Last week, I made the point that our Lord Jesus, in addressing the crowds concerning John the Baptist, was sounding a warning. That warning was, and still is today, "don't miss the moment". Don't miss the redemptive historical realities playing out before your eyes. Don't miss the coming of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. Don't miss, him.

And in this morning's passage, the same block of teaching continues. But here Jesus dials up the gain: to the extent, that to miss the moment is associated with failing to repent and hardening one's heart against God, and to be under a woe of cursing. Having seen the light but rejected the light. Having heard the gospel but rejected the gospel. Now soon we will hear our Lord Jesus crying out, "Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest." That's coming soon. But here we will hear him, the same Christ, denounce and thunder the woes of cursing of God upon all who refuse to repent and come. From the lips of Christ there comes that two-edged sword, the one that cuts to the heart, bringing salvation to the soul, saying "Come unto me", and then the one that cuts and strikes down the sinner in their own unbelief with woes of coming judgement.

The great truth of this text, brothers and sisters, that I want to highlight for you is perhaps best set forward in a question which is linked to the title of my message. Are we each here this morning sufficiently moved by the truth of the gospel? That is the challenge of Christ to the crowds, and it is the challenge that Christ has from his word for us too. Are we living in silent protest, or are we repentant in heart and moved to submission to Jesus and the truth of the gospel?

Unmoved Hearts

So as we develop these things, I have two headings for you. First of all, in 11:16-19, unmoved hearts. We read in the opening words at 11:16, "But to what shall I compare this generation?"

On Boxing Day 1941, Winston Churchill was visiting in the US and was about to address the members of Congress regarding the war. The official senate record states a hush fell over the crowded chamber as Churchill took his place at a lectern. An eerie silence fell over the room as Churchill began to speak, and I can certainly imagine the same thing with our Lord Jesus Christ here as he begins to speak these words to the crowds, as he declares and thunders, "But to what shall I compare this generation?"

His point here is that these Jews, the people, were in the most advantageous position historically and spiritually to recognise the coming of Christ and his kingdom. Christ here rebukes them so that they might yield and receive a positive response to the gospel, to become joint heirs of God and Christ.

But think of the words of John the Apostle: "He came to his own and his own received him not." Those to whom were entrusted the Holy Word of God did not come. Those who received the prophecies of God did not come. The covenants, the sacrificial system, all of these pointers to a great coming work of redemption, and now they are uninterested. The Jews by and large became comparable to someone entering a stadium for a sports game, perhaps the All Blacks, waiting for months for the date to finally come, excited to go and watch the team play, enjoying the pre-match celebrations, getting food and all of these things, waiting in the crowd for the teams to come on, and then just as the team enters the arena, suddenly they walk out and leave, and they're not interested anymore. This is what took place in Israel in the first century when the Messiah came.

And so it is as if Christ is here in Matthew 11 standing with outstretched arms, making the cry of Isaiah 51, "Rouse yourself, rouse yourself, arise O Jerusalem, receive your awaited King." This challenge, dear friends, is in no way time-constrained; it applies to us. So if there's any inkling in your hearts this morning of scoffing, or even bewilderment, at these unmoved, dissatisfied people with Christ right before them and yet having to be rebuked for unbelief, I want you to look inside your own hearts this morning for a moment. What do we find? Perhaps we could rephrase Jesus' words here to say, "To what shall I compare this generation of people in Southland this morning? Have they repented at my word and the gospel? Have the ministers that I've sent among them, the evangelists, the elders that I've raised up in their midst, witnessed sufficient fruit for the word that has been declared?" You see, from this generation to that generation, every generation is commanded to call upon the name of the Lord and to seek the saviour of our ruin while we may.

So look at what Christ says next in 11:16 again. He says, "It is like children sitting in the marketplaces who call out to other children and say, 'We played the flute for you and you did not dance. We sang a dirge and you did not mourn.'" This is a short parable, and in it Jesus is explaining the nature of the people's unbelief. Christ and John the Baptist can be thought of here as those playing the flute and the dirge in the marketplace. The flute was something that you played for a wedding, and you expected people to dance and to sing when the flute was played. A dirge was more of an instrument for a funeral. Both of these have been played in the ministries of Christ and John the Baptist, so to speak. These were the sounds of salvation, and yet the sounds of judgement. They've rung out throughout the land through these two men. But what was the people's response? Well, Jesus is saying that the sound of the flute, the trumpeting of the Messiah's coming, was played, and yet they did not rightly respond. They did not dance when they ought to have. They were unmoved. The dirge was played, a sober message of judgement and repentance, yet there was no mourning, no calling out to God in anguish. An inadequate response.

What is the principle here? It's ground we've covered previously. It is that we must always take Jesus as we find him. These Jews were unmoved because they first had a wrong expectation of what the Messiah's purpose was. They wanted a political Messiah, a warrior Messiah, a Messiah accompanied by legions of angels in battle array. Because of their false hopes upon which they pinned everything, they were offended by Christ, dissatisfied, and they refused to respond. They thought they knew better. "Who is this Jesus? What is he selling? What is this about repentance? We are the people of Abraham. We are the chosen of God. What are you talking about? We are in the kingdom already, and you say we are outside of it and we must come. What do you mean, Jesus? Where is your army? Get on with the programme. Put an end to these tyrant dictators of ours in the palaces of Rome."

So I ask, how do you think of Jesus this morning? Have you taken him at his word? Be willing to associate with the one who says that you're not enough, but come to me and I will make you whole, because that is the most offensive message. Christ says that you're not enough. You're not righteous as you ought to be. You're not clean. Still, the song of salvation and judgement, this flute and dirge, is still now being played in 2026, and Christ is saying, "Come on to me." But are we really dancing? Are we responding? Or are we wanting something else?

So the question is, is coming to Woodlands Church on a Sunday morning about ticking the Sunday box, or is it about finding life in Jesus because you have none in yourself? Is your Christianity about keeping up appearances, or is it about brokenness and worshipping the God of heaven who has saved your soul? Christ demands repentance from these crowds. He points at them as he does to us and he says, "Unclean, unholy, you're not right in yourself. Change is required. You cannot come to the Father as you are now. Change must occur. I will cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Only come and confess so that you might know life."

Now moving on, look at what Christ says next. He says that instead of confessing their sins, they have criticised the messengers. Look again at 11:18. It says, "For John came neither eating nor drinking and they say he has a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, 'Behold a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.'"

So Christ here points out that the people were contradictory in their criticisms. Instead of repenting, they became critics. John the Baptist came living a life of self-denial. His food was locusts and wild honey in the desert with his camel hair cloak, like the prophets of old, and yet what did they say about John? "Oh, he has a demon. Who is this nut job out in the desert? This preacher. Who is he?" They called him a demoniac. They criticised the very man sent by God. And then what do they say of Christ? "Oh, he came in a very different way to John. He came eating and drinking as a common man, you might say. Oh, did this please the people now? No, not at all. They call him a drunkard as he came drinking wine, a glutton as he came eating food, and they condemned him and his company of tax collectors and sinners." Their response was perverse, Christ is saying.

What is the applicable point here for us? Well, it is that many people will not only harden their hearts to the preaching of God's word and the truth of the gospel, but they will go a step further and become critical of the messengers. Dear friends, there is certainly a place and room for critically evaluating the preacher and his message. Certainly. There's a place for that. The question I ask, and I think many miss, is this: are these criticisms that you and I have of preaching good and proper? Or is it that the conscience has been pricked, and your flesh runs to point the finger at others rather than pointing it at your own heart? You see, Jesus and John pricked the consciences of the people. So they say, "Who is this demoniac in the desert, this drunkard calling me to repent? Who is this Christ calling himself equal with the Father? This glutton, who is he? Who does this man think he is standing in judgement over me?" So instead of doing business with the truth, they criticised the messenger.

How does this play out in your life, friends? Preachers have to deal with this almost every week, all across this country. "Oh, it was too heavy this morning. Too many Bible references. Not enough application. The sermon was too long. Not enough smiling. Not enough stories. I don't like the tone of the preacher this morning. This, that, and the other thing." Always criticisms. Seldom repentance.

I'll never forget sitting beside a friend of mine many years ago in Queenstown hearing what was very ordinary preaching. It's an ordinary man preaching from his Bible in Queenstown. Many people are fidgeting, looking around, bored, unengaged. My friend is in tears beside me and visibly shaking as he is moved by the truth of the gospel.

J. C. Ryle puts it this way: "It is a mournful fact that there are always thousands of professing Christians just as unreasonable as these Jews. They are equally perverse and equally hard to please. Whatever we teach and preach, they find fault. Whatever be our manner of life, they are dissatisfied. Do we tell them of salvation by grace and justification by faith? At once they cry out our doctrine is licentious and antinomian. Do we tell them of the holiness which the gospel requires? At once they exclaim that we are too strict, too precise and righteous overmuch."

You see, the application here is very plain. Faithful preaching is to be heard with fear and trembling and an earnest seeking of God. Don't go to church to be a critic. There are enough people doing that already. Let the word work on your soul. Oh, people complain one Sunday it was too heavy, and then the next, "Oh, it was too simple." The preacher was too loud, and then they complained he was too quiet. Too hot, too cold, too warm. Always complaining, always the critic, and Christ is finding this detestable here in the passage this morning.

If we want to learn about what preaching really is, look at what Jesus says to those who do not receive it. These are sober truths of this passage. Christ is here searching to see what our attitude is towards the word preached. Now I'll say again, there is a right place to discuss preaching critically. But if a man has stood before you and earnestly taught you from the word of God, know for certain that God is at that moment looking at you, the hearer, more than he is at his fallen messenger, full of faults but seeking to present the truth with power and with integrity.

You see, God sent his son to be a surgeon of hearts. The people wanted none of it, especially the Pharisees, and so what did they do? They became critics. Look at the end of 11:19, and what does Jesus say? "Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds." In other words, the truth will vindicate itself, and in the end, everything will be revealed. So brothers and sisters, search your hearts to find whether there is any part of you which stands to condemn Christ and his word by inadequate response to the message preached. And if you find anything, let it surface, let it come, and be exposed to God, who is gracious to forgive.

Foretold Judgement

Let's move on to the final four verses, 11:20-24, and we see foretold judgement. Jesus dials up the temperature right the way to ten, full blast, reminding us of the severity and the consequences of unbelief. He says in 11:20, "Then he began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles were done because they did not repent." The material point here is because they did not repent. Repentance is what God requires of men and women. Repentance to God can be thought of as the hinges upon which the door of faith swings open to everlasting life. Repentance is not optional. A life of repentance is required in any sinner who would come to God through Jesus Christ.

What does repentance mean? Repentance means to turn away, to forsake self. It means to confess your transgressions to God, which are many. It is to cry out to him, "Against you, and you only, Father, have I sinned." It is to confess your own folly, your hell-bound nature of which you cannot help yourself. It is to say, "Oh righteous Father, I am but a sinful worm, doomed but for the blood of Christ." Oh, we have sinned more than we know, friends, and so we ought to repent more than we do. Repentance is not the saving work itself, nor is it even a work. Repentance is the response. Repentance is what comes when there is an awareness that Christ has died for me and, "Woe am I, the sinner."

So Christ names here these cities in which he has performed miracles, and no doubt his inner twelve as well, and yet they did not adequately respond. They were unmoved by the truth. Look again at 11:20. He began to denounce the cities. He says, "Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon, which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgement than for you." And then he repeats the same thing with Capernaum and Sodom and Gomorrah as the example.

Now the question which comes to mind for many here, I would think, is this: why, in the presence of Christ himself, were these signs being performed, miracles, a man with such authority as they had never witnessed before, how could they remain so unmoved by the truth? They saw signs, and they were expecting signs, but they were unmoved. Why?

Many unbelievers today still have this sort of evidential view of things. They say, "Oh, if God revealed himself personally to me, if Jesus appeared to me, then I'd believe. If I had a Damascus Road experience like the Apostle Paul did, then I would fall down and believe in Jesus. But he hasn't done that for me, so I won't believe", as if God owes them such.

Now the interesting fact here, however, is that even with special revelation right in front of these people in Matthew 11, special revelation being the miracles of Christ, the teaching of Christ, the person of Christ, with all of this right before them, there's still something wrong, isn't there? Something amiss. It reveals something about the human spiritual condition: wilful unbelief. This passage shows us that evidence is not the problem. The heart is the problem.

Now there are many doctrinal directions we could go from here to explain what's going on. There is this matter of why some turn to Christ but others do not. How two children raised in the same household with the same parents, in the same home, in the same church, hearing the same preaching. Why is it that one comes to repentance and faith and one does not? There is that question here. The sobering answer to that is going to come next week in our portion that we will consider. But for now, perhaps understand these three realities.

The first is what I've already alluded to, and that is evidence is not the issue. Jesus says they have more than they could ever need to repent and believe, and yet they did not. So it teaches us about the human heart, doesn't it? You must understand that the inclination of man's will by nature is not God-orientated, nor is it even neutral; it is hostile to God. That's how we are. If you have unbelieving family this morning, which we all do, if you have unbelieving children perhaps, if you have friends that don't know Christ, you need to know that there is far more to their conversion than just the right evidence or the right timing or just the right argument, and then they'll be persuaded. It's far, far deeper than that. It is an issue of the will that hates God and wants nothing to do with him.

Now you say, "Rhys, you've gone too far." Well, listen to what Paul says in Romans 8:7. He says, "The mind set on the flesh is hostile towards God. It does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God." So it's not an evidence issue. It's a matter of the heart.

Listen to how Jesus, in the parable of the rich man and the poor man in Luke 16, explains it. This rich man has died and a poor man has died. The poor man is carried to heaven, and the rich man found himself in hell. And he cries out in torment and he says, "I have five brothers. Go and warn them of this place. Go and tell them to be saved before it's too late." And then Abraham in the parable responds and he says, "They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them." But he said, "No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead they will repent." In other words, "If only there's more evidence." Then what does he say? "But he said to him, if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead." In other words, Jesus corrects the thinking that many have, that evidence is the issue, because it's not. Evidence is not in short supply. In fact, there is an abundance of evidence. Rather, there are sinful hearts suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. That's the issue, and that's what we see here.

A second point we see here is that God does not owe salvation to anyone. That is a sobering truth. These are the things, the secret things, that belong to God. God does not owe salvation to anyone. Notice how he says here that Tyre and Sidon and Sodom and Gomorrah, pagan peoples, Sodom and Gomorrah was wiped off the map with fire and brimstone from heaven, he says in effect, "These people, if they had the revelation that you had, they would have repented." That makes us realise that they didn't receive that special revelation. God left them to it, and he judged them, and justly so. God is not unjust. Is that not the most alarming statement that Jesus says? These pagan peoples, to whom no special revelation was supplied, would have repented if they'd witnessed what the Jews had witnessed. It is a rebuke against the Jews here. The revelation is not owed by God. So when revelation is given, accountability goes way up. It puts a great weight of importance on the fact that we have received light. We are sitting here in Woodlands this morning hearing teaching from the word of God, that is light of revelation, that makes us accountable to that light. We are immediately more accountable to that truth.

If someone hears the gospel and then decides to sit in a church for thirty years hearing the gospel but never repent, they of all people are most pitied, because they have heard the light over and over and over and over again. And there are degrees of punishment for light received. That's what Christ is saying here in Matthew 11. "Nevertheless, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the judgement than for you." The people of Sodom and Gomorrah had only the light of natural revelation, which holds them accountable. These Jews have special revelation, and still they have rejected it, which makes them more accountable, and the judgement will be far worse for those who have received such light and hardened their hearts against it.

So let me draw this application as we close, developing a third point. It is that there is nothing that you and I do that is so important as listening to preaching. It is preaching that for all time is the God-ordained instrument of heralding his truth in the world. The foolishness of preaching, God has ordained. And it's our response to preaching that matters more than anything else in the world. And so it is preaching to which we should pay the most attention. When we realise that billions of people throughout human history, like those in Sodom and Gomorrah, were without a preacher, were without a prophet, and God justly damned them, it makes us fear and tremble at the fact that light has been given to us, and how earnestly we should seek to respond adequately, to be moved by the truth. We have access to his word. We ought to receive it with gladness, as with weeping, with tears, with joy, knowing of the great mercy of God calling out to us, "Behold, sinner, repent and come to me."

Listen to what R. C. Sproul says, and I give him the final word. He says, "Just imagine standing before the judgment seat of Christ and hearing him say to you, 'I know about your life. You had light. You had the Bible preached to you week in and week out, but you never repented. Therefore your punishment will be worse than what I poured out upon Sodom.'"

What an awful thing it would be to hear such a condemnation. But that is an accurate rewriting of what Christ is saying here." So the warning is now sounding. How will we respond? Will we be moved by the truth, or will we harden our hearts against him more? God help us all.

Let's pray.