So over on the TMBH podcast subreddit, which is where we talk about the program, there was a post last week from a guy who goes by the internet handle Dagum snatch block. And it would seem that what he was asking was whether there'd be a way to give this Dwell Audio Bible app that I'm a big fan of, and they've been sponsoring the program, there'd be a way to give this as a Christmas gift. And I replied down here in the comments, so that seemed like a good idea. I'll ask them. And then Dwell replied in an email and they were like, that's a good idea, we'll do that. And so they did that. So the deal is if you go to dwellapp.io slash TMBH Christmas, you can get any variety, it's like a five-pack, there's a lifetime membership, there's a one-year deal, and you can give any of these as a gift to another human or to yourself because the internet's anonymous, so you can give gifts to yourself. Big thing that stands out is they're doing a lifetime membership with this deal for 50% off instead of 150 bucks at 75, which is awesome. So huge thanks to Dwell for sponsoring this week of the program, and huge thanks to Dangum Snatch Block for a really good idea that we decided to run with. All right, let's get after it. Talking about John the Baptist in Matthew chapter 3, it says in verse 3 This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. So we're talking about John the Baptist. This is the guy who lived the goofy aesthetic lifestyle out in the wilderness, and somehow, despite having a terrible marketing plan, got a whole bunch of people who come out and repent and change what they were doing and decide to get baptized in some sort of statement of alignment and preparation and change and readiness for what John called the kingdom of heaven's arrival. At least the kingdom of heaven is near. But we get this really famous verse here that we're told is from the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling in the desert. And whenever we see those, to really understand how the original audience would have understood this text and to better receive it for ourselves, I think we need to go back and check that stuff out. So it's in Isaiah chapter 40, and it's relatively close to the front end here. Verse three is where it crops up. But before I read it to you back here, which is gonna sound a lot like it sounded in Matthew, let me just frame up Isaiah for you one more time. Quickest summary of this book you'll ever hear. Right here. Here we go. The first half of Isaiah is a bummer. Things are really, really bad, horrible things are happening. There's gonna be external conquests and consequences for the things that you're getting wrong as a people. And he's talking mostly to the southern kingdom of Judah shortly before its fall. Isaiah wrote for a very long time, so long that some people think there was maybe even more than one Isaiah that was compiled into this document. And so he's telling the people, hey, you know, get ready for this stuff. This is the judgment that is coming. But the second half of Isaiah is super positive. There's, you know, some dark stuff in there, but overwhelmingly, starting in chapter 40, the tone changes from what feels like 39 chapters of just beating. This is brutal. This is so hard to take. Negativity and judgment and what feels like hopelessness suddenly is tempered with, oh, but don't panic completely. God's not done redeeming. And so this reference that we get to John the Baptist happens right at the pivot point of the book of Isaiah. It goes like this. Let's just start with verse one. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Okay. A voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God, every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low, the rough ground shall become level, and the rugged places a plain, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. So here we go with this glimmer of hope thing again. Now, if there was one prophetic book that I think everybody at this time would have been dialed on, it would have been Isaiah, because the people who were down on the leadership and frustrated with how the story had unfolded would have been like Isaiah called it 39 chapters. We are reaping what we have sown, and things are just going to be brutal, and this is something that we're going to have to endure. But others, more glass, half-full types, would have fixated on the second part and been like, no, but what about that shoot that was vaguely referenced early in the book of Isaiah that's fleshed out in the second half of Isaiah? This David's line that's still going to work out and things are going to be okay, and there's going to be all this good stuff that happens and makes things right and fixes everything that's broken. The point is, whether you were a downer type who is mad and trying to appease the occupying government or overthrow it with violence, or whether you were a positive type that believed that some sort of Messiah was still coming down the pike, Isaiah is language everybody would have been very, very familiar with. And everybody would have known where the pivot point was in Isaiah. So Matthew is doing something very important in likening John to this voice of the one calling in the desert. It's a change of pace from the pain and the suffering and the yuck to something that is comforting, to something that has God warming up to his people or making himself more available and present and about to do a thing again. So the language here would absolutely double up beautifully next to the language of repent for the kingdom of heaven is near, and that both of these things evoked a sense that God was about to be active again. And the language that goes on to talk about basically terraforming things, you know, leveling stuff out and making the rocky wilderness, unusable terrain suddenly usable and beautiful and arable, that kind of language would have stood out very dramatically in this particular geographic location that everybody would be envisioning down by the Dead Sea where stuff is badlandy and awful and wrecked. I mean, what would it take to make this terrain level and usable? What kind of power would that take? We're looking at a major sea change that's about to happen, and the subtleties of the language would be backing that up. Once again, John the Baptist, I believe, was crystal clear on what his role in all of this stuff was. He would have been raised around the story of Mary and Jesus and that visit that happened when both he and his cousin were in the womb. He would have been raised on the story of what happened in his father's life because he didn't believe the angel Gabriel and how he got his ability to speak back when John was born. He would have been raised, probably memorizing and reciting the words of the prophecy that Zechariah offered that we looked at over in Luke a couple of episodes ago. John knew what his destiny was. I think he probably had a pretty good idea of what it was going to cost him to take on, frankly, a lot of his dad's co-workers in communicating something that they weren't going to agree with and they weren't going to sign off on. I think he knew that he would be better off taking this message to a place that fit the prophetic language surrounding him and that better illustrated the gigantic change that was about to happen. And as a result, as we've discussed before, this worked. People showed up. They were eager to respond. But, and this is maybe one of the really important points of this particular conversation today. I'm not sure they knew exactly what was going to happen next. And I'm not sure John knew exactly what was going to happen next. You got this following, and it's really growing fast. It's growing fast enough to attract the attention of the powerful elites back home. And we'll get to that once we get to verse 7 here down the road. And you got people confessing and being baptized and frictions starting to happen, but where do you point this thing? Where does the movement go? They're not just going to hang out in the desert and follow John and keep getting baptized. I mean, you don't see anybody getting repeatedly baptized here. This is like a moment in time. This is a preparation for the next thing. Even his language, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near, says this isn't the end game. This is the preparatory game for whatever's going to come down next. In other words, the situation, historically, prophetically, dating all the way back to Isaiah, the situation dating back 30 years to the time of the birth of Jesus and John, the situation politically, all of these things are just pregnant for the next step to happen. And the next step is going to happen when the guy who all of this is about shows up at the Jordan River where these baptisms are occurring, and John immediately, immediately recognizes this is the point, this is where this story is going, and there's something of a handoff that occurs here. But what's interesting is that the transition isn't quite as smooth as you might expect for how everything goes down. And in future conversations, we're gonna have to come back to this and look at what happened with the is cult of John the Baptist too strong a language? I'm not sure it really is. Let's just use that language. If you don't like it, you can substitute other language in your brain as we go along. But really, what occurs with this tangent that isn't quite sure where it's supposed to go? And this doesn't just linger for a year or two into the ministry of Jesus. This John the Baptistism is gonna go on for at least decades. And we're gonna see it come up again all the way into the book of Acts. Again, more on that later. The singular, most important thing that we see here, though, is that John's job was somehow to be the opening act, the hype man for Jesus to throw all of the attention that direction, to ready the audience, to get people energized and worked up and thinking about these things again, and then to throw them directly to the solution and the main act. And that is what we're gonna get into in the next couple of conversations. Thanks to everybody who supports the program at patreon.com/slash the TMBH podcast. Can't tell you how much I appreciate what you do there. It makes all of this possible, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate just having the opportunity to turn on microphone and talk about interesting things that I think have huge implications with all of you. All right, I'm Matt. This is a 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do it again soon.