INTRODUCTION:
This morning, I want you to put on your “imagination cap.” I want you to imagine that you are a Jew, living in the first century, just at the turn of the century. You can be married if you want to, you can have a family if you want to – after all, this is all imagination! But, you are a faithful Jew. You follow the law of Moses to the best of your ability, in every aspect of life. You live a moral life. There is a lot, a lot of immorality that is going on around you, but you still live a holy life. You sacrifice animals as you should. If you are male, you go to Jerusalem three times a year as the law requires.
Your parents were also faithful Jews. They taught you to listen to the Pharisees as they teach the law of Moses and review Israelite history but your parents also told you not to follow the example of the Pharisees. Too often, the Pharisees were politicians and they changed their behavior to fit whoever was in power in the governor’s office. Your parents took you to the synagogue every Sabbath day.
The Old Testament was not a book at that point; books will not be invented for maybe another 100 years. But there were scrolls on which the Old Testament had been written. Those scrolls were in the synagogue and those scrolls were read every Sabbath day. And, because your parents, and their parents before them, had been faithful Jews, then the substance of the Old Testament teaching could be repeated, nearly word-for-word by your parents and your grand-parents. In fact, if you had a pen and papyrus, you and your parents could probably write down much of the Old Testament simply by memory. There was no TV, radio, or cell phones in those day. No after school activities; nothing to provide distractions. So, nearly everyone’s memory was quite sharp, especially when it came to quoting large portions of the word of God.
With that background, you knew that there was a Messiah coming. You knew that He would preach God’s message to the poor and that He would provide freedom from your Roman authorities. You knew that He would be anointed by the Holy Spirit and that He would give the Spirit of God to all those who would serve God. You did not know if the Messiah would be one person or two – a sect of the Jews who lived in the village of Qumran up on the shore of the Dead Sea believed there would actually be two Messiahs. But you knew that all the Jewish rabbis were not in agreement on that point.
You also knew that the Messiah (or Messiahs) would have a forerunner, a herald, someone who would announce the coming of the Messiah. But, you and your Jewish people had also waited a very long time for this Messiah. From the time Isaiah preached about the coming of the Messiah, it had been 700 years. It had been nearly 600 years since Ezekiel had predicted the coming of the Holy Spirit and around that time since Joel had predicted the coming of the Holy Spirit. Those men were regarded as prophets of God among your people and all the faithful Jews believed what those prophets were saying.
But, ever since Malachi came and preached about the forerunner of the Messiah, it had been 400 years without a single word from God. You still believed in God and you still believed that God had worked in the lives of your ancestors, going all the way back to Father Abraham and, yes, even to Adam. But, without any message from God, you wonder if and when God would ever fulfill His promises to establish His kingdom that would break and consume the Roman Empire, under the leadership of His Messiah. When?
THE ENTRANCE OF JOHN THE BAPTIZER – 3:1-4:
One day, you hear about a man named John who was preaching in the wilderness of Judea. John became very popular, especially with the common people. The talk was that John’s parents were both from priestly families. His dad, Zechariah, was from the family of Abijah and his mom, Elizabeth, was from the family of the great high-priest himself, Aaron, brother of the famous Moses. That would put John in the line of priests. The talk was that both John’s parents had the Holy Spirit of God. No one had had the Holy Spirit for the past 400 years, not since the prophets you heard read about every Sabbath.
But John did not choose to be a priest. John chose to be a preacher and he preached in the wilderness of Judea, outside of Jerusalem. People preaching in the wilderness was nothing new. They were mostly considered quacks. Mostly, they were just deceiving people and wanting to gain their own followers.
But this John was different. This John was not trying to make disciples for himself. He was teaching the Jews they needed to get their lives right with God, based on the law of Moses and the preaching of the prophets and he tried to get the Jews to follow someone else – a relative of his named Jesus from Nazareth.
You see, a big part of John’s popularity was the simplicity of his message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” As a faithful Jew, you knew what the word “repent” meant. It was used over a dozen times in the Old Testament. You also spoke Greek, ever since Alexander the Great took over Judea and Jerusalem and everyone started speaking Greek. You knew the Greek word for “repent” could have a broad meaning and a narrow meaning. In it’s narrow meaning, the word “repent” meant to “change your mind.” The Jews used it this way to say that if you wanted to be right with God, you had to “change your mind” about living your life your way and had to live life the way God wanted you to live.
But “repent” could also be used in the broad, general way to refer to the sadness and regret that you felt in your heart when you learned what sin was and that you, personally, had sinned. And the “change of mind” that resulted from that sadness and regret and the change of behavior that would result from that change of mind.
So here, this man named John appears on the scene and says that the Jews needed to repent and get prepared for that coming kingdom, the kingdom the great prophet Daniel had talked about nearly 600 years ago! What excitement.
Of course, there was also talk that John was the one who was fulfilling those prophecies made hundred of years ago by Isaiah: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight.” If John was, in fact, that messenger from God, then that meant that the Messiah would come soon! The Messiah represented the Lord God, Himself! That was exciting! And there is talk of this “kingdom” now! That was exciting too!
On the other hand, John dressed unusually. He dressed in clothes made a camel’s hair with a leather belt. His food, as you might expect living in the desert, was locust and wild honey. What John made everyone think about what that greatest of all prophets, the one, in fact, who never died, Elijah the Tishbite. Elijah famously won a challenge against 450 prophets of Baal. Could John do the same thing with the false gods of the Roman people?
RESULTS OF THE PREACHING – 3:5-6:
John’s preaching was simple. And John’s preaching was drawing a crowd. People were ready for a renewal. The Jews had become spiritually stagnant and they needed renewal and John’s preaching provided it. It gave them motivation and an incentive to repent of their sins.
So, multitudes of people were going out to him from the capital of Jerusalem. Folks in the whole region of Judaea were going out to hear him. People from villages all around the Jordan River were going out to hear him. They knew they were in sin. They knew that they needed to change their minds about how they were living and then change their behavior. They confessed those sins and, based on John’s preaching, they were being immersed in the Jordan River for the forgiveness of sin (Mark 1:4).
This “immersion” was not something totally new. There were Jewish sects who immersed themselves in order to become a member of that sect. But what people were really thinking about was the practice of the Jewish priests who had to wash in that bronze laver before they could enter the temple. This immersion John was preaching was something similar to that – He was preaching that if you wanted to be prepared for this kingdom the Messiah was going to establish, you had to be immersed for the forgiveness of sins.
In the crowd, one day, you and your whole family saw so many passages from the Old Testament coming together in the preaching of John, so you all decide you will also be immersed in the Jordan River to have your sins washed away. That was a great day, a feeling of newness, of refreshment.
PHYSICAL RELATIONSHIPS DO NOT APPLY – 3:7-10:
You and your family went out many days to hear John preach and you were anxious to see this Messiah whom John kept talking about.
But one day, groups from the two largest Jewish sects went out to hear John preach – a group from the more strict Pharisees and a group from the more liberal Sadducees went out to hear John. You could feel the tension in the air. You knew these Pharisees and Sadducees were not happy with John’s preaching and behavior because when he preached against sin, everyone knew that these Jewish leaders were the epitome of sin. The question is, what is going to happen?
What did happen? Well, John was just as plain with the religious leaders as he was with everyone else, part of the reason why so many people liked him. John preached the truth, even to power. He called the religious leaders a “brood of vipers!” Wow! How blunt can you get? Then John challenged them: “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” A coming wrath? There were lots of warnings in the Old Testament about the wrath of God. God’s wrath was also indiscriminate, as indiscriminate as John’s preaching. God’s wrath was poured out on lots of nations in the Old Testament: the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Persians. Would John preach about the wrath of God being poured out on the Romans? Is that going to be the work of the Messiah?
But here, John warns the Pharisees and Sadducees – the religious leaders – about God’s coming wrath. Could that mean that God’s wrath was coming agains the nation of Israel? That also happened several times in the Old Testament. In fact, the prophets said that both the Assyrian exile and the Babylonian exile had been the result of God’s wrath against His people, your people, the nation of Israel. Now John is warning of another exhibition of God’s wrath on His people?
But your nation is the nation of Israel. Jacob was your father. Abraham was your father. Your people were promised by God to be a blessing to the world. That was the promise God had made to Abraham, your illustrious ancestor. What about this coming wrath?
John tells his audience to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Again, you knew what that meant: Feel sorry for your sins; change your mind about how you are living; then change your behavior. That is “fruit” that is “in keeping” with that changed mentality.
But then John gets to the heart of your thoughts, almost as if he could read your thoughts about being a descendent of Father Abraham. John preached: “Do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.”
Wow! So being a descendent of Abraham is not a prerequisite to being a member of this new kingdom? Really? You can be a member of the Messiah’s kingdom without being a member of the Jewish nation? You had heard talk about that in the prophets – that the Messiah’s kingdom would be a universal kingdom.
But then John interrupted your train of thought one more time – “The axe is already laid at the root of the tree; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
By saying that the axe is already laid at the root of the tree suggests that this wrath of God is already prepared. It sounds like God is already making plans to bring about this wrath, this judgment on your people. No wonder John is preaching so fervently that everyone needs to repent, to bear good fruit. Otherwise, they will be cut down and thrown into the fire – both individual Jews who do not repent and the whole Jewish nation if sufficient numbers do not respond to God.
JOHN’S PROPHECY OF THE MESSIAH – 3:11-12:
While it was certainly eye opening to hear what John had to say about your nation, the next words out of his mouth were another reason for excitement: “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
The Messiah again. Oh how excited you are that you might very well get to meet the Messiah! How wonderful He will be; how wonderful He is! If John was having such an impact on peoples’ lives by preaching as He is doing and the Messiah is even greater than John! Wow! You could not wait to see, meet, and listen to this wonderful Person.
And John says he was baptizing with water for the purpose of repentance – here’ the fifth time you’ve heard John mention repentance – but the Messiah would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. You were familiar with the prophets’ messages about the Messiah bringing the Holy Spirit on all of God’s children. Isaiah preached about it (32:15; 44:3). Ezekiel preached about it (36:26-27; 39:29). Joel preached about it (2:28-32). When the Holy Spirit comes, people would be able to prophesy again! Just like in the Old Testament – sharing the message of God with the people around them! And when the Holy Spirit comes, people would have a new motivation, a renewed motivation to serve God – they would have new hearts and new spirits.
More reason for excitement! The Messiah was almost here. The Kingdom was almost here. The Holy Spirit with all of His blessings was almost here! All they had to do was repent of their sins and be patient for God to reveal the Messiah!
But what about this “baptism in fire”? What about that? John went on to elaborate on that: “God’s winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Ah, so that’s the reference to the baptism with fire – its referring again to God’s wrath against the nation of Israel, against their capital, Jerusalem. Men all over the country side used a winnowing fork – it was used to toss the wheat or barley into the air and the husk, the chaff, would blow away and the grain would fall back to the ground. So John is warning again of that coming judgment on Jerusalem – if the Jews did not repent.
Well, you and your family had repented; you had confessed your sins; and you had been immersed in the Jordan River for the forgiveness of your sins. You were ready for the coming Messiah. You just prayed that everyone else would also get ready.
CONCLUSION;
If you had stayed there and listened to John preaching, eventually you would have seen Jesus of Nazareth come to John to be, Himself, immersed in the Jordan River to complete His righteousness.
And you would have lived to see fulfilled everything John had preached – including the establishment of that kingdom on the Day of Pentecost after Jesus rose from the dead and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
Now, that kingdom, which now exists on earth as the church of Christ, is going to be completed in heaven where it will include those faithful Jews in the Old Testament and it will become the “eternal kingdom” mentioned by Peter in 2 Peter 1:11.
Just as it was necessary for the Jews to repent of their sins in order to be prepared for the coming of the kingdom, we, too, must repent of our sins in order to be prepared for the eternal kingdom. In fact, since we sin on a frequent basis, it is better to say that we always need to have a repentant heart so that as soon as we do sin, we’ll make it right.
Take home message: Regret your sin. Reform your heart. Refocus your life. Be prepared for the eternal kingdom.
Paul Holland
