Preparing the Way for the Lord

The Fruit of Repentance

Matthew 3:1-12

Harry Stoliker
October 7, 2007 EBC

This morning we are beginning an exciting new journey that will take us through the gospel of Matthew. What is my goal and hope for this series of sermons? It is simple. I want to see Jesus. I want us to gaze at Christ as he lived His life on this earth. I want us to fall in love afresh with Him as we watch him deal with people and listen to him teach us about the Kingdom of God. I want our experience to be like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: "Did not our hearts burn within us as he walked with us along the way." That kind of burning comes when we study the gospels with a hungry heart.

This study may take us a couple of years to complete, but we aren't going anywhere so we can just enjoy the tour! I'll save the Christmas story in Chapters 1-2 for December and we'll begin in Chapter 3 with John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord. Please turn there and we will work on the first 12 verses. Let's dig into the details. Here is my simple outline of the first 12 verses of chapter 3:

V.1-4 The silence is broken by the Messiah's Herald: a voice crying in the desert
V.5-6 The floodgates are opened: people flock to John confessing
V.7-9 Fruit that proves repentance: a brood of vipers exposed
V.10-12 Avoid the unquenchable fire: the ax is falling, the winnowing fork is threshing

Here is the question we will use as the centerpiece of our study this morning: What does it mean to Prepare the Way for the Lord? John's ministry was unique. He was the forerunner, the herald of the Messiah. That was a once for all ministry. Yet, are there any applications for our lives in the patterns he set? John "prepared the way for the Lord."

We are at the beginning of the adult ministry of Jesus Christ. Matt doesn't tell us how old Jesus was, like Lk. does in 3:23. We have jumped into the storyline here at chapter 3. We begin with John the Baptist whom Jesus called the greatest of the prophets. Matthew 11:11 "Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." Why was John the greatest prophet of the Old Covenant? Because all the others prophesied in symbolic, enigmatic, mysterious, shadowy ways, with dreams and symbols; but John pointed directly to Jesus of Nazareth and said: "Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world." He actually saw with his eyes and participated in the fulfillment of what they saw from a great distance. We are even greater than John in this regard: we have the completed story of redemption in Christ in the Holy Scriptures. The full picture is ours. We see Christ more clearly than any of the OT prophets when we look hard at the gospel story in the Bible. Take out your outline from your bulletin and let's get to work.

V.1-4 The silence is broken by the Messiah's Herald: a voice crying in the desert

V.1
Where are we? We are on the west side of the lower Jordan river in the Desert of Judea. Not far from here is where the Qumran community lived. They were some separatist Jews who are famous for having written the Dead Sea Scrolls. They separated from society and went into the wilderness to wait for Messiah. This whole wilderness motif/theme is no accident. It comes right out of Isa. 40 in which God is speaking to Israel about bringing good tidings of spiritual restoration. The desert/wilderness theme has an eschatological connotation – it makes us think of the climax of time and history and the long awaited coming of Messiah. This is what the gospels are about! Jesus has come, the Kingdom of heaven has come, the Old Testament prophecies are being fulfilled. The central theme of Matthew is one word: FULFILLMENT! A distinctive feature of Matthew is his repeated formula: "All this happened to fulfill what had been declared through the prophets …" With slight variations this formula occurs 10 x's … (1:22; 2:15;, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 27:9)
Back to the theme of wilderness: Israel became a people of God in the wilderness after escaping from Egypt. Jesus defeats Satan in the wilderness. The prophets in the OT spoke of the wilderness as a place of new beginnings and a hope of a new exodus in Jer. 2:2-3; Hos. 2:14-15; Ezek. 20:35-38.

There will be times in your life when God will bring you out into the wilderness to begin something new in your soul. You may have to walk in a dry and weary place and cry out for some time until the voice of heaven comes to you with spiritual revival. Deserts are not bad places. They are places of encounter with God.
V.2-3
John bursts on the scene with no real announcement. He appears with a powerful message: It is time to REPENT for the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS UPON US! In effect, John is preaching a familiar message. The prophets of old cried out the same theme. But now there is an urgency of fulfillment that John adds. Judgment is coming, redemption is provided, repentance is required. It is so important that we understand the meaning of the word "repent". Repentance is a calling of the people back to allegiance to God, it is not a mere academic change of mind, it is not a simple regret for the mess you have made, it is not just a feeling of remorse, shame or guilt in the conscience for getting caught in sin. It is a radical turning from sin that results in the fruit of a righteous life to the glory of Christ. It is a change of heart, mind, will and soul that brings you into a life of happy obedience to the will of God. It is an abandoning, turning away and forsaking the actions and attitudes that made you an enemy of God, under his judgment.
Jesus began his preaching in the same way as John. Matthew 4:17 "From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand'." This shows us that if you are ever going to experience the blessing and coming of the Lord in your life, you must learn the deep meaning and experience of biblical repentance. The more thorough your personal repentance the more obstacles that hinder your experience of God's presence will be removed. A life cluttered with hidden, unconfessed sin, will never enjoy the refreshing coming of the Messiah. This is part of what it means to "Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him." Get everything out of the pathway to the throne of your heart for Christ Jesus.
V.4
John's clothing of camel hair and a leather belt and food of locust (grasshoppers) and honey are appropriate for the rugged lifestyle he lived and rugged message he preached. They are symbolic of his prophetic role. He is deliberated described in a way that makes us think of Elijah in 2 Kings 1:8 "They answered him, 'He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.' And he said, 'It is Elijah the Tishbite.'" Why is this significant? In Matthew 11:13-15 Jesus himself speaks of John this way: "For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, ¹⁴ and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. ¹⁵ He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Jesus said John was the Elijah that had been promised to come. If they were willing to accept it, they would have realized that the end of time was beginning right before their eyes. What greater motivation to REPENT. They knew the OT said in Malachi 4:5-6 and were expecting Elijah to come. "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction."
John himself was the fulfillment of Scripture. What is the key word in Matthew? The great and awesome day of the Lord began right before their eyes as John announced the coming of the Messiah!

V.5-6 The floodgates are opened: people flock to John confessing

Unlike many of the former prophets, John seems to have enjoyed much success and response to his strong preaching. John is out in the wilderness, some 20 miles from Jerusalem and a large number of people make the trip out from all the towns surrounding him. They keep coming and keep being baptized. It was not a one time event. We know this from the tense of the verbs used in this verse. It is the imperfect tense: "they were going out to him".
Make a note that we learn here that the word "all" doesn't always mean all without exception. "all Judea and all the region about the Jordan" doesn't mean that every single little spot in that entire region was emptied of people who rushed out to John. It simply means "from all over the place they kept coming …"
What is absolutely amazing about this is often lost on us because we are separated by centuries from that culture. What is amazing about the fact that Jews would flock out to John, himself a Jew, and be baptized in the Jordan? It's this: Jews were submitting themselves to a rite that for them had the association of doing what gentiles did in order to become Jews! It was called proselyte baptism. When a gentile wanted to come into Judaism he submitted to baptism. This ritual washing symbolized purification that the gentiles needed, not the Jews. They considered themselves already pure in God's eyes.
Yet, John's preaching was so powerful that Jews were seeing that they too needed to repent of their sins and commit themselves to a new way of life as a purified people of God. Those who came out for baptism must have seen to a great degree how ungodly their society and contemporaries were. They were unashamed to submit to baptism!

V.7-9 Fruit that proves repentance: a brood of vipers exposed

Here come the Pharisees and the Sadducees to investigate what was going on. What was all the buzz about? They are a "sort of surveillance squad" (France, p.110). A few of them MAY have been sincerely interested in John's baptism of repentance but certainly not the majority. The majority was just curious or angry at John's hard preaching about sincere repentance. Notice how carefully Matthew words V.7 "coming to where he was baptizing …"
The Sanhedrin was made up of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees were small sect in Judaism of about 6,000 men. They were proponents of legal righteousness through the observance of oral tradition and are the main competitors of Jesus throughout the gospel. They were known for rigid adherence to the ceremonial fine points of the law (MacAruthur). (Hagner, p.49) The Sadducees controlled the priesthood and partner with the Pharisees more intensely as the end of Jesus life drew near.
John sees them and blasts them with "You brood of vipers … you offspring of snakes!" Not a very flattering or endearing address to the scholars and religious leaders of your day! It shows us that John was no fearer of men. Jesus used the snake analogy in his preaching too in Matthew 12:34 "You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" and in Matthew 23:33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?" The imagery is of a snake wriggling away from a fire.
What's the point? Hypocritical repentance is no repentance at all! There can be no impure motives in our repentance. Our confession of sin and commitment to turn from sin must be sincere or it was draw the ire of God's holiness.
The only true option is to "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance."
Again, Jesus preached the same message in Matthew 7:16-20 "You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? ¹⁷ So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus you will recognize them by their fruits."

The apostle Paul preached the same message in Acts 26:19-20 "Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, ²⁰ but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance."

We are not going to finish this section this morning, so let me make my application here.

Application

Do you want to prepare the way of the Lord in your life this morning? Do you want to take out the obstacles that are blocking the way of great blessing from God? Do you want King Jesus to have a direct, unhindered route into the throne room of your life? If that is so, this passage is calling you to a life of thorough repentance. Our repentance needs to be deep, constant, repeated, honest, biblical and backed up with the evidence of a changed life. That means we talk differently, we want what God wants, we fix our eyes on Jesus not on the evil things of the world, we crucify our flesh and rejoice in the Spirit. Preeminently, it means we OBEY THE WORD of God at the very points in our lives that we need to.

Jesus Christ died on the cross so that we could have the gift of repentance. We are to exercise the gift of repentance so thoroughly that He will be our Master and Lord and Commander. That is exactly why he died on the cross for us. I close with:

Rom.14:8-9 "If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living."

Let's Pray,

Emmanuel Bible Church

Matthew

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