Printable Handout

1. What was John’s ministry all about?

2. What is John’s issue with the Pharisees?

3. How is John’s baptism only a set up for Jesus’ baptism? How are they different? How is our current baptism different from John’s?

4. Why does John initially refuse to baptize Jesus?

5. Why would Jesus need to take part in a baptism of repentance if He has nothing to repent from?

6. Why does the spirit descend on Christ here? Is this Christ receiving the spirit for the first time? Is it just a public announcement of Jesus’ messiahship?

7. How can we relate this passage to our own lives and to our modern contexts?

This week you will be going over Matthew 3: Jesus’ baptism as well as looking at John the Baptist’s ministry some as well. Make sure you take the time to read the passage and look through the questions before you meet with your group. Additionally don’t forget about the teaching guide as well if you or anyone in your group desires to have a deeper dive into the text.

As per usual, your agenda should be to fellowship, then pray, then read Matthew 3, then get into the discussion and see where it takes you. It is okay to skip over or even add questions, these questions are just a guideline. As always I have provided you some answers for these questions if people seem a bit stumped.

1. What was John’s ministry all about?

   • It’s a ministry of repentance, calling Israel to repent much like an OT prophet

   • It gets summed up in 3:2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (NASB)

2. What is John’s issue with the Pharisees?

   • John is accusing them of being complacent because they are Abraham’s physical descendants. He essentially says that they are not worthy of his baptism because they are not truly repentant

   • This sets up the ensuing conflict between Jesus and these Sadducees and Pharisees which culminates in Matthew 23

3. How is John’s baptism only a set up for Jesus’ baptism? How are they different? How is our current baptism different from John’s?

   • John’s baptism is purely symbolic, especially so considering he’s in the Jordan river. The Israelites crossed the Jordan when they came to conquer their land of promise. Elisha crossed the Jordan to start his ministry after Elijah was taken up into heaven. Crossing the Jordan is an important motif within scripture that we see John calling upon. It’s almost like a more positive version of the phrase we have in the western world “crossing the rubicon.” For Caesar that was a point of no return. For the Jews it’s a starting point for the kingdom of God being manifest.

   • Jesus’ baptism is characterized as being of “spirit and fire” which are likely one in the same (think burning bush in Exodus). The baptism that Jesus brings is one of the spirit. Do not forget the literal translation of baptism is “to immerse.” We are immersed in the Spirit, something we see fulfilled in Pentecost quite clearly. With John they are immersed in water, but Jesus will come and immerse them in the very presence of God.

   • There are differing views of these two baptisms of water and spirit. Some believe that they are two separate occurrences that will sometimes happen together but sometimes not. Others will say that we receive both in water baptism. In my experience it was more of the former, I was baptized in water as a young teen (about 13) but I wasn’t fully immersed in the spirit until I was closer to 17 (which coincides with God’s calling of me to the ministry).

4. Why does John initially refuse to baptize Jesus?

   • This is two fold. First is that John sees himself as far inferior to Jesus, and he’s not wrong. It is the equivalent of Albert Einstein stopping by to ask you for help on a physics equation. Second is that John’s baptism was for repentance, and Jesus has nothing to repent of, He is the only man who has not sinned. John is more in need of his own baptism than Jesus is.

5. Why would Jesus need to take part in a baptism of repentance if He has nothing to repent from?

   • The symbolism of the Jordan aside, Jesus is quite simply identifying with those He came to save. Jesus, as per usual, refuses to lord over others and say that he’s above things like a baptism of repentance. He is above such things but He is not afraid to go through it anyways for the sake of personally identifying with those also baptized. 

6. Why does the spirit descend on Christ here? Is this Christ receiving the spirit for the first time? Is it just a public announcement of Jesus’ messiahship?

   • I’d air towards the latter. As God incarnate of course the Spirit would have been involved with Jesus’ life prior to this event. Yet still we see the Spirit and the Father both establish Jesus as the Son in quite a trinitarian moment. This is the public announcement that Jesus is who He claimed to be, it’s that prophetic call.

7. How can we relate this passage to our own lives and to our modern contexts?

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome to session 4’s teacher’s guide. For this session we will be going over Matthew 3 in its entirety. There is a roughly 30 year gap between last session and what we are reading this week. Jesus and His relative John (their relation is only mentioned by Luke). Are now roughly 30 years old. Jesus has had a whole childhood and is now ready to start his ministry. But before we can get there, we have John the baptist’s ministry. His ministry is one of repentance through baptism.

The end of this chapter features the introduction of adult Jesus and His baptism by John which serves as a particular call for Jesus’ ministry. Next Jesus will go off into the wilderness and there we will see the temptations, from which Jesus will return and begin His ministry in Galilee.

John the Baptist (3:1-12)

First thing to address here is John’s title here: the baptist. He is the first one to actually baptize in this way. There exists some similarity in the Jewish custom for gentile converts, as well as in the Qumran community (France, 95), a sect of Jews that had splintered off from the mainstream temple system. Yet both of these baptisms had some key differences from that of John. First is that their baptisms were self-administered, while the baptism of John was administered by another, namely John. Another is the reason for these baptisms. For both the gentile and Qumran baptisms, they were for ritual purity, a ceremonial cleanness. For John it is a baptism of repentance. John’s baptism wasn’t worried about cleanness and purity, but it was worried about sin and the repentance from such. 

This John also often gets associated with Elijah, and for good reason. John’s clothing is very indicative of Elijah (France, 96; Turner, 57), which is likely why Matthew calls attention to it, but it’s not the only similarity. Other similarities include John’s solitary lifestyle, his uncompromising message, and his eventually complications with a king and his wife. Elijah went up against Ahaz and Jezebel. Elijah had won over Ahaz at times, but Jezebel would always turn Ahaz against the prophet.  Similarly John would come into conflict with Herod (not the same Herod from chapter 2) and his wife (France, 96). It seems that Herod didn’t want much bad to happen to John, yet it’s Herod’s wife that demands the prophet’s head later on. 

Now John’s ministry was inherently one of repentance. Matthew sums it up in one statement: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 3:2 NASB). To signify this repentance John was baptizing repentant souls in the Jordan river. On baptism similarities I have already written, but here I’d like to mention the significance of the Jordan river here, which is another connection to Elijah and later Elisha. The Jordan river serves as a very important role within Israel’s history. When returning from Egypt the Israelites first crossed the Jordan to enter the promised land. Later we see this river pop up in a significant way in Elijah and Elisha’s ministry. Towards the end of Elijah’s life we see him being called by God over across the Jordan. There is a bit of a back and forth between Elijah and Elisha, and then in 2 Kings 2:8 we see Elijah take his mantle and strike the Jordan and the river parted for him to cross. Later after Elijah ascended into heaven via chariots of fire (2 Ki 2:11) Elisha goes back to cross the Jordan. He takes Elijah’s mantle which got left behind and strikes the water, and it parts for Elisha to cross. This symbolized the end of one ministry and the start of another. Similarly for John it symbolizes the same thing, especially by the end of the chapter.

Before we get into how this exchange of ministries applies to John’s life, we first need to mention the arrival of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Here we see John taking issues with them. He is seemingly refusing to baptize them because of their unrepentance, something that will become all the more apparent as we go through this gospel and Jesus takes them to task again and again. 

The Pharisees and Sadducees aside, Let’s focus in on what John says in verse 11: “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Mt. 3:11). This is where it connects to that Elijah to Elisha conversion. Elisha receives a double portion of Elijah’s spirit and does far greater things than Elijah. Similarly John here is doing a good ministry and drawing quite the following (enough for the religious leaders of the day to come and pick a fight with him). Yet he is saying that another is coming who will have a much greater ministry, a much greater blessing. While John’s baptism is only of water, this one to come will baptize with spirit and fire (likely one in the same, think burning bush). 

Take a moment to consider what this truly means. John is saying that he is merely immersing them in water, it’s a largely symbolic act and that’s really it. Yet one is coming that is not merely going to dip them in some water, but will immerse them in the Spirit Himself. The very Spirit of God is going to envelop those who follow this one to come (which of course is Jesus). 

This becomes all the more fighting when Jesus comes to get baptized by John. Jesus comes to get baptized and John initially refuses. This isn’t in the same way he refused to baptize the Pharisees and Sadducees. Rather John here is recognizing either that Jesus is far superior to him, or that Jesus has no need for repentance, or both. By all means John has far more need of his own baptism than Jesus does. Yet Jesus insists and so John complies. In this we see some sort of fulfillment of what John says, the Spirit comes out and declares Jesus as the Son of God. Now with Jesus the Spirit is involved with baptism, something we see all the more when the Spirit descends onto the disciples at Pentecost later on. 

Conclusion

In this chapter we see a few key ideas we can examine in our own lives. First is the transition from one ministry to another. John had a good ministry, but it severely declines once Jesus takes the scene. This baptism is very much a handing over of one ministry to another, much like we see in 2 Kings between Elijah and Elisha. 

We see this again later in John 14:12: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.” There is this similar passing from one ministry to a greater one. John baptized merely with water and managed to garner a following. Jesus baptized with spirit and managed to become known across Israel. Jesus’ immediate followers ended up taking the message of salvation to the edges of the known world. Some suggest Paul made it all the way to modern day Spain (1 Clem. 5.7). Tradition also holds that Thomas made it all the way to modern day China*. The men after Jesus took the message far further than Jesus did and did far more. Similarly we take it even further today. 

*While the arrival of Christianity in China is historically documented in the 7th-century Xi'an Stele, earlier traditions—specifically in the Malabar liturgy and the Acts of Thomas—claim a 1st-century mission by the Apostle Thomas. Modern researchers point to the Da Qin Pagoda and 1st-century Han Dynasty carvings at Kongwangshan as potential archaeological evidence of this earlier presence. See Martin Palmer, The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Religion of Taoist Christianity (New York: Ballantine, 2001), 45–52.

Bibliography

France, R. T. Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985.

Turner, David, and Darrell L. Bock. Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol 11: Matthew and Mark. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2005.

Clement of Rome. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. Edited and translated by Michael W. Holmes. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.