The past two weeks we have discovered that, as followers
of Jesus, we are to live as ambassadors of Jesus who are to represent Jesus as
we speak and act on His behalf. We discovered that, as followers of Jesus, we
have been rescued from something and we have been rescued for something. We
have been rescued from a position of hostility against God to a position of
being and ambassador for God.
We discovered that the selfless love of Jesus should
compel and motivate us to live our lives as an ambassador of Jesus that places
Jesus as large and in charge of our lives and that shares that claims of Christ
and the message of the gospel with those around us who are far from Jesus. And we
discovered that, as followers of Jesus we are an ambassador that is used by Jesus to make other
followers of Jesus. We discovered that just as Jesus was on a mission to make followers of
Jesus, as followers of Jesus we have been given a mission by Jesus to be used
by Jesus to make other followers of Jesus.
Now the reason why followers of
Jesus are called to be ambassadors to Jesus that speak and act on His behalf because
of who Jesus is and what Jesus has accomplished. You see, when we read the
letters that make up the Bible, we are entering into the history of God’s
creation and passionate pursuit of rebellious humanity.
The letters of the Bible
chronicle the reality that while humanity was created by God to live in a
loving relationship with God and one another, all of
humanity chose to selfishly reject that relationship to instead love themselves
over God and others. And it is that selfish love over God and others that has
led humanity throughout history to act in ways that have hurt God and others.
And it is this selfishness and rebellion against God and others that the
letters that make up the Bible refer to as sin. And it is this sin that
separates us from the true community and relationship with God and others that
we were created for.
However, when we read the letters that make up the
Bible, we discover that God had, from the very beginning of time, had a plan and
promise in mind when it came to how He would respond to our selfishness and
rebellion. A plan and a promise that would bring rescue, restoration, and
healing from the consequences of the corruption that our selfishness and
rebellion brought into humanity. God had a plan and a promise; a promise of a new
kingdom.
A kingdom that would be marked by rightness and
justice. A kingdom that would be marked by peace and wholeness. A kingdom that
the letters that make up the Bible refers to as the kingdom of heaven. A
kingdom that we are introduced to in a section of an account of Jesus life in
the Bible, called the gospel of Matthew. Let’s jump into this introduction together,
beginning in Matthew 3:1-6:
Matthew begins
this section of his account of Jesus life by introducing us to a man who was
called John the Baptist. Now when Matthew called John the Baptist, it wasn’t
because he was a Baptist instead of a Methodist or a Presbyterian; John was
called a Baptist because of what he did. John wasn’t a Baptist, he was a
baptizer. Matthew tells us that John the Baptizer lived out in the wilderness
and wore an outfit made of camel’s hair with a belt that probably had one of
those huge belt buckles on it. He lived off the land, eating locusts and honey.
And Matthew tells us that John the Baptizer had a
pretty rough and tough message; repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This
morning, can you imagine what that must have looked and
sounded like? I mean here is a dude who lives out in the wilderness who
eats grasshoppers covered in honey. Here is a dude wearing a hairy garment who
was probably a pretty intimidating guy. John sounds like a pretty rough and
tough dude. And then this pretty intimidating, rough and tough dude starts
saying in a loud voice “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand”. Can you
imagine what that must have looked like? Can you imagine what that must have
sounded like?
Now to understand John’s message, we first need to
understand some terms that John used. First, when John uses the word repent,
this word repent literally means to feel remorse that results in a change of
one’s mind and heart. To repent means more than simply feeling sorry for something
you did; to repent means that you feel sorry for what you did and the sorrow
that you feel drives you to change something in your life. To repent is to
change the trajectory of your life that is moving away from God back to God.
John explained that the reason we need to repent was
because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. John here was proclaiming that repentance
was a requirement for experiencing a relationship with God in the kingdom of
Heaven. A natural question that arises here is “what is the kingdom of heaven”
and why is it at hand? When John referred to the kingdom of heaven, he was
referring to the royal reign of God. In addition, the phrase “at hand”
literally means to draw near in a temporal sense.
If John the baptizer was communicating this message in
the language that we use in our culture today, his message would sound
something like this “Repent, recognize and feel remorse for how you are living
life. Change your attitude and your mind when it comes to the trajectory of
your life that is moving away from God and turn back to God, because God is
coming soon. The kingdom of God is approaching and will be here soon”.
Matthew then backed up John the baptizer’s claim that
the kingdom of heaven was coming soon, by quoting from a section of a letter
that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible, called the book of
Isaiah. Some 600 prior to this event from history, in Isaiah 40:3, the prophet
Isaiah predicted and proclaimed God’s promise to the Jewish people that He
would send a rescuer, a redeemer, a Messiah, who would deliver the Jewish
people from oppression and establish them to a place of prominence in the
world.
Matthew then explained that as people heard the
message of John the baptizer, they responded by being baptized in the Jordan
River as they confessed their sins. But why were the people responding this
way?
To understand why they were responding this way, we
first need to understand what baptism is. Baptism is a public proclamation and
a public identification with an inward reality that has occurred in our lives.
All Jerusalem was going out to him and were being baptized as a public
proclamation that they were identifying and aligning themselves with his
message.
The people of Jerusalem recognized their need to
repent from their selfishness and rebellion and change the trajectory of their
lives that had been moving away from God back toward God. These people
recognized their need to be right with God before the Messiah, the promised one
of God appeared to usher in the kingdom of Heaven that they were waiting for.
And as Matthew continued to give us a from row seat to
the event from history, we see Matthew introduce us to another group who also
came out to see John the baptizer. Tomorrow, we will meet them together…
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