We’ll be in Matthew chapter 4 this morning, continuing on in the Gospel of Matthew.

And I will say on accident, I think this morning’s sermon is awfully Christmas themed. I thought I should just save this one for Christmas morning, but it’s the Christmas season all the same. So we’ll hear it and be glad for it.

Matthew chapter 4, we’ll be in verses 12 through 17.

I’ll read that for us.

It says, Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. The land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light. And for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them light has dawned.

You’ve heard the statement before, ignorance is bliss. How often do we say that when we make a mistake? And think, well, I didn’t know, and maybe that’s better. But I think the reality is often ignorance is not bliss.

Ignorance is inexcusable. And ignorance oftentimes comes at the hurt of ourselves or perhaps others around us. I remember several years ago at the church I was serving, we had this night of worship. It was called Night of Justice and Worship. And we had this guy come in from the International Justice Mission. And he told me, He talked about at length human trafficking, human slavery. And I think a lot of people are very unaware of human trafficking, sex trafficking that happens around the world. And it was incredible to hear all these things that I was so ignorant about. And you hear the first time he went into a raid to bust up this place. He ran out of the place just in tears, not believing the things that he saw. This past week I read two articles on the same subject. Natalie Grant. Popular Christian artist. She was speaking before Congress and was saying how she was ignorant. But went to India and she saw a six-year-old girl in a cage. She saw so many horrible atrocities. And it moved her out of her ignorance to do something about it. I read another story about a former Dodgers general manager, Kevin Malone. He got out of baseball and the Lord called him in to fight human trafficking. He said locally there are over 100,000. Children who are being trafficked in the United States every year. And this moved him to start a non-profit organization. So ignorance isn’t bliss. Ignorance is so often inexcusable. And so as we round out this first section of Matthew’s gospel this morning, we’re going to see and we’re going to hear what Matthew said so many times. But I think Matthew doesn’t want us to miss it. And we cannot miss it. I think people think a lot of times they need religion. They need Jesus. They need Jesus for a number of different things. Perhaps they want financial security. Maybe God will give that to me. They want relational peace. They want that. They maybe have some kind of anxiety, depression, inner turmoil. They want a lot of different things. And people have a lot of different reasons for why they think they want and need religion. I’m not minimizing those things. But friends, Matthew doesn’t want us to be ignorant about the one reason why Christ came. Christ came, yes, to address so many issues that happened in our lives. But ultimately Christ came. Because you and I live in darkness. You and I live with a bondage to sin, a bondage to death. And Matthew says this is why Jesus came. And he’s going to remind us one last time here how Jesus is going to deal with it. In darkness and death, Jesus has come. Look at verse 12. It says, Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. That John… John the Baptist has been arrested. That’s not disconnected from what happens in the rest of these verses. It’s very critical. It’s not like some minor transitional point of detail. What Matthew says here concerning why John has been arrested, it very much so moves Jesus to do what Jesus does. But also it’s a very small picture of what is going to happen to Jesus. Remember we established several weeks ago that John the Baptist was a plain man. He wasn’t fancy. He was plain in his food. He was plain in his clothes. He was plain in the place that he lived. He didn’t care to rub shoulders with important people, religious or political. So John was a plain man with a plain message, right? Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Yet the Scriptures do tell us John had a special relationship with Herod Antipas. Remember Herod the Great, which was Herod Antipas’ father. He tried to murder Jesus when Jesus was a child. He committed infanticide to try to get at Jesus. For some reason… For some reason Herod now finds John to be a holy religious man. He has a soft spot for John. The Scriptures say Herod hears John gladly. So he likes to hear what John has to say. But Herod throws John into prison. Why? Well, because Herod had recently married his brother’s wife. Philip’s wife Herodias married Herod quite willingly. And so John is… All right with Herod. Herod, you can’t marry your brother’s wife. One, you can’t commit adultery. But secondly, the law of Moses says you cannot uncover your brother’s nakedness. It was especially wrong to marry your brother’s wife. It was allowed if perhaps your brother died and you needed to raise his child. But Salome was alive and so was Philip. So there’s no reason here for Herod to have married Herodias. And Herodias hates John and wants him dead. So right now he’s in prison. And here’s what this points to.

John’s message, while it was plain, it was not shallow. Yes, it was short, but it’s a full and deep message. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It’s not a cute catchphrase. It’s not a bumper sticker. It’s a powerful command that encompassed everything about who God is and what God demands of all people, certainly His own people. And so John was not willing, if you will, to let anyone just read the title of the book. Right. He demanded you read the whole book. He demanded you read the whole book, line by line, word by word. Have all of it or have none of it. But this interaction with Herod and Herodias, it points to this. So many people just want the catchphrase version of the kingdom. They want the bits. They want the pieces. They want what rubs them raw, the leaves. So many want the romantic, idealistic God of their wicked preferences, not the God who is there. And it comes at a great cost then, and we see it in John, to step into the space of such. And proclaim the whole message and compromise nothing. So this happening then, it leads Jesus to move on out of Nazareth and begin His ministry. See it in verse 13. And leaving Nazareth, He went and lived in Capernaum by the sea in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. Now it would be hard to argue that Jesus moved out of Judea and back into Galilee because He was a Christian. He was afraid of Herod. Remember how Jesus so often in His ministry supernaturally just disappears out of the crowds when they’re trying to kill Him. So I don’t think Jesus was afraid of Herod. Rather, Jesus knows with John’s ministry over, Jesus’ must begin. It’s the only reason John ever had a ministry was so that Jesus could show up on the scene and do His ministry. But please note, see this, where Jesus does His ministry. He doesn’t stay in high and lofty Judea. He comes to… There’s a lot of layers here. We’ve got to see them. Jesus moves out of His rural hometown of Nazareth. Remember, Jesus grew up in Podunk, Nazareth. But He moves to Capernaum in Galilee. And Capernaum had a much greater population. A lot of people. It had a very advantageous position on the northwest coast of the Sea of Galilee. So Jesus’ message in life would have been seen by so many people. The message about Jesus would have spread. So Jesus is wise to that. But come out another layer to Galilee. Galilee was despised and looked down upon by the religious elites living in southern Jerusalem. Galilee had been conquered so many times over the centuries. And every time it was conquered, more foreigners, more Gentiles were left behind. So Galilee was seen as this place of an intermix of religion. It was seen as a place with an intermix family. It wasn’t pure and devoted to Judaism the way that the Pharisees, would have been. So the presence of the influence of Gentiles is great here. The Jews are very nominal. They had a very small spot, speaking of population, in Galilee at this time. But that points to the larger reason why Jesus goes to Galilee. And it gets at this prophecy that He refers back to about Isaiah. This was once in ancient times the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. Now who were they? Well, they were two of the twelve tribes. They were the tribes of Israel. So when Joshua led God’s people into the promised land, he cast lots. Hey, you’re going to get this, you’re going to get this. And what Joshua said God said to do, you’re going to go and you’re going to wipe out the inhabitants. The wicked Gentiles, they’re false gods. Wipe all of them out completely. Don’t let any of them stay. And then you take over and possess the land. That’s not what happened. And so I want to run through a string of verses here so we can see it. In Judges 1.30, it says, Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants. Or the inhabitants of Nahalo. So the Canaanites lived among them, but became subject to forced labor. Judges 1.33, Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh or the inhabitants of Beth Anath. So they lived among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh and of Beth Anath became subject to forced labor for them. And so then when Joshua and the elders, the last of these great leaders, die, see what happens in Judges 2.1. And he said, this is God speaking, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, I will never break my covenant with you and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall break down their altars. But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns. Thorns in your sides and their God shall be a snare to you. And so we see the great culmination of this in 2 Kings 17 when once for all God forsakes the Israelites because they have forsaken Him. 2 Kings 17.6 In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halal and on the harbor, the river of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes. And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned. They had sinned against the Lord their God who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh the king of Egypt and had feared other gods, walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. So you see where Jesus is coming. He’s coming to a place that in current modern day is riddled with religious nominalism. Very nominal into devotion to God. Probably multiple religions going, among multiple Gentile nations, multiple cultures at work. These people are not earnest to know who the Lord is. It’s a place that’s despised. It’s a place that’s not looked upon well. Historically, it’s a place forsaken by God where God has left them because they had left God. It is a place then that’s spiritually dark. Very spiritually dark. And the tense in the Greek says dwelling in, sitting in, it means they’re stuck in the spiritual darkness. It’s an inescapable state that they cannot, that we cannot get out of.

Jesus came into our spiritual darkness.

That’s what Isaiah is making clear.

And I think it’s entirely a unique brand and kind of amazing all on its own that you and I, friends, can so often get over that wonderful truth.

That Jesus, holy, unrighteous, Jesus who is before all things, Jesus who is after all things, Jesus in whom all things hold together, the one for whom all things were created, the one by whom all things were created, the beloved of the Father who is altogether separate from evil and wickedness, would step down to our depraved, vile space. That He would interact with a humanity so wretched, so sin-sick. And I think if we could make the argument we deserve God’s rescue, we deserve Jesus to come near us, then perhaps we could, we could justify our apathy. But I don’t want to try to make that argument for myself.

I think less than 24 hours in my mind and heart have become plain. I have a proneness to wander into the darkness. Adam and Eve decisively wandered into the darkness. The Israelites time and time and time again after God’s many attempts to forgive them, what do they do? They wander into the darkness. And these people in modern day Galilee, what do they do? They’re just sitting in, happy to sit in, their, their darkness. None are worthy. No, not one. You see it in Peter. When Jesus says to Peter, Peter, cast out your nets. And Peter says, Oh Jesus, we’ve been fishing. There’s no fish out there. And He says, do it. I’ll do it for you, Jesus. He’s going to pacify Jesus. And the boats begin to sink.

And what does Jesus say? He says, get away from me, Lord. I’m a sinful man.

Peter recognizes in the moment, I am darkness. And this Jesus is altogether different. But isn’t that what makes grace so amazing? God’s unmerited favor amply poured out, not on friends, but on enemies against His cause. Rebels like us dwelling, sitting in darkness. That is grace so precious. It ought to be the sweetest sound to our ears, the sweetest taste to our mouths, that Christ came near us in the darkness. And it’s when we think, little of Christ coming, because we feel, to grasp how dark our darkness was. Just how unpardonable our offenses are that we care not that Christ came into our darkness. Which is really at the heart of the problem with the Israelites. It’s at the heart of the problem with the Gentile nations. It’s at the heart of our problem, friends. We’re complacent with the presence of sin in our lives. We see it not as that thing which riles up, royally offends, provokes the holy God of the universe. We see it as just a petty annoyance. Oh, there’s a housefly. Wish it wasn’t there.

That’s not how God sees it. God sees sin, God sees unrighteousness as a cancerous disease. And so God’s going to treat it like that. If He didn’t, He wouldn’t be God. God is what evil is not. And so if God is passive towards evil, He can’t possibly be God, because evil is very much so aggressively opposed to the very nature and will of God Himself. So necessarily,

sin inflames the necessary justice of God. And it makes us ask the question to ourselves. And we must ask it, Tom. Time and time again. Is sin as outrageous and heinous to us as it is to God? That’s the question.

And I think someone says, oh, that’s offensive to talk about sin. Let’s not point out rights and wrongs. Let’s not judge, not condemn. Friends, my response to that is there is no healing, there is no salvation apart from identifying the actual problem. Would you go to the doctor and say, doctor, don’t give it to me straight.

Say it in the most round of about ways that’s not going to upset me or offend me. Be very vague. And then how I might get better. Be even more vague. And just describe it to me in a sort of kind of way what prescription I need to heal. Well, that’s crazy. None of us do that when we’re physically sick. Yet, even within the church, friends, this is how we so often want to treat sin. And please note, Jesus was not always… He didn’t take a baseball bat to people’s heads. Jesus is quick to be kind. He’s quick to be gentle. He’s quick to point to people that there’s mercy and forgiveness. But there are times with the Pharisees and people alike that the most loving thing you can do is be blunt. It’s to be very honest about the reality of sin and what it will do. Jesus gets this way with Capernaum where He starts His ministry. Eventually in Matthew, He says, Capernaum, you’re going to be brought down to Hades. Why? Because they would not believe Jesus’ words about darkness and about light. The darkness of sin, unrighteousness, it’s not a problem. It’s not a pest, friends. It’s a cancer. And Christ coming close to us ought to make us take serious sin both for ourselves and the people around us. Someone once wrote concerning sin, man calls it an accident. God calls it an abomination. Man calls it blunder. God calls it blindness. Man calls it defect. God calls it disease. Man calls it chance. God calls it a choice.

Man calls it an error. God calls it enmity. Man calls it a fascination. But God calls it a fatality.

Friend, I’m happy for common graces that we get. You know, when the bills are paid. Everybody’s healthy. I’m in a warm or air-conditioned house. I’ve got clothes on my back. I’m grateful for these things. But they must never replace, friends, the joy we have because Christ came close to us. And we lose that truth when it gets muddled underneath a number of good things that keep us from dwelling on that eternal, wonderful fact. I don’t want to get over the Gospel. I don’t want to get over that Christ came near to sinners. And then it becomes the question of are you willing and wanting to daily resist sin? Do you mortify your flesh? Do you make it your daily work? Because as John Owen said, be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

Which goes back to what we’ve been talking about. Are you word saturated? Because you know where you find what the darkness looks like is through the Word of God. I’m looking at this Word and boy, it doesn’t look like the conversations I’ve been having. I’m looking at this Word and it doesn’t look like the thoughts I’ve been thinking. I’ve been looking at this Word and it doesn’t look like the way I’ve been treating or I see you treating people. So I constantly have to go back to the Scriptures. To define and redefine again what is darkness because I am, you are, we are prone to wonder into it. As Jonathan Edwards says, I need the Lord’s to change my affections. I have affections for what’s dark. But only Christ can show me the darkness and lead me into changing my affections so that my will will change to act like, to walk in the light.

In death and darkness,

look back at verse 16 with me.

It says, The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light.

And for those dwelling in the region in shadow of death, on them a light has dawned. So Israel in the Old Testament, they have the commandments of God, they have the promises of God, they have the Word of God, they have the power, protection of God on them, but not just for their own selves. Often times when we think about Israel in the Old Testament, we have this light, lopsided view. God only cares about Israel, nobody else. What’s true, Israel has a special relationship to God in the Old Testament. But along with that special relationship comes the responsibility that they must show. They must represent what it looks like to be God’s people for the benefit of the nations around them. That’s why they have the privileged position. So God is not just looking at Israel, He’s looking at interacting with Israel so the rest of the world around them, and we’ll see. Let me show you a few verses that kind of tease that out. We see it first in Genesis 12 when God speaking to Abraham says, I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So through Abraham, all the families will be blessed through this coming seed. Isaiah 42.6 I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I will take you by the hand and keep you, I will give you as a covenant for the people, a covenant, light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison, those who sit in darkness. There’s our sit in darkness. Isaiah 49. It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob. So it’s not enough just to save and preserve Israel. God says, I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. And then Paul makes it very clear in Acts 26 when he speaks, speaking before the king. He says that the Christ must suffer and that by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people, Jews, and to the Gentiles.

But as we’ve seen so many times, even earlier in this series through Matthew, the Israelites were terrible lights, weren’t they? They were barely dim. They loved to intermingle good with bad, right with wrong, moral with immoral, they loved to serve capital G God and lowercase g gods. So if holiness is what it means to be altogether separate, they were not holy because they were very much so intermixed with the nations. But Matthew here referring to Isaiah says, the people, that’s Jew and Gentile, that’s any and everyone, they’ve seen not just a light, it says they’ve seen a great light.

And the greatness here, in Matthew, it means unique in its remarkability. It means it’s a light that no one’s ever seen before. It’s full and it’s real and it’s not coming through a filter. Nothing’s holding this light back. It’s the whole and it’s the real thing. And as John the Baptist was not willing to hold back anything concerning the message of the kingdom, Christ has come in the full radiance of heaven itself to display the fullness of holiness and righteousness of God’s kingdom. Did the Apostle Paul not say in 2 Corinthians 4-6, for God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So what is the glory of God? Well, the glory of anything is its unique weight and worth. Someone said the glory of the horse is its beauty, its strength, its power. God is glorious in so many ways because He is altogether holy and sovereign. He is separate in the way that you and I are not. So that’s God’s glory. And how do I get knowledge of that glory? Well, I need someone to expose me to it. Well, who could expose me to it? Well, Paul says only Jesus could because in His face is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. So in Jesus, in His person, is the fullness of heaven, its substance. He is the manifestation of the full and real thing of heaven.

So Jesus displays the light in all its fullness because He Himself is the fullness of heaven’s light. Grace has come close to us in the darkness, but it has also displayed light in all of its purity and unadulterated integrity. If the darkness was the antipathy of the kingdom, Christ is the full substance and manifestation of the kingdom. And when I look at Jesus, I see everything that is holy and right, everything that Christ is calling me to. But the light also shows me the way in which I should go. You ever been asleep in a dark room and somebody flicks the light on, Mom, my dad used to do that to me to wake me up. It makes you mad, doesn’t it? It makes you mad.

Because that light’s so different from what you’ve been so used to for so long. But as time goes on, you realize that that light’s not just different from where you’ve been. That light shows you where you should go. And so the light of Christ then isn’t just unique as I consider it. That light also shows in God’s my pathway about where I go out of darkness and into Christ’s light and light. And the beautiful thing here, what Matthew’s saying is Jesus has come not for one or the other. He’s come for Jew and Gentile. He’s come for rich and poor. He’s come for any and all that would gaze upon this light and live in the path that it would show you to follow. That’s the beauty. That’s the power of Christ’s light. C.S. Lewis once said, I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see, everything else.

The psalmist says, your word is a lamp to my feet. So God’s light makes sure I don’t step in a place I shouldn’t step to my great harm. But it also shows me the path that God would keep me on. So just as I need to know God’s word to define the darkness, friends, we need to know God’s word to define the light, what it means to live for Him, what it means to be like Him. When Moses came down the mountain, everybody said, what’s wrong with him? His face is shining. And what does that prove? It proves that God’s light is shining. It proves you cannot get close to God and look the same. You’re going to glow with heaven’s light when you get close to God. And you see that in Moses. And if you see that in Moses, friends, we who are filled with the Spirit, the world should see that in the church. A holy, healthy church that’s full of the light of heaven is a useful and effective church, friends. So we must have a passion then for holiness, but it also should lead us, because God has the heart, a passion for people who don’t have the light. It’s a passion for the nations. It’s a passion for the lost. That’s why the light has come close, not for us only, but so that through us the light can shine to others.

Do we study and live in the light?

Verse 17.

It says, It says, From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, Repent,

for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So we can’t be ignorant because the Scriptures have made plain what’s wrong. The problem is not that we have bad days. The problem is not sometimes life doesn’t go as we wish. The problem is we are sinners in the hands of an angry God. We are in an inescapable state. We are in an inescapable state of darkness. That’s the problem. But why does Jesus, when He comes on the scene, just do what John did? You think that Jesus would do something more amazing at the start of His ministry? Well, here’s the thing.

Jesus wasn’t preaching John’s message. John was preaching Jesus’ message. And so when Jesus preaches His message, He accompanies the message with the substance that the message is about. John 8, verse 12. Again, Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Jesus is the light of life. He is the substance of it. John the Baptist paid a great cost. He paid a great cost with his life because he was faithful to the message. He stepped into the space of someone who didn’t want to hear it. It cost him his life. But Jesus paid a great cost. He paid a far greater price. Jesus stepped into all of our spaces, which was completely spiritual darkness. And Jesus paid a much greater cost because Jesus wasn’t just faithful to the message. Jesus did what no one else could do. He lifted the darkness off of humanity and became in the Father’s sight darkness for us. Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Jesus became a curse for us. And so as Israel was forsaken by God, Christ really and fully and for all of us, He was forsaken in that moment for us. He became detached from His Father because His Father saw our darkness on His Son. It’s not general. He carried sin. No, He carried your sin. It’s your particular sin. It’s that thought you thought. It’s that thing you did. It’s that way you are. Christ carried that in His body and before the Father was cursed and cut off. And then Jesus did what we would not think He would do. He did what we would not think He would do. The very Creator of life subjects Himself to death. Jesus died.

How’s that for a Christmas present? Jesus died for you.

But having died with our sins, He fulfilled the law. What’s the law require? It requires that someone dies for sins. So Christ died with all of our sins. And by the power of God, He was raised back over death and over the darkness. So He has what Paul calls an indestructible life. And the Bible tells us when I place faith in that Jesus and what He did, His light and His life flood me so that I’m no longer dark because He took my darkness and He died my death. So His light and His life come upon me and I get to enjoy the spoils of Christ’s victory. That’s what He’s done. So in our darkness and in death, Jesus is our light. Jesus is our life. And it’s full and it’s deep and it’s not a catchphrase. It’s not a catchphrase.

So this Christmas, this season,

let’s live in the light. Let’s look at the light. Let’s become like the light. And let’s shine the light. And let’s pray.

Father, there’s

nothing like being called a Christian because there’s no one like Your Son Jesus.

We couldn’t even begin to chalk up Christianity as just, as just another world religion because it’s so personal. It’s so full of love. It’s just dripping with the intimacy of how heaven came close to earth and how Your Son loved us and how in Him we’re called beloved of the Father. How in Jesus we’re called the bride of Christ that He will always care for and He will always love. And so there’s just so much to think about. There’s so much to dwell on and to meditate. And Father, forgive us when we get busy with, with the small things of life and the eternal truths of the Gospel.

It just becomes old hat. Let it not be so.

The light has shone in the darkness.

Father, may Your Spirit more and more illuminate that light that we may bring You more glory and that we may show the world what it means to receive the free grace of God in Christ Jesus.

I just encourage you this morning wherever you’re at to just reflect on that truth. Where are you apathetic?

What do you need to do to run the race, to live in the light, to surrender your all to Christ as you remember He gave His all for you?

Let’s be a church not just once, not here, not there, but always lives in the light of Christ, shines the light of Christ, enjoys the light of Christ. It is God’s free gift to us.

Thank You, Jesus, for Your sacrifice.

Thank You that You abide. Thank You that You keep. Thank You that You lose none who are Your own.

Thank You, thank You, thank You.