Blessed is the One who is not Offended

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, chapter 7, verses 18 -28.

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The disciples of John reported all these things to him, and John, calling two of his disciples, said to him, sent them to the

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Lord, saying, Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another? And when the men had come to him, they said,

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John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

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And in that hour Jesus healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were blind he bestowed sight.

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And he answered them, You go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

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And when John's messengers had gone, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John. What did you go out into the wilderness to see?

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A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing?

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Behold, those who are dressed in splendid clothing and they live in luxury are in king's courts.

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What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, and I tell you, more than a prophet.

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This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.

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I tell you, among those born of women, none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.

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And when all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just.

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And having been baptized with the baptism of John, but the Pharisees and the lawyers, they rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. The voice calling in the wilderness has been silenced.

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This is what he confessed himself to be, by the way. In the gospel of John 1, starting at verse 19, it says this.

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This is the testimony of John. When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him,

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Who are you? He confessed, and he did not deny, but he confessed, I am not the Christ.

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And so they asked him, What then, are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet?

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He answered, No. So they said to them, Well then, who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us.

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What do you say about yourself? And he said, I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.

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Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. Now, consider this.

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The context of our gospel text has, well, John in prison. Luke 3 records for us this account, that many other exhortations

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John the Baptist preached good news to the people, but Herod the Tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison.

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The voice of repentance has been silenced. Preaching repentance is a dicey business.

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And so committed to a dark, dank, clanking chain prison, the fact that it was in the palace of Machaerus, John now is decreasing.

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Christ is increasing. And indeed, this is appropriate. And so we come to our gospel text, and we must keep in mind the context.

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Early in chapter 7, we hear the account of the healing of the centurion's servant. And this is the fellow who said that he was unworthy to have

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Christ even come under his own roof, but said because he was a man of authority, that all Jesus had to do was say the word, and he would be healed.

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And so it was. And this man's faith was placarded as excellent. And then we read the account of the healing or the resurrection of the dead son of the widow of Nain.

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And here's what it said. So soon afterwards, Jesus went to a town, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.

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And as he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, who was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.

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And a considerable crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.

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Love the Greek here. His splogneeds, oh my. What a great Greek word, by the way. His splogneeds, oh my, were wrenched.

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That's your guts in Greek. So he has compassion on her, and he says, do not weep.

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And then he came up, and he touched the beer, and the bearer stood still, and he said, young man,

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I say to you, arise. And the dead man sat up, and he began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

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Fear seized then them all, and they glorified God, saying, a great prophet has arisen among us, and God has visited his people.

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And this report about Jesus spread throughout the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country, and now we come to our gospel text.

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So the disciples of John, and consider their plight, if you would. Disciples of John the

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Baptist are now kind of stuck. If you're a disciple of John the Baptist, the voice of the wilderness, who's now languishing in a prison, what are you supposed to do?

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And so you'll note that John's disciples are kind of caught, caught between two epic figures of Scripture.

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On the one hand, John the Baptist, the man who discipled them, and Jesus, the

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Messiah, whom John was preparing the way for and pointing to. And you note the fact that they're kind of stuck between these two things.

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And so they go and they report all these things to John. And so John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the

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Lord, saying, and pay attention to the pronouns, are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

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John doesn't say, or shall I look for another, because John the Baptist is the one who the word of the

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Lord came to. And that word of the Lord came to him, and he was a prophet. He saw the

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Spirit descending on Jesus in the waters of his baptism, heard the voice of the Father say, this is my beloved

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Son, in whom I am well pleased. So John's not really dealing with doubts, if you would.

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The people who are doubting here are his disciples. Here's what's going on.

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Is this the one? Is this the one? And so go back and you ask, shall we look for another, is the question.

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So when the men had come to Jesus, they said, John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

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Now note the difficulty here for them. They had heard John the Baptist preach, and his message went along the lines of this.

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He said, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals

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I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor, to gather the weed into his barn, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.

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And so now you can see where the difficulty is. I mean, have you ever had an expectation about something in your mind and then only realized your expectation didn't square with reality?

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Is this not the reason why it's so easy to return things to Amazon? I'm just saying.

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I may or may not have experienced something along the lines of, you know, I really want this thing. I think it would be cool.

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It's going to meet my needs. It's right there on Amazon .com. Look at that. All of the reviews are four and five stars.

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It's got to be the perfect thing ever. And so you click the order button and then your mind is always kind of racing, looking at the tracking number to see how many days it arrives at your house.

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And then when it arrives, you open up the box and you sit there and go, where's that return label?

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Right? And so this is kind of what's going on in the minds of John the Baptist disciples. You told us fire, man.

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You told us winnowing fork, dude. And Jesus is like, yeah, he's doing miracles and stuff.

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But have you seen who he's hanging out with? He's hanging out with like prostitutes, tax collectors.

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I mean, I thought he was supposed to like call down fire and burn them up. He's eating with them.

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Hmm. So the text then says this in that very hour,

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Jesus healed many people of diseases and plagues, evil spirits. And on many who were blind, he bestowed sight and he answered them.

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You go and you tell John what you've seen and what you've heard. The blind receive their sight. The lame walk.

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Lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised up. The poor have good news preached to them.

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And then here's the key line. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

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The offense of Christ, the offense of the cross. Here Jesus, God in human flesh, is not acting in power and glory.

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He's acting as a servant, as Philippians tells us, that at this point, he who did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave and being born in the likeness of man and being found in human form, he humbled himself.

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See, Jesus wasn't here in his first advent to judge. He was here in his first advent to be our servant, to bleed and to die for us, to number himself among the sinners.

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So, we learn this, that the scandal of Christ goes along these lines.

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In Matthew 9, verse 10, it says, When Jesus reclined at the table in a house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came, and they were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

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Could you imagine having a sinner in your house for dinner? Wait a second.

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. I know every night at my house, sinners come to eat at the table.

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Whoops, that would be me, right? You see, that's kind of the thing.

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See, that's the scandal of it. The reason why Christ is scandalous is because we sinful human beings oftentimes come to the mistaken notion that there are sinners, and then there's us.

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There's them who are awful, and then there's me. I'm a pretty good fellow. Nah, no, that's not how that works.

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And so, Jesus is reclining at the table, and so the Pharisees lose their minds. They're triggered.

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And so, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? Well, he's eating with you. What did you expect, right?

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So when he heard it, Jesus said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, only those who are sick.

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Are you not going to recognize that you're sick? So go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

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I came not to call the righteous. I came to call sinners. And so, note this here.

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John the Baptist, he had this kind of same stigma attached to him. In Matthew 21, verses 31 and 32,

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Jesus tells us a little bit about John the Baptist. You see,

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John the Baptist knew full well the scandal of the forgiveness of sins. And then even when you saw it, you didn't afterwards change your mind.

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You didn't repent and believe him. But yet, Scripture is so clear here about the scandal of the cross.

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For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the, and listen to the word again, the ungodly.

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Jesus didn't die just for tax collectors and prostitutes. He died for farmers.

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He died for pastors. He died for media people. He died for engineers.

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He died for retired teachers. He died for people who excel in spreadsheets.

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What a rabble that must be. I mean, could you imagine the tax collectors and the prostitutes when an accountant shows up in heaven and the disgust that they reveal at that time, oh my goodness,

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Jesus is letting anybody in here now. That's the scandal, isn't it?

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Blessed is the one who is not offended by me. Christ died only for the ungodly.

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For scarcely will one die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare to die. But God, he demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners,

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Christ died for us. And there it is. Notice the pronoun, us.

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Not them, us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God?

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For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, how much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life?

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So blessed is the one who is not offended by Jesus. And this is what Paul writes about this idea of the offense of Christ and the cross.

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He says this in 1 Corinthians 1, the word of the cross, it is folly to those who are perishing.

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Absolute foolishness. But for us who are being saved, notice again the pronouns, for all of us who are being saved, the gospel is the power of God.

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It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. So where is the one who is wise?

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Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know

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God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

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Jews demand signs, Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.

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This is a stumbling block for Jews and Greeks. Blessed is the one who is not offended by me,

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Jesus says. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

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So don't be deceived and watch the list. Neither the sexually immoral, the idolaters, the adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor the drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, none of them will inherit the kingdom of God.

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And here's the scandalous words, are you ready? And such were some of you.

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Were. Past tense. Were. Such were some of you.

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And here's the big but. But you were washed. You were sanctified.

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You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the

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Spirit of our God. So blessed is the one who is not offended by Christ and his cross.

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Think of it this way. If you do not think that your salvation and your justification is an offense, then you do not recognize yet just how sinful you are.

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In the name of Jesus. Amen. We thank you for your support.

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