Preaching Through the Life of Jesus Year 1
1. The Preaching of John the baptizer
Matthew 3:1-12; Mark 1:1-6; Luke 3:1-18
3.
CONTINIAL REPENTANCE AND FAITH
“Repent and be baptized so your sins can be forgiven.”
(Mark 1:4)
“To the / church at Ephesus. / You do not have the love you had at first. / Repent and live like you once did.”
(Revelation 2:1-5)
The story of Jesus’ public ministry begins with a scene much like a Billy Graham Crusade. A man called by God is preaching Christ; calling people to turn from their sins and put their faith in him and telling them their eternal destiny of heaven or hell depends on what they choose to do.
Jesus and John were both about thirty years old at this time. Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3 and 4 said a “prophet”; a “voice in the wilderness”; an “Elijah” would step forward and announce the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. When God called John out of the desert and he came on the scene dressed like Elijah () and claiming to be this “voice”; Jesus, up in Nazareth knew it was time for him to come forward. In John’s message shows lost people are saved and how saved people grow. Our salvation begins with:
CONTACT
People by the tens of thousands were streaming down to the Jordan. They did it is because God reached out and touched them and drew them there. A farmer could not get his mule to start pulling a plow. He found a mule “whisperer” who talked mules into obeying. The whisperer stood in front of the mule and hit it between the eyes with a sledge hammer, making the mule’s legs buckle. The stunned farmer said, “I thought you were going to talk to my mule.” The whisperer said, “I am. But first I have to get his attention”.
What got these people’s attention were John’s words, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” To them this meant the Jewish Messiah-King was about to arrive. For 400 years, between Malachi and Matthew, Israel was subject to Gentile nations from Persia to Rome and they longed for and prayed for the day when their Messiah-king would come and conquer all Gentile (non-Jewish) nations; set up the Jewish kingdom of peace and prosperity and rule the Gentiles with a rod of iron. (Psalm 2;72 Amos 9). We will see how Jesus’ kingdom was different from that, but this is what got them to John.
We don’t come to God to get right with Him until He comes to us and gets our attention. Romans three says none of us “looks for God”, meaning the true God revealed in Scripture. Adrian Rogers says a sinner no more looks for God than a mouse looks for a cat. Jesus said we come to him when God “draws” us. (John 6:44) Hebrews 6 says the Holy Spirit “leads” us to “repentance.
We are fortunate enough to live where we are continually bombarded by the gospel. But First Corinthians three says we don’t “understand” it and it is “foolishness” to us. After I became a Christian at age 22, under the preaching of Jack Whitley, I was a little angry at the Pastors I had in the past. I wondered why they hadn’t preached the gospel he preached. They had, but I wasn’t listening. The sound went into my ears without my really hearing it. (Isaiah 6) I was thinking about cars, football and girls or sometimes girls, cars and football.
God reaches us in different ways. For Luther it was the death of a friend struck by lightning. For my Ethics Professor in seminary it was the fear of going to hell. For hundreds of thousands of young men it was going through the living hell of the Civil War. Scottish Comedian Harry Lauder said when his son died, “For me it was alcohol, suicide or God and I chose God.” For me it was the desire for a loving home without arguing and fighting, and I knew for that to happen, I needed help to stop doing some things. After contact comes:
CONVINCING
Jesus said the Holy Spirit must come into us and change us in something comparable to being born all over again. (John 3) After getting our attention the Holy Spirit, using the truths of the Bible (xx) convinces us of sin, righteousness and judgment. (John 16:8-11) We all know we sin. Our conscience tells us that. But we don’t take it seriously because everybody does it. But the Spirit lets us know God is not talking “to everybody else”; He is talking to us. It becomes personal. A little boy asked his mom and dad, going home from church, “Has the preacher been peeking through the window at our house?”
He lets us know sin is “against God” (Psalm 51); He takes it seriously and we will all answer to Him at the Judgment. He lets us know that for us to be “righteous”, right with God, Jesus had to die for us, and we must accept Him and His sacrifice for us. We hear this over and over in observing the Lord’s Supper, where Jesus said, “this is my blood of the New Testament shed for many for the forgiveness of sins”. (Matthew 26) After convincing comes the:
CONVERTING
The Spirit’s New Birth process then moves to the emotions and the will. Three terms sum this up: REPENT (Acts 3:19); TURN-convert (Acts 3:19) and BELIEVE (Acts 16:20). These three go together like fire, heat and smoke.
We believe God takes wrongdoing seriously and we need His forgiveness. We are sorry (the emotions) for what we have done to Him, to others and to ourselves. (2 Corinthians 7:10-11)
We want forgiveness and a changed life so we turn (convert) from a life controlled by what we want to a life controlled by what God wants (Repentance).
We turn (convert) to Jesus Christ (by faith) believing His sacrifice made our forgiveness possible (Romans 3:24-27).
We pray and entrust to Him our sins to forgive and our lives to change and control. Peace and assurance come when we truly believe that He has forgiven us; changed us and will receive us into heaven when we die.
This is not something we can go out and “do” any more than we can go out and “fall in love” with someone today. It is what is going on inside of a person who is being born again. It is the work of God. After I became a Christian, people who knew me said, “Bobby, you sure have changed”. I wanted to tell them, “I didn’t change. I have changed by God.” We talk someone “turning their life around” this is a perfect description of what we see here. It is like an army marching in one direction and when the leader says, “To the rear march!”; the men turn around and start walking in the opposite direction. The difference is, it is God who turns us around. This is called “conversion” and if it is real it will be:
CONTINUING
Some people in John's services, as in every church service, were right with God. They had repented and were trusting in God’s promise of forgiveness through the Old Testament sacrifices that were “shadows” of the cross. (Hebrews 10:1). Here, they were “re-dedicating” their lives so they could welcome the Messiah with a clean conscience.
Being sorry for our sins and asking God to forgive us and help us put those sins away becomes part of our Christian life. We spend the Christian life like we begin the Christian life. God told the Church people at Ephesus to “repent” and start loving Him like they did when they were first converted. First John, written to believers (5:13) says in 1:8-10,
“If we (Christians) claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins He is faithful and just and will forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
This is why Jesus teaches us, in his pattern for prayer, to ask our Father for forgiveness. (Matthew 6) Initial forgiveness is different from family forgiveness. Initial forgiveness is like a pardon. We receive a new RELATIONSHIP with God. We go from being children of Satan (John 8:44) to being children of God. (John 1).
In the Christian life we are disobedient children restoring our close FELLOWSHIP with our Father. After committing adultery and murder (2 Samuel 11) David did not pray for his salvation to be restored. He prayed the “joy” of God’s salvation to be restored (Ps. 51). Remember, we pray, “Our Father”, before we pray “forgive us”. We see this in our own family. When we disobey our parents, they don’t disown us, but there is tension and friction until we say we are sorry.
This is how we GROW as Christians. Initial forgiveness is like baptism and continual forgiveness is like “foot-washing” where we get the world’s dirt washed away daily. Day by day God helps us remove the bad things and on the positive side, add good things. A lady watched a sculptor carving an angel out of stone and said, “I wish I could do that.” The sculptor said, “You can. All you have to do is take way everything that does not look like an angel.” Daily we remove everything that doesn’t look live Jesus.
This is also how we KNOW we are true Christians. We cannot trust in some past “experience” when we cried and had “goose-bumps”. The new birth produces a new life. James calls the new life “works” and says faith that has no “works” is dead and the work he mentions is helping others. (James 2). Jesus called this life “fruit” and said a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. (Matthew 7) First John 3 says the same thing - a child of God “cannot” live a life of habitual, willful wrongdoing because he is born of God.” W.T. Conner says it is not how high we jump at conversion that matters; it is how straight we walk when we come back down.
A man and his wife slipped into a new church late as the preacher was praying, “Lord, we have done those things we should not have done and have not done those things we should have.” The man said, “Honey, this looks like our kind of church.” It is everybody’s kind of church. The Pastor was quoting Paul in Romans seven. Paul didn’t have a girl-friend on the side, he was painfully aware of those areas where his attitudes and actions were not like those of Jesus. And in his confession we see that he “wanted” to do right; he did not “want” to do wrong; he “hated” the wrongs he did and he longed for the day when he would be completely delivered from wrongdoing. (Romans 7:14-25).
The repentance the Holy Spirit gives is the desire to turn away from sins and be the right kind of person. That is why people asked John what changes they needed to make and he told them to help the poor, to be kind and to not make material things primary.
CHOICE
Not everyone came forward in John’s service. Once the Spirit gives us the truth that sets us free from sin’s penalty; power and its presence in heaven; the choice is ours. The ball is in our court. Unwillingness to repent is where most people fail. We have little trouble “believing”. A child TV actor had improper relations with her father from her early teens. In her early twenties she told him, “Daddy, you and I are going to hell for what we have been doing.” and stopped it. Most people reject Christ and his salvation because they don’t want God or anyone else telling them what they can and cannot do.
We must remember repentance is willingness not ability. I had this wrong all my life. I never had any problem believing the Gospel, but when it came to repentance, I thought I had to give up all my sins (quit doing them). The passage on “turning the other cheek” kept me from getting right with God for over a year. I knew I could never promise God I would do this and I didn’t want to be a hypocrite.
I did try to be a better person. But reforming our lives is like mopping a dirt floor. The harder you work, the dirtier it gets. Thank God, I did not give up, but went to our new Pastor. I told him my problem and he told me “Bob, I’m not sure I can turn the other cheek. I hope I can, but I don’t know it.” I said, “Man, you are the preacher, you have to do it.”
He laughed and said, “Bob, let me ask you this. Would you like to be able to turn the other cheek, and will you ask Christ to help you become that kind of person?” I answered, yes, and he said, “That is all God wants.” I believed him and found salvation. I had lived 22 years 12 inches from heaven, the distance between my head and my heart. When God changed me, what I believed in my head, I began to practice in my heart and life.
Judas did not go to hell for betraying Jesus. He went because he went to the WRONG TREE. Instead of going out and hanging himself, he should have gone to the cross and asked Jesus to forgive him. Jesus would have forgiven him, used him and welcomed him into heaven.
