under your wrath and curse, that in your Son you would bring us near, even at the cost of his humiliation, adding creatureliness to himself, so that he might be our sacrifice and our priest. As we come to you through him, who is our King, has delivered us in almighty power and subdued us to himself and rules and defends us and shall at last avenge all that has been done against him and against those who are his. We come to you through him, asking that you would give us to listen to him, our prophet, the one greater than Moses, whom you raised up from among the Moses brethren in Israel, whom you have given as the one to whom we must listen, your beloved Son, with whom you are well pleased, of whom you say to us, hear him. But, O God, how can we hear him? We are but preachers and even sinners. Yes, forgiven, O Lord, and no longer in our sin, but yet with sin remaining in us. And with this creaturely weakness and this sinful wickedness and the weakness of that, how can we hear him? And so come and help us by your spirit, by his spirit, yours, yours whom he pours out upon us. Help us in the preaching. Help us in the hearing. Glorify yourself. according to your own design in worship, that not only would you be glorified, but that you might do us good. Come help us by your spirit, now we ask our God. For we do come to you through your Son, our Lord Jesus, asking you in his name. And his people in this place say, amen. Let us stand since first we come to hear the word of God read. Matthew chapter 11, verses seven through 15, these are God's words. As they departed, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John, what did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? But what did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Indeed, those who wear soft clothing are in king's houses. But what did you go out to see, a prophet? Yes, I say to you, and more than a prophet. For this is he of whom it is written, behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. Assuredly, I say to you. Among those born of women, there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist. But he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Amen. This ends this reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. Rejoice to know that he adds his blessing not only to the reading of it, but to the preaching of it as well. Please be seated. How could John have let something like being imprisoned for rebuking Herod for taking his brother's wife. How could he have let something like that shake his faith? How could he have let a little bit of discomfort being thrown into a prison cell? Does it not say in another passage that He was treated well and often summoned to be heard. How could he let himself feel like he was so uncomfortable in a situation like that? What a weak show of unbelief. Now, you and I might not think or speak that way about John the Baptist, which would mean John who was baptizing with water, not that he belonged to some denomination or theological positions that's some 500 years old or less. We won't call him John the Presbyterian. Maybe we'll call him John the Baptizer. Now, you might not think that way about John. Jesus's cousin. But certainly there were some who were saying things like, what a reed shaken by the wind. He's so soft. We must be careful in how easily we take a low opinion of others or resort to change to a low opinion of those whom we had once held in spiritual esteem. Certainly, the Lord Jesus is responding to something that he perceived or had even heard in the multitudes. He announced this thing to the two of John's disciples who had come and asked the questions. And we read in the parallel passage He immediately did many of these works to show them. And you know how crowds are. I hope you know how your own art is, how observing the miracles that the Lord Jesus did right there before those two disciples' eyes, before he sent them back with that sermon for John that we were hearing about in last week's portion, how in a crowd like that and in hearts like ours, the mind said, of course he's the one. that John, so I really thought better of him. I guess we know better now. Jesus, of course, doesn't just save face for John here, but he speaks so highly of him that we puzzle theologically over how highly he speaks of him. Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women, there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist. How can Jesus say that? Well, in part, the same way that Jesus can say anything, because it's true. And he even begins it with that word, amen, truly. Translated here in our English version before us, assuring and so he is he is saying of John the Baptist at this time even with his faith slightly shaken not shaken so much as you and I are often shaken mind you what did he do but he had a doubt he sent to Christ asking for that we would resort immediately to the Lord and immediately to this word and receive it when it comes and be strengthened by it. But John, in the midst of this moment where he had been shaken and wondered and asked the question, Jesus is saying he is, right now, at that moment, greater than anyone else. who has come to that point on the earth. Now, it's not too difficult for us to understand if we go back over what we have learned of John, that literally from his mother's womb, he was responding to the Lord Jesus. Greatness is not produced by the level of our intellect, or our theological acumen, yes, spiritual greatness does consist in large part and a great part in believing the Scriptures truly and believing what is true about God and what is true about Christ and what is true about us and sin and what can be done about sin and what God is doing for those whom he is redeeming. Theology is not unimportant. The spiritual greatness and even coming to a knowledge of the truth is by the work of the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who had come upon John and indwelt him so that not by x-ray vision from one womb to another, but by the regenerating, saving power of God the Holy Spirit, even before they were born, he left in his mother's womb. at the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who sent in his younger cousin. Some of you may have a younger cousin. Many of you, I know, at least have a younger sibling. If you have a cousin who's six months younger than you are, that you, in your fleshliness, maybe, and hopefully not entirely fleshly, maybe just good naturedly, give them a reading about how you're the older cousin. But John was submitted to his cousin. He made it his life's mission to announce that his cousin was the king who was coming, and not just the king. That he was the one who could baptize not just with water, but who could pour out the Holy Spirit. He was the one who could not just say that he needed repentance, but by his Holy Spirit. raises up children of Abraham from stones, turning hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. So that when his cousin had come to be baptized by him, John said, I'm not worthy to untie your shoes. This was way ahead of Mary or Jesus' half-siblings. who during Jesus's ministry were concerned that he might be losing his mind a little bit, and needed not to stir up the crowd so much with these grand claims about himself. John never thought that way of the Lord Jesus. He doubted his own theology. Is it possible that the God-man, his cousin, was going to send someone else? That was an incorrect possibility, and the Lord Jesus corrected that for him. But John, John had a doctrine of the Trinity. John had the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. John understood that his cousin was God who had become a man in order to be what all of the sacrificial lambs of every Passover and every sacrifice that God had ever commanded and Israel had ever offered but his cousin was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He had given up everything, committed his whole life to that. Oh, let us be careful. Let us be careful when others are shaken in faith. And when the pressure of present providence squeezes them, and we discover they are not yet the kingdom of heaven. As James says in the context of speaking about teachers in the church, in James chapter three, we all stumble in many things, And as Jesus was sending two of John's disciples back to him, of whom he says in the passage before us now, that he's great, that there is no one who is risen, no one born of women is risen that is greater than he. As Jesus was sending the two men back to preach the gospel to John, what did Jesus quote? the poor have the gospel preached to them. Should we not still have ringing in our ears from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, back in chapter five, blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who realize that in and of ourselves we have no good thing whatsoever. We're spiritually penniless. We're spiritually impoverished. We don't have anything by which we could maybe be okay. We deserve, have provoked, rightly and justly, God's full opposition to us, so that as glorious as he is, So great is His glory, so great is His wrath against our sin, and we have nothing that we can do about it. There's no turning over a new leaf that can undo it. There's no amount of service to Him or to others, no amount of worship, no amount of obedience, no amount of giving everything that we have, selling everything that we have, and giving it to the poor, that no amount of perfect, righteous thinking and feeling and desiring from this point on, all of it would be rubbish. Spiritually worthless. We are poor. and anything good that is in us is only in and from the Lord Jesus Christ by virtue of union with him. Even when a Christian does that which is really good, desires that which is really good, thinks and speaks that which is really good, the genuine good works that God prepared before him for the believer to walk in are done by virtue of union with Christ. are done from that new nature that we have in Him, that nature that cannot ascend. But what we have brought to the table is that which is from our former nature, the sinfulness of which still remains in us. And so long as it remains in us, we are not able to enter the kingdom of heaven. Not only must a man be born again, not only must a man repent, have his nature changed, have his mind, the character of his mind changed, we must have that. We must have that even just to believe. We must have that even just to have Christ as our worthiness. And he has earned heaven for us. but we cannot enter the heaven that Jesus has earned for us with the least particle of sin left in us. Without holiness, we will not see the Lord. When we see Him, we must be like Him. And when we properly hope thus, 1 John 3 says, we purify ourselves. as pure as Jesus, not just a little bit better, not just wanting to please God and love Him and walk with Him. All those things are things that we ought to desire. It's good for us to desire it. If you don't, then you are either dreadfully backslidden to where you can't even know that you're a Christian or you might not be saved. But those who hope thus, he says, purify themselves as He is pure. And so Jesus, in order to make this point to us about listening to what John has said about Christ and about imitating John or learning the lesson from this moment in John's life of how it is the means by which we enter glory, first he has to rehabilitate John's name to them. And he asks them, what did you go out into the wilderness to see? Were you, at the time, that John was in the wilderness, in his camel's hair clothing, and his leather belt, and eating locusts and honey, and all that stuff that grabs our attention when we're young? Maybe when we're old, we're not so too old to be, have our curiosity piqued by all those things. when they were going out to hear this preacher who was announcing the coming of a kingdom that was not good news for Pharisees and Sadducees who were still in themselves and brood of vipers. That were not good news for soldiers who didn't get changed in character so that they no longer extorted, or tax collectors, so that they no longer took more, collected more than was required. This one who announced that if you are going to enter the kingdom, you need to be changed, but that he couldn't change you. And there was one coming who could, and you should put all your hope in the one who is coming and not in him. When they went out to hear him preaching all of those things in the wilderness, what were they going out to see? Was he really a reed shaken by the wind? You're going to take all the evidence of what he was like for all of those years, all that God had done in him and through him, he's just gonna discard it? Based on an exaggerated significance about one moment of doubt? He wasn't falling in some scandalous sin? Was he really addicted to comfort? You wanna find someone who's addicted to comfort, Jesus tells you where to find them. It's the same today, isn't it? Though we often during an election season scratch our heads about how people who didn't have, well, not nearly that much before they came into office could become eight, nine figure wealthy while they're in office. That's not new in America. That says, ever since the fall. You want to find the people who are addicted to comfort and have the soft clothing, look in McCain's houses. That's not what they were going out in the wilderness to see. John was not eating locusts and honey so that we could say, oh, you know, locusts are pretty nutritious. And I've heard that they're prepared this way in that culture. No. He was eating locusts with honey because that's what was out there and he was so preoccupied with his calling that that's what he ate. Because that's what was available. He wasn't addicted to comfort. John was a preacher to God's people and he was a good example for God's people. And so Jesus praises John. And he says to them, they remember when they went out, a prophet, a prophet. Now, we still have people today. who over against everything that the Lord Jesus has said in John 16 about the Holy Spirit coming and giving to the disciples those things that remain. He said, I have many things that remain to say to you, but you cannot bear them now and promises that his Holy Spirit is gonna pour out his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is gonna tell him the things that are left. He promises a completed Bible. We still have today those who speak of themselves or speak of others as prophets or even, you know, use of the term apostles and they get all excited about it. Now we have a completed Bible and we ought not get excited. about those things, well, these people were looking for a prophet. These people hadn't had a prophet for over 400 years. God had given a famine of his word. It was the longest silence in the history of the church. Never from when he gathered Israel at Sinai and he constituted a covenant with them as a church and a nation, never since then had he gone 400 years without sending them a prophet. And so of course when the Lord raised John up and he was in the wilderness and he was preaching, And he looked and sounded like the prophets of old, the prophets now that they read about in their Hebrew Bible or their Greek Septuagint Bible, the translation of the Old Testament. Here was one who was real and whom God had sent. And Jesus says, yeah, you were right when you thought that about him, and you went out to them. And boy, she should have listened to him, because he's not just any prophet. The one that Malachi 3 promised would go before God. In the beginning of Malachi 3 from which verse 10 is quoted, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way before you. In the context there, it's not even so much the Messiah. It's God himself who would suddenly come into his temple. And Jesus is saying, oh, he was more than a prophet. You should not be wondering at how John could have been shaken and how John could be so, apparently to you, uncomfortable where he is. You should be remembering what he said about me. You should be remembering, Jesus saying, you should be remembering what John said about him, believing in him. And so not only was he promoting John as the greatest of the prophets, he was, sorry, praising John as the greatest of the prophets, he was promoting John as one to whom we must listen. That he is the Elijah who is to come, verse 14. That's not from Malachi 3, that's from Malachi 4, the second to last verse of the Old Testament. said that Elijah would come and that by Elijah's preaching, God would start turning the hearts of children to their fathers and fathers to their children. That John's preaching or the preaching of the Elijah that was to come, which is the messenger that is sent before God's face, would be an indication that the one who came to undo the fall, The one who came to reverse the curse. The one who came to crush the serpent's head. The one who came to be wounded by the serpent. As the Lord Jesus was. That he was here. That Jesus is God and Jesus is the Christ. That had been the message of the entire Bible. That's the relation of Verse 13 to verse 14, for all the prophets in the law prophesied until John, the one of whom the law and the prophets spoke, says one brother to another as he's convincing him to come and see the Christ and the other brothers of Nazareth. And anything good come out of Nazareth? No, he's the one of whom all the law and the prophets spoke John 1, verse 45, Jesus telling them in John 5, 39, and they're opposing him, and he says, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. They were right to search the scriptures. But then he tells them what they should have found in the scriptures. It is they that speak of me. That is the point. of Genesis through Deuteronomy, the law. That is the point of the former prophets, Joshua, Judges, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings. At the point of the latter prophets, Isaiah through Malachi, saved by temptations. And the writings, of course, also preached Christ, but sometimes the law and the prophets was used instead of law, prophets, and writings, just shorthand abbreviation. But all those scriptures, Jesus said, they spoke of him. God wasn't giving eternal life by a user's manual on how to get eternal life. God was giving eternal life by proclaiming to them in whom would come eternal life. It is they that spoke to me. A wonderful conversation, the two discouraged disciples after the resurrection, but they don't know that he's resurrected yet. They think that Jesus is still dead, and they're walking back from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and Jesus joins them, and they don't recognize him, and they're discouraged, and he asks them why, and they're like, you must be the only one in Jerusalem that doesn't know what's happened, And then he starts speaking to them, opening to them, beginning with Moses, beginning with Genesis. It was written by Moses. He speaks to them from all of the scriptures, the things concerning himself and showing that the Christ had to come and had to die and atone for sin. Oh, listen to John, listen to the whole of the Bible announcing Jesus to you as the one who has righteousness for sinners, as the one who would suffer the fullness of the wrath of God for sinners, that you might have him as your righteousness before God. Not your coming to hope, or not your hearing the Word, not even your repenting and believing in Jesus. No, you believe in Jesus so that He would be righteousness. Your faith isn't credited to you for righteousness because of how good your faith is, or because God accepts faith. It's because of how good Christ is, and because God accepts Christ. He says, all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. All those prophets, 1 Peter 1, verses 10 to 11 tells us, were prophesying by the Spirit of Christ. Talking about a time and talking about a person that they themselves, as the Spirit, carried them along to preach from Christ and to write from Christ. Those who preached and wrote, they didn't know exactly what time or exactly what person. But they were preaching of him. And John is their climax. John is the last one. He's the Elijah who is to come, Malachi 4-5. He is the messenger who came before God's face. Malachi 3.1, he was the one who came and announced, prepare the way of Lord, Isaiah 40, as chapter three of Matthew identified him to be. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. And of all the prophets that there had ever been, John was the last preacher who consolidated all, condensed it all with this laser-sharp focus on Jesus, his cousin, who is God, who became man to be the Christ to save us, to announce his kingdom to us as prophet, and earn his kingdom for us as priest, and exercise his kingdom over us as king. And John had preached this of Christ. Now, not everyone who reads the Bible comes to this conclusion. You say, how can it be true if it doesn't convince everyone? But do you not realize that not everyone who heard John came to that conclusion? And not even everyone who heard Jesus came to that conclusion. Do you not see that in verse 15? He who has ears to hear, let him hear. You and I, if we are not understanding that Jesus is God who became man to save us, to be our prophet and priest and king. to be the one who is our worthiness before God and who brings us in himself near to God and who by his Spirit is making us to be like himself so that we can enter his glory. If we don't realize that about Jesus like John had preached it about Jesus, like the whole Bible had preached it about Jesus, then you and I must cry out to God, let us cry out to God, give me ears, Lord. There were those who heard John and did not believe in Christ that way. There were those who heard Jesus and did not believe in Christ that way. Much less would we expect that everyone who hears a servant who is sent some 2,000 years later, no, we must be given ears to hear. God give me, God give you ears to hear so that you can hear John, so that you can hear Christ, so that you can believe. Jesus doesn't just praise John as the greatest of the prophets. He promotes John as one to whom we must listen. And he does so in the context of presenting John as an example of how believers enter glory. He says, not only Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women, there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist. But he also says, but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Well, John isn't in the kingdom yet. He's about to receive the rest of his sanctification at the command of Herod. When his head will be on a platter, and presented to Herodias for Solomon's dancing. But his soul will be perfected in holiness. And there will be no more moments of doubt. And there will be no being shaken at discomfort. There will be no discomfort. You know, the the least sanctified, the least mature true believer can know that there's coming a day soon when they will be holier than John the Baptist was in Matthew 11. You who are plagued with doubt, everything that happens, or doesn't even have to happen, When your anxiety rises and you wonder, how can this be true? Could I really be a Christian? Is this for real? Oh, I know that Christ saves, but I don't seem to be saved. Have you fallen to the same sin that you've been battling? for years, maybe decades, some of you. And it feels like you've barely made a start in mortifying it, putting it to death. One day soon, if you are a believer, if God is saving you, he's not going to leave you the way you are. There will be no sinners in glory. There will be no doubters in glory. There will be no backsliders in glory. There will be no immature in their faith in glory. And so what should we do? Well, we should come to Jesus, and we should come to His Word, We should ask for help. We should fight. We should run. We should wrestle. We should work. I don't know if you've ever had the spiritually dangerous experience of sitting under preaching the confused, resting entirely upon who Jesus is and what Jesus has done, with being kind of a complacent and passive person spiritually before God, as if the Christian life was not supposed to be hard and taxing and violent. Is it violent? Yes, because Jesus says violent. He says from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence. Why? Because through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom. Because those who hope thus purify themselves even as he is pure. They don't let the weak knees buckle. They straighten the weak knees and they strengthen the hands. And they continue to resist their sin unto the shedding of blood. And they receive whatever the Lord does as for their good, even and especially when it seems to be chastening for a particular sin. The Christian life is a vigorous life. God uses words like run, and wrestle, and beat, and fight, and kill. And this is what it looks like when someone has the faith in Jesus that John had in Jesus, when someone who still stumbles in many ways desires to enter glory. And so I wonder, is that what it looks like for you? Because we do live in an age which we're not told to do those things. Even though God uses plain and vivid language in his word about what it looks like to be a Christian and to desire to come into the possession of what Christ has earned for us. Is it possible that Jesus would earn it for us, but not bring us into the possession of it? Of course not. But if he tells us that we come into the possession of it through this vigorous, difficult, active killing of sin, growing in grace, and serving the Lord, and loving him, and loving one brother, and laying down our life for our brother, and loving our neighbor as ourself as well, Then I ask you, is your life a violent pursuit of that? Because those who are actually entering heaven are getting ready for heaven, are taking heaven, as it were, by storm. You do not coast into glory. on fluffy clouds of comfort and passivity. That is not the religion of the Bible. That is not the salvation that Scripture describes Jesus saving sinners with. Now, if you think any of that is earning heaven for you, then you haven't begun in Christ. You begin in Christ by abandoning any idea that you could earn anything from God. Only Christ has earned everything for you. But those who are entering heaven are taking it by force. We are pressing, pushing, and running, and fighting. And this is something that maybe not just because of the poor theology that is in so much of the church these days, but even just providentially, are Americans not addicted to comfort? Is this not one of the ways that we have willingly destroyed ourselves by so often taking that which is easiest and that which is most entertaining, by not living hard and living well with strength and purpose, building and not tearing down, being as productive as we can for God and for family, and for neighbor. These were consequences of Christianity that led to America at one time being comparatively great. We want America to be much greater than it ever was. We want America to confess Christ. But do we not all, each one of us, do we not need to ask ourselves, how addicted to comfort and pleasure am I? How addicted to entertainment? I won't tell you where because, well, you can ask me later. Ran into someone this week. and asked me how I was doing. Unimprovably well. I'm getting what Jesus deserves instead of what I deserve. How are you? And he says, great, it's Friday. And I said, would it not be great if it were some other day of the week? He said, oh, well, Friday means the weekend's here. I can sleep in. That's it. Friday means it's almost the Lord's Day, and I can worship. And by that time, the interaction was over. And I had to pull forward. And now you know why I wasn't going to tell you where I was. Because it was easy, fast, and comfortable. Are you living for weekends? Are you living for retirement? Are you living for vacation? You get through the day so that you can relax and enjoy yourself with whatever entertainment you might have been promising yourself if you got the other stuff done today. Do we not even dangle those things before our children and train them to think that way? We are a people who are reeds shaken by the wind. And in soft clothing, are we not? And this is a great hindrance to us violently taking heaven, taking the kingdom by force. But Jesus is the king. And Jesus is the answer even to that, isn't he? John baptized with water for repentance. But is this not what Jesus has given you his Holy Spirit for? the King of Righteousness giving his own spirit to you so that you can shake off your slumber and strengthen those weak hands and straighten those buckling knees and live with strength and zeal and diligence, pursuing holiness and service of God. This is one of the great prophecies of his kingdom. We're about to sing about it from Psalm 72. that when he comes, as Psalm 110 says, in the day of his power, his people will be willing volunteers, and his kingdom will be filled with righteousness, because he will be king. Oh, look to your king. If you are not in the battle, then you are not in the faith. Take warning, for the kingdom comes, If you are not, if you are not, if you do not belong to King Jesus, if you are not his subject when he comes, then you will be his enemy. If you are not his subject in this life, then you will be his enemy forever. He will be yours. But if you are his subject, and you are weary in the battle of faith, or you have been lax, oh, take heart from Christ. Look to him, the same one to whom you would cry, give me ears that I can hear. Ask him to give you heart, to give you courage, to give you love, to give you zeal, to give you diligence, to give you perseverance, to give you endurance. It all comes from him. Take heart from Christ.