Green Baggins

Matthew 11:25-30

5/18/2008

Audio Version

One man challenged another to an all-day wood chopping contest. The challenger worked very hard, stopping only for a brief lunch break. The other man had a leisurely lunch and took several breaks during the day. At the end of the day, the challenger was surprised and annoyed to find that the other fellow had chopped substantially more wood than he had. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Every time I checked, you were taking a rest, yet you chopped more wood than I did.” “But you didn’t notice,” said the winning woodsman, “that I was sharpening my ax when I sat down to rest.” In today’s America, everyone is always busy. People are up all day and considerable parts of the night working. And this is in spite of the fact that we have many more machines now that are supposed to make our work easier! We have so many ways to make our work load easier, and yet we don’t seem to get nearly as much work done as our predecessors. Furthermore, we don’t seem to have any time left for fellowship or any kind of social gatherings, because we are so busy. Sometimes it makes me think that people are trying to earn their way to heaven by being busy. They think that they can get to the door of heaven, and God will ask them, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” and they will answer, “Because I’ve been so busy all my life. Just look at all the things I’ve done.” The Pharisees had similar thoughts in Jesus’ day. And Jesus alone has the answer. “Come to me,” says Jesus, “and I will give you rest.” The answer is not work, but rest, rest in Jesus. And only Jesus can give us rest.

Now, this passage seems like a shock, coming as it does immediately after Jesus has just finished pronouncing a scathing judgment on the people of three towns, Korazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. However, the connection is not difficult. The people of those towns thought they were being wise in rejecting Jesus. After all, shouldn’t the Messiah be someone they don’t already know? Wouldn’t He just drop out of heaven into their laps, so to speak? So Jesus starts to pray to the Father, thanking the Father, praising the Father that these things have not been revealed to those people who thought of themselves as wise, but instead have been revealed to people like the disciples. Now, we must be careful here. Jesus is not rejecting intelligence. He is rejecting intellectual pride. You can perhaps put quotation marks around the words “wise and learned.” They were wise and learned in their own eyes, but they could not see that Jesus was the Son of God come in the flesh to give salvation to people on earth. They could not see that. Last week we saw that there was no excuse for the people in those three towns. They should have repented. Here, we learn that the ultimate reason why they did not repent is that the Father had hidden these things from them. The Father did this in order to overturn worldly wisdom and arrogance, and instead exalt His own grace, by revealing these things to children. In other words, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

In verse 27 we have a remarkable statement from Jesus’ own lips about His relationship with His Father. If, in verses 25-26, Jesus has been talking about the people to whom revelation is given, here in verse 27 we learn where that revelation is located: it is in Jesus Himself! Only in Jesus can we see the Father. The relationship that the Son has with the Father is an exclusive relationship. No one knows the Father except the Son, and no one knows the Son except the Father. But they know each other. This is what constitutes “all things.” What the Father knows, the Son knows. Of course, this is referring to Jesus’ divine nature. There are things that the human nature of Jesus does not know. But that is not what Jesus is talking about here. What Jesus is talking about is His own divine nature as it relates to the Father. In other words, Jesus knew that He was divine.

Now, when we come to the last part of the passage, we might wonder how it all hangs together. What does God hiding things from the wise and learned, and all things being committed to the Son have to do with Jesus giving us rest? It has everything to do with it. There is no rest outside of Christ. These things have to be made known to us by Christ Himself. And any trust of anything outside of Christ will not lead to rest, but to a heavy burden. It is important here to notice that Jesus is not saying that there are people outside of Christ who have rest. In essence, we could paraphrase it this way, “All you out there, all you who don’t have me, you all are weary and burdened. Come to me to have rest.” In the context, however, Jesus is particularly targeting those people who have followed the Pharisaical way of thinking. This is proved by verse 29, which mentions a yoke. The Jews always said that people should take upon themselves the yoke of the law. Jesus is telling people that the yoke of the law is too heavy to carry. One must carry it perfectly if one is to have rest. None of us can do that. But Christ took that yoke of the law so that we would not have to carry it. Jesus, in effect, is the law. But the yoke He lays upon us is very different. I am not saying that the law is meaningless to us today. By no means. However, we do not carry the law as a burden. In other words, we do not work to earn our salvation. Instead, we trust that Christ has carried that burden for us. After all, Christ does not advocate the abandonment of the law. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus actually told us that the requirements are now stricter, and that our righteousness has to surpass that of the Pharisees and the scribes! This is what is ironic about what Jesus says. However, the key here is that Jesus helps us to carry the burden. A yoke was put on two beasts of burden, not just one. So when Jesus tells us to take upon ourselves HIS yoke, it means that Jesus is our yoke-fellow, the one who helps us to bear the yoke of righteousness. He helps us by implanting in us the Holy Spirit, so that we can bear that yoke. No longer do we have to carry that yoke of the law in order to obtain salvation. Rather, we can carry the yoke of Christ, who helps us to accomplish the law in our lives as a result of salvation.

The result is rest, rest for our souls. The problem with taking upon ourselves the yoke of the law is that we never know if we have done enough. And then, when we hear that the standard is God’s own perfection, we collapse into despair. This was the despair of Martin Luther before he discovered that the righteousness that was required of us by God is the righteousness that God gives in Jesus Christ, and not a righteousness that we ourselves earn. All we do is lay hold of that righteousness by faith without any kind of works of ours involved. Oh, it is rest to know that Christ has accomplished all for us. He took upon Himself the yoke of the law, the heavy burden of our sin, so that we could have a lighter burden. Our lives may be harder in this life that those lives of the non-believer. However, what we will discover is that our souls are lighter, for we can have the joy of salvation, the joy of knowing Christ. Christ denounced the Pharisees for laying on the people burdens too heavy to carry, and not lifting one finger to help the people carry those burdens. Not so, Christ! He has promised to carry our burdens, and oftentimes He does that by carrying us entirely! One is reminded of the woman who looked over the footprints in the sand of her own life, and saw for most of the way two sets of footprints, hers and Christ’s. However, there were times when she saw only one set of footprints. She accused God of abandoning her. Jesus said that He had never abandoned her. Then she asked why there were sometimes only one set of footprints. Jesus answered that it was not because He had abandoned her, but because He was carrying her. God will never give us a heavier load than we can bear. Any burden that we bear is certainly infinitely lighter than the burden that Jesus Himself carried for us. And these two things can be of great comfort to us when we undergo trials: Jesus carried more than we ever will, and Jesus is helping us to carry ours even now. He is yoked to us. What a merciful, faithful High Priest we have! Jesus is not aloof from us, but knows us. He knows our burdens, and helps us carry them.

So, we should all come to Jesus. Any other burden is simply too heavy for us. We certainly do not want the burden of judgment on us for ignoring Christ. We do not want the burden of hell. We do not want the burden of trying to earn our way to heaven, nor do we want the burden of being too busy. We need the light and easy burden that Jesus offers. Come to Jesus, and He will give you rest.

Matthew 11:20-24

5/11/2008

Audio Version

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. A Jesus who doesn’t judge anyone. God doesn’t judge me. Therefore, if I do the best with what I have, God will overlook my mistakes. God would never wend anyone to hell. Do any of these ideas sound familiar? People constantly repeat them. In fact, so keen are people on repeating these thoughts that you would think their life depended on how often they say them. Sometimes, however, you can detect some insecurity behind these brave but naive ideas. The reason they say them so often, is that it is their faith, and they need to say it often to take comfort in how often they say it. The more they say it, the more it must be true, they think. However, this passage strips away all such masks, and shows us the judgment of God in all its starkness. The fact of the matter is that no one speaks more of hell and condemnation than Jesus does. He also talks a great deal about grace and mercy, and so both sides are important. However, we hate to feel uncomfortable, and so we’d rather skip over passages like this one. Or, if we read it, we think that there is no way that these passages can apply to us. Or, we try to make Jesus speak a more meek and mild tone of voice. There is no softening of these words. We can still hear the Gospel in this passage. But the Gospel is presented as a freedom from judgment. Let us pay close attention to this judgment, in order that we may know the severity of that judgment from which we are freed. The judgment comes hardest on those who are indifferent to Jesus, or who ignore Him. That may surprise us to learn. We may think that the worst punishments are reserved for those who persecute Christians. However, if those who persecute Christians have never heard the Gospel, then they will not be punished nearly as severely as those who have heard the Gospel, and yet ignore it. Let’s see how this is so.

Jesus mentions three cities, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. These three towns were all on the northwestern part of the Sea of Galilee, fairly close to that Sea. It is where Jesus grew up. And it is the area where Jesus did the majority of His miracles. Probably all of the miracles that we looked at in chapters 8 and 9 took place in one of these three towns. These three towns are compared unfavorably to Tyre, Sidon, Sodom and Gomorrah. Now, Tyre and Sidon were Phoenician cities on the coast of the Mediterranean, northwest of Judah. They were arrogant cities, denounced by the Old Testament prophets for being in league with Egypt. However, Tyre and Sidon had never heard about Jesus during Jesus’ earthly ministry. They did not have the light of the Gospel. Chorazin and Bethsaida, however, did have the light of the Gospel. Notice here that Jesus knows not only what happened, but would have happened, had the conditions been different. Notice also that the miracles of Jesus are part of God’s revelation. They leave people without excuse. People who saw Jesus’ miracles are certainly supposed to believe in Jesus. However, unless the Holy Spirit acts in that person’s heart, then not even a miracle will make someone believe. We can see that principle at work in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man wanted to go back and tell his brothers about hell and the judgment, so that they would not go there, and Abraham told him that the brothers have Moses and the prophets. The rich says that if someone comes back from the dead, then they will believe. Abraham says that if they don’t believe Moses, then they will not believe a miracle. So, the hearts of the inhabitants of Chorazin and Bethsaida were hard as flint rock. Nothing would persuade them to believe in Jesus. Of course, not all the inhabitants of those three towns were condemned. Some of the apostles were from Bethsaida, after all. However, there were so many inhabitants of those towns who simply would not believe, despite all the evidence set before their very own eyes. Oftentimes, we will hear people today say that they only believe what their eyes and ears tell them. But this judgment that Jesus pronounces proves that that really isn’t true. People will not always believe their eyes and ears. Only the Holy Spirit can make someone to be born again.

So we learn here that there are degrees of punishment in hell. Those who have never heard about Jesus will receive a much lighter sentence of condemnation than those who have heard about Jesus. And yet, we learn also that even those who have not heard about Jesus will still go to hell. The reason for that is that there is still no excuse for sin. This is the answer to people who will say to us, “What about all those people in Africa who haven’t heard the Gospel? Isn’t God unjust to send those people to hell?” Well, no He isn’t. None of us deserve to be saved. The question assumes that people deserve to be saved. But no one deserves that. It is only by God’s grace that anyone at all is saved. We must recognize that fact if we ourselves are to escape God’s wrath. We must recognize that all alike are under God’s wrath. We all deserve God’s judgment. And if God were to send everyone to hell, it would only be justice. That is the human condition. And as long as we deny that, we cannot know the depth of God’s love for us, either.

Look again at Capernaum. Capernaum’s judgment will be worse that Sodom! Sodom was infamous for being a den of iniquity. That city was the example of iniquity in the Old Testament. Whenever God wanted to get the attention of His people when they were going astray, He would call them Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet, people who do not respond to the call of Jesus are more wicked than Sodom. This is really an amazing statement from Jesus. Think about America for a moment. Certainly there are cities that come to mind when we think of Sodom and Gomorrah. However, the primary problem with Americans today is that they are indifferent to the claims of Jesus. They think that Jesus is irrelevant. They think that Jesus is unimportant. They think that He is so old-fashioned. Certainly, they think that judgment does not exist. After all, “judge not, lest you too be judged.” How then can anyone dare to judge anyone else’s behavior as right or wrong? Well, it was the same Jesus who said “Judge not lest you be judged” who also said “By their fruit you shall know them,” and He also pronounced woe’s of judgment on the people who rejected His message. This indifference of Americans exists despite everything God has done for America. God set her on Christian principles. We are the only nation in the history of the world to have Christian principles and a Christian foundation there at the beginning. Therefore, we have much less excuse than any other nation, if we ignore the claims of Jesus. America should tremble!

However, it is not just non-believers that need to hear this message. We as believers are often indifferent to the claims of Jesus on our lives. We think that because Jesus has saved us that therefore we can live however we want. We think that we can ignore what the Bible says. We think that it doesn’t really matter what Jesus says. It never applies to me. We hear a sermon and are constantly ticking off in our heads a long list of OTHER people for whom this sermon would apply, and fail to realize that it is we ourselves who need to be zapped. Well, what about you? Are you without sin? Are you fully mature, never needing to hear the Gospel of grace?

But the burning question, the ultimate question, this passage raises is this: is there any escape from this fiery judgment? Who will save us? I can no better than to give you this illustration from H.A. Ironsides: pioneers had been making their way across one of the central states of the US to a distant place that had been opened up for homesteading. They traveled in covered wagons drawn by oxen, and progress was necessarily slow. One day they were horrified to see a long line of smoke in the west, stretching for miles across the prairie, and soon it was evident that the dried grass was burning fiercely and coming toward them rapidly. They had crossed a river the day before but it would be impossible to go back to that river before the flames would be upon them. One man only seemed to have understanding as to what could be done. He gave the command to set fire to the grass behind them. Then when a space was burned over, the whole company moved back upon it. As the flames roared on toward them from the west, a little girl cried out in terror, “Are you sure we shall not all be burned up?” The leader replied, “My child, the flames cannot reach us here, for we are standing where the fire has been!” Do you know that Jesus is burned ground? He has tasted the fires of hell’s hottest judgment upon Himself. He was scorched for our transgressions. He came behind us and allowed Himself to be burned, so that we could stand on Jesus Christ and escape the fires of judgment that were inevitably coming our way. Is that the ground upon which you stand? It is untouchable by the fires of judgment. Fire cannot burn on already scorched ground, since there is no fuel for the fire. Now can you see not only the fiery judgment coming, but also the way of escape? Do not be indifferent to Jesus.

Matthew 11:16-19

5/4/2008

No Audio Available

I’m sure you know people like this. They never smile at parties. They never cry at funerals. They are never impressed with something incredible. Instead, they wear a stone face all the time, as if to say, “Don’t you have anything better than that?” They will not be shown to love any part of life. Because if they did show something any emotion in life, it might be an indication that they might be, you know, human or something. I know and have met an enormous number of teenagers who are like this. They are bored with life, and they aren’t even 20 years old yet! They are a little bit like the Jews of Jesus’ day.

Now, Jesus is coming to the end of His talk on John the Baptist. We have seen that John the Baptist is a prophet of the coming Kingdom. That is stupendous. He is the Elijah whom people were expecting! People should have been excited about this, and should have started confessing their sins, and repenting of their sins, because the Kingdom of heaven was at hand! And yet, that was not the reaction of the people to John. However, it was not just John they rejected. It was also Jesus Christ Himself! Jesus tells us a very pointed parable to illustrate just what He means. Let’s follow the details closely.

First of all, Jesus wants to make a comparison. So, He compares the present generation of Jews to children sitting in the marketplace. However, there is a difficulty here. Is Jesus saying that it is the Jews themselves who are calling out to the other children? Or is it Jesus and John who are calling out to the other children? I believe that the children who are calling out in verse 17 are meant to represent John and Jesus. Jesus tells us a little allegory. The main point of this allegory is that it doesn’t matter how the Gospel is presented. It can be forcefully presenting judgment, a “fire and brimstone” sermon. Or, it can be a gentle, winsome sermon. If people do not want to hear it, they will not hear it.

So, Jesus is the one who played the flute, trying to get the Jews to dance. Flute-playing here means playing at wedding. On the level of the story, then, the children are playing a make-believe wedding. Yet the other children won’t play along. They don’t want to play wedding. So, the first children say, “You don’t want to play wedding? Okay, how about playing a funeral?” The other children won’t play that either. We are to understand that everything in between is also included. The first children tried everything to get the other children to play along, but the other children would not.

Jesus explains the meaning of the story. John came as an austere man, who did not go to parties. He was a Nazarene. He lived a life very similar to a monk’s life. His message was a dirge, a funeral song. He preached judgment on the people. But the people didn’t like that message. “It’s too depressing! Play something else!” they said.

However, when Jesus came along, He went to parties. You will remember that the first party He went to was the wedding at Cana, where He turned the water into wine. Jesus was no monk. In fact, He went to enough parties that He got accused of being a glutton and a drunkard! Furthermore, He obviously kept the wrong company, in contrast to John the Baptist, who hardly had any company. Here is the point: John and Jesus preached the same thing! They both preached the kingdom of God. So, Jesus is here saying that the form of how it was preached makes no difference if the substance of the preaching is the same. This is extremely important for us to remember as we listen to sermons. We should not let ourselves become distracted by the manner of presentation. There are good preachers and not so good preachers. But many of them are faithful to preach the Gospel, and that is the important thing. We should listen for the Gospel. If we don’t hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified, risen and ascended into heaven, then we should stop listening. However, if we do hear that Gospel, then we should be all ears in order to hear what God has to say to us. This is the main point of application for us. Listen for the Gospel, and do not be distracted by the form in which it comes to us.

There are several other very interesting applications to draw from this passage as well. For instance, (as a second application) the fact that gluttony is mentioned in the same breath as drunkenness ought to be very suggestive to us. It is not difficult for us to see that drunkenness is a sin. It is to be enslaved to alcohol. However, it is just as easy to be enslaved to food. Now, not every person who is overweight is a glutton. We need to remember that. However, gluttony is a sin. And it is a sin no less enslaving than drunkenness.

Thirdly, notice that alcohol itself is not evil. Jesus would not have been accused of being a drunkard if He drank no alcohol at all. Indeed, Jesus turned the water into wine at Cana. And that was His very first miracle! The Bible is clear on this issue: alcohol in and of itself is not evil, and it is not a sin to partake of alcohol. The Bible is equally clear, however, that drunkenness is a sin. We need to be very careful not to be judgmental about this issue. Unfortunately, many Christians rush to judgment. On the one hand, many will say that if someone else drinks at all, then they cannot even be a Christian at all. Such people judge Jesus Christ Himself not to be a Christian. If you think that it is a sin to drink alcohol at all, then you are saying that Jesus Himself sinned in this very way. There is no getting around the text of Scripture. Jesus did drink on occasion. Jesus never got drunk. And that is the proper balance, if one is going to drink. It is perfectly okay if someone does not drink, however. There are many very good reasons for someone not to drink, the most important being if they have a problem with alcoholism. If a person cannot restrain themselves to moderation, then they shouldn’t drink at all. However, it is also possible to judge people wrongfully from the other direction. People who think it is okay to drink alcohol often pass judgment on teetotallers, saying something like this, “Well, they are impinging on my Christian freedom. How dare they! And how dare they think I am not a Christian just because I drink every now and then!” Read Romans 14:1-4, 9-15 on the weaker and stronger brothers.

A fourth application has to do with evangelism. It is often thought that we should not keep bad company. We are told that bad company corrupts good morals. This is true to a certain extent. However, this is not always what Jesus did. Yes, He had His twelve disciples. That is where He spent a great deal of His time. But when it came to evangelism, Jesus went where the people gathered. He ate with tax collectors and sinners. He was a friend of sinners. Isn’t this ironic? For the Jews reproached Him for doing the very thing that is so wonderful for us! He was our Friend. He is the only such true Friend, who will take upon Himself our sin and guilt. What a Friend! I wonder what would happen today, though, if a minister you knew walked into a bar in order to evangelize. What would you think? Would you be scandalized? Would that cause you problems? You see, there is a difference between engaging in sinful activity at a party, wherever that party happens to be, versus going to a party in order to evangelize. Of course, any principle can be stretched too far. It is not appropriate to go to a place where you know that great sin is going to take place, because you are going to “evangelize,” when what you really want is to join in with the others in their sinful practices. A rule of thumb here is if you are tempted to the kind of sin you know is going to happen at such a party, it is best not to go there, lest you be tempted as well. However, in our churches, I suspect that this is not our difficulty. Our difficulty is that we will not go where the people are at all. We will not go and evangelize. And that is often just an excuse on our part. We use the fact that there might be sinful people there as an excuse not to go share the Gospel. In other words, we are too good for Jesus. We are not willing to do as Jesus did. I can hear someone saying, “Yes, but Jesus was perfect, and did not have to worry about sin. I am not perfect, and therefore I shouldn’t go where the people are, because I might sin.” By that argument, no evangelism would ever get done. We are always tempted to sin everywhere we go, not just parties. The question is whether we will love the people enough to go. Jesus thinks we should.

Lastly, Jesus tells us that Wisdom is proved right by her actions. In other words, even if John and Jesus don’t have very many visible signs of success in their ministry, they still did the right thing. It is easy to get discouraged when we don’t see results. But who knows what that seed will do when once planted. Do we not plant in hope and faith the physical seed we put in the ground? Then let us plant with hope and faith the spiritual seed that we plant in people’s hearts. This is the proper reaction to what Jesus has preached about the Kingdom of God.

Matthew 11:13-15

4/27/2008

Audio Version

Here are Edgar Fiedler’s Forecasting Rules. (1) It is very difficult to forecast, especially about the future. (2) He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass. (3) The moment you forecast, you know you’re going to be wrong — you just don’t know when and in which direction. (4) If you’re ever right, never let them forget it. This is true of all human attempts at telling the future. We just do not know what is going to happen, and even if we think we do, we are just as often wrong as right. Even if forecasting the weather, the weatherman is just as often wrong as right. In fact, if you predicted that tomorrow was going to be just like today, you would have just as good a chance of being right as the weatherman. However, there were right all the time. Their prophecies never failed. They were the biblical prophets. The reason they never failed was that they were inspired by God. God does know the future. That is why Isaiah was able to tell us about Cyrus hundreds of years before Cyrus was even born. However, the most important prophecies of the Old Testament had to do with Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the One who would take away the sin of His people. That is Whom this passage is really about. The passage looks like it is telling us about John. However, as we have seen in the previous passages, the only reason that John is important is that he is the one who points his finger and says, “There is the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

Last week we saw that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence. It makes perfect sense, then, to go to talk about prophets, since the prophets were persecuted just like the Kingdom of God is persecuted. And John, of course, was the perfect example of this persecution, since he was sitting in prison as Jesus spoke these words.

Jesus says that all the prophets and the law prophesied. Now, isn’t that interesting? Normally, we think of prophets when we use the term “prophesying.” What sense does it make to say that the Law prophesied? Well, the law tells us about Jesus as well. In John, chapter 5, Jesus Himself tells us that Moses wrote about Jesus. So, the entire Bible is about Jesus. That is what Jesus means when He says that the Law and the Prophets prophesied. They were all about Jesus. Of course, the Word had a significant meaning for the people at the time they were written. The significance of the Old Testament is not limited to Christ. But Jesus Christ is still the main subject of the Old Testament. Every passage does show us Jesus Christ in one way or another.

However, these Old Testament prophets came to an end with John the Baptist. John was the last of them. And he came after a long time when there was no prophecy. There was four hundred years between Malachi and John the Baptist. Interestingly, that prophecy Malachi ends with these words: “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” Elijah was prophesied in the very last part of the Old Testament. The New Testament opens with John the Baptist paving the way for the Messenger of the Covenant, Jesus Christ.

Why does Malachi talk about Elijah? Was Elijah himself going to come back down from heaven? Remember that Elijah is one of two people who never died. He was taken up to heaven. So the Jews thought he would come back from heaven, when he was needed. Of course, John the Baptist is not literally Elijah, as he himself tells us in the Gospel of John, when the Jews were asking him who he was. John said that he was not Elijah (John 1). However, Jesus is telling us here that John the Baptist is Elijah in another sense.

You see, Elijah in the Old Testament could in one very important sense be called the forerunner of Elisha. Elisha had a double portion of the spirit of Elijah. Elijah did twice as many miracles as Elijah did. Elisha was therefore a greater prophet than Elijah. So also is Jesus greater than John the Baptist. Everything that John did was to make himself lower compared to Jesus. He said that he was not even worthy of untying the sandal from the feet of Jesus. Jesus is, then, the one to whom Elisha points. Elijah was seen in the prophecy of Malachi to be that forerunner of the one that everyone wanted to come, the Messenger of the Covenant, as Malachi says in chapter 3.

This is what Jesus wants us to hear, and it is important enough for Jesus to add this comment: “He who has ears, let him hear.” What does Jesus mean there? He means that if you are really listening to your Old Testament, and these references to Malachi and the books of Kings, which tell us of Elijah and Elisha, you will recognize that the Kingdom of God has come in the person and work of Jesus Christ. You will recognize that John the Baptist was the forerunner promised by Malachi, and you will also recognize that Jesus is the Messenger of the Covenant. This verse about having ears and hearing is always used by Jesus when something especially important is being said that is difficult to understand. Not everyone can hear. This is a common theme in the prophets of the OT. The prophets often castigated the people for not hearing properly what the Lord said. It reminds me of the placard you can buy that says, “What part of ‘Thou Shalt Not’ didn’t you understand?” But people’s hearts are hard. They cannot hear and understand and believe. Why is that? It is because people are stubbornly trying to suppress the truth in unrighteousness, as the apostle Paul would tell us. People’s hearts are hard. They cannot hear. The only way they can hear is if God opens their ears and hearts to understand. In other words, hearing, understanding, and believing what Jesus has to say here is really nothing less than the Gospel itself. After all, if you hear what Jesus is saying here, then you understand what Jesus came to do. You will understand that Jesus is the one True and Great Prophet, in whom is all wisdom and knowledge. You will know that God has definitively spoken to us in His Son, Jesus, as Hebrews 1 tells us. You will know that what Jesus has told us is that we must believe that He is our Elisha, come to raise the dead to life, come to raise us from our spiritual death to spiritual life.

How does this help us? Well, the Gospel is laid out for us, and so we must believe what Scripture tells us about itself. This is an aspect of Scripture’s authority. It tells us what we are to believe about itself. This is what is called the self-attesting nature of Scripture. Scripture attests that the prophecies of the Old Testament find their yes and amen in Christ. They all came true, and not a single one fell to the ground unfulfilled. This is because God is faithful, and knows the future. That is a wonderful thing about God to remember. Not only does He know the future, but has planned it as well. That is something no one on earth can do, or has ever done. Which would you rather trust? The spiritual equivalent of weathermen, true one day, but horribly wrong the next? Or would you rather trust the God of the universe, who does what He says He will do?

Secondly, this understanding of what Jesus said helps us to understand out Bibles better. Surely it is obvious that this Scripture helps us to understand what in the world Malachi was talking about when he uses the term “Messenger of the Covenant.” It also helps us to understand what Malachi was talking about when he said that Elijah would come. It helps us understand what Kings is really talking about when it gives us the life stories of Elijah and Elisha.

Thirdly, it helps us to understand that we must strive to listen in order to understand. It is one thing to hear a sound or a word or a sentence. It is quite another actually to hear and understand. Sometimes we call this the difference between hearing and listening. When Jesus says “let him hear,” Jesus means that we must be listening and hearing in order to understand. The meaning of what Jesus says is not always obvious. My wife has frequently told me that much of what Jesus says is puzzling to her. I heartily agree with her. Jesus is not always the easiest prophet to understand. But taking the time to hear, listen, and understand is important if we are going to be good Christians. Jesus commands us to hear. It is not a suggestion. We must not be like small children, who must be admonished because they are not listening. Instead, we must place our undivided attention upon hearing, listening, and understanding Christ.

Matthew 11:12

4/20/2008

Audio Version

Polycarp of Smyrna was one of the very earliest Church Fathers. He was a bishop of Smyrna, which is in Asia Minor, now called Turkey. He was a disciple of the Apostle John. So he was only one generation younger than the apostles. Polycarp lived into his 80’s. However, at the very end of his life, he was taken by the Romans. They asked him not only to bow down to the emperor, but also to renounce Jesus. Polycarp said that he had served His Lord for 86 years, and His Lord had never done him any harm. Why would he renounce his Lord now? So, at the age of 86, he was martyred for his faith.

Violence against the kingdom of God has been part of human history since the very beginning. As Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote, in his book the City of God, all of humanity is divided into two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. This conflict started with Satan tempting Eve. The conflict was given verbal form when the Lord said that He would put enmity (or strife) between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Cain, the seed of the serpent, killed Abel, the seed of the woman. The conflict continued in Egypt when the kingdom of man started killing the little boys of the kingdom of God. Then, when the Israelites went to the land that was promised to them, they had to fight with the people of the land. The wickedness of the people of the land had risen to such a height that the Lord judged them by having the kingdom of God fight against the kingdom of man, and wipe out the inhabitants of the land.

The problem, of course, is that even within the people of Israel, there were always members of the kingdom of man. That is why the people of Israel persecuted all the prophets who came to tell them that they were misbehaving. So, even within the so-called people of God, there have been members of the kingdom of man. The relationship of the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God has always been an adversarial relationship. They are adversaries. But that relationship came to head, a climax, when Jesus Christ was born. When Christ was born, John the Baptist was also alive, a few months older than Jesus. John was a forerunner. We have seen that in the last couple of weeks. He was one who came before Jesus in order to pave the way for Jesus. But that way is not an easy way, as we will see from this verse.

This verse is probably the most difficult verse in all of Matthew to understand. There are several ways it could be translated. One is the NIV, which reads, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” This translation implies that it is the kingdom of God that is exercising force. However, other translations say it this way: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” This translation means that kingdom of heaven has been suffering violence, rather than forcefully advancing. I believe that the second translation is more accurate. In other words, people have been attacking the kingdom of heaven ever since John the Baptist started his ministry. The reasons why I believe this are several: firstly, Jesus is talking about John the Baptist, who is currently in prison, having been persecuted for speaking the truth. Jesus knows that John is just about to pay the final price for his devotion to God. Secondly, Jesus hasn’t really been talking about the kingdom of God expanding. He has been talking about how great the kingdom of God is. But not really about how the kingdom is expanding. Thirdly, the last part of the verse makes much better sense as explaining the first half of the verse. And the last part of the verse is plainly saying that the violent are trying to take the kingdom of God by force. So, Jesus is saying here that the battle between the two kingdoms has escalated since John began his ministry.

Of course, Jesus does not mean that the OT battle is meaningless. But the battle has escalated since John the Baptist started his ministry. The reason, of course, is that Satan did not want Jesus to enter into the kingdom. That’s why Satan tempted Jesus three times. Satan knew that if he could only get Jesus to disobey God just once, then Jesus would not have been able to bring the kingdom in its fullness, because that kingdom was to be a kingdom of righteousness, perfect righteousness.

So what does this phrase mean, “violent men take it by force?” It refers to the fact that the kingdom of men is always trying to reduce the number of people that belong to the kingdom of God. Any way they can do that, they will. Satan has many ways of luring people, but there are two broad categories that encompass all of his ways. The first category is that of temptation. This is the soft way. If he can get people to sin, and keep them buried in sin, then that is more people for his kingdom. The other way is persecution. This is the hard way. If he can scare people enough, then they will not want to be part of a kingdom where the going is so rough. People often want to have a comfortable life. In fact, they will often make that an idol in their lives. They want comfort so much that they are willing to sacrifice anything and everything else to get it. This is a major problem today in a culture that is comfort-crazed. We are too comfortable. Was John the Baptist praised for being comfortable? No, he lived very simply in order to have his message be clear, and so that his message would not be compromised. We need to be wary of making an idol out of comfort. There is nothing inherently wrong with comfort. However, we must never let comfort get in the way of sharing the truth. And by comfort, I am including both physical and emotional comfort. After all, it is much more comfortable simply to stay at home, never bothering anyone else, and never letting anyone else bother us. Live and let live, we like to say. The difficulty with thinking that way is that we will fail to be prophetic voices in our culture today. We will fail to speak out against injustice and oppression. Furthermore, and more seriously, we will fail to share the Gospel with people. I think comfort often gets in our way. We need to pray to the Lord that He would remove this idol from our lives, so that we would be willing to take risks in order to love people and share the words of life.

So, we need both to resist temptation, and stand firm in the time of persecution. Persecution is coming, you know. There are many groups of people out there who would like nothing better than to beat up on Christians. Certainly this is true in government. However, it is rapidly becoming true in the private sector as well. Even here in North Dakota, there are people who cannot stand “those religious people.” The would just as soon shut up those religious people so that there could be no more evangelism. Persecution is coming. Will we stand fast, holding to our confession? People have now been martyred for the Christian faith even in America. Think of Columbine High School. If someone were to come up to you with a gun and ask if you were a Christian, and he told you that if you are a Christian, he will kill you, what would you say? I have often asked myself this question. What I always have to do is to pray to the Lord that the Lord would keep me steadfast, and that He would strengthen me to seal my testimony with my own blood. You never know when something might come to that, as unlikely as it looks sitting here in a country that still has religious freedom. Those freedoms are eroding as surely as North Dakota wind erodes the land.

Furthermore, we need to be in prayer for the persecuted church. How often do we remember those Christians around the world who are being persecuted? And do we pray that the persecution would end? That is not necessarily what they need, even though that is usually the first thing that comes to our minds. A Chinese Christian once told fellow Christians in the US to stop praying that the persecution would cease, and instead pray that the persecuted Christians would stand fast, and hold on to their confession. Persecution is one of the best things that can happen to a church, because it purifies the church. Hypocrites will not stand up in the time of persecution. They will fall away, leaving those who truly are Christians. In fact, church discipline is hardly even needed in churches that are being persecuted. They love each other with an undying love, and help each other as much as they possibly can. As the early church father Tertullian put it, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” This is the main reason why God allows persecution of the church. Some estimates say that China will be 40% Christian in under 20 years, if the present rate is any indication. The Gospel is exploding over there, precisely because of the persecution that is happening. The same thing is happening in the Middle East. So, although violent men seek to take the kingdom by force, we know that the very gates of hell itself wil not prevail against the church.
 

Matthew 11:7-11

4/13/2008

Audio Version

In music, one of the most exciting things a composer can do is to have a long drawn-out crescendo. A crescendo is what happens when you get gradually louder and louder until finally you reach a mountain peak of sound that stuns everyone with its beauty and power. That’s a little bit like what Jesus does here in our passage. The crescendo hits a high note when Jesus tells us about the greatness of the kingdom of God. We might think that Jesus is really talking about John the Baptist. However, as I hope to show, Jesus merely uses the subject of John to prove how great the kingdom of God is.

It is important to set the context. John had sent his disciples to Jesus in order to ask the question that had been nagging in John’s mind as he sat languishing in Herod’s prison. Jesus had told John that the new age of the kingdom had begun. It had arrived. Judgment had not come yet, but grace had. Jesus ended that answer to John with a gentle encouragement to John, pronouncing a blessing on the one who did not turn away from Jesus because of the unexpected character of Jesus’ ministry. That is the setting.

Now, the people might have begun to think that Jesus just blasted John the Baptist. That is why Jesus now addresses the crowd to talk about the kingdom, and simultaneously tell them how great John was.

The first question has to with reeds. Did the people really go out to see a reed shaken in the wind? The question implies a negative answer: of course they did not go out to see a reed shaken by the wind. Now, there is a lot here for us to see. First of all, reeds were extremely ordinary plants. The people therefore did not go out to see something ordinary. They went out to see someone who was weird. Secondly, reeds were not the most stable plant on the face of the earth. A shaking reed is therefore symbolic of a man whose opinion shifts around all the time. It reminds me of politicians. They hold up their wet finger to see which way the wind is blowing, or where the people are headed, and then get in front of the crowd and call themselves “leaders.” Obviously, John was anything but a shaking reed. Thirdly, there was a man especially known for reeds. Herod Antipas! That’s right, the very Herod who currently has John the Baptist imprisoned in his fortress/palace. This is the same Herod who will feature prominently in the passion of the Christ. It is not the same Herod who killed all the children in Bethlehem. Well, this Herod Antipas smelted some coins for money. Guess what he put on those coins? Reeds! Not exactly the symbol I would have put on there. So, what Jesus is really doing here is setting up a contrast between John the Baptist and Herod Antipas. This becomes clearer in the next verse.

The second question regards soft clothing. Again, the answer to the rhetorical question is “No, of course you didn’t come out to see someone in soft clothes.” And again, Herod Antipas is clearly the one in the palace with soft clothing. Soft clothing is another sort of jab at Antipas, since the implication is that Antipas is a real wimp. Soft clothing is only what wimps wear. Again, contrast Herod’s soft clothing with John the Baptist’s rough and tough clothing. John’s garment was made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. There is some fairly intense irony here, since John was actually in the house of the king. In fact, they both were! However, John was the prisoner, though he was a real man, and Herod Antipas was living it up in luxury in the palace. But John is the greater of the two men.

The third question is different, because the answer is given for us, and it is yes. John is a prophet. Prophets did two things in ancient Israel: they foretold the future, and they spoke the word of the Lord. Of course, those two things were often the same thing. Certainly the prophet told the Word of the Lord. Everything they said was the Word of the Lord. But not everything they said was a prophecy about the future. In fact, sometimes it was a prophecy that was conditional. If Israel did not repent, or if a person did not repent, then such and such would happen.

However, John the Baptist was more than a prophet. Not only did he proclaim the Word of the Lord. He was also the Elijah who was to come. He was the forerunner of Jesus Christ. The text that Jesus quotes is from Malachi, chapter 3, where the messenger is sent by the Lord in order to prepare the way for the Lord who is coming to His temple. By the way, this is a clear indication that Jesus is the Lord Who was promised. For Jesus is the one to Whom John pointed and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” John had the very great honor of being the person who would point out to people the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ. Indeed, no greater honor before the coming of the Kingdom could be imagined. That is why Jesus says that among those born of women, none is greater than John the Baptist.

And then comes the climax of the great crescendo. Jesus tells us that the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist! Now, let us be clear. Jesus is NOT saying that John the Baptist was not part of the people of God. In fact, Jesus is not talking so much about people, as He is talking about a change, a shift in era. We saw that clearly last week, when Jesus quoted from Isaiah, indicating that the new age had indeed begun with Christ’s Person and Work. Now, we see that the Kingdom of God has come in its fullness. And what a privilege it is to be a part of that Kingdom!

The privileges are great. For one thing, we can now see what was shadowy and unclear in the Old Testament. If all we had was the Old Testament, we would not necessarily have said, “Oh, yes, it points to Jesus Christ, who will bring grace, and put off judgment of humans until the Final Day.” There were many who believed in God’s plan, and believed in God, such that their faith was truly in Jesus Christ even before Christ came. Let me repeat: Jesus is not saying that the Old Testament saints are worse off, in terms of salvation. What Jesus is saying is that since Christ has come, we have greater clarity, more light, more of God’s revelation. It is not as if God was unclear. The problem is that we don’t understand what God is saying. So if God tells us more, then we will understand better. This change happened when Jesus Christ Himself, who is the true Word, came into the world, and fulfilled the plan that the Father had made from before the foundations of the earth.

So, do you belong to this Kingdom? There is no more important question that you can ask yourself than that. Belonging to the Kingdom means that you are a subject of the King. He is your Lord, and not just your Savior. In other words, you cannot simply believe in Jesus as someone who died on the cross for your sins, and then leave everything at that. Unfortunately, that is precisely what a lot of people do nowadays. They think that after they convert to Christianity, there is nothing more to it. What we are saying here is that when a person becomes a believer in Jesus, he is transferred from the Satanic kingdom of darkness into the glorious light of the Kingdom of God. A change in citizenship occurs. This new Kingdom has different laws, different codes of conduct than the Satanic kingdom. We need to learn what those rules are, and follow them out of gratitude for what God has done in transferring our citizenship.

A second application comes by way of seeing Jesus’ priorities. What impressed Jesus? It wasn’t likability, and it wasn’t wealth and social standing. If Jesus wasn’t impressed by those things, then neither should we be. Now, we are still to respect authority. However, we should not play favorites with people who are more likely to get us somewhere socially. Jesus was impressed with John the Baptist. John dressed horribly, lived in the desert, was always offending someone. He had no tact whatsoever, and yet Jesus called him the greatest man born of woman before the coming of the Kingdom. John the Baptist was greater than Solomon, greater than David, greater than Abraham, greater than Noah, greater even than Adam! So, again I ask: what impresses you? What should impress us in life is holiness of character in someone else. It should be their faithfulness to what God has called them to be.

A third application follows from the second one. For what ought we to strive? Should we strive to be liked by people? Should we wave our reeds in the air, and see what comes? Or should we seek to have a good standard of living? Is that our ultimate goal? Or is our ultimate goal to be faithful to what God has called us to be? Our priorities need to be those priorities of the Kingdom of God, not Satan’s kingdom, or an imaginary kingdom of our own construction. For only Christ’s Kingdom is truly great. And that is because God values it so. So let us make our priorities line up with God’s priorities.

Matthew 11:1-6

4/6/2008

Audio Version

 A Christian was witnessing to a Jewish rabbi in New York City. The Christian was telling the Jewish rabbi that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, the one that the Jews were expecting. The Jewish rabbi shook his head, went to the window, looked out, and pointed to the city, and said, “No, when the Messiah comes there will be justice.” I have a hunch that many of us occasionally look out at the world and wonder if Jesus really came and did what He did. What difference has it really made? Where is justice against wickedness? These are key questions that our text answers for us very clearly, if we have the eyes to see.

Chapter 11 marks a break from Jesus’ second sermon in chapter 10. This chapter was full of commands that Jesus gave to His disciples. When He had finished commanding them, He went on about His business in the rest of the countryside teaching and preaching. But this raises a significant problem for Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist.

You might remember that John the Baptist had prophesied that Jesus was the lamb who takes away the sin of the world. That is in the beginning of John’s Gospel. John’s message was very clear: repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The baptism by fire and Spirit of which John spoke was a reference to judgment. John the Baptist was a preacher of judgment as all the great OT prophets were. In fact, that is what finally got him into trouble (again, like all the great OT prophets!). John preached to Herod that Herod could not have his sister as his wife. Herod threw him into prison as a result. However, John could still hear news about Jesus. John would have been put in the prison at Machaerus, which was connected to the rest of the country by a very well-constructed access road. So, John was hearing about all the things that Jesus was doing and saying. After all, John still had his faithful disciples. They were telling John what Jesus was doing (I’m sure at John’s request). The problem that I mentioned, however, was that Jesus’ words and actions were not measuring up to what John was expecting. John is a lot like us in this regard. We expect God to do and to be certain things, and then when God doesn’t do those things, we doubt whether God is really God.

In any case, although John still believed that Jesus was the lamb of God, he was getting impatient. After all, John was a man of the desert, and here he was, cooped up in this prison. Wasn’t justice supposed to happen? What about the tyrants who had put John in prison? What about freeing John from prison? Why wasn’t Jesus doing these things?

So, John does what we all should do when we have doubts about our Lord. He asked Jesus about them. John sent his disciples with an important question.

Now, there are different interpretations of why John asked this question. There are those who think that John didn’t have any doubts about Jesus at all, and that he is only asking for the sake of his disciples. Some important names have held to this opinion, including John Calvin. However, Jesus tells the disciples to tell John what the answer is. Furthermore, it is still John who is said to ask the question. It is quite natural for human beings to doubt. Remember that Jesus said that John the Baptist is Elijah, who was expected to come before the Messiah. Well, Elijah had his doubts, even immediately after his greatest success on Mount Carmel. It was immediately after the Mount Carmel incident that Elijah fled for his life from Jezebel, and wondered if he was the only one left in Israel who still worshiped God. Elijah was the forerunner of Elisha, who was said to have done twice the number of miracles that Elijah did. So also, John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus Christ, who did many more miracles than John.

But what is the answer to John’s question? John’s question has the same point as the rabbi’s objection referred to at the beginning of this sermon. There doesn’t seem to be any justice in the world. So, how can Jesus be the Messiah? Should we look for another? That word “another” means “one of a different kind.” John was expecting Jesus to be something else. So, what is the answer? Jesus gives us the answer. I am going to phrase it in somewhat unusual terms, but I hope the point will be clear. The answer lies in the realm of eschatology. Eschatology is a long word that means the study of the end times. Now, Jews expected a very sharp break from the old age to the new age. That is clear from the rabbi’s statement mentioned at the beginning of the sermon. When the Messiah comes, there will be justice and judgment of the wicked. However, when Jesus came, this justice and judgment did not come upon the whole world right away. It did come upon Satan, who is now said to be bound by the Strong Man, Jesus. Judgment did come upon death in a preliminary, though decisive, way with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, there is a delay in the final judgment. Judgment Day is still future. That creates a window of grace. Jesus came and brought grace. That is what He says here when he talks about the blind receiving their sight, the lame walking, the lepers cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead raised, and the poor evangelized.

There are some very fascinating details here in Jesus’ answer that I do not want us to miss. First of all, notice that Jesus is referring to Isaiah 61:1-2, which was our call to worship. Notice that in Isaiah, it is God who does these things. Now, here in Matthew, it is Jesus who does these things. This plainly says that Jesus is God, and was sent by the Father to do these things. Secondly, notice that only a prophet can do these things. Curing leprosy, for instance, was something that was as difficult as raising the dead, according to the Jewish rabbis, and only a prophet who had the Spirit of the Lord upon him, could do that. Elisha did this with Naaman, and now Jesus, the anti-type of Elisha, cures leprosy. Thirdly, notice that preaching to the poor is last in line, and is therefore emphatic. It is the most important of all of them. The good news is now, says Jesus, but the judgment is put off, so that many can come to Christ. The end times have started now, but they have not yet come to fulfillment. John the Baptist preached that there was grace and there was judgment. There was grace for those who believed, and there was judgment for those who do not believe. Jesus is saying that the grace comes now, and the judgment will come later. What John has preached as the same event, Jesus separates into two parts. This is what was confusing for John. But Jesus’ answer is that the grace has truly come. All of these things are, in fact, happening, and that means that the judgment will infallibly come. Jesus merely tells John to be patient. That is hard for John to bear, since he is languishing in prison, thinking to himself, “You know, in Isaiah, the text says that those in prison will be set free. You’d think that the Messiah would at least have freed His own forerunner, and judged those tyrants who were over him. So why doesn’t Jesus do that?” John was left in prison so that we would know that judgment upon the wicked, although it is delayed, will still surely come. And it doesn’t have to come in our lifetimes. Many things will not be made right until the final Day of Judgment.

So it is in our own lives as well. Many of us want judgment to come upon the wicked. We cry out to God, “How long? Why do you wait? How come our lives have to be difficult? How come we are treated so unjustly?” Jesus tells us to come always back to Him. He will tell you, after your HONEST prayer to Him, that your blind eyes have received their sight, your lame legs now walk, your spiritual leprosy has been healed, your spiritual deafness healed, and your spiritually dead soul has been made alive. Most importantly, you have had the Gospel preached to your poor soul. Wait patiently to be made right. After all, you don’t want justice to be done on you yet, do you? It reminds me of the story of the lady who walked into a beauty salon, wanting her hair cut. She told the barber that she wanted him to take his time, so that he could do her hair justice. The barber said, “Lady, your hair doesn’t need justice, it needs mercy.” That’s exactly what we need in life. We desire mercy from God, not justice. Otherwise, we would all be lost forever. But thanks be to God, who has not only created such a window of salvation in time, but has filled that window with grace, so that we might be saved, and therefore might not need to fear Judgment Day. For there is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Will there be justice? Yes, there will. Justice has gone forth, although cloaked, all the time from Christ’s first to His second coming. Justice will spring forth in all its glory, as the glory of the Lord Jesus is revealed, when He comes back, to judge the living and the dead. Amen.

Matthew 10:40-42

10/28/2007

No Audio Available

During World War II, England needed to increase its production of coal. Winston Churchill called together labor leaders to enlist their support. At the end of his presentation he asked them to picture in their minds a parade which he knew would be held in Picadilly Circus after the war. First, he said, would come the sailors who had kept the vital sea lanes open. Then would come the soldiers who had come home from Dunkirk and then gone on to defeat Rommel in Africa. Then would come the pilots who had driven the Luftwaffe from the sky. Last of all, he said, would come a long line of sweat-stained, soot-streaked men in miner’s caps. Someone would cry from the crowd, ‘And where were you during the critical days of our struggle?’ And from ten thousand throats would come the answer, ‘We were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal.’” Not all the jobs in a church are prominent and glamorous. But it is often the people with their “faces to the coal” who help the church accomplish its mission. As we saw in our call to worship, we are not to despise the day of small things. Jesus echoes that thought here with a simple illustration of a cup of cold water. We should never despise the small things that we can do for the kingdom of God. We should not despise the day of small things. For receiving even the least of Christ’s disciples because he is a disciple, is to receive Christ Himself. And, as Christ says, to receive Christ is to receive the Father also.

Verse 40 is very important for us to consider closely. Receiving the disciples means receiving Christ, which means receiving the Father. Ultimately, of course, that means that receiving the disciple means receiving the Father. This bestows enormous importance on the disciple. It was a Jewish custom to regard an ambassador as having the full dignityand rights of the person who sent the ambassador. If a man is sent to do something for someone else, the man sent has the full power of the sender. So, what Jesus is saying here is that the disciple, who will most definitely be sent out by Jesus, has the same importance (in terms of the message that the disciple delivers: obviously the disciple is not greater than the Master) as Jesus. The person who receives the disciple receives Jesus. This is an amazing statement on Jesus’ part. It begs for us to ask this question: how are we receiving the disciples of Christ? This doesn’t just refer to pastors, of course. It refers to how we receive any Christian. What Jesus is talking about is hospitality both to the person and to the message that that person has to bring.

This hospitality has to be intentional. In other words, we receive such a person and that person’s message precisely because that person is a disciple of Christ. That is what Jesus goes on to tell us in verse 41. The NIV translates this very well. The Greek says literally, “the one receiving a prophet in the name of the prophet will receive the reward of the prophet.” And the same with the righteous man. Receiving someone in the name of that person is to receive that person because he is that person. So, the NIV translates it, “Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.” Anything you’ve done for another believer in Christ because that person is a believer; anything you’ve done for a missionary because that person is a missionary; anything you’ve done for a pastor because that person is the pastor; all these things are things that God reckons as having been done for Him.

And not only that, the reward that such people will receive is the same reward that the prophet receives! This is also amazing to us. However, when you think about it, it becomes reasonable. Think of every great and famous Christian you’ve ever known about. Then think of all the other people who supported that famous person. You will quickly realize that the person would never have become famous if the other supporting people had not done all the “behind-the-scenes” kind of work necessary for the famous person to do his work. The same thing is true of missionaries. They cannot go on to the mission field without financial support, prayer support, language support, all kinds of support. The point here is that even if we do not all feel called to be foreign missionaries, we can do the same work, and receive the same reward. Of course, we have to be very careful when we say that, because some people might be called to do the actual work of missions, but say that since they can get the same reward without going to all the bother of going out in the mission field, that therefore they aren’t going to do it. They’ll just “support.” Friend, if you are called to the mission field, you need to go. But for the rest of us, we should not feel bad if we are not called. As Winston Churchill pointed out, the soldiers have to be supported by an entire army of civilians making clothes, getting food packed, praying for them, sacrificing their own comfort for the morale of the troops, and providing the necessary raw material, such as coal, so that the army can do its job. As Paul said in Corinthians, just because the hand is not an eye doesn’t mean that the hand ceases to be part of the body. Look at your own body. Think about it. What good would your eyes be without your brain? What good would your brain be without your heart? What good would your heart be without all the arteries? How would the arteries and your blood function without food and oxygen? So your arteries are dependent on your lungs and on the entire digestive system. None of this would be in its right place without your bone structure. Your bones don’t work right without the muscles. The muscles don’t work right without the nervous system to tell them what to do. And on and on it goes. The Church is the Body of Christ. We are all one of those body parts in the kingdom of God. And not one of us is dispensable. Maybe you do dishes, or babysit, or change the trash, or say one encouraging word, or pray. These seem like small things to you. They are not small to God. Do not despise the day of small things.

Jesus Himself uses the example of a cup of cold water. Water is rather inexpensive. In the desert, of course, a cup of cold water can be very important. However, the emphasis here is on the smallness of the act. It may be small in our eyes, and yet God does not ignore it. There is a reward even for that. This passage, along with others, indicates that there are two ways to regard rewards in heaven. On the one hand, there is the parable of the master of the vineyard who gave everyone the same pay, no matter how long they had worked in the vineyard. That is plainly an illustration that with regard to eternal life, everyone gets the same. That is, all who believe in Christ have eternal life. However, there are rewards in heaven on top of eternal life. Paul talks about these in 1 Corinthians 3, when he says that some people build with hay, straw, and stubble. Their works will burn up on Judgment Day. But others build with gold, silver, and costly stones. Such people’s work will not burn up on Judgment Day. And our passage here also says that there is a reward even for the smallest act of kindness for one of God’s people. The reason is that we do it unto God, if we do it unto one of His people. So, if you are changing a diaper, do it as unto the Lord. If you are correcting homework, do it as unto the Lord. If you are doing dishes, taking out the garbage, helping someone else lift something, inviting someone over for dinner, no matter how small it is, do it as unto the Lord. Do it because the person you are helping is one of God’s children.

Of course, this raises the question: should we help unbelievers? Is there any reward in heaven for doing that? Well, of course there is. Doing these kinds of things builds a relationship with that person. You can build a Gospel witness upon that relationship, and, by God’s grace, lead that person home to Christ.

This raises one final question, however. There are people out there who say that we should not do anything expecting a reward from God. We should just do it because God told us to do it. Of course, we should do these things because God tells us to do it. However, why would Jesus bring up the idea of reward if it is wrong to desire it? The point is rather which reward do we desire? In chapter 6, Jesus warns us against desiring the wrong kind of reward. Do we give donations so that people can see it? Do we pray impressive prayers so that people will think about how holy we are? Those are the wrong kind of rewards. We should rather desire the heavenly rewards. Jesus repeats Himself there in chapter 6. Do the good deed in such a way that the Father sees what is done in secret, and will so reward you. This is treasure in heaven. By all means, we should desire such reward. However, we should remember that God does not owe us anything. If God gives us a reward, it is because of His grace, and not because of our merit. Keeping all these things in perspective is necessary for us to understand how it is that we can receive Christ by receiving those sent in His name. Receive Christ. Receive the Father. Receive the disciple.