[Machine transcription]
Jesus says, what then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way before you.”
You may be seated. Dear Wendon, Fabiana, and Amelia, and to all the Lord’s Baptists, whose consciences are made clean by the word of God and the promise of His mercy, who are ready to hear the word of God, today we rejoice in them, in the preaching of Jesus to His cousin, the prophet John the Baptist.
Now, just by way of introduction, if I were to ask you, who is promised in the Old Testament? You would answer and say, well, Jesus is promised. Over and over, from the very beginning to the very end, we read these promises. The Lord Jesus on the way in the garden, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, to King David, through the prophet Isaiah—all of these promises are given of the birth of Jesus. And that’s right. But there’s another who’s promised in the Old Testament, maybe second only to Jesus.
And it’s none other, amazingly, than the prophet John, the way preparer, the one who was sent before the Lord to make ready the voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, tearing down the mountains of pride by preaching the law, lifting up the valleys of sorrow by the good news of the gospel. Jesus, in fact, quotes the passage from Malachi chapter 3 that, “Behold, I send my messenger before you.”
And the very last verse of the Old Testament—this is amazing—is not a promise of the coming of Jesus. It’s a promise of the coming of John the Baptist, who’s on the way. And when he arrives, he meets expectations. I mean, he is a character. He’s already preaching before he’s born, with his feet in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, when Mary brings his Lord Jesus to greet on the visit, when they’re just a few months apart and both getting ready to be born.
And then when John comes on the scene, he’s there thundering in the wilderness, preaching repentance. Remember some of the Gospels give us the summary of his preaching: “Who told you to flee from the wrath to come? You brood of vipers.” And all of Judea, this is the text that says, all of Judea was going out to listen to him. It’s amazing.
So that John the Baptist’s fame was spreading. In fact, I think that if you were to go back to, say, the year 40 or 50 AD, Jesus has died and been buried and risen and ascended into heaven and the church has gotten started. That if you were to just go into the far reaches of the earth and ask about Jesus, maybe a few people have heard of him, but you ask about John the Baptist, more people would have known about John than Jesus. In fact, when the apostles show up in Ephesus, there were already people talking about John, and no one had heard of Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So well known was John. And I mean, it makes sense. He held nothing back. He was appointed by God for this purpose. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit to preach in this way. And not only that, I mean, he was wild—camel-skinned hair, he was eating honey, he’s got locust wings stuck in his teeth. I mean, he is blasting away at the people. His highest, perhaps most beautiful accomplishment is as he’s there baptizing the people for repentance.
The Lord Jesus Himself comes to be baptized by John. John says, “Look, you don’t need this. You should baptize me.” And Jesus says, “No, let it be so now to fulfill all righteousness.” And so Jesus is baptized by John. He comes up out of the water, and John points to Jesus and says to the disciples all following, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” John is able to see that Jesus is the one that was sent, the one that was promised, the one who will redeem and rescue and save His people. John knows this profoundly.
But today’s text gives us a different story. John—a different side of the man. John’s in prison. He was arrested because he preached that Herod shouldn’t be married to his sister-in-law, Rhodius. He got mad about that, Herod did, and so he threw John in prison. And in just a few weeks from the passage that we read today in Matthew chapter 11, in just a few weeks, Herod would have a feast, and he would be so pleased with his daughter-in-law’s dancing that he promises to give her anything up to half of the kingdom, and she plots with her mother to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And so he’s martyred by being beheaded.
There the head is brought before him. This is what’s on the way for John. And as he’s there in prison, probably in the dungeon of one of Herod’s castles on the east side of the Dead Sea, his disciples come to care for him and to minister to him. And John says to his disciples, “Go and find Jesus and ask him this question. Are you really the one? Are you the one that’s coming? Are you the one that we’ve been waiting for? Or are we waiting for another?” John, this great prophet, is asking, “Is my preaching right? Did we put our trust in you for good reason or in vain?”
Now, some people think that when John does this, he still believes and still has a strong faith and is sending his disciples so that their faith would be strengthened. They say it’s kind of below the dignity of John the Baptist to doubt. And I have to be honest, the text is not 100% clear on this, and I myself go back and forth on the kind of strength of John’s faith at this particular moment. But here’s what the helpful thing is: even if John is doubting, which it seems like it, he’s in what the old theologians called the “dark night of the soul,” when faith is fighting against unbelief.
And when things just fall apart and you wonder if God still is God, and if He’s still in control, and if He’s still taking care of things—are you there, Lord? Are you going to save me? Are you still the one who helps me? And are you still my deliverer? John still, though, knows where to go. He knows who to send his disciples to. He says, “Go to Jesus. Ask him.”
So they go and they find Jesus in Galilee, He’s preaching, and they come. You can imagine Jesus receives this group of disciples from John, and He gives them an audience, and they ask, “We tell them, we’ve come from John, he’s in prison, he sent us to you, he wants to know, are you the one that we’ve been waiting for?”
Now, here’s something really amazing. Jesus is going to send the disciples back with a sermon, “Go preach this to John,” and He gives them three passages. Amen. He gives them first Isaiah 29:18, and then Isaiah 35:4-6, and then Isaiah 61:1. But here’s the amazing thing that’s easy to miss: Jesus, as he’s giving these passages of how he’s fulfilling all of these promises—to be the one to cleanse lepers, to be the one to give sight to the blind, to be the one to cause the deaf to hear, to be the one to cause the lame to walk, to be the one to cause the dead to live again, to be the one through whom the poor have the gospel preached to him—that Jesus actually stops that quote from Isaiah 61.
I want to read it to you. It’s Isaiah 61:1-2. This is one of the promises of the Messiah, and it says this: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted.” And then this is what Jesus doesn’t quote: “To proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to the bound.”
I have to think, dear saints, that as John is looking and meditating on all of these promises of the Messiah, that as he’s sitting there in Herod’s prison, this promise is jumping out at him. One of the works of the Messiah is that He’ll set the prisoners free. Those who are unjustly thrown in prison will be released by Him. And when John asks Jesus, through his disciples, “Are you the one? Are you the one who’s going to heal the blind and make them see, heal the deaf and make them hear, heal the lame and make them walk and set the prisoners free?”
And here’s the answer that John gets from Jesus: “Yes, but not for you. I am the one who is coming. I am the one who will set the prisoners free. I am the one that will heal the blind. But for you, John, it is appointed not to be set free.” This message comes back to John. It’s a beautiful message—it’s tough though. John, I’m your Savior, but you’re going to stay in prison. I’m the one who raises the dead, but you’re going to stay dead.
In fact, as far as I can tell, John the Baptist is the only person who dies in the ministry of Jesus that Jesus lets stay dead. Every other person who dies, Jesus raises from the dead, but not for John. In this way, John is the greatest, like Jesus says, the greatest ever born from woman, but the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than him. Now, what do we make of that?
Here’s my best answer: It’s a picture that I want someone to paint something on. Any of you know how to paint? This would be great. It’s the picture of the prophet Isaiah sitting at a desk, and he’s got a scroll in front of him, and a pen, and he’s writing. And in front of Isaiah the prophet is one of our five-year-old confermans. And the five-year-old conferman is confessing the creed: “I believe in Jesus Christ.” And Isaiah the prophet is weeping with joy, writing, “Oh, His name is Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary.”
His mother’s name is, I knew He was born of a virgin. I wrote about that in chapter 7, but His mom’s name is Mary. And as the children are confessing the creed, did you see what I mean? That even the youngest in the kingdom of heaven, the least in the kingdom of heaven, know so much more than all of the prophets put together because they’re looking back on all of these promises fulfilled instead of looking forward to their being fulfilled.
“He suffered under Pontius Pilate.” I knew He was going to suffer, but Pontius Pilate—okay, that means He was crucified. “Oh, He was crucified, dead and buried. On the third day He rose again.” I knew the third day. What happened after that? “40 days He ascended into heaven.”
In other words, the basic Christian faith is so full. We have this great gift that the thing that the prophets long to see, the youngest among us knows. And Jesus says, that’s what makes us, in fact, great—great—that we know the name of Jesus, that we know His birth and His death and His resurrection and ascension, that we know His love for us and the forgiveness of all of us.
That you then, if you can imagine it, that you are greater than John the Baptist because you remember the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s amazing. Now, this text gives us so much comfort because Jesus is teaching us that in our affliction, He’s with us; in our doubts, He’s with us; in our troubles, He’s with us. And that the one who will never leave us or forsake us is soon coming back for us.
So it could be that the Lord will loose your bonds and set you free. It could be that the Lord will let you die in prison. It could be that the Lord will give you healing, or it could be that the sickness could endure. It could be that the Lord would give you a nice peaceful life. It will most likely happen that the Lord will give you trouble and tribulation, but He is still with you all through— the one who is kind and gentle and shepherds the flock of Jacob with love and tenderness and affection.
So we rejoice with the disciples of John and with John himself to know that Jesus is the one. May God grant us this wisdom and peace through Christ our Lord. Amen. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord.