Our scripture reading this morning is going to come from the book of John chapter 3 verses 22 through 30. After this Jesus and His disciples went into the Judean countryside and He remained there with them and was baptized. John also was baptizing at Anon near Salem because water was plentiful there and people were coming and being baptized for John had not yet been put in prison. Now a discussion arose between someone John's disciples and a Jew over purification and they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, He who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, look he is baptizing and all are going to him." John answered, "A person cannot receive even one thing unless it's given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom, the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete, he must increase, but I must decrease. This is God's word, it's true, and it's given out of His love. You may be seated." Awesome. Thanks, Tyler. Well, it's great to be worshiping with you all again this morning. Last week I started off a sermon with a cute little baby story from our boys, and so it went really well, I think. So I'm going to do the same kind of thing today. Only it's an older kid story, so this week I already got permission for this. Anderson got his wisdom teeth out, which if you've gone through that with a kid, you know that can be an interesting experience. So his little brother Jackson decided this would be good if I come along to film this and see how this goes. And he was not disappointed in any way, it was fantastic. So Anderson had a little bit of fear as he went into the procedure, and then he came out completely hopped up on all the pain meds and everything. And the first thing he said is, "Mom, I did it!" And I'm like, "I think you may have overestimated your role in this procedure. You didn't have anything to do with this. The dentist is the one who did it." And then from there, he just was like living his best teen bravado life, everything he could think of. "I'm doing great." He's like, "Get on my level." "I'm him." All these phrases that the cool kids say. I don't know what "I'm him" means, but I think it's what the cool kids say, because Anderson said it. I just listened to him just go on for about an hour with how great he was feeling and how great he was at life. I remember thinking, "Boy, I wish I had half that much confidence. I think I would do much better at life. If I lived life like Anderson just coming out from under Novocaine or whatever that is that he was under." And then the more I reflected on it, the more I realized, I probably am more like that than I want to admit, right? If we're honest, I think we all have this deep down sense that we're probably doing pretty well. We're probably doing okay, and if we could just, you know, get liberated through a sense of medication and be able to say what we're honestly thinking about ourselves, most of us think we're pretty awesome, right? I think there's some insecurity on the surface for a lot of us, but if you dig down below that insecurity, a lot of us have this sense of self-confidence or this sense of selfishness, maybe is a better way to say it, that we tend to think that we're doing pretty well at life, right? And the things that we do that mess up, those are like surface problems, but if they really got to know us deep down at the core of who we are, we're doing pretty well. I think that's how I tend to be myself if I'm honest. The hard part is, I didn't realize until recently that that's how I viewed myself. I thought I was the most humble person I know, I've said that before, which is an ironic statement, but I confused my insecurity with humility, but insecurity and humility are not the same thing. In reality, insecurity is just another form of selfishness where I had made my own self the center of the universe. There's an expression or a joke I heard once that said, a Copernicus told us that the earth revolves around the sun, but it wasn't until the millennial generation came along to prove that actually the world revolves around them instead. So if you're in Gen Z, I'm so glad that you're here because now the younger kids coming up us millennials are like, there's someone else to make fun of besides millennials now. But I think what I'm trying to get out with all this stuff is that if we're honest with where we're at in our own hearts, we have a very self-centered way of looking at the world. And so then when someone reveals to us that we have an area we need to grow in, or if there's something that we need to change about ourselves or a sin we need to repent from, that is the hardest concept for us to wrap our minds around. It's something that we can nod our head to and we can give a little bit of credence to, but it doesn't ever penetrate the depths of our souls the way that the scriptures say that it should. It's a little bit like when an astronaut is trying to re-enter the earth's atmosphere. If they don't get that angle right, they will bounce off the atmosphere and head into space. I don't know if that's true, but that's what all the movies say about it anyway. I got a thumbs up from there. I think that's how our souls deal with this topic of repentance a lot of times is as we hear something coming at us, we know that we're not perfect, we know we need to turn from our sin, but there's something in our souls, this atmosphere that protects our pride and most calls to repentance bounce off the atmosphere of our souls and we leave unchanged by those things. And so what we have this morning is we have this passage on repentance that we're going to study. It's John the Baptist. He is the most famous person in the Bible calling people to repent. And the thing that I want us to see as we go through this is that repentance is something for each of us. No matter who you think you are or how well you think you're doing or if you think you've already done that repentance thing in the past, each and every one of us has something that we need to repent of. We need to turn from sin and turn towards Jesus in that process. Sometimes in life, God is gracious and merciful in the sense that He reveals to us the depth of our pride and our need for repentance. But most of our lives we're able to skate by as innocently as we think we are, thinking that repentance is a message for someone else rather than a call to our own hearts. And so what I want us to see this morning is that deep inside of us, there's something that wants to run away from this call to repentance. We think we've got to get away from here as quick as we can. But what we're going to see through John's teaching is that by running away from repentance, we're actually running away from Jesus. And if we want to run towards Jesus the best way and the only way, in fact, to run towards Jesus is by running towards repentance, being honest of our need for a Savior and then asking Him to fill us with His Spirit because of His grace for us. So let's say a word of prayer and then we will study Luke chapter 3 together this morning. Heavenly Father, we're so grateful that you have given us your word. We can open this book and know that it is not a mere book. It is alive with your Spirit. It is full of your truth. And when we encounter the truths on these pages, it's actually a means for us to encounter you in a way we can't anywhere else. And so I ask that you would soften our hearts, Lord. You would open our eyes. You would open our ears. Then we would receive what you have for us today. At the name of Jesus we pray, amen. Amen. All right, so we are in week, I think, four of our studies through Luke. We're going to spend the next few years doing this. And the reason we're going so slowly and methodically through this book. Luke is actually the biggest book in the New Testament. There's more verses and Luke than any other book. The reason we're going to spend about two years doing this is because it's such a wonderful thing and a beautiful process to have our minds open to see who Jesus really is. And there's no way better to do that than by studying one of the Gospels and seeing Jesus as He is presented to us through Luke's account here. And so we had the birth narrative. We went over last Advent. We started Luke a few weeks ago. Last week we saw this amazing picture of Jesus' childhood. It's actually the only place in the whole history of recorded history where we have an authentic account of what Jesus was like as a child. In that account we see that He is not only fully God, but He's also fully human. Those two things have to go together. What theologians call the hypostatic union. And it's the most beautiful teaching in Christianity because since He is fully God, He is powerful enough to save us. But since He is fully human, He's also loving enough to sympathize with us. So Jesus didn't grow and become God. Jesus was not God who only looked like He was human, but really was only God. He is fully God and fully man. He's truly God and truly man. And because of that we can have confidence that He is powerful enough to save us. And He's loving enough to sympathize with us in our weaknesses. So this morning we're going to start off in chapter three. We're going to see the story of the famous John the baptizers or John the baptist. As your Bible probably translates to that. If you have your Bible, turn to Luke three. If not, it's page 858 on the table Bibles. But the reason I want those open in front of you is because it's so important to see that this is God's Word and it's true. And we encounter His love in a special way. So we're going to go through every verse this morning from verses one through twenty today. The interesting thing here is that Luke chapter three, this is where the Gospels of Mark and the Gospels of John begin. They begin with John the baptist proclaiming the way of Jesus. All four Gospels include the story of John. So he's obviously an important figure for us to know as we study the life of Jesus. So let's begin in Luke chapter three beginning in verse one. It says, "In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, being governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, Tetrarch of the region of Iterreia and Trakhanitis, and Lysanius Tetrarch of Abilene. During the high priesthood of Anis and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness." So Luke is beginning this account of Jesus' adult ministry by setting us in a specific historical moment. He gives us these different leaders in order for us to be able to say, "This is the time in which Jesus' ministry enters the world." And the reason this is important is because if you remember back to Luke chapter one, the first four verses, Luke tells us that the reason he has wrote this gospel, written this gospel for us, is so that we can have certainty concerning the things that we believe. All right, Luke's goal, it's a very audacious goal, is that we can have confidence and, in fact, certainty over what it is that he's teaching us here about Jesus. And so you cannot have certainty if the things he's teaching are not historically accurate. And so Luke is wanting to show this is historically accurate. There's a specific time that this entered into history. And the thing that's amazing about both Luke's gospel and the book of Acts that he wrote later after the book of Luke, is no matter how often people try to skeptically disprove what he teaches historically, Luke is the most amazing historian that has ever recorded facts that happened in the earth. Every time there's something that people feel like, "Oh, we have Luke here, this wasn't true." More research comes out and more archeology and actually proves him to be true. So, for example, this Lysanius guy, for years people thought that Luke was mistaken, because his reign did not coincide with Philip the Tetrarch. And then we found out a few decades ago that there's actually another Lysanius in a different part of Judea who was ruling at this exact same time. All right, so that every time people try to disprove the Bible historically, it's amazing how God in his sovereignty has protected this word to show that it is trustworthy. But the reason why I want to bring that up is because the historical reliability of the Bible is an important thing in strengthening our faith. It's something that God can use to say this is true, it is given out of his love, we can come to this with confidence. But at the same time, the historical reliability of the Bible only takes us so far. At the end of the day, we have to have this moment of faith where we choose to trust that not only is this historically accurate, but the words that it proclaims to us are actually true. And here's what I mean by that. It says that in this particular moment, we think it's probably 29 AD. In this moment, the word of God came to John. Okay, now there's no way to prove historically that this is God's word coming to John. We can prove that John was a real dude, that he spoke this message. But ultimately, it's the heart of faith that says, yes, this is God's word that is proclaimed to us. This is not just a historical account by Luke the historian. And so what I want us to see here is that there are good historical reasons for trusting the Bible. But ultimately, what God is beckoning us towards is a heart of faith that says, I trust him. Not just do I believe him, but I trust him with what he has shown us in his word. And the interesting thing I love about this start is it starts up really big, right? Caesar is over all of the Roman world. And then Pontius Pilate is over this region of Judea. And then it goes down to smaller and smaller levels of authority until you get to John the Baptist, right? So there's all these huge governmental officials with all this authority. And then there's some crazy dude out in the desert who eats locusts and wears camel skins. And it's that guy that God's word comes to to prepare the way for Jesus. And I think there's something so key about how God works in that way. As you go through the Gospel of Luke, you're going to see that there is this dichotomy of the powerful people with all the pride who think that they have been exalted because of their physical power or their authority in the world. And then you have the teaching of Jesus that says it's actually the humble people. The people of the world overlooks the outsiders, the outcasts. Those are the ones that begin in this posture of humility that God will actually be the one to exalt them. And he will humble the people that the world has already exalted. So that's the historical setting as we start into the Gospel here with John. He continues in verse three. And he went, John did, into all the region around 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 paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill 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." So this is how, like I said, all four Gospels include the ministry of John the Baptist. And in each of them, they identify that John is the forerunner of the Messiah. He's the one who's coming before Jesus who's proclaiming that the Messiah is coming. He's preparing the way for Jesus. And they all four Gospels quote this passage from Isaiah and tie it to John the Baptist ministry that he is preparing the way for the Messiah. So why is John in all four Gospels? Isn't that an interesting question? Why couldn't Luke have began with Jesus' ministry rather than including John in this? And I think the simple answer is all important people need to be announced before their arrival. So think of the example of the State of the Union address in our government. Before the President comes into the House chamber and gives the State of the Union, the Sergeant at Arms is the first one to come in. He tells everyone to get on their feet and then he says, "Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States." Because that's the proper entrance for the leader of our country. If he just slipped in the side door and sat down by himself for a while and then got up and talked, that would not communicate the decorum that the President is supposed to have. In the same way, if Jesus is the Messiah, he doesn't just come in by himself and slip into the corner and sit by himself for a while. He says, "He needs someone to herald and to announce and proclaim that the Messiah is coming." That's what John's role is. But notice the way that he prepares the ministry of Jesus. He doesn't just say, it's not a Kingly thing. There's not a lot of pomp and circumstance. Like I said, he's a guy that people assume is crazy because of his appearance and his dietary habits living in the desert. But what John says is actually the thing that prepares the way for the Messiah is repentance. He says, "If we're going to be prepared for the King to come, we have our hearts prepared by repenting, by turning from sin and turning towards God in faith, relying on his grace." That's the way that prepares this. So that prophecy from the book of Isaiah, it's about preparing the way, making paths straight, valleys being filled in and mountains being cut off. It's this image of saying, "We need a nice level road for the King to enter on." That was an ancient tradition of any time a King won a great victory. They would make a new road for that King to enter into the city to celebrate his victory. Even modern examples of this, like the Champs de lise in Paris, with the Arc de Triumph. That's so that the conquering general Napoleon could enter into the city of Paris and be celebrated. In the same way, John is saying, "We need to make a nice level path for the Messiah to come in and be celebrated." But the difference is, rather than it being a physical road, John's path is made through repentance. Turning from sin is the thing that prepares people for the Messiah to appear. Which makes perfect sense, right? Because who is the Messiah? It's God in the flesh. It's God incarnate. Go all the way back to Genesis chapter 3. Why was God's physical presence removed from the garden? It's because of the sin of Adam and Eve. God in His holiness and His justice cannot coexist with sinful beings. And because of that, He withdrew from the garden in order to provide a way for Adam and Eve to be made holy through the sacrifices instead. And so in the same way, if the King is going to come in to the city, to our churches and to our hearts, the way needs to be prepared by repentance leading the way. We need to clear our hearts out of the sin, turn from the sin we're experiencing, and turn towards Him as the way of preparing. But the thing I think is interesting in this section also is that Luke is the only one who includes verse 6 in his quote of Isaiah. This awesome verse that says, "In all flesh shall see the salvation of God." He is so interested in showing in his gospel that Jesus came not to save nice religious people. Jesus came to save all people, especially those people who think that Jesus must have come for someone else. That is the message that Luke is trying to show us is that Jesus is a savior for all people. And here's the interesting thing, this repentance path, this road of repentance that prepares the way for Jesus, it has two effects. One thing is that it actually prepares our hearts for Jesus to come in. By dealing with the sin, by turning from our desire to live for ourselves, our hearts are ready to receive Jesus. But in the same way, when we prepare the way for Jesus through repentance, we're actually making this path easier for other people to get to Him as well. This is the twofold purpose of this. Our repentance clears the way not only for us to go to Jesus, but for other people to see how beautiful Jesus is. Now, in the room this size, for sure people here that aren't following Jesus, you wouldn't say that you're a Christian. You're here just because you're exploring Christianity or because someone drug you here. And I want to say, we're so grateful you're here. This day and age, it takes a great amount of courage and boldness to come into a church if you would not consider yourself a Christian. And the reason it takes courage and boldness is not because there's any fear of arrest or repercussions. The reason it takes courage is because followers of Christ in our day and age have made Jesus so hard to get to. Our pride, our lack of repentance, our failures has clouded the way to Jesus so much so that when people look at the church, often they don't see Jesus in His beauty. They see a bunch of hypocrites who have become enamored with things of the world and are not proclaiming the good news of Jesus. And so that's why this message of John is so important. Not only do we need our hearts prepared for Jesus to enter, we need to prepare the way for other people to come see how great Jesus is. And if in our pride and our self-sufficiency, we think that repentance belongs to someone else. We are limiting the world's ability to see how great Jesus is. That's why we need to repent for both of those reasons. And in light of that, John's message is once you repent, you show your repentance through baptism. It's very clear, baptism is not the thing that saves you. He's not saying if you do this work, you will be saved. He's saying if you have repented, you show everyone that you've repented by performing this sacrament of baptism. And so baptism is an external proclamation of an internal transformation. So once you come to Jesus in faith, He has given you a new heart. You have died to your old self and risen with Him to walk in the newness of life. And in the same way, water baptism demonstrates that. It models for everyone that I have died to my old self and I have been raised to walk in newness of life. And so if we're a church that is pursuing repentance, we're making it easier for people to see how great Jesus is. That means there will be more and more repentance, which means there will be more and more baptisms. People coming to see Jesus. So if you have not yet been baptized and you are a follower of Jesus, let's have another baptism surface. We would love to get that dirty old horse tank we have in the context out here and fill it with water and get some people wet at church. I think that's awesome. Let's keep going verse seven through nine. So this is that the path of repentance prepares the way for Jesus. But it's the content of repentance that prepares each individual for Jesus. Let's look at verse seven. John said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by Him, you brood of vipers. Who warns you to flee from the wrath to come? There are fruits in keeping with repentance and do not 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 tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and is thrown into the fire. I have a feeling that if John was ever invited to be a dinner guest somewhere, he's probably not invited back for a second time. He's probably not one of those guys. Once you've kind of heard John's message, you kind of think you've met John. You don't need to go through that again. He is such a bold proclaimer of the importance of repentance for all of us. And so what he does here is he lays out what repentance says. He shows us in verses seven and nine that repentance is being humble enough to deal honestly with our own depravity, our own sin, our own failures, and to deal honestly with the just wrath of God. It's the idea that we are sinners and God's only righteous just response towards sin is wrath. Now this is something that we don't talk a lot about this day and age. I think previous generations there was this image of the hell fire and brimstone preacher that would only talk about wrath and vengeance and God's judgment. And we reacted so far against that that it's very rare anymore to hear Christians talking about the fact that God does judge sin because he is holy and righteous. And here's the problem with that. God judges sin because he's holy and righteous. And we are not loving anyone if we don't talk about the fact that God in his holiness will judge sin. God in his righteousness will judge sinners. It is the most unloving thing in the world to deny someone this call to repentance because you're worried that it's an unpopular feeling this day and age. The truth is the most loving thing you can give people. And so by undermining this idea of wrath and punishment we're actually undermining our ability to love one another. But because of the posture and the pride of those people who would say that. I think we're right to say that oftentimes that message of hell fire and brimstone came from someone who didn't see their own need for grace. They thought they were on a different level from everyone else and if you could be more like me than God would love you more. That arrogant posture is what we need to repent from. But in that repentance we need to tell everyone God is judgmental towards sin. He does punish sin. That's what it means for him to be holy and righteous. And so there's this idea of theological liberalism is what it's called. Completely different than political liberalism. That's not what we're talking about. This came about probably a hundred years ago and it's still very much colors the water of American religion. Like this idea that God could not possibly be wrathful and loving at the same time. There's a famous theologian named Richard Nieber who says that this way he describes theological liberalism as "a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." And what he's showing there is that if you remove God's holiness and his justice and his wrath towards sin, you've actually undercut the whole point of Christianity. What is the point of going to church if God is not judgmental towards sin? Again, what is the point of living differently as a Christian if God is not holy and righteous? The point is God in his love and his mercy has shown us that he is righteous and he judges sin. And in that kindness of God, he invites us to turn from it. But there's no reason to turn from sin if sin is not a thing. We have to be bold and proclaiming like John the Baptist does that sin is a real thing. Because if sin isn't real, repentance doesn't exist. And if repentance doesn't exist, you cannot possibly be prepared for Jesus to enter. If repentance prepares the way, you have to deal honestly with repentance. And I love how blunt John is, you brood of vipers. I've always just thought that was a reference to like a pit of snakes, a lot of vipers existing together. But the word brood actually means a son of a serpent or a descendant of the snake. Like what John is doing here is he's telling a group of Jewish people who are very excited about the fact that they are God's chosen people, that you're actually more the son of the serpent than you are the child of Abraham. Now he's looking back to Genesis 3, that same pass as we just talked about, where sin entered the world because of Adam and Eve's sin. But in that moment, it was the serpent, the devil that tempted Adam and Eve. And so he's telling these religious Jewish folk, you may think you're good because Abraham's your father. But in actuality, you have more in common with the devil himself than you do with Abraham. Like he says, like God can raise up children from stones if he wanted. That's no big deal to have that in your lineage. You have to actually repent. You have to turn from being a son of the serpent in order to follow Jesus, in order to be one of his children. And I think this is something that's easy for us to overlook because I don't have any Jewish heritage. So much of the New Testament is about people who are Jewish in their lineage and the gospel writers are saying that won't save you. You have to come to Jesus in faith, it's not just who your parents were. But I think this passage is really applicable to all of us this day and age because so many, well in two different ways. One of the most common way is because we have this theology of I will go to heaven because I am a good person. Now it gets back to this failure to repent concepts we talked about, right? Everyone thinks God and I must be cool because I'm nowhere near as bad as some of those other people I know. I heard a pastor say once, in order to not be a good person, you have to be a terrible person. And since you're not a terrible person, you must be okay. He's saying that like sarcastically. But because we all know we're not terrible people, we assume that God and I must be cool. And that's the same kind of thing like the Jewish people were doing of saying, I'm going to get into God's presence because I come from a good bloodline. And that is not at all how we enter God's presence, it's repentance that prepares the way for Jesus. Another way we see this idea of Abraham as our father coming up is in this day and age with millennials and Gen Z leaving the church so fast. I've noticed with a lot of these people that have left the church, they haven't rejected Jesus. They haven't rejected the God exists. Some of them have, but most of them haven't. What they have rejected instead is the church. Have you heard that phrase? I love Jesus, I just hate his people. It's a very ironic phrase, right? How can you love someone and hate their bride? That's not how it works in any relationship. But what they're doing there, often what they can be doing is saying, I'm going to rely on my religious heritage. I was raised in a Christian home, I would still check the box Christian on a survey, therefore I must be good. With no actual repentance or fruit of what it means to follow Jesus. Which gets us to the last part of this section in the beginning of verse 8 where he says, we're going to go. Verse 8, bear fruits in keeping with repentance. So the key that John is getting at here is, if you have authentically turned from your sin and repented, that will be demonstrated by the fruit of your life. Your actions, your posture, the way that you exist in the world among people will demonstrate that you have in fact turned from your sin and come to God in faith. And I think that this verse is the most challenging one and probably the whole New Testament about what it means to follow Jesus, right? Like that question of have you authentically repented or not will be revealed in the fruit of your life? And so for years when I was able to convince myself, I don't have a problem with pride, I'm not arrogant. There was no fruit of humility in my life because I had never turned from that sin of pride because I was not aware of it in my pride. Isn't that the ironic thing about pride? Is it blinds you to your own pride? In that though, what John is saying is once you become aware of that, whether you have really turned from your sin or not is demonstrated in how you live your life. And so from there, verse 10, the crowds say, and the crowds ask them, what then shall we do? The best response of every heart that is genuinely pursuing Jesus is this question, what must I do to be saved? How do I respond to this message? And John answers them in this really fascinating way. It says verse 11, and he answered them, whoever has two tonics 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. Soldiers also asked him, and what and we, what shall we do? And he said to them, do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, but be content with your wages. And so there's three different groups here that have come and been baptized by John. They have repented, they have received this baptism by water, and they're saying, how do we bear fruit in keeping with repentance? And John gives these three crowds three different answers. I love the specificity of his response. He's speaking to each of them individually saying, your own unique struggles and sin will determine what your unique fruit looks like. How do you respond with the fruit of repentance? It's going to look different depending on what it is that you're repenting from. So for the general crowds, he's like, you need to be generous. If you have resources, give those resources to people who have none. James says the same thing in James chapter two, that the true religion is seen in the way you care for the orphans and widows, for the people that are down and out that the world overlooks. The other crowd is the tax collectors. So they were the most hated people in the Jewish world. They were Jewish people who had kind of sold out their fellow countrymen in order to make a lot of money taxing, buying the rights from the Romans to tax their fellow countrymen. And John's response says, you need to be honest. Don't take more than you're supposed to. Live honestly in your vocation. And the last crowd, the soldiers, that they're occupying force, they say, what do we need to do to bear fruit of repentance in our lives? And he says, don't extort anyone. Don't leverage your authority for your own benefit. Be content with your wages. So each of those three crowds is different responses. It's a personal thing. We need to have our own unique fruit of repentance when we turn to Jesus. The thing that I think is fascinating about each of those three examples, though, is they all have to do with money. Every single one of them has something to do with possessions and finances and income. And I think that this is something we're going to see throughout the entire gospel of Luke. Money comes up a lot. Because when we're talking about repentance, it's not just am I doing things on the surface. It has my heart actually changed and then has my changed heart produced to the fruit of a changed life. And I think what John is trying to get at here is, there's no easier way to see if your heart has been changed or not than by looking at how you spend your finances. There's something unique about generosity that says, rather than looking in at myself, I'm looking up and around and I'm seeing the other needs that exist around me. That's the fruit of a changed life. And so when we talk about giving generously as a church, we're not saying, hey, we got some budget needs we need to fill. We're saying Jesus wants your heart and he can't have your heart if he doesn't also have your money. That's the most bizarre thing about what it means to be human is our souls and our finances are interwoven in a very unique and tight way. From there, he's saying that this is what repentance is. If repentance is unique to each individual and it prepares the way for Jesus, the crowd has a really interesting response to that. Look at verse 15. As the people were in expectation, they were longing for a Savior, they were longing for this Messiah, the one that had been prophesied. And all were questioning in their hearts concerning John whether he might be the Christ. Christ is just the Greek word for Messiah. And John answered them all saying, I baptize you with water, but he who is miter than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hands to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. So there's something really natural about the Jewish people's response. They see John, he's this charismatic figure, it's a little bit bizarre, but he's charismatic for sure. People are drawn to him and they're wondering, I wonder if this is the guy. Is this the Messiah? Is this the Savior we've been waiting for? And it's so natural of us as humans to misplace our hopes onto another human. I love this section of Scripture because it shows how thoroughly human of a tendency that is. Every election cycle, when we do that exact same thing, every time you're in a rough spot and you think that another person will be the one who can come and rescue you from where the problems you find yourself in. I think that's such a human tendency for us, but John in his humility says, hey, I'm not the guy. The reason I had Tyler read that passage from the Gospel of John is because that's where we see really clearly the heart of John the Baptist where he says, I must decrease and he must increase. If I thought I was the Messiah, I'd be trying to draw attention to myself, I know I'm not the Messiah, I'm the best man at a wedding, and my job is to point out everyone how great the groom is. That's what John is saying here. So with that we see his humility when he says, I'm not even fit to undo the shandals, the straps of the sandals of the Messiah who's coming. And there's this really interesting axiom or phrase that existed in this first century where Jewish disciples were told as a disciple of a teacher, you have to do everything for your teacher that a slave would do, except undo their sandals because that's disgusting. That's the one thing that you didn't have to do. And what John says is the lowest of lows, a thing that even a slave couldn't be required to do, I'm not even close enough to Jesus to even do that. That's how much greater Jesus is than I am. That's what it means for him to say, I must decrease, but he must increase. And the reason why John's able to say that is because he sees honestly the limits of his own ministry and the need of everyone that exists who he is ministering to. He says, I baptize you with water, but there's one who's coming after me who's going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He's saying, I have limited ability to affect change. I can get you wet in church. I can put you under the water. I cannot change your heart. I cannot give you a new spirit. I cannot give you the Holy Spirit. And so what John is pointing out is that there's a limitation in his ability and because of that he knows that we need the genuine Messiah to come into our lives instead. That's why repentance is so important. If repentance prepares the way for Jesus, we need to run towards that repentance because we will get more of Jesus in that process. And ultimately, it's only Jesus that's able to do all these things that we need done. We don't just need to go under the water. We need our hearts to be made new. We need a new life that is evidenced by new fruit that comes from us. That's what it means to come to him. And then he ends here with another judgment image, the idea of a wheat in the barn. The chaff is going to be burned. The wheat is going to go into the barn. And I think what's interesting there is he says that if you are baptized by the Messiah, you will receive a baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit. If you reject the Messiah, you will be burned in the fire. So basically he's saying fire comes for us all. There will be a judgment day for us all. The question is, is it a purifying and refining fire like gold that goes through a furnace? Or is it a fire of judgment that burns up and destroys the person because they didn't come to Jesus in faith? And then he ends, I think Luke is hilarious here, listen to this, verse 18. So with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people. Don't you love that? He's like, turn or burn. And other good news, messages I have for you, right? That's not how we normally view good news. But the reason that we're good news is where we get the word gospel from. The reason that's good news is because it's an invitation to come to Jesus. The reason a message of repentance is good news is because John knows by getting more repentance you actually get more Jesus. And more of Jesus is what we're after in the end anyway. Let's wrap up the story of John 19 and 20. It says, "But Herod the Tetrarch, the ruler of this region of Judea, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife." So Herod married his brother's wife historically, we know that that's true. And for all the evil things that Herod had done, he added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison. And I love how this is how we kind of, John moves out of center stage and off to the side now for the rest of the Gospel of Luke. And what Luke is doing is saying, John had this amazing ministry. We know from Josephus, one of the early ancient Jewish historians, that John was more impactful and more popular with his contemporaries than even Jesus was. And Josephus is writing, he spends about twice as much time on John as he does on Jesus. I think it's fascinating. So John with all his popularity and all of his acclaim, he still ends up in prison at the end of the day. We know from the other Gospels that he actually gets martyred, he gets beheaded for what he preached to Herod. By preaching this message of repentance, he actually ended up suffering instead of being celebrated. And I think that that's an appropriate place for this section on John to end because we know that when you preach the message of repentance, it doesn't actually hit us well. It's not something that we love to hear. No one likes to be told, "Hey, I'm going to meet with you next week. I'd love to take you out for lunch because you have a lot of repenting you need to do and I want to talk to you about that." We run from that feeling so quickly. We reject it. We tell who are you to point the finger at me. You're just as bad as I am. What are you talking? You're mistaken. We have all these things to keep repentance at arm's length. But what John is doing is saying, if you keep repentance at arm's length, you're really keeping Jesus at arm's length. So the rest of the Gospel of Luke, what we have for us is this chance to sit back and evaluate and ask, "Who is Jesus?" If my failure to repent is keeping Jesus at arm's length, what does that actually do for me? Is that actually what I need? Is that actually what I want? And I think the reason why we can see that this passage is a great place to see how clear this is, is if you flip to Romans chapter 2, Paul tells the people he's writing to in Rome, "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" The reason God calls us to repent is not because he's mean and evil and all kinds of negative things. The reason God calls us to repent is because he's kind, because he's merciful, because he desires to forgive you. He desires relationship with you, and that relationship and that forgiveness and that mercy and that wholeness and that thriving, all the things that we're looking for, that cannot exist without repentance. So rather than keeping repentance at arm's length, we need to run towards repentance, because in running towards repentance, you run towards Jesus. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we are grateful for this message of repentance. We confess that we all have this tendency to think that the repentance is something that is needed for someone else, but not for us. Lord, we just admit before you this morning that that is pride, and pride is most importantly what we need to turn from. We need an humility to come to you and recognize that we need a Savior, that all of our actions, all of the things that we do, that we think make us a good person are nowhere near close enough to bringing us into your presence. We need to be made whole, we need to be made new, we need to be made righteous through your mercy. And so in repentance and faith, we come to you asking for you to give us more of yourself, a greater appreciation for who you are in your spirit among us. That's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, well, if you're new here, we're so glad that you're with us today. The reason we do this weird thing where we sit around tables is so that after we spend some time studying God's Word, we can turn towards each other, and we can process and reflect on what it is that God has shown us from His Word. So here's some discussion questions to get us started. These are just discussion starters. Don't feel pressured to share anything that you're not comfortable sharing. First of all, when you personally find it hard to repent, what are the factors? And how does John's message speak to those factors? Second, why do you think John's applications of repentance had to do with money? And how is that message applicable to our American culture? Lastly, John's humility is a wonderful example of the posture we all should have. What is humility and how can we grow in it? So we'll do that for about 10 minutes and then we will continue our time of worship. We are now going to transition our time to communion. At our table, we were kind of talking about that humility it takes to recognize the log in your own eye versus the speck in your neighbor's eye. And this passage from 1 Timothy always sticks out to me. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. That phrase of whom I am the foremost I think is a really challenging phrase. I'm usually not a huge fan of doing this kind of thing, but this could either be really fun or terrible, but we're going to do a survey. If you know that you are the foremost as sinners, like in your mind, if you know you're the foremost as sinners, go ahead and raise your hand. Awesome. Now, if you act like you're the foremost as sinners, go ahead and raise your hand. Okay, cool. Now, if you know that you're the foremost as sinners, but you're not as foremost as your parents or your siblings or your in-laws or your spouse, go ahead and raise your hand. Hmm, yeah, no, definitely there are some people that don't raise your hand. Don't put it down, except for the people that aren't sitting with any of those. See, that was fun, right? I probably won't do that again. So we're going to transition to communion. This is the time that we recognize where our status is in front of Jesus, rather than looking to those around us and comparing ourselves and our sin to those nearest to us. We are comparing our state to Jesus and the sacrifice that he had to lay down on the cross in order to pay that penalty for us. So, there are tables in the front and the back. We will take communion, but we are also going to read this prayer of confession together. So if you can join me in stand as we read. And we'll just read the whole thing together out loud. Father, we confess today that we need a new revelation, a better advice. We need more than better behavior or new techniques. We need deliverance and a new heart. We are dead in our sins and in bondage to our own ways. Gracious God, forgive us and make us new. Renew our hearts and minds as we seek to follow you, amen. Just take a couple seconds here with me to silently pray as we lead into worship. Father, we love you. In this time of communion, Lord, I pray as a time of repentance. We can recognize how much you love us, how much you hate our sin, and how much you desire for us to come to you. I pray for this time of worship, that our eyes would be fixed on you and not each other, and that we'd be more in love with you than we are ourselves. Amen. If you would like prayer, I'll be in the back corner and would love to pray with you. Please worship with me. (guitar music)
SERMON OUTLINE:1: The call to repentance prepares the way (Luke 3:1-6).2: The content of repentance prepares the individual (Luke 3:7-14). 3: The Christ of repentance deserves the glory (Luke 3:15-20). DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:When you personally find it hard to repent, what are the factors? How does John’s message speak to those?Why do you think John’s applications of repentance had to do with money? How is that message applicable to our American culture?John’s humility i...
