Like many grandmoms, my grandmother Williams loved to sew and knit. I have this picture in my mind of her sitting in her rocking chair with both hands in her lap busily working on some needlecraft project, but doing it on sort of auto pilot as she watched TV or talked to a friend who had come to visit. Her favorite needlecraft project was afghans. I think she made one for each of her great-grandchildren. Grandkids like me got quilts! Now, for those of you whose grandmothers had other hobbies, let me share my limited knowledge when it comes to making an afghan. First you spend weeks knitting hundreds of colorful knitted squares. I think they are called “granny squares” – I guess because so many grandmothers make them! And then you knit the squares together to make whatever you want: a throw for the back of the couch or a baby blanket or a scarf.
I was thinking this week that there is a sense in which preaching a sermon series is like making an afghan, because you make each sermon one “granny square” at a time and then you have to “knit” them together in a way that people will be able to understand how each message fits together. Do you see what I mean? Since this message is part of a sermon series, let me do a little “knitting” this morning as I begin. If it helps, imagine me holding two “sermonic knitting needles” in my hand as I remind you that I’m doing a series on the four stained-glass windows that we have here in our sanctuary. The purpose of this “sermonic afghan” is to help us remember the basic tenets of the Gospel message that, as Christians, we are commissioned to share. My prayer is that once this series is done and each sermon is carefully fitted together, each of us will be better equipped and motivated when it comes to personal evangelism.
Last week’s “granny square” was a message about the birth of Jesus which is pictured in the first window. To “knit” it to this second sermon we need to understand that the event pictured in our second stained glass window happened about 30 years later. Unfortunately we don’t know very much about these 30 years of Jesus’ life. In needlecraft terms, I guess you could say our record of that time is a bit “thread-bare,” because other than the incident in the temple when He was a young boy, the Scriptures are silent concerning the decades between Jesus’ birth and baptism. I think we can safely assume that our Lord spent these years working as a carpenter, living with His family, and that at some point Joseph passed away, because after the incident in the temple he is never mentioned again.
Take your Bibles now and let’s turn to the scene that we see illustrated in our second window, a scene from the life of Jesus that is mentioned in all four gospels. I’ve decided to use Matthew’s version as our text. I’ll be reading from Matthew 3:1-17.
1 – In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea
2 – and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
3 – This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.'”
4 – 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.
5 – People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan.
6 – Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
7 – 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?
8 – Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.
9 – 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.
10 – 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.
11 – I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come One Who is more powerful than I, Whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
12 – 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.”
13 – Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John.
14 – But John tried to deter Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?”
15 – Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.
16 – 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 lighting on Him.
17 – And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, Whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.”
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Now, who exactly was this John the Baptist? What do we know about him? Well, like Jesus, we know very little about John’s life prior to this text, but here’s what we do know:
We know he was a P.K.-a Priest’s Kid. His father was Zechariah. Remember? Zecharaiah and his wife Elizabeth were two senior citizens whom God blessed with a miraculous birth when Elizabeth was several decades past menopause. If my recent sermon series on the three wise women of Christmas hasn’t “unraveled” in your mind then you should remember that the first chapter of Luke’s gospel that tells of the angel who came to Zechariah while he was doing his priestly duties and foretold John’s miraculous birth. You may also remember about the visit Jesus’ mother Mary made to her cousin Elizabeth when she was six months pregnant with John, and of John’s Holy Spirit prompted pre-natal kick when Mary walked into the room.
Tradition says that when John was a teen his elderly parents died and when that happened he went to live in the desert wilderness of Judea, existing much like a hermit. Some believe John stayed with the Essenes for a time-those Hebrew scholars who lived a monk-like existence in the wilderness near the Dead Sea-and copied the texts we know as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Another thing, most scholars also believe that John and Jesus had never met as adults. They say this because people didn’t travel much those days so if the two did meet at all it was as small children when their families attended a religious feast in Jerusalem.
That brings us to our text where as Alexander Maclaren puts it: “John leapt, as it were, into the arena, full-grown and full-armed.” What does this text tell us about John the Baptist?
(1) First, it tells us that he was a fulfillment of prophecy.
John was the one God had spoken about through His prophet Malachi 400 years earlier when he said, “See I am sending My messenger, who will prepare the way before Me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come, See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.” (Malachi 3:1; 4:5)
Malachi’s prophecy is what the angel was referring to in Luke 1, verses 16 & 17 when he told Zechariah that his wife would miraculously bear him a son in her old age. He said, “Your son, John, will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous-to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” I guess you could say that in a very real sense the coming of John “knits” the Old Testament and the New Testament together, because as a man living in New Testament times, he fulfilled prophecies given in Old Testament days many centuries earlier. And John was indeed a man who exhibited the spirit and power of Elijah! With his camel-hair robe and leather belt, he even dressed like Elijah and he also preached the same powerful no-holes-barred message of judgment.
Another thing I want you to understand is that John’s appearance in the desert is noteworthy because to the people of Israel, the desert was a symbol of new beginnings. After all, God had rescued them from Egyptian bondage and then led them through the desert for 40 years and then into the promised land. They would have seen this hermit coming out of the desert to preach, as something special-an indication that God was up to something!
But most of all, John’s arrival would have reminded Jews that God always keeps His promises! God does what He says He will do! We would do well to remember this as well, especially in the difficult times of life; those days when it seems to us as if God is silent and inactive! No matter how tough life gets, we must anchor ourselves in the knowledge that God is always at work. His purpose will prevail, according to His perfect timing! As He says through the prophet Isaiah, “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.” (Is 46:10)
(2) A second thing Matthew tells us about John the Baptist is that he was an extremely popular preacher.
Huge crowds came out to hear his messages and to be immersed by him in the Jordan. Some scholars estimate that as a result of his sermons, he baptized tens of thousands of people. No doubt John began preaching to the few people who lived in this wilderness, but the power of his message spread such that multitudes left their cities and villages to come and hear him speak. Even the Pharisees and Sadducees came to listen to this strange, unrefined son of the desert. A. T. Robertson says, “Some preachers start with crowds and drive them away with their sermons. But not so with John. He started with a message and the crowds came to hear him.”
Well, why? Why did everyone come all the way out in the wilderness to hear this guy preach?
- It wasn’t because he was a snazzy dresser. Camel hair coats weren’t popular back then!
- It wasn’t because of the food he served. Locusts and honey might be “finger-lickin'” but not what you would call “finger-lickin’ good.”
- Nor did the multitudes come because of John’s snazzy power points or sermon outlines.
No, they came because his words rang with compelling authority. They came because His messages sounded like they were from God Himself-which they were! Throngs of people came to hear John because it had been 400 years since a prophet of God spoke. They came because the hearts of the people were hungry for a word from above. And, this 400 year silence had been prophesied. God used the prophet Amos to warn the Hebrew people that because of their repeated refusal to obey His Word a “spiritual famine” was coming.
Listen as I read part of one of Amos’ sermons:
“The days are coming, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I will send a famine through the land-not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east searching for the Word of the Lord, but they will not find it.” (Amos 8:11)
The literature written in the years of silence Malachi’s day-those years between the Old and New Testaments-revealed the longing in men’s hearts to hear from God. The Jews detected God’s voice in John’s preaching so they came from everywhere to hear him. God’s people came because they realized that the years of silence had finally ended.
And you know, I believe people today are still hungry for a Word from God. They yearn for the guidance of their Creator. They long to know of God’s great love. This is one reason Billy Graham has been so successful. Think of it. He preaches the basic Gospel message and billions have come to listen. People crowded into the town square, hanging off of roof tops and balconies to hear the basic Gospel message. Remember that, Christian! You don’t have to be snazzy. You just have to be willing to tell people about the love of God in sending Jesus. You just have to verbalize what Jesus means to you, because just as it was in Elijah’s day, today people are still longing to hear from God.
This week I had breakfast with Steve Smith, who has been visiting Redland and as we ate he shared his testimony. He told of how he had been very successful in his career, starting several high tech companies, developing the software that makes it possible for computers to understand human speech. But he said that in spite of worldly success he was still hungry for something else. He told me of how one day while searching for a place to eat lunch he met an old friend who had become a Christian since they had seen each other last. That friend, who now serves on the staff of McClean Bible Church, told him about Jesus, the Bread of Life. Steve became a Christian and says that ever since he literally “eats up” Bible study. The Word of God satisfied the longing, the hunger, that he felt in life. I believe he would agree that as the Psalmist says, “The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey.” (Psalm 19:9-10)
Now, what exactly was John’s sermon? What did he say in his messages? He didn’t do sermon series. Basically he preached the same sermon over and over again and it had two points. His first point was this: “Repent! Turn from your sinful ways!” And, this Greek word that we translate as “repent” means more than to be sorry for the wrong you’ve done. It means to change your mental attitude and conduct. It’s a call to alter the entire direction of your life. It’s like a train is barreling down a track, headed toward a bridge over a deep gorge-and the bridge is out. A man stands on the track waving a lamp saying. Repent! Stop, turn around, go the other way! That’s what John first point was. He was saying, “You guys are heading for destruction so, repent. You’ve got it all wrong, change your lives, you’ve got to change your nature!”
And John didn’t just say this to your common every day sinner. No he said it even to the religious leaders of his day. Look at verses 7-9 where John says to a delegation from the Pharisees and Sadducees,
“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.”
John didn’t pussy-foot around did he!? No! Whenever and wherever John saw evil he boldly rebuked it, calling for repentance in the crowd, in the temple, and also in the courts of his immoral king, even though preaching this fearlessly eventually cost him his life. Apparently, like William Penn, John believed that “right is right, even if everyone is against it and wrong is wrong even if everyone is for it.”
You know, there have been times when as Christians we have been too careful. For fear of offending someone, or of being less than popular, we have been silent, when we should have spoken up. We’ve let people continue to live in ways that lead to destruction instead of bravely, lovingly saying, “You need to stop doing that. You need to change! You need Jesus!” So, that’s John’s first point: Repent! Turn from your sin!
John’s next point was not negative but rather positive, and this leads to a third thing the Bible tells us about him. And before I get to it, to make sure you don’t “drop a stitch,” let me review what we’ve said we know about John thus far. He was a fulfillment of prophecy; he was a popular preacher, but most of all (and this is the second point of his sermon) as John himself said in John 1:23,
(3) He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord.”
So John’s sermon was don’t sin but, do prepare for the Lord because He’s coming! This second part of his message was another fulfillment of prophecy, specifically that of Isaiah chapter 40, a prophecy delivered 800 years earlier. John was the forerunner of the long-awaited Messiah. He was sent to tell people, “Get ready because the Messiah you’ve been waiting for so long is about to come, so prepare the way for coming of the Lord!”
Now, back then most roads in Israel were not surfaced. They were mere dirt tracks, and when it rained the tracks made by carts would harden into deep ruts, which made travel difficult at best. William Barclay says that in those days there were three states of misery: sickness, fasting, and travel. Due to the sorry state of the roads making a journey was a real “adventure!” When a king was about to visit a province, when a conqueror was about to travel through his domains, word went out calling for the roads to be smoothed and straightened.
John the Baptist was kind of like that. When he referred to himself as a “voice,” John was saying, “I’m the pot-hole crew! I’m a voice telling you to get ready because the King is coming!” And don’t miss John’s humility here. He did not say, “I am John, the son of Zacharias the priest.” He did not say, “An angel foretold my birth. God made it possible for me to be born to elderly parents, etc.” He did not say, “I’m the fulfillment of 800-year-old prophecy!” He didn’t even say he was a man. He simply said, “I’m a voice delivering a message!” In other words, John didn’t come to start a John the Baptist Movement, but rather to point men to Jesus. John was what every preacher, teacher, every Christian ought to be, a voice pointing not to self-but to the Christ.
This week I read of a priest in a small European village who gathered his church for a special service. “Come tonight,” he told them, “for a special sermon on Jesus.” And they did. They came. To their surprise however, no candles illumined the sanctuary. They had to grope their way to the pews in darkness to find their seats. And their priest was nowhere to be seen. But soon they heard him walking through the church toward the front. When he reached the crucifix that hung on the wall, he lit a candle. Saying nothing, he silently illuminated the pierced feet of Christ, then His side where the spear thrust was made, then one hand, and then the other. Lifting the candle, he shed light on the blood-masked face of Jesus and the crown of thorns. Then, with a puff, he blew out the candle and dismissed the church. His sermon was literally nothing but Jesus.
Friends, I hope this second window reminds you of this important principle of evangelism. Our job is to point people not to us-but to the Savior of the world! It’s literally all about Jesus! And this invites an uncomfortable question. “Do you point people to Jesus or away from Him? In the way that you live, do you make the gospel message clear? Or do you obscure it?”
(4) Here’s one final thing we know about John. He was a baptizer.
Now, baptism wasn’t anything knew back then but the way John did it was. Let me explain. In the first century Gentiles were baptized who wanted to embrace the Jewish faith, as a way of symbolizing the fact that as Gentiles they were spiritually unclean. Jews didn’t think they needed to be baptized, because in their minds, being the physical children of Abraham made them clean and pure. But John insisted on baptizing them as well, as a way of saying we are all sinners and all need to repent no matter what our heritage.
One day Jesus came to the place where John was baptizing, probably at the same place the Hebrew people had made their crossing into the Promised Land hundreds of years earlier. And remember, John had probably never seen Jesus as an adult but somehow he still knew He was the Christ. Perhaps the Holy Spirit prompted Him as He had done when John was still in Elizabeth’s womb, but John recognized Him as the Messiah. And when he did, I think that for a few minutes something happened to this fiery preacher, something that I can say rarely happens to pulpiteers-for a few minutes he was actually at a loss for words. Preacher John didn’t know what to say. Through the crowds and the clamor of confession, he saw the One he had been waiting for, the One he’d been preaching about, the One he had spent his life preparing for, and for a few seconds he was literally dumbfounded! Words eventually found their way back to his throat, and when they did he cried out to everyone gathered there, “Look everyone! Look! He’s here–the Lamb of God, the Gift of Heaven Who will finally, once and for all, take away our sin. This is the One I’ve been telling you about! This is the Messiah, Whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
When John said this, Jesus waded up to him and asked to be baptized and John said, “No, You should baptize me, not the other way around.” But Jesus insisted and John obeyed. Now, why? Why would Jesus need to be baptized? Why would the holy, perfect Son of God have to be immersed like a common sinner? By the way, the Greek phrase in verse 13 that we translate “to be baptized” is an infinitive of purpose so Jesus sought baptism with a definite purpose in mind. Well what was it?
(1) First, I believe Jesus was baptized to identify with the ministry of John.
John had spent months, perhaps years, heralding the coming of the King and Jesus came to be baptized as a way of saying, “Yes, John is right. I’m the One he has been talking about! John’s sermons have been right on. You do need to repent. You need to be righteous in God’s eyes because you are not, no matter what race you belong to! I’m here to make this righteousness possible.”
And understand, in identifying with John’s ministry, Jesus was also officially beginning his own ministry. In a way a “baton” passed as Jesus was baptized, because as John’s work ended, Jesus’ work began. After His baptism, after the baton was passed, you might say that “all heaven broke loose.” Heaven itself opened up and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove came down and rested on Jesus and God said, “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.” And if you doubt this was Jesus’ coronation day, then note the fact that all three Persons of the trinity showed up at the same time for this, the presentation of the King of Kings. I also want you to note that God did not say, “You have now become My Son.” No, He said, “This is My beloved Son,” because as I said last week, Jesus was always God’s Son, even from the moment of His conception in Mary’s womb!
God’s spoken Words here are echoes of His written Word. “This is My Beloved Son” is a quotation of Psalm 2:7 and Jews considered this Psalm as a description of the Messiah. “In Whom I am well-pleased” is a quote of Isaiah 42:1, which refers to the Suffering Servant, a description of the Messiah that culminates in Isaiah 53. So in the baptism God said two things. He confirmed that Jesus was indeed His Son-the long-awaited Messiah-and also that His primary purpose in coming was to suffer and die for sinful man. As Jesus told his reluctant-to-baptize cousin, His baptism was necessary to fulfill all righteousness. And this leads to a second reason Jesus was baptized.
(2) He was baptized to identify with us.
Gordon MacDonald says we should imagine the scene of Jesus’ baptism if it took place in the twentieth century. If we did it might look something like this: Someone decides to get things organized, so they set up a registration table. And at this table they hand out nametags for each person who wants to be baptized by John. When a person registers for baptism, the person working the registration table asks, “What’s your name and what sin do you need to repent of?” You’d say, “My name is Joe and I’m a liar.” or “My name is Susan and I’m an adulterer.” or “My name is Ira and I’m a gossiper.” Each person to be baptized would have a name tag with their name and their sin written on it. Then Jesus would come and He wouldn’t need a nametag. Instead He would ask each one of us to take off our name tags. As Jesus prepares for His baptism, He puts our nametags on Himself, my name and your name, my sins and your sins. And then Jesus goes into the waters of baptism, identifying Himself with our sins, identifying Himself with the plight of sinful humanity. So you see, that’s one reason Jesus was baptized by John-to identify with you and your failures, to indicate the fact that He had come to do something about the sins that weigh us down. Harry Ironside said, “He Who was to take the sinner’s place came to be baptized of John, that He might thereby be identified with sinners for whom He was to lay down His life.”
In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom tells the story of how her grandfather, a Dutch Christian, had a heart for the Jewish people. William ten Boom started a weekly prayer group in 1844 in the city of Haarlem, near Amsterdam focused on praying for the salvation of the Jews. This weekly prayer meeting continued uninterrupted until 1944 when the ten Boom family were sent to a concentration camp because they had helped Jews flee Nazi persecution. Corrie also tells about her father, Caspar ten Boom. When the Jews were forced to wear the Star of David, Casper lined up for one, even though he was not Jewish. He wore it because he wanted to identify himself with the people for whom he and his family had been praying all those years. He was prepared to be so completely identified with the Jews that he was willing to wear a sign of shame and persecution for the sake of the people he loved. He didn’t have to wear the Star but he chose to. Well, in His baptism Jesus was doing a similar thing. As the sinless Son of God, He didn’t have to be baptized any more than He had to go to the cross but He chose to.
(3) And this leads to a final reason Jesus asked John to immerse Him in the Jordan. He did so to identify what He had come to do.
His baptism was a picture of what was to happen in three short years. Being immersed and then raised up out of the waters of the Jordan were a foretelling of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. There is a sense in which even today we are baptized for the same three reasons that Jesus was. With this ordinance, we identify with the ministry of John the Baptist, affirming that Jesus was and is the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of God. Plus, when we are immersed we identify with what Jesus came to do, We testify that He did die for us, that when we put our faith in Him our sins were washed away, and that in the power of His resurrection we are reborn to a new life, abundant life, eternal life.
Finally, whereas Jesus was baptized to identify Himself with us, we are baptized to identify ourselves with Him. Baptism is a way of saying, “I have given my life to Jesus. He is my Savior and Lord.” This is one reason I love it when baptism is done at some public place like a lake or river, because when we are immersed in plain site of the world, we tell everyone that we have given our heart and life to Jesus. When we are baptized we are saying, “Watch my life from now on because I’m going to let Jesus live through me. I’m going to love people the way Jesus loves them.”
Beyond the Gates of Splendor is a powerful documentary film that tells the true story of five American missionaries: Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian, who in January 1956 were speared to death in the jungles of Ecuador by the Auca Indians. In a testament to forgiveness, family members of the slain missionaries returned to live among the tribe, evangelizing the very people who had killed their loved ones. In one scene from the film, Kathy and Steve Saint, the children of missionary pilot Nate Saint, speak of their own baptisms that were administered by the Aucas who now follow Jesus as Lord. In the film, Kimo, a participant in the killings and the baptisms, refers to Steve’s baptism saying, “By his father’s grave we did it when Steve was a little older. It was right up the river there. He brought his mother too.”
Isn’t theirs a powerful baptismal testimony? Looking at their baptism makes me think of Galatians 2:20 where Paul writes: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Because of their relationship with Jesus, these children could look at the men who had murdered their father in love.
Closing
Let us pray.
Abba Father,
Forgive us as Christians for the ways we no longer live out the testimony of our baptism. Empower us to love people as You do, so that our neighbors and co-workers and family members and friends will be able to tell by our Godly example, that we are Your Children. Help us to live lives that prove we are followers of the Christ. If there are Christians present that You want to become a part of this church family, tell them right now. And if there are people in this room who do not know you, knock on their heart’s door. Convict them of their need for the salvation and abundant life that is only possible through faith in Your Son.
I pray in His name, Jesus, Amen.