Written by: Steve Hollinghurst – Church Army

Matthew 3 v 1-4
About that time John the Baptist began preaching in the desert area of Judea. John said, “Change your hearts and lives because the kingdom of heaven is near.” John the Baptist is the one Isaiah the prophet was talking about when he said:
“This is a voice of one who calls out in the desert:
‘Prepare the way for the Lord.
Make the road straight for him.’” 
John’s clothes were made from camel’s hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food, he ate locusts and wild honey.

Notes
In this chapter Matthew wants to show us how Jesus fits in his time and place, before beginning his account of Jesus’ adult ministry. Hence he introduces us to John the Baptist.

Matthew sees John as fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 40, written within the context of the exile of the people of Israel in Babylon. Isaiah offered hope that God would restore Israel and bring a time of great goodness. However, after the people had returned and rebuilt Jerusalem much of Isaiah’s vision remained unfulfilled, and foreign empires, currently the Romans, had repeatedly ruled Israel.

The people looked back to prophecies like Isaiah’s and believed God would send someone to set them free, “the Messiah”, the chosen or anointed one. So when John appeared declaring “the kingdom of heaven is near”, people pricked up their ears. Was he the one who would save them?

In some ways our time is similar. 2,000 years later we still await the return of Jesus and the coming of his kingdom on earth. There are also many different prophets and spiritual people around pointing to possible saviours in all sorts of directions.

John appeared at the right time and in a way that fitted with God’s promises. God has not forgotten his promises today either and they will be fulfilled at the right time. We cannot know when, but for us too, the kingdom of heaven is near. As John’s message tells us, this challenges us to live lives that are changed, not only so we can be welcomed as citizens of that kingdom, but also to show that the kingdom is already present in us as a sign to others. In this way we are all called to John’s ministry of preparing the way for God to come.

Prayer
Lord, help us to trust that you know what you are doing when the world seems to be in such a mess. More than this, help us to be part of the solution to the world’s problems even when they seem overwhelming. Amen

Matthew 3 v 5-6
Many people came from Jerusalem and Judea and all the area around the Jordan River to hear John. They confessed their sins, and he baptised them in the Jordan River.

Notes
John’s message and appearance in the desert created quite a stir and people came from all over Israel to hear him. His message (see Matthew 3 v 1-3) in many Bible translations is written as “repent for the kingdom of God is near”. Our translation has the words “change your hearts and lives”.

The image behind the original Greek word for “repent” is of someone going in a particular direction suddenly stopping short, realising they are heading the wrong way and totally changing direction. Repentance is not just about saying we are sorry and being forgiven, it is about totally changing the direction of our life so that we follow God’s way of living. When people confessed their sins and were baptised this was therefore a new beginning, but it would require a “daily repentance”, a daily decision to follow God in one’s life.

Baptism was fairly new and usually only for non-Jews - “Gentiles” - who wanted to follow the God of Israel. John baptised Jews even though they already had many rituals to cleanse people of sin. By comparing Jews with non-Jews and adding this new ritual, John was making the radical statement that even though these were God’s chosen people they fell short of God’s standards as much as the Gentiles.

Most of us like to see ourselves as “good people”, but even the best of us have done things we are ashamed of. All of us have those parts of our lives that we know could do with being changed. We need to repent as much as John’s hearers. And if we do, we must not forget that this is not a one-off event but the start of a daily process of changing how we live, and this is something we cannot do without God’s help.

Prayer
Lord, help me to see myself as you see me, create in me a desire to change, and give me the patience to trust you to work in my life over years and not do everything by tomorrow. Amen

Matthew 3 v 7-9
Many of the Pharisees and Sadducees came to the place where John was baptising people. When John saw them, he said, “You are all snakes! Who warned you to run away from God’s coming punishment? Do the things that show you really have changed your hearts and lives. And don’t think you can say to yourselves, ‘Abraham is our father.’ I tell you that God could make children for Abraham from these rocks.”

Notes
Clearly John was not impressed with the Pharisees and Sadducees! As the religious and political leaders, calling them a bunch of snakes was both shocking to some and certainly risky. However, many saw the Sadducees as collaborators with the Romans, and even the well-respected Pharisees were thought to have gone astray by some. The Pharisees probably came from a group formed during the reign of Greek King Antiochus who was trying to stamp out the Jewish religion. They refused to renounce their faith in God even though they suffered torture or death as a result. After Antiochus was overthrown they became key teachers on living morally according to God’s law. The Sadducees were the ruling elite and contained the priests who ran the Temple in Jerusalem.

The two groups often opposed each other, but John was clearly not a fan of either. His words suggest they thought they didn’t need repentance and baptism, but John was adamant that even descendants of Abraham still needed to show by how they lived that they were followers of God.

It is no different for Christians. Knowing your Bible or being a religious leader doesn’t guarantee you are serving God. Like the Pharisees it is also true that those who once served faithfully can wander from God’s path. Where Christian leaders have gone badly wrong, often a factor has been that people didn’t question them because of their status. Our leaders are human too. None of us benefit from judgemental attitudes, but we all sometimes need God to show us when we need to change the way we are living, and God often does this through other Christians. As a Christian leader I need to remember this, and encourage people not to think that leaders are above question.

Prayer
Lord, I pray for those who are leaders in my church or group. Help them to stay focused on serving you. By your Spirit help me not to take them for granted, but also not to take them as always right. Teach me to decide for myself what is right and wrong and play my part in helping others to see this too. Amen

Matthew 3 v 10-12
“The axe is now ready to cut down the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptise you with water to show that your hearts and lives have changed. But there is one coming after me who is greater than I am, whose sandals I am not good enough to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. He will come ready to clean the grain, separating the good grain from the chaff. He will put the good part of the grain into his barn, but he will burn the chaff with a fire that cannot be put out.”

Notes
In verses 1-9 John stressed how people needed to change the way they lived. Here he talks of our actions being like fruit on a tree. We will all be judged by the fruit we produce, and a time is coming when those who do not produce good fruit will be cut down.

In verses 1-3 Matthew sees John as the one who prepared the way for the Messiah - it was this much greater person who would enact this judgement. Whereas John baptised with water as a sign that people wanted to follow God’s ideals afresh, the Messiah would baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The fire, John explained, would burn up the bad harvest and destroy it, but what would the Holy Spirit do?

Jeremiah 31 v 33 talks of a time when God will write his law upon our hearts. Similarly, Ezekiel 36 v 26-27 tells us God will give us a new heart and put a new Spirit within us. He will take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.

John’s call to repentance was a call to live life according to God’s ideal, but in truth none of us can do this. Living according to the commands written on stone given to Moses (see Exodus 20) was always an impossible task that meant people constantly needed God’s forgiveness. God’s Spirit within us, however, can transform our hearts so that we become the people God intends us to be.

If human nature leads to a world of violence, greed and hatred, the key to changing this lies in the process of hearts being changed by God. People sometimes think we have to choose between evangelism and changing society - the truth is, they both go hand in hand.

Prayer
Lord, where my heart is like a stone make it come alive with your love. Help me to live more and more as you want me to. Help me to see where you are calling me to share my faith with others, and work to see others’ hearts changed. Amen

Matthew 3 v 13-14
At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River and wanted John to baptise him. But John tried to stop him, saying, “Why do you come to me to be baptised? I need to be baptised by you!”

Notes
John had been baptising people who recognised they needed to change the way they lived. So when Jesus, who John realised was the Messiah, came to be baptised, John protested. Whilst all of us need to change our lives, Jesus is the exception. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews in chapter 4 v 15 tells us Jesus was tempted in every way we are, but he never gave in. Jesus hardly needed John’s baptism.

God wants to transform people into those who live naturally according to his ways. Jesus is the example of such a person. In Jesus, God became a person so we could see what it really was like to be a person living God’s way. However, Jesus does even more than this - he enables us to become more like him each day. One could define Christians as those who are being changed into the likeness of Christ by the Holy Spirit within them.

You may have heard people talking of Christians as being “so spiritually minded they are of no earthly good”. Yet this could hardly be said of Jesus who challenged the authorities of the day, healed the sick and encouraged the poor and marginalised. This is the kind of person we are also called to be.

Christianity is not just about what happens when we die, it’s about what happens even now. Like the Christian Aid posters, we are to “believe in life before death” and work to see the fulfilment of Jesus’ prayer, often called the Lord’s Prayer, which asks for God’s kingdom to “come on earth as it is in heaven”. Jesus came not so much that we might get into heaven, but so that heaven might get into us.

Prayer
Lord, may your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. May your kingdom come where there is injustice, greed, hatred, racism, sexism and abuse. May it change our world into a place of love. And knowing how I really am, start that change in me. Amen

Matthew 3 v 15-17
Jesus answered, “Let it be this way for now. We should do all things that are God’s will.” So John agreed to baptise Jesus.
As soon as Jesus was baptised, he came up out of the water. Then heaven opened, and he saw God’s Spirit coming down on him like a dove. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love, and I am very pleased with him.”

Notes 
In the verses before these, John didn’t want to baptise Jesus as he did not need to repent and change how he lived. So why did Jesus think it right to be baptised? There are probably several answers to this.

When Jesus was baptised a voice from heaven alluded to some of the psalms, which speak of the enthronement of the king as “God’s Son” (these include Psalm 2 and 110). By John’s time these psalms were seen as prophecies about the Messiah. Jesus’ baptism can be seen as his consecration as the Messiah, a king to restore God’s rule and a priest to save people from “sin”, that which is wrong and destructive in our lives.

Also, Jesus seeks to identify with our lives in every way. As God in human form, he did not as we might expect decide to be born in a wealthy place and live a life of ease and luxury. Instead he was born to an ordinary family and risked death at an early age. He lived a normal life until he was thirty when he started his adult ministry, which this baptism marks the start of.

In being baptised with those who needed to change their lives, he showed that he wanted to understand this too. Hebrews 4 v 15 reminds us that because of Jesus’ life, he understands the problems we face as well as the joys we experience, and furthermore he is sympathetic to us when we get it wrong. It can be easy sometimes to think of God as a policeman who wants to catch us out and punish us. Jesus, however, shows us that God is not like this, but instead wants to help us and set us free from the power that sin can have over us.

Prayer
Lord, thank you that even though you know all the things I might rather hide in my life you don’t point at them and laugh, or expose my failings to others and embarrass me, or punish me angrily for what I do. Instead you love me and seek to make me free to be who I truly am. Thank you for coming as Jesus to make this happen. Amen

Matthew 4 v 1-4
Then the Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Jesus ate nothing for 40 days and nights. After this, he was very hungry. The devil came to Jesus to tempt him, saying, “If you are the Son of God, tell these rocks to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written in the Scriptures, ‘A person does not live by eating only bread, but by everything God says.’”

Notes 
If the Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted, then we must not fear we have done something wrong if we too are tempted. Jesus had just heard a voice from heaven declaring he was God’s Son. The devil picked up on this: “If you are God’s Son” he said, implying that perhaps he wasn’t so he’d better prove it by turning the stones into bread. The devil also knew Jesus was hungry. He needed to eat, so why not make bread out of stones?

It is easy to think that Jesus was above temptation, but these temptations were real for Jesus. Jesus however turned to the Bible. He knew that living by what God says was more important than his status or his hunger.

I am not personally tempted to create a nice meal out of my rockery, but I can see that the devil tempts me in the same way. We all have needs and desires and these are not bad in themselves. However, when they become the deciding factor in how we live, we can ignore right and wrong and pursue our desires in ways that harm others. We see this both in those who will not share what they have with the needy, and those who take what they want by force. Like Jesus we are to put doing what is right first, trusting God to meet our needs. The Bible can help us here too by reminding us of God’s values.

The devil will also attack who we are by trying to convince us we are too bad, or ugly, or stupid for God. God knows our weaknesses, but in his sight we are all beautiful and special, and, like Jesus, his chosen daughters and sons.

Prayer
Lord, help me when I am tempted. Help me to do what is right even if this isn’t always what I desire. Whatever others may say, never let me forget how precious I am to you. Thank you that I am your child just as Jesus was and when you made me you didn’t make a mistake. Amen


word-on-the-web uses the Scripture text taken from the Youth Bible, New Century Version (Anglicised Edition) copyright 1993 by Word Publishing Milton Keynes