Word of Salvation – Vol.39 No.23 – June 1994

 

The Kingdom Advancing Forcefully

 

Sermon by Rev. D. Baird on Matthew 11:12

Reading: Matthew 11:1-19

Book of Worship:

29, 399, 518, 476, 132, 528.

 

Beloved congregation,

I want the children to imagine this: In the middle of this village there is a market place.  It’s like an open mall.  Every Thursday people set up stalls there and sell oranges, and rabbits and moccasins and fish.  But for the rest of the week there are no stalls there, so it’s a great place for the children to play.

On this particular day the children were there, hanging around, and someone said: let’s play a game.  Let’s play weddings!  You can be the bride and I’ll be the bridegroom.  Let’s go and get some dressing-up clothes; and you can bring your flute: we’ll sing and dance and be happy.  We’ll have a happy wedding.

So they come back with all their things, but the others say: that’s a dumb game!  We don’t feel like playing weddings.  We don’t feel very happy today.

Then someone says: let’s play funerals!  Someone runs off and comes back with some black clothes and says: let’s all line up and we’ll march in a slow procession around the market place, looking very sad.  But the others say: that’s stupid!  Who wants to be miserable – that’s no fun.

Probably you too can remember some times when no-one wanted to play anything; nothing was any good.

Jesus said the people of his time were like those children.  No-one was able to please them.  John the Baptist came and preached repentance: turn from your sins and avoid the judgement!  They didn’t like that message of course.  Then Jesus came with a happy message of forgiveness.  But they didn’t like that either.  They didn’t want to play a funeral game OR a wedding game.  What about us: What is OUR response to God’s Kingdom?

But firstly, let’s see what Jesus is saying.

1.  The Kingdom of Heaven has been forcibly advancing.  (verses 12-15)

Does the kingdom of God seem to be forcefully advancing?  Often it doesn’t seem to be.  It’s a slow process: at times it hardly seems to be moving at all.

Of course we sing, ‘Like a mighty army moves the church of God!’  But who is rushing to join this army?  Do people stop you in the street pleading to be told how to enter the kingdom of heaven?  In our own experience it doesn’t seem as if the kingdom IS forcefully advancing.  That’s why it is hard for us to picture this.

But it was happening then, because Jesus said so.  From the time of John the Baptist until the time Jesus was speaking, the kingdom had been forcefully advancing.  Well, it was a time of great drama, wasn’t it?  Many came into the desert to hear John’s message that they should turn away from their sins.  Then think of Jesus’ own teaching and all his miracles.  It was all happening.  This was when Jesus announced: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near!’  We would say: a great time to be alive!

But who was grasping the opportunity?  Sure there were big crowds following Jesus because of the miracles of healing and feeding and raising the dead.  But a lot of them drifted off after a while.  Who would see the significance of what God was doing?  And who would seize the day?

Forceful men were seizing the day!  Forceful men!  ‘The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.

Are these violent, dangerous men?  No.  They were ordinary people who saw who Jesus was, and grasped the opportunity.  People like the woman in the crowd, who reached out to touch Jesus’ coat, because she thought: ‘If I only touch his cloak I will be healed.’  Or the two blind men who called out in public: ‘Have mercy on us, son of David!’ (9:27)  Or the ruler who said: ‘My daughter has just died.  But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.’ (9:18)  People like that had ears to hear and understand.  When they saw the kingdom was near, they seized the day.

That especially dramatic time was just one stage of God’s whole programme of bringing in his kingdom.  But ever since then the kingdom of heaven has continued to forcefully advance.  In fact it has advanced all round the world.  It is still here.  We still live in this day of grace.

.And today too, it is forceful men who lay hold of it.

This morning again, right here, the kingdom of heaven is near.  The Lord Jesus has come, and died, and risen.  He is the Lord who speaks to us.  ‘NOW is the time of God’s favour, NOW is the day of salvation!’ (2 Corinthians 6:2)  Seize the day!  Grasp the opportunity!  ‘Make every effort to enter through the narrow door!’ (Luke 13:24)  ‘Ask, and it will be given to you.  Seek, and you will find.  Knock, and the door will be opened to you.’ (Matthew 7:7f)

When the kingdom comes by, we lay hold of it.

He who has ears, let him hear.

2.  The danger of letting the kingdom go by.

Now we go back to the children in the market place.  Jesus said his generation was like those children.  They wouldn’t play funerals and they wouldn’t play weddings.  Nothing pleased them.  Nothing the Lord did pleased them.

What the Lord did was to send John the Baptist to announce the Christ and then to send Christ himself.  John was more like the funeral and Christ more like the wedding.  The people didn’t like either because they couldn’t see where they fitted into God’s scheme of things.  In what John did, and then in what Jesus did, you have the kingdom of heaven forcefully advancing.  But the people would not play: with both games there was something they did not like.

John was the last of the Old Testament prophets.  He was the person like Elijah who would prepare the way for the Christ.  His message was to prepare the people: Repent of your sins – turn back to the Lord!  His whole life-style fitted in with that.  He lived out in the desert.  His clothes were made of camel’s hair.  When you were grieving over sin, a hair-shirt was the thing to wear.  Not very comfortable, but then this wasn’t such a happy business.  ‘John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He’s weird – he has a demon.”  They wouldn’t accept that they DID need to repent of their sins and seek the Lord.  And then the Lord Jesus himself came.  He wasn’t living in the desert, wearing a hair-shirt.  No, he lived like anyone else, and wore normal clothes.  He attended weddings and parties and was even seen with people of doubtful reputation.  Because he had come to seek and save the lost.

He was going to deliver them from misery and bring them to a place of joy.  He was the Saviour, the deliverer.  But of him the people said, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’  Because they didn’t grasp that here was their Saviour.

So the Kingdom was forcefully advancing in all this, but these people did not lay hold of it.  They did not seize the day.  And so the kingdom passed them by.

That was a particular stage in God’s scheme of things which won’t happen again.  There won’t be another John the Baptist, because Christ has already come.  We don’t have to be prepared for the Christ in the way the Jews were, because Christ is already here.  Nonetheless there is something very important here for us.

We all need to face up to our sin against God.  We should grieve over our sin and mourn over it.  Because we have wronged God.  We have defied him.  If you are not yet deeply aware of your sinfulness, you need to become aware of it.  And to turn from it to Christ.  God calls us to do that.  So we do need to grieve and mourn: We need to experience the funeral.

But: ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’  We turn from our sin to the Lord Jesus Christ.  The Saviour brings us deliverance and the joy of the wedding and of the party.  The Son of Man came eating and drinking because He came to set us free.  Our Saviour invites us to the wedding, to a time of feasting and celebration.  Because that sin we have become aware of has been atoned for by the Son of Man.

Conclusion

So the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing.  How are we going to respond to that kingdom?

Like the children in the marketplace who would not play funerals or weddings?  It is because we don’t feel any need to repent?  And we don’t feel any need for our Saviour?  So we just sit here doing nothing: dull, bored, and lifeless.  While the kingdom passes us by.

Seizing the day!  Because there is no greater opportunity than this!  Really, it’s the only way to go!  Only a fool would let the kingdom pass by.  So let’s lay hold of Christ’s kingdom – now!  ‘Now is the time of God’s favour; now is the day of salvation.’

AMEN