(Read Matthew 3:1-7; 13-17.)
MANY stories have been made out about what the Lord Jesus said and did when He was a Child, but we cannot believe these stories. God has told us that “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Try to find this verse for yourself, without asking anyone to help you. It is in the second chapter of the Gospel by St. Luke.
In the same chapter we are told of some words which the Lord Jesus said when He was twelve years old. You will find them in the forty-ninth verse, and in the next verse you may read that Joseph and Mary did not understand what He meant when He spoke of being about His Father’s business. The next verse tells us that Jesus was “subject unto them.” While the Son of God lived in that poor house at Nazareth, growing up to be a man, He behaved at home as a child should behave, and was obedient to the wishes of Joseph and of Mary, His mother. But, all the time, in all His thoughts and in all His ways, He was pleasing God, His Father; for the Lord Jesus, when a Child, was quite different from any child who ever lived before; other children thought about themselves, and tried to do what they would like, and to get what would please them, but He never did one thing to please Himself, but was always meek and lowly in heart, and the grace of God was upon Him.
In the first chapter of the Gospel by St. Luke we read of the birth of John the Baptist. The name John was given him before he was born, by an angel sent by God to his father. It means “God is gracious.” When this name was given to him, God taught his father something wonderful about his son, and he said to him, before all the people who were there, “Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His way.” He said, too, that this child should turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.
The time was now come for the saying about John to come true. Thirty years had passed away since the time of which we last read, when the child Jesus, with Mary His mother, went to live at Nazareth.
The chapter which you have just been reading tells us about the preaching of John the Baptist, and Matthew explains to us that he was the one of whom God’s prophet Isaiah had spoken many, many years before. The prophet had said there should be “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” This voice was the voice of John, and it was in the “wilderness of Judaea” that it was heard, crying aloud, “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
The wilderness of Judaea was the place where John had lived a long time: if you find on your map where the Dead Sea is, you will know about where John the Baptist first preached. He wore a rough-looking dress, most likely very much the same as the “mantle” which Elijah wore; camel’s hair cloth is hard and coarse, but is a very good dress for keeping a man safe from heat and cold and rain. John ate locusts and wild honey; the locusts were a kind of grasshopper which the poor people of that country still eat when they cannot get better food. They catch them and dry them in the sun, and eat them with salt, as you eat shrimps, and sometimes they are eaten with gutter and honey. There are wild bees in the “wilderness of Judæa,” and travelers who have been there have gathered honey, not from hives, but from the trees and rocks.
In this chapter we are told who John the Baptist was, and how he used to live, and the words which he said when he gave God’s message to the people.
What does “repent” mean? Those who heard John cry that cry and understood it, those to whom God taught what His message meant, knew that they were quite wrong in all their ways and thoughts, and so they went in crowds to John and were baptized by aim in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Crowd after crowd came, and all had the same story to tell; they spoke of the wrong things they had done; they came “confessing their sins,” not trying to hide what they really were, as they came to God’s messenger to be baptized “unto repentance.”
At last, some came who did not confess their sins, for they trusted in themselves that they were righteous. These were the Pharisees and Sadducees. John spoke to them, and told them the truth about themselves, and then he began to speak of One who was coming after him. “He is mightier than I,” John said; “I am not fit to carry His shoes.” Slaves used to carry their masters’ shoes, and John meant that he was not worthy to do the least thing for Christ, whose way he had come to prepare.
How surprised John must have been to see Jesus come to be baptized! It troubled him very much, and he tried to prevent Him, saying, “I have need to be baptized by Thee, and comest Thou to me?”
Jesus answering said unto him, “Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness,” and John allowed it to be so.
We may be surprised, too, that the holy Son of God, whose thoughts and ways were all for God, all perfect and beautiful, should come to be baptized with these poor people from Jerusalem and Judaea who had found out how wrong their thoughts and their ways had always been. They were confessing their sins, and the Lord Jesus had no sins to confess: but, in a place where all the people were sinners, there were some who did not try to cover themselves up out of sight, but said they were wrong. These people, who did not pretend, were the only right people, and the Lord Jesus came and took part with them.
But how did God in heaven show the difference between the Lord Jesus and all the people who had been baptized in the river Jordan?
Read the last two verses of your chapter, and you will see in what a wonderful way the difference was shown.
“And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water; and, lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him; and, lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
See whether you can find, in the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John, how John the Baptist first knew that the One whom he had baptized was indeed the Son of God, the One of whom he had spoken to the people, saying. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.” C. P.