JesusX30 Challenge—Scene 3: THE MUSTERING OF FORCES

JesusX30 Challenge—Scene 3: THE MUSTERING OF FORCES

 

1. Key Texts

•      Matthew 3:1–17

•      Mark 1:1–11

•      Luke 3:1–22

•      John 1:19–34

2. Outline / Notes

Date & Place

•      Late 26 – early 27 AD.

•      Judean wilderness—harsh, rocky, remote, symbolic place of encounter with God.

•      Jordan River—the crossing point into the Promised Land, symbolizing new beginnings.

Main Account

•      John the Baptist emerges in the wilderness, preaching: “Repent, for the Empire of heaven is at hand.”

•      His message: not just spiritual, but political—God’s reign breaking into the world here and now.

•      John confronts corrupt leaders, critiques the Temple system, and calls people to abandon allegiance to worldly powers.

•      Baptism = public declaration of changed allegiance, not just private spiritual decision.

•      Jesus arrives; John baptizes him despite feeling unworthy.

•      The heavens open, Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice declares: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

•      Turning point: the movement shifts from preparation to active campaign.

Meanwhile

•      John is the son of a priest—he could have lived with privilege in the Temple system, but he rejects it.

•      His wilderness lifestyle recalls the prophetic tradition (esp. Elijah) and aligns with Essene separatism.

•      His location and actions (Jordan River baptisms) evoke Israel’s Exodus and entry into the land.

•      John’s growing crowds and public criticism of Herod Antipas make him politically dangerous.

•      Eventually, he’s arrested and later executed—not for theology, but for being a public threat.

Main Point

•      God’s revolution begins on the margins, not in the halls of power.

•      John’s role: prepare the way, call people to switch allegiance, and point to Jesus.

•      The mustering of forces for God’s Empire happens in the wilderness, through repentance and radical allegiance.

Exegetical Insight

•      Matthew 3:2: Metanoeite, ēngiken gar hē basileia tōn ouranōn — “Repent, for the empire/kingdom of heaven has drawn near.” The verb ēngiken = “approached/come near,” signaling God’s reign breaking into the present.

•      Baptism in the Jordan recalls Joshua leading Israel into the land (Josh. 3–4): symbolic re-entry into covenant life under God’s rule.

3. Devotional / Reflection Questions

•      Where are you tempted to keep your allegiance tied to worldly systems rather than to Jesus’ kingdom?

•      John rejected privilege and comfort to prepare the way—what privileges might you need to release to follow Jesus more fully?

•      How does seeing baptism as allegiance rather than just a private decision challenge your faith practice?

•      What “wilderness” places in your life might actually be spaces where God is preparing you?

4. Action Step / Challenge

•      This week, identify one specific way you can shift your allegiance more fully to Jesus’ Empire—whether in your personal life, your friendships, your politics, your finances, your habits, or your loyalties. Take one concrete step to live that allegiance.

5. Share & Join the Movement

•      Share your reflection with #JesusX30Challenge, #JX30Challenge, or #JX30.

•      Invite a friend to explore the challenge with you.

•      Subscribe on YouTube / follow the podcast to stay on track.

✦ Lekh Ulmad—Go and learn. Come back for Scene 4 of the JesusX30 – 30-day Discipleship Challenge.

Important note: 

This 30-day challenge is based on my book trilogy entitled Jesus: The Strategic Life and Mission of the Messiah and His Movement (3 Volumes, Hekhal Publishing Co., 2025).

•      The Challenge follows the same “scene-by-scene” structure: historical, strategic, exegetical, devotional.

You can buy or borrow the trilogy at:

•      Hekhal Publishing Co.

o   Jesus, vol. 1

o   Jesus, vol. 2

o   Jesus, vol. 3

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Episode Transcript

(00:09):
If someone were going to prep the world for the arrival of a
new Kingdom, a new empire, just a total upheaval of the
spiritual and political order, how would you expect that to
start? We talked in the previous scene
about the way Jesus prepared andthe way God used his upbringing
and experiences to prepare him for his relatively brief public

(00:32):
campaign. But what about the world itself?
If you're going to launch a campaign to turn the world
upside down, how do you prepare the world for it and for what
you're about to do? Maybe a press conference, a
council meeting, some kind of sort of coordinated
announcement, a massive campaignrally, a blast across TV and
social media about your plans. It's interesting to think about.

(00:55):
But in the case of Jesus, we don't get any of that.
Instead, what we get is a guy out in in the desert, dressed in
camel hair, shouting at people to repent and dunking them in
the Jordan River. What's up everybody?
Welcome to scene 3 of the Jesus X30 Challenge.
I'm Tyson Puthoff, and today we're talking about John the

(01:15):
Baptist, a guy we often view as a sort of this strange sideshow,
but he's actually someone who was a serious part of Jesus's
messianic movement. Because what John's doing in the
wilderness, he's more than preaching.
He's not just out there witnessing and evangelizing in,
in preaching sermons, the way wethink of sermons.

(01:38):
He's launching his own strategicmovement that will not just pave
the way for Jesus, but it's kindof going to soften the ground
for the emergence of Jesus's Kingdom.
So chronologically, historically, we're in the late
part of 26 AD and early part of 27 AD and we're out in the
Judean wilderness. And, and if you've been there

(02:00):
and Andy and I have, man, it's dry, it's rocky.
And especially during the 1st century of remote region not far
from Jerusalem, it's not a placepeople casually wander into.
It's hard, it's unpredictable. It's the kind of place where
ancient Israel met God, where prophets went to wrestle with
their calling. But it was not a safe place.

(02:22):
And that's exactly where John sets up shop, outside of the
reach of the temple establishment, away from the big
cities. And along with dressing like a
crazy man and talking like a crazy man, John's baptizing
people in the Jordan River, which itself is a charged
location. This symbolized crossing into
the Promised Land the way the Israelites did after leaving

(02:45):
Egypt. So if you're a 1st century Jew,
you know exactly what John is signaling.
He's signaling a new beginning, a second exodus, a reset.
And John's message is pretty simple, but it's pretty intense
as well. Repent for the empire of heaven
is at hand. That's in Matthew 3.

(03:06):
It sounds spiritual, and we takeit that way.
And there's some spiritual elements to that message that
John teaches when he's in the wilderness, but it's just as
political as it is spiritual, especially for someone in John's
day. In our Christianized world
today, we think we say things like Kingdom of heaven, and we
think that's where we're going to go when we die, right?

(03:28):
Kingdom of Heaven is sort of thespiritualized, futuristic
entity, and we don't really knowwhat to do with it, to be
honest. So we spiritualize it.
But this wasn't what it meant when John and then Jesus said
it. It wasn't what people heard in
the ancient world. A Kingdom or an empire of God or
of heaven wasn't about going to heaven when you died.

(03:49):
It was about God taking charge here and now in the middle of
this world and making this worldsocially, politically,
economically, religiously look like and operate the way heaven
operates as we speak at this moment.
It's about bringing God's reign and presence to earth, or as
Jesus actually describes it in his famous prayer, May God's

(04:10):
will be Done and his Kingdom or empire come on earth as it is in
heaven. This is what John means.
That's what John meant when he shouted repent for the Kingdom
of heaven or the Kingdom of God is near bringing the makings and
the economies and the operationsof heaven down to earth right
now. And John's not vague about it.

(04:31):
And based on the way he dresses and eats and carries himself,
we, we wouldn't expect him to bevague.
He calls out corrupt leaders, religious ones, political ones.
He critiques the temple system, which was less like a church
today, and it was more like a combination of the Vatican, the
Fed, the central bank, Fort Knox, the Supreme Court and the
White House, all in one institution.

(04:53):
It was the religious epicenter of the world, but it was also
the central banking and taxationhub for the Jewish people and
the seat of political and judicial power.
And John doesn't hold back. He calls it all a sham, not the
entity itself, but the way it's been corrupted and the way it's
being used. And when people come to him to

(05:13):
be baptized, he's not handing out warm welcomes and a free
T-shirt, right? He's not saying go to the booth
and get your mug. He challenges them.
He calls out hypocrisy. He tells them real repentance
means not just changed behavior,but changed allegiance.
He tells them that if they want to be ready for the empire
that's about to breakthrough, they can't place their loyalty

(05:36):
in human religious institutions any longer, in human social
systems, in human economic policies or human political
powers, good or bad. John says all represent the ways
of the world. And to be a member of the empire
of God, the Kingdom of heaven, 1must repent.
There's that word. Or turn away from and abandoned
allegiance to those worldly powers and place their

(05:59):
allegiance solely in God Himselfand in his coming anointed one,
Jesus. And then there's a big moment.
John's baptizing, doing his thing.
And Jesus shows up. And John knows who Jesus is.
Even though John grew up in Judea in the South and Jesus
grew up in the Galilee in the north, they would have grown up

(06:20):
together at pilgrimage festival's other holidays,
family visits. So when Jesus comes walking out
to where John's baptizing, John knows this is the one we've been
waiting for. But Jesus does something
strange. Remember this, I'm not sure what
John expected to happen. He knew he was basically
starting a movement to generate some steam so that when Jesus

(06:42):
came on to the public scene, a foundational group of followers
would be ready for Jesus to absorb into his own movement.
That was part of John's role, and John knew that.
So John knows this moment is coming, but he's kind of he, he
kind of acts shocked Still, if you're reading the text at what
Jesus does, when they meet that day in early 27 AD, Jesus asked

(07:03):
John remember to baptize him. And John's response of course is
I'm not even worthy to untie hissandals.
And yet Jesus insists and John does it.
John baptizes Jesus and when he does, the heavens open, the
Spirit descends in a sort of a dove like form.

(07:24):
Or at least that's the best way the Gospel writers can explain
what it looks like. And a booming voice from heaven
says, this is my son, whom I love.
With him I am well pleased. That's when everything begins to
shift. The mustering of forces is no
longer theoretical. It just got real.
But let's not forget where John came from.

(07:45):
So remember, he's the son of a priest, Zechariah, which is a
big deal. Think about it like this.
As I mentioned a minute ago, thetemple was the equivalent of the
Vatican, the Fed, the central bank, Fort Knox, the Supreme
Court, the White House, all in one.
The priesthood then were essentially in charge of the
temple operations. Can you imagine what kind of

(08:07):
power and prestige and honor andwealth the priestly class had at
this time? I mean, being a member of the
priesthood was basically like being a powerful pastor, social
leader, economic influencer, andpolitical leader all at once.
So John's dad is a priest. John could have had a
comfortable, honorable life inside the temple system, but

(08:29):
instead he rejects it. He he despises it.
In fact, he walks away from the entire system.
He lives in the desert. He eats locusts and wild honey.
He dresses like Elijah wearing scratchy fur clothes.
He looks like someone who stepped right out of the old
prophetic tradition from ancientIsrael.
And his teachings are kind of mind blowing.

(08:49):
They line up with a group known as the Essenes.
These were this group of desert separatists who believed the
temple had been compromised and that God would soon act in
history. And they lived in community sort
of like what we'd think of as a monastery with a lot of a lot of
differences. But they practiced ultra strict

(09:10):
purity. And they anticipated a kind of
final battle between good and evil at the end of time.
And John, he probably wasn't oneof these Essenes formally, but
his message overlaps in a lot ofways with them, which we'll talk
about in a later scene. And the location where John does
his work, the wilderness was thesame place that these Essenes

(09:31):
gathered to worship and live. So a lot of connections there.
And not only that, but the Jordan River wasn't random
either. That's where Israel entered the
land, as we mentioned a moment ago, after they had wandered
through the wilderness for 40 years.
So for John to bring people there and call them to re enter
a new way of life, that's symbolism, that's inspiring.

(09:53):
And it was also dangerous. So by now, Herod the Great's
dead. His sons take over the land and
divided up into sections. Herod Antipus is the ruler of
Judea, the region surrounding Jerusalem and this portion in
the wilderness for John's livingand operating.
And almost immediately, he starts taking notice of John.

(10:14):
He's paying attention to what's going on out there.
And it makes sense because not only are John's crowds growing
and they're growing rapidly, buthe doesn't hold back.
He publicly criticizes Herod's personal life and political
leadership. Eventually, Herod arrests him.
And so John's in prison. And as the story goes, he's
later executed. We'll deal with that in a

(10:36):
different scene. But not for his theology, all
right? Not not not based on religious
stances that he takes, but for being a threat, for being a
disagreeable man with too much influence too quickly.
And all of this came not becauseof his prestigious priestly
line, his family, his wealth, his honor, his powerful

(10:57):
political ties. John is influential and
threatening because he rejects all the ways that the world
views power. He denies himself not just of
pleasures and comforts, but alsohis God-given rights to prestige
and honor in all of the mechanisms that normally allow
someone to have influence over others.

(11:18):
OK, take note of that. John could have gone to his
connections in the halls of the priesthood and in the chambers
of the most powerful political figures in Judea and gathered
support for this new movement hewas about to launch.
But he didn't. He rejected the city's approach
and took it to the wilderness. So here's what John understood

(11:39):
and what I think a lot of peoplemissed then, and a lot of us
still miss today. Change doesn't always start.
And in the case of Jesus and John and the way God operates,
change never starts in the city,in the halls of power, in the
spaces of influence. Never.
It doesn't always come with a press release or a proper

(12:01):
announcement either. Sometimes it starts with someone
standing waist deep in a river at the edges of society, telling
people to wake up, to abandon orrepent of their loyalties to the
world's ways, to the current rulers, and to change their
allegiance to the coming Kingdom.
John understood too that his role wasn't to be the star.

(12:23):
It was to clear the brush, to lay the foundation and to point
people to the to the one who would come next.
At the same time, he wasn't justa warm up act, right?
Just because he wasn't the star didn't mean he was somehow
unimportant. He was literally announcing the
invasion of a new empire, a new Kingdom, a new world superpower,

(12:45):
the empire of God. And he was inviting people to
switch sides. And he he understood that there
were some good things that the current regime were doing right.
It wasn't that everything they ever said and did was bad, but
as a whole, worldly powers don'tdo what God's Kingdom aims to

(13:08):
do. And so the baptism that he
offered wasn't just a public display of personal spiritual
decisions made inside the heart,right?
Which is what a lot of us tend to talk about when we talk about
baptism. Baptism for John, wasn't just a
public declaration of a decisionyou make inside your heart.

(13:29):
It was the public declaration ofan inward and outward change of
allegiance, a way of saying I'm done with whatever's going on in
this world, whatever's going on in this nation, I'm done with
this, good or bad, I'm in on this new thing that God is
doing. We started by asking how you'd
expect a revolution to begin. Jesus's messianic campaign began

(13:53):
with the crazy obedience of someone else, Jesus's cousin
John, and somewhere outside of the spaces of power and
influence. But what about you and me?
Today we all know the name Rosa Parks On December 1st, 1955.
Rosa, she's just a woman riding the bus home from work in

(14:15):
Montgomery, AL Nothing dramatic,no crowd, no microphone.
She wasn't posting on her socials or live streaming.
So when the bus driver tells herto give up her seat for a white
passenger, she refuses. And that simple act in

(14:36):
obscurity, in in the quiet and in the mundane, that simple act
sparks a movement. It lit the fire for the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, which became a catalyst for the entire
civil rights movement in the US.All because one woman, in an
ordinary moment, decided to takea stand by staying seated.

(14:57):
She didn't start the revolution in a courtroom.
She didn't start it at the top and center of power in at the
White House, at the Capitol building.
She started it in the wilderness, in a place of
danger, a place of isolation, a place of determination in the
place of preparation. And it makes me think, what

(15:18):
looks like your own wilderness right now might just be the
space in which God is readying you to be the voice of one
calling in the desert to lay a foundation for others to see
Jesus's empire and decide that today is the day to change
sides. The empire of God is here, and
on its throne is Jesus and nobody else.

(15:40):
Good leader or bad leader, nobody else sits on Jesus throne
and he alone is calling your allegiance.
And today, even though you feel like maybe it's preparation
time, today might be the day where he's preparing you and
calling you to do something radical for him.

(16:01):
Lake Omad, go and learn. Come back for Scene 4 of the
Jesus X 3030 Day Discipleship Challenge.