John, Jesus and You

We’re back in the gospel of Matthew, and last week we started in chapter 11. Chapter 11 is one big episode, so breaking it up into multiple sermons is a bit like a TV series—you need to just pick up where you left off each week.

And that’s exactly what’s going on here in verse 7 which says, “As they went away.” John’s disciples came to ask Jesus if He was really the one John had been waiting for. Having heard Jesus’ answer, they go back to pass on the message to John, who is still in prison, and as they go, “Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John.”

Maybe the crowds heard the conversation with John’s disciples, and Jesus is deliberately defending John. Or perhaps he’s simply taking the opportunity to say something important?

Either way, he asks the people a question: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” The assumption here is that most of the people following him went out into the wilderness to see John. We know from Matthew 3:5 that “Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him.”

The wilderness around the Jordan wasn’t a popular tourist destination in those days.If people were going out there, it must have been to see something special. So what was it they were going to see? That’s what Jesus asks them. And then he gives a humourous answer: “A reed shaken by the wind?”

There were reeds that grew along the Jordan river, but nobody travels there to see the local greenery. There’s more to this question. “A reed shaken by the wind” was also a word-picture used by the Rabbis to describe a man who, like a reed that went wherever the wind blew, was the kind of person who changed his tune and his message to suit whatever was popular at the moment. Whatever people wanted.

And it’s a humorous suggestion, because this was the opposite of John. John was in jail right now because he refused to back down from his unpopular message. John did the opposite of going with the flow. Clearly this is not what they went out to see.

“What then did you go out to see?” Jesus asks again in verse 8, heightening the suspense in Jesus’ question. “A man dressed in soft clothing?” Again, the question is funny because, “those who wear soft clothing are in king’s houses,” as Jesus goes on to explain. You don’t go out into the wilderness to see someone dressed luxuriously. Not to mention the fact that John was known for dressing the opposite of softly—he wore a leather belt and a garment of camel’s hair (Matt 3:4).

John’s rough dress was important, because it was the dress of a prophet, and in particular recalled the dress of Elijah (2 Kings 1:8). And it was the opposite of smooth. Finally, there’s irony in Jesus’ words here because, at the present time, John is not in the king’s house but the king’s dungeon. No, they didn’t go out to see a softly-dressed man.

“What then did you go out to see?” Jesus asks, insistently, a third time. “A prophet?” Yes, this is what they went out for. It was big news for a prophet to show up after four centuries of silence. They’d travel a long way to hear a prophet speak. “Yes, I tell you” affirms Jesus. That’s what John was: a prophet.

But, according to Jesus, John was “more than a prophet.” Why? Verse 10: “This is he of whom it is written, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’” (Matthew 11:10).

John was not just a prophet; he was also the subject of prophecy. He didn’t just prophecy; he had been prophesied about. The words Jesus quotes here are from Malachi chapter 3. Malachi is the last written prophet, the final book in the Old Testament. And Malachi foretold John the Baptist’s arrival.

It might be worth it for us to turn back to Malachi together for a moment to better understand this passage Jesus refers to. If you’re in Matthew, Malachi is just a few pages back, the final stop in the Old Testament. At the end of chapter 2 we read, “You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, ‘How have we wearied him?’ By saying, ‘Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.’ Or by asking, ‘Where is the God of justice?’” (Malachi 2:17).

In the days of Malachi, wicked people were prospering, and the people were saying one of two things. Either, “It looks like God delights in evil people now,” or, “When is God finally going to show up and fix things?”

And God’s answer to this final question is found in chapter 3. “‘Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord” (Malachi 3:1–3).

In other words, “I am coming, when you least expect it, and I will purify my people.”

Let’s ask an important question about verse 1. Who exactly does God say is coming? “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” God Himself is coming. And before he comes, verse 1 says, He’s going to send His messenger, who will prepare the way before him.

Keep your thumb there in Malachi as we turn back to Matthew to hear Jesus’ stunning words that these words are written about John. John is that messenger, sent on ahead to prepare the way for the Lord. Thus, John is far more than just a prophet. He was the prophesied messenger who had the absolutely unique role of preparing the way for God Himself to come and visit His people in salvation and judgement.

But if that’s John’s identity, then what does that say about Jesus’ identity? If John is preparing the way for the Lord, and John was preparing the way for Jesus, than who does that make Jesus?

That means Jesus is the Lord. He is the God of Justice, come to judge and save. The temple belongs to him. If John is this messenger, then Jesus is divine.

Jesus makes this point even clearer in verse 14, when He says about John, “If you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.” This is another reference to Malachi, this time from chapter 4 if you’ll turn there. Malachi, the last prophet in the Old Testament, ends with a promise of a day of judgement in which the wicked will be consumed and the righteous saved. And then the book ends with these words: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction’” (Malachi 4:5–6).

I hope we understand that this is not talking about a literal reincarnation of Elijah. Elijah rather is the quintessential prophet, boldly rebuking kings and calling Israel back to worshipping the Lord alone. This messenger will minister in that same spirit, and be empowered in that same way, as he prepares the way of the Lord.

Gabriel explained this to his father Zechariah when he foretold his birth: “And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared’” (Luke 1:16–17).

But if that’s true, if that’s who John is, then we must ask again: who is Jesus? And the answer is that Jesus is God. God has come in Christ to bring about the promised day of the Lord. To judge the wicked and save the believing. If John is Elijah then Jesus is the son of God.

2. The Nature of the Kingdom

And if John is Elijah, and Jesus is the son of God, then that means that the kingdom of God, foretold by John, has arrived now in the person of Christ. And for the next several verses Jesus explains to His listeners that the kingdom is here, and what the kingdom is like and just how privileged are those who have entered it.

Verse 11: “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matthew 11:11).

John the Baptist, according to Jesus, was the greatest human who had been born up until that point. His role as the unique messenger for the Lord, the herald who proclaimed that all of history was about to be fulfilled and the promises of the centuries were coming to pass, the forerunner for God himself, was absolutely unique and unparalleled in history.

Because Jesus is so great, being his messenger means that John towers above every human born up until that time. That includes Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and Elijah. Nobody was greater than the one who got to announce the arrival of the king and prepare the way for the Lord Himself.

Now, we should not understand this to mean that John, in and of himself, was such a great person by virtue of his own greatness. Rather, John’s greatness is found in his connection to Jesus. Abraham, for all of his faith, could only see the reality from a distance. Moses, for all of his law-giving, only dealt with shadows of the reality. David, for all of his greatness, was still a distance from the real thing.

But here is John, right on the edge. He doesn’t just get to say, “The kingdom of God is coming at some point in the future,” he gets to say, “It’s at hand.” He doesn’t just get to say, “The Lord will come at some point in the future.” He gets to say, “He’s coming after me. There will be no more prophets in between me and the Lord.”

Up until that point, nobody in history had a greater privilege than that. And yet, so great is that Lord, and so great is that kingdom that He brings, that “the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he,” as Jesus goes on to say in verse 11.

For as great as John was, he still essentially belonged to the old covenant era of promise. He was still the last in a long line of prophets who foretold what was coming. As verse 13 says, “all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John.” John stood at the boundary between the age of promise and the age of fulfillment.

And those who share in the age of fulfillment—those who now know Christ, who have actually entered his kingdom—surpass even John in his greatness and his privilege.

John prepared the way for a saviour that we know personally. John was Jesus’ messenger; we get to be Jesus’ brothers and sisters, joint heirs to the universe.

Now again, don’t miss the point. The question is not whether John will be in heaven or not. The question is whether John, in his life here on earth, got to enjoy the fruit of the kingdom he announced or not. And for all of John’s greatness in the scope of salvation history, he was still on the boundary of the kingdom. He still only announced its arrival.

He still belonged to that class of prophets that Peter talked about, who searched and inquired carefully and knew that they were not serving themselves but as as they foretold the coming of Christ (1 Peter 1:10-12). And John’s question from last week shows that there was much he still didn’t understand. He didn’t see the whole picture of how suffering and glory fit together in the tapestry of the kingdom. He probably couldn’t have fathomed the cross, any more than Christ’s disciples.

But those of us who actually get to enjoy the saving rule of Jesus—which is another way of saying, we’re in HIs kingdom—enjoy far greater privilege than any of those prophets, including John. You might think you’re the weakest and most immature Christian, and the least in the kingdom, but according to Jesus your position in His kingdom makes you greater than John himself.

Now in verse 12, Jesus makes what feels like an abrupt transition as he makes a statement that seems a little cryptic at first: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12).

The sense of this verse can be a little hard to understand, in part because the words aren’t used a lot elsewhere in Scripture and they can be taken in various ways. The ESV says that “the kingdom of heaven as suffered violence.” But if you look at the little text note in your ESV Bible, you’ll see an alternate translation—which is that the kingdom “has been coming violently.” Or, perhaps, “coming forcefully.”

Both of these senses are true. The kingdom did come in force. You look at the ministries of John and Jesus and the Apostles, and they weren’t lounging about doing talk show interviews. They were going out and forcefully attacking the kingdom of darkness. And, the kingdom had also suffered violence. Isn’t that exactly that Jesus told His disciples in chapter 10? As they went about proclaiming the kingdom they’d be beaten and thrown in prison by violent men.

And that seems to be the meaning of the second phrase here: “And the violent take it by force.” Violent people have been attacking it, as other translations say. Violent people like Herod who had John locked up and would soon take off his head.

And the point Jesus is making here is actually pretty huge: if the kingdom is under attack, that means that the kingdom is actually here. Don’t look at John in prison and think, “If the kingdom is here, why it he sitting in jail?” Which is the question John himself was asking. Instead, we should think, “The kingdom is here, it’s arrived in force, it’s under attack, things are violent, and John is one of the casualties.”

My grandparents lived through World War 2 in the Netherlands. German forces in the Netherlands surrendered on May 5, 1945. The people in Amsterdam had been told that the Canadian forces would be arriving two days later, so on May 7 a huge crowd gathered in the city square to welcome their liberators. Nobody expected that the remaining German forces, anxious and fearful, would set up a machine gun and open fire on the crowd, killing up to 30 people and injuring dozens more.

Some people might have seen the carnage and thought, “This war is never going to end.” But the bloodshed happened because the war was about to end. The Allied invasion was forcefully advancing, and violent people attacked what they could. The end of the war did come for my Oma and Opa. The next day many Dutch people heard a sound they’d never heard before—bagpipes—as the Canadian soldiers rolled into Amsterdam. And the following day, May 9, 1945, the final German soldiers handed over their arms and were sent out of the city.

And so it will be for us. Instead of bagpipes, we’ll hear a trumpet. And he shall reign forever and ever. Until then, we live in the days between the arrival of the kingdom and its final victory. When Jesus was born, the armies of heaven announced that the invasion had begun. That’s why demons screamed at Him everywhere He went. Jesus was attacking the kingdom of darkness and bringing people under His own loving and saving rule. This drew the enemy’s fire. And so the violence done to people like John is not a cause to question the reality of the kingdom—it is proof that the kingdom is here.

And Jesus underscores this as He goes on to say in verse 14, which we’ve considered already, that John is the promised Elijah figure, which, if you have ears to hear, means that Jesus is God in the flesh, come to save His people and judge the wicked. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15).

3. The Foolishness of That Generation (vv. 16-19)

So, in these first verses, Jesus has said a lot about John’s identity, His own identity, and the nature of the kingdom that John proclaimed. In verses 16-19 Jesus transitions to some comments about how John was received by the people of that generation.

John was Elijah, Jesus is God incarnate, and neither of them enjoyed a warm welcome by the majority. Most of the crowds didn’t heed John, and now they were not heeding the one John announced. And Jesus expresses the foolishness of that generation when he says, “‘But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, ‘ ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” (Matthew 11:16–17).

In the culture of that day, musicians would play music at times of celebration, like a wedding, as a soundtrack for dancing. Professional mourners, on the other hand, would be hired to sing sad songs, dirges, at funerals to help people express their sadness. And the scene here, as far as I understand it, is that you’ve got some kids here pretending to do that with each other. One minute they’re playing a happy song on a flute, the next minute they’re singing a dirge. There’s no rhyme or reason for any of it—there’s no real celebration or real cause for being sad. They’re being totally inconsistent. They’ll try anything just to get their friends to do what they want them to do.

I have very specific memories as a child of being in this spot. I had an idea, and I wanted my friends to go along with my idea. And my idea could change very rapidly. One minute, we’re doing this, the next minute, we’re doing that.  The only consistency is that I wanted to be in charge. And if my friends did not go along with my idea I could get very frustrated. “You’re not doing what I wanted you to do! I told you to do this and you wouldn’t do it. I told you to do something else and you wouldn’t do that either.”

And Jesus says that’s what that generation is like. Like children in the marketplace, the people are upset at both John and Jesus because neither of them did what the people wanted them to do. And it doesn’t bother the crowds that they are upset at John and Jesus for completely opposite reasons. “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (Matthew 11:18–19).

The crowds criticize John for avoiding alcohol and eating locusts and honey. “He must have a demon.” Along comes Jesus, who knows how to enjoy wine and a good meal, and instead of being okay with that, they criticize him for the opposite reasons. “He’s a glutton and a drunkard and is way too friendly with bad people.”

No consistency. The only consistency is that the crowds wanted to call the shots. They wanted prophets and messiahs who would who would dance when they were told to dance and mourn when they were told to mourn. They wanted prophets and messiahs who catered to their preferences. Their expectations. Who would let them stay in charge.

“Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds,” Jesus says in verse 19. Neither John nor Jesus have anything to prove. Their actions were both appropriate for their respective missions, and time will prove that theirs was the path of wisdom—unlike the foolishness of that generation.

4. The Fate of that Generation

Now, we might hear “foolishness” and this comparison to childre and think, “How silly.” But this foolish rejection of John and Jesus is more than just silly. It has severe consequences. Remember Malachi 4? Elijah must be listened to or else God will strike the land with a curse. You can’t reject John and Jesus without judgement.

And it’s that judgement that Jesus turns to in verses 20-24, where He describes the fate of that generation. “Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes’” (Matthew 11:20–21).

Tyre and Sidon were pagan cities, centres and sources of Baal worship, often held up in the Old Testament as examples of pride and wickedness. And if Jesus had visited them and did what he did in the Galilean towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida, those wicked, pagan, Gentile cities would have turned aside from their sin and followed him. They would have put on sackcloth and sat in ashes, the traditional way of showing mourning.

“But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you” (Matthew 11:22). What a slam. The residents of Tyre and Sidon, pinnacles of Gentile wickedness, will get off easier on judgement day than these observant Jews who refused to accept their Messiah when He came to them.

Verse 23: “And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you’” (Matthew 11:23–24).

The men of Sodom, renowned for wickedness, destroyed by fire from heaven, will get off lighter on judgement day than the people of Capernaum where Jesus himself lived for a time (Matt 4:13). Because if Jesus had gone to Sodom and did there what he did in Capernaum, sodom would have turned aside from their sin and still been around to that day.

Remember how John was sitting in prison wondering what happened to the judgement he had said was coming? Well, here it is. Jesus makes it very clear that judgement day is coming. And it’s going to take a lot of people by surprise. Hell is the fate of those foolish people who refused John’s message and the Messiah he proclaimed.

And You?

Now, there’s certainly more to say at this point. There’s more to say even about these verses we’ve just read, and we’re going to pick up with them again next week to consider some angles that we didn’t consider today.

But for today, we want to step back and sum up what this passage says and what it has to do with us. And as we do that, I want to go in two directions.

First, I don’t want to ignore the fact that some people listening to this sermon today, whether here in person or a recording later on, might find themselves in the spot of the crowds of Jesus’ day. You haven’t paid attention to John the Baptist’s call to repent, which are no less urgent just because we read them on a page instead of hearing them from his mouth. You’ve ignored the warnings of judgement. You have not embraced Jesus for who He is in all of His divine kingly authority. Maybe you’re like the children in the marketplace, upset with everybody who doesn’t dance along to your flute or mourn along to your dirge.

Maybe you need to hear the warning to repent or face judgement. Responding to the gospel is not optional. Jesus isn’t someone you can just consider endlessly. As Paul explained in Acts 17, God “commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness.”

Have you repented, turning back from your love affair with sin and placing yourself under the loving authority of king Jesus? If you haven’t, would this be the day?

Now, to go in another direction, what does this passage say to us who have repented and by God’s saving grace are in His kingdom underneath His saving authority? I’d suggest that this passage calls us to continue to surrender our expectations to the Lord. Even as we trust in Jesus, we so often get tangled up again in the world’s way of seeing things.

Today’s passage shows us again how upside-down things are in God’s kingdom. Imagine someone gave you a magic lamp today, and a genie popped out, and you said, “I wish to become the greatest human ever born.” Would you expect to find yourself instantly in a dank prison waiting to have your head chopped off? Because according to Jesus, that’s where the greatest human was when he spoke these words.

Today’s passage calls us to redefine greatness. And it tells us that, so great is the kingdom, that the least in the kingdom is greater still than John.

If you’ve been saved by Jesus, do you have any idea how great your status is? The smallest, weakest Christian is someone whom John and David and Abraham and Moses would look up to as greater than themselves, because we get to experience the kingdom that they only saw from afar.

We get to taste the realities that they only heard echoes of.

We get to follow the Lord from a transformed heart that they could only look around and dream of.

We get to worship a saviour that they only saw shadows of.

We get to enjoy a salvation they would have given everything to taste.

What challenges ahead of you start to look different when you see things this way? What temptations start to loosen their hold when you recognize your status? What discouragements start to look a lot more manageable when you remember who your saviour is and who you are in relation?

Christian, take heart this morning. You might think you’re the weakest, smallest Christian you know. You probably aren’t, but even if you are, you’re one of the greatest people in history. Not because of anything in and of yourself, but because you are a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. You live under the rule of King Jesus—a monarch who gave His own life to pay for your sins and has promised to come back for you.

As we turn to the table now and remember the body of Jesus given for us, the blood of Jesus shed for us, and His promise to eat and drink anew with us in His kingdom, we hold gifts that remind us of the greatness of the kingdom and can strengthen our faith as we head into a new week together where, no doubt, we will feel the enemy’s violence directed at us. And none of that will change the saviour’s love for us. Take heart and hold fast until He comes.