John appears in the wilderness of Judea wearing 4"a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist." Anyone who knew the Old Testament would have thought of Elijah, who is described in nearly the same terms (2 Kings 1:8), and Elijah was the prophet Malachi said would come first. His message matches his clothing: 2"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matthew tells us Isaiah spoke of him, and John's whole purpose is in that verse. He clears a road for someone else to walk on.
The crowds come from Jerusalem and all Judea, confessing their sins as they are baptized in the Jordan. Then Pharisees and Sadducees show up, and John's welcome changes. He asks who warned them to flee 7"the wrath to come." He knows what they are leaning on. They assume their ancestry covers them: 9"We have Abraham as our father." John answers that 9"God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham." A family tree is no shelter. What he wants to see is 8"fruit in keeping with repentance," and the time is short: 10"the axe is laid to the root of the trees."
Repentance, in John's mouth, is a turning of the whole life, and it shows. A tree is known by what it produces. Confession without change leaves the tree standing, and the axe is already resting against it.
Then John does what every sentence has been building toward, and points away from himself. 11"I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry." Carrying sandals was a servant's task, and John places himself beneath even that. The coming one 11"will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." Fire refines and fire consumes, and John's next image explains how both can be true. 12"His winnowing fork is in his hand." A farmer throws the grain into the wind, the heavy kernels fall back to the threshing floor, and the chaff blows away to burn. Wheat and chaff grew in the same field. Only the wind shows which is which.
John never sees the rest. He announces it from a wilderness in a prophet's old clothes, pointing down a road he did not build toward a person too great for him to introduce properly. He has total clarity about who he is and total certainty about who is coming. Everything the kingdom will be, the mercy and the fire and the sorting of every heart, still lies ahead of this passage. His only job is to make sure nobody misses the road when it arrives.
Ask what you are leaning on today that Abraham's children were leaning on. It might be a church background, a family's faith, a good name, or years of attendance. Then ask where the fruit is.
Prayer
Father, thank you for John, a voice with nothing to say about himself and everything to say about your Son. Give us a repentance that goes deeper than words, and fruit that shows it. We cannot claim a place in your family by our history or our name. Do the fire's work in us, refining what your Spirit can use and burning away what it cannot. In Jesus' name, amen.