Last week we finished up Matthew chapter 10. We talked about taking God seriously. Jesus made this incredible statement to His disciples because they were about to face all sorts of people problems. He said essentially: don’t fear these people that can just at the most kill your body, instead fear the almighty God Who has absolute power over your body and soul. Who can even destroy a body and soul in hell. That’s a hard statement, and it’s not a figure of speech, it’s not a metaphor, it’s a reality that God is Who He is, and absolutely can do these things, and as such we must take Him very seriously.
But that wasn’t the end of the story, that wasn’t the whole picture. We looked at how the all-powerful God, who does possess that power, and that authority, still cares for His creation all the way down to the birds, and even so much more, how He cares for us. We learned that He sees and acknowledges the good things that His people do, the things that Honor Him, and not just big things, but all the way down to the example that Jesus gave of giving someone a cup of cold water. God is powerful, but He absolutely cares. And we closed last week by looking at a promise that Jesus made in that passage. He said that if we confess Him before people, if we confess Him as Lord and Savior, then He Himself will stand on our account and confess us before God the Father in heaven. That’s an incredible promise, that Jesus will represent us when that time comes. But again, there was a take Him seriously part in this promise as well, because He also said, that if we deny Him before people, He will then also deny us before God the Father.
Again, He’s awesome, He’s wonderful, where would we be without Him, but don’t ever think we should take Him lightly, because He is God, and there is nobody else like Him.
That was the end of chapter 10 and today we’re starting into Matthew 11 and let’s read our passage for this morning.
Read Matthew 11:1-18
The last three weeks we have been working through this talk that Jesus was giving to the disciples as He was preparing to send them out into the community for ministry. That’s what all of chapter 10 was about. It was just real talk, about the job, the difficulties, and some understanding that they needed to have, before they set off to get to work. And now as we come into chapter 11, we see in verse 1, that Jesus’ talk with the disciples had ended. It tells us that Jesus took off from where they were at and He continued teaching and preaching elsewhere in the community, and I’m sure the disciples took off to do the same as well.
But as we come into verse 2, we see the main event of this passage, we see that John sends two of His disciples over to Jesus. And this John is John the Baptist once again. It’s been a while, but we found out back in Matthew chapter 4 that John had been taken into custody and sent to prison. And so, verse 2 here tells us:
Read Matthew 11:2
It says that when John heard from prison about what Jesus was doing, that he sent these two guys over to Jesus. And we have to remember that John went to prison at basically the exact same time, as when Jesus officially started His ministry. John wasn’t out and about following Jesus around and seeing firsthand what was going on. John was sitting in prison and just hearing the reports of what Jesus was doing from His prison cell. So that gives us a little context, but it’s still really interesting what these guys come to ask Jesus. And we see the question in verse 3:
Read Matthew 11:3
I feel like this is kind of weird isn’t it. Like how is JOHN THE BAPTIST unsure if Jesus is the one? The guy had the opportunity to baptize Jesus, he saw the Spirit of God descend on Him, he heard God the Father speak and say, “this is my beloved son.” But now we’re at this question. And there’s some debate as to whether this was John’s question or his disciples just asked Jesus this when they got there, or if John set this up for his disciples for them to go and ask the question so that they themselves could get the answer directly from Jesus. But any way that it goes, why the question?
This question was asked because of a misunderstanding or misconceptions about Jesus and what He was going to do when He came. The general idea of most people at this time was that the Messiah was going to come as a political or military leader and that He was going to conquer their enemies and their oppressors and take political leadership or the literal throne as King. But as we have been learning, from the book of Matthew so far, is that that is not at all how He chose to come to this Earth. He came humble, He came as a servant leader, and a servant savior. He came in might, He is God after all, but He used His might in service and ministry, in humble acts of service, and generally meeting individual needs. He didn’t use His might to bring political deliverance for these people, but that’s what they were expecting. And because of that, we end up at this moment in verse 3 where Jesus is asked: are you the One? Or should we be looking for someone else?
And so, Jesus responded to the question in verses 4 through 6.
Read Matthew 11:4-6
He didn’t give them a yes or a no. He said, go tell John what you see and what you hear. You’ve seen the miraculous, you have heard of even more of the miraculous. John probably hasn’t had the chance to see any of this with his own eyes. But Jesus is like, go and report back about these things. Like I said, Jesus didn’t say yes, but He basically said, look at the evidence that is in front of you, consider what you have seen and what you have heard. What conclusions should you come to based on these things?
Blind people now see, lame people now walk, diseased people are now healed, deaf people now hear, dead people have been brought back to life, and the poor are hearing the good news of the Gospel.
I work in a science-based job, where we evaluate the evidence of crime every day, and we seek the truth of the situation or whatever facts that we are able to come to based on the evidence. We look at evidence, to get an answer. Jesus was like, here’s some evidence, you have seen it, you have heard it, and you should have the answer to your question based on that evidence. And that ended the conversation, it was enough, it was enough evidence to answer the question and these guys took off. Probably to go back and report to John. And it’s so interesting, because as they took off, Jesus took the opportunity to talk about John to the multitudes around Him at that moment. Let’s read that again.
Read Matthew 11:7-15
We’re not going to break down every word of this, but Jesus spoke very highly of John. He’s like you guys that went and saw John, you didn’t just go out to see one of the millions of reeds by the river, meaning you didn’t go out to see just anyone, there was something different with this guy, you didn’t go out to see some guy in fancy clothes, because that wasn’t John, instead Jesus says, you guys went out to see a prophet. And in fact more than a prophet, you went to see God’s messenger who was preparing the way for the Messiah. Jesus says that there was not another person born that was greater than John the Baptist, but then He makes an incredible statement. The end of verse 11:
“But he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”
And that’s because John lived and died under the Old Covenant, under the old way of doing things. He never got to see and to know in His life here, how exactly, Jesus was going to change everything. Because of what Jesus has done for His people, because of His death, burial, and resurrection for our sins, every single one of us that believes in Him starts on higher ground than John was on, we have been moved up from the lower ground of the law to the high ground of God’s grace, only because of what Jesus has done. Again, Jesus changed absolutely everything.
John was the end of an era; he was really the last prophet on the scene. Every prophet prior to John was announcing that “THE MESSIAH IS COMING.” John was the only one who got to say that “THE MESSIAH IS HERE”. He was the last person to hold the position of prophet, and he will be until Elijah comes back, which Jesus mentions in verse 14. Which most believe Elijah will be coming as one of the two prophets mentioned in the book of Revelation. But until then, John was the last one, and Jesus says that through this time in verse 12 that the Kingdom, His Kingdom, suffers violence. And we’ve talked about this, Jesus’ people will not always be welcomed with open arms, and that’s because of Jesus and His message as we have discussed, and that’s why guys like John have been and will be facing the consequences of following Jesus.
John would suffer those consequences, all the way to death, but how incredible is it to be spoken of so highly by Jesus Himself. I think this is a great leadership training moment on Jesus’ part. Jesus didn’t just hoard the attention for Himself, even though He absolutely deserves it, He took the time to build up another guy like John who was actually in the work for the Kingdom. Great leadership doesn’t just build the focus to a point, or to a single person, it distributes the responsibility, it builds up other people so that the work and the results can be multiplied by more hands and more workers, and then it acknowledges and encourages the people doing it. Jesus is obviously a great leader. I mean of course He is, He’s Jesus after all.
But after Jesus speaks so highly of John, we get to these last verses, and this leads us towards the practical application that I want to consider for us today. Let’s read verses 16 through 19.
Read Matthew 11:16-19
Jesus considers the people of that generation. But this could probably be applied to any generation. And this kind of falls in line with what we talked about earlier about people having misunderstandings or misconceptions, or maybe expectations that aren’t met exactly how they expect them to be met.
And so, Jesus is like, this generation is like children sitting in the marketplace with their friends and this one thing happens, like people playing the flute and nobody responds, nobody dances. Another thing happens, and again nobody responds. And then in verse 18 this guy shows up and he doesn’t eat or drink, and we know he was out in the desert, and he dressed kind of crazy, and people were like, something is wrong with this one, this guy must be a demon. And then Jesus shows up and He’s not out in the desert, He’s hanging out with people, He eats, He drinks, and so He must have problems and OH NO! He’s a friend of tax collectors and sinners! Two completely different guys.
Jesus is basically making the point, that all of these different things happen, and sometimes they are basically the exact opposite, like in the example of John and Jesus, but people will still find problems, people will still not respond, people will still not be satisfied, people will still be against whatever it is. Jesus is basically like, people are acting like a bunch of children, they don’t even really know what they want or what they are looking for. But then Jesus says at the end of verse 19:
“Wisdom is justified by her children”
Which is just an interesting way of saying, what Jesus told the guys earlier. He said, look at the evidence! Does the evidence prove that Jesus is the real thing. People might not know what they want, they might respond weird to whatever is in front of them. But when we look at the evidence, when we actually see and hear what’s going on here, what conclusion do we come to?
I hope that in everything that we have seen, everything that we have seen in Matthew so far even, that we come definitively to the conclusion that Jesus is the Messiah, He is the Coming One as they asked, but from where we’re sitting, He already came and He already did. And all of the evidence, even historically, of course scripturally, and I believe very practically as seen in our lives changed by His power, points to the fact that He is exactly Who He says He is. That’s the message that was heading back to John as he sat in that prison cell. John, the evidence is in, He is the one, and we sure don’t need to be looking for another.
It’s very important that we know Who He is. Jesus even challenged His own disciples on this. I want to look at a passage together in the book of Luke.
Read Luke 9:18-20
Jesus is like, who are people saying that I am? And He gets all of these answers. Some people are even saying that He is John the Baptist. Some people are obviously confused, or misinformed, or misguided, about Who Jesus actually is. But then Jesus asks His disciples, and Peter steps up, and says YOU ARE THE CHRIST. Or YOU ARE THE MESSIAH. Peter knew exactly Who Jesus was.
So, like I said, it’s very important that WE KNOW WHO HE IS. Lots of people don’t understand Who Jesus is. Even John the Baptist and his followers were kind of struggling with this question. Obviously, lots of people were struggling with it when Jesus asked His disciples. But we must know that He is God the Son, He came down as the savior of sinners, He died on a cross for our sins, He was buried, and He rose again to share and invite us into His eternal life. That’s a very foundational description, there is so much more, but we absolutely have to start there, and we’ll continue to build our understanding from there.
But we have to start on those right foundations, or on that right BASE, because there are so many misconceptions about Jesus out there. And that’s why we’re going through this book, that’s why we’re going through Matthew, so that we can see the evidence, we can hear His words, we can see the accounts of His works, we can see the miraculous, we can see how He walked, how He talked, how He treated people, what He preached, and what His purposes were. Even John and his followers were struggling a little bit with understanding Who Jesus was. And obviously a whole bunch of other people were too. I think that is still very much the case today. My hope is that by seeing Him firsthand through the scripture, we can break down all the misconceptions, and all of the misunderstandings, and know Jesus as He really is, and then FOLLOW HIM for real, because we’ve actually gotten to know Him.