Advent 3 Matthew 11:2-10 (2021)

What Are You Looking For?

St. Matthew 11:2-10

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

            St. Matthew 11:2-3  And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”

Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord…  What do you come to church to hear?  In other confessions of the faith, folks want to hear advice on Christian living and how to go about doing more things for God.  And sadly, that’s exactly what they get from their “I just wanna be a nice guy and not ruffle any feathers” pastor, whoever he or she may be.  

Many people just want to hear words that give them the inspiration they will need to get them through another week.  Indeed, you hear inspired words, but they are meant for more than this week and they speak about more than today’s life.  And you most certainly receive more than just words each time you come to the Divine Service.

So, what do you come to church to hear?  You come to hear comfort.  You come to hear certainty.  In fact, more than comfort.  For you do not simply need to hear that everything will be okay, and that life is not so bad.  You also need to hear that the Lord God Himself is very personally and very much for you and not at all against you.  You need to hear that His will is done.  You need to hear that God is always working to save you from yourself.  You need to hear that God will deliver you from the evils you see and experience.  You need to hear that God will bring you safely through your present troubles to His heavenly home and into His eternal presence.

The voice of Isaiah cries out: “All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of Yahweh blows upon it.  Surely the people are grass.  The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

Did you hear those last words?  “The Word of our God stands forever.”  In other words, God never has and never will back down from what He says.  God always makes good on His promises.  God always comes through, just as He says.  Nothing in all the world or even in all creation can undo what God says.  His Word always does what it says.  He and His Word always get their way.  Even if and when it looks and seems to us as if God’s Word isn’t going to win the day, never ever doubt that it will.  He has never let anyone down, and He’s not about to start with you.

But that begs the question: What exactly is the Lord’s way?  We say and we pray “Thy will be done.”  And we confess in the Catechism that “The good and gracious will of God is done even without our prayers, but we pray in this petition that is my be done among us also” (Luther’s meaning to the Third Petition).  But do we really mean that?  Do we really want God’s will to be done among us?  We need to understand and not be disappointed when we discover that the Lord’s way, of necessity, must be different than our way; it must be different from the way we think things ought to be.  For Yahweh also says in Isaiah 55:8-9, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways…  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

So what is this higher way?  What path does it take?  And where does it finally lead?  These are the kinds of questions that fill the minds of John’s disciples in Matthew 11.  And these are often our questions: “Which way, O Lord?  How long, O Lord?  What is Your will, and how will I know when I have discovered it?  Is this the way, or is that the way?  Am I even on the right path?”

And when it comes to looking for the answers to all those questions, we do well never to go poking around in our own minds or hearts.  We also do well not to go thumbing our way through our Bibles just hoping and praying that somehow some word will magically jump out at us, or hoping some phrase grabs our attention. 

You may have heard the joke about the person “seeking God’s will” for their lives, and decided to let their Bible fall open and with eyes closed put their finger in wherever it opened to, only to read in Matthew 27:5 where Judas “threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself.”  Need I say more about that?

And we do well not to sit around with others saying, “This is what I think it all means, so what do you think it means?” 

No, dear friends; for the answer to those questions about God’s will, we do exactly what John’s disciples did: we go straight to Jesus.  We go directly to Him and His Word and put the hard questions to Him.

So, John sent two of his disciples and said to Jesus, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”  And notice that Jesus didn’t instruct John to take an opinion poll, or to stick his finger in the air to determine which way the religious winds were blowing.  What answer did Jesus give?  “Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.  And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”

Now, at first hearing, that may sound like yet another one of Jesus’ puzzling answers.  Jesus always seems not to answer questions directly; He seems to answer questions that don’t get asked; He seems to answer better questions than the ones that are put to Him.  But listen carefully to what Jesus says, because this is what you go to church to hear.

Essentially, Jesus says two things.  First, He tells you that He is on the side of those who are disadvantaged; He is on the side of those who know they cannot make it on their own, and those who need more than a helping hand.  Scripture essentially says that, in and of our sinful nature, we are blind, dead, enemies of God.  What can the blind do to undo their blindness?  How can a lame man walk without a limp?  What can a leper do to heal himself?  How can a deaf person start hearing?  What dead man can raise himself from the dead?  Which poor person can pull himself up from his misery, or see past his poverty to the riches of the Gospel?  Clearly, the answer to all those questions is, “None.”

All of these folks who suffer like that are in need of more than just a little boost; they need more than just a helping hand or a leg up.  They, like all of us, need to look to Jesus – the Jesus promised by the prophets, the Jesus who always makes good on His promises, the Jesus who is always speaking and doing and acting on behalf of His people.

And Jesus will not let you down.  Whatever prison you may be sitting in, whatever mental or spiritual or physical ailment you may be enduring, whatever grief you may be bearing, whatever struggles or crises or adversities you may be facing, whatever desires you have that continually pull you away from your faith and from godly living, whatever temptations are enticing you to think you have to make do for yourself, whatever evils are troubling you and whatever devils haunt you – whatever it is, your Lord Jesus is more than up to the task.

And so, as He did for the blind and lame, the leper and deaf, the dead and poor, so He will also do for you.  He will never leave you; He will never forsake you.  He will pull you through; He will make the way of escape.  THAT is what you go to church to hear!

But be careful, for the Scriptures remind us that our thoughts are different than the Lord’s thoughts.  And while He speaks these words of comfort and hope, He does not speak them in the way that you might expect.  Those words to John’s disciples do not automatically make the prison doors swing open, for, as you remember, John remained in prison and was soon beheaded.  And when you see that, you might be led to believe that the words of Jesus are just more promises and more words with nothing to back them up, and that they really do not work.

But here is where you must understand and listen to the second thing Jesus said.  For hidden within His answer is not only the Lord’s thoughts, but also His way.

Consider the blind, the lame, the leper, the deaf, the dead and the poor.  They all suffer.  Consider John the Baptizer.  He sat in prison awaiting the executioner.  Consider yourself.  Life never seems smooth, and even if you think you have forced or bluffed or squeaked or worked your way through your suffering and heartache, you never really leave it behind, do you?

Now consider Our Lord Jesus.  He was baptized, and then immediately thrown into the wilderness to suffer the devil’s temptation.  He preached, but those who heard Him persecuted Him.  He rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, but then suffered the horrible cruelty of the crowd; He was tortured, beaten, and crucified.

And He was crucified with this purpose – His crucifixion paid for all your sins; His crucifixion paid for all your shortcomings; His crucifixion paid for all your miserable failures.  He died the death that should have been yours.  He suffered your sufferings.  He died your death.  He loves you and saves you in that specific way, which is what John wrote in his third chapter and sixteenth verse: “For God so loved the world” – meaning God loved the world in this specific way: by giving up His Son on the cross for you.

That is the way the Lord works – through suffering and death on the way to the glorious resurrection and the fullness of life in God.  And then He delivers the very thing He purchased on the cross – forgiveness of sins – He delivers it only and specifically through the ways He has chosen: through water and words in Baptism, through bread and wine and words in Holy Communion, and through words from your pastor’s mouth in Holy Absolution and the preached Gospel.  There is where He delivers the goods to you – in His Sacramental gifts.

So do not be afraid.  Rather, be here where your Lord gives you what you need most – His forgiveness, and from His forgiveness strength – His strength to pull you through your present life challenges, all the way to the life of the world to come.  For that is what you come to hear and receive.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.