In the last year of World War II, the First Canadian Army was given the deadly task of liberating the Netherlands, which had been occupied by the Nazis since May 1940. In the fall of 1944, the Canadians defeated Nazi forces along the Scheldt River so that the Allies could now bring their ships into the port city of Antwerp. However, much of the rest of the Netherlands remained under Nazi control. That winter, the people of the Netherlands suffered a horrible famine as the Nazis diverted food sources to feed their troops, leaving nothing for the local people to eat. Many dug tulip bulbs and sugar beets out of the ground and ate them to try to survive. About 280,000 people died in the Netherlands as a direct or indirect cause of the Nazi occupation.
In March 1945, the First Canadian Army began attacking Nazi forces in the rest of the Netherlands, and they met stiff resistance. Finally, on May 5, 1945, Nazi forces in the Netherlands surrendered, and two days later the war in Europe came to an end. The Canadians were greeted as heroes as they liberated towns and villages and the Dutch people have never forgotten what Canada did for them. Every year, the Netherlands sends thousands of tulips to Ottawa to show their appreciation and thanks for what Canada did in liberating the Netherlands and granting safe sanctuary the Dutch Royal family during the War. Every year on May 4th, the Dutch people place tulips on the graves of the nearly 1,400 Canadians buried in the Canadian War Cemetery at Holten. On Christmas Eve, each grave site is lit by a candle.[i]
Just like the Netherlands in World War II, ever since our first parents disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden and chose to go their own way, all of creation has been occupied by an evil foreign bent on separating us from all God’s goodness and destroying us. But the Good News is that God has begun to liberate this broken and hurting world by sending God the Son into this world to stand in the place of all humanity and succeed in fulfilling all God’s righteousness, where we have invariably failed. That’s the promise given in Jesus’ main message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 4:17)
But what does the coming of God’s kingdom in the person of Jesus Christ mean to us now? To answer that question, we are going to jump over the first two chapters of Matthew so we can save them for Christmas, and our focus today will be on Matthew 3:1-17.
The Longing for God’s Kingdom
But before we turn to Matthew’s Gospel, to understand the full effect of what the coming of God’s kingdom would have meant to people living in the Holy Land in the first century, we need to go back 700 years to the time of the prophet Isaiah. Through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, Isaiah was able to see decades into the future when the Babylonian Empire would conquer the southern kingdom of Judah and take God’s people into exile as punishment for their worship of false gods. Isaiah’s role was to call God’s people to turn away from their idolatry, but he was also called to deliver a message of hope to sustain God’s people during their exile. God would continue to be faithful to his people, even when his people were faithless, and in time, he would bring his people back to the land he had given them. So, Isaiah wrote,
Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins. (Isaiah 40:1-2)
And yet, even with God’s people back in the Promised Land and the Temple in Jerusalem restored, things were still not right. Judah was frequently harassed by the super power nations around them, and their kings, though descendants of David, were frequently unfaithful. Plus, what hope could there be when the reality of each person’s sinfulness confronted them every day? Isaiah gives voice to the heartfelt longings of God’s people when he wrote:
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!…
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:1, 6)
People were longing for the day when God would come as King, re-establish his reign over this broken and dying world and save his people and his creation by redeeming and restoring all things. Through his godly reign, as he exercised his kingly powers, in the power of his Spirit, God was going
…to proclaim good news to the poor.
… bind up the brokenhearted,
… proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
2… proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
… comfort all who mourn,
3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair. (Isaiah 61:1-3)
Isn’t this what every human heart longs for? Isn’t this the dream that every advertisement tries to sell to us? If we just buy their product, all our problems will go away. We can win the lottery, move to Costa Rica and live in a mansion with an ocean front view. I believe that every human heart was designed to long for the blessings of God’s reign over us, but we try to bring those blessings into our lives in our own power, without God, and that will never work. Only God can satisfy the deepest desires of our heart. God’s people in ancient times knew this.
So they divided human history into two eras: “this age” (or “this present evil age”) and “the coming age.” During “this age,” which began with the Fall, Satan and his minions hindered the reign of God and humanity, through its sin and unbelief, frequently allied itself with the supernatural forces of evil and against God. But “the coming age” would begin with God’s decisive intervention in history.[ii] The prequel to this divine intervention was foretold by Isaiah:
A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:3-5)
Therefore, when people saw John the Baptist dressed in humble clothing like Elijah, and preaching in the wilderness, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:2), they would have remembered the words of Isaiah and realized that the Coming Age was about to begin, and they flocked to John in large numbers to affirm the conversion in their heart by undergoing John’s baptism of repentance.
Even the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, came to be baptized by John, but he refused them. He realized that they only wanted to be baptized to look good in the eyes of the common people. They didn’t really believe that they needed to change because they thought their ethnic heritage as a descendant of Abraham would save them. Their lack of heart change was revealed in their lack of life change and John called them a brood of vipers destined for judgment.
Even though John was experiencing a season of great popularity and impact, he was always very careful to point out that he was not the promised coming King, he was only preparing the way for that King. He said, “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. (Matthew 3:11)
The King Appears
And then the King shows up. God came into this world in the person of Jesus Christ, not as a powerful political leader or a general at the head of a large army, but as single, ordinary human being. Born in a humble manger to poor parents and raised in Nazareth, a town with a very sketchy reputation, this was a special King who came in a special way for a very special reason. He came in weakness to stand with God’s people. God was faithful to his people. He brought them out of slavery in Egypt, sustained them throughout the forty years in the desert, and ushered them into the land he promised to give to them. God loved his people so much that he had Moses tell Pharoah, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, (Exodus 4:22)
But every time God’s people had an opportunity to respond to God’s faithfulness with their own, they failed. So God’s only begotten Son came into this world to relive the life of God’s people and be faithful in all the times they were faithless. As a young child, he was taken to Egypt to save him from worldly danger. When the time was right, God brought him out of Egypt and back to the Promised Land. As he grew up in the obscurity of Nazareth, Jesus was a faithful child of God. Even at the young age of twelve, he was about his heavenly Father’s business, And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:52)
And now Jesus stood at the edge of the River Jordan, the same river God’s people crossed when God completed their exodus from Egypt, the same river they crossed when they returned from exile in Babylon, and he asked John to baptize him. It was a baptism that Jesus, as the sinless Son of God, did not need. John knew that and refused at first. He knew that on the last day, King Jesus would come with His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:12) But what John did not understand is that Jesus would reveal his kingly reign in this present moment, by being a humble sin bearer. Jesus not only took on our humanity, he also took on our sinfulness and our need to be converted from self-centered, self-filled, and self-led people to being God-centered, God-filled, and God-led people. In faithfulness, Jesus would complete the human life journey, dying on a cross on a hill outside Jerusalem for sins that were not his own, and then rising from the dead on the third day, so that, in him, we could all be beloved sons and daughters of God. Jesus replied to John, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. (Matthew 3:15)
And the moment Jesus was baptized, ancient prophecies were fulfilled once again, for God did rend the heavens and come down. God the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, and God the Father descended with words of blessing for Jesus. “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)
Living in the In-Between
So what does all this mean for us right now? We live in an in-between time where the Coming Age has begun but has not yet been fulfilled. We still struggle with attacks from the evil one, and we still share in the brokenness of the world where illness, accident or evil intent can strike us down at any time. We become weary and heavy-laden with the cares and worries of this world, fatigued by our ongoing personal struggle against the sin in our life, and disheartened by the relentless march of our bodies towards aging and death.
But let us remember that all these worldly realities do not define us. Our true life is defined by a King who came and fulfilled all righteousness so that we could have life with him in his kingdom forever. He stood with us sinful human beings in his life, death and resurrection, he took all our sin, guilt and shame from us, and he has given us new life in God’s family as his beloved, forgiven child. More than that, in the Holy Baptism he have given us, Baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Jesus has sealed for the Last Day when he comes to purge this world of all evil and heal it, reverse all the damage caused by sin and death, and raise us from the dead to live with him in the new heaven and earth forever. On that day, ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[a] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)
Remember Your Destiny & Identity
That is your destiny. You are a child of the high King of heaven who has begun his reign. He reigns in our hearts, he reigns in this world, and one day, all the world will see Jesus for the great king he is. Some to their great joy, others to their great regret. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16)
So the challenge which I want to leave with you today is this: First, remember who Jesus is. He is the faithful Son of God who came as King and fulfilled all righteousness. Second, remember who you are. In Jesus, you are cleansed and redeemed, a beloved child of God with whom your heavenly Father is well-pleased. Through faith in Jesus, you are living in his Kingdom right now, and a day will come when you will see that kingdom come in fullness with your own eyes. And Jesus has promised that he will also be with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. The life you are living right now is a life that you are living in him even as he lives his life in you. And third, remember that your King has come. Amen.
[i] “Liberation of the Netherlands,” The Canadian Encyclopedia (Internet; available at: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/liberation-of-holland; accessed November 19, 2025); “German Invasion of the Netherlands,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (Internet; available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_invasion_of_the_Netherlands; accessed November 19, 2025).
[ii] For a fuller explanation, see Jeffrey A. Gibbs, Matthew 1:1-11:1, Concordia Commentary Series (St. Louis: Concordia, 2006), 161.
Farewell to Shadowlands 