Matthew 7

Chapter 7. The Rejection of the KingHe was despised and rejected by men,a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.Like one from whom men hide their faceshe was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3)He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. (John 1:11)Then Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. (Matthew 11:20)We have seen in the course of the last chapter the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Son of David and the King of Israel, in His power over sickness, Satan, nature, death and sin. The time had now come when His people must either accept Him or reject Him. The Light was so ample and the credentials were so divine and convincing, that evasion was impossible, and the issue faced them inexorably and immediately. Would they receive Him or reject Him? The answer is given by our text, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11), and the old vision of Isaiah was fulfilled, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3). Already in the previous chapters we have had no doubtful intimation of this result. In connection with the remarkable faith of the Centurion in the eighth chapter, He had said: I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 8:10-12) Again in the ninth chapter of Matthew we have already seen the spirit of hostility and opposition manifested when He undertook to forgive the sins of the paralytic, and they said in indignation, “This fellow is blaspheming” (Matthew 9:3). But in the next three chapters (10-12) their opposition reaches its climax, and finally terminates in open blasphemy and murderous conspiracy, so that the Lord Jesus is obliged to change entirely His methods from this time. Instead of teaching openly, we find Him using the veil of parables, and commencing in the 13th chapter that extraordinary series of the parables of the kingdom in which He unveils the future development of His kingdom in a form fitted to hide the truth from those that were disposed to abuse it, and at the same time to reveal it to the earnest and sincere inquirer. Let us trace this story of rejection in those chapters. The Apostles Sent Out

1. The first intimation of it is in connection with the sending out of the 12 apostles (Matthew 10:1-42). They were to be His witnesses to Israel, and the terms of their commission are most explicit. “These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel’” (Matthew 10:5-6). The very fact of His appointing them indicates His realization of the fact that He Himself would soon be taken from the world, and therefore He appoints these representatives to carry on His kingdom after He shall have gone. Their message is to be rejected as well as His. “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves…. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings…. All men will hate you because of me…. A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master…. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household” (Matthew 10:16, Matthew 10:18, Matthew 10:22, Matthew 10:24-25). The principles of Christianity are not to bring about a state of universal peace, but “to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household” (Matthew 10:35-36). “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). The radical teachings of the gospel arouse as much antagonism as love. On the other hand He tells them that those that received them will be recognized as receiving Him and the slightest ministry done to the disciple and the servant shall be acknowledged and rewarded by the Lord (Matthew 10:40-42). How different the prospect thus held out to them from the ideal which they had formed. How strange and sorrowful the ministry to which they went forth. But how necessary it is for us to understand the true spirit of the New Testament and realize today that the spirit of the age is as utterly opposed to Christ and true Christianity as it was in Galilee and Judea when these words were first uttered. We are not going forth to be received with open arms by our generation and to see a golden millennium arise around us during the present order of things, but rather as a “little flock” (Luke 12:32) of humble and separated men and women following still “outside the camp” (Hebrews 13:13) the lowly Nazarene, while the spirit of the age pursues its earthly aims and is satisfied with its own resources, hopes and destinies. John’s Message of Doubt
2. The next incident was the sending of two disciples from John the Baptist with a message of inquiry: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:3). The Baptist was now a prisoner at the mercy of Herod, who was soon to behead him, and in the loneliness of his dungeon, the breaking down probably of his health, and the confused reports that doubtless came to him about Jesus Christ, he seems to have begun to doubt whether He was the true Messiah after all, and he sent two of his disciples to inquire. It must have been discouraging to the Master to find that even John was beginning to doubt, but He sent back the self-evident answer, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor,” with the addition of a little hint to John himself not to lose faith: “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me” (Matthew 11:4-6). He then takes the opportunity of bearing high testimony to John as the greatest prophet of the old dispensation, but adds, as showing how much greater the gospel age is than the Old Testament: “yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matthew 11:11). The humblest disciple of Jesus raised through Him to the family of heaven as a son of God is greater than the highest of the Old Testament prophets. How lofty the dignity to which Jesus has brought us! The Lord next proceeds to tell His disciples how the Jewish nation has rejected both John’s ministry and His. “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn’” (Matthew 11:16-17). He means that the ministry of John with its solemn message of repentance has not really brought them to repentance, and that His ministry, so different, with its words of joy and hope, has likewise failed to evoke any real response from the heart of the nation. Israel refused the message of her God, and rejected John and Jesus, too. The Cities of Galilee
3. Next follows His open upbraiding of the cities of Galilee, wherein most of His mighty works were done, because they had received His messages and the manifestations of His love and power in vain. Less terrible, He tells them, shall be the fate of Tyre and Sidon and even Sodom in the day of judgment than theirs. In proportion to their opportunity and privilege has been their indifference and unbelief. Today the ruins of Korazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum attest the awful fulfillment of these tremendous warnings. Let not the modern hearer of the gospel forget that the privileges and opportunities which we are enjoying in this enlightened age will bring upon us also an equal or a greater guilt and doom if we receive the grace of God in vain. His Gracious Words
4. His mercy was in contrast with their unbelief. Over against the dark picture of their rejection stands the light of His love. It was in the very hour when His lips had uttered the dread woe against the cities of Galilee, that His tender and loving heart burst forth with the most touching and beautiful of all His messages of love, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30) Perhaps in the crowd that surrounded Him, He saw the agonized face of some poor sinner; and from the hard unbelief of the self-righteous Pharisee, He turned to the earnest hearts even in that crowd that were longing for His mercy. It is a beautiful coincidence brought out by a careful study of the gospel harmony, that the story recorded in the seventh chapter of Luke of the sinful woman, who came and washed His feet with her tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head in the house of Simon, followed this incident in Matthew. How delightful to think that that appeal recorded in Matthew 11:28 had gone to her heart and led her to follow Him to the house of Simon and there to let Him know how His words of mercy had comforted and saved her. Yes, as the lone rose of the Alps grows amid the glaciers, so the fruits and flowers of grace are found even in the most forbidding soil and the most unlikely surroundings. Oh, that some heart that reads these lines might also come and repeat the story of her blessing. New Controversies
5. The next step of their opposition and rejection was a bitter theological fight with Him over their traditions concerning Sabbath observance. As He walked with His disciples through the grainfields they were hungry and without supplies, and they took the grain and rubbed it in their hands and satisfied their hunger in this crude way. The very poverty suggested by the act might well have touched the hearts of His cruel foes. It was indeed a sign of His rejection by a selfish world, and showed how true it was, as He said elsewhere, “The Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). But all they could see in it was a slight to their rigid traditions about working on the Sabbath. In their eyes it was a greater sin to rub out some grain than to let a man die of starvation. The same spirit appears in the incident that follows in the 12th chapter of Matthew in connection with the healing of the man with the withered hand. They recognized His healing power by their question, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” (Matthew 12:10). It never seems to have occurred to them that if He had power to heal He must be greater than the Sabbath or the law. But all they could see was their theological bigotry. The Lord answered them by an appeal to common sense and humanity. He asked them what they would do if one of their sheep had fallen into a pit on the Sabbath. Would they help it out, or let it die there? The question needed no answer for every one of them knew that his self-interest quite as much as his humanity would lead him to save the sheep, Sabbath or no Sabbath. The Lord swiftly turns the argument on them by answering, “How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:12), and immediately heals the man with the withered hand. These ancient theologians were types of a good many later followers, men who would fight to the death for a quibble or a doctrine, but who had no compunction about torturing to death an innocent martyr under the Spanish Inquisition, or treating a poor Hottentot as if he were a brute. In passing, it is not out of place to refer to the question of the Sabbath. Our Lord undoubtedly recognized the Sabbath by His own distinct acknowledgment, “for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:8). He distinctly revised it when He incorporated it into the New Testament and He established not only a new significance to it as His day, and the day that we hold in remembrance of His resurrection, but He also instituted as the essential principle of its observance the great law of liberty and love that runs through all the teachings of the gospel. The essential principle of Sabbath observance is love. It is not so much what you do not do, as what you do. It is to be spent in works of mercy and charity and therefore is to be kept in the spirit of holy liberty and loving service for God and man. Do not let us go back with the Seventh Day Adventists to the law of Moses. The gospel has set us free, but the liberty on which its freedom rests is “do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love” (Galatians 5:13). Plotting to Kill Him
6. The outcome of this controversy is a bitter, malignant hatred that at length fully determines upon His destruction and at once begins to conspire for His death. They seem to have met at this time in a special conference and arranged the plot for His immediate arrest and destruction. They seem never to have realized how futile all their plans and plots were against One that had the power of life and death in His hands, and that He could not die until His hour had come. But God let their malignity reach its full fruition and show itself in all its blackness and crime. Withdraws
7. We now read that when He knew of their conspiracy, He withdrew Himself from them and kept in retirement for a while (Matthew 12:15-16). This was but a type of His final withdrawal from Israel altogether. He was beginning to leave the nation to its fate, and, therefore, the evangelist quotes from Isaiah the prophecy concerning Him. Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory. In his name the nations will put their hope. (Matthew 12:18-21) The emphatic feature of this quotation is its reference to the Gentiles. Christ was now withdrawing from Israel and preparing for His ministry to the uncovenanted nations who have reaped the advantage of Israel’s blindness and rejection. How solemn for us the thought that there comes a time in the individual’s life when the Lord also withdraws Himself from the soul that has long rejected His grace. There is a time, we know not when, A point, we know not where, That marks the destiny of men, For glory or despair. Their Blasphemy8. This final climax of their long course of unbelief and opposition finally came through an outburst of popular enthusiasm on the part of the people after one of His miracles. Having healed the blind and the mute man, possessed of an evil spirit, so that the man both spoke and saw, the people were amazed and said, “Could this be the Son of David?” (Matthew 12:23). The Pharisees could not stand this testimony and they broke out into wild and angry vituperation and immediately accused Him of being in league with Satan and casting out demons by Beelzebub, prince of the devils. Once before they had hinted at this, and the Lord had passed it over. But now He takes up their charge and answers it: first, with the most inexorable logic, showing them the absurdity of supposing that Satan would try to cast out himself, when this would be the surest way of breaking down his kingdom; and then, having exposed them to the ridicule of the people, He turns upon them with awful severity and pronounces upon them the fearful sentence of eternal judgment because they had committed the unpardonable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit by attributing the works of God to an evil spirit. Their sin had reached its culmination and at last their doom was sealed. It is indeed a fearful picture and the question may well be asked, is it possible for us to commit their sin today? Certainly it is not possible in precisely the same way to commit it without our going to the extent of impious infidelity. But it may be possible for any sinful man to go to the terrible limit which they did in this essential principle, that is, in the face of light with full conviction and certainty that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, to reject Him deliberately and finally. This would indeed be an unpardonable sin. Let no one, however, be distressed and driven to despair by the enemy through this passage, if you still find that you really desire and are willing to accept the Lord Jesus as a Savior. For in this very passage He tells us that “every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men” (Matthew 12:31), the assumption of course is that they will accept forgiveness through Jesus Christ. It is the rejection of Christ that constitutes the fatal sin. For such there is no forgiveness, for there is no other Savior but He. The Sign of Jonah
8. They asked Him for a sign and He now gave them the sign of the prophet Jonah (Matthew 12:38-42). It is somewhat sardonic that the Lord Jesus should choose as His witness the very man that the higher critics are trying to get rid of. Jesus at least had no doubt about the historical reality of Jonah and the great fish, and we can safely stay in such good company, notwithstanding even the higher critics. The two peculiarities of Jonah’s significance as the type of Christ were, first, his death and resurrection. By referring to this the Lord Jesus clearly indicates now what He had incidentally hinted at before, that He is to be finally rejected and crucified. The next significant point, however, in Jonah’s resemblance to Christ, was that after his resurrection Jonah was sent to the Gentiles and not to Israel. There is no mistaking the meaning of this in Christ’s use of the figure. He is clearly intimating that through His death and resurrection He is to become the Savior not of the Jew only, but of the Gentile and the heathen. In connection with the story of Jonah, the Lord adds a solemn warning to the men of that generation by telling them that their sin was greater than that of Nineveh, which repented at the preaching of Jonah, while “one greater than Jonah” (Matthew 12:41) was appealing to them in vain. Parable of the Unclean Spirit
9. The parable of the unclean spirit follows (Matthew 12:43-45). He applies it directly to Israel. They had been previously cleansed through John the Baptist, but they had failed to go on as John had bidden them, and receive Jesus Christ." And the result would be that their hearts, left “unoccupied, swept clean and put in order” (Matthew 12:44), would again be possessed by “seven other spirits more wicked than itself and “the final condition… is worse than the first” (Matthew 12:45). How real, alas, all this has become to Israel, and it will become more sadly true in the judgments still awaiting them. It is also true of the individual soul. A temporary reformation, which is not followed by the filling of the heart with Christ and the Holy Spirit, will not suffice, but will surely be followed by a worse relapse. The only sure salvation is a full salvation. It is not enough to cast out Satan—you must receive the Holy Spirit and be filled with the fullness of the indwelling Christ. His Mother and Brothers
10. The last incident in the chapter is very pathetic. As we read it in the light of the other Gospels, we learn that His mother and His brothers were seeking for Him, not out of idle curiosity or family affection, but because they believed He was insane. “They said, ‘He is out of his mind’” (Mark 3:21), and probably they wished to put Him under restraint. Yes, even His dearest ones at last had failed Him, and He takes advantage of the occasion to proclaim the law of the new relationship which He has established in the family circle of heaven. “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50) And so to us, as we follow the Master, may come the keenest of all trials, the misunderstanding that separates from us our dearest friends and makes us as strangers and aliens to all human love. If it comes, let us go with Him all the way, but let us not be embittered against our friends. Let us love them still with His love and let us cease to need their love; loving with the love that seeks their good rather than ours, and God may be pleased at last to lead them even unto Him. But let us pass on in spirit to the heavenly family circle and the new circle of those whom He calls “brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50). In conclusion, surely the one lesson that stands out above all other lessons is that the sin of sins is the rejection of Jesus Christ. Our eternal destiny hangs, not on our obedience or disobedience to any or all of the commandments, but our attitude toward Jesus Christ. As someone has said, “It is not the sin question, but the Son question.” How do you stand toward that question? “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18).