Text: Matthew 3:1–12
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
Burning Down the Vipers’ Brood
So go ahead and turn in your Bible to Matthew chapter three, and Lord willing, this morning we will take up the first twelve verses together.
Let me give you an illustration to set up our text that I think is helpful in understanding some of the deep, structural pilings that undergird the account of the text—things that the Jewish readers of Matthew would feel under their feet, but which we might not.
There’s something called “the law of unintended consequences” that plays out all the time in the sphere of human endeavors, because we aren’t gods, and so we aren’t omniscient, and so we don’t always accurately predict how our actions will affect the world around us.
One example is in the area of wildfire management. When left to its own devices, forests will burn down pretty regularly—often as a result of lighting strikes starting fires that spread and consume big swathes of forested regions.
But as humans settle further and further into forested areas, developing them, building cabins, and using them for our own purposes, we usually start interrupting that cycle—dispatching firefighters with bulldozers to cut firebreaks, airplanes with fire-retardant capabilities, and other strategies to snuff out wildfires at the first sight of smoke.
The instinct isn’t bad: We’re trying to prevent people from dying, houses from being burned down, recreation areas from being destroyed, etc. But we’ve found that the law of unintended consequences kicks in, and guess what? We made wildfires worse.
See, as trees grow, they have lifecycles. And part of that lifecycle is dying. Whether by a strong windstorm, pests, disease, or just age, trees die, shed limbs, fall down, and fill the undergrowth with deadfall. Trees will die standing due to things like pine beetle infestations.
Another name for deadfall could be firewood. You can see where this is going. And so after about a century of this new style of wildfire management, we’ve seen many more super-fires—fires that grow massively big, burn hotter and longer, and destroy more, sometimes even heating the soil to a depth that makes future growth harder.
But if you let small fires burn most of the time, they will clear out the undergrowth, kill pests, and allow for the pine cones—full of seeds that are, you know, just little pine trees in principle, waiting to spring up—to get sunlight and space to grow up into new forests.
The problem that we’ve discovered is that smothering wildfires isn’t fire-prevention, but rather fire-postponement—despite all efforts, eventually a fire is going to get going that we can’t contain.
Sin and repentance are like that, too. God sends his prophets, God sends his convicting Spirit, to a person, a family, a city, a nation—and if they smother out that conviction before it takes its effect and leads to repentance; if they kill the prophet before his message takes root—then the deadfall of sin and disease and rot just piles up and piles up.
And ultimately, when a spark finally catches, the fire is going to be hot. This morning, we meet a prophet of God—sent to warn a city choked with deadfall—that a spark is coming. Look with me at Matthew 3:1. This is the Word of the Living God:
“In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight.’”Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 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.
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
-Matthew 3:1–12
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word; may he write it on our hearts by faith.
Thesis: Two Witnesses in God’s Case Against Israel
Now, what I’d like to do this morning to understand and apply this text together is to give you my summary of the central thesis of the text first, and then go through and show how that thesis, that main point, arises out of what Matthew writes.
The thesis is that Israel has become like an Egypt—like Egypt at the time of Moses under wicked Pharaoh. Israel has become like a diseased forest, choked with deadfall, and God is sending a fire of judgment into that forest to burn it up—but out of and in the midst of—and even through this coming judgment—God is going to bring forward new life, a new tree, a new forest that will dwarf the old. In fact, the old forest always was about this coming forest.
Israel has become like an Egypt, and as in the days of Moses, the people must come out of her, must flee her borders, lest they be swallowed up in the judgment to come. Like Egypt, Jerusalem has set up Pharaoh-like leaders who hate God—and want to be as gods to the people.
So God sends two witnesses in his final prosecution of this apostate, Old Covenant Israel. As God sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh, God sends two witnesses to establish his case against Israel, to establish the charge that God would level against them, namely: Israel, you have rejected your God, and in doing so, you have become like the pagan nations. Repent and be saved, lest you perish.
As his first witness, he sends John the Baptist, and we will see John’s prosecution of the nation this morning, see his charge against them—and his message of hope and promise in the midst of the coming judgment.
And then secondly, John will give over the prosecution to Jesus, who will then spend the rest of Matthew’s gospel building his case against apostate Israel. This legal case will culminate in chapter 24 of the gospel, where Jesus will prophesy the utter destruction of Jerusalem and her Temple—and call the people of God, all who do receive him as Lord and King and Messiah—to come out of her, to leave Jerusalem, lest they be swept up in the judgment, when they see certain signs taking place.
And what Israel is going to do in response to this case, this prosecution by John and Jesus, is that they are going to—rather than obeying Jesus and going outside the city for baptism and repentance themselves—they will take Jesus outside the city and they will crucify him.
And here’s the kicker, here’s the black swan that none of them saw coming: This crucifixion of Jesus, this utter rejection of him and repudiation of his case against them, will be the means through which they become the third and final witness against themselves.
In essence, the rulers of Israel and people of Israel plead guilty to the charge of rejecting their God—and they do it by crucifying their God. Yet by crucifying their God, they actually bring about the very plan of God; they do all that God’s hand had predestined to take place for the saving of the world, as Acts 4:23–31 explains after the fact.
That is the broad story that we are situated in as we take up Matthew 3. And we will see the beginning of this story—the beginning of this case against the nation—unfold from the text as we answer three questions:
First, who is John? We’ll find that he is a prophet in the spirit of Elijah, bringing a charge and a promise to Israel.
Second, what is his charge? What has Israel done? What are they being called to repent of?
Third, what is his promise? In light of the great sin of the people, is there any hope? John would say, emphatically, yes! Yes, because of the One who is coming.
Who is John? A Prophet.
Let’s take those three questions up in turn as we go through the text together, starting with that question, “Who is John?”
John is a prophet in the spirit of Elijah. We can see this in a few places in the text. First, he intentionally presents himself as a prophet—dwelling in the wilderness, a common association with prophets, bringing a message of repentance to Israel, calling them to bear the fruit God demands.
But it goes even deeper than that: He doesn’t just style himself as a prophet, but as a specific prophet. Verse four says, “Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.”
In 2 Kings 1, a prophet comes to speak with the king of Israel, and he meets with the king’s messengers to tell them he has a message for the king. So the messengers go to the king to let him know that a prophet wants an audience. The king asks the messengers what the guy looked like, and they say, “He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.”
The king’s response—and not a very happy one, by the way—was to conclude, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.” And he was right.
So John is intentionally evoking the prophet Elijah. This is very important, because there is a prophecy hanging over Israel, one that the people had been waiting for four centuries to see arrive at the time John strides out of the wilderness with locusts in his teeth—in fact, the very last prophecy given to Israel, from Malachi 4. Look there with me:
“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.
“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
-Malachi 4
John is prophet in the spirit of Elijah, and he has come to announce the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh, to turn the hearts of fathers to their children. But you don’t have to just take my word that this is what we’re supposed to see in the text of Matthew 3, because 8 chapters from now, in Matthew 11:11–15, this is what Jesus will say:
“Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist… all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
-Matthew 11:11–15 (selections)
And in Luke 1:16–17, an angel told the father of John the Baptist, a priest by the name of Zechariah, this about his son:
“…he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
-Luke 1:16–17
John is a prophet in the spirit of Elijah, the fulfillment of the final prophecy of the Old Testament—and as the prophets always did, he came with both a charge and promise.
What is his Charge?
That brings us to the second question we need to answer about the ministry of John, namely: What is his charge?
First of all, you need to see that what he is bringing actually is a charge. That is plain in his message, right? What is his message? Verse 2 tells us. It is, “[YELL] Repent!” Something like that. “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
More on the Kingdom of Heaven in the next section (actually in the rest of the whole gospel of Matthew). But now, just see that this “repentance” language means his message is a charge—it’s fundamentally about something they need to repent of.
Repent: You’re not actually Israelites at all.
So what does Israel need repentance for? Well, it’s so deep, that they what they need is baptism. And I know you’re like, “Ok… so what?” But to a Jewish reader, that is an astonishing charge, “Repent and be baptized.”
It’s astonishing, it’s scandalous, because it is saying that Israel is fundamentally pagan and needs to convert to the worship of the true God of Israel! He’s saying, “Israel, you’re not actually Israel. You’re more like Babylon, Assyria, or Egypt. Come join us.”
See, the only other people who would have been baptized before this would have been pagans converting to Judaism. So his fundamental message is that Jerusalem has become an Egypt. It is a pagan nation. It needs baptism and repentance. Pagan converts would perform a ritual bath, where they would symbolically have the filth of their former idolatries washed away in order to join the community of Israel.
John is telling pagan Israel that—as the pagan converts of old had to pass through their own Red Sea baptism, through their own Jordan, to come to the Promised Land—so now do they. He's saying, “Israel! You need to leave this little Egypt you’ve made of my city and come to the true Promised Land!”
Repent: Wrath is coming.
This charge actually comes with a stern warning as well. Look at verse 4 again,
“Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 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.”
-Matthew 3:4–10
They have become an Egypt, and their leaders are like the baby-devouring serpent-dragon of the Garden, of Pharaoh, of Herod. They are a brood of vipers. But hear what he says to them and think about it with me. He says, verse 7, when he sees the Pharisees and Sadducees coming out of Jerusalem and to the Jordan river, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
John sees their leaving of Jerusalem as a fleeing of wrath that is coming. Here’s the thing: God is going to send a great day-of-the-Lord judgment on Israel’s capital city, Jerusalem, in one generation, and it is going to be awful and deadly. The city is choked with deadfall, and it is going to burn.
So in saying, “Who warned you to flee the wrath to come?” He’s saying, “How’d you know Jerusalem is going to get nuked? Are you here to repent?” And they weren’t, as we know.
His charge is that they had become like the pagan nations, and that they could only be renewed from their exile by passing through a radical renewal, a death and resurrection—by realizing that they are trapped in the wilderness of sin, not really at home in the Promised Land, and that they need pass again though the waters of the Jordan and be saved—and they’d better do it soon, because there is wrath coming.
What is his Promise?
And yet with that charge, the prophet brings a promise as well: The Lord is coming. In fact, he’s so close, that we need to prepare the way for him to walk in the door.
His cry, verse 3, makes this plain: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight!” And verse 11 doubles down: This coming One will be able to baptize us with the very Spirit of God! The promise is clear: Messiah Lord is here! And that promise, we see in the text, means at least three glories have arrived with Christ:
1. Because the Lord is at hand, so is the Kingdom of Heaven.
That was John’s justification for why these Israelites needed to repent: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Now, think about this with me: Who do the Jews think they are? God’s nation! They are, in their estimation, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth! And yet, here John comes, the prophet of God, telling them to repent—why? Because the Kingdom is here, guys!
The implication is plain: You are not, ethnic Israel is not, this little country in the Middle East is not the Kingdom. He warns them, verse 9, “…do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.’”
The point is the same one we need to consider today: The Kingdom of God isn’t a mere matter of genetics. Don’t think you are in because you are related to Abraham through Isaac! Don’t think, Refuge, that you are in because of your family tree! It’s not enough! We must come through door of repentance and faith; there is no other.
Of course, none of this means the promises to our children are null and void, right? The Apostles proclaimed in the book of Acts that the promises of the Gospel are for us and to our children and to all who are far off. Paul tells us that our children are holy. God says that he shows his faithfulness to the thousandth generation of those who love him and keep his commands. But all of us—our sons and daughters included—must heed the Shepherd’s call and come.
So John’s promise is plain: Though sons of Abraham have become sons of serpents, God can make sons of Abraham from stones. In fact, he does. That’s what he has done for us, who were far off, Gentiles, unrelated to the line of Abraham—hearts like stone. Yet God took out those stones and put in true hearts; he made us Abraham’s sons by giving us Abraham’s faith.
2. Because the Lord is coming, a straight way through the wilderness is here.
Matthew tells us in verse 3 that John’s ministry was a fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah. He’s referencing Isaiah 40, which reads like this:
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.A voice cries:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’”-Isaiah 40:1–5
God promised that the exile of his people—the exile of their sin, ultimately, their exile, not just from the Land, but from fellowship with God—would come to an end. It would come to an end with the pardon of their iniquities.
And he paints a picture of a vast and tangled wilderness separating us from God. And the prophecy is that one will come, a voice, and he will cry out, “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the LORD; make staring in the desert a highway for our God.” This is John, and his message is glorious.
One is coming who will make a straight way through the wilderness of sin and back—not just from physical exile—but back to God. Christ would come, and he would blaze a highway through the wilderness, so that sinners could come back from their aeons long exile of sin in Adam, and be restored to God.
3. Because the Lord is coming, the wheat is going to be gathered in the barn.
Verse 11,
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
-Matthew 3:11–12
The picture of the winnowing fork is a farming illustration that was easily understood by John’s audience. They would harvest the wheat, and bring the dried stalks with wheat kernels on them to a smooth, often clay, floor that was outside. And they would trample it down with oxen or themselves, and then—especially on a windy day—they would take a winnowing fork, a kind of pitchfork, and toss the trampled wheat in the air. The light chaff would blow away in the wind, and the heavier kernels of wheat would come down on the threshing floor.
The point is the same as that made in Psalm 1, that though the righteous are like trees planted by a river, bearing fruit—the wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
God is going to gather his wheat up, but the wicked will be like chaff—except instead of just blowing away, they will be burned up with unquenchable fire. There is a judgment coming, and you don’t want to be chaff, but rather wheat.
Back to that Fire Analogy…
Let me close by coming back to the analogy I used at the beginning of forests choked with deadfall, waiting for a spark. We’ve seen now that Jerusalem is like that—choked with rot and pests and deadfall, and that a fire is coming—a big one.
But remember: One of the purposes for fires is to clear the way for new life to spring up. Fires clear away the old, pine-beetle-infested dead things, and make way for new saplings to grow into new forests.
In Matthew 3, a fire is coming to Jerusalem—a conflagration of unprecedented size. The judgment of this city is going to be cosmic in scope, and not one stone will be left standing of the Temple at its center. But God is not wasteful in his judgments. Even in this massive judgment, he is clearing ground for a new thing.
See, God is going to rebuild a new temple in the ruins of the old—except this Temple is going to be made not with dead stones and human hands, but with living stones by God’s own hand. It is going to be people. Instead of building a temple and calling the nations to come to it, God will build a Temple of the people and send them to the nations.
He is going to rebuild a New Jerusalem in the ruins of the old—the city of God, of every tribe and tongue and nations. By Matthew 5, we will see that Abraham’s meek sons inherit—not just the Promised Land—but the earth. God is making a mighty and meek people, and the meek will inherit the earth.
So the message for you today is the same as for them: Repent! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! It is at hand, it is increasing, it is here among you, and it is your only hope. Join in the Kingdom of Heaven: The old Kingdom is going to burn. The Kingdom of Darkness is self-immolating; don’t burn with it.
Come out of the city of idols. Come out of your sin. Come out of your pornography, your greed, your adultery, your gossip, your homosexuality, your pride, your longing to be liked by everyone, your worship of comfort and safety—whatever it is that is keeping you from coming to this Lord and his baptism: Repent, and come.
His yoke is easy. His burden is light. He’ll take your sin and your burdens, and he will give you his. Come.
Remember: When a prophet comes, when conviction comes, and you push it down over and over and over again—what you’re doing is choking your life with flammable deadfall. And you don’t know when the spark of judgment is going to come. Maybe you will die today. Maybe you will make it another 50 years. I don’t know. God knows. Heed him now. And don’t presume.