The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Matthew 3:1 Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, 2 ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 3 For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet, saying, THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT!'” 4 Now John himself had a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather belt about his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea, and all the district around the Jordan; 6 and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins. 7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Therefore bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance; 9 and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you, that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 And the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 “And His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’”
John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets. He is the Advent prophet. He is the one whose coming was prophesied in Isaiah 40:3 “The voice of him that is calling in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include a quotation of Isaiah 40:3 as a way to make sure the readers and hearers of their Gospels know just exactly who John the Baptist was and what God had created him to be (the forerunner to the Christ) and to do (prepare the way for the Christ).
No one anticipated the coming of the Savior better than did John. He was in the best position of all the Old Testament prophets to expect the advent of the Son of God. He was, after all not only the closest in time to the coming of the Messiah, John was Jesus’s cousin and just a few months older than Jesus.
John was the son of Zacharias, a priest and Elizabeth his mother. He himself was the product of a miracle, conceive in Elizabeth’s womb when she was far too old to conceive and give birth, but conceived she did by the promise and Word of God.
While the Scriptures do not give us any details of the birth and childhood of John the Baptist, it is reasonable to think that Zacharias a priest and Elizabeth had told their son in his youth the story of his birth and that of his cousin Jesus.
After establishing the genealogy of Jesus and recording in summary fashion His conception and birth in chapter one and the visit of the magi, the flight into Egypt, and the slaughter of all the little boys under the age of two, St. Matthew reports that John the Baptist, fully grown and fully commissioned suddenly and without warning comes dressed in a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, outside Jerusalem standing in the Jordan river and preaching Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand and preaching a baptism for the remission of sins.
How was His message received? 5 “Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea, and all the district around the Jordan; 6 and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.” “Jerusalem was going out to him.” It wasn’t just a few people going out. The crowds were so large, it seemed like the entire city was going out to confess their sins.
There are two things that stand in sharp contrast to our current culture. First the number of people, the sheer volume of people who took the trouble to go to church to hear John the Baptist preach. Second, they confessing their sins.
Those two things are radically different than what is happening today. Sunday morning traffic has gotten pretty light over the last couple of decades. And those who do risk the treacherous drive on Sunday morning, are not heading off to church focused on confess their sins and receiving holy absolution.
They go to be “inspired,” “energized,” “affirmed” and “supported” in their lifestyles, to be coached along so called “divine principles,” and worst of all to be entertained. Liberals and American Evangelicals aren’t the only ones heading off to church with wrong ideas. All too often conservative type people head off to church to be praised for and directed in good deeds. They head off to hear “do gooder sermons.” And the more pietistic among us don’t connect forgiveness of sins to the church service. “Go to church to confess sins! Seriously, I can do that in my own mind when I feel like I did something wrong. I don’t need a church or a priest or pastor for that.”
But the believers in Jerusalem understood something of God delivery system for the remission of sins. The people of Jerusalem were walking, sometimes miles to hear John the Baptist preach and teach, to confess their sins, and to be baptized for the remission of their sins. The whole enterprise was all about sin and the forgiveness of sins. That’s what the kingdom of heaven, the promised Messiah was fundamentally about and that’s what it meant to prepare the way for the advent of the Christ.
Unbelievers also went out to see and hear John the Baptist; and to be baptized by him. “The Pharisees and Sadducees [were] coming for baptism, [John] said to them, ‘You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Therefore bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you, that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.’”
The Smalcald Articles in the Book of Concord says this about that;
Here the fiery angel St. John, the preacher of true repentance, intervenes. With a single thunderbolt he strikes and destroys both (the scribe and the Pharisees). “Repent” he says. On the one hand, there are some who think, “We have already done penance” [today people think, “we have already done good things] and on the other hand there are others who suppose ‘We need no repentance’ [today they think “I am a good person]. But John says “Repent, both of you. . . Both of you need the forgiveness of sins, for neither of you knows what sin really is, to say nothing of repenting and shunning sin. None of you is good. All of you are full of unbelief, blindness, and ignorance of God and God’s will.”
In this day and age, do you want to know how to grow a congregation, how to turn a small faithful congregation into a successful model of a religious corporate success? You become an unfaithful congregation. You do what St. Paul told Timothy not to do. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (2 Timothy 4:3-5)
When the church growth/mega church movement first swung into full gear one of the first recommendations of the growth experts was to tone down the talk about sin, to divest the building of crucifixes, and to reduce any conversation of sin to the basic knowledge of it for the purpose of leading people to pray the sinners prayer. If you follow these basic principles, your service will immediately become a more comfortable and warmer place, thus people will enjoin themselves more at your worship event.
But what they have done to their congregations, their audiences as they call them, we do within our own families and circle of friends. We tone down our religious and moral conversations. We settle for safely agreed upon family conversations, even to the point where spouses don’t talk about so called religious topics.
The peddlers of contemporary Christianity and church life and those of us who have tried to make peace with our own sins and the sins in the family have made our houses of worship and family life “warmer.” Thus John the Baptist’s warning. “He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
John sees the scribes and Pharisees making their way to the edge of the river and calls out to them, “You brood of vipers! Repent, for the kingdom of God; the reign of God’s Heavenly rule is at hand!” Can you imagine what would happen to all those places of worship that don’t have the Law and Gospel and the forgiveness of sins as the center piece of their church life, if John the Baptist were to show up in their buildings preaching his message?
It’s always been a difficult task, this preaching of repentance to sinners and vipers alike. Many pastors are no longer in pulpits because the people did not want to hear the message of repent and be baptized. It is part and parcel of the God given message. It’s what it means to be a faithful pastor and a faithful congregation. To speak it or preach it usually means we are going to hurt someone’s feelings. John the Baptist lost his head for this message . . . literally.
Two groups of people showed up on the banks of the River Jordan: “sinners” and a “brood of vipers.” There’s no third choice. It’s (A) sinners or (B) a brood of a vipers. We all belong to the first group. By God’s grace, may you and I not be a part of the second.
To employ a lyric from a well known hymn. “Jesus sinners doth receive” so John preaches repentance and a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He is telling the people that we are to have sorrow over our sins and to trust in Christ for forgiveness of the same because the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
To the sinners John is a pastor. He preached to them, baptized them, and remitted their sins as they “came confessing their sins.” These people were like the like the publican in the parable who stood a far off in the temple and cried out day and night “Lord, be merciful to me, the sinner.” Thus we start our divine services with the common confession of sin because that is what the Bible teaches us what we are to do when we come into the presence of God, even when that presence takes the form of the preached and sacramental Word.
John issues the same basic call to the “brood of vipers” who stood before Him in stubborn self-righteousness, but does by use of a different phrase so as to distinguish between those who already understand their condition and those who live in denial of their spiritual condition. He tells the brood of vipers to “bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance.”
The fruit to which John the Baptist is referring to is faith, trust in Christ and His merits alone for the forgiveness of sin. John is calling them to abandon any idea that there is something good in them and to bring forth the only fruit that is brings about the forgiveness of sins and salvation–faith.
The sinners were already bringing forth the fruit of repentance. They were confessing their sins in faith. The second group was counting their own good deeds and what they believed was their fidelity to their genealogy, to the laws of the Old Testament, and to the Tradition of the Elders.
Repentance is more than a necessary requirement of the law. Repentance is the first and most basic act of the Christian heart, the first act of faith. This first act has two parts; sorrow over sins and trust in Christ alone. I end this morning with lyrics from another great hymn; the 5th Stanza of the Hymn, Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness, followed by the first and second stanza of the sermon hymn this morning.
- Lord, I believe we’re sinners more Than sands upon the ocean shore, Thou hast for all a ransom paid, For all a full atonement made. . . On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry Announces that the Lord is nigh; Come, then, and hearken, for he brings Glad tidings from the King of kings. 2. Then cleansed by every Christian breast And furnished for so great a Guest. Yea, let us each our hearts prepare For Christ to come and enter there.
AMEN
May the Peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.