Luke 7:24-35

Butler's Comments

SECTION 4

The Superficial (Luke 7:24-35)

24 When the messengers of John had gone, he began to speak to the crowds concerning John: What did you go out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken by the wind? 25What then did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft clothing? Behold, those who are gorgeously appareled and live in luxury are in kings-' courts. 26What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 27This is he of whom it is written,

-Behold, I send my messenger before thy face,
who shall prepare thy way before thee.-'

28I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. 29(When they heard this all the people and the tax collectors justified God, having been baptized with the baptism of John; 30but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.)

31 To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? 32They are like children sitting in the market place and calling to one another,

-We piped to you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not weep.-'

33For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine; and you say, -He has a demon.-' 34The Son of man has come eating and drinking; and you say, -Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!-' 35Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.

Luke 7:24-30 Perversity: John the Baptist had been a fire-eating prophet of the judgment of God upon his own nation so filled with materialism and hypocrisy. Many people had initially heard John's preaching with excitement (Luke 3:15), but the penetrating righteousness of the truth he preached soon began to work on their consciences and they began to denounce him. Jesus takes this most opportune situation (John's asking about His ministry) to vindicate John's faithfulness in his ministry and his message as the revelation of God.

Jesus challenges their motives for first going out to hear John. What did they expect or want when they went to Johna fickle, unstable, vacillating good-old-boy who would bend with the ebb and flow of human opinion like a reed bends in the wind? Did they expect or want a preacher who was self-indulgent, fawning after those in positions of human power like those of Herod's court or like Herod himself fawning after the Romans? Jesus-' rhetorical question implies that this is indeed what many of them wanted. That is why they turned away from John the Baptist, He was certainly no vacillating, self-indulgent pawn of human tyrants. He was in prison because he dared to condemn a king's conduct. He was a prophetand more than a prophet! He was the forerunner of the Messiah predicted by the prophets (esp. Malachi 3:1). He held a special place of service in God's redemptive program afforded no other prophet. Jesus added this epitaph, to which a literal Greek translation adds idiomatic emphasis: I tell you, greater among those born of women than John, no one is! This applies not only to John's position as forerunner, but to John's personal character. Jesus said John was the greatest man in the human race. That statement of Jesus minimizes much of what the world calls greatness in human beings. John had none of the trappings of worldly power, worldly wealth, sophistication, travel, education, longevity and yet among those born of women, not a greater has ever lived.

Then Jesus utters a very interesting and paradoxical statement, ... yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. Hobbs puts it this way, He (John) stood on the shoulders of all foregoing prophets as the one forerunner of Him whom they foresaw. But those coming thereafter stand on John's shoulders.. He saw only one picture of the Christ. But those who have come after him see the whole; death, resurrection, promised return and coming judgment. We see the end from the beginning. Jesus means that those who have become Christians have their covenant enacted upon better promises (cf. Hebrews 8:6). Those who believe in Christ after the cross and resurrection and the ministry of the Holy Spirit have seen God as John the Baptist could never have seen Him. As great as John's position and character was, those who believe in the Christ after him have a much greater privilege. Do we not also have greater responsibility? Only the perverse would reject the message John preached. What he proclaimed was so transparently true only the calloused hypocrite would object to it. When Jesus announced that John was God's forerunner of the Messiah and that he was the greatest, in God's scheme of things, among all the prophets, many sinners justified (Gr. edikaiosan) God, by submitting to John's baptism. The word justified means they declared God to be right (as He spoke through John) that they needed to repent and be baptized by John. So they did! Justifying God means to put God in His rightful place, Absolute Sovereign in one's life. But the Pharisees and lawyers, hypocrites who pretended to worship God, rejected the purpose (Gr. boulen, will, counsel, deliberate design) of God for themselves (which was forgiveness and repentance) refusing to be baptized in John's baptism. These hypocrites, no matter how much they pretended, would not put God in his rightful placeSovereign over their lives. Why? Because, as Jesus would soon reveal (Luke 7:43 ff), they did not think they needed forgiveness or repentance!

Luke 7:31-35 Petulance: Those who wish only a superficial relationship to God and truth will find every excuse possible to have it. The Pharisees and other hypocrites of that age were like petulant children of the streets. They did not want to play God's game at all. When John the Baptist came, they said John's concepts are too austere. John is all doom and gloom and judgment. John demands too rigid a lifehe is too ascetic. So they would not accept John's concepts. When Jesus came, they said His concepts were too liberated, too normal, too cheerful. Jesus is a wine-bibber and a glutton. So they would not accept Jesus-' concepts. They condemned in Jesus what they implied John should have manifested, and condemned in John what they implied Jesus should have manifested. They simply were not going to play God-games unless they could dictate the rules. They really did not want to play at all so they said neither John or Jesus was playing the right game.

But Jesus-' reply was, Wisdom is justified by all her children. In other words, the rightness of both John's ministry and His is vindicated by what those ministries were producingrepentance and faith and changed lives! As seen by superficial people, who really did not want to see, the ministries of John and Jesus might have appeared to be in conflict. But that was because the hypocrites, Pharisees and others, judged them by human standards. Their concept of the kingdom game was human power, exploitation of the poor and ignorant, manipulation through human traditions and violent wresting of the kingdom from God's hands into their own (cf. the parallel to this incident in Matthew 11:7-19). So they said neither John nor Jesus knew anything about the kingdom game at all. Jesus said, Wait and seewhat John the Baptist and I both say about the kingdom will be proven to be true! There are still worldly-minded people with superficial views of the kingdom of God, acting like spoiled brats, unwilling to accept Christ's mind on the kingdom. They do not want to play by God's rules so they either try to destroy the game for others or do not get in the game at all!