Episode 261: Tell John What You See and Hear | +Quigg Lawrence

We are in Matthew 11. If you have a Bible, if you have a Bible app, please turn there. It'll be more fun if you do.

And Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John the Baptist what you hear and see. The blind will receive their sight, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me." — Matthew 11:4-6

Father, we give you this time and we pray we would not waste your time. We pray that we would have open ears to hear what you want to speak to us—whether encouragement, comfort, or maybe to tell us to turn from something we're doing. Thank you for your word, in Jesus name. Amen.

Well, guys, we had a football game yesterday, and sadly, that old mule kicked the gnarly goat in the face, and we lost at the very last minute. Go Navy beat Army, is all I can say. Army, have your day. I just will remind you that we won fourteen years in a row. So we're going to let you have a couple.

Alright. So we're in Matthew 11, and we're going to see this weird scene with John the Baptist in just a second, but I kind of want to give you some context. In my office, I have a couch, and that couch is kind of like Barbara Walters. You know, they say when you go in to meet with Barbara Walters for an interview, what happens? Everyone cries. Even people that think there's no way she's going to make me cry, they end up crying. My couch is a place people cry.

And usually the scene is like this: husband and wife are at odds. The couple that used to skip together and hold hands and call each other at the wee hours of the morning and send each other long letters, now are turned against each other. Oftentimes, one has found a friend in their pain. They broke their marriage vows. So usually that person's on the couch, and they're telling the story, and first of all, I want to say, if you come to the office, you have a lot of wisdom. You have a lot of courage. It's much easier to stay at home, stay locked down, don't seek counsel, and just let the devil beat the tar out of you. So that comes—I understand it's hard. I've gone to a counselor. I remember the first time I went to a Christian counselor, kind of doing this, wanting to wear a ski mask on my nose and eyebrows. I walked in there and half our church was in the waiting room of the counselor's office. "Hey, pastor. How are you doing?" "Great, I'm fine. Sounds good."

But the point being, I salute you if you do admit, "Hey, sometimes we need help, we need prayer, we need coaching." But what happens often is the person that's broken the marriage vow, the person that's committed adultery, sits on my couch and just cries incredibly. It's amazing. They're broken, and all this stuff is coming out, and that's good. But in and of itself, I tell them, that's awesome, but in and of itself, tears don't really mean anything. I mean, actors can cry on demand.

What I tell them is, God has grace to forgive any sin, but for the sake of your spouse, you're going to have to do more than say, "I'm sorry." Saying I'm sorry in and of itself means nothing. Words are cheap. It's action over time. And the Bible says that godly sorrow leads to repentance, and then salvation. Earthly or worldly sorrow just ends in death.

And so I know what it is to see somebody crying, but what I try to say is, "Listen, if you really are broken, if you have godly sorrow, then God will give you the grace day by day to, first of all, stop doing what you're doing. That's the first thing. Whatever it takes, stop it, walk away, burn your phone, get rid of whatever you have to do. But two, the way you're going to show your spouse that it's safe to be married to you again is by showing actions over time. Deeds. Deeds. James probably wasn't all wrong."

And so we see here this amazing story of John in prison, and he started to hear about the deeds that Jesus did, and we're going to get there. But first, let's look at verse one.

It says, "Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples. When he finished instructing them, he went on to teach and preach in their cities." — Matthew 11:1

Now, that's kind of—for most of us, we read that and go, "Yeah, so what?" Except for it's instructive. I learned from my Reformed brothers, my PCA brothers, that a pastor should not spend three or four hours preparing a sermon. They need to get into the word and spend a lot of their work day and their work week in the scriptures so that the preacher can equip y'all. So you can be fully equipped, not blown to and fro.

However, what we notice is that Jesus, while he did spend a lot of time teaching and instructing his disciples, there was a time where he goes, "Okay, we're done for today. Now he's going to go out and share the gospel with others." And so both are needed.

Study, but there's a time to study, and there's a time to stop studying and go witness, and testify, and share, and speak of the hope. Because we don't want to keep giving the gospel to the same people till they're saturated with it, while these people are starving to death.

John's Question in Prison

So that's the beginning. Verse two says:

Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one? Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?" — Matthew 11:2-3

John's asking this through his disciples: Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

The first question I have for you is, why is John the Baptist in prison? You could go to Matthew 14 a little bit later in the text, and they're looking back and telling about something John did that landed himself in prison. What did he do? He called out the most powerful man in the land. He called out Herod. Herod had divorced his wife and married his brother's wife, and John the Baptist says, "What you're doing is unlawful. It's not of the Lord. You need to stop and repent." And Herod had this strange thing with John, where he kind of liked him, kind of liked hearing from him, but this time he didn't like the message. He put him in prison. And eventually, John would be put to death. So he's in prison, rotting, waiting for his death.

But while he's in there, he starts to hear all the things Jesus was doing. Now, what strikes you as super weird about this? That John the Baptist would have to ask about Jesus through his followers: Are you the one to come, Jesus, or is there another?

Why does that strike you as weird? They were cousins. Do you remember the story when Mary, Jesus' mother, comes to visit Elizabeth? Inside Elizabeth is a baby, a six-month-old baby in utero—that's John the Baptist. And the minute Mary crosses the threshold with Jesus in her womb, this baby by the Holy Spirit knew that Messiah had entered the house. And the Bible recounts that John the Baptist in the womb jumped. He leapt for joy.

And so it's odd to me that a baby that knew Jesus was the Messiah even in the womb—the same guy who had baptized him. And Jesus comes up to him and goes, "I need you to baptize me." Johnny goes, "No, no, no, no, no, no. You, Jesus, need to be baptizing me." And so he knew. And in fact, he even spoke it. When Jesus came forward to the river for baptism, what did John the Baptist say?

"Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." — John 1:29

See, unlike other prophets who said, "Messiah is going to be like this. Messiah is going to look like this," John is not simply prophesying what's going to happen in seven or eight hundred years. He's proclaiming and announcing: This is the one that all the prophets pointed to. He's the one, and he is now here. God is with us. Emmanuel.

So it's super weird that he would ask, "Jesus, are you really the one?" He knew Jesus was the one. So why now is he asking?

The Crucible of Suffering

He's asking because he spent who knows how many months in prison, eating cockroaches and maggots and stale bread, cold water running on him, damp, filthy, smelly, knowing death is coming. And in that setting, it was very easy for John to say, "Did God really say all this I thought about Jesus being Messiah? If he's Messiah, why am I in jail, rotting?"

And I'm thinking—the text doesn't say it explicitly—but I think in the crucible of suffering and isolation in a prison cell, he began to wonder himself.

What I want to take from that is: sometimes we're in a crucible. Sometimes we've had a loved one die. We just got a message. Tim just got a message. A nineteen-year-old boy, Wills, was lifting weights, a friend of our congregation this morning, and it killed him. And his parents are in grief. So you can pray for Wills.

But I think John the Baptist was being crushed by the ugliness of his situation, and it was clouding his vision—the things that he knew that he knew that he knew. All of a sudden, in the crucible of suffering, he's thinking, "God, where are you? Where are you?"

Even the good, faithful people sometimes say, "Lord, where are you? I don't like what's going on here. I don't like what's going on with my kid. I don't like what's going on with my dying parent. I don't like to see what's happening to young children being abused in our city. God, where are you?"

And so see the honesty of John. "Are you the one who's to come?" And so Jesus answers him. Jesus is not afraid of questions. You know, conservatives, we need to understand that. Jesus is not afraid of questions. He doesn't shut you down. He doesn't upbraid him. Jesus is not afraid of questions.

So Jesus is pointing back to the same prophets who told about Messiah coming. We see in Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61 that the blind are going to see when Messiah comes, and the deaf are going to hear, and those who are in prison of any sort—a prison like John, or even a prison of something we've wrapped ourselves in—that he came to bring liberty to those that are in prison. The lame will walk, the blind will see, the deaf will hear.

Jesus says, go tell John what you're seeing, what you guys are presently seeing and hearing. Tell John. And he knew that as soon as they told him that, what they had witnessed with their own eyes and ears, John would know that that points to the Messiah. It is the Messiah. Only Messiah can do that.

In fact, when Jesus started healing people, he healed the widow of Nain's son. The people said, "Oh, is this man a great prophet? We thank God himself. God is working through this man." And so Jesus told them:

The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

Then it says:

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John. — Matthew 11:7

Jesus loved John. Jesus really did. He goes, "What do you guys think? You think he's going to be like a concierge at a five star hotel? You think he's going be a wispy little fellow who you can just tell him this and that, and he'll bend to your will?" No. John had a backbone of titanium. He was on a mission. He ate locusts. He wore dead animal skins. He was a man's man, and he called it like he saw it. And Jesus said he's the great prophet. In fact, he's more than a prophet. The prophets predicted what was going to happen. He's now proclaiming what is—that Jesus Messiah is here with us.

The Greatest Yet the Least

Let's skip down just a little bit. Verse 11 says:

Truly I say to you, among those born of women, there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist. — Matthew 11:11

In other words, of all the men and women who've ever come from the womb, no one born of a woman has ever been greater than John the Baptist. And yet, he says:

But in the kingdom of God, John the Baptist is least. — Matthew 11:11

Do you remember when he said, "You must be born again"? He tells Nicodemus, you must be born again. You've gotta be born of the water and the spirit. Not just an earthly birth—we all have that—but there's another birth, a spiritual birth where you come into Christ. And so John the Baptist is the greatest man born of woman ever, and yet he stands on the precipice of the kingdom breaking in, and just announces it, proclaims it.

And then we have this really strange verse. It says:

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

So from the time of John the Baptist until now, that's not very long. A couple years, bunch of years. From that time, it says, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent have taken it by force.

Now, I looked it up online. I looked at about nine commentaries, and everybody that answered it—you know, it kind of reminds me of tenth grade when I didn't read the book and I got the cliff notes, and I was so lazy I wouldn't even read all the cliff notes, I just read the chapter summary of the cliff notes. And the teacher would ask you something, and you would just start making something up, talking off your head. Or if you've ever read papers of kids in high school or even college, and you clearly have not read the material, and they're just spewing forth all this stuff like their teacher is going to be great—"Oh, wow. That's amazing." The teacher knows the information. And yet, nobody seems to know what this means. The kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.

Now, what I'm going to do—because I need help if I can figure this out—let me phone a friend.

[calling] Hey Siri, can you call Tim Henderson?

[Tim arrives]

Hey Tim. So I got a situation. I'm in Matthew 11, verse 12, and like, nobody knows what it means. It says the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent will take it by force. And I knew about phone a friend, so I thought maybe you could help me out here.

Tim: Yeah, right here. Okay, perfect. Yeah. So what does it mean, dude?

Quigg: Dude, nobody knows. You're exactly right. I mean, you can read every commentary and they all got like, you know, "it means one of these three or four things"—and then they pick. And then it's weird. None of them fit.

Tim: Right. It's tough, right? You guys, the commentators are like blind school children throwing darts. They have no idea what it means.

And the reason I spend time bringing this up is, you read the Bible. And there are times you read something and you go, I don't know what that means. And sometimes it takes a little effort and you can find it like in the notes or something or you can Google it. This is a tough passage, and what I want to say is you're not a freak. If you read the Bible and there's something you go, I just can't understand this.

An old preacher told me, Canon Brian Green said, when you read scripture, eat the fish, set aside the bones. Down the road, those bones may actually be fish for you, but right now, you don't have the ability to understand that, so just eat what you can eat.

For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John and if you're willing to accept it, it is Elijah's to come. — Matthew 11

Let's look at verse 16 because we gotta hurry up.

But to what shall I compare this generation? — Matthew 11:16

Jesus said, what should I compare all you guys to? And he compares them to school children. Look what he says. Clearly, he's quoting something of the day. He goes:

We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, and you did not mourn. — Matthew 11:17

In other words, Jesus, we just want to get this straight with you. We are the hand in the glove. You're the glove. We're the hand in the glove. We tell you what we want. What are those little things on strings? They called minuets? No wonder nobody in the first service knew when I said minuets. Marionettes. Somebody controls a little stick figure. That's what people try to do with Messiah. They try to control them. Oh, yeah, sure. I appreciate the ticket to heaven, but really, I'm still God. And Jesus is like, this is what this generation is like. They want to control me. They want to take me on their terms, not my terms.

And then it ends with a strange verse, verse 18 through 19. Let's read it and then we'll unpack it real quick.

For John, that is John the Baptist, came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, he has a demon. On the other hand, the Son of Man, Jesus, came eating and drinking and they say, look at him. Look at Jesus. He's a glutton and he's a drunkard, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. — Matthew 11:18-19

I want you to listen carefully. The Bible has a lot to say about alcohol. There are a lot of positive uses of alcohol in the Bible. The Passover, the Last Supper, Psalm 104, I think.

Wine maketh the heart of man glad. — Psalm 104

There are also plenty of other scriptures that say, watch out for the red in the cup. It sparkles nice and shiny. But sometimes, it'll bite you. You have wounds without cause. You have sorrow. There's this pattern of addictions there. And so, we want to have a right view of alcohol. Some people, some Christians say, don't drink at all. That goes beyond scripture. Other Christians just say, I want to drink as much as I want and leave me alone and that goes beyond scripture.

At a time where I was taking a time out—you ever had a time out? Drinking when you said, this thing's starting to control me, and not me control it? Instead of being a blessing, it's starting to be a thing of sorrow, so you take a time out. During one of those time outs, I read this passage and I was amazed. Look what the religious people are doing. On John the Baptist, who didn't drink alcohol, what do they say about him? Dude's a freak. He eats locusts, he wears dead animal skins, he's a freak. He's got a demon. And out of the same breath, the same religious people had a comment about this man who ate and drank clearly alcohol. And what did they say about this man? He's a glutton.

So, religious people accused Jesus of being a drunkard, and the Bible's clear, he never sinned. The point of bringing this up is not so you'll flee to the ABC store today and get hammered. I just want our people to have a right view. Some of us need a time out. Some of us have already had our share. And some of us, we're fine with it. It's not a thing. It's a blessing for you. What I want you to see is what I discovered a time where I was not drinking. The scripture does not forbid alcohol use. And in fact, they tried to say Jesus was a sinner because he drank alcohol and all I want to say is we need to have a right view of it. Don't be afraid to have a right view of the scriptures and hold them in your hands.

And friends, we see Jesus and he says, I'm the one. I've come. I'm the one. I am Emmanuel. The one that all the prophets talked about. I am he. If you can't see, I'll open your eyes. If you can't hear, I'll give you hearing. If you're without hope, I'll give you hope. If you're lame, I'll make you walk.

If you're depressed, if you're sad, I came to set captives free. Jesus is a god of freedom. He wants us to know his freedom.

He came neither eating nor drinking. They called him a demon. The son of man came both eating and drinking and they said, he's a drunkard and a glutton.

In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen. Amen.