Latest / Reformed Thinking / Greater Light, Greater Guilt: Jesus’ Woes on Unrepentant Cities (Matthew 11:20–24)

Transcript

Greater Light, Greater Guilt: Jesus’ Woes on Unrepentant Cities (Matthew 11:20–24) · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed thinking. I am really looking forward to
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this discussion. Me too.
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So today we are opening up the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 11,
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specifically verses 20 through 24.
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And I have to be honest, right out of the gate, if you're the
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kind of person who prefers your Jesus strictly gentle, mild, and
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affirming, this deep dive might feel like a cold bucket of water
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to the face. Oh, absolutely.
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We're two Protestant Christians looking at this through the lens
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of Reformed theology and, of course, the Westminster
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Confession, and we are about to stare down one of the most
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unsettling passages in the entire New Testament.
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It really is a shock to the system.
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You know, we often talk about the comfort of the gospel, and
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that is so vital. But here, here we're dealing
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with the terror of the law that comes before that comfort,
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looking at a text where Jesus isn't offering a beatitude, he's
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issuing A woe. Yeah.
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And it forces us to grapple with the sight of Christ that I think
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modern evangelicalism often tries to smooth over or just
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ignore completely. That's so right.
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And the hook here, the thing that really grabs you when you
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read these sources is just how counter intuitive the whole
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premise of the passage is. It is.
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I mean, I think if you stopped the average person on the
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street, or maybe even the average churchgoer, and you ask
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who is in the most trouble with God, they'd have a pretty
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standard answer, right? They.
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'D point to the big scandalous Sinner.
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Exactly. The cartel boss, the outspoken
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atheist, the person living a life of, you know, open
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debauchery. That's just the natural human
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assumption, isn't it? Yeah, we assume judgement falls
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hardest on the pagans, on the person who's furthest away from
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the church. But Matthew 11 turns that
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assumption completely upside down.
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It really does the. Central argument of the sources
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we're looking at today is that the most perilous position a
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human being can occupy is actually the one closest to the
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light, which. That's a terrifying thought.
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So you're saying that someone can be surrounded by truth,
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swimming in good theology, maybe even witnessing the evidence of
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miracles, and yet be in greater spiritual danger than the people
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of Sodom? Precisely.
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It's the danger of proximity. We tend to think that being near
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holy things somehow makes us holy by osmosis.
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But Jesus teaches here that being near holy things without
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being changed by them doesn't just leave you neutral, it
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actively increases your guilt. It's a case of greater light
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leading to greater judgement. OK, so before we get to the
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specific verdicts, Jesus hands down here, help us set the
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scene. Where are we in the narrative
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flow of Matthew? Because Jesus isn't just
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shouting this into the void. Something specific triggered
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this moment. Context is everything here.
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We're in Matthew 11. Just before this, in chapter 10,
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Jesus has commissioned the 12 disciples.
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He sent them out to preach the Kingdom.
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Right then early in Chapter 11, we get this really poignant
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moment where John the Baptist is in prison.
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He's suffering and he sends a message to Jesus asking are you
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the one who is to come, or should we look for another?
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Which, I mean, coming from John the Baptist, that's incredibly
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human. This is the guy who baptized
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Jesus. He saw the dove descend, and now
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he's having doubts. He is, and notice how Jesus
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answers him. He doesn't send back some, you
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know, secret theological treatise.
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He points to his public credentials.
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Proof. The proof, he says.
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The blind see the lame walk. Lepers are cleansed.
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These are the dynamis, the mighty works.
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They are the objective empirical evidence that the Kingdom has
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arrived. But the crowd's reaction to all
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these credentials, it wasn't exactly a standing ovation, was
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it? Far from it.
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Mixed would be a very polite way to put it.
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Jesus actually compares that generation to children bickering
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in a marketplace, he says. We played the flute for you and
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you didn't dance. We sang a dirge and you didn't
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mourn. So basically nothing was good
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enough for them. Exactly.
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They rejected John the Baptist because he was too strict, too
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ascetic, and now they're rejecting Jesus because he's too
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social. He's eating and drinking with
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sinners. So they were just looking for an
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excuse to be offended. If the preacher is too serious,
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they don't like him. If he's too joyful, they don't
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like him either. It just reveals this fickleness
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in the human heart. They wanted religion on their
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own terms. And that sets the stage for what
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happens next. Jesus isn't just dealing with a
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confused crowd anymore. He turns his gaze to specific
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cities, Corazon, Bethsaida and Capernaum.
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And these weren't hostile Pagan territories.
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No, not at all. These were the Jewish towns
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where he had spent the vast majority of his ministry.
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This brings us to the first major section of our analysis.
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Then the indictment. The text says in verse 20.
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Then he began to denounce the cities that word denounce or I
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think the King James, says upraid.
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It feels so much heavier than just a critique.
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It's much, much heavier. The Greek term there is Juanny
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Dyson. This is not a mild expression of
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disappointment. It's not Jesus saying, guys, I'm
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really let down by your lack of enthusiasm.
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This is judicial shame. It's a prophetic lawsuit.
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If you read the Old Testament prophets, someone like Amos or
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Isaiah, when they bring a case against Israel for breaking the
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covenant, they use this kind of language.
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Jesus is effectively taking the stand as both the prosecuting
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attorney and the judge. So what's the charge?
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I mean, usually when you indict someone, you list specific
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crimes. Did these towns try to kill him?
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Did they chase him out with pitchforks or something?
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And that is the scary part. No, they didn't.
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They weren't violent. The charge is simply this.
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Because they repented, not That's it.
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That's it. They didn't stone him, they
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didn't run him out of town. They just continued his normal.
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They let him preach in their streets, they watched him heal
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their sick, and then they went right back to their shops and
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their dinner tables, completely unchanged.
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The source material we looked at calls this respectable unbelief.
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Yes, and it's the idea that passive indifference is actually
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a form of active rebellion. We often think rebellion has to
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look like a fist raised at the sky or, you know, shouting
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blasphemies. But sometimes rebellion looks
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like a polite nod in the Pew while the heart remains as hard
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as stone. It's like the husband who hears
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his wife express her deepest pain and just turns back to the
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TV. That silence isn't neutrality,
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it's a form of rejection. So the whole issue turns on this
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word repent because they repented not.
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We hear that word a lot in church circles and it can become
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kind of a buzzword left drip it down based on our material.
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What is the actual biblical requirement here?
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It is so crucial we get this right because we so often
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conflate repentance with just feeling regret.
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The Greek word is mitanio. It literally means a change of
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mind. But in the Hebraic context of
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the New Testament, it's not just some intellectual shift.
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It's a turning of the whole person, your mind, your will,
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and your affections away from sin and toward God.
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So it's not just feeling bad about getting caught, no.
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Or crying during a particularly emotional song at church?
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No. You can have very emotional
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experience and not repent at all, can be dazzled by a miracle
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and not repent. Repentance is a fundamental
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reorientation of your soul where you stop being the king of your
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own life and you finally bow before the true King.
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It's treason against self sovereignty.
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Speaking of being dazzled, the text mentions these mighty
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works, the Dynames. The source material brings up an
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interesting cessationist application here.
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For our listeners who might not know, cessationism is the view
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that the miraculous sign gifts like healing on command or
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speaking in tongues ceased with the closing of the Apostolic
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age. So how does this text relate to
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that whole debate? Well, the argument really hinges
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on the purpose of the miracles. Why did Jesus do them?
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They weren't magic tricks for entertainment.
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They were Kingdom credentials. They were the seal of
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authenticity. Exactly the seal of authenticity
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on his message. The source argues that now that
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the Canon of Scripture is complete, we possess the sure
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record of those events. We have the testimony of the
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miracles, plus the divine explanation of what they
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actually mean in the Gospel. So the implication is that we
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don't need new signs today because we have something even
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better. Correct.
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The argument is if we have the full Bible, the completed
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revelation of God, we have even more light than Korzen and
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Bethsaida had. They saw the sign.
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We have the sign and the full theology behind it.
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So to ignore the full council of scripture in 2026 is actually a
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greater affront to God than ignoring a single healing back
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in 30 AD. We can't say.
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Well, if God would just write my name in the sky, then I'd
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believe we have something much more durable than skywriting.
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We have the word of God. That really raises the stakes
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for us. We can't claim ignorance.
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But let's go back to the text and look at these scandalous
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comparisons. This is the part that really, I
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think, shocks the modern reader. Jesus starts comparing these
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nice Jewish towns to some very, very notorious places.
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First up, Tyre and Sidon. This would have been a massive
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shock to the original hearers. A huge shock.
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Tyre and Sidon were Gentile cities up on the coast in the
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Old Testament. They were the bad guys, the
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villains. They were the center of Baal
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worship. They were the historic
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oppressors of Israel. Jezebel, the wicked queen who
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haunted down Elijah. She was the daughter of the king
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of Sidon. So these are the boogeymen of
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Jewish history. These are the people you tell
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your kids stories about to scare them into behaving.
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They're the archetype of Pagan arrogance and idolatry, and
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Jesus looks at the religious Bible believing Jews of Chorizin
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and Bethsaida and says woe to you, for if the mighty works
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done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have
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repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
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He's effectively claiming that these Pagan strongholds were
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more spiritually sensitive than the covenant people of God.
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He is, and notice that detail in Sackcloth and Ashes.
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That's the picture of public humiliating mourning over sin.
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He's saying that if these Baal worshipping pagans had seen the
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glory of Christ, they would have fallen on their faces in the
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dust. But the religious people of
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Galilee, they just shrugged, just exposes the incredible
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hardness of the religious heart. That is a hard pill to swallow,
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but then he ramps it up even further.
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He brings in the ultimate comparison, Sodom.
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Verse 23. This is the nuclear option of
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biblical comparisons. Sodom is not just a bad city,
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It's the byword for depravity. Genesis 19 describes a place of,
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well, violence, sexual perversion, and absolute
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rebellion against natural law. We all know the story.
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God incinerated it with fire and brimstone.
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It is the ultimate example of divine judgement in all of
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history. And yet Jesus says to Capernaum,
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to his own headquarters. If the mighty works done in you
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had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
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Just think. About the counterfactual history
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there, Jesus is saying Sodom would still be on the map.
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They wouldn't have been destroyed.
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This forces us to completely rethink how we categorize sin,
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doesn't it? Because we all have a very
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specific hierarchy in our minds. It absolutely does.
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This gives us the hierarchy of sin according to God.
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We humans, we categorize sin by social disruption we think the
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worst sins are the ones that hurt people physically or
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disrupt society Murder, theft, perversion and make no mistake,
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those are terrible, terrible sins of.
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Course. But God categorizes sin by the
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amount of light that was rejected.
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So Sodom sinned against natural law and conscience.
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Correct. They violated the very order of
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creation. But Capernaum.
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Capernaum sinned against the Incarnate Word.
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They sinned against the direct revelation of the Son of God
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standing in their living rooms. So therefore.
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Therefore, the difference of the respectable Pew sitter in
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Capernaum is more damnable than the perversion of the sodomite.
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And that is a terrifying thought for anyone who grew up in the
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church. It completely destroys any sense
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of moral superiority we might feel, and it leads us right into
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the theology of judgement. In our next segment, we have to
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talk about this phrase mortality tolerable.
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Jesus says it will be more tolerable for Sodom on the Day
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of Judgment than for Capernaum. What does that actually mean for
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our understanding of hell? It tells us that divine justice
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is proportional. The Greek word is anecdotron.
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It implies degrees of punishment.
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We often have this sort of cartoonish view of hell, partly
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from Dante, partly from pop culture, as this monolithic fire
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where everyone suffers exactly the same.
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But Scripture and the Reformed tradition teaches that God's
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justice is meticulously calibrated.
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So punishment corresponds directly to the revelation that
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was rejected. Yes, in Luke 12 Jesus talks
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about this. The servant who knew the masters
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well and disobeyed receives a severe beating, while the one
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who didn't know receives a light beating.
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Hell is terrible for everyone there, but there are deeper
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pits, and the deepest pits are reserved not for the ignorant
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Pagan, but for the evangelized unbeliever, the person who knew
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the truth, who tasted the good word of God and then said no.
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This sources also use this text to refute annihilationism.
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Can you just walk us through the logic there?
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Sure. Annihilationism is the view that
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the wicked just cease to exist, they're destroyed, and that's
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the end of it. But logically, for a state to be
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more tolerable for one group than for another, both groups
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have to exist to experience. It right, you can't compare to
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nothings you. Can't have a more tolerable non
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existence. Non existence is just nothing. 0
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= 0. So this text affirms the
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Westminster Confession, chapter 32, which states that the souls
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remain in darkness and torment. The suffering is conscious and
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it is eternal, but it is graded based on guilt.
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There's another theological term that came up in the source
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material, Scientia media or middle knowledge.
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This relates to Jesus saying Sodom would have repented.
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That sounds like he's just speculating, but he isn't, is
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he? He's never guessing.
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This is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of Christ.
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Middle knowledge is a theological concept.
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It's often debated between malinist and Calvinist, but it's
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applicable here that God knows not only what will happen, but
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what would have happened under different circumstances.
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He knows the counterfactuals. So he knows the road not taken.
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Right. He knows the deep, contingent
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realities of the human heart. He knows that if the
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circumstances had been different for Sodom, if Peter and John had
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preached there, if Jesus had healed lepers in their streets,
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their response would have been different.
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And that qualifies him as the perfect.
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It does. He doesn't just judge us on the
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bare facts of our actions. He judges based on opportunity
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and the potential for repentance.
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He knows exactly what we did with what we were given.
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That brings us to the tragedy of Capernaum itself, and really the
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tragedy of us. Jesus addresses Capernaum
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directly. And you, Capernaum, will you be
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exalted to heaven. You will be brought down to
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Hades. Why did they think they were
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exalted to heaven? They weren't some big political
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power like Rome. No, not at all.
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They were a fishing village. Their exaltation was their
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spiritual privilege. This was Jesus's HQ, This is
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where Peter's mother-in-law was healed.
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This is where the paralytic was lowered through the roof.
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If any place on earth had a home field advantage with the
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Messiah, it was Capernaum. They had the pride of proximity.
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That's it exactly. They mistook access for
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acceptance. They thought, well, Jesus lives
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here, we're his neighbors. We must be good.
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They thought being near holy things made them holy.
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But Jesus says that very height is what makes their fall so
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catastrophic. You will be brought down to
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Hades. Yes, and here is where it gets
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really uncomfortable for us. The source material makes a
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direct parallel between Capernaum and the modern Western
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church. It's the parallel we have to
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face. If you live in the West, and
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particularly if you're part of the Church, you are the
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spiritual Capernaum of today. I mean, think about the
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inventory of privilege we have. It's this.
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You probably have 10 Bibles in your house.
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You have apps on your phone that can pull up any sermon from
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church history in seconds. You have centuries of
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theological precision handed down to you, like the
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Westminster standards that we cherish.
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We're literally drowning in light.
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We are. We're standing on a mountain of
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privilege. And the warning of this text is
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if we are unchanged by this mountain of privilege, our fall
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will be catastrophic. It's a huge critique of what we
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might call easy believism. You know the idea that being a
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decent, law abiding citizen, voting the right way and
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generally agreeing with Christian doctrine, that that's
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enough. But the source material is
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clear. Yeah, that is not enough.
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If the heart isn't broken, you can agree with the Westminster
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Confession line for line and still go to hell.
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If you haven't repented, if you haven't personally closed with
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Christ, it's not about intellectual ascent.
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It is about surrender. And there's also a critique here
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of the desire for spectacle, isn't there?
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We see this so much today, people chasing the next big
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emotional high or spiritual experience.
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That is the danger of spectacle. We live in an age that wants
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atmosphere. We want the lights, the haze,
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the emotional crescendo and the music.
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We want signs to make our faith feel real.
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But the source reminds us miracles didn't guarantee
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repentance back then. In fact, what they did was
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increase accountability. So if you're chasing signs, or
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if you need a constant emotional buzz to feel like your faith is
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real, you're in a spiritually perilous spot.
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The mandate is not to manufacture amazement.
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It's to herald Christ. It's so sobering, but I don't
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want to leave our listeners and, you know, a pit of despair here.
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We need to look at the pastoral purpose of all this.
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Why is Jesus speaking this harshly?
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Is he just losing his temper? No, no, he's the good chef.
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He speaks this harsh word to awaken us.
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It's mercy in the form of an alarm clock.
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That's a good way to put it. Think about it.
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If your house is on fire, you don't want a neighbor to whisper
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politely at your window. You want them to smash the glass
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and scream. You might be offended by the
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noise, but that noise saves your life.
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He wounds with truth in order to heal with grace.
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That's it perfectly. And look at the placement in the
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text. This is so crucial for our
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understanding of Law and Gospel. Immediately after these
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terrifying woes, what do we find in Matthew 11 verse 28?
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Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
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you rest. The sweetest invitation in the
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entire Bible follows the harshest denunciation in the
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entire Bible. That is the law, Gospel dynamic
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in action. We cannot feel the need for
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rest, that's the gospel, until we first feel the weight of the
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woe. That's the law.
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The invitation is precious because the judgement is real.
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It is. If there is no judgement, then
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rest is just a nice nap. But if judgement is real, then
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rest is salvation from the wrath to come.
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And that connects perfectly to our reformed understanding of
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total depravity and sovereign grace.
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It does. The reaction of these cities
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proves total depravity. You can have the Son of God
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performing miracles right in front of you, and your heart
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will remain dead as a doornail unless the Holy Spirit
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regenerates you. External evidence cannot fix a
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dead heart. It takes a sovereign act of
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grace. But that doesn't let us off the
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hook, does it? It's not an excuse for inaction,
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no. Not at all.
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God's sovereignty never cancels our duty to repent, but it also
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gives us hope for the unlikely. And this is a beautiful point
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the source makes. If Jesus says Tyre and Sidon
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could have repented those hardened Pagan idolaters, then
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we should not despair of our hardened secular neighbors
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today. That is a really important take
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away because we often write people off.
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We think, oh, they're too far gone, they're too woke or too
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atheist or too immoral to ever come to church.
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But if Sodom Sodom would have repented, given the right light,
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then no one is beyond the reach of God's power.
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We shouldn't look at our culture with arrogance like Capernaum.
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Look down on the Gentiles. We should look with hope and
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urgency, proclaiming the light that can change them.
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So as we wrap up this deep dive, let's try to distill this into
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some actionable takeaways. I think the headline is pretty
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clear. Greater light equals greater
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responsibility. The scary reality is that
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respectable unbelief, sitting in church knowing the truth but not
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submitting to Christ, is a greater crime in God's eyes than
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Pagan darkness. And the comfort, the comfort is
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that Jesus is the Judge who knows perfectly.
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He knows all the what ifs, but he is also the Savior who
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invites the weary. He is.
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He invites us to trade our heavy burden of sin and self
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righteousness for His light burden of grace.
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I want to leave our listeners with the final provocative
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thoughts, something to chew on as they go about their week.
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The source material put it this way and it really stuck with me.
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Gospel privilege is either a ladder by which you climb to
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Christ or the evidence by which you are condemned.
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That cuts deep. It really challenges our self
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perception, doesn't it? Do you treat sermons as just
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background noise? Is your Bible just a decoration
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on the shelf? The call to action is immediate.
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As the book of Hebrews says today, if you hear his voice, do
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not harden your heart, do not be Capernaum, and do not assume
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you're safe just because you're here listening to this run to
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Christ. Amen to that.
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Thanks for joining us on this deep dive into Matthew 11.
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We will see you next time.