Matthew chapter 11. Matthew chapter 11. The title of the message is, Judgement Day will be a day
of surprises. Charles Spurgeon said that one
time in a message I was reading, and that title fits this portion
of scripture. Judgment Day will be a day of
surprises. Spurgeon said there'll be people
there in judgment who will enter into heaven that you didn't suspect,
and there'll be people there who will perish that you didn't
suspect. There is nothing more difficult and hard to please than lost
men or women. Trying to please this flesh is
difficult. That's why when you go to a restaurant,
you have such a big menu. We all don't like to eat the
same things. Listen to what our Lord says
here in verse 16. Where unto shall I liken this
generation? It is like unto children sitting
in the markets and calling unto their fellows. and say, we have piped unto you
and you have not danced. We have mourned unto you. We
have given the funeral pipes music and you've not lamented. You've not been happy and you've
not lamented. You've not been sad. For John came neither eating
nor drinking, They say he has a devil. A son of man came eating
and drinking, and they said, behold, a gluttonous man, a wine-bibber,
a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom, he said, is justified
of her children. But he says, concerning this
generation, and this can be applied to many, if not all generations, They are like children who are
so taken up with what they are doing that they will not hear
their fellow children calling to them. The first thing that jumped out
at me when I was reading this is the indifference. The indifference to the music. They play happy music. They played happy music and they
wouldn't dance. They played sad music and they
wouldn't cry. They were indifferent to the
music. Why such treatment? Why such indifference? First of all, it's because they
are spiritually dead. They had no ears to hear the
music. They have no ears to hear it.
They are deaf to God's voice. You know, in one place, God spoke
to one of his prophets and the prophet heard him, but the people
said it thundered. That's what they heard. They
heard thunder. The prophet heard God's voice. When the good news of the gospel
is preached, they don't hear it, they don't dance. It doesn't
make them glad. And when the bad news of condemnation
is preached, they don't hear it either. Without ears to hear, you don't
know what is being said. Our Lord, speaking of John in
this chapter, and that he was a prophet, Says in verse 15,
he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Let him hear what's
being said. Let him hear the message. But
now if you don't have ears and the hearing ear and the seeing
eye is of God. And if he hasn't given it to
you, you can't hear him. You can't rejoice in the gospel.
You won't rejoice in it. You won't rejoice in it at all. Noah preached for 120 years. The flood is coming. The flood
is coming. The only safe place from the
flood of God's wrath is in the ark. And not one of them went
into the ark. Only Noah and his family. Now
because of this spiritual deafness, judgment, that is our judgment,
Human judgment is distorted. They accused John of having a
devil. You see, John was so different
from them and the message he preached was so different from
what they had been hearing. They charged him of being possessed. Isn't that just like men and
women, lost men and women? You know by nature, if someone's
not like us, there must be something wrong with them. If someone's
not like me, that person must have a problem. Well no, maybe I got the problem. But they accused John of having
a devil because John was so different and his message was so different.
They said he must have a devil, he's not like us. And that's
the way spiritually dead people think. That's the way they think. Then they accused Christ of being
a winebibber, a gluttonous man because he ate with publicans
and sinners. Therefore, he must be likened.
He sat down with publicans and sinners. And they charged him
with eating with them as being like them. But I assure you this, when our
Lord sat down with publicans and sinners, he sat down and
he taught them. I assure you, he controlled the
conversation. And when he sat down there and
he ate with them, they felt comfortable in his presence. The self-righteous
do not feel comfortable in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. So they charged him as a winebibber
and gluttonous man. And our Lord began to upbraid
these cities for their conduct and their treatment of him and
the gospel and the This is the heart of the message here. Then
began he to upbraid the cities, wherein most of his mighty works
were done, because they repented not. This is what he charges them
with. They repented not. Over in Revelation, 920, it says,
and the rest of the men, which were not killed by these plagues,
yet repented not. They repented not of the works
of their hands, that they should not worship devils and idols
of gold and silver and brass and stone and of wood. They didn't
repent of it. It is written in Revelation 16,
nine, and men were scorched with great need and blasphemed the name of God,
which hath power over these places. And they repented not to give
him the glory. Men and women left to themselves
would rather go to hell than give God the glory. They would
rather go to hell than to change their way of thinking about God,
Christ, and themselves. That's what repentance is. Repentance,
to put it simply, is the change of mind. It's a change of the
way you're thinking. That's to put it simply. And
they would not, they absolutely would not, as in repent not,
they would not change the way they thought. And if you don't
change, if God does not change the way you think of Him, Christ,
and yourself, you'll perish. You'll perish. Repentance is
a gift of God. It takes the power of God. It takes the power of God to
change the way I think. And if the way I think never
changes, my actions, now listen, if the way I think, and this
is, It's important. If the way I think never changes,
my actions never change. What I do, the way I worship,
what I worship, never changes if my thoughts are never changed.
You know, the scripture speaks of the renewing of what? The
mind. The renewing of the mind. You
don't think like you used to. You don't think like you used
to. You think now, now you think in the way of truth and righteousness
and the way it is, the way that God has revealed himself in the
scriptures, the way God has revealed salvation in the scriptures,
the way God has revealed Christ in the scriptures. You now begin
to think according to the scriptures. They repented not. They changed
not their thinking. John the Baptist came preaching
repentance, Christ came preaching repentance, and they repented
not. They gave no attention to what
was said, none. Repentance is the evidence of
the work of grace in you. It's the evidence of the work
of grace in you. You cannot remain the same and
claim God has saved you. God has saved me. And yet for
me to think of God as one who loves everybody, wants to save
everybody, that's not scriptural, is it? That's not scriptural
because I know he hated Esau, so he couldn't have loved everybody.
I know he hated at least one. Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated. It says he hates, he hates the workers of iniquity. And then you think, well, I didn't,
you know, I never thought that way of God. You know, I always
thought he loved everybody, wanted to save everybody, and just like
his old grandfather that just Oh, mushy, mushy, and no, he's,
let me tell you something. Outside of Christ, God is a consuming
fire of steel. He still is. He still is. God is still God. He hasn't changed.
He hasn't changed. Now listen to our Lord here.
Woe unto thee, unto thee, Chorazin. Woe unto thee, Bethsaida. For
if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in
Tyre, Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sackcloth
and ashes. But I say to you, it shall be
more tolerable. And this shows us there are degrees
of judgment. There are degrees of torment.
A man, a woman will receive exactly what they've done in this body.
I mean, torment is torment, but there are degrees of it. Because
he said it's more tolerable. He didn't say they will do well
in judgment and everything will be fine. No, it's just more tolerable
is all. For Tyre Sidon at the day of judgment than for you.
Now he ought to know, he's the judge. The judge is the one telling
this. And thou, Capernaum, which art
exalted unto heaven, that was the city of Christ. It was his
hometown. shall be brought down to hell,
for if mighty works which have been done in thee have been done
in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto
you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom, it be
more tolerable for the Sodomites than for you, where my mighty
works have been done. Where the gospel has been preached
and the person has just sat there with indifference day after day,
week after week, year after year, and then died under the sound
of the gospel. Our Lord, as I said, he upbraids
these cities where his mighty works were done. The people in
those cities, they witnessed things no other people witnessed.
They blind to see, lame to walk, dead, raised up. It's evident here that seeing
miracles don't save. But I'll tell you what, a miracle
performed in you saves. If God performs a miracle in
you, if you just see one, it's not gonna do anything for you.
It may dazzle you for a little bit, but if he performs one in
you, you'll be saved. But what we see here, listen,
there's a couple things to point out here, especially. Did you
notice, did it jump out at you when I read this? divine sovereignty. He said, if the mighty works
that I did here had been done there, he said, they would have
repented. Cyrus Iden would have repented.
Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have remained to this day. Why
didn't he do it? Did you ever? The first time
I read that, after I heard and understood the gospel, that just
jumped out at me. If they had been done there,
they would be here. They would be here today. And
they would have repented. Well, why didn't he do it? Here's divine sovereignty at
work. Mighty works done in one place and not another. The gospel sent to one place
and not another. God sends the gospel where he
will and does not send it where he will. We must understand that God,
now listen, God does not owe men and women salvation. It's
not a debt he's paid because we are his creation. He's the potter, we are the clay. He can do with us as he will. It is very clear in the word
of God that God saves whom he will and passes by whom he will. He has the right, God has the
right to do as he sees fit. Is that not right? Does he not
have the right to do with his own? Does he not say that? Can
I not do with my own as I will? Do we not do that? I don't have the keys to your
house. I have the keys to that house over there. I don't have
the keys to your car. That's your car. You do with it as you
will. I'm not going to just move, and
you're not going to let me. I'm not going to just walk out
there and get in your car and take off. That's your car. We try to exercise
the same rights that we turn around and deny God of, to do
with his own as he will. The doctrine of divine sovereignty
is loved by his children and hated by all his enemies. His
children say, thy will be done, Abraham, Abraham. And he says,
here am I, Lord. Well, the world like his father
the devil hates God's will be done. It's a battle over wills. It's a battle over whose will's
gonna be done. When the Lord taught his disciples to pray,
it was thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, in my house,
just like it's done in heaven. It is written in Psalm 24, 1,
the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, everything
in it, the world, and they that dwell therein. All belong to Christ. It doesn't matter whether a man
believes or not, he still belongs to Christ. He still belongs to
Christ. Christ is still Lord, whether
we like it or not. He's still the Lord, and it's
still His. It's still His. Now, I have a
question. Here's the question. Do you know
anyone better to make all the choices? Do you? Do you know anyone wise enough
to run all of this? You know, it took me till I got
older and understanding the gospel, understanding it because without
that, I wouldn't understand what's going on. But as I got older,
I realized there is no president. There is no Congress. There is
no Senate smart enough to run this thing. None. None. Our Lord is the only one who's
wise enough to make all things work together for His glory and
our good. Nobody else can do that. No one
else could make this earth stand for 6,000 years with a bunch
of God-hating people on it that want to blow it up. I'm telling
you the truth. We would have blown this thing
up a long time ago. if Christ wasn't on the throne. We would
self-destruct. We are literally, by sin, by
sin, equipped and made to self-destruct. If Jesus Christ was not on the
throne, ruling over all of it, all of it. You know, back in the 60s and
the Vietnam War, and you could see all this, all the stuff that
was on. I can remember when I was just
a kid and it would be on television. You'd just see the riots in the
street and stuff here, you know, trying to get, you know, things
to end. And I mean, it was just a mess.
It was a mess, wasn't it? And it looked like, it looked
like it was just going to just go down the tanks. Well, here
we are years later. And still we got other things
going on here and there, and it's a mess, but it's still going
on, isn't it? It's still going on. That's because the Lord Jesus
Christ is on the throne, and he's ruling, and he's reigning
over this, what you and I look at and see as a mess. It's just
orchestrated chaos. And he controls it all. And it's
serving his eternal purpose. God has an eternal purpose in
all of this. And I can't comprehend it. I don't have that kind of ability
in this life. I don't have it in this life.
But I understand that our God who is sovereign, our God who
rules over all, is righteous. The scripture says he is holy
in all his works. He does nothing but good. He
can do no wrong. Even when he's sending men and
women to hell, he's doing good. That's justice being executed.
That's just like sending someone to prison who's a serial killer. You think that's wrong? No, you
say it's good. You say it's good. The Lord, it says in Psalm 145,
17, the Lord is righteous in all his ways and holy in all
his works. I don't understand all his ways
and works, but I understand who's doing them. And that's all I
need to understand. That's all I need to understand. Let him that glory, glory in
this, not that he's strong, not that he's the fastest, not that
he's the smartest, but glory in this, that he understands
and knows me. That's what your glory is. And
that's what you rest in. That being said, it's written
in Job. It says he gives no account of any of his matters. Now, the
president, the Congress, the Senate, all the leaders, the
governor, every person has to give an account. Only the sovereign,
the true sovereign gives no account. And God is the only true sovereign.
He's the only one. God does not answer to his creation
for what he does or to whom he does it to. If it's his will
to visit Bethsaida and Capernaum with mighty works and leave Tyre
aside to meet his justice, that's his royal prerogative. And it's
right. It's right. If we hadn't followed in Adam
and we're so sinful, we'd be able to understand that. But now in Christ we do, we do
have an understanding of it. Now divine sovereignty is where
we get human responsibility. It's where we get human responsibility.
God is our creator. Abraham called him the judge
of the whole earth. God, as our creator, is to be
believed and loved and worshipped. You know, the gospel says, whosoever
will, let him come. The problem is, no one will by
themselves. God must make us willing in the
day of his power, but now listen, He's not obligated to make me
willing. He's not obligated to. He's free. God is free to make
some willing by his grace and power and leave others alone. I'm telling you who the God of
the Bible is. That's who he is. I'm telling you this, you'll
never worship God until you meet this one. Until you meet and
bow down to this God, the God of the Bible, the sovereign God
of heaven and earth. Until you meet him and bow down
to him, that's when worship begins. A.W. Pink said, all other thrones
you'll bargain with. All others you'll bargain with. Inability. Inability and ignorance
does not do away with responsibility. It doesn't. Drive down the road,
break the speed limit, get pulled over, and the policeman says
to you, you were 20 miles an hour over the speed limit. And
you can say, and it can be true, you can say, I didn't see a speed
sign anywhere. Oh, well, I can't write you a
ticket. You're going to get a ticket because there is a speed sign.
Even though you missed it, you might have been talking or gawking
around, looking around, or whatever, but ignorance doesn't excuse
responsibility. And inability doesn't excuse
responsibility. Adam had the ability not to sin,
but he did anyway. And now he, as well as we, must
answer to the law. We must answer and listen to
the lawgiver, who is Jesus Christ. Man's will is not to come to
the light, lest his deeds should be reproved, but he's still responsible
to come. God has commanded all men everywhere
to repent and believe the gospel. Now God has commanded that. And
I will tell you this, every last person in this room is responsible
to do what God just said, repent and believe the gospel. Now you
and I know, apart from the work of God's grace, none of us would
do it because we love darkness rather than light. Now, men and women, they're gonna
cry, because I've had this said to me, they're gonna cry, not
fair, not fair. That's not fair. We don't know what fair is. And
you know what? God does not work on the assumption
of fair. God does what's right. He's doing what's right. You know, my parents, they've
always, you know, I grew up, I had good parents. And there's
seven of us kids. And if they couldn't give one
of us something, they didn't give any of us something. You
know, if you didn't give one, none of us got it. And I said
to my mother one time, I said, but mom, this is a situation. I said, this one needs it. The
rest of us don't need it. That's the difference. God, he does what's right, and
he always will, and he gives to whomsoever he will, and what
he gives is right. What he gives is right, and he
meets our need, and that need is Christ. I'm not going to try and harmonize
these two truths. I'm just gonna preach them and
leave them where they are. But I tell you what I'm gonna
do. I'm gonna do, and I wanna do, what our Lord did and said
about divine sovereignty. Look at verse 25. At that time,
Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth. It's yours. This is yours to
do with as you will. See, the key words here are Lord
of heaven and earth. The Lord Jesus Christ treats
divine sovereignty as a doctrine of praise. I thank you, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth. He who rules the earth and skies
is to be thanked for all that he does. I thank thee, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent and has revealed them to babes. And here's
the reason why. Here's the reason why our Lord
gives. Here's his explanation of divine
sovereignty. And this is all the explanation
you and I ever need to give. Even so, Father, it seemed good
in thy sight. Now, if anyone Could have explained
this thing, could have written another book on it. He could
have. But wisdom is always simple.
And truth is always simple. I think truth is always short.
It doesn't take long to tell the truth. Now if you're gonna
tell a lie, you gotta remember how you told it. But truth is
the same, it never changes. It's so easy to tell the truth. Even so, Father, it seemed good
in that sight. All's not lost. Some are gonna
be saved. Some are gonna be saved. You note the word here revealed.
The wise of this world can't see nor understand the mysteries
of the gospel. Take the wisest men in this world, and they are baffled by creation.
And you and I sit here with just the simple faith that God created
all of this out of nothing. And they're spending hours and
billions of dollars. You know how much money taxpayers
pay because they're trying to prove that God doesn't exist?
You know how much money we pay for that? We're scientists that
try to figure out how this exists, how that exists. And you and
I sit here, And we understand. We understand
by the word of God, it says in Hebrews, that the world was framed
by the word of God. You say, well, that's too simple.
No, it's not. No, it's not. It's just so. It's just so. The wise of this world can't
comprehend the mysteries of the gospel, yet babes can. Babes. Babes. Two things about babes. One, they're considered babes
by the world because of their lack of education. Not many mighty,
not many noble. You know, yeah, I fit that group.
You fit that group? And then babe, because they're
his children. They're his children. Out of
the mouth of babes, he's ordained wisdom. Well, here's one talking
this morning. Here's one of his babes talking this morning. Whatever the world may call them,
they are his children, chosen by him, adopted by him, born
by him. And to them, he reveals himself.
He reveals, he makes himself known. All is not lost. I'm telling
you, sinner's gonna be saved. Sinner's gonna be saved. We make no excuses for divine
sovereignty. I believe as Eli said, when God
killed his two sons, Apnon and Phinehas, it's the Lord. Let him do what seemeth him good. That's how we treat divine sovereignty.