Haven City Church Sermons
Haven City Church started in Baltimore City in 2017. The church is committed to the weekly proclamation of the Gospel.
Haven City Church Sermons
Matthew 23:37-39
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Matthew 23. If you're new with us, we're going verse by verse through the book of Matthew. We've already gone through the Sermon on the Mount. That's where you have our the um our Lord's Prayer of our Father who art in heaven. Right? You got that? We already covered that. We looked at Jesus' ministry across the region of Galilee. And then we've gone through some more teaching that Jesus has done. Now we're in the part of the story where Jesus is two or three days away from being crucified. He's in Jerusalem. Excuse me. He's in Jerusalem, and he's on the Temple Mount, which was a large courtyard with some coverings around the edge, but there is just massive crowds that are gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. And what we've seen, thank you, what we've seen is just ongoing conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders. Do you remember that most of Jesus' ministry, most of Jesus' ministry was done in Galilee, not in the capital city of Jerusalem. And so the religious leaders, though, are there in Jerusalem, and we have this conflict that's occurring in Jerusalem between the Pharisees and Jesus. The passage that we're going to look at, it'll address the human tendency to resist God's loving initiative. Like I was saying just a minute ago, God's disposition towards you and his activity towards you is love. Like God loves you. He demonstrated that by before you were born sending his son to the world to die for your sins so that you can be reconciled back to the Father. But that's not all that God's doing. Like He's given you breath in your lungs when you woke up this morning. He's clothed you. God's work towards you is love. And yet, this weird thing about being human, being born as a son and daughter of Adam, is just this resisting the goodness of God in our life. The people of Jerusalem at Jesus' time, despite being God's chosen and repeatedly being offered grace, they were unwilling to receive God's embrace. This story, this passage exposes our inclination towards self-sufficiency and spiritual stubbornness. What I'm going to ask for you to do this morning is to be reflective a bit about your own spiritual journey and those conversations with God that you may have been resisting. Because here you have the God who created you loving you, but yet there is this thing in us towards self-sufficiency. It sounds like this God, I got it. I got it. Don't worry. You know, I don't need your help. I don't need your voice. I don't need to hear what you have to say. I got it, right? That is what self-sufficiency looks like in our life. And yet God wants to work in our lives. And so the book of Matthew is this biography about Jesus. If you're new to the Bible, that's fine. What you're going to see is that we're jumping right into just words of Jesus right before the crucifixion. The person who wrote this was a man named Matthew. He was a um he was a disciple of Jesus. He was one of the twelve. He's also called Levi in the text. That's the other name he goes by. And he was a tax collector before he became a follower of Jesus. So he was wealthy, but he was despised culturally because of his job. Again, I we're here on the Temple Mount, it's Passover time, and this is two or three days before the crucifixion. Let me read to you the text. It says this Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Let's pray together. Father, we are going to study these three verses together as a church family, and we're asking that your spirit, the Holy Spirit, would open up our eyes that we could understand what you're teaching, but for us. And not just for our church as a whole, but for us individually. And that means that we've got to let down the guards in our hearts, the hardness that's in our hearts, we need you to take that away. Our stubbornness, we need you to deal with that. The pride that we have. God, we need all that stuff to be out of the way so that we can receive from you. That we would have soft hearts. And the other thing, God, we want to pray is that we would be eager to respond in faith and obedience. That as you speak to us individually, we're ready to leap up with a yes. I'm ready to do it, God. I'm ready to obey what you've spoken to me this morning. And so, God, here we go. We're going to engage the text. We ask that you would teach us in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So we're going to just take this in three pieces. We're going to talk about what was historical, what was current at the time of Jesus, and then what is to come. Let me put the text again in front of you, verse 37. You see that he's speaking to the crowd that's in front of him, which is Jerusalem. He's in the city of Jerusalem. And he cries out. The language here, the genre of this is a lament. This is a mourning over the state of Jerusalem. Now, you know, if you read through the Bible, you see that Jerusalem is this special place where God has been working. Even before David made it the capital of Israel, there have been things that have been significant in the story of God there in Jerusalem. And it's the place, this is the place where God has decided to work. And we're even going to talk a little bit about how he's going to work in the future in Jerusalem. But Jesus there, days before his crucifixion, he is mourning over the condition of the Jewish people in this city. And so he says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. It's a description of the city. You'll recall last week we closed with a text that talked about this very thing that Jesus gave a warning to the Pharisees, talking about their persecution of the people that God had sent. And Jesus promised that he would send even more who would also face this ongoing persecution. So Jesus, as he just wants to describe Jerusalem, he says, You're Jerusalem, and your identity is you're the killers of the prophets, the stoners of the one God sends. So let's look briefly just at what was, what was, kind of just the biblical history here. Again, he's referring to this history. Let me give you just a couple of passages that recall this persistent compassion of God. That he in his care would send these prophets to the nation. If we go to 2 Chronicles 36, this is in your Old Testament. If you're looking at a Bible, you would turn left or you would go earlier up in the books of the Bible on an app. This is 2 Chronicles telling the history of the nation of Israel during the times of the kings. And this is near the end of 2 Chronicles. Near the end of the story, these scholars or scribes that put together this story, they said, But the Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent word against them by the hand of his messengers, sending them time and time again, for he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. Verse 16. But the nation they kept ridiculing God's messengers, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets until the Lord's wrath was so stirred up against his people that there was no remedy. One of the ways that God has always worked with people, going back to the very beginning of the story in Genesis, is that he warns people. I want you to multiply. I want you to subdue and rule. You're going to bear my image. I want you to tend to the garden and take care of it. Just that one tree right there, the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, I don't want you to take from that. The implication is that God wanted to be the Jewish source of wisdom. Knowing good and bad is this idea of wisdom. In your life this week, you're going to determine that's good and that's bad. And he wants to be your source of wisdom. He wants to be your tree of the knowledge of good and bad. He didn't want them to be self-sufficient. Instead, he wanted them to rely on him. And so he said, Don't take from that tree. By implication, they would have taken and gained wisdom from God. And yet, what did they do? Did they heed the words of God? No. Many of you have had kids, you've raised your kids. And when your kids are doing life and maybe getting close to doing the wrong thing, most of us, a good parent, gives verbal instructions, right? You say, hey, don't do that thing there, right? Take care of this issue over here, right? Make sure you clean up your room. Make sure you're doing your homework. Make sure you treat people in this particular way. There's this verbal communication. That's the first step of discipline in our homes. Discipline is just the idea of giving structure. Some of you think of the word discipline, you think of like getting spanked or whooped on the butt with a belt or something like that. But really, discipline starts with just communication of structure. And God in his love has been the God of communication from the very beginning, where he's saying, Listen, this is what I don't want you to do. Don't do this thing. And so God was saying and recalling with the nation of Israel, I sent people to you. In my compassion, I gave you verbal instruction. But here's your response. You kept ridiculing God's messengers. It's amazing. Let me show you another one. This is from Jeremiah 7.25. It's going to be the same story, right? What I want you to see is as Jesus is, last week he's sharply criticizing the Pharisees. This week he's mourning over the condition, the spiritual condition of the people. But this is not a new theme. This is a reoccurring theme throughout Scripture. So in Jeremiah 7.25, it says, Since the day your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until today, I have sent all my servants, the prophets, to you, time and time again. However, my people wouldn't listen to me or pay attention, but became obstinate. They did more evil than their ancestors. When you speak all these things to them, they will not listen to you. This is God speaking to Jeremiah. When you call to them, they will not answer you. Therefore, declare to them, This is the nation that would not listen to the Lord their God, and would not accept discipline. Truth is perished, it's disappeared from their mouths. Cut off the hair of your sacred vow and throw it away. Raise up a dirge on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and abandoned the generation under his wrath. This language, it's like cut off the hair of your sacred vows and raise up a dirge on the barren heights. It's this idea of mourning. And this is what Jesus is doing right before he dies, is he's mourning over the spiritual condition of the people. And my question for you the question that I think God would ask us is is he mourning over our spiritual condition? Is he looking at us and seeing a self-sufficient people? Is he is he looking at our story and saying, I sent to you this person? I sent to you this person, I spoke to you in this way, I let this thing over here happen to you because I'm trying I love you and I'm trying to give you truth. I care for you. And are you listening? With our kids, we do that discipline, the verbal correction, and then it's like, okay, you're not gonna listen. Well, I'm gonna give you some pain in your life. I'm gonna say, hey, you got to take a timeout, or I'm gonna put you in a take a break, right? You're gonna be disciplined, you're gonna lose the benefits of your technology, right? I'm gonna amp up the pain in your life so that you're motivated to receive what's being said. So you're motivated to change, right? We do that with our kids so that when they turn 18, 19, 20, they become adults and they're independent for us. They can engage with God in a healthy way. Where God is now the one, and he's been the one even before they're 18. He's the one who's speaking and saying to them. And they've learned they're familiar with the idea of verbal correction. They know what it feels like to be corrected. And it's not this thing to be rebuffed and be like, hey, don't tell me that that thing, right? Some of you are like that. Some of you, as you get correction, you're like, you kind of throw your shoulders back, and it's just like, you don't talk to me like that, right? No. We we discipline our kids so that as God is chastening them and as they're doing life, they're moldable, their hearts are tender instead of being foolish, right? The fool is the one who's just like rejects the correction and the words of God. It just is a miserable way to live life, right? But God is God, like God's not detoured from his faithfulness to the nation or his love for them because of their rebellion. What does he do? He says, Okay, well, you're gonna face some hard days. The image that we get next in our text, verse um thirty-seven, he says, I had longed to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks. Hens, this is what I've learned about hens. Hens they quite literally call their chicks to themselves, they shelter them under their wings for warmth and protection. This gathering reflex, it's driven by specific maternal clucking. They literally are roosting and clucking rapidly, and the chicks learn to obey the verbal calls of the hen, often resulting in the brood huddling beneath the hen's spread wings. Uh they the the checks, the chicks between day one and thirteen will spend about 60% of their time underneath the wings of the hen to regulate their heat and to protect them from harm. And the hen literally has a call that she will do to differentiate between a ground attack versus an aerial attack. Isn't that fascinating? And so Jesus talks to this crowd on the Temple Mount and says, This is how I wanted to care for you. This is this is my disposition towards you was to care for you as if you were a chick needing to be pulled under the wings of the hen. Again, this is not new language in scripture. In Deuteronomy 32, 11, it says he watches over his nest like an eagle. He hovers over his young. He spreads his wings and catches him and carries him on his feathers. Listen to me, church. Some of you have been through a hellish life. You have scars and pain from relationships and disappointments, hopes and dreams that have not been realized. You're disappointed even with yourself. And it is sometimes difficult from that position to let the guard down in your heart and to be cared for in this way. But you need to know that the God of the Bible is this God who wants to picture himself as this maternal caring hen that can put you under her wings and to protect you, to keep you warm, to alert you to oncoming harm. That's that invitation. You come to church, you're here, you're hearing this long-haired guy preach from Matthew 23. But I hope what you're hearing is Jesus speaking and teaching, and you're hearing the invitation of love for your life. And you know, look at there is this life where things are like broken and there's suffering and there's pain and people dying, and there's all this junk that goes on, and yet you're able to still look and see a beautiful sunset. You're still able to long for love in relationships. You're still capable of dreaming for things that are good. And that's because you're made by the God who is good. And the God who is good, who loves you deeply, is not leaving you in your pain and suffering and your alienation from the life of God. He sent Jesus so that he could take away your sin and get you on the path to recovery, the recovery of life. In fact, Jesus cried out. He said on the Temple Mount, it's in John, same setting. He said, Come to me, all you who thirst, and I will give you rivers of living water that will well up from your inward being. It's an internal life source. So many of the people around us are desperately hungry, running after the good, looking for a life source, and they'll they'll pursue a career or they'll pursue substances or relationships or entertainment or laziness, all for what they think is the good life. And Satan's ripping them off, and they're cut off from the life of God, not knowing that Jesus' invitation is come to me. I want to give you living water boiling up, rolling out of you, just this spring of life that you can have. One more verse similar to this Psalm 91 4. He will cover you with his feathers. You'll Take refuge under his wings. His faithfulness will be a protective shield. God wants to care for you. It's on you to receive what he wants to do in your life. Let's talk a little bit about what Jesus is doing in the present day. Not necessarily our day, but the moment, because he's talking about what they've done. Here he has just a brief statement for them about his time. He says, You've rejected. He closes off 37 saying, I wanted to do all this for you, but you were unwilling. Why can't I be a chick under your wings, Jesus? Because you're unwilling. You're unwilling. The question for you and I is, does he look at, does he say that to you and I? Does he say, I had all this for you, but you're unwilling? Some of you are like, well, you know, I had all these hopes and dreams, but it must have not been God's plan. Well, maybe your dreams are not aligned with the will of God. That is possible. But it's also possible that the good work God wants to do in your life is stymied and not happening because you're unwilling. You're unwilling to listen to the prophets he's sending into your life, the circumstances that are popping up. God speaks to us in four key ways. And it's really obvious that God's talking to you and I in these four ways. One of those ways is through the Bible, right? We read our Bibles and He's speaking right into our lives. The other way is through prayer, right? We're praying, He puts impressions on our heart. The third way is through circumstances, like closed doors and open doors. Like you had hoped to do this, but the money's not there. So it's like the circumstances not worked out, and God's speaking to you, revealing his will by that door being closed. And the fourth way is through people, through God's people. You're around God's people, they're talking to you. My wife was working at the center on Friday, and I was flying back from Chicago. She's telling me some lady was there. I don't think she's here today. She walks up and she just starts prophesying, speaking the words that God was laying on her heart over my wife. Just speaking a prophetic word over her life. And things that she didn't tell this lady, the story of her life. But this lady just felt like she had these words from God. I had that happen to me earlier in 2024. I'm sitting driving the truck, dropping off food, which I rarely do, as ended up at a location, talking to one of the sites, and the lady she just says, Hey, I think God's laid this thing on my heart. Can I share it with you? And she begins to speak. She had no idea, and she literally said things to me that I had been asking God about. Nobody knew. I didn't even tell my wife. I didn't know nobody knew that those were the questions I asked. And she literally says, This is what you need to focus on. This is going to happen in your life. You need to not worry about this thing. That's the blessing about being a child of God in the space where God's people are at. But here's the thing. Again, are you living in verse 37 where you're unwilling? God may be like, hey, I've got all these wealth and riches, just like a fullness of life that I want to pour out on you, but you're unwilling. And so Jesus tells these people in Jerusalem, see, your house is left to you desolate. Your house is left to you desolate. This was spoken of in Micah as well. This is a prophet, again, out of in your Bible, out of the Old Testament. He says, Therefore, because of you, Zion will be ploughed like a field. Jerusalem will become ruins, and the temple's mount will be a high, a high thicket. Excuse me. About 40 years after Jesus says these things, uh, Jerusalem was destroyed. A man, a Roman um general named Titus, in 70 uh BC or AD, came to Jerusalem with four Roman legions and they attacked the city. They put up um uh embankments around it and they sieged the city. They literally cut down um every green thing, every tree ten miles out from Jerusalem, because that was the fuel source. That was where um they would be able to get fruits and vegetables off of you know trees and nuts, olives. They literally decimated everything around the city and they just basically kept everybody there until late in the siege it the temple caught on fire and it was completely sacked. The the Roman government took away the um special ornaments and stuff in the temple, and it left, it was left barren. These are some of the ruins that have been dug up from that time. We we still have um examples of some of the rocks that were thrown against Jerusalem that were used as a uh a part of this siege. Some of the weapons that were used in this uh battle in 70 AD are there. And um, and so Jesus said that their house would be desolate. We have archaeological evidence of it happening. Your Bible is true. When Jesus talks, his words come true. He's not just a commentator on TV, he's not just giving you an opinion. What he says happens. And it did. What is to come though? Because Jesus says in verse 39, I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Future recognition, future recognition at the parisia or the return of Christ. You see, the Bible doesn't just say that Jesus came as a historic figure 2,000 years ago, but the Bible promises that Jesus will come again. And in Matthew's context, where he says this, um, where he's talking about judgment, when he says, Um, you will not see me again until he's talking about a future reversal, when the people finally greet the king. This is borrowed from Psalm 118. In fact, the crowd just days earlier had quoted Psalm 118 when he came in on the donkey, and they said, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. But that was not the moment. It was like a foreshadowing of something that Psalm 118 was talking about in the future. Let me read to you from Zechariah just briefly. Zechariah 12, 10 says this, then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the residents of Jerusalem. That's what we're talking about, Jerusalem. They will look at me whom they pierced. Now, this was a prophecy before the Messiah came, before he's crucified, and yet God guided this prophet to talk about a future day when the nation of Israel is going to look on him whom they pierced. And they're going to mourn for him as one who mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly for him as one who weeps for a firstborn. There is a future day that is coming for Jerusalem where they will see Jesus again. They went through a time of desolation. One of the historical, more recent historical, miraculous things is this the repatriation of Jews back into Israel. The fact that God has kind of reassembled and allowed the Jewish people to have a home of their own back in this original location. In Romans 11, 36, Paul talked about this. It says, and in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion, he will turn godless away from Jacob. This is Paul. You can go read the context of this in Romans 11. But Paul speaks of this future day when Jesus will return, he will establish his reign and rule from Jerusalem, and the people of God will gather themselves to him, and there will be a Jewish remnant. And as we look at Jesus in this moment of mourning, we can map our life onto it. And we know that many of us are here gathered because when God sent the prophet to us, he sent somebody to us, we responded to God in the right way, right? We heard the gospel message, the good news invitation into Jesus' kingdom, and we responded and we said, Yes, I want that. And that's why we're here. We're gathered today, celebrating that together, saying, I want to keep going. I responded in faith, I want to keep going. And some of you are here because you're sensing that invitation to this day. You still maybe haven't fully responded, but you're aware that God is drawing you. And your next step is to have that conversation with God where you say, God, I'm ready. I'm ready to turn my life around towards you and to give my life to you. I'm ready to trust in the Lord Jesus. But I want you to see something else in this text. There's the responsiveness that we've talked about, where we don't want to be the unwilling, we want to be the willing recipients to what God's doing. But here's the other thing: Jesus has gone to heaven, he's given us his spirit, and now we are the body of Jesus on the earth, right? We're called the body of Christ, the extension of Christ's work on earth. And the disposition that we see here in this text, when Jesus says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I long for you, I want to gather you. The Spirit of God puts that attitude in your hearts. It's this warm, tingly love toward your neighbor. It's this softness that seems alien, of like, wow, I never used to be that soft. I didn't normally care for other people like that. But you see, the work of God, the kingdom of God is coming in your heart by the power of his spirit, changing your heart towards other people. Where you line up with the statements of Jesus, longing for people to be gathered into his care, to experience his care, to receive the work, the message that he has. And so we want to follow Jesus, right? That's one of the things we say when we come to a text. And one of the things that we see is when Jesus does something, oftentimes we in some way are emulating it. We're like Jesus. We want to be like him. And so what I want to encourage us to do is not just to be like, hey, I'm good. I was willing, I got in the kingdom. But the next step is this softness to be like Jesus, where instead of being ticked off, that people are stubborn, self-sufficient, angry, and even want to stone you, instead, your heart is broken for them. That's what God wants to do in our hearts. Remember, the person who's mourning here is the one who knows he's going to the cross for you and me. Here he is crying over the state of Israel, the state of Jerusalem, knowing that this is the audience about to crucify him. That's what he wants to do in our hearts. That's why in Matthew chapter 5, he says, he says, hey, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. Because that is who he is. That's the strangeness of his kingdom. He's not saying to you, hey, muster up that love. Like get your act together. He's not beating you over the head with that. He's saying, here, let me give you my spirit. Just give place to my spirit. Let my spirit fill your heart with love. Says in Romans that he sheds his love abroad in our hearts. Just like you paint a wall, you shed abroad that paint on that wall. He wants to shed abroad his love across your heart. May we say amen. Right? That God would do that in our lives. Lord, we thank you for this incredible demonstration of love. And we just bring our hard hearts before. I bring my hard heart before you. I just need every day to have a soft and tender heart before you. I can't produce that, God. But your spirit can work in me and on me to help me love others. Help us to be that, God. This city is really rough. There's a lot of hurt people that turn around and hurt other people. And Lord, we need to be a people just full of your love. And so we offer ourselves afresh to you. Come and do this work in our lives. We pray. In Jesus' name. Amen.