John the Baptist: Back to the Beginning

Introduction

When things go wrong, John the Baptist calls us back to the foundation of repentance and faith. In this sermon on Luke 3, Revd. Mark Fletcher explores how the baptism of repentance proclaimed by John the Baptist offered a revolutionary path to forgiveness of sins outside the temple system. John’s message of returning to God reminds us that the journey of faith always leads back to where it began.

They say that if you find yourself in a hole, what’s the best thing to do? Stop digging. Very good advice. It may be that the first rule of wisdom is the ability to recognise when things have gone wrong and ask the question why. It takes humility and it can be a little uncomfortable to recognise that it’s gone wrong, but it is so much better than keeping digging.

So it is the year 30 AD and things are in a very bad way. The people of God are in a deep hole. The nation is divided. It is ruled by a series of corrupt foreign kings. Did you hear those four names? They are the four sons of the original King Herod, and they have carved up the nation between them and the people are divided between those who collaborate with this corrupt regime, those who are plotting some kind of rebellion or uprising, and the vast majority who are simply losing hope and faith. And then in the desert east of Jerusalem, rumours start to circulate of a strange figure. One calling the people to repentance and speaking of the hope of a messiah and the possibility of forgiveness and new beginnings.

Verse three, he went into all of the country around the Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And at first, a few hopeful, curious people travel out to hear him, and then as the word gets out, it begins to swell into a hugely significant reawakening. This is John the Baptist, and here in Luke’s Gospel, as we travel through it, this is really where the story begins.

John the Baptist, I think is a hugely important figure. He has been eclipsed in our minds by Jesus, and I think that’s right and natural, but for a time he was, as they say, bigger than Jesus. He really is very significant. And in fact, we know the story of John the Baptist, not simply from the gospels, but because it is recounted in the Roman historical annals.

Josephus writes the story of John the Baptist as well, and he is acknowledged by almost everyone as a great man and as a prophet from God. And what he’s doing, what he’s talking about is really unprecedented. He preaches a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And as an idea, I suspect that’s quite a sort of familiar one to you, but it had never happened before.

It’s quite revolutionary for two reasons. The first is that he’s talking about the possibility of the forgiveness of sins outside the formal religious institutions, outside of the temple, and the priests and the law and the sacrificial system. He says that what God is looking for is not sacrifice, but repentance.

Not an offering of a gift but a change of heart. And of course, that’s a theme that does pick up some sort of minor chords in the Old Testament, but it’s really revolutionary. And secondly, baptism. So baptism happens a little bit in the Old Testament, but it’s only for people who are converting to Judaism.

A sort of washing away of the old and starting a new. An act of humility and new beginnings. But you see how significant it is that he’s getting Jewish people to start over. And I think the geography is fascinating. I love a little bit of Bible geography and have you noticed where is this happening?

It is happening in the area around the Jordan and the baptisms would have been happening in the river Jordan. And when the people of God first entered the Promised Land, this is where they came from. They came from the East, led by Joshua, and they travelled through the Jordan River. And so can you see that essentially what John is doing is calling them back to the place where they first began. There is all of this symbolism and this geography of saying, things are so bad, we need to go back to the beginning. We need to start over. And his message really strikes a chord. That, that sense of him saying that they’ve lost their way and that they need the humility to retrace their steps and start again, really echoes in people’s hearts.

And more and more people begin to flock to him. He has tapped into this kind of deep sense of the need to start over. There’s a lovely moment though, which you can’t help but notice at the point at which it starts to look like a populist movement, there’s great crowds coming out to him, instead of doing what sometimes people do appealing to people’s worst instincts in order to obtain maximum following.

He does exactly the opposite. Did you hear what he said in verse seven? You brood of vipers. Who told you to flee from the coming wrath, and his point is verse eight, you need to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. It’s not enough to just say this, it’s not enough even to just get baptised. You need to change your lives.

There needs to be a kind of moral and ethical evidence of the things that you say. He demands a kind of authenticity in faith and in their repentance. He challenges their prejudice and their sense of privilege. He says, don’t go thinking that you are something special. God could raise up from these stones followers and sons and daughters of Abraham. He’s brilliant. He is uncompromising. He’s such a strong and provocative figure and he holds this kind of pivotal point in the story, not just of the gospel, but of the whole Bible. Jesus refers to him later on as the last of the Old Testament prophets.

And you can see he’s got that about him, hasn’t he? This sort of wild man from the wilderness. Preaching very uncompromising sermons. And he is the one who has this job. So there’s a prophecy right at the end of the Old Testament in the book of Malachi, and it speaks of the one who will be like Elijah, who will come before the Messiah arrives.

Luke identifies him with this prophecy from Isaiah as the voice crying in the wilderness, who says, make straight the paths for the promised Messiah. John in many ways signals the final stages of that Old Testament religion, the end of those old religious systems. He speaks of forgiveness being found in a new way, no longer dependent on institutional religion.

And he promises this. In verse 16, he says, I will baptise you with water, but there is one who is more powerful than I who will come. And he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. So you see how significant he is, but he has this very strong sense that he is pointing the way to the one who is to come. But he has an amazing impact.

He catches people’s imagination and these vast crowds go out to them and they ask him the question what should we do? How should we be different? And his answer is great. He talks about really kind of foundational stuff. Care for the poor, share with those who have nothing. Stop being corrupt and greedy.

Be satisfied with what you have. Don’t extort, don’t use threats or false accusations, and that’s all good. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, quite how basic that is. Jesus’ moral teaching is often really lofty and amazing, whereas essentially what John is doing is just pointing them back to the law.

This is just the basics of what it means to be decent people. But can you see how far wrong things must have gone that they needed to be reminded of these really obvious things? And I fear that in our world, these same basic things are getting lost. So hear the words of John the Baptist.

He is really the end of one era and the beginning of another, and I think he’s brilliant. I really like him. In many ways though he’s not speaking to us. He’s not the answer. He is pointing to the one who is. But there are a couple of things that I’d like to pick up from John the Baptist, which I think are really helpful to observe.

The first is this. Immorality is an evidence of a lack of faith. It’s a really interesting point that John the Baptist seems to make because he is challenging people, not simply because of their immorality, but because they have stopped trusting in God. So there’s this whole thing about the quote from Isaiah 40 and that passage talks about the fact that the word of God endures forever, but the word of human beings is like grass, which flourishes for a time and then quickly fades.

And so often that was true of the Old Testament people of God. That the faith, which once shaped their lives very quickly becomes routine. They forget God and they trust in other things, and the result of that is that immorality creeps in. John the Baptist seems to be saying that corruption and greed and exploitation, of course they’re morally wrong, but actually the biggest problem is that they are evidence of the failure of our faith.

Only when we cease to believe that God actually cares that he will one day judge the heavens and the earth that we need to give an account for our lives, will you be willing to act in that way. Living faith, genuinely trusting in God has consequences. It bears fruit. It means that we honour God with our whole life because we must give an account for our whole life.

And then the second thing is this really nice idea, I think, that John the Baptist calls us to remember where we come from, where it all began. And the journey of faith is of course, a lifelong journey. It’s full of wisdom and things to learn, but I think it needs to bring us back often to the place where it begins.

You know, the very foundation of the gospel is repentance and faith. It is like the tax collector in the temple who says, God have mercy on me, a sinner. And when we seem to be going astray, when we seem to be getting lost, when it seems to be going wrong, John the Baptist would say, go back to where you started.

Go back to that foundation. Remember the gospel, which is your hope and your salvation. Repentance is the foundation of faith. A humble return to depending on God that’s willing to say, show me where I’ve gone wrong. Show me what I need to put right.

We need to experience the love and the mercy of God because that is the thing that defines us. We should never get too far from that starting point of repentance. So this is John the Baptist. He’s a remarkable uncompromising figure, but remember that essentially what he’s doing is he’s pointing the way to the one who is our salvation.

He reminds us of these foundational things that we are put right with God simply by repentance and faith. He calls us back once more to the place where it all began. So where do you turn when it seems to be going wrong? Where do you go when you feel like you are in a hole? John the Baptist says, return to the foundational things. Go back to where it all began to repentance and faith.

The journey of faith, I think is like that. It is not just travelling to new places and learning new things, but coming back often to the familiar places and seeing them with new eyes. Luke brings us once again to the beginning of the story, back to that hopeful expectation that God is in the business of rescuing his people through the promised Christ.

It brings us back to that joyful trust in a God who will liberate us to live in the light of eternity if we will put our trust in him once more. The people were waiting and wondering if John might be the Messiah and John answered them. I baptise you with water, but one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I’m not worthy to untie.

And he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And so we say, come Lord Jesus. Amen.