Mission 66 (English podcast)
Matthew 03 Make Way for the King
The Kingdom of God comes with the arrival of the King himself, with the presence of the Messiah revealing that it is time to turn back to God, and this is why it's necessary to repent, to look back at our mistakes and our sins, and ask God for His forgiveness, turning back to Him. Today we continue our focus on the Gospels. Mission 66 originates from the ministry of Bible teacher and pastor Dr. Louis Ciao, and is produced and heard in multiple languages around the world in partnership with Transworld Radio. Let me remind you to download your free study guide of the Gospels. You'll be able to go deeper into God's Word and follow along with each day's program. It's a great companion resource of the audio teaching of John Matthews and Esther Sussulu. To get your free study guide of the Gospels, visit mission66.org. That's mission66.org. Get ready for some serious discussion as John Matthews and his co-host Esther Sussulu take us through today's study. And so begins another edition of Mission 66, where we're on a journey exploring the pages of the Bible. We're currently in a series of studies in the Gospels, and I'm your host Esther, and today our teacher, John Matthews, is in Matthew chapter 3. The theme for today is Make Way for the King. Great to be with you too, Esther, and great to be with you, our listeners, wherever you're listening to Mission 66 today, a really warm welcome to you. And you're right, Esther. We're going to see here in the Gospel of Matthew that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the long-awaited one, awaited by the Jewish people, according to the prophecies of the Old Testament. And we'll begin with the first verse of chapter 3, and it says, "In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, Repent said John, 'For the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when Isaiah said, 'One will come,' said Isaiah, and it would be the one, the voice of one, crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." So John the Baptist was Jesus' herald, if you like, announcing his coming arrival, or the start of a three-year ministry that was going to change the world forever. So John is the one preparing the way. He's the one saying, "Make way for the king," or, "Here comes the one that Isaiah had prophesied about." He's the king because the kingdom of heaven, in Matthew's way of saying it, means that the kingdom of God is near. And as we've seen in many passages from prophecies back in the Old Testament, also in the Book of Psalms, there's this expectation. The hope is that one day God himself would come in person and rule the earth, bringing peace and justice to everybody. And this John the Baptist, the man who was preparing the way, the one who was announcing the coming of the king of the kingdom of God, well, he was an unusual kind of man. Scripture goes on to tell us that John's clothes, well, they were made of camel's hair and that he wore this leather belt, perhaps nothing too unusual about that in today's day and age. But John the Baptist was not really into, let's say, the later styles and customs of that time. He lived, separated from others. He dressed really differently. He followed a diet that certainly isn't popular today. I doubt it was then either, locusts and wild honey. But John the Baptist was especially empowered by the spirit of God. And that meant that people listened to him. The Bible says that there were people coming to him from Jerusalem from all over Judea and the region around the Jordan River. And what did John say? Well, his message was, "The kingdom of God is near, therefore, it's necessary that everybody repent from their sins." Matthew 3 verse 6 says, "And they were baptized by John in the River Jordan, confessing their sins." Verse 7 continues by saying, "But when he saw," that's John, "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 in to the fire." You know, the kingdom of God comes with the arrival of the King himself with the presence of the Messiah, revealing that it is now time to turn back to God. And this is why it is necessary to repent. That is to look back at our mistakes, at the stuff we've done wrong, at our sins, and ask God for forgiveness by turning back to him. Did you know the religious Jews Esther of the time, both the Pharisees and the Sadducees, like many actually today, were so full of self-righteousness that they believed it wasn't necessary for them to repent of anything that they didn't need to repent of any kind of sin? So these religious people believed themselves to be children of Abraham, and as such they believed they had some sort of special genetic favor with God, and that this would give them special protection. But the divine judgment destined for these people is clearly defined here. John the Baptist continues in verse 11 by saying, "I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, who 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. John makes it really clear, "Look here, I'm baptizing you, I'm inviting you to go through this ritual, and it is a ritual of purification in the water, asking you to repent, but somebody else is coming, you know, somebody who sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will be the one to bring you the message that you all must and need to listen to." In other words, make way for the king. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. You see, up to this moment, the ministry of the Holy Spirit was different than it was after Christ's resurrection. In the Old Testament, we would see the Spirit of God come upon people, and then it would leave, for example, we saw the Spirit give Samson this unusual physical strength, but then later it departed from him, leaving him weak and powerless. We saw the Spirit fall upon King Saul at one point in his life, so that he was turned into a preacher, but then it left him because of his disobedience. John the Baptist here is foretelling a different ministry of the Holy Spirit, which would come upon believers and indwell them permanently, that is, live within them, giving them new life, nurturing, transformation, giving them perhaps in certain situations special abilities, and one sign, actually, Esther of the Spirit's coming was at Pentecost when there appeared these cloven tongues of fire over each person's head, and we're going to see and explain more of that when we come to the Book of Acts. John, you know, I'm so intrigued by the winnowing fork in God's hand and clearing out his threshing floor. Please tell me, what does this mean? Well, Esther, it talks about the process of separating the good grain from the useless part of the grain, which was called chaff. You know, the reapers would use a forked instrument to throw the grain into the air so that the good grain, which was heavier, would fall back down onto the pile whilst the chaff, which was lighter, would be carried off by the wind. And this was John's way of saying that God was about to do some major house cleaning. There were times in the Old Testament when people acted really badly out of ignorance, but that was about to be set straight. God was about to make a clear difference between those who really believed God and those who did not. And the cutoff point was going to be whether they accepted or rejected the coming of Jesus Christ as a Messiah. Now remember, John the Baptist is Jesus' forerunner. He's the one saying, "Make way for the King." He's announcing, if you like, the coming of Christ. And so what does Matthew tell us here in verse 13? Well, this is what he says. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by John. John would have prevented him saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness." And then he consented. You know, John did indeed know that Jesus was the King, the Messiah, the one who had been promised in the prophecies of the Old Testament. John did indeed know that Jesus was the King, the Messiah, the one who had been promised in those prophecies of the Old Testament. And you can imagine, John felt really unworthy and he said, "Who am I to baptize you, the long-awaited Messiah myself? I'm the one who should be baptized by you." Especially because baptism was directly connected to repentance. You know, Jesus didn't have to be baptized because he had no sin to repent from. But Jesus decides to do this as an example that we should follow as part of fulfilling all righteousness. It is good, isn't it, and right to repent of our sins? And it's good and right to make that public demonstration of our faith by being baptized. And we should all seek to be like Christ and be baptized just as he was. And Scripture then says that as soon as Jesus came out of the water after he was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Make way for the King." Yeah, this is the Messianic King who's coming and he is with us now. This is what John the Baptist is telling everyone, asking everyone to prepare the way because the Messiah was coming. And if you're waiting for a voice from the heavens declaring that Jesus was the Son of God, then this was it. The heavens loudly proclaimed the coming of the King. And here we see clearly the supernatural origin of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit of God comes in the form of the dove and at the same time, a voice from the heavens says, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased." Here you see the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit forming the triunity of God, one Godhead in three persons. And this is manifested at this moment, recognizing that Jesus is the one sent by God to establish the kingdom of God among us. And this is why, dear listener, it is necessary that we think carefully about all of this. It is important for each of us to answer the major question in every human being's life, whether they recognize it as that or not. The question is this, "Have I opened up my life and heart to Jesus? Have I prepared the way for Him in my life? Have I made way for the King?" This is Mission 66 and our teacher, John Matthews, is certainly giving us quite a lot to think about with that question. Thank you so much for being here, friend. I'm Esther and I encourage you to stay tuned with us because we have some questions that I imagine some of you may have wondered about. Now John, Matthew chapter 1 and 2, they tell of Christ's birth, but chapter 3 seems to skip His entire childhood. How do we know anything about Jesus as a child or even as a teenager, and at what age was Jesus baptized? Well, Esther, when Jesus came back from Egypt in chapter 2, He was still a child and then by chapter 3, He's baptized. So there's a definite time gap there, isn't there? And you'll see as well in the Gospel of Luke that He was about the age of 30 when He began His ministry. So Jesus was already an adult here and other than the time that He was in the temple teaching the elders as a younger man, we're not told much at all about Jesus the child. Rather, the Bible tells us only what is pertinent, only what is important to His mission as the Messiah and Savior of the world. There was no need, I guess, for the Bible to get into details that are not important to Jesus' mission on earth. So it would be possible, wouldn't it, to write entire libraries telling of the things that Jesus did in His entire life? Yeah, and what a life Jesus lived. But I think that in the same way, we don't know much about John the Baptist, right? Did He learn He's strange lifestyle from His upbringing? Well, Esther, we know that He was the son of Elizabeth, who was one of Mary's relatives. Now, she bore John when she was in her 80s. So He Himself, John the Baptist, had a miraculous birth, the same as Jesus. But like Jesus, we're not told much about His upbringing. We only know that He was a prophet with a special mission. And that mission was to call people to get right with God and to denounce the hypocrisy of the religious elite, the Pharisees who were legalists, keeping strictly to the law of Moses and then despising those who didn't or couldn't or weren't able to. And then the Sadducees who were considered or considered themselves, for sure, the intellectuals and denied that there was any such thing as a resurrection. And there was also another group, a sect known as the ascends, and even other similar communities that led a lifestyle similar to John the Baptist. And they considered society to be a lost cause. So they isolated themselves in the desert, in caverns, in uninhabitable regions. They dressed differently and they didn't interact with others. One thing, actually, the ascends did leave for us was their careful attention to copying the scriptures. And because of that, we owe them a debt of gratitude. But we don't have to live like them. And we don't have to live like John the Baptist in order to be faithful to God. Well, honestly, that's good news that we can still remain faithful, nonetheless. Okay, well, right now we're going to look at baptism. And baptism is done in water as per scripture. But where does this practice come from? And why is it done in this way? Well, it was ceremonial purification, which was based on the Old Testament worship system, which included ceremonial cleansing and washing. The Jews had their own purification baths that were known as the Mikvod, as it said in Hebrew. So when John the Baptist was preaching about the need for repentance, he baptized those who were willing to make this public declaration that they were renouncing sin. I think magical at all, Esther, about the water that the baptism was just symbolic of their desire to be purified using water. You know, I'm curious, did they go all the way under the water? I mean, we don't know about that. And I'm not sure if the people being baptized by John were taken completely into the water or not. You know, the word baptized comes from a Greek word that means to dip or immerse. So it seems likely that these people were immersed in the Jordan River. And there are other ways in which churches practice baptism today, which we can get into elsewhere. But they do all involve water. And the intent is to make this public declaration of faith, this outward expression. So we touched briefly upon where John says that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Can you explain a little bit more about this? Yes, in the book of Acts, when the Holy Spirit came down on the day of Pentecost, and this is a day to behold, this is a sight to behold, because visible flames showed up over people's heads, described as tongues of fire. Can you imagine seeing or being in the room and this happens? And the fire actually has this positive aspect to it because it's demonstrating the power of God. So this is very different from the fire of the final judgment, which John talks about here. John says that Jesus will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. He has this winnowing fork in his hand and he will clear the threshing floor. And he was talking about how God would one day separate his faithful people from those who don't believe in him. And he would gather the good wheat into the barn but burn up the chaff with this unquenchable fire, which is a sobering thought. This means salvation for the good wheat, the faithful ones, but judgment upon those who don't believe the unbelieving world. Yeah, well, my prayer is that we'll be found faithful in God, in Jesus today. Thank you so much, John. So now that chapter three ends with Jesus' baptism, and it talks about a dove, a voice coming from the heavens, how can we understand this passage? Yeah, I love this part of the passage. It's beautiful, isn't it? Jesus, just picture it is being baptized. And as soon as he emerges from the water at that very moment, heaven opens. And the Holy Spirit comes down in the form of a dove resting on him. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that a beautiful image? And then comes this voice from the Father, the perfect heavenly Father, God, saying, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased." You know, Jesus was born being completely divine, being both God and man at the same time. And this enables him to be our Savior. But even more than that, we see here the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all here present at the occasion of Jesus' baptism. And it shows that the three are united, that the three are one, and at the same time they are three. And the theological term for this, if you want to use that, is called the Trinity, God in three persons. And the Bible reveals this reality about God, the one true God. And at the same time, he's three. Now, this baptism in the Jordan River was really the inauguration or the start of the ministry of Jesus as he officially sets off to fulfill his task, his mission sent by his father, God the Father, and what a moment this is. And you know what? Get this, John. In the law of Moses, I read that if someone was too poor to afford a sheep or an ox for sacrifice, he was allowed to offer a dove. And the dove was considered a pure animal, and it represented peace. Wow. Yeah, and I think that's the reason that this is such a lovely part of the passage is because our world today, Esther, isn't it, is so desperate for this kind of impact, this kind of peace. And you have Jesus, the Savior, who comes in peace, but also in purity to offer himself as a pure sacrifice on behalf of mankind, on behalf of sinners in need of forgiveness and salvation. Well, what a beautiful picture of our Savior. Oh, what a beautiful picture it is, John. All right. So what are your closing comments for this chapter? Yeah. Well, today on Mission 66, we've had the privilege of journeying through chapter three of the gospel of Matthew. And our theme was make way for the king. We've heard how John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of Jesus, the Savior. And we've also heard of what Jesus is baptism was like. And then the voice of God coming down, revealing that Jesus was indeed the beloved Son of God. The kingdom of heaven is revealed and other episodes to come will also show that Jesus is king of kings and Lord of lords. And he will reign forever with power and love. And what a magnificent prospect that is for all who believe. Amen and amen. Friend, this is Mission 66. As you know, we take a daily journey through the pages of the Bible. And I really hope that you've gleaned so much from this particular study, but we're hoping to see you again next time so we can continue studying the life of Jesus in the book of Matthew. So until then, be blessed and God bless you. Let me remind you to download your free study guide of the Gospels. You'll be able to go deeper into God's word and follow along with each day's program. It's a great companion resource of the audio teaching of John Matthews and Esther Susullo. To get your free study guide of the Gospels, visit Mission66.org. That's Mission66.org. It's a great resource. You can also support the Ministry of Mission 66 when you visit the site. You'll help continue the program here and around the world. Mission 66 is a Ministry of Transworld Radio in partnership with Dr. Louise Seattle. I'm Rob Dempsey.