Jesus is miraculously born of a virgin from the tribe of Judah, from the line of David.
He is born in Bethlehem.
He is born in all of these different categories that are fulfillments of Old Testament prophecy.
Matthew shows us, one way after another, that Jesus fulfills every single one of those predictions that God gave to the Old Testament prophets.
The Lord said, “I am sending a Savior, and this is what you need to look for. I am sending a Savior who is going to redeem humanity and restore the world, who is going to destroy the forces of darkness, who is going to crush the head of the devil, who is going to wipe away every tear, and who is going to redeem humanity back into My family, back into My kingdom. He is going to reconcile humanity back to God.”
That is what the Savior is going to do.
And He says, “You will know the Savior when you see Him because He is going to fulfill these prophecies.”
There are 300-something prophecies of the coming Messiah.
Jesus fulfills every single one of them.
It would be essentially mathematically impossible for any one person to fulfill just eight of those prophecies, and yet Jesus fulfills every single one of them.
Matthew is telling us, “This is the Savior we have been waiting for.”
The Kingdom of God Is at Hand
So Jesus begins His ministry as the Savior God promised that we’ve been waiting for, and He starts preaching:
“Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
—Matthew 4:17 (WEB)
He says, “I am bringing God’s kingdom into this world. I am bringing God’s rule and God’s reign into this fallen and broken world. Through Me, you will be redeemed so you can join God’s kingdom. Through Me, this world will be restored until it quite literally becomes God’s kingdom.”
So He starts preaching and teaching, showing us how to live as God’s kingdom people, how to do God’s kingdom work and kingdom mission in the world.
He starts gathering disciples, and we become partners with Jesus as His disciples.
We become partners He has deputized in doing His kingdom work.
We preach and teach the truth.
We heal the sick.
We cast out demons.
We restore the outcasts.
We find the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling, and we introduce them to the God who wants to redeem and restore them.
And He makes them into His people too, and then they join us in His kingdom work too.
Jesus has set off on this kingdom mission.
But as He begins this kingdom mission, bearing God’s kingly authority as Savior and King and God, He does it in a very specific way.
First to the Jew, Then to the Gentile
This is a running theme throughout the Scriptures.
Paul brings this up over and over and over.
Christ’s kingdom work and mission is brought first to the Jew, then to the Gentile:
“For I am not ashamed of the Good News of Christ, because it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek.”
—Romans 1:16 (WEB)
Before anything else, Jesus is bringing the gloriously good news that the kingdom of God is at hand, that God is breaking His rule and reign into our fallen and broken world through Jesus, to the people of Israel.
He is going first to the Israelites.
Why is He doing that?
Because He is restoring the nation of Israel.
Again, the restoration of Israel did not happen in 1948.
It happened in like A.D. 31 or A.D. 32.
The restoration of Israel is happening right here in the Gospel of Matthew through Jesus.
But it looks different than people expected because the Jews expected the restoration of Israel to happen when they build a great and powerful temple to the Lord.
They build a great and powerful earthly kingdom.
They build a great and powerful nation with a great and powerful army, and then they go conquer Rome.
Then they go conquer the rest of the world, and then all of the world would live in subjection to the empire of Israel instead of the empire of Rome.
That is what the first-century Israelites were hoping for when they thought about the restoration of Israel.
When they thought about the kingdom of God, they thought about conquering the world with Israel as the powerful imperial force that subjugated everybody else and forced them to live under their rule, forced them to worship the true God, forced them to live by God’s rules and God’s law, forced them to live in submission to God and His people, Israel.
That is what they wanted.
That is what they had in their heads when they thought of God restoring Israel.
So, like I said, they weren’t just Zionists.
They were hyper-Zionists.
But that is not the restoration that the God of Israel had in mind.
Instead, Jesus begins His work to restore the nation of Israel by gathering up His disciples, sending them out to one Israelite town after another and saying, “Go tell them the Messiah has come, and His name is Jesus. Come follow Him.”
Gathering the Remnant of Israel
So the disciples go out, and they begin that Israel-restoring ministry that Jesus sent them on in Matthew chapter 10.
Jesus and the disciples are focusing on the Israelites.
They are going to get to the Gentiles later, but right now they are focusing on the Israelites.
They’re going to the lost sheep of Israel, and they are teaching them the truth about Jesus.
They are telling them the good news that the Messiah is here and the kingdom is at hand, and the Lord is redeeming humanity and restoring the world through this man, Jesus.
But what they find is that most of the Israelites reject them.
Israel, throughout its history, did not follow the Lord.
They did not submit to the Lord.
They did not give themselves fully and truly to the Lord.
They did not seek the Lord.
Instead, they just thought, “God chose us, so we’re God’s favorite, so we’re safe. We’re bulletproof. We can do whatever we want.”
So they started to follow and worship other gods, and they rejected God’s will and God’s way and God’s laws.
So they rebelled against the Lord who gathered them as a people, and because that is true, God exiled them from the land.
God did not abandon His covenant with Israel, but He destroyed the physical nation of Israel.
But He said, “One day I am going to restore Israel. I am going to bring you back from your exile. I am going to make you into My people again. I’m going to make you into My kingdom again.”
But here’s the thing.
He’s not promising that He’s going to make them a powerful nation that can subject everybody else to their rule again.
He’s promising that He’s going to redeem them and restore them alongside the rest of humanity.
So they go out, and they are looking for that remnant of Israel.
The Old Testament prophets said the Lord will gather the remnant of Israel.
That means He is going to gather the Israelites who are not just related to Abraham by blood, but He is going to gather the Israelites who truly seek the Lord, who truly love the Lord.
The remnant of Israel is all the Israelites who meet Jesus, recognize Him as the Savior they’ve been waiting for, throw themselves at His feet in repentance and faith and submission, and say, “Here I am, Lord. Let me be Your people, and You be my God.”
How do you become a part of the remnant of Israel?
You place your faith in Jesus.
How do you become a part of the true Israel?
You place your faith in Jesus.
Everyone who follows Jesus is part of the true Israel of God, and everyone who rejects Jesus is part of the world that will be condemned and destroyed.
His Own People Reject Him
So they are going around the towns of Israel, and they are proclaiming the good news about Jesus.
And the Israelites who reject them stop being Israelites.
They are banished from God’s covenant.
They shake the dust off their feet, which, in the first century, means essentially, “You are a Gentile now.”
But the Israelites who respond with faith and repentance are restored into the true Israel.
They become part of God’s kingdom.
They’re adopted into God’s family, and they become disciples of Jesus.
So they’re going out, and they’re fishing for people.
They are fishing for Israelites.
But when they do that, they have terrible results.
Most, most of the Israelites reject them.
They see His miracles, but they refuse to repent.
They see all the signs that Jesus is the Savior they’ve been waiting for, but they refuse to repent.
God Himself comes down from heaven and goes to His own people, but His own people reject Him.
And so there is this huge irony.
The Israelites, He says, are like children sitting in a square, and you played the flute for them, but they refuse to dance.
They’re like children sitting down in the square, and you sang a lament for them, like a funeral song, but they refused to mourn.
He says, “You met your God, and you rejected Him.”
Revealed to Infants
Which is strange because the Israelites should be wise and learned.
Jesus uses this shocking, exaggerated, over-the-top statement to make a point.
He says:
“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants.”
—Matthew 11:25 (WEB)
He says, on the one hand, the people who should be wise, who should be learned because they’ve had God’s Word for millennia, are rejecting God when they meet Him.
But people who have absolutely no reason to recognize the Savior and follow Him, people like that centurion from a few chapters ago, the pagan Gentile Roman soldier, right?
He’s a jackboot soldier.
He recognizes that Jesus is who He says He is, and he repents and places his faith in Him and starts to follow the true God through Him.
He’s like an infant.
He’s like an uneducated person.
He says, “You’ve revealed these things to infants but hidden them from the wise and learned,” these Israelites who’ve had the Word of God forever.
Now remember, the way Jesus communicates is hyperbolic.
It is not always totally literal.
So did God literally hide the truth from the Israelites?
No, of course not.
The point is there’s irony.
The point is the people who should have recognized Jesus and immediately followed Him, the people who should have been His first and most faithful followers, rejected Him when He came.
And the people who had no reason whatsoever to recognize Him and believe Him immediately threw themselves at His feet.
He’s lamenting that most of the Israelites don’t have eyes to see or ears to hear.
Even John the Baptist Experiences Doubt
In fact, even John the Baptist starts to struggle.
John the Baptist does not lose faith.
He’s not turning his back on Jesus here.
But John the Baptist experiences doubt.
All of us at some point are going to experience doubt.
Doubt is a part of life.
We are imperfect creatures.
We are imperfect people.
We are not fully rational.
We are not fully logical.
We are not creatures who just look at what is obviously true and right and follow the trail of evidence to a conclusion and then settle on it.
That is just not how we work.
We are driven by emotions.
We are driven by desire.
We are driven by so many things that can cloud our judgment, and that makes us susceptible to doubt.
And John the Baptist sees Jesus, and Jesus doesn’t fulfill his expectations.
Jesus doesn’t fit the definition of Savior, King, and God that John the Baptist had in his head.
Because John the Baptist assumes, just like almost every other first-century Israelite, that as Messiah, Jesus is going to raise up an army.
And John the Baptist assumes that Jesus is going to use that army to break him out of prison and then go conquer their Roman oppressors.
By this point, Jesus has been ministering for maybe months or maybe years.
We’re not 100% sure about the timeline.
But so much time has passed, and instead of raising up an army, Jesus is out there teaching people to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile, to make peace, to resist in nonviolent ways, and to seek out Gentiles, Roman soldiers, tax collectors, to be redeemed and restored.
John looks at Jesus and says, “Okay, You have time to pal around with tax collectors and prostitutes and gang members. You have time to go heal the servant of some Roman soldier, but You don’t have time to raise up an army for the Lord and come break me out of prison, where I am currently being held unjustly for serving Him.”
He says, “Was I wrong? Are You the Messiah that I thought You were, or should we be waiting for somebody else?”
John is experiencing a perfectly normal form of doubt, a perfectly understandable kind of doubt.
How Jesus Responds to Doubt
And as followers of Jesus, just like John the Baptist, we are going to experience doubt sometimes.
When your life does not turn out the way you thought it was going to, you may experience doubt.
When you feel like the Lord is telling you to do something, so you obediently go do it, and then it blows up in your face, you might experience a form of doubt.
When you do everything you can to serve the Lord faithfully, and yet it still feels like absolutely everything is going wrong, you may experience some kind of doubt.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
You and I will doubt just like John the Baptist.
And yet look at the way the Lord deals with John’s doubt.
Jesus says, “I understand that you are struggling right now. I understand that this is not what you expected. I understand that you are experiencing doubt. But look. You need to do what these Israelites cannot bring themselves to do. Open your eyes and open your ears.”
He says:
“The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”
—Matthew 11:5 (WEB)
He says, “Look at every single one of the signs. It is unmistakable that I am exactly who I said I am.”
He says it is unmistakable that Jesus is that Messiah that we have been waiting for.
He’s just not quite the kind of Messiah that we expected.
Jesus deals with John’s doubt head-on.
Jesus deals with John’s doubt not by telling him he doesn’t have enough faith, not by mocking him, not by telling him that he’s not a real follower of Jesus, not by telling him that he needs to just sit down, shut up, stop having questions, stop thinking about these things, and just have faith.
That is not what Jesus says.
Jesus says, “Okay, you have these doubts, but here’s why you should believe.”
He takes his doubts and confusions and his questions seriously, and He tackles them head-on.
And that is exactly the same way that Jesus tackles our doubts and confusions and questions.
So you can bring every last one of your struggles to the Lord, and you will be met not with judgment or criticism.
You will be met with the loving embrace of Jesus, and He will guide you through your doubts one at a time.
Jesus Is the One Way to God
So He’s rejected by the Israelites.
He’s doubted by John the Baptist.
But He is unmistakably the Savior and King and God, the Messiah that we have been waiting for.
He is the one God will work through to redeem humanity and restore the world, to destroy the forces of darkness and crush the devil, to wipe away every tear, to put an end to all wickedness and injustice and sin and poverty and struggle in the world.
He will bring the world back to the way God created it to be.
He will put everything right again.
The world will once again be perfect the way God created it to be, and we will be redeemed so that we can enjoy that restored creation alongside the God who created us, all through Jesus.
And because that is true, Jesus is the one way to God.
This is an unpopular concept in modern culture, but Jesus is the one way to God.
If you want to know God truly, you have to go through Jesus.
Jesus is the one who introduces us to God.
Jesus is the second person of the Trinity who introduces us to the other two persons of the Trinity.
The Spirit works in our heart to bring us to faith in Jesus, and then Jesus introduces us to the Father.
The only way to know the Lord is through Jesus.
He says:
“No one knows the Son, except the Father; neither does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and he to whom the Son desires to reveal him.”
—Matthew 11:27 (WEB)
Now, once again, don’t get caught up in the small details.
Look at the forest.
Don’t obsess over the trees.
Is Jesus saying that He chooses to reveal God to some people and not others?
No.
The point is Jesus is the one who introduces us to God.
Jesus is the one who brings us into God’s presence.
Jesus is the one who brings us into God’s family, who brings us into God’s kingdom, who makes us into God’s people.
We can only know the Lord through Jesus.
And that means what it means.
Once again, if you purposefully, knowingly reject Jesus, you cannot know God.
But if you repent and place your faith in Jesus, He brings you to God.
You become one of God’s people.
You are redeemed and restored.
You are saved through Jesus.
“Come to Me, and I Will Give You Rest”
So Jesus says one of the most famous things in all of Scripture.
He says:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you will find rest for your souls.”
—Matthew 11:28–29 (WEB)
To anyone who embraces Jesus and submits to Him as Savior and King and God, Jesus gives us the rest of God.
He gives us the rest of God’s presence.
He gives us the rest that the Old Testament prophets looked forward to.
What am I talking about?
Here’s what I’m talking about.
The whole story of Israel is not about a piece of land.
You cannot understand the Bible if you don’t understand this.
The story of Israel is not about a freaking piece of land in the Middle East.
It’s about God bringing His rest into our fallen and broken world.
The story of Israel is not about God giving a piece of land to a certain race of people.
What even is that?
It’s about God bringing His perfect and eternal rest into our world of radical chaos and sin and rebellion.
The story of Israel and the covenant with Israel is about Genesis 12:
“All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”
—Genesis 12:3 (WEB)
And so the physical nation of Israel was a pit stop in the process of bringing His full and final and true and perfect rest into our world by redeeming humanity and restoring the world.
So Jesus is telling these Israelites, “Come to Me, and you will receive the rest that the nation of Israel was always about. Come to Me, and you will receive the rest that the covenant God made with Abraham was always about. Come to Me, and you will receive the true rest that the Exodus, when God broke the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, was always about. Come to Me, and you will receive the true rest that the Law of Moses was always about. Come to Me, and you will receive the true rest that the prophets always looked forward to. Come to Me, and you will receive the rest God created us to have from the very beginning, before we rebelled in the garden.”
He says, “I am here to give you God’s kingdom rest by redeeming you and restoring you and adopting you into His family and bringing you into His kingdom and making you into His people and bringing you into His covenant. Come follow Me, and you will be restored.”
That is what is happening in Matthew chapter 11.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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