Right under the purple banner, "Introducing Your Child to the Gospel," you might be able to see a wooden cart. You can't see the details in this picture, but the cart has a canopy, so that it looks like a vending cart. It's full of bags of locusts and jars of honey, and has the words, "Wild honey", and "Fresh Roasted Locusts" painted on the side. There's desert in the background, and you can see John from behind with his long, wild hair, and brown, camel's hair cloak.Who was this wild man of the desert, washing Jews, and insulting the religious leaders of the day? Why were so many there to see him? Matthew says people from "all Judea and all the region around the Jordan" went out to see him. The answer that both Matthew and Mark give to the question of who he was, is found in the book of Isaiah, "The voice of one shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
So there John was, shouting in the wilderness, and preparing the way for Jesus by letting the people know that just being Jewish, children of Abraham, wasn't sufficient as far as God was concerned. After all, God could make children out of rocks if He wanted to. But God doesn't want rocks for His children. So John said, straighten up, turn away from your current path, repent. Get dipped to show your changed heart. (Just to make it clear, in John and Jesus' day, we're pretty sure baptism was practiced, but as a symbolic washing for those who wanted to become Jews, not the Jews themselves, so what John was doing was huge.)
I have this sense that the people of Jerusalem and Judea were looking for the "next big thing." Under oppression, aware that God promised deliverance some day, they may have flocked to anyone who had a certain charisma or powerful message. We have records of a few of these individuals and movements, which were often revolutionary and violent, each of which died out when the leader died. Was John just the next big thing? Was Jesus?
In considering Matthew 3, what strikes me as unique about John, is that he didn't say follow me. He said, get ready for what's to come. Rather, for who's to come. In essence, he was saying, "I'm not the next big thing, but the next big thing is coming." And it happened. With a big surprise even for John, Jesus came to him to be baptized, to fulfill righteousness. And the movement didn't die out when John was killed, because he had already passed on God's mantle to Jesus. And that movement didn't die out with Jesus' death, as we were able to attest to in our celebration yesterday.
As a society, though, and as individuals, often even as Christian individuals, we still seem to want to pursue the next big thing. Who will be the next American idol? What show will be the next American Idol? Pick from this list: O.J., Jon Benet, Anna Nicole. Or this list: Dr. Atkins, the Zone, L.A., Weight Watchers. Or this one: IM, Tivo, MySpace, blogs. (Oops, better stop now.) In Christian circles, we might have this list: church growth, purpose driven, prayer of Jabez, emergent, Velvet Elvis, Dominionism, house church, Lucado, Warren, LaHaye and Jenkins, Blackaby, Wilkinson, etc.
Recognizing this tendency to look for the next big thing, what can we take away from the picture presented in Matthew 3? Can you find the wild man of the desert in the picture painted by Matthew? What did he say? Can you find Jesus? In the picture above, He's the One in the rays of sunlight, so the kids can't miss Him. In Matthew's picture, He's the one Who when baptized, was blessed by God. What next big thing could we possibly be looking for? Listen to the wild man, and look at Who he pointed to. There's no need to keep looking for something else. The only big thing after His coming will be His coming again.
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