Word of Salvation – Vol.52 No.7 – February 2007

 

Prepare For The Messiah

 

A Sermon by Rev John De Jongh on Matthew 3:1-12

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 40:1-11; Matthew 3:1-12

 

Dear Congregation.

Introduction:

What do you do when something big is about to happen, some dramatic change? Don’t you prepare for it, so that you’re ready when it comes? Kids, you know how that works. It’s like when you know you’re heading off to the beach, or the pool. What do you do? Don’t you get your swimmers on, grab a towel, get your toys, your board – you get ready, you prepare.

As the most important thing in the history of the world was about to happen, God made sure that his people knew about it ahead of time, too, and could prepare. He didn’t advertise it on the telly, pop it in everyone’s mailbox, or send everyone an email. But as Jesus was about to begin his public ministry and introduce the Messianic Age, God sent John the Baptist ahead of him, so that people could prepare.

Point 1

John came, like a herald, preparing the way for the Lord. You might have noticed that his message is exactly the same one Jesus brought later, and then his disciples after him, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

John was basically the last of the Old Testament prophets. He follows in the line of prophets like Amos and Hosea, Zechariah and Joel. He’s calling Israel to make a complete turn-around and get back on track. They were on the wrong track, they needed to turn around, leave their sin and rebellion against God behind, and head back in the right direction of covenant obedience and righteousness.

So John’s call to repent didn’t only call for repentance from sins they might have committed from day to day. It was actually a call to a lot of the Jews of his day to repent for the first time – to trust in God and obey him for the very first time – John’s talking about conversion. Whatever it was that most of the Jews of his day thought they had, it wasn’t a faithful covenant relationship with God.

And he’s urging them to do it because of the judgment to come. The Messianic age was about to dawn like the rising of the sun. The Kingdom of heaven was near, just around the corner. God was about to come and lay his claim on the earth. God was about to come as King of creation, and every knee would bow and every tongue would confess him as Lord, whether they wanted to or not.

The good thing about that was that it meant that salvation was just around the corner. But then, so was judgment. And so John was calling the Jews of his day to escape the anger of God against sin that’s only just around the corner – not by running away from God, but by running to him, running away from their sin, and running to God in love and trust, to find forgiveness.

John was like the guy who knows there’s a fire on the ground floor of the building. The only way out is to run through the flames before the whole building goes up. There’s still time to get through without getting hurt, but only just, you won’t be able to for too much longer.

And so he’s running through the building telling everyone to run through the flames and escape safely from the destruction to come. And some people are, and now they’re fine. But others are still heading in the other direction, hoping that there’s some other way out – but there isn’t. They’re going to leave it too late. They’re going to end up trapped. For them there’ll be no way out.

And it’s still the same today. The only difference is that if it was already urgent in John’s day, what does that mean for today? There’s still time to escape the building and be saved. But who knows for how much longer? There are only two options. You can either run to God in faith and trust and escape the inferno that’s on its way. Or you can run the other way and find yourself trapped. So, have you turned from whatever other way you might be on and run to God through faith in Jesus? Or are you still trying to find some other way out before it all comes crashing down?

Actually, escaping the coming judgment isn’t all that complicated. You need to know enough about Jesus to understand who he is. You can do that by reading the Bible, or talking to another Christian – come and talk to me after the service if you like. And you need to put your trust in him – you need to believe that he can save you from God’s judgment – nothing and no one else can, but he can.

And the natural follow-on from that is obeying him as King, doing what he commands in the Bible, not cutting corners and hoping you’ll still get to heaven. It means that if your preferred way to live is still the way of sin, ignoring him and living some other way, you need to ask yourself if you really have run to him at all, if you really are saved.

That was the problem with most of the Jews, so John doesn’t have much good to say to the Pharisees and Sadducees. He’s looking for fruit in their lives like a real love for God, a passion for him, obedience to him. But he couldn’t see it. They said they loved God and his law, but they really loved themselves and their own laws. They said they depended on God, but they depended on being Jewish. It was all very external, very focussed on themselves. Instead of seeing the kind of fruit God produces in someone, John saw poison and death.

He actually called them a brood of vipers, a brood of snakes – it’s not exactly the user-friendly approach. It literally means fruit of snakes. How can you even expect good fruit to come from people who are the fruit of snakes themselves? But in line with his message he calls them to produce the right fruit, like repentance. The axe is already at the root of the trees, there isn’t much time, and every tree that doesn’t produce the right kind of fruit will be cut down and burned.

In John 15 Jesus uses the same picture. He’s the true vine and we’re the branches. Every branch that bears no fruit will be cut off and burned. Branches that bear the right fruit are pruned so they produce even more. Jesus says, “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” And the fruit he’s talking about there is also obedience to him, which turns out to be love for others. Later in the New Testament Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. They’re the kinds of things that God’s looking for in the lives of those who claim to be his.

So is that the kind of fruit people see in your life? Are you growing in those kinds of things? When you, in your more honest moments, think about the kind of person you are, is that you? It isn’t enough just to say you believe in Jesus. The right words without the right fruit do not count for much. As James says, faith without works is dead. Don’t depend on just saying you believe in Jesus. Make sure that statement and commitment are filtering down into your life as the right fruit – if it isn’t, something’s wrong. And with things being so urgent, you don’t want to be wrong when it comes to your relationship with God.

And then following the pattern of these early chapters in Matthew, all of this was in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. Matthew gives us verses from Isaiah 40 that are fulfilled in the work of John the Baptist.

You probably know that the book of Isaiah is made up of two halves, a book of judgment, and then from chapter 40, a book of comfort. And even though he prophesied before Judah went into exile, Isaiah in chapter 40 talks as if they’re already there and about to return. And so in verses 1 and 2 Isaiah speaks comfort to God’s people in exile, because there is light at the end of the tunnel – there’s hope. Then in verses 3 to 5 he describes a voice calling for a way to be prepared – a highway – so that God might travel along it unhindered and his glory be revealed to all mankind. And as it turns out, John the Baptist is the voice of Isaiah 40:3. He’s the one calling for a way of righteousness to be prepared through repentance from sin, so that a highway of covenant faithfulness might be prepared for God in Jesus to come along.

In spite of his strange lifestyle modelled on the prophet Elijah, John is effective. People flock to him from Jerusalem, Judea, and the whole region of the Jordan. They confess their sins. They’re baptised by him as a symbol of what they’ve done. And John becomes an important figure in his own right. In fact, he started a widespread spiritual revival movement that lasted for decades. The Jewish historian, Josephus, commented on it. John was the Jonathan Edwards, the Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the Billy Graham of his day.

Point 2

Like those other great preachers, John’s message pointed far beyond himself. He came, preaching in the desert, but his message pointed to Jesus. John was the herald, declaring that someone far greater than him was on the way. An eastern custom at the time was for visiting kings to send representatives ahead of them to prepare the way for them – and that was John’s role.

And so he says, I baptise you with water as a token of your repentance, but just wait till you see the real thing. And so his description of Jesus compared to himself is all about ‘more’. Jesus would be more powerful than him, more worthy, he’d have more effective tools, a more effective ministry.

Jesus would be more powerful than John. John was drawing crowds from Jerusalem, Judea, and the Jordan region, starting a movement that would last for at least the next 70 years. But Jesus would be even more powerful than that. You see that in the way that the gospel in Acts already went out from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth, and is still going from strength to strength 2000 years later. Apparently, around the world, 53,000 people are being saved every day.

And Jesus would be more worthy than John, to the point that John wasn’t fit to carry his sandals. There was an expectation at the time that the disciples of a Rabbi would virtually be his slave. But even though Jesus came after John, was even baptised by him as one of his disciples, John understood that Jesus was far greater than him. John could even say that Jesus must become greater while he became less.

And Jesus would have more effective tools. John baptised with water as a symbol of what had hopefully happened in the heart and lives of the people coming to him. But Jesus would baptise with the Holy Spirit and fire. John’s baptism pointed to what needed to be done in the same way that the whole Old Testament did. Jesus’ baptism was the real thing – making believers one with God, united to him, their sin atoned for.

And so the best John could do was stand in the River Jordan, call people to repent from their sin and run from the coming judgment, and be baptised by water. On the other hand Jesus stands in the river of God’s judgment fire and demands that everyone come to him – and we have no choice. Everyone who’s confessed their sin and come to God through faith in him is purified by the flames, filled with the Holy Spirit, and made one with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus suffered his baptism of fire on the cross on their behalf. He faced God’s eternal anger against sin for them. As the sky went dark for those three hours, he took on himself an eternity of hell for everyone who puts their faith in him.

On the other hand, those who haven’t confessed and believed and obeyed still have no choice but to wade in, and it becomes their eternal judgment as unfruitful trees thrown into the fire.

Conclusion

I hope that now you can understand why John’s call to the people of his day was so urgent, and why the call is still so urgent today. Who knows how long anyone has? Life can be so short. Life can be snuffed out, without anyone expecting it, at a moment’s notice. We usually think we have years left to live, but only God knows how long we actually have. And who knows when Jesus will return – it could be today. And then comes judgment.

And so, if any of us haven’t repented from our sin, turned to Jesus in faith, and taken up the eternal life that only he can give, now’s the time to do it. We don’t have time to wait. We can’t even afford to put it off until tomorrow. The decision was already urgent 2000 years ago, but it has remained urgent every day since then and it is urgent today. Jesus is in the process of bringing his harvest in, separating the grain from the chaff. The grain finds itself in his storehouse – life spent with him forever. Everything else finds itself in unquenchable fire. It’s not a nice thing to have to think about. It’s a terrible prospect. But it’s here in black and white.

Really, the only thing left to do is repent from your sin, turn to Jesus in faith and obedience, and escape the coming judgment.

Amen.