May 13, 2018 A Whole Lot Of Estimating Going On by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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May 13, 2018 AM: A Whole Lot Of Estimating Going On Matt. 11:1-24 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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Open your Bibles, please, to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 11, verses 1 -24 will be our text for this morning.
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Matthew 11, 1 -24. As we go through this, we need to understand that the
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Gospels, we have four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And in one sense, they all work together to make this one inquiry, and it's sort of this.
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What do you make of Jesus? What do you, individual, what do you, believer, what do you, who doesn't believe in Jesus, what do you make of Him?
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I titled this sermon, A Whole Lot of Estimating Going On, as there's an estimate of John to Jesus, Jesus to John, the people to Jesus and John, and then
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Jesus to the people. There's a lot of estimating going on here in Matthew, chapter 11.
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And it's really coming to ask us to ask you to impose upon you this one overriding question.
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How do you estimate Jesus? What then do you say of Jesus? Who do you say
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He is? In the synoptic Gospels, and synoptic only means sin, meaning one or together, and optic, meaning view, so when
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I say synoptic, all I mean is the three synoptic Gospels that take sort of the same view of Christ.
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They seem to have come from a lot of common original sources. There's synoptic, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then there's the fourth
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Gospel, John. So when I say synoptic, that's all I mean is those three books that have a common approach.
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In Mark's book, he is the man of determination and action. Many scholars think that that was written to appeal to the
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Roman man, the man's man, the one who says, if I'm going west, I'm going west, and I'm not going to turn an inch south or north.
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I'm determined, I make decisions, and then I go forth, the man's man, the man of action. And Mark uses immediately,
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Jesus did this, and immediately Jesus did that in his Gospel. In Luke's Gospel, it's the universality of Christ's mission, that's the key.
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Not meaning universalism, which says that everybody is saved regardless of their faith, that's not what
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I mean by universality, but that the Gospel makes no distinction of sex or race or wealth or religion.
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John's Gospel highlights Jesus' deity, his Godhood. We read much in John's Gospel about the glory that is
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Christ's due as the eternal Son of God, as we often say, God the
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Son, emphasis mine, he is God the Son. And we also have God the
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Father, and God the Holy Spirit, and that's one of John's great emphases. Matthew's Gospel, from where I took this morning's verses,
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Matthew's Gospel is more like the Matthew spends a lot of ink, a lot of effort to show us that Christ is the prophesied, the promised one, that he descends from Abraham, that he descends from David, that he is the one who for so many ages was alluded to, promised, and prophesied in the
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Old Testament. Matthew spends all this effort and all this time so that we can know and we can say with confidence that Christ, that Christ Jesus is the focus of all the
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Scriptures, which is what Christ says of himself at the end of Luke's Gospel in chapter 22. The prophets and Moses and the writings and the wisdom and the prophecies and the genealogies and the begats and the begots, all about him.
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Peter's bedrock confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, is reported in the three synoptics,
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Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But only in Matthew, only in Matthew in chapter 16, and we're not going to go there this morning, but just for background, only in this
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Gospel do we have Jesus saying that that confession of Peter, that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of the living God, that confession is the bedrock on which
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Jesus will build his church. And so all these verses, all these
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Gospels, all this preaching, all this effort, really kind of focuses in on this one question, what do you make of Jesus?
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How do you estimate him? What do you call him? How do you estimate
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Jesus Christ? We're in Matthew 16, 15, we have Jesus asking the disciples, but who do you say that I am?
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These verses in 11, 1 through 24, some five chapters before that great confession of Peter, they have us asking him who he is.
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We're going to go through this in four parts. We have John the
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Baptist's estimate of Jesus, that's verses two and three. We have Jesus's estimate of John, which is verses four through 15.
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Then we have the people's estimate of Jesus and John, for that matter, in verses 16 through 19, and then
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Christ's estimate of the people, in verses 20 through 24. And if chapter 16 comes somewhat after this, just before this chapter, in chapter 10, we need to remember that the
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Lord had just sent his disciples out to proclaim to Israel. He said, don't go to the Samaritans, don't go to the
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Gentiles, go to Israel, and proclaim to them that in me the kingdom has come.
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And he gave them authority over unclean spirits, and he said they had authority and power to heal every disease and every affliction.
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In short, they had, in chapter 10, his power to perform miracles.
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We have there a precursor of what the apostles would do after Christ's ascension, where the
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Holy Spirit would come upon them, and they would continue the work of Christ in just the way that they're seeing here as a preview of it.
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So then now in chapter 11, with them, with the disciples out on their mission, declaring that the kingdom has come in Christ Jesus the
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Lord, we finally come to chapter 11, this morning's verses.
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And verse 1 we read, when Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities.
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In other words, he's apart from the disciples. He didn't go with them. So in chapter 11, which we're going to attend to this morning, he's there by himself.
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Augustine points out here, he says he, meaning Christ, he withdrew himself to give them, which is the disciples, to give them room to do what he had enjoined.
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For while he was present and healing, no one would be willing to approach them. It would be like in John chapter 11, where they come and say, sirs, or sirs, we wish to see
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Jesus. And if Jesus was there, he being the one that was causing all the furor, all the excitement, well why would you rather see
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Peter or John or Thaddeus or any of the others? You'd want to see Jesus. Well that'd be natural.
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So Jesus is now alone with this crowd of anxious inquirers, seekers when
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I say. And the first ones that he answers are the ones who had been sent to him by John the
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Baptist. It's a bit of an interesting note if you look at this, that the
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Messiah that Christ had just in chapter 10, as I explained, sent out his disciples, his emissaries, that John the
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Baptist, at the beginning of the next chapter, sends his disciples, he the
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Baptist, who many thought was the Christ, he says, no I'm not he, I am not worthy to untie his sandals,
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I'm not the one, I'm pointing to the one, I'm not him, but he, the one that many thought had been the
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Christ, is sending his disciples. So both are sending them out, and John's come to Christ.
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So we find here John's estimate of Jesus.
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How does John estimate Jesus? We read in verse 2, now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the
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Christ, now remember why he's in prison? He told Herod, you cannot have your brother's wife.
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Quoting the Old Testament law to this king, he was so angry with him that he put him in prison. John's about to be beheaded for having done that.
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So Jesus heard that John is in prison, or excuse me, John heard in prison about the deeds of the
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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?
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The question comes again, how do you estimate the Christ? What think ye of him?
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And Jesus answered them and said, go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and 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.
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What is he saying here? He's saying he's proven by the miracles that he's performed, the healings that he has done, the proclamation of the good news of himself, that he is that very one.
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What do we have? John chapter 9, a man born blind sees.
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Luke 17, when ten lepers come to him and they're cleansed. This is no less incredible than eyesight to a man born blind.
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I mean, leprosy was the most dreaded of all diseases. It was given to Moses when he kept answering back to God at the burning bush.
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It was given to Miriam when she rebelled against Moses. When King Uzziah's pride lifted its ugly head, he was given this ugly disease.
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He died with his whole body as a memorial to what sin does. There's no disease in that day that more clearly showed the ravages and the ugliness and the sheer putridness of sin than did leprosy.
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And what did Christ say to those lepers in John 17? Those ten who came said, Lord, have mercy on us.
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Lord, have mercy on us. They had to walk through the streets shouting out, unclean, unclean, so people keep out of their way.
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Jesus simply says, go, show yourselves to the priests. Who but the
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Christ could have done that? And we don't know how he cleansed them. It doesn't say that he waved his hand over them.
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He didn't put mud on their bodies as he put mud on the one blind man's eye. He didn't say a prayer.
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He didn't say, oh, Lord God, that you would cleanse them. He just said, go to the priest. Clearly by his word, simply by the enactment of his will that these ten should be cleansed, they were cleansed.
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He says, go, show yourselves to the priests, and of course they were clean. And to Christ's disciples, then as now, he says, already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.
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Who but the Christ is what Jesus sort of says to these disciples of John.
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Who but the Christ could do this? And the point is simply that only
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God could have done such things, and only the Messiah, the Christ, was prophesied to do them.
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So the answer to John's disciples is not so much a yes or a no. It's more like, just tell him what
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I've done, and he'll get the point. There's a variety of opinions on why
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John sent them to ask Jesus about him. Calvin, of course in the 16th century, in the 1500s, he reports that some men in his day thought that John wanted to know what, after his execution and his arrival in heaven, what he should tell the fathers up there, the saints in heaven, after he was executed about the
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Christ. In other words, the speculation was, what should I tell them about you when
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I get there? That you really are the Christ? That doesn't seem to have a lot of credibility, but Calvin seemed to have to argue against that.
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Others more rationally, but still wrongly I think, think that John had doubts and wanted to confirm whether Jesus was really the
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Christ or was another coming. In other words, I'm about to die. Herod's not going to put up with me rebuking him.
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My head's coming off fairly soon, or I don't know if he knew he was going to be beheaded, but he knew he was going to be executed.
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Did I point people to the right one? That's the idea. And this would make some sense, and you'd be curious if he'd finished the race.
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That's more rational than that first theory about John wanting to know what to tell the saints in heaven about him as he was on earth.
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But I don't think it fits. Here's what I think. I think
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John the Baptist was concerned that his disciples be assured that Jesus was the
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Christ. I think he wanted to be sure that in their eyes, he, the
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Baptist, became less, and Jesus, the Christ, became more. He was about to be poured out to borrow from Paul in 2
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Timothy. So it would make sense for a pastor's heart to be that his flock, his disciples, be secure and confident in what?
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That Jesus was the Christ. I don't believe John the Baptist for a moment doubted that. He sent them so that they would not doubt it, so that they would hear from Christ's own lips about the miracles and the preaching of the gospel, that they would see for themselves and that they would be left with that sureness, with that confidence.
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John sent them for their sake, not his own. And this concern is actually validated if you look ahead into Acts chapter 19.
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When Paul's in Ephesus, and in Ephesus he finds some of John the Baptist's disciples.
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He says, did you receive the Holy Spirit? They said, we didn't even know there was a Holy Spirit. And so Paul preaches to them, and they hear the whole gospel, and they hear about Christ is the
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Christ. Jesus was the Christ. Jesus died for your sins, and Jesus was buried, and Jesus was raised on the third day for your justification, and now has ascended and sits in glory at his
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Father's right hand. So the fact that Paul in Acts chapter 19 needed to fill them in on the rest, to show them the better way, would confirm that John might have sent those disciples to Christ so that they would have that confidence, so that they would know.
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This is the pastor's heart for his flock. This is the reason that we watch over this pulpit, both when
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I am here, when Conley preaches, when guest preachers come in. What is it we want you to know?
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That Jesus is the Christ is a good starting point, is it not? Well how then shall we live?
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We'll walk in holiness, we'll walk in circumspection, we'll walk in the gift of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5.
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What do I want you to know? What does my heart bleed for you to know? That Jesus is the
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Christ. What do I trust the men who are given this pulpit as guest preachers here, or our faithful brother
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Conley when he preaches here fairly regularly? To know that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of God who died for your sins, and God raised him up. This is the pastor's heart.
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This was John's heart, that they would know that he is who
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John said he was. When John said, Behold the Lamb of God, and before what Jesus read to you a little bit ago, he said,
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Behold the Lamb of God who, what? Takes away the sin of the world. John had no doubt.
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He wanted to be sure his disciples had no doubt. Verses 7 and following have
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Jesus' estimate of John. As he turns to the crowd and explains to the crowd about this one who sent his disciples to them, as they went away, verse 7, as they went away,
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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?
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In other words, did you think he was going to go with the flow, compromise his message, make it more palatable for you?
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What did you go out to see? What did you think he was going to say to you? He was going to say,
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Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What then did you go out to see?
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A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings' houses. What then did you go out to see?
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A prophet? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written,
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Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. Now this is
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God the Father speaking to God the Son. I, the Father, will send my messenger, and that of course is referring back to Malachi's prophecy fulfilled in John the
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Baptist. I will send my messenger before your, now that's Christ, before your face, who will prepare your way before you.
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John the Baptist, the herald, the final herald of the Christ.
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The Baptist was the promised herald who would finish Malachi's message. What does a herald do?
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A herald repeats his sovereign's message exactly as John the
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Baptist most certainly did about God's message about his Son. But that doesn't mean he understood it fully, does it?
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John was the end of the line of prophets that 1 Peter 1 verses 10 -12 are about, with prophets and angels wondering about the salvation that God was revealing over the centuries through them.
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I love this picture of the angels longing to understand what's being written by the prophets, where they're on their tiptoes and looking over the shoulder.
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Let me read 1 Peter to you, chapter 1 verses 10 -12. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the
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Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.
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It was revealed to them that they were serving not them but you in the things that now have been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the
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Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. Can you imagine that?
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John the Baptist didn't have it all. He's the greatest prophet, and we'll talk about that in a moment. And angels are still on their tiptoes, and they're looking over and say, do you see that?
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What is he writing there? Something like, and I said, what exactly? But something like, for by grace you've been saved.
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And the angels who know nothing about salvation, because Christ didn't die for them, he died for people.
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He died for the elect. He died for those whom God gave him. They say, for by grace you've been saved.
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What do you think of that? Well, let's run back up to heaven and join the cherubim and the seraphim and call, holy, holy, holy,
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Lord God Almighty, author of a salvation like this. And then they run back down.
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And not of works. It is the gift of God that no one should boast.
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And they run back up to heaven and sing more glory and holiness to God, and come back and find out that Christ would die to save unworthy sinners.
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This is angels peering over and wondering what this is. This is the prophets who have just this beginning picture, this glance of the glories of Christ of whom they're prophesying.
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Even if John the Baptist didn't understand it all, he saw it all in God in the flesh in Jesus Christ.
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I don't think he was confused, as some might say, but we must say that he absolutely could not have understood the whole picture.
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And why was John the Baptist's picture deficient? Why did his disciples not have it all?
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So in Acts 19, Paul had to preach to them the rest of the gospel, if you will. What was missing?
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If this was Sunday school, I'd say, and the class said, and I would hope you would all shout out to me, the resurrection.
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You can't understand it all without the resurrection, without the certainty that Jesus rose from the grave.
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And the very next verse says, truly I say to you, this is Jesus speaking, among those born of women there is arisen no one greater than John the
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Baptist, yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Think about that.
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The one least in the kingdom of heaven. The one who while on earth would have been pushed to the back of the line.
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The one who while here striving with all might and mean might have gotten a B average in school.
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That one, now in heaven, greater than the greatest of the prophets.
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How so? Why is the least one in heaven greater than John the
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Baptist? Because they know the resurrection.
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Because they're in heaven now seeing our Lord face to face. The least in heaven is greater than the greatest prophet because of that.
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And just as a brief excursus for you, the science of hermeneutics, which is used not just for the
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Bible, they talk about the hermeneutic of the constitution for legal scholars. Hermeneutic just means your science, your way of interpretation.
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What method do you apply to something? So we talk about hermeneutics in this context, we simply talk about biblical interpretation.
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And when you're in a passage or a verse, if you're in Exodus or the genealogies of 1
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Chronicles, or in one of the difficult parts of Job, or the prophets, or anywhere in the scripture, and you're having a hard time figuring it out, well you can come to myself, you can come to our budding scholar, our faithful deacon, and ask about the
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Greek and the Hebrew syntax and some church history that might help you, and maybe one of the church fathers had an insight that could help us unpack a verse.
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But I'll tell you a simpler way, and I've found that it works quite well a lot of the time, if not every time, it's the resurrection.
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The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ answers a whole lot, and that's why the least in heaven is greater than the greatest of prophets, because the least in heaven knows the resurrection, because they're there, they're seeing
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Jesus face to face, which is greater than the greatest prophet. From the days of John the
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Baptist, Jesus goes on, until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent have taken it by force.
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For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, and if you're willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.
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He who has ears, let him hear. John wasn't
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Elijah reincarnated or anything silly like that. Elijah was succeeded by Elisha, and these two together made one whole ministry to Israel.
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This is fairly common in the scripture, that we have two different men to make one movement of God.
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So you would have Moses, who does what? He brings the people to the promised land, and you have
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Joshua, who completes God's promise to Israel to deliver them to the land, and the land to them.
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So he brings them into the land. So Moses and Joshua together make this one fulfillment of God's promises.
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David and his son Solomon together are one. Elijah to Elisha are one ministry.
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So John the Baptist didn't have to have any real spiritual or DNA, if you will, kind of connection to Elijah.
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He's just the one who God designated to complete the prophecy of Malachi, or of Elijah, excuse me.
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Great as these prophets were, they only gave glimpses of the Christ. In John the
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Baptist's prophetic work, though, the illusions were over. This is why he's the greatest.
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Jesus, the Christ, had come. John was more than a prophet because he brought prophecy to its ultimate and its glorious conclusion when he pointed and said, behold, the
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Lamb of God, the one who all the prophets longed for. And they wondered what manner and what type and when would come and how would he look and what would he do, all these things.
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And John said, there he is, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That's why
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Jesus' estimate of John is that there was none greater. He wasn't really a greater or even a better man than his forerunners.
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But in God's decree, he was given the greatest message. There is
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Jesus. So the least in heaven is greater than John the
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Baptist in that way. I'll tell you something I take out of this.
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I'm greater than John the Baptist, at least John the Baptist while he was on this earth.
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And so is our brother Conley who preaches from this pulpit. And why is that?
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Because we preach to you something very different than Christ has come. We preach that Christ died for your sins and rose again.
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We preach to you that if you will but believe this glorious message, you will be saved.
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Men all over this world are on this Lord's Day proclaiming this gospel.
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And because we can proclaim this gospel and not say, just as John the Baptist did, there is the
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Christ, he is the one. We can say he is the one who did something that John the Baptist didn't see. I don't know how much of it he knew.
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I don't know how much of the prophecies he was able to say, well, Christ will go to a cross and die for our sins, including my own, and be raised again on the third day and then be glorified by his ascension to heaven.
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I don't know how much of that John the Baptist knows, but I do know this, or so you should say knew, because if he's in heaven now, he knows.
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I know that we preached to you a Christ who came, and a Christ who died, and a
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Christ who was buried, and a Christ who was raised, and a Christ who has now ascended, and if you will but believe this,
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I know it's a Christ who saves you. We preach a resurrected
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Lord, now glorified. We preach a resurrected Lord died for your sins and my sins and for everyone who will declare themselves a sinner who can be saved only by God's mercy and grace.
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This means you, sinner. This means you who do not this morning believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Why am I greater than John the
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Baptist? I don't mean as a man qualitatively. I mean the message that I have, a completed message, and what is that message?
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You're a sinner, that you, sinner, you rebel against God, you blasphemer of his name.
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If you will but repent and believe this gospel that in Christ Jesus your sins were answered, believe that he died for you and God raised him up on the third day.
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If you will but believe this message, I can tell you on the authority of God's word, you will be saved, and that's a greater message than what
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John the Baptist had some two thousand years ago. Well then there's the people's estimate of Jesus.
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In verse 21 Jesus says, Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
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And he goes on to say that even the depraved men of Sodom, had they seen what the people in Jesus' days saw, even they would have repented.
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Go back and read about them in Genesis 19, and let your mouth drop in awe and wonder that, oh
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Jesus just means that kind of metaphorically, no he's saying it literally, oh it's just sort of a simile, no he means literally those men who actually lived, the ones who tried to break down Lot's door to get at the angels to do something untoward with them, those men, had they seen what those cities, what those people had seen, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes.
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Jesus goes on, But to what shall I liken or compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates,
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We played the flute for you, and you did not dance. We sang a dirge for you, and you did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he has a demon.
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The son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Look, look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners, yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.
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John, the Baptist, and Jesus, the Christ, both rejected by the people, and you know, people who oppose
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God, people who are against him, who oppose him, they always have their reasons, don't they? But no matter how well founded is their reasoning or their logic, at its base, it is a matter of the heart.
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What is Jesus saying there? We played the flute for you, we did these things, we played the dirge, you just didn't conform to our expectations.
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You just didn't become the Christ that I wanted to see. You're just not giving me a message that makes me feel good, that gives me what
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I want, that makes me feel the way I think I should feel after I've heard a message that I think is good.
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No, Jesus, no, John, you're not what
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I want to see or follow. People who don't believe this gospel always have their reasons, and they always seem so good.
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What is the heart from which those reasons flow is what
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John Calvin in the 1500s called a great factory producing nothing but excuses.
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It's having unreceptive and believing hearts, which is your responsibility. You are accountable before God for your unbelieving, your hard heart against Him.
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Look what they're saying in Jesus' day. Saying, oh, that John, I follow him, but he's too holy.
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But Jesus, you know, you don't seem to be holy enough. Well John drinks too little, Jesus drinks too much.
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John is too ascetic, Jesus is too friendly. Some hear about Jesus today, they say, well, he's too tough for me,
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I don't like the way you preach him, he doesn't seem to like me the way I am. Others hear a false Christ who loves you just the way you are and everything's fine.
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And some would say, well, that's too weak to handle my sin. In a sense, because those are false Christs being preached, they're both right.
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But they're all just excuses. It's all just excuses. John was no more a demoniac than Jesus was a glutton.
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And you, you today sitting here hearing this message, you detractor from Christ, you, you blasphemer, you, the one who calls the church a bunch of hypocrites, and that's why
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I stay away. We've all heard this. I'd go to the church, but they're full of hypocrites. You, the one who says you don't want to join with us because we're just a bunch of holy rollers who get on your nerves.
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Or you, the other one who says we're just way too serious about all this stuff. Why can't we loosen up a little bit?
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Excuses. Excuses is all it is. See, we never said we were not hypocrites, and you know we never made such a claim.
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We said the Lord hates hypocrisy, and therefore we strive against it. And you, you know, you do know that we never said we were holier than anybody.
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We said we want to be like Jesus, holy, meek, and mild. We said we want to be that way.
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That's no more being holier than thou than I'd be saying I'm smarter than Einstein because I want to be like him.
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I want to emulate his skill with mathematics. Now, it's all just excuses.
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And I would suggest to you if you're one of these who builds up these reasons that in your heart, deep, deep down, don't you know that they're just excuses?
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I never said I was holier than anybody else. Nobody in this church ever did.
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And you know that. You find reasons against us.
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I'm not going to tell you to open your head, take out your brain, and put it aside. Keep those reasons on a shelf.
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Put them where you can access them. Don't forget about them if you don't want to. But just put them in suspense for a while.
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And let me ask you to think the other way for a bit. Think of reasons to believe.
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Think of reasons to believe. And think of reasons to believe because of what
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God says of his Son in the Word. Think of reasons to believe because of what Jesus says of himself.
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Think of the history that has been declared to you about Jesus healing people of leprosy, the blind see, the deaf hear, lepers are cured, the good news is preached.
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Think of the purity and the goodness of God the Son and what he accomplished on the cross if these histories that we have in all four
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Gospels, the Synoptics and the fourth Gospel, as we call it, be true. And instead of thinking of reasons not to believe, instead of looking to the
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Bible and trying to take apart and finding what you think are inconsistencies or contradictions, look at it from the other angle.
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Try to build up some inventory of reasons to believe. And now let's talk about those. Stay away from Christ if you must, but blame it on your own heart, not our behavior.
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If you'll spend eternity in hell, it won't be because I'm a hypocrite or she's too phony holy.
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It'll be because of your sin. It'll be because you declined to believe that Christ died for your sins, which means, in fact, he didn't.
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It's not that you choose, but if God chose you to believe this Gospel, then you'll believe it by his choosing and not by your own.
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And even so, even believing God's absolute sovereignty and he being the sole purveyor and determinant in this salvation, believing all that completely, you're still responsible.
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To this day, choose whom you will serve. You must choose because God now commands all men everywhere to repent and believe this
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Gospel, to believe that this Jesus, this one who's the subject of Matthew chapter 11, is indeed the
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Christ. How do you estimate him? What do you say of him?
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I'm pleading with you to believe. Are you just shrugging your shoulders? I can't wait for lunch.
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Your soul's at stake. Your eternal fate rests on your estimate of Jesus, the
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Christ. Is he the highest of the angelic beings that God created? No, he's
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God the Son. And if he had a beginning, he's not the Christ who can save. How do you estimate this
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Christ? See, the greatest prophet, as the Muslims might say, Muhammad said he's the greatest of the prophets, but still only a prophet, not good enough.
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He's the Christ, he's the Son of God, who alone could be that lamb of God to take away your sins.
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How do you estimate him? The question has eternal ramifications.
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When you meet Jesus, he'll talk to me about the example that I set.
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He'll talk to John and Paul and Tom and Mary and Jane and Sandra about the examples that they set, and what an awesome and terrifying thing it will be to look into his eyes and account for every time we spoke wrongly.
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But when you meet him, you're not going to get to point to me and say, if only he had preached a little more clearly, if only she had been a little more holy, if only my neighbor hadn't fought that one time,
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I would have believed. You're not going to get to say that. You're going to answer to Christ, the judge of all the earth, with your eternal fate for yourself and what you believed.
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How do you estimate this Jesus? How do you see him?
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What do you think of him? God now commands all men everywhere to repent and believe this gospel.
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He confirmed that he will judge the living and the dead, all mankind, by raising
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Jesus from the dead, which is the Lord's last word on this whole matter of sin and righteousness and judgment, and all this on God's terms and not our own.
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But now hear how Jesus estimates them. Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent.
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And we could very easily read in here, just a little bit, we can paraphrase it and say, then he began to denounce the person who had heard of these mighty works that he had done and still would not repent.
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Verse 21, woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon that would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
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But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you,
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Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades, for the mighty works done in you have been done in Sodom.
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It would have remained until this day. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.
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Now, some might hear this and say, well, look there, they saw Jesus in the flesh doing actual miracles before their eyes, and yet they didn't believe.
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How am I supposed to believe just by hearing you tell me that he did them? They actually saw it and rejected him.
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The answer is that in God's wise and perfect plan, John the Baptist opened the door to the fulfillment of all
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Israel's hopes, and Jesus the Christ completed it. Then Jesus the
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Christ handed it off to the disciples who gave eyewitness testimony to the ultimate confirming miracle of what?
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The resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then they handed that ultimate confirming miracle off to us in the word that they gave us in what we call the
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New Testament. They handed it off to the church, giving us this word being proclaimed throughout the world.
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If you must see Jesus before you repent and believe the gospel, if you must see a miracle before you will avoid these cities' fates, if that's what you require,
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I really have no answer for you. I can only tell you what the scripture says happened.
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I have no cure. You will die in your sins. Jesus said that even if a man rose from the dead, listen to what he said, this is in Luke chapter 16, the rich man and Lazarus.
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At the very end, I'm not going to repeat the whole parable, but at the very end, Jesus says that even if someone should rise from the grave and tell you to your face about heaven and hell and the dread consequence of failure to believe, even if this person was someone who you knew had been put in the grave, you stood at the graveyard or at the gravesite, you saw them go down and they came back up and told you in person about Jesus the
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Christ, still you won't believe. Your heart is the problem.
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It's not that I can't perform a miracle or that the people in this church can't be holy enough for you.
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I can't perform a miracle or play a flute or strum a lyre. It's your heart, your heart that remains stone cold.
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The question here has been, what do you make of Jesus? What is your estimate of him? The great prophet, the greatest moral teacher of all time, the chief of all the
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Buddhas? Some say he's just the finest thing that God ever wove together, and none of this will do.
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He is God the Son. Note well, he is God, emphasis the scripture, he is
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God the Son. The creed says it this way.
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We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages,
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God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made.
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Well, let me close by pointing out one thing. It will seem to contradict almost 40 minutes of preaching.
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More important by far than what you think of him, actually, is what he thinks of you.
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And what he thinks of you is whether he sees you in his Son and his
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Son in you. I'm speaking of God. What does God think of you? All based upon what he sees, whether he sees his
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Son in you. You might think that religion is a matter of choice only.
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And in one way, that's true. It is true, religion is a matter of choice.
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But that's if, that's if we separate the idea of religion from faith.
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You can have all the religion you want. I'm not going to name them all, take any religion you want.
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Those are choices. This one fits me, this one works for me, this one helped me out of this problem because I did what it said.
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That's religion. I'm speaking of faith.
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I'm speaking of believing in Christ Jesus, the Son of God. I'm thinking of you by faith, estimating him the way he estimates himself, the way
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God the Father estimates his own Son. Now, if religion is just a tradition, just a set of rules and practices inherited from our upbringing, whether it's
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Catholic or Jewish or Pentecostal or even Reformed Baptist, if it's just something I do because I think I'm supposed to, then choose whatever you like.
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Makes no difference, but we're talking about faith in Christ. And if that being the case, then there's only one who said and proved,
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I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to Father except through me.
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This is Jesus' estimate of himself. This is God the Father's estimate of his
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Son. And so I close just by asking one more time, and know that your soul stands in the balance.
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What is your estimate of him? Amen. Amen. And grace,
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Heavenly Father, we do thank you again for this day that you've given us. I pray, Lord, that we would see
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Jesus rightly, estimate him according to your word, and know him for who you say he is, the very
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Son of God, that he is the eternal Son of God who alone died for our sins, who alone was buried and raised from the dead, who alone is our
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Savior. I pray, Lord, that today be the day of salvation for many, that you, Father, would, in your mercy and the power that only you have, change hearts to believe this glorious message.