Setting the Record Straight (Luke 7:18–28) | The Gospel of Luke (Part 53)

Transcript

JRNT 104
03/22/26
The Gospel of Luke: Setting the Record Straight
Luke 7:18-28
Jesse Randolph


Well, this morning we are back in the Gospel of Luke, in Luke 7 specifically. I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Luke 7, and as you are doing so I want to give you some thoughts, just put some truths before you. Let's just reflect for a moment on the fact that Jesus Christ is all powerful, He is all powerful. He is the second person of the trinity, He is the eternal and glorious and all wise Son of God. He is all powerful. Jesus Christ is also polarizing. He's the One who separates those who thought they might have been compatible as spouses, He's the One who divides families, He's the One who ends friendships as those who believe in Him realize they cannot any longer have fellowship with darkness. So, Jesus is all powerful, Jesus is polarizing. Jesus Christ is also perplexing. Jesus can be perplexing. By that I don't mean that there is anything in the Savior, of course, that is imperfect or flawed or off center. No, Jesus is the true Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. And Jesus is the Truth which means there is nothing inherently confusing or contradictory or perplexing about Him. Rather when I say this man's statement that Jesus can be perplexing, I'm simply acknowledging the truth that we as fallible and fallen creatures, we often fall short of understanding Him and understanding what He is doing in our lives and what He is doing in this world and what He is teaching us.

Well, one person who went through this experience of being perplexed by Jesus was John the Baptist, Jesus's forerunner. Take a look at Luke 7, we're going to be in verses 18-28 this morning. I'll read it and then we'll work our way through it. God's Word reads, “And the disciples of John reported to him about all these things. Summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord saying, ‘Are You the One who is to come, or should we look for someone else?’ When the men came to Him, they said, ‘John the Baptist has sent us to You saying, are You the One who is to come, or should we look for someone else?’ At that very time He cured many people of diseases and afflictions and evil spirits, and He granted sight to many who were blind. And He answered and said to them, ‘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. Blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.’ And when the messengers of John had left, He began to speak to the crowds about John, ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken by the wind? But what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft garments? Behold, 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 even 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.’” What we're going to see in our text this morning is that there was some confusion on John's part as to what it was Jesus had come to do and where he, John, fit in with it all. And so here in this passage Jesus is really setting the record straight, both through His testimony to John and then through His testimony about John. Now those are our two points this morning, we have Jesus's Testimony to John in verses 18-23, and then we have Jesus's Testimony about John in verses 24-28.

Now recall last time, last Sunday morning, we walked through Jesus's encounters with those two Gentiles, one rich and one poor, one male and one female, who were each having their own front row experiences with death. There was this mighty military man, a Roman centurion, who had this slave whom he cared for deeply who was sick and on the verge of death. And then there was this woman and this woman from this village called Nain who was not only a widow, but she had a son who had just passed, her only son. And Jesus, we saw last time, He intervened on behalf of both. He healed the centurion's slave really as a reward for the centurion's faith, and then He brought back the widow's son to life as an act of compassion. And that's where Luke left us last time, with these two reports of death being defied, this Gentile centurion now enjoying the blessing of seeing his slave spared and this Gentile widow who is now overjoyed by being reunited to her now alive, once dead son.

Now in our text for today, Luke turns another corner in this Gospel narrative and he takes us for the moment out of the world of the Gentiles and He brings us back to the world of the Jews and specifically to one Jew, a very important Jew, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the Messianic forerunner John the Baptist. Now Luke has already pretty extensively acquainted us with John the Baptist and his ministry. There was that account of John's conception back in Luke 1. And then later in Luke 1 there is the account of John's birth, and then even later in Luke 1, there are 80 verses in Luke 1, there is that account of John's father, Zechariah, prophesying over his son, John. And then in Luke 1:80 there is that statement from Luke that John “continued to grow and become strong and he lived in the desolate regions until the day of his public appearance to Israel.”

Then we have the account of Jesus's birth in Luke 2 but then comes the account of John's preaching ministry in Luke 3. He explodes on the scene in Luke 3:4, you can go ahead and turn back with me to Luke 3, John explodes on the scene as the “voice of one crying in the wilderness.” That's Luke 3:4. And then in Luke 3:7 we see John saying things like “you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Then Luke 3:9 he says, “The ax is already laid at the root of the trees, therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And then Luke 3:16 he says, “As for me I baptize you with water, the One is coming who is mightier than I, His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor and to gather wheat into His barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” John's preaching, preaching like that, got him into trouble. Look down the page, Luke 3:19, it says, “But when Herod the tetrarch was reproved by him,” meaning John, “because of Herodias, his brother's wife and because of all the wicked things which Herod had done, Herod also added this to them all. He locked John up in prison.” That's referring to that episode in Mark 6 where King Herod takes the wife of his brother, Philip, as his own wife and then John the Baptist calls him out on it. John said to Herod in Mark 6:18, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.” Well, Herod didn't like that, so he had John arrested and then eventually executed with his head, John's head, being served up to him on a platter.

Here in our passage back in Luke 7, you can turn back to Luke 7, John the Baptist still has his head, his head is on his shoulders, it's not on a platter, but he's imprisoned. He's been jailed, he's been jailed for calling out the king, he's been incarcerated for standing for truth. And as we see in our text, word at this point has gotten back to John about Jesus's ministry and the nature of the activities that the Lord was engaged in, in and around Capernaum. And what Jesus was doing through His ministry to others, it perplexed John. Look at verse 18 again, “And the disciples of John reported to him,” meaning to John, “about all these things.” Now a few things to note here, for starters note that John had his own followers, he had his own disciples, those who were learning under his tutelage. In fact we've already seen in Luke's Gospel that John did in fact have his own gathering, his own learners, his own mathetes, his own disciples. Back in Luke 5:33 there is that scene where the Pharisees and the scribes corner Jesus and His disciples because they are eating with tax collectors and sinners and the Pharisees there in Luke 5:33 say to Jesus, the disciples of John fast, they offer prayers, they're the pious ones, the holy ones. And then they continue on by saying to Jesus, but yours, your disciples, eat and drink. Inconceivable, right? Well, that's when Jesus gives that wine and wine skins illustration and He gives the garment and patch illustration where He is essentially saying to the Pharisees that a new era has come through Him. But the point for our purposes is that John the Baptist had disciples, he had followers who were learning from him.

And it says here in our passage, Luke 7:18, that those disciples “reported to him about all these things.” Which things? Now I don't think that Luke here is necessarily limiting what the disciples of John reported to John were the two immediate preceding episodes of the centurion's slave being healed and the widow at Nain's son being raised. Rather, I think this expression that “John's disciples reported to him all these things” is covering everything from the middle of Luke 4 up to this point. And everything in there includes Jesus having taught and having called and having appointed and having healed and having cleansed and having revived among other things. In other words what is caught within this phrase, “the disciples of John reported to him about all these things” is everything we have been learning about in Luke's Gospel for about the past 13-14 months. It's all packed into verse 18 here.

Now put yourself in John the Baptist's sandals for just a moment. Put yourself in those sandals to the time where he still had his freedom, when he was still on the outside, not yet locked up in prison, when he was out there preaching about the Messiah who was still to come. When John was out there in the wilderness and elsewhere preaching about Jesus, what was he preaching about? He's preaching about wrath, he's preaching about axes, he's preaching about winnowing forks, he's preaching about chaff being burned up, he's preaching about trees being cut down and thrown into the fire. John the Baptist was a total turn or burn guy. He would make guys like Leonard Ravenhill or Paul Washer look like soft liberals. He was intense, and yet here he is in prison and he's learning that Jesus is healing and he's learning that Jesus is reviving, and he's learning that Jesus is demonstrating compassion. So John is like, what gives? Have I missed something? Have I gotten Jesus wrong here? He was the one who, in John 1:23 was saying, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” quoting back from Isaiah 40:3. Now what he had in mind when he was saying “make straight the way of the Lord” was that Jesus was going to come and lay waste to His enemies, that He was going to come to judge, He was going to bring that ax, He was going to have that winnowing fork. He is perplexed now. As he sits in his prison cell, he is perplexed.

And so he sends two of his disciples to see Jesus. Look at verse 19, “And summoning two of his disciples,” it says, “John sent them to the Lord.” And note that Luke is offering a little editorial comment here, he is highlighting for Theophilus that Jesus is in fact the Lord. And John has these two disciples of his visit him in prison. And by the way according to the early Jewish historian Josephus, this prison could have been, I won't even say likely was, we think it may have been clear on the other side of the Dead Sea from where these events took place. So Jesus is ministering in Capernaum, over on the east side of the Dead Sea would have been perhaps where John's prison cell was, in that same area of wilderness from which he first came as his public ministry began. So just think about that for a moment. He comes out of the wilderness, proclaiming the Messiah to come, he goes on to have this very public ministry, John does, which is associated with the Messiah, with Jesus, but now he has been thrown back into a prison cell, perhaps in this wilderness area, where I'm sure there are times where he is feeling neglected and feeling forgotten and feeling like he is all alone there on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea.

But he wasn't actually alone because we know at least from this passage that he could receive visitors there in his prison cell which he did. Verse 19, “John sent them to the Lord, saying, ‘Are You the One who is to come, or should we look for someone else?” Now there is so much baked into this question that it is important that we slow down and examine it for just a moment here. In asking this question was John being forgetful? Was he forgetting who the Lord actually was? I mean, let's walk it back just for a moment. Surely John had heard through his mother Elizabeth the whole story about how both she and Mary had become pregnant within months of each other, how the Lord had visited both women, permitting his mother, Elizabeth, to carry him, the forerunner, and how the Lord had allowed Mary to carry the Messiah in her womb. Surely his father Zechariah had reported the same stories to him as a young boy, and then Zechariah had also affirmed for him that he had prophesied over his son, John, to go be a prophet one day. Had John, now in the prison he was sitting in, forgotten all of that? Had John forgotten that he had baptized Jesus? Had he forgotten that Jesus approached him about being baptized in Matthew 3 and then John says back to Jesus in Matthew 3, “I have need of being baptized by You.” Had he forgotten that after baptizing Jesus this audible voice from heaven, the voice of God the Father comes down saying, ‘This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased?’” Had John at this point, now that he is sitting in this prison cell forgotten that he had testified about Jesus, and not only about His axes and not only about His winnowing forks but about His very mission and identity?

Turn with me over to John 1, let's go to the Gospel of John for a moment here. Look at John 1:29, this is all in that lane of John's earlier testimony about Jesus, the things he had said about Jesus before his imprisonment. John 1:29 says, “On the next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world! This is He of whom I said, “After me comes a man who has been ahead of me, for He existed before me. for I did not know Him, but so that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing with water.” And John bore witness,” verse 32, “saying, I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He abided on Him. And I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The One upon whom you see the Spirit descending and abiding on Him, this is the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” Now get this, verse 34, “And I myself have seen, and have borne witness this is the Son of God.”

Now back to Luke's Gospel, Luke 7. Now many months later, having heard that Jesus was healing the sick and raising the dead and demonstrating compassion toward Gentiles, no less, had John just forgotten all of that? Had he forgotten that he had testified that Jesus is the Lamb of God? Had he forgotten that he had testified that Jesus is indeed the Son of God? Had he not only forgotten those facts but was he doubting Jesus, doubting His person, doubting His promises? Was John feeling discouraged on account of Jesus? Was he feeling let down by the Lord? You know, his disciples have come back to him in this prison cell, reporting on all that Jesus is doing for them at that point, for others at that point—healing and curing and forgiving and taking people's pain away. But for John, he's looking at it like, my prison door is still firmly latched, I'm not going anywhere. Was there a part of John who felt like Jesus perhaps had overlooked him and bypassed him? Was there a reason that the Lord had not come to the aid of the one who paved the way for Him?

Now surely these are questions and thoughts which many of us here this morning can resonate with. You are going through that trial, you are suffocated with worry, you are overcome with grief. You know that the Lord is good, you know that the Lord has promised to never leave you nor forsake you, you know the promise of James 4:8, that if you draw near to the Lord He will draw near to you. But in your season of languishing or angst or depression or hurt or whatever it is, it feels like the Lord isn't there, it feels like He is distant, it feels like He has forgotten you, it feels like you are alone. Well know that you are not alone, the Lord will not leave you nor forsake you. But also be encouraged in knowing that there are people like this, like John the Baptist, revealed in the pages of Scripture who apparently went through something very similar. He was imprisoned, he had been bold for Christ and yet he is now seeing Jesus reverse the fortunes of others, but Jesus hasn't reversed his. That must have stung.

It had John perplexed and so he sent out his own disciples to see what might be going on. Verse 19 again says, “Summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord, saying, ‘Are You the One who is to come, or should we look for someone else?’” Let's put on our Bible study hats for just a moment and remember that though John the Baptist appears to us in our New Testaments in Luke's Gospel, he really was an Old Testament prophet, meaning he lived and he ministered before Jesus's death and resurrection. In fact, John died before Jesus's death and resurrection, head on platter happened before the cross. And the prophets of old, like John, they had a certain set of expectations about the Messiah and what He would do when He came. For instance, for John, not only has he proclaimed Jesus many months before this episode, but even now as he sits in this jail cell, when he thinks of the Messiah he is thinking of passages like Malachi 3:1 which says, “Behold I am going to send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming, says Yahweh of hosts. But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like the smelter's fire and like fuller's soap,” meaning the Messiah when He came was going to come to purify, He was coming to clean house. John would have had passages like Daniel 7:13 in mind which reads, “And I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like the Son of man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and came near before Him and to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every tongue might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not be taken away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.” In other words, for John the Messiah was coming to rule, He was coming to set up His kingdom. John was thinking about passages no doubt like Zechariah 14:1, “Behold a day is coming for Yahweh when the spoil taken from you will be divided among you. Indeed, I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished, and half the city will go forth in exile, but those left of the people will not be cut off from the city. Then Yahweh will go forth and fight against those nations, as the day when He fights on a day of battle. And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south.” In other words, for John, the Messiah was coming as a warrior, He was coming to do battle, He was coming to vanquish His enemies.

Now you might be thinking with your open Bible and all 66 books there, well, duh, Malachi is about the Messiah's first coming and Daniel and Zechariah are about His Second Coming. And that's true. But the reality is, you've heard me say this before, the Old Testament prophets as they took down perfectly what God through His Spirit had revealed to them, they didn't necessarily distinguish between the Messiah's first and second coming as they took that information down. They simply recorded the fact that Messiah was coming. It was only through subsequent revelation, later books of Scripture written, that it would be revealed that the Messiah would come in two phases, not just once but twice, meaning for a prophet like John living before the cross, living not in the church age but instead living under the Law, he wasn't expecting the Messiah, the Christ, to arrive once and then to arrive again. He was simply expecting the Messiah to arrive, to come. So it's understandable in a time like this where men like John, prophets like John, had this flattened understanding of what the Messiah would come to do. It would be understandable that he would be expecting all of these Old Testament prophecies which we know some apply to the first coming and some apply to the Second Coming, to be enacted all at once. It's understandable then that John would be perplexed as to why Jesus wasn't at this point wielding His sword and destroying His enemies and bringing forth fire.

So verse 19, “Summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord, saying, ‘Are You the One who is to come, or should we look for someone else?’” And now verse 20, we see that his disciples, John's disciples, dutifully comply. It says, “When the men came to Him,” meaning to Jesus, “they said, John the Baptist has sent us to You, saying, ‘Are You the One who is to come, or should we look for someone else?’” So, they repeat the question verbatim to Jesus.

Now as we turn to verse 21, we see that Luke does something interesting here. He suddenly injects his own voice as the narrator in Luke 7:21. And look what he says, “At that very time He cured many people of diseases and afflictions and evil spirits, and He granted sight to many who were blind.” Now what Luke isn't saying here in verse 21 is that with that question from verse 20 hanging out there in the air, “Are You the One who is to come, or should we look for someone else,” that Jesus left that question pending and then took off and began healing more people, giving sight to more blind people and otherwise taking care of people. Rather, what Luke is doing here in verse 21 is he is inserting his own voice into his Gospel and highlighting the fact that throughout this period of Jesus's ministry He was busy healing people, not only the ones that are mentioned in this Gospel, by the way, but many other people as we see in Mark and Matthew and John. And even John says there were more things that Jesus did. At the same time here Luke, by giving us this little interjection in verse 21, he's also previewing the answer that Jesus Himself would give in verse 22.

In fact, why don't we look now at Jesus's answer to John through John's disciples. Verse 22 says, “And He answered and said to them, ‘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.’” Now note what Jesus didn't say to John there by way of his disciples. Jesus didn't, as He opened His mouth and had something to say back to John's disciples, say, you moron, you numbskull, I can't believe how dense you are, I can't believe that you are doubting Me, I can't believe that you are questioning Me. Didn't you baptize Me? Aren't you the one who baptized Me? Weren't you there when you heard the voice of My Father coming from heaven saying, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased?” Aren't you the one who declared that “I am the Son of God?” Aren't you the one who proclaimed that “I am the Lamb of God?” And now you have the audacity to ask me the question, “Are You the One to come, or should we wait for someone else?” Really, John? He could have done that, He was well within His right to flame John for asking such a question. But that wasn't Jesus's attitude or approach at all. What did Jesus do instead? He actually quoted Scripture back to John. He quoted and paraphrased Scripture back to John to remind John and to reassure John and to highlight for John that He, Jesus, was indeed the foretold Messiah.

He said, verse 22, “Go and report to John,” He's speaking to the disciples of John here, “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard.” So it wasn't only what they had witnessed for themselves, what they had seen, but what they had heard that Jesus had done from eyewitness accounts of others. And then Jesus gives this list of six different acts that He had been performing which supported His claims to be who He claimed to be, the Messiah. Now we're going to march through these in order. For starters, He says, “The blind receive sight.” Jesus of course opened all sorts of spiritually blind eyes during His earthly ministry, He still does today. Praise God. That's why we're here together worshiping as a body. But He also opened physically blind eyes. There was the blind man at Bethsaida in Mark 8, there was Bartimaeus in Mark 10, and there were the two blind men in Galilee in Matthew 9. There was the blind man mentioned in John 9 who Jesus instructed to wash in the pool at Siloam. Still in verse 22, Jesus reported that “the lame walk.” So not only did the blind receive sight, but the lame walk. And that indeed was the case. At the pool of Bethesda in John 5 Jesus healed a once-lame man so he was able to pick up his mat and walk. We've seen back in Luke 5 that Jesus healed the paralytic, a man who was in that condition for life it had seemed, who had been rendered lame. And then we saw in Luke 5:24, Jesus said to that man, “But, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority in earth to forgive sins,”—"I say to you, get up, and picking up your stretcher, go home.” Luke 7:22 still, Jesus said that “the lepers are cleansed.” Again, that was the case. There were reports of Jesus cleansing lepers in Matthew 8, Mark 1, Luke 17. Actually, go back to Luke 5:12 and we'll see another example of Jesus cleansing a leper. We studied this many months ago now. But Luke 5:12, “And it happened that while He was in one of the cities, behold, there was a man covered with leprosy; and when he saw Jesus; he fell on his face and begged Him, saying, ‘Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.’ And He stretched out His hand and touched him saying, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’ And immediately the leprosy left him.”
Back to Luke 7:22, Jesus also reports to John's disciples that “the deaf hear,” which was also the case. Mark 7:31 says, “Again He went out from the region of Tyre, and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, within the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to Him one that was deaf and spoke with difficulty. And they pleaded with Him to lay His hand on him. And Jesus took him aside from the crowd, by himself, and put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting He touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven with a sigh, He said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ that is, ‘Be opened’ And his ears were opened.” Fifth on this list of six, Jesus said that “the dead are raised up.” We saw that just last week with the raising of the son of the widow at Nain. There is also the account of the raising of Jairus's daughter in Luke 8. There is the account of the raising of Lazarus in John 11. And last, end of verse 22, Jesus noted to John's disciples that “the poor have the gospel preached to them.” That language hearkens back to Jesus's initial sermon in His hometown of Nazareth in Luke 4:18 where He says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.” It reminds us of His statement in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:20 where He says, “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

So as He reported these various details back to John's disciples, Jesus, no surprise here, He is God, He is the truth, was being accurate and truthful. He had given sight to the blind, He had helped the lame to walk, He had cleansed lepers, He had helped the deaf here, He had raised the dead, He had preached the gospel to the poor. But what Jesus is really communicating to John here in context and in the face of John's question, “Are You the One who is to come?” is that He was in fact that coming One. He was not only the One who was to come, He had in fact come in fulfillment of various different Messianic prophecies. Speaking of which, I'm going to read off just a few of these prophecies, Old Testament prophecies, these are all from Isaiah, by the way, that tie into verse 22. Isaiah 35:4-5 speaks of the “eyes of the blind being opened.” Isaiah 26:19 says, “Your dead will live.” Isaiah 29:18 says, “The deaf will hear words of a book, . . . and the eyes of the blind will see.” And then there is Isaiah 61:1 which Jesus quoted from in His sermon at Nazareth in Luke 4 where He says, “The Spirit of Lord Yahweh is upon Me because Yahweh has anointed Me to bring good news to the afflicted.”

So yes, Jesus performed miracles. And for instance, like we saw last week in the case of the raising of the son of the widow at Nain, He performed those miracles with compassion. But He didn't perform those miracles merely to show compassion or to model compassion or to model mercy, though those things did happen. The point of those miracles ultimately was to certify Jesus's claim to be the Messiah, that He is the Savior of the world. That's what Jesus was doing here in verse 22 as He listed off this list of these six-fold ways in which He was ministering to others. He was answering John's question, “Are You the One who is to come?” He was setting the record straight. And note, He doesn't say the words, “John, I am the Messiah”, He doesn't use that verbal expression through His testimony by pointing to what He has done, by linking these acts to the Old Testament Scriptures. He is signaling to John that there is no other place to look. The Messiah is in their midst.

Well, with that we now turn to this proverbial statement from Jesus in verse 23 which apparently, He tacked on to His conversation with the disciples of John before they left to go back to meet their teacher in prison. He says, verse 23, “Blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.” Now the word there for “take offense” in Greek is skandalizo, and it means to cause to stumble. Jesus here is saying blessed is the one who doesn't stumble over Me. Blessed is the one who isn't tripped up over what they think the Messiah should be, or what they think the Messiah should do. Blessed is the one who doesn't abandon his faith on account of who Christ really is, as opposed to who he thinks Christ ought to be. Now in the immediate context Jesus here was still speaking directly about John the Baptist. He is speaking about John's being perplexed over who he thought the Messiah should be as opposed to what the Messiah Jesus revealed Himself to be. John was expecting this brash and powerful king, he was expecting a Messiah who was coming to crush His opponents, to break the teeth of His enemies as He propelled Israel into national greatness. What John got though, at least at this point, is this man of humble means, this Nazarene, this Nazarene who surrounded Himself with a bunch of smelly, uncivilized fishermen and lowly tax collectors. And not only that, He was ministering not just to Israel but now He is expanding out His ministry to the Gentiles. John needed to hear those words in verse 23, “Blessed is the one who does not take offense at Me,” blessed is the one who does not stumble over Me.

And we need to hear these words today as well. As much as ever, folks, in the year 2026 we need to hear and heed that statement, that beatitude, “Blessed is the one who does not take offense at Me.” You know, you have on one side of the spectrum those who confuse being a red-blooded, ribeye crushing, flag saluting American for being a follower of Christ. Or they confuse moralism—dutiful church attendance or schooling decisions for one's children or strictness with entertainment choices—as being on par with being a follower of Christ. Folks in those camps need to make sure that they have embraced Jesus Christ for who He truly is, rather than buying into some distorted cultural notion of what Christianity ought to be. “Blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.”

But then there is the other side of the spectrum of course. There are those who think that Jesus's message was all about tolerance and embracing each other's differences and “live and let live” even when people are spiritually dead, even when people risk eternal death if they don't repent of their sins and put their faith in the Son. Well, folks landing on that side of the spectrum, those who have been infected with some squishy and soft form of theological liberalism, they also need to understand who Jesus is and the call that He places on their lives, so that they are not sucked in further by the world's definition of love or happiness or truth or whatever. Instead, they, too, need to heed the words here of verse 23, “Blessed is he who does not take offense at Me,” who stumbles over Me. In the end those who are Jesus's true followers who have truly put their faith in Him and their trust and full confidence in what He has done for them, they are going to stand with confidence one day before God their Father not because of anything they have done, but instead because of what Jesus did for them fully and completely on the cross. They are the ones that recognize that they are lost and guilty sinners and they are the ones who recognize that they cannot save themselves, and they are the ones who recognize that true hope is found in a Man who was nailed to a cross between two common thieves. Those are the ones who are, to use the word here in verse 23, “blessed.” Not so the ones who worship a false Jesus, a Jesus of their own making, who worship a fake Jesus, a cultural Jesus, an idolatrous Jesus, an American Jesus, a made-up Jesus. They are in reality far from blessed. If they don't have Jesus for who He truly is, if they haven't embraced Him for who He truly is, what they are is cursed, they are damned, they are on that slippery descent to that place where all who ultimately reject Christ will go—the fires of hell.

With that we turn to the second half of our text and our second point this morning. We've considered in verses 18-23 Jesus's Testimony to John, now we're going to look in verses 24-28 at Jesus's Testimony about John. If you are a notetaker that's our second point, Jesus's Testimony about John. Verse 24 says, “And when the messengers of John had left, He began to speak to the crowds about John.” We can stop there for just a moment. Now given that He has just had to deal with John's being perplexed over Him and that He's had now to remind John of His Messianic credentials, that He really is the One who came and the One who is to come, at this point Jesus very easily could have, once John's disciples left the room, trashed John. Totally smoked John verbally. He could have said something like, “Can you believe this guy?” He is the guy that said to the crowds before that “I am the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” and now he is asking should they be looking for someone else? Are you kidding Me? But Jesus didn't do that, He doesn't take the opportunity to slam John, instead He commends John. And He does so in the midst of this crowd who by this point might have been on more shaky ground in terms of what they thought about John. Maybe they were already starting to think ill or having second thoughts about John. So, Jesus not leaning into any doubts they were having about John instead takes this as an opportunity to plead John's cause, to affirm him.

There is a really good leadership lesson here about saying what you need to say to your brother in private and then affirming him in public. Jesus affirmed John by way of a series of questions He directed toward this crowd that was now gathered around Him. And by the way, this was a crowd that was partial to John up to this point, loyal to John. In fact, if you drop down to verse 29 we see that this crowd was made up of individuals who had been baptized with the baptism of John. These were naturally John loyalists. So Jesus again is affirming John, not tearing into John. And look at the first question He asks the crowd in verse 24 as a way to commend John. He says, “What did you go out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken by the wind?” Now what kind of man had this crowd gone out to listen to? What kind of man had they been baptized by? A reed? A wispy reed in the wind? Well, that wasn't John. John was not a man who was convictionless, John was not a man who had been like the straw and craft his next string of thoughts to appease the next crowd that came along to tickle their ears. Far from being a wishy-washy wimp, John was a rock that no storm could move. He was a man of spiritual strength and a man of sturdiness. Now to be sure, John could be wrong at times. We just saw that in verse 20, right with the question he is asking Jesus—Are You the One who is to come? But Jesus's point here is not that John is flawless, but rather that he is fearless. He was this iron pillar in Israel; he had no fear of man. That's exactly how he found himself in prison, by standing up to King Herod about taking his brother Philip's wife. John was firmly planted, he was a sturdy oak, not a wispy reed shaken by the wind.

Next Jesus asked this question of this same group of individuals, this same crowd. Look at verse 25, “But what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft garments?” What do you expect to see? A soft-looking, smooth talker, somebody draped in silken threads, a delicate dandy who is infatuated with indulgence? That's not what they got. John the Baptist was this formidable fire breather who didn't confuse his witness by living in the lap of luxury. Far from being this powdered and primped socialite, John was a man on a mission. His bare bones approach to living—coarse camel's hair for clothing and a pouch of locusts and wild honey to keep him energized—that really matched the urgency of the mission he was on. John had no interest in impressing the elites for the sake of gaining favor with them. Speaking of the elites, still in verse 25, Jesus says, “Behold, those who are splendidly clothed and live in luxury are found in royal palaces!” And that wasn't John. John wasn't royalty. John was a roughneck and his mission again was simple, to call on the people of Israel to repent. And Jesus here is commending him for that.

Next Jesus asks a third question of these crowds in verse 26. He asks, “But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and even more than a prophet.” If they had come to see a prophet, if they had come to see an oracle of God, one who spoke for God, if they had come to see a herald of truth, this crowd was not going to be disappointed. And that's because John was, in fact, such a prophet. John's father, Zechariah, had prophesied over him, I mentioned that earlier, but he had specifically prophesied that his son would be a prophet. Luke 1:76, Zechariah says, “You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High.” We're also told in Luke 3:2 that “the word of God came to John.” That's prophetic language, the word of God during these days came to prophets. But John was more than a prophet, wasn't he. Yes, he was. He wasn't merely a prophet who foretold truth, he was a prophet who himself had been foretold. He not only spoke and delivered truth, but truth had been spoken and delivered about him long ago in certain Old Testament prophecies dealing with the coming of the Messiah.

If you would, turn with me to the Old Testament book of Malachi, the final book of the Old Testament. And Malachi was God's final prophet to Israel before God's 400 years of silence, and in the book which bears his name, Malachi, this prophet is calling out the Jews who had returned from exile, but who had grown complacent, since returning, toward God and toward God's law, His Word. And look at Malachi 3:1, it says, “Behold, I am going to send My messenger and he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple; and the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming, says Yahweh of hosts.” Now you might be thinking, and you can go ahead and either keep a finger there or just turn all the way back to Luke 7, you might be thinking, what in the world does this have to do with Luke, and what does this have to do with John the Baptist? Well, in Luke 7:27 we see this, this is still Jesus speaking to these crowds, these crowds made up of John's followers. Luke 7:27 says this, “This is the one about whom it is written.” He's speaking of John there. And then He continues, “Behold, I send My messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way before you.” Now an important thing to mention here is that, as we just saw from Malachi as that language was originally written in Malachi 3:1, it read, “I am going to send My messenger and he will prepare the way before Me.” The idea was that God was going to send His messenger, specifically Elijah he has alluded to in Malachi 4, as the precursor, the forerunner to “the great and awesome day of Yahweh,” it says, the Day of the Lord. Well, here in Luke 7:27 Jesus takes this language from Malachi and He tweaks it ever so slightly to make it apply to Himself. And guess what? He is allowed to do that, He is God. That's what He does here. He takes language that originally pointed to the forerunner, to Yahweh intervening in the Day of the Lord, and He makes it about John being the forerunner to Jesus's arrival as the Messiah in Israel. “I send My messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.”

So, yes, John was a prophet, but he was more than a prophet, to use that language back in verse 26. He was the one whom Jesus Himself declared had come in fulfillment of what the Old Testament prophet Malachi had prophesied. John was, verse 27, “the one about whom it is written, behold I send My messenger ahead of you,” meaning this crowd as they are interacting with Jesus, they had come not only to see a prophet, not merely a prophet, they were coming to hear a prophet who had been appointed and anointed to proclaim the coming of the Lord, the one who had that distinct privilege of introducing the Savior of the world.

Well, last, Jesus offers these words of commendation about John, this is verse 28. “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.” That's a profound statement. I mean, first, there is this incredible compliment which Jesus pays to John there—“I say to you, among those born of women,” i.e., everyone, everyone was born of a woman, that's His way of saying, among all of mankind ever. And then note what He says, “there is no one greater than John.” The God-Man here is announcing that among all of mankind, of all who have ever lived, outside of Jesus, of course, there has not been and had not been anyone greater than John, this man who was not only a prophet but this man of whom prophecy had been written was the greatest man who ever lived. High praise, especially considering the source.

And yet, look at that word in the middle of verse 28, “yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” What did Jesus mean by that? He has just expressed that there has been born of women no one who is greater than John, and now He is saying that there are people who are greater than John. What's He doing here? Well, Jesus is intentionally giving the impression of being contradictory as a way to make a point. Remember, and this has come up several times in our study of Luke already, when we see the kingdom mentioned in the Gospels it is speaking to a future physical reality. The kingdom isn't now. We live in the United States of America in Lincoln, Nebraska, we don't live in the kingdom today. The kingdom is not about Christ reigning spiritually in our hearts. No, the kingdom is future, the kingdom is physical, the kingdom is material and the kingdom will have real subjects with a king, Jesus, ruling over it. So, in what sense will the future citizens of that future kingdom, even its lesser citizens, be greater than John, the greatest man who ever lived? Well, it's in this sense, by virtue of the fact that they live on this side of the cross, in this era in which we have information about how the glories of our redemption was purchased, in this era in which we have information and knowledge about Jesus's death and resurrection having been fully revealed to us. The least member of the body of Christ in the current church age and the least citizen in God's future kingdom is greater than John in that they have this clear and blessed perspective on the marvelous mystery of the cross. And they have this clear and blessed perspective on the wonders of the empty tomb. John, based on where he sat on the historical timeline, didn't have that. Remember, by the time the cross took place, by the time the resurrection occurred John's head had already been placed on a platter. So, he didn't have this information. Living on this side of the cross as we do, as heirs of God's coming and future kingdom, we sit and we live with this privileged position. We carry this treasure of the full message of the gospel, everything from the death of Christ to the resurrection of Christ, we carry it in these earthen vessels, as Paul says in II Corinthians 4:7. Jesus Himself even alluded to the fact that there are things that progressive generations of followers know that previous generations don't. To His own disciples in Luke 10:24 He said, “Many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.”

So yes, John was great, just as Jesus said he was in verse 28, “No one is greater than John who has been born of women.” But the truths that you and I know about Jesus Christ, living today, living when we do, are even greater. And the takeaway for us this morning is not to lose sight of the distinct privileges that we hold as His followers today, knowing that, believing that, living in truth and living in light of those realities in truth.

Let's pray. God, we thank You for the chance this morning to again open Your Word, to study it, to be enriched by it as we've learned of Your greatness, Lord Jesus. We thank You for this account of John and his sense of being perplexed over the nature of Jesus's ministry and being clarified or having had his perspective clarified on what Jesus came to do. God, I know at times we go through those phases of being perplexed and wondering what the Lord is doing, or why He isn't answering the prayer or showing up, seemingly. I pray that what this message would do is take us back to the Word as Jesus took John and his disciples back to the Word as we remember our Savior, His goodness, His sufficiency, His purpose and what He has done already and what He is coming to do. God, we thank You for Your Word, we thank You for its truth. May it sanctify us as the truth. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.