I. The disciples of John were to learn (1) that their hearts were under another tillage-cultivation than their own. They could not winnow the grain, they could not separate corn from chaff. If there was no one more skilful than they were to do that, the labour had been thrown away; the corn would not supply bread to the eater, or seed to the sower. (2) They were to be sure that this discipline, if it was indeed Divine discipline, would be thorough. "He will throughly purge His floor." (3) Those who heard John speak, and understood him, must have received two lessons, at first sight inconsistent. They must have been sure that He who was conducting the sifting discipline, of which the prophet testified, over them and over the whole nation, was the Lord of the spirits of all flesh. And yet they were told of a Man standing among them, who claimed the floor as His, and could prove it to be His by purging it.
II. John the Baptist's words were fulfilled when Jesus Christ came in the flesh. They have been fulfilling themselves in every age since He ascended on high. In every age men, who have been led to discover their own great necessities, have asked indeed for one who should forgivetheir sins; but quite as earnestly for one who should destroytheir sins, who should put an everlasting barrier between that in them which they knew to be their enemy often their triumphant enemy and that which cleaved to a Friend, and sought fellowship with Him, likeness to Him. They have learned to welcome sufferings when they found that they were designed for this object. The fires were good which denoted that they were baptized with the Spirit, and that He would not leave them till He had made them what they were created to be. And so, too, the course of history and the trials of nations interpret themselves. As long as there is any strength, vitality, faith in a people, so long is there wheat, which Christ will assuredly gather into His garner; and so long that nation will be subjected to frequent fires, that its chaff, all its untruth, and baseness, and heartlessness may be burnt up; nay, it may be said, always be in such fires, for the time of our wealth, as well as the time of our tribulation, is a searching time. That is the time in which it is hardest for us to separate the chaff from the wheat, and therefore in which we have most need to recollect that there is a Lord who is doing it, and will do it thoroughly.
F. D. Maurice, Lincoln's Inn Sermons,vol. iii., p. 267.
References: Matthew 3:12. Bishop Huntington, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxix., p. 403; J. Keble, Sermons from Advent to Christmas Eve,p. 290.