“Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?” [Matthew 3:7]
“Who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us.” [Hebrews 6:18]
We will first consider the question of John the Baptist: “When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?” [Matthew 3:7]
I have no doubt that the Pharisees and Sadducees were very surprised to hear John addressing them in that way; for men who wish to win disciples, ordinarily adopt milder language than that, and choose more attractive themes, for they fear that they will drive their listeners away if they are too personal, and speak too harshly. There is not much danger of that nowadays, for the current thinking today is that gospel ministers instead of piercing men and women with the sword of the Spirit, only show them only its handle; they let them see the bright diamonds on the scabbard, but never let them feel the sharpness of the two-edged blade. They always comfort, and console, and cheer, but never allude to the terrors of the Lord.
That appears to be the common interpretation of our commission; but John the Baptist was of quite another mind. There came to him a Pharisee, a very religious man, one who observed all the details of external worship, and was very careful even about the most trivial matter, a firm believer in the resurrection, and in angels and spirits, and in all that was written in the Book of the law, and also in all the traditions of his father, a man who was consumed with external righteousness, a ritualist of the first order, who felt that, if there was a righteous man in the world, he certainly was that person. He must have been greatly taken aback when John talked to him about the wrath of God, and plainly told him that that wrath was as much for him as for others. Those phylacteries and the broad borders of his robe, of which he was so proud, would not screen him from the anger of God against injustice and transgression; but just like any common sinner, he would need to “flee from the coming wrath.”
I daresay that the Sadducee was equally taken aback by John’s stern language. He, too, was a religious man, but he combined with his religion greater thoughtfulness than the Pharisee did; — at least, so He said. He did not believe in traditions, he was too broadminded to care about the little details and externals of religion. He observed the Law of Moses, but he clung rather to the letter of it rather than to its spirit, and he did not accept all that was revealed, for he denied that there was such a thing as an angel or a spirit. He was a man of liberal ideas, fully abreast of the age. He professed to be a Hebrew of the Hebrews; yet, at the same time, the yoke of religion rested very lightly upon his shoulders. Still, he was not irreligious; yet here is John the Baptist talking to him, as well as to the Pharisee, about “the coming wrath.”
They would both have liked to have a little debate with John, but he talked to them about fleeing from the coming wrath. They would both have been pleased to discuss with him some theological questions, and to bring up the differences between their two religious groups, just to hear how John would handle them, and to let them see which way he would lean. But John did not waste a moment over the matters in dispute between Pharisees and Sadducees; the one point he had to deal with was the one of which he would have spoken to a congregation of tax-gathers and prostitutes, and he spoke of it in just the same way to these who practiced external religion. They must “flee from the coming wrath;” or else, as surely as they were living, that wrath would come upon them, and they would perish under it.
So John just kept to that one topic; he laid the axe to the root of the trees as he warned these hypocritical religious people to escape for their lives, or else they would perish in the common destruction which will overwhelm all ungodly men and women. This was not the style of preaching that John’s listeners liked; but John did not think of that. He did not come to say what men wished him to say, but to discharge the burden of the Lord, and to speak out plainly what was best for men and women’s eternal and immortal interests, He spoke, therefore, first, concerning the wrath of God; and, next, he spoke concerning the way of escape from that wrath.
Those will be our two topics also. First, the tremendous danger: “the coming wrath;” and, secondly, the means of escape: “Flee from the coming wrath.”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
