Three Things: Matthew 3:1-17
ILLUSTRATION
There was a young student who had just graduated with his M.Th, fresh with his knowledge of New Testament and Greek. He was asked to introduce a colleague who had come to visit from Germany. This colleague was a pastor there. He knew what the word pastor meant, i.e., shepherd. So he said, “This morning we have to speak for us a German Shepherd!” Hopefully the message was not barked that morning.
This morning we have two introductions. In Matthew 3, we have an introduction to
I. John the Baptist, and
II. Jesus.
I. John, the Baptist
So far we have had 2 chapters in Matthew done, but we really have not been introduced to Jesus. We were introduced to the genealogy for Joseph and to Mary, then to some Magi who came to worship Jesus, and different people involved in the birth of Jesus. There is a connection between the birth and the ministry, but in the book of Matthew there is a big gap.
Sometimes I am confused when I see signs concerning infant Jesus. I wonder why would anybody advertize or put a sign up for infant Jesus, and why would anyone pray to infant Jesus? Jesus isn’t infant anymore. Yes, in chapter 2 He was born, and there were scholars from the East who came to worship Him. He went with his family; they escaped down to Egypt and came back to Israel. We do not know much about Him, there is a big skip. In chapter 3, rather than being introduced to Jesus first, we are first introduced to John, the Baptist.
READ Matthew 3:1-17
We will be having a whole collection of 3s. That comes to 18 point sermon! John the Baptist was introduced so that we could be introduced to Jesus. We have:
1) 3 people who introduce us to John the Baptist.
2) 3 affirmations to John’s identity.
3) 3 point message from John.
1) 3 people introducing John, the Baptist:
1. Matthew
2. Isaiah
3. God
2) 3 affirmations to John’s identity:
1. For Matthew, John’s identity was from a human perspective.
Matthew tells us about John’s unique fashion sense that he wore clothing with camel’s hair. I have never worn a garment made of camel’s hair, but it sounds like it is kind of itchy and uncomfortable. He also had a leather belt around his waist, and he had a unique diet. You might have heard of the Mediterranean diet, or the low carb or high carb diet. There are all kinds of diets out there for people to lose weight. I think if I were on John, the Baptist’s diet I would definitely lose weight! His diet was locusts and honey.
John also had a unique approach. Let’s say we have a pastor introducing visitors, “Do we have any new visitors this morning?” and they stand. Then the pastor says, “You, brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the wrath to come?” John the Baptist had not read the book, “How to win friends and influence people.” He had not read any books by John Maxwell on how to get along with each other and do business or 25 ways to win people! In fact if he had written a book, he might have written “25 ways to lose with people.”
2. Isaiah gives an introduction to John from a prophetic perspective
There was a prophecy concerning John that he would be the voice speaking in the wilderness from Isaiah 40:3, “A voice crying out in the wilderness…” If you look at Isaiah 40, the beginning of the message, it is God speaking. John’s purpose was not to have an influence on fashion! It was not to give us an idea of the best diet or the idea of an ideal preacher. He came with a very specific purpose: to introduce the world to the Lord that would come.
3. God introduces John, 600 years before he was born. He says, he is “A voice crying out in the wilderness, “make straight, or make clear the path for the Lord.””
The image is this. You have a dignitary coming into town. And have you noticed when a big politician comes, the streets of Bangalore gets smoother? Potholes get filled in. The path would be made clear for his entry into the city.
John the Baptist was sent then to prepare the hearts of the people.
He had a way of doing this.
3) 3 point message from John
1. When Jesus begins His ministry, He says, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come.” What does John, the Baptist say? He says, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come.” He is preparing the hearts of the people to receive the message of Jesus, by bringing them to a baptism of repentance, turning away from dead works.
Some people say repentance is a 360 degree turn! In that case you end up back to where you started. But repentance is 180 degree turn! John says, you need to bring fruits of repentance. On fruits of repentance, some say it is the fruit of the Spirit, and John 15, abiding in Jesus and bearing fruit.
Some say to John that they were children of Abraham and that would get them to heaven. John says, that does not give validity to enter heaven. Just because you have a heritage; your family is Christian that does not make you a Christian!
Our future in heaven is directly related to our individual repentance before God, turning away from our past and turning toward Christ.
2. Be baptized
3. Bear fruit
The fruit of repentance is that you don’t do what you have repented of in the past. So if you find yourself sinning, and repenting, and sinning and repenting, like a child who says, he would never lie again until next time, it may not be repentance. When we have repented we don’t return to our sin, like a dog returning to its vomit.
The fruit of repentance is a life you live like you have really repented, a life of righteousness and peace and getting along with people, life of grace and forgiveness, cleanness.
There are three results of repentance.
1. People confessed. They became humbled by the ministry of John, the Baptist. Have you met that kind of person of God, just getting to know them is humbling.
ILLUSTRATION
One time I was invited to work, during the summer break. My parent worked at a company doing inventory. I wanted to do that and make some bucks. It was a large warehouse and I was given the job of calling out numbers and I check it off on the list.
Somebody spilled glue on the floor, this was the glue which if stuck to something wouldn’t unstuck. I was asked clean it up and I had no idea what to do.
The owner of the company happened to walk by the place I was standing. He looked over and perceived what was happening. He said, “Having little problem with this glue eh?” And I said, “Yes sir. I have no idea what to do.” He asked a guy to bring him a bucket of dirt. He took the dirt and spread it on the glue. And he said, “If you put this dirt on the glue, it will absorb the glue and then you just have to scrape it off.” So he got a thing and started scraping it off. I said, “Thank you very much. I got it.” I asked him to leave and I got the glue off.
To me I did not forget that experience because it was an example of servant leadership. He was my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss, who got on the knee to clean up the floor.
2. Fruit of Repentance. The cleansing, which we have talked about.
3. Deliverance from the wrath of come. This was not his main purpose for coming. It was not to bring people to confession or baptize but to introduce them to Jesus. He should have been called, John, the MC. Jesus called him the friend of the bridegroom.
II. Jesus
So far, we see John, the Baptist was introduced. Now we are in the 2nd introduction. Here we have, 3 three introducers.
1. John, the Baptist
2. The Holy Spirit
3. God
1. John, the Baptist.
John, the Baptist was foretold, 600 years before his birth, God said, “I am sending somebody. He is going to come.”
Imagine having a prophecy about you in the Bible? Wouldn’t you like to go to a church who was prophesied about in the Bible?
God spoke to John the Baptist at a time when He was not speaking to a lot of people. This is the man who spoke fearlessly to the leaders. He was later put in jail because he was not afraid to speak against Herod to his face, the King of that time. But when Jesus comes to him, he is a humble man. “I am not worthy to untie Your sandals. Do you come to me to be baptized? I should be baptized by You.” Beautiful introduction!
John 1: 29-34 - He gives his testimony of Jesus.
2. The Holy Spirit
Here we have exchanges:
Between John the Baptist and those who came to him. He says, “The One who came behind me, is greater than I am because he existed before I came.” And then we have the exchange between John the Baptist and Jesus. He says Jesus should baptize him and not the other way round.
Finally, I would like to suggest 3 results of the baptism of Jesus:
o Heaven is opened
o The Spirit descends
o God speaks
This baptism of Jesus is extraordinary because Jesus did not require baptism. Jesus had nothing evil He had done to turn away from. He was tempted in everyway and yet was without sin. Yet He went to be baptized, to set a standard for us. In Philippians 2 it says, He took upon Himself the form of a servant.
In John’s day, Baptism was a symbol of cleaning. For the Christian it is a symbol of identification with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus went down totally inside the water and came out – it was total immersion and was not sprinkled.
For John the introduction of Jesus demonstrates to us the purpose of His coming. Jesus came to die, to be buried and then to rise again from the dead. We see the beginning of the earthly ministry and the ending of His ministry, and the beginning is the symbol of the end. When God the Father sees this, that Jesus by demonstrating His humility symbolically in even willing to go to the cross, He says, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Jerry Shirley put it this way,
“At His birth, He stepped from heaven to taken on our flesh. At His baptism, He waded out into the water to stand with us in our sinfulness.”
3. Introduction of God, the Father
The Gospels record the voice of the Father 3 times.
a. One is here at the baptism of Jesus.
b. At the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17). Jesus transfigured at the mount and He glows like the noon-day’s sun. And the voice of the Father is heard from heaven.
c. In John 12, Jesus knows He is going to the cross, like the seed ready to die. He says,
“Father glorify Your Name.” And the voice says, “I have glorified it and will glorify it.” (John 12).
This voice that comes from heaven was not really for Jesus’ sake. That voice was for our sake.
ILLUSTRATION & APPLICATION
The importance of the Father’s words:
We see an ideal father-son relationship between the Father and the Son. It is such a vital thing about what the Father said to the Son, and is such a contrast to the human father-son relationships.
In India there is still the family unit, and in the US, the family unit has been broken down for a long time.
One young boy adored his father and admired his mother. At 7 year old, he was sent off to a boarding school and the parents began receiving messages about their son. This was the first one, “Your son is the worst in his class. He is greedy at the table. He eats too much and his manners are terrible. He seems unable to learn anything.” He was beaten badly if he did not do what he was asked to do. After he went home, the parents found the scars on his back, and so they put him into another school.
From the other school too they got reports, “He does not pay attention. He has made no friends at school.” His mother almost never came to visit him. His father actually spoke at a school next to his school, when the boy was 11 years old, but did not go to meet him. His son heard about this, and wrote a letter, “Papa, I heard you were here next door and you never came to visit. Please come and visit me when you come again. When you come, you can go back on such and such train and we can spend some time together.” His father never replied. When the boy visited home, his father yelled at him and said, “You must forgive me boy. Old people have much on their mind, and are not always as kind as they ought to be.”
Later, as the boy grew older, he wrote this in his autobiography. “That was the only moment of intimacy I ever had with my father.”
The boy wanted to go to a better school and the father said, “You will only embarrass me. You are such a stupid boy!”
The next school said this, “He is so regular in his irregularity.” On Parent day visits, the kids were put in their rankings. He was always put right at the back. His father was a politician and everyone made fun of his boy.
This boy had about 1500 toy soldiers arrayed and his father studied it and asked, “Would you like to become a soldier?” The son said, “Yes.” So, in a snap decision, he was put in a military school. The boy said this as he grew up, “With that one snap decision, my career for life was set by my father. For years I thought he had seen in me some military genius. I later heard he simply thought I was too stupid to be a lawyer, and felt I could only be a soldier.”
As he gold older, he applied to the great military academy in England. But he failed. His father told him to try again. Again he failed. His father got a tutor. His tutor sent this report, “I do not want you to be under false assumptions. I do not think he would pass. I have never had such a student. His absolute irregularity and his desire to learn only what he wants to lean is I think an insurmountable barrier.” Nevertheless he passed. He was excited, and wrote to his father about the fact that he had succeeded in getting into an Amherst, the great military school. His father replied, “You are a constant disappointment to me. There are various ways of passing an examination, and you always choose the worst. Your performance is so slovenly, but I have learned you will not be allowed to the infantry class, you must be in the cavalry class. And now I must pay for a horse for you while you are there. Not only are you a complete failure, you are the worse sort, because you have pretenses about your abilities. I see nothing ahead for you but failure. You will be a waster of the kind that decorates the fringes of society. Do not write to me anymore.”
But at Sandhurst, Winston Churchill had found a place where he could learn and grow. The course only lasted 18 months. Out of a class of 130, he graduated as number 20. He said later, “A solitary tree, if it grows at all, grows to be strong and sturdy and frequently a boy deprived of the father’s love…feels determined to win back that love even after the father was gone.”
Winston Churchill did try a lot to earn the love of his father. The last exchange that they had was to return his rusted watch which he was upset that the son did not take care.
He was a believer and believed at the resurrection of believers. Winston Churchill arranged his own funeral. He died in January 24, 1965. There were about 300,000 people that came to visit his coffin. His casket was taken out from West Minster Abbey to make its long way to St. Peter’s Cathedral, where he wanted the service to be. They had a simple, short service. At the end of the service they played two trumpet calls. The first was the Taps, the universal signal that the day is over. There was a long pause. Then another trumpeter on the other side played Reveille, the military wake-up call. because he believed he had gone to rest, it was only the beginning and it was time for his resurrection.
He insisted on not being buried in the West Minster Abbey, where one of the great halls where all the kings, Prime Ministers and people of great honor were buried. Instead he wanted to be buried next to his father, mother and his brother in a private cemetery. For him family was very important. He loved his kids and raised them very carefully, and wanted to raise them differently from how he was raised. The father’s words have tremendous impact.
It’s interesting that God, the Father said, “I am well pleased with My Son,” even before any ministry had begun. Jesus had not healed anyone or taught thousands and multitudes. All He had done was gone to the tradition of being baptized, and that moment, God speaks.
How do we speak into one another’s lives? How do we introduce our children and friends? Let us learn to speak words of blessing, words of power, peace and grace!
