The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 3:2-3)

Context

Fire-breathing, hair-shirted, remarkably successful John would spend his time in the desolate Judean mountains east of the ridge and roam the deserted arid plains of Jordan north of the Dead Sea. This became his home. He is pictured as a strange and lonely man who had learned to live off the land. In a phrase reminiscent of the calling of Old Testament prophets, The word of God came to John, a man whose only distinction was that the word of God had come to him (3:2; Jeremiah 1:2; 2:1; Ezekiel 1:3; Hosea 1:1-2; Jonah 1:1; Micah 1:1; Zephaniah 1:1). He was the last of the Old Covenant prophets.

This itinerant preacher began to confront sin noisily. He probably wouldn't have attracted too much attention if he hadn't publicly rebuked King Herod Antipas, who ruled Galilee and Peraea from 4 BC to AD 39, for divorcing his first wife and marrying Herodias, his niece and his brother Philip's former wife (Luke 3:19). Soon John's bold preaching drew a tremendous crowd from Jerusalem and the other towns of Judea (Mark 1:5). His message was this: the kingdom of God is at hand, the Messiah is coming soon (Matthew 3:2), and you're not ready. You are sinful and corrupt. You must repent of your sins and be forgiven.

He made his home in the Judean wilderness, a desert-like wasteland. He separated himself from society. He ate and drank subsistence fare, wore simple clothing, got back to the basics. He did it not because he was a weirdo, but because, in the tradition of God's prophets, he wanted to get beneath the surface to acquire an interior view of what philosophers might like to call “the human predicament.” What he found was personal, unexpected. It cut to the core, it cleared the mind. Luke tells us John heard a “word from God.”

Sin

The Greek word for sin is “missing the mark.” We all miss the mark of perfection and holiness in our lives. We all come up short. There are essentially two sins in the Bible:

• the sinfulness of human nature that we cannot escape or change. 
• the specific sins, flaws and imperfections of our personalities/deeds/actions that can be changed.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” (Reinhold Niebuhr)

Repentance

• a change of mind, repentance, turning about, conversion."
• more than a sense of guilt.
• more than sorrow for getting caught or for doing something wrong.
• an actual change of mind, an action - God's call isn't to guilt or to sorrow, but to change
• Martin Luther suggested that we are to be baptized daily. That is, we are to daily experience repentance and forgiveness, a daily cleansing of our lives.

Forgiveness

• 'release' from captivity
• pardon, cancellation' of an obligation, punishment, or guilt,"
• "let go, send away, cancel, remit, pardon
• Forgiveness of sins is a dominant concept both the Old and New Testament. The word, “forgiveness,” comes from a Greek word, “let go.” God lets go of our sins; we are also to let go of our own sins and the sins of others around us.

The outsider

What does this kind of desert hermit life do to a person? It produces someone who really doesn't care what "civilized" people think about him. John didn't structure his life in relation to societal norms and expectations, so when he burst upon the scene as a desert preacher, his words were unrefined, blunt, and uncompromising.

Why would God use an eccentric, a maverick, a "loose cannon" in such a crucial role? Because the ordinary person would have bent too easily to the extreme religious and political pressures that came to bear on John. Ordinary wouldn't do, so God fashioned John to be very different.

The wilderness also seems an unlikely place for the word of God - the outback is often dangerous, stark, beautiful, expanding the awareness, summoning up different values from those twinkling from neon lights and advertising hoardings. Why not Jerusalem? - When "the word of God came," it did not come from Caesar's palace or the senior Herod's temple. The word of God came to a location far from these centres of power.

• When the word of God came in biblical times, it was usually through people who had little power or influence, but who had learned to listened to God.
• We are reminded again and again that God chooses unlikely people - David, a young lad whose father did not even include him among the sons whom he presented to Samuel for consideration!  How odd of God to choose Mary, a young unmarried girl!  How odd of God to choose John
• Artists belong out at the edge of society and beyond where the pain is, where the raw nerves are, where the subtlest and most delicate and most easily overlooked things are. This is not to say that the only art is the art of anguish or of criticism and never of celebration or ecstasy, but it is to say that every work of art to the extent that it doesn't simply Xerox the consensus is a challenge to the consensus.
• Society has always encouraged mediocrity rather than greatness. That is because society cannot give us dreams. It gives us only plans…dreams, are the things that prophets brings us. Today we have far too many plans and not nearly enough dreams.

Ones of the greatest obstacles to authentic Christian living in the thorough pervasiveness of a western obsession with hyper-reality. How can I explain to you that at the centre of human history is the story of a perpetually displaced God who addresses us from the edge of human affairs, who has chosen the place of the excluded - seek always to find who is being forgotten or pushed to the edges. Hyper-reality is better than the real thing: I can’t believe its not butter…freshly squeezed orange juice packed with minerals and vitamins…Dim B list celebrities parading themselves as if being in the Jungle for 14 days was a back to nature experience rather than a bizarre artificiality…talk show hosts who talk to me as if I am a personal friend; soap operas that make feel an involvement in strangers lives