Transcript
Are you ready to get into Matthew three? Are you ready? I am having so much fun in Matthew. I don't know if it's going to come across because it's just a mess in my head, but man, I am loving Matthew three and each week there's just so much there to cover. So turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter three. We're actually going to just do one through 12. I was going to try to do the whole thing, but it is just not going to happen, right? Matthew three, one through 12 next week we'll look at the baptism of Jesus. So do you have your Bibles? Get your Bibles out. We're going to cover a lot of Bible today. Matthew chapter three. Now, before we do that, do you know who this is? Do you know who this character is? This is Roger Banister and up until 1954, nobody had ever ran a sub four minute mile and he decided that he would try to break the record and he did a lot of planning and preparation.
That's the key word here, preparation to be able to accomplish this. He had a scientific method that he followed, unlike many athletes of his time, banister applied a methodical, almost scientific regimen to his training. He balanced his medical studies with his targeted workout schedule. He also had a strategic team that worked with him of pace setters, fellow runners, Chris Bashir and Chris Chataway helped him maintain the needed speed during his attempt. This was a strategic part of his preparation and then also psychological preparedness. He prepared his mind focusing on the goal, visualizing it and refusing to let naysayers divert him. And on May 6th, 1954, a small event in Oxford, banister did it. He broke the four minute barrier completing the mile in three minutes, 59.4 seconds. I want you to have in your mind this morning that idea of preparation, that idea of preparation. You do this every day.
You prepare for things every day, and this chapter, chapter three, is going to show us how God was preparing a nation for the Messiah. Let's read the text together and then we'll get into it and study it and see what the Holy Spirit has for us this morning. Starting in verse one, he says, in those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near for he is the one spoken of through the prophet Isaiah who said, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make paths straight. Now, John had a camel hair garment with leather belt, a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locust and wild honey. Then people from Jerusalem, all Judea and all the vicinity of the Jordan were going out to him and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River confessing their sins.
When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don't presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones. The ax is already at the root of the trees, therefore every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I. I'm not worthy to remove his sandals. He himself will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire his winnowing. Shovel 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 fire that never goes out.
Lord, we pray that you would speak to us this morning. We give you permission to speak into our lives, Lord, we need help understanding the Bible. Some of us have not spent a lot of time in scripture and now all of a sudden we've got a character wearing camel skin and eating locusts and honey, and we need you somehow to speak to us. We know we've heard that the Bible is important and it's God's word and it's food for us. And Lord, we just need you to work in our life. And God, we bring to you the mess of our life, the things that we're anxious and scared about, the things that we're upset about and the hopes that we have. And Lord, we just pray that somehow by doing what we're doing right now of spending a little bit of time in your word, that we would have a spiritual experience that is transformative, that you would speak into our lives.
I pray for the young people that are here, even down to the young kids, that Lord, they would know you as their personal Lord and Savior, that they would have a personal relationship with Jesus that would go with them, that that would go with them through their whole life. Bless our time together, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So there's going to be three sections that we cover this morning since we've read the text up front. What I will do is I will summarize and dip in and out of the text, but you've gotten this broad view that there's this character named John the Baptist, which we're going to spend a good bit of time trying to understand. Before we do that though, what I want to put in front of you is just some tools. I know that the text is small. We used to have this slide on a big projected screen and that's difficult to see, but this is, if you're new to the Bible, this is how the latter half of your Bible is organized.
This is called the New Testament, and we have these first four books, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John, and those are called the Gospels, and those tell the story of Jesus. Each one tells the story of Jesus from a different perspective. And then we have the Book of Acts. Acts is the history of the early church, and then we have a bunch of letters. We often call them epistles, but they're letters written by either Paul. He's got his letters there, Thessalonians, Galatians Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, Romans, colo, colos, Colossians, Ephesians, Timothy Titus, and then we have the general epistles, Peter, James, Jude in Hebrew, Hebrews, and so those are letters. And then we have the book of Revelation, which is in its own, it's the final book and it is this image of the victory of Jesus at the end. It's all this great beautiful picture that shows that Jesus wins the day.
Okay, so we are looking at the historic part of the Bible. We're here in Matthew another way, if we're just going to look at it on a timeline, the biblical history, going back to the very beginning. We have 2000 years from Adam to Abraham. We have another 2000 years from Abraham to Christ. You see here, this is Genesis one through 12, Genesis 12 through the rest of the Old Testament, and then we have 2000 years from Christ to the present time. That's another way for you to see it. And also one more just visualization here, just a timeline. Jesus, we see he's born in three bc. He starts doing ministry just before 30 ad he's probably crucified around 30 AD and then we have acts telling the story of the early church. There's where the epistles fit in and we have the book of Revelation.
I know some of you're just kind of getting used, wrapping your head around how the Bible works and how it's organized, and I thought I'd put that up there in front of you just to give you that visualization of where we're at. The X marks the spot of what we are looking at this morning in the book of Matthew on a map. We're looking at this region here in Israel, Israel and the Mediterranean Sea really kind of, this is Israel over here on our map. This is the Dead Sea. This is the Sea of Galilee, and right there where it says Rama is close to Jerusalem and the Jordan River where John is baptizing, zoomed in this, again, this is kind of an older map. You probably have this at the back of your Bible, but here is the Bethany beyond Jordan. There's two possible spots.
This is probably the area down here in the south, but there's also a Bethany beyond Jordan that's up there in the north. But we're going to say that John is down here close to Jericho, Jerusalem and Bethany, do you see that? So that's where our story is occurring and we get into this first section, Matthew chapter one, Matthew chapter three, one through six. It's the introduction of John, the preparer of the way. Do you notice I changed his name? Do you see that? Because what do we normally call him John the Baptist, but that is not, that's just something he does, right? He's actually has a calling in life just like you have a calling in life and he's called to prepare the way. Now he does baptisms to prepare the way, but I wish we could name him John, the preparer of the way.
Again, there's that theme preparation. Now it says here in our text, let's go over to this phrase here. This is his message. He says, repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near. Now we look at the story of Luke and we find out about John's origin story that he's a cousin of Jesus, probably he's related to Jesus. He's probably born six months prior to Jesus and John, he kind of rolls off the scene. He's a miraculous birth because his mom couldn't have babies. And then she conceives of John, his parents are Elizabeth and Zacharia. He's named John. It's this whole crazy thing. But he's given this command, which we're going to see in the next verse, but he has this message, repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near the kingdom of heaven is one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk about Matthew. The kingdom theme goes all the way back to the beginning of the Bible. Do you know where the kingdom theme first pops up? I mean, I kind of gave it away there, but what chapter does kingdom come up in?
I would suggest Genesis chapter two, Genesis chapter two, where God has already said he's creating humans in his image, but then he commands these humans to rule and subdue over the creation that he's made. That's royal language. The calling of humanity is different from the calling of animals. Humans were entrust. They were given the image of God. Animals don't bear the image of God, the word image, by the way, in Genesis chapter one, it's the same word as idol. So humans are walking idols of God. They bear the image of God on earth. They're God's representatives on the earth, and then they're told to do God's rule of ruling. So literally, humans are created to take this authoritative position within creation and to rule and subdue. It's this royal appointment given to humans. Now, the Bible, do humans keep up with that calling? No, they turn away from that calling.
They stop obeying God. They forsake that authoritative position with God to reign and rule. They're rebellious and they fall from royalty with God and they're estranged from God. And so the Old Testament continues to raise up kingdom like figures and develop this kingdom theme because God's kingdom is always about to break out God. This is going to be a kind of a disgusting analogy, but some of you are in the medical field. Sometimes there's these diseases that are kind of subdermal, but then they break out. I think that's like psoriasis or that kind of thing, right? It's this breaking out of something that's under the surface that's like God's kingdom. I know that's gross, but I can't think of a better analogy right now. Okay? It's like it's this interruption. I'm going to just break into history. God's ruling and reigning, it's been anticipated all the way back since Genesis chapter three where God's saying, I'm going to send something to crush the serpent's head.
The seed of the woman is going to crush the serpent's head. Then you have an Abraham figure, you have a Noah figure. You have these different characters where there're symbolizing this reigning and ruling, this authoritative acting on God's behalf in the midst of a totally broken world. But none of those characters, whether it's Moses or Abraham or Noah or David or Solomon, they all have failures. You're like, oh, maybe this is the guy, and then they fail. And so there's this anticipation throughout the Old Testament waiting for the kingdom of God. And now here is John the Baptist comes on the scene and he says, repent, the kingdom of God is at hand. Now, Matthew tells us, he says that John did this because he is the one spoken of through the prophet Isaiah who said, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. So here's the interesting thing. We're going to look at Isaiah 40 in just a second, but Matthew says, John preached this message because Isaiah, Isaiah prophesied that there would be this one crying out in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord, making his paths straight. It's fascinating how John fulfills this calling.
Now, let's look a little bit, let's look at this passage out of Isaiah. Here's what Isaiah 40 literally says, because the quote you have in your text in the Bible in front of you, you have Isaiah 40, verse three quoted in Matthew. But listen, listen. This is what Isaiah 41 through three actually says, comfort. Comfort my people says, your God, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and announce to her that her time of hard service is over. Her iniquity has been pardoned, and she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins, a voice of one crying out, prepare the way of the Lord in the will. Do you see that? Here it is in Isaiah, what Matthew quotes. This is happening seven, 800 years before Jesus. This is being spoken by Isaiah. Do you know that Israel God's people were taken captive into Babylon because God's people had disobeyed God?
And God said, okay, your time in the promised Land, it's up. I'm going to let you be taken captive into Babylon, into Assyria. But God raised up a generation of prophets, these different men who would speak on God's behalf to the nation and the surrounding nation saying, listen, yeah, things are bad right now, but you need to know that God is at work and this is his promise. The crazy thing is sometimes they would have these prophetic words from God that spoke of way in the future 800 years. In fact, Isaiah prophesied of things that still to this day have not yet come to pass about the second coming of Christ, but here in Isaiah chapter 40, God gives Isaiah this word about this one who's crying out in the wilderness, and his job is to make straight paths or straight highways for our God in the desert.
It's this beautiful, beautiful image. It's interesting to compare the explicit prophecies about John the Baptist with his practice. Notice how vague the prophecies are, and yet John are and John to figure out how to be. I don't know what happened to that sentence. I apologize. This was me brainstorming on this. The idea is that John gets this word out of Isaiah, but what do you do with that? What do you do with when God's speaking to you and he gives you these principles? It's amazing just the humanity involved here because our character, John, he has to decide how to make the paths straight, right? This is what it looked like in Israel. Notice all the rocks when you had to make a Roman road at the time of John the Baptist, it primarily means just get the bunch of rocks out of the way. And that's the image here is that the Messiah is going to come on the scene.
We got to clear the streets for we got to clear a path so that the Messiah, but is he talking about construction? Is he talking about a literal road? No, he's talking about the hearts of the people. He's talking about the hearts of the people. And this is the question for you and I this morning is like if you were listening to John, would your heart be ready for the Messiah? And so John, what he does is he is baptizing in the Jordan River. He's saying, repent. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's just this fascinating method to accomplish the purpose of spoken 800 years in advance. And I think the thing that gets me excited about this is that God is wanting to bring about his work in your life and in my life, and he has a way of getting our lives ready for the rain and the rule of Jesus.
And so there may be things that you're encountering that seem like, man, what is going on here? Why is this happening to me? And if you're a disciple of Jesus, the disciple of Jesus, being a disciple of Jesus means that Jesus paid for you with his blood. He owns you because he died on the cross. If you've given your life to him, that's the idea of being a follower of Jesus. And so he's not going to just trash your life when you've become a follower of him. He now has access and he wants to give you a life that he designs. And so he is free to orchestrate the activities of your life. I don't want to use the word mess with you, but in a sense he's is in charge of really beautifully designing your life so that your heart is prepared for the Messiah.
So we have this guy, John, let's talk a little bit about him. The identity of John was perplexing and oftentimes enmeshed with Jesus or Elijah. They're kind of confused with each other. The accounts themselves are intention with each other. Jesus refers to John the Baptist as Elijah in the gospel of Matthew, but in John's gospel, John the Baptist denies that he is the prophet. Now, here's what he's talking about in Matthew 17, Elijah, this is Jesus speaking. Jesus says, Elijah is coming and will restore everything he replied. But I tell you, Elijah has already come and they didn't recognize him. On the contrary, they did whatever they pleased to him. In the same way the son of man is going to suffer at their hands. Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them about John the Baptist. Do you remember what we were talking about last week about the layering and how there's this repeated patterns in the Bible and things map onto each other?
Here? This text is saying John's life maps onto the image of Elijah. And John was the Elijah. John was the Elijah, but then there's an Elijah that's also still to come. Now John the Baptist himself over in John one 19, he says this, this was John's testimony when the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, who are you? Here's what John said about himself. He didn't deny it, but he confessed, I am not the Messiah. And they said, what? Then are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Because remember what happened to Elijah? Remember, he got taken up to heaven, right? So there was always this anticipation. Well, maybe Elijah's going to come back because Elijah, and who's the guy in the beginning of Genesis that didn't die?
Enoch. Enoch, yes. Enoch and Elijah, the two characters in the Bible that didn't experience death. Maybe Moses would be a third one possibly, but that's debatable. So they asked him, are you Elijah? Are you kind of come back from heaven to us? He said, I'm not. And they said, are you the prophet? He said, no. Now, what is he talking about when they ask, are you the prophet? This goes back to Deuteronomy 19. Deuteronomy 18 and 19, Moses told the nation There's going to be another prophet like me that's going to come. You need to discern is he the prophet? Moses was talking about the Messiah. So you see that these individuals, these religious leaders are testing and trying to figure out who does John think he is? And he said, no. And they say, who then are you? And they asked, we need to give an answer to those who sent us.
What can you tell us about yourself? And so I didn't add the rest of the, I don't know why I didn't add it, but this is where he says, what we're going to read in a little bit where I'm not worthy to you on loose his shoes. So that's John the Baptist. Okay? John is this fascinating character that again, repeats some earlier ideas. Now he's there. The main thing that I am hoping that you see is this idea of preparation because God is over and over again in the old and the New Testament is just doing this work of preparing his people, preparing the scene, right? What did Moses do? Did he just go and take Israel out? No. He had this whole work of like, I'm going to go to the Pharaoh and the whole soil, spiritual soil of the land is churned up because Moses is doing this thing with the 10 plagues and the calamities that come on, Pharaoh and Egypt.
It's this whole preparatory work. Same with Joshua. There's a whole preparation that happens with Joshua, and so it's this repeated idea, and I would suggest that God is doing that and does do that in our own lives. Now, let's look at this second section. John's message and confrontation with the religious leaders in verses seven through 10. Now, we've already seen that the message that John preached was this repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but now he encounters these religious leaders, so we get to kind of drill down on some of the preaching of John. When he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath.
We're going move through this. I read this to you and I just want to help you give you a framework for the Pharisees. These guys are the primary bad guys of the gospels, right? It says, the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to John. They're in the crowd, and so here's who the Pharisees are. The name is stems from a Hebrew word, Perus, which means separatist. It's developed out of the Hasidim, the pious ones of the Maccabean period. And were closely connected to the oral tradition or the official interpretation of the Torah for that day. They were teachers of the law and advocated a scrupulous observance of purity and piety regulations. They saw themselves as building a fence around the law so as to help the common people keep its rules. Now, they developed in the Maccabean period because remember I told you a second ago that the children of Israel rebelled against God, and God allowed them to be taken captive to Babylon.
They went into exile. When they came back after 70 years, there was this zeal that we see in Ezra, in Nehemiah. The people were zealous. Never again do we want to fail God by going into adult idolatry. And so there was this passion that became the Pharisees and other responses of that kind, but we see that it becomes misguided. It becomes a legalism where these individuals are so concerned about drawing this fence around the law that they completely miss the idea of the Messiah. Here's a picture of John. This is not actual the actual John. This is just a drawing, an artistic rendering of John engaging with the Pharisees and Sadducees. Pharisees were the party of the common people, but the Sadducees, the name probably coming from the priest Zadok in one Kings one, eight, they were the party of the aristocrats consisting of many chief priests and the upper class.
So we do have John saying to them, you are a brood of vipers. He's calling them out. I don't know what a Palestinian viper was, but in Africa, a viper was always feared because it would hide on the side of the path and it would jump out. It had this ability to spring out and just grab you by the heels, and this is what John says of these Pharisees, you are a brood of vipers, but he continues with his picturesque language and he calls them to bear fruit or to produce fruit consistent with repentance. Consistent with repentance. Listen, Paul came and he said, in a pretty zealous way, you need to repent. You need to repent all throughout the Bible, even back in Genesis chapter three, when Adam and Eve failed in the garden, God came to Adam and Eve and what did he say? What was the first question that God posed? Adam and Eve, where are you? Yeah, where are you?
He's posing these questions, not because God doesn't know, but because God is inviting Adam and Eve to repent. An aspect of this idea of the fruit of repentance is this word that we have called confession. If you grew up in a Catholic tradition, you know that confession has been formalized into something you do with a priest where you literally go into a little box and you confess your sins. Now, whether or not that's good or bad, I don't know. I don't think it actually hurts because in James chapter four, it says that we are to confess our sins to one another. There's a healthiness about confession, but God's not just concerned about our lips, but he's concerned about our life. But God's always inviting his people to repent. He's inviting us this morning. If you feel far away from God, he's inviting you to repent.
That's not a scary thing. It's the beginning of relationship is there's this breach and you need to repent. You need to come and agree with me on what I say is right and wrong in the world, and you need to align your life with that value system. Repent. There was this crazy story that happened in Corinth where there's this church like our church, and there was a guy in the church and he was sleeping with his father's wife like his stepmom, and the church was permitting this to go on. It was just completely. Paul says, this isn't even something that the heathen do. I mean, this is gross immorality. Like, why are you doing this? And the church is told you need to get this guy out of the church until he repents and turns. And so he does. And in second Corinthians, Paul writes a follow-up letter to the church, and he uses the same language.
He says, now, I rejoice not because you were grieved when I wrote that first letter to you about the situation. He's like, I'm not happy that I got you upset when I wrote that letter, but I am rejoicing because your grief led to repentance. For you are grieved as God willed so that you didn't experiencing any loss from us for godly grief. There's that word again, produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. But worldly grief produces death for consider how much diligence this very thing this grieving of God's will has produced in you. And he begins to list out all of the ways that they're demonstrating the fruit of repentance as a church. It's producing them this desire to clear themselves. In other words, we're totally in the clear. We're not guilty of this anymore. We're not just welcoming in completely immoral people and just saying, yeah, yeah, that's good.
God's okay with that immoral life. What indignation it produced in them, this indignation and fear of like, man, we don't want that ever to happen again. What a deep longing. What zeal, what justice in every way you showed yourself to be pure in this matter. So John the Baptist has as an audience, I imagine him, he's in there in the Jordan River baptizing people and preaching to the audience on the banks of the river, and he's saying, you brood of vipers. You need to produce the fruit of repentance in your life. And this is all in line with what Isaiah said about John, that he's there to prepare the people for Jesus the Messiah. Do you see? Think about that road where the rocks are God, in order for God to work in your life, in my life, there has to be this day of reckoning where it's like, you know what?
This junk needs to go. These rocks need to be moved out of the way so that Jesus can come and have his full way. In my heart, it's not just for salvation, but listen, you can give your life to Jesus, but leave a rocky path there. We read that in Hebrews. In Hebrews. He says, listen, mend the broken out of joint bones, clear the path, so the valleys are brought up high and the hills are brought down low. So it's a smooth path for God's work in your life. The path is prepared. God wants to work in your life and in my life, and he sent John here to do this, and he is not messing around. When you start calling people snakes, you're not messing around. Third section, John's description of the coming Messiah. This is the last two verses. He says this, I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I.
I'm not worthy to remove his sandals. He himself will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire his winnowing shovel in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out. He's continuing with the imagery. He's saying, these sandals, I'm not worthy to even undo the sandals. In this time, John had disciples. Jesus had disciples. Teachers had their apprentices who would follow 'em around, and these disciples would act kind of like slaves. They would be the runners, but they would not be asked to clean feet or untie feet that was left to a foreign slave that was lower than a disciple's job. And so John uses this image and says, there's somebody coming that I'm preparing the way for the Messiah whose feet I'm not even worthy to loose his sandals.
And you need to know that he has a winnowing fork, a winnowing fork. Now, we don't use winnowing forks every day because we're not harvesting wheat, but they would be familiar with this picture where the wheat is harvested brought to a flat surface and the wheat would be scooped up like a snow shovel and thrown up into the air and the husks, the outer shell around the wheat kernel would blow away. That was called the chaff. And John uses this image to say that this is what's going to happen. His winnowing shovel is in his hand. He's clearing the threshing floor and gathering his weeded into his barn. This is what you need to know about this whole study about Jesus is that Jesus is not an accommodator. Jesus doesn't come to make you feel fuzzy and improve your identity and give you something warm, fuzzy to feel in the morning.
Jesus is like, look, you're either wheat or you're chaff and I'm here to get the wheat and the chaff is going to get burned up, and you need to decide, are you going to follow me or are you going to get burned up? There's no middle ground in this. There's no like I'm going to tiptoe around and come to church on Sunday and maybe I'll get into heaven when I die. That's not how it works with Jesus or with John. It's straight up. You're going to follow him. Then you need to obey him because he's ready to come with fire in judgment. I just want to read for you from Malachi chapter three, one through three. Do you know where Malachi is in the Bible?
The last book of the Old Testament, the last thing that was said before Jesus came, there was a 400 years of silence between this message and when John got there, and here's what it says. See, I'm going to send my messenger. He will clear the way before me. Does that sound familiar to you? Yeah. Then the Lord, you'll suddenly, then the Lord you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant. You delight in. See, he is coming, says the Lord of armies, but who can endure the day of his coming who will be able to stand when he appears, for he will be like a refiner's fire and like a launderers bleach. These people in the Old Testament, this Jewish tradition, they've been primed. So this is why you get a John the Baptist flaming prophets saying, you vipers, you need to repent.
You need to recognize, prepare your hearts for the coming King. He'll be like a refiner's fire and purifier of silver. He'll purify the sons of Levi, refine them like gold and silver. Then they'll present their offerings to the Lord in righteousness. It's beautiful. Well, let's land the plane. I with this God is actively preparing you for his Jesus agenda. Do you know that He's not preparing you for your agenda? He's preparing you for his agenda. We belong to him. We've said we're going to be followers of you, Jesus. And the beautiful thing is we have all the Bible to see that he does good things with his people. He gives him promised land. He gives him his word. He gives him prophetic warning. He gives him defense. That's the God we're following. That's the one we're brought to. But he's preparing you every day for the Jesus agenda.
The Holy Spirit is working in your life. So Jesus can one establish his reign and rule in your life. He wants to be in charge. He wants to rule as your king, but not only that, he wants to reestablish Genesis chapter two through you. You can join him in the Genesis two rule and subdue human mandate. Jesus has come to restore you back to that garden vision so that you can be there in the garden flourishing with him, fruitful, multiplying, ruling, subduing, bearing his image all the way out to where you are operating from that position of authority. We don't have time to go into it now, but this is where prayer is so important because in Psalm one 10, it says that you extend, he extends his scepter from Zion. Go and look at that. How do kings and priests act throughout the New Testament? It's always tied in with this idea of prayer. The most royal thing you can do this week is pray. That is the most reigning and ruling act that you can take in cooperation with God. So we have John preparing the way, inviting us in and saying, the good thing is coming. This kingdom is coming. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. Thank you for being the good Messiah.
Thank you for being the king that baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Lord, we are so grateful that we stand at this point in history looking back on this account, seeing that there's this long, beautiful tapestry of your good work. Lord, would you weave our life into that tapestry this week? Would you let us be a part of that beautiful pattern of your good work? Lord, I pray that you as strengthen the saints, strengthen us to stand in the evil day, to look into the face of the things that we're afraid of. We're concerned about our insufficiency, and to trust in you that you're at work. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.