|Synopsis Home||Matthew Chapter 3| Chapters 5 to 7 The threefold
ministry of John the Baptist We now begin (Matt. 3) His actual
history. John the Baptist comes to prepare the way of Jehovah
before Him, according to the prophecy of Isaiah; proclaiming
that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, and calling on the
people to repent. It is by these three things that John's
ministry to Israel is characterised in this Gospel. First the
Lord Jehovah Himself was coming. The Holy Ghost leaves out the
words "for our God," at the end of the verse, because Jesus
comes as man in humiliation, although acknowledged at the same
time to be Jehovah, and Israel could not be thus owned as
entitled to say "our." In the second place the kingdom of heaven
was at hand that new dispensation which was to take the place of
the one which, properly speaking, belonged to Sinai, where the
Lord had spoken on the earth. In this new dispensation "the
heavens should reign." They should be the source of, and
characterise, God's authority in His Ch