I want to preface this episode by letting you know that I have recently started my seminary classes again and do not have a ton of time on my hands. There may be a week or two where I run into a snag and do not have the ability to record an episode and I want to go ahead and get behind that and apologize. I want to be faithful to the Word and faithful in sharing it and I hope that I can manage that around my filling plate. I also hope you’ll notice better quality messages coming from me. Things that are more in depth, or more captivating, or even more focused. Most of my episodes in Matthew so far have really just been a ton of random information thrown at you. Let me know if you notice a difference as time goes on, if I’m able to produce episodes weekly, Lord willing. Also, if you read my blog, you may notice a change in structure. Before I was leaving the introduction and final word in, kind of as a part of my whole joke of reading whatever I write. Now, however, I plan on cleaning up the blogs a bit making it less of a transcript and more of an actual blog - leaving the podcast open for more rambling, if it so strikes me.
With that being the case, let’s dive in. We are going to call this one: Grace in the Wilderness.
Now in those days John the Baptist came preaching in the Judean wilderness and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” For this is the one who was spoken about by the prophet Isaiah, saying, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
Matthew 3:1-3
This is the inerrant and infallible Word of God. We hope and pray that through the power of the Holy Spirit we will be enlightened to its truths and grace.
Now, we are going to tackle this exegetically, starting, of course, with verse one, which we will head with “The Gospel was taught.” A little backstory before we really dig into the meat of the text, however, is that based upon this verse, and the harmonized verse in Luke, we make a close assumption that John’s ministry began when he was thirty. Now, there are no definitive notations of him being thirty, but we can make that assumption based upon a couple of the things that are given to us. For instance, based upon tradition, most scholars safely predict the birth of John the Baptist to be around fifteen years before the death of Augustus. Flipping over to Luke 3:1-2 we read “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” Thus, doing the math during the reign of one Caesar and then another, we come to the conclusion that John was close to thirty years old.
If we take this knowledge in conjunction with the knowledge that Jesus began His ministry in about His thirtieth year as it says in Luke 3:23, we can make another assumption: the ministry of John the Baptist did not last very long. His purpose, of course, was to pave the way for the Christ, as we will see as we continue on in the next couple of verses, and not to stick around and preach for a long period of time. For there is no more paving the way once Jesus’ ministry actually begins, which, as we have affirmed, began around His thirtieth year.
Malachi 4:1-2 gives a wonderful picture that we should look at when discussing the ministry of John the Baptist. We read: “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.” The Sun of Righteousness, as you may have guessed, is Jesus Christ. That would have made the time before Jesus, the night - which would give credence to the silence that was preceded by the ministry of John and Jesus. However, this would paint another picture for us, if we were to continue on with the illustration of the Sun and the night. John the Baptist, as John Calvin puts it, would be the morning-star, or could even be considered the dawn. The dawn is not a long period of time, just as the ministry of John the Baptist was not a long period of time. It is a bright shining rip in the darkness of the night that brings forth the even greater light of day. In this case, the dawn of John brought forth the bright and shining ministry of Jesus Christ. But that does not make what John did and who he was any less important - the day needs the dawn just as the Father required John before the ever bright Son.
This brings us to discussing our first point, that the Gospel of grace was taught.
Now, I want to correct a misconception. The NASB95 puts it best when it translates Isaiah 55:11 as “So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” A lot of people read that and assume it means preaching - that when someone shares the gospel that it will do what it is supposed to do. Well, yes, that is the case, however, the purpose of this verse is aimed more specifically at the person and work of Jesus Christ. The Puritan, John Owen, explains in his book The Death of Death in the Death of Christ that the propitiation which reconciles us is a definite action and not an action that must be accepted. To explain, he says, The reconciliation which we receive is granted to us based upon faith. However, that faith with which we are reconciled is given to us, His children, definitively. Christ did not fail in His sacrifice, it accomplished the purpose for which it had been sent, just as the Father promised in the book of Isaiah.
That being said, the importance of teaching the Gospel should not ever be downplayed Romans 10:14-17 says “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” The importance of the Gospel is thusly stated: once given the ears to hear by Christ, faith comes from the hearing of the Gospel proclaimed. The dead do not hear - nor do they want to hear. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians, the Gospel is the smell of death to the perishing. Non-believers want nothing more than to run as fast as they can away from the gospel. And those who do have ears to hear, ears given to them by Christ Jesus, are made not only able to hear the Gospel in sincerity, but are able to accept it and are thus gifted with the faith to do so.
So, as we see in verse one, John the Baptist came preaching as was required for those hearing him to have faith.
This brings us to our second point, and that is that the Gospel was defined.
In our text, specifically verse two, we have a definition of the very Gospel that was needing to be preached. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
In order to fully understand this statement we should take a moment to define what we mean when we say “kingdom of heaven.” Simply put, the Kingdom of Heaven is the group of those who believe the Gospel. Jesus explains this when He talks about how the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed. Jesus goes on to say “It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” The kingdom of heaven is at hand because the King, Himself, is here to inaugurate His Kingdom. The Kingdom, further than just the believers, then, is the restoration of the people of God to the place they were meant to be in the garden. John stating that the Kingdom is at hand is a statement of both our banishment from the kingdom due to the sin of Adam just as much as it is the invitation for the regathering of the elect exiles from that banishment. In and through this invitation, we have the free adoption and the forgiveness of sins through the reconciliation provided by the Son in which we can walk in newness of life, as it says in Romans 6:4. We have been rescued from the bondage of sin and death.
Building on this, the doctrine of reconciliation is where we get the exhortation to repent. Let’s pause for a moment and make it clear that we are not repenting so that the kingdom of heaven may be at hand. We repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The grace of God, already present, brings forth the gift of repentance to those adopted as sons and daughters of the Most High. In other words, repentance is not the first order of business - that belongs to the forgiveness of sins. We aren’t repentant in order that God be gracious to us - that would put some form of limitation on God. Any form of limitation would cause Him to not be God. Rather, we are commanded to repent in order that we may receive the reconciliation which is already offered. Wretched men are received into God’s favor by His merciful grace and everlasting love First in order. Our sins are pardoned while in Christ, not to be overlooked or indulged by God, but that He may heal us of those sins. As anyone who has heard a Paul Washer sermon can attest, a true, born again Christian who has tasted the grace of God, has remorse and hatred for their sins.
This brings us to the highlight of our second point, that the Gospel is defined. The whole Gospel consists of the two parts already mentioned: the forgiveness of sins and repentance. As we see in verse two, the first part of that definition is summed up by “The kingdom of Heaven.” But the rest of the verse explains, in our call for repentance, that we are still at enmity with God until we are received into His favor. This does not deny the fact that both the graceful and merciful forgiveness of our sins as well as the repentance required to be welcomed into the favor of God are both gifts from God, Himself. I cannot put it better than John Calvin when he says “As he freely pardons our sins, and delivers us, by his mercy, from the condemnation of eternal death, so also does he form us anew to his image, that we may live unto righteousness. As he freely adopts us for his sons, so he regenerates us by his Spirit, that our life may testify, that we do not falsely, address him as our Father. In like manner, Christ washes away our sins by his blood, and reconciles our Heavenly Father to us by the sacrifice of his death; but, at the same time, in consequence of our old man being crucified with him, and the body of sin destroyed,” He makes us ‘alive’ unto righteousness. The sum of the Gospel is, that God, through his Son, takes away our sins, and admits us to fellowship with him, that we, “denying ourselves ” and our own nature, may “live soberly, righteously, and godly,” and thus may exercise ourselves on earth in meditating on the heavenly life.”
In summary of our second point, though Matthew summarizes the Gospel with the second verse which is seemingly dripping with doctrine, we can contemporize it as this: Repent, for the forgiveness of sins is at hand.
And, for our last and final point, we come to this: The Gospel is Promised.
Turning back to Isaiah 40, where Matthew has traced this prophecy, we read about a prophecy spoken specifically about Cyrus and the Persians. The Lord employed them to clear a path for His people. Now, Matthew has taken this to mean that the Lord, in all of His wondrous power, will remove the sins that obstruct the kingdom of God giving way to His unending grace. But the context is extremely important, because the Lord had gone silent after His prophets had gone ignored for quite a while. It is important to note this because, in contrast to the silence, a voice now cries out from the wilderness proclaiming the coming of the Gospel.
This promise is one of revival. Matthew relates Jerusalem to being wilderness, and those within her would be considered dry-bones - dead to the hearing of the call for repentance, and her only chance for being risen from the dead is the voice of One who would Save her through taking her sins upon Himself as her great substitute.
This promise carries back to the promise given to Eve in the garden after her sin - a promise of future redemption. This promise was given to Abraham in Genesis 12 when it was said that through him all the world would be blessed. This same promise is passed to Isaac, and then to Jacob, who becomes Israel. Then we have the story of Joseph with which the sons of Israel sold Joseph into slavery. Years later, when they had a need for food because there was a famine in the land, the sons of Israel went searching for it and found it in Egypt, where God through His sovereign power had appointed Joseph, the brother the sons of Israel had sold into slavery, had been placed over the food of the land. Joseph, who they did not recognize, demanded that they bring their younger brother who Israel favored over all the rest. Judah, recognizing his need for reconciliation to Israel told his father that if anything were to happen to Benjamin he would take his place as his substitute.
Fast forward to the story of Jesus, the lion of the tribe of Judah, and we have the same story. The people of God required restoration, reconciliation. And none could do it but the perfect Son of God, the true Israel, who Himself became a substitute in fulfillment of the promises given all those years ago. The Gospel was promised.
And how should this change how we should live?
We should live by faith. Our God is faithful. He was faithful to Eve, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob. He was faithful to Joseph, and all the way up through the family line given to us in an earlier chapter. Why is that generation important? To show us the line from Jesus to Adam in an expression of the fulfillment of the promise. The good news is here.
The promise is here. Repent and believe.