And His Own No.2 Great Man

After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, Are you the one who was to come or should we expect someone else? Jesus replied, 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.

Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me. As John's disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John. What did you go into the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in the king's palaces.

Then what 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. I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way before you.

I tell you the truth, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist, yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing and forcefully men laid hold of it. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.

And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. He who has ears, let him hear. God bless these words I've just spoken.

Please do be seated and let's go to Mark, or rather Matthew's Gospel, chapter 11. Whenever you come across a little expression as you do in the 15th verse of Matthew 11, he who has ears, let him hear. Take this as a hint.

What our Lord is saying is that the previous verses or the ones that are to follow are particularly significant and maybe especially difficult. Scripture does not yield the fullness of its meaning, what Carlyle called the profundities and the immensities to those who will only in a cavalier fashion come to its pages and spend just a brief period of time. Excavation of the gold mines around Johannesburg only enriched people of yesteryear because of the effort that they put into the work of getting down to where the gold is.

Though the analogy does not hold in every aspect, it's nonetheless a fairly good illustration to use as far as excavation in Scripture is concerned. And when I say that our Lord is giving a hint that here is gold in a difficult passage, when he uses the expression, he who has ears, let him hear, I don't exaggerate. There is an I-solve that the Holy Spirit can give the diligent person who when he comes to Scripture has the great desire to understand the truths of God.

You never really apprehend divine truth as a result of your own intellectual ingenuity. Truth comes to you through the play of the Spirit of God upon your mental faculties also stimulating your emotions and causing your will to buckle. This is the most remarkable thing.

You cannot study Scripture like you study another book. You cannot speak of Scripture and from Scripture as though you were rehearsing just a lecture. It's all in an area which is far more complex, far more profound than anything else.

So our Lord is hinting that as far as we're concerned, the previous verses in this chapter are somewhat difficult and yet he who has ears, let him hear. The explanation can be cracked with concentration and the endowment of the Spirit of Christ resting upon the believer. Now let me set in the context just for a moment before I lift out three things from the passage that we have in hand.

John is in jail. John is the cousin of our beloved Lord, a man of the open spaces. His freedom has been curtailed.

He's got a little group of disciples as did his cousin. And they've listened to what he has had to say in the days gone by. His public ministry lasts only for about a year.

And John has identified to the disciples and all those who were present by the banks of the River Jordan who Jesus is. There is one who is coming and he's greater than I, the latchet of whose shoes I'm not worthy to unloose. And he sets out something of the portfolio of the Lord.

And they know that the Savior is not just the Messiah, but he's linked to John with family ties. Now if he is who you say he is, John, then why are you like you are? Why doesn't he spring you from jail? Well we looked into the predicament and I tried to give you the answers the other week when we commenced this little series of study of studies from the 11th chapter. John doesn't answer the disciples, his disciples, probably because he's not aware of the answer.

What he does, however, is very important for you and for me to realize and to practice. He sends them to Jesus, verse 4, go back and report, sorry, verse 2, when John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, are you the one who was to come or should we expect someone else? Jesus receives these men, he doesn't directly answer the question, and nonetheless he does send a message back to his cousin and as his disciples, John's disciples, merge into the background, Jesus then puts a question to those who remain with him. Verse 7, what did you go out into the desert to see? So I want to talk to you about three things, from the 7th verse through to the 15th.

The character of John, that will be the easy part of our address. Then the privilege of citizenship, getting a little more difficult. And then the hardest, the storming of the kingdom of God.

Well, that won't fall into order unless you're well versed with the context immediately on giving you those headings, but it will take on space and your comprehension will develop as we go through. The character of John, what did you go out into the desert to see? Jesus will put to his disciples, who do men say that I am, but here's a question that he's now asking them about his cousin, who is John? Is he a fop? That's an old Dickensian word. A man of sartorial splendor, his clothes, he buys them from Next.

He is at the forefront of fashion. Maybe one of the courtiers of the medieval courts, or maybe one of the courtesans of Herod, who did you go out to see? This man with the blazing eyes by the Jordan River, was he a fop, dressed in fine clothes? No. People dress like that are in king's palaces.

Did you go out to see a gourmet? A man who cooks good food, eats good food. Well, most of you are in on the secret that John's diet will not vie as an option for your lunch in an hour or so's time, unless you're particularly partial to locusts and honey. John dresses in the skin of an animal.

He eats from the simple resources of nature. Then this man who's just sent his messengers to me, who really was he? Who did you go out to see? Verse 9, a prophet. Well, says our Lord, giving an accolade of John that he doesn't direct towards anyone else, yes, yes, I tell you, you do see a prophet, and yet you see more than a prophet.

When Wendell Phillips gave the funeral oration of John Brown, that eccentric champion of Negro slaves, he says this, or he said this, how some men struggle into obscurity while others forget themselves into immortality. We all know of John Brown's body which goes a-mouldering in the ground. He didn't work for a place in the history books.

He didn't struggle himself into obscurity. Rather, he forgot himself into immortality, and that, I dare to suggest to you, is basically what our Lord is saying and more about John. Among those, verse 11, born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.

A prophet, yes. Well, Isaiah, he prophesied that when the suffering servant came, ultimately he would give his life as a ransom for all. The prophets, they got it right in their predictions about Messiah.

But John, he's one in advance of them. They point, in a futuristic sense, to me. John predicted me and then identified me.

They didn't live to see my day, but John has. He's not just a prophet. He's more than a prophet.

Prophets prophesy, but he has been prophesied about. Our Lord joins Exodus 23.10 with Malachi 3.1. I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way before you. Is it not interesting, my dear friends, that our beloved Lord sees John by the banks of the Jordan and his cousin confesses who Jesus is, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And now Jesus confesses who John is, not just a prophet, more than a prophet. Amongst those who have been brought into the world by their mothers, there's none greater than John. Do you know, Jesus says that if we confess him on earth before men, one day he will confess us before his Father.

Thine they were and thou gavest them me. Our Lord is speaking about the church, the millions of people who will be part of the kingdom, the redeemed community. And the day will come when our Lord will present the members of his kingdom before the Father.

Who's John? A man dressed in king's clothing? A man who has good food? The thing about the Lord Jesus is he knows who John is. Jesus knows all about my sorrows. Jesus knows when the days bleak.

There's not one thing about John that Jesus didn't know. My beloved friend, there's not one thing about you that he doesn't know. And he wants to tell the Father about who you are and what you're doing.

And even though your circumstances may be as unpleasant as were the circumstances of John, in one sense that wasn't important. Jesus just outlined the faithfulness of John and placarded it in front of the people who were listening as one day he would speak of the faithfulness of his cousin John, the human level, before the Father. If that's all you can understand of this chapter, I think perhaps you've got good enough fare for today.

But just in case there are any complaints that my addresses are getting too short, I will continue. Not only does our Lord give this accolade of John, among those who are born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. He then goes on to speak about the privilege of citizenship in the kingdom and he does so in such a fashion that causes us to jolt.

Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Then our blessed Lord seems to spoil it all. Yet who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

It seems to be a send up and then a total collapse. Did our Lord have tongue in cheek? A little bit of work that I've been trying to do over these months, looking at the preaching of other people. I've come to the conclusion that preachers use hyperbole quite a lot.

You say, what does hyperbole mean? Well, it's a fashion of speaking where to secure a point you tend to exaggerate a little. Now preachers can do that in telling you how many people they have preached to. They count legs and not bodies.

But I mean in a more legitimate sense. There is a fashion in which hyperbole can be quite a justifiable thing to get into. If we come to the pulpit, for example, and say I want to address you on the most important subject in the world.

You will know that about three months later on we'll be saying exactly the same thing but the subject will have shifted. It's not that there was any falsity in what was being said. It's just that in accentuating the burden of what's gripping you at the moment, you tend to over pitch it a little bit, hyperbole.

Now, is this what our Lord is engaging in? It seems to me that that would be untypical of our Lord Jesus. He has indicated to us that John is utterly impeccable in the way that he has gone about his ministry and that's why it's that much more difficult to understand why he puts in the qualification. Yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

I mean John has done everything as far as we can judge, bearing in mind that he's a human being with imperfections as well as with strengths. He's done everything well. He has fulfilled the role of a herald.

Our friend Felicia who is handling the Romanian end of the project was taken to Heathrow yesterday on her return flight or to get her return flight. When you get to Heathrow you hear a crackle coming over the speakers at some stage and they announce the arrival of. And then the lady or the man who is making the statement goes to direct your attention to where the flight has come in.

And then the voice recedes into the background and you're relieved that she or he is not the person who's bringing the jolly plane down. The purpose of the announcer is to tell you just what's going to happen and then get out of the way. And that's what John has done.

He's prepared the way for the Lord Jesus. He's cleared the way and he's got out of the way. Then why does our Lord put up this qualification which seems to dilute the accolade that he gave John when he said that none has risen on earth greater than the Baptist.

When you come across a difficult statement in Scripture you can do one of two things. You can skip it. It's amazing how many of the commentaries do that actually.

Or you can look for what I would call some sort of controlling principle, some controlling event or statement that will help you. You see Scripture must be interpreted by Scripture or else all that you're hearing is what I'm thinking or what Tim's thinking or anyone else who happens to have the privilege of preaching from this pulpit. And I so much want in these days to try to teach people how to listen to preaching.

Because preaching that is not anchored in Scripture, preaching that cannot be defended by the context from which the man is working is not really preaching. It is the sharing of an individual person's views. Well, you can get help from the immediate context and from the wider context of this particular chapter and you'll crack the problem.

John is in difficulty, isn't he? We've referred to that. That's why I took you on the historical pilgrimage just a few moments ago to set up the context from the previous week. John is in prison and he is lacking in information.

That's why, verse 2, he sends his men to the Lord Jesus, verse 3, to ask him something that was buzzing around in their minds and they could find no satisfactory explanation. So what is in the balance is helping people who don't have the information they need to be at peace and at quiet. All right, let's go to chapter 13 and let's turn to the 14th and through to the 16th verses.

I'll summarize the verse 14. It's a quotation from Isaiah. It speaks of the coming of the Lord Jesus.

In other words, it's the predictive, the prophetic Scriptures. Now, Jesus is working out that those who are actually listening to him are better off than the prophets and those who listen to the prophets. Verse 16, But blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear.

For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men long to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. Why is this particular audience better off than the prophets? Well, because they actually were listening to what the Lord Jesus had to say. Now, John is the last of the prophets and he's not directly involved in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, is he? These other people who are with the Savior, his disciples are.

Therefore, they are getting understanding as to the nature of the kingdom of heaven that our Lord is founding. He who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. What is he saying? Well, John never lived to see the day when our blessed Lord would be put on the cross of Calvary.

He never lived to hear, though prophetically he would have known, of the Scriptures that our Lord was raised from the dead. You contrast the preaching of the Lord Jesus and contrast the preaching of John. John speaks of judgment.

John speaks of law. Jesus speaks of mercy. Jesus speaks of compassion.

John is correcting what he has to say in his enunciation in the fashion that his ministry takes. But it took the cross to show the dimensions of the love of God, the width and the breadth, the length and the depth. And those who are in the kingdom, just a little child who's got some inkling of this, is more advantaged than all who lived before the public ministry of our Lord.

You see the point? The little child who sings from the fullness of his heart, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, is better off in his understanding than all who lived prior to our Lord coming to establish the kingdom. That doesn't mean, of course, that John and those prophets were not saved. Of course they're saved.

But it's the kingdom that's important. It's the church that's important. And Jesus is revealing the secrets of the church and the secrets of the kingdom.

And a person who comes with an ABC understanding of the gospel into the kingdom, into the church, he is greater in terms of his comprehension than all those who lived yesteryear. That's the marvel. That's the privilege that is yours and mine inasmuch as we confess Jesus Christ as Lord.

We are members of the kingdom. John had a message which was incomplete. He had an experience which was inadequate.

He was like the blind Victorian lamplighter who spent the late afternoon going up the lampposts and lighting the lamps that he never saw. John points away to the Lord Jesus. John is a signpost.

But John pointed men to a greatness into which he did not enter. For within weeks, his head will be on a platter and the ministry of the cousin of Jesus will be stopped. But the king and the kingdom will still continue to preach and to be founded.

You see, you cannot put too high a value on the church. You say to me, why so often do you speak about the church? You seem obsessed with it. Okay, I am obsessed.

Not the church in terms of a building like this, but the total people of God. This is the greatest entity in the world. It is the greatest organism of all time.

This is what the Lord Jesus has come to establish, a people for himself, that he can confess one day individually each member of before his father. And the least member of the kingdom has greater comprehension of the purposes of God in history than all the erudite intellectual people of the Old Testament era. It was not their fault.

It was just the timing of the grace of God. And all I am suggesting to you is that your privilege, if you are a Christian, should be heightened in your own estimation. Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist, yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.

Now the last hurdle to get through. Verse 12, from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing. The authorized version, if memory serves me right, says, the kingdom of God suffereth violence.

Do you remember the man who led the allied forces in the Gulf War? Storming Norman, the Americans called him. And it seems to me that he used indiscriminate force in the last day of that battle. And maybe the ticker tape welcome in New York should have been a little less extravagant when you think of some of the hundreds who were killed on that final day.

But I believe history will indicate that the vengeance was greater than what was demanded in the last 24 hours of that catastrophic war. Violence? Violence in terms of the kingdom? Who directs the violence and to whom? Now this is where the commentators are all askew. You've got as many options as possible candidates to take over Neal Kinnock's job.

Some have suggested that maybe the violence was, well, that imposed upon our Lord when they tried to deflect him from being the Messiah and become a political leader. Someone suggested that it was the increasing violence which was being directed towards the Lord Jesus, his physical person, and trying to prevent him, trying to shut him up from saying what he had to say. But the context won't allow for either of those two explanations.

The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing. Let's go, I think it's to Luke's gospel. I hope I've got the gospel reference right here.

16 and verse 14. No, it's not. 16 and verse 16.

I breathe a sigh of relief. The law and the prophets were proclaimed. This is Luke.

The law and the prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time the good news of the kingdom is being preached and everyone is forcing his way into it. See, balancing scripture with scripture? This is how to get help.

In the passage that we're studying from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing. That's how it's put. A little bit more clarity, a little bit more information in the parallel passage in Luke 16.

The kingdom of God is being preached and everyone is forcing his way into it. How do you storm the kingdom of God? Well, by the violent way in which you indicate your desire to be a Christian. You say, what is this? We hear 21 years a Calvinist and now he's slipping over into Arminianism.

Is he going into heresy or is he seeing the light? The answer is he's staying with both feet firmly on the ground, I hope. You see, when you become a Christian you don't become one in a nonchalant fashion. Well, I think so.

You know, I'll do the Lord Jesus a favor. If you have never known violence in your heart or that which amounts to violence, in your desire to get into the kingdom, I wonder whether you are a child of God. When God causes his spirit to work in you and creates conviction, he gives you no rest until you have got into that kingdom.

You come before him and you plead that your sins are forgiven. You realize that this is a great and awesome God into whose hands you will fall. And unless you know his mercy, then you will know his wrath.

And with great violence, so to speak, in your emotions, you come before this God and you plead for your forgiveness as though your forgiveness depended upon your pleading. And yet you know full well that had there not been that old rugged cross, you couldn't have stormed the kingdom. He works and you work.

Only the violent get into the kingdom. It's too precious a thing for men to get into this kingdom, to slip in, to get there accidentally. I woke up one day and I became a Christian.

Not a bit. You become a Christian through your determination. You become a Christian by showing with every fabric of your being that this is what you want to be.

And God, in his grace, swings open the doors of his heaven and his son says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. If you've got that sort of forcefulness, if you've got that violence within you, you're one of my men. You're in the kingdom.

There needs to be more violence, I tell you, about conversion and conviction. And not only a violence when you're there, but a violence, not only a violence when you get in, but a violence when you're there. How do you love? I love the Lord with an anemic disposition.

Not a bit. I love the Lord with all my soul, with all my strength, with all my mind. All, all, all.

There's violence in love. It's not the violence of doing damage. It's the violence of taking your emotions and channeling them into service, into love for this great God.

And the kingdom would not be as it is today if men and women realized more the violence that they should be showing in their own hearts towards the things of God in terms of the enthusiasms to advance his kingdom and to retain purity and integrity in your walk, in their walk with the Lord. It seems to me that in some ways you find all this anticipated in the character of John, do you not? I mean, he was defective in his understanding. That wasn't his fault.

He didn't have the final revelation. He was dead before our blessed Lord was pinned to that cross. But nonetheless, in embryo, you've got it there with John, haven't you? There's violence.

Don't you see it in his eyes? This man with the blazing eyes is by the banks of the River Jordan. He calls a spade a spade. He'll put the axe to the tree.

He will tell the Pharisees what he thinks of them. He will tell the Roman soldiers how to behave. It's that sort of violence.

Are you understanding me? It's that sort of thing that God wants us to be reproducing in our lives. These dynamisms, these energies, these aspects of personality so drenched with the power of the Spirit that makes us stand out over and against other men and women. When, and with this I close, when the Jewish people to this day keep the Passover meal, there will be one seat unoccupied.

They believe that when Messiah comes, Elijah will preface his ministry. He will return to the world to prepare for the coming of Messiah. Jesus says in verse 14, If you are willing to accept it, he, John the Baptist, is the Elijah who was to come.

And then verse 15. You see how wonderfully logical scripture is. He who has ears, let him hear.

Now you're in on it all. The whole thing or else I've blown it in trying to explain this to you. Hopefully with the help of the Spirit.

And if I've had his help, then you will understand. This is what our Lord is saying. Elijah has come in the person of John the Baptist.

That prefigures the building of the kingdom. So now we're in kingdom territory. Now we're in kingdom dispensation.

And anyone who's in the kingdom, who's a member of the church, is so advantaged that with no disrespect to John, it would be true to say of him or her, that they are greater than the Baptist was. They're in on the secret. They're inaugurated into the kingdom.

Then live within this kingdom violently. Understanding the violence in the setting that I have explained it. He who has ears, to hear.

Let him respond to what the Lord tells us in these tantalizing yet wonderful verses. Amen. Now let's go to 319 in our new book.

And this will take some of you down memory lane. To George Beverly Shea singing in the 1950s. I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold.

I'd rather be his than have riches untold. 319. I'd rather have Jesus than houses or lands.

I'd rather be led by his nail-pierced hand. And that's what Jesus is asking of us. That submission to his rule, his authority in our lives.

I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold. I'd rather be his than have riches untold. I'd rather have Jesus than have houses or lands.

I'd rather have Jesus than have houses or lands. I'd rather have Jesus than have riches untold. I'd rather have Jesus than have houses or lands.

I'd rather be led by his nail-pierced hand. I'd rather be led by his nail-pierced hand. I'd rather have Jesus than have houses or lands.

I'd rather be led by his nail-pierced hand. I'd rather be led by his nail-pierced hand. His authority in our lives.

Thank you very much.