The Preaching Of John The Baptist
THE PREACHING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
LUKE 3:1-9
When John began to spell out what repentance meant in practical terms, the truth became uncomfortable.
Verses 1-3. Here is Luke, the careful and exact historian, speaking. It has been demonstrated, first by the scholarship of Sir William Ramsay, that he was precisely that. He lists the rulers who held sway, from the old Emperor Tiberius to Caiaphas, priest of Jewry. The princes and prelates did not know that they formed merely the background for the events which really mattered. Of deep and lasting significance was the great religious revival led by John. It was no less. His preaching-place was the wide river-valley of the lower Jordan near Jericho. It is likely enough that John had spent years of preparation in the company of the sects of the wilderness.
A few miles from the place of baptism was the community of Qumran, the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is possible today, in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to see their roll of Isaiah, one of the many documents which they hid in the caves when the Romans were pacifying the Jordan Valley in the Great Rebellion of AD 67–70. It is possible that John himself saw it, for it was in use in his day.
3:4-9. Isaiah was more than once upon John’s lips. He knew that his preaching was a fulfillment of prophecy. Using the splendid poetry of the prophet, he pictured himself as the herald of a king. There was a note of fierceness in the preaching of John which bears the mark of the Old Testament rather than of the New. Snatching a figure of speech from the scrub fire of the Jordan wilderness, from whose running flame the hidden vipers of the undergrowth darted to safety, John castigated the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matthew 3:7), thrashed Jewish nationalism and pride, and demanded repentance. Israel’s largest forest-land, the Jordan jungle, provided him with the image of the axe. Repentance, its reality and demonstration, was his theme, and gentler and more loving though the persuasion of the Christian evangelist may be, repentance is still the prerequisite for all blessing, for acceptance, for salvation. Demonstrate this from Christ’s teaching.
Notes 3:1-2: compare Matthew 3:1, and note how carefully Luke links his Gospel to world history. Annas had been deposed by the Romans, but was recognized by the people. 3:3: Baptism had been confined to proselytes, but it was familiar as a symbol of purification (Ezekiel 36:25ff., Zechariah 13:1). 3:7-8: no substitute for repentance!