We got like three feet of snow in the last few days here. This is one gigantic blizzard. I've been in some crazy stuff. I don't know though that I've ever seen something quite like this. Howling winds, and so these three feet of snow, you know, that's gonna drift up to five or six feet in places. It was up almost at the top of our door on the back deck. And it's not like we didn't see it coming. I mean, it was all over the news and everything. They were canceling stuff in advance. But we got home, we're kind of getting ready to hunker down. My wife's like, hey, we got to put chains on the truck so we can battle back and get out of this tomorrow. It's gonna be too deep otherwise. And we have this old beater F-150 with an old plow on the front, and I use it when stuff gets bad to clear a roads in our driveway. But I mean, yeah, I don't know if everybody knows this, but you can put chains on the tires of your truck to get added traction, battle back against ice and slick stuff. And it really is a very impressive thing. I've driven vehicles with chains on them, but truth to be told, I don't know that I've ever actually totally put chains on before this weekend myself. Anytime I've done that, I've had help, and then you just, you know, like dudes do, you stand there and you act like you know what you're doing and ask a couple questions to make it seem like you bring something to the table, but you don't. So getting this figured out, I don't know, it was kind of balking. I was like, oh, I'll just do it without chains. And Camilla just kept saying, like, no, we have to buy chains and put them on. So she took action, went and found a place right as the snow was starting to hit that had chains in the right size for the tires and brought them back. I was like, cool, we'll put those on tomorrow in the snow if we need them. She's like, no, you're not gonna do it tomorrow because the snow is gonna be horrible. We have to be geared up and ready for what's coming now. I just want to watch TV. And so I geared up and I went out there with her and we watched some YouTube videos and we chained up the truck by ourselves, and we got it right. And I just gotta say, as a side note, when she does stuff like that, I just find it enormously attractive. So, whatever the case, we high-fived and got that done, and then sure enough, the blizzard hit and it was horrible, and it was a really good thing that I had those chains on, or we would have been completely out of luck. But here's the point: I had a way that I'd been doing things for a very long time, but there was an impending situation coming down the pike. And my wife was like, You have got to do things differently because of what is about to happen. Segue, that is almost exactly what John's message is in Matthew chapter three. Specifically, he says it like this: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. Translation: change what you're doing because a big gigantic thing is about to happen. And before we even get into breaking down what that means, we gotta get rid of the stuff that is the cultural baggage that we bring to the text right now. Because when we picture this, we picture street preacher, sandwich board, yelling at anybody and everybody for everything. Oh my goodness, we had this idiot who would show up at a couple of the campuses that I was on, both as a student and as an instructor. And he would just yell at everybody. And dude was just making stuff up. Like it's not like he knew these girls. He's just called them every nickname for prostitute that he could possibly think of. And he thought that somehow yelling at everybody about things like this would help them better understand the message of the love and mercy of Jesus. And everybody hated him. And frankly, they were right to reject his message because he was a jerk and he was missing the point. So when we hear the word repent, I mean, we're kind of triggered to think about that kind of crazy stuff that you don't hear as much anymore, but was popular even 10 years ago to go out and try as a means of public evangelism. No, what's happening here is a call that I think is just very literally in keeping with the meaning of the word, which is you're going this direction, go this other direction, because if you keep going that direction, it's the wrong direction and it's going to hurt. Because of this thing that's about to happen, the kingdom of heaven being at hand, which we'll break down in a second, you need to go in this other direction. So where we picture quit doing naughty things, John actually seems to be more interested in telling people to start proactively doing good things, in addition to not doing some destructive and obviously evil stuff as well. What we really see from John is him inviting people to participate in the values of the kingdom of God. So when he's saying repent because the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God is at hand, what he's really saying is this whole new set of values under the authority of this king who you're about to get to know is being put in place, and you want to be on that team. You want to be a part of it. Now, to get a better sense of what he was teaching specifically, we can jump again over to the corresponding passage in Luke. And, you know, he says the same kind of stuff that we're gonna see him saying in Matthew chapter 3. And the axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Okay, so there's some pretty scary stuff about how things are gonna go down when God's judgment happens and this kingdom is initiated, and people are compelled by it. And so they ask in verse 10 of Luke 3, Well, what should we do then? The crowd asked. And John answered, The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same. The tax collectors also came to be baptized, and a teacher they asked, What should we do? And John said, Don't collect any more than you're required to, he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, and what should we do? And he replied, Don't extort money, and don't accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay. So you see how all of these things are kind of customized for the station in life that these people occupy. In other words, implicit in John's teaching is that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, is for everyone, for people of high station and low station. And the kingdom of God should affect our thinking and our behavior and our values and our priorities, whether we have a lot of responsibility, a lot of authority, a lot of possessions, or very little of each of those things. So clearly the call here is not just a reactive one to stop being bad, but it's a proactive one to embrace the values of the coming king. And as we're going to see as we move forward in this conversation, there's more than just embrace kingdom values and reject world values. There's also this overtone of reject the mindset of hopelessness and the screwed-up religious stuff that was going on. But again, we'll get into that as we look at the Pharisees and Sadducees arriving on the scene in verse 7 here down the road. The bottom line is this: much like the gigantic impending blizzard that was such a big deal on the horizon that the only common sense thing for me to do was to respond to the prompting to change my behavior. So the only thing in John's mind that would make sense for his original audience to do would be to see that all the signs line up, the kingdom is at hand, something big is about to occur, God is about to do something in a very visible way, in a lot of ways, maybe for the first time in hundreds of years, and you want to be aligned properly, positioned properly for this thing. So what does he do? Well, he goes out and he bravely picks a fight with the people who he needs to pick a fight with. Because the religious leaders of the day are not interested in the kind of stuff that he's talking about. The religious leaders of the day, as we'll see, are far more interested in making lemonade out of the historical lemons they've been dealt and preserving and expanding even their own status, power, and wealth. This crazy talk of John, though, it gets through to people in a way that the religious leaders aren't. There's an honesty to this. When somebody's willing to sacrifice something to say it, it's a lot more compelling than when somebody says it from a very cushy position where obviously they get a ton of stuff out of the deal. And so John is the right guy at the right moment. It's almost as if it's providential in the way that it's set up. And his message resonates with people because, dude, people are showing up for this. You're starting by confronting people's screwed-upedness. You're talking about something that hasn't yet happened, but that you're promising is coming. You set up your operation in the middle of a desert and literally like the least convenient place for people to come to. I mean, if you've ever been to the Badlands in South Dakota, this is the kind of place where he's operating. It's scrubby, there's not a lot of food to eat. That's why he probably ate locusts and honey. It's not pleasant in terms of temperature. It's a very difficult walk down from the highlands where Jerusalem is at, where most of the population base would have been. It would be very difficult to get word to anybody. This is just an awful looking operation in every sense of the word. And you're going right up against much more powerful, much more reputable religious leaders who have a proven track record and a standing audience, and yet people are showing up. Why? Well, like I already said, I think it resonated because of the authenticity of the person saying it. I think it resonated because God ordained that it was going to resonate, because in this perfect moment in history, he's clearly providentially moving things about to put the right people in the right places and to pull up the right kind of leaders to do this stuff that he wants to accomplish. I also think it was the right message for the moment. All of this hopelessness, all of this promise of nothing for a long time and a whole lot more nothing to come, and religiously we can help you adjust to nothing better, gets replaced with, nah, something. Something is going to happen. And further, this isn't just some large movement that affects everybody else and is some kind of intellectual thing that you have to assent to. This is something that's coming that affects you, that you are a player in. And the very act of calling people to repentance is an act of including them in this moment in redemptive history. You have a role to play, you matter, you have a part in this thing, and you need to be ready and prepared for what it's going to look like. This was just weird. It was different, it was timely, it was sincere, it was convicting. And further, people go out into the desert and they engage in a practice that really wasn't a thing yet at this point in history. And we're going to talk about that more specifically in an upcoming episode as well. It would seem that John is indeed this voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. And in the very next episode, you know what? We're going to have to break that down pretty specifically. There's an Old Testament reference there to Isaiah chapter 40. And I don't think we have time to fully wrap our brains around what's going on there and everything that Matthew's drawing on. So I'm going to hit pause at this point. I'm going to say thanks again to everybody who left a rating and a review this week. That is a huge help. And thanks also to everybody who supports the program at patreon.com slash the TMBH podcast. Your way I can do this. Thank you. All right, we're going to pick it up tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Thanks for doing this with me. We'll catch you soon.