Fruit Worthy of Repentance, Luke 3:7-18
Introduction
In his book Living Faith Jimmy Carter writes: A group of Christian laymen involved in missionary work approached a small village near an Amish settlement. Seeking a possible convert, they confronted an Amish farmer and asked him, “Brother, are you a Christian?” The farmer thought for a moment and then said, “Wait just a few minutes.” He wrote down a list of names on a tablet and handed it to the lay evangelist. “Here is a list of people who know me best. Please ask them if I am a Christian.” The evidence of faith is spiritual fruit.
Transition
This morning we will discuss what it means to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” At the outset, allow me to make this point clearly. We bear fruit for the Kingdom not so that we may earn God’s favor, forgiveness, or merit, but because He has showered us with His favor according to grace alone!
He has poured out forgiveness according to the gift of faith alone! He has granted merit in that we have been adopted as sons and daughters of the Most High!
Nothing I am now about to expound, nor anything else ever spoken from this pulpit shall ever be mutually exclusive to the divine reality that work proceeds from grace and grace proceeds from the abundance of God’s love for us.
What we will be talking about here is what does it mean to “bear fruits worthy of repentance” and specifically what is it that hinders our ability to do it. What does it mean matters; how do I do it makes the difference.
Exposition
I would define “Bearing fruit worthy of repentance” as bearing fruit, living in such a way, as to outwardly express the reality of what repentance has wrought in our lives. In other words, it means that our lives reflect a lifestyle, action, and choice pattern which are consistent with having repented of sin – that is – with having made a declaration against the destructive things of this world in favor of aligning ourselves with the beautiful things of the Kingdom of God.
We are being called here to bear fruit which is worthy of the gift of repentance.
The New Living Translation of the Bible says it very well, “Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones.” (Luke 3:8)
John the Baptist is telling us to live in such a manner befitting of having repented. This, my implication, says that repentance is a part of the Christian life.
Repentance though is not a onetime act of confession or a onetime recital of a certain prayer or creedal statement. The great Congregational Pastor of old, D. L. Moody wrote that “Man is born with his face turned away from God. When he truly repents, he is turned right round toward God; he leaves his old life.”
Repentance is the declaration of the heart, of the soul, of everything that is in us, in response the terrible burden of our own sin and the great weigh of His love for us, in turning from that which is destroying us to that which saves us!
Repentance is little more than a deep abiding inward decision to reject this life for the life of Christ! It is the ongoing and living decision to choose Christ and live for Him; even more so to allow Him to live in us! Repentance is the attitude of the heart which is thankful for the grace of God.
John the Baptist points out a great heresy, or false religious view, of the Jews of that day, many of the Jews of this day, and many Christians. That is, the belief that I can be saved by another’s faith. Parents cannot believe for children. These Jews were not saved, even by the great faith of Abraham. Each of us must own our own sin and in response to the grace of God, repent and turn to the Lord; for it is in turning to the Lord that we will find not condemnation but freedom!
Illustration
A little girl, whom we will call Ellen, was some time ago helping to nurse a sick gentleman whom she loved very dearly. One day he said to her, “Ellen, it is time for me to take my medicine, I think. Will you pour it out for me? You must measure just a tablespoonful, and then put it in that glass close by.” Ellen quickly did so, and brought it to his bedside. But, instead of taking it in his own hand, he quietly said, “Now, dear, will you drink it for me?”
“Me drink it! What do you mean? I am sure I would, in a minute, if it would cure you all the same, but you know it won’t do you any good unless you take it yourself.” “Won’t it really? No, I suppose not. But Ellen, if you can’t take my medicine for me, I can’t take your salvation for you. You must go to Jesus, and believe in him for yourself.”
In this way he tried to teach her that each human being must seek salvation for himself, and repent, and believe, and obey, for himself.
Exposition
While an increasingly secular society has asserted everybody’s right to be right and thus killed the idea of sin, the Church has done something far more dishonest; we have redefined sin to a neutral status.
Sin is, as the saying goes, not keeping the law, not doing what we are supposed to do; sin is, in the view of many within the Church, merely attaining less than God’s best for us. While this is true, it is only a part of the story.
The biblical view and the view which I would suggest is much more consistent with our experience of reality, is that sin is an affront to God! Continued unrepentant sin is the active rejection of God’s best for us! Sin cuts us off from God’s best for us; it is no small matter, this business of the unrepentant heart.
Sin is well defined as asserting self-will over God’s sovereign will. A discussion of sin, though, should not produce guilt as much as hope. When understood from the biblical perspective a right consideration of sin compels us to the grace of God. No person ever asked forgiveness who did not first recognize his mistake.
Repentance is not only a theological concept. When we are wrong, repentance is not merely saying we are sorry, but making a change in direction.
We live in a society, as Dr. R.C. Sproul once lectured, where “not only does everybody think that he is right, he thinks and asserts that he has the right to be right.” Arrogance, pride, and pomposity have gripped our culture.
Self assertion lies at the heart of our lack of repentance, which is the very thing which inhibits our ability to bear fruit which is worthy of repentance!
We live in a vacuum of humility and what is more, humility is often seen as a vice!
In having divorced ourselves from the personal nature of sin, we have also forgotten just how destructive sin’s personality is. We have become practitioners of applying the medication of grace without first diagnosing the viral infection of our sinful nature.
John the Baptist telling the people, telling us, to bear fruit worthy of repentance is paramount to a sports doctor saying to a patient athlete, “We have identified the break, set it in a cast, it has now healed; now go and do that for which you have been created; go and run!”
An honest discussion of sin is all that John the Baptist is having in John chapter 3 and what a glorious discussion it is indeed! For when we discuss our brokenness in honesty and humility we can then see the problem for what it is and be led to honest, routine, and constant repentance.
When our lives reflect a humble attitude of gratefulness to God for His love and mercy, repentance will lead our being enabled to bear fruit for the Kingdom!
Conclusion
In one of the coal mines of the north, the top of the pit fell in while a considerable number of the miners were down below, and the shaft was completely blocked. Those who were in the mine gathered to a spot where the last remains of air could be breathed. There they sat and sang and prayed after the lights had gone out because the air was unable to support the flame. They were in total darkness, but a gleam of hope cheered them when one of them said he had heard that there was a connection between that pit and an old pit which had been worked years ago. He said it was a long passage through which a man might get by crawling all the way, lying flat upon the ground—he would go and see if it were passable. The passage was very long, but they crept through it, and at last they came out to light at the bottom of the other shaft, and their lives were saved.
If my present way of access to Christ as a saint is blocked up by doubts and fears, if I cannot go straight up the shaft and see the light of my Father’s face, there is an old working, the old-fashioned way by which sinners have gone of old, by which poor thieves go, by which harlots go. I will creep along it, lowly and humbly. I will go flat upon the ground. I will humble myself till I see my Lord and cry, “Father, I am not worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants, so long as I may but dwell in thy house.” In our very worst case of despondency we may still come to Jesus as sinners. “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Call this to mind, and you may have hope.
It is a world gone mad which refuses to recognize reality. This culture has abandoned reason and forsaken God and in the process, you and I are left to choose between acceptance of reality and God’s truth or acceptance of the stark vanity of the way in which this world understands self – apart from God.
Martin Luther once wrote, “God creates out of nothing. Therefore until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him.”
Today, be reminded that our calling is to bear fruits that are worthy of the greatness of the gift that we have received in Christ. Let us repent, continually turning away from the things of this world that so easily consume us, unto the God who consumes us with His love! Amen.
