•        Introduction

Every now and again in a believer’s life you might find something really odd, unusual and unexpected happens.

And you might find yourself just saying … ‘Whaaa-t?!’

What is going ON here?

What on Earth is THAT about?

We’re used  to things just being the way they are, quietly and calmly explicable … in a world where ‘normal’ has become our source of security.

We like to make our preparations, plan out how we’re going to do things then carry that through without repetition, hesitation or deviation from the status quo we’ve so carefully created for ourselves.

The thing is … when God shows up the rules of physics, biology (even Town Planning) leave by the window!

And THAT’s what’s going on in our Bible passage today.

Things are getting weird.

Not WILD, because that is about chaos.

WEIRD, because it’s ordered - planned - but way OUT of the ordinary.

And when that happens, we really need to ask what’s going on here.

Let’s see how that works out in this final call to ‘prepare’ in our mini-series on that theme this Christmas season.

         •        Vv. 1-2 The preaching of the coming Kingdom of God

The Old Testament Kingdom of God under David then Solomon split in the reign of Rehoboam in 922 BC leaving two remaining entities:

·       the Kingdom of Israel which collapsed with the conquest by Shalmaneser V in 722BC, and 

·       the southern Kingdom of Judah which fell in Nebuchadnezzar Il's second capture of Jerusalem in 587 BC.

One world power after another then took over the previous conquerors of these two territories, right up to the time when the Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem and its surroundings by 63 BCE.

The Roman Senate declared Herod the Great "King of the Jews" in c. 40 BCE.

And now around the late 20s AD, John the Baptist turned up:

So then, “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea 2 and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 

Matthew 3:1-2

Now, bear in mind, Matthew just told us that this happened ‘in those days’.

 So … WHICH days?

The days 

·       after the Magi met Herod, broke their commitment to tell Herod where they’d found the new born ‘King of the Jews’ (who obviously WASN’T Herod, the King of the Jews that Rome had appointed), 

·       after Joseph and Mary had fled as political refugees to Egypt then returned after the death of Herod to the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the town of Nazareth. 

They went there not back to Joseph’s native Judah because when they got back in that area they discovered that Herod’s son had replaced him so they went to a part of the old Northern Kingdom which was ruled by someone else (read about it all in Matthew 2:13-23)

Now, I’m running quickly through this so you realise the total asymmetry of the situation.

John the Baptist is preaching a new Kingdom of God with a new King Who was 

an international refugee then 

an internally displaced person all His human life 

… no wealth, no resources, certainly no army, yet being proclaimed King of the Jews in the face of the power that was Rome.

And what’s more, he was making a call on the people to step outside the status quo of the Temple religion (a religion that was all cosied up with Rome) to do something that was utterly new.

It was a move that created what looked like a new identity for those who answered this call to prepare in this way for the coming of the King, to find their new identity as the  people of the incoming Kingdom of God:

“In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.””

This.

Was.

RADICAL.

But it was even more radical than an overthrow of the old things, because all the while it claimed continuity with and legitimacy from the Biblical faith of Israel across the ages …

         •        Vv. 3-4 The continuity with the old

Vv. 3-4: “This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:

“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

    make straight paths for him.’”

(That’s Isaiah, the prophet of the Judah’s collapse and subsequent captivity, and then to ADD to that weighty impact we’re told … “A voice of one calling in the wilderness,

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

    make straight paths for him.’”)

That’s, Isaiah 40 … which starts a new major section of the prophecy of Isaiah … Isaiah that MAJOR Old Testament prophet.

Now the thing to realise about that is that up until the end of Isaiah 39 there have been glimpses of a future hope but it’s mainly been about judgement on Israel’s infidelity.

And then in ch. 40:1 the tone changes completely as the prophet takes a fresh tack:

“Comfort, comfort my people,

    says your God.

2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

    and proclaim to her

that her hard service has been completed,

    that her sin has been paid for,

that she has received from the Lord’s hand

    double for all her sins.

3 A voice of one calling:

“In the wilderness prepare

    the way for the Lord;

make straight in the desert

    a highway for our God.”

4 John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.”

Who’s coming?

Verses 9-11 of Isaiah 40 make it absolutely explicit:

“You who bring good news to Zion,

    go up on a high mountain.

You who bring good news to Jerusalem,

    lift up your voice with a shout,

lift it up, do not be afraid;

    say to the towns of Judah,

    “Here is your God!”

{WHO is coming?!}

10 See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power,

    and he rules with a mighty arm.

See, his reward is with him,

    and his recompense accompanies him.

11 He tends his flock like a shepherd:

    He gathers the lambs in his arms

and carries them close to his heart;

    he gently leads those that have young.”

As Psalm 23 makes very plain to us ‘The LORD is my Shepherd …’ so here HE comes!

It is GOD Who is coming as King … and then Jesus came.

That tells you a lot, but it tells you a lot that the religious authorities are unlikely to be very keen on, and their political allies, the Roman governors, will be even less keen about it.

And yet, there’s even more in these few verses linking John’s message and method with authentic Old Testament religion that would wind them up even more.

Look at v. 4

“John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.”

John’s lifestyle was in stark contrast to many of the religious leaders of Jerusalem who lived in relative ease and luxury. 

While his clothing and diet were indicative of someone who lived in the desert, they also depicted him in his role as God’s prophet.

Zechariah 13:4 describes the distinctive uniform of the Old Testament prophet as being ‘a garment of hair’.

Just like John’s.

And then again, John’s appearance is described in terms similar to that of the Prophet Elijah in 2 Kings 1:8.

There the bad King Ahaziah asks his servants the appearance of a man they’d met and the conversation goes like this:

“The king asked them, “What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?”

8 They replied, “He had a garment of hair and had a leather belt around his waist.”

The king said, “That was Elijah the Tishbite.”

It was the mark of recognition for Elijah to be dressed like this, you see?

That situation back there with Ahaziah doesn’t go well for that bad King.

Ahaziah tries repeatedly to strong-arm Elijah, and Elijah just calls down fire from Heaven which consumes the soldiers Ahaziah sent … not something that would make the powers that be at Jerusalem in John’s day very happy to be reminded of, when John was out there in the desert proclaiming the Kingdom of God and resting it on the shoulders of the One Who was about to come.

The shoulders as WE now know were shoulders of someone without any army of any conventional sort, but which could certainly be relied upon to pack some power.

And then what’s all this about a vegetarian diet?

“His food was locusts and wild honey.”

Locusts and wild honey were a common diet in desert regions, and locusts (dried insects) are listed in Lev 11:22 among the “clean” foods.

The salvation God has planned for His people in the inaugurated Kingdom of God will arise once more - as so often in Israel’s history - from out of the desert.

Not only is there continuity with the old covenant, there’s a claim to derive this new Kingdom’s authority from there … which is radical indeed, conflagration-ary in times like those. 

Now, I hope it is clear that all that we’ve been looking at so far is 100% theological and political dynamite.

We have to conclude that John is a very brave and very faithful individual.

And his method and his message are incendiary, falling on the unstable kindling of first century Israel/ Palestine.

HOW are people going respond?

The responses fall into one of two categories … and they always do.

First, there’s ….

         •        Vv. 5-6 The response of the faithful Remnant

Vv. 5-6: “People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6 Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River.”

Two things here:

Firstly, this is a pretty cosmopolitan bunch of people.

They do come from the big, holy city of Jerusalem.

They do.

This isn’t just some theologically under-privileged, hicks from the sticks kind of rebel movement.

And it’s not just a privileged metropolitan set-up either … people from the the whole of Judea showed up.

But get this next bit … they also came from “all the region around the Jordan”.

Did you get that?

The Jordan river rises in the hills in the very north around Banias and runs right down the country through a set of lakes including the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea right down in the desert in the south.

People came from everywhere.

What for?

To hear the speaker?

To see the spectacle everyone was talking about?

Well, no.

This wasn’t a Billy Graham mission or anything of that sort.

This was the response of the faithful Remnant of Israel to a call to return to God, because now His Kingdom was coming in.

Secondly, we need to notice the AMOST unprecedented nature of their response:

“Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River.”

The cause is the repentance and the baptism is the consequence.

John is preaching and instigating national repentance … a spiritual renewal that by-passes and circumvents the priests and leaders of the people that had been at the heart of such times of spiritual renewal on every occasion in the history of the monarchy.

Now, we don’t know what was taught or what was believed about the significance of baptism down there by the Jordan while John was baptising.

But we know the people made this to that preaching in order to express their repentance.

We know that because of the way the Greek works out there in v. 6, (in the middle voice) but it’s not until Romans 6 that we get baptism’s significance spelled out to us like this after Pentecost and the full-on Christian experience of repentance, faith baptism then receiving the Spirit becomes apparent.

Romans 6:2-4

“We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Baptism in the New Covenant is about repudiating and coming to consider yourself dead to sin and being raised to a new life in Christ the King.

Of course, we know there’s something not fully sorted with John’s baptism of repentance because of what Paul finds at Ephesus in Acts 19:1-6 … there’s a whole lot of gospel and the New Testament doctrine of the Spirit that’s missing out of John the Baptist’s baptism … but the repentance element, that is the repudiation of sin because the King is coming back, is definitely there and the faithful remnant hidden amongst the mass of Judaism in that day are rallying to that call.

Sounds GREAT, doesn’t it?

Something was looking odd but what it meant was that something marvellous was going on.

And yet, whenever God’s Word goes out, you also get a different pattern of response … and that’s what Matthew turns to next.

         •        Vv. 7-10 The warning to the ‘rump’

Vv. 7-10 “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptising, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 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. 10 The axe 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.”

So what is John saying here?

It’s VERY Old Testament prophet stuff, of course, calling down judgement on religious hypocrisy.

They are characterised as a brood of vipers.

There are hints here of David’s prayer for deliverance from evildoers in Psalm 140:3 “They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s;

    the poison of vipers is on their lips.”

There are even stronger hints, though, of Isaiah 59.

The background to Isaiah 59 is that Isaiah 58 has described the people it’s talking about in the next chapter, and it describes them as people playing it pretty false with God: 

“For day after day they seek me out;

    they seem eager to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that does what is right

    and has not forsaken the commands of its God.

They ask me for just decisions

    and seem eager for God to come near them.”

Isaiah 58:2

Then in Isaiah 59, Isaiah goes on to describe these people who are making out like they want to know God as utterly ungodly and sinful in the way they relate to their fellow man.

And because of THAT Isaiah characterises them in these terms:

Isaiah 59:5-8 

“They hatch the eggs of vipers …

{there y’go … a BROOD of vipers, right there!}

“They hatch the eggs of vipers

 and spin a spider’s web.

Whoever eats their eggs will die,

    and when one is broken, an adder is hatched.

6 Their cobwebs are useless for clothing;

    they cannot cover themselves with what they make.

Their deeds are evil deeds,

    and acts of violence are in their hands.

7 Their feet rush into sin;

    they are swift to shed innocent blood.

They pursue evil schemes;

    acts of violence mark their ways.

8 The way of peace they do not know;

    there is no justice in their paths.

They have turned them into crooked roads;

    no one who walks along them will know peace.”

And here is John addressing these religious leaders as fitting right in to Psalm 104:3 and Isaiah 59’s scenarios.

It really is the most POWERFUL of stuff any prophet could preach to those Pharisees and Sadducees who’d dragged themselves all the way down int the desert to see him.

What John says to these religious people, play acting that they love God and take Him seriously when really they do NOT, is this (Matthew 3:8) “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”

Fruit is what it’s about.

The FRUIT that flows from deep sorrow for sin and repudiating it from the heart.

This is a pretty major theme in the Lord’s ministry too but it seems to take its origin from the Old Testament idea that Israel was to be a fruitful vine, sometimes a fruitful vineyard which He nurtured and protected, for Himself.

So Isaiah 27 picks up that theme, as does Ezekiel 19:

““‘Your mother was like a vine in your vineyard

    planted by the water;

it was fruitful and full of branches

    because of abundant water.

11 Its branches were strong,

    fit for a ruler’s sceptre.

It towered high

    above the thick foliage,

conspicuous for its height

    and for its many branches.

12 But it was uprooted in fury

    and thrown to the ground.

The east wind made it shrivel,

    it was stripped of its fruit;

its strong branches withered

    and fire consumed them.

13 Now it is planted in the desert,

    in a dry and thirsty land.

14 Fire spread from one of its main[c] branches

    and consumed its fruit.

No strong branch is left on it

    fit for a ruler’s sceptre.’”

Well now, John says to these religious leaders of the people who were making out they were God’s people but weren’t, now the axe island to the root of the tree, the vine that bears no fruit.

You know about laying the axe to the root?

It is what you do in preparation to swinging the axe.

You place the axe against its mark, then you swing up and away then down and into contact along the same ark to hit the very spot you were aiming at.

What John’s talking about here is the preparation immediately prior to felling the tree.

John is saying they need to sort out bearing fruit in keeping with the repentance they profess because the Kingdom of God is right at hand, the axe is already laid to the root of their hypocritical lives which profess to be close to God but are actually totally without Him.

And they have no defence … least of all their religious heritage as physical descendants of Abraham.

John goes straight to the point that - lacking Abraham’s faith - they are NOT his true children.

God has no grandchildren.

The rump is getting its last urgent warning.

The Kingdom of God is now finally at hand, and that make it dangerous to be in rebellion against the King.

And finally John sets about preparing the way of the Lord by …

         •        Vv. 11-12 Pointing forward to the King

The big issue is that John is heralding the arrival of the Ruler, Who is coming back to take up His rule.

““I baptise 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 baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 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.”

Matthew 3:11-12

Now, there’s no getting away from that preacher’s direct application of his text … is there?!

What’s his text?

Maybe Malachi 3:1 “For behold the day is coming burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”

But whatever the background and the text John has in mind (and the Pharisees and Sadducees there would have a better guess at identifying it than you or me) here’s a preacher who knows how to powerfully preach the coming of Christ, and shows the urgency of repentance and faith.

John is preparing the way for the Coming One … the One they all said that they were looking and longing for.

But some of them genuinely were looking forward (the repenting remnant) and some of them were just pretending to (the brood of vipers Pharisees and Sadducees … fruitless religious bigwigs almost to a man).

John, in preparing the way of the Lord, was laying bear the prelates cosy hypocrisy, and exposing sin and unfaithfulness seems also part of his preparation job.

For the axe was already laid to the roots of the tree.

         •        Conclusion

Following John’s example at this crucial turning point in the history of salvation, how are we learning that we should prepare for Christ’s coming?

Firstly, we should make the proclamation of the imminent coming of Christ as King the cornerstone of our proclamation to the world around us.

We don’t communicate that He is an interesting idea or a compelling concept.

We proclaim Him as the coming King … and in His proclamation He draws together His followers.

THAT is how His church gains ‘a following’.

Entertaining people to death when they come leads to … erm, well not life!

Secondly, this proclamation is no respecter of persons.

It insists on and safeguards spiritual authenticity.

The high-flying (but utterly destructive) religious play-actors of the day got a ROASTING from John in prophetic Old Covenant terms!

Fruit is what it is all about.

Thirdly, this proclamation is rooted in and authenticated by (NOT high fallutin’ and inaccessible arguments about physics or mathematics or biology, but) consistency with Old Testament prophecy.

Whatever pragmatically useful part we may think these things can play in our science- worshipping era, they form NO part of the Johannine, Messianic OR apostolic proclamation of the Kingdom of GOD.

Fourthly, John preaches the coming of Christ as King, returning to receive the allegiance of His repenting subjects or mop up pockets of persistent and intractable rebellion.

And it is URGENT … because the axe is already laid to the root of the tree.

Gentle Jesus is on his way.

Yes, He is certainly meek … but He certainly can’t be characterised as mild!

He is coming and He’s coming as King.

So.

Who is the King of your Christmas?

And will it be a time of indulgence of your ‘self’, or of repentance to the ranks of the followers of the King.

It surely isn’t too late.

Not quite yet.