Matthew 11:16-24 marks a pivotal shift in the Gospel from Galilean joy to severe judgment against Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. The speaker argues Jesus is justified because these cities witnessed unparalleled miracles yet rejected both John the Baptist and Christ, displaying a deadly hardness of heart that prioritizes being right over repentance. Unlike pagan cities like Tyre or Sodom, these towns faced greater condemnation due to their complacency and self-satisfaction despite clear prophetic focus. Ultimately, this sermon warns against spiritual apathy while offering immediate rest and salvation to those who still come to Christ. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Jesus Pronounces Severe Judgment00:15:27
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Good morning.
Will you stand for the reading of God's word?
As is our custom after we read, I will say, This is the word of the Lord, and I would invite you to say thanks be to God altogether.
Our text this morning, as Pastor Jewel said, is Matthew chapter 11, verses 16 through 24.
It says this But to what shall I compare this generation?
It is like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to their playmates.
We played the flute for you, and you did not dance.
We sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, He has a demon.
The Son of Man came, page turn, 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.
Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.
Woe to you, Chorazin!
Woe to you, Bessida!
For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.
And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven?
You will be brought down to Hades.
For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
But I tell you that it will be more tolerable in the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, you may be seated.
There's quite a lot in this text, and so we're going to jump right in.
And because there's quite a lot in this text, I made a decision to go a little bit outside the text and give us even more information today.
I'm going to give a little bit of an extended introduction as we get into it.
And the reason for that is this passage in Matthew 11, the whole chapter, is really a turning point in the book.
It's kind of a funnel or an hourglass, if you will, where The ministry that Jesus has been conducting so far has been in one way, in a particular kind of tone or tenor, and coming out of Matthew 11, it's going to change quite substantially.
And if we're not careful, when we read Matthew 11, it can be very easy to think, man, Jesus is being really arbitrary, really petty.
He's really like making a big deal out of nothing.
And so I want to preserve us from that idea that would creep in and cause us to doubt the justice of God and the justice of Christ.
In order to understand this passage well, we need to hold two things in mind, and I'm going to explain them briefly.
They're all based on the argument that Matthew is making in the book of Matthew so far.
Okay?
And what's going to happen by the end of this section is Jesus is going to end up pronouncing severe judgment on the people of this region.
And for us to understand why he is justified in doing this, these are the two things that Matthew has been developing over the entire book.
And we need to understand these two things.
The first of these is the structure of the book of Matthew so far.
And the second is how Matthew in this chapter highlights the importance of John the Baptist's ministry.
So let me briefly explain that first one the structure in the book of Matthew so far.
The key point for our passage today is found in verse 20.
Where it says that he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done.
Matthew goes out of his way through the whole book.
His order of events is a little bit different than some of the other accounts.
Matthew's going out of his way to show that Jesus' ministry, up to this point, he's about a year and a half into his ministry, about half of his ministry.
And so far, Jesus has focused almost exclusively on the towns and villages around the Lake of Galilee.
And Matthew really wants us to understand that Jesus spent a disproportionate amount of time of his ministry in this region.
So, when you look at what's happened in the book of Matthew so far, we see in Matthew 4, Jesus settles in Capernaum, that's the town there in the Galilee, and begins to minister in that area.
Matthew 5 through 7 is the famous Sermon on the Mount, but that was delivered, his great kind of magnum opus sermon is delivered right there in the Galilee region.
In Matthew 8 and 9, we see a series of healings and miracles in Capernaum, in the countryside around Capernaum.
And then in Matthew 10, we saw that Jesus sent his disciples out into Israel, yes, but mainly focusing on the area right there in the Galilee region.
And then in Matthew 11, we have to understand this in the chapter.
Matthew 11 1, the first verse in this chapter, says, When Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities.
This in their cities is the towns and regions in the Galilee area.
He's confined himself to the northwest the whole time, almost exclusively.
He made one trip down to the south for a Passover, but most of his time has been in this region.
And Matthew wants us to understand that Jesus spent a lot of time with these people.
Not only that, but the way he ministered was very free, very open, very cordial, back and forth.
He was not critical up to this point.
It was a very convivial and congenial type of ministry.
But, like I said, coming out of Matthew 11, when you read on in the book, it's like the hourglass and it opens up again underneath chapter 11.
Jesus' ministry changes.
It becomes more antagonistic, even in this region.
The Pharisees begin to say worse and worse things about him, to blaspheme him.
He says in chapter 13 that he begins to speak in parables that are hidden.
And he says the reason he does that is because the hearts of the people in the Galilee are hard.
So the chapter serves as a really key hinge for the book.
And the pivot point of this whole shift is the last verse that Pastor Joel preached on last week, verse 15, where Jesus says this He says, He who has an ear, let him hear.
It's as though he's saying, This is the line in the sand.
I've ministered in this region for a long time in a particular way.
Going forward, if you're going to listen, great.
And if not, we're going to change tactics here.
So we see how much importance Matthew puts on this.
We have to understand this.
Jesus spent years in the homes and businesses and social events of these people, preaching and doing miracles.
It was an incredible amount of time with the very Son of God ministering to them.
And Matthew wants us to understand that this was one of the greatest privileges that could have been given to a region or a people or a city in all of human history.
So that's the first pillar that Matthew has for his argument.
Jesus gave them a lot of time.
The second pillar is Jesus' comments about John the Baptist in the last section that we studied last week.
Remember that what's happened so far, Jesus' teaching about these things, happened because John the Baptist sent some disciples to ask Jesus some questions.
Right?
In verse 7, we saw that it says this As they went away, in other words, after Jesus answered those questions, as they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John.
This is very interesting because Jesus could have answered John's questions, let his disciples return, and that would have been the end of it.
But as they're leaving, it says Jesus turned to the crowds and began to speak to them concerning John.
You see, this was on purpose.
John and the people's response to John the Baptist becomes a litmus test, a dividing line, to determine which people are understanding and soft to Jesus and which people are hard.
And they are rejecting Jesus.
How do we know that?
How do we know that this dialogue about John was such a decisive point?
Well, Luke records the same event, the parallel account, but he gives us an interesting historical detail that Matthew doesn't include.
And I want us to take a look at it here for a minute.
So this is Luke chapter 7.
And I'll read it for you.
It's going to sound very similar to Matthew, but he's going to throw in one extra detail.
So this is Luke 7 28 through 30.
Same story.
Jesus says, I tell you, among those born of women, none is greater than John, yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.
Sounds exactly like Matthew 11 11 that we studied last week.
But then Luke adds this when all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, right, having been baptized with the baptism of John.
But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having baptized.
Been baptized by John.
What does this mean?
Well, in Matthew 11 13, Jesus says this about John.
He says, For all the prophets in the law prophesied until John.
In other words, Jesus is reinforcing John's ministry.
John was the last, the final, the greatest of the Old Testament prophets who was preaching repentance and the coming Messiah.
That was The job of the prophets in the Old Testament.
Repent, Messiah is coming.
Repent, Messiah is coming.
And John was the last one in this line of centuries of prophecy.
Like the prophets of old and even the law itself, John called for this kind of repentance and obedience.
But on top of that, John served as a bridge out of the Old Covenant into the New Covenant.
He did not just say, Repent or be destroyed, right?
You think of Jonah and various prophets in the Old Testament.
That was the message repent or God's going to destroy you.
No, what John said was repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
The kingdom of heaven is right around the corner.
That's why you, Israel, need to repent.
In other words, John showed the true purpose of repentance, which is that repentance is the doorway into the kingdom of God.
And the reason that this is important in our context is that many people in the Galilee region, especially the sinners and the people who would have been rejected by the establishment, ruling establishment, had actually gone down.
To John when he was preaching.
Now, this was a long journey.
It was about 100 miles, four to six days of traveling and walking, just one way.
Then you're down there for a while, listening, being baptized, and then going back up to the Galilee.
Many had gone down to hear, and Jesus reminds them of the message that they had heard a hard message of repentance, not a soft message of ease.
So Jesus is saying, You yourselves, the crowd that's sympathetic to him, You yourselves know that John testified about me.
And they agreed that God was right through the testimony of John that Jesus was the prophesied one.
And so, what John is doing is Matthew is showing that John applied the weight of all of the prophetic testimony in the Old Testament centuries, millennia.
And he focused it before then when a prophet would prophesy a Messiah is coming, a Redeemer, a Deliverer is coming.
It was just kind of open and out there.
Who is it?
We don't know.
When will it be?
We don't know.
What John did was he took all of that, that massive amount of prophetic authority, and he focused it like a magnifying glass right onto the person of Jesus.
So no longer was it a mystery.
This Redeemer, this King, this Messiah, it was here.
And many who were sympathetic to Jesus had heard John's message and believed.
But in Luke it says the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected, they did not accept the testimony of John the Baptist.
And so that's the second pillar.
Why is Jesus justified in condemning these people?
First of all, Jesus spent a great amount of time preaching to them.
And second of all, the testimony of John the Baptist himself confirmed the weight of the Old Testament prophecy had finally landed.
Jesus, the Lamb of God, was here.
And so, with all of that in mind, let's turn to our text today.
Don't inhale liquids.
All right, so the first point, it'll pass in just a second.
Verse 16, Jesus says this.
He starts with a question.
He says, To whom shall I compare this generation?
This is not a perplexity.
Jesus is not perplexed.
It's not like he's saying, I have no idea.
What he's saying is, Oh, thanks, man.
Try it again.
Jesus is actually just introducing, he's going to give an analogy.
He's like, Well, what can I tell you to explain?
This generation of people.
And so he's going to give a little mini parable, a little mini story.
But keep in mind that what he's trying to do with the story is explain the generation that he is preaching to in this region.
Well, what does he mean by the word generation?
Explaining This Critical Generation00:02:31
It's possible that he means all of the people in the region.
You could make the case that even those who had gone down to John the Baptist and been baptized, they've come back, they haven't changed.
And so it's possible that he's talking about every single one of them.
I don't think that's the case.
I think it's a majority of them.
Obviously, if he's saying the generation, you don't say the generation and then actually I was just talking about 5% of them.
No, it's a majority of the people in this area.
It's a lot of them.
But verse 19 gives us a clue.
Verse 19, in it, the people who are criticizing Jesus criticize him for spending time with the tax collectors and the sinners.
These are the same people in Luke's account that agreed with Jesus about John or agreed with John about Jesus.
And so, I think what we actually have here is the influence of the religious leaders and Pharisees.
They were down in Jerusalem, but they always sent envoys out to challenge Jesus.
And because they had the power and the establishment, I think a lot of people in the region were siding with these religious leaders and rulers.
They were on their team.
And so, a lot of the people in the Galilee, in spite of the fact that it was remote, were on the side of the Pharisees and the religious leaders.
But there were some, these sinners and tax collectors, who weren't.
They were the minority, the remnant, if you were.
These are the people, this is why it's important.
These are the people who wanted to virtue signal to the positions of power back in Jerusalem.
In fact, we see in that story that they seem to be repeating talking points, right?
It seems like the Pharisees are the ones who came up with these lies about John the Baptist and these lies about Jesus.
And they had spread all the way out, and even in Galilee, these people are just repeating the talking points.
Oh, yeah.
Jesus is this.
John is this.
These are the unthinking followers who cast their lot in with the establishment because it's easier, they don't want to ruffle feathers, and they're tired of this troublemaker, Jesus.
And so, what is the story that Jesus gives?
It's a very short story, but it's very interesting and a bit confusing to our modern ears.
He says, This generation, and again, I'm saying that's the religious leaders and the majority of the people in the area who are casting their lot in with these religious leaders.
Kids Playing in the Marketplace00:03:47
He says, This generation is like a bunch of kids in a marketplace.
At the time, villages and towns had an open central area called the Agora, and it was open for community use, but often, like maybe once or twice a week, they would do a market there.
And so the parents and the farmers would come in, they would set up a little shop, a little stall, and they would sell things out of it.
And while they're selling things, the kids I mean, this is like the best day of the week for the kids.
They're running around with all their friends that they haven't seen for the whole week.
They're playing, they're saying hello.
And like kids in every period of time in history, the kids mimicked human interaction that they saw their parents do.
Now, we don't know if this was a real game they were playing or if Jesus is giving us a hypothetical, and it doesn't matter.
But in the story, Jesus said, Oh, this generation, it's like the kids that run around the marketplace here.
He's probably speaking in the marketplace right then.
It's like the kids that run around whenever the market is out playing games.
And they play these games and they play a happy game where they're pretending to have.
Flutes, and maybe it's a wedding or something like that, right?
Maybe they get a boy and a girl and they parade them around.
They say, Oh, the bride and oh, the groom, and they go to all the stalls, and the parents are saying, Oh, how cute, that's great.
And they're playing wedding.
But there's a second group of kids who are grumpy and upset and just cantankerous, and they're sitting off to the side.
They want nothing to do with the games.
Something's got them in a bad mood.
And so the happy, playful kids go over to them and say, Hey, come, come play the wedding game with us.
And the grumpy kids say, no, that's stupid.
Only babies play wedding games or whatever.
I don't know what they said.
They're just grumpy, cantankerous.
They don't want to join in the fun.
So the happy, cheerful kids say, okay, well, they don't want to be happy.
We'll play a different game.
Let's play funeral.
Now, we think that's a really weird, morbid thing to play.
But at the time, the two big events, the public events in the public life of these towns, were weddings and funerals.
And funerals were a big event because they would have.
Mourners go through the streets crying out loud.
There would be wailing.
There would be a big crowd that would gather.
And so the kids decide, okay, you don't want to play wedding.
You're in a bad mood.
We'll play funeral.
And maybe they would lead one of them around and they would wail and cry and have this fake kind of song that's sad, a dirge.
And they say, let's play that.
And the grumpy kids say, no.
The other one was too fun, but that one is too sad.
We're not going to play it.
What's the point of this?
The point is, no matter what the kids, the happy kids, tried to do, the grumpy kids were not going to join in.
All they were going to do was offer excuse after excuse after excuse.
They were going to criticize and criticize, but what they were not going to do was join the game.
And this is what Jesus compares that generation to endlessly critical, trying to not only not participate in the game, but derail it.
You guys shouldn't even be playing that game.
It's dumb.
Come and sit with us and be boring.
The implication here is that no matter what game the happy kids came up with, the grumpy kids were going to say no.
They weren't even going to consider it.
So, what does this mean?
Well, Jesus describes that the happy game, like the wedding, represents Jesus and his ministry, and the sad funeral game is represented by John the Baptist and the way he did his ministry.
Rejecting the Happy Game00:07:39
He says, John came in sackcloth and ashes, in funeral mode, as it were.
You think about his hair, his clothing, the camel hair, which was rough and coarse like sackcloth.
And he lived in the desert.
He was dirty all the time, like someone who's put ash on them.
And even he lived out in the wilderness.
And so, in a sense, his own life was a separation, almost like death is.
He was not with his family, he lived alone out in the wilderness.
And John came in funeral mode.
His austerity and his severity was to represent and to call people to the kind of sadness you would feel at a funeral.
We are undone.
We are sinful.
We must weep and mourn over our sin.
And what the Pharisees and the people who are parroting back their talking points say is that guy doesn't even eat and drink.
He eats locusts, right?
He's not even with people, he's just a downer.
And then they resort to insulting him.
They say he's even possessed by a devil.
And so then Jesus adds that he represents the happy children, or the children who are happy represent him.
Jesus came, and notice in verse 19, he refers to himself as the Son of Man.
He came as a man to interact with humanity.
John the Baptist was detached and separated and severe.
Jesus came as a man and lived among the people.
He went to weddings, he went to places of employment, he went to their funerals, he ate in their homes, he walked with them in the countryside, he participated with them.
And his message largely, he did call people to repent, but it was also one of joy.
The kingdom of heaven is here.
The bridegroom is here.
Celebrate and rejoice.
Unlike John's austerity, he was joyful.
He was approachable.
He came in wedding mode.
And again, I think it's important here.
I can't prove this from the text.
It's just as I've read it over and over, I think that you can make this case.
I think it's not just Jesus and John the Baptist.
I think the story represents the children.
And so there's even people who followed John the Baptist.
In the Galilee region, who are going to the rest of the region saying, Guys, John said repent.
We need to be really serious about that.
And to those people, the rest of the Galilee is saying, No way, man.
That guy's demon possessed.
I can't get behind that.
And then there's other people who are following Jesus.
They're the happy children, and they're calling to the people around them and saying, Guys, Jesus has the most incredible teachings you've ever heard.
Come and hear him.
And the same hard hearted people are saying, No way.
He's a glutton.
And a drunk.
The only reason he's going to those weddings and those parties with you guys is he's covering a raging alcoholism.
And what's more than that, he even is friends with sinners and tax collectors.
That guy is no good.
I'm not joining into that.
And you notice they're even arguing conflicting things.
They're saying John was neither eating nor drinking, but Jesus is drinking too much and eating too much.
Now, it's true that the lies that they told about John and especially about Jesus are offensive and are sinful, but they're not the root of the problem.
The root of the problem is that their hearts are so hard that they're not going to engage the argument, they're not going to engage the issue head on at all.
There's nothing that can be done to convince them.
They have prejudged the whole situation and they want to stay in their sin and they want to stay comfortable and they want to stay in the good graces of the religious leaders.
I don't know if this is sounding familiar at all.
This is a pattern.
That's repeated throughout history.
There are many, many people, and we need to know this as we're evangelizing people, or you have friends or family members, and you're giving the gospel to them.
There are going to be a lot of people who are just so hard that no matter what you say, it's not about the argument.
They're going to say, Go pound sand, and they're going to come up with all sorts of slanderous or even stupid, trivial reasons.
And you're going to say, That makes no sense.
That's the point.
It doesn't make sense because what they're doing is rejecting.
The call of the Holy Spirit.
That is the most illogical, insane thing that you can do.
And so, when you're doing that, none of your reasons or motivations are going to make any sense.
That's the sin here that Matthew is exposing in this section.
These are people who have a lying criticism that really covers a heart that is completely unwilling to even consider the teachings of Jesus.
I think it's no coincidence that they in the text seek to justify themselves.
That.
Theme runs through this whole story.
Who is right?
Remember the people in Luke 7?
They justified God.
They said, God is right.
Here, these wicked people of this generation are saying, We are right.
And the question of who is right determines who has to change.
If God is right, I must change.
If I am right, I don't have to change.
And in fact, as blasphemous as it sounds, the implication is, God must change.
What's really interesting about this is that while the Pharisees themselves obviously openly opposed Jesus, you get the sense that the people in the region were not necessarily openly hostile to Jesus.
They liked the fame that Jesus brought to the region, they appreciated the miracles.
Some of them probably had a family member or a cousin who was healed by Jesus.
But they had no intention of actually learning from Jesus or of repenting.
They were using him while at the same time offering talking point after talking point from the Pharisees about why he had no right to make any sort of claim in their lives.
As I said, we see this in our time as well.
The commentator William Barclay says this about this pattern The plain fact is that when people do not want to listen to the truth, they will easily enough find an excuse for not listening.
They do not even try to be consistent in their criticism.
They'll criticize the same person in the same institution from quite opposite grounds and reasons.
If people are determined to make no response, they will remain stubbornly and sullenly unresponsive no matter what invitation is made to them.
When you see in someone's life constant criticism, constant belittling, constant nitpicking of reasons that are not valid, what you know is that you're dealing with someone who has a hard heart.
And Jesus understood this, and he's been in this region for so long, and because Jesus practices what he preaches, he at this point decides not to cast his pearls to the swine anymore.
So we see that one of the biggest tells that someone is a swine or a pig is that all he can ever do when faced with the truth is criticize, challenge, and nitpick.
Deadly Temptation of Criticism00:10:22
And all of these are done in a way that makes himself look good.
Brothers and sisters, this is such a deadly, deadly temptation.
We all face it.
When we face conviction, when we hear something in the Word, or someone says something to us, confronts us on something, it is so easy for our first response to be, I must justify myself.
I must explain away that valid critique from God's Word or from my brother or sister in Christ.
I might even resort to, Well, you do this, and you did that last week.
It's so easy for us to have this heart in ourselves as well.
We want to be right.
We want to be right.
And that is deadly in the eyes of Jesus.
Excuses and criticisms are the fortresses that the proud retreat into.
Let us not be like that, brothers and sisters.
Jesus takes this very seriously, so seriously, in fact, that he issues a warning in verse 19 against this kind of person.
He says to the crowd, again, the crowd largely sympathetic with him, it's a soft warning, it's a soft rebuke.
But he turns to the crowd and he says, You kind of imagine he's kind of somber.
He says, The generation is like this.
And then he turns to the people that are listening to him and he says, Wisdom is justified by her deeds.
Wisdom is justified.
Again, that word.
Who is right?
Who will be shown to have been right?
Will it be the people that side with the Pharisees or the people that side with Jesus?
Matthew Poole says this about that comment Wisdom is justified by her children.
The children of wisdom are the wise.
Those who understand.
The Savior means that though that generation of Pharisees and fault finders did not appreciate the conduct of John and himself, yet the wise, the candid, those who understood the reasons of their conduct would approve and do justice to it.
In other words, those who weep at their sin like John the Baptist called for and cling to Christ for salvation like Jesus called for are the children of wisdom.
And it's as though Jesus is turning to these people who are listening to him.
And saying, you just wait and see.
They are going to be sorry.
They're going to regret it because wisdom will prove itself in the end.
This is a quiet threat, but it's very serious.
Because usually, by the time we get to the point where wisdom is proven right, it's too late.
It may be the judgment seat of Christ, where those who were wise and trusted Christ are elevated to eternal life, and those who rejected him, in this case, and sided with the Pharisees, Are damned.
The time when wisdom proves itself is often too late for the person who rejected it.
So that's the first terrible reaction.
It is criticism by the hard hearted.
But there's a second one, and for them, Jesus has even stronger words.
This is indifference by the unrepentant.
Jesus gives a mild, not mild, it's not mild in any way, but it's more subtle warning in verse 19.
But immediately, as if to prove his point, he transitions in verse 20 and utters some of the most severe and strong condemnations that we find anywhere in the Bible.
He's talking to the crowd and he says, again, kind of quietly, that's how I imagine it just wait, they're going to find out.
But then it's almost as though he turns and he looks out over the whole countryside or the whole city.
Maybe he extends his arms to indicate the entire region.
And he raises his voice.
He was speaking in that reserved teaching mode.
Now he raises his voice in anguish and anger.
And he says, Woe to you, Chorazin.
Woe to you, Bethsaida.
Woe to you, Capernaum.
A woe is a pronouncement of judgment, it's not a warning.
This is not a warning that Jesus is giving.
One more time, and I'm going to get you.
No, that's not what's going on here.
A woe is a formal discipline.
It's covenantal language.
It's the loud thunder of the gavel, bang, as the judge issues his sentence to the guilty man.
Well, who is the guilty man in this story?
Specifically, Matthew says it's these three towns, right?
Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum.
A lot of commentators think that they're just representative of the whole region because Jesus had been in the entire region ministering and doing miracles.
So, Either way, it's these three cities and probably the entire region on the northwest side of the Galilee.
This is a massively important passage.
It's huge because while Jesus is not condemning all of Israel yet, he's condemning an entire region with strong covenantal language.
This is the first step that we see in God's divorcing of Israel.
This is the first step in God and Jesus saying, You're done.
It's been decided.
Woe to you.
Judgment is here.
And it is not going to back off.
And again, we would be tempted here to say, Man, that's awfully harsh.
Right?
Jesus condemns these entire towns and cities.
Isn't God, like in the Old Testament, didn't He?
Condemn and wipe out really wicked places like threatens to wipe out Nineveh or Sodom and Gomorrah.
Jesus is saying that about these towns?
Man, what's going on here?
We have to understand something very, very important here.
God hates sin, but God especially hates indifference.
Say that again.
God hates indifference.
Indifference towards himself.
This is well established in the Bible.
Let's look at just a couple of examples.
Matthew 7 26 is the parable of the man who builds his house on the rock and the sand.
And Jesus says, Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like the foolish man.
He'll be washed away.
Why?
He heard the words and he said, Take it or leave it.
No big deal.
In Matthew 24, Jesus references the generation of Noah.
And he says, For as in those days, before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark.
Noah was preaching the entire time he was building the ark, and the response of the people was not, Lord, save us.
It was, Oh, let's go to a wedding.
Let's go eat.
Let's go get some food.
Yeah, Noah says we're all going to die.
Indifference.
Matthew 22, 4 through 5.
This is the parable of the wedding.
Guests who were invited and didn't come.
Jesus says again, He sent other servants saying, Tell those who were invited, see, I have prepared my dinner.
My oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready.
Come to the wedding feast.
And notice this sentence.
But they paid no attention and went off.
You see, God hates indifference.
Why does God hate indifference so much?
Indifference is the opposite of faith.
Indifference is the opposite of faith.
Faith is when you hear something, you take a particular action before the promised results have happened.
So when the sinner hears of God's judgment, he takes action before the judgment is there.
That's faith.
It hasn't happened yet, but he believes it.
When the man of faith hears the offer of salvation, he's not indifferent.
Instead, he turns to Christ and clings to him.
Faith does not ignore what God says, and that's largely what the people in this region did.
Jesus preached, he did miracles, and they simply did that.
Huh, neat.
Gotta go plant some crops.
Sometimes the greatest reason for judgment is not that someone did something evil, of course, that's a reason for judgment, but sometimes.
The greatest reason for judgment is that someone did not do something.
You imagine someone driving down the road, going in his lane perfectly at the speed limit, not speeding, not swerving, observing all the traffic laws, driving down the road, and up ahead of him, about a block, a child runs out into the street.
The man sees this child, and he has plenty of time to put on his brakes or to swerve out of the way, and he just keeps going.
It's not going to count for him to say, Your Honor, I didn't do anything.
I just kept in my lane like I'm supposed to.
The judge is going to say, You wicked man.
You should have gone around.
You should have stopped.
The Danger of Indifference00:15:46
And that's what Jesus is saying here.
I preached to you for years, and it should have had an effect on you.
And you just continued with life as normal.
You see, this indifference.
In these towns, it was worse even than the sin of ancient pagan cities.
At the core of Jesus' condemnation of these cities is the fact that they ignored, they were indifferent, they shrugged their shoulders.
Jesus says something to these towns and cities that was utterly devastating, totally offensive.
He says in verse 21 that if the miracles that he had done in those cities in the Galilee, Specifically here, Chorazin and Bethsaida, if Jesus had done those miracles in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes.
In other words, they would have acted the way John the Baptist called for them to, with his camel hair and his severity.
In the mind of the Jews in the Galilee region, especially, these were the worst cities imaginable Tyre and Sidon.
They were actually not far from there, they were on the sea, just a few miles from where these towns were.
There were two towns of the Phoenicians.
The Phoenicians were a seafaring people.
They took over much of the Mediterranean.
They were ruthless and cruel and barbaric.
And these two towns on the Mediterranean were towns where sailors would put into port.
And we all know the reputation that that kind of city has full of debauchery and immorality, fights, violence, all sorts of things.
Not only that, these two cities, Tyre and Sidon, were centers of Baal worship.
They were strongholds of the worship of this false God.
They were immoral.
They were pagan.
They were heathen.
And God actually did end up destroying them.
In Isaiah 23, Ezekiel 26, 27, and 28, we learned that these Phoenician cities were extremely proud.
They were greedy.
They were cruel.
In Jeremiah 25, In 47, we see that the Phoenicians, these two cities, were selling, were capturing Israelites and selling them.
They were also capturing them in Amos, it says they were capturing Israelites and selling them to the Edomites.
And so, in this region of Israel, to say Tyre or Sidon would have been to conjure up the worst sort of behavior possible, the most revolting.
Wicked, deserving of judgment cities and lifestyles imaginable.
Jesus says, Listen, you cities, if I would have preached and done the miracles there, they would have repented.
But you all, you are stubborn of heart and you continue in your sin.
And in fact, he goes so far as he says, It would have been better for them on the day of judgment.
Are they being judged?
Yes, as Pastor Joel said last week.
But there will be a much more severe penalty for these cities in Galilee.
You see, God hates indifference, He hates it.
And that's why He saves the harshest criticism for the city of Capernaum.
This is the town where Jesus has made His home, His base of operations, the town that had the most access to Jesus, which He spent most of His time in.
Capernaum was well off, it was beautiful, it was by the sea.
It was peaceful.
It was really idyllic in many ways.
That northern area of the Galilee is where a lot of the wealthy Roman politicians and soldiers would go and spend time.
It was absolutely stunning.
They would have had a sense that they were uniquely blessed by God for their prosperity and the beauty of their setting.
He did miracle after miracle after miracle there.
He healed the nobleman's son, he healed the demoniac, he raised Peter's mother in law.
He healed the paralytic that the friends lowered down through the roof.
He healed blind men, cast out demons, healed the centurion's servant from a distance.
And even with all that miraculous power and testimony, they did not change.
Jesus says that because they were unwilling to change and respond, they were harder and more wicked and more vile than the city of Sodom itself.
This comparison to Sodom was a stunning insult.
I mean, guys, you have to realize how much of a slap in the face this was.
Sodom was the city in the Old Testament that was not, it wasn't conquered by foreign armies.
God Himself rained fire and brimstone on the city for its wickedness.
And Jesus says, You think you're going to ascend?
No, you, Galilee, are going down to Hades.
If Sodom would have had the witness that you have, they would still be around.
In other words, they would have repented and they would have followed God.
This would have been a full hearted repentance, pervasive and profound.
So, why is this sin of Galilee, of Capernaum, so much worse than the sin of these ancient cities?
So, what MacArthur says about this He says, What makes them worse?
Indifference.
The sin of these flourishing places was not violence, it wasn't the sin of sensuality, it was just indifference.
There's no record that they opposed Christ or mocked him or ridiculed him, they just didn't pay any attention to him.
His doctrine produced no change in their lives.
Self satisfied, complacent, whether in the form of Pharisaic self righteousness or popular indifference, is condemned by Christ as the grossest of evils.
On the outside, they were eminently respectable, but hell will be hotter for them than for the sodomites.
As Pastor Joel said last week, the greater the grace, the greater their responsibility.
And they had the grace of the Son of God Himself living and preaching and working in their midst.
And they had the grace of all the teachings of the Old Testament, not in mystery, but with pinpoint focus pointing directly at Christ.
And if we're not careful, we can be paralyzed by this.
We hear the greater the grace.
I've received a lot of grace, I've received a lot of teaching.
And that can paralyze us.
Oh, what do I do?
Am I just getting more and more judgment every time I read my Bible?
You hear a sermon?
Don't fear.
God is working in you.
When He teaches you something, He's going to give you the strength to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
But it should humble us and sober us.
God is not messing around.
It's easy for us to look at this story and say, oh, they were so foolish.
And they were absolutely fools who earned condemnation.
What they did was a greater evil than Tyre and Sidon and Sodom, but the knife cuts both ways.
There are many, many in our own land who have heard the gospel more clearly than John presented it.
There are pastors who have gone to seminary who shrug their shoulders at the demands of Christ on his church.
There are many who can say, perhaps even like President Trump, possibly, that they've seen direct intervention, miraculous intervention in their life, saved from a bullet.
Or saved from a car accident, or saved from some sort of calamity.
And in the moment, they can say, That was God's miraculous dealings to me.
And then they can shrug their shoulders and move on with life.
And God will judge that indifference.
He hates that sort of indifference.
And this applies to us as well.
This applies to us, Christians, as well.
Much has been made of Romans 11 in the last few years.
But in the middle of that passage, remember, Paul uses the example of Israel, and part of that starts right here in this passage as a warning to the Christians in Rome.
So I'm going to read what he says in Romans 11, and it applies to us as well.
As we think, oh, those foolish Jews in the Galilee region, be careful.
Romans 11, 20 through 22 says this So do not become proud, but fear.
For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.
Note then the kindness and the severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness.
Otherwise, you too will be cut off.
In Matthew 11, we see that Jesus is initiating the process of cutting off the unbelieving branches.
And yet, the warning extends to us.
That's how Paul uses it.
We must not be proud, for God can cut us off as well.
Whether as a hardened individual who heard the gospel or even as an entire nation who rejected God, how do we run the risk of demonstrating this kind of hardness?
Because we must avoid it at all costs.
First, by simply not repenting.
I know there are probably some of you either who listen online or who even come every week.
You go weeks and months and maybe even years listening to the gospel proclaimed Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.
And yet you shrug your shoulders and you walk out and you go on with life.
You've heard the truth over and over and over, but it has no effect on you at all.
And friend, if this is you, I have to tell you, this is the most dangerous position you can be in.
There's nothing more dangerous than to hear the truth of the gospel over and over and over.
And for it to bounce off of you every single time.
How hard must a heart be to reject the blinding sunlight that flashes on it every single week?
It's as though that kind of person walks in, you know, those eclipse glasses that you wear to look at the sun?
You have one of those over your heart so that the light of the gospel cannot penetrate.
And if that's you, I plead with you to repent.
This is the day for it.
Not next Sunday, not the following Sunday.
This is the day.
Remember, Jesus ministered in these cities for years, but finally there came a time and he drew his line.
He said, That's it.
Woe to you cities.
Do not assume that next month or next year you will be more likely to repent.
The reality is you will probably be less likely and less likely and less likely.
Second, even Christians can be tempted by this.
We hear Christ speaking to us from the Word.
We read or we come to church.
He commands us to do something or to stop doing something.
We hear it clearly, but we just move on.
And here's where this is really heinous other things become more important to us than obeying Christ.
Brothers and sisters, there is nothing more important than obeying Christ.
When Christ speaks to you through the word, the most dangerous thing you can do is shrug it off.
I'll get around to it.
Not that big of a deal.
To go on with your life as if the king of the universe had not said anything to you.
Remember, indifference is the opposite of faith, and God hates it.
And third, we'll probably wrap up here.
Notice that these three cities did not only disregard Jesus' teaching, but in verse 20 they disregarded his mighty works.
The miracles that Jesus did should have caused them to be full of thanks and praise and worship to God.
But for the majority of them, that's not what happened.
They saw a blind man healed or a lame man healed.
They go, Oh, that's a neat trick.
I wonder how he does that.
Well, off to the bakery.
Often, often, when people are in a terrible situation, they call out to God.
And God is kind and he often intervenes.
And then immediately we forget that that was God's direct hand in our lives.
We move on with our life.
We forget to give him the credit and the honor and the glory.
And I don't know why it is.
I've thought about why I tend to do this.
Maybe it's because we don't like to admit that we were helpless.
And once we're out of the situation, yeah, I had that.
I was okay.
We don't like to admit that we were helpless.
Maybe it's just kind of humbling to be physically and verbally grateful to God.
I struggle with this sometimes as a father.
I like to be the head honcho.
I don't like to put myself on my knees and say, The Lord has been so gracious.
I like to get the credit.
I had a good plan, right?
I had a good plan.
When the Lord does something incredible in your life, you need to mark it and remember it, and it should stir you to worship and thanks and praise to Him.
Don't neglect the workings of the Lord in your life or the life of your family.
Discipline yourself to express gratitude and thanks and praise so that you do not end up like these cities.
Who could see the work of God routinely and just say, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was kind of neat.
And if we do these things, we will keep ourselves from hardening because it is a terrible, horrifying thing to have and to maintain a hard heart.
In fact, it is so bad that God cut Israel off for it, starting with this picturesque, beautiful, peaceful city on the northwest shore of Galilee.
Finding Rest for Your Souls00:02:01
In your notes, I had one more point, and I'm just going to read what I had written in the notes because Matthew's story continues.
The very next word after this section is, I'm on the wrong page.
At that time, so on the heels of Jesus declaring that these cities have woes coming upon them, the very next thing that Jesus says is, Come to me, all you who weary and are heavy laden.
The woes are not the final word.
This is what we're going to get into next week.
The woes are not the final word.
In Matthew's narrative, the woes are the climax of mounting unbelief in the Galilee, but they are followed immediately by the offer of rest to signal that condemnation is never God's last word to the repentant.
Were the towns going to be judged?
Yes, there was no going back on that.
And yet, still, the kindness of Christ turns to the people who are listening to him and says, If you are still hearing my voice but have not come to me, come.
Find rest for your souls which are weighed down so strongly by sin.
It's not too late.
If you have heard and heard and you say, I'm hard of heart, it's not too late.
If you have been living in a sin pattern, it is not too late.
Come to Christ and find rest from sin for your souls.
And that's why we continue to cast the seed, even as it's discouraging to look around at our generation, which is so wicked and so likely to side with the evil and wicked authorities that are in power, the soft positions of power.
We continue to cast the seed of the gospel out, longing that even our wicked generation, destined likely for judgment, would still hear Christ's message and that many in our generation would repent.
Praying for True Repentance00:00:59
And believe.
Let's pray.
Gracious Father, we want to take seriously the fact that you judge.
You are a God who is long suffering.
Your patience is great, and your anger is slow to kindle.
And yet, Lord, we pray that we would not mistake that for casualness towards sin.
We want to be people in our own lives who treat very seriously the idea of taking you seriously.
We pray for our generation, our town, and our city, and our nation, that you would soften their hearts, that they would repent, and that they would turn to you with true repentance like John the Baptist called for, not fake repentance that just kind of appeases the moment.
Lord, we pray for true repentance starting in our own lives and extending through our church, our city, and our nation.