Transcript
All right, we're going to be in Matthew chapter 11, Matthew chapter 11 verses one through six. We'll talk a little bit about doubts. We'll talk a little bit about doubts, so if you want to get your Bibles out, you can turn to Matthew 11 as a church. We've been going through the book of Matthew. There's a couple of big sections that we have already covered in this book. We've seen the life of John the Baptist, seeing the birth of Jesus, John the Baptist, Jesus baptized by John Jesus going into the wilderness to be tempted, coming out of the wilderness and then commissioned to go and do ministry in the region of Galilee.
And then we go into a long discourse of Jesus called the Sermon on the Mount where he is teaching ethics. He's teaching kind of what it's like to be a part of this kingdom. What does that mean? Then we looked at verse chapters eight and nine where there's nine different miracles that take place, nine different miracles that take place, and throughout that section Jesus is talking about here's what it means to be a disciple. We oftentimes use the word apprentice. If you want to become an electrician, you apprentice as an electrician. You're getting trained by somebody who's already licensed to already is experienced in that field, and so Jesus had these apprentices. They were called disciples, and in chapter eight and nine he explains, here's what this means. Then we got in and we've been looking at for the last few weeks, this we're kind of set up by this statement where Jesus sees the crowd and he has compassion on the crowd, and then he tells his disciples to pray to the Lord of the harvest, that the Lord of the harvest would send the laborers into this crowd, into the field.
And then right on the heels of that prayer, we have Jesus commissioning his disciples, his apprentices, to go and preach and to heal, to do basically everything we've seen Jesus doing. They're given that ministry to go and do. He empowers them, it says, and then he sends 'em out and he's been giving instructions about what they will encounter, where to go, what to do, what to bring. All of those instructions we have covered, and the section actually ends in verse one because it says after he sent them out, he himself went to their towns to preach and to heal. We'll see that in just a second, but to of set the stage for this morning, I want to kind of prime the pump a bit by this quote, mother Teresa. She says, I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that he didn't trust me.
So much pain in our lives can lead us to a lot of wrestling, and we're going to look at John the Baptist at a very painful point in his life and the wrestling that he went through. Let me read to you verses one through six, and then we'll come back and we'll walk through the text in verse one. It says, when Jesus had finished giving instructions to his 12 disciples, he moved on from there to teach and preach in their towns. Now, when John heard in prison that the Christ was doing what the Christ was doing, he sent a message through his disciples and he asked him, are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else? Jesus replied to them, go and report to John what you hear and see the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed.
The deaf here, the dead are raised and the poor are told the good news and blessed is the one who isn't offended by meme. Let's pray together. Lord, we ask as we look at this text that you would teach us by your spirit, we believe that not just the words on the page will impact us and change our lives, but that these are your very words that you inspired Matthew to make this record of Jesus's teaching and to give this account and that your spirit can take and apply this text to our lives. Lord, I ask for each person here, Lord, you know our story. You know what we walked in that door with and I pray, father, that you would work in our lives in a deeply personal way, Lord, that you would meet us through this text and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
So let's look at this text together. One of the things that we see is that Jesus finishes off this section of commissioning his disciples, and then he himself goes around the region of Galilee to preach and teach. And so that closes out this section. So imagine with me for just a second, and I'm going to put it on the screen in a minute. Just this region of Galilee, this northern large body of water, a lake, and the disciples, the 12 disciples have been sent out around the towns to preach and to teach. And so Jesus is kind of on his own for a minute and he's going now to preach and teach in some of those surrounding towns, and then Matthew turns his attention to John the Baptist, and that's where we'll spend a good bit of our time. When John heard in prison what the Christ was doing, he sent a message through his disciples.
So you see that the word disciple there, this is not just a Jesus word. It's not just a Christian word. It's a cultural construct where we have the idea of an apprentice. These in this time, you'd have these Pharisees or Sadducees or John the Baptist, each one of them, they had their sets of disciples, their adherence, the most zealous followers that would follow their teacher, their rabbi around, and John had his, but John is in prison hearing about the Christ. That's the Latin word for Messiah. It means the anointed one. John hears about what he's doing and he sends a message through his disciples, and we will look at the question in just a second. I want to just set the stage here about who John is. So John has been doing ministry here in this region of Galilee. This is the northern body of water.
If he go south below this map, the Jordan River here runs through Israel down to the Dead Sea. Jerusalem is down over here, not on the map. Jesus's hometown is here in Capernaum. You see some of the other kind of, this is the Samaritan side. This is where we saw earlier, Jesus encountered the demon possessed guys there on this side over here on the northern side. So John did much of his ministry and engaged, and he found himself in prison because of the Roman, not Jewish, but the Roman government that was overseeing Israel at the time.
Here's kind of a refresher because some of you are new with us and you weren't here when we studied Matthew three. Here's a little bit about John from earlier in Matthew. In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. So that's South Judea is kind of south here. Judea goes back to when the nation of Israel was divided up and you had, Judah had an area, Judah, the tribe got carried off in captivity for 70 years in around 700 bc. Then when they returned, it was primarily the Judean tribe that came back into Israel. They became the largest tribe, and so Juah became Judea, and that's where we get the word Jewish from Judah. So John is here in this Judean region around the Jordan River baptizing, and this is his message. He was saying, repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near. Now we've gone another seven chapters deep into Matthew. How many times have we seen Jesus's message summarized as this? The kingdom of heaven has come near. I mean, this is the message of Jesus. That's
The Messiah's message,
Definitely. Yeah. That's the Messiah's message, the kingdom of heaven, and that's what he told his disciples to preach, right? The kingdom of heaven has come near, and I just keep pointing that out to you because we talk about so much about becoming a Christian and entering into a personal relationship with Christ, which is very much a Protestant recovery of the New Testament message of Jesus. So there's a very good recovery that happened through the Protestant reformation where Martin Luther and John Calvin and those theologians were saying, listen, you're not to just know God through the church and through your local priest. No, you can personally know God. You should have the Bible in your own language. So all that is well and good, but in that whole move through Protestant reformation and the personal relationship with Christ, what gets downplayed and diminished is this theme of this kingdom and Jesus is really teaching.
Look, I've come to bring this new society, which means there's community. There's an aspect of following Jesus and being a disciple where it puts a new lens on your concept of ethics and interpersonal ethics. It reframes the value system of your life. It gives you, you have a new society, you have values, you have authority, you have rules. And so the message of Jesus and John and the disciples all saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So I digress, but that is John, and we continue here in chapter three. He is the one spoken of through the prophet Isaiah who said, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. So John the Baptist is preparing the nation really preparing their hearts for the coming Messiah. So we're already prepared for that, and John is doing, this is Isaiah chapter 40, by the way.
So John the Baptist is doing what he's called to do from Isaiah 40, and again, this sets the stage for him being now in prison. We'll go a couple more verses. John had a camel hair garment with a leather belt around his waist. His food was locust and wild honey. So he's like this crazy character, crazy preacher. Then people from Jerusalem and all Judea and all the vicinity of the Jordan were going out to him and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River confessing their sins. So if you want to know who John the Baptist is, that's kind of the summary, okay? This is what John is doing. He's baptizing them saying, repent, because the kingdom of heaven is near. And then fast forward here they are getting baptized and they're confessing their sins. Have you ever told somebody, you know what? I was really wrong when I did that.
There is this dramatic thing that happens in our hearts when we confess our sins, our mouths are miraculously connected to our hearts where it's just this kind of almost esoteric experience, like other weird aspects of being human, having the hiccups or something like that, right? It is just like it is weird how there's this connection between confession and our hearts just being softened, and that's what's happening here with the nation. Their hearts are being softened, prepared for the Messiah. I say all of that because when we come back over to this story here, we have John and he's going to ask a question that almost contradicts this whole ministry that he's been doing. But before we get there, I just want to show you the last thing that we read. This was chapter four verse 12, when he heard that John, this is Jesus. Jesus heard that John had been arrested.
He withdrew into Galilee. So in the other gospels, there's other more details about this, but Jesus is deeply impacted. John, John the Baptist is one of Jesus's relatives, and Jesus and the disciples, his followers are in a sense, upset. There's this moment of grieving, I think it's in Luke where it's in detail and they're really busy, and it's right around the time where they're feeding the 5,000 and they're just going and going, and Jesus takes his disciples and says, come away. Let's just rest for a minute. Let's pause for a minute. Because of the arrest of John, here's a bit more of the story. John had been telling Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. So Herods held a grudge against him and wanted to kill him, but she could not because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing he was a righteous and holy man.
When Herod heard him, he would be very perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him. So what's going on? So Herod and I put this in Slack as a church, we use Slack as a group communication tool. If you're not on it yet, the invite is open. You can either use the QR code that the Usher team gives out or you can ask Marvin or Joe to invite you to it. But in the general thread, there is a timeline of Herod and his family because there's multiple Herods in the story of Jesus, and it kind of gets a little confusing on how to parse it and to figure out what is going on with Herod. But essentially this Herod takes his brother, Philip's wife. Her name is Odious. She wanted to be taken, but it's an incestuous adulterous relationship. And so John being this fiery preacher, he's like, look, she shouldn't be your wife.
That's wrong. And the wife is upset with it. And so Harus ultimately is the one who gets Herod to be head John. But what we see here in verse 20 is that John's kind of like perplexed. He's interested in this guide, John, he's kind of probably put off a bit by John saying he's doing something immoral through this relationship with Herods, but at the same time, he's kind of putting up with him because he's fascinated by John the Baptist. Here's what one commentator writes. He tells us of Josephus. Josephus tells us that Herod anus imprisoned the Baptist, John the Baptist in his fortress at Urs east of the Dead Sea, and he was there for about a year before his death. So that is the scene with John in prison. Now, let's look at John's question for a second. Now, when John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent a message through his disciples and he asked him, are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else?
Now, again, this is written to a Jewish audience, so there's some shorthand that's going on here. John is saying, are you the one who is to come? Is that like Santa Claus? Who's to come? Is that the Easter Bunny? No. If you're Jewish, the one who is to come is deeply embedded in the warp and wolf of your life. This is culturally like, oh, yeah, there is the one who is to come. John actually uses this phrase earlier on in Matthew chapter three. John says, I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I am not worthy to remove his sandals. This idea of somebody who's coming is the Jewish hope. It's fascinating. I just continue to be amazed by the Bible and how the Jews lived in anticipation of the coming of Christ, and then Jesus comes as the Messiah and he fulfills part of the prophetic hope of the Old Testament, but then Jesus teaches his disciples, I'm going to come again. And so there is for us kind of the Jewish experience maps onto our life because we also are waiting for one who will is yet to come, but we know better than the Jews know. Now we know that that's Jesus who will return again. So there's a bit more clarity, but how it's all going to happen, we don't know. We don't know what that will look like.
That's right. That's why we shouldn't judge people. The phrase, the one who has to come is a Messianic title, the one who has to come. It's a messianic title drawn from various Old Testament prophecies that spoke of a coming deliverer, an anointed one, literally anointed one Messiah means anointed one who would fulfill God's promises to Israel. Now, look, I know, I know that we have in this room people who are not yet born again and you're not yet decided to follow Jesus. I know we have some that are with us who you're just starting out in your relationship with Jesus, and as you read the Bible, you are reading different verses where it just gives you the warm, fuzzy feelings. You don't necessarily know how that verse connects with the ones around it, but you're like, I love how that says that. I love that.
I love that verse. But here's what you need to understand is that as you grow as a follower of Jesus and you're reading the Bible more and more, what you're going to see is that it's like this beautiful tapestry with all these connected dots where it's just like all these hyperlinks back to the different parts and it's like, oh my gosh, this onto this and this is connected here and to that there. And so this idea of the Jewish tradition and experiencing being one where you're waiting for the Messiah and how it comes to pass through Jesus, this is one of those things where you just get to enjoy it as it unfolds and you pull back layers. But so I'm going to read to you some of these Old Testament prophecies that primed the pump that got the Jewish heart racing with hope for this one, who is to come look at Isaiah nine, six and seven.
So Isaiah prophesied about 650 years before Jesus, and he said this, to the nation of Israel, a child will be born for us. A son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. So this child's going to be given and he's going to have a political position, a government authority position. He's going to be named wonderful counselor. So imagine having a president or a king where you're like, he counsels me wisely. He's going to be called mighty God. He's called eternal father and the prince of peace, the one who brings about peace, the dominion, this dominion that he has, the space, the geography that he reigns over is going to be vast and its prosperity will never end. We talk about economics and national economics and GDP right here for Israel, for Isaiah, he's talking about the Messiah. He's saying the geography and the economy of this kingdom is going to just, it's going to blow everything else out of the water.
He will reign on the throne of David. So literally it's going to be this. The throne of David is this Jewish position for the nation of Israel. So he's going to be a Jewish king and over his kingdom to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now and forever. So he's going to have this eternal reign. The zeal of the Lord of armies will accomplish this, so God's armies are going to accomplish this mission. So if you're Jewish, you're reading that, you're like, wow, there's going to be some king in Israel that's going to have this massive rain, but you're waiting, right? You're waiting. What's that going to look like? What's it going to look like? Look at Isaiah 35, 5 and six. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. You got to go back and kind of read this in context, but Isaiah is just speaking of sometime this is going to happen.
Then the lame will leap like a deer in the tongue of the mute will sing for joy, for the water will gush in the wilderness and streams in the desert. So these prophets would be filled by God's spirit. They're prophesying 650 years before the Messiah. They're talking to a nation that's rebelled against God and is about to get carried off into captivity, and God gives these prophets words about the future as well as truthful words about their time. So would oftentimes their primary ministry would be like they would call the kettle black. This is what God has to say about you today. You think you're righteous, but you're actually violating your neighbor and stealing from the poor, right? That's how the prophets would oftentimes riff. But then they would say stuff like this about some future moment where the lame or leaping like a deer in the tongue of the mute are singing for joy.
All of those things, you're kind of like, it's fuzzy. It's like you can kind of see like, wow, where does that line up with? When's that going to happen? Look over at Jeremiah 23, Jeremiah 23, 5 and six. Look, the days are coming. This is the Lord's Declaration when I will raise up a righteous branch from David. So he's using the picture of a tree, the metaphor of a tree, and there's a branch that is going to come off of or grow out of David's family line in He will reign wisely as king and administer justice and righteousness in the land. In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely. This is the name he will be called. The Lord is our righteousness, man, we don't have time to get into all of this, but you can see it's just, again, there's a king coming. There's somebody that's coming in the future who's going to, he's going to be our righteousness. He's going to bring security. He's going to bring salvation. All these incredible things, this crazy passage. Look at one more Isaiah 59 20, Isaiah 59, 20 says, the redeemer will come to Zion and to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, this is the Lord's declaration.
And then Isaiah 61, 1, and two, the spirit of the Lord God is on me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the freedom of prisoners to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of our god's vengeance to comfort all who mourn. Now, if you're in Isaiah's Day reading what Isaiah writes here, he's writing it in first person, and you're like, is this Isaiah's ministry? Is Isaiah going to do all these things? It doesn't seem to map onto Isaiah's life perfectly. Well, Jesus comes on the scene early in his ministry. Jesus walks into a synagogue, takes a scroll on a Saturday morning on Shabbat. He goes to this passage, he reads it, and then he tells the crowd, this passage has been fulfilled in your hearing today.
And they're like, what? You can't say that? No, because they're already tuned in. This is the Messiah who's going to bring these things about all of this to say that the nation of Israel has been primed and prepared for the one who is to come. And yet you have John the Baptist sitting there struggling with his own circumstance, locked up for a year hearing about what Jesus is doing. Remember, that was kind of the context it's given to us for the question John's hearing about the Messiah, but yet he's questioning, are you the one who is to come? I want to just stop for a second. I want to talk about doubt because this is a moment of doubt in John's life, and we're actually starting a section in Matthew that's going to go up to chapter 13, verse 53, 13 53, and we're going to see the idea of doubt and rejection come up multiple times throughout this section of a couple of chapters.
And the idea of doubt is something that we see repeatedly throughout the old and the New Testament. Look at the story of Abraham and Sarah. God comes to Abraham and says, I'm going to make of you a great nation. And yet they struggle with believing God that God's going to bring this about. There is doubt. Now, what in the end happens with Abraham? Well, one, Abraham and Sarah have a son named Isaac, but not only that, Abraham's nickname is that he's the father of faith. Abraham becomes this paragon of faith for us to emulate. And yet when we go and read it in Genesis chapters 12, 13, 14, all the way up through 24, we see a man who struggles and his wife struggles deeply with doubt, and they make bad decisions along the way. Or take for example Moses. Moses encounters God at a burning bush, and God says, Moses, I want you to go back to Egypt and I want you to set my people free.
And Moses really has some objections to God. He says, God, I am a horrible communicator. You got the wrong guy. Send my brother Aaron to do it right. And he's struggling with his own ability to speak. He doubts God's call. Or if you go to judges chapter six, there's this character named Gideon. And Gideon is, we first see him, he's hiding kind of in a hole on the side of a mountain threshing wheat, which is really hard to do because you need kind of a breeze to thresh wheat to get the chaff to come off. But there's this constant attack that's coming in from the enemies of Israel, and Gideon is hiding there. And God appears to Gideon and says, Gideon, I'm calling you to be the deliverer for Israel. And yet Gideon asks for multiple signs to confirm God's will. He doesn't just take God at his word.
He says, okay, well, let me put a fleece out, and if there's water on the fleece, but the ground is dry, then I will trust you. And God patiently responds to his request. Here's the thing, doubt is a very real piece of our human experience, and it is often the result of pain in our own lives. Doubt isn't so much an apathetic disbelief as much as is an internal questioning and a wrestling. You remember the story of the parable of the seed that falls on the rocky ground and the sun comes out and beats that seed with the bright heat and it kind of withers away. There is this reality in our lives of going through experiences that are painful as if the sun was just beating down on us where it's life's miserable for a moment and doubts crop up. Some people respond to those doubts and go, I can't handle this Christian thing.
I'm out of here. But there is another group of people who realize that doubts are just an organic part of the process that often does lead to spiritual breakthrough. In my own personal experience, my own faith journey, angst and doubts and wrestling oftentimes lead to these incredible like, whoa, I can't believe it. Uncertainty at its core is at the core. Doubt is the feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction about a particular idea, belief, or claim. This uncertainty can stem from a variety of sources such as a lack of evidence, conflicting information, personal experiences that challenge previously held beliefs pair that idea of uncertainty or lack of conviction with curiosity and a dogmatic belief that God is light and that he wants to be our source of wisdom. It will lead us into amazing answers. What I want to do is I want you to feel comfortable with that wrestling.
Don't feel like you're a bad Christian for asking God difficult questions. The problem comes up is when you let doubt lead you to falling away. When you let doubt lead you away from a pursuit of answers. Instead, let your doubt if you go into doubt, in fact, embrace doubt. Look for those challenges of, because I promise you, in your spiritual experience, it will lead to, it will lead to the spiritual breakthroughs. Oftentimes, doubt is associated with pain. And CS Lewis said this, we can rest cont contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, we'll admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon attending to God. Whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.
It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf ear. Our pain can be God's instrument to lead us into the answers God so desperately wants to provide. So let's see the answer that Jesus provides. Jesus' reply, Jesus replied to them, go and report to John what you hear and see the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed. The deaf here, the dead are raised. The poor are told the good news. So if you take and combine Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61, you almost have this list perfectly. I think you have five out of the six things that are listed here. The premise of John's question was not was the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. And Jesus points back and says, well, what's set of the Messiah? What is set of the Messiah? These are the things that are set of the Messiah.
So he says, this is what you need to tell John that you are seeing in our own culture. I was recently having a conversation with somebody that I'm close to, and they're not a follower of Jesus. I would put them in the camp that they're kind of a hostile critic of Christianity at this current point, and yet they want to live in a society where there's fairness, where there's peace, where there's harmony, where there's equality, where there's human dignity. And so we were talking the other day, and he was kind of mocking Christians a bit about how they hope for Jesus to return. Oh, Jesus is going to, oh, Jesus is coming back. And I said to him, I said, it's funny because the Bible describes what it will look like when Jesus comes back a second time. And what we saw the first time was these incredible societal acts where people are healed, people who had systemic, systemic, chronic illnesses.
Those illnesses were reversed. Who doesn't want that? Right? But the funny thing is, Jesus, the person was rejected. So we live in a society that wants the kingdom. They just don't want the king. And so this mourning, this text comes to us as it does John the Baptist, and it says, here's the kingdom. Here's the kingdom. Are you ready to accept that Jesus is the one who was promised to come? He's the one that was anointed by the Father. He was commissioned. It was said of him, you are my beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased. He preached about this kingdom. He did these kingdom works, and now he says, the kingdom is open to you. The kingdom is open to you. And so my invitation to you is to step in with your doubts, to step in with your doubts, and to let the king answer your questions, to heal, to resolve.
I've gone a little bit over time, we're out of time. So the rest of the sermon can't be preached, but we do get to take communion together. So let's pray though. Let's see these elements. Lord, we thank you for being our Messiah. Thank you for being the one who rescues us, who takes away our blindness, who flips the switch on in our souls and says, let there be light. I pray, Lord, for each person here this morning that you would give them life. Give them the kingdom, Lord, as they follow you, give them the kingdom realities as they step and walk in as disciples of you. Lord, as we take communion together, remind us of what you've accomplished on the cross. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.