Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is Near - Part 1
Matthew 3v1-6
28th January 2012
Having outlined Jesus's genealogy, birth and childhood, the next thing Matthew tells us is:
Matthew 3v1-2
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea
and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."
For hundreds of years, the Jewish people had been waiting for the Messiah, the anointed one sent from God, foretold by the Old Testament scriptures. They knew that this heavenly king would change things for ever:
Isaiah 9:6-7
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will
be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over
his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and for ever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.
Daniel 2:44
In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it
be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself
endure for ever.
In the context of Daniel 2, "those kings" are the rulers of the Roman Empire, so the people of the first century would be aware that it would be soon.
Daniel 7:13-14
In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of
heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.
He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language
worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that
will never be destroyed.
And they knew:
Daniel 9:25a
Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed
One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens', and sixty-two 'sevens'
Then as now, many interpreted these "sevens" to mean "seven years", in which case this prophesy would mean there would be an interval of (7 + 62) x 7 = 483 years from the issuing of that decree to the coming of the Messiah. Many would have dated that decree to around the middle of the fifth century B.C. and so when John started preaching and baptising, probably in 26 AD, there would have been a heightened sense of expectancy that the prophesy would be fulfilled soon.
Matthew 3v3
This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: "A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare
the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'"
Matthew confirms what many Jews would have been thinking. John's arrival on the scene was to prepare the way for the Messiah, as Isaiah had prophesied in Isaiah 40:3.
Matthew 3v4
John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt round his waist. His food was locusts
and wild honey.
John lived as a prophet, and even dressed like a prophet. Zechariah 13:4 speaks about "a prophet's garment of hair". The people would have understood that John was claiming to be a prophet - probably the first prophet seen in Israel for 400 years. And they would have been familiar with:
2 Kings 1:7-8
The king asked them, "What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?"
They replied, "He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt round his waist."
The king said, "That was Elijah the Tishbite."
So they would have seen the resemblance between John and Elijah the prophet, and they would have remembered the last words spoken by the Old Testament:
Malachi 4:5-6
"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.
He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers;
or else I will come and strike the land with a curse."
As John's father Zechariah had prophesied:
Luke 1:17
And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah
And now Malachi 4v5 was fulfilled, the Messiah would soon be revealed. Jesus was about to announce Himself to the world.
Malachi describes the coming of the Messiah as "that great and dreadful day of the Lord". The Old Testament teaches that, when God comes to a people, He brings mercy for some, and He brings judgment for others (see, for example Isaiah 63-66). The coming of the kingdom of Heaven was not all good news.
So, at the time prophesied by Daniel, John had come in fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3 and was preaching that the kingdom of God had come near, and some people were going to be immensely blessed, some were going to experience disaster, and the world would never be the same again.
For the Jewish nation, it was time to make your mind up.
Matthew 3v5-6
People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan.
Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River.
Many people, from all over the region, responded to John's message and were baptised as a promise that they would turn from their sins.
Then as now, we must confess our sins to God before we're baptised. Without repentance, baptism is meaningless. To repent is literally to change your mind. That's not like "I wanted cornflakes for breakfast but I've changed my mind and now I want bacon and eggs". It's thinking differently and believing different things, and consequently living differently.
If you believe that it's better to look after yourself than to trust God, then that's how you'll live. If you believe that God is more capable of sorting out your life than you are (which, of course, he is), then you'll surrender your will to His will.
Jesus said in Matthew 16:25, "... whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it". Whether you believe that to be true will determine the rest of your life.
Either you'll believe it's wise to obey God, or you'll believe that it's wise to go your own way. And you'll live according to what you believe. If you think that your life proves that assertion to be false, then I suggest that you don't really believe what you think you believe.
For us as for them, the kingdom of God is near. For us as for them, it's time to make up our minds.