God’s Plan! Revealed and Finally Realized!
The Wisest Plan, with the greatest result!
Matthew 11:12-19

† In Jesus Name! †

May the grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ convince you that His plan intended to, and always has included you, and those around you!

Trickle up, or Trickle down Ministry

As long as there have been missionaries, as long as churches have been planted, or replanted in a communities, there has been a question that has been discussed and discussed – who do we target our ministry to?

In some countries, the tactic was to focus the reach on those with the most influence, the scholars, the rich, the influential people in the world. That is still a popular way to do it, even in our church. And so money and the “best” pastors are sent into the rich areas to plant new churches, with the intent that they can eventually develop ministries to those less… well… just less.

The other tactic most readily used was to send the missionaries to the inner cities and poorer remote communities, to the people that were presumed to have the greatest need for hope in this life. Money would poor in, to develop education and like skills training.

In both cases, the primary goal is revealing God’s love in Christ to these people. They get the idea heard in Colossians, ¹⁵

“… God planned to reconcile in his own person, as it were, everything on earth and everything in Heaven by virtue of the sacrifice of the cross.” Colossians 1 (Phillips NT)

But the strategy of how to reveal this to a new community, or a new nation, or reach out with it often boiled down to this – Who do we start with—the top of society, or the bottom?

Which is God’s plan? What if neither is?

What does today’s gospel reading say about this,

And can we take a passage like today, and draw a firm conclusion from it?

More importantly, can we use that plan here, at Concordia?

For we need to continue to reach out – and not just add one or two people a year… for their sake – we need to reach out to everyone….so they dwell I heaven.

But where do we start this time?

How do we know if they are “ready”

As we look at the gospel reading this morning, we see the people and leaders of Israel that are talking to Jesus aren’t quite ready for the message that God has come to them, to love them. Let’s listen to it again!

¹⁶  “To what can I compare this generation? It is like children playing a game in the public square. They complain to their friends, ¹⁷  ‘We played wedding songs, and you didn’t dance, so we played funeral songs, and you didn’t mourn.’ ¹⁸  For John didn’t spend his time eating and drinking, and you say, ‘He’s possessed by a demon.’ ¹⁹  The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say, ‘He’s a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!’ But wisdom is shown to be right by its results.”  Matthew 11:16-19 (NLT2)

It sounds a lot like the generations we deal with today!

We try to reach them this way, they don’t respond, we try to reach them with another tactic, and they still don’t respond. Indeed, we get blasted for ministering both ways!

There are going to be people that aren’t ready, that either don’t want to grieve over the depth of their sin, or rejoice over the lifting of the burdens that sinning brings to consume us. They didn’t want to hear John’s message of repentance, or Jesus’ message of what creates a repentant spirit – the message of grace and forgiveness.

These people would be eventually ready to repent, but they would need a few things first.

Wisely Discerning God’s Plan!

If we look at who did respond to Jesus in this passage, it was not one demographic exclusively. Let’s hear it again,

¹⁹  The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say, ‘He’s a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!’

Tax Collectors were among the richest folk in the land, those identified as sinners, were among the poorest, as their families were forced to abandon them to their fate.

What they had in common?

They were the outcasts, those whose lives were undeniably broken. Those who sin could not be denied, for relationships with loved ones and entire communities were sacrificed at the altar of self, to gain the sin that so wanted to entrap them—and it had!

They knew this, they knew the despair, they knew the violence that sin did to establish someone it its grip. They were broken – from Zaccheaus to the women caught in adultery; from the Gadarene Demoniac to the Centurion whose servant was ill. From the lepers to the man let down through the roof that Jesus declared forgiven before he told him to get up, to all the other broken people like Peter and Paul

And you and I!

This is the wisest plan of God, with the greatest plan—to have Jesus Christ, the Son of God, come into the lives of the broken, no matter rich or poor, no matter famous or infamous or abandoned, to heal and restore us. To grieve with us over our broken lives and world, and to rejoice with us as He forgives and heals those we bring to Him.

That was what Marilyn saw so many years ago, that define who we are so well, and why so many people need to know we are here… for we fit God’s plan, as we are the place where broken people find healing and hope in Jesus, while helping others heal.

The wisest of plans with the greatest result. AMEN!