MATTHEW 3:1-12
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” ’ Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. 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 will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’
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JOHN’S MOVED MY CHEESE!
I have never been somebody that has dealt with change massively well, whenever I have moved home, and I have moved quite a few times in the past few years, I’ve always found it difficult to adapt. It usually takes me about six months to get used to my new circumstances, to begin to settle and then I finally begin to feel at home.
There’s a lovely little allegory about change and our response to it, It’s called ‘Who Moved My Cheese.’ I read this book when I was 21 and I have just read it again recently. It’s about four little characters, two mice and two little people (the same size as the mice), who set off in a maze each day to find some cheese.
Every day they search and search, until one day they find it. and they’re really happy and eat it up, then return home. The next day comes, and they travel down the maze again and find the cheese in the same place and eat it again. The mice continue to do this every day. But the little people, they decide to settle near the cheese, so it’s easier to get to. They wake up every day and there, cheese is right in front of them ready to eat. They begin to feel that it’s right that the cheese is there, that they feel entitled to the cheese, they can’t imagine that it will never be there. They couldn’t imagine life without it. All the while, the mice, travel through the maze every day, eat their fill and go back home.
One day. The little people woke up and there was no more cheese. The little mice arrive and find that there is no cheese there either; they aren’t surprised by this; they simply looked elsewhere in the maze and quickly found some and started to travel there instead. But those who set up shop near the old cheese they were devastated, they were angry they were frustrated ‘we deserve this cheese!’ they think. Why did this happen to us?
‘You brood of vipers!’ says John the Baptist ‘Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, and don’t think you can say to yourselves, ‘we have Abraham as our Father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.
You see, some of the people were comfortable, they thought to themselves everything is ok with us, we’re the people of God, we have Abraham as our Father, we don’t need to change, it’s those people “over there” who are the problem. We are God’s chosen people. And when God is preparing to so something new, they can’t cope with it. We see this throughout the gospels, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and others, they can’t fathom that the time has come for God to do a new thing, that the centre through which they orient themselves has changed.
And they commit the sins of the previous generations that the ancient prophets always called them on.
John says, No! there is a new way. He stands in the great line of the prophets from Isaiah to Jeremiah to Micah saying, ‘Repent, produce fruits in keeping of righteousness’, don’t think you can rest on your laurels, for change is coming. Don’t be like the little people who refuse to change, be like the mice who go down a different path, towards life in all it’s fullness. Be looking for Jesus and his ways, all the time.
John is the voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’
John the Baptist is tasked with preparing the way for Jesus to arrive. He is the herald, the one who enters the town tolling the bell telling the people that the king is in his way.
Now, John the Baptist had a lot of followers, But he knows that his is message is not about him; he knows that he doesn’t have the power, he knows that, his job is the point to another. This is the job of every Christian, no matter our age and time of life, no matter what we do with our time day to day, we are to point to Jesus.
‘You brood of vipers!’ he warns the Pharisees and the Sadducees. We cannot be complacent, we can’t go through the motions of baptism and rest assured in your kind of your salvation because ‘we have Abraham as our Father.’ Tempting as it was, they were tempted to go down their own path for their own purposes. But as John warns at the end of the passage, that only leads to death.
The people that John is speaking to think that they have found their cheese. Abraham is their father, which is code for ‘we like things as they are thank you very much.’ They don’t realise that that the cheese has moved, it is now in a different place, now there is something new and something greater than Abraham, now there is Jesus.
We see in the gospels how Jesus was rejected by so many people and how he riled people up the wrong way; we see how when he challenged the way of thinking that they had, there were plots to kill him. Ultimately, we see how they were so resistant to change, that their hearts were so hardened they they put him on trial and had him executed by the occupying power, the Romans, the hated Romans! They used the enemies of Judaism to kill God’s messenger.
What are we relying on that isn’t Jesus? What have we turned to as a source of comfort and hope that isn’t Jesus?
We can’t rely on anything, only Jesus, only through faith in him can we have life.
We can’t rely on the fact that we were christened as children (if we were), we can’t rely on going to church every Sunday, we can’t rely on the idea that ‘I’m a good person really.’ We can’t rely on our health, wealth or or anything like that, for these fade away. We can only rely on Christ, we can only be transformed by Christ.
His power needs to work within us. Look at what John says, he baptises with water, but one more powerful than he is coming, he’s not even worthy to untie his sanders. He baptises with water, but the one who comes will baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
When the people came to John to be baptised, the water he used was just that, water. It didn’t have any power to change people. At most it was a pledge by the person to change their life, to turn away from their old ways, and turn to the ways of Christ, through their own efforts
But this cannot happen until there is spiritual renewal within us. One of the key ideas of Christianity is that in some way, we can’t help ourselves, we can’t ourselves out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves, rather we need to reply on the Grace of God, the power of God. The witter of Ecclesiastes says that God has put eternity in our hearts. This is true, there is that longing, and yet as one writer puts it, we have chosen time instead.
Do you experience the Grace of God in your life?
Do you experience the Power of God in your life through his Holy Spirit?
How tempting it is for all of us to be like the Pharisees, to assume that we, like them, can call Abraham our father; to simply rely on our tried and tested ways, to go through the motions in our lives thinking that ‘we are safe’ ‘we are ok’ ‘we don’t need to change’
But we cannot presume this, ‘you brood of vipers John says.’ He stands in the great line of the prophets going back to the Old Testament when they called the people of Israel to repentance. And John calls us to do the same.
Asking for forgiveness from God
Being transformed by his Holy Spirit.
Not holding onto bitterness and anger and resentment.
Helping those you would rather not help.
Produce fruit in keeping with righteousness.
Be generous and loving.
Loving our enemies, and praying for those who persecute us. I’m
This time of advent is an opportunity to examine ourselves, really examine ourselves, look within, what is God calling us to do. Who is he calling me to be. John uses vivid language at the end of our passage, about a winnowing fork on the threshing floor, gathering the wheat into barns and casting out the chaff into the fire.
Why? Not because God is mean or doesn’t understand, but what he wants us to live life to the full, life full of joy and hope, life that is full of goodness and love and forgiveness, a holy life. He wants us to be full of wheat that provided sustenance to others, and to ourselves. He wants to get rid of all the darkness of the chaff that is within us and cast it into the fire.
Ask the Holy Spirit, ask him‘. What one thing could change in my life ‘what one thing needs to change in our lives.
Jesus is at the door, he is on his way.
May the Lord when he comes, find us watching and waiting.
Amen.
