Wild Man of the Desert. Matthew 3.

Read Matthew 3 online here.

My daughter owns the book pictured below, and one day I spent about an hour going through it. As you can see, the book is patterned after the "Where's Waldo?" books, and the actual book is big enough that all the details in this picture are clearly identifiable. (Click on the pic for more information about the book.)
Right under the purple banner, "Introducing Your Child to the Gospel," you might be able to see a wooden cart. While you can't see all the details in this picture, the cart has a canopy, so that it looks like a vending cart. It's full of bags of locusts and jars of honey, and has the words, "Wild honey", and "Fresh Roasted Locusts" painted on the side. That's desert in the background, and you can see John from behind in the water with his long, wild hair, and brown, camel's hair cloak. The picture is a lot of fun.

Who was this wild man of the desert, washing Jews, and insulting the religious leaders of the day? Why were so many there to see him? Matthew says people from "all Judea and all the region around the Jordan" went out to see him. The answer that both Matthew and Mark give to the question of who he was, is found in the book of Isaiah, "The voice of one shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

So there John was, shouting in the wilderness, and preparing the way for Jesus. He told the people that just being Jewish, children of Abraham, wasn't sufficient as far as God was concerned. After all, God could make children out of rocks if He wanted to. But God doesn't want rocks for His children. So John said, straighten up, turn away from your current path, repent. Get dipped to show your changed heart. (This was a radical idea, because even though Jews did baptize, they did it to those who wanted to become Jews, as a symbolic washing. Not to Jews themselves.)

I have this sense that the people of Jerusalem and Judea were looking for the "next big thing." Under oppression, aware that God promised deliverance some day, they may have flocked to anyone who had a certain charisma or powerful message. We have records of a few of these individuals and movements, which were often revolutionary and violent, each of which died out when the leader died. Was John just the next big thing? Was Jesus?

But John didn't say, "Follow me." He said, "Get ready for what's to come." Rather, for who's to come. In essence, he was saying, "I'm not the next big thing, but the next big thing is coming." And so it happened.

With a big surprise even for John, Jesus came to him to be baptized. The one who would baptize with Spirit and fire was there in the water, ready to receive John's washing. Imagine that. I like the dual obedience depicted -- Jesus obediently "fulfilling righteousness" by submitting to the act He had no need to submit to (a washing of sin); and John reluctantly obeying Jesus' desire to do so. God affirmed the rightness of this action by anointing Jesus with His Spirit -- "... the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming on him." The affirmation in words is even more compelling -- And a voice from heaven said, “This is my one dear Son; in him I take great delight.” For any Jews hearing those words, or reading them in Matthew's account of the baptism, there is an unmistakable allusion to the messianic texts of Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1. In other words, God was saying that Jesus was not just the next big thing, but was the big thing the people had been waiting for. For centuries. Messiah.

And even though we sit on the other side of the Messiah's arrival, as a society, as individuals, often even as Christian individuals, we still seem to want to pursue the "next big thing". Who will be the next American idol? What show will be the next American Idol? Today, on Yahoo, one of the front page selections was The Top 10 Searches of 2008. And I'd guess most of you reading this could identify at least 1 or 2 of those top 10. In the church world, we have our own lists of things that go in and out of favor: church growth, purpose driven, prayer of Jabez, emergent, Velvet Elvis, house church, seeker-friendly. Authors like Lucado, Warren, LaHaye and Jenkins, Blackaby, Moore, MacArthur, etc.

Recognizing this tendency to look for the next big thing, what can we take away from the picture presented in Matthew 3?

Can you find the wild man of the desert in the picture painted by Matthew? What did the wild man say?

Can you find Jesus? In the picture above, He's the One in the rays of sunlight, so the kids can't miss Him. In Matthew's picture, He's the one Who when baptized, was blessed by God.

What next big thing could we possibly be looking for?

Listen to the wild man, and look at Who he pointed to. There's no need to keep looking for something else.

The only big thing after His coming will be His coming again.