Other than being generally associated with living in the West, I don't have a lot of cowboy credibility, but still, I went to the boot barn with my wife the other day, and she was trying on some cowgirl jeans, most of which I thought were pretty cool looking. And so she tried on four or five. And for most of them, I was like, yeah, thumbs up. That's great. I like those. Any of those would be fine. There was one she tried on. I don't know. I just didn't like the cut. I mean, she still looked good, but it just wasn't my favorite. And I kind of did like the thumbs down and sort of the I don't know face. And she knew what that meant, and she ended up getting some jeans, and I really like them. And in the same way that both of us knew exactly what the thumbs down gesture meant in that context, so everyone knew what the very same gesture, the thumbs down, meant in the context of the Roman gladiatorial arena in classical Rome. It didn't mean I don't like your pants. It meant run that guy through with the sword and make him dead in front of all of us. Whereas when I used it in a more recent setting, I didn't want to run anyone or anything through with the sword. Not the pants, not any people, not the lady that's trying to sell it to us. Just no killing whatsoever. Same exact gesture, very different connotations. Likewise, when we get to Matthew chapter three, there's always a likewise, isn't there? But this is a good one. Because look, when we get to Matthew chapter 3 and verse 11, we're seeing that John is conceiving of two very different gestures that look the same on the outside, but that do something and mean something and are motivated by something very different. Once again, he says, I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I'm not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. All right, there is a lot going on here, but just to reset this thing, because maybe it's been over the weekend for you, we got a situation where John the Baptist is out in the wilderness living this crazy man life, but for some reason his message of repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near is really attractive to people. And people are flooding down from the more fancy parts of the country to go out and be like, okay, I repent of stuff. And then John would baptize them, literally dunk them underwater and bring them back up. And that was it. There wasn't really a next thing that you went and did other than follow through on your repentance. So you get this big religious movement that's unfolding. Matthew is connecting this religious movement to a whole bunch of stuff that had already happened in the Old Testament and views this as the completion of prophecy. The prophecy being that there's supposed to be one that paves the way for the Messiah, the promised one of God, the one who is the completion of all of the promises to David about this extended line of kings that would result in this one great king and this one great kingdom that's coming. So high stakes here. All of this is going on, and then the religious leaders come out, John rebukes them, and this verse in verse 11 happens in the middle of that rebuke. That there's, you know, this one kind of baptism that I'm doing, but there's this other kind of baptism that's coming. But what do these two baptisms mean and how are they different? That's what I want to try and tackle here. So what's not different is the method of baptism. The Greek word for baptize is baptizo, and there really isn't even an English word for baptize. It just is a Greek word with the ending very slightly changed. So trying to figure out what the English equivalent of baptize is is kind of the wrong question. It is look, it meant dunk something underwater. We've got extra-biblical sources. I think the most prominent of which is a poet named Nicander who wrote about preparing vegetables or something. It's like you gotta baptize the pickle in the thing. I don't remember if it was a pickle or not, but it was something like that. And so the word just literally means to dunk. Now, look, I know that Christian theology has evolved, and I know that there's a whole lot of thinking that brought us to a point where some people say that you baptize by pouring water on somebody or by sprinkling water on somebody or maybe even a baby. That just isn't what's in view here. If that makes sense in someone's Christian understanding of theology and how to become a Christian and how to enter into the church, I'm cool with that. I'm not in charge of Christianity. Whatever's fine. I don't really have a dog in this fight. But as we look at this passage, what we see is that literally the word meaning to dunk is used to describe both what Jesus does and what John does. There's a separate Greek word for what it is to sprinkle, that's rontizo. We don't call him John the Rontizazizer. We literally have a word for the other practice. It's used like four times, maybe in Hebrews, in reference to sprinkling blood in the style of Old Testament sacrifices. So there's no confusion about physically what's actually going on with this sign any more than there'd be a confusion about what I mean when I say thumbs down. We can all picture it. Again, if you do it differently now, baptism can take on different meanings over time. That's cool. Just here it means this. I think we're not in a fight, and I think it's going to be cool to move forward. Okay. So John is baptizing with water for repentance. Oh, well, that makes sense because in verse three, remember, or verse two rather, it's repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. So these people are coming out to say, our bad for doing the stuff that we're doing. You'll recall that we looked at the expanded account in Luke where uh we detail exactly what things people need to quit doing. The crowds need to be more generous. So you got a tunic and somebody else doesn't have one, give them one. If you got some money and you can help somebody else, help them out. If you're a tax collector, quit stealing from people and take them more than you're supposed to. If you're an occupying soldier, quit oppressing the people. So everybody's got a thing that they need to change and come away from this thing changed over. So apparently, John's baptism is one of confirming that repentance. The repentance is an act at a moment in time where a person says, I gotta knock that off. Yick. And here's a way of me, like you're putting a stake in the ground to say, boom, from this moment in the timeline forward, I am declaring to everyone, I'm done with that before God and men and women. I'm done with that. Here's how I'm gonna live moving forward. And this again is preparatory in nature for the next thing God is going to do cosmically in history, and the next thing that God is going to be doing, presumably in the individual lives of the people who are baptized. So, real simple, John's baptism first involves some kind of belief. That is, I mean, the people who are doing this think there's a God, or else the whole motivation to change wouldn't push them out into the desert to do this, and it involves repentance, real simple. So, how is the Jesus thing different? Why did I turn the page? All right, here we go. But then he goes on to say, but after me will come one who's more powerful than I, whose sandals I'm not fit to carry. You don't need a lot of exposition on this. You can figure out the point here. He's saying this guy's way, way more important. He's gonna do something that matters more, and his baptism is gonna be different. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Huh. Well, is this one of those double sayings where both words point to the same conclusion? Or is this one of those sayings where each word points to a different part of this reality? It's like in Game of Thrones or Song of Ice and Fire, the HBO series, you've got one of the houses where they're saying is fire and blood, house Targaryen, right? And well, does that mean that what they're into is fire, like burning stuff down and blood, like the blood of the family, and we stick together? Or does it mean like fire and blood, like we're just gonna rain death and destruction on everything? And, you know, you kind of have reasons as you read or watch to believe that it could mean either, and that's kind of the fun of good literature, is it makes you think about what that turn of the phrase is about. Well, likewise, here there are kind of two schools of thought on what John's description of this baptism means. If we take the meaning to be Holy Spirit and fire are one package deal saying the same thing pointing in the same direction, then it's clearly a purifying notion that the arrival of the Holy Spirit through the spiritual baptism in Christ and the external baptism that goes along with that, that this is purifying. It makes the yuck go away, it resolves the problem of sin, though sin will still be present for a time. It is ultimately resolved in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, much like fire cleans out a forest when it burns and purges everything off, much like heat separates the true pure gold from the ick that needs to be scraped away and left for nothing because it's of no value. That's one way to read it. Another way to read it is that we're talking about two elements of what Jesus is going to do, that one baptism is the saving spiritual baptism with the accompanying physical sign of that baptism, and that the other reality is a baptism by fire, a judgment that is coming. Now, in support of that latter idea, is that verse 12 goes right back to talking about judgment. His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear the threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. I think the more attractive of these two positions, intuitively, is the first one because it's all positive. I think the more honest read given the text, like we talked about in the last conversation, is also the scarier read, which has to do with both God's grace and forgiveness and the reality of God's judgment. No matter how you read this passage or how you take John's meaning, it doesn't really matter because both are true. Well, everything he said is true. Jesus is a bigger deal than John. Jesus' baptism is one that is salvific, whereas John's baptism at this point was an in-between step. It was a statement of association with God, of mental preparation, of rejecting the stuff that would position one poorly to be receptive to what is God is doing next. But what God is doing next is Jesus. So this is a chronological moment in the unfolding of redemptive history that these people are uniquely on screen for. John's baptism doesn't really make a ton of sense moving forward because Jesus' baptism fully displaces it in purpose and in theological meaning. It's consumed in Jesus' baptism, which is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, salvation itself, people made right with God. And accompanying that is the baptism of repentance, but it's on a grander level than just behavior, because as we'll see moving forward, the repentance that Jesus is calling people to is meta. It's a repentance that says, I was serving as the default king of my own life. My little kingdom was the kingdom I participated in. The kingdom values of my own little kingdom or the world kingdom were the values I espoused and lived out. But now that the true king has arrived with his true kingdom in tow, with truer, realer kingdom values, real repentance in Christ means I reject all the old cheap king stuff and embrace this new real stuff. Again, I know there are people who are listening who are like, yep, I'm on board with that. And I know there are people who are listening who are like, nope, this is an ancient set of beliefs, and it's very interesting for me to learn about it and understand it, but I'm not doing that. Look, one way or another, what I'm telling you here is I believe this is what the text is trying to communicate. As always, come on, it's the internet. You can do with it what you need to, and I got my read, and you may have yours. And to put it very simply, my read is that Jesus is the true king, that his kingdom is the truest, realist thing, and that his kingdom values, even for people who really don't like Christian stuff, which I mean is understandable at times, these kingdom values are the best set of values. They're the values that everybody is designed for and that everybody wants, no matter what they happen to think religiously, there's real, sustainable truth to the teachings of Christ and the values of the kingdom he describes. And I'm very excited to get on through chapter three and chapter four and start getting into the specifics of what those kingdom values are about, because I think they're really exciting. And I do think they have an enormously universal appeal and ring of truth to them. I always want to do so much more, and then it goes so fast, and then we're here, and then I have to pause in awkward places where I don't want to, but yeah, I don't know, we're just gonna do more about it next time around. It's gonna be great. Dwell Audio Bible app is sponsoring this week of the podcast again. And look, if you want to give a super brilliant gift to somebody, regardless of what they think about things, the gift of Bible built into the regular rhythm of their day is a great idea. And so Dwell, as I mentioned last week, set up this special landing page for people who listen to the TMBH podcast where you can go and give Dwell. It's an app on a phone, so it's kind of difficult to give, but with this landing page, you can give it as a gift. And they're doing a gigantic discount on a lifetime subscription, which I think is a great idea for something to give to somebody. So I hope you'll check that out. You can do so at dwellapp.io slash tmbh Christmas, or even easier than that, you can just click on the top link in the show notes down below. Final thought, I know everybody thinks different stuff about baptism. The cool thing about this is that we don't really have to solve it right now because all we're really worried about in this case is the meaning of these two baptisms from the perspective of this particular text, which makes it really easy for us to get along over something that occasionally Christians get a little bit sideways with each other about. All right, excited to break this down further tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is a 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Catch you soon.