Preparing the Way for The King

Have you ever waited for a phone call or a letter, or a package? When I was a kid, it was the time, at least in my family, where we were making the shift from ordering out of a catalog to ordering online. But at least in my earlier memories, I remember looking through the sears or J.C. Penney catalogs. A phone call would be made, and new pair of shoes, or pants, or a shirt would be ordered to be shipped to our house. Then started the waiting game - sometimes a few days, sometimes weeks. In our impatience and fast-moving society, we now make orders and look for guaranteed delivery dates, we continually check tracking information available online. In some places, an order can be made and the product delivered to your home on the same calendar day. Waiting isn’t our strong-suit anymore.

I remember when Lizzy and I were dating, and we lived 600 miles apart. A phone call every evening was our usual form of communication. And I remember waiting for that phone to ring, knowing when it did that it was going to be her, and waiting by the phone so no one else would answer it.

As we look at our passage today, we are looking at the culmination of waiting. In the birth of Jesus, the wait for the coming of the Messiah was over. It was recognized by very few at first, but that time of waiting had drawn to a close. But Matthew 3 introduces us to John the Baptist, another one who was promised and prophesied about. And with every promise, there is waiting.

The end of the Old Testament is found in the prophet Malachi. The last recorded prophesy in the Old Testament is this:

Malachi 4:5–6 ESV

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

That was the last that God’s people heard from the prophets for 400 years. They waiting game was on. They were waiting for the “day of the Lord.” - The coming time of judgment and rulership of God. And with that waiting, they were given a sign. Malachi says that Elijah the Prophet would come to inaugurate the coming of the Lord.

Luke 1:13–17 ESV

But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

The angels promise is that John would fulfill that prophecy about Elijah coming in Malachi 4, that John would be an incredible man, filled with the Holy Spirit. He would go in the “Spirit and power” of Elijah. This was a big promise. People had been looking back to that promise from Malachi at this point for nearly 400 years. 400 years of prophetic silence, waiting, anticipating. Many, no doubt, had fallen off the bandwagon, so to speak - given up hope that there would be a word from God again. Many, as we will see even in our passage today, had essentially stopped looking for God and focused in on their religion, getting it down to a science. Yet, God is always a God who keeps his promises, and even after nearly 400 years, this promise was kept.

Jesus confirmed that the coming of John was the fulfillment of this prophecy when he spoke of Him later in the book of Matthew - whenever we interpret scripture, we cannot go wrong when we copy Jesus’ interpretation. Here is what he said.

Matthew 11:13–14 ESV

For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.

Lets read our passage for today, which is Matthew 3:1-12

John the Baptist came preparing the way for Jesus the King, he came proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was near. In doing so, he was pointing to Jesus - pointing to God and saying, “God is the King - that is something you must come to terms with.” And that is what we can draw from John’s ministry today. He pointed them upward to something bigger - to God Himself as ruler and king, and preached repentance.

John’s ministry shows that each of us must personally come to terms with the Kingship of God.

1. A Message of Preparation - 1-3

“In those days” - we skip ahead now in the timeline in Matthew’s Gospel. From what we can tell, the Ministry of John the Baptist probably took place around A.D. 26. He is around 30 years old, older than his cousin Jesus by perhaps a matter of months. He was called the “Baptist” because he was a baptizer, baptizing people in the Jordan River. His parents, Zacharias and Elizabeth, knew the significance of his life and role. He was raised in a particular way because of that, according to the instruction by the angel that told of his birth, and he starts his ministry “in the wilderness of Judea.”

When we think of wilderness, we think in terms of vast forest and uncharted territory. Most likely, John was east of the Jordan river, near the places where those coming west from the Judean hills, or east to those hills, could cross over and would see and hear his preaching.

His main message was simple, “repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

Jesus also started his teaching ministry in this same way.

Matthew 4:17 ESV

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Now, we are told in Luke that he also was a great teacher of ethics, instructing tax collectors to only collect the appropriate amount, instructing those with resources to be generous and equitable, instructing soldiers to treat people justly. But this is not the crux of the message - the crux of John’s message was this idea of repentance, because the Kingdom of God was near.

The word repentance is one of those buzzwords - when you hear it, perhaps you hear drudgery and religion and formalism and rules. But we misread the word repentance, we sometimes, as many Christians throughout the centuries do, unduly give it the meaning of “penance” or self-punishment. That is not the idea at all. Biblical repentance, that is, repentance toward God, is a change of mind and heart, a change of disposition. Repentance is going from having a view of God that is indifferent or hostile, to having a view of Him that is accurate and truthful. It is to see and take God for who he truly is. It is a fundamental change, not a merely outward change.

This is what John was proclaiming in his ministry, and his reasoning for that was “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

This is the first mention of the Kingdom in Matthew. Throughout the Gospel records, we find hundreds of mentions of the Kingdom. Mark, Luke, and John usually refer to it as “The Kingdom of God” while Matthew prefers Kingdom of Heaven.” Many take these as two different things, saying that the Kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom of believers, while the Kingdom of Heaven was to be an actual Kingdom that would have been set up on earth had the Jewish people accepted their Messiah. I think this is a misunderstanding, and if you view it that way it robs the book of Matthew and many of the teachings and parables within of its true significance, and its true bearing on our life.

The reason why Matthew uses the term “kingdom of heaven” over the “Kingdom of God” is most likely because he is speaking to Jewish people who rarely pronounced the name of God, often inserting stand-ins in their language, heaven being one of them.

The word Kingdom, Basilea, is not referring to a place, a land, or a palace. It is referring to the “kingship” or “rulership” of God. That is, the Kingdom of God is where God is king, and the citizens of the Kingdom are those under his rule. That is a simple way of viewing it, but think of John’s message this way - when he proclaimed that the kingdom was near, or at hand even, he was saying - “God is the King, and you must come to terms with that.” By preaching repentance, he was telling religious people, some even very devout, that their mere religion was incomplete - they needed to repent, to come to terms with who God is and what he was doing - and he was about to do something big in the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

John was always pointing outside of him to someone else, and Matthew tells us that he fulfilled the prophecy in Isaiah 40 - the voice in the wilderness crying, prepare the way of the Lord! The fact that John was preaching in the wilderness fulfils this in a geographic sense, but in a truer sense, God’s people were in a wilderness - a time of prophetic silence - a time of waiting and wandering, in need of the leadership. John points to that leadership, as we will see, in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

2. A Response of Recognition - 4-6

Matthew gives us some more details about John’s attire and demeanor. He was a sight to behold! Here is this man, probably standing by the traveled road, by the river, telling everyone to repent for God’s kingship is drawing near! He wore camel’s hair and a leather girdle. This would have conjured a clear image in people’s minds.

2 Kings 1:8 ESV

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.”

Matthew also includes every young boy’s favorite detail, that John ate locusts. Now, I think I have heard back and forth on this fact more than any other statement in the Bible, but as far as I can tell - these were real locusts. The Insect. In fact, locusts were actually a permitted food in the law! And further, it was actually a somewhat normal practice among those who dwelt in the wilderness to catch locusts and dry them in the sun covered in wild honey. It was a good form of nourishment, it was in keeping with John’s Nazarite-like living, and it was a self-sustainable food source. John’s life wasn’t centered around his cuisine, after all, it was centered around his proclamation of the Kingdom of God.

That he was full of the Holy Spirit is evident in the fact that people were coming from everywhere to hear John’s message, and not only did they listen to him for the sake of novelty, but they heeded his message. People from all around were being baptized by John, and they confessed their sins.

John’s baptism, although a precursor to Christian baptism, is not the same thing. John’s baptism belongs to the Old Testament period, as Jesus’ ministry of the Gospel had not started yet. There was a kind of baptism in the Old Testament, a baptism where gentiles could come and enter into Jewish life. There was also a group, called the Essenes, also dwelling in the Wilderness region, who practiced ritual cleansings like baptism. John’s baptism, really, is a baptism of identification. That is the way in which it pictures Christian baptism. Christian baptism is trinitarian, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it pictures the death and resurrection - publicly identifying the person with the Gospel in that regard. John’s baptism publicly identified a person with repentance - an outward sign of a fundamental inward change.

The people were “confessing their sins.” The word confess means to agree or “say the same thing.” That is, when they heard John preach, they realized that even in their formal religion they were spiritually bankrupt, and they came to repentance because the Kingship of God was coming to bear on their life.

We don’t know how many people came to listen to John and came to repentance, but it seems to be many. John was an incredible man. If he had not been overshadowed by the more important ministry and life of Jesus, then we would no doubt see him with the same significance that we see the major Old Testament prophets. But, he himself said that he was not the main focus - only to point to that one.

3. A Word against Assumption - 7-10

There were many true followers of John, many of which would swiftly and willingly turn to Jesus Messiah when he became prominent, but there were also those who came with insincere hearts, insincere motives, and a lack of true repentance.

We read of some of them in verse 7, where it says “many of the Pharisees and Sadducees” were coming to his baptism. The Pharisees and Sadducees were the “ruling classes” of religions Judaism in that day. The Pharisees, on one hand, were the ultra-conservative, devout, to the letter religious leaders. Their traditions had gone so far beyond the teaching of the Old Testament that they had created thousands of additional regulations in order to safeguard their keeping of the law. As we will see in Matthew, Jesus had no patience for these men. He identified them as spiritually bankrupt, manipulative, fake, and idolatrous. In one place he identified them as whitewashed tombs - outwardly clean and pure, but dead and decaying on the inside.

The Sadducees, while still elite, were somewhat different. They took advantage of the ‘business side” of Judaism in that day. Interestingly, they rejected much of what the Pharisees touted. They rejected the resurrection of the dead, they rejected the oral tradition that the Pharisees lived by, and they were almost anti-spiritual. Yet, they were still identified as those guilty of turning true religion into false religion. When Jesus cleansed the temple and accused the guilty parties of turning the house of God into a den of thieves, the Sadducees were largely responsible for the lucrative temple-businesses that Jesus repudiated.

So as these elite religious men came to John, he had stern words for them! “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

I toyed with making that the title of today’s sermon, but I decided it might not be well-received. A brood of vipers - that is, literally, the offspring of vipers. The image here is of snakes wriggling away from a wilderness fire. John was not being diplomatic, but he was being vivid.

It seems that they weren’t actually coming to be baptized, but just coming to see the baptism. In a very prophetic way, John examines the men and gives them a command. “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”

Now, we learn two things from this statement.

1. Our good works are not our repentance. Repentance is not a work, or the keeping of a list of obligations. Repentance is, again, a fundamental change of mind and heart, a change of disposition - a change of nature. It is not merely outward and formal, but it does effect the outward drastically.

2. Someone can be full of strict obedience to the letter of the law, a perfect adherent to formal religion, without having any real change, any real repentance.

These warnings flow into John’s continued monologue, as he preempts what their response would be. Knowing the elite attitude of these two classes, knowing their high view of their own righteousness, he strikes at the heart of their religious assumptions and says, “don’t think that your pedigree has anything to do with your true spiritual life.”

“we have Abraham as our Father” would have been a tie back to the origins of Judaism. A tie back to the originator, the first one called out by God. It would have been akin to saying “I am a true Israelite! Of course I am in good standing with God.”

Now, we should note that the Pharisees and Sadducees did not represent all the citizens of Judea in that day. Not every practicing Jew was as self-deceived and self-righteous as these men were, but their influence was strong, and much of the New Testament is devoted to repudiating this kind of religious legalism.

John points to the rocks by the river and says, “you think you’re something because of your heritage? If God wanted to he could bring children for Abraham out of these rocks! You’re nothing special!” The pedigree of Judaism couldn’t save them from the wrath of God. Their strict, outward adherence to moral standards could not save them.

John says, “even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.” He brackets this by going back to the idea of fruit. If there is no spiritual life, no reality, no genuine repentance, then all the religion in the world won’t save them. They will be cut down as a dead tree is for firewood.

Can I say this today, that you can never base your standing before God or your entrance into His Kingdom on your family heritage or your religious conformity? Your standing before God cannot borrow from your Mother’s merit as a christian, or your grandfather’s merit who was a deacon in the church, or your church attendance from the time of childhood. John and Jesus both preach the message, repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand - if you have never come to that place where your mind and heart and disposition have been fundamentally changed to view and take Jesus for who He truly is, then you are still in your sins.

1 Peter 2:4–10 ESV

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

John says, “God is able to raise up from these stones children for Abraham.” Brothers and sisters, if you are a believer in Christ, you are one of those stones - Peter calls us “living stones” that are making up the “household of God.” We are members of God’s Kingdom, subjects and citizens in the truest sense. We are living stones, made alive by the stone that the builders rejected - Jesus Christ. Once we were not a people, and had not received mercy - even in our religion, but now we have received mercy through Christ.

Make no assumptions - please, I beg you, do not base your eternal life on assumptions. You cannot ride to heaven on the coattails of someone else’s religion, and you cannot propel your way there by merely outward good works. Repent and believe the Gospel of Christ!

4. A Promise and a Warning - 11-12

John ends his sermon to the Pharisees and Sadducees by telling them that there is something of eternal significance coming - rather, someone.

The promise is that the greater one is coming, and as we will see next time we are in Matthew, he was even nearby! The Promise is that the greater one would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and Fire.

John looks forward to the start of Jesus’ ministry as Messiah, and he sees primarily the Judgment aspect of Jesus. We know now that Jesus is reserving that judgment for his second coming. But in reality Jesus’ first coming was a judgment, for he drew a line in the sand. All those who repent and follow Jesus are part of His kingdom, “Baptized with the Holy Spirit” as john puts it, identified with and made new by the King. But those who reject will be cast out to make room for the wheat, and will be as chaff burned in the fire.

Yes, Jesus’ coming, although one of peace and teaching, ending with his sacrifice for sins, is a judgment - because the call is still for repentance - a change of heart and mind, a transformation of the disposition and the whole life before God. John’s work as the forerunner in that day points to our ministry of reconciliation in our day, where we proclaim the Gospel of Christ and say, “The King is Here!”

Paul tells us in Philippians that one day Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. He is the Lord that John prepared the way for, and He is the Lord that we proclaim today. He is the Lord of creation, the King of Kings. He is reigning even now, and you must come to terms with Him! The Kingship of Jesus Christ, the Kingship of God is an unavoidable fact, and everyone will come to know that fact either in their living, or in their dying.

John’s ministry shows that each of us must personally come to terms with the Kingship of God.