Gooding, David: 3 - Matthew 11-13

Thank you once more very much for coming. The narrative portion of Matthew that falls to us today is chapter eleven and twelve, though we shall allow ourselves permission to extend our view to chapter thirteen that contains the collection of teaching that goes along with this narrative portion. This part of Matthew, of course, is famous for the gracious invitation that our Lord gives. Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And doubtless all of you have many times expounded those verses to Sunday school classes, to Bible classes, preaching the gospel, perhaps also in instructing the believers. So that this morning I shall be all ears, if you will, my brothers, my sisters, to hear from you how those verses appeal to you and how you normally present them. Perhaps you don't have any particular one way, perhaps you preach in a thousand and one ways. Well, never mind, we have plenty of time this morning, and I shall be delighted to hear from you how you normally present the, that delightful invitation of the Lord Jesus and the claims and statements upon which that invitation is built. Now, as usual, I take the easy part of this occasion by surveying the leading themes of this section of the gospel, and it seems to me, beyond any doubt, that one of the leading and major themes of these chapters is the question of judgment. First of all, the judgment itself. Of course, I know you may argue to me that this is not peculiar to these chapters eleven, twelve, and thirteen. uh You will long since have observed that all the major collections of teaching in the Gospel of Matthew end with a reference to the judgment. That is true, isn't it, of the great Sermon on the Mount, where in chapter seven um our Lord reminds us of the coming time of storm, and says in chapter seven twenty two, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? Then will I profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you that work iniquity. In that day, a solemn reference to the judgment to come, thus ending the three chapters of the famous Sermon on the Mount. Yesterday, we had no time to examine the teaching section, uh, the teaching collection that lies in chapter ten. It is concerned, of course, with the briefing of the twelve apostles as they went forward on their ministry, but goes quite beyond the immediate circumstance of that early missionary journey. And as our Lord briefs his disciples, and so his people at large, for their evangelistic activities, he three times repeats at various stages in the briefing a solemn announcement prefaced by the words, verily I say unto you. Look at chapter ten fifteen. verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. Verse twenty three: but when they persecute you in this city, flee into the next, for verily I say unto you, you shall not have gone through the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come. And finally, in verse forty two: and whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. So as our Lord briefed his disciples for their evangelistic mission, he reminded them solemnly of the great backdrop against which we always preach. The final authority for what we say and do. You will remember yesterday while you are considering through chapters eight and nine the dominant topic of authority. We notice now that as our Lord dedicates authority to his apostles to send them forth to preach, he solemnly reminds them of that ultimate authority that forms the background to all that we say and do, the coming judgment, when the wicked will be judged and the faithful be rewarded. It is so, of course, in our passage today, the collection of teaching that goes along with the narrative of chapters eleven and twelve is, of course, the collection of parables given in chapter thirteen. We remember how that chapter ends, with an explanation of the parable of the wheat and the tares, where the tares are gathered, made into bundles, and cast into the fire. Similarly, with the parable of the dragnet, which when it is dragged to the shore, the fish are taken out and sorted, and the bad fish are consigned to the dish. In the fourth great section of Matthew, the collection of teaching that goes with the narrative is to be found in chapter eighteen and ends, of course, with that great parable of our Lord's judgment of his servants. Where the servant who had been forgiven but refused to forgive his fellow servant has his forgiveness withdrawn, and he himself put into prison, not to come out until the final pardon was paid. And then, of course, when it comes to the next, uh, uh, major section, it is Otios to point out, isn't it, that the great Olivet Discourse and the parables that conclude it fasten our attention on the judgment to come. Now, if you find all that exceedingly solemn, I beg you to notice that I didn't write the Gospel of Matthew. And if you would that I entertained you with something, uh, more pleasant, well then you suggest the topic on the next occasion. But it is so, isn't it, in this central part of Matthew, chapters eleven and twelve and thirteen, that form the center of this gospel, the topic of judgment permeates not only the teaching with which the section ends, but permeates the narrative as well. Look, if you will, at, uh, chapter eleven, verses twenty to twenty four, where our Lord begins to upgrade the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done because they repented not, and affirms that it should be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment. And again, in verse twenty four, howbeit I say unto you that it should be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee. Or look, if you will, at chapter twelve verse thirty six. and I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. Or again, in chapter twelve and verse thirty eight to forty five, Then certain of the scribes asked him for a sign, and he refused to give one, except the sign of the prophet Jonah. And then he observed in verse forty one, the men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it. And he repeats the warning in verse forty two, the queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it. Along with those explicit and exceedingly solemn references to the judgment, we have, as I have just observed, the parables in chapter thirteen, notably those of the tares and the wheat and the good fish and the bad, that fasten our attention on the coming judgment. We may notice a little more detail on this topic. In chapter eleven, verse twenty to twenty four, not only is the judgment referred to, but the procedures of the court are described. And our Lord points out that at the judgment, one of the major questions that will be raised by the prosecution is the question of the amount of evidence that the defendants had at their disposal. It is, of course, a common notion that at the final judgment, people shall be judged according to their works, and that is very true. We must not lose sight also of this element in the judgment. The prosecution will raise the question of the amount of evidence that was on earth available to the defendant. And here, Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum are warning us. By comparison with Tyre and Sidon and Sodom, our Lord affirms that is the amount of evidence that was available to Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin, if the amount of evidence available to them had been available to Sodom, the men of Sodom would have repented. And therefore, the gravity of the sentence upon these three Palestinian cities will be the heavier because of the greater evidence that was put before them, therefore their greater sin in refusing it. And similarly, in that second passage that so resembles this one, chapter twelve, verses thirty eight to forty five, Again, the final judgment. Again, the matter of evidence. And now an interesting and see- exceedingly significant quest detail of the procedure of the court. Witnesses shall be called. For the court is nothing but absolutely just and fair. Witnesses shall be called. The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the court. The verb stand up being a quasi-technical term in Hebrew. Witnesses will be called to stand up to give their evidence against the accused. Case law shall be cited. The que- the men of Nineveh shall stand up and shall condemn this generation, for a mere Jonah came, and what a tiny miracle, comparatively speaking, has attended his preaching. And yet the men of Nineveh have repented. The generation of our Lord's death. The evidence of our Lord, not only of his teaching, but his burial res- uh, uh, uh, his death and burial, and finally his resurrection. As a nation eventually hardened their hearts and officially rejected the sign of the greater than Jonah, his life, death, burial, and resurrection. His ascension, of course. The Queen of the South should be called in evidence, having heard of the wisdom of Solomon. She was so keen on wisdom. She came from the uttermost parts of the earth just to hear the witness of s- the wisdom of Solomon. I don't know, ladies and gentlemen, how far you would have gone for hearing that. But when it comes to the judgment, some people shall find the Queen of South ranged against them in the witness box. For they had available to them the witness of the incarnate wisdom of God, and they couldn't be bothered across the stream to come and listen to it. These are exceedingly solemn things, aren't they? And then another form of evidence that shall be brought before the court. Look, if you will, at chapter twelve and verse thirty six. I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. We shall be held, men will be held to what they have. Mm. Then, of course, in the parables of wheat and tares, and the dragnet with its good fish and bad, we have described for us in metaphorical terminology the actual sentence that shall be passed, and judgment in the sense of the penalty that shall be imposed. But if the final court, so to speak, will thus concern itself very seriously with the question of evidence. That leads us on to another sense in which the matter of evidence lies to the very fore in these two chapters eleven and twelve. If we are called upon to believe the Savior, that Jesus is the Christ, and to believe the gospel that he offers us, and to accept the claims that he made. Is there any evidence now for us to consider? Or does God just require us to believe in the dark? I was talking not so long ago to, to a Christian, young Christian gentleman in a communist country. I said to him, or I myself have dared rashly to talk about Christian evidences in the course of the preaching. I said to him, um, tell me, do you do much with evidence here in your preaching in this country? Oh, no, no, no, he said, no, no, no, no, no, no. We wouldn't want people to believe because of their intellect, because we... we rely more on the witness of our Christian lives, you see, at work. Marvelous when our lives will speak so loudly for the Lord that others will inquire. And of course, in that particular country, if if one of the chief, uh, means that God uses the li- evidence of the lives of the people, not only with the government, but with individuals at the work, in their schools, in their universities. I said, that's very good. Well, what would you make then of, uh, the Gospel of John? Uh, John tells us that these, uh, miracles were, have been written in order that you might believe. And the word for miracles I pointed out, we all know, is the word sign, which of course conveys the idea of evidence. This, the miracles are evidence that God is putting before people, on the basis of which they can make up their minds about the fact that Jesus is the Christ. Of course, they'll need to go further and consider not only that fact, but having come to faith in that fact, to take the next step and believing in him receive eternal life. I said, that seems to me as if God himself is offering us evidence. Or said I, what do you think? When it comes to anybody believing that Jesus is the Christ, do they do it on the basis of evidence, or do does, do they do it as a step of faith in the dark? Oh, he says they do it as a step of faith in the dark. What? I said, how would you know at that moment whether you were believing God or the devil? If there's no evidence either way. Oh, he says you find out that later on, when you believe the savior and it works. Ah. Well, I don't know what you think, my bet, and I think you would, um, if you had the opportunity, uh, uh, uh, say a little differently from my friend in the communist country. As I read this passage of, uh, o- o- of Matthew, it brims over with the discussion of the evidence that Jesus is the Christ. Of course, it must do, doesn't it? If at the final judgment, men and women are going to be called to question as to what they did with the evidence. Then, of course, the evidence must be available for them here and now to consider, mustn't it? So you will notice, to go over a few things very briefly, the leading question it begi- with which chapter eleven begins is John's question. Art thou he that should come, or look we for another? Our Lord didn't say, John, you da- learn to believe in the dark, my good man. No, no. He did some miracles and sent back John's disciples with evidence to comfort John's heart that Jesus was indeed the Christ. And there follows then a long discussion between J- our Lord and the crowd on the evidence of John's ministry that the nation ought to have accepted and in the end rejected, and the evidence of our Lord's own ministry. And at the end of that, our Lord in chapter eleven verse nineteen, discussing the evidence both of the ministry of John and the ministry of himself, enunciates the principle that wisdom is justified either by her children, according to some memberships, or according to others, by her works. That is the very wisdom of God now incarnate, the greater than Solomon that is here, demonstrating the wisdom of God both in his teaching and in his, uh, acts, stands at the bar of men to be assessed. Will they justify him and say, this is the very wisdom of God incarnate? You can see it because of this and this and this and this. Or will they reject that wisdom and denounce it as folly? That is the central issue before men anyway, isn't it? And I should be all ears to hear, my brothers, my sisters, how you in your respective fields, where you labor for the Lord. What do you point to when you're talking of our Lord as the wisdom of God? To help men see that he is indeed the wisdom of God. Or do you say, no, I don't bother to do that. I follow one Corinthians two, There's no good talking about wisdom to the unconverted. You just get up and speak and don't speak any wisdom. Uh, wisdom for this for those that are already converted. Oh, I thought, what do you say to them? Jesus is the wisdom of God. I'm looking forward to a sermon as soon as anybody will preach it. Not necessarily today. I've heard sermons on the love of God and the love of the Lord Jesus, haven't you? The grace of the Lord Jesus, the power of the Lord Jesus. I'm looking forward to a sermon now, as soon as I can persuade somebody to preach it, on Jesus as the incarnate wisdom of God. There is a great section in the Old Testament, is there not, that is technically called wisdom literature. This part of God's self-revelation to men, even in Old Testament days, encapsulated in this wisdom literature. Our Lord, of course, is wisdom incarnate. As he stood at the bar of men's judgment, offering himself as the wisdom of God, there were those, of course, who perceived that he was the wisdom of God and believed. There were those who maintained the very opposite. In chapter twelve are two stories. In the first of them, the Pharisees accuse him and his disciples of unlawful behavior on the Sabbath. And similarly, in chapter twelve, verse nine following, the Pharisees, uh, uh, again a- attempt to accuse him of unlawful behavior, the opposite of wisdom. They go further, do they not, in chapter twelve verse twenty following, in which, when the question is raised by the crowd, is this not then the son of David? The Pharisees say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The very opposite is true. He casts out demons in the power of the prince of demons. In the end, of course, you have to come to that decision about Jesus Christ, don't you? Either he is God incarnate, the wisdom of God incarnate, or he is of the very dead. And finally, for the moment on this line, when the Pharisees came to their final conclusion and maintained that they believed that Jesus was of the very dead, it interests me to notice what our Lord did. He didn't simply turn round and go off and say, oh, leave them in their folly. They're not worth talking about. If men can be so deliberately perverse, oh, leave them. Don't bother to argue with them. Turn on your heel and shake the dust off your feet and, and stop talking to them. No, no, no, no, no, no. When the Pharisees charged him with being in league with the devil, as chapter twelve records, he responded by arguing at great length, with a whole series of arguments designed to expose to those men that they were being utterly perverse. They were denying their own basic value. They were calling that black, which in every other circumstance of life they would have called white. Why did Arnold bother to do it to them. I will say, there's a final judgment. If those men persist in that accusation, long before the final judgment comes, they put themselves beyond hope. You call God incarnate and the Holy Spirit, if you call that the devil. What hope is there of any light ever getting through to your head after that? Rather than letting those men get away with that to their eternal damnation, imagining that they are being so marvelously logical and so marvelously holy. Our Lord thinks it worthwhile, as on last attempt to reach those men, to expose them to themselves. Show them that in this decision of theirs, they are being utterly perverse and false to their own basic standards. It is a most solemn example of what perhaps the final judgment will be like, when before consigning men to perdition, God will show them how foolish and blind were their judgments, yes, but also how knowingly, in order to reject Christ, they rejected their own very values for which they pretended to stand. They're very solemn matters, my brothers, my sisters. I shall come to, to, if not the final judgment, of course, some amount of judgment if I go on like this much long and don't give you the opportunities. Let me therefore hasten to come just to one other problem. The leading question in this section of Matthew is the question that John addressed to the Lord. Are you he that should come? Or do we look for another? It will seem that when John was in prison, he suffered from doubt. But perhaps you rise to defend him and say, no, he didn't. Who are you to say that the greatest of all prophets suffer from doubt? Get back to Bill Frost, you five-eights of a Christian, and learn not to criticize your superiors. Oh, he didn't suffer from that at all. No, you say he didn't. What the question was this, he believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Of course he didn't. Of course he did, but there was just this little point that Jesus didn't seem to be doing much about it. I mean, John had come preaching, hadn't he? Two things, basically, that the Messiah was coming, and when Messiah came, he would do two things. He would baptize with the Holy Spirit. That is, he would bring forgiveness and regeneration and the gift of the Holy Spirit to all who repented and believed. But then John would also teach the other side of Messiah's ministry. He would truly purge his threshing floor, gather the wheat into his garner, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Messiah would judge. That's what John preached. He had preached that the axe is already laid at the root of the tree. You went through a garden, this garden, and saw an axe laid at the root of the tree. What would you suppose? You'd say, well, the gardener's going to have this tree down very shortly. No. Axe is laid to the root of the tree, says John. You better start repenting. So, uh, then John looked around and thought he saw a heap of chaff way up there in the palace. Well, there was King Herod himself living publicly in sin. And in the name of Messiah, John denounced him, publicly called upon the man to repent. Didn't repent. Went on with his sinning, and worse than that, put John in prison. And if you had been John, what would you have expected the Messiah to do now? Messiah had no option. It wasn't really a question that the food in prison wasn't very nice, and John wanted to get out. The whole question of the reputation of Messiah was at stake, if Jesus is Messiah and come to fulfill Old Testament prophecy and come to execute the judgments of God on the evil and purge his thrashing floor. Burn up the chaff and establish the kingdom. Just have to deal with Herod, don't we? He must come and let John out of prison. He didn't come. That raises a very fundamental question, my brothers, my sisters. Is he then the Messiah after all? Of course, you've never had any doubts on the question, have you? I studied Hebrew, or attempted to at one stage in Cambridge. One of my fellow students in the class was a certain John Rayner. He is now rabbi in a great synagogue in London. He lost both his parents in Hitler's gas chamber. And he used to say to me, David, your Jesus is not the Messiah. I said, how do you make that up? Well, he said, the Old Testament says as plainly as it can say anything that when the Messiah comes, he'll put down evil. Your Messiah Jesus has no done no such thing. And don't you start talking to me, he says, about a supposed spiritual kingdom. He said, that's only what you Christians invented after you were disappointed that Jesus didn't fulfill the Old Testament today. The Old Testament said he would come and put down evil, and your Jesus hasn't done it, therefore he isn't the Messiah. What would you have said, my brother, in answer to those questions? I wish I had known then the little that I know now. But it seems to me that Matthew, in this central section of his gospel, is not merely concerned with judgment. He is concerned, of course, with the claims of Jesus to be the Messiah and the eventual judge. And therefore, it raises this question of Jesus and the question of evil. And when and how and will he put down evil? Used to be a common question during the war, if there's a God at all, why doesn't he stop the war? I have another Jewish friend in Belfast. Your Jesus, he says to me. Where was your Jesus when Hitler was gassing six million of my fellow Jews? Gone on holiday or something? A real question, aren't they? How do you explain if you maintain that Jesus is the Christ, a fulfillment of Old Testament, that he did not put down evil? Let me cease just by remarking that perhaps these chapters give us a hint, don't they, of the timetable for Messiah's establishment of his kingdom and putting down. At least let me call attention to the little word until. When our Lord walks out eventually from the synagogue in the face of the Pharisees' determination to kill him, Matthew nudges us in the ribs and says, will you not observe that he's not running away or abdicating his claim to be the Messiah? If in the face of evil he eventually turns around and quietly walks away, he is adopting deliberately the tactics announced in Isaiah, the bruise of Greed he will not break until he sends forth judgments of Israel. Or you will notice the parable of the tares and the wheels when the servants come and say, wilt thou that we, uh, root up the we- uh, the tares? No, says the master, let both grow together until the leaven was put in the mead, until. And of course, as we know from our further reading of the Old Testament, it was never God's intention, was it? That the wicked should be dealt with at the first coming of the Lord. The Psalm one hundred and ten, long centuries ago, set the time back. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand. Until. So there was the Old Testament itself announcing the timetable. The first coming of Christ, his death, burial, ascension, and session at the right hand of God, until the time came for his enemies to be put under his feet. The fact that he didn't deal with evil at his first coming is not evidence that he wasn't the Messiah, it's strong evidence that he is, and was fulfilling the Old Testament program laid down before. Forgive me, my brothers and sisters, for going on so long, but, uh, uh, in my generosity, I am prepared to face Sam and ask for ten minutes more. In the moment, uh, uh, to the, uh, assignment time for you to make your extra contribution. Would anyone like to start? By giving me a sermon or two. How do you normally put across the lovely verses of the invitation? Come up. What do you normally say about it? Going back to the, the time of judgment. Yes. God made that distinction, didn't he, when he said that spirit in the family, and to the very upon them, but not the day of the Lord. Yeah, that's right. He closed the book, sir. In his programmatic sermon in, in, in Nazareth, he, he read so far the acceptable year of the Lord, he closed the book and said the scripture is fulfilled this day in your ear. Not the next phrase, I suppose, in the day of entrance of our God. There's a very superficial one that goes like this. The way to stop evil or put it down and bring in the age of peace that we all long for is as follows. You divide the world into two groups, the goodies and the baddies. Take a sword or other device, cut the heads off all the baddies. Then you are left with the goodies. And you have your utopia. Of course, it's a little difficulty to decide who the goodies and the baddies are. I mean, if you're capitalists, the baddies are the communists. And if you are the oppressed workers, then the baddies are the capitalists. So that's a little bit difficult. But other than that, all you have to do, put them into two groups, destroy the baddies, and you're left with the goodies. A little simplistic, isn't it? If the Savior had taken a sword and cut the heads off all the baddies, how many would have been left? None. None. Uh, was never in the intention of God that at the first coming the Savior should put down evil in that. The intention was that he would proceed as a sower going forth to sow. And by sowing the word, not by the sword, but by the word, the men and women should be faced with the evidence, offered the opportunity to receive. Yes. Before eventually the final judgment comes. And what is more, given opportunity to receive it, and then to demonstrate the reality of their faith. In a world where Satan is still allowed to attack, and attack them more than he can ever be once they receive the Savior. To demonstrate faith in the Savior in a world where the Satan is allowed still to show tears and thus confound the issue. For faith in God must be demonstrated to be genuine faith in God, and not merely a form of cupboard love. I think you're sorry about that, I will stop. I was just going to say, um, uh, it seems to me that this question of the timetable for Messiah setting up his kingdom and the timetable for putting down evil is not an arbitrary thing. It is in the very nature of God's way- ways and wisdom. As the first coming should, should offer the evidence, make the possibility of atonement and redemption and forgiveness, give opportunity for the gospel to be preached, people to survey the evidence, to see its wisdom and receive. And only when men have finally rejected it, then for the Lord to intervene and by his judgment to put down into. Those people, when the Lord was on earth, would they have a knowledge of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Nineveh, and so on? They should have had that. But what about people today who, where the gospel has not gone, the Bible, the Word of God, the history of Sodom and Gomorrah, uh, and Nineveh is unknown. Therefore, the preacher's job, the missionary's witness, to speak of these things, isn't it? Yes, surely. Uh, I had a very unusual experience, the only one like it in my whole life. Uh, in uh nineteen thirty nine, just about six months before the Japanese took over our area, I was up in the mountains with Chinese friends, and we were preaching and distributing literature in a very remote area, and an old man, seventy years old, he invited us to come and have tea and oranges and watermelon seeds and sit down and chat. He said, now what are you doing? What is this you're talking about? We told him the story of the Lord Jesus, and he said, that is wonderful. He said, all my life I have asked the venerable one of heaven to forgive my sin. He said, I've not lived a violent life. I have tried my very best to be good, but I realize my own shortcomings. I've not worshipped heaven and earth, I haven't worshipped the ancestors, not a Buddhist, not a Taoist, not a Confucianist. I have asked the Venerable One of heaven, they have that term, Tian Lao Ye, to forgive my sin, but I have been troubled until you tell me now the basis on which he could forgive my sins, and you tell me it's his own being. But I haven't met anyone else that's ever thought of that. There may be those. Mm. Well, I personally, you are the expert, uh, uh, my brothers and sisters. Eh, I take comfort from these solemn chapters. And the God of heaven does consider the amount of evidence that people have. Not necessarily is it to have 100% complete evidence before one believes that the Christ covered backwards and forwards. What are you going to say, if I may? Uh, uh, you haven't yet, ladies and gentlemen, I think you're a little bit niggardly with your sermons. I mean, I told you about a half a dozen sermons of more, goodness me. Huh, yes? I just wanted to say that, uh, yesterday, just two months ago, we made a terrific little book of a hundred and pages written by an English brother, and his son was in Manchester, a lawyer, you probably know him, who wrote the Dean verdict, and it is on his very signature book about the evidences of the resurrection, and he treats it like a trial. Mm. He goes through the whole trial as a, and showing all the evidences, and here's a picture of the truth of the resurrection, our evidence, and uh, this progress that you're saying. Yes, yes. But this is a wonderful book that I recommend. I can't remember the author's name now. Ah. But a lawyer from semi and uh, Metro. That'd be very interesting if you could remember the name to tell me afterwards. Certainly so. Yeah. The word. Yeah, good. This the is truth of Romans one nineteen, isn't it? That what may be known of God is apparent to them. Yeah. So that they are left without excuse. Oh, surely. God has provided evidence that even the, the heathen have not heard. Tell me, sir, if I may ask you, I, I be bold, because I'm anxious to conserve every minute. In this matter, what do you make of the references then to the question of revelation? For instance, in the great invitation, come unto me and I will give you rest, is based on our Lord's claim to a monopoly, isn't it? No one knows the Son, save the Father. No one knows the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son is willing to reveal. Do you find any problem between the idea of evidence and the question of revelation? I thank thee, Lord of heaven and earth, for thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babe. Does that mean that God does a selection and he bypasses all the wise and prudent, and that's too bad that they were wise and prudent and revealed it to babe? Or could any of us, if we had the mind to qualify as a babe? Would you say that chapter twelve is the watershed of Mount of Harb. In verse 10, verse thirteen chapter twelve, then the Pharisees and others had the conflict against them, where they might destroy. Now that was a apparently a correct concept. Mm. It could have done. Mm. And it was a considered error Mm. by the responsible leaders of the, of the nation. And from that point on, the Lord's ministry seems to change the matter. Seems to be a hot issue. Mm. They have heard the error Mm. of the murder in chapter 3 to 9, Mm. and had heard the minister write through the back of the minister and the murder. Mm. And hence they held the council. So, so is so. It lies actually, doesn't it, eh, eh, not in exactly in the amount of chapter, but in the amount of literary structure of the book. This is absolutely central to the book. And they were now in danger while this generation of committing the unpardonable sin, with the evidence of the Holy Spirit working through the Savior, calling that be held in darkness. I think we have to take seriously ourselves our Lord's assessment of his contemporaries. He said this is an evil generation. Now, of course, all of us are evil in one sense, but even the Jewish rabbis recognized that there were certain generations in the course of Israel's history that were peculiarly wicked. The rabbis talked about the generation of the dead, who apostatized in the wilderness and refused to enter the promised land. The rabbis regarded them as being particularly and extremely sinful. Our Lord takes the view, even more so of his own contemporaries. All the sins, he says in the Gospel of Luke, all the murders of the martyrs, from Abel to Zechariah, will be required of this generation. To work the truth of the evil. I've rejected the supreme evidence. Speaking of John, that beloved John the Baptist, he had preached about the Lamb of God. Mm-hmm. Then... that was the Passover, I'm sure that's what it meant to him. And then in prison, could he have forgotten that, or had it become dim when he was suffering as he was suffering, expecting that the Lord would judge the evil one? Well, I myself think, sir, uh, uh, that the, uh, confinement in prison raised for him not questions of personal discomfort, but questions, theological questions. Are you really the Messiah? Now, I know some people object to that, and they say that John was only questioning the timetable, and that what he did was a little bit perplexed that Jesus wasn't openly saying, I am the Messiah. There are very few occasions when our Lord actually publicly stood and said, I am the Messiah, are there not? And some suggest that John was getting a bit upset about this, so hit upon a strategy for gently pushing our Lord to commit himself, and he waited till there was a mighty great crowd around the Lord Jesus and sent a, a few of his disciples to ask our Lord publicly in front of the crowd, now tell us, are you really the one that should come? And he'd have to say yes or no, wouldn't he? And he would commit himself, yes, I am the Christ. But if you take that view, of course, you haven't got very far because you'll now have a John who didn't altogether trust our Lord's timetable and tactics. And if Peter could disagree with our Lord, has gone under pressure. Prisons look very different from the inside, sir, and what they do outside. Easy for us to sit in comfort. When you're in a concentration camp and you've prayed and prayed and prayed, and the enemy says, where now is your God? That's a different story. I'd like the answer, may I ask you for com- anybody got any comments you'd like to get up, I be kind they can say, about chapter eleven. When the crowds were gone, when the disciples of John were gone back, given the evidence that our Lord was feeling certain of the program from Isaiah, and if he was fulfilling this part of the program, then surely one day he would fill it, fulfill it all. What is this all about in chapter eleven verse seven, probably, where he says to the crowd concerning John, what went you out into the wilderness for to see? And that is also confident. Many years ago, Mr. J. B. Russell, who at that time was the editor of The Witness, came up to Africa and visited us. He did a little lifetime of John the Baptist, but that time was something on my horizon. Mm-hmm. He said he had three tests. The first test was he was tested to fight like a Democrat. Are you Democrat? No. The next day, are you elected? No. He was tested to fight like a Democrat. And then John believed when he heard that the Lord stopped tithing, and so on, he said, by there he's been more than you are able to do. And there he was tempted to end. And then the third temptation was he was in prison. He was tempted to stop by the second. Got it. Got it. So we have the three temptations. Mm. First of all, time, Mm. and then danger, Mm. and thirdly That's lovely, sir, isn't it? I find, perhaps because I'm a weakling, but I do find our Lord's gracious gentleness with people in doubt a marvelously comforting thing. In his tempted through his sorrow, the Lord doesn't send to rebuke John, uh, uh, uh, as though he was some terrible scoundrel, but gently conveys the end and did some miracles, so one of the gospels says, on that in that, uh, in those moments, and then told the men, go and tell John what you're seeing here. Blessed is he that is not penitent. Sometimes, my brothers and sisters, when my seniors used to sing that hymn, you don't hear it sung so much now, are we? He is not a disappointment. Jesus is far more than that. Well, I've seen it with gusto. I've always been a hundred percent true with me. Have you never prayed and been disappointed when the Lord didn't answer? Well, happy you are if you've never been. You are happy if you've never found occasion of stumbling. Have you never had an intellectual difficulty? Ah, well, then you are happy indeed. I don't want to be congratulated on your happiness. Sometimes I would have to contest, yes, I have been disappointed. My fault, of course. And oh, the tender grace of our Lord, ministering to our disappointment, helping us to overcome our stumbling blocks and to carry on believing. I don't know whether you would allow me, I think our Lord actually was being a little bit, I better not say sarcastic, I better say ironic then. I actually won't even allow me that. I don't know. When he turned on the crowd and talked, started to talk to them about John, because now he is chiding them for their reaction to the evidence, isn't it? He said to this vast crowd, as many of them, according to the earlier chapters in the gospel, many of them had gone out to John in their thousands, they'd gone out and made a big splash getting baptized through tremendous enthusiasm, thousands of them, what a who. But by this time, they weren't for accepting Jesus, were they? What had gone wrong? But John had said that Jesus was the Messiah, and they got themselves baptized by John. Why didn't they believe in Jesus? Jesus come to me and said, there's a question I want to ask you. Um, you know that business a year or so ago you went out into the wilderness, didn't you? Yes. You went out in South of it, didn't you? Yes. Well, I've been wondering, tell me, why did you go out into the wilderness to see exactly on that occasion? Ah. A reed shaken with the wind, perhaps. What man or woman on earth went ever went out into a wilderness to see a reed? Oh no, you didn't. But you did go out into the wilderness, didn't you? You must have had some reason for going out in the world. I mean, you just don't go out in the wilderness for nothing. Um, what do you go in the wilderness for? Oh, I know. To see a man clothed in prime raiment. Well, perhaps not then, because I mean to say, no, if you want to see a man in prime raiment, you go to a palace, wouldn't you? But you did go out, didn't you? What do you go out for? I fancy their faces were getting redder and redder and redder and redder. Yes, they had gone out and then they got baptized, and they thought John was, uh, Isaiah forty and, uh, he said the Messiah was coming, and they got baptized. Now they were trying to forget him. But they weren't prepared to accept him. Why not? As it was, you think that they had wrong notions of what the Messiah would do. They didn't mind a Messiah that would come and beat the Romans and drive the Romans out and give them a better share of the country and a new chariot or two and a garage to put it in and a extra acres of earth. But a Messiah that wouldn't fight the Romans and bring social reform and political freedom. They weren't interested in it. I think our Lord is now, uh, uh, probing their consciences and reminding them that, yes, they were indeed went out to see a prophet because they believed John was the fulfillment of Isaiah forty, greatest of all the prophets. But then if John was the prophet, why didn't they accept Jesus? And you see, he ends up by de- de- denouncing the crowd as a lot of children. We danced unto you, and the you- you- we have piped unto you, and you did not dance. We wept, and you did not mourn. John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he had a demon. The son of man came eating and drinking, they say, behold, a gluttonous man who was wine bibber, a friend of public inconsiderate. Arbitrary lot of tyranny for them. You see, now they were saying, and the Pharisees in particular, oh, but John, I mean, just look at him out there dressed up in that funny clothes, you see, shouting his head off about the wrath of God. I mean, and intelligent and refined people like us couldn't be expected, could we, to listen to somebody bawling his lungs out there on the, in the desert and, uh, uh, calling on people about the lot for kind, and God himself wouldn't ask us to listen to stuff like that. I mean, we're... The man is emotionally disturbed. And then the son of man came. He didn't bawl in the street, and he preached a delightful message to God receive us simple. Even me with all my sin. I learned it. My friend the publicans. And they said, yes, well now, this is far better than John. We didn't like that judgment business I'm in today, but this is lovely. This is the love of God. We love this. Yes. I didn't like that either. They wouldn't have the rock of God, they wouldn't have the love of God. I remember attending some tent meetings in Cambridge once, and it was the last night of the campaign, and the preacher had very solemnly warned the people about the judgment to come and the need to accept the Savior and believe the gospel because of the coming judgment. And afterwards I was asked if I'd come and speak to a certain gentleman who was still sitting on his seat and fuming like a volcano. You'll say, I found the man was a lawyer. Ah, he says, all this boring about the judgment to come, I just love it. No, I said. I mean, I'm one of those people that want to draw mankind to God by the love of God, and here's him standing up there bawling at the only his voice about judgment. That's a very big old judge, isn't it? Uh, but then I said, you know, I wonder what tone of voice would you think John the Baptist said, you generation of vipers who have warned you to flee from a rock and come. I'm afraid the lawyer got angrier still, but that wasn't the wise thing to say. Anyway, another friend invited us both to supper. The lawyer graciously accepted and, uh, said he just got to go and attend a certain business, and then he would call at the house and have some. So on the way out to the house, I said to my friend, I said, look, we'll, we'll stop all this about the judgment. We'll talk about the love of God. And I said, you'll see he doesn't want that either. We got into the home, and presently the subject rose again, and I said, yeah, the love of God, isn't it marvelous? So loving is God, you know, for God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish. And so marvelous that when we believe we have eternal life, and God assures us that, uh, our sins are forgiven, and we may be sure. Nonsense, he said. I don't believe that at all. Of course you can't be sure of forgiveness of sins and eternal life. I said, yes, my man, because the love of God is so great. No, no, it isn't. You can't know. So I opened the Bible and read in one John five, of course, these things are written that you may know that you have eternal. Oh, shut that old bookie. Yes. Don't want the wrath of God. Doesn't want the... He talks about the love of God. He wants us all people by God's love. Doesn't want the love of God either. So were the Jews of our Lord General. They neither wanted John, nor did they want Jesus. You are like a lot of children, said our Lord. It wasn't that long after that that he had a very much more serious metaphor. You are like a lot of... Thank you very much once more for your presence. And. Somebody ought to thank you for coming. You for coming. Come on, we too. So we. Lord, we thank thee for thy word. The solemnity of it grips our hearts. We bless thee nonetheless for thy judgment. We thank thee that the jewels of the New Jerusalem are we. Its joy shall be founded on thy divine justice. We thank thee now, our sinners saved through the atoning death of Christ, and therefore safe from all judgment and penalty and wrath to come. We thank thee for thy wrath against sin. And we bless thee to know that in the death of our Lord, thou hast not forgotten even the slightest one of all our sins, and each one has received its due recompense of reward. We thank thee, Lord, for thy son, his authority to make thee known, and his ability to make thee known. And sovereign of the skies, we do praise that thou hast been willing and able to reveal thyself to us mere days. In Jesus Christ, thy son, we have the very wisdom of God. We thank thee too for the Holy Spirit come to make known that hidden wisdom that none of the princes of this world knew. Now thou hast to reveal to us things that I never saw or ear heard, neither entered into the heart of man. In our turn, we do beseech that thou will so reveal thy Son to us, that we may not be stumbled in him or in his ways with us. Sometimes clear, sometimes we confess quite to our side. And we pray, Lord, that with strength and faith, thou will give us grace and wisdom, how to present the wonders and the treasures of the wisdom of God to our fellow men and women, that they may come to worship our Savior. Thank thee for this hour. Be thy blessing upon us as we go, through Jesus Christ our Lord.