Matthew 11.12-19
A few years ago, the saying, “The math isn’t mathing,” took the internet meme world by storm. People used the popular saying when something was confusing and didn’t make sense to them.”
Just like the complexity of mathematics, the workings of an infinite and righteous God can sometimes be confusing to our finite and sin-corrupted brains. In the moments that we don’t understand how or why God is doing the things that God is doing, or in the moments we think that God should be doing things differently—meaning the way we want things done—we believe that God isn’t Goding.
In this morning’s Biblical text, chosen for us by the lectionary, we are brought back into the Gospel of Matthew to a moment where a crowd of people is questioning Jesus. The crowd is confused and doesn’t understand how or why God would choose to work through someone like Jesus. The crowd had many unbiblical opinions about who God was and how God would work and Jesus wasn’t matching up to their personally invented version of God. Therefore when God was speaking and acting through Jesus, the crowd rejected Him believing that God wasn’t Goding because God wasn’t acting the way that they wanted God to act.
Let’s hear from Matthew 11.12-19 now.
Matthew 11:12–19 tells us this:
[12] From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. [13] For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, [14] and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. [15] He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
[16] “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates,
[17] “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’
[18] For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ [19] The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” (ESV)
In verses 16-19, Jesus talks about the mindset of those that deny His divinity.
Jesus tells the crowd that those who refuse to believe in Him do so because they don’t like the way that God is choosing to rescue humanity from eternal condemnation and damnation.
When God sent Jesus to be the Savior, many people were confused as to how a lowly carpenter from a back-roads town would be able to rescue humanity and connect them back to God the Father in Heaven. These people were left scratching their heads because in their minds God wasn’t Goding.
Many in Jesus’ day and many today create a “god of their understanding.” They create and believe in a god that has nothing to do with the God of the Bible. This self-created deity is impotent to fix any real problems that they have and always leaves them looking for something else or someone else to satisfy them.
Since God wasn’t Goding the way they thought God should, those that had this complaint found reasons to wrongly judge and reject the work God was doing on their behalf.
They didn’t like John the Baptist because he lives simply, not enjoying the pleasures of life. So, they say that John has a demon oppressing him.
They didn’t like Jesus because he lives enjoying the pleasures of life. So, they mischaracterize Jesus as a drunk, gluttonous sinner.
Do you see how ridiculous people are?
They are complaining that John is wrong because he abstains from eating and drinking to glorify God and they complain that Jesus is wrong for eating and drinking from the glory of God.
It is a typical, “You’re damed if you do and you’re damed if you don’t,” situation.
They condemned John for his abstinence and they condemned Jesus for his freedom.
The truth is, when sin rules the heart, common sense goes out the window.
In this example, sin has blinded the Christ rejectors from seeing the truth that they are mad at both ways that God is working in the world.
Both the Jews and Gentiles that were rejecting God’s way of loving them didn’t care about the way John was living or the way Jesus was living. All they cared about was that God wasn’t being the God they wanted God to be.
Look at the comparative statement that Jesus uses to define the thinking of those that want to control everything but don’t get their way.
They think and say things like, “We wanted you to be happy and dance, so we set the stage for you by playing the flute. However, you refused to act the way we wanted you to act by not dancing!” And, “We wanted you to be sad and mourn, so we sang a funeral dirge. However, you refused to act the way we wanted you to act by not grieving pensively.”
Those that don’t have God’s love leading their heart will always find something to complain about because their self-righteousness leads them to believe the lie that their ways are the only ways to think, act, and speak. And that means that God will bow to their will and their ways to make them happy.
At Jesus’ moment in time, John the Baptist is in prison for preaching the good news of Jesus the Savior. John the Baptist’s message was God’s message from the Garden of Eden, is God’s message today through His pastors and churches, and will be God’s message to the very end of the ages—“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near!”
Since people don’t like admitting their faults and their need for help, especially when it comes to admitting you have been disobedient to the Creator of the universe and need His help to make things right with Him, the Jewish religious leaders (who didn’t believe any of that sin and repentance stuff) and the government rulers (who wanted to be the ones that people respected and followed) joined forces to wrongfully imprison and kill God’s messengers and then Jesus and His followers.
This violence against God’s Kingdom of Heaven isn’t an old story. It is happening today as we speak. Right now, as we sit comfortably in these pews freely worshiping Christ and reading the Bible, Christians are being imprisoned and publicly executed for their faith in Jesus Christ.
The people in the crowd had ideas in their head about what God would look like, what God would say, and what God would do.
Regardless of their inability to understand God and his ways, the Jewish population of Jesus’ day had high hopes for God’s prophets and God Messiah.
They expected God’s prophets to be educated, honorable, and prestigious men. They expected prophets to come to them and tell them how great they were. They wanted to hear that God would reward them and punish anyone that opposed them. They wanted to be told that God was proud of them because of their strict adherence to religious laws.
But what God gave them did not fulfill their hopes.
When he shows up on the scene, John the Baptist was a disappointment. John the Baptist was a weirdo when held up against the standards of society. He was wearing a shirt made out of camel’s hair and a leather belt to help keep that shirt on. He lived in the desert and when he got hungry he ate locusts and wild honey. That means his beard would have been a sticky mess laced with insect parts, sand and dirt. And on top of that, he was talking about sin and the need to ask God for forgiveness and he was also asking people to get soaking wet in a river as a baptism.
John didn’t butter them up. John didn’t give them goosebumps or butterflies in their stomachs. John didn’t tickle their ears or make them feel good about themselves. Instead, John told them that they were not right with God and needed to turn away from the way they were living if they wanted God’s love to be poured out on them.
This was not the message they were hoping for.
At the same time. they expected the Messiah to be a strong military and political leader. They wanted the Savior to ride into Jerusalem on a warhorse brandishing a sword which would be used to rid the land of all foreigners. They longed for the Chosen One to sit on the throne in Israel and rule over them, blessing them for the good lives that they have lived in faithfulness to God’s rules for life and love.
But what God gave them did not fulfill their hopes.
As someone sent by God, Jesus was also a disappointment. He was born into a low income family. He wasn’t even born inside a building. His family was so unimportant that they had to give birth to him in a stable next to piles of animal feces. He grew up as a tradesman, taking on his father’s carpentry business.
Wherever he went and whenever he spoke, people got upset with him and wanted him to leave. He hung out with those considered to be an embarrassment to society.
And just like John, Jesus didn’t butter them up. Jesus didn’t give them goosebumps or butterflies in their stomachs. Jesus didn’t tickle their ears or make them feel good about themselves. Instead, Jesus told them that they were not right with God and needed to turn away from the way they were living if they wanted God’s love to be poured out on them. However, unlike John, Jesus told them that He was the one that would pour out God’s love on them.
This was not the message they were hoping for.
Let’s be honest, we are no different than the crowds in today’s text. We are often disappointed with Jesus and his people. Life with Him isn’t all we thought it would be and it is often not what we want to be.
Even with faith in a God who is in control of all things we still experience suffering and pain in this life.
And, our personal hopes and dreams often go unfulfilled.
So, what do we do when we are disappointed with Jesus?
Well, the last thing that Jesus says to the crowd in this morning’s text is “Wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
So, what is wisdom and what does it do?
Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do and doing it.
Jesus is the human embodiment of Wisdom. Being God-in-the-flesh, Jesus knew every commandment of God and Jesus perfectly obeyed every commandment of God.
Therefore, Jesus is always proved right when when we look at God’s promises for a Savior and measure Jesus up against those promises. Jesus is justified as the Savior by the life He lived, the death on the cross that He died, and His victory over sin and death in His resurrection.
That being said, the wise look to Jesus and trust in God even when their hopes of what He will do or should do go unfulfilled.
The wise look to Jesus and don’t treat the kingdom of Heaven with violence by tearing down God and His people with judgements about who they should be and how they should act.
According to this morning’s text, the wise let Jesus be Jesus.
The wise look to Jesus and trust that regardless of one’s own personal hopes and dreams, Jesus is always working for their good.
And, the wise hope in God’s promise that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the God-man, their sins are forgiven, they are called perfect and righteous in God’s eyes, and the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven are opened wide for them.
We all have hopes and dreams.
Ultimately, we all hope to be loved and accepted.
We hope to be told that our lives are meaningful and have purpose.
And, in Jesus, the lowly and gentle, carpenter from Nazareth, who was in fact God in the flesh, we can know that we are loved and accepted by God and therefore have meaning and purpose as we walk this earth.
In sin, we hope for the wrong thing. We want freedom from the discomforts of earth.
But, Jesus hoped for the right thing for us. He hoped for our freedom from the death that is brought to us by sin.
And, he not only hoped for it, he worked to make it so. In the death and resurrection of Jesus, the hope of being free from the effects of sin, death and separation from God, was fulfilled.
This morning, place your hope not in who you think God should be, but in who God is—the one who loves you unconditionally, the one who forgives your sin time and time again, and the one who will never leave you or forsake you regardless of how hopeless you may feel.
This is the Word of God for you today.
This is the Grace of God for you today.
Amen.
Reverend Fred Scragg V.
October 25, 2026
