Everyone always talks about the “miracle of birth.” Every pregnancy, every child is born, “it is a miracle, it is a miracle.” I do not want to downplay the great joy and blessing the children are. I do not want to downplay the amazing process by which God chose to continue the procreation of mankind. There is a great deal to the science of the development of a baby in the womb that is fascinating. The more we learn about the science, especially in order to combat the evil of abortion, the more we can see the hand of God in this process. It is an awe-inspiring thing to think about. The way God chose to bring a man and woman together and the way He designed our bodies. David even writes about the tender way, God knit us together in our mother’s womb.
But I do think it goes too far to call it a miracle. Not because I want to take away from the process, but because I do not want to take away from true miracles. We tend to overuse words like “miracle” and it diminishes its real meaning. One of those statements like, “if everybody is special then no one really is.” If we keep calling everything a miracle, if every birth of a human child is a miracle, even if it beats long odds but is still naturally possible, then when God does divinely intervene in a situation that could not go a particular way without supernatural intervention it somehow is diminished to recognize it as a miracle.
The birth of Jesus was a miracle. Divinely ordained and orchestrated because there is no natural way virgin can conceive and give birth. Six months older than Jesus, His cousin John the Baptist was also a miracle baby. His birth was the result of supernatural intervention and from the womb he was destined to fulfill one of the greatest roles given to any man.
John the Baptist was the one guy who had a message that needs to be heard and a mission that cannot be ignored. Let us read Matthew 3:1-6 and hopefully I can help you look past the crazy guy in a camel hair robe and get you to look at the man and his message.
Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
‘Make ready the way of the Lord,
Make His paths straight!’ ”
Now John himself had a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.
Who is John the Baptist? Matthew does not give us a lot of detail about John the Baptist before he begins his description of his ministry. In fact, Matthew has about a 30 year jump from chapter 2 to chapter 3. The gospel write gives us more details about the later life and ministry of John the Baptist and eventually his death, but here we are only given a description of his message preparing the way for the Messiah. But we do know of his earlier life comes from the gospel of Luke. Turn with me over to Luke chapter 1 to look at the conception and birth narrative of this man. Like Jesus, there was divine intervention around the circumstances of his birth.
John was a miracle child. We can look at Luke chapter 1 to see the story of his miraculous beginnings. His father Zacharias was a priest. That in and of itself was not a special thing. Everyone from the tribe of Levi served as a priest for a particular period of time during the year and then worked a different profession the rest of the year. He was a low-level guy, and while he was simply carrying out his prescribed duties in the temple, an angel appeared to him and told him that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son and that he was to name him John.
This would really blow Zacharias’ mind. From the beginning of this announcement there is one mind blowing revelation after the next. First, we see in verse 19 that this was no simple angel but the arch angel Gabriel who stands in the very presence of God. The head angel over all of the others. The same one who appears before Mary just a few verses later to announce the Messiah. God is using the highest ranking angel to announce John the Baptist’s coming as well and reveal the miraculous nature of his birth.
Zacharias knows that his wife Elizabeth had been barren their entire marriage. More than that, we see in verse 18 that both he and his wife were advanced in years. The implication is that she was beyond the childbearing age. Though the miracle would not be quite as astonishing as the virgin birth of the Messiah, the president of divine intervention in the womb of a barren woman beyond childbearing age has long been established as a sign from God introducing someone of great importance. Think back to Abraham and Sarah.
More than just the miraculous nature of his birth, the Archangel Gabriel reveals the great nature of this child. He tells Zacharias in verse 15, “for he will be great in the sight of the Lord; and he will drink no wine or liquor and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb.” This is an even further amazing revelation to Zacharias. He is essentially telling him that he will be a Nazirite, one who takes special vows of abstaining from certain things in order to be marked out as one specially set aside for the service of God. He will be great in the sight of the Lord. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he was born and we even know when that occurs as we read in verse 41 that when Mary, carrying the unborn Messiah came to Elizabeth’s house John left in the womb and not only he but also his mother were filled with the Holy Spirit.
John was not simply miraculous child, he had a mission from birth. We read again in verse 16 and 17, “and he will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God. It is he who will go as a forerunner before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Before he was even born, the angel was telling Zacharias that John would be the forerunner of the Messiah. And Zechariah would have known this he would have known the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the Messiah and the fact that there would be someone coming before him to prepare the way.
At John’s birth, Zacharias again is filled with the Holy Spirit and looking at his newborn miraculous son says, “and you child, will be called the prophet of the most high; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare his ways; to give to his people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the sunrise from on high will visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
This is a man on a mission. Born under miraculous circumstances. Filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb. Prophesied over at birth. This great man, and actually in Matthew 11:11 Jesus says of him “truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” He is not just a great man, he was the greatest man who had ever been born until his time. Why was he great, what made him worthy of all of this? It was not anything he had done, this started before he was even born, he was great because he was the Herald for the king. And if the greatest man who ever lived is simply the Herald, the one announcing the coming of someone else, what does that say about him?
We see in the Gospel of John, the apostle writes about John the Baptist, and the Pharisees asked John who he was and he says in verse 1:20, “and he confessed and did not deny but confessed, I am not the Christ. They asked him, what then are you Elijah? And he said, I am not. Are you the prophet? And he answered, no. Then they said to him who are you so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself? He said to them, “I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as Isaiah the prophet said.”
John the Baptist knew who he was. Before he was born his parents knew who he was and they would have told him the story of his miraculous origin and birth and the prophecies about him his entire life. He was to be the Herald of the Messiah.
We also know that the Jewish people knew the Messiah would have a Herald. They knew that somebody was going to come along and announce that the Messiah was coming. They were expecting the prophet Elijah to come back. Right at the end of the Old Testament the last book, and the last chapter, the last verses, Malachi 4:5-6 “behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts the fathers to their children in the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land the curse.” We just read that. That was part of Zacharias’s prophecy over his own son.
He was not Elijah reborn, he was not the prophet Elijah but what the religious leaders of the Jews failed to realize was that he was a prophet in the spirit of Elijah. He was the Elijah of the New Testament. Now what does that mean? How can he be a prophet in the spirit of Elijah? We just read how he fulfills that prophecy in Luke 1:17. “It is he who will go as a forerunner before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children.”
He was not Elijah, but he came in the spirit and power of Elijah and fulfilled the intention of this prophecy concerning the forerunner of the Messiah. Look again to Matthew 11. Right after Jesus told everyone that John was the greatest man who had yet to be born he continues in verse 13 “for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. (Meaning that he was really the last Old Testament prophet.) And if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who was to come. He who has ears to hear let him hear.”
John the Baptist came to announce the coming of the Messiah, but did you hear that condition? “If you are willing to accept it” if you are willing to receive him, if you are willing to accept him as Elijah preparing the way of the Messiah, “he who has ears let him hear” if you are willing to listen, then he is Elijah. But they did not receive him, they did not accept him, they did not listen to him. What happened to him? They beheaded him.
So, in the end they chose to stop the fulfillment of that prophecy and another Elijah, another person will come in the spirit and power of Elijah and fulfill that role of getting the people ready for the kingdom that is yet to come in the future. He could have been that Elijah, the kingdom of God could have come to earth with Jesus reigning from the Davidic throne in Jerusalem but the people of Israel, the Jewish people rejected Him and so they rejected the kingdom of God. That means we will have to wait for another to come in the spirit of Elijah before the kingdom of God will come and some strongly argue that the Elijah of the future will be one of the two witnesses in Revelation chapter 11. I do not know if that is true but that will have to be a discussion for another time.
But that was his mission. His purpose from his very beginning was to be the Herald of the Messiah. To be the forerunner who prepared the hearts of the people to accept their king. That is the man and his mission. But what about his message?
First, we have to talk about the location of his message. Now when you want to get a message out, if you are planning to prepare the way of the Messiah by a giving a message to an entire nation, where would you go? You would think that you would go to the capital city and start proclaiming it from the most prominent place. Maybe the city gates, the palace steps, the temple? That is not where John went, we read in verse 80 of Luke chapter 1, “and the child continue to grow and to become strong in the spirit, and he lived in the deserts until the day of his public appearance to Israel.”
He spent his whole life in the wilderness of Judea. Last week, Ben showed us a few pictures of what that wilderness was like. It is a dry, rocky, arid stretch of land that is only able to be used for farming with massive irrigation works.
Now why did he do that? Why did he live out in the desert, away from the people that he was sent to prepare? What we do not know for sure but I think it largely has to do with the message that he had for the people. A message that was conveyed not just with his words but also his lifestyle. Look again to Matthew chapter 3. Before we get into the words of his message let us talk a little bit about his appearance as he is described in verse 4.
“Now John himself had a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey.”
So here is this guy out in the wilderness dressed in camel hair robes with a leather belt eating bugs, and you have to ask what is with the crazy? I cannot know this for certain, nothing specifically says this in Scripture, but I believe that John was making a statement about the need for major change. He was calling them away from their comfortable city in Jerusalem. Calling them away from the hypocrisy of their religion. Calling them away from their halfhearted lip service they were giving to God in the temple worship. Calling them away from involvement in the system that had taken over true worship of God and out to an arid and desolate place as a reflection of their heart. He wanted them to leave the system, he wanted them to leave the city in order to prepare themselves for the coming of the Messiah.
We read the words of his message in verse two. John the Baptist had a very short and pointed message, “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Here is this great man, the spirit filled man, divinely ordained and trained and conditioned to be the forerunner, the Herald of the king, getting the people ready for their long-awaited Messiah and his message is “repent.” Before you can accept your king before you can worship your king you have to repent. He is a gracious king he wants a relationship with you, he wants you to worship him, but you cannot come to Jesus, you cannot have any of the blessings that he pours out on his people, you cannot even be considered one of his until you repent.
This is the message of salvation for all people, not just for the Jewish people in order to accept their Messiah. It is the same message that has always been preached. It is the heart of the gospel. The message is not “believe,” the message is not “accept,” the message is not “be a friend of Jesus,” the message is not “work your way out of sin,” the message is and always has been “repent.”
That is a message that John the Baptist preached. Look on the next page at chapter 4:17 that is the same message that Jesus preached. At the beginning of his ministry, after his temptation, verse 17 says “from that time Jesus began to preach and say, “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” That was Jesus’s message. That is the starting point for all that he had to say over the next three chapters that comprise the Sermon on the Mount. That is the foundation for all of his parables. That is the starting point for salvation, “repent.”
It did not and with Jesus, the apostles preached the same message. In Acts chapter 2, after Peter’s sermon at Pentecost pleading with the people to accept that Jesus is the Messiah who came to die for their sin, who was raised from the grave and is seated at the right hand of God, who poured out the Holy Spirit onto his church, and will come again to sit on the Davidic throne, he tells the people “therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ-Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
After this powerful message, Acts 2:37 tells us, “now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘brethren, what shall we do?’ Peter said to them, ‘repent’ and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.”
This is the starting point to entrance into the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. We will go into more detail describing what the kingdom of heaven is next week, But it all begins with repentance. The Greek word for repent or repentance traditionally implied a change of mind or attitude, but under the Old Testament influence it took on the sense of a change of action as well. This combination means that John was asking his hearers to change their way of life as a result of a complete change of thought and attitude with regard to sin and righteousness.
God wants us in His family. God wants us to join with his son Jesus in his kingdom. God wants to love us and to forgive us and for us to come to him with the worship that is due him. But before any of that can happen, it begins with repentance.
Paul in 2 Corinthians 7 describes what repentance is. He starts in verse 9 “I now rejoice, not that you are made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you are made sorrowful according to the will of God so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.”
In order to repent you have to be broken over your sin. In order to repent you have to recognize the position you are in before God as a rebel who has rejected the truth of God for a lie and done nothing but violence toward your creator. You should be torn up over your sin you should be brought low, in pain because of the grief and guilt.
Paul continues “for the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation.” This is a beautiful verse. This is a verse of restoration. This is a verse of healing. This is a verse of hope. Two things I want to point out about this verse. First, that the sorrow you feel over your sin, that brokenness, that grief, that is a gift from God. Some people claim that God would never do anything to harm us. God never wants us to feel sad or hurt. God will never do anything to wrong us.
But thank God that He will break our heart over our sin. Because, number two, that sorrow produces repentance without regret that leads to salvation. Repentance that leads to freedom from that sorrow and guilt. Repentance that leads to a recognition that God has removed our guilt, our debt, the penalty that we owe. Even though we are wretched sinners, were the of the eternal fires of hell. Even though we blasphemed the name and nature of the creator and sustainer of the universe, God sees us as righteous. Because of the forgiveness we experience through the death and resurrection of Christ, we have been endowed with his righteousness and we stand justified before the only holy and righteous judge.
This is not something that we can do. Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us, “for by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Both the grace and the faith are the gift of God. It is fully dependent on him to give that grace which works out to be the faith that we are saved by. That process, that grace and faith are begun first by the gift of recognition of our sin and guilt that leads to repentance. God is the source, but we must respond.
It all starts with repentance. And it leads to a life that is defined by repentance. Paul describes that life of repentance in 2 Corinthians 7. In verse 11 we read “for behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow has produced in you. What vindication of yourself, what indignation, what fear what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! And everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter.”
It is repentance that drives us forward and sanctification. We are declared righteous by God and have no need to prove anything to him in order to be accepted into his kingdom, to be granted salvation. But it is a heart of repentance that drives us to live a holy life, it is a heart of repentance that drives us to root out any sin that clings to our heart, it is a heart of repentance that drives us to demonstrate ourselves to be innocent of wrong.
This is the beating heart of a true Christian. A Christian is not one who simply comes to an intellectual understanding that they need a Savior. A Christian is not one who simply recognizes that Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. A Christian is not one who simply praise a prayer asking Jesus to come into their heart. A Christian is one who is destroyed over their sin and in repentance pursues with God stoked passion, a life of holiness that is transformed by the Spirit of God into the image of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
I do not do altar calls. I am not going to ask you to close your eyes or raise your hands. I am not going to ask you to come forward. I am not going to ask you to repeat a prayer after me. But I am going to challenge you. No matter who you are, no matter how long you have sat in church, no matter what you know about the Bible, the only question that matters is, “have you truly repented of your sin?” That is between you and God and there is no question that needs to be answered more than that one. As I have said before, my greatest joy in life is that God has called me to minister to his people and if you have questions, if you want to know more, if you want to go deeper in understanding what it means to repent, what it means to live a life of holiness, then I am begging you to let me help, please let me know what I can do to help you with any questions you may have.