Luke 3:1–22

0:00 So a couple months ago, back in April, there was an article published in the New York Post that was bemoaning what it called one of the greatest tragedies of the post-COVID era. And that is the total obliteration of dress codes in some of New York's finest restaurants. Now, I don't know if you would agree with the article, Ryder, that that's one of the greatest tragedies that has come about, but apparently in the minds of this New York Post writer, it's just something awful. Dress codes at New York City restaurants have been obliterated, relaxed, and abandoned. Now, it did a little bit of analysis of why that might be. You know, it gave theories like, well, it seems like the sort of uniform of stay-at-home work has just sort of bled back into the office, and so when people come into the office in things like hooties and sweatpants, and they have a client dinner afterward, they don't normally go back to the apartment on the Upper East Side to change into a suit to go down to, you know, the fancy restaurant

1:03 in South New York. They just go straight from the office in their sweats and their hoodies and take the client to dinner at the place, and so they show up looking like that. Most of all, though, it wasn't analysis. It was just a kind of rant, like how in the world could this be happening? You know, there was a guy who got a little bit philosophical about it, and he said, well, he was a restaurant owner, and he said, well, what are we supposed to do, really? I mean, are we really supposed to turn him away if, say, M&M comes in with all his friends and wants to spend $50,000 on dinner, and yet he's wearing Air Jordans? Or what if somebody comes in, yes, yes, yes, what if somebody comes in with sweatpants on to our swanky restaurant, but they're $3,000 sweatpants? As if we're all supposed to immediately understand the ethical dilemma that that creates. Oh, yeah, my $3,000 sweatpants have It caused all kinds of problems, you know.

1:54 You have four pairs of those. Restaurant owners have come up with different strategies for handling this problem. Most of all, it has to do with sitting people who are wearing things like hoodies and sweatpants in corners or behind walls. And the way they'll sell it to the person is that they'll say, Ooh-hoo, oui-ou, monsieur, we have a special table out of the crowd specially put aside for you. And it's like in a bathroom stall. Another restaurant owner has just decided to take it head on.

2:25 So a famous director of a movie came into his restaurant dressed like a slob at one point. And he just decided he was going to run right at it. And so he walked up to the guy and he said, why would you come dressed like that into my fine establishment? Your mother would slap you for that. He's probably right. The whole thing was making the point that people were showing up to dinners, to events, to restaurants unprepared. for the event that they were about to participate in. You're supposed to show up prepared.

2:56 You're supposed to show up dressed in a certain way, presenting yourself with a certain amount of flair, and people are showing up like slobs, unprepared. And the whole article was examining the problems that come up from that. It may seem like a silly problem to you. And I know that we live in an age of total casualness, right? Nobody wants to much dress up for anything. And yet Jesus, believe it or not, told similar parables with a similar point. You've got the guest, for example, who shows up at the wedding feast of the king without proper wedding attire.

3:28 And what's the response of the king? Throw him out into outer darkness because he came to this wedding feast unprepared for what was about to happen. You've got the parable of the bridesmaids who didn't have enough oil to keep their lamps burning. And what happened to them, they were locked out of the wedding feast altogether because they weren't prepared for what was about to happen. They were present. They showed up at the feast. They showed up at the wedding ceremony. They showed up at the restaurant. They were there, but they were not ready.

4:04 And that's what I want to talk to you about today from our text this morning, being ready for what's coming as we continue this study through the Gospel of Luke. Just to get you up to speed a little bit, if you haven't been with us in the Gospel of Luke, it was written sometime probably in the early to mid-A.D. 60s. I'm not going to kind of give you the case for that, but there is in fact a detailed case, and we've pretty well pinpointed that this book was written sometime between 60 and 65 A.D. Luke, this book, is actually part of a longer work that's comprised of both the book of Luke itself and the book of Acts, it was written by a man, a physician, a doctor in fact, named Luke, who it turns out traveled with the apostle Paul on some of his missionary journeys that are recounted in Acts. And it was written, Luke wrote these books very deliberately as a careful systematic compilation of the life of Jesus and the early days of the church. So it's in two parts, right? There's Luke and then there's Acts. In Luke, what you get is a very systematic, careful laying down of the story of Jesus' life and ministry.

5:06 So who he was, what he was about, what he was doing. And then in Acts, you get the story of how the word about Jesus, the gospel, the good news of Jesus, spread throughout the known world. And we've been in the book of Luke for the last few weeks. Last week, we finished up looking at the first big section of Luke's gospel, which are the infancy narratives of both Jesus and this other figure, John the Baptist, that we're going to talk about today. Today, those infancy narratives run from chapter 1 all the way through chapter 2. That's the first kind of big section of the book. Today, we're starting to look at the next big section, which essentially is going to run from the beginning of chapter 3 all the way through chapter 9.

5:46 So if you want a kind of big look at the Gospel of Luke, it breaks down into four big sections. So you've got the infancy narrative of Jesus, also of John the Baptist in chapters 1 and 2. Then you have Jesus ministering in Galilee from chapter 3 all the way through chapter 9. Everything that happens in 3 through 9 is happening in Galilee. That's kind of Nazareth. That's where Jesus started out his ministry. That's where everything in 3 to 9 happens. Starting in chapter 10 and running all the way through chapter 21, you have Jesus' journey to and then time in Jerusalem.

6:21 So you've got infancy, Galilee, Jerusalem. And then the last three chapters or so, 22, 23, and 24, are the story of his death and resurrection and ascension. So those are the four big sections of it. Infancy, Galilee ministry, Jerusalem ministry, and then the passion narratives. So that's kind of where the book is headed. I think I've told you about this. We're going to be in this book, God willing, for probably six or seven falls, I think. So I think we're in this book for the long haul. We're just going to kind of return to it each fall, each summer, and take a look at a different section of this book.

6:55 So far, Luke has spent the first two chapters using all these different events that are going on to tell us who Jesus is. And what he ends up saying is that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. There's all kinds of stuff in the book that flags us to that. So the angel told Mary and Joseph that Jesus was going to be great. He was going to be called the Son of the Most High. He was going to sit on the throne of his father David and reign forever and ever. Simeon, this old prophet in the temple when Mary and Joseph take Jesus to name him and have him circumcised and all the rest. Simeon, this old prophet, probably in his 80s or 90s, grabs the baby and holds him up and says, Now I can die happy because mine eyes have seen the salvation that God is going to bring to the world.

7:36 Everything that's been promised in the Old Testament has come to fruition right here. And then last week what we saw was Jesus himself seeming to become kind of fully aware in his human nature of his unique relationship with the Father. And also his unique identity as the suffering servant and the Messiah and the Son of God. It all seems to kind of click and he says, my mission now is to be with my Father. And so that's the point of the story about Jesus in the temple. Well, today we're looking at the first part of chapter 3, about half of it, verses 1 to 22.

8:10 And we're going to focus on really the other central character that's been introduced in the first two chapters, John the Baptist. So if you look at the end of chapter 2, verse 52, Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. That verse covers 18 years. 18 years are in that verse. And so from the end of chapter 2 to the beginning of chapter 3, we're fast forwarding from the time when Jesus is 12 years old to the time when he's about 30 years old.

8:41 Let's pick it up and read what happens then. Chapter 3, verse 1. Annas, and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region across the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill, excuse me, shall be made low. And the crooked shall become straight and the rough places shall become level ways and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance and do not

9:44 begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. And the crowds asked him, what then shall we do? And he answered them, whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none. And whoever has food is to do likewise. Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, teacher, what shall we do? And he said to them, collect no more than you are authorized to do.

10:15 Soldiers also asked him, and we, what shall we do? And he said to them, do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages. As the people were in expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

10:49 So, with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people. But Herod the Tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to all those evil things, that he locked up John in prison. Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.

11:21 Let me give you the main idea of this text. I think it's this. You say you want to be included in God's kingdom when it comes? Well, then repent of your sins and embrace your king. Repent of your sins and embrace your king. A lot of times when you're dealing with narrative like this, it's a little bit hard to break the text into pieces. When you're in like an epistle of Paul, that's usually really easy because they're highly organized, right? In a narrative, it just kind of runs from one event to the next. But I think that this one breaks down really nicely into two sections that we're going to talk about this morning.

11:54 So from verses 1 to 14, essentially you've got John preaching about being prepared for the kingdom of God that in his moment is not here yet, but is really close at hand. It's coming, and therefore he says you need to be prepared for that. It's about to be inaugurated. Then in 15 to 22, you've got him basically calling it, right? He's pointing his bony prophetic finger at the king of that kingdom. And he says the time has come and the kingdom of heaven is no longer at hand. It's here now with the coming of this one.

12:26 And by the end of it, he, John the Baptist, has completely faded out of the picture entirely. And Jesus is centered stage. In fact, the things that John does at the end of chapter, well, end of verses 21 and 22 are put in the passive voice so that Luke doesn't even say his name. he's shuffled off the stage really quickly he's thrown in prison by Herod he's off the scene and it's Jesus alone that is at center stage so you got those two sections 1 to 14 15 to 22 two points to the sermon looking at those two sections number one verses 1 to 14 a people prepared for the coming kingdom a people prepared for the coming kingdom and then number two the king revealed my prayer is that by the end of the sermon today, you will understand a little better what John was telling these people in his own day. And therefore, by understanding that, understand a little better what God requires of you. So let's look at it. Number one, looking at verses 1 to 14, a people prepared. So if you look at verse 1 of chapter 3, you can see that it opens with this

13:32 kind of piling up of historical facts, right? You have seven different names that are mentioned here. There are people, places, rulers, high priests, even the emperor himself, and all of these things are sort of piled up in verses one and two. And the way it's functioning is as a sort of fanfare. It's a kind of trumpet blast or trumpet flourish that something important is about to happen here. Now that sort of piling up of names and places, all of which can be dated, right? You look at other historical sources like Josephus and, you know, other Roman authorities and all the rest.

14:07 You can date these things pretty precisely if you start looking at it historically. And what Luke is doing by piling all that stuff up is a number of things that are supposed to click into your mind. So first of all, by piling up all these names, Luke wants you to know again, he's already said it before, right in the very first verse of the book, in fact. He wants you to know, again, that Christianity is based on a series of events that really happened in history.

14:38 Which means that if you're unfamiliar with Christianity, you need to understand that Christianity is not primarily a system of philosophy or thought. It's not primarily a system of ethics or wisdom. Yes, there is thought, and there is philosophy, and there are ethics, and there is wisdom that come out of Christianity. But all of that is based on events that actually happened in history, which, of course, sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the world.

15:11 Every other religion in the world is primarily a matter of thought, wisdom, philosophy, and ethics, not events. And Christianity is exactly the opposite. I mean, think about it. When you start thinking about the major claims and the major tenets, for example, of Buddhism, does it really matter to the main tenets and claims of Buddhism whether Gautama Buddha really went into the forest and achieved a higher state of being? Does that really matter?

15:42 It doesn't matter. Because what finally matters are the thoughts that exist in Buddhist teaching. And those things would hold for Buddhists whether Buddha went out into the forest or not. Or again, does it matter whether Muhammad really completed the journey of the hajj? Well, no. Because for Muslims, whether or not Muhammad did that does not affect the fact that the Koran, according to Muslims, contains the word of God. It's the ideas and the words that matter, not so much the events.

16:14 The events are incidental. Again, does it matter whether Joseph Smith of the Mormons really translated the Book of Mormon from golden tablets through the guidance of the angel Moroni? No, it doesn't. Because what ultimately matters for Mormons is that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It's the words, it's the concepts, it's the ideas that matter. It's not the events. But for Christianity, does it matter if Jesus really was born, that he really lived, that he really died, and that he really was resurrected?

16:54 Yes, it's everything. Because Paul said, look, if Jesus wasn't resurrected from the dead, if this historical event didn't happen, then all the thought and philosophy and ethics and morals and wisdom, it all fails. Because the whole thing rests on the event of Jesus' life. Christianity rises or falls on whether certain things happened. And by piling up all these names in these first couple of verses, that's one of the points that Luke is making. These things happened, and they happened when these various people that can be very particularly dated happened to have been in charge.

17:32 Second thing, with all these names and places, Luke just wants to give you a little bit of a sense of the charged political atmosphere in which all of this has happened. This was not a peaceful time. This was not a time of relative peace and harmony in the Roman Empire and between the Romans and the Jews. It was a time of massive upheaval and massive tension. There were sparks flying between the various layers of leadership in the Roman Empire. What you've got here in all these names, you may not know all the details, but if you're a first century Jew that's reading it, you would understand that what you've got here are these various interlocking and even competing levels of political power and authority.

18:10 And Luke lists kind of all of them that would have been relevant at the time. From, you know, the greatest imperial power in the world at the time. Tiberius, Caesar, all the way down to these little local provincial officials, Annas and Caiaphas. In fact, Luke shows you that he's got a really deep grasp of the political situation. This is not just a surface thing. Luke knows what he's talking about. He wants you to know this happened in this kind of time. So look at verse 2, just to give you an example of this. How, in verse 2, do you have two high priests during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas?

18:50 How do you have two of them? The high priesthood in Israel was a singular office. It was always held by a singular man. It changed from year to year to year to year. But how could you have two people here who are called high priests? And some people have looked at that and said, well, Luke just made a mistake there. Or Luke didn't understand the high priesthood situation in Israel at the time. He didn't understand how the rules work. He thought you could have two of them at one time. Or he misdated it or something. But there's an error in the Bible right there. Well, it turns out, no. What's going on there is that Annas had been high priest officially some years earlier.

19:25 Like think 15 years prior to this. But Annas was such a powerful high priest and such a powerful figure at the time. He's still alive at the time of Jesus. He was so powerful that he managed to get four of his sons in succession to be the high priest after him. And Caiaphas is the fourth of his sons to hold that office. And because he was so powerful, everybody knew that no matter who the high priest happens to be that's wearing the crown at the moment, it's Annas who is always the power behind the throne.

19:59 And so the Jews often talked about the high priest, the official guy. And, of course, we all know it's actually Annas. Luke knew what he was talking about, and he wants you to understand. So he gives this tongue-in-cheek sort of nod to that whole situation by calling the one high priest Annas and Caiaphas. He wants to let you into the situation here a little bit. Third, maybe most importantly, all this kind of historical fanfare, this historical trumpet blowing, would have struck a first century Jewish reader immediately as a particular thing that's happening.

20:39 It would have struck them as extremely familiar and they would have recognized, oh, this is a particular thing that's happening. It was the way that the Old Testament frequently introduced prophets of God. You look at the minor prophets, you look at the major prophets, And often, kind of more often than not, the way a prophet is introduced is something like this. In the days of king such and such, when the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah was happening, and there was giant chaos all over the land, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah or to Joel or to Nahum, whoever it was.

21:19 It's almost formulaic. And so what Luke is doing here is telling you basically in no uncertain terms who John the Baptist is. He's a prophet. In the days of Tiberius Caesar and Pontius Pilate and Philip and Lysanius and Annas and Caiaphas, in the midst of all that chaos, the word of the Lord cut through like a lightning bolt to John the Baptist. Now, we've actually known that for quite a while. Ever since the beginning of the book, really, we've known that John the Baptist was going to be a prophet.

21:52 And you look back at chapter 1, verse 76, his father said it straight up. You, child, will be a prophet of the Most High God. And even the angel that announced his birth said that he was going to stand before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, who, of course, was the greatest of the prophets. Now, before we go on any further, I don't want you to miss the significance of this and the reason that Luke spends so much time here and so much complexity blowing these trumpets so loudly here. The reason he does that and the reason this is such a massive declaration, a prophet is here, is because there had been no prophet in Israel for 400 years.

22:32 The word of the Lord was silent for 400 years. Malachi, at the very end of the Old Testament, he was the last one. And that was way back in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, like 450, 460 years prior to the birth of Jesus. And his message, it ended with a promise that one last prophet was going to come and announce the arrival of the Messiah. And what Luke is saying here with this fanfare of historical trumpets is that finally that last prophet is here. John the Baptist shows up on the scene.

23:05 Okay, so what was this last of the prophets saying? Well, that's what Luke focuses on in the rest of this first section, verse 3 all the way down through 14, where you kind of get a summary of both his message and his role in the story. So let's look at it. So look first at verse 3. You get a concise summary in verse 3 of what John was preaching and doing. He went into all the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. So that's what he was doing.

23:37 If you think it out, it's not that difficult. He was basically calling people to be baptized as a symbol of repentance from their sins. And he's saying then that that repentance ultimately will issue them into forgiveness. If that repentance is real and the baptism symbol of that repentance is genuine, right, then that repentance in your heart will ultimately lead you into forgiveness. Okay, now this is where we have to be careful.

24:08 Because it would be really easy to take a passage like this and decide, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take whatever this says and I'm going to apply it one-to-one to my heart. So I'm going to take what John says and I'm going to apply it one-to-one to my heart with no movement through the rest of the story, no movement to the cross, no understanding of how Jesus develops any of this stuff. I'm just going to apply it straight to me. And I'm going to come up with the conclusion that, oh, what John is obviously saying here is that salvation is based on my repentance.

24:41 In other words, if I repent, then God's response will be to give me what I now deserve, which is to forgive me. My repentance is the cause of my salvation. Or if you really kind of mess it up, you'll end up saying my baptism is the cause of my salvation. But that's not at all what John is saying here. And that becomes clear, I think, when you realize when, not just what, but when John is preaching.

25:13 Okay, now think about that. When is John the Baptist preaching? he's preaching right before the moment of the dawning of the kingdom in Jesus and what he's calling people to do is prepare their hearts for the imminent coming of the Messiah he's saying to the people out there you guys have been waiting for like 2,000 years for the coming of the Messiah you've been waiting on that the prophets have talked to you about that the law started to reveal him to you and it just got clearer and clearer as David came on the scene in Isaiah and Jeremiah mind. You've been waiting on this forever. Well, guess what? It is at hand. He's coming really quickly. And what you guys need to do is prepare your hearts for his coming through repentance.

26:01 Because if your heart repents, if you see your evil and your wickedness and you repent of that, that's going to put your heart in the right frame of mind to acknowledge and accept the Messiah when he gets here. That's what's going on in John's own preaching. It's not repent and the result will be this immediate thing that you've earned your salvation and God will give you forgiveness. It's not that. It's a preaching that's particularly situated in a time. And so the message is repent so that your heart will be in the right place. Your heart will be prepared, dressed correctly, so to speak to receive forgiveness when it finally comes in the person of the messiah repent so that you'll be ready to recognize and receive the messiah when he's revealed now the the fact that that's the case that john is calling these people to prepare i think really becomes clear when you look at how luke defines john the baptist's role in verses four to six so look down at look down

27:01 at four to six because because four to six kind of explain what he's doing in verse three he preaches this baptism of repentance unto the forgiveness of sins. And verse 4 is going to tell us who he is and how that's working, right? As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, etc. Now those verses, as it says right there in verse 4, they're a quotation from the prophet Isaiah that are actually prophesying John the Baptist himself. They're telling us you should expect this one who will come before the Messiah to prepare the way of the Messiah. And it's John the Baptist. That's what Luke is saying there. And what these verses say is his role is to prepare to sort of lower the mountains and raise the valleys. It's imagery that's kind of piled up in a hyperbolic way to talk about the normal thing that a city would do when a great king was coming to visit them. So if you're in like Colossae or something and you find out that

28:02 Tiberius Caesar is going to come visit you. What do you do? You do things very similar to the way cities, even in the modern day, get ready for the Olympics or the World Cup, right? You paint the street signs, and you paint the street lamps, and you make sure that there are no big rocks in the road that are going to trip the emperor. And you straighten up everything. You get it all ready to go. Well, that's what's going on in these verses in Isaiah. That's what John the Baptist has prophesied to be doing. But it's just hyperbole on top of hyperbole. So instead of removing the rocks from the road, it's literally, you guys need to level the mountains.

28:32 You need to knock the mountains down and use the dirt that's left over to fill in the valleys so that everything will be flat and straight for the coming of the great king. So it's hyperbole, but it's the same kind of idea. This voice that's crying in the wilderness is supposed to prepare the people for the great king who is going to come and give them salvation. And so they need to get themselves prepared and ready for his arrival. But how do they do that? How are they supposed to get prepared and ready for the coming of the Messiah?

29:04 I mean, we've already said that it's hyperbole, right? So they're not actually supposed to go out and knock down the mountains and fill in the valleys. This is metaphorical. And it turns out that Luke, even in the way he writes the story, goes out of his way to show us that it's metaphorical. And he uses the wording to point us to exactly what we're supposed to do, or these people we're supposed to do, to get prepared. So the preparation, the making a straight path, knocking down the mountains, leveling the valleys, it's all preparation of the heart. It's all a call to repentance.

29:35 Now, how do we know that? What does Luke do? What little hints are there in here to tell us that the preparation that's being called for is actually a call to repentance of the heart? Well, I'll show you. Look at the last line of verse 4. Make his paths straight. That little word, make, is actually repeated six times over the next few verses. So look down at verse 7.

30:10 He said, therefore, to the crowds that came out to be baptized, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath. And then he says, bear fruits. But the word isn't actually bear, it's make. Same word that's up at the end of verse 4. Make fruits in keeping with repentance. And don't say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the tree. Every tree, therefore, that does not make good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

30:40 And then you get it again in the next paragraph. And the crowds asked him, what then shall we make? And he answered them. And then verse 12. Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, Teacher, what shall we make? And then 14, soldiers also asked him, And we, what shall we make? You see what Luke's doing there? He's saying the making of straight paths is the making of the good fruit of repentance. That's what it means. To prepare your heart for the coming of the king is to make your heart ready to receive him through repentance.

31:19 That's what John is preaching. Now, this is a critical point, so I want to talk about it a little bit more. And I want to talk about the question, what is repentance? Now, repentance is a 50-cent theological word, right? It's one of those big words that we don't typically use in normal English. You hear it a lot in church, and you hear it a lot in theology. But it's not that complicated. Literally, it just means turn around, like make a U-turn. That's what it means. So, you know, if I'm driving with one of my kids down the road and they miss a turn, I could literally say to him, repent, and then make a left, right?

31:52 Because literally, it just means make a U-turn. You're going in this direction. Now you need to turn around and go in the other direction. But I think John says a couple more things in all this that help us understand what repentance is and why it's so important. So three things that I want to tell you about. Number one, notice what John says here. Repentance is necessary because judgment is coming. Repentance is necessary because judgment is coming. So that's the point of 7 to 9. I mean, look what he tells them. You brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come, bear fruits in keeping with repentance.

32:26 And then in verse 9, even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees, and every tree that doesn't bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Here's what I want you to see from this. Christianity always starts with the bad news. Christianity is good news. But the good news is not good news until it's paired against, until it uses as a foil the bad news that judgment is coming and that is not going to go well for you and me. And I've said it often throughout my ministry.

32:59 If you're swimming in a pool and, you know, some big old guy comes running at full speed and jumps into the pool going, I'm here to save you. That is not good news unless you know you need to be saved. It's bad news. You're about to get crushed. That only becomes good news when you recognize that you need to be saved. And that's the first step of understanding the Christian good news. You have to understand the bad news that over and over again in the scriptures, God has promised that the day of judgment is coming and it is not going to go well for you.

33:34 You may have come in this morning and wondered, why are we reading all these dark passages from like Joel and of all places, Zephaniah, about the judgment of God? It's to remind you that God has been promising that for thousands of years. And he always keeps his promises. Repentance is necessary because judgment is coming. And there's no way you're going to escape that. Except by coming in faith and repentance to Jesus.

34:08 Here's another thing. Repentance, John says here, is eminently personal. You can't trade on someone else's relationship with God. That's exactly the point of verse 8. Look what he says in verse 8. Don't begin to say to yourselves, well, I have Abraham as our father. Because I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. In other words, you can't trade on your relationship with your dearly departed mother, who was a really good Southern Baptist and had a Sunday school pen that went all the way down to her knees.

34:41 You can't trade on your wife's relationship with Jesus. When judgment day comes, you will stand before him alone. And the question will be, how did you respond to my son? Here's a third thing. John says here that repentance is entirely practical. It is entirely practical. Look at verses 10 to 14. You can see what happens there. Once the people in the crowd start to understand the kind of main outlines of what John's saying, that they need to repent so their hearts will be prepared for the coming of the king and his judgment, they start to ask the very natural question, Okay, John, we understand that we need to repent, but what does that mean?

35:26 Does that mean we need to go off into a monastery somewhere or sit on top of a giant 80-foot pillar for the rest of our lives? Is it asceticism? What do you mean, John, that we need to repent? What does that look like? So three different categories ask him that question. You've got kind of the whole crowd first, then you've got tax collectors, and then you've got soldiers, right? They all ask, okay, what shall we do? And I want you to notice here that it's worth noting that John is not against the people of God working in government.

35:59 He doesn't tell soldiers and tax collectors to quit their jobs. He doesn't tell them to overthrow the government. He's not a revolutionary. He's not a pacifist either. He doesn't say to the soldiers, well, you're sinning by the very nature of your work. So you need to throw down your sword and beat them into plowshares and never go to war. Again, it's not what he says. In fact, what he says is just eminently practical. It's even kind of shocking. If you want to be repentant, if you want to have a repentant heart, and think about what he says, you should be generous, you should be fair, and you should be content.

36:35 You should be generous. If you've got two tunics, give one away to somebody who needs a tunic. You should be fair, you should not extort people, and you should be content with your wages. Generous, fair, and content. It's not a high bar, is it? Imminently practical, and yet it's something that is worth asking ourselves about. If God has given you, so to speak, two tunics, are you generous with one of them? Much less if God has given you the equivalent of 10 tunics.

37:07 Are you generous? Are you fair with people? Or are you constantly weaseling around trying to figure out how to get yours? Are you content? Are you constantly grasping after more? It doesn't strike us as a high bar. It's not a monastery in the wilderness. But it's worth asking yourself if your heart is marked by those kinds of things. That's true if you're a Christian.

37:39 Simple thing to ask yourself, but it's profound. Because the heart of a Christian, when it comes to Jesus Christ in repentance, will create, make, bear the fruits of repentance. And if you see the absence of that, or if you see the opposite of that, It's worth asking yourself if salvation is really there. If you're not a Christian, what does this say you need to do?

38:11 To say you need to just try really hard to be good so God will save you? No, that wasn't the point of John's preaching anyway. John's point in preaching this was to tell the people, ultimately, your eyes need to be set on the coming king. Your trust needs to be in him and his imminent coming. And part of what you're going to do to get ready for that is repent of your sins. Well, guess what? There's no more waiting for the Messiah, not in that sense. He's already here. But the heart's the same. The heart of repentance is the same, and it all looks forward in faith to Christ. If you're a non-Christian, don't spend a moment of your life trying to earn God's favor.

38:46 That will fail. What you need to do is recognize your sin, repent of it, and immediately go to Christ for salvation. Put your faith and trust in Him. so that's point number one the people prepared number two the next few verses 15 to 22 the king revealed so starting in verse 15 the people obviously recognized the power in john's words because not only do they identify him as a really good preacher right this is a guy that i really like to listen to but they actually start to question whether he himself might be the christ which is the greek word for messiah anointed one king they start to ask is this the guy right they basically missed just about the entire point of what he's saying he's supposed to be the forerunner they're thinking he might be the guy so john answers them in no uncertain terms and in the process tells us a little bit more about who jesus is and what he's come to do look what he says in 15 as the people were in expectation all were questioning in their hearts concerning john

39:50 whether he might be the Christ, John answers them all, says, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Okay, what do you see in those verses that John tells us about Jesus? What does John tell us about Jesus? Well, for one thing, you can see it just right there on the surface in verse 16. The Messiah, Jesus, is mightier than John is. He's stronger than John. He's of a higher station and honor than John. So mighty is a really common description in the Old Testament of the Messiah. There are lots of places where the Messiah is said to be mighty, and there are many places, in fact, where even God himself, Yahweh, is said to be the mighty one. So John is saying, look, this guy is so mighty. This guy is so far up there in honor and authority that I'm not even worthy to be this man's slave. So a common thing for

40:55 slaves to do in the Roman world was to untie the sandals of the master and take them off his feet when he came home from his travels, right? And that was seen as so demeaning that Jewish slaves were often let out of that particular obligation. They were not asked to take off the sandals. And John is saying, it would be an honor for me to untie the straps of the sandals of this man. I'm not even worthy to do that thing which all of you think is demeaning. He is that high above me. Here's another thing too. He's not just mightier than John. He's not just of a higher station than John. He brings a better baptism than John. John identifies that as a baptism of Holy Spirit and fire. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, let's break it down. You really got two things that are happening here. There's baptism of the Holy Spirit, and then there's baptism of fire. So the word baptism kind of controls both those terms. Baptism of the Holy Spirit, baptism of fire. So let's think about both of them. Baptism of the Holy Spirit first.

41:59 The Old Testament, right from the very beginning, had always promised that one of the main features of the Messianic age, when the Messiah comes, was going to be that God's Holy Spirit would no longer just rest on certain superheroes in history, right? In the Old Testament, that's kind of how it worked. Samuel got the Holy Spirit, and Saul got the Holy Spirit, and David got the Holy Spirit. It's just these little, these individuals throughout the story where the Holy Spirit would be poured out on them, right, for a specific task. And one of the great promises of the Messianic age is that when the Messiah gets here. That's not the case anymore. God is going to pour out the Holy Spirit on everybody who is part of the Messiah's kingdom. That's why Paul so shockingly can say to the Corinthians, you have all been baptized into one spirit. It's not just your pastors. It's not just your elders. It's not just the people who are up front that have the Holy Spirit. It's all of you have been baptized into one Spirit. So if you're a Christian, you need to hear that. If you're a

43:03 Christian and a believer in Jesus Christ, you have been baptized into the Holy Spirit. There's not some second blessing that you need. There's not, you know, a moment when you come to Christ and then a moment later at some retreat where you speak in tongues and you get the Holy Spirit. There's nothing like that. When you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit is poured out on you and he starts doing all the things that the New Testament says the Holy Spirit does with believers. So he convicts you of sin. He points you to Christ. He lives in and around you. He prays for you. He prays with you. He protects you. All those things that the Holy Spirit does, he starts doing immediately when you become a Christian. And that's what John is talking about here. That great promise of the Old Testament that all believers will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. The Messiah is going to do this. Okay, what about that other phrase? A baptism of the Holy Spirit and a baptism of fire. What does that mean? Well, lots of discussion has happened about that, and basically the question is, okay, this baptism of fire, is this baptism of fire a good thing to happen to you,

44:09 or is it a bad thing to happen to you? So think about that for half a second. What do you think? A baptism of the Holy Spirit, baptism of fire. The baptism of fire in particular, is that a good thing to happen to you or a bad thing. Now, some people have looked at it, and you know, the syntax can bear this. They've said, look, it's the same. The baptism of fire is the same as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It's a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, right? And they'll point to things, for example, like the beginning of Acts, when tongues as of fire hovered over the heads of people at Pentecost. The problem with that understanding, though, is that the Old Testament often speaks of a baptism by fire. So the pouring out of fire or immersion in fire, and it is always, without exception, a fire of judgment. So Ezekiel 22, God says to these wicked people,

45:12 As one gathers silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into a furnace to blow fire on it in order to melt it. So I will gather you in the furnace in my anger and in my wrath. I will put you in the furnace and I will melt you. I will pour out my wrath upon you. Nahum 1. Who can stand before God's indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken asunder by him.

45:47 Okay, so given that, if you've got a baptism of the Holy Spirit that we all want, right? That's a promise of God to those who are part of the Messianic kingdom. And then you've got a baptism by fire where fire and wrath and punishment are being poured out. If you've got those two things going on, what's John talking about? He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. What does that mean? What that means is that when Jesus comes, there will be a hard separation among humankind between those who respond well to the Messiah and those who do not.

46:20 There's going to be a baptism, there's going to be a sifting, there's going to be a shaking of all mankind where some of them respond in faith to the Messiah and are baptized with the Holy Spirit and others who reject the Messiah and are baptized in fire. Which you can see very clearly if you look at 17 that that's what it means. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn. The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. You know what's going on with winnowing? You know what that is? It's like you've got a pile of grain here, right?

46:52 And you've got this fork and you get out into the wind, right? And you take the grain and you throw it up into the air and as the wind blows by, the chaff or the husks around the wheat are lighter than the wheat itself. And so the wheat falls down in the wind and the chaff gets blown over there into another place. And you can separate the wheat from the chaff by throwing it up into the wind and you burn the chaff and of course you make bread out of the wheat. So you see what John is saying there. That's what Jesus is doing when he comes into the world. It's like he said, I didn't come to bring peace to this place.

47:24 I came to bring a sword. I came to set father against mother. I came to set brother against brother. I'm going to divide you. And the great dividing line is going to be, how did you respond to the king? And look at verse 18. I think 18 is just extraordinary. I mean, he's just said, he's going to baptize you with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand. He's going to be dividing the wheat from the chaff, and he's going to burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.

47:56 And then 18, Luke has the audacity to say, in this way, with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people. I'm like, what are you talking about, good news? You're talking about unquenchable fire. But you know what that is? You know what that reaction is? That's me thinking that I deserve to be among the blessed wheat. And it's bad news if anybody's not with me. But what Luke understands and the reason he can say that everything he said here is good news is because a division of humankind into those who will be blessed and those who will be condemned is actually good news for us because the expectation is that we should all be condemned.

48:45 Friend, it's good news. It is good news for you. It is good news for you that God has put passages in his Bible like Joel that we read earlier this morning or Zephaniah that we read earlier this morning. It is good for you that God has told you about a coming last day of judgment. Because what that means is that grace and forgiveness are on offer. There's a way out of it. And you see what John is saying here. You see what John is saying here.

49:16 John is saying the way out of it is to come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. To come to the King. look I don't want you to just understand this intellectually I think it's critical that you don't just understand it but that you feel it that it gets down into your heart that even right now as the gospel is being preached on this Sunday morning there's a separation there's a judgment that's happening right now around the world between those who will have the Holy Spirit poured out on them as people of the kingdom and those who will have fire poured out on them in wrath and judgment and there's a reason that god has put you here this morning to hear that so how are you going to respond god has done an extraordinary thing he's taken an entire race an entire people the entire human race that rebelled against him and deserves now nothing but death and wrath and

50:17 punishment and fire and he said yet in my compassion and in my love i'll send my son to open up his arms and offer you salvation if you'll come to him and acknowledge who he is. You want mercy? You want grace? You can have it. Just take it from his hand. Last thing I want you to notice. We're going to look in future weeks in more detail at verses 21 and 22, but here's what I want you to notice for now.

50:49 We're going to pick it apart. We're going to look at what the dove means and the saying from heaven, all the rest of it. We're going to do that in future weeks. But here's what I want you to notice for now, since we're focusing on John the Baptist. In 20 through 22, Luke is quick to shuffle John the Baptist off the stage. I mean, basically, in 19 or 20, 19 and 20, he just notes that Herod locks him up in prison. And really, that's the last we hear from him. So that by 21, 22, even when he baptizes Jesus, He's not even named.

51:25 All of a sudden, it's Jesus and Jesus alone that occupies center stage. Friend, I wonder if, whether you're a Christian or not, I wonder if that needs to happen in your own heart and mind and life. So many times we have so many characters and so many players in our lives and in our minds that Jesus can very quickly get lost in the shuffle. And sometimes it takes some work to push some things off the middle of the stage so that Jesus can occupy it alone.

52:03 Some of you may need to do some simplification of your life. You may need to allow Jesus to stand center stage. Brothers and sisters, the last day is coming. There's no escaping it. Don't let that day come for you like a thief in the night. Be prepared for it. Embrace your king. Let's pray. Our Lord, we honor you and we praise you this morning as king of kings and lord of lords.

52:41 As the one true Messiah, the great king, the creator of the universe who yet also is redeemer and savior. You who are enthroned above all the universe, all power and all authority in all the cosmos is yours, and yet you love us. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you for these things, and we pray that in every way, in every way, our hearts might come to you in repentance and faith as we prepare for the last day.

53:13 We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen.