Would you take this and move it over there? Cannot deal with those being right underneath. They're fine right there. Just so that's fine. Just so they're not right underneath me. Otherwise, I will sneeze through the sermon. That's the way it is. Which is a word to you young men as you go into ministry. Folks do love to decorate. The front of the church blows the flowers, but be bold enough to say, if you have a problem with allergies, as I do, please don't put those right there. Okay. Turn with me in your scriptures to the gospel of Matthew, the 11th chapter. Matthew chapter 11. But as I read this, I'm going to ask you not to follow along in your various translations and tinker with why the text is slightly different in phraseology. Just put your finger in the place, listen to the word, and then we'll look at the details later on. After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else? Jesus replied, Go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight. The lame walk. Those who have leprosy are cured. The deaf hear. The dead are raised. The good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me." As John's disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John. What did you go out into the desert to see? The reeds swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in king's palaces. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet, yes? And I tell you, more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, I will send my messenger ahead of you who will repair your way before you. I tell you the truth. Among those born of women, there is not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than me. But from the days of John the Baptist to now, the kingdom of God has been forcefully advancing and forceful men lay hold of it. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. He was ears. Let him hear. To what can I compare this generation? They're like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others. We played the flute for you and you did not dance. We sang a dirge and you did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking and they say he has a demon. And the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, He is a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. But wisdom is proved right by her actions. Then Jesus began to denounce the cities in which His miracles had been performed, because they did not change their mind. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the great works performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, They would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the Day of Judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the pit. If the miracles that have been performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom on the Day of Judgment than for you. At that time, Jesus answered and said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. For you hid these things from the wise and intellectual, revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for thus it was pleasing in your sight. All things have been entrusted to me by my father, and no one knows the son except the father. Does anyone know the father except the son, and the one to whom the son determines to reveal him? Come to me, all of you who labor hard and bear heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon yourselves, and learn from me. For I am humble and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your lives. For my yoke is kind, and my burden I read you the entire text of the 11th chapter of Matthew so that you could see the context. The disciples of John are wondering, is this really the Christ? Because Jesus is not operating as you would expect an earthly king to operate. And so John sends his disciples to find out for themselves. And Jesus reports to them, what do you see? The blind, they see. The deaf, hear. The lepers are cured, the lame walk, even the dead are raised. And the good news of the kingdom of God is preached to the poor and the lowly. And then John speaks to the crowds, why did you go out to hear John the Baptist? Don't you understand that John the Baptist was the greatest of all men, but you who are in the kingdom are greater than he. And then Jesus begins to denounce the cities. Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. Woe to you, Capernaum. If the great works had been done in Sodom, in Tyre, or in Sidon that were done in you, they would long ago have changed their opinion, changed their thinking, changed their mind. it will be more bearable for them than for you in the day of judgment. And then Jesus says, and it's interesting because you see Matthew narrates as he begins this with the same formula with which he normally uses when Jesus interacts in a conversation with people. Jesus answered and said. The use of apokronomai with Lego. Jesus answered and said. Who is he answering? Who is he replying to? He has just spoken to the cities and he is, as it were, replying to them, speaking to them. I thank you. I praise you. I confess you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the intellectual and you have revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, this was good in your sight. God was pleased, despite the great works which his son did in the cities of Capernaum and Chorazon and Bethsaida. God was pleased to leave them in their own willful darkness. But to others, to those who were little children in the world's estimation of those who are wise and learned to those God was pleased to reveal his kingdom of salvation. And then Jesus says. All things have been entrusted to me by my father, and no one knows the son. Except the father. This is an amazing statement, because, you see, I know you and you know me. Why? because we share fully the one same human nature. Part of the ability to preach the gospel to others is the ability to look into your own life, into your own soul, into your own life experience, draw lessons and perspectives from that, and then presume that the people to whom you are speaking share the same humanity created by God according to His image and likeness, fallen and corrupted in sin, that they experience the same emotional traumas, they experience the same hurts and pains, the same temptations. They are every bit like you and you like them. And that is the point of contact that allows preacher to speak to audience. And while it is true that Jesus in his human nature was tempted as we get without sin, if he here says that no one knows the sun, Except the father. He claims to have a. Position wholly different than you and I's ordinary mortals have. There's something about him that is so different that the crowds do not know him. His disciples do not know him. His mother. Did not know him. Only the father in heaven. Knows him. And then he reverses the statement and says that no one knows the father except the son. Now, remember, this is spoken to devout Jews. Did not God reveal himself to Moses? Did not God put Moses in the cleft on the rock and show him his backside, as it were, and proclaim his name? Did not God appear to Isaiah high and lifted up with in the temple, did not Ezekiel see the form of Yahweh in the vision by the river Kibar? And yet Jesus says, no one knows the Father except the Son. And those to whom the Son determines, counsels to himself to reveal him. Do you realize that Jesus is at that point claiming to be nothing less than that personage of Yahweh who appeared again and again to the people of God in what we call the Old Covenant and revealed God to them. It was the son who descended on Mount Sinai that Moses might get a glimpse, a mere backside of the shoulder glimpse of God. It was the son who appeared on the chariot throne to Ezekiel at the River Kibar. No one knows the Father except the Son, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and the one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. You see, Jesus has come in human flesh. The Son has become a man among men. He is shared in our humanity so fully that He is shared even in our death and burial. And yet he did that, that he might reveal to us the Father. We are prone to misread this text, because we quickly substitute for the word Father, the word God, or the word Yahweh, the divine name. And that's not wrong. God, the Son, does reveal God, the Creator. He does reveal the one who is Yahweh. But that misses the point of the text. He reveals to us the one who is father. And in that word is comprehended the whole of the Christian gospel. That the almighty God, the creator of heaven and earth. the holy one whom every man must give account, the one who searches the hearts and minds of men and knows the depths and profundity of our evil, that one is through the Son to us, Father. And when you were a little child and something wrong happened in your life, a bully, a fall and a scrape on the knee, You were afraid of foxes underneath the bed, as my daughter was when she was little. Whatever it was that grasped you with fear, you have had the experience that in the midst of the fear and the uncertainty that you were experiencing as a little one, into the room came your father. He picked you up. He sat you on your lap. everything was okay. Because you knew that whatever else was true, here was Dad. Here was Father. He loves me. In that is the hope of the Christian gospel. That in Jesus the Son, the Almighty Judge of heaven and earth, is for us. A father who forgives and bears with his children. A father who knows our weaknesses and is patient with us. A father who lets us try and stumble but picks us up and patches up the knees and puts us back on our feet. No one knows The son, except the father, and no one knows the father, except the son and the one to whom the father, the son, excuse me, determines to reveal him. And precisely because God, the son, Jesus and human flesh comes to reveal to us the father. He can then say to us, come to me, all of you who labor hard and are heavy with burdens, I will give you rest. What is the rest that Jesus gives us? We could define that in many ways as theologians. We could say, well, it is our justification in which all of our sins are forgiven and we are accounted as righteous in the sight of God, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. We could speak of in terms of our regeneration and the work of the Holy Spirit and effectual calling. We could speak of it in terms of our sanctification, of God persevering us in faith and all through all of this life. all boils down to this one simple principle that even the little child can understand. But the wise and intellectual cannot grasp. But God comes to wicked, evil men and women who deserve his eternal wrath. And he becomes for them father. And they become to him beloved Therefore, you see, when you come to Jesus, you find rest for your lives. Take my yoke upon yourselves and learn from me, for I am humble and lowly in heart. God the Word, by whom the Father made all things, God the Son, who alone knows the Father and Father alone knows him, has come to us in all the loneliness and ordinariness of our own humanity. So obviously, a man among men, that even when he performed the works of God, the dead were raised, the blind saw, the deaf heard. Corazon and the Seda. and Capernaum did not recognize Emmanuel, God come to his people. He comes to us lowly. He says, you will find rest for your lives. And finally he says, for my yoke is, and then depending on how you want to translate that, easy or kind. The Greek word there both can mean easy as opposed to hard, but its fundamental usage is the idea of kind or good. as opposed to harsh or hard. His yoke is kind. Why? Because it is the yoke of being children of the Heavenly Father. And my burden is light. An oxymoron. Burdens by definition are not light. But you see, the burden that Jesus places on our shoulders, the burden of discipleship is not some heavy burden in which you must bear it of your own strength and somehow finding in yourselves, perfect yourselves before God that you may be acceptable to him. It is rather the burden of children who have a father who loves you. I close by telling you a little episode from my own life. It's been now eight years ago when my earthly father passed away. And the year of my father's passing was a very difficult year for me. My father and mother that year had, between the two of them, 11 distinct hospital events. I knew every hospital in Fayette County. At one point, the burden of the outward care of my parents and their affairs, and more the inward burden of watching my father die and seeing my mother almost die, was, there was more that I could take. And I went into the kitchen of my house alone. And then I'm sure the theologians here would not have this problem. But I didn't know what to say. All of my academic learning of theology was just worthless. with the burden and the weight of what was on my soul. And all I could pray was, Oh, Father. When I was a child, that was sufficient. Dad! Mom! They would come and care for me. The good news For you sinners who still have a ocean of evil surging inside you, who find that time and again you fall miserably short of what you ought to be, is that when you are at your wits end, you can bear it no more. All you have to do is call out, Oh, Father, Jesus has come. took our flesh, bore our sins, died in our place, that when life overwhelms us, we have a Father. We have only to say, O Father, and he meets us in his grace. And more than that, if we have a Father who meets us in his love and mercy in all the troubles of this life, then he will meet us in our death when we walk through the valley of the shadow, and we will have nothing ever except this, that we will always be His children. And He will always be our Father. And therefore, life is good. Let us pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank You that we have the privilege of calling You We thank you for your marvelous love that sent your son to the cross for us. We thank you for his words and his works that show us your fatherly love. We thank you that in him we have become your children. Oh, help us to treasure you, to love you, to count you as the great treasure of our lives. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.