A reading of Matthew’s account of Jesus’s fore-runner, John the Baptist

1. My devotional reading this morning (Monday, Nov 2, 2026) took me through Matthew’s gospel, chapter 3, verses 5 to 12.
2. I picked up a Movement of the Message, the Mission, the Man and His Ministry. And John the Baptist’s ministry was to spotlight the ministry of “the Man”, the Messiah Himself, Jesus Christ, who was already present, and soon to be announced by John to the Judean public that had come out to be baptized by him.
3. There are some themes in Matthew’s account that hold particular pertinency for us. The message of the Holy Spirit in and through Scripture, speaks to all men of all ages, regardless of their varied culture, station of life or upbringing or status, ethnicity and language.
4. Surprisingly, John lets loose a barrage of uncompromising truth when he sees the religious establishment coming to his baptism. Instead of being gratified, even flattered that the religious elite were attending his baptism services, he actually offends them, and teaches us a great truth in the process.
5. “Brood of vipers” in its simplest terms would be to call someone or a group that they are born snakes! Incredibly, John’s sharp words echoes Jesus’s and his half-brother, James’s later. In John’s gospel, chapter 8, verse 44, Jesus, speaking to the same group of religious elite, calls out their true nature, see below the full quotation:
   1. New American Standard Bible
      You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44
   2. James 4:14 But if you harbor bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast in it or deny the truth. 15 Such wisdom does not come from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every evil practice.
6. The movement in the message and ministry of John and especially of Jesus begins here. A strong declaration that our sin nature contains demonic element, and must be dealt with thoroughly. And John is careful to point to “He who is coming after me is mightier than I”, and proceeds to explain and expound the mission and ministry of Jesus.
7. This beginning is crucial because the current zeitgeist (“spirit of the times”) is hostile to the unvarnished truth. Actually, the zeitgeist has always been hostile the naked and raw truth since the Fall in the Garden. When the serpent’s strategy to paint God as total opposite of His gracious sovereignty to man, and when man accepted that venomous spoken lie, that misrepresentation of God hit man in his core, even in his DNA, affecting manking physically, and spiritually. And the spiritual is connected to the psychological elements of man. Man became stained with the serpent’s own adversarial life against a good and gracious God.
8. It would need a supernatural work and word of God to transform the rock hard heart of sinful men, and it would need continuous fire to thoroughly clean him.
9. When sin is taken lightly, the Savior and His ministry of cleansing and empowering is too. A diluted gospel message contaminated with humanistic ideas and tone, kills!
10. A supernatural work of transformation of a rock hard heart is what Jesus was getting at when Nicodemus, possibly part of the “brood of vipers” that went out to see John the Baptist, engaged Him in John’s gospel, chapter 3, during the night-time theological chat.
11. Such is the contamination of sin in every aspect of man’s thinking, feelings and behaving, that man “must be born-again, from above, of the Spirit”. And in John’s gospel, chapter 5, Jesus likens His ministry of bringing Eternal Life to many as calling men from the grave, and out of the tombs.
12. Today, the gospel message has been severely reduced to “accepting Christ”, and almost totally devoid of repentance from a life of independence and rebellion towards God.
13. Jesus’s mission, ministry and message is “I baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”. The outcomes are:
    1. His winnowing fan is in His hands. Winnowing fork is also used in some translations. The idea is one of the gospel separating the old bad stuff from the new good creation. 2 Cor 5:17 is pertinent here. The gospel affects nothing less and nothing else than a “creation in Christ”. A new heart, a new spirit, just as the prophets promised in Jeremiah 31:31, and in Ezekiel 36:24-28
    2. He begins the moment of salvation in a repentant heart and His salvific movement continues under His gracious sovereign hand. A believer by keeping their focus on the Savior and the saving story continuously, experiences the incredible grace of God through the empowering presence of the Spirit of Christ resident and working His plans and purposes in and through them.
    3. John the Baptist goes on to say that “He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor”. The work of salvation in our lives is thorough. And because God uses fire of life’s often unpredictable circumstances, we can be sure that pain and frustration is part of the process of us being cleaned.
    4. John also says that “He will gather His wheat into the barn.” Again, assurance and confidence in the complete plan of salvation in Christ that He is gathering His fruit, His children, into His storehouse.
    5. Finally, “He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire”. The existential crises that followers of Christ encounter are the burning of the chaff that is the outer lying surface that yields the true wheat of a life purchased by Christ Himself, who gave His life as seed of the wheat that falls on the ground, dies, and bears much fruit!
14. We mustn’t ever make the mistake that God is not good all the time, and some of the time, God is perhaps good. That goes against the grain of who God is, and His character of being overwhelmingly good that we cannot handle such goodness and grace. No, God is good ALL the time, and ALL the time, GOD is GOOD!
15. Anchored on this indisputable truth, we continue to echo the Psalmist in Psalm 23, verse 6, “Surely goodness and mercy shall “radaph” (Heb), pursue me relentlessly, ALL the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD (indeed, Christ by His Spirit indwells us right now!) forever.”