Matthew 3:1-17

Good morning church, it is a very great morning to be with you here today!

In the last two weeks I have read a great book on waiting called: ‘Waiting isn’t a waste’, by Mark Vroegop.

And the reason why I read this book is because this year for me involves a fair bit of waiting. Let me tell you about two exciting things that are coming up for me;

Firstly, as you all know by now in November with the amazing support of Carly my wife, I plan to plant the next church in our movement in the Foothills of the Dandenongs, the Bayswater/Boronia area most likely, and it feels like a long way away. I need patience. And if you talked to me last year I would have floated that August 2025 was the dream time to plant!

So why have we gone with November? Well that leads to my next exciting thing, it turns out that in all the excitement, planning, nervousness, the Lord decided this would be a great time for Carly to also fall pregnant and I am delighted to share that we are expecting in August. (clap moment)

Two very exciting things that I am sure will be easy, fun, and stress free back to back.

But they are two things that I am going to have to wait for.

Waiting is a part of the Christian life in a bigger way than I think we often talk about. Full confession time, I’m not very good at waiting. I like fast internet, I fast food. I appreciate efficiency.

I actually feel like I have discipled myself out of being good at waiting. That is because waiting isn’t valued in our culture. I have come to realise that by impatience for many things, change in myself, my circumstance, change in other people or situations is a deeper symptom of a problem of my heart.

I have seen waiting as something that is additional to the Christian life, a small part of it, but am convinced that it is central. Following Jesus involves a life of waiting. It seems to be a feature in every single page of scripture.

Why am I talking about waiting and not diving into the text?

Well in this text, I think the context behind it is one of the most significant times of waiting that we see in Scripture. If we are going to understand the context that Matthew is writing to as we look at this book all year, we need to understand the heart that they had in this time, how those original first hearers and readers felt. So let us turn and read the text again before we look at the coming kingdom.

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’ ” Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptised by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Let’s do something a little different and go on a journey church, as we try and engage our minds and hearts as to what it would be like to be in this space as this happened. We are so far removed from this, that it is crucial to comprehend the context of this passage so we might appreciate what Matthew is saying. To help us I’m just going to walk through this story again all the way through to help us feel what is happening here.

Come back with me roughly 2025 years…

It’s the first century. You are a young man or woman in Judea which was once a bustling center of the Jewish nation under King David and King Solomon. But that was a long time ago…it is now a far cry from the stories of the hay-day that you read and heard growing up.

Israel has been under occupation for 700 years…700 years…during that time they have been exiled by the Assyrian empire, taken captive by the Babylonian empire, allowed to return to their land only to live under crazy strict rules and their places are in shambles. The last word they had from God was 400 years ago, it seems that he has gone silent, and things don’t seem to be changing. Rome has it’s boot on their neck and is making life seriously hard to worship, build a life out of this situation.

It seems like a terrible situation that isn’t going anywhere…Every week however, you cling to hope.

Despite so many years of pressure to bow down to other gods, you, your family, your community that you live with continue to drag yourself to the practices of the day in faith because you hear stories, and for some reason believe them, that God chose your people to be his nation, to bless you and save the world through you. If you are going to admit it, this is really hard to believe every week because of what you see around you.

But what makes it a little easier, is there are a bunch of promises that you cling to. Things that were written down, some in your favourite book, the book of Isaiah that promised a coming kingdom. You resite to yourself Isaial 40:9-11

Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

You can’t wait for that day. So you call on the LORD, and you wait.

You and your people wait, and wait, and wait…For 400 silent years.

During this time, believing is hard. Silence is hard. Waiting is hard.

But then you hear of a movement that is happening out in the east, in the desert outside of Judea. Now you’ve heard things like this before, this isn’t the first time that someone claims that the promised one that you’ve been waiting for, is here or coming. You are reminded of the disaster that comes upon your people when you try and stand up to the Romans and you are worried that this new movement won’t spell the end of your suffering, but instead exacerbate it like it has in the past.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. —Helen Keller

Helen Keller

But then some people that you trust decide to go and check it out. And there is a report that there is something that is different about this…so you decide to go and check it out for yourself.

When you get there you don’t find someone trying to rile up a rebellion against the Romans, but this man preaching a message that you’ve never heard before…

His message is repent and be baptised. You find out the man saying this is named John, and here he is quoting your favourite passage of scripture Isaiah 40:3.

He is claiming that there is someone is coming…someone significant, the one who will show the glory of the LORD. This person will be the judge of all, the king of all. The one whom all of your texts that you’ve held to so closely talks about. And that here, and now is the time to turn in repentance of your old ways, to make yourself ready to receive the messiah.

The people around you are commenting how much this guy reminds them of the prophet Elijah in how he dresses, and how he eats what the levitical priest eat.

So you step forward in faith, confess your sins, and with many others are baptised by this John.

When you come up out of the water you feel totally normal. But then something happens. Something that shocks you and totally reframes what you had been taught…You see John now starts talking about who would be in the kingdom and who would be out. He turns his attention off the crowds and directs his message at the religious leaders who are standing near by.

Now you know exactly who these men are. They’ve been here for a few days questioning John about what he is doing and who he is. They are the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These guys represent two distinct religious factions of Judaism. The Pharisees were known for their strict adherence to the Law and traditions, believing in the resurrection, while the Sadducees, who held a more aristocratic position, denied the resurrection and focused solely on the written Law.

You were often made to feel bad about how good of a Jew you were by the Pharisees, or you felt like the Sadducees just sat in the pocket of the Romans.

You can’t tell if they seem to be there to participate in the baptism, or more monitor what is going on. But that doesn’t matter because your jaw is on the floor at what John goes onto say to them..Well not say, but shout;

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Now you’ve never heard anyone stand up to them like this.

The words that John has just barked at them are controversial and cut to the core, and more than an insult calling them a snake that subtly moves around striking people with its poison. But because at the core of each of their beliefs, was that they are God’s chosen people by birth, and they like you held onto the promises that they would be the ones whom the Son of man was coming for, and that they of all Jews are the most important given their religeous status.

If his messiah is coming these would be the first that he would come and see, warn, and make his disciples. They had a theology that was the call of being one of God’s people was to do good. Be a good Jew for the sake of their salvation. And these men claimed to be the best at holding to the law.

But John has flipped that on it’s head.

He warns them of the wrath to come if they tried to lean on their heritage as Jews rather than having restored, repentant hearts. Repentance rather than heritage is his message.

Here John goes right at their heart, and is accusing those standing and watching of having a lack of fruit in keeping with such a changed heart. And you think back to every time you were stepped over when asking for food on the street, looked at like you’re less then, every time you felt alienated from these men.

But John doesn’t stop there, he goes on;

“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

The crowd is getting nervous now. These are fighting words. Not only has John gone after them, but he is really saying that the time is now.

All of the scriptures you’ve studied for all of your life have led you to have faith in one who is to come. Now he has many titles, the messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God. the prince of peace, the judge of all.

He is going to come and right the wrongs of the world. The good will gather a people to himself and those who are not his will be judged by him.

And suddenly, out of the crowd steps a very ordinary looking guy. He presents himself to be baptised, but unlike the others, John insists that he doesn’t need it. He insists that it should be the other way around! That this man who has come forward, who you’ve learnt his name is Jesus, should be the one doing the baptism. But then he speaks to John and says; “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.”

Apparently this is him. And as you stare at him, you can’t help be equal parts underwhelmed and captivated. This man standing in the water is just a man. He isn’t the messiah that you are expecting, hoping for and waiting for. There is no great white horse, no legion of angels. Just a man standing in the water just like the rest of the people.

And then it happens. John baptises this Jesus, and when he came up from the water a voice from heaven thundered

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

After 400 long, silent years, God speaks. The waiting is over, he is here.

…

What we have just walked through is the way that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all start their gospels. The baptism of Jesus is a significant moment, as it is the start of the end for him. Up until this point, for 30 years, everything in Jesus life has been more private and behind the scenes. But from this moment forward Jesus is in the public eye and in three years from this point he will be crucified.

I wanted to just go through it closely like we just did as it is easy to be familiar with it rather than wanting to jump straight to theology. Remembering that this is a real person, Matthew, who travelled with Jesus who wrote this down, for a real audience, not first to us, but first to his primary audience, Jewish people like himself. What did this moment mean for them?

It meant the wait was over, the messiah had arrived, the silence was broken - the kingdom of heaven is here. BE READYf

The kingdom of Heaven is a major theme in the gospel account. Matthew will go to pains to highlight that the Old Testament points to it and Jesus reigns over it. So much of the teaching that we are going to come across over the next 30 something weeks is getting people ready to be citizens of this kingdom.

In this passage I have pulled out three short ideas that Matthew highlights about the kingdom, let’s briefly look at them as we think about how to apply this to our lives.

Let’s take a look at the first one, the kingdom promised.

Notice with me where Matthew starts his gospel with the man named John the baptist. This is 30 years on from the birth narrative that we have seen over the last few weeks, the Child who was born Jesus has grown up, and here we are introduced to a key character in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, John. Often known as John the baptist, because there are so many Johns in the Bible.

Who was John? John the baptist is not the John who wrote the gospel of John, that was the beloved disciple of Jesus, rather, this is Jesus’ cousin.

He is going to be a significant player through Matthews gospel, and rather than thinking of him as John the baptist, I want you to think of him more like John the spotlight. Wherever John is mentioned in Matthews gospel it is to throw light on the mission of Jesus.

Matthew starts here with him to link us back to and continue the story of the OT. You see the gospel accounts rely on the Old Testament rather than make it redundant. The life of Jesus makes sense of the workings of God through recorded history.

Matthew is showing the words of John here are the start of the coming kingdom that they have all been waiting for. That the promises of God are going to be fulfilled in this gospel that they are about to hear and read. His opening statement is key to the whole book in verse 2 the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The NIV translates it the kingdom of heaven has come near. This promised kingdom has arrived, the wait is over. It’s here and now, you can touch it.

Secondly, the kingdom is proclaimed.

Another major theme that is set up for the rest of the book is found here in verse 2, and that is the proclamation to be ready for the coming of the kingdom.

John preaches repentance rather than heritage. He warns them of the wrath to come if they tried to lean on their heritage as Jews rather than restored, repentant hearts.

And here we get the first glimpse into what will be the most radical teaching of Jesus throughout the rest of this gospel. We are going to learn in the later teachings of Jesus, that he accuses the religious leaders of the time as having it all wrong. And it’s flagged here in the attack on their desire to boast in who they are and what they do to be a part of the kingdom.

Repentance hand in hand with a renewed heart is the key to the kingdom. Therefore, that begs us the question that we must answer - what is true repentance?

What is meant by repentance in the new testament is not a merely intellectual change of mind or grief, or doing penance for a sin against God, but instead a radical transformation of the entire person, a fundamental turnaround involving mind and action and including overtones of grief, and ultimately results in “fruit in keeping with repentance.” in short, repentance means starting to live a new life.

And here is the amazing thing, this text tells us how we prepare our hearts to be repentant. In verse 11 the one who is coming will baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire. If our hearts have a chance of changing from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of heaven, they are going to need a new nature. And here we see that Jesus is the one who bring us that new nature by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Repentance is a plant that never grows on nature’s dung-hill. The nature must be changed, and repentance must be implanted by the Holy Spirit, or it will never flourish in our hearts.

Charles Spurgeon

This is really significant, at the center of the proclamation of the kingdom is that those who belong will have God Himself dwell in them. Implanted in them, one with them. The Holy Spirit, the 3rd member of the Trinity, God Himself will give you a new heart and new nature.

Lastly, The kingdom is provided

So the kingdom is promised, proclaimed, and the last thing that we see here, is the kingdom is provided.

The baptism of Jesus is a huge moment…God breaking his silence and the saviour presented as Gods Son with Gods Spirit by God the Father. But an obvious question that comes out of the text is this:

Why was Jesus baptised if he never sinned? A baptism of repentance is something that one needs to do if they have sin to repent of surely? The claim of the Christian faith is that Jesus was totally sinless. So why does he get baptised? In verse 15 we get our answer: To fulfil all righteousness.

This again is Matthew indicating the moment that Jesus really becomes like us. The whole point of his gospel, is to show us the righteousness of God, which is the way that Jesus provided the kingdom for us. How does he do that?

He does all that we do, but perfectly. And here he is baptised not for the forgiveness of sins…but to identify with a sinful people he came to save through his substitutionary life and death. The righteousness of God is God himself becoming fully man to live the perfect life, being the perfect sacrifice in full obedience to the father, and his baptism is the first step in that walk.

The point that Matthew is trying to make here is that this is Jesus with us, God with us, not just Jesus next to us and God distant from us, He does this so that we might know the character of God, and the depths of God’s love for us, and how far he is willing to go for us - to do what he does not need to do.

This is a significant moment of understanding the grace of God isn’t it? You see most other traditional religions will say that you must clean yourself up to be able to access the divine to be able to access the perfect, but what we see here is the divine and perfect making himself dirty so that he can come to us.

Do you see the character of God in this act? This is a God you can trust, this is a God you can follow. If God just stayed distant saying live your best life and please me, you could never really be sure of where you stand with that God, you would always be checking your ledger against them and in a constant state of anxiety about if you are in or out.

But the radical nature of Jesus is that it is precisely at your dirtiest moment that Jesus dressed himself down to be with you, was baptised in solidarity with you, and was crucified for you, that you can always be sure of his love for you and your status with him even at your worst because that this is right when he died for you.

Tim Keller in the reason for God says this;

God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Saviour. Timothy Keller

This is the gospel church. This is your provision to the kingdom. When asked why you should be in the kingdom of heaven, and your answer starts with I, because I understood, or because I attended, or because I did…Our entrance into the kingdom isn’t based on ‘because I’ rather it’s always on “because he”…because HE lived the life I couldn’t I have been granted access to the kingdom. Because HE died the death that I should have, because HE said I could come in.

The kingdom of God is not a place to be worked into, or born into, but it is a place that belongs to those who have been given a new heart by the Holy Spirit.

The kingdom of God has been provided. All of him, none of us. Do you understand the ramifications on your life in this truth church?

As the band comes up, let me finish with another story…

It’s 2025…you are sitting in church maybe for the first time, maybe for the 500th.

You, like the first century Israel, are back in a state of waiting. Every Sunday you are reminded of a kingdom that has come but is also not here yet. A kingdom that we are waiting for. A kingdom that will be ushered in at the return of Jesus.

But it’s been 2000 years… Sometimes it feels like God has gone silent again. Day to day you are confronted with the brokenness of the world, but what is most concerning is what dwells inside you.

It’s been a full on start to the year, in December you thought you had a good plan but that has gone out the window. The bible reading plan you had is out the window, the busyness of life is creeping in. Old habits it turns out are dying hard.

You are wrestling with things you’ve done in the past, or you are trying to put some really bad habits behind you at the moment. You try and you try but you feel like a terrible person when you have a moments to reflect on your sin.

To be honest it isn’t the judgement of other religious people like the Pharisees that condemns you, it’s the small voice on the inside that overwhelms you with guilt and self loathing. You wonder how God could possibly love someone as rotten and hypocritical as you.

It feels like you are fighting a losing battle and you’ve convinced yourself that God doesn’t love you.

You’re living in a lie.

But then you are reminded of the core truth of the gospel. That the state you are in, is the exact state that Jesus came to redeem. And that every day, including today, is an opportunity to come to God afresh in repentance.

God doesn’t love you because you are loveable, God loves you to make you loveable. When that voice from heaven spoke the words this is my son, with whom I am well pleased, do you know that they now apply to you? This is my daughter, this is my son, with whom I am well pleased.

You are reminded that this season of tension and waiting isn’t a mistake, but it is promised in the scriptures. We are back waiting, but not in confusion, rather empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue to hear God’s voice through his word.

Not waiting in hopelessness, but in confidence.

Is that person you today? The gospel doesn’t allow you to believe those lies church. Stop living in them. Come back to the truth and rest in Jesus afresh today.

We are about to sing again, then Nick is going to lead us in communion.

But before we do I am going to pray for us as a collective, and I am going to ask you to do something bold.

Firstly if you would like to pray with someone 1:1 during the song, can I encourage you to come down the front and pray for whatever is on your heart with me or someone else? Leave your fear and your shame in your seat, and come to the love of Christ.

Secondly, if you want me to pray for you specifically, I would love for you to stand up where you are right now.

If you are feeling like you need to repent and do that right here right now, to turn from your old self and live afresh in Jesus today, please stand up.

If you are feeling smashed by the weight of the world and tired of waiting for Jesus, and you would like prayer to endure, please stand up.

If you want to put your trust in Jesus for the first time, realising that it is your need for him, please stand up.

If you just want more of the Holy Spirit this year, to allow you to see God more clearly in all things, please stand up.

At communion we are coming to the Lord’s table to eat and drink the promises of God that we have heard today. Today is a great day to respond a fresh to the love of Christ.

Let’s chase after God in light of this gospel truth that he has already caught us today.

Let me pray.