Matt 11.20-24 | "Painful Truth or Harsh Criticism?"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Glad to see you this morning.

I don't know whether to take this as a good sign or a bad sign, but I'm gone for one week, and when I come back, there's this gigantic clock up there.

I'm not sure if it says more about Anton's preaching last week or my preaching.

I joked with Joe upstairs that I'm just glad it wasn't a countdown clock.

I'm thankful for Anton filling the pulpit so ably last Sunday.

If you have not listened to that sermon from Judges chapter 1, you must do so.

Judges 1 · chapter mention

Thank you for your prayers for our family while we were gone.

We were in Kansas City for about a week helping Allison's mother begin the moving process.

So that involved lots of purging, some packing, and going through nearly 40 years of accumulated things.

I think at one point Allison and her mom probably spent between 30 and 40 collective hours just flipping through decades of scientific meteorological papers and trying to figure out is this worth keeping or not.

So we got the preparation started, and we'll be making another trip soon to complete that process and bring her mother up here.

So appreciate your prayers as we continue that and work towards that end.

But this morning we have Matthew chapter 11 before us, picking up where we left off a few weeks ago.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

If you would take your Bible or your device and make your way to Matthew chapter 11, beginning in verse 20 this morning.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Going to work our way through verse 24.

If the Lord allows, we'll get a little bit further than that, but I think first service showed me that clock showed me I can't do that.

So we'll see what happens this morning.

Again, that's Matthew chapter 11, beginning in verse 20.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

If you have your Bible, I'll be reading if you would follow along.

Matthew records for us that he, that is Jesus, began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done.

Why?

Because they did not repent.

Here's what Jesus said.

Woe to you, Korusin.

Woe to you, Beth Saida.

For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.

And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted all the way to heaven?

You will be brought down to Hades.

For if the mighty works done in you had been done even in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus.

Sometimes you say things and you make bold statements, strong statements that are hard for us as human beings to wrestle with and to grasp and to accept.

So I pray that as we unfold your words this morning, that you would give light by your spirit, that you would soften our hearts to be receptive to what you have to say to us.

We ask this for your glory.

Amen.

I hope I have a better response to this question than I did in first service.

No offense to first service, folks.

How many of you like surprises?

Oh, come on.

What's with you people?

You're just like first service people.

Seriously, how many of you like like surprises?

Now, when you think about that question, just think about the question, do you like surprises?

Now, when we ask that question, we generally tend to assign something positive to that question.

There is a positive assumption that seems to be given to that kind of question when it's asked of us.

In other words, of course I like surprise gifts.

Who doesn't?

Who doesn't like a surprise gift?

Some of you may enjoy a surprise party for a birthday or for some sort of celebration.

You might enjoy a surprise visit from a relative that you haven't seen in a long time or someone that you just really enjoy spending time with.

On the spiritual front, we we might love to have a surprising conversation with someone that we've been praying for, a conversation that we didn't expect to happen that results in encouragement for us.

We might enjoy a surprise visit from someone that we've been praying for, and the result of that is conversion.

They come to faith in Christ.

Those are surprising elements that we would embrace, right?

That we would all raise our hands and say, yes, those we love those kinds of things.

Those might take us off guard a little bit sometimes, but we can say that yes, we would appreciate that.

But there are other surprises that we might not appreciate in the same way.

And on Mother's Day in 2006, I received a surprise phone call from my stepbrother.

Hopefully he's not watching now and didn't just didn't expect to get a call from my stepbrother.

That was a surprise.

Wasn't expecting him to give me a call.

But that surprise was followed by more surprises.

There was the surprise that he was calling me to tell me that he had taken my parents to church.

And the reason that he had taken my parents to church was because my dad asked him to take them to church.

And my stepbrother said to my dad, I'm only going to take you to church if we go to the emergency room after church.

That surprise was followed by the surprise that my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

And that surprise was followed by the surprise that my dad would be having emergency brain surgery.

You all have a story like that in your life.

Where there's something surprising that you didn't expect.

On a spiritual front, sometimes a brother or sister in Christ will come up to us and speak painful truth to us that we need to hear.

Maybe it's about some element of sin in our lives that we've been wrestling with, and maybe we need to wrestle harder.

Maybe it's with a confrontation of some kind of thing that we're participating in that we haven't realized how bad it is.

Any kind of thing can surprise us, can catch us off guard, but instead of hearing it as it's intended, as truth, painful truth, maybe, to us it's unacceptable.

It's harsh criticism.

Instead.

But see, here's what happens.

When we work so hard to avoid those uncomfortable situations, those elements of pain and hurt and those negative surprises, when we put effort and labor into avoiding them, we can inadvertently put ourselves in a position of missing God's intention for our pain.

And if we miss God's intention for our pain, we can then move into a place of self-diagnosing our painful truth as harsh criticism.

And when we diagnose ourselves as receiving harsh criticism, it's much easier to just dismiss it, isn't it?

We have an illustration of this in this passage before us in Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

I want to point out to you this morning four surprises, four statements from the Lord Jesus that are unexpected.

And we can receive these statements as truth, however painful they might be for each one of us, and so then grasp God's merciful intention in that truth, or we can simply dismiss it as harsh criticism towards some people who maybe didn't respond in the best way.

But that points to a reality that we have to grasp before we get into those surprises.

See, Jesus is speaking here.

If you look closely at your Bible, you will find that there are quotation marks beginning in verse 21.

Jesus himself is speaking.

This is the Jesus who is Emmanuel.

Matthew told us in chapter 1.

God.

God with us.

This is the word made flesh, full of grace and truth.

This is the love of God incarnate, who is, while being loving and expressing love, issuing surprising statements that are full of judgment.

What Jesus says here is either painful truth or it's harsh criticism.

And the way in which we receive what he says will depend first and foremost on whether we believe that God always speaks truth.

Who is he talking to?

If you look back at verse 7, you'll see that there are crowds.

How big are the crowds?

We don't know, but there are crowds surrounding Jesus.

They're there because Jesus always has crowds.

Before that, there were some disciples of John the Baptist who had come to Jesus because they were experiencing pain.

John the Baptist was experiencing pain.

He was in prison, not understanding why he was in prison when the Messiah was here, when the kingdom of heaven was at hand.

John was trying to make sense of his circumstances in life.

Crowds are now gathering around Jesus, and he starts to speak to them about John.

Who did you go out into the wilderness to see?

What did you learn from him?

So these are crowds that are here surrounding Jesus who are Jewish crowds.

As Jewish crowds, they are religious crowds.

And they've been prepared for this moment.

If you go back to chapter 11, verse 1, you will see that Jesus sent out his disciples into their cities.

Likely referring to the cities that the disciples went to in pairs in preparation for Jesus, who would follow and come to those cities and proclaim the gospel and teach the people and miraculously do all kinds of wonders that only God Himself could do.

These are the same people that John had been sent to before Jesus and before the disciples.

So they are twice-prepared people.

God sent John the Baptist to them to prepare the way.

Jesus sent his disciples to them to prepare the way.

And what have they learned?

Are they prepared?

They're like twice-baked potatoes.

In case you didn't know what you're having for lunch, now you know.

Twice-baked potatoes, right?

Some twice-baked potatoes are incredibly enjoyable, right?

They're moist and and full of flavor.

And you can really just dive into them.

Then there are those twice-baked potatoes that are more like quadruple baked potatoes.

And they're so dry that it takes like three glasses of water just to get through a few bites, right?

They're prepared.

But what's the result of the preparation?

What kind of response did Jesus and John get from these prepared people?

We see it in verse 17.

Jesus says, We played the flute for you, and you didn't dance.

We sang a dirge for you and you didn't mourn.

Rather than respond in the way that God expected, these prepared people ridiculed John the Baptist for his extremism, and they mocked the Son of God for following the law of God.

What happens next?

Then Jesus began to denounce.

Hermann Ritterboss in his commentary on Matthew says no longer was Jesus merely rebuking the people and calling them to deeper reflection.

He was uttering words of cursing and damnation.

That's strong language.

Here are prepared people who did not respond in the way that the preparation was designed to accomplish.

And the result is very strong cutting, biting language from God Himself.

Look at what he does.

Jesus names names.

You know, that's not so politically correct these days.

Woe to you, Khorazin, woe to you, Bessaida, woe to you, Capernaum.

He's pointing fingers.

Verse 22, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment than for Tyre and Sidon than for you.

He does the same thing at the end of verse 24.

Be more bearable for that place called Sodom than for you.

Jesus is incredibly pointed.

He's saying these things to people who knew the law.

These are people who had who made a point of obedience.

These are people who followed the patterns and the procedures of worship in the temple and in their synagogues.

These are people who claimed faithfulness to God.

These are people who claimed to have a connection to God and for whom that connection was important.

And that leads us right to the very first surprise.

Jesus demands repentance of those people.

Understand what's going on here.

Jesus is talking about his earthly ministry, right?

The mighty works that he had done in these cities.

We understand this, right?

You can't be in all places at all times.

You have a certain amount of time with your family, you have a certain amount of time with people at church, you have a certain amount of time that's given to work.

All of those things.

That's true of the Lord Jesus in his earthly ministry, too.

His time was limited.

The scope of his ministry was limited.

So he didn't give equal time to every single person.

There wasn't an equal number of people healed in this place and in that place.

There wasn't an equal number of sermons preached in one town and in another town.

Some places had a greater measure of grace given to them, a greater measure of revelation dispensed to them in the teaching and the work of Christ.

Three locations, three communities, three villages were the recipients of the greatest number of miracles, of divine displays of power that were seen in the life of Christ.

The people in those cities had the most proof, you might say, most evidence of who Jesus is.

The people in these cities had the most familiarity with Jesus' ministry.

They had the most familiarity with his power, with the displays of his might.

But that's where we realize a very understandable point that we often forget.

Familiarity does not necessarily lead to the right response.

Having seen the most miracles, the most displays of God's might, does not believe that someone will rightly respond to that.

You want an example?

Greatest example in the Bible?

Man by the name of Pharaoh.

God told Moses, go, go back to that place, lead my people out, because I want to make a show of my might.

Ten signs.

We call them plagues.

The Bible calls them signs.

Signs of God's might.

Maybe a parallel to John's gospel, where John gives seven signs of Christ's deity.

Displays that this is God at work.

God says, I'm going to show Pharaoh and all of Egypt who I am.

Pay attention.

Did they respond right?

No.

In the time of Christ, the religious leaders would come to him and say to Jesus, Jesus, you know what?

We're all on board with this claim of yours to be the Son of God, if you'll only show us a sign.

No, no, no, no, no.

Show us a bigger sign.

And Jesus says, no.

The only sign that's going to be given to you is the sign of what?

Do you remember?

Jonah.

He says, put me in the ground for three days.

On the third day you'll see the sign.

Is that enough?

No?

At this point, it's good for us to remember that while Jesus was in certain cities more than others, and more mighty works were done in some places than in others, every single person who has ever taken a breath on this planet knows the power and the might of God that is able to save.

That's what Romans chapter 1, verse 20 says.

Romans 1:20

Speaking of God, it says his invisible attributes, the things about God that we can't see.

And then he defines them.

He gets more specific.

Namely, his eternal power.

The might of God is on display, having been clearly perceived ever since the beginning, the creation of the world, in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse.

No one has an excuse.

Everybody has seen the power of God on display, some more than others.

But every single person is there.

And that brings us back to the surprising element here about Jesus demanding repentance.

You see, we we expect at some level, at least as church-going people, we expect God to demand repentance, a recognition of wrong done against a holy God and a turning back to Him.

We expect God to demand that from a pagan world.

We have this sense of right and wrong, of justice and lack of justice.

We expect then a just and righteous God to hold an evil world accountable for its evil.

We want to see that.

We long to see that.

Then we learn that God wants us to repent.

Now, what do we mean by us?

Remember that Jesus is speaking to the crowds who knew John the Baptist.

Not only that, they knew John the Baptist so well that they were excited enough to take weekend trips out into the desert to hear him preach.

Jesus is speaking to crowds that are familiar with him.

They've heard him preach, they've heard him teach, they've watched some of his miracles, his mighty works.

These are the religious people who filled the temple and the synagogues of the day.

These are the people who go to church.

These are the people who watch TV preachers.

These are the people who listen to religious podcasts, who participate in Bible studies, who send their kids to Christian school or even homeschool them so that they can teach them scripture.

These people are us.

Jesus expects us to repent.

Edmund Calhamy was a descendant of French Huguenots, a group of people who protested against the Roman Catholic Church.

Edmund lived between 1600 and 1665 or so.

He wrote, Many of us by hearing sermons are grown sermon-proof.

That is, we know how to scoff and mock at sermons, but we know not how to live sermons.

See, religious people get so comfortable, so attuned to hearing the same things that we sometimes fail to recognize God demands a response from us.

Jesus expects us to hear his word and to receive it as truth.

Yeah, it may be painful.

It may feel like a scourge to the soul.

May feel like a branding iron taken to your flesh.

It may be corrective because God takes his word and uses it to exercise, to cut out dead tissue.

God expects us to receive the revelation that he's given to us to move us to repentance.

Why?

Because citizens of Christ's kingdom are repentant people.

But there's an inherent difficulty in us.

We're just like the Jewish people of Jesus' day.

We say, oh, wait a minute, I'm part of God's people.

I belong to the church.

I go to church all the time.

You know what?

I even go to Bible study.

I've been baptized.

I'm good because I'm in.

We belong to Abraham's family.

Yeah.

We need repentance too.

Why?

Why do we need repentance?

Well, it's because of the reality that Jesus presents here.

If there's no repentance, then we're only going to be led into condemnation.

And that's our second surprise, is that Jesus announces condemnation for those who don't repent.

Woe to you, Corazan.

Woe to you, Bethsaida.

For if the mighty works had been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.

Proper response to the revelation of Christ is repentance that leads to life.

An improper response is apathy, is being okay with the status quo in my life that leads into a place of judgment.

Think about what these two communities had, Khorazan and Besseida.

We'll get to Capernaum here in a moment.

Jesus says very clearly, they've heard the words of God directly from his mouth and didn't respond properly.

They even had an understanding of who Jesus is and what he can do.

They had an understanding of his power, his mighty works that spoke of his deity, and they did nothing.

Jesus said, We sang for you and you didn't mourn, we played for you and you didn't dance.

What has Jesus done for you?

If nothing else, you have the words of the living God in your hand.

You've heard it.

You've read it.

True, we haven't seen the miracles directly from the Lord's hand or from his mouth, but we have we have the true written record of these things, and we are held responsible to respond.

Remember, Jesus has already said to us back in chapter 7 that on this day of judgment there will be many people that will say to him, Lord, Lord, look at everything that I did for you.

And Jesus will say, Yeah.

Who are you?

I'm sorry, I don't, I don't know you.

Go away from me.

Israel had the unique connection with the God of creation.

He chose them.

They had his word in the Old Testament.

They had the very words of God in the Word of God Himself, and they had the power of God on display, and they failed to respond appropriately.

In the same way, there will be many who have spent a lifetime in the church with improper responses who will hear those dreadful words depart from me, for I never knew you.

Now, these cities.

Khorusan, Besseida, Capernaum, they're small communities on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

You might be able to call them fishing villages.

In many ways, that was their primary purpose is to be together there near the seashore to live off of the sea.

Khorusan was a little closer to Capernaum than Beth Saida, but basically all of these villages are within three, four, or five miles of one another.

So in a way, you know how small towns are.

When one person knows something, the whole city knows it, right?

So if Jesus does something in one city, it's likely that all the others are going to hear about it very, very soon.

And most of his mighty works are right here in this small space of land.

They had the majority of his revelation, the majority of the demonstration of his deity, of his power.

And then there's the contrast: Tyre and Sidon and Sodom.

Tyre was originally built as two separate cities, one on an island just out from the mainland, and then another city right on the mainland.

And they used that to their advantage to become a massive commercial center that had great safety.

They established settlements in Spain, they established other settlements along the coast of northern Africa.

But their downfall was their pride in what they had accomplished.

They became so proud that one of their kings was used by God in Ezekiel 28 as an ex an illustration of Satan himself, of Satan's pride.

Well, and then in 332 BC, along comes Alexander the Great, and he looks at the situation.

He says, Yeah, I can do this.

So he starts besieging the city for seven months.

He destroyed the city on the mainland and literally destroyed it.

Took all the materials from the city and began to pile them up in the sea to build a causeway out to the island until he destroyed the island city.

By the time of Jesus, it had been rebuilt to some extent, had become again a commercial center.

In Mark chapter 3 and in Luke chapter 6, people from Tyre and Sidon had come down to hear Jesus, to meet him.

Mark 3 · chapter mention Luke 6 · chapter mention

Sidon is another community there.

Some believe it's the oldest Phoenician city.

But what's interesting about this is the biblical history about these cities.

You see, Tyre and Sidon both belonged in the territory of land that God gave Israel.

God said, This is part of what I'm giving to my people.

Specifically, he gave that property to the tribe of Asher.

Anton didn't quite get this far in Judges chapter 1 last week, but in Judges 1.31, it says that Asher could not drive those people out.

Judges 1 · chapter mention

So Khorazan and Bethseida were presented with the gospel, shown the might of God, shown God's power on display in the person of Jesus Christ.

Tyre and Sidon were given a connection to Israel.

King David and King Solomon had a connection to those people groups.

They had some element of God's revelation given to them.

Clearly not as much as Kors and Bethsaida.

Now, when Jesus speaks of Tyre and Sidon here, he's not referring to the cities as they were at the time of Jesus, but most likely the cities in antiquity.

During the times of the Old Testament when they were massively prosperous and so arrogant and proud, and God pronounced judgment on them.

In his commentary on Matthew, John Broadis wrote that Tyre and Sidon, quote, had long been famous for their splendid wickedness.

Think of that.

Splendid wickedness.

Splendid because they had the wealth and the ability to do things very well.

Greatly.

And to be very great at their wickedness.

I wonder sometimes if those same words could be used of our living today.

But the point is not how evil Tyre and Sidon were.

The point really is not how blessed and cor how blessed Korazan and Bethsaida were.

The point is the response.

Look at how much these villages received of Jesus' time, his energy, his miraculous power, his speaking to them.

And they didn't respond.

But the Gentile peoples of ancient Tyre and Sidon, represented in the Old Testament, would have.

Jesus displays knowledge of what might have been, had they received the same revelation of God's truth and God's power that Korusan and Bethsaida had, they would have responded appropriately, just like ancient Nineveh did to the preaching of Jonah.

They heard the preaching of Jonah that God was going to bring judgment on them for their sin, and they repented and sacked cloth and ashes.

Simply because people receive particular revelation from God doesn't mean that they will respond in repentance and turn to God.

God said this.

Jesus gave an example of this in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, not the Lazarus who he raised from the dead, a different Lazarus, who was poor, had nothing.

He lived on the street.

He scraped around for scraps to live off of, and his body was breaking down and was full of sores.

Most of the time he lived right outside of a rich man's home.

The rich man didn't care a thing about Lazarus, just ignored him.

Both men died.

Lazarus went to heaven.

The rich man went to hell.

And Jesus in his parable says that the rich man could see Lazarus in all of his comfort and privilege of being in God's presence in heaven, not lacking for anything.

And the rich man said, would somebody please send Lazarus with just a drop of water on the tip of his finger so that that drop of water can land on my tongue and give me the slightest bit of comfort in this place?

What was the response?

Yeah, no.

Can't do that.

Oh, okay, then can you please send Lazarus back to my family because they need to know how awful it is here?

And so that they they can hear the truth and repent.

And the response was, well, they they have the law and they have Moses and the prophets.

They have the truth of God given to them.

Yeah, no, they won't listen to that, but if Lazarus goes back and raises from the dead, they'll listen to Lazarus.

No, they won't.

No, they won't.

Because the sad reality is in Romans chapter 3 that there's no one who really truly seeks after God.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

But the surprise, again, is to those who are familiar with Jesus, who are familiar with Jesus' words, who are familiar with his works.

He says, if you don't respond properly, I'm gonna come in judgment.

And on the day of judgment, you're going to receive an even greater surprise.

You're gonna be surprised that you end up in judgment, but the surprising thing after that is gonna be this.

You're gonna be surprised that I'm more gracious to people that you thought were more evil than you.

I'm gonna be less harsh in my judgment of Tyre and Sidon than I am in my judgment of you.

Why?

Because you had more knowledge, you had more understanding, you had more grace, you had more revelation from me than they did.

That's hard.

Is it painful truth or is it harsh criticism?

Let's go one step further to a third surprise.

Jesus declares that living with him, being present with him, knowing him brings even greater responsibility.

He says, And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven?

Couple of things to point out here.

Number one, Capernaum is where Jesus lives.

He was raised in Nazareth, but when he began his public ministry, he moved to Capernaum.

This is where Jesus spends the majority of his time.

These are the people that are most familiar with him.

These are the people that lived with him.

And exalted to heaven is language that is eerily similar to language we find in the Old Testament referring to Lucifer's desire to ascend the throne of heaven and unseat God.

It's almost as if Capernaum got so comfortable with Jesus that they said, Hey, you're our hometown boy, Jesus.

We want your place.

Will you be exalted to heaven?

There's so much pride, so much arrogance because of Jesus.

So these three cities, Korus and Besseid and Capernaum, they're going to face a harsher judgment than three evil cities of ancient times.

Why?

What's their crime?

What have they done?

Yes, Tyre and Sidon and Sodom and Gomorrah were evil.

So God destroyed them.

Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed so much that we don't even know where it was.

Still destroyed to this day.

But in terms of faith in God, of trust in God, of repentance towards Christ, they are all similar.

They're all going to spend an eternity in hell because they rejected Christ.

And in their rejection, they're no different.

These places are all the same.

Kors and Besseida, Capernaum, Tyre, and Sidon and Sodom, they're all the same.

They have received the revelation of God given to them in his grace, and they've said, no thanks.

We like it the way we've got it.

And their rejection, they're no different.

They're no different than any who reject him today.

The difference is the level of their responsibility based on the revelation of God given to them.

There's a level of accountability that God says, you know this much, and I'm going to hold you accountable for what you know.

Old Testament Sodom and Gomorrah had what God gave them in creation.

They could see the invisible attributes of God, see that he's powerful enough to save.

Oh, they also had Lot.

Remember that Abraham's nephew who lived there?

Yeah, that didn't turn out so well, did it?

Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.

Tyre and Sidon had a relationship with the nation of Israel through David and Solomon.

They were destroyed.

The Coruscant, Besseida, Capernaum.

Friends, they had the living God in their midst.

They had the living God walking with them, talking to them, displaying his might to them.

They were held to a higher standard because of the revelation that they had.

So we have to ask ourselves, what do I have?

And how does God hold me accountable?

You see, revelation from God to you requires a proper response.

Will we hear the truth of God and receive it as divine truth, even if it hurts?

Or will we cast it off as the rantings of a lunatic who only wants to issue harsh criticism to make people feel bad?

So it's time to pause and process.

The God of love has issued a declaration of judgment.

Harsh judgment.

How will we respond?

There's one more surprise that I want to leave you with.

So the Bible was given to particular people at a particular time in world history, and that came with a particular cultural context for those people and a particular geographical setting that came with particular language elements.

Not only that, each unit of the Bible has its own context.

It fits within a section, a chapter, or a book, and even within the whole book of the Bible, the whole collection of books.

If we ignore those contexts, we can be led into an improper understanding or an improper application or even miss something entirely.

And it's important here that we do not miss something significant.

This is a surprise you don't want to miss by failing to put this in the context of all of Scripture.

Verse 20.

Then Jesus began to denounce the cities.

That word denounce, it means to rebuke.

Something is wrong and a correction is being issued.

It can be translated rebuke or taunt, or even in a very general sense, to insult.

So when someone is rebuked, when they are taunted or insulted, they bear a reproach.

There's a shame that comes with having that rebuke given to you.

Put myself out there as an illustration.

This did not happen, by the way.

Just putting myself in the context of a made-up story.

Imagine that on a Sunday morning, I leave home, headed to church, getting ready to preach God's word.

And all of the neighbors in my neighborhood are outside knowing who I am and understanding.

Where I'm going and what I'm about to do, and they see the patrolman pull me over.

And they know what's going on.

They know, they've been there.

They know that the patrolman is going to issue me a rebuke.

How ironic that it is that that's coming to the preacher on Sunday morning.

And so I bear the reproach.

I bear the shame of that.

That same word is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

When Goliath stood before the armies of Israel and insulted them.

Morning after morning he would come out and taunt them.

Where's your God?

Where's your strength?

Cheers of evil people taunting God-fearing people.

Choose of the world taunting God Himself.

God, where are you?

Rebuking.

Whatever.

Here Jesus is rebuking these crowds and these cities for not responding properly.

And so they are bearing a reproach, they're bearing shame because they're exposed in their sinfulness of not responding properly to God's truth.

But it's worse than that.

This shame that Jesus rebukes on the people for rejecting God is eternal.

It's eternal judgment.

Listen, friends, we will bear greater shame in eternity than the ancient city of Sodom if we refuse to hear the painful truth of God's word without repentance.

Without turning to him and trust and grief over our sin and resting in Christ.

Beloved, religion without repentance is rejected by God.

Religiosity without humility is scorned by Jesus.

Those who come to Christ must be marked by repentance.

That's not the surprise.

The surprise is what God does for those who come to Christ in repentance.

So, in other words, we are these crowds.

We are these crowds who are rebuked by God Himself for not responding properly to the revelation that he's given us of himself.

We bear our reproach, we bear our shame as we stand before a holy God in judgment for our lack of repentance.

Now notice the surprise.

Look with me at Isaiah 54.

In Isaiah 54, this is a song, really.

It's a song about Israel, God's people, Israel, and what God is going to do with them.

And in in this is part of what God does in all of Scripture, where he connects pieces to help us see the bigger picture.

The same word is used here in Isaiah 54, verse 4, that Jesus uses to rebuke the people.

Isaiah 54:4

God says, fear not, for you will not be ashamed.

Be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced.

For you will forget the shame of your youth.

Why?

Look down at verse 8.

Because in overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you.

But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says Yahweh, your Redeemer.

Here's the surprising truth.

It's that God Himself bears our reproach in Christ.

Notice what God promises his people.

He said, if you come to me in repentance, don't worry about your disgrace.

Don't worry about your shame, because I am God, your Redeemer.

I'm the one who's going to purchase you out of that place of reproach and shame.

How will he do that?

Our time is gone.

My clock is already past what I'm supposed to be doing.

You can look at them on your own Romans 15, verse 3, quoting the psalmist, Christ says, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.

Romans 15:3

Jesus bears the reproach.

He bears the rebuke.

Hebrews 13, verse 3, speaking of bearing the reproach of our suffering on the cross.

Hebrews 13:3

In other words, those who hear the words of Jesus as harsh criticism or the ravings of a lunatic and don't repent of their sin will bear their own reproach.

They will bear their own shame for eternity.

But those who hear these words of truth, even if they're painful words, even if they're cutting words, and who are cut to the core and repent of their sin and trust in Christ alone.

They, they will have their shame and their reproach borne by him who hung on the cross.

So Jesus says, come to him repentantly, and he will take your reproach on himself.

Get that, beloved, the God of love who issues just judgment will bear the rebuke and the shame that he issued upon you because you trust in him.

If you're not surprised by that, ask God to surprise you by that.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, may we be surprised by the gift of your grace that takes our shame upon yourself.

We confess that too often, even as your people, we we hear your truth, we see your power, we see what you do, and we don't respond in the right way.

It almost becomes normal to us.

Forgive us of that sin.

Grant us repentance to see you in all of your glory, to understand our sin and all of its shame, all of its reproach.

And give us the grace to come to you, knowing that you will bear all of our shame.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.