Christ's Model

Do you ever stop to consider the fact that all of us are the product of our culture? Of course, you can take that in several different ways. We have a social culture, meaning American. We have a church culture, Church of God. We probably also even have family cultures that have to do, in some cases, strong ethnic ties or traditions or geographical locations. But we're made up of, or we are simply the product of the culture that we are in. We think like, we act like, we reason like our culture has taught us. Many times, when we go into the church culture side of culture, many times we go on autopilot when we respond to ideas and concepts relating to what we are to do, how we are to do it, what our performance requirements are. A good example of that is the view that any one of us would have of our mission.

Very early on, United worked with great deliberation on framing its mission. You know, a mission is something that you are to be able to state in one sentence. Maybe a long sentence, but nonetheless, a one sentence statement of where you're going. And it's quite a challenge sometimes to take all the random thoughts, all the parts of your culture, all the parts of what you feel you are and what you ought to do, and to compress it down into one simple statement.

Embedded at the very beginning of our governing documents is our mission statement that reads as follows. Quote, the mission of the Church of God is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and kingdom of God in all the world, make disciples in all nations, and care for those disciples. This was the best effort in framing a statement culturally of who we are, what our task is about. If you were to survey the major Church of God splinter groups, one of the most commonly held cultural views is the responsibility to preach the gospel to the world.

Various groups would color that statement differently. It's no mystery to me, after as many years as I have had of interfacing with groups, that every group colors that slightly differently than do the other groups. Various groups color it in a way that best fits their view of what the responsibility is.

The broad majority would agree, for instance, that it's mandatory to preach the gospel to the world. It is a part of our culture inherently, as far back as you want to go. I don't care how long you have been in the Church or how short a time you've been in the Church. Everywhere along that continuum, there has been a recognition of Matthew 24, 14 as a significant part of our view of responsibility.

In answering the disciples' question of, tell us the signs of the end of the age, Jesus Christ, in the midst of giving that answer, made a statement about what would occur. And he said, verse 14 of Matthew 24, This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. The result is the broad majority agree that it's mandatory to participate in preaching the gospel to the world, and would reference Matthew 24, 14. To also understand that we have a part in making that happen.

In fact, not just a part, but culturally, it is accepted that we have a responsibility to see that as much is done as we are able to do. As a result, every size splinter group, it doesn't matter how small it is or how large it is, from the smallest to the largest, the majority of them have some form of one or more of these components. A radio program, a television program, a monthly publication, and booklets, tracts, or articles to support and buttress that material. That's something culturally that is broadly held. Now, some among the groups would focus on a particular quality, and they would say, well, the quality that we see as most significant is the quality of witnessing.

And in some cases, would articulate witnessing as making a statement of biblical fact without an expectation, one way or the other, regarding people's response. You have a message to deliver, and ultimately, in the deliverance of that message and the doing of the job, it makes no difference whether anyone responds or not. The task is fulfilled by the deliverance of the message. Yet others, in viewing the same cultural responsibility, would focus on the aspect of warning, taking a more doctrinaire approach.

The message would be more pointed and more direct, and in the most extreme cases, focus primarily on a very strong rebuke or condemnation of society for its sins. Now, these are just for instances where different parts of our culture have taken us. Do you ever stand back from your culture? That's a challenge to do. It's easier said than done. Do you ever stand back from your culture far enough to have at least a modest amount of objectivity?

Now, if you want a challenge, I just gave you a challenge. Trying to back away from one's self, one's culture, one's long-standing position far enough that you actually have some degree of objectivity. Do you ever try to use the Bible as a reality check for culture? That's simply a matter of going along. It's like in a machine shop where you have certain gauges that you use to test whether or not things are in compliance. You do quality control checks to see that, okay, we are still within tolerance.

We are still within the prescribed tolerances on what we're making. Do you ever use the Bible that way? Do you ever go along and look at the Bible and use it as a tolerance check on whether or not you are within specs? After all, our culture is supposed to reflect the Bible, not vice versa. The Bible is not obliged to reflect our culture. We, through our culture, are reflective, if we're within specs, we are reflective of Scripture.

I alluded to the value of doing just exactly what I mentioned just a short time back, and I'd like to share the results with you today in a sermon that I will title, Christ's Model, Our Culture. We talk about Christ's model, and you can overlay that model upon our culture.

The purpose of the sermon, brethren, is to provoke thought. There's absolutely no way that we can cover a topic of this magnitude in one message, but we can provide a substantive beginning for future thought and future Bible study. All of us are standing here aware of the fact that the physical life of Jesus Christ is described as a way of living. It's described to us in four books at the beginning of the New Testament.

We are aware that three of those books called the Synoptics cover the story in substantially the same fashion.

Of the three of those books, the first in order of appearance in our Bible, and also the longest is the book of Matthew. For the sake of this message, I'm going to let Matthew's account of the life of Christ serve as the model that we will use for asking and surveying the question about how our culture mirrors the life of Christ. Consider Christ's culture, if you will. I'm talking about what it was like when he was on this earth, the period between 27 and 31 A.D. when he was doing his ministerial work. Consider, if you will, the cultural setting that he was in. He knew that the society in which he lived was going to murder him within three and a half years after he began officially preaching. So as he began to preach, as he finished the temptation, the baptism by John which preceded the temptation, and he began his ministry, he began that ministry with an awareness. In three and a half years, I will be dead. The society in which I am currently walking will murder me. He also was aware, if you look at Matthew 24, and some of our historic literature has made the point that Matthew 24 has type and anti-type. It would be difficult to say Christ was not aware that the culture in which he lived had a very short time span left. When we look at history in the rearview mirror, we are aware that following the death of Jesus Christ, not 40 years passed before everything those people held a sacred disappeared. The temple was destroyed for the last time. And I'm speaking up to the current date, okay? Up to the current date, the temple was destroyed for the last time. Jerusalem was destroyed. Following that, though it took another generation to accomplish, the Jews eventually reached the place where they were banned and prohibited from even setting foot in that part of the world on pain of death.

As I said, it would be difficult to imagine that Jesus Christ, maker of mankind, was not aware that these things were on the doorstep. And whether the people of that land were oblivious to it or not, it would have been a part of his culture, whether a part of their culture or not.

Considering culture in which he lived and the shortness of time, both for his life and for the nation itself, it would not be surprising to see Jesus focusing strongly on a warning message. What actually did occur during the three and a half years of his preaching? Have you ever stopped taking any one book, all three of the synoptics? John, have you ever taken the account of the life of Jesus Christ and analyzed it from the standpoint of how he approached the need to give a message to the people who were there?

Let's look at a couple of foundational statements, and then we will walk through the book of Matthew. The first instance of Christ dealing with the society around him in the book of Matthew follows his baptism by John the Baptist and the completion of the temptation. Regardless of how you word these, Jesus Christ did not, and I will put the term in quotation marks so we won't argue over whether it was needful or not to quote-unquote qualify, but he did not feel it was yet the time to proclaim any message until after his baptism and the temptation. The Matthew account after Matthew chapter 4's recounting the temptation then says to us in verse 12, the temptation is finished in verse 11. In verse 12 it says, Jesus heard that John had been put in prison. So he came down off the mountain, the temptation was finished, the news came to him that John had been put in prison, and he headed for Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying. And then follows two verses of fulfillment of Isaiah. In verse 17 it makes the first statement about Jesus Christ addressing his culture. It says simply, from that time. This was a beginning point. And really it never ended. So for the remainder of his life, from that time Jesus began to preach and to say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This is the very first statement about Jesus Christ and mission. It is a statement that does not contain any commentary. It contains one sentence. And that is, I began doing this work. I began to let people know that they needed to repent. And that they needed to be aware that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. We have no mentality here. We have no commentary to tell us the approach. Gentle, firm, soft, harsh. It doesn't say.

In every generation, in every age, the church has understood and it has taught the need to a world around it. That there is a need to turn. 180 degrees. Stop going the way that one has been going. Turn it around and conform to the way God has given.

You know, there's an old saying about exceptions proving the rule. I said to you, we would stay in the book of Matthew. Unfortunately, here at the very beginning, there is the need to take one step and only one outside of the book of Matthew. And for the remainder of the sermon, we will stay in Matthew. But if there were anything that came close to an SPS statement in the Gospels, it would be in Luke 4. And since we're dealing with foundation statements and foundational events, I would be remiss in not taking you to this place in Luke 4. And then, as I said, we will spend the remainder of the sermon in the book of Matthew. I take you to this place because, as I said, this is as close to a statement of purpose, an SPS statement, as you will find in the Gospel accounts. This is in the event of Jesus Christ attending Sabbath services in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. And on that particular day, they handed to him the scroll containing the reading for that day. It was the scroll of Isaiah. And Christ opened the scroll of Isaiah, and he read to them from the book of Isaiah his mission statement. Verse 16, Luke 4, And so he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to sit at liberty, those who are oppressed, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Then he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down, and the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he said to them, today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. I don't know of a statement that states more succinctly the mission of Jesus Christ, and the reading from Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth on that Sabbath day. Those miracles, you can see within the text there what he was supposed to be able to do, or what he was going to do. There is inherent in that description in Luke 4, a responsibility that Christ had, and a way of fulfilling that responsibility that is not equal to where we are. I'm referring in this particular case to the fact that Jesus Christ's ministry, literally from beginning to end, was filled with the performance of the miraculous. Visible, obvious, instantaneous, miraculous events that were a part of the confirmation of his status. Even though people were not of one accord as to who he was, they knew he was not the ordinary man on the street. The question arose on multiple occasions. Well, who are you? And they would say, well, you know, you're John resurrected. You're Elijah. You're that prophet. Referring to, as they knew, and those of you who are conversant with Moses' writings know that Moses said there would come a day when someone would come like unto a prophet, would come like unto me. And they simply referred to him as that prophet. Well, they weren't of one mind as to who he was, but they knew he was not an ordinary person based upon the miracles that he performed. Those miracles were ways in a sign-oriented society. You know, Jesus Christ and the later apostles said, if you want to understand the cultures of our day, they're very simple. With a Greek, you sit down and reason. With a Jew, you show him a miracle.

If a Greek wants to be convinced of something, he says, let's sit down and talk. If a Jew wants to be convinced of something, he says, show me a sign, show me a miracle. Sent to a miracle-oriented society, Jesus Christ was equipped to do miracles as a way of confirming that he was not an ordinary person. You and I can't lay that as an overlay upon our culture and say, okay, how do we compare? This is not a part of our specs test. What is comparable, though, is this. How Christ performed those miracles and the attitude that went with the performance of those miracles speaks of his heart.

You and I are to have the same heart.

We are to be like-minded. We are to be of the same way of thinking as Christ. And so the how of it tells us about the heart. The what of it simply tells us that he was extraordinary.

And we'll look at the how of it. Performing a miracle is performing a miracle. How you choose to do it speaks about who you are. As you walk through the book of Matthew, Christ's first reported dealings with society, according to Matthew, occur in chapters 8 and 9.

It takes us all the way through chapter 4 before we have reached the place where he's ready to begin proclaiming the gospel. He then stops and takes the opportunity through chapters 5 and 6 and 7 to instruct his disciples privately and personally. And so he is not really interfacing with the society around him until we arrive on the doorsteps of Matthew chapter 8. In Matthew chapter 8, we begin to see how Christ's attitude toward society is unveiled. Matthew 8 and Matthew 9 are a listing from beginning to end of the miraculous.

These are two chapters that are filled with the performance of divine miracles. The very beginning is instructional in the way it unfolds.

Matthew 8 and verse 1, it says, When he had come down from the mount, great multitudes followed him. And behold, a leper came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Here is a man who is rotting to death. Literally. Here's a man who is rotting to death. He simply is being consumed by leprosy. And he makes an interesting comment. He said, If you are willing, this was not about power, this was about attitude. The man said, If you are willing, you can make me different.

It is interesting to see Jesus Christ's response.

Then Jesus put out his hand and touched him, saying, I am willing. This is not about power. This is not about a display. This is about a frame of mind. He answered the man on the level the man was communicating. He was saying to Christ, I want to know where your heart is. And Christ said, I will demonstrate by removing your leprosy where my heart is. You didn't ask, was I capable? You said, was I willing? And his response was, I am willing. And you are no longer a leper.

As soon as this event is over, Jesus Christ is now introduced in the city of Capernaum to a centurion. A man who came to him and said, I have a servant who is lying at home paralyzed and he is dreadfully tormented. And Jesus Christ said, again, a statement of willingness, take me to your house and I'll heal the man. Where do you live? Show me the way. And the man said to him, and the accounts are different between the Gospels, so I will take you, I will simply give you a composite statement. The man said, I'm really not fit for you to come into my house. I am a military man. I am used to authority above me and below me. Those below me, when I say do something, they do it and they don't ask questions. And I understand authority. I know in this case that your realm of authority is over illness. And therefore, it isn't a matter of you being present in my home. I don't need the tactile senses of grabbing you by the hand, taking you to my house, opening the door, having you walk in, having you visually see my servant. Because I understand the concept of power and authority. And I know that if you give the word, when I get home, the servant will not be sick anymore. Christ not only healed the man, but He used the event as an opportunity for instruction. An instruction of appreciation for the magnitude of faith that He had seen. He said, I've not seen that quality of faith in Israel. This is a rare quality that does not require reinforcement. It comprehends conceptually a principle and says, I know the principle well enough that that's all I need to know. This is an issue of authority. You have the authority. I'm simply asking if you are willing to exercise the authority. You've said you will. That's all that I need. There's instruction in that. That takes up much of chapter 8. There is also the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, which is not overly instructional. There's a case of demons being cast into swine, which again, though it is a remarkable event, is not so instructional in that we don't have dialogue. It's in the dialogue. It is in the statements of observation that are made by Christ about the event or the statements of the commentator about what He witnessed in the attitudes, the actions, the demeanor of Christ. And that takes us to chapter 9 in verse 1, where Jesus Christ healed a paralytic.

Chapter 9 in verse 1, it says, So He came into a boat, crossed over and came to His own city, and behold, He brought to Him a paralytic, lying on a bed, and Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven. And it's an interesting situation. Very positive, very upbeat. You know, in acknowledging that this man, lying on the cot, was lying there because at some juncture, sin was involved, allowed Christ to go to very different directions. There is the direction of, let's talk about your sin, let's evaluate your sin, and let me correct you for that sin. That would be one approach. The other approach obviously required some evaluation, which you and I are not capable of doing, with the same instantaneous ability that Christ was, of where the heart of that man was. And I can only assume that his evaluation was that there was a heart in there that was very pliable and very soft, because he bypassed exhortation, correction, and warning, and he went directly to, Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven.

Now he got corrected for doing that, and as a result he talked with those who had corrected him, accusing him of blasphemy, and he said, Well, which is easier to say? Your sins are forgiven you, or to say, arise and walk? He said, bottom line, those of you who are here as critics, can you tell me the difference, if the man is lying on a cot, and when I finish talking, he's standing up, and he's rolling up the cot and putting on it his back to leave, what difference it makes, whether I say, your sins are forgiven you, or get off that cot, stand up, roll the cot up, and get out of here. Net, net, the man is going to walk out the same door with the same cot, in the same condition.

He said, I said it the way I said it, because it's important for you to know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sin. And so I said it the way I did, so that you comprehended that there is the power and the capacity here to take sin and to remove it. And that was important for you to know.

Interesting here in Matthew 9, verses 1-8, he did allow people a chance to glorify God, and he gave the religious leadership a chance to disagree with him.

It is interesting because as we go along, we're going to see an escalation of tension between Christ and the religious leadership.

Here initially, Jesus Christ even gave the religious leadership an opportunity to hear what he had to say without being directly confrontational. If you read Matthew 9, verses 4, 5, and 6, his response to the religious leadership, it was a matter-of-fact statement, instructional in nature. It was not confrontational. It was not accusative. Simply instructional.

As we continue down, verse 10-13, we arrive at the first significant non-healing event.

It says in these verses, And so it was, As Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came, and sat down with him and his disciples. Now he was sitting at dinner with the cream of the crud. All right? There was very little difference in that culture between the term tax collector and extortioner. We've gone before, through this particular route, that these were franchises. These were a franchised right to extort from those from outside the land upon entry custom according to what the collector felt the individual could bear.

And so he was sitting with many tax collectors and sinners. So they named one category and left all the rest of the sinners just in the pot as collectively sinners. And so there he was sitting with the cream of the crud, having dinner. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? So here was a condemnation, a judgment. Doesn't he realize the contamination of being with people of this sort? Jesus Christ responds to them again, allows us to look inside of himself. He could have said, You self-righteous so-and-so's, you arrogant so-and-so's. He did not choose initially to fight even with those who were worthy of being dressed down. He said to them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. The closest thing to correction he gave to those men was this. He said, But go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He gave them something provocative to think about, but even in giving them something provocative to think about, He didn't shove it up their nose in a forceful fashion.

Continuing on in Matthew 9, verse 18, another healing occurs. In verse 18, we see actually two healings compressed into one account. He said, But come and lay your hands on her, and she will live. And so Jesus arose and followed Him, and so did His disciples. And suddenly a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, she had had menstrual flowing for twelve solid years. And she came from behind and touched the hem of His garment. For she had said to herself, If only I may touch His garment, I'll be made well.

And Jesus turned around, and when He saw her, He said, Now another account says He felt literally the Spirit flow from Him, and He looked around to see who had touched Him. In this case, it's an abbreviated account. But His comment to her was a beautiful comment. He said, Your faith has made you well. You have lived with misery for twelve solid years. You felt that if I could only get close enough to Him that I could reach out and even touch His clothing. That's all I need. He said to her, Be of good cheer, daughter. You're okay. This has ended. It's not going on anymore. As I said, He was on His way to perform another miracle, the resurrection of a dead child. When Jesus came into the ruler's house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd wailing, He said to them, Make room, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed Him to scorn. When the crowd was put outside, He went in, He took her by the hand, and the girl arose, and the report of it went out into all that land. An ideal opportunity to set the record straight as people were laughing, mocking, and they probably had some choice words to call Him, like, What kind of nut fruitcake is this? We're having our morning service, and we're all here professionally doing our job. The girl is as dead as dead can be, and this nutcase comes in and says, She's just asleep. He took the ridicule, He took the scorn, He simply ignored it. He healed the child, and the account ends at that particular point with no additional commentary. Verses 27 through 31 contain another one of those miracles. He healed in this section, and all He asked was one thing. There was a blind man that said, Son of David, have mercy on me. The only thing He said to the blind man was simply this, Do you believe I am able to do it? And when the man said yes, He said, You have results. You have to commensurate with your response. You said, I am blind. Can you remove the blindness? I simply asked, Do you believe I am capable? He said, Yes, I know you are capable. The blindness departed.

Verses 32 through 34, another miracle. Here again, I won't read this one to you. You can look at it. It's only three verses long. Here again, Jesus Christ performed another healing miracle to the chagrin of the religious leadership. If you'll read the three verses, you will see even though the religious leadership was agitated by what He did, He didn't confront them. He simply left them alone. The last in the series, verses 35 to 38, this is the capstone of the section.

Since these verses, 35, 36, 37, and 38, summarize the opening report of Jesus Christ's ministry, we've had two chapters, the entirety of both, dealing with miraculous healings and giving us a window into where Christ was. If I were to summarize these two chapters, what is instructional in them is the positiveness with which He dealt with those who approached Him, the opportunity to encourage others when their response was exemplary, and even though now, confronted by religious leadership multiple times, has not even chosen to contend with the religious leadership, but has graciously stayed above the fray.

Verses 35 through 38 summarizes this first section. It says, And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. And when He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered like sheep, having no shepherd. And then He said to His disciples, The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.

His assessment at this point in time, with the areas He had been in, the cities He had visited, the people He had seen, was a deeply felt compassion for the weariness of their condition, the scattered state that they were in, a sense that here were people who spiritually were like sheep that had no shepherd, everyone wandering this way and that way and here and there, with no focus, no direction, no sense of what life is about, where they were going, where they ought to be.

And as He saw it, He turned to His disciples and He said, Among this scattered, weary, fragmented people who truly don't know where they're going, He said, Among those is a harvest. Pray that sufficient will come forward, be brought forward to take care of that harvest. Transition takes place at this point. Matthew 10 is all about sending out the twelve apostles for the first time and to give them some exposure to responsibilities that would be with them for the rest of their physical lives.

This is, as it were, a look to the future. Much of what you see in Matthew 10, you're going to see repeated again in Matthew 24 and 25. It is a statement that says to these men, before they've ever begun their job, let me tell you where this is all going. Let me tell you what conversion does. Let me tell you about the actions and reactions within society that will come about when you are converted. And so He dealt with the fact that in doing your job immediately, this is near term, I'm sending you out.

While you're doing this particular job, this is what that job is going to be about. As you continue your career, what I've called you to for the rest of your life, these are the things that you're going to experience. Matthew 10, in a sense, is not directly involved in the flow of what we're talking about, which is, where was Christ? What was His mindset? How did He view things? What was His cultural response?

There is worthwhile training and worthwhile instruction within the chapter, but it isn't central. Let's simply suffice by saying that. As I said, this is not about Christ, this is about us.

Matthew 12, then, picks up again. Matthew 11 is an interesting mixture. Matthew, as a whole, contains two faces. Matthew 11, in this case, rather, contains two faces. Let's look at them. Here's one of the faces. Look at verses 2 through 6. It says, when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of His disciples. So he sent two of the disciples to Christ, and they said, Are you the coming one, or do we look for another? And Jesus answered and said to them, He said, Look, you've come to me from John in prison, and you're asking me, am I the Christ, or are we supposed to look for someone else?

He said, I want you to take this report back to John. He said, Go and tell John the things which you hear and see. And what Jesus Christ did at this point, brethren, was to simply say, and I'm giving you the commentary, the things that I read off the scroll at the synagogue in Nazareth from the book of Isaiah, I have now been doing. Proof of the pudding is in the eating. You go back and tell John that the blind receive their sight, that the lame walk, that the lepers are cleansed, that the deaf hear, that the dead are raised up, and that the poor have the gospel preached to them.

And blessed is he who is not offended because of me. He said, Go back and tell John that. Tell John that every conceivable kind of healing miracle has been performed already by me. All the categories, the blind, the deaf, the leperous, the dead. In addition to that, the Word of God, the gospel, have been preached to the poor. Now, this is a whole sermon in itself, okay? And I'm not going to go there. But you do need to understand that the term the poor is not talking about how much you have in your pocket. It is talking about a frame of mind. It is talking about people whose impression of themselves is not so inflated that their ears are stopped up.

It is talking of people whose sense of themselves is sufficiently deflated that their ears are open. And both here and in Luke, it is a statement about preaching to people who, when I talk, listen. He said, Tell John that is happening. Verses 20 through 24 of this same chapter. Jesus Christ was not unwilling to indict. Matthew deals with this account in one fashion. Luke deals with this account in a very different fashion.

Luke deals with this account from the perspective of when the disciples were sent out, those cities that didn't receive them, woe to them. Matthew deals with it, as you will see in verse 20, that Christ began to upbraid the cities in which most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent. In contrast to the poor who listened, he said, In cities such as Corazin and Capernaum, because he resided in Capernaum, he said, There have been multiple opportunities for these people to see miraculous events that have evidence that I am not the average run-of-the-mill human being.

And yet their response is one of skepticism, one of denial, one of it makes no difference, one of sarcasm. He said to these people, in both cases, verse 21, also, verse 23, He said, Woe unto you Corazin, and woe unto you Bessada. The way in which he issued the woe is interesting. He said, in essence, when it comes the time of the resurrection, the mighty works which had been done and you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.

He simply said, We have a scale of tolerance. They are going to find it more tolerable than you are going to find it. He didn't damn them. He didn't categorically condemn them. He said, You have a liability because of your faithlessness, that when the time comes where it's important, and he didn't bother to give them all the doctrine here, you're going to find it more difficult than those people. Their ears were more open. They were more poor. You were self-inflated. Verses 25 through 30 stands in considerable contrast to verses 20 through 24.

He took particular cities that had lost the excuse because of the volume that they had seen, and he said, You saw it, and you have taken the hard-hearted approach. There were others who had not, and he said of them in verse 25, At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight, all things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father.

Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. He said, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

His approach to those people who didn't simply stand in front of Him and arrogantly deny Him has now been described. The Chorizan, the Bessadis, he said, You've got a problem. How much evidence do you need? How much proof do you need? What do I have to do for you to stop, pay attention, and listen? To the others, he said, Come and be instructed by me. You know what you're going to find? You're going to find, if you're willing to listen to me, and you're willing to follow what I say, that the life that I am asking of you is far less heavy to bear than the life that you want to choose.

I look at a room full of people who are a testimony to that fact. The more that you carried a life before coming into this church, the more you know the heavinesses that this world places upon one. The weight of sin and its consequence is phenomenally heavy. The lightness of the yoke of responsibility to obey God is extremely light by comparison. He said, I can give you rest. I can take burdens off your shoulders. He said, I am gentle and lowly in heart, and I can provide for you comfort and rest. A very instructional part of who he was.

Beginning in Matthew 12, we find the entrance of the religious leadership. I will simply say of Matthew 12 that a reading of this chapter will provide all the information you need to draw a simple conclusion. There comes a point in time when those people who should know better can reach the limit of Christ's tolerance for their arrogance. And at that particular point in time, Jesus Christ is going to go, as we saw in chapters 8 and 9, from an ambivalence, a willingness to ignore, to a willingness to stand there and say, wait a minute.

Wait a minute. You need to consider who you are, where you are, what you're doing, and the problems you are creating. And beginning in chapter 12, Jesus Christ began to confront them in the areas where they were deficient. He didn't back away from it. He didn't flinch. He was very direct. That directness was cutting. It didn't feel good to be the object of His directness. Because He said to these particular people, the direction that you are teaching the Word of God is destructive to the people you are teaching, and it is contrary to where you should be going.

He also fired a shot across the bow of them, and He said to them, watch out. It was an interesting statement that He made to them when they called Him illegitimate. And He said, you can call Me anything you want. And you know what? In the end, it will not be held against you. The day is going to come when your minds are opened, and every blankety-blank name that you call Me, that goes by the by. It is chalked up to ignorance.

But when there is incontrovertible proof that the power of God is working through Me to perform a miracle, and your level of knowledge of the Bible and your intelligence tells you these things cannot be done by anything but God, and you ascribe the works to the devil, He said you cross a line. He said, don't cross that line. He said, you cross that line and you're dead. You're dead forever. Back off.

Call Me what you want. Stop there. You go too far past that point, and you will find at the point that you come to understand truth from error that it's too late, and you're dead forever. And so it was a very sobering shot across the bow, not a condemnation, but a drawing of a line. He said, you can call Me an illegitimate so-and-so. In the end, that won't matter. Don't go over here, though. Verses 31 through 37 contain that particular account.

Matthew 14 through 20 is a section made up of the next seven chapters. In fact, all the rest of Matthew, all the way up to the point where Jesus Christ is arriving at Jerusalem to end His ministry. And in Matthew chapter 14 through 20, there are three interwoven messages.

Let me give you the three themes. Theme number one, the escalating confrontation with the religious leadership of the time.

Classic example. If you want to see the intensification of the confrontation, simply read the first nine verses of Matthew 15. They have dogged Him. They have sniped at Him. They have name called what He has done. They have undermined Him to the place where Jesus Christ now stands eyeball to eyeball with Him. And for the very first time, He uses a term that He has not used before. He says, you hypocrites. You sanctimonious, self-righteous hypocrites.

And He then tells them where their theology, their religion, and their conduct totally makes a farce of what they should be doing.

Matthew 16 continues that confrontation. The second theme. And as I said, interwoven because they are literally interwoven. They are not three at the beginning, three next, three next. They reoccur and they are interwoven among each other. The second theme, the continued performance of miracles. In Matthew 15, Jesus Christ heals the Canaanite-ish woman.

A remarkable case in the fact that this woman was told by Him, I am not sent to you. I have been sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. You are not an Israelite. I am not sent to you. This was a woman who exemplified what I said earlier when I said, poor is not about money. It is about a frame of mind. He stomped all over her feelings and the woman came back and said, you know what, let me use an analogy. The children, the people of Israel, sit at the table and they eat their meal. As they eat their meal, you know, the kids are messy enough, crumbs fall off. The dogs underneath, referring to herself, are at least allowed to pick up the crumbs and eat them.

Jesus Christ looked at the lady and said, this is in between the lines, but it is very easy to see. He said, you have a beautiful attitude. I am not high bound by rules. I am sent to the house of Israel. I have just met a lady who is not an Israelite, who has a heart and a spirit that is absolutely stunning. You have your answer. You have your healing. I have enough to give beyond the boundaries of Israel, and you truly have exemplified a spirit worthy of it. The third theme, broadly demonstrated compassion upon people of various walks. As we move later into the ministry of Jesus Christ, what we have the opportunity to see is some tremendous compassion, not upon individuals, but upon broad categories of people. Matthew 14 and verse 13. Is the account of Jesus Christ feeding the 5,000?

You know what it says? The opening account tells the whole story. When Jesus heard, verse 13, He departed from there by boat to a deserted place by Himself, and when the multitude heard it, they followed Him on foot from the cities. When Jesus went out, He saw a great multitude, and He was moved with compassion for them and healed their sick. He looked at this great massive throng of people trying to find where He was at all costs, and wherever they heard that He was, they went to gather at those places. Not ten, not a hundred, thousands. And He looked at this throng of people in the thousands, and was truly, deeply moved by the pathetic state that they were in. Not just physically, culturally, spiritually. Matthew 15, verse 29.

You'd see the same thing all over again. Look at verse 29 through 32. The miracles that are described in 29, 30, and 31 are summed up in verse 32 when it says, When Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days, and have nothing to eat, and I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way. Now, this was not of magnitude.

You know, sometimes you see people's compassion in small events even more pointedly than in major events. Here were people that had been following Him for three days, and He said, You know what? They haven't had any place where collectively they could go to get food, and they have been so willing to stick with Me that we are now three days into that, and they don't have anything to eat, and I'm going to leave where they can't follow Me. And He says, You know what? It's not fair to them. And so He fed seven thousand.

Oh, excuse me. This was not the seven thousand. This was the end of count. Now, there were those who ate were four thousand men beside women and children, so it's four thousand plus the women plus the children, which is probably even more than seven thousand. But He said, They haven't had anything to eat. I'm not going to let them go without something to eat. Set them down. We'll see they're properly fed. Then we'll go on our way.

It is in the same part of Matthew that all of us are acquainted with the blessing of little children, and I don't even need to go through that. The disciple said he's too busy. He's too important. He's got too many big things to do. Shoo, shoo, shoo. And Christ said, No, no, not shoo, shoo, shoo. He takes a small child in his arms, and he says, He does two things. And he says, I don't need to go through that. He blesses the child, but he also says, Here's an opportunity for you to learn something. There is an innocence in this package that needs to spiritually reside in every grown adult. Look at that wide-eyed innocence. Come to that place spiritually. Matthew 20, the end of this section, verse 29.

Now, as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed him. And behold, two blind men, sitting by the road, when they heard that Jesus was passing by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David. And then the multitude warned them that they should be quiet. And they cried out all the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David. So Jesus stood still, called them, and said, What do you want me to do for you? And they said to him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened. So Jesus had compassion, touched their eyes, and immediately their eyes received sight. And they followed him. What you find is probably one of the greatest trademarks of Jesus Christ's ministry. If you read any one of the four Gospel accounts, it's a profound sense of how sad and tragic it is to be a part of this society.

This society being that of 31 A.D. at the time. This is written. And how much there is to gain through the calling to the way of God. Beginning in Matthew 21, we really have no further to go for a simple reason. From the introduction to Matthew 21 until the end, we are in an abnormal state of the last week of Christ's life. The leadership has decided to murder him at all costs, and we go through that horrible account.

What have we observed? From Matthew 1 through Matthew 20, in the parts that show the ongoing record, what really have we observed about Jesus Christ, his model, that we can overlay on our culture?

What we can observe are these things. Central to his ministry was a power not currently given to the church. The power to do great public healing miracles.

Those miracles confirmed to a miracle-conscious society that this indeed was someone special. Those miracles also, as I have given you book, chapter, and verse, have instructed us who live at latter times and believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, they instruct us about his frame of mind, his attitude, as he approached people. He was moved by people's needs, no matter how temporary they were. He noted lasting spiritual qualities such as great faith and admired the holders of such. He also allowed his heart to transcend formula, healing a Canaanite-ish woman, though he was not sent to them at the time. Due to a beautiful heart. Number two. Though he was very capable of giving rebuke and warning, and when needed gave scathing rebuke and warning, the majority of such instances were reserved for the religious leadership. i.e. those who knew better and deliberately acted contrary to their knowledge.

Citizens of cities who chose to deliberately close their eyes to obvious miracles were also told that they were inferior to even the heathen they so self-righteously condemned. And thirdly and lastly, the broadest theme of the book was seen in conduct that was consistent with the reading of the scroll of Isaiah on the Sabbath in Nazareth, a care for people's physical and mental failings, coupled with a tender heart for the aimless ignorance of the masses, who simply didn't understand why they were alive and where they were going.

Is there something that we can learn in our culture from the model of the conduct of our Master?