“Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, 2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 3 For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said, “THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT!’ ” 4 Now John himself had a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; 6 and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins. 7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 “Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; 9 and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. 10 “The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 “His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
What is the worst thing you can think of that could happen to you?
Isn’t that a terrible question with which to begin a sermon? You’re probably thinking something like, “Oh, boy, this is not going to be an upper”
Now I’m going to cut right to the heart of the issue and say that the worst thing I can think of is being cast into Hell. However, since I am a born again believer in Christ and have His Holy Spirit dwelling in me and giving me assurance of my everlasting acceptance with God through faith in the finished work of His Son on the cross, I do not fear death or Hell. And if you are a believer – a Christ-follower – also, you need never fear that fate.
If you are not a believer then you should be very afraid indeed, and being cast into Hell and suffering everlasting torment should be thought of by you as the worst thing that could ever happen; because it is your destiny and it will happen if you go out of this life without Christ.
Now I am certainly not trying to be glib about this most solemn topic and I hope my opening words of this sermon will cause some among you to sincerely take stock and examine where you stand in relation to a Holy God.
But getting back to my opening question, ‘what is the worst thing you can think of that could happen to you’, my own answer to that question would be that God would be silent. I believe that the very worst thing that could happen to mankind and to this world is if God would stop speaking and His Word would not be available.
Well, that happened once. For one 400 year period in all the history of the world since Creation, God was silent.
Through His prophet, Amos, in response to His people’s repeated and continued rejection of His warnings and His word through His prophets, God made this announcement:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “When I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the LORD. People will stagger from sea to sea and from the north even to the east; they will go to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.” Amos 8:11-12
That declaration of the Lord was brought to pass at the end of Malachi’s ministry. When that last prophet stopped talking, God stopped talking.
For 400 years the world kept turning. The Greek empire arose. Alexander the Great came and went. But God was silent.
Rome came to power and ruled the world. Julius Caesar lived and died. Names we all know such as Mark Anthony and Cleopatra had their glory days and they came and went. But God was silent.
There was no preacher, there was no prophet in all the land of Israel; no, not in the world. Oh, there were, no doubt, teachers. There were those who taught the history of the Children of Israel and there might even have been those who studied and picked apart the messages the prophets left behind. But there was no one to say “Thus says the Lord”, for the Lord was silent.
What a famine indeed! What a dearth! What emptiness! How do people live in this world with no word from God? How do they survive on any level without the voice of the Lord in their lives? It astounds me.
I mean… I know that I was once without God in that I was in rebellion against Him and I didn’t care for Him and I felt no sorrow for sin or my own waywardness.
But as I look around me now I wonder how people in today’s conflicted and crisis-filled world can go on day by day, ignorant of the horrible destiny toward which they careen and thinking they have everything under control.
If the Word of God disappeared from my life right now I would despair to my deathbed, and I hope many of you feel the same way.
I hope you understand what a blessing you possess, that you have access to the written and spoken Word of God and that He perpetually leads you onward and upward, through springs of living water and closer and closer to His Celestial home by His Spirit and His Word.
For 400 years the world turned and people came and went; entire generations, who never knew the voice of God.
Then… Luke tells us…
“…in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, 2 in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.” Lk 3:1-2
ALONG CAME JOHN
Is it any wonder that people from Jerusalem and Judea and all the region around the Jordan were flocking out to hear this man? None of them had ever heard a prophet, nor did they probably ever expect to hear one. True prophets of God were something of the past. They were almost relegated to the status of mythical characters in the minds of this generation.
But people were saying, “Hey, there’s a man out there living by the Jordan in caves, wearing camel hide and eating locusts and honey, and saying things like ‘prepare the way of the Lord and make His paths straight’. Could that mean Messiah is finally coming? Is he the Messiah? Let’s go see!”
Think about this now… the Pharisees were going out even Roman soldiers were going out. This was no insignificant thing going on by the Jordan River. This was no insignificant man.
First of all, let’s remember that John’s birth was announced in much the same way that the conception and birth of Jesus was announced. The news even came by the same angel. He came from God with a message from God to Zacharias and told him Elizabeth was going to have a boy-child and that his name would be John.
The angel said to Zacharias that his son would be great in the sight of the Lord and that he would turn the hearts of many back to God.
John must have been some powerful preacher. People came in droves to hear him, and as a result of his preaching they were coming down into the waters of the Jordan in repentance to be baptized by him.
Come to think of it, we preachers today must be doing something wrong. This guy wasn’t offering any comforts. He wasn’t telling them how to overcome their anxieties or their financial hardships. He wasn’t offering marriage seminars or grief seminars or stress-relief techniques.
He himself was living the self-denying lifestyle of a Nazarite, and when certain ones approached his outdoor church his first words to them were “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
Yet people continued to come and many responded positively to his preaching.
I wonder how many would stay in the pew and not get up and walk out if the preacher suddenly began pointing to specific people and started shouting, ‘You children of serpents! What are you even doing here? You think you’re ok with God because you are Baptists, or Presbyterians or Lutherans, (or whatever)? Well, God is about to do some pruning around here and then we’ll see who is spiritual and who is the phony!’
Well, we’re going to take a closer look in a few minutes at the heart-responses of the people who heard the Baptist’s message and what affect their responses had on choices they made in their near future.
THE BAPTIST’S FAITH
First though, let’s talk about the faith of the Baptist. What was it he believed, and under what conditions did he cling to his convictions?
Well, he believed that the Promised One was coming. By that term I mean the One God had promised from ages past who would deliver men from their sin. The Jews called Him the Messiah and the Greeks called Him the Christ. Both terms mean the same – they mean the anointed one. An anointing is a designation to a specific mission for which one is sent.
When I was ordained for ministry a group of preachers applied oil to my forehead to symbolize an anointing of oil and they prayed over me. They were sending me forth, so to speak, to preach the same message they themselves had spent many years preaching.
So firm was John’s conviction of the coming of the Anointed One, that his entire life was centered in that coming event. He didn’t seem to look beyond that and he apparently had little interest in anything before that.
His singular focus and purpose was to call people to prepare their hearts for the coming of this Holy One, and this he did from the day he opened his mouth to preach until the day he decreased and his ministry ended.
And might I remind you before we go further that John was proclaiming the Christ and recognizing Him prior to His performance of any miracles, before He came preaching that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, before any public ministry at all. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
I want to take you to John’s Gospel for a minute or two, because most of what we have recorded for us from John the Baptist’s preaching is found there. Turn to John 3:25
“Therefore there arose a discussion on the part of John’s disciples with a Jew about purification. 26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him.” 27 John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. 28 “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’ 29 “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. 30 “He must increase, but I must decrease. 31 “He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. 32 “What He has seen and heard, of that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony. 33 “He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true. 34 “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure. 35 “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. 36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” Jn 3:25-36
Church, we’ve talked about this before. Salvation is by faith alone, but faith that saves is never alone; it issues in good works. It manifests itself in deeds…physical deeds and lifestyle.
John’s faith in God’s truth was demonstrated in his very life. We’ve already talked about his stark lifestyle in the wilderness but that alone is not proof of faith. Any person with a distaste for the society around him might withdraw to seclusion and live on just the basics to sustain him and be perfectly content. We call them hermits.
But John’s chosen lifestyle was to keep himself pure and accessible to the God who had set him apart even before he was concieved, for the humble task of running before the Messiah and proclaiming His arrival on the scene.
It was not his lifestyle but the fact of his lifestyle that demonstrated his faith. Listen once more to Luke 1:15-17
“For he will be great in the sight of the Lord; and he will drink no wine or liquor, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb. 16 “And he will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God. 17 “It is he who will go as a forerunner before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, TO TURN THE HEARTS OF THE FATHERS BACK TO THE CHILDREN, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Do you think these multitudes would have listened to John and responded to his words if they had any ill to say of him personally? And do you think if there was anything to find fault with that the Pharisees would have kept silent about it?
No, I tell you, God was sending His only begotten Son into the world and He would not announce that great coming through a corrupted vessel.
The hearts of the fathers would not be turned back to the children, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous if people knew they were hearing the ravings of a hypocrite with a second, secret life. It wouldn’t have worked for John and it won’t work for us.
No, John’s faith was shown in his total commitment to a Godly life and faithfulness to his message, and he preached it unwaveringly and unashamedly until the day he was arrested and tucked away from public view.
THE BAPTIST’S MESSAGE
John was the last of the Old Testament prophets, who came with a New Testament message. He preached repentance, the judgment to come and the kingdom being brought in.
REPENTANCE:
Now in saying that he preached repentance I highlight the primary purpose of his preaching – his primary message.
If you look again at verse 2 of Matthew 3 you will see that he came calling for repentance for/because the kingdom of heaven is at hand; and if you look at verse 8 you will see that he calls for the fruit or evidence of repentance in those who have come out, then in verse 11 of Matthew 3 you will see that John said of himself, “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance”.
It will be very important for us to understand this point later when we talk about the condition of the hearts of those who came out.
Just in case you’re wondering about why Jesus was baptized by John since this was a baptism for repentance, you need only remember that Jesus came to identify Himself with outcast and irreligious people.
He did not need to repent and He did not have personal need of baptism to show repentance, but He did need to do the Father’s will, and it was the will of the Father that He identify Himself with the people for whom He would become sin so that they might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor 5:21).
John was calling for a change of mind. That’s what repentance is. It is a turning from something to something (or in this case, Someone).
God’s people as a nation had gone their own way. Jesus felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd (Matt 9:36).
As He was about to come on the scene to teach the kingdom of heaven and fulfill the plan of redemption, John’s job was to get the attention of their hearts and minds and prepare them to recognize and receive this Anointed One who is referred to by Luke (2:25) as the consolation of Israel – the One the nation had looked for ever since Abram received the promise that in his seed all the nations would be blessed – indeed, the One the world had waited for since God promised Eve a seed that would crush the serpent’s head.
To accomplish that preparation they needed to turn around – change their thinking – seek to have their hearts purified and ready to receive this Pure One John was about to introduce.
John also spoke of judgment imminent for the wayward nation of Israel.
Matthew specifically states that Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out to see him when he called them a brood of vipers, but in Luke’s gospel, chapter 3 verse 7 the Gospel writer indicates that these same words were generally directed at the multitudes that came out to hear the Baptist’s message.
I bring this to your attention for this reason. John called them a ‘brood of vipers’. Do you know what the word ‘brood’ means? It doesn’t just refer to a group or a gathering. He wasn’t just calling these people snakes. John was calling their ancestors snakes; and not just snakes but vipers, which denotes venom and treachery.
John was reminding them that they had all descended from those who had killed the prophets and rejected God’s Word. He was in effect saying, “Your fathers are the reason God was silent for 400 years, and now that He is speaking again His first words to you are to inform you that you are descended from vipers”
Now folks, if a viper has babies, what are the babies? Are they ladybugs? No, they are vipers.
So notice in our text verses in Matthew 3, that John calls them out, then he challenges them to bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance. In other words, God isn’t looking for remorse or regret. Remorse and regret are both non-fruit-bearing emotions. In fact, in the absence of true repentance remorse and regret are only a bondage to the soul, keeping guilt alive until the heart is hardened or the soul despairs.
In his book “That Incredible Christian”, A.W. Tozer included a chapter in itself worth the cost of the book, titled “The Futility of Regret”. In that chapter he wrote:
“There is indeed a godly sorrow that works repentance (2 Cor 7:10), and it must be acknowledged that among us Christians this feeling is often not present in sufficient strength to work real repentance; but the persistence of this sorrow till it becomes chronic regret is neither right nor good. Regret is a kind of frustrated repentance that has not been quite consummated. Once the soul has turned from all sin and committed itself wholly to God there is no longer any legitimate place for regret. When moral innocence has been restored by the forgiving love of God, the guilt may be remembered, but the sting is gone from the memory.” THAT INCREDIBLE CHRISTIAN A.W.Tozer, Christian Publications Inc, 1964
Many of these people may have come out carried by some feeling of remorse or regret, or may have begun to feel these things while listening to this man preach. But John knew that nothing short of Godly sorrow for sin and change of mind and heart would prepare them for the Messiah; and friend, that is true of you and me.
There are many in this world and in the church who for years have carried a load of guilt and regret for the sins and failures of their life, but they remain in bondage because they’ve never come to the place of saying ‘I’m sorry’ to God, from a sincere heart, and letting Him truly forgive them.
Regret and remorse are of the mind and can be assuaged with time and the kindness of loved ones. But repentance must be worked in and brought from the heart and only God can accomplish that.
True repentance is fruit-bearing, which means it produces visible results which are demonstrated in the life.
John’s message was that Israel’s long history was one of sin and rejection of God and His Word, and that the coming of Messiah was their last chance; and indeed, it was. The ax was laid at the root of the tree and when as a nation they rejected their Messiah they were cut off as a nation until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
In the meantime though, the message had its application to each and every individual and each one hearing the voice of the prophet had this opportunity to repent and be greatly helped.
HEARTS IN THE WILDERNESS
Now I want to close talking about the condition of the hearts of the people represented in this multitude. We are given two fundamental examples in the Gospels and they are evident here.
Either the hearers of John’s preaching were repentant and therefore receptive of the Messiah, or they were self-righteous and rejecting of the Messiah.
Once more I’ll step outside of our text for my support and then I’ll explain.
At the end of a discourse from Jesus on who John the Baptist was, Luke writes:
“When all the people and the tax collectors heard this, they acknowledged God’s justice, having been baptized with the baptism of John. 30 But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves, not having been baptized by John.” Lk 7:29-30
Now what do we see here?
Well, first let me tell you what this is not saying to us. It is not saying to us that John’s baptism had some magical quality that allowed those who had gone down into the waters to understand the truth about what God was doing. It is not saying ‘people who got baptized were able to understand but those who did not were not able to understand’.
What is being conveyed is the condition of the hearts of the people, from individual to individual.
The people who went down into the waters of the Jordan and submitted to John’s baptism did so because in their heart they were repentant and desirous of being clean and prepared for the coming of this Holy One of God, the Anointed One, the Messiah.
Their submission to this outward act of baptism was physical demonstration of the heart-change they were experiencing. They didn’t experience it because they went down – it was the other way around.
Those who were not repentant but rejected the purpose of God for them and clung to their self-righteousness and trusted in the keeping of the Law for their righteousness, did not submit to John’s baptism because they rejected his entire ministry and message and subsequently, the ministry and message of the Messiah.
Christ-followers, there is a timely application in the faith and message of the Baptist for today’s church and today’s Christian.
John’s faith was in the imminent coming of the Lord’s Christ and his message was a call to both the nation and the individual to have their hearts prepared for the arrival of the Holy One of God.
Today, as then, we who believe await eagerly and anticipate the imminent return of the Lord’s Christ. Shouldn’t we therefore, as the church and as individuals be concerned with our readiness for His coming?
In his first epistle Peter indicates that judgment begins with the household of God, and I do not want to violate the context of what Peter was conveying, but just to point out that God will keep His house clean, and He will return to a pure bride when He comes to claim the church He purchased with His own blood.
It is my belief that the entity that calls itself the church in today’s world and in our society is in dire need for a wake up call to repent, to produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and abandon the self-righteousness and self-serving powerless form of godliness that she has trusted in for so long now.
More directly though, since the true church is made up of individuals, I believe the pertinent message of the heralds of God in these last days must be a call for individual repentance, recognition of the need for fundamental change in our hearts, and a desire for God to call us all back to true holiness and submission to the sanctifying work of His Spirit in our heart of hearts so that we can be truly confident that when the trump of the Lord sounds and the voice of the archangel calls none of us will have missed out through neglect or unbelief.
The Messiah is at hand, church, and His coming is soon. The Baptist’s faith and message still sound clear and loud to the true church of Jesus Christ.
There is the judgment He delivers; there is the baptism He brings; and now we as individuals are compelled to examine ourselves and answer whether the fruit of repentance, which is obedience and submission to our risen and coming Lord, is really evident in our lives and therefore in the church.
When the Baptist preached of One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, ‘…whose winnowing fork is in His hand and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire’, the message had application to the nation of Israel standing before him in the wilderness.
But it also had direct application to you, and me, and all who comprise the true church in these days and on the day He comes.
God intends to catch up to Himself a pure bride, a holy people, repentant and submitted and full of the Spirit.
Are we ready? Are you?
