I. The Arrival of John (vv. 1-4)
The first four verses of chapter 3 detail the arrival of the forerunner of the Messiah, John the Baptist. In verses 1-2 we read, “Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” Out of nowhere, John appeared in the desert. Now we know from Luke’s gospel account that as he continued to grow “he lived in the deserts until the day of his public appearance to Israel.” Perhaps John had been orphaned as his older parents passed away. Perhaps Zacharias and Elizabeth moved to the desert region after all the commotion with King Herod and the slaughter in Bethlehem. Whatever the case, God used this time to prepare John for his task of being the herald for the Messiah. What we do know is that from this passage there are three important truths we recognize about his arrival.
A. His announcement
The first truth we recognize about his arrival is his announcement. “He came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” His announcement, his message, was a simple one: “Repent.” Repentance means literally “to change one’s mind.” Biblical repentance is a changing of the mind that acknowledges God is right and I am wrong. Faith (believing what God says) and repentance (changing my mind to accept that truth) are inextricably linked. Faith in God’s Word produces repentance. And the repentance that John called the nation of Israel to was to receive their Messiah, their Savior. Therefore their repentance included two aspects. They were to acknowledge they were sinners, that is, they had broken God’s law, and they were transgressors of it. Secondly, they were to acknowledge that they needed a Savior. Their repentance was a call to embrace specific truth. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” which is to say, God’s appointed Messiah is coming and you must change your mind about your sin and be ready to receive Him, to have ears to hear Him. John was preparing the nation for the coming of the Messiah. If they didn’t repent now they wouldn’t be ready and they would not understand the message of the Messiah.
We will look at repentance in more detail later but let me say that repentance is not sorrow. Because a person experiences sorrow does not mean that they are repentant. The Scripture says that there are two types of sorrow. In 2 Cor. 7, Paul addresses them. He had written a harsh letter to the Corinthians concerning their sin. This was either the letter we know as 1 Corinthians or another letter that he wrote between those two. He says that he was glad, not that they were made sorrowful, but that they were made sorrowful to the point of repentance, and in verse 10 he says, “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.”
Worldly sorrow is self-focused; godly sorrow is focused on the Lord and our offenses against Him. Both Judas and Peter were sorrowful over their sin. Yet Judas’ betrayal of Jesus only caused Judas to think more about himself (“Oh, poor me.”). And its outcome was death: physical death (he hanged himself) and spiritual death (separation from God because of his unrepentance). Peter’s sorrow unto repentance produced a restoration of his fellowship with Jesus and a return to service. Let me ask you a question. Have you done something worse than Peter when he denied the Lord Jesus? The Lord restored Peter when he repented and later used him mightily. Whether you will be used by the Lord does not depend upon the severity of your sin. It depends upon whether you repent over the sin that the Holy Spirit brings to your attention.
The Lord can still use you, if you repent over the sin that He is speaking to you about. Don’t cover it: confess it. King David and King Saul did. God confronted Saul about his disobedience. He was supposed to have destroyed the Amalekite nation and everything in it. They were to have none of its spoil. But Saul didn’t do it. When he was told through God’s Word that he had disobeyed he said, “I did obey,” and gave reasons why his disobedience should be thought of as obedience. God told Saul, “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king.” Saul was never again used by the Lord.
When King David sinned against Uriah the Hittite and his wife Bathsheba, Nathan the prophet was sent to confront David. When the prophet rebuked him, David’s response was, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And the Lord’s response to David was, “The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.” Though there were still consequences to his sin, David continued to be used by the Lord.
When you sin, have godly sorrow that acknowledges the righteousness of the Lord and your sin, and God will restore you. God will use you. God’s message to us all is always, “Repent.” You and I, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, need to keep our hearts soft to the work of the Holy Spirit. Let us not grieve Him, let us not quench His work in our hearts, but obey the promptings of His Spirit in daily repentance.
B. His authority
The second truth we recognize from his arrival is his authority. Why was John preaching? What gave him the authority to proclaim this message of repentance? It was authority of heaven, the spoken word of God. Luke 3:2 says “the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.” God spoke to him and sent him to prophesy the coming kingdom of heaven. For over four hundred years the nation had not received a prophet. There was silence in the kingdom of Israel. Now the Holy Spirit appointed John to proclaim a message of hope to the nation. Their long-awaited Messiah was coming, and John was His herald.
But there was another authority for His message: the written Word of God. In verse 3 Matthew writes, “For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”’” John was the fulfillment of the prophecy Isaiah made some 700 years earlier. The Word of God made him a prophet and not a kook. Had he gone out into the wilderness of his own volition and begun preaching this message he would have been deemed a lunatic. But the Word of God confirmed the fact that he was a prophet and not a fool.
Why do we meet together as a group called the church? Why do I preach the gospel, which many take to be foolishness? Why do we baptize people? The Word of God empowers us with the authority to do so. We are not making it up. We are seeking to follow the Word of God in these things. Otherwise we would be fools in the sight of God. Now understand this: the more our culture turns against the Scripture, the more we will be classified as fools in popular opinion. Are you willing to be considered a fool for the sake of Christ? If you follow the authority of the Word of God, people may consider you foolish. With the same risk, John brought his message with authority from God and His Word.
This was the challenge given to Jesus later in Matthew’s book. The religious leaders asked Him by whose authority he was doing what he was doing. Jesus went right back to the two possible sources of authority, men or God. Jesus said, “I will also ask you a question…The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?” Whatever we do we must seek to ground our practice on the Word of God. John had the authority of heaven. His message was not his own, and so he proclaimed it with all the power of heaven. When you and I set out to follow the Word we can expect opposition from those who would call us fools, but we can carry on with heaven’s authority, acting boldly because what we do has God’s approval.
C. His appearance
This causes us to see this third truth concerning John’s arrival, which is his appearance. Verse 4 says, “Now John himself had a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey.” His appearance was rather extraordinary. Why did he dress in such an unfashionable manner? Why did he eat such unusual things? Why did he preach in such a desolate place?
Imagine what other people must have said to him. “John, if you want to influence people you need to be a little more sociable.” “John, location, location, location!” “John your message is important. Don’t you know you’ve got to rent some prime space in Jerusalem? Go to where the people are or else you won’t gain an audience.”
Why was he doing this? In part (as we mentioned) to fulfill the Scripture. Malachi 4:5-6 says, “I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers…” We are given a brief description of Elijah and know very little of his appearance. John seems to be a man out of time, appearing anachronistically as Elijah. And the passage from Isaiah said that his ministry would be of one crying in the wilderness (that was literally fulfilled).
But I think that there is an even greater reason than just to fulfill the Scripture that John behaved in this bizarre fashion. He was not some monastic crank. He did not see this as some more righteous way. If he thought the way he dressed and lived was special to God he would have called people to come live with him in the desert. But he didn’t call people to give up their livelihood and come live in the desert. He told tax collectors to stop being thieves and soldiers to be content with their wages. He was not advocating that an austere way of living was somehow more righteous than another.
He had been filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. The Holy Spirit was directing him in this way so that the power of the message would be from the Holy Spirit and not from himself. No man would say that his polished speaking style drew him in. No man would say that his positive Joel Osteen message and smile caused people to hear him. No man would declare that he went to hear John because he was within a convenient distance. No man would tell others that he sought John out because he catered to his felt needs. People would go because they heard the prophet of God speaking the message of God with the power of God.
The apostle Paul endured this same type of humiliation for the sake of the gospel. Listen to what he says in 1 Corinthians 2: “I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” So says Paul, the man we think of as the bold, outspoken witness for the gospel. He mentions weakness, fear and trembling, yet his message was full of the Spirit and power, so that the gospel would rest on neither human ingenuity nor on personality, but on the Holy Spirit.
No one working from personal resourcefulness would have gone out into the desert to gain a following. Yet the Spirit of God drew people from Jerusalem, Judea, and all the surrounding districts to hear the message of this man endowed with God’s power. It was a hard message, but they knew it rang with God’s truth and they were willing to listen and repent at its proclamation.
When you desire the Word of God it is because you know it is living and powerful, because it has spoken to your heart and you want more of it. When you desire to come to hear the Word of God taught and preached it is because you know that you are going to receive something just for you (not your felt needs but your actual needs), because the Spirit of God is speaking to you. And when that happens don’t ignore it. Don’t resist it. Don’t quench it. Believe it and receive it as God’s Word to you.
I remember someone telling me several years ago how he had been going to a church but stopped going to midweek Bible study and prayer meeting because the person teaching was doing Christian book reviews. This person had no compulsion to go any longer because he wasn’t yearning for the scoop on the latest books but for the Word of God. The Spirit of God illuminates the Word of God, so God blesses His Word when it is proclaimed in reliance upon His Spirit.
John offered nothing in the way of human attraction, nothing that would compel a person to come from the vantage point of human achievement. But they came and the power of God worked despite any lack of human showmanship.
Now what does this mean for us? John had a very specific ministry ordained by the Spirit and Word of God. I don’t think we are being called to go out into the wilderness of New Hampshire and begin preaching. But I do think the attitude we must have (and cling to) is that of recognition that, unless we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit, there will be no one coming to receive Christ as Savior. There will be no hunger for the Word of God; there will be no Christian love expressed toward one another. There will be no one hearing the Word of God speaking to them.
I understand that the words I speak here will be worth nothing unless the Spirit of God empowers them to speak to your heart. Does that mean I don’t prepare my messages? No. Does that mean that I don’t study for them? No. I work hard to preach and teach you. But all week as I prepare I diligently ask that the Holy Spirit would direct me and help me to give what is good food for you. And I see the fruit of it. When you tell me something like “that is just what I was going through,” I know that the Holy Spirit took my prayer and blessed His Word.
By all means we ought to seek to win people to Christ and separate ourselves from worldliness and sin, yet at the same time recognize that all of it is vain unless the Holy Spirit brings fruit from it. By all means look presentable (instead of like a goofball), by all means study the Word diligently so you might teach it clearly as a Sunday school teacher or children’s church worker, by all means keep our building well groomed outside and cared for inside, but recognize it will not mean a stitch unless the Holy Spirit’s power is blessing His Word and bringing conviction to the hearts of people about their sin and the Savior, about their judgment and their need to be justified, about repentance and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Upon whom are you relying?