Matthew 3:1-10 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 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.’” 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. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 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. The ax 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.
These verses offer a quintessential example of God’s thoughts on those who believe they have a right to live any way they desire because of their special position with God. As Abraham’s seed, the priests in particular thought themselves preferred by God. John the Baptist told the Pharisees and Sadducees to repent, for God saw their impurity, pride, and lack of love for others. God rejected their erroneous teachings, their conventions, traditions and rules about the commandments of God. Knowing their hard hearts, God understood they were covenant breakers, even teaching sons to break the established covenant that the children would take care of their aging parents. Instead, the teachers allowed the sons to say they gave their resources to God in alms. John saw their desperately wicked hearts, telling them they could not hide their self-will and evil intentions. Only God’s enduring patience kept them from fiery judgment. Claiming Abraham as father offered no protection, for God will judge every man on his own merits, and all have sinned and displeased the Lord. Right now, John said, the ax is poised at the root of all who live, to be cut off from God forever. God is a consuming fire of righteousness, a perpetual, unstoppable force, eradicating all wickedness forever with no patience for waywardness. Anyone who is not fully righteous will face the judgment of God on his or her life. The destination of sin? Thrown into the fire. John asked, Why do you, the priests of Israel believe in a special dispensation because you are priests? God does not accept your assumption of rightness with him; He knows your hearts and your intentions. He can take the stones at your feet and call them to serve and praise him, giving him the deference He deserves. I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. These stones could become true children of Abraham, with sure allegiance to their God, not serving as self-deluded hacks, claiming to know God, but their hearts, lifestyle, and intentions remain far from God. John expressed all of this to the priests who are like vipers to God, nesting near the paths of life, ready to strike the innocent, the vulnerable. Given their position of authority, they are highly respected and considered spiritual leaders, but they heap heavy burdens on people, teaching the traditions of men rather than God’s will. John said their hearts are as stones, hard against God’s mercy, grace and love, unyielding to God’s desire to reconcile his people to himself. Instead they stand in the way, unwilling to be baptized, unwilling to follow the people in repentance, insensitive to recognizing a new work in Israel. They will reject the Messiah, despising him and eventually killing him on the cross. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, “Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that!” He replied, “If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!” (Luke 19:37-40) Yes, the stones would recognize God in Jesus Christ before the spiritual leaders of the Jewish community would recognize him as God.
John’s mission was to call the people back to God through the tradition of baptizing in water. For years, Gentiles who wanted to belong to the Jewish faith had to be baptized to cleanse them of their Gentile ways. They in essences had to be born again. John who was called at birth by God was given the mission of calling the Jewish people back to God. An angel spoke to Zechariah, Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:13-17) He was not to drink any alcohol—not to be a wine bibber, for his call for repentance must not come from an alcoholic induced origin. No, he was to lead a pristine, disciplined life, so the people would consider his voice pure, from God himself. The Holy Spirit set him apart to a rudimentary, rugged, and solitary lifestyle: consequently, he could hear the voice of God free from distractions such as the competing activities, ideas and voices that prevail in the community of man. People of status and elders in the faith could have influenced his ideas about God and his mission. But in the wilderness, he sat before God just as the apostle, Paul, learned in the wilderness about God’s intentions, and as Christ learned about God and resisting the devil in the wilderness. Man’s knowledge is foolishness to God because man’s wisdom goes only so far, depending on circumstances and his personal experiences. God’s wisdom is beyond the rational and the scope of man’s thinking; therefore, in John we see a man learning from God in the wilderness. John cried out to a whole nation: repent or God will judge you with the fire of hell. The people heard his voice and came to him to be baptized in water, to repent and to serve God rather than themselves. He was reorienting the people spiritually, causing them to think deeper than their own self-willed agenda in life. He was preparing the way of the Lord so people could accept the spiritual words of Jesus as the carpenter from Nazareth became the Rabbi to many. In Jesus they found the wisdom of God and the power of God to heal. His life impacted the people so greatly that they began to think of him as the deliverer of Israel, the one to overthrow the Roman occupation. John prepared the way; Jesus became THE WAY. Good News had come to the people through the man Jesus; the man who called himself the Son of Man.
Jesus, not the teachers in the temple, would fulfill the covenant of Abraham: blessing the whole world through the faith of Abraham. Abraham believed God would give him and his descendants the land of Caanan, a heaven on Earth. As Christians, we believe God has a Promised Land for us: our faith rests in that hope. Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, purchased that land for us through his sacrifice on the cross when He stopped the hand of judgment on the world. John, in his analogy of the ax at the root of the tree (all trees), infers that all people are in the precarious position of judgment from God. Because all people have been made in God’s image, all should be exuding God’s image in their lives. People should be performing works of righteousness in their lives. John, full of the Holy Spirit and God’s knowledge of the condition of the world, cries out for repentance—to serve God rather than the self. Of course, later on John baptizes Jesus, following God’s will, obeying the Holy Spirit’s desire for all people to repent and to follow God. After Jesus is baptized, He begins his mission to redeem the world. The people are ready for Jesus’ voice, but the Pharisees, the religious elite, reject the voice of God through the words and deeds of Jesus. He could not touch their stony hearts, just as Moses could not penetrate Pharaoh’s heart when the Israelites were in Egypt. We know God performed miracles before the eyes of Pharaoh to push him to let the Israelites go. But when he did release the Israelites, he repented of his decision and chased them to the Red Sea. There he drowned, experiencing God’s judgment. The Pharisees had to see Jesus’ miracles before they would believe, but finally, just at the right time, they chased after Jesus to his figurative Red Sea. Their priestly order would drown at the cross when Jesus died for all. Now people who wanted to be right with God, would find their rightness with him by their faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus would become their high priest by dying on the cross. Although God’s judgment was rolling towards mankind as a ferocious lion, at the cross Jesus ran ahead of God’s holy fire of judgment. Outside of Christ, nothing, no man, could stop this devouring judgment. God would put mankind in the pit of hell; humans would be discarded as useless, selfish, unthankful, godless, worthy only for destruction.
But we see Jesus running ahead of God righteousness, his fiery judgment, the path that God must follow, for no imperfection can be allowed to enter eternity. Sin must be judged, annihilated. Mankind, covenant breaker, must be dealt with permanently. Jesus, the Son of God himself, stood in the path of judgment with his hands raised high to stop God in his righteous intentions of getting rid of his own creation. Jesus knew this God, so ferocious, so mighty and righteous that man has no words or conceptions to describe him and his holiness, for he cannot even look upon sin without judging it. Isaiah attempts to describe God: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. (Isaiah 6:1-4) This vision caused Isaiah to fear for his life, for who can look on God and live. John was crying in the wilderness for people to repent, holding back God’s judgment. Through the ages sacrifices were given to hold back God’s judgment. But the road was clear: nothing stood between God’s eventual judgment of all mankind, nothing would satisfy God, nothing would deter him from the journey. No sacrifice, no willingness to obey his covenants, no purity in actions and thoughts would prevent God from traveling down this road to destroy the fallen race of Adam. But Jesus, the first fruit of the cross, the perfect sacrifice, jumped ahead on this path of holy judgment. He puts his hands up, those hands scarred by the spikes, telling God, I have paid the price; I have closed this road of your righteous intentions. I have closed the book on their unrighteousness, for I have paid the price for every sin that they have ever committed. Jesus came, Immanuel, God with us. He stopped the wrath of God. He said, “It is finished.” We do not have to write another chapter for our redemption; the book is closed; the road to destruction has been blocked. John’s cry was for repentance; he paved the way for the one who would complete the task of making man right with God. Amen! Accept your free gift today!
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