We are introduced to John the Baptist in this passage, and he comes onto the scene with one very clear message – repent! This message is not quite the one we think of at the time of Christmas, but it’s hard to miss this clear, hard message from a hard man. John serves as a bridge from the prophets of the Old Testament to the gospel of the New Testament. Elsewhere, Matthew describes John as a second Elijah.
John lived apart from the culture and away from the population centers – he set the pattern later picked up by the Desert Fathers of the early church as well as the broader monastic orders. John serves as the model, establishing himself away from the rest of the world but serving as a magnet for people seeking the truth being shared – truth about sin and repentance.
How do we talk about sin and repentance? Some talk about it in the context of judgement, others in terms of broken relationship with God, others in a more postmodern way, addressing our behavior in relation to our own personal beliefs.
John’s role was to call for paths to be made straight, to point Jesus out to people in a way that was clear, insisting that his listeners reorient themselves around the coming Messiah. John’s whole identity was as a witness to the person of Christ. He spent a lot of time insisting he was not the Christ, but pointed the way to Him.
Carl Ellis describes a matrix of righteousness, addressing the personal and social working out of both piety and justice. As evangelicals, we tend to live in the personal piety quadrant nearly all the time, while other traditions may live more in the social quadrants. The challenge is to seek righteousness in a holistic way.
This was the challenge laid out by John the Baptist, looking ahead to Jesus who will make all things new. Some of that new-making, though, will be destructive, an axe at the root of the tree. These processes can be painful, but “joy comes in the morning.”
As a church we have felt like we have been in a time of wilderness. As a society, as well. And so our responsibility is to, as John instructs, produce fruit in keeping with repentance – to emulate John, speaking the truth that clears the way for the truth of Christ’s love to enter all situations.
— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 4, 2022