John’s Urgent Message: Luke 3:1-18

As we continue into the gospels this year, we transition out of the Christmas story of Jesus’ birth, and now come to the introduction of Jesus’ forerunner in ministry, John the Baptist. While the gospel writers focus heavily on Jesus in their books, which we want and expect them to do, all four gospels give a little focus towards John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus to step into His public ministry.

The gospel of Luke, chapter 3, sets the scene and identifies the point in history this all happened. Let’s read what Luke shares as he makes the transition from talking about Jesus’ birth and childhood onto John the Baptist’s public ministry. We’ll be reading from Luke, chapter 3, starting in verse 1 from the New Living Translation:

¹ It was now the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, the Roman emperor. Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea; Herod Antipas was ruler over Galilee; his brother Philip was ruler over Iturea and Traconitis; Lysanias was ruler over Abilene. ² Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests. At this time a message from God came to John son of Zechariah, who was living in the wilderness. ³ Then John went from place to place on both sides of the Jordan River, preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven.

Let’s pause reading here because I want to draw our attention onto something that might be very easy to miss. If we look at how Luke sets the stage and how he words the first verses of this chapter, it reads more like a historical stage than a fictitious stage. In other words, Luke draws our attention onto a specific point in history, which lends credibility that he wrote his gospel to document history, despite what critics might say or think.

Luke also draws our attention to the detail that John gets the nickname of “Baptist” or “Baptizer” because his message was one of repentance and he stressed that those who wanted to show they had repented should be baptized in a public setting.

Continuing on, Luke also describes how John the Baptist was prophesied about in the Old Testament. Picking back up in verse 4, we learn that:

⁴ Isaiah had spoken of John when he said,

“He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming!
    Clear the road for him!
⁵ The valleys will be filled,
    and the mountains and hills made level.
The curves will be straightened,
    and the rough places made smooth.
⁶ And then all people will see
    the salvation sent from God.’”

Pausing briefly again, I wonder if John had read this prophecy about himself and felt a little overwhelmed. Imagine for a moment this message described you. How might you live your life if you knew you were helping to prepare the way for the Lord’s coming?

How did John do this? Luke then describes how John framed his message and what he challenged those who came to listen to him to do with their lives.

Continuing our reading in verse 7, we learn that:

⁷ When the crowds came to John for baptism, he said, “You brood of snakes! Who warned you to flee the coming wrath? ⁸ Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones. ⁹ Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.”

¹⁰ The crowds asked, “What should we do?”

¹¹ John replied, “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry.”

¹² Even corrupt tax collectors came to be baptized and asked, “Teacher, what should we do?”

¹³ He replied, “Collect no more taxes than the government requires.”

¹⁴ “What should we do?” asked some soldiers.

John replied, “Don’t extort money or make false accusations. And be content with your pay.”

If you ever wondered if God or Jesus would have a message for us living today about how we should live, we can take what John says and pull out some big themes.

John challenged those in the first century to “Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God” and I believe this could be a challenge for all of us living today as well. The best decision you can make is putting your belief, faith, and trust in Jesus to save you from your sins, but the way you make your decision public is by repenting, which is a fancy religious word for choosing to intentionally not do a particular bad action anymore and instead replace it with a good habit and action.

John challenges Christians throughout time that our lives are our greatest witness to others whether we have truly accepted Jesus into our hearts.

John challenges us to not rest on our past ancestry, our past choices, or even our past accomplishments. Instead, he challenges us to live our repentance each day we want Jesus in our lives.

John challenges believers to be generous, to be honest, and to be kind to each other. While this sounds incredibly simple, it is actually one of the hardest challenges for each of us to live out each day. While there are some people who can love others effortlessly, others, such as myself, must intentionally choose to love in this way because there are some people who don’t make loving them easy.

John’s message cut to the heart of the people living in the first century, and Luke draws our attention to another interesting detail. Continuing in verse 15, we learn that:

¹⁵ Everyone was expecting the Messiah to come soon, and they were eager to know whether John might be the Messiah. ¹⁶ John answered their questions by saying, “I baptize you with water; but someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to be his slave and untie the straps of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ¹⁷ He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.” ¹⁸ John used many such warnings as he announced the Good News to the people.

While I might not think that John’s warnings sound like “Good News”, we can see from the anticipation in John’s message that he believed Jesus would come and usher in a new age of the world. Some people living today believe this to be the case. All the Old Testament prophecies seemed to point to the Messiah coming and setting things straight, but we might wonder why things are still messed up. Is the urgency in John’s message misplaced?

Should we give our message about Jesus a sense of urgency similar to John, or would that be misplaced too?

I don’t believe any message about Jesus is wrong to have a sense of urgency applied to it. Every time we share Jesus with others, we should include a sense of urgency because of two things.

First, there will be a time that the world will end and Jesus will come back. Each day brings us one day closer to this event.

Secondly, with rare exceptions, each of us don’t know when our lives will end, and if our lives end before Jesus returns, then it doesn’t really matter when Jesus comes back for us specifically. If you or I only have a week or year to live, this makes our decision for Jesus urgent for us. Since we don’t know the day we will die, it’s safest to live every day with the sense of urgency that either Jesus will return today, or that our lives might end today leading to the next thing we see being Jesus.

John challenged those present in the first century to be ready for Jesus’ first coming, and all of us in the 21st century should focus on preparing ourselves for Jesus’ second coming!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always start by challenging you, intentionally seek God first in your life. Live your life with a sense of urgency, and with an intentional purpose of growing closer to God. While we don’t know when our lives will end or when exactly Jesus will return, we do know that only one decision matters in the end, and that is whether we have placed Jesus first, repented, and intentionally chosen to put our focus, faith, trust, and belief on Jesus.

Also, as I regularly challenge you to do in one way or another, as we move forward in life and history, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself so you will be able to know and understand what God and Jesus are really like. The better we know the God of the Bible, and Jesus who came showing us a picture of God, the better we will be able to recognize Jesus when He returns.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or fall away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!