Jesus stares straight at the crowd—and straight at us—and asks the question none of us want to answer: “Why did you really come to here today?” To feel better? To look spiritual? Or because you’re finally tired of the lies, the hypocrisy, and the shallow game we all play?
If you’ve ever wondered whether church is just another performance, or if Jesus is actually dangerous enough to expose and save you at the same time, this sermon will confront you, cut you, and—if you don’t turn away—lift you into the staggering joy that even the least in His kingdom is greater than John the Baptist.
Listen at your own risk. The dead are being raised, and you might be one of them.
Advent 3
Psalm 146; Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11
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I.
Jesus asks the crowd in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, “What did you go out into the wilderness to behold?”
The same question ought to be asked of everyone whoever stepped foot in church or became a member of one: “What did you come here to see?” Or, more accurately, “What did you come here to hear?”
Jesus continues: “A reed shaken by the wind?”
What does that mean? It means someone who is not anchored in the Word of God. Someone whose opinion changes with every puff of wind.
Jesus asks again, “Why then did you go out? To see a man clothed in soft raiment?”
Many churches offer their versions of “soft raiment” and “kings’ houses” — whether it’s the splendid vestments of the priest, the gothic splendor of a cathedral, or the performative passion of contemporary Christian music.
“But why are you really here?” Jesus asks. “Why, then, did you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.”
You are not very different from the crowds who went to hear John. You’ve come to hear a prophet. The problem is, John was the last and greatest prophet before Christ. Christ Himself has now ascended to heaven. The apostles have all died.
What, then, is left for you to see and hear? Why, then, did you come here this morning, to this church, on this Third Sunday of Advent, in the Year of Our Lord, two-thousand and twenty-five?
II.
You came here to hear these words from Isaiah: “The ransomed of the Lord shall return.” You came to hear Jesus say, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear.”
You came to hear the good news that the long-promised restoration of all things is now well underway, and that it’s happening in a very powerful way: even the dead are being raised.
In other words, you came here seeking eternal life.
Jesus says: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”
Last week, we heard John preaching repentance. This week, he is in prison. That is not surprising considering that he called the political and religious leaders of Jerusalem “a brood of vipers.”
John in prison is in marked contrast to John baptizing in the River Jordan. The man who confidently proclaimed “he who is coming after me is mightier than I” now sends his disciples to Jesus to find out who Jesus really is.
“Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?’”
Jesus tells John’s disciples to go back to John and tell him that yes, it’s true. Everything is happening just as Isaiah said it would.
What a time it was to be alive back then and hear Jesus speak those words. Of all the men born before him, Jesus says John is the greatest.
But you didn’t come here to recount some past glory. This is no retelling of some pagan myth. Jesus tells the crowds that from now on, even a little child born in the new kingdom will be greater than the greatest man born in the old:
“Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
Are you one of those little children? That is why you came here today. To find out. To answer that question.
One way to find out is to examine your response to what Jesus says in verse six, “blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”
He’s alluding to the cross, the shameful manner in which He will die, something His disciples find more and more offensive the more He talks about it.
The fact is, it was always there, the cross. “For this I was born,” Jesus says (John 18:37).
But it’s offensive, this cross. It forces us to face the fact we are sinners, that our neighbors are sinners, that we are born in sin and that we love sin and lies (Psalm 52:3; 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12; Revelation 22:15).
It forces us to face the fact that our community service, and our outreach, and our “kindness” and our “being nice” and our donations to the food bank and our church clean up days, all amount to nothing more than shoveling dung onto an ever bigger dung-pile.
Or, as Isaiah puts it elsewhere, “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6).
It forces us to face the fact that we are the reed shaken by the wind. If you’re honest about it, that’s why you came here today. You came to church to see and hear yourself, and to have a hard look.
III.
Unfortunately, when we are forced to look at ourselves, most of us turn away. We can’t stand to look at ourselves. We really are that ugly.
You know, it’s easy to spot another person’s ugliness, to see his or her flaws, to say, “Thank God, I am not like other men” (Luke 18:11).
You say you don’t do that, but you do. You say you don’t judge others, that only God is judge, yet you judge the message coming from this very pulpit. You choose sides every day. You join one thing, you resign from another. You put a sign on your front lawn or scoff at the one on your neighbors’.
Every day you are saying, “Thank God, I am not like other men,” yet you are the reed shaken by the wind.
But that is not the only reason you came here today. You also came here today because you’ve finally had enough. You came here today because you’ve had enough of the lies. You came here because you are starting to learn how to hate evil and to love the good, but that means that your world is now turned upside down.
Like John sending his disciples, you came here to find out who Jesus really is. This is why it is so utterly unforgivable for any pulpit — or any Christian for that matter — to deny who Jesus is (Matthew 12:31-32).
Yet we are not without hope. In every age God sends His messengers before His face to prepare the way before Him.
IV.
It may be impossible to look at ourselves, but it is impossible to look away from the cross. The image of Christ crucified has enraptured and bedeviled men for 2,000 years.
Longer, in fact. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die,” God warned Adam and Eve in the garden. But they ate and they fell into death, and we fell with them.
They did not want to pass judgment on the fruit, based solely on God’s Word, but instead to see for themselves what was right and wrong.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” they thought to themselves, when, at that point, they were, in fact, without sin, and should have stoned the serpent right then and there.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” that verse from John 8:7 has been distorted beyond all recognition. It is not a call for Christians to be ignorant, passive, and neutral in the face of public sin.
Rather, it is an order, a direct order from Jesus Himself, to take the mask off and see yourself for who you really are: which is a hypocrite.
A similar passage in Matthew 7 makes this clear: “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5).
Jesus doesn’t say leave the speck in your brother’s eye. How is that showing love to your neighbor?
If you take offense at this, good. Better to be offended by your hypocrisy than to take offense at the One who hangs on the cross because of it.
This is why it’s impossible to look away from the cross. It’s the only time we see ourselves as we really are: as twisted men and women drowning in our own blood guilt.
We know it’s us who should be up there.
This still-living symbol of death, perfectly sums up the “already, but not yet” of our own living death, what we foolishly call our lives, of all that we mean when we say, “This is what it means to be alive.”
How can we be so foolish? How? Why, we are the walking dead!
This is why the world was forever changed on that day when Jesus said, “Go and tell John what you hear and see… the dead are raised up.”
This is why you came to church today: to see the dead raised.
V.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” does not mean you get to walk right on by your wounded brothers and sisters, lying in the ditch of their sins.
In fact, if you have received mercy from Christ to escape the wrath that is to come, you must do all in your power to rescue them, your family, friends, and neighbors, especially those who call themselves Christians, those who may very well already go to this or another church.
Elsewhere, Jesus asks, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?” (Luke 14:5).
The Left has captured the modern church, as well as the public square, and declared a “gospel sabbath.”
This means “good” Christians are to rest from preaching the truth. There must be no rescuing your pride-filled neighbor from the ditch he’s fallen into.
After all, you wouldn’t want to cast any stones. You don’t want to become a social pariah. Never mind that Jesus has washed you of your sins, so that, as long as you are in Christ, you are indeed without sin.
The Left has perverted the gospel, taking it to mean that only God can judge, forgetting that St. Paul says that the Church is perfectly competent to judge the world — competent enough even to judge angels — and that it’s the world who has no business judging the Church (1 Corinthians 6:2-3).
Yet many Christians would rather walk away from Christ and return to their sin and hypocrisy, like a dog returning to its vomit (Proverbs 26:11), than be caught dead judging their neighbor.
For good reason, then, Jesus said in today’s gospel, “blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”
This is how the Left exerts its power. It’s how the dysfunctional mother-in-law wields hers. It’s how the elder brother wields his.
This is how they control you, just like the Pharisees controlled the Jews. You can never be good enough so you might as well not try.
This is how every other religion, except a biblical one, works. It works to control you through guilt and emotional manipulation.
This is because they know you’re guilty. You know you’re guilty. And they know that you know you’re guilty. You both know you’ll die in your sins. But neither you nor their false religion can raise the dead.
The fact is you are good enough — though not through any merit of your own — but because Christ has ransomed you from death, and made you a citizen of His kingdom.
He who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than anyone outside of it, and that certainly makes you more than capable of judging sinners, walking away from their sins, maybe even to get a few to come with you, and for you all to come into Zion singing, with everlasting joy upon your heads.
Preached on December 14, 2025, at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut (https://www.firstchurchwoodbury.org).
