Matthew
3:1-17
Who is
familiar with Epiphany? It is a holiday,
a day of commemoration. We typically do
not point it out or celebrate it here in our church. The word epiphany comes from the Greek and
means to show or to reveal. In western
churches that do celebrate Epiphany, it is sometimes called Three Kings’
Day. In other words, in the western
church, Epiphany is often associated with the arrival of the magi to worship
the child Jesus as told in Matthew 2.
I did
not realize though that the arrival of the magi is only one event which is
associated with this holiday on January 6th or also the first Sunday
after New Year’s. In the Eastern Church,
particularly the eastern orthodox churches, Epiphany is rather a commemoration
of Jesus’ baptism which we are going to look at today in Matthew 3.
The Christmas
carol “We Three Kings” is often associated with Epiphany, but there are other
carols and hymns which take a wider view of Jesus life. In particular, I enjoyed a hymn written by
Christopher Wordsworth in 1862, which was written just 5 years after “We Three
Kings.”
Songs
of Thankfulness and Praise
Christopher
Wordsworth (1862)
Songs
of thankfulness and praise,
Jesus, Lord, to you we raise,
Manifested by the star
To the sages from afar;
Branch of royal David’s stem,
In your birth at Bethlehem;
“You
are Christ,” by us confessed,
God in flesh made manifest.
Manifest
at Jordan’s stream,
Prophet, Priest, and King supreme;
And at Cana, wedding guest,
In your Godhead manifest,
You revealed your pow'r divine,
Changing water into wine;
“You
are Christ,” by us confessed,
God in flesh made manifest.
Manifest
in making whole
Palsied limbs and fainting soul;
Manifest in valiant fight,
Quelling all the devil’s might;
Manifest in gracious will,
Ever bringing good from ill;
“You
are Christ,” by us confessed,
God in flesh made manifest.
Wordsworth
is an interesting man. I could talk a
long time about him and things he did in addition to writing hymns, but I will
conclude with a couple of his views on hymn-writing. First, he wrote simply. Though he wrote more than a hundred hymns, I
read or sang through a mere half a dozen.
Even in that small selection, I would say that his word choices are
clearly understood. When there is a word
which is not familiar, it is something which is wise to reflect upon. In the above hymn, it is the word
manifest. Maybe you don’t know what
manifest means, but you can ask one question, and then the hymn is unlocked for
you. Manifest means to be made evident,
obvious, understood.
Wordsworth
also wrote that it was “the first duty of a hymn-writer to teach sound doctrine,
and thus to save souls.” I thought it
was interesting to consider the connection between soundness of doctrine and
salvation. This is consistent with Titus
2 which explains that the grace of God offers salvation to all people and also
teaches us to say “no” to ungodliness and worldly passions. Perhaps you may think on those things in
sharing your faith with others: 1) to
keep your words simple and understandable, and 2) to teach sound doctrine, to
stay connected to God’s Word.
Additionally,
you can say that you did hear an Epiphany message on Epiphany Sunday at Clemson
Community Church in 2020 as we look into the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3.
Let’s
pray now before we read.
Lord
Jesus, direct our minds and hearts to You as we go through this message. Help us to see that which You desire for us
to see. I pray that as we look at the
starting point of Jesus’ earthly ministry, You would help us to see our
ministries, our service of You, freshly here at the beginning of 2020. We pray in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
In those days John the Baptist came,
preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of
heaven has come near.” –
Matthew
3:1-2
Who is
John? John and Jesus are nearly the same
age. If you remember, Mary Jesus’ mother
went to visit Elizabeth, John’s mother, while they were both pregnant. The baby John leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s
womb and Elizabeth recognizes that Mary’s baby is the Lord.
There
is no record that John and Jesus ever spent time together prior to the
encounter we are reading about here in Matthew.
John’s
ministry most definitely doesn’t follow the model of going where the people
are. He is preaching in the wilderness
of Judea. His message is announcing the
arrival of the kingdom of God. What is
the proper response to this news? Repentance. To change one’s mind from sin to God. In the next chapter, we will see that this is
the exact message that Jesus begins and continues preaching.
What
does repentance look like? Jonah records
an excellent example. Jonah preached a
message of judgment to the great city of Nineveh. The people of the city including the king
responded by giving up their evil ways and violence. (Jonah 3:8)
John’s
preaching is a fulfillment of prophecy from both Isaiah and Malachi.
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.’ ” – Matthew 3:3
John
was a prophesied prophet. John is not
Elijah, but he is the “Elijah who is to come.” (Matthew 11:14) The angel foretold Zacharias that John would
“go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah.” (Luke 1:17) Repentance is the preparation and making
straight paths for the Lord that individuals must do to receive 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. –
Matthew
3:4
John
was weird. We already talked about the
fact that he’s preaching in “the wrong place.”
Now, we see that his wardrobe choice is also alienating. The priestly robes were made of linen. John is wearing camel’s hair garments
fastened on with a leather belt. Elijah
is described wearing something similar in II Kings 1:8.
His
food is unusual, too. However, it may
not be as unusual as we think. It was
probably routine for a person at that time who lived in a desert wilderness to
eat locusts or grasshoppers. People
around the world still eat them today.
In some quick research, I saw them being served on a stick in China. They are remain popular throughout the Arabian
peninsula. Chapulines, a kind of
grasshopper, are eaten in Mexico and exported.
They have even been served at Seattle Mariners baseball games.
Locusts
are “clean” or okay to eat according to Old Testament law. But it’s not easy to be sustained on locusts. The best I could do on figuring out the
nutritional value of locust is 200-800 calories per 100 grams. But locusts don’t weigh much. It’s something like 50-100 locusts per 10 grams. So you’d have to eat 500-1000 locusts a day
to get far less than half the calories we eat per day. I guess they knew that John ate locusts
because he was eating them often. I
think we can also envision John as being really thin. Medieval paintings of John the Baptist
frequently show him almost muscular in appearance but he was probably far less
filled out. I’d say that the price of
locusts and grasshoppers today reflect that they’re not so easy to gather at
least not all the time. Prices online
are in a range above $20 a pound.
People went out to him from Jerusalem
and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. – Matthew 3:5
I
imagine that it’s the same then as today.
People are drawn to weird. People
heard about this character John, and they wanted to see what it was about. A lot of people went to see John. Jerusalem was a big city. Judea was a relatively populous area. You add in the other territories along the
Jordan: Samaria, Perea, the Decapolis,
Galilee. This region at that time had a
population of more than a million people.
I’m not saying all these people went to John, but there were people from
all those areas who went out to see him.
It was not a handful. What
happened when they came to John?
Confessing their sins, they were
baptized by him in the Jordan River. – Matthew 3:6
God’s
Spirit was at work in and through John. As
a result, people’s lives were changed.
It didn’t matter that John was in the wilderness. It didn’t matter that John wore strange
clothes or ate a rather confined diet.
The people that heard John were impacted by the message. Obviously, they had gone out of their way to
find him in the wilderness.
Here
is another hallmark of repentance. The
people who came to John confessed their sins.
The acknowledged the wrong they had done. I John 1:9 is a wonderful promise from God, “If
we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and
purify us from all unrighteousness.”
In
addition to confessing, the people who came to John were also baptized. Baptism is not mentioned prior to this point
in the bible. Where did baptism come
from?
Full
body immersion or Tevilah is mentioned in the Old Testament as a ceremonial
washing after certain types of uncleanness or purification after performing
certain actions. If a non-Jewish person
wanted to convert to Judaism, then they would be immersed fully in water. The word baptism is from the Greek. The Greek word for baptism is based on the Greek
word for immersion.
John’s
baptism is a symbolic purification as a result of the repentance and confession
of the individuals who came to John and responded to His message. And yet, not all who came to John came in
humility and repentance.
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.” – Matthew 3:7-8
It may
seem like John is being overly harsh, but some people came to him for selfish
reasons. It is interesting that John
lumps them together here because the Pharisees and Sadducees were quite
different from one another and often in conflict. Perhaps, what they had in common was that
they represented the leadership of Judaism.
Most
Pharisees were religious elites who followed the law in a self-righteous
way. They believed many traditions on
the same level as the bible. Often
hypocrites, they were harsh and judgmental, lacking both grace and humility.
The
Sadducees were men of business, men of the world. They did not believe in the resurrection from
the dead, for example. They administered
governmental business internally and externally including collection of taxes.
Both
groups caused hardship on the other people who had been coming to John to
repent, confess and be baptized. The
Pharisees were often the rabbis or teachers.
They were ones who made life hard for people in their effort to pursue
God. Jesus said that the Pharisees put
burdens on the people that they themselves wouldn’t lift a finger to
relieve. The Sadducees were so pragmatic
that they stole away hope. Furthermore,
they took advantage of the people in a material way. Sadducees were responsible for maintaining
the temple and were likely participants in the lifestyle there that Jesus would
describe as “a den of robbers.”
In
spite of this, John says that these two groups could repent. They could produce fruit. They should not be regarded as unreachable.
“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.” –
Matthew
3:9-10
I
think I’ve mentioned this in previous messages.
We each must come to God as individuals.
There is a saying that God doesn’t have any grandchildren. That is a good description here. The Pharisees and Sadducees felt justified
merely because they were descendants of Abraham. Elsewhere in Scripture, we see that it is not
the biological children of Abraham who are God’s children but rather the
children of the promise or the children of the covenant. (Romans 4:13,
Galatians 3:7)
We
also catch a glimpse here of thoughts expressed later in James 2:17, “faith by
itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” Producing good fruit is not something we can
do with self-effort. We need new life
inside in order to be fruitful.
Jesus
gave similar warnings. For example, in
John 8, he says to the Pharisees, “If you were Abraham’s children, then you
would do what Abraham did.” And, they
wouldn’t be looking for ways to kill Jesus.
But those events are in the future, let’s continue with our passage in
Matthew 3.
“I baptize 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 baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 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
In
preparation for this teaching, I saw some writing about how John and Jesus were
not unified in their mission. Looking at
passages like these, I find it hard to understand how that conclusion could be
reached.
John
knows the limitations of his ministry.
He is baptizing for repentance.
However, there is another baptism.
This time, it will be a baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire. John knows that this is coming. He doesn’t put himself in the same category
as the baptizer to come. He’s not even
worthy to carry the shoes of this newcomer.
Touching someone’s shoes was the lowest of the low jobs for a
servant. John says relatively speaking,
he’s not worthy of the lowest position a servant can take compared to the one
who will bring in the kingdom of God.
Jesus
says in later in Matthew 11 that “among those born of women there has not risen
anyone greater than John the Baptist.” (11:11) So it’s not that John is lowly
compared to humankind. In fact, John is
the greatest person ever born. Compared
to Jesus though, there is no comparison.
Jesus came down from heaven. He
is truly above all.
What
is the One like who is coming after John?
He is powerful. He is
worthy. He will baptize with the Holy
Spirit. In other words, He will bless
those who come to Him. He will baptize
with fire. What does that mean? Some connect it with the baptism of the Holy
Spirit which happened in Acts 2. Others
connect it with the judgment to come.
This is described in the next sentence there.
He has
a winnowing fork. What’s a winnowing
fork? It’s similar to a pitchfork except
you don’t use it for carrying stuff. You
use a winnowing fork to toss the grain and the chaff of a wheat harvest into
the air. The wind will blow away the
chaff. Then, the grain falls back down. It can also be used to turn the grain and
chaff on the threshing floor so that it can get broken down more quickly. The goal is ultimately to separate the useful
grain from the not useable chaff.
At the
end of the harvest, His threshing floor will be clear. The wheat will be gathered into the barn, the
chaff will be burned.
If we
put all these things together, we see One who is powerful and worthy. He is able to immerse those who come to him
in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit
bears fruit in those who walk by the Spirit.
(Galatians 5:22-25) He makes
those who come to him have life. He will
separate those who have life from those who do not.
Who is
bringing this Kingdom of life? Who is
the king?
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the
Jordan to be baptized by John. But John
tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to
me?” –
Matthew
3:13-14
For a
while, I was sending emails daily to someone based on Scripture. In particular, I used verses taken from
Ephesians chapter 4. Since I was sending
them daily, I was okay with using very short phrases. In the verses here, we can start simply with
“then Jesus.”
It
doesn’t much matter what comes before so long as we get to that phrase, “then
Jesus.” When you see “then Jesus,”
doesn’t your pulse quicken? Don’t you
feel a sense of anticipation? What will
happen now?
We can
also add the third word and have the simple phase, “then Jesus came.” After Jesus comes, things are different. Things can’t be the same as they were before
Jesus came. Do you ever think about what
life was like for you before Jesus came?
If you were young when you came to place your faith in Christ, do you
ever think about what your life would look like now if Jesus had not come into
your life?
We are
surprised too at what Jesus comes to do sometimes. It looks like John was surprised here. Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be
baptized by John. That seems backwards
right? If Jesus is the powerful and
worthy One, shouldn’t he baptize John?
John
understood his position, his condition and his need. John’s position was the lower one. He likened himself to an unworthy servant
compared to Jesus. John understood his
condition. Yes, he was a man set apart
unto the Lord. Yes, he lived a life of
deprivation rather than extravagance.
Apparently, he had crucified the flesh with its passions and desires
(Galatians 5:24). Yet, he still looked
to the One to come. John was still
looking, waiting for more. John understood
his condition. John understood his
need. He needed that new baptism of
which He spoke. John needed new life in
Christ.
For
whatever reason, I hear John’s response to Jesus given as to someone who needs
“a talking to.” “I need to be baptized
by you, and do you come to me?” This
feels upside down.
Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is
proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” – Matthew 3:15
Jesus
says in effect, “Yes, John, I get it.
This may seem strange to you, but it has a purpose. Let it be so now. This baptism fulfills all righteousness.”
Why
does Jesus need to be baptized? He
doesn’t need to be purified. As we will
see in a moment, He is consecrated to God and approved by Him. All God’s righteous requirements for the
Messiah are fully met in Jesus. So that
is one reason. Second, Jesus baptism is
the point at which John publically announces the arrival of the Messiah and the
start of Jesus’ ministry. God’s
righteousness is demonstrated in Jesus coming as “a sacrifice of atonement.”
(Romans 3:25) Another reason Jesus is baptized, Jesus identifies with us. He identifies with our sin and our failure
even though he does not need to repent or be cleansed from sin. He is our substitute. (II Corinthians 5:21)
“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become
the righteousness of God. One additional
reason, it is simply an example to all of us as his followers to be
baptized. Jesus doesn’t ask us to do
things that he hasn’t done himself. And
so, Jesus in baptism fulfills all righteousness and does what He asks of us.
Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out
of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and He saw the Spirit of God
descending like a dove and alighting on Him.
And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I
am well pleased.” –
Matthew
3:16-17
God is
pleased by His Son. He also is pleased
by His children. He is pleased additionally
by their obedience.
This
is a good example of the three persons of the Trinity mentioned together: Jesus, the Spirit of God, and the voice of
the Father from heaven.
The
words spoken from heaven are reminiscent of at least a couple of passages from
the Old Testament. Psalm 2:6-7 says, “‘I
have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.’ I will proclaim the LORD's
decree: He said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ ”
Isaiah 42:1 says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen One in whom I
delight; I will put my Spirit on Him, and He will bring justice to the nations.”
We
went to the Faithwalkers conference last weekend up at Ridgecrest, NC. I appreciate each of you who took on added
responsibilities to give us the opportunity to go. I could say a lot of things from that time,
but one which seems to relate closely to this message today. The emcee shared a conversation he had with
Herschel Martindale while driving down to Faithwalkers from Ohio. Herschel is now 92 years old. One of the things which Herschel shared was
that he was hoping for a fresh start in 2020.
This fresh start was in relation to ministry goals.
Many
times, we need a fresh start. Another
speaker at Faithwalkers shared how God removes our sins and separates them from
us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), how He blots out our
transgressions and remembers our sins no more (Isaiah 43:25). The speaker noted that there is no other
friend like that. God is the only one
like that. We should run to Him every
day. He is always waiting for us. He is ready to make us new. He is the One who does make all things new
(Revelation 21:5).
If you
are seeking a fresh start, I encourage you follow the admonition of Isaiah
43:18-19 where the Lord says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the
past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now
it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness.” The ultimate Way in the wilderness is Jesus
Christ. He came to John and was baptized
by him. This initiated Jesus’ ministry
which would ultimately take Him to the cross.
That is not the end. Jesus has
overcome death, and He is risen. He has
sent His Holy Spirit to us to give us new life.
Be filled by His Spirit. Come to
Him each day seeking Him. He will do it.
God is
pleased with You. He loves You. Draw near to Him. Let’s pray.
Lord
Jesus, thank You for fulfilling all righteousness. Thank You that it doesn’t depend on us. Thank You for saving us. Thank You for fresh starts and new life. I pray for each one here to connect with You
even more deeply in 2020. Guide us into
Your truth we pray, in Jesus’ Name.
Amen.
Generation
42 … the answer to life is 42! 42 weeks
= Daniel 7, Revelation 11?
He
held it to be "the first duty of a hymn-writer to teach sound doctrine,
and thus to save souls."
Gracious
Spirit, Holy Ghost, Taught by Thee we covet most
Author:
Christopher Wordsworth (1862)
1
Gracious Spirit, Holy Ghost,
Taught by thee, we covet most
Of thy gifts at Pentecost,
Holy, heavenly love.
2 Love
is kind, and suffers long,
Love is meek, and thinks no wrong,
Love than death itself more strong;
Therefore give us love.
3
Prophecy will fade away,
Melting in the light of day;
Love will ever with us stay;
Therefore give us love.
4
Faith will vanish into sight;
Hope be emptied in delight;
Love in heaven will shine more bright;
Therefore give us love.
5
Faith and hope and love we see
Joining hand in hand agree;
But the greatest of the three,
And the best, is love.
6 From
the overshadowing
Of thy gold and silver wing
Shed on us, who to thee sing,
Holy, heavenly love.
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