Take your Bibles, turn to the Gospel of Luke Chapter 7, Luke
Chapter 7. It's page 916.
If you're using one of the Bibles in the seat around you.
And if you are new and you don't have a Bible, we'd love to give
you a gift of a Bible. So please feel free to take that
one home with you. Well, we are in week 3 walking
through this next section of the book of Luke, where we're
walking through a series of stories that ultimately answer
the single most important question any human could ever
wrestle with. And that is, who exactly is
Jesus? Who is he besides a character in
a book that's a couple thousand years ago?
Who is he besides a baby that we celebrate at Christmas time?
Who really is this man named Jesus?
I, I think all of us recognize that in any relationship, there
are always layers to a relationship.
The, the things that you discover over time.
So you get to know someone when you first meet them, but the
longer you're in a relationship with someone, you have an
opportunity if you step into it to really get to know that
person more and more and more over time.
And so I know for some of you, as we are walking through this
story of who is Jesus, this is all brand new to you and it's
like you're meeting someone for the first time.
And for others of you, you have been a Christian for a very long
time. And you may be looking at this
and going, this is information I already know.
But I want to encourage you that this is an opportunity for you
to stretch yourself and to go a little bit deeper and think
about things about Jesus that you maybe haven't thought about
for a long time, or maybe it unpacks some layers of a
relationship with Jesus that are new to you in this point in your
Christian journey. Today we're going to talk about
a story of a man named John the Baptist.
And if you've been with us as we've journeyed through the book
of Luke, you'll remember John the Baptist is the cousin of
Jesus. He was the baby that was carried
by Elizabeth in the Christmas story that we looked at back in
December. He's also the one who baptized
Jesus back in Luke chapter 3. So John is incredibly well
acquainted with who Jesus is. But John himself was also quite
a preacher. He had built a large following
of his own disciples. But recently, John hit on some
really hard times in his life. Other parts of the Bible tell us
that by the time we get to Luke 7, John was in prison.
He was probably in a remote location, in a very dark, damp,
cold prison cell, isolated from many people, isolated from the
world. He'd been there because he put
there, But he was put there by Herod Antipus after he told
Herod that, hey, man, you are an immoral man.
And Herod said, I don't want anything to do with you.
Put him in jail. And John had been there perhaps
many months, maybe as much as a year by the time we get to this
passage. And from his prison cell, John
would have been very disconnected from the life of
Jesus. He would not know all the things
that Jesus was up to at that point in time.
All he has to go on is hearsay and what his own followers are
coming and telling him about Jesus.
And that's where we pick up the story in verse 18 of Luke
Chapter 7, verse 18. Then John's disciples told him
about all these things. So John summoned 2 of his
disciples and sent them to the Lord, asking, Are you the one
who is to come or should we expect someone else?
When the men reached him, they said, John the Baptist sent us
to ask you, are you the one who's to come or should we
expect someone else? At that time Jesus healed many
people of diseases, afflictions, and evil spirits, and he granted
sight to many blind people. John has this really important
question for Jesus. Are you really the Messiah that
we've been waiting for all these promises from the Old Testament
about a coming Messiah? Are you really the Messiah?
Or should we expect someone else to be the Messiah now?
I think John already had a knowledge that would have told
him. He knows the answer to this
question already. After all, when John baptized
Jesus, he said behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins
of the world. He knew exactly who Jesus was.
But even though he knew the right answer, John still has
questions because his life is going through some experiences
that are leading him to go. I know what I think is right,
but my life doesn't add up to that right now.
And I've got questions. See, like most Jews, John would
have believed that the Messiah was coming to rescue people from
oppression. But John sitting here in this
personal experience where he's in a prison cell for an unjust
reason, and I think there's a rational reason that John would
be struggling with the emotion of how on earth are you the
Messiah who's supposed to come and rescue us from oppression?
And here I am sitting in a prison cell under Roman rule.
John was also a firestorm of a preacher back in Luke 3.
He preached that the Messiah was going to be someone who would
baptize people with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
This idea that the Messiah was going to be this conquering hero
who would come and clean house with all the mess in the world.
And now all he's hearing about are these stories of Jesus going
around showing mercy to people and healing them.
There's a disconnect for John and it's leading to questions.
You ever had those moments where you know a story, you've read it
in the Bible, maybe 100 * a promise of God, and then you're
walking through something in life and you go, God, are you
really there? Do you really care about that?
Like I know you say that you never leave me or forsake me,
but right now, God, it doesn't feel like you're all that close
to me. I've got questions.
God, have you ever felt those kinds of questions where you go?
How in the world is this happening?
Why in the world is this happening?
God are Are you sure that you're all powerful like you say you
are? How did you not know this was
coming? Sometimes even if you know all
the right answers, even if you've been a Christian your
entire life and you know all the right answers of the promises of
God, you can still have questions and doubts because not
everything in life is going to make sense.
But the life of Jesus teaches us that God's promises are not tied
to our feelings. God's promises are not tied to
our expectations of how we think God should respond in any given
moment. The promises of God are tied
directly to his character, that He is a God who always follows
through on what he says He is going to do.
No matter what you or I see in front of us in the moment, the
the challenge that we face as humans is that there's usually
more to the story of Jesus than we're willing to acknowledge.
I'm going to come back to verse 22 for a second.
When life raises questions, Jesus is going to anchor you in
all of God's promises. Look at verse 22.
He replied to them. Go and report to John what
you've seen and heard. The blind received their sight,
the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed, the deaf
hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are told the good news.
I love the response that Jesus has to John's questions.
Jesus doesn't go on some long lecture to say, hey, let me show
you and prove to you that I am who I say I am.
Jesus doesn't go on some thesis to say, let me show you all the
ways that I live up to the Old Testament prophecies.
He just goes and does what the Messiah would do.
He he lets his actions do all the talking and through his
actions, what Jesus is saying is, yes, I am the Messiah.
So if you're here today and you're struggling with questions
about life and God, I get it. And, and I'm thrilled that
you're here today that you can feel that you can ask those
questions. It's OK to vocalize your
questions, but I want you to know Jesus will always answer
your questions with saying, look to me, He's not always going to
answer your questions by fixing the problem immediately in front
of you. What he's going to answer your
questions with his look at me. See me?
He doesn't get angry at your questions.
What He's going to do is He's going to simply show you who He
is and why. It means you can trust God to
keep all of His promises. Now, I know that for some of you
that can feel like hollow words because right now you're really
going through it. You're wondering if God's ever
going to show up and change anything.
In these verses that we're about to read, Jesus is going to start
to describe the importance of John the Baptist.
He's going to describe all the oh man, my computer is acting
up. The life of Jesus teaches us
that God's promises are not tied to your feelings.
But the challenge we face as humans is that there's usually
more to the story of Jesus than we're willing to acknowledge.
Look at verse 23. Blessed is the one who isn't
offended by me. Jesus will always do what God
wants, not always what we want. See Jesus says here, blessed are
you if you don't get offended by me, which means this sometimes
Jesus is going to offend you. This is the hard part for us.
Jesus is not going to always operate the way that you want or
you expect him to operate. All, all of us we we've got
preconceived ideas of who Jesus is and what he should be doing
in any moment. We live in this moment, but
Jesus doesn't respond just to the moment.
Jesus sees a whole story. So what are you going to do when
Jesus is not what you hoped for or expected?
What are you going to do when He doesn't do the things you want
Him to do? What are you going to do when He
doesn't teach the things you think he should be teaching?
What are you going to do when he doesn't fulfill God's promises
when or how you think they should be fulfilled?
I don't know how many of you have ever met a hero before, but
you know the old saying, don't ever meet your heroes because
they're just going to let you down, right?
You're probably going to be disappointed.
I've lived that. I've met people that I've looked
at as being spiritual heroes in life.
And I can't begin to tell you how many times I discovered
things about these people that changed the way I saw I thought
of them before I had met them. Things that that surprised me
and not always in a good way. And I got to be honest with you,
sometimes when you journey with Jesus, there may be times where
you're going to feel this way. Like Jesus, I experienced your
love for me over here. But but when you're saying these
other things to me, it feels a little harsh right now.
It doesn't feel like you love me Jesus.
This made sense, but this part confuses me.
And that's the reality John the Baptist is facing.
He's expecting a Messiah who's going to shake things up with
his fiery preaching, and he said he's getting a guy who just
wants to love people and show mercy to them.
John's picking up on passages from the Old Testament, like
Psalm 2, that said the Messiah would one day break the nation's
with an iron scepter. And while that's true, that's
only part of the picture of what the Messiah was going to be like
from the Old Testament. John missed out on passages that
said he would lead the deaf to hear, in the blind to see.
God promises that the Messiah would be both because both are
what we need. We need someone who is going to
look at the problem of sin and suffering in this world, who
would come and be the conquering king who breaks the power of all
sin. But we also need someone who
sees us in our pain and in our suffering, and he shows up with
humility and grace to heal because we all need mercy.
If Jesus is only who you and I want him to be, then we become
guilty of making Jesus in our own image.
If Jesus is only who you want him to be, then we miss out on
seeing the fullness of God's promises because we are only
looking for certain things. And God's got so much more to
the story that he wants to reveal to us.
I'm going to build this out for you a little bit more because I
think we can all have blind spots when it comes to seeing
the fullness of who Jesus is. And there's a couple places in
particular where I see this showing up today that show up
here in this passage of Scripture.
Let's continue reading. In verse 24, After John's
messengers left, he began to speak to the crowds about John.
What did you go out into the wilderness to see?
A Reed swaying in the wind. What then?
Did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothes?
See, those who are splendidly dressed and live in luxury are
in royal palaces. What then?
Did you go out to see a prophet? Yes, I tell you.
And more than a prophet, this is the one about whom it is
written. See, I am sending my messenger
ahead of you. He will prepare your way before
you. I tell you, among those born of
women, no one is greater than John, but the least in the
Kingdom of God is greater than he.
Jesus starts here to describe the importance of John the
Baptist. And he describes this paints
this picture of all these people, this these crowds of
people who would come to hear John the Baptist preach.
And, and the reason why they're coming to hear him preach is
because they're looking for a prophet.
They're they're, they're looking for someone who's going to tell
them a different story than the one that they're living in, in
the moment. And Jesus says John deserves
incredible praise. He even goes as far as to call
John the greatest human who had ever been born.
That is high praise to give to anyone.
But then he says this, yeah, John is great, but in the
Kingdom of God, he's nothing compared to the least of these.
His his entire point is John's entire role is to point to
Jesus. And the first blind spot that
you and I can face to how we view Jesus is our own opinions
or algorithms. Because when you're wrestling
with questions of what God is doing, it's very normal for us
to have an opinion of what we think God should be doing.
When you're wrestling with questions because you're facing
a difficult situation, you go, God, you really should be doing
it this way. And we have an opinion on that.
And sometimes that opinion is even based on things in the
Bible. God, you said you would do this,
but he doesn't always do it that way.
The people go to hear John preach because they're looking
for a different message than what was coming out of the Roman
government. Jesus says you didn't go into
the wilderness to listen to a political leader do a political
speech. You went to see a prophet.
You had a hunger for a different story.
And because they already had an opinion and a hunger for a
different story, they respond to John's call for repentance
because they knew they wanted a Savior to rescue them.
They already knew what they wanted, and they went to hear
someone say what they wanted to hear.
But John was never the point of the story.
John was meant to point people to Jesus.
He is the story. One of the realities in our
current culture is that each of us can have our own ideas of
what is wrong or what should be done right.
And it does not take very long for us to get sucked into a
vortex of other people who share the exact same opinions that we
do. If you do enough searches on
YouTube, if you like enough posts on social media about
whatever your favorite issue is, if you subscribe to certain
types of podcasts, guess what's going to always show up in front
of you? Thousands upon thousands upon
thousands of videos and posts of people who think exactly the way
that you think. And here's what happens for a
ton of Christians as well. We have our opinions or desires
of the answers that we want. And then we look for how can
Jesus fit into the thing that I already want to be true?
How can Jesus fit into my desires of what I think should
be happening in this difficult situation?
So let me give you an example. Some of you are looking at the
state of the world right now and you're thinking to yourself, why
hasn't Jesus returned yet? Where is he?
Look at the mess that's going on around the world and you're
wrestling with the question of like, I would be really good if
Jesus just came back right now. Maybe just look at the problems
in your own life and you're thinking, I just want Jesus to
come back right now and bail me out of all the problems that I'm
facing. Just bring an end to it.
And you know what? Nothing wrong with the desire of
wanting Jesus to come back. But so many Christians then
start going down a path of searching up other people and
other things that are talking about the end of the world.
And before long, you know what's going to happen.
You're bombarded by videos and posts about the end of the world
and the signs of Jesus return. And then you get upset because
it feels like nobody else around you is talking or thinking about
the return of Jesus. And you, you want Jesus to come
back and judge the world. And you get angry because
everybody else, nobody else is talking about it.
And then what do you do when you think Jesus is coming back any
day and it's 30 years from now and he still hasn't returned.
Then what? You know what, Let me just say
this. First of all, you're right.
Jesus will return one day. Praise God.
Jesus is going to return one day.
He is going to come back. But the full story of Jesus is
that he also said he doesn't know the day or the hour when
he's going to come back. And He commands you and I as
Christians to be fully occupied and being His ambassadors until
He comes. That's the full story.
Celebrate the reality he's coming back, wait for it, look
forward to it, but live in the fullness of who he is and what
he's called you and I to be. We can do the same thing with
politics too. We we can get caught in our own
vortex of our own opinions and we go, how does Jesus fit into
my political beliefs? When you study Jesus, you are
going to discover that very rarely does Jesus fit your
political ideas. He might fit some of them, but
very rarely does Jesus fit all of your political ideas.
And the reason is he's living for a different Kingdom than you
and I live for the reality is Jesus does not exist to fit into
your story. Jesus is the story.
As a pastor, I am deeply concerned by the number of
people who are being discipled by their own opinions and by
algorithms online rather than the fullness of what Scripture
reveals Jesus to be. If you are getting more of your
information and your beliefs from a bunch of people online,
then you are getting it from God's Word.
You are missing the fullness of the story.
You're stuck. So many of us pick and choose
the parts of the Bible we like, and those are the parts we
decide to read. We pick and choose what
discipleship opportunities we're going to connect with because
those are the things that feel like I want to be a part of
that. So here's what I'm going to
challenge you to do because we need to expand our horizons in
understanding the fullness of Jesus.
I want to challenge you over the next couple of months.
Connect with something you would never otherwise connect with
because you need to discover a part of Jesus you haven't wanted
to pay attention to before. Like for example, pick and equip
class that you would never otherwise attend.
Some of us, I've grown up in Baptist Church my whole life.
I can say this with absolute confidence.
Some of us are in this room and we are locked into this is
exactly how everything's going to unfold in the end days.
And we've got it all mapped out in every timeline under heaven
written out. All right, I want to give you a
little secret. There are other faithful
believers in Jesus who think differently than you do, and
you're going to spend eternity with them.
So for some of you, you need to sign up for our Quip class
that's going to talk about 3 different views of the end times
that are all biblically based so you can learn a fuller picture
of the Scriptures and what the scriptures say about these
things and wrestle with it. Some of you think that the
Christian life, it's great for you just to come to church and
be isolated and be on your own. I can come and sit in the room
on Sunday and then I can just go and enjoy the rest of my week.
And you have no clue what Jesus talks about, about the beautiful
power of the fullness of Christian community.
And you need to step into our equip class on community that's
happening, where you can learn all that Jesus has to say about
the fullness of Christian community and what that means
for our lives. It's so much more than just
sitting in an auditorium on Sunday morning.
Some of us think, hey, I'm a pretty nice person.
I like to have people over to my house.
I'm good. Nobody ever needs to teach me
anything about hospitality. It's good, but I promise you
none of us measure up to the standard of Jesus when it comes
to hospitality. Learn the fullness of the
picture of hospitality. We have a women's class coming
up on hospitality. Learn the fullness of the
picture of hospitality that Jesus has.
I don't know very many men who are going, hey, I really want to
learn on how to show mercy, but the Bible says the Lord requires
that we be men who love mercy. So we have a men's class coming
up on what it means to be men who love mercy and show mercy.
Stop having this partial view of Jesus and get to know and love
the fullness of who He is and who He's calling you and I to
be. Second blind spot is your
religious background. Look at verse 29.
When all the people, including the tax collectors, heard this,
they acknowledge God's way of righteousness because they had
been baptized with John's baptism.
But since the Pharisees and experts in the law had not been
baptized by him, they rejected the plan of God for themselves.
To what then should I compare the people of this generation?
What are they like? They're like children sitting in
the marketplace and calling to each other.
We played the flute for you, but you didn't dance.
We sang a lament, but you didn't weep.
For John the Baptist did not come eating bread or drinking
wine, and you say he has a demon.
The Son of Man has come eating and drinking.
And you say, look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax
collectors and sinners. It's fascinating to me that the
people who had the most difficult time accepting the
fullness of who Jesus is, who could not accept that Jesus was
the Messiah, we're also the people who spent the most amount
of time studying the Scriptures to try to figure out who exactly
this Messiah is. The people who were the experts
in the Old Testament law, who would know everything that the
Old Testament would have said about the coming Messiah, are
the ones who look at Jesus and go, Nah, that's not it right in
front of them. I grew up in a world where every
single Sunday all we talked about was hell.
We literally scared people into heaven, and we not only scared
people into heaven, but we scared people into obeying God
or else God's going to get you. And my life, my discipleship
became all about my behaviors. What can I do for God?
Because if I don't do enough for God, God's going to get me.
That's what I grew up thinking, believing, and living out in my
life. So you can imagine the surprise
that I had one day when I read these words from Jesus.
The greatest command is to love God with all of your heart,
soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.
I was blown away. It blew away all of my previous
religious upbringings that the greatest rule of life is love.
The greatest rule of life is to love God and to love each other.
The entire Christian journey is about love.
It's amazing how many times our religious backgrounds get in the
way of us seeing the full story of who Jesus is.
Some of you have come from religions who would teach things
like Jesus was a good teacher or a prophet, and he was a good
teacher and he was a prophet. But Jesus claims to be so much
more. He says he is God in flesh.
Some of you grew up in environments where you needed to
do more and more and more and more good works so that you knew
you could be made right with God.
But Jesus shows up and he undoes all of that teaching because he
says whoever believes in me will never die.
That's it. Whoever believes in me will
never die. The being made right with God is
based on our faith in Jesus and what he's done rather than us
somehow measuring up. Some of you've been taught
things like God will always heal you when you're going through a
difficult situation if you just have enough faith.
And if He hasn't healed you, it means you don't have enough
faith. Jesus will tell you that in this
world you will have trouble, but take heart because I've overcome
the world. There are Christians who think
the Christian life is just about sitting and enjoying God's love
like some giant kumbaya exercise.
But Jesus says that to be His disciple means you're going to
have to learn to die to yourself and love others.
That even the things you do for the least of those in society is
what you're doing to Jesus himself.
See, so many times our religious beliefs or our partial create a
partial story of who Jesus is, and we get annoyed or frustrated
or even disappointed when Jesus doesn't do the things we want or
expect him to do. And Jesus says here in these
verses that people can be just like a bunch of kids.
You can never make them happy. No matter what what they what
Jesus does, we are never satisfied.
Jesus says John comes out to you.
He calls for people to repent of their sins because the Kingdom
of heaven is coming. You go.
Why would we listen to him? He's just a madman.
And then Jesus shows up and the only thing Jesus wants to do is
go to parties, hang out with sinners and heal people who are
sick. And you think, what in the
world? We can't trust that guy to be
the Messiah. And some of us still respond to
Jesus the same way today. Some of us cannot stand any call
to repentance because we're like, that's way too judgmental.
You're getting up in my space, now let me live my life and
enjoy God's love. Others can't stand how gracious
Jesus is, how much fun Jesus wants to have even when the
world seems to be falling apart. Like, think about the people in
that day. They're living under Roman
oppression, and Jesus just keeps going to parties.
The world's falling apart, and he wants to have fun.
Don't let your religious background lead you to miss the
full and glorious picture of who Jesus is, because the bottom
line is this. The more you see the fullness of
Jesus, the more you can experience the confident joy
that God always keeps all of His promises.
Verse 35. Jesus says this, yet wisdom is
vindicated by all her children. Here's what he's saying.
The soundness of wisdom can be judged by the fruit of that
wisdom. Or let me put it another way.
Hey, give it time and you're going to see the whole story
unfold. Give it time and you're going to
see how God keeps all of His promises.
So often when we get in those moments where we are wrestling
with our questions, the things and the doubts that are swirling
in our minds, all that we see is that moment, that circumstance,
that issue that we're facing. And Jesus is saying, Hey, trust
me, trust me. I see the whole story.
I see the whole picture. I know exactly how all of this
is going to unfold. Sometimes when we struggle with
part of what Jesus says and we wonder, how does this line up
with all the things I've always thought should be done?
And Jesus says, trust me, trust me, blessed is the one who is
not offended by Jesus, who trust him even when we don't
understand, who trust him, even when we're not sure if we like
everything he teaches or says or does what the blessing is.
Second Corinthians chapter one, verse 20 tells us this.
Blessing everyone of God's promises is yes in him, in
Jesus. John Piper describes the meaning
of that verse in Second Corinthians this way.
He says every single good that God can conceive of just stop
there for a second God who is infinite and eternal.
So there's all kinds of good you can conceive of, but your idea
of good is limited. But God, who is infinite and
eternal, every single good that God can conceive of is yours in
Christ. That's the blessing.
That's the blessing that only comes through Jesus.
Humans have always had questions to try to understand what God's
doing. Even before Jesus came into the
world, people had questions. They're wondering when's the
Messiah going to show up. But God, at just the right
moment in human history, sent his Son Jesus, the one that he
promised we he would send. He sends him the Messiah, the
Savior of the world, the one who came to heal the sick and show
mercy to the humble. Another promise kept.
The one who would sacrifice his life so that we could be
forgiven of our sins and so we can ultimately be saved and
healed of every consequence of sin.
Another promise kept. And one day he's going to return
to bring God's final justice and our final and complete healing.
See, for every question that you have, every doubt that you're
facing, God has a promise. For every question you don't
even know to ask, God has a promise.
Jesus has come to this earth to graciously, lovingly reveal to
us that the God who makes promises always keeps his
promises. And all of his promises, all of
His promises become realized in our lives because of Jesus.
That's why we trust in Jesus. He's everything.
All of God's promises are yes in him.
And God's desire is that you would know the joy and have a
confident expectation in your heart that all of God's promises
will always be kept because He's always done it.
He's going to keep doing it into the future.
We pray for you, Father, thank you so much for your love for
us. Thank you that you would send
your Son Jesus as the ultimate expression of how you keep your
promises. Thank you that all of your
promises are yes, they are found in Christ.
And thank you that through Jesus we get to experience the
fullness of your promises. God, today I pray for all of us,
no matter what circumstance we're in, what challenge we're
facing, God, give us the grace to be able to hear your voice,
to lift our eyes off of the circumstance and fix our eyes on
You. Help us, God, to seek to know
the fullness of who Jesus is so we can discover the joy of the
fullness of your promises for our lives.
I pray this in your mighty and powerful name, Amen.
Amen. Let's stand and worship the Lord
together.