The Essential Gospel

As we have been considering for some time now the important revelations in Paul’s letter to the Romans, it is important that we remind ourselves that Romans is written to and for those who are in Christ Jesus, in Romans 1:7 he says that he is writing “to all who are beloved of God”, those who are “called as saints”. This is not a general letter for unbelievers, but to believers.

And so as we consider what Paul says in chapter 6 and chapter 7 is true of us, it is vital that we keep in the forefront of our minds that he is not speaking indiscriminately to everyone at all, but discriminately, to only certain people, those who he describes in chapter 4 verse 15 “…who follow in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham”.

And so as we pause our study for the next month to focus on the work and ministry of those “who proclaim good news of good things”, I would like to focus your attention upon this most vital good news, the gospel message as relayed by our Lord Himself in Matthew chapter 11, which He begins in verse 21, openly declaring,

Matthew 11:21 LSB

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

And he will go on in this same discourse to beckon people to him, saying down in Matthew 11:28,

Matthew 11:28 LSB

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

In this message, I want to call out three essential truths to your attention as part of Jesus’ gospel message,

Three Essential Truths

Horrible Judgement Awaits Unbelief

Salvation Only Available God’s Way

Salvation Requires a Particular Response

And it’s important that we really understand these truths, because there are many people who are horridly mistaken and outright confused as to who is a Christian, such as those who demand that God accept them for who and what they are on account of the idea that “god is Love”, or that God will certainly accept everybody into his eternal kingdom.

And we must realize at once that the world is divided into two, and only two groups, identified by these first and third truths. The first group of people, those rejecting Christ Jesus, will invariably come into in certain, horrible judgement. The second group, those who respond in the manner God requires, will enter into a certain and secure rest.

To illustrate this in poignant manner, just prior to these events Christ Himself had declared to his twelve disciples in chapter 10,

Matthew 10:34–36 LSB

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. “For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.

There are two divisions of people, Jesus told them. You are either in the group rejecting Him and His message, the wide and popular group he identifies with Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, or else you are those to whom the Son of God himself says “come to me”, you’re weary, you’re heavy-laden, and in Me you will find “rest for your souls.” This popular notion that all will be saved, that only those few truly evil and heinous people like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and a few others like them are destined for judgement, is entirely wrong; far from such a message of universal love and forgiveness being simply without merit, it is a clear and utter denial of what Jesus Himself proclaimed throughout not only the four gospels, but also the entire breadth of the Bible!

So as we start looking in detail at what the Lord said to the crowds in Matthew 11, we will find something disturbing to our self-centered, Jesus-loves-everyone view of the world:

Matthew 11:20 LSB

Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because they did not repent.

Matthew 11:21–22 LSB

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. “Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.

Matthew 11:23–24 LSB

“And Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day. “Nevertheless I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you.”

You see, it is not just certain individuals who are destined for judgement, but rather the masses of people who our Lord proclaims “woe” to. These people and their leaders were confused as to who Jesus was, they doubted very much whether they ought to receive His message and change their ways.

Horrible Judgement Awaits Unbelief

He had done miracles in them, most of His miracles were done in them, authenticating Himself, authenticating His message that He was from God and spoke truly, and still they did not believe, still they refused to repent, still they despised Him.

Oh, they despised Him – he was a lunatic as far as they were concerned, unworthy of being listened to and unworthy of being obeyed. They had despised John, His forerunner, out in the wilderness “neither eating nor drinking” with them in verse 18, and they proclaimed in their self-appointed wisdom, “he has a demon!” And yet when Jesus Himself came to them eating and drinking, rather than anything good to say, they despised Him as well, saying in verse 19 “Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”

Yet “wisdom is vindicated by her deeds”, and our Lord’s deeds were indeed great! John’s confusion about Christ was resolved in these cities when in Matthew 11:4–5 “And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Go and report to John what you hear and see: the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT 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.’” These miracles, done in the presence of John’s disciples in these same cities, had fully and thoroughly resolved John’s own confusion, yet the eyewitnesses of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum had rejected what they saw, they rejected Him even when they heard Him call those deeds out to John’s disciples, they instead took offense at Him!

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!” Woe to you, Capernaum!

You were called on to repent, and yet you rejected repentance!

And when you do so, when you reject the demand of the Lord, you will be judged, for there is a certain and definite “day of judgement”, a day when you will be judged and there will be no remaining opportunity for you to repent; our Lord Himself declared so in Luke 13:25–27, ““Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ “Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’ And He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; DEPART FROM ME, ALL YOU WORKERS OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.’”

No, no – woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida.

We see right here in our Lord’s prayer why it is they have rejected Him,

Matthew 11:25 LSB

At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

You had the message, Chorazin! It was proclaimed truly to you, Bethsaida! It was announced accurately, Capernaum! You have no excuse, you who think yourselves wise and astute, who have decided to place your own selves as judge over the Lord of Glory, to declare that he may only love and not hate, that the business of his church is merely to love and accept. You have decided that you are the authority, that you alone may judge; that whatever a person is, whatever a person has done, you don’t need to worry, for the god of hate, the god of the old testament, is done away with and all that remains is the god of love and peace and rest!

And do we not realize that this description is not solely of Chorazin, Bethsaida, or Capernaum, but also of those places far off and removed from first-century Galilee, but other places and other times such as at Sidon and Tyre and even Sodom, we realize that we here today are not far removed, that we all fall under this same condemnation, this same woe, from the day of our birth onward. For just as Chorazin heard the message of Christ and failed to repent, so did we. We have read the accounts of the eye-witnesses who themselves saw the blind receive sight, and wrote about it, the accounts of the deaf ears being un-stopped, proof which would be acceptable in any court of law. We see the words, we comprehend their meaning, and yet we reject them, we throw up objections, we dismiss the eyewitnesses because not 2 but 3 accounts seem virtually identical.

In other words, we ourselves desire to sit in judgement even over the accounts of the witnesses, saying that the account of 2 or 3 witnesses rather than establishing the facts, they instead obscure the facts and may be summarily dismissed as the need suits us.

And so, having dismissed the words presented, we promote our own ideas and agendas, we attempt to show our own selves to be more compassionate, more civil, more pleasant than this good teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, who may be some sort of god when we declare His love, and not His wrath.

But there is but one God, there is but one judge, and He alone sits in judgement over the entire earth, and His glory He will not share with another! The very demands you place upon He who judges, that He acquiesce to your debauchery, that He accept your depravity, that He approve your wicked and adulterous ways, rather than approve you, instead serves to condemn yourselves. This same God declares in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.”

No, God alone has the right to sit in judgement, and He shall do so. And he says that the awful end of Sodom, Genesis 19:24–25 recalling “And Yahweh rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of heaven, and He overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.” God destroyed the cities of that valley, the smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace on account of the wrath of God on that land. Tyre and Sidon likewise could not escape the certain, resolute wrath of the Lord God poured out on them, as well.

No, my friend, there is a certain and horrible judgement which awaits unbelief, the fearsome wrath of God will be poured out on all who refuse to repent.

And this message of “woe” is as applicable the world over today who have these gospels and yet still ignore them, as to the inhabitants of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum themselves!

But we dare not stop there! No, for should we stop there, we would miss the central point of this gospel message in front of us! We must go on to the next verses!

Matthew 11:25–26 LSB

At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. “Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.

Matthew 11:27 LSB

“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

In other words, this gospel message is exclusive, salvation is only available to those who approach it in God’s way.

Salvation is Only Available God’s Way

And here was the real failure of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. This was the failure of Saul, the pharisee from Tarsus who thought himself to be blameless under the Law. This is the real failure of we ourselves. All of us are the same, all of us fall under this condemnation, all of us are partakers in this same woe!

We think ourselves to be the authority, we think ourselves the ones in the position of determining what is true and what is false, the ones worthy to decide who should be listened to and who to ignore.

“Not so!” declares God, “Not So!” declares Christ Jesus! The truth is hidden from such people, their eyes may see but they are blind, their ears may hear yet they are deaf! They have already set their mind upon a message they like – “come to me, I will give you rest”, and summarily dismiss and discard the message they abhor – “woe to you!” They don’t want the whole of Jesus, just the portion they are willing to allow him to have.

Not so, says the creator and sustainer of the universe and all things in it! From the same mouth, from the Son who reveals His Father to whom He wills, comes both “woe to you” and also “come to me”. He alone can give peace and also withhold it, He alone holds the right to judge men, He alone has the authority to determine a man’s destiny, and God has declared that it rests entirely upon their relationship to Him!

There is no confusion in what Jesus prays! There is no wavering as He speaks to His heavenly Father, declaring His own authority to be given by the Father and that through Him and through He Himself alone can a person’s eyes be truly opened, their ears really unstopped.

For if they despise His authority, if they spit in His face as they dismiss and despise His message, if they set themselves up in their own authority, in their own intelligence, in their own wisdom, so as to pass judgement on Him, He has every right to allow them to remain blind and deaf, to continue hiding the truth from them. It’s not a matter if ability, but of

Instead, He demands that we come to Him as infants, as those who are weary from our own destitute estate, heavy-laden under the guilt of a Law that has come to us and shown us our sin in a manner that leaves us feeling the weight of death from which we cry out and run to Him!

It’s not a matter of intellectual ability, but a matter of pride. He demands that we realize we are but infants, he demands that we lay aside everything else but Him!

Matthew 11:28–30 LSB

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

There are those who seem to think that mere acknowledgement of Jesus is sufficient. They desire to simply acknowledge Him as a good man, as a teacher, and perhaps as a god. They may desire to know stories about Him, they invoke His name in times of distress, they use His name as an incantation to place their demands before God, or to gather followers to themselves.

They invoke His name, they quote His words when it suits them.

But that’s not acceptable to God, that’s not acceptable to the Father or to the Son. He demands a particular and certain response.

Salvation Requires a Response

The same God who pronounced woe to those in thrall to the boastful pride of life for their refusal to repent, turns to those who do repent and says “come to me!” This is what he had done with Matthew from Capernaum in the 9th chapter of his gospel. This is what he had done in Mark 1 to Philip, and Andrew, and Peter from Bethsaida. They left their former thinking, and followed Him, answering His call to them, coming to Him in the manner He desires us.

For we do not have to remain under the woe, but to repent and to come to Him! That’s what He wants, that’s what He desires!

Not for us to demand that He accept us in our strength, but for us to realize instead that we are weak, that we are without strength, agreeing with Him that we ought to be denounced, that we ought to be shamed, that we repent of our sin and flee to His beckoning call!

Without this call we could only stand condemned! We would be lost and hopeless! And all who yet refuse Christ Jesus yet still remain in their sin, remain in His condemning “woe”!

In John 3:18, Christ Himself declares that “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” And again later in John 3:36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

Just as Peter and Philip, Andrew and Matthew, and even the great apostle Paul had to come wholly and completely to Him, so must we. They came out of those cities of woe!

He demands all of ourselves come to Him; to just “add a dash of Jesus” to your already-full plate is not to come to Him, but to mock Him and despise Him.

We must see the whole person of Jesus Christ, both saviour and judge, and respond with the whole of our own selves! T Nicodemus, our Lord in John 3:14–15 declared “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.” How did the Israelites recover from the fiery serpents? The simply turned, orienting themselves toward the serpent on the staff! In the same manner, we must re-orient ourselves with Christ as our head, we must believe in Him with faith like that of Abraham, faith which is not dead but faith which acts and depends entirely upon His finished work!

What about you this day? Which of the 2 divisions of people are you in? Have you repented? Have you rejected the wisdom of men, the boastful pride of life? Have you rejected the pride that lifts itself up against a righteous and holy God?

Or do you sit and judge this gospel, criticize this two-fold message of condemnation and salvation, the preeminence and authority of Jesus Christ, the Son of God to proclaim such a message?

The world in its pride is told “Woe, to you!” You all thought to be exalted, you all thought to be wise, you all thought to be great, yet only wrath and judgement awaits! The one-time inhabitants of Sodom, destroyed by fire and brimstone, will receive more tolerance than you! You have the message, you have the accounts, yet still reject Him His place!

Take the yoke of Christ upon you, learn from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, for He is gentle, yes! Does he make demands of us? Of course! Otherwise He would have no need of yoke and burden!

But that burden is light, the yoke is easy! What we once reveled in, we do no longer! Go back to what we read in 1 Corinthians 6, and see what Paul wrote to the Church in verses 9–11; “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” We who are In Christ Jesus are no longer what we were! We were unrighteous, we no longer are!

The yoke of Christ is not fitted to the unbeliever, but is applied after we come to Him! We need not clean up our lives to be acceptable to Him, no! We cannot do so ourselves, that’s what Paul has been telling us in our study of Romans 7! But when we have come to Him, we have “been washed”, we have “been sanctified”, we have “been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God”, just as 1 Corinthians 6 joyously exclaims!

When God reveals Himself to a person and they repent and come to Him, we at long last “find rest for our souls!” Our enmity with God is at an end, John 3:36 declared “He who believes in the Son has eternal life!”

The vilest person on earth this day may yet receive such rest for his soul, if he would but humble himself, to repent and to come to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith!

Praise be to God!