NOW IS OUR TIME TO PREPARE
LUKE 3:7--14 DECEMBER 15, 2002
LUKE 3:7-14
7John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
10"What should we do then?" the crowd asked.
11John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."
12Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"
13"Don’t collect any more than you are required to," he told them.
14Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?"
He replied, "Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely--be content with your pay."
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Dearest Fellow-Redeemed and Saints in the Lord:
From day to day we don’t always get things accomplished. It might even be week-to-week, month-to-month, or year-to-year before we do the projects we were planning. We can’t always ‘get it done tomorrow’ because tomorrow turns into today. It is you and I who live in the present. We live in what is called today, looking ahead often times to the future.
The Lord reminds us of that very fact today as John the Baptist prepares us. He says yes, we look ahead to the future, but we prepare also day by day for that future. We are concerned about what is in the present. The present, the Lord tells us, is our time of grace. Every day that God gives us is our time of grace, an opportunity to grow in our Christian faith.
Paul writes in Corinthians as he quotes the Old Testament: "For he says, ’In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.’ I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation"(2 CORINTHIANS 6:2). As John the Baptist came and preached the message of repentance. That was his message. He says, ‘Now is the day of salvation. Now is the time of God’s favor.’ It is that message from John that we use as a theme when he says, ‘Now is our time to prepare.’ In other words, now is our time to get ready.
NOW IS OUR TIME TO PREPARE
I. With repentance
II. With fruitfulness
I. With repentance
The readings this year and our texts in this season have centered a lot around John the Baptist (more than usual.) They remind us of the importance that he played in making straight the paths for the Lord and preparing the way for Him to come. His message was one that people came to hear, even though he spoke at times very harshly to the crowds. John told them of God’s law very bluntly and very pointedly. Listen to our text begin at verse 7: John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers!” He calls them snakes—a brood of vipers! Isn’t that a fitting description of them? Later on, Jesus would call them the same thing. They would come and claim their heritage from Abraham. He would remind them that really, they were children of their father, Satan, who was the ‘father of lies’, that first serpent; therefore, a brood of vipers!
John wanted to know something from them. ‘Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?’ He was wondering why they came out to hear the message, why they came to see him, John the Baptist. They hadn’t listened to the prophets very often. They dismissed Jeremiah and the prophets before him. They even put the some of the prophets of God to death. Now he was wondering what changed their minds, why they came out from their temple, why they came out from the synagogue, why they came out from their nice city and fine homes to see him. Part of the reason they came to see him was that they had heard many things about him. He was living out in the desert by himself. It was an odd lifestyle that he lived. He gave them the warning not to use their same old tired excuse with him. He said, ‘Do not begin to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our father.’ Generation after generation had said that. They gave that as the reason of not listening to the prophets of God. They said, ‘after all, God chose us. God made us his children.’ They were right but they had used that so long that they had forgotten faith. John tells them: ‘For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.’ He turned to these people who came out to him and said, ‘you think you are alive. If you think that Abraham and his faith makes you faithful people, God can make far better living believers out of these dead stones than what you already are.’ That was a pronouncement of God’s judgement against these people.
They had time to prepare; yet time after time they had given it up, dismissing the prophets, not listening to them, and now they came out to see John. Hopefully they would listen to John, and we find out that they do. He gives them another warning. He says, ‘The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." His message, in other words is: Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand. He states to these people that now is the time to prepare with repentance. 8Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.
They heard the law from John but they also heard the gospel, because why did they come out? They came out first to see John, they came out to hear John’s message, and they also came out to be baptized. They came out to have their sins forgiven and washed away. They knew that this gospel message would, and could and did, save them from their sinfulness. That is the gospel message when John preached, ‘Repent. The kingdom of God is at hand.’
This is the message you and I are privileged to hear from God’s Word. This is the same message you and I need to hear time and again. For we know as we stand before God, we only stand there bringing our gifts of sin—disobedience, evil actions, wicked words and bad thoughts. That message of repentance needs to be told to us time and again. John preached it over and over. We’re told Jesus preached it over and over. When John was put into prison, what was the message of Jesus? ’The time has come,’ he said. ’The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’"(MARK 1:15). The Lord wants a sinner to repent. To repent, we have to understand that we’re sinners. We have to admit to that. We confess our sins. We do all that by God’s grace—faith.
We live in a society, which is very difficult in a sense, to admit to sin. A lot of sins are covered over. Many times we don’t look deep enough into our own souls, into our own lives, to see the dark sins that are there. The Lord wants us to repent because in repentance, we reach out to God and realize that we cannot stand on our own, but instead it is God who gives us His strength. It is God who gives us His forgiveness. After all, it is God who wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. Listen to Ezekiel, the prophet. "For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!"(EZEKIEL 18:32). Repentance is really between each one of us and God, isn’t it? Repentance brings us joy and contentment in our life…joy in knowing, ‘Yes, the Lord forgives me!’ It’s not very joyous for us to come before God and admit our sinfulness, but it ‘s joyful to know that the Lord has provided us with a Savior.
We may remember the example of David, the king. He committed adultery and murder and all kinds of sins, simply because of wicked thoughts that began in his heart. He learned from that. He learned that as far away as he had fallen away from God, that as much as he had slapped God in the face with his sins, so much God could and did forgive him. Psalm 51, a psalm of confession, repentance and joyful understanding of God’s forgiveness, verses 9 and 10: "Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. (That’s what we plead with the Lord.) When He does that, we say: Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me"(PSALM 51:9,10). The Lord says now is our time to prepare. We come before Him with our sinful hearts and lay them on His altar. Then He creates in us a new spirit, a steadfast spirit.
Now is our time to prepare with repentance, and then as John continues,
II. With fruitfulness
It is amazing, at least to me, when these crowds came out to John and he spoke this way (he called them a brood of vipers, challenged the fact that they even came out to see him) that they did not leave. They stuck around! They didn’t say, ‘Well, we’re not going to listen to John anymore. We don’t want to hear those things. We don’t want to hear him tell us about our sins.’ Instead, John said produce fruit in keeping with repentance. John then pointed out, ‘every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’ He looked at them and said they would be thrown into the fire. Did they leave? They stayed. The crowd said, ‘What should we do then?’ They wanted to know how they could live a fruitful life. He tells them very clearly that the fruits of their faith are to be seen in their living. 11John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same." He tells them to be generous—generous as the Lord had been generous with them. They ought to bless others as the Lord had blessed them.
Then, miracle of miracles, it wasn’t just the crowd who stayed there, but even more people came out to see him; people who were not the children of God. 12Tax collectors also came to be baptized. (They were looking for the gospel.) "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?" They looked at John now as a teacher, not just as a nut in the wilderness. They were looking for what to do. 13"Don’t collect any more than you are required to," he told them. We remember the tax collectors—they could charge as much as they wanted. They knew what the government wanted, but they always tried to get a little bit more for themselves. They would get as much as they could, as much as the people were willing to pay. They were not only making their salary from the government but also from the extra taxes that they took in. John said, ‘be honest. Charge what the taxes are.’
14Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" There were lots of soldiers around, connected very often with the Roman government. They weren’t believers, but they came up and asked what they were to do. He replied, "Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely--be content with your pay." Again, the soldiers weren’t ‘enlisted’ as we think of today. They were for sale. They were mercenaries. Governments hired soldiers. It was an occupation. Sometimes the government paid them well and sometimes the government said, ‘Whatever you can get, you get.’ John reminded them: "Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely--be content with your pay." Sometimes they got paid with money, sometimes with just room and board. The Lord said whatever you get paid, be content.
The Lord said to all of these people through John: Now is the time to prepare--to get ready for the coming of the Lord with fruitful living. The last part here is also the key for us in our world today. The Lord says to us to be content. When we are content, we aren’t so anxious to take care of ourselves, to be selfish. Instead, we try to be selfless. That is the key to fruitful living. If we aren’t content in our life, we aren’t willing to share with others, we aren’t willing to be honest or generous with others, are we? We have to look at our life (this month before Christmas is a season of discontent isn’t it?) because the world around us makes it seem as if we’re not satisfied with all of the things that God has already given us. We have to go out and get the most up-to-date gifts. We can’t wear last year’s clothes. We can’t be satisfied with last year’s toys; we have to get the new up-dated ones. We have to show how much we love each other by the amount of money we spend on all of these things. In a sense, we’re discontented with what we have, hoping to get more and better things. Contentment, which is well worth looking up, is best defined in 1 Timothy, chapter six. The Lord reminds us about how we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out. We ought to be content with food and clothing. Then He tells us: "People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction"(1 TIMOTHY 6:9). We can see that all around us and sometimes we can see it in ourselves when we aren’t content. The Lord says, ‘Be content.’
As we are content, we realize the blessings that God has given us…not just earthly but spiritual. We realize that when we stay close to God. Again, in our season of discontent in this celebration of Christmas, sometimes the world drags us away from God and the meaning of Christmas. (Not always, but sometimes.) We do lots of different things in the month of December more so than we do in the rest of the year in preparing for Christmas. The Lord shows us how to be content, how to be fruitful. "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me"(JOHN 15:4). Wasn’t that the message of John, saying to the tax collectors and the soldiers and those that came out to him—remain in the Lord Jesus? He says stay close to God. God will stay close to you always. Then we see God’s blessings and we want to live fruitful lives.
All of us would admit that the Lord has been generous to us beyond comparison. There’s no reason for us not to be content. As we learn to be content and satisfied, then we realize it becomes much easier to be a fruitful Christian in a world that is selfish. It becomes easier to be a generous Christian in a world that is miserly. It becomes easier to be a Christian that shows forth the fruits of Christian faith. Just a few of these fruits are listed for us in Galatians: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law"(GALATIANS 5:22,23). There is no law against peace, joy, love, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, gentleness, patience, and kindness. These are fruits of the Spirit. These are Christian fruits. Hopefully the world sees them in our life, that they see in us all of these things rather than discontent, rather than dissatisfaction, because now is the time to prepare.
Now is the time to get ready for the Lord as He is born on Christmas Day, as He comes on the Last Day. We do it with repentance, realizing that if it were not for God’s grace, you and I would be lost and condemned forever. Because of God’s grace, we realize that we are content. We can be content because no matter how much we have, or how little we think we might have, or how much more we think we need to have, the Lord has given us everything. He has given us eternity.
Paul sums it up in saying, ‘Now is the day of our salvation.’ He reminds us that John prepared the way for the Lord thousands of years ago and a lot has happened since then. Since we’ve come here this morning, the words of Paul are true when he says, "And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed"(ROMANS 13:11). Every second that ticks by, our salvation is nearer. Every day, every year, our salvation is nearer. That’s why in the present he says, ‘Now. Now is the day of our salvation.’ Now is our time to prepare with repentance and then with fruitfulness. Amen.
Pastor Timm O. Meyer
