Jesus: The One Prepared For

Finding Jesus In The Old Testament • Sermon • Submitted 7 months ago • Presented 7 months ago

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Introduction

It’s been a long time in history since there have been the kind of decadent rulers that were around in ancient times. Certainly we in Canada are technically still royal subjects, King Charles is our King, and sure there’s a lot of pomp and circumstance still surrounding things like coronations and royal weddings. But in ancient times monarchs really took things to the next level.

For instance, when a King was going to visit a city it was not uncommon to send a team of people before him to prepare the way for his arrival. They would do many things like travelling all around and loudly proclaiming the time of the King’s coming. They would also walk down all the roads that the King would walk and remove any obstancles and smooth any difficult terrain. There’s one recorded instance where a queen had hills and valleys leveled in order to prepare for her arrival so that she could ride in smoothly and so that the countryside would forever bear the marks of her coming.

This is the sort of thing that would come to mind when ancient Jewish people heard or read Isaiah 40:1-4

Isaiah 40:1–4 (CSB)

“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 wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.

Every valley will be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be leveled; the uneven ground will become smooth and the rough places, a plain.

In case you’ve forgotten we’re continuing in our series Finding Jesus in the Old Testament, where we take a look at Types of Jesus in the Old Testament, Christophanies, and in the case of today Prophecies about who the Messiah would be.

Now we touched a little bit on this passage in a previous sermon about Jesus being God, and we’ll revisit some of that territory today, but the main thing is looking at the fulfillment of this prophecy and learning what we can about who Jesus is from what this Old Testament passage says about Him.

Now interestingly today’s passage is the only one I’ll be doing in the whole series that Jesus doesn’t fulfill Himself. This passage is fulfilled by none other than John the Baptist. Let’s take a look at it’s fulfillment in Matthew 3:1-12

Matthew 3:1–12 (CSB)

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 for the Lord; make his paths straight!

Now John had a camel-hair garment with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts 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 am 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.”

So who is the herald that God sends before the Messiah, His only beloved son? This John the Baptist. A man standing in a river in clothing made of camel hair yelling at people to repent and dipping them in the water.

I really want you to picture that for a minute. Imagine you were walking along the river on the walking path and you saw a huge crowd gathering around someone. That someone is a dishevelled looking man in rags telling everyone that they need to repent because judgment was going to come and that if you wanted to be ready for it you needed to let him dip you in the water. Would you stay and hear him out?

Now to be fair our context is a little different. In the time of John, this actually wasn’t as unusual as you might think. In fact this was sort of the standard for what prophets would wear and do. In fact it very much connects John with one of his predicessors, Elijah, who we read about in 2 Kings 1:8

2 Kings 1:8 CSB

They replied, “A hairy man with a leather belt around his waist.” He said, “It’s Elijah the Tishbite.”

So when John shows up looking like this, he’s looking like a prophet. And a prophet is what He is, remarkably the first prophet that had come to Israel in over 400 years. So it’s no wonder that the Pharisees and Saduccees came to check out what was going on. Now it’s hard to say for certain whether they were genuinely interested in John’s message or whether they had come to pass judgment over him. Certainly from the way John greets them he seems to think they have come with ill will.

So why are we talking about John the Baptist today? Well John is preparing the way for Jesus and is actually considered by many to be the last prophet of the old covenant. If he fulfills the role of being the herald of the Lord’s coming, than His heralding teaches us something about the nature of the one he has come to announce. So what do we learn about Jesus from John the Baptists’ prophecied coming? We learn that

Jesus requires Repentance

Jesus is God

Jesus is Greater

1. Jesus requires Repentance

I’d like to think that I have a pretty decent sense of direction, but that doesn’t mean that I never get lost on the road. I think there are probably a few of you here who can relate to thinking a road would get you somewhere and being wrong. You turn and you start driving and you think you’re getting closer to your destination and nothing is looking familiar. So you keep driving and driving until eventually you have to admit that you must be going the wrong way, and you stop, turn around and head back to more familiar territory.

That my friends is a picture of repentance. Realizing that you are headed down the wrong road and turning around completely. And that’s how John comes to prepare the way for Jesus. The very first words that we hear from John the baptist are this message in Matthew 3:1-2

Matthew 3:1–2 CSB

In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near!”

This is the way that he prepares for Jesus. Of course when Jesus comes we hear him saying the same thing in Matthew 4:17

Matthew 4:17 CSB

From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

And later in Acts we hear the disciples continuing that same refrain, Acts 2:38

Acts 2:38 CSB

Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

This is because the Israelites and all of us were headed in the wrong direction. They were lost and getting further and further away from God, which is the natural state of all people. We try to find our own way and only get ourselves into worse and worse places.

The baptism that John brought to the Israelites wasn’t a brand new concept. That’s why none of the gospel writers feel like they need to define what that means for their readers. Baptism was immersion in water, usually for the purpose of ritual cleaning. It was a washing off of uncleanness so that you could enter the holy places of God. Before the time of the New Testament it was common for Israelites to baptize Gentile converts who wanted to worship Yahweh but weren’t born Jewish. So for John to call Israelites to baptism was sending a clear message, once that he says plainly in his exchange with the pharisees in Matthew 3:9

Matthew 3:9 CSB

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.

It wasn’t enough to be born in the nation of Israel. Each person had to account for his sins with God. The reason John and Jesus reacted so strongly against the Pharisees and the Saducees wasn’t primarily because of theological differences, although certainly they differed on quite a bit, it was the fact that they believed that they were righteous and didn’t need repentance. But as Jesus taught us, you know a tree by its fruit. So John calls them out and tells them to bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

Does that mean that we earn righteousness by doing good works? Certainly lot. Trees aren’t good because they bear good fruit, they bear good fruit because they are good. The things that we do and say, whether for good or for evil, are just the evidence of our inward reality.

So the call of the gospel is to repent and turn to God, and then the evidence of real repentance and life change is the good works that we do after we have been reborn. This is what James meant when he wrote in James 2:17-18

James 2:17–18 CSB

In the same way faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself. But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works.

He’s not saying that faith isn’t what saves us, he’s questioning whether you have faith if you don’t produce good works.

2. Jesus is God

Now I know what you’re thinking, Josh didn’t you just a few weeks ago spend a whole sermon talking about this?

Yes.

So anyway, one of the cool things about this passage of scripture is how clearly and yet subtely it shows the divinity of Christ.

See one thing you have to understand is just how controversial it was for Christians to believe that Jesus is God. Judaism is a monotheistic belief system, and while we believe because of the doctrine of the Trinity that Christianity is also monotheistic, a lot of Jewish people still were very upset at the idea that someone would claim to be God Himself come to earth in the flesh. So upset that they crucified Him.

So in the early days of Christianity it was common to be quite subtle about the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity. Yet for those looking closely you can see plainly that the gospel of Matthew is teaching that Jesus is Lord.

Just the simple fact that all four gospels believe that John the baptist is fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 40:3 is already evidence of their belief in the diety of Christ, since the passage in question is predicting a herald who will prepare the way for yahweh in the wilderness. So by saying that John was predicted to prepare the way for Jesus, they are saying that Jesus and Yahweh are one and the same.

Then on top of that consider the words of Matthew 3:11-12

Matthew 3:11–12 CSB

Who but God has the authority to baptize with the Holy Spirit? Who but God has the authority to judge who is righteous and who is sinful? The answer is no one. But John is saying that the Messiah has that authority, so he is saying that the Messiah will be God Himself.

Clearly this is lost on a lot of people at the time, since it took even the disciples a long time to fully grasp the implication that Jesus was God, but in retrospect when you know it’s there it seems so obvious.

Why does this matter? Because it shows the depth of God’s love and concern for His people. He didn’t just send any old messanger. He didn’t just send some prophet like John, He came to earth Himself to die for our sins and redeem us. So when we repent and turn to Jesus we aren’t just adopting the teachings of another wise teacher, we are turning to the God who created the universe to pull us out of the pit that we’ve gotten ourselves into.

He is the road map and the road, the only way to get to righteousness and to eternal life and He did it in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

3. Jesus is Greater

What is the greatest achievement a Christian can every hope to accomplish? There are a lot of good ambitions out there, but when I put the question to you in that way there’s really only one answer, isn’t there? It’s ultimately to give glory to God and not to receive it ourselves. This is what John achieved first and foremost in His ministry. He was an excellent example of humility and of pointing others to God instead of to himself.

Consider his appearance, how he dressed in poor man’s clothes and ate poor man’s food. How he called people to look forward to another one coming who was greater than him. That was the whole purpose of his ministry. In face the verse that predicts John’s coming calls him “a voice crying out in the wilderness,” a picture that diminishes the person by calling him just a voice. He dissapears behind the veil as Jesus comes onto the scene. In fact as soon as the ministry of Jesus begins John the baptist starts to fade into the background of history. He himself tells us why in John 3:26-30

John 3:26–30 CSB

So they came to John and told him, “Rabbi, the one you testified about, and who was with you across the Jordan, is baptizing—and everyone is going to him.” John responded, “No one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I’ve been sent ahead of him.’ He who has the bride is the groom. But the groom’s friend, who stands by and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the groom’s voice. So this joy of mine is complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

So the bride is the church and the bridegroom is Christ, and John simply calls himself the groom’s friend. He came to prepare the way for Jesus, and he’s more than happy for Jesus to become greater than he is.

My friends this is the attitude that you and I should be adopting in our lives. We should be like John the Baptist, pointing others onward to Jesus. Not making disciples of Josh, disciples of ____ or _____ , but pointing people away from ourselves and towards Jesus.

In order to do this effectively we need to deny ourselves. In Jesus’ words in Luke 9:23

Luke 9:23 CSB

Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.

The imagery of taking up the cross is the imagery of crucifying ourselves, dying to everything that makes us who we are, of everything that we used to think was important, and following Jesus instead. See the life of a disciple of Jesus is not to get dipped in water and then sit in a pew once a week. The life of a disciple the way it should be lived is radical self denial and a dedication to showing Jesus to everyone so that they too can follow after Him and inherit eternal life.

Philippians 2:1–11 CSB

If, then, there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross. For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow— in heaven and on earth and under the earth— and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There’s this song I love by a band called Showbread called “Life After Life After Death” that the lead singer Josh Porter wrote about being a father and wanting most for his son to follow Jesus and know him. The Chorus goes like this:

If I can be some light for you To help you find your way Just pointing at Someone bigger than me Then that would be okay For you to know Him like I do And even better, better still

That is the wish we should have not just for our children, though certainly for them too, but for everyone in our lives. That we could be alight pointing at Someone Bigger, that someone being Jesus.

Conclusion

Now when you consider these three things about Jesus they really all boil down to one all important application: we need to lay down our lives and follow Jesus. See when we consider that we are prepared for the Kingdom by repentance and baptism we need to consider the words of Paul in describing baptism and new birth. In Romans 6:3 he describes baptism as being baptized into Jesus’ death

Romans 6:3 CSB

Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

And when you consider that Jesus is God than you realize that if you die to yourself than He has the power to raise you, as Paul continues in Romans 6:4

Romans 6:4 CSB

Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.

And then in that new life we remain dead to our old selves so that we can point others towards Jesus. We should have the attitude not only of John the Baptist but also of Paul when he said in Philippians 3:7-11

Philippians 3:7–11 CSB

But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.

So we should ask ourselves today brothers and sisters, how can we in everything dedicate ourselves to being followers of Christ, dying to who we used to be and showing forth his light to other people?

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