Introducing Jesus (Matt 3:1-17)

On Friday I got to kick off our youth term series on Jesus from Matthews Gospel. The big idea I started to go for was that Jesus is announced by John and affirmed by God. But in the end, it more turned into "who is Jesus?". This was our first night back, so the idea was to get people to think about who Jesus is and then to travel with us as we look more at Him each week of the term.

Below is more or less what I said, I did stray slightly here and there, but not too much.

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Introductions

Hi, welcome to Youth, tonight it is all about introductions. Some of you it is your first night here at Youth. Welcome. Some of you this week had your first day at a new school. How did you go? Did it meet expectations? Did you have to introduce yourself to a bunch of people?

How good are introductions? I kinda hate them. There is the pressure on first impressions, what are people going to immediately think of me? I think it’s even worst when someone has talked about you beforehand. I’ve had people say, "you should meet Andrew, he is pretty blah blah blah". And then when that person meets me they are of cause let down, cause I’m not that funny, or smart or cool. I don’t meet expectations when people meet me.

Did anyone bring you here tonight? They may have said, “you should come to this youth group thing, it's great they do blah blah blah”. Now if that is you, if this is your first time, have we lived up to your expectations? Some of you may have come from other youth groups, does what you were told about us meet your expectations of us?

It the end I’m not that important anyway, and Youth, like life and school, will have its great moments and dull moments. But tonight, I want you to meet Jesus. Matthew wrote his Gospel to introduce you to Him. This term we are going to be looking at Jesus as we think He kinda is a big deal, and no matter how great we say He is, I don’t think we can ever oversell Him. He is that good.

Tonight, we are starting at chapter 3, missing some of the Christmas story, but already, if you were to read those chapters, you would see Matthew links Jesus to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, along with David and Solomon. We see angels announcing Jesus’ birth, Jesus’ family fleeing from the government to Egypt and then coming back, and throughout these chapters already, Matthew is trying to tell his Jewish audience that Jesus is fulfilling the Old Testament, that Jesus was fulfilling the old prophecies they were looking forward to.

Matthew wants you to see that Jesus is the coming one that Gods people were looking forward to for hundreds of years.

3:1-6 Predicting Jesus

And in our passage, we have another Old Testament quote. We meet John the Baptist who is this crazy cousin of Jesus. He is out in the wilderness, wearing camel’s hair, eating honey and bugs; and he is attracting a crowd. John is like the prophet Elijah; Jesus says this later in Matthew.

John is calling people to repent and to be baptised[1] because, get this, he says in verse 2, “the Kingdom of Heaven has come near”. Now, what the heck does that mean?

Back then, people knew what a kingdom was more than we do. It generally involved a King, a place and a people. Israel was once a great nation under David and then Solomon, but it all turned south, and they got taken out first by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians. They did manage to come back to the land and rebuild, but it wasn’t as great as it was in the past. And in Jesus’ day, Israel was under the Roman King, the Ceaser, and so under Roman rule. They were looking forward when they would be free and under their own king, with their own rules as their own people[2].

Don’t you feel like your life would be better if you could just be free, free from parents and school and laws? One of my favourite punk-ska bands had a song called “I wish I had my own Flag”[3]. Do you ever feel like that? Israel did for hundreds of years, they wanted their own flag.

So this crazy guy in the desert comes along and says, the Kingdom of Heaven is near, get ready. People are interested. Matthew points out how this had been predicted in Isaiah, except notice there is a slight difference in wording. Check out verse 3. Isaiah talks about a voice in the wilderness, getting people to prepare the way for the Lord, not for a Kingdom. However, it isn’t hard to work out that a King is in charge of a Kingdom. It’s like right there in the name.

So you are going to need to hold on to this idea this term. This Kingdom plays a massive part to Matthews Gospel, and it might not be what you expect. It was not what the people back then expected either.

3:7-12 Warning about Jesus

So John gees up the people for this Kingdom of Heaven and tells people to get ready, to repent, to change how they are living.

He then sticks it to the man, these are Pharisees and Sadducees. He calls them snakes. These guys were the religious guys, the ones who seemed to obey all the religious rules, and yet John warns them about the coming wrath or judgement. John says you cannot just repent and rest on your ancestors. You have to produce fruit to show your repentance. You may say all the right things, but just because of who your parents are, or what race you come from, does not guarantee salvation. The Pharisees and Sadducees thought that because they were Jewish, the children of Abraham, that they would be right, but John says that isn’t really that special, God could make stones to become children of Abraham if He wanted to[4]. What is important is if they are producing fruit from their repentance, otherwise the warning is, like in most commercial farms, if a tree doesn’t bear fruit, it will get cut down.

And this is still a legitimate warning to us today. Today we hear a lot about the love and mercy and grace of God, but we do forget there is judgement and a Hell along with a Heaven. We may not pride ourselves on being a Jew, but do we rest on our context. We are in a Christian home, so we are all good. We go to a Christian school, so I am fine. Do we think “I have lots of Christian friends, so I am also a Christian”? Or the worst do you think “I do good, so I am a Christian”? That one is deadly.

John’s warning is the opposite. The religious guys are warned that they are to do good because of their repentance, not that because they think they are good so they don’t have to repent.

It really matters if we repent and follow Jesus as our King. In verse 12, John warns of the coming one, who is greater than him, who will separate the wheat from the weeds.

3:13-17 Affirming Jesus

And then in verse 13, with not much fanfare we are introduced to Jesus who came from Galilee. That is like saying he came from Kambah. (In 2009 Kambah was voted in the top 10 bogan suburbs in Australia[5]). No one thought anything good came from Galilee, it was a no-name town, no great universities or sporting teams or creative artists came from there.

And Jesus shows up and wants to be baptised too. John says this can’t happen, but Jesus insists and says He needs to do this as it was proper. This was a time for great repentance and Jesus wanted to identify himself with this movement as repentance is necessary for salvation[6].

So then, when Jesus comes out of the water, we have something that hasn’t happened since the ten commandments on Mount Sinai. We have a voice from heaven declaring that Jesus is this voices Son who He loves and is pleased with. This is a crazy event, we also get the Spirit coming down on Jesus. We hear from the Father that He loves to Son and the Spirit comes to rest of Jesus.

Who do you say Jesus is?

So this is the introduction of Jesus. We are first introduced to the introducer, John the Baptist. John then introduced us to Jesus.

John the Baptised said that Jesus is the one who is more powerful than him and warns people of His power. Matthew said from that Isaiah verse that Jesus is the Lord and we also have the Father from heaven saying Jesus is His Son who He loves and is well pleased with.

John thinks Jesus is the Messiah. Matthew says Jesus is the Lord, the Father says Jesus is His Son.

But what about you?

Who do you say Jesus is?

You may not know or have an opinion. Great, that is what we are here for this term. We think Jesus is worth knowing and looking at for yourself. At Youth we want you to make up your own mind, based on our oldest historical records of Jesus. There are a bunch of ideas about Jesus out there, but they aren’t based on primary sources. We want you to do real history. So please track with us this term, and even try reading Matthew’s Gospel for yourself so you can know and have an opinion about Jesus.

You may think Jesus was a good guy from history, but not God, or something special. Great, I am glad that you are here. My neighbour thinks Jesus was just misunderstood and should have kept His mouth shut at the right time. Do you think something like this? I would ask you, where do you get this idea from that Jesus was good but misunderstood? What was Jesus wrong on and why do you think that? We would love to have that conversation with you.

And some of you, I already know, think that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Lord and Son of God. Again, this is great, and this term we want to look at Jesus again, to learn more about Him because we think He is the bomb. But if this is you, this also comes with a warning. If you are in this camp, that you believe Jesus is God and fulfils the Old Testament, that He forgives you for your sins, don’t be like the religious guys of John the Baptist day. Don’t just rest on what you know but put it into practice. Verse 8 says we are to "produce fruit in keeping with repentance". What might this look like? What fruit, what lifestyle would a repentant person be known for? Can I encourage you to think about this, and then do it?


<pray and then move to discussion groups>

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[1] I found it interesting to discover that people would be baptised to become Jewish, but Jews never were baptised till John turns up (William Barclay (1965), The Gospel of Matthew Vol 1, p52-53)

[2] This is a hat tip to Graeme Goldsworthy definition of the Kingdom of God being “God’s people, in God’s place under God’s rule” (or something like that)

[3] Less Than Jake, My Very Own Flag

[4] There is a bit of a pun also going on here with “stone” (abanim) and “children” (banim) in Hebrew (R.T France (1985), Matthew, (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries))

[5] Australia’s top bogan suburb – They name a few in Canberra!

[6] R. T. France (1985), Matthew, (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries)