'In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness
of Judæa, 2. And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand. 3. For this is He that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias,
saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the
way of the Lord, make His paths straight. 4. And the same John had
his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins;
and his meat was locusts and wild honey. 5. Then went out to him
Jerusalem, and all Judæa, and all the region round about Jordan, 6.
And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. 7. But
when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his
baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned
you to flee from the wrath to come? 8. Bring forth therefore fruits
meet for repentance: 9. And think not to say within yourselves, We
have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of
these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 10. And now also
the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree
which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the
fire, 11. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he
that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not
worthy to clean he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with
fire: 12. Whose fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His
floor, and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up
the chaff with unquenchable fire.'--MATT. iii. 1-12.
Matthew's Gospel is emphatically the Gospel of the kingdom. The keynote
sounded in the story of the Magi dominates the whole. We have stood by
the cradle of the King, and seen the homage and the dread which
surrounded it. We have seen the usurper's hatred and the divine
guardianship. Now we hear the voice of the herald of the King. This
section may be conveniently treated as falling into two parts: the
first, from verse 1 to verse 6, a general outline of the Baptist's
person and work; the second, from verse 7 to end, a more detailed
account of his preaching.
I. We have an outline sketch of the herald and of his work. The voice of
prophecy had fallen silent for four hundred years. Now, when it is once
more heard, it sounds in exactly the same key as when it ceased. Its
last word had been the prediction of the day of the Lord, and of the
coming of Elijah once more. John was Elijah over again. There were the
same garb, the same isolation, the same fearlessness, the same grim,
gaunt strength, the same fiery energy of rebuke which bearded kings in
the full fury of their self-will. Elijah, Ahab, and Jezebel have their
doubles in John, Herod, and Herodias. The closing words of Malachi,
which Matthew, singularly enough, does not quote, are the best
explication of the character and work of the Baptist. His portrait is
flung on the canvas with the same startling abruptness with which Elijah
is introduced. Matthew makes no allusion to his relationship to Jesus,
has nothing to say about his birth or long seclusion in the desert. He
gives no hint that his vague expression 'in these days' covers thirty
years. John leaps, as it were, into the arena full grown and full armed.
His work is described by one word--'preaching'; out of which all modern
associations, which have too often made it a synonym for long-winded
tediousness and toothless platitudes, must be removed. It means
proclaiming, or acting as a herald, and implies the uplifted voice and
the brief, urgent message of one who runs before the chariot, and
shouts, 'The king! the king!'
His message is summed up in two sentences, two blasts of the trumpet:
the call to repentance, and the rousing proclamation that the kingdom of
heaven is at hand. In the former he but reproduces the tone of earlier
prophecy, when he insists on a thorough change of disposition and a true
sorrow for sin. But he advances far beyond his precursors in the latter,
which is the reason for repentance. They had seen the vision of the
kingdom and the King, 'but not nigh.' He has to peal into the drowsy
ears of a generation which had almost forgotten the ancient hope, that
it was at the very threshold. Like some solitary stern crag which
catches the light of the sun yet unrisen but hastening upwards, long
before the shadowed valleys, John flamed above his generation all aglow
with the light, as the witness that in another moment it would spring
above the eastern horizon. But he sees that this is no joyful message to
them. Nothing is more remarkable in his preaching than the sombre hues
with which his expectation of the day of the Lord is coloured. 'To what
purpose is the day of the Lord to you? It is darkness and not light'; it
is to be judgment, therefore repentance is the preparation.
The gleam and purity of lofty spiritual ideas are soon darkened, as a
film forms on quicksilver after short exposure. John's contemporaries
thought that the kingdom of heaven meant exclusive privileges, and their
rule over the heathen. They had all but lost the thought that it meant
first God's rule over their wills, and their harmony with the glad
obedience of heaven. They had to be rudely shaken out of their
self-complacency and taught that the livery of the King was purity, and
the preparation for His coming, penitence.
The next touch in this outline sketch is John's fulfilment of prophecy.
Matthew probably knew that wonderfully touching and lowly answer of his
to the deputation from the ecclesiastical authorities, which at once
claimed prophetic authority and disclaimed personal importance, 'I am
the voice of one crying in the wilderness.' The prophecy in its original
application refers to the preparation of a path in the desert, for
Jehovah coming to redeem His people from captivity. The use made of it
by Matthew, and endorsed by all the evangelists, rests on the principle,
without which we have no clue to the significance of the Old Testament,
that the history of Israel is prophetic, and that the bondage and
deliverance are types of the sorer captivity from which Christ redeems,
and of the grander deliverance which He effects.
Our evangelist gives a vivid picture of the asceticism of John, which
was one secret, as our Lord pointed out, of his hold on the people. The
more luxuriously self-indulgent men are, the more are they fascinated by
religious self-denial. A man 'clothed in soft raiment' would have drawn
no crowds. A religious teacher must be clearly free from sensual
appetites and love of ease, if he is to stir the multitude. John's rough
garb and coarse food were not assumed by him to create an impression. He
was no mere imitator of the old prophets, though he wore a robe like
Elijah's. His asceticism was the expression of his severe, solitary
spirit, detached from the delights of sense, and even from the softer
play of loves, because the coming kingdom flamed ever before him, and
the age seemed to him to be rotting and ready for the fire. There is no
need to bring in irrelevant learning about Essenes to account for his
mode of life. The thoughts which burned in him drove him into the
wilderness. He who was possessed with them could not 'come eating and
drinking,' and might well seem to sense-bound wonderers as if some
demonic force, other than ordinary motives, tyrannised over him.
The last point in this brief _résumé_ of John's work is the universal
excitement which it produced. He did not come out of the desert with his
message. If men would hear it, they must go to him. And they went. All
the southern portion of the country seemed to empty itself into the
wilderness. Sleeping national hopes revived, the awe of the coming
judgment seized all classes. It was so long since a fiery soul had
scattered flaming words, and religious teachers had for so many
centuries been mumbling the old well-worn formulas, and splitting hairs,
that it was an apocalypse to hear once more the accent of conviction
from a man who really believed every word he said, and himself thrilled
with the solemn truths which he thundered. Wherever a religious teacher
shows that he has John's qualities, as our Lord in His eulogium analysed
them--namely, unalterable resolution, like an iron pillar, and not like
a reed shaken with the wind, conspicuous superiority to considerations
of ease and comfort, a direct vision of the unseen, and a message from
God, the crowds will go out to see him; and even if the enthusiasm be
shallow and transient, some spasm of conviction will pass across many a
conscience, and some will be pointed by him to the King.
II. The second portion of this section is a more detailed account of
John's preaching, which Matthew gives as addressed to the Pharisees and
Sadducees. We are not to suppose that at any time John had a
congregation exclusively made up of such; nor that these words were
addressed to them only. What is emphasised is the fact that among the
crowds were many of both these parties, the religious aristocrats who
represented two tendencies of mind bitterly antagonistic, and each
unlikely to be drawn to the prophet. Self-righteous pedants who had
turned religion into a jumble of petty precepts, and very superior
persons who keenly appreciated the good things of this world, and were
too enlightened to have much belief in anything, and too comfortable to
be enthusiasts, were not hopeful material. If they were drawn into the
current, it must have run strong indeed. These representatives of the
highest and coldest classes of the nation had the very same red-hot
words flung at them as the mob had. Luke tells us that the first words
in this summary were spoken to the people. Both representations are
true. All fared alike. So they should, and so they always will, if a
real prophet has to talk to them. John's salutation is excessively rough
and rude. Honeyed words were not in his line; he had not lived in the
desert for all these years, and held converse with God and his own
heart, without having learned that his business was to smite on
conscience with a strong hand, and to tear away the masks which hid men
from themselves. The whole spirit of the old prophets was revived in his
brusque, almost fierce, address to such very learned, religious, and
distinguished personages. Isaiah in his day had called their
predecessors 'rulers of Sodom'; John was not scolding when he called his
hearers 'ye offspring of vipers' but charging them with moral corruption
and creeping earthliness.
The summary of his preaching is like a succession of lightning flashes.
We can but note in a word or two each flash as it flames and strikes.
The remarkable thing about his teaching is that, in his hands, the great
hope of Israel became a message of terror, the proclamation of the
impending kingdom passed into a denunciation of 'the wrath to come,' set
forth with a tremendous wealth of imagery as the axe lying at the root
of the trees, the fan winnowing the wheat from the chaff, the destroying
fire. That wrath was inseparable from the coming of the King; for His
righteous reign necessarily meant punishment of unrighteousness. So all
the older prophets had said, and John was but carrying on their
testimony. So Christ has said. No more terrible warnings of the certain
judgment of evil which is involved in His merciful work, have ever been
given, than fell from the lips into which grace was poured. We need
to-day a clearer discernment of the truth which flamed before John's
eyes, that the full proclamation of the kingdom of heaven must include
the plain teaching of 'the wrath to come.'
Next comes the urgent demand for reformation of life as the sign of real
repentance. John's exhortation does not touch the deepest ground for
repentance which is laid in the heart-softening love of God manifested
in the sacrifice of His Son, but is based wholly on the certainty of
judgment. So far, it is incomplete; but the demand for righteous living
as the only test of religious emotion is fully Christian, and needed in
this generation as much as it ever was. All preachers and others
concerned in 'revivals' may well learn a lesson, and while they follow
John in seeking to arouse torpid consciences by the terrors which are a
part of the gospel, should not forget to demand, not merely an emotional
repentance, but the solid fruits which alone guarantee the worth of the
emotion.
The next flash strikes the lofty structure of confidence in their
descent. John knows that every man in that listening crowd believes that
his birth secured him joy and dominion when Messiah came. So he wrenches
away this shield against which his sharpest arrows were blunted. What a
murmur of angry denial must have met his contemptuous, audacious denial
of their trusted privilege! The pebbles on the Jordan beach, or the
loose rocks scattered so plentifully over the desert, could be made as
good sons of Abraham as they. A glimpse of the transference of the
kingdom to the despised Gentiles passed across his vision. And in these
far-reaching words lay the anticipation, not only of the destruction of
all Jewish exclusiveness, but of the miracles of quickening to be
wrought on the stony hearts of those beyond its pale.
Once more with a new emblem the immediate beginning of the judgment is
proclaimed, and its principles and issues are declared. The sharp axe
lies at the roots of the tree, ready to be lifted and buried in its
bark. The woodman's eye is looking over the forest; he marks with the
fatal red line the worthless trees, and at once the swinging blows come
down, and the timber is carted away to be burned. The trees are men. The
judgment is an individualising one, and all-embracing. Nothing but
actual righteousness of life will endure. All else will be destroyed.
The coming of the kingdom implied the coming of the King. John knew that
the King was a man, and that He was at the door. So his sermon reaches
its climax in the ringing proclamation of His advent. The first
noticeable feature in it is the utter humility of the dauntless prophet
before the yet veiled Sovereign. All the fiery force, the righteous
scorn and anger, the unflinching bravery, melt into meek submission. He
knows the limits of his own power, and gladly recognises the infinite
superiority of the coming One. He never moved from that lowly attitude.
Even when his followers tried to stir up base jealousy in him at being
distanced by the Christ, who, as they suggested, owed His first
recognition to him, all that his immovable self-abnegation cared to
answer was, 'He must increase, but I must decrease.' He was glad 'to
fade in the light of the Sun that he loved.' What a wealth of suppressed
emotion and lowly love there is in the words so pathetic from the lips
of the lonely ascetic, whom no home joys had ever cheered: 'He that
hath the bride is the bridegroom.... My joy is fulfilled'!
Note, too, the grand conception of the gifts of the King. John knew that
his baptism was, like the water in which he immersed, cold, and
incapable of giving life. It symbolised, but did not effect, cleansing,
any more than his preaching righteousness could produce righteousness.
But the King would come, bringing with Him the gift of a mighty Spirit,
whose quick energy, transforming dead matter into its own likeness,
burning out the foul stains from character, and melting cold hearts into
radiant warmth, should do all that his poor, cold, outward baptism only
shadowed. Form and substance of this great promise gather up many Old
Testament utterances. From of old, fire had been the emblem of the
divine nature, not only, nor chiefly, as destructive, but rather as
life-giving, cleansing, gladdening, fructifying, transforming. From of
old, the promise of a divine Spirit poured out on all flesh had been
connected with the kingdom of Messiah; and John but reiterates the
uniform voice of prophecy, even as he anticipates the crowning gift of
the gospel, in this saying.
Note, further, the renewed prophecy of judgment. There is something very
solemn in the stern refrain at the end of each of three consecutive
verses,--'with fire.' The first and the third refer to the destructive
fire; the second, to the cleansing Spirit. But the fire that destroys is
not unconnected with that which purifies. And the very same divine
flame, if welcomed and yielded to, works purity, and if repelled and
scorned, consumes. The rustic simplicity of the figures of the
husbandman with his winnowing-shovel, the threshing-floor exposed to
every wind, the stored wheat, the rootless, lifeless, worthless chaff,
and the fierce fire in some corner of the autumn field where it is
utterly burned up--needs no comment. They add nothing but another vivid
picture to the thoughts already dealt with. But the question arises as
to the whole of the representation of judgment here: Does it look beyond
the present world? I see no reason for supposing that John was speaking
about anything but the sifting and destroying which would attend the
coming of the looked-for kingdom on earth. The principles which he laid
down are, no doubt, true for both worlds; but the application of them
which his prophetic mission embraced, lies on this side of the grave.
Note, further, the limitations in John's knowledge of the King. His
prophecy unites, as contemporaneous, events which, in fact, are widely
separate,--the coming of Christ, and the judgments which He executes,
whether on Israel or in the final 'great day of the Lord.' There is no
perspective in prophecy. The future is foreshortened, and great gulfs of
centuries are passed over, as, standing on a plain, we see it as
continuous, though it may really be cleft by deep ravines. He did not
know 'what manner of time' the spirit which was in him did 'signify.' No
doubt his expectations were correct, in so far as Christ's coming really
sifted and separated, and was the rising and the falling of many; but it
was not attended by such tokens as John inferred. Hence we can
understand his doubts when in prison, and learn that a prophet was often
mistaken as to the meaning of his message.
Again, while we have here a clear prediction of the Spirit as bestowed
by Christ, we find no hint of His work as the sacrifice for sin, through
whom the guilt which no repentance and no outward baptism could touch
was taken away. The Gospel of John gives us later utterances of the
Baptist's, by which we learn that he advanced beyond the point at which
he stood here. 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world,' was his message after Christ's baptism. It is the last, highest
voice of prophecy. The proclamation of a kingdom of heaven, of a king
mighty and righteous, whose coming kindled a fire of judgment, and a
blessed fire of purifying, into one or other of which all men must be
plunged, contained elements of terror, as well as of hope. It needed
completion by that later word.
When John stretched out his forefinger, and with awe-struck voice bade
his hearers look at Jesus coming to him, prophecy had done its work. The
promise had been gradually concentrated on the nation, the tribe, the
house, and now it falls on the person. The dove narrows its circling
flight till it lights on His head. The goal has been reached, too, in
the clear declaration of Messiah's work. He is King, Giver of the
Spirit, Judge, but He is before all else the Sacrifice for the world's
sins. Therefore he to whom it was given to utter that great saying was a
prophet, and more than a prophet; and when he had spoken it, there was
nothing more for him to do but to decrease. He was like the breeze
before sunrise, which springs up, as crying 'The dawn! the dawn!' and
dies away.