Last week we looked at the previous passage where Luke recorded that John the Baptist sent a message to Jesus from prison by his disciples asking was He the One to come or should they look for someone else? Perhaps he asked that because he was discouraged after spending almost a year in jail, but also because he was confused. Because the message of the Kingdom he had been sent to proclaim was a message of repentance for the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. But though he saw the coming of the Messiah, and though he declared publicly, “behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world”, yet John misunderstood the timing of the coming Kingdom. He preached that the Kingdom would come with judgment, with fire and destruction for those that rejected it. But as heard what Jesus was doing, he wasn’t hearing about fire and a winnowing fork in his hand and judgment. He was hearing about mercy and forgiveness of sins. And so John was wondering if there was another that would come and do the judgment part.
But Jesus said to his disciples, “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM.” What John failed to realize is that there is two stages to the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven. The first part which Jesus initiated was a ministry of reconciliation. The first part of the Kingdom was characterized by compassion. God in His mercy made it possible for man to be saved, and to be adopted into the family of God, thereby gaining admittance into the Kingdom. That was the purpose of Christ’s first coming. The first coming of the Kingdom was a spiritual kingdom. Whereby man is given admittance by faith in Christ and spiritually he is born again as a son of God and a citizen of the Kingdom.
Now there will be a second coming of Christ as Jesus talked about in Matthew 24. And at that second coming He says He will come in judgment and in fire and with a winnowing fork to separate the evil from the good. Matt. 24:29 “But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory.
And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.” And after that gathering of the elect, and the judgment of the wicked, the spiritual kingdom will become a physical kingdom as well, as God will rule and reign over His citizens in a new heaven and new earth.
Now after John’s disciples left, Jesus turns to the crowds and uses this as an illustration of a very important point. Jesus says in vs. 25, ““What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? But what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Those who are splendidly clothed and live in luxury are found in royal palaces! But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and one who is more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER AHEAD OF YOU, WHO WILL PREPARE YOUR WAY BEFORE YOU.’ “I say to you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”
Now what was Jesus teaching in all of that? First of all, Jesus was saying that John was a prophet and the greatest prophet up to that point. And He was perhaps being a little bit sarcastic by asking, “What did you go out to the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?” In other words, a prophet of God is not swinging in the breeze of ambiguous doctrine. A prophet of God is not swayed by popular opinion. A prophet of God is compelled to speak the word of God whether or not it is popular. Whether or not it is politically correct or seemingly insensitive.
And furthermore, Jesus is inferring that true prophets of God aren’t influenced by riches. They aren’t characterized by wearing $3000 suits and flying to speaking engagements on private jets. That’s not typical of true prophets of God. So Jesus is affirming that John was indeed a true prophet, a great prophet, in fact he had been prophesied of in Malachi which Jesus quotes; BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER AHEAD OF YOU, WHO WILL PREPARE YOUR WAY BEFORE YOU.’
Jesus goes on to say that among those born among women there was none greater than John the Baptist. Now born among women was simply a way of stating that he was a human. And of all the men born on the earth, the greatest of them at that point was John the Baptist. That prompts the question, why was he considered to be the greatest?
John was the greatest because he was chosen to proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven was here. He was given the privilege of introducing Jesus to the world, as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He was given the privilege of introducing the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. All the other prophets before had only an partial vision of what was to come, but John was given the actual opportunity to see the Kingdom come into fruition. He was given the privilege to be a part of ushering in this Kingdom, and to personally introduce the Messiah. All the past prophets could only point to the Messiah in a prophetic picture, but he was able to actually witness His coming and proclaim “here He is!”
But the second part of Jesus statement has an even greater significance for us, because Jesus says in contrast to John being the greatest man that had lived up to that point, “but he who is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he.” Now to understand that statement we are going to have to first understand what is the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven.
Prior to the coming of Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven was portrayed by symbols and pictures in the Old Testament which signified a heavenly reality. Hebrews 8:5 says that the Old Testament priests and sacrifices and the temple “serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” But with the coming of the Messiah, the Kingdom of Heaven came to earth, manifested in the incarnation of God in the flesh. Hebrews 9:11, ”But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.”
So the King of Kings came to usher in the Kingdom, to bring the gospel to full realization by the establishment of His church, that the light of salvation might come to the world, not just to the Jews, but to every people and every tribe on earth. In the Old Testament, the Kingdom was pictured as the chosen people, the nation of Israel, but in the New Testament the Kingdom is manifested as the church, which is the body of Christ. The religious leaders of the Jews failed to recognize that Jesus was the King, the Messiah that was promised, partly at least because they expected that prophesied kingdom at that time to be a literal, earthly kingdom. But Jesus said in John 18:36 to Pilate; “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” In other words, it’s a spiritual kingdom.
Before the resurrection, the disciples themselves didn’t even understand that principle. They were looking for a physical kingdom in which they would be rulers with Christ over their enemies. That’s why they were fighting over who would be the greatest and who would sit where right up to the Last Supper before Jesus was crucified. But after the resurrection, after the Holy Spirit had come with power to explain the words of Jesus, after the church was established on the day of Pentecost, then the Apostle Paul writes in Eph. 1:3 that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” They understood then that the church is the physical representation of a spiritual reality, whereby Christ is lived out on earth through us.
That concept of the Kingdom is still not understood very well in the church today. We all know that Christ died to save sinners. But far too often, there is a lack of understanding about what comes next. We are not saved, just to get a “get out of hell card.” But we are saved to become citizens and ambassadors for the Kingdom of Heaven - to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom, to build up the Kingdom.
Yes, Jesus came to save sinners, but He saved us in order to call out a people from the earth after His own name, who would become citizens of His Kingdom. This citizenship He accomplished through several ways. First He had to make us righteous and holy. He did this by offering Himself as a substitute for our sins by dying on the cross in our place. 2 Corinthians 5:21, "[God] made [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." By faith in His sacrificial death and resurrection, we are made holy by the transference of our sins to Christ, and His righteousness transferred to us. Eph. 1:4 says, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, so that we would be holy and blameless before Him.”
But that is not where it stops, just in our forgiveness of sins. That is where new life begins. That’s why Jesus says to Nicodemus that you must be born again. John 3:5,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” We were made holy and blameless so that we might become partakers of the nature of Christ. Now that we have been made holy by grace, we might receive the indwelling presence of Christ in us, through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given to us as our Helper, that we might have the power of Christ working within us, so that we might be ambassadors for Christ. Grace was given so that we might be made positionally holy before God, and the Holy Spirit is given that we might live holy lives doing the work of God. Eph. 1:13 “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.” Eph. 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
So what is the good works that we are supposed to do? The work is the building up of the Kingdom. Specifically, the building up of the church of God. Eph. 4:11 tells us that “He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints [that’s you] for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”
See, you have been saved so that you might become part of the church, and the church is a living organism, made of up people, who are workers in the temple of God. God being in their midst. This is greater than anything that John the Baptist realized. Peter describes us in 1Peter 2:9 as we are “A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY.”
This church is the mystery which God is displaying to all of the heavenly realm. Eph. 3:10 “so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.” This church is the triumph of Christ, the bride of Christ, the body of Christ that Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” God is showcasing us to the devil and his angels as trophies of His grace and by which this church, made up of redeemed people like you and me, will ultimately triumph over the world and over death and over sin. That’s what Paul was talking about in 2Cor. 2:14 “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.”
Listen, understand something here that is critical to your faith. The Kingdom of Heaven is no less than the spiritual kingdom of God which is manifested on earth by the church. The Greek word used for church is ekklesia, which means a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place, an assembly. It’s not a building made with hands, but a people saved by grace, equipped by God, nurtured through the Word, gifted and indwelled by the Holy Spirit, that we might be the image of God to the world. We are His body, physically visible to the world, but spiritually connected to the invisible God, of whom Christ is the Head. This is what Jesus was talking about when He said that he that was least in the Kingdom is greater than John the Baptist. John didn’t know all the benefits that we know. John died before the Kingdom came fully into completion through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ by which He established His church on earth.
Please understand, the church is not a building, not an organization, but a living organism which tabernacles God and manifests Christ to the world. The Old Testament tabernacle portrayed the future church where Christ would dwell within us, within the holy of holies as we are made holy by Christ’s blood. In the New Testament it becomes clear that the believers are the temple of God. 1Cor. 3:16 “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a church made of stones and mortar, but a temple made up of people - living stones. In 1Pet. 2:5 Peter says, “you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
Paul uses that same metaphor in Eph. 2:20 to describe the church, “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”
So how are we to be great in the kingdom of Heaven? You become part of the church, the spiritual kingdom, the manifestation of Christ’s gospel to the world. We become workers with Christ, serving through the only vehicle by which God has authorized to bring the gospel to the world. We must first of all become born again as living stones, and then joined together with other living stones that form the church, the temple of God’s Kingdom.
Listen, I grew up a preacher’s kid. If anyone had a reason to dislike conventional church, I did. And perhaps for you also, some experience you had at church has left a bad taste in your mouth. But it took me a while to understand that just because every church isn’t a good church, it doesn’t negate the plan of God. Just because the devil has infiltrated the church doesn’t invalidate God’s plan for the church. You are not going to find your purpose in God’s will outside the church, because the church is in the center of God’s will. Eph. 5:25 says “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” The church is central to God’s plan, and we need to conform our will to God’s will, not try to get God to bend to our will.
Some of you may think that you can worship God anytime, anywhere you want. You don’t want the responsibility of a church. You don’t want the authority of church. You don’t want to submit to God’s church. Let me warn you that you need the fellowship of Christ’s body whether you think you do or not. And some of you visiting here today need to go back home and ask yourself some serious questions regarding your church. Is it conforming to the plan that God has for the church, or is it a popularization of what we think the church ought to be like, or how we would like church to be? Are we following church leaders who are bending like reeds in the wind with every strange doctrine? Has your church abandoned the authority of scripture alone, in light of becoming more seeker friendly, or politically correct? And if that is the case, then you need to get out of there and find a Bible teaching, Bible believing church where you can get to work. And then you need to get about the work of the Kingdom through your local church.
There is one other important teaching that Jesus uses the life of John to illustrate. Though many thousands of people heard the message of John the Baptist, and heard the message of Christ, yet most of them still remained outside of the Kingdom of Heaven. Most of the people in the crowds were merely spectators who were drawn to the miracles, but weren’t willing to come into the Kingdom. Jesus addresses them in 7:31 “To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’ Jesus was comparing the unmoved people of that day to that of children who played in the marketplace. He is describing some children who wouldn’t play with the other children. They sat there unmoved, preoccupied with their own activities. They heard the music but didn’t want to play.
Let me paraphrase that in modern English for many people in our congregations and communities today. We preach judgment to come and you did not repent. We preach glory to come and you are not interested. We preach forgiveness has come and you do not weep. You sit there, and will not join the work of the Kingdom. You are like children sitting in the marketplace who won’t respond to the music. Listen folks, the church is not a concert hall and Christianity is not a spectator sport. We don’t worship God by attending church once in a while and clapping our hands. We worship God by being obedient to His commands. By becoming submissive to His will, and laying our will on the altar. By serving His kingdom, and by laying our priorities aside in favor of serving the King.
Jesus concludes by saying, “But wisdom is vindicated by her children.” In other words, the wisdom of the children of the Kingdom will be their vindication that they acted in wisdom when they heard the gospel. One day the King will come again, and this time He will come in power and judgment. And He will separate with His winnowing fork the foolish from the wise. Those that heeded the truth of the gospel will be wise, and they will be vindicated. But for those that are foolish, there will be judgment.
At the end of Matthew 24 Jesus tells a parable about that second coming. Matt. 24:45
“Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But if that evil slave says in his heart, ‘My master is not coming for a long time,’ and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards; the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
I’m going to close with one of the saddest verses found in the Bible, Jeremiah 8:20 which I think is appropriate to our situation, especially here at the end of our season on the beach. It says, “Harvest is past, summer is ended, and we are not saved.” What a terrible thing to hear the gospel and yet remain unmoved like the children in the market place. We don’t know when the King is returning for His people, for His bride, but the invitation is there for everyone; Romans 10:13 says, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Today is the day of salvation. Today the Kingdom of Heaven is near you. I pray that today is the day you will call upon the Lord for salvation.
And for those who are born again into the Kingdom, remember what we were made for, what our purpose is, and heed the admonition of Hebrews 10:25, “not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” Jesus is coming again soon. I hope you will be found faithful.
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