The Appearance of John the Baptist
Matthew 3:1-12
We have new come to the second Sunday in Advent which is the first season of the Christian year. It is tie for soul searching and preparation. But instead of preparing for Christmas as many think, it is a time we prepare for the return of Christ. It is more comfortable to hold a little baby Jesus than have to face the returning Judge of the living and the dead. For all the importance of the Son of God becoming incarnate in the womb of Jesus is, this is not what Advent is. It is at Christmas we properly remember this. But Jesus is no longer a little babe in the arms of Mary. He is the one appointed King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Therefore, we must prepare for this reality.
The Gospel text we read this morning is from the Gospel of Matthew. He and John give the most extensive accounts of John the Baptist’s ministry. Mark and Luke give shorter summaries of John’s significance. How John the Baptist is introduced varies. Luke gives extensive detail of the conception and birth of John the Baptist, and the first witness of John to Jesus, leaping while he was still in the womb.
In Matthew’s account, John the Baptist just appears on the scene. There is no preparation of the reader for his appearance and ministry. He just suddenly appears. The Greek verb for “arrive” is in the present tense. What this is meant to do is to draw you into the story as if you where there when it happened. Poof! There he is. Matthew will use the same verb and tense in verse 13 to describe the appearance of Jesus.
Matthew describes this John as being in the wilderness, clothed in an animal skin and a leather belt. This immediately conjures up the image of Elijah’s clothing. Elijah had spent extensive time in the wilderness, hiding out from Ahab and Jezebel. But unlike the food which Elijah ate, which was flesh from unclean ravens, John, being a Nazarite could not eat this. Instead it says that he ate wild honey and locusts (perhaps honeycomb). The prophet Malachi prophesied the coming of Elijah who would prepare for the sudden appearance of the LORD. Jesus explicitly would make the connection between John and Elijah.
What is more important than his appearance is his message. He fulfills Isaiah 40 by preaching in the wilderness to tell Israel to make their paths straight. His message was simple: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near!” It was time to prepare for this reality. It was in this sense preparing for the first advent of the Messiah. Those who were not prepared would miss it. This was more than being in the right place at the right time. It was a matter of having one’s heart right before God. This message of repentance was the same that Jesus Himself would preach. It is also Peter’s response at Pentecost when the audience shaken to the heart by his sermon asks the disciples: “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Of the six ABC’s of the Christian faith in Hebrews 6, repentance from dead works is the first. Preaching repentance comes first. And this should be true of our witness to Christ.
In the Hebrew sense, to repent means to turn. Hebrew theology is walled “two way” theology. Think of it as being a road with two destinations. One way goes to God and the other to hell. To repent is to acknowledge that one is going the wrong way on that road and to turn the other way. In Greek thought, repentance involves listening to the facts at hand and making the right choice. Choose the best alternative. Both of these ideas are in play here. Preaching repentance is to lay out the facts and the consequences involved and then turning to the right way.
Even though John was in the wilderness, the word got out about his preaching. The pundit would think that if one wants to be heard, they should go to Jerusalem to preach this message, In fact, in John 7, Jesus’s earthly half-brothers said as much to Jesus. They thought if He would put on his miracle show in Jerusalem rather than in the back woods of Galilee, that he would have better results. In their eyes, the Galilean ministry was a failure as his hard preaching in John 6 had alienated the crowds there. “Make a new start in Jerusalem!” But this is not how God works. He is able to draw the crowd to the prophet.
The crowds came. They came from Jerusalem proper. They came from the surrounding area of Judaea. They came from areas beyond the Jordan to hear John. The use of the Greek imperfect “were being baptized” gives us the impression of a constant stream of people coming to be baptized over a period of time. While they were being baptized, they were confessing their sins. This was the baptism of John who baptized at the Jordan River. There is a lot of symbolism here. Those who were baptized came out from Israel and passed through the Jordan back into the Promised Land. The Children of Israel had passed through the water more than 1000 years earlier, but they passed through dry. Here they were baptized in the water. They were now truly Israelites. They were physical descendants of Israel, this was true. But they were not children of the promise. God’s true Israelites are those who are specially prepared. They are transformed. This transformation begins with repentance. They confessed their sins.
Baptism was prescribed to Gentile converts to Judaism. So when a Jew submitted to baptism, they were confessing themselves to be Gentiles. They weren’t Israelites at all. Now they were. This required a great deal of humility on one’s part. The same is true of baptism today. There are some who come to the church from the outside who are baptized and brought in. But there comes a time for those raised in the church to confess they too are sinners in need of God’s saving grace. Every one, whether from within the four walls of the church have to repent and turn to the new way of following Jesus.
Not all who came to the wilderness were prepared to accept these conditions and repent. It say that many Sadducees and Pharisees came to see what was going on. The text actually says they were coming to his baptism. Does this mean they just came to observe, or perhaps to be “baptized” as it was the popular religious thing to do? At any rate, John the Baptist savages them. “O generation of vipers! Who warned you to escape the coming wrath?” This is a far cry from the greetings we offer to those who come and visit our churches. We are so afraid to offend anyone! But John could hardly have been more offensive in greeting the Pharisees and Sadducees, both of whom were proud of their uprightness and status in society. To call a Jew a snake was the equivalent to calling them the offspring of Satan. After all, it was Satan who is the serpent who beguiled Eve in the Garden of Eden. And to tell the truth, the Bible says that before one is born again, all people are properly the children of the devil. It is only by the grace offered in Jesus Christ and the gift of faith that we are transformed into the children of God. We who once were vipers are now God’s children. We used to teach total depravity, but in many churches this is passé. Maybe we would stop dying and start growing if we returned to the old paths.
John does not just leave them with an insult. He tells them that if they really had come for baptism, they must first repent. Baptism isn’t a cutesy thing we do when we “Christen” children. In churches which practice infant baptism, it is a strict charge to the pastor, church and parents of the child that they will be diligent in bringing up the child in the Christian faith. For believer’s baptism it is a symbol of a change life and new reality. If circumcision can become uncircumcision when not mixed with faith to the Jew, can baptism become un-baptism to the Christian. By submitting to baptism. On is confessing saving faith in Jesus Christ and a pledge to follow Him in obedience.
John gives the idea of what it means to be baptized. “Produce fruit which proves your repentance.” Jesus also says as much in the Sermon on the Mount. So does the rest of the New Testament. And this we should do also. WE must not assume because we were raised in the church that we are God’s children. The Sadducees and Pharisees thought they were all right just because they had been raised either in proximity to the Temple in Jerusalem or in the synagogues, They thought being a child of Abraham was good enough. How they ever got that idea is amazing. The “Old Testament” teaches the same as John the Baptist, Jesus, the Apostles and the Church of the necessity of faith and repentance.
Jon the Baptist follows the former prophets in prophesying the inclusion of the Gentiles. The Sadducees and Pharisees made conversion exceedingly difficult for them, in most cases requiring the family to adhere to Judaism for several generations before being included. As a result, there were many Yahweh fearers but not many converts. God can turn the apostates out and raise up rocks to be His chosen people, God had his axe out and was getting ready to chop down the dead wood to be burnt in the fire. This should serve as a warning to us as well.
John finishes the message by telling them of the Coming One. He is the LORD of the Covenant mentioned in Malachi. The last of the Old Prophets said the LORD would come suddenly into the Temple. He was supposedly the One they delighted in. They wanted Him to come. But they were unprepared for Him. He came with a winnowing fork. He came to purify the Sons of Levi that they might offer an offering in righteousness. If they rejected this coming LORD, he would smite the land with a curse. This curse they would feel in 70AD when Jerusalem was destroyed with the glorious Temple. The surviving Jews were made slaves and ordered to take down all of the Temple’s stones until not one lay upon the other. If they rejected John’s message of judgment, how would they fare when the One far greater than Him came? If people reject our testimony of Jesus, how will they abide in the day he returns?
So this season of Advent should serve as a stern warning for us to get our house in order. What good is it if we have perfect knowledge of prophecy and can predict when the Lord will return if our heart isn’t right when He comes. Sometimes we need strong medicine, and much as we don’t like it and as bad as it tastes in our mouth. Human medicine is meant to cure our maladies and extent the quantity and quality of the few and troublesome days we spend on this earth. How much more shall we take God’s medicine which preserves us to life eternal? The LORD will appear suddenly. Poof! Are you ready?
