Sermon - Gaudete 2018 - Matthew 11:2-11

John the baptist was a fascinating fellow, conceived and born 6 months before the Christ, He was the forerunner of Jesus prophesied by Malachi: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.” John the Baptist was the last of the great Old Testament prophets who declared that the Messiah was coming. 

He was an odd fellow, as he was dressed in camel’s hair and ate locust. Not really a civilized sort of man. He lived in the wilderness calling all peoples to repentance and announcing that the Kingdom of God is near. He was the kind of man you see on the side of the road and avert your gaze, ashamed of what you see. Yet John the Baptist was sent by God to proclaim a holy message from the Lord. What is this message that John proclaimed? Upon seeing Jesus he announced: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the Word!” 

Now even from behind the bars of prison, his impending beheading looming over him, John continues to direct his doubting disciples to Jesus. “When John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” Understandably so, John’s followers probably began to doubt that Jesus was the Christ, afterall the one they followed was now in prison and sure to die. Was his message true? Did he get the right guy? Perhaps John even, in this his hour of greatest need, began to doubt. 

But John is not a reed shaken by the wind. He was never a man accustomed to soft clothing and comfortable living. He is a prophet, in truth more than a prophet, He is the one who prepares the way and the hearts of the people for the Coming One, the Messiah. He is the one who points to Jesus and reveals Him to be the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. So today, listen and look to the One the prophet John directs us to heed. Do not doubt, but believe, that Jesus is the Coming One, as revealed by His miracles and by which He saves the world.

So when you doubt and shake like a reed in the wind because you’re one dressed in soft clothing, look to where John points, look to Jesus. Listen to His Word. For the works of Christ have been made manifest for all to see and believe. “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Jesus performs miracles and these miracles are evidence that He is the Christ, the One who comes to save the world. Jesus’ miracles they’re not like the kind of miracles we talk about. I know we say that miracles happen all the time. Maybe a rich man pays off all of your layaway purchases at a store, and we call this a miracle. Or we refer to a child being conceived and growing inside of its mother’s womb and then being born as the miracle of birth. Or someone’s cancer suddenly goes into remission and we call this a miracle. Or we observe a plant germinating from a tiny seed and growing up over the course of decades to mighty tree as a miracle.

But quite frankly none of these naturally occurring phenomenons are truly miracles. They’re incredible, maybe we don’t understand them very well, and we praise God that He has sustains this universe and put into place these marvelous events. However they’re not actually miracles. 

It’s not a miracle when a doctor can perform laser surgery to improve your eyesight. It is a miracle when at the speaking of a word one born blind can see. It’s not miracle when over the course of many surgeries a handicapped man can walk. It is a miracle when Jesus simply says rise and walk and the man can walk. It’s not a miracle when grape juice ferments into wine. It is a miracle when water becomes wine. 

What Jesus performs are miracles, and the only way that these miracles can be done is by power of God. You can’t manipulate God, you can’t control Him, you can’t take His power from Him for yourself. God gives His power to those whom He chooses. Jesus uses the power of God because He is Himself God. The miracles reveal this to us which is why Jesus told us to look at His miracles so that we would know He is indeed the Messiah. “And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Lest you doubt that the scriptures are trustworthy and the miracles recorded didn’t happen, consider this. Why would the disciples falsely record miracles that didn’t take place? What’s the benefit to them? Being persecuted, arrested, and put to death isn’t much of a benefit. What’s more, none of Jesus’ enemies contemporary to Him denied that He performed miracles, they simply wrote them off as some sort of unexplainable magic. We have some of the writings of Jesus’ enemies, we know that they affirmed He did miracles. Muhammed himself, the creator of Islam, believed that Jesus did miracles. So we have no good reason to doubt that Jesus performed the miracles recorded in scripture. 

Because He performed these miracles, we ought to believe that Jesus is the Coming One foretold by the prophets of old and John the Baptist. Jesus is who John said He is: He is the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the World. He has come to restore sight to the blind, mobility to the lame, cleansing to the diseased, life to the dead, and the Gospel to this impoverished world. 

We who by reason of our doubts are blind and deaf. We walk about with uncertainty, unsure of what lies ahead because we have become blind to God’s Word and deaf to His voice. We stumble about in our sins and misgiving. Yet Christ opens our eyes, as by a miracle our doubting hearts and unseeing eyes may behold Christ Jesus as the true Lamb of God, our Savior. 

We who on account of our many trespasses are lame to walk and follow after Christ. Try as we might, we cannot do as our God commands, we cannot come to Jesus, we cannot walk into heaven. Instead we lay on the ground, miserable, wallowing in self-pity and the mire of our sins. Still, Christ gives our feet strength to stand, He pulls us up, and walks beside us as we walk by faith. 

We who have been infected and diseased with sin are leprous contagious sinners. Our disease of sin has separated us from God, we have been marked as unclean, we aren’t deserving of being in the presence of God’s holy people. But the perfect holy righteousness of Jesus has cleansed us of all iniquity, into His shed blood our filthy living has been purified from us. 

Thus, we who are dead in the tresspasses of our sins are made alive. Because of our filthy disease of sin, we have succumbed to its power and died. Yet, Jesus can make even the dead to be awake. He who has died for His people now calls His people from their death, and awakens them to life eternal. 

Most significantly, we are who poor in spirit, whose faith is no stronger than a blade of grass, have the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached to us. For our sins and tresspasses, for our weakness and depravity of heart and mind and soul, for our foolish doubting and wavering consciences, Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who was slain on Calvary for us and now saves us. 

We are the poor who are gospelized. Instead of depression and doubting and sin being our identity, we are now defined by the Gospel. We are indeed poor in spirit, but that poverty isn’t our identity any longer. We who are not offended by Jesus and His miracles, we who are not ashamed to call Him our God and Lord, are blessed. 

Jesus blesses us by being the miracle worker who comes to heal us. He says that “among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” John the Baptist who wasn’t a reed shaken by a wind, is now no greater than you or I am. Truly, we are the least in the kingdom of heaven because of the magnitude of our sin, and yet Christ declares that we are even greater than John the Baptist. 

Do not doubt, but believe, that Jesus is the Coming One, as revealed by His miracles and by which He saves the world. God has come to us doubters in the person of Jesus, and miraculously He has saved us from such impossible sin. So in the miracles of the season, of Jesus’ incarnation into Mary’s womb, of Jesus’ sinless life lived for your benefit, of God’s death and burial in the person of Jesus, of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, in all these many miracles He performs, He saves you just as John the Baptist announced so many years ago.