Matthew 3: Preparing the way

Introduction

Matthew has told us how the birth of the Christ came about, and how all of the event surrounding Jesus’ birth and upbringing fulfilled different Scriptures. In a single verse, Matthew is now going to jump 30 years to the days just before Jesus started his ministry and made himself public. This “time skip” is common in the OT, with decades, and sometimes even centuries being skipped over quickly! In fact, this kind of happens when we jump from the Old Testament to the New Testament - in a single page we skip 400 years!

Before Jesus enters the picture, Matthew wants to let us know about another man who came first: John the Baptist. Luke tells us all about John’s own birth, and how he was actually related to Jesus. Matthew, like Mark, cares more about the role John played in God’s plan for salvation: he was a messenger, a herald, preparing the way for Jesus.

Matthew 3:1-6

Matthew starts by telling us that “in those days” John the Baptist came preaching. I think he’s letting us know that something strange, new, and different was beginning to happen.

The people hadn’t heard or seen a prophet in 400 years. God, it seemed, had been silent. But now, in the middle of nowhere a man had appeared with a new message. A strange message.

I like to think of it like the calm before a storm. Usually just before a storm hits there is a small breeze that begins to stir things up. This was what John was doing: he was beginning to stir things up before the real storm hit.

The wilderness of Judea where John was living was south of Jerusalem, so it wouldn’t have taken long for word to travel about this strange man with a simple, yet powerful message.

That message: Repent

For John, his ministry was to call people to turn from their sinful lives and return to God. As we’ll see later in the passage, he wants the people to demonstrate their repentance by producing real fruit.

The message was urgent: the kingdom of heaven was upon them! And if the kingdom is here, that means the King is also.

This message of repentance is going to underwrite everything else he says and does throughout this passage.

Matthew, like Mark and Luke, sees John’s actions and words as the fulfilment of Isaiah 40:3 “A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

It wasn’t hard to make this connection, as John the Baptist made this claim himself in John 1:23 “He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.””

With this passage in mind, John’s call for repentance becomes even more clearer: the kingdom is now, the King is coming, so get your act together and your heart right.

Anytime a King, or President, or Prime Minister, or Governor, or dignitary comes to town, that town usually goes into high gear to make itself look good, ready, and prepared. It cleans up the streets and paves the roads. This is the message John is trying to tell the people.

And the message is still the same today, and with more urgency because the King has come. On this side of the cross, He now reigns. And if Jesus’ first coming merited such action, how much greater will His second?

Don’t overlook that this passage from Isaiah says just as much about Jesus as it does John. John is simply “the voice”. Jesus is the Word, the Lord God for whom the way is being prepared.

The another thing I want to point out here is the comparison between John and the prophet Samuel from the OT.

Samuel was the last of the judges, and he ultimately ushered in a new era of rule, the kingdom, annointing the king of Israel.

Similarly, John was the last of the prophets, ushering in a new era, the kingdom of the Messiah, annointing (through baptism) the King of Israel.

John isn’t just like Samuel though. He is like Elijah, and Matthew gives an explicit hint at this by his description of John’s clothing: a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt.

2 Kings 1:8 “They answered him, “He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.” And he said, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.””

In general, this was also the garb of prophets. Humble. We see this referenced in Zechariah 13:4 ““On that day every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies. He will not put on a hairy cloak in order to deceive,”

The author of Hebrews also mentions it as part of the prophetic wardrobe in Hebrews 11:37 “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—”

I think there could also be a deeper symbolism of “camel hair”. The camel was both a clean animal (chewed the cud) and unclean animal (it’s hoofs are not divided). This could be a subtle reference that the Gospel and coming Kingdom was to be for all people - even the “unclean” Gentiles.

His food of locusts and honey are again symbols of a destitute prophet who relies completely on God for his nourishment and survival.

This man obviously began drawing alot of attention in the area, and people flocked to see this strange man and hear his message. Their response: they were baptized and confessed their sins.

Self baptism wasn’t uncommon in Jewish culture, however John seems to be unique in that he started baptizing other people - something that Jesus was command his disciples to also do.

In a way this was a prelude to the response to Peter at Pentecost - with one clear difference: John’s baptism didn’t include the Holy Spirit, nor did it bring forgiveness of sins.

Matthew 3:7-12

As the people came to see John, even the religious leaders came to see him. And this seems to have surprised even John.

Why would the religious leaders care about a homeless man in the desert? Were they genuninely curious? Were they just there for show? Whatever the case they clearly didn’t take John’s message to heart - something Jesus would call out later.

Matthew 21:25–26 “The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.””

The Apostle John also tells us that the Pharisees had sent people to question John the Baptist on his identity (John 1:19-28).

This fake curiousity drew the ire of John the Baptist who has some fiery words for them: “You sons of snakes!”

Jesus will also call the Pharisees this name two more times

Matthew 12:34 “You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

Matthew 23:33 “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?”

John’s message to them is just as relevant to us: our faith must produce fruit. If we aren’t producing fruit, but only hallow words, our faith is futile and dead.

Two things we should remember:

Family history doesn’t matter.

In this particular case, the Jews thought they were safe from God’s judgement simply because they were physical descendents of Abraham. John makes it clear that this isn’t the case: God could just as well make “children of Abraham” out of stones.

And speaking of…that’s exactly what God did and does. Ezekiel 36:26 “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

To be a child of Abraham has nothing to do with physical descent, it has everything to do with having the faith of Abraham, the faith we have in Christ.

This is Paul’s entire argument at the end of Romans: God basically did make children out of “stones” when he cut off the unbelieving Jews and grafted in the Gentiles.

The principal of the matter still applies even today. Too many “Christians” claim to be simply because their family was Christian. How many people will say, “Of course I’m a Christian, my parents were Christians, and so were my grandparents.” or “I grew up going to church.” and yet…they live completely ungodly lives, clearly demonstrating their lack of faith.

Which leads to the second lesson of John’s message: the axe is waiting for those who don’t start producing fruit. And it’s not just there to trim the branches (which Scripture says is actually a good thing for believers, because pruning can produce more fruit!), no the axe is there to uproot the entire tree.

As referenced with Romans, Paul makes the case that this did in fact happen, allowing the Gentiles to be grafted in. But Paul gives a stern warning to us: watch out, because it can happen to us, too.

John ends his message with clarity: his baptism is only the beginning. It’s a baptism of repentance, meant to prepare the people for the real deal, it’s meant to prepare them for Jesus.

He makes clear that Jesus is so much greater than himself, he isn’t even worthy to untie Christ’s sandals - something only the lowest of slaves would do.

John tells us that Jesus will baptize with “the Holy Spirit and fire”. Considering the message to this point has been one of fear, I think this is a note of grace and mercy. It’s John’s way of saying, “Things are going to be really bad for you if you don’t genuninely repent. But don’t worry, if you let him, the King will give you the Holy Spirit and purify your soul.”

I think the case could be made that this one last illustration John uses ultimately refers to the Church and the world:

The threshing floor is the Church and the field is the world (think of how Jesus describes the world has a harvest field that’s lacking workers).

Everyone is invited into the Church, just like the entire harvest is brought into the threshing floor.

But once in the Church, Christ uses his winnowing fork and gathers his wheat into the barn, but then he burns the chaff (think of the parable of the wheat and the tares growing up together before being separated).

The bottom line is: It’s not good enough to just “go to church” or call ourselves “Christians”. We have to put our faith into action, demonstrate genuine repentance, and produce fruit of the Spirit and good works. As James says, “Faith without works, is dead.”

Matthew 3:13-17

It doesn’t take long for John’s words to start coming true. The King makes his way down from Galilee - this probably would have taken several days to make the journey. If the Pharisees and Sadducees showing up shocked John, seeing Jesus totally blew him away.

And for good reason: Jesus didn’t actually need to be baptized. He is the sinless Son of God. John was well aware of this which is why he tries to stop Jesus, making the case, “Hey, you should be baptizing me!”

So if Jesus didn’t need to get baptized, why did he? By his own words it was “to fulfill all righteousness”. This could mean a couple of things:

First, every human needs to be baptized for the remission of sins. And so it only makes sense that for Jesus to truly “fufill all righteousness” or every requirement of humanity in order to redeem us, He was baptized, too. Just like he was born like us, suffered like us, died like us, and rose from the dead (like we will), he also was baptized like us.

In a way, I think Christ’s baptism also purified all baptismal waters, allowing for the forgiveness of sins through our own baptism.

Similar to the first point, God would never ask us to do something He wouldn’t do himself. And so like a good Master, he was baptized first before commanding us to be baptized.

Christ’s baptism culminates with his identity reveal. The little wind that was stirring things up with John gives way to a full on tornado: the Son of God is revealed.

In this one moment we see the Holy Trinity clearly revealed together, and it starts with the very heavens being opened:

The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in the form of a dove.

The voice of the God the Father is heard

He declares that Jesus is His “beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”

And with that, the storm was upon them. Over the next three years, the world was going to change forever, because the King had arrived, and He was bringing his kingdom with him.

Conclusion

The person we focused on most in this story today was John the Baptist. Of course, he’d probably hate that. He’d always say that the focus should be on Jesus. By John’s own words, he had to become less so that Jesus could become greater. He was the groomsman to the Groom. And it’s true - we’ll hear very little about John going forward, as he faded out while Jesus faded in.

But John’s role in the great mystery of God’s plan for salvation shouldn’t be overlooked. Just look at the words of his father Zechariah in Luke 1:76–79 “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.””

It’s no surprise that later Jesus would say in Matthew 11:11 “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.”

But then he adds right after, “Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

Which is why we ought to strive to be like John the Baptist, striving to decrease so that Christ may increase. Like John, may we continue to produce fruit and prepare the hearts of others to repent and accept Christ, too.