3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— 2 during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:
“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.
5 Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
6 And all people will see God’s salvation.’”
As we come to this account in Luke’s Gospel we note that Dr. Luke is framing for us John the Baptist’s ministry by the usage of the historical political context (Luke 3:1-2a) along with the context of fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy (Luke 3:4-5). Of the Gospel writers only the historian Luke gives to us the leaders in power at the time. This allows us to have a pretty good idea of the dating of Christ’s birth.
Luke giving us the political leadership landscape is not his only unique mark as a chronicler of the account of Christ. Luke also, alone, uniquely emphasizes the the impact which John’s arrival on the scene has upon a renewed realization of the promise found in Isaiah 40:3-5.
In Isaiah, which is the beginning fulfillment of seeing Israel’s promised deliverance by God was seen in their deliverance from their exile under Cyrus the great. That former deliverance is now being hearkened back to as a shadow deliverance type of a greater deliverance anti-type that is being announced to them now. As Isaiah was then a “a voice calling in the desert,” so the anti-type deliverance has another prophetic voice calling out in the desert.
Luke, through John the Baptist, informs us that God comes near, and as such all creation is to prepare for His arrival. It is as if creation is being told to turn itself into a red carpet for the arrival of God.
And it not just the creation that must ready itself for the coming of God. John the Baptist also demands a readying on the part of his audience that includes repentance (Luke 3:7f) This cry for a contrite heart also has echoes in Isaiah … this time from chapter 57
For this is what the high and exalted One says—
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
So Luke has John on the scene as the great herald of God’s coming near. This coming requires creation to be turned into a royal road for His arrival, as well as demanding that men are humbled in the presence of God, turning again to the doing of justice towards one another. God comes and all creation must be readied.
Of course this reminds us again that the New Testament grows out of the soil of the Old Testament. What is happening here in Luke 3 is conditioned and informed by what happened centuries earlier with a shadow and lesser deliverance. We need to keep this relationship between Old Testament and New Testament in mind when we read prophetic Scripture.
I.) The Importance of the Wilderness Motif in Christianity
This great and coming arrival of God is announced, in all places, a desert.
Now, a desert is hardly the place to make this kind of announcement. This kind of announcement belongs in the context of these high and mighty political personages that are mentioned here by John. Instead what we get is a desert God making the announcement of His arrival out of the mouth of His desert prophet.
Don’t miss the intended stark contrast here. Luke is contrasting here the Potentates of this world with the desert God and His spokesman. The coming of God is announced in a wilderness setting as set against all the splendor of worldly pomp and power represented by the emperor Tiberius, the governor Pilate, and the “ruler” Herod. Luke likewise gives us the names of the ruling religious establishment, (Annas and Caiphas). What Luke has done here is to situate the announcement of the coming of God in the context of the rule of man.
Great are the houses of Tiberius, Pilate, and Herod. Great is the pomp of Annas and Caiphas. The aspirations of each of these men are well known. Luke situates the coming of God’s Messiah in such a way that what is communicated to the alert reader is that God once again intends to use the seemingly trivial, obscure, and unanticipated to answer the problems of a world that the regal political and religious establishment structures of the day can not answer.
God comes near but when He comes near He announces it in and through a lonely desert prophet.
God comes near but when He comes near He does so through a unknown and virgin maiden descendant of David
God comes near but when He comes near He does so through a people who were considered “the least of all peoples.”
God comes near but when He comes near He makes lowly Shepherds His announces
God comes near but when He comes near He is ignored by those who should know better
God comes near but when He comes near He comes near pinned to a Cross
In History God often worked His redemptive plan in the places we might consider the most unlikely of places among the most unlikely of men and women. Scripture seems to indicate that this is done so, so that God might not be shorted on the Glory that is His to be had. Any deliverance that is to be had, any salvation that is to be known, any Exodus that is to be granted are to be clearly seen as being done by the finger of God quite distinct from any human agency. God does all the delivering. God does all the saving. God gets all the glory.
We would do well to remember this on this Advent Sunday. Men still believe that all the action is where all the pomp and splendor is but God still speaks … God still comes to us … in and by the comparatively simple proclamation of the Word and dispensing of the Sacrament.
Continuing with this idea of the Desert Motif in Scripture let us consider the Redemptive-Historical way in which the Scripture develops and unwinds Wilderness – Desert symbolism.
In Genesis Adam is cast out of the Garden Temple Sanctuary and in being driven east of Eden Adam is driven into the wilderness of this fallen world. Adam has to contend with a ground that produces “thorns and thistles,” the very vegetation of the Desert that Adam would now occupy. As you move from Genesis to Revelation one way of reading the Scripture as a whole is seeing that God’s intent was, through the redeeming work of the Lord Christ, to recreate the fallen world again into a Garden Temple sanctuary.
Man lost Eden … Man is cast into the Desert … Man will reoccupy Eden by the coming of He who is God’s Recreation.
Moses as God’s man is planted in the Wilderness of Midian for 40 years before he is raised up to confront Pharaoh. Joseph spend time in the wilderness rot of a prison before God lifts him up. Elijah spends time in Desert conditions before he confronts Ahab. Paul spends time in the Arabia before the flowering of his ministry.
We again see the Desert – Wilderness motif in the Hebrew’s wanderings in Exodus. Here we have a literal desert complete with lack of water, poisonous serpents, and short food supply. God brings His people through the desert preparing them for the land flowing with milk and honey that He will lead them into.
Now remember we are looking at this because John the Baptist is a “voice crying in the Wilderness.” We are looking at how the Wilderness motif is used in Scripture. God raises up His people and trains them in the Wilderness before they are led into the promised land.
The idea of Wilderness – Desert is often employed in the OT books of the prophets. What we see there is that God intends to make the Desert bloom with the coming of the Messiah
[When] the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, And the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, And the fruitful field is counted as a forest (Isaiah 32:15).
For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, And streams in the desert (Isaiah 35:6).
I will open rivers in desolate heights, And fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, And the dry land springs of water (Isaiah 41:18).
The Lord will comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places; He will make her wilderness like Eden, And her desert like the garden of the Lord; Joy and gladness will be found in it, Thanksgiving and the voice of melody (Isaiah 51:3).
All of this in Isaiah is connected to the passage from Isaiah quoted by Dr. Luke. John the Baptist is the voice crying in the Wilderness and in demanding that the wilderness of creation be made readied for God coming near we find the intent of God to make the desert flower.
It makes sense that John the Baptist would be the voice crying in the wilderness presaging the Lord Christ who would make all things new. The movement is from desert to garden. John the Baptist played the dirge, the Son of man came eating and drinking. John the Baptist pointed out the Barrenness of God’s people. The Lord Christ came to give life and life abundantly.
Our Lord Christ is driven into the Wilderness just prior to the official beginning of His ministry … one day for every year Israel spent in the Wilderness. There is a kind of recapitulation going on here. The Lord Christ is the faithful Son who triumphs in the Wilderness by the Word of God succeeding where Israel, as God’s son failed in the Wilderness by giving into sin. The Lord Christ succeeds and overcomes in the Wilderness and begins a ministry that casts out barrenness and brings the life of the garden to all He heals and delivers.
This relationship between desert and garden is punctuated on the Cross where Christ suffers in the most extremes of deserts. As the writer of Hebrews puts it “Christ suffers outside the camp,” providing for us an allusion to the sin bearing scapegoat who was taken into the desert and released.
During His wilderness on the Cross, Christ has upon Him a crown of thorns … those very same thorns that Adam was cursed with, in being cast out of Eden. It is as if, with the crowing of Christ with a crown of thorns, He is crowned with Adam’s sin.
So, when you combine the wilderness of the Temptation where Christ was obedient through the Word of God (where God’s people had previously failed) with the Wilderness of the Cross where Christ is crowned with man’s sin, you have a picture of Christ’s obedience in our place and for us along with a picture of Christ’s suffering the penalty for our disobedience. Christ has done for us in the Wilderness what we could never do. By His wilderness obedience and penalty we are healed.
But … the wilderness of the Cross is relieved by the resurrection that happens in … you guessed it, a Garden.
In the text this morning Luke shows how the desert pattern begins yet again with John the Baptist in the wilderness. John is like Elijah, as Mark 1:2-3 and Luke 1:16-17 note (Mal 3:1). When God comes near this time God makes salvation manifest for all to see. There is nowhere else to look for God’s saving work except to the Lord Christ for it is in the Lord Christ that God is coming near.
Here, in Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist is announcing, as the voice of the Desert Prophet that God is coming. In the other Gospel’s we get this more explicitly as they have John announcing that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” This idea of God coming indicates that God is coming in a unique way in which He has not come before.
For the promised kingdom to be “at hand” means that it was not yet present when John speaks. So John is not speaking of the kingdom of God in its broadest sense of God’s rule from the beginning of the creation. Rather, he is discussing the promised, long-awaited rule of God in which the promised Messiah and God’s Spirit become evident in a fresh and startling way. John is saying that finally God is fulfilling the long-awaited hope of Old Testament promise wherein all the barren places are turned into a garden.
This is what happened with Christ’s first advent. Christ, who was and is, God’s recreation has come and should one desire to have abundant life one must flee to He who is God’s recreation.
It is true, as we have mentioned often, there is a “not yetness,” to the nowness of the life which Christ brings. The fullness of the fullness that is yet to come is not yet here. But if men are to find any joy in a world made sad by their attempt to de-god God … any relief from the weight of sin and guilt … any hope of the end of alienation from God, others, and self, then man must find that joy, relief, hope and life by looking to and trusting in the Lord Christ who is to fallen man his pardon from God’s wrath.
II.) The Importance of Historicity to Christianity
We have been over this ground before so we won’t spend a great deal of time here.
The point is, is that Christianity is a faith that can not be true unless the historicity of it is true. It is a faith that depends upon the validity of space and time History. Here we see just such an example. Luke the Historian, places John the Baptist in a very concrete historical context. There you have have the pronouncement of God coming near in the time of Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Caiphas, and Annas. The legitimacy of this proclamation of John the Baptist is dependent upon the Historicity of all that is swirling around it. God came near at this time and point in History.
The Scripture repeatedly turns us to the Historical for verification. The Creeds follow that lead when we recite that Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate. There it is … real life history.
We can not affirm Christianity if we discount its record of the Historical. Luke was a careful Historian. If you read his Luke-Acts book you see that he carefully examined all that he wrote. He was writing a history and he wanted it to be taken as History. Paul likewise speaks of Historical evidence when he mentions in I Cor. 15 that there were over 500 witnesses to the historical event we call the resurrection.
Now I mention all this because if this space in time Historical narrative did not really happen. If God did not really come near during the reigns of Tiberius, Pilate, and Herod, then how can I trust anything the rest of Scripture tells me? If God was not really born of a virgin, if the Lord Christ did not cast out Demons, raise the dead, heal the palsied and lame, if He Himself was not raised and ascended … and all this as real life historical events then Christianity collapses completely. Christianity requires the Historical and reciprocally History is defined by Christianity.
If you deny the historical of Christianity and replace it with the “spiritual meaning of the historical event” then you have nothing but your own imagination and no matter how much it might be denied such a person has themselves for their God. If the historicity of Christianity wherein the supernatural happens in space and time history is not real history then it is the cruelest of all hoaxes.
