Amy C Walters

John the Baptist Prepares the Way – Luke 3:7-20

In Luke 1, the angel tells Zechariah that his son, John, would turn many people of Israel back to the Lord their God. And in Luke 3, we see John embrace that calling, sharing a message of repentance, even though it might not be popular or safe.

This story fast forwards many years from the previous story. When it left off, Jesus was a boy of 12 years old staying behind at the temple. Now Jesus is beginning to prepare for his public ministry. And John is stepping into his role of preparing people for Jesus’ ministry.

Luke 3:1 tells us that this is the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. It also mentions a number of other rulers, including Herod the Tetrarch. Tetrarch is the title for a regional ruler. Several other Tetrarchs are mentioned, but Herod is going to be important to our story today.

The beginning of this passage also tells us that John was in the desert when the word of the Lord came to him. In fact, Luke 1:80 says that John was in the wilderness until his public ministry. And that’s where this chapter picks up.

Notice that Luke uses a formula that we see in the prophetic books of the Old Testament that says “The word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.” So many prophetic books start off with the word of the Lord coming to a specific prophet. So that tells us that John is a prophet.

Let’s take a look back at what the angel said about John in Luke 1 to see how this story lines up with those prophecies. 

The angel told us that John would be “filled with the Holy Spirit from birth.” And in fact, when we learned the story about John’s birth several posts ago, we saw that people were already talking about how “the hand of the Lord was with John.” So clearly there is something special about John and what he’s doing.

We’re told that he would “turn many people back to the Lord their God.” And we get to this story, and it tells us that John spoke to the crowds who were coming out to be baptized by him. So this is the “many people” that the angel told us about and they are coming to be baptized. 

Now John’s baptism was not a baptism into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, because that hasn’t happened yet. Baptism actually predates Christianity. The Jewish people would often baptize people who had converted to Judaism.

For John, this was a baptism of repentance, of dedicating oneself to turning away from sin and turning in expectancy toward the Messiah.

So John is carrying out his calling, his ministry of preparing the way for the Messiah by speaking to the crowds, by challenging them with their sinfulness and their need for a Savior.

We’re also told that John would “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” In tomorrow’s blog post, we’re going to look at what that message is, what it means for people to be prepared for the Lord. But we already see a little bit of it in this passage, as John is baptizing people, teaching people, calling them to repentance.

A potential problem crops up: people start to wonder if John himself is the Messiah. But John corrects them. He says, “I baptize you with water, but one more powerful than me is coming, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” John is telling the people, “I am not the Messiah. He is still to come, and he is so much greater than I am.” 

We see this incredible humility from John. Even crowds of people coming out to see him doesn’t puff him up. John doesn’t point to himself–he does the work he is called to by pointing people to Jesus.

It’s interesting too, that crowds are flocking to John, because John does not have a pleasant, easygoing message for them. Right at the beginning, he calls them a “brood of vipers.” This is a horrible insult! He is calling them treacherous, deceitful people. He’s telling them that they are not good and they need to repent. So John’s message is not one that you would think would draw a lot of crowds.

John’s message might even be one that some people would be afraid to preach because it’s going to turn people away. People don’t want to hear bad news like that. And yet, that is what John is called to do, and he embraces it, not shying away from difficult messages.

John’s message is even going to put him into a dangerous situation as he speaks out against Herod the Tetrarch. Herod, the ruler of that region, had taken Herodias, his sister-in-law, as his own wife. John calls him out for that and other evils that Herod had done. This makes Herod so angry that he throws John into prison. So John, in doing the work that he was called to do, ends up in prison.

Sometimes when bad things happen to us, it’s easy to think maybe we did something wrong. Where did God go? Did he abandon me in this? Or did I make a mistake? Am I in sin? Is that why these bad things are happening?

But here we see that John was doing what he was meant to do, and that still put him in a dangerous situation. He went headlong into his calling, even though it was a difficult message, and even though it got him in trouble.

And this is something that we need to learn from John, that we too should embrace our calling. That is our key truth for today.

John of course had a unique, distinct calling: to prepare the way for the Messiah. There are even prophecies in Scripture about him. There’s one in the Book of Isaiah that’s even quoted here in Luke 3:4-6.

So John has a very specific, unique calling, and we are not called to that same thing. But there are other things that we as believers are called to.

First of all, it’s the call to accept Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf, to accept him as our Savior. Like this message of John says, we are called to repent and to trust Jesus alone for salvation. Have you accepted that calling? We need to first acknowledge that we are sinners and that we need a Savior and that Jesus alone is that Savior.

We are also called to obedience to Jesus, to know what he has taught us and to do those things, not just to be hearers only, but to be doers of what Jesus has taught. We are called to sanctification. That means becoming more and more like Jesus. While we are on this earth, we are always going to struggle with sin. But we need to be growing in Christlikeness, growing in our understanding of the things that please him, and our desire to do those things that please him. Even if it means sharing difficult messages or getting into difficult situations, like it did with John.

We are called to be Christ’s ambassadors, to share Christ’s message with others. Just like John telling people about who Jesus is and preparing the way for him, pointing people to Jesus himself.

And we are also called to serve Jesus, to do the good works that he has prepared in advance for us to do.

Some of you also are going to be called to specific things. Maybe you’re called to full-time ministry, to do ministry as your occupation.

Maybe you feel that God is calling you to a specific place in the world to go and tell people about Jesus there because they don’t have access to the message.

Maybe God is calling you to endure with patience a difficult situation right where you are.