The Servant of the Kingdom

When it comes to imposters, history is full of them. For example, in 1918, after Bolshevik revolutionaries murdered the Russian princess Anastasia, rumors had it that she had survived for decades! And with these rumors came many imposters claiming to be the survived Russian Princess. and one of these imposters, was Anna Anderson, who made a claim to the throne.

She claimed she was Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the deceases Czar Nicholas the II. And though most of the surviving Romanovs dismissed her as a fraud, still, the girl bore a striking resemblance to the princess and even knew many personal details of her life! This led to her winning the support of many wealthy Russian emigrants who genuinely believed she was the legitimate heir to the throne. However, eventually she moved to America in 1968, and while her story inspired several books and even a Hollywood movie, she failed to win recognition in court due to a lack of evidence. And not only that, DNA tests finally proved she was not related to the Romanov family at all.

Another famous imposter in history was the man named Dmitry the 1st, who not only successfully posed as a prince, but he managed to con his way onto the royal throne of Russia! Maybe it is a Russian thing - I don’t know. Dmitry first appeared in the early 1600’s in Poland, where he declared himself to be Dmitry, the youngest son of the deceased Ivan the Terrible. However, the real Dmitry had been assassinated as a boy, though the imposter claimed he actually hadn’t, and had escaped and fled the country. After charming the Russian people, Dmitry eventually raised enough support that led him all the way to Moscow. And in July of 1906, the fake Dmitry was crowned the Czar of Russia. However, his rule was ultimately short-lived, as he was overthrown and assassinated less than a year later, in which two more Dmitry imposters tried the same thing.

When it comes to imposters, there is certainly no shortage of them throughout history. And while some imposters caused very little harm, other imposters caused great harm with their imposterizing.

But the key to detecting an imposter from the real deal, is knowing what to look for. Because if you don’t know what to look for, you’re going to be deceived.

In Matthew chapter 9, we find the signs to look for that help identity of the Messiah. Which is of critical importance since there have been so many messianic imposters over the centuries. And, when it comes to bad consequences of trusting an imposter over the real person - this one by far comes with the worst of consequences. And so this morning, we are going to finish Matthew chapter 9, which along with chapter 8, tells us about Jesus’s miracles which help not fall for a messianic imposter and identify the real Messiah. And so if you have your Bible’s turn with me to Matthew chapter 9 where we will see the 4 things the miracles reveal about the Messiah.

The miracles reveal the Messiah’s

1. Identity
2. Opposition
3. Mission
4. Commission

1. Identity

Let’s jump in. How do the miracles reveal the mission’s identity?

If you’ve ever flown before, you know that they won’t just let anybody with a ticket onto to the plane. They absolute won’t. And so if you want to get on the plane, what do you have to do? You have to prove your identity. How? You need airline documents - like your ticket. You need a photo ID that proves who you are. And if you want to fly out of the country, you need more than that even, don’t you? You need a passport, and maybe even a VISA if you’re going to stay a while in another country. And sometimes, you even need to provide the hotel information showing when and where you will be staying.

Now, who did Jesus claim to be? He claimed to the Christ. And that isn’t some fancy Russian last name - Christ means Messiah. Now what’s a Messiah? Messiah means God’s “anointed” or “chosen” one.

Anointed or chosen for what? To be the deliverer. To be the one who would save God’s chosen people, the Israelite nation from their enemies - which includes both spiritual and physical. The Messiah would be from the line of David - which is why the blind men who ask Jesus to heal them call Him, “SON OF DAVID” They are calling Him “The Messiah.”

Now, in Matthew’s day, there were a lot of people who claimed to be the Messiah. Like A LOT! And all of them, except for one, were not the Messiah. And so, the question is, how were people supposed to know who was and and who wasn’t the messiah? How were they to detect the imposter from the real? And the answer is, by knowing how to properly identify the Messiah. And how were they supposed to do that? By examining His biblical passport.

Now, just a reminder, but the Old Testament was written before Jesus was born. And in the Old Testament, we find over 300 prophecies about the Messiah, which tell us how to identify the true Messiah from the false Messiahs. And in Daniel chapter 9, we find a very specific prophecy that helps us identity the Messiah.

In Daniel 9:24, we find the Messiah’s mission.

“Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.

Daniel 9:24 ESV

Now that’s His mission, which is our 3rd point, so we’ll stop there before we get ahead of ourselves, but Daniel goes on to help us properly identify the Messiah. Look with me at verses 25-26.

Daniel 9:25-26 (NIV) “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.

OK, now stick with me here for moment. The context here is that Daniel and the Jewish people are in exile in Babylon because of their many sins and breaking of their covenant with God. And so during Daniel’s prayers as he is asking God for forgiveness and to restore them, the angel Gabriel shows up and tells Daniel that God has heard his prayer, and that God will restore the people through the Messiah. And then, remarkably, Gabriel tells Daniel when that will happen. And it will happen within the period of the 70 weeks. But what on earth does that mean?

We don’t have time to jump into it fully, but the short version is that each week equals weeks of years. So one week equals 7 years. And Daniel says that once the decree is given to rebuild Jerusalem, there will be 483 years, or 173,880 days before Messiah arrives to put and end to sin and atone for their iniquity, as verse 24 says. And historically, we know the decree to rebuild Jerusalem went out in 445 B.C. by the Persian King Artaxerxes. And when did Jesus arrive at Jerusalem to announce that He was the Messianic King they were waiting for? 31 A.D. And oh snap! Would you take a look at that?!? According to the 360 day a year Jewish Calendar, how many years are there between the two? 483, EXACTLY! Which means, Daniel’s prophecy to Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was prophesied nearly to the exact day!

Now, about that triumphal entrance that we celebrate every year on Palm Sunday, let me ask you - what does Hosanna mean? Hosanna means, “Lord Save us,” which comes from Psalm 118, which is a Messianic prophecy that reads:

Lord, save us! Lord, grant us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. From the house of the Lord we bless you.

Psalm 118:25-26 NIV

And ya know, that sounds vaguely familiar.... What did the people shout as Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem on a donkey? Matthew 21:9 (ESV) “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

Now you know why the religious leaders were freaking out, because they knew what the people were saying. They were saying, “Jesus is the messiah!” And that’s because Jesus IS Messiah, and everything about His life and ministry prove it! In fact, even the miracles He did proved it! How? Here’s how.

In the Old Testament law, when someone with leprosy had been healed, what were they supposed to do if they wanted to be allowed back into the Israelite camp? In Leviticus 14 it tells us, and one of the things is that they are supposed to do is appear before the priest and be examined to prove that the leprosy was gone. Which is really weird, because outside of Elijah’s healing of Naaman, nobody ever got healed of their leprosy. Which means the purity law of Leviticus 14 in regards to the healing of lepers just sat there getting dusty for thousands of year.

But that leaves us with an important question. Why would God give laws that weren’t going to be used? Because, as the 1st century rabbis taught, these instructions for dealing with the healing of lepers were for a unique purpose. And what purpose was that? Identifying the Messiah.

See, the 1st century rabbis taught that leprosy was such a nasty disease that only the messiah would be able to heal it. And why did they think that? Because of Isaiah’s prophecy of messianic healing.

In Isaiah 35, it tells us about the kind of healing Messiah would bring: Isaiah 35:5-6 (ESV) Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.

Similarly, in Isaiah 29:18

In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see.

Isaiah 29:18 ESV

And so with this in mind, in Mathew 11, when John sends a message to Jesus asking if He is the Messiah, what does Jesus say?

And Jesus answered them, “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.

Matthew 11:4-5 ESV

Which is Jesus’s way of saying, “you know the prophecies don’t you?” “You’ve know of my miracles” “So yes, I am the messiah!”

And now you know why Matthew tells us all about Jesus’s miracles in chapters 8 and 9, Because the healing of the leper, The healing of the paralyzed man The casting out demons Restoring the eyes of the Blind Is all to proof that Jesus is God’s anointed one. That Jesus is the Messiah!

And the blind men in verse 27 realized this, which is why they cry out to Jesus calling Him “Son of David” Which is a messianic title since the messiah would be a descendent of King David. And so when Jesus asks them in verse 28, “Do you believe that I am able to heal you and restore you sight?” He’s not simply asking them if they believe He has the power to do this, He’s asking them if they believe that He is the Messiah! And, by faith, they do believe He is the Messiah, and so He heals them proving that their belief in His Messiah-ship is correct!

However, not everyone believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and of those who did not believe the religious leaders of Jesus’s day stood at the front of the pack. Which is pretty ironic, because out of everyone who should have known that Jesus was the Messiah, THEY absolutely should have known! Because after the Leper was healed, what was a cleansed leper supposed to go and do? As Leviticus 14 says, go and show themselves to the priest. And so when that leper showed up cleansed by Jesus, that miracle, along with the other ones, should have led them to recognize that the Messiah had finally come! But it didn’t! In fact, is led to their fierce opposition against Messiah, which leads us to our second point.

The miracles reveal the Messiah’s

2. Opposition

Why did the religious leaders reject Jesus? Why did they oppose Him?

They didn’t opposed Him because He healed to many people. No, they opposed Him because His mission didn’t match their mission. And His mission was to provide a healing that wasn’t merely skin deep.

As Jesus performed miracles, what does Jesus keep saying over and over to those He heals? “In accordance with your faith, be healed.” He says this to the centurion in chapter 8 He says this to the paralyzed man in chapter 9 And to the women who couldn’t stop bleeding for twelve years. To all of them, He says: “In accordance with your faith, be healed.”

But what does that even mean? “In accordance with your faith?” Oh I know, maybe it means if you have strong enough faith, God will reward you with healing... So if you want healing you better start taking spiritual steroids and doing the spiritual disciplines like praying, Bible reading, and fasting... Is that the point of the miracles? Just believer harder and God will reward you with good health and riches? If you’ve been around this church for any amount of time at all you know to the answer to that, and it’s a capital “N - O” So what’s the deal here with the faith & healing that Jesus is talking about?

What is faith? This is another we recently talked about, but faith is not a thing. It’s not a noun.

You can’t buy a can of faith anymore than you can buy a can of trust. And why not? Because faith is verb, It’s not a noun. You can only have FAITH IN SOMETHING or SOMEONE. Just like you can’t have TRUST You have to put your trust in someone or something. So if you say, “I’m a man of faith,” that’s a totally meaningless statement. You haven’t told me anything. Because you can only have FAITH in someone or something.

Hebrews 11:1 says:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1 ESV

Now think about this with me. When Jesus heals the blind men, unlike the crowds and the religious leaders, they were blind and unable to see. However, ironically, the blind men weren’t really the blind ones... And why not? Because even though they lacked physical sight, unlike the crowds and the religious leaders, these blind men had been given the spiritual sight to see that Jesus was the Messiah.

And if we aren’t careful here, we’ll read about Jesus’s miracles and completely miss what’s actually going on. We’ll miss the entire point of them! Jesus is granting their physical healing as the outward sign of the inward spiritual healing they’ve received.

See, JESUS’S Mission isn’t just to heal ‘boo boo’s and ouchies.’ That just putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. It’s like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic! It’s not actually solving the real problem! And Jesus came to solve the real problem, which is to heal humanity’s spiritual condition! And may I remind you that our spiritual condition which started in Genesis 3 is what caused all this mess we see with our physical suffering? And so the point of the physical healing miracles are to prove that Jesus has the power to heal us at our deepest level! Yes, Jesus can and will one day ultimately heal our physical condition, but only in connection to the deeper healing of our spiritual condition! The two go hand-in-hand.

And now do you see why the Pharisees and most of the crowds rejected Jesus? They didn’t think they needed any spiritual healing. They thought were good already. And if you remember the sermon on the mount, what was Jesus’s point? You’re not good. Not even a little bit good. In fact, if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, your righteousness must be even greater than greatest among you! It must, as Jesus said in chapter 5 on the sermon on the mount, exceed even that of the scribes and pharisees! But who can ever live up to that? Who can fully and perfectly obey God’s law? None, BUT, ONE!

A moment ago we looked at Psalm 118, which was fulfilled in Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. And the verses right before the ones we looked at, tell us that the Messiah would be the stone, or the cornerstone that the builders rejected. Which is precisely what happened with Jesus. The religious leaders and the crowd rejected Him as their Messiah, which actually proved even further that Jesus was their Messiah. For He was the cornerstone that was rejected.

After Jesus’s triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, He cleanses the temple for a second time, which caused the religious leaders to go into a frenzy and seek His immediate death. Which took place a week later. And why? Because it was His MISSION to die for the sins of men, which is the only thing could lead to our spiritual healing. Which leads us to our 3rd point.

The miracles reveal the Messiah’s

3. Mission

In Daniel 9 it reads Daniel 9:26 (NIV) After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing...

In Isaiah 53, the prophet writes: Isaiah 53:3-6 (ESV) He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

As we think back on the miracles of Jesus in chapters 8 and 9, we find a hint at the kind of healing Jesus offers us. Christ healed the leper, which shows that only He can make us spiritually clean. Christ healed the demonic, which shows that only He can set us free from Satan’s tyranny! Christ healed the paralyzed man, showing that only Christ can restore our spiritual brokenness! Christ healed the two blind men, showing that only Christ can heal our spiritual blindness! Christ healed and raised the girl from the dead, showing that Christ alone can raise our spiritual corpses, which will one day gloriously lead to our resurrection! And all of this was made possible, because as Matthew told us in chapter 8: Matthew 8:17 (ESV) “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”

On the cross, Jesus gave up His robes of righteousness for my spiritually leprous ones. He gave up His sight, as He was blinded, and then slapped, beaten, and spit upon. He gave up His freedom to walk about, as His legs were nailed to a cross. And ultimately, He gave up His life, so that you and I could have eternal life.

Isaiah 53 ends, saying: Isaiah 53:11 (NIV) my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

This is Jesus’ mission. To save and justify sinful man before a Holy God, which is our greatest need. And this healing is made available to us, as the women with the bleeding disorder came to find out, by just a touch of faith.

The miracles reveal the Messiah’s

4. Commission

In verse 35, it tells us how Jesus then went throughout all the cities and villages teaching and preaching, and healing every disease and affliction. And then in verse 36, it tells us about Jesus’s compassion for the people. For He saw that they were like sheep without a shepherd. And why were they like sheep without a shepherd? Because Israel’s shepherds - their religious leaders, were not caring for them AT ALL. In fact, they were leading them astray into great spiritual danger and peril! What kind of peril? The peril of the harvest.

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Matthew 9:37-38 ESV

In the Bible, the harvest is spoken of in two ways. A harvest of grace, and a harvest of judgment.

In Chapter 3, Matthew already told us about the harvest of judgment that Christ would one day bring, saying:

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Matthew 3:12 ESV

And as we’ll eventually see in Matthew 13, this harvest which comes at the end of the age sees the people of God brought into the kingdom while the those who reject God are thrown into the fiery furnace. But... today is not yet that day! And right now Christ, our great healer has guaranteed our mission’s success and commissioned us in His harvest of grace. “The harvest is plentiful!” Jesus says. In John 4 He says, “Lift up your eyes! See the fields! For they are white for harvest!” And right now, for this brief, momentary vapor we call life, we have an opportunity to share in Jesus’s compassion as we bring the gospel of grace to those who are perishing.

For we know the Savior’s identity! And yes we know there are those who oppose Him and those with Him. But we also know the success of His mission upon the cross, which guarantees our success! And so why wouldn't we want to accept our commissioning and labor in the harvest of grace?! Why wouldn't we want to lay up treasures in heaven?

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19-21 ESV

So how about you? Will you join the Savior in the mission to go into all the world and preach the gospel? To make disciples of all peoples? “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few!” Won’t you labor with us in the harvest of grace?

Church we have such a short moment to labor in the harvest of grace, and then it’s too late. For the harvest of judgment is certainly coming. Are you ready for it? Have you accepted the healing the Messiah brings by grace through faith in Christ? ans is it changing you from the inside out?

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Daniel 12:2 ESV

By the grace of God may we labor in the harvest of grace in such a way that when we soon stand before our risen Savior we will hear: “Well done thou good and faithful servant!”

This is the manuscript the sermon was preached from, so the recording may differ in places.