and you may be seated. I would invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to the gospel according to Luke. Specifically today we're going to be taking a look at Luke chapter 7 and verses 31 through 35. We often think that what will make all the difference in the salvation of an individual is the skill of the person sharing the gospel. If they are an eloquent speaker, if they use the right illustrations, if they have the gift of gab, then that person will be persuaded and will come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Whereas if the person is only lightly endowed with proper speaking skills, there isn't much chance that people will come to faith. Well, one of the things, unfortunately, that we see in the Bible is the fact that the greatest of all preachers, the Lord Jesus Christ, came to the world and he preached the gospel, and yet he was rejected by his own people again and again. They did not want to hear the message that he was preaching. They did not just reject Jesus, they rejected the gospel message. And that should warn us that the critical thing in the preaching of the Word is not the eloquence of the person who conveys it, but rather the working of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of mankind. If the Spirit does not change the heart, then the heart remains hardened. And we remember that as with the sun, the same sun that melts the ice hardens the ground, and so too when it comes to the hearts of people. The same gospel message that can melt a heart can also harden it. So let's keep that in mind as we hear now the words of Christ as He was preaching to His own. But before we do that, let's go to the Lord Himself and let's ask for His blessing upon the preaching of His Word. God, our Father, true it is that I may be able to reach years, especially because I had the aid of amplification, but Lord, I know I can't reach hearts. That's something only you can do, and only you can change them. And so, Lord, I pray that you would help me to open up your word aright. I am a man with feet of clay. I'm a sinner myself. I'm someone who needed the gospel in order to be saved. And I thank you, Lord. I didn't do anything to save myself. You opened my heart to receive your message in the fullness of time. And so, too, I pray, Lord, that you would do that mighty work here today. There are some who are hearing my word who have not closed with you, Lord. And I beg for their souls, Lord. I pray that you would cause them to close with you, to know you by faith, and to know the wonder of new life through Christ. Lord, would you help us to hear? I pray, Lord, that you would comfort those who are, Lord, in dire straits, Lord, who are struggling at this point. And I pray, Lord, that you would afflict those who are comfortable, that you would show them their need of you, that you would cause them to flee to you. Regardless, help us to hear the words of Christ. And we pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Luke chapter 7 and verses 31 through 35. I do remind you this is the word of the Lord. And the Lord said, to what then shall I liken the men of this generation? And what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, saying, we played the flute for you, and you did not dance. We mourned to you, and you did not weep. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine. And you say, he has a demon. The Son of Man has come eating and drinking. You say, look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. but wisdom is justified by all her children. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. One of the things that you can't help noticing in the gospel is the fact that many of the people who embraced the gospel were considered the worst of sinners in their time. Prostitutes, tax collectors, collaborators with evil Romans. They came willingly. They came first to John to receive the baptism of repentance. And then they heard his word when he said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and pointed to Christ. And then they went to Christ. for forgiveness of their sins. But those who thought themselves to be righteous at this period in time, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, those who thought they had nothing to fear from the judgment to come, they did not. They rejected the message of both of these messengers. It's always been the case, generally speaking, that those whose sins are very obvious, when they see their need for repentance and the availability of it, when they see the way of life that they close, much more quickly than those who are self-righteous, those who consider that they have no need whatsoever for forgiveness, those who do not think they have any sins to repent of. If you believe that you have no sins to repent of, if you've conned yourself into believing you haven't broken God's law, why would you listen to the preaching of a man like John the Baptist, who commands you to repent and believe in order to be saved? Now, John the Baptist, we remember, he was a wild and a fiery messenger of the Lord. He lived a life of self-denial in the wilderness. As Matthew tells us in Matthew 3, 4, and John himself was clothed in camel's hair, this incredibly itchy garment, and he had a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. We had a grasshopper land on the door. My daughter pointed it out, and I'm looking at it and thinking, I can't believe people ate these things, you know, as you see it moving across. That was his food. He ate locusts and wild honey. Now, John's father, Zachariah, had been told by the angel Gabriel way back in John 1 that his son John would be great in the sight of the Lord and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. that he would be regenerated in the womb. We remember that John leapt at hearing the voice of Mary, the mother of his Savior. It's not the case that most of us are regenerate from the womb, would that it were, but unfortunately it's not. We need the preaching of the Word in order to bring us to life, accompanied by, of course, the Lord's Holy Spirit. But John was different. He was brought forth regenerate, and he was of Nazarite from birth. That is somebody bound by the Nazarite vow of number six. Normally, the Nazarite vow was only taken for a little while. It was a period where a person would be dedicated to the service of the Lord. And during that time, they did not shave, they did not eat or drink anything associated with grapes. You couldn't even eat a raisin if you were under the Nazarite vow or have anything to do with dead things. After the time of the vow was completed, they shaved their heads, they offered sacrifices, including their own hair that they'd shaved off. That, too, was burned on the altar. It was consecrated to God. And then they returned to normal life. They could once again cut their hair and beards and drink wine. And you have an example of that in Acts chapter 21 and verse 24, where Paul is being urged to prove he's still a good Jew by paying the expenses of those men who had taken the Nazarite vow. But in the case of John, it was different. Like Samson, he spent his entire life as a Nazirite. But unlike Samson, he appears to have actually kept his vows to the very end. So you can imagine John, who looked like a cross between, you know, in modern terms, between, I guess, a homeless person and a mountain man, you know, kind of grisly. if you think that Elder Brunson's beard is long, would have been nothing compared to John the Baptist. He had not shaved for his entire life. I dare say his beard probably would have extended down to his waist or beyond that. and he was dressed in the roughest of clothes. He drank only water. This man was an aesthetic for the Lord. He did not indulge in any of the pleasures of this present life. Now, when the Pharisees looked at this man who preached with a fiery spirit, he warned them of the coming day of judgment, they looked at him and said, he's mad. They said, he's possessed. He has a demon. Why should we listen to him? And it didn't help, obviously, in that sense that he called them hypocrites and he wasn't afraid to call them a brood of vipers in front of everyone. These men who thought that they were the most holy in Israel. John looked at them and he said, you are in danger of hellfire. They heard that message and their countenances became stern and hardened. They rejected it and they found excuses to reject the messenger as well. Now Jesus was a very different man from his cousin John. He didn't live in the wilderness. His base of operations, as we've seen, was the city of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. And far from being a monk-like aesthetic, like John was, he spent all of his time with the people. He spent his time in their houses. He spent his time eating and drinking with them. And I think the contrast between Jesus and John is perhaps best highlighted by the fact that Christ's first miracle was changing water into wine at a wedding reception. What a great difference between the two of them. Even their preaching was different in its emphasis. The emphasis in John's preaching was the coming of the day of judgment. It was on repentance, the call to repent from sin. Jesus, on the other hand, declared that the kingdom of God had now come, and he emphasized the grace of God in saving sinners. Now, we shouldn't divide those two and say, well, that's an entirely different message. No, they're both two sides of the same coin. We do need to repent of our sins, brothers and sisters. But what enables us to repent of our sins is the grace of God. It's his mercy in changing our hearts. It's a differing attitude. Often the preaching that sometimes shared from pulpits is you need to repent of your sins so that you can believe in the Lord. But the fact is, we will never repent of our sins until we believe in the Lord. These two go together. emphasized this grace of God, and he emphasized the importance of believing in Him. Now, both John and Jesus, they preached the same gospel. They both said to men, you can't save yourselves. And they preached repentance from sin, belief in the Messiah. Jesus said, the gospel of the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe. John said the same thing, but they said it differently. They came across very differently. There isn't one way of preaching the gospel. This is something that we should be reminded of. I have different I don't know if you do as well. I know at different times I I need the same gospel administered in different ways. So for instance when I am becoming lax when I'm becoming lazy in my Christianity I will often go to Paul Washer and he will metaphorically kick me in the behind and give me that emphasis on on repenting, and I don't know why you're clapping, I'm talking about you, that kind of message that comes like a two-edged sword. At other times, I'll go to men who will lift me up from the dust, who will give me hope when I'm despairing. I'll go back to the preaching of my pastor back in Hatboro when I was in in seminary, which I find very encouraging in those moments. But as I said, there's no one way of preaching the gospel, no perfect delivery of it. But these men, they both preached the gospel. Of course, Christ did. He preached about what men needed so very badly. They needed the grace of God and repentance. And his forerunner, who prepared the wafer men, John, did the same. And yet, the reaction of the Pharisees is the same for both men. They don't want the preaching of one. They don't want the preaching of the other. Now, what were they rejecting? Were they rejecting the man? And the answer is no. They weren't rejecting the man. They were rejecting the message. They were rejecting the gospel. That's very clear. We have it spelled out for us. But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves. Jesus tells us what the will of God the Father is in John 6, 39. He says, and this is the will of Him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life. And I will raise Him up at the last day. God's declared will to the world is that all men, all women, all children everywhere should believe in Jesus the Son and be saved. But tragically, these Pharisees, like all natural men, they have hearts of stone. And as a result, John the Baptist comes to them warning and admonishing them. warning them, repent of your sins, flee to Christ, they reject His message. When Christ comes to them, bearing the gracious words of life, calling them to believe in Him, and to receive the forgiveness of their Father in Heaven, they reject His message as well. Now, the Pharisees in doing that, they couldn't come out and say, we categorically reject this message of the grace of God. Our hearts are dark and stony. We proclaim to be wise, but we are in fact fools. We tell everyone we can see, but we're blind guides. We say we love God, but when he sends his son to us, our desire is to kill him. They're not going to say that. Instead, they have to come up with an excuse. Why are we rejecting these men? Well, We reject the messenger. It's not the will of God that we're rejecting. Far from it. We can't believe any message from this John fellow. He's demon-possessed, you know. Isn't that obvious? I mean, look at the way he's dressed. Or this Jesus. Don't you know about Jesus? He's a friend of sinners. And you know about his problem, don't you? Well, just the other day, my friend saw him drinking wine in the house of that tax collector, Matthew Levi. Well, we all know he's got a drinking problem, doesn't he? He's an alcoholic. I mean, who else but a drunkard who cares nothing for his reputation would associate with such swine? No, no, no, of course we have to reject them. Jesus, though, knows their hearts. He sees them for what they were and he applies this common proverb of the time. He compares them to spoiled children in the marketplace. Let's, the kids come in and they say, half of them say, let's play a happy tune like they play at weddings. Let's dance. And so, you know, half of them want to do that. And then the other half say, no, no, wedding tunes are boring. Let's play funeral music instead. Let's play mourners. I'm taking my flute and I'm playing a funeral dirge. And the others say, no, wedding tune. And they argue. And Jesus says, you're like that. You're frivolous. You're inconsistent. You're spoiled. Nothing's ever good enough for you. You know, whatever message is brought to you, you reject it out of hand. Now John called them a brood of vipers, a bunch of snakes, and he told them they needed to flee from the wrath to come. He implied to these Pharisees, who thought that they were holy, that they were in danger of hell. And as a result, hearing that, they reacted angrily. They said, this man isn't from God. He's not saying what they want to hear. He told them to mourn for their sins. when they were hoping to be told that the wedding feast was near and that they were the most important guests. They wanted to play wedding and John comes and he's preaching funeral. It's time for you to mourn for your sins. So they looked at John and they rejected him outright. They said, obviously he's got a demon. Look at how he dresses. See what he eats. He doesn't even drink wine. He takes everything too far. The Nazarite vow was for a time and this man's doing it for his entire life. We don't need to listen to this demon possessed madman. He tells us the most holy men in all of Israel to repent. The very idea is absurd. Then Jesus talks about his own ministry. Jesus wasn't an aesthetic. He dressed simply, but not in a camel hair tunic like John did. He ate food. He drank wine. He attended wedding feasts, even made wine. His followers didn't fast like John's disciples did or the Pharisees. He told them that he is the Messiah and that his is the wedding feast that they were supposed to be preparing for. He came preaching wedding and they said, no, no funeral. This was the moment that God himself had sent his own son into the world for. He had sent him to redeem his people and unite them to himself. But instead of making the Pharisees his most important disciples and telling them they were going to have the chief place in the kingdom, God sent a very different message. He told them they were sinners. He told them they needed to repent and that without faith in Him, they couldn't come to the wedding banquet. So they looked at Jesus and they said, we know all about Him. He doesn't fast. He's a glutton. Wine bibber, incidentally, that old saying means simply alcoholic. He drinks, they said, and then they made aspersions about that. Look at the people also he eats and drinks with, tax collectors, sinners, and so on. When you eat with them, you become unclean, they said. And instead of repenting and mourning and fasting himself, he celebrates. They came in saying he needs to be playing funeral with the tax collectors, telling them they're all going to hell, but instead he's playing wedding. And he calls us sinners? That's rich. Why should anybody listen to him was their reaction to the preaching of the gospel. It reminds me of that great parable that we got from the philosopher Dr. Seuss. I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam, I am. It didn't matter what Jesus said, where he said it, how he said it. They rejected the gospel message. Why? Because it went straight to their hearts, and he told them that they were sinners, and they felt that conviction. I remember that. I remember being in the presence of Christians who were themselves saved, who were gracious in spirit, and I despised them because they told me I was a sinner. and my heart was troubled by that. I rejected it, I pushed it away, and I made fun of them. I was a mocker of God, a mocker of the gospel. I didn't even understand it, but I mocked it nonetheless. Why? Because of the way it made me feel, incredibly uncomfortable. I wouldn't even have admitted that back then, but it's true. Thor didn't upset me. Vishnu didn't upset me. None of the false gods. I wasn't even upset with Allah and the message of Islam, as violent as that is. But Christ and his message, that made me angry. If I'd had more wisdom, I would have said, I wonder why that is? Why is it that every other religion on the face of the planet doesn't disturb me at all, but Christianity does? Gets under my skin. I did, I didn't ask why, because my heart was dark and stony, and there was a veil over my understanding. Well, Christ finishes off his statements here by saying, wisdom is justified by all her children, and that statement is intimately connected to verse 29, and when all the people heard him, that is in these verses, when all the people heard him, even the tax collectors justified God having been baptized with the baptism of John. Now, wisdom here, is not to be found amongst the Pharisees, not to be found amongst the Sanhedrin, the Jewish leaders, for they rejected the gospel, they rejected salvation. They may be the elite, but in some senses they learned, but they knew nothing of the wisdom of God. Rather, it is the simple people, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the sinners, who heard this gospel message with joy and they honored the wisdom of God as it was revealed by the message of John, and then supremely delivered by the incarnate word of God, Jesus himself. Now, I want to suggest to you two applications that we can take from these verses, and I'll rank them in ascending order as I see it. The first is a relatively minor compared to the second point, but still important point is this. Do not make the mistake of ranking John higher than Jesus. Don't make that mistake. And you may turn to me and say, well, what Christian would do that? That's stupid. He was the forerunner. He was the prophet who came to make the way of the Lord straight in the wilderness. But countless numbers in the history of the church have done exactly that. They've said that the way that John lived was better. Let me read to you John Calvin on that subject. He says, those who think that the highest perfection consists in outward austerity of life, and who pronounce it to be an angelical life, when a person is abstemious or mortifies himself by fasting, ought to attend to this passage. On this principle, John would rank higher than the Son of God. But on the contrary, we ought to maintain that bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things. That's 1 Timothy 4.8 that he's quoting there. Jesus drank alcoholic beverages. Jesus ate heartily. He wasn't afraid to live as light in the midst of a sinful and wicked generation. And I have to tell you this, you shouldn't be afraid to do so either. Your godliness, brothers and sisters, is not reckoned by abstaining from things that the Lord has allowed you to take part of. It is reckoned by how you use them or how you abuse them. The Scriptures do not condemn eating. They condemn gluttony. The scriptures do not condemn drinking. They condemn drunkenness. They don't condemn living amongst the world. They condemn living in the same manner as the worldlings. You are called to be in the world. You're not called to be, I mean, I have enormous respect for the Amish on many different levels, but you're not called to be out of the world, separated from it entirely. What good can you do for the gospel in that situation? You need to be in the world, but not of the world. A fishing boat is only useful when it's on the sea, but the fishing boat becomes infinitely less useful when the sea gets into it. What we're supposed to be doing is taking the fish out of the sea and bringing them into the boat. The boat is obviously the church. We're supposed to be saving people out of the world, but we can't do that unless we're on the sea. Fishing boats don't fish on land. So separating ourselves entirely from the world is not going to help much. I can go further and try to give you another illustration. Sex is not a result of the fall. It predates the fall. It's part of God's creation, but because of the fall, like all of God's good gifts, there's a sinful tendency to misuse that particular gift. So the answer to this problem, though, is not to swear off of it entirely and to adopt some sort of monkish existence, but rather to keep it where God intended in the midst of heterosexual monogamous marriage. God gives us these gifts and he says enjoy them as I intended for you to enjoy them, not say that the things that I've given you are bad in and of themselves. There is nothing, know this, there is nothing that God has created that existed before the fall that is inherently evil in and of itself. But there is nothing that God has created that we can't abuse somehow. Remember that, all of his good gifts. So instead of hightailing it to the wilderness and living as John did, learn by God's word and via the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit that sanctifies us to be children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world. And that's Philippians 2.15. Now, here's the second point, and it's far more important, and this is this, and I can't, I can't emphasize this enough. The unconverted heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Men, prior to the regenerating, the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, they'll grasp at any excuse to reject that gospel that would bring life to them. We see that in the way that the Pharisees in these verses, they reject first the preaching of John and then the preaching of Christ. One is too otherworldly, the other is too worldly to them. And I've seen it countless times in my own life, prior to my own conversion. and in the lives of others. I remember one conversation in particular where the person declared adamantly, I was talking to them about the gospel, they said, I can't believe the gospel because of X. And they set it forth. It was the authenticity of the gospel accounts. So he said, have you studied that particular subject? Well, I've seen this show and I've read a couple of things. I said, okay, let's go over this. And I talked about the gospel and how the gospels were presented to us, the New Testament, and the veracity of the New Testament accounts and so on. I spent, it must have been 45 minutes. Finally, I got to the point where their last stronghold had fallen. And they were like, oh, all right. Well, I still can't believe because of Y. That's the reason I can't believe. I'm like, oh my word, we could do this all day. As soon as we deal with Y, it's going to be Z. And then Z1, Z2, Z3, Z4. We can go through this again and again and again. They're still going to have a reason not to believe. Because they're willing to accept anything but God. The ABG principle, anything but God. I run into people who are more willing to believe that, not angels, I'm so sorry, that spacemen came to Earth and seeded the world with their DNA than that God created the world in the space of six days. Oh, that's ridiculous. No, you see, aliens came and they established life. And then you say to them, okay, aliens came, they established life on Earth. All right, all right. So who created the aliens? Other aliens. And like I've said many times, it's aliens all the way down. You know, the aliens created aliens, created aliens, created aliens, you know, and you go on forever and ever. But who started it all? Who created the heavens and the earth? The Bible tells us, God. But what don't we want to hear that there is a holy God? who created us, and then we sinned against him, and that we're in a desperately perilous situation, that we're sinners in need of salvation. But Paul reminds us, doesn't he? Those of you who understand what I'm saying, who agree with it, he reminds us that we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. We often say, that this rejection of the Lord and his word is something that you will only find outside of the church. But the fact is there are countless people who come to church and who reject the message that they hear from the gospel, from the pulpit. Charles Haddon Spurgeon got to the heart of that. Take a look in your folders if you would, the Sabbath meditation there. There Spurgeon wrote, there are multitudes of men who always quarrel with any kind of ministry that God may send to them. This man's style is much too florid. He has a super abundance of the flowers of oratory. The other man is much too dull. There is nothing interesting about his discourses. This man is too coarse. He is so rough as even to be vulgar. The other man is too refined and uses languages, a language that shoots over people's heads. It's easy to find fault when you want to do so. Any stick will do to beat a dog. Any kind of excuse will do to allow your conscience to escape from the message of an earnest ministry. How many men and women are there in the world who want to come to church for a comforting message? They just want to be soothed. They want to hear smooth things. They want to be told that they're fine as they are. They want to hear the message the Pharisees wanted to hear. You guys are the greatest. You are empowered. You are blessed. You are going to heaven. If anybody's going to heaven, it's you guys. You're the greatest. Love you. Had they heard that, they would have been like, he's the best. I love to hear his message. But that's not the message we need to hear when we're on our way to hell. The message we need to hear is conviction of sin, need for repentance, and so on. But there's so many people who, when they begin to hear that, they decide, well, this church is not for me. This minister, oh, hellfire and damnation, we gotta get out of here. When their consciences begin to be pricked, they determine this is not the message that they need to hear. And at that point, any excuse will do. I would not like it here or there. I would not like it anywhere. And as Spurgeon said, any stick will do to beat a dog. You'll pick up anything to hand and say, this is not the message that we should be hearing. But you, don't be like that. Look beyond the messenger. Look to Christ, who is the message himself. Look to the one whom Jesus said that he was, the Messiah, the one whom John proclaimed to be, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Do you know, as I said, many times people think it's going to be the quality of the preacher, the style of the message that does the working. I have to tell you that's not the case. You remember the story of how Spurgeon was converted. I mean, he was raised in the church. He was raised amongst a godly ministry, surrounded by godly books. He loved to go into his grandfather's library to read books by men like John Bunyan and so on, but yet he was not convicted of his sin until one day he wandered into a primitive Methodist church in the midst of a snowstorm. It wasn't the regular preacher. He hadn't been able to make it. He was stopped by the snow. And this man, he imagined a cobbler or some sort of workman, simply said to him, look, look to God and be saved. And the message went to him. He looked at him in the eye and he said, young man, you seem very miserable and you will always be miserable until you look to God. And he heard that message. You know, the funny thing was, I was saved by a sermon on the way to work one day. It wasn't a sermon that saved me, obviously. It was the agency of God delivering his word and his spirit that changed my heart. But the funny thing was, many years later, I said to myself, I want to look up that sermon. So it was something that was preached by a preacher in Texas, and I went through his library of sermons. I finally found it, and I expected it to be the best sermon on the face of the planet. I really did. I listened to it, and I'm like, That's not a great sermon. I mean, I'm no great shakes, but I preach better than that. You know, and I was like, and yet it was what God used to save me. It was the message. It's not the messenger. So understand when you reject the messenger, You're rejecting the message. You're rejecting the gospel. If you're sitting here today and you, like the Pharisees, believe you don't need to hear this message, you are just as blind as they were. I'm begging you. I say to you, repent and believe before it's too late. You once again are hearing the gospel message, but there will come a day when you won't hear it anymore. The door of grace is open to you right now. Go through it. because the day comes when it closes and then no man can enter. That's when Jesus comes back. I want the return of Christ to be a day of rejoicing for you, a day of jumping in the air and rejoicing, not a day when you call upon the mountains and the hills to cover you because the day of the Lamb has come and you know you're going to be judged. Let it be the case that it's a day of delight for you. Let's go before the Lord now. God, our gracious Father, I thank you that you use small things, you use weak preaching to reach people with your message. I pray now, Lord, that those who have heard my voice would not reject Christ, but instead would embrace him. If they already know the gospel, may their hearts be comforted by it, may their assurance be grown, and may they have no fears for what is to come. But if they have not yet come to you, Lord, I pray that their heart would be filled with that conviction of sin that we need so very badly, but that they would not go home under that weight, but rather that they would repent and have that weight removed from their shoulders forever, that they would come to you by faith, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved from their sins. And I pray all of this in Jesus' holy name, amen.