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John the Baptist sends his disciples to check out whether Jesus is the one who was coming to save his people.

Dan: (00:00)
Hi, everyone. And welcome to training for life redeemed. I am your host, Dan today as always, I’m joined by my father, Dr. David Jackson.

Dan: (00:11)
Today, we are looking at Matthew chapter 11, continuing our series through the book of Matthew dad. Chapter 11 begins by kind of reminding us what we did in our last episode where Jesus had finished. He said he finished giving instructions and sent his disciples off on their little commission to go and, you know, practice being apostles . and then we transitioned into John being in prison and sending out, some of his friends and or messengers. If you like to go and find out from Jesus, if he really is the one, you know, this is meant to be Elijah who was worshipping Jesus while he was in his mum’s womb. yeah, the Elijah or the John, the Baptist to, you know, baptises him at the Jordan river and declares Jesus to be the, and to go and follow him. And now he’s in prison and he’s doubting what’s going on.

David: (01:07)
Yep. yep. And if you were around at the time, you would understand why anybody has any doubts. There’s been half a dozen fellows wander around. I am the promised one, come and follow me and the Romans end up slaughtering everybody. So if you’re in prison and you’re about to get your head cut off, you kind of want to be sure that you’re dying for the right bloke. and you’ve been waiting 450 years for him to come since Malachi’s done his prophecy and died. It’s not clear from the text, whether this is John, the B having doubts or John, the Baptist’s disciples, having doubts. So is John sitting in prison going, am I dying for the right Messiah? Or is, are his disciples saying, you know, how could he be the right Messiah if you are here? I mean, the Messiah comes to free captives. Why aren’t you being free? Yeah.

David: (02:04)
So John, the Baptist says, well, go on, ask him off you, go, go on, ask him. which isn’t as easy as it seems because John, the Baptist he’s in a dungeon in one of Herod’s fortresses, Machaerus, and Machaerus is down in what is now Jordan on the east side of the Jordan river, near where John was baptising. So this is a three day hike to come up to Galilee to ask Jesus, are you the right bloke? You know, we’re gonna take a week or 10 days to get this question answered.

Dan: (02:38)
Yeah. Yeah. And Jesus gonna answer the question, but basically just quoting passages from Isaiah and going, you know, look around you that we have lame men walking. We have blind men seeing we have deaf men hearing and that’s it. That’s how he leaves it with them. Yeah.

David: (02:53)
Because if he comes out and he says, oh yeah, I’m the Christ. He’ll be in prison with John the Baptist. So Jesus has got this plan that he’s gonna spend three years training these guys, which means he’s gotta spend three years not getting arrested. So if you go through Matthews, Gospel, or Mark, or any of them, you notice he never calls himself the Christ. He avoids that title. He keeps calling himself, the Son of Man. And nobody’s got a clue what that means. that that’s not a title that’s ever been used before Jesus. So, you know, if you wanna find out whether I’m the one who is coming, the coming one, and if you go back through the old Testament, the coming one is God, it’s Yahweh. So do you wanna know whether I’m the coming one? Just look. And he, he quotes Isaiah’s prophecy. When you see these things happening, Yahweh will have come to save his people. So they’re gonna go back and tell John the Baptist Isaiah’s prophecy is happening. We saw it happening, therefore you’re on the right track. Yeah. yeah.

Dan: (03:58)
And then Jesus is gonna go through a series of things and talk about John the Baptist, make sure that everyone knows John the Baptist was the Elijah who was meant to come beforehand. Yeah. The messenger who was off the desert preparing the way of Yahweh again. Yeah. We preparing the way of, Yahweh not just of a Lord, but of Yahweh.

David: (04:16)
There’s no mention in any of this, of the Messiah, it’s all about God coming to save his people.

Dan: (04:22)
So that is the main point of this chapter. That Jesus is God,

David: (04:25)
I think that’s the main point of the whole of Matthew, but, but the really exciting part, I think is this, this line that Jesus uses about John, the Baptist. I’ll actually see if I can read it. yeah. Where is it? “Among those born of women there hasn’t risen anyone greater than John the Baptist, yet the one who’s least in the kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist,” which means John, the Baptist isn’t in the kingdom of God.

Dan: (04:52)
Well that’s because the kingdom of God is at hand, right? It’s near. It’s not well.

David: (04:56)
So what is the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is where God dwells with his people, where the king is actually in residence with his people. And the only place where that’s happening is Jesus.

Dan: (05:07)
Doesn’t it all Then go back to the fact that in order for there to be a kingdom, the king has to be thrown. Yes. And Jesus at this point, probably isn’t what I would say enthroned.

David: (05:18)
He’s like David, he’s wandering around the Bush with his followers. He’s an outcast and the kingdom of God hasn’t been put in place yet. But the exciting thing from that verse is when does the kingdom of God get put in place? And the answers Pentecost. So when the son of man has ascended and taken his throne, he can’t pour out the holy spirit till that happens. So God can’t ‘dwell with his people till that happens. And so John, the Baptist is dead before that happens. And then when the holy spirit comes, the kingdom of God has arrived. And the King’s on his throne and the king is dwelling with his people and we’re empowered to advance the kingdom into the world. So John, the Baptist is telling us that that’s coming. Yeah, but he’s gonna be dead before it arrives.

Dan: (06:04)
Okay. So Jesus is Yahweh John. The Baptist is prepared the way for Yahweh he’s the Elijah Jesus then follows this up by talking about the cities, particularly, there’s kind of the main cities, I guess John’s disciples have just come a witness and gone up. He’s the, he’s the Yahweh, we’re going back to tell, tell John, he then just goes well, woe to you woe to you caper, you know, woe to you Corazon and bethsaida. All these cities are just, you know, what, how, how can you not have repented and come to faith? If I hadn’t done any of this, you know, Gentiles city, they’d all be worshipping God, but you guys are not.

David: (06:45)
Yeah. One of the, one of the things that really, as a Christian, you gotta keep your eye on is because if you’re raised in a Christian family, if you’re raised in a Christian community and you’ve had this stuff since birth, there’s an element there where you don’t appreciate the difference because you haven’t, you haven’t lived in the sewer in that sense. And you haven’t gone through that transition quite so dramatically. As some other people, there, there’s a tendency to take things for granted and the, the religious people in Capernaum and in Bethsaida, the Jewish leaders they’ve made up their mind how the kingdom’s gonna work. And it’s all about Jews ruling the world. And anything that threatens that that says, oh, you’re a sinner You need to repent. Oh no, no, no, no. That threatens my identity as God’s chosen. And that hits my pride.

David: (07:35)
And then the next thing you know, we’re killing the Messiah. So Jesus is looking at this question with us and saying, look around guys, all through the Gospel. It’s the Gentiles who are demonstrating faith in Christ at an exemplary and even an excessive level. I’ve never found faith in Israel. Like I’ve found in a, you know, a Roman Centurion you just go from gentile to gentile to gentile where people are responding to the gospel and you go to Corazon and Bethsaida and God help us. We’re gonna go to Nazareth where he was born and grew up and they’re gonna wanna kill him.

Dan: (08:11)
Yeah.

David: (08:12)
And you go, what judgment is gonna come on You when you, of all the people on the whole planet, have seen, heard, touched, witnessed the Messiah in the flesh. And you’ve said, no, How does that work? I mean, the kids at school used to say, well, if you know, if God’s there, why doesn’t he come down and show us? And I’m standing there going, well, duh, he did. And you killed him. You know, let, let’s have another look at that. We, we we’re setting up this model, where we are the centre of the universe. And if God doesn’t fit it, we shoot him.

Dan: (08:51)
Yeah.

David: (08:52)
And Jesus is saying, you’ve, you know, you haven’t looked at the scriptures. You haven’t looked at you Haven’t listened to the prophets. You’ve spent all these generations killing the prophets. Now it’s John the Baptist turn. I’m next? what do you think God’s gonna do? in judgment after you’ve had that many privileges and turned your back on me.

Dan: (09:15)
And it’s not as though that’s scary. God’s not like Jesus is not welcoming of people either mean he goes on to talk about all the people who God has given me, you know, who have come to me welcome. I don’t lose any of them. And that’s how he is gonna finish this chapter about, you know, and there’s a big emphasis, I think, in this chapter about Jesus being, God, him being yahweh and then talking about the father. Yeah. And how the father’s gonna look after it and yeah. Everything the father’s given me, I’m not losing that. You know, these people are mine. They’re gonna be in my kingdom when you

David: (09:43)
They’re getting

Dan: (09:44)
Saved, gets put in place.

David: (09:45)
Yeah. And I love, I love that last line that he puts in. if you look at the notes online, if you sign up and subscribe and go and have a look at the notes, I’ve put some photographs in there because it talks about my yoke is light. And everybody at the kids at school dunno what a yoke is. They’ve never seen one. So I put a photograph in there of this yoke, and it’s an old ox, yo, and it’s heavy and he’s contrasting the gospel as I’m gonna lift the burden of sin and guilt and everything off his shoulders. You don’t have to earn it while the Pharisees are piling on this wagon load looks like a, you know, one of those old bullocky wagons with 80 bullets and you know, 400 ton of wheat or woo or something on the end of it.

David: (10:29)
And Jesus is saying, you know, don’t try and pull that wagon. I’m here to take your sin, your guilt, everything away. It’s all on me. So come to me, my yoke is easy. My burden is light. I’m here to take it all away from you and I’ll do it for you. so Corazon and Bethsaida, I’ve preached this gospel to you. And you’ve said, no, no, no. We, we like our big, heavy load of guilt. you’re crazy. You know, there, there they are killing John the Baptist. And here I am inviting you to come and be freed from your sin and guilt.

Dan: (11:07)
Well Dad, that brings us to the end of chapter 11 of Matthew, which is the end of this episode. If you would like to come and grab the show notes, the study notes and stuff that go along with this episode, please head over to training for liferedeemed.com/seventy, and you should be able to find everything you need there. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and make sure you hit the subscribe button so you can come back and join us next week. As we continue through Matthew and we head on to chapter 12,