You have to respect John the Baptist. Notice, I didn’t say that you have to like him, but you do have to respect him. Talk about doing the dirty work so that others could benefit from it! That’s pretty much the name of John’s game. He was the one specially appointed by God to be the forerunner of the Messiah.
And make no mistake about it, it was dirty work. Dirty, ugly, messy work, for a number of reasons. First, it involved a lot of up-close-and-personal time with other sinners. Sinners. Like, the messy kind. People who had all sorts of skeletons in their closets would come to see John out there in the wilderness, out there to repent.
Repent. Funny word, that. The Greek word is metanoeite, which means, roughly translated, “to have a change of heart and mind and to turn your life around so that you’re not living the way you were, and not believing in yourself but in God, and to try to make that change a permanent one.” It’s a lot quicker to just say repent, but it has all that in it.
John’s bold words of repentance are aimed not only at the average ugly old sinner, but also at those who don’t think they have any need to repent. The long and the short of it is that when we hear our Gospel text for today, it’s extremely crucial for our understanding of it that we ourselves also go and stand by the banks of the Jordan and listen to what John is telling us, too.
Let us listen again as Isaiah had prophesied, to the voice of the one calling in the wilderness: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2) He’s talking to you, and to me. The kingdom of heaven is at hand! It is near! Soon the fulfilment of God’s promises is coming, soon the Messiah will be here. The kingdom is not some abstraction of which we can politely chat over tea and cookies, but a powerful call to a new world order. The old way of things is passing away, the new is at hand.
For what is this kingdom of heaven in the first place? It is nothing less than the kingdom of God, the kingdom which is and ever will be ruled by the heir to the throne, the Son of David, Jesus Christ. And this kingdom is not one which allows criticism of its King. Only those who love, honour, trust, and fear the King need apply. The call to repent sounds because you have not loved this King wholeheartedly at all times. The call to repent sounds because you have put many other things in the way of following the King at His Word.
In a sense, the Kingdom of Heaven is merely restoring God’s people to how things were supposed to be in the first place. You might recall that Israel had not always had an earthly king. From the days of Abraham to the days of Samuel, God’s people were led by Him, acting through His agents the patriarchs and the judges. God was their King and they needed no other. He carried out all the roles of king: provision of His people’s needs, protection from their enemies, and just judgments in their controversies and disputes. In 1 Samuel 8 we learn that Israel getting an earthly king in the first place was God’s gracious response toward His people who were rejecting Him. Hear the word of the Lord: And the LORD said to Samuel, "Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them." (1 Samuel 8:7-9)
Having an earthly king was a breaking of the divine order of things. Yet God did not give up on His people or cast them off, even though they rejected Him. He still carried out His role, just through these earthly rulers. God used these kings for the good of the people, and some even revered the Lord their God. One, in specific, King David, was described as being “after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14), but even he had feet of clay and sinned greatly against the Lord at times, arrogating to himself powers which were not rightly his–taking Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba as his own, conducting a census which the Lord had not instructed him to take. If this is the best of the kings, except perhaps Josiah who was noted in 2 Chronicles as being the best at keeping to the Law of the Lord, how much worse were the worst!
The kingdom of God on earth had disintegrated. The people of Judah, the smaller of the two nations which had once been Israel, saw themselves as specially blessed, which they were, but here too John strikes at their sense of self-worth and entitlement:
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." (Matthew 3:7-12)
To put this second saying of John into a 21st century context, you could rightly paraphrase it as follows: Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We’re Lutherans,” for I tell you, God is able to raise up from these stones faithful Lutherans. After all, the Pharisees and Sadducees were the faithful laypeople and the diligent religious authorities of John’s day. The Pharisees, if they were around today, were the sort of folks who would hold prayer groups and home Bible studies and would never miss church on Sunday. The Sadducees were the type who would be teaching in Christian colleges and seminaries and knew every arcane detail of the Bible. These were no pagans whom John was calling to repentance–these were the crème de la crème of Jewish faith and life. He calls them, and by extension, us, a “brood of vipers”. Not the best way to win friends and influence people. But he was right. Whenever we trust in our church membership or our own opinions about God, and not in Christ alone, in what the Word teaches us of Him, and then teach others to do the same, we are vipers, full of spiritual poison.
We can’t rest on our laurels and assume that since we’re churchgoers, since we’re decent people, that therefore all is well with our souls. The devil wants us to be complacent about our spiritual health and well-being. The devil loves to lull faithful Christians into docile inactivity, into malaise and a spirit of uncaring about the ones who are not yet part of God’s kingdom. The devil enjoys twisting our thoughts to questioning God’s Word on this sin or that and asking us, “Did God really say?” The devil wants us to put our faith in our building or our programs or our pastor or ourselves–anywhere but in Jesus and His Holy Word. We often complain about our small church attendance, our shrinking Sunday Schools and the lack of children in our congregation, but when is the last time you invited your family or friends who aren’t going to church to come and join us? And please bear in mind, if we default on our God-given duty, God can and will make followers of His way out of whatever He finds. His kingdom will come, His will will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, as the Lord’s Prayer reminds us. We pray that it would come among us also, to echo Dr. Luther’s catechism.
The axe is indeed at the root of the tree. Jesus would later echo these words of his cousin John, in the Sermon on the Mount: So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 7:17-19)
This fruit is not necessarily a numerical thing, mind you. There are faithful servants of Christ whose role is simply to plant the seeds and never get to see the numbers. One thinks of missionaries of years gone by who worked for 20 or 30 years and only saw one or two converted to the truth of Christ, of faithful believers who died for their faith before they ever got to see any results of their patience and persistence in Christ. But fruit will come forth in those who are repentant and repenting–the fruits in keeping with repentance, fruits of living for God and not for self, the fruits of the Spirit as listed in Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
So far, this is all Law. It tells us of our shortcomings. It tells us of what God demands. And certainly by this point John has left none of us unmarked. The call is to repent. Stop believing in yourself, despite what Oprah or Dr. Phil may tell you. Stop trusting in your own goodness, in your own abilities, in your status, in your associations. Believe in Christ, and Him only.
After all, you have not been baptized with water only into repentance, but you have been baptized by Christ with the Holy Spirit and with fire, baptized into the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. He has burned away the power of the devil–trust Him. This coming king, whose sandals the greatest of prophets the world has ever seen was unworthy to untie, has humbled Himself to be born, live, and die for you on the cross of Calvary. He has washed your heart clean from sin and its stain. Cling to Him. This season of Advent, as the world would convince you that it is the time to search after bargains and the latest and greatest gadgets, throw that aside and listen to Christ, listen to the Word of the Lord. Be cleaned by the body and blood of your Lord Jesus Christ, who died that you might live, who lives that you need not fear the devil and his lies.
The words of John the Baptist remind us to continue clinging to Christ, to continue to love Him above all things and to trust in His death for us, His resurrection for us, His means of grace given to us. For “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” God grant that each of us would be wheat to be stored and not chaff to be burned. God grant this for the sake of Jesus.
We look forward to the coming of our Lord and the day when the wheat and chaff will be separated at last. Until then, our role is to continue in the Lord and in His Word, to live as those whom He has called out from this world, washed and made clean in Baptism, whom He nourishes in His Holy Supper, and to continue in the pattern He has placed before us, ever repenting of our sin and pressing toward the goal of eternity with Christ.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus! Amen.
Last updated December 2007 by the webmaster.