[music] Today on Growing Through Grace. [music] When the Lord gets in, he doesn't like stuff, he wants to move stuff around. He wants the whole house. Repentance is a process in many ways. God takes you through it, but at the same time, when the Lord moves in, sin doesn't look as good as it used to. God begins to change you from the inside out. I love growing in your grace. You and your end on me, and all that I do, love will keep me strong. [music] You're listening to Growing Through Grace with Pastor Jackabellum of Morningstar Christian Chapel in Whittier, California. In preparing the way for his son, God used John the Baptist to turn the religious system of that day on its ear. As we finish up this passage in Luke chapter 3 verses 1 through 15, our teacher will clarify for us the heart of John's ministry, repentance. And then moving on to verses 16 through 38 of Luke 3, our teacher will examine for us the righteous fulfillment of the Scriptures through Jesus baptism. Here's Pastor Jack. So John comes, verse 3, he ministers to folks in the wilderness where they go to see him. He is the fulfillment, Luke writes, of those verses that we read this morning out of Isaiah chapter 40. He's coming to smooth the way for the Messiah, like a road crew that might fix the road as a dignitary is coming to visit, but he does it spiritually. And the way in his message is very simple. How do you get ready to meet the Messiah? You admit to sin, you admit to your inability and you seek after forgiveness from God. And that's really what the good news is all about. Jesus has come to save those who are repenting of their sins. All of the flesh, verse 6, will see the salvation of the Lord. Isaiah wrote that in 700 B.C. Now one after other people were being made ready as they were baptized by John, had a huge ministry it would seem, and some others were just turned away. Verse 7 tells us that he then said to the multitude John did, who were coming out to be baptized, you brood of vipers. That's no way to make friends is it? Who wanted you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits that are worthy of repentance and do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our Father Christ tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these very rocks. Matthew tells us that this angry response from John the Baptist came forward as many scribes and Pharisees were showing up along the Jordan not to repent of their sins but to spy out how much damage they were suffering as a result of this fellow's popularity. John was a tough guy. I think John had a t-shirt that said, "Step on no toes, minister to no one." He was willing to stand fast. He called them a brood of vipers, literally those snakes that land the desert that look like branches, like Paul and Malta reached into the branches and was bit by one of these things. So John defines repentance as an inward decision that results in an outward change of behavior. In other words, repentance is measurable, if you will. For me, when I first got saved, the thing I remember, I got saved on a Thursday night, I remember getting a Friday morning saying, "I think I'm going to have to throw my drugs away." Which was a bummer because I really liked those drugs. They were hard to come by and they were easy to hide and they kept the weekends going, "What am I going to do with these?" And I got rid of them. And I remember flushing some of them down the toilet. I think about giving them some friends. I'm not probably not good either. And I got delivered in one day from drugs, like in one day. For the next five years, I smoked cigarettes, though. The Lord can't speak to me. I go, "Yeah, but I already got rid of the drugs. Come on. You can't have the cigarettes, too." But I didn't like them as much as I used to. When the Lord gets in, he doesn't like stuff. He wants to move stuff around, right? He wants the whole house. And so repentance is a process in many ways. God takes you through it. But at the same time, when the Lord moves in, sin doesn't look as good as it used to. And God begins to change you from the inside out. God worked in me to lose my desire for things that were my desire before I met the Lord. And the more I desired him, the less I desired those other things. And that's still going on and there's still things to be changed. And I'm thankful that the Lord hasn't quit working, but it's just hard work that then reveals his change in me. And John says to these religious guys, "Don't you even think about saying to yourself, "Yeah, but we're Jews. You understand. We're God's people." And John literally says, "God will make his people out of rocks, or he'll make his people out of the Baptists, or he'll make his people out of the Calvary Chappellites." Doesn't really matter who you are. It's a matter of the heart. He continues in verse 9 and he says, "Now is the axe being laid to the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree which does not bear a good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire." So the problem for us is a sin issue and the heart is the problem. You can't deal with sinful behavior if you're not going to go out to the root of it. If there's good fruit, it's because the tree is good. The good heart is the heart that has been born again that God has moved into the heart and given you a new heart. That's where the promises are everywhere you look. Reformation won't help you. That's cleaning up your whole life. But you still got a rotten heart. You still got sour heart. You can't really reform it. God wants to do more than reform you. He wants to uproot you. He wants to replant you, bring up evil, bring a new root. You need to be born of the Spirit. That's why the term born again is so important. And then, watered by the Word of God. So whatever this message and how are John communicating that, pretty clear, verse 10 tells us that the people were convicted. What shall we do, they say? And so we answered them. He said, "If you have two coats or croonix, give one of them to him who has none. If you have some food, do the likewise to you tax collectors who come to be baptized." And they said, "Teacher, what should we do?" He said, "We'll collect no more than is appointed to you." And likewise the soldiers asked him and they said, "And what shall we do?" He said, "Don't intimidate anyone or accuse them falsely and be content with your wages." So there was a conviction as the people began to ask, "What can we do? Luke gives them a couple of illustrations of lives that are lived and sinned." And what you could do to correct the behavior, hopefully the response is going to be, "I can't do that even if I wanted to." So they would be ready then for the Lord to give them a new heart and a capacity to do what is right. And so Jesus would be coming quickly behind. He doesn't give them advice on how to work out their own salvation. He just points out that here's the root of sin and you can discover it easily in your life. If you have more than you need, give it to somebody who doesn't have anything, whether it's food or whether it's clothing, to the tax collector. By the way, the tax collector, at least in the first century, worked for the Romans. He was given a percentage to collect from everyone. But he made his money not by doing that job, but by adding on top of that, whatever he thought he could skim and get away with. Which is why they were so hated. They lived and got rich off the difficulty of the people. That sounds a lot like our politics today. So they're not very well liked. And Jesus said, "Just be honest and be fair." Matthew's a pretty good indicator, right? He was sitting at the receipt of customs when Jesus said, "Come and follow me." He said, "Man, I want to follow you." The rich young ruler wanted to follow the Lord. So Jesus uses them as an example. Often in the scriptures, John speaks directly to these tax collectors who were coming to repent of their sins, to turn away from the way that they were living. To the Jewish boys who were conscripted into the Roman army, John said, "Don't use your power wickedly or selflessly. Don't intimidate people. Make them afraid." Roman law said, "Any soldier could compel you, make you, carry a burden for them for one mile." Not to one. Now Jesus will later say, "Just go to." But he says to these guys, "Don't misuse your privilege if you will. Be selfless and satisfied." What he doesn't say to any of these folks is quit your jobs, which I think is interesting. I ran into a guy a couple of years ago who said to me, "I'm quit my job." I said, "You haven't knew when yet?" He goes, "No." I said, "Well, you're not that bright then." But I said, "Why are you quitting?" And my job cusses like you've never heard. And I said, "Yeah? Welcome to the world. How's it going to get better once you leave?" Well, I don't know. So I showed him these scriptures. I said, "Here's tax collectors and soldiers." And their advice was never to walk away from the difficult situation. It was just to live the godly life. You don't look to the Lord. And this is the way he prepared them for the Messiah who was coming. Well, as you might suspect, verse 15, the people then began to talk to one another, and they were already looking for the Messiah, and they wondered maybe if John was the one, could he be the one? After all, he's saying all the right things. So in the dark days of political corruption and religious phoniness, Jesus had a life, a man prepared that he would go out and begin to call him and to repent. I think that's the church day. We are the John Devaptists of this generation. God would have you to go and call people to repentance. Because Jesus has come, he's the Lamb of God. People still need to turn to him for forgiveness. The act still needs to be laid to the root of the tree. It's not about cleaning up your act. It's about getting a new heart. You need a heart that God can begin to root. So then he saves you, and then he sends you out to speak to others about him. We're going to pick up in verse 16 and head to the end of the chapter, which will be easy for us. Since beginning in verse 23, we have a lot of names. And we'll try to understand what that means. You know, the one thing any preacher longs for is the anointing of God's Spirit. I think that anyone who has ever taught the Bible knows the difference between teaching, having it all right, and yet not being anointed by God's Spirit. And maybe you do in your own life as well. You just know when God is moving upon your heart. Well, John the Baptist was a man who had been filled by the Holy Spirit from the womb. He had for 30 years been groomed in silence by the Lord. He had recently launched into his ministry. It would bear tremendous amounts of fruit early on. Many of the normal folks, not so much the religious folks, but the normal folk came and they listened. What do we do? Where do we turn? Who is it that we should follow? And God began to do in John's life what he would like to do in ours. And John, in response to the people, are you the one? You know, said, no, no, no. I'm nowhere near the one. In fact, you not cannot even compare me to the one. Years from now, Jesus will say to the disciples there in John 16 about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that when the Holy Spirit comes, that he will guide you into all truth. And that he will speak not of his own, but words that his authority, he'll speak what he has heard. And then he said he will glorify me and he'll take what his mind and he will declare it to you. And certainly that was what God was doing in John's life here as Jesus now is about to come upon this scene. He's pointing to the one who needs to be known. So should we. So should we. John was causing quite a stir as the Holy Spirit began to move upon his life. And the people's expectations, verse 15, were heightened. Success in ministry can stumble a lot of folks. It is something to be seen. We've seen it over the years with folks who start off humbly enough and then find some measure of blessing in God's hand. And all of a sudden they begin to take credit or think that they are something they are not. I would tell you as a pastor that you're only as good as your last sermon. If God is done with you, he's done with you. So to take credit for his work as foolishness, but there's always that temptation. John had moved a nation in many ways and yet he wasn't moved himself. He trusted the Lord. He was interested in what God was going to do. He was willing to point to a Savior and to point away from himself. So are you him? Verse 16, John answered and said to them, "I indeed will baptize you with water. But one mightier than I is coming whose sandal straps I am not worthy to lose. And he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and he will baptize you with fire." The word answered there in Greek is expressly answered. No doubt, no hesitation. John wanted them to know and know in certain terms that he wasn't the one. I can't so much just take the loneliest position of a servant to untie his shoes when he comes into the house. A true servant knows their place before the Lord. And though John had had tremendous success from all that we can gather from the Gospels, he was also aware of this frailty and of God's glory. So though the people rushed to John, "Are you the one?" And he might very well go, "Well, I know him." It didn't even occur to him. There's that scripture in Proverbs chapter 25 that said, "It's not good to eat too much honey. Neither is it good to seek your own glory because that will not be glory." Remember James and John early on with Jesus thought that they were on the in-crowd. And they said to the Lord there in Mark 8, "Could you just let us sit one on your right hand the other on your left when you come to glory?" We just like to be vice presidents of the world. And the Lord kind of had to put them in their place. God resists the proud, gives grace to the humble. But the way to keep from taking the privileges of grace for granted is never forgetting whose shoes you're unworthy to loose. We're in Hawaii this last week, and there's a Hawaiian word that people use for main letters. They call them howlies. But the word "howly" in Hawaiian literally means to neglect to be reverent. And I thought, "You know, that so often is the way we seem to come to the Lord. You know, and we should never come to the Lord that way. Draw men to Jesus, don't draw men to you." Well, that was John's ministry for sure. And we'll be great in God's side if we're small in our own. And so John begins to minister on the people where they flock to Him. "Oh my goodness, you the one?" No, I am not the one. In fact, I can't even picture myself being worthy to untie his shoes. The superiority of Jesus' person is also matched by the superiority of Jesus' ministry. Notice that John goes on in verse 17 and says of him, "He, his winning winnowing," sorry, "fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly cleanse out his threshing floor and gather the wheat into the barns, but the chaffy will burn with an unclenchable fire." You know, you can be baptized externally and never have your heart changed. You can go through the motion. It's one of those sacraments in the church, bad and commune. It's important to the Lord. But indeed, you can go through the motions and have it mean nothing. But when the Lord is able to touch your life, then God meets you at that place of repentance, and his work, his spirit begins to cleanse you and purify you. Man can repent, but that's as far as man can go. You can repent. God has to change. You can turn away from how you once were. But God is going to have to do that what you can do, give you a new heart, give you new desires, give you empowerment within to will to do of his good pleasure. Jesus' ministry was so far a superior to John's because John could warn you and tell you about your sin and your need, but Jesus could meet your need. That's the difference. With the coming of the Holy Spirit, there comes fire. I think in Malachi chapter 3, we read, "Behold, I send my messenger. He will prepare the way before me. The Lord whom you seek will come suddenly to his temple. Even the message of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he's coming, say, at the Lord. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand before him when he appears? He'll be like a refire's fire or a launderer's soap." The first speaks of John. But the second speaks of Jesus. He's coming to clean. He's coming to wash. He's coming to make new. And Jesus' judgment here in verse 17 is totally discriminating. You know, John didn't know as he was baptizing folks who they were, what their intentions or their motives were. In fact, if you were with us a couple weeks ago in verse 7, John seeing the Pharisees came and you see he called them a brood of vipers. That's not exactly a kind word. You bunch of snakes, what are you doing here? But John was trying to cover every, I think, you know, base in the hopes of smoking out the hypocrites. But Jesus knows the heart. Peter would learn that when he met with Jesus there after the resurrection in John 21, where the Lord said to Peter, "Do you really love me?" Three different times he talked to him about his relationship. And he finally just said, "Well, you know what I'm all about. You know who I am." God's judgments are purpose. Jesus comes to judge. You know, a threshing floor was a place that a farmer would go to the top of a hill and find a hard rock and begin to just beat the sheaves of the beat into the rock. And it would just kind of, it would release the chaff, which is very light and around the edges. And then the wheat would stay put on the rocks or fall to the ground because they were far heavier. And so they would throw this mixture up and the wind would carry away the chaff. God uses that often to speak of how he's able to separate the believer from the unbeliever, the one who was headed for judgment and those who have been delivered from it. In fact, if you look at the word here, "Unquenchable fire." The word for unquenchable is the Hebrew word, sorry, the Greek word for asbestos, which is interesting. And then the fire is unquenchable. It just, it'll continue to burn. But so will your salvation. Jesus is coming, John says, and he'll have a fan in his hand and he'll be able to separate the believer from the unbeliever, from the true believer, from the poser. He knows the judgment and the judgment will be eternal. We read in verse 18 that with such words and many others, John exhorted as he preached to the people. But Herod the tetrarch being rebuked by him concerning Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, also added this above all that he shut John up in prison. Verse 18 tells us that the anointed preaching of this forerunner John was an excitation. The word in Greek for excitation is where we get our English word eulogy from, or evangelism. But it literally speaks, it means to speak well of someone declaring in this case the good news of the Lord's coming. But even the message of judgment is a great comfort to people because you really don't know how valuable grace is until you realize what you have as an alternative. So often it is the gospel that is received because the law has been understood. The judgment of a Paul certainly follows that formula in the book of Romans, he lays out how bad things are for us and then talks about God's grace. But by the time you get to chapter, the middle of chapter 3 and all the way to chapter 8, you're saying, "Oh man, I need this grace of God because I realize who I am and what my fate is before the law." And so John encouraged the people with pretty tough words, but at the same time he became a help and a blessing to them because he turned their eyes to the things that they were facing without a relationship with God. The one thing about evangelism, it doesn't leave you neutral. You have to make up your mind which side of the fence you're going to stand on. If the Bible says Jesus is the only way and without him you'll never make it. You can't take that or leave that. You either believe it and you jump in with both feet or you run away from it as heresy that you are not going to embrace and you're going to take your chances on your own. But the Gospel can't leave you suspended in the middle somewhere. It just won't allow for it to be that way. As Luke looks ahead and he looks ahead from a standpoint of timing, he looks ahead to John the Baptist's eventual arrest and then execution for his preaching. He mentions the issue of Herod and Herodias. Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, who he had an affair with, it caused her to leave her husband Philip and Mary Herod instead. The story is found in Mark chapter 6, but John was not willing to compromise the message just for the hearer. And I think that's important. Although there's still a good portion of our study remaining, but we'll pick up the balance of Luke chapter 3 verses 16-38, the next time we're together. This has been the second part of a three-part study taught by Pastor Jacob Ilin. If you'd like to get the entire message, we do have that available for you. All you need to do to order? Simply contact us and ask for study number 42-42. And when you get a hold of us, be sure to mention the call letters of the radio station that you're listening to. And as we're studying through the Gospel of Luke, sometimes it's good to be able to compare one Gospel to another. So in the month of July, we'd like to offer to you, Pastor Jack studies through the Gospel of Mark. This Gospel, as many scholars believe, was dictated by the Apostle Peter to young Mark, who then wrote a detailed experience of the life and ministry of Jesus. Pastor Jack's teachings through the Gospel of Mark are available in the MP3 format on a flash drive. So if you'd like to get this resource, or today's message, just dial our toll-free phone number at 866-88-Grace. That's 866-884-7223. 866-884-7223. You can also order by mail just to address your letter to growing through grace, P.O. Box 1954, with your California. 90609. And for your convenience, you can find this and all of our resources online at growingthroughgrace.com. Again, log on to growingthroughgrace.com. And that will bring things to a close for us today. We do appreciate you tuning in, so until next time, as you daily walk with our Lord Jesus Christ, may you continue to grow in His grace. And to grace is a listener-supported ministry brought to you by Morningstar Christian Chapel in Whittier, California. A coverage apple outreach. (upbeat music) [MUSIC]
