Karen Beilharz: Welcome to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia,
that seeks to glorify God through biblically sound, thought-provoking and challenging talks and interviews.
In this episode, from a chapel service held on Tuesday 20th of May, 2025, David Höhne, Academic Dean
and Lecturer in the Theology, Philosophy and Ethics department at Moore Theological College, speaks on
Luke 7:18-35, and Jesus' conversation with John the Baptist's disciples and with the witnessing crowd.
David reminds us that wisdom is vindicated by her children and that the wisdom of God is ultimately found in Christ Jesus himself.
We hope you find the episode helpful.
David Höhne: Well, after receiving a threefold warning to stay in my lane from student sermons in men's chapel last Wednesday,
i've decided to focus our time together today on Luke seven 18 to 35, our New Testament reading.
This morning we'll be considering more of how Christ Jesus deconstructs human concepts of faith.
But there'll be no jokes about French philosophers.
The vice principal warned me that with engineers and uh, allied health workers in the room, there could be safe ministry issues.
So we have to look after the vulnerable.
So here we are in Luke chapter seven, and the movement that Jesus has started last time we were together is now well underway.
Yet, as I noted last week, the Jesus movement is only one of the groups amongst several others who were caught up in the wake of this great prophet.
Through whom God visits his people as they acknowledge.
In Luke seven verse 16, the crowd swarm around Jesus.
Like so many insects around a fluorescent globe, the shallowness of their incessant jostling and bustling is
highlighted by the unexpected moments of intimate encounter between Jesus and seemingly random individuals.
Like the Gentile centurion, Luke seven, verse nine.
Jesus heard the words of the centurion and was amazed at him and turned to the crowds following him.
He said, I tell you, I've not found so great of faith even in Israel.
Then there's the achingly beautiful tale of the sinful woman who found salvation through self-abasement.
In chapter seven verse 38, she stood behind Jesus at his feet, weeping and began to wash his feet With her
tears, she wiped his feet with her hair of her head, kissing them and anointing them with fragrant oil.
Well, our attention this morning is on John the Baptist, the Ryan Gosling of the Gospel Stories.
Yeah, it's right.
It isn't it?
When I was a kid it was Tolton.
Heston.
Oh, mighty God.
Not like the creepy John of the chosen series.
This was a hairy, tested John.
So, but I chose Ryan Gosling for today.
So let's get back to the Bible.
There are three important questions in this passage that help us out understand
how the wisdom of God is vindicated against the disdain of the devoted.
What we're looking for is how the wisdom of God is vindicated against the disdain of the devoted.
But before we get into that, let's pray together.
Our great God and loving heavenly Father, we pray that in the power of your spirit, we might indeed see Jesus and hear his voice and so be saved.
Amen.
So firstly, wisdom's first vindication to revolt is human to regenerate.
His divine to revolt is human to regenerate.
Divine.
The first question that Jesus asked or is asked of Jesus is in verse 20 of
chapter seven, are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else?
The characterization of John the Baptist in Luke's account begins with spectacles, angels,
and miracles, not unlike the Lord himself, but by the time we get to chapter seven.
John's presence in the narrative and possibly his prophetic patience seemed to have diminished.
Are you the one who is to come,
or should we expect someone else?
Is this uncertainty we hear from the mouth of the prophet, like Elijah complaining to the Lord that he was all alone and ready to die.
If it is, it's a far cry from the she Guevara missing demands of chapter three.
Let me remind you, Luke three, seven.
John said to the crowds who came out to be baptized by him, brood of vipers, who warned
you to flee from the coming wr. Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance.
And don't start saying to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father for I tell you that God can raise children for Abraham from these stones.
The acts is already at the root of the trees.
Therefore, every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
Back then, the Baptizer knew his place in the unfolding plans of God.
When asked if he was the Messiah, his reply was more mystery and mayhem.
Chapter three, verse 16.
I baptize you with water.
For one who is more powerful than I am is coming.
I'm not worthy to untie the straps of his sandals.
He will baptize you with a Holy Spirit and fire.
His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the
weed into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out
here in chapter seven.
John's been in prison for a while now.
The cost of preparing the way for the Lord in moral and political terms has perhaps taken a toll.
The kingdom of God has not put imperial occupation or despotic rule to the sword in a fiery blaze of glory.
Instead of history, suddenly ceasing in some kind of apocalyptic disaster,
passion and devotion have met their real foe.
Time waiting
and the wisdom of the Christ.
The Christ has come as Isaiah foresaw, but to give life rather than to take it.
And so he informs John in chapter seven, verse 22, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk.
Those with leprosy are cleansed.
The deaf here, the debtor raised.
The poorer told the good news, and blessed is the one who isn't offended by me.
I am the one you sought, but my ministry isn't as small as you expected.
Humans think that change only comes through revolution, but God intends to bring change through regeneration.
Look again at how Jesus message to John ends in verse 23.
It's a pretty remarkable thing to say to the devoted, lest is the one who isn't offended by me.
It's what we expect to say to unbelievers or antagonists, or outsiders, but this is a message that Jesus passes on to the Baptist.
To his cousin, one born.
Also from a message of angels and blessed from an early age with the power of the spirit.
Even so, Jesus tells John, the kingdom is never late, nor is it early.
It arrives precisely when he means to and in his chosen manner.
I've had quite a few conversations with the young, restless and reformed setting me straight, about four years of
theological education or even one wasting precious time when there's so much evangelism to be done, to flee the coming Roth
in an era of instant gratification for the bourgeois.
Where feelings and dreams must never be denied, and entrusting yourself to the wisdom of God is disempowering at best, cruel, and unusual punishment.
At worst.
The Lord says, blessed is the one who isn't offended by me, by my timing, by how I allow you to participate in my ministry.
Wisdom is vindicated by her children because they wait on her timing
and wisdom is vindicated a second time because it's the righteous who are first to repent.
The next lesson the Lord wants us to learn is introduced in the following question.
What did you go out into the wilderness to see?
Chapter seven verse 24.
Now, if we thought perhaps that John the Baptist was getting a serve earlier, Jesus turns his real criticism to the crowds.
That chameleon character in the gospel of Luke, who loves to run with the miracles and hunt with the Pharisees, but
the wisdom of God deconstructs the crowd's faith in lifestyle leaders.
Look at verse 24.
What did you go out into the wilderness to see a reed swaying in the wind?
What then did you go out to see a man dressed in soft clothes?
Those who are splendidly, dressed and lived in luxury are in royal palaces.
John's moral authority doesn't come from finery and flattery.
He was, in fact an old time, hardcore scrutineer of Israel's leaders and their soft idolatrous underbelly.
Moreover, John the Baptist is no snowflake, whining like a narcissist about
imagined obstacles to a life of promise, what God owes him for his ministry.
Verse 26, what did you go out to see your prophet?
Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet, John was indeed the very herald of Yahweh for foreseen by Malachi verse 27.
This is the one about whom it is written.
See, I'm sending my messenger ahead of you.
He will prepare your way before me.
I tell you, among those born of women, no one is greater than John.
John is the last and greatest of those sent to point to the coming of the Lord and his Christ.
As Jesus mentions later in chapter 16, the law and the prophets were until John.
Since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed.
Christ's answer to his own question about John clarifies the way of God's righteousness, the unrepentant, uh, the enemies of God's salvation.
Look at verse 29 there, and when all the people, including the tax collectors heard this, they acknowledged God's way of righteousness because they'd
been baptized with John's baptism, but since he had not baptized the Pharisees and experts in the law, they rejected the plan of God for themselves.
They rejected the plan of God for themselves.
The leaders of Israel, the teachers of the law, the ones devoted to Moses,
the baptism of repentance from John is not the spirit of regeneration that comes from the Christ, but it does reveal those who have no desire.
For God's wisdom,
wisdom is vindicated by her children here because the righteous are the first to repent.
Fundamental to the character, conviction and competency of ministry is the capacity to repent wisdom's.
Third vindication is the fools don't know grace when they see it.
The third of wisdom's lessons comes from another question put to the people by Jesus.
Look at verse 31.
To what then should I compare the people of this generation and what are they like
if we think the crowd is on side with Jesus?
Through his association with John, the Lord asks a third question that suggests a
deep contrarians in the crowd, the childish and spiteful dark side of mom mentality.
Verse 32.
What are they like?
They're like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to each other.
We played the fruit for you, but you didn't dance.
And we sang a lament, but you didn't weep
for John the Baptist did not come eating bread or drinking wine.
And you say he has a demon.
The son of man has come eating and drinking and you say, look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
Genuine understanding for the crowds and their leaders is as reliable as a social media stacks on where every reactive
assertion is followed by the blazing hot Twitter rage as the one who was on the internet is wrong, is virtually hung,
drawn, and quoted where people speak according to the flesh, things they would never have the courage to say in the flesh.
Jesus quotation here.
His question is highly reminiscent of the description of God's wisdom.
In the beginning of Proverbs, let me remind you from Proverbs one 20.
Wisdom calls out in the street.
She makes her voice heard in the public squares.
She cries out above the commotion, she speaks at the entrance of the city gates.
How long inexperienced ones will you love?
Ignorance.
How long will you mockers enjoy mocking and you fools hate knowledge.
As Jesus says, wisdom is vindicated by her children.
Now, Jesus is associated with wisdom in several important times throughout Luke's narrative.
His childhood is marked by wisdom and the grace of God.
In chapter two, verse 40, in chapter 11, verse 31, we're told something greater than the wisdom of Solomon is here in Jesus.
And in the seven woes spoke to the Jewish leaders in chapter 1149.
The wisdom of God said, I will send them prophets and apostles.
Some of them they will kill and persecute
here, especially in chapter 11.
Jesus announces that the failure of the men or leaders of Israel to recognize the wisdom of God among them, results in their condemnation.
The fools who don't know a good thing when they seek it, don't just miss out.
They risk the condemnation of God for rejecting his grace towards them.
Now, the significance of all this, of course, is summed up later by the Apostle Paul
who was given the task of revealing the mystery of God's wisdom found in the cross.
Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom.
Yet, to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
We speak God's hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory.
None of the rulers of this age knew this wisdom because if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
The wisdom of God deconstructs the faith of the world at the cross.
For there the sum of all human aspiration and piety is on display in the form of the battered and bloodied king of the Jews.
He becomes what we truly are
in his wisdom and grace.
As Bonhoeffer put it, God lets himself be pushed out of the world and onto the cross.
To save us from our own folly.
He has nails put in his hands and feet so that we can't push him any further away.
And so Jesus says, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.
The wisdom of God is regeneration before revolution, where the righteous are the first to repent and grace does not go unrecognized and unappreciated.
Squabbles between fruitfulness and faithfulness.
Wisdom is vindicated by her children
as we too have to wait on the timing of the Lord.
For our ministries, wisdom is vindicated by her children.
When we feel that we are suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, because we've simply had to comply with a larger
program in a ministry context, whether it was the Rector's vision, the campus leaders' design, or the mission director's imperative,
wisdom is vindicated by her children.
When we take the initiative to repent in times of conflict.
Wisdom is vindicated by her children,
or even when we have the opportunity to give feedback on the service we have received, wisdom is vindicated by her children.
Let's pray that that'll be true of us,
our gracious God, and loving heavenly Father.
You sent your son as your wisdom incarnate,
and we banded together with unrighteous men and showed our aspiration for power and our religious devotion by nailing him to a cross.
And yet, in your immeasurable grace, this was your wisdom.
Father, empower us to be wisdom's children.
To respond to your grace for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Karen Beilharz: Thank you for listening to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College.
Our vision as a College is to see God glorified by men and women living for
and proclaiming Jesus Christ, growing healthy churches and reaching the lost.
We invite you to attend any of our upcoming events, including this one that's happening at Moore College.
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in the New Testament" with T Desmond Alexander, and last year's series on the Book of Galatians with Tom Schreiner.
This year, Peter Orr, Lecturer in the New Testament Department at Moore Theological
College, will be delivering the 2025 Annual Moore College Lectures on the topic of faith.
What is faith?
Is faith without knowledge still faith?
What did Jesus mean when he said that if we have faith as small as a mustard seed, we can uproot a tree or move a mountain?
And why does Paul tell us that we are declared right with God by faith, apart from works of the
law in Romans, while James insists that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone?
Join us on the mornings of Monday the 4th to Friday the 8th of August, and hear from Peter
Orr how God provides us with an unfolding revelation of faith across the whole Bible.
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