Luke 3:1-18 - Homiletics

The forerunner, and his ministry.

Some thirty years have passed since the birth of a son of the old age had filled the house of the good priest Eacharias with the voice of rejoicing. The blameless priest and his blameless wife are dead. The son who, when an unconscious babe, was called "the prophet of the Highest," has lived the life of a recluse, receiving his inspirations wholly from the study of the Law of the Lord, from lonely communings with God and truth in the great temple of nature. There were many solitaries in that period. There were the Essenes, one of the sects of the Jewish nation. Eremites, too, dwelt in dens and eaves, fleeing far from the world, with its strife and tumult. But this man was no mere Essene, no mere Eremite. There was a vocation before him; like the Master who was to come after him, he was being filled with the Holy Ghost for the work the striking of whose hour is related in the passage. A man sternly, austerely simple. No phylacteries and fringes about him; no soft clothing and signs of luxurious culture. For dress there is only the skin of a camel thrown around him and held together by a rough leather band. His sole nourishment is the honey which he gathers in the moorland, and locusts steeped in water and dried in the sun. He wants nothing which the world can give to him, and he fears nothing which the world can do to him. He can stand alone, for God is with him. To him, in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, comes the Word of the Lord.

I. Observe, at the outset, THE TIME AND THE PROPHETIC DESIGNATION OF THEIR MINISTRY . The date bids us back to one of those times of confusion and uncertainty which mark the passing away of the old and the preparation for a new day or period. Note the names in Luke 3:1 . Tiberius, a low, dull, sottish despot; Pontius Pilate, indolent, overbearing, greedy; Herod, disgracing his tetrarchate by by open licentiousness; Caiaphas and Anuas disputing for the priesthood, and neither of them worthy of respect Typical of the world on which from his Judaean retreat the son of Zacharias looked forth. "The godly man ceased, for the faithful were failing from the children of men." Then—reminding us of Elijah the Tishbite, who abruptly confronts Ahab in his purple, protesting, "as the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand"—on a sudden the popular vision is arrested, the popular imagination is excited, by the figure and preaching of John. The evangelist sees in this preaching the fulfillment of the sublime prophecy of Isaiah ( Isaiah 40:3 - 5). Looking at this prophecy, we are struck with the greatness of the announcement, and the apparent insignificance of the fulfillment. There is nothing incongruous in applying to John the description, "a voice crying in the wilderness." But the results declared—the filling of every valley, the bringing low of every mountain and hill, etc.—seem too vast as a representation of the effect of John's cry. Reading Isaiah's sentences we imagine a work with inspiring circumstances, with grand, striking evidences of its accomplishment; turning to the Gospel pages we are introduced only to a rough preacher of the desert, uttering sharp sentences, and aiming at a spiritual repentance for the remission of sins. Yet in this preacher and in his work the prediction was fulfilled— in God's way . Let no one despise the poverty of the instrument. "The excellency of the power is of God." The chapter reminds us of a wonderful blaze of popularity. On the effete religiousness of Judea it came as a new sensation to hear that a man, recalling the image of Elijah, was speaking in sentences which fell like thunderbolts; and forth from priestly Hebron, from Pharisee-worshipping Jerusalem, from city and village, there poured a mighty throng, all hastening to the desert-sanctuary of John. Again the long-silent Spirit of God was speaking; the chain of prophecy, which seemed to have ended with Malachi, had again been formed. They gather trembling and awe-struck around that strange, uncouth-looking saint; he bids them submit to his baptism; they do so; and sanctimonious religionist and haughty soldier and corrupt publican demand, "What shall we do?" It was a great religious revival, raising the question, "Can this be the dawn of Messiah's day? Is this indeed the Messiah promised to our fathers?"

II. Regard THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE . What is the force of the man? What is the relation of his word to Christ?

1 . The preacher .

(1) There is the force of earnestness . He has looked through all the appearances and shams of his age, and has seen how hollow they are. He has been communing with the unseen realities; and to him heaven and hell are no distant futures, but are states actually encompassing men. He is possessed by the word which has come to him, and therefore he is beyond the region of fear. What are either smiles or frowns to him? Therefore, too, his is the eloquence of action. A man in earnest will not trifle among the flowers of rhetoric; he has no time to hunt for metaphors and tropes. Is not life very short? He must get by the most direct road possible to the human conscience. Ah! that is the power of the God-sent preacher. When men feel that there is no second-hand repeating, that there is no mere playing at dialectics, that there is no part-acting, that the utterance proceeds from conviction, that it is the expression of truth which is swaying the soul, they cannot but listen; so far they will yield. Earnestness is not noisy rant; but, calm and quiet as it is, like the kingdom of heaven, it breaks in with violence. It must work, fight, win.

(3) Add to this the thorough honesty and humility of the teacher . Every person knows that the ordinary ambitions of men have no charm for him; even the extraordinary ambitions—to be a leader of thought, to guide and direct spiritual movement, to stamp the impression of his own mind on others—have no power over him. He claims to be only the voice. "Art thou the Christ?" so deputations of the Pharisees ask; to this effect the people muse. "No" is the answer; "there is One behind me. I am only the witness, only the herald. Mine is only the poor baptism with water. His is the baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Thoroughly honest, unselfish, noble, is this prophet of the desert.

2 . Now consider his message as that is stated by St. Luke.

(2) The sacrament which accompanies the word . There is the baptism of repentance. Sinners must take their stand with God as to their sins, joining him in his condemnation. They must confess their sins. They are commanded to do this in expressive act—to go down, soiled with dust and weary with their journey, into the river; standing there, with eye uplifted to heaven, to say, "I acknowledge my transgressions; against thee, thee only, have I sinned. God be merciful to me a sinner!" And then, as they sink beneath the water, they seem to have sunk in it their old sinful life; they arise, white and clean, pledged to walk henceforth in newness of life. A type yet to be fulfilled! John distinctly protested, "This baptism is only an installment; the laver of regeneration is not with me." But it was a symbol rich with meaning; it was the act which expressed the word that rang through the wilderness, "Repent!"

(3) The hand which pointed forward . This man, with the true second sight, sees the measure of iniquity all but filled up. He sees the tokens of rapidly hastening judgment. The nation is only the carcase of a nation, and the eagles are swooping down on it. "Flee, flee from the wrath to come." How? "Repent!" Whither? "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." He is there to prepare them for it, to lead them to it. Note: The preacher knows that a new order, that of the Coming One, is close on them· But he knows no more. "While he is preaching, that new order is moving towards him in the person of the Cousin on whom his eyes, for long years, had never rested—perhaps, indeed, he had never even seen him. "I knew him not," he could afterwards say. All that he then knew, he knew through an inner teaching which was no lie, "One mightier than I cometh, and with him cometh the kingdom of heaven."