that we cannot save ourselves is offensive. The fact that we need a Savior is offensive to some.

Do not let that offense sink in with you. Don't sit there and go, I can't believe that that person's going to church and that they think that they're a Christian. Because as soon as you start thinking like that, then Christ himself has become the offense.

Are you offended that Jesus forgives real sinners? If you are, then you don't even yet recognize that you are the same. James says it this way, those who break one of the commandments are guilty of breaking them all.

Not a single commandment can you point to and say, yep, I've kept that one. Not one. Because I can point to the one that we've all broken. We are all idolaters. We have all had other gods. We have all believed falsely regarding the true God.

And as a result of our idolatry, that one sin makes us guilty of breaking the rest. It's like dominoes that go down the line. So Christ has come to forgive real sinners. And if you don't think you're that, then Jesus is an offense to you.

So blessed then is the one who is not offended by me, Jesus says. And we rejoice at this. I'm not offended by Jesus. I am so thankful that God has had mercy on me. And rather than give me what I deserve, he's given me the gift of salvation.

And the promises and just the little glimpse that he's given us of what's to come, it blows my mind. And it gives me hope. So this Gadate Sunday, this Rejoice Sunday, let us rejoice in the great gift that we have in salvation in Jesus Christ.

And let us take comfort and let our weakened knees be strengthened by the glimpse of heaven that is given to us by the prophet Isaiah and invoked by Jesus in our gospel text. In the name of Jesus, amen.

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