1 Mission Impossible Matthew 3
The first talk in a series on the life of Jesus given at Kalbarri Anglican Church 8th October 2023
Every good story has a beginning a middle and an end. So said Aristotle 2500 years ago. Jesus’ story is told by four writers, all of them alive at the time he lived; each of them says the story began with John the Baptist—though there is always a back-story. Luke, with his historian’s hat on, even gives a date:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee … the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Luke 1.1–3
It all began about AD 27 or 28.
John the Baptist was a sensation. He even made it into the history books. Most ancient history is about kings and governments and wars. John gets mentioned in Josephus’s history because of a war between Herod and the Nabataean kingdom of Petra. Petra was that city cut into a sandstone cliff they still take tourists to. Josephus was the Jewish governor of Galilee at the time of the great war between the Jews and Romans. Later, from Rome, he wrote up the story of the war, and an eighteen-volume history of the Jewish people.
Herod’s army was annihilated, and many Jews blamed it on his treatment of John the Baptist. Listen to what Josephus writes:
To some of the Jews the destruction of Herod’s army seemed to be divine vengeance, for his treatment of John, surnamed the Baptist. For Herod had put him to death, though he was a good man and had exhorted the Jews to lead righteous lives, to practice justice towards their fellows and piety towards God, and so doing to join in baptism… When others too joined the crowds about him because they were aroused to the highest degree by his sermons, Herod became alarmed. Eloquence that had so great an effect on mankind might lead to some form of sedition … Herod decided therefore that it would be much better to strike first and be rid of him before his work led to an uprising …. Though John, because of Herod’s suspicions, was brought in chains to Machaerus … and there put to death, yet the verdict of the Jews was that the destruction visited upon Herod’s army was a vindication of John …
Jewish Antiquities 18.116–119
Josephus doesn’t explain why the Jews connected John with a war which took place years later. In an interesting example of how different historical accounts can complement each other, the Gospel of Mark supplies the missing link. Herod’s wife hated John because he had criticized their marriage, and pressured her husband to have him beheaded. Herod had been married to the daughter of King Aretas, but fell in love with Herodias, his brother’s wife, and they agreed to marry—if Herod divorced his first wife. The easiest way to do that was to invent some charge against her and have her put to death. But she got wind of the plot and escaped back to her father’s kingdom. We can see how people would have connected the disaster which befell Herod to his treatment of John.
Why did John cause such a stir? We need to understand how it was for the Jews. Five hundred years earlier their nation was almost wiped out by Babylon’s armies. The reason they survived was their prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel said God had abandoned them because they had abandoned him. However, one day he would send a king to rescue them, put things to rights, and set them up as a great kingdom. For this they waited eagerly, and, when John said the time had come—the kingdom of heaven is at hand—hundreds of thousands came to hear him from all over the country.
He called on them to repent. On the surface their relationship with God looked good, compared with the bad old days when they worshipped idols, but John said it was a sham—their hearts were far away—they were a nest of snakes. If they wanted the coming king to be merciful, they needed to do more than boast about their Jewish ancestry; they should turn to God, and if they were real about a change of heart, come into the river for a symbolic washing.
Some people thought John himself might be the Messiah, but he quickly dispelled that idea. “I am not fit to do up his sandal straps. I can wash you with water; he will wash you with the Holy Spirit and fire. He is the new Moses, who will remove all evil from the world. All that matters is to be accepted when he carries out the great judgement and separates the righteous from the wicked.”
Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Luke 3.9
The woodcutter has come into the forest with his axe over his shoulder. The trees that are to be felled are marked. He sits on a log and rolls a cigarette. When he is finished his smoke, he will start chopping. There is not much time.
His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
Luke 3.17
People believed him. They came forward in droves to be baptized. Clearly, John thought Messiah—he called him “the coming one”— would carry out the last judgement and separate the good from the evil. He believed Messiah was already there among the people, though he did not know who.
One day a man from Nazareth presented himself. John had no idea he was Messiah, but recognized him as a distant cousin. When Jesus came forward for baptism, John wouldn’t do it. He knew Jesus was a good man, and thought he should rather be baptized by him. But Jesus insisted on it. This is one of the many odd things that surrounds the life of Jesus. If he was a good person, why does he insist on being baptized—a symbol of repentance and forgiveness?
As Jesus came up from the river something happened. All the accounts agree that whatever it was, it signaled the beginning of his mission. Even the non-Christian historians agree Jesus must have had some dramatic experience that set him off on his new career. Before that, he was a nobody, a local builder from an unimportant village; soon he will become a national sensation, and will end up in the hands of the Roman governor and be executed. What was it happened that day? The Gospels say heaven opened, a dove flew down, and a voice spoke to him.
You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.
Mark 1.11
The words were familiar—recognizable words from the Bible—a combination of two important lines. We need to understand what they meant to Jesus, if we are to understand the rest of his story.
Jesus recognized words from Psalm 2, which answer to a problem raised by Psalm 1. The first Psalm is about blessing. The world as it stands suffers under a curse, but there is blessing in store for those who trust God. Who will be blessed, and who remains under the curse? Those who trust in God and live by his word will be blessed; the wicked will be swept away like chaff. The second Psalm addresses the question how this can ever be, since there seems there is no justice in the world. Good people suffer, and others do well. The answer lies with a future king, whom God will establish to set things right. It is what all governments are meant to do, of course, but rulers are as rebellious towards God, as their citizens—and as confused, and as prone to temptation, and as lost. God promises David to establish his “son” as king of Israel, but then as king of the whole world to put things right.
The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.
Psalm 2.7–8
That day at the Jordan River Jesus heard God tell him he was to be this king. For a thousand years Jews had been waiting.
But Jesus was a backwoods builder. He had no influence, no important family connections, no special education, no money, no army. Was God going to magically plonk him in power, and what would that look like? Everyone knew the story of Rome’s rise to power; Tiberius Caesar was now king from Arabia to Spain and invincible, but that had taken six hundred years.
Along with the words of the psalm Jesus heard the echo of a prophecy of Isaiah that told him that what God declared would not be automatic; he would have to do it himself. Isaiah had spoken of a “Beloved One,” a “suffering servant of the Lord” who would establish God’s future kingdom, but at great personal cost.
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him … He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.
Isaiah 42.1–4
Jesus put these two ideas together and knew he was called to an impossible mission of world conquest. It would cost him his life, he knew, but he would succeed nonetheless, because of God’s promise and power.
Messiah means “the Anointed One.” Israel’s kings were “anointed.” Olive oil was poured on their head as a symbol of God’s Spirit, who they would need to help them. God had promised to anoint the future king, not symbolically, but with his Holy Spirit. This was the meaning of the dove which descended on Jesus and never left him. He would be anointed with God’s Spirit—God’s power! That is how he would be able to carry out his mission.
I don’t think Jesus had never thought about these things. His mother had told him of strange things that had happened at his birth. But he had never before felt any call on him to be anything more that an eldest son, and now that his father had died, with a special responsibility to look after his mother and brothers and sisters. That day at the river he heard God commission him for something quite different. What would be do?
That is the question we will explore next. What were his first steps after learning he was to create the kingdom of the future and rule the world forever? But what is at stake here?
Most people dismiss the Jesus-story as religious fantasy, and irrelevant to their lives. If the understanding he emerged with after his baptism was mistaken, it is fantasy, but if it was truly God who spoke to him we are dealing with ultimate political questions and an answer to the future of the human race. For Jesus believed himself to be commissioned to solve the problem of evil and suffering.
The world is not as it should be; everyone feels this. The disasters that reach us on our television screens shout at us that the world is broken—the Bible says it is under a curse. With all our science, and money, and organization the suffering goes on. Every great religion seeks to explain the origin of evil—and its solution. Even atheism has an answer. Athesist think there is no God—if there were, surely he would fix things up. No, everything is random, chance, accident—except natural law (but how is that?); science is the only way out.
But good government is also needed. Someone must decide how the science is to be used, and lead us into the future. Humans have never been able to do without rulers, because things become chaotic and violent when everyone does what is best for them. You have only to think of the violence and looting that happens when law and order is paralyzed. In ancient times every city had its king, and every tribe its chief. There was safety in numbers, even if it was only for their little group. But these little groups were always fighting with other little groups, so it made sense to find allies. In the modern world nations are bigger, but they still fight. Some people think a single government for the whole world is the answer.
But who would rule? There are always winners and losers. Would the rule of one group be accepted by the others?
Every time we have an election an individual or a party will promise to make the world a better place—or our nation. Some do better than others, but the world continues to limp along. And then there are the rogue rulers: the Osama bin Ladins, Saddam Husseins, Idi Amins, Pol Pots, Adolf Hitlers, Benito Mussolinis, Joseph Stalins. All these men came to power with dreams and promises of fixing things up—at least for their own people. The results were catastrophic. It seems the more idealistic they are, the greater the ultimate destruction they bring. Obviously, the world has a problem with leadership: who will rule? Someone must, but who? Who has the right to rule.
If God made the world and its people, he has the ultimate right to choose a leader. When he commissioned Jesus, he did just that, and also announced there would be an end to suffering and evil. Is there anyone with the wisdom, power, and goodness to bring about a truly good world, and ensure that evil never again recurs? The answer to that question is Jesus.
We need to ditch the idea that Christianity is religion. This is politics on a grand scale. Not the everyday politics we are familiar with, but the God-given, final answer to all our political problems—if you believe it! Most, as I say, do not. Most see it as irrelevant fantasy—though not all. But whichever way we jump, there is one thing we cannot escape: Jesus believed it, and set about achieving it—though not in the way people expected; not even John. The other thing we cannot escape is the ongoing suffering, which two thousand years of human effort have failed to end. Is there a solution, or are we forever at the mercy of whatever may happen next, and the next leader’s promise to fix it? Let’s look again at Jesus—hear him out, and then decide.