Now in those days comes John the baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,
Matthew's account jumps from a child in Nazareth to a grown man crying out in a desert, with nothing in between. The chapter raises two questions at once. How much time has passed? And why does God's messenger appear in a desert instead of Jerusalem?
"In those days" is a loose phrase. It does not tie John's appearing to Archelaus, the ruler named at the end of chapter 2. Forcing it to do so creates a false clash with Luke's dating.
This supposed contradiction comes from twisting Matthew 3:1 so that it clashes with Luke 3:2-3. The plain answer is that Matthew does not place the baptism of Jesus under Archelaus... "In those days" does not mean the days of Archelaus. It means the years while the family was living in Nazareth. Luke gives the exact date of our Lord's baptism. Matthew never claims to do so.
The silence covers more than family history. Matthew tells us nothing of John's birth, and nothing of Jesus' boyhood. This Gospel follows official position, not private life.
The Gospel says nothing about the birth or youth of John the Baptist either, though Luke's Gospel makes much of it in chapter 1. So about 28 years pass before we meet John preaching in the wilderness of Judea.
Behind the personal gap lies a national one. Israel had lived for centuries with no prophet at all, and one brief national revival had not stopped its decay.
As everyone knows, the New Testament was not given as a quiet continuation of the Old. Inspiration had long since stopped. After Malachi no prophet had risen in Israel for over 400 years. Then the "Messenger" who goes before Jehovah, the one Malachi had spoken of, suddenly broke the long silence, preaching in the wilderness of Judea. Much stirring history had happened in that time. Israel herself seemed for a while to come back to life in the kingdom of the Maccabees. But for the nation this was only like passing a current through a corpse. It does not keep the body from rotting further.
John is not the story. He came to make room for Someone else. And by sending a herald, God left no excuse for those who refused the One he announced.
The coming of the Messiah was deeply important, and huge issues depended on it. So God in His great mercy appointed a forerunner to prepare the way for His welcome. This gracious arrangement left those who refused Him without any excuse... It is true that he attracted much attention himself, and the whole country was full of talk about him. But with everyone who asked, he sought to turn attention away from himself and on to his greater Master and Lord. "I am not the Christ." "Behold, the Lamb of God." This is, after all, the proper work of every true servant of God in every age.
The place itself is a verdict. John came from a priestly family, yet God did not station him at the temple. He sent him out to empty country.
For a priest to preach in the wilderness is completely out of character. Nothing but the sovereign power of the Spirit of God can explain his large audience. They came from Jerusalem and all Judea, out into the wilderness, to hear this unusual messenger of God. The formal religion of the Jews had been set up by God, but it had decayed so far that God's testimony now had to stand completely apart from it. It had to bear solemn witness against the sin of elders, priests, scribes and people, for their state was as desolate as the wilderness.
The desert also shaped the repentance John asked for. Earlier prophets could still call the nation back to God. John's call rests on a ruin with no remedy.
This is why John the Baptist does not appeal to the whole nation, as the prophets before him did. He says, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness." Israel was a wilderness to God. From now on the prophet's appeal rests on a ruin that cannot be undone, while the appeal of the older prophets always assumed the nation could still return to Jehovah... The sinner did not stop at confessing his sins. He admitted that from now on the only answer to his state was death, and that there was no remedy.
The man matched the message. His clothing, food and distance from public life were all part of the preaching.
He had come as a man separating himself from all alike, and altogether. Preaching in the wilderness of Judea, never seen in their cities, never taking part in their religious ceremonies, although of a priestly family, with his strange unfashionable garment of camel's hair, and his food of locusts and wild honey, he stood off from men, calling a whole nation to repentance and to flee from coming wrath.
- Silence. Four hundred years without a prophet stand behind the vague words "in those days." Matthew gives no date. Luke is the one who does that.
- Voice. God breaks that silence with one man who calls himself only a voice. His whole business is to point away from himself and on to Christ.
- Wilderness. A priest preaching in a desert is a public verdict. Israel's religion had decayed so far that God's testimony had to stand outside it.
- Ruin. Israel itself had become the wilderness. So John's call is not an offer to improve man, but an admission that there is no remedy in him.
- Reach. Crowds still came out from Jerusalem and all Judea. When God speaks after long silence, people leave the city and go out to Him.
and saying, Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn nigh.
John the Baptist sums up his whole message in one short sentence. Everything turns on two words: what "repent" asks of a person, and what the "kingdom of heaven" is.
Many people reduce the word to regret, or to a promise to do better. The commentators mean something sharper, and they trace it back to God's kindness:
Repentance has been described as a change of mind toward God that leads a person to judge himself and his own acts. This would not be possible without the thought of mercy in God. It is the goodness of God that leads to repentance. Romans 2:4.
One writer takes the definition further, warning that the common answers fall short:
Some say it is sorrow for sin. Some say it is a change of mind, resting on the literal meaning of the word. Others say it includes a decision to give up sin and to do the will of God from now on. In truth it is none of these… Repentance in Scripture is nothing less than agreeing with God in His judgment of our sins. It is taking His side against ourselves, and so bowing in the dust before Him in true self-judgment.
This phrase turns up only in Matthew's Gospel. The reason for that lies in the Old Testament:
The expression comes from the Old Testament, and that is why it appears in Matthew only. As we have already seen, Matthew writes with Israel in view. So he takes up a phrase drawn from the prophecy of Daniel, who speaks of days coming when the heavens would rule. Before that, in Daniel 2, we hear that the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed — the kingdom of heaven.
Two common guesses about the phrase miss it completely:
Many people take this phrase to mean heaven, or the church. Both are wrong. The kingdom of the heavens is an Old Testament term. It is to be on the earth and not in heaven. It is a kingdom in which the heavens rule (Daniel 4:26). Its setting up is spoken of in Daniel 2:44 and Daniel 7:14. It is in the hands of One who is the Son of Man, the Messiah, the Son of David, who is to rule in righteousness.
John announced the kingdom as near, not as arrived. There was a reason for that gap:
Notice that God announces here, not that the kingdom has come, but that the kingdom is at hand. That is, God was ready to bring in the kingdom, but a change had to take place in the minds of the people before they could have it. He cannot have a kingdom of thieves and murderers, of drunkards and idolaters. No, He could not acknowledge a kingdom of that sort. There must be a thorough change of mind — true repentance — and then He would set up the kingdom.
Commentators differ on how near "at hand" is. Snell reads the kingdom as still future, waiting on repentance. Another writer says the King's presence had already brought it:
The Messiah he announces is a coming Messiah, already present among His people. The kingdom of heaven was there. It was not near at hand; it had come in the person of Christ. (Matt. 3:2.) If the people had received Him, the Lord was about to take up the government of the earth at once… He cries, "Prepare the way." This way, by which the Lord could enter, was repentant hearts, convicted of sin, confessing their guilt.
John's clothes and food fitted the message he carried:
John's clothing of camel's hair, his leather belt, and his food of locusts and wild honey all suited this call to repentance. Grace is not yet brought in… So John does not bring out the fullness of divine grace, but the moral call to repentance.
The Lord Jesus later preached the same sentence (Matthew 4:17). One writer hears a different note in it:
Seen this way, the mission of Christ on the earth — His ministry — completed the mission of John the Baptist. Compare Matthew 4:17 with Matthew 3:2. John sang the mournful funeral song of judgment; the Lord sang the joyful song of hope and of grace.
- Kingdom — Not the church, and not heaven above. It is the rule of the heavens over the earth, promised in Daniel.
- Near — Near enough to demand an answer. Commentators differ: some read it as still future, waiting on the nation; others as already present, because the King Himself had arrived.
- Repent — The one door in. Not regret, not resolve, but taking God's side against yourself and bowing before Him.
- Mercy — The demand rests on kindness. Self-judgment only becomes possible because there is mercy in God to make it safe.
- Grace — John's stern call prepared the way; the same words on the Lord's lips carried hope. Repentance was never the destination, only the road cleared for the King.
For this is he who has been spoken of through Esaias the prophet, saying, Voice of him that crieth in the wilderness prepare ye the way of [the] Lord, make straight his paths.
Four hundred years of silence end. God's next word comes not from a palace but from a lone preacher in open country. Matthew explains him with a prophecy from Isaiah, which raises two questions: who is this man, and whose way is he clearing?
Matthew does not introduce John by his family or his training. He identifies him with words written centuries earlier. Those words came after a long gap in which God said nothing.
The prophet Malachi has the solemn duty of delivering God's last message to His earthly people before the coming of Christ. Once Malachi delivers that message, God speaks no more for four hundred years. Then at last a voice breaks the silence — the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight."
In the prophecy Matthew quotes, the name behind "the Lord" is Jehovah — the personal name of Israel's God. So the One coming was God Himself.
So John the Baptist's ministry was preparing the way of Jehovah. Matthew 3:3 quotes Isaiah 40, and Malachi 3:1 says, "I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and Jehovah, whom you seek, shall come." If the judgment to come on the earth is what is meant, a difference of interpretation about that does not affect the question of the Person who comes. Neither does the move from Christ's first coming to His second. He who came first will come again.
A voice has no face and leaves no monument. That is the point of the title John took for himself.
He replies that he is only a "voice." He is not Elijah, foretold by Malachi; he is not the prophet promised by Moses; he is only the voice Isaiah spoke of. He refuses to take a place as a gathering centre for the people of God; he refuses to take a name, to make himself great among the people of God. He is simply a voice to speak of Jesus in obedience to the Word of God.
The wilderness was more than a location. It described what Israel had become in God's sight, and it shaped the repentance John preached.
This is why John the Baptist does not appeal to the people as a whole, like the prophets before him. He says, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness." Israel was a wilderness for God. The prophet's appeal now rests on their ruin beyond recovery. The appeal of the older prophets always assumed that a national return to Jehovah was still possible… Like them, John the Baptist had certainly preached repentance, but a repentance founded on ruin without remedy.
The command was not roadwork. It asked the nation to change how it walked, ready for the King's arrival.
For the One whose way John was to prepare was Jehovah Himself, the Lord. What then was John compared with such a glorious Person? He was only a voice… In preparation for receiving Jehovah their King they were to make His paths straight. As His people they were to walk in His paths and not paths of their own choosing. Reality and the evidence of it was what was required, not natural claim and empty profession… Once they rejected the forerunner and his message, they were certain to refuse the King too.
One writer finds a difference between the two commands themselves.
It seems plain to me that the paths are left for continuous or repeated action in detail, while the way of Jehovah is spoken of as made ready at once.
John cried, and the people would not believe. Their unbelief limited what his ministry achieved, but it did not defeat God.
There was therefore only a partial application. The people's unbelief cut across and broke off the thread of God's ways. Yet His purposes stand unbroken, and their very unbelief carried them out in the cross as nothing else could have done. The way of Jehovah was not yet prepared, nor was there a straight highway in the desert for God. God put man to the test of responsibility, and man heard the cry only to sin the more; but in time to come God will make everything good in grace by His own power.
- Voice. A prophecy defines John, not a résumé — he takes no title, gathers no following, and lives to announce Someone else.
- Way. The way he prepares is Jehovah's own; the One walking behind the herald is Israel's God arriving in person.
- Wilderness. He cries in the wilderness because the nation itself had become a wilderness before God. His call was repentance with no hope left in self.
- Paths. "Make His paths straight" asked the people to walk His way, not their own. It asked for reality, not empty religious claim.
- Glory. His first coming fulfilled the prophecy only in part. Unbelief broke the thread. God will yet make it all good by His own power.