We turn in God's Word to the third chapter of the book of Matthew. Matthew chapter 3 is the subject of our study this evening. Matthew chapter 3. We read God's Word together. In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt round his waist and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region about the Jordan were going out to him. They were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume 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 thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, And he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. Then Jesus came from Galilee to Jordan, to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, Let it now be so. For thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.' Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water. And behold, the heavens were opened to him. And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." There we end our reading of God's Word. real religion. I want to bring three points from this passage this night, the passage that we read in Matthew chapter 3, that speak to us about real religion. The first point is, it's unimpressive but highly attractive. Secondly, real religion requires real change. And third, real religion is all about Jesus Christ and his kingdom authority. Real religion is unimpressive but highly attractive. We live at a time in the history of the world when in the last thirty years or so, a new phenomenon has swept across the church in the Western world. We are being told constantly that if we want success in the church, then what we do in the church has to be impressive. We need to have a real competition with the world I mean, what we need to do in the church is have a church life and worship services that can compete with the world in terms of the impressiveness of the services and the activities that we offer. This past week, we had our semester in Scotland students give us a review of one of the books that they read during their time with us this past four months. And one of the students picked a book which contrasted with the experience that she had growing up in California, where she went to a church where, in her words, it was all about the feeling and the experience on a Sunday. A huge church of many, many people, thousands of people would go to this church on a Sunday. But it was all centered around giving the people who came a sense of being at something that was impressive and giving them, through that being at something that was impressive, a sense of self-worth. The man who would speak on a Sunday sometimes would speak from the Word. On occasions he would bring what he had read in a Christian book based on a passage of the Bible. But she said the whole thrust of that worship experience was geared towards bringing people in. She quoted how often it was said, we don't need to be different from the people whom we meet during the week. We need to do the things they do, we need to have the experiences they have. What we need to do is simply communicate to them the fact that they can also have Jesus in their life. And so if we communicate to them that we're like them, but they can also have Jesus in their life, then they will come to church and our church will grow and God will be happy with a growing church. That is not a unique scenario. That scenario has been proposed as the way forward for the church. And it not only has been imbibed In America, it has, in the last 5-10 years, been imbibed by churches in the United Kingdom. The way to grow your church is to be impressive in everything that you do in that church. So that when people walk in, they are bowled over by the experience that they have. The experience on the door, the experience in the foyer, the experience on the chair, the experience of the music, the experience of the technology, the experience of the speakers, the experience of the band, the experience of every aspect of the worship service has to be something that gives them a sense of having been at an event. And they will then go and tell their friends, to come and experience this event. And they will come and they will be part of the church. And therefore the church will grow and as the church grows, then other people will look and say in our community, there's a growing church. I will go along to that. And just as they have their routine during the week, so on a Sunday they find themselves going along to the event that is at worship at the local successful church. Impression. Impressive impression. That's the demand of the church today, if you want success. But real religion, religion that deals with the heart and the mind, religion that calls men and women to turn from their sin and to walk as consistent, committed disciples of Jesus Christ knows nothing of that impressiveness. It is unimpressive in many ways and yet it is highly attractive. We have been considering the subject of the King of Kings and His coming to earth. The singular most important event in the history of the world to date. And we read about the coming of the King in Matthew chapter 2. We read of the fact that He was born in the city of the kings. We read that he was one who came as king over all, Jew and Gentile alike, symbolized by the coming of the wise men to take note of his birth. We read how that he is a king who divides and that he is a king who fulfills. His coming was marked by the coming of a star that pronounced that he had been born. He then lived for a period of years, 30 years, and we know very little about what happened during those 30 years except one trip up to Jerusalem when he went to the temple. Now we come to a chapter where we are going to be presented with the first commencement of his work as the King of Kings upon the earth. One would expect that we are going to read something here that would bully over. This is an event that has been looked forward to for decades, centuries, millenniums. this coming of the King. Every Jewish mother thought that when she was bouncing a child on her knee who was a boy that possibly this was the Messiah, the Christ, the King who would come and deliver his people. And one would anticipate that the coming of the King in terms of his public work and ministry would be preceded by a great fanfare, a great deal of activity, There's a program on at present that shows the life of our present monarch in Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth II. It's on during the week. It's been had a series of three or four programs. Very interesting seeing her life and seeing all that goes on around her life. When she goes on a state visit, the months of preparation that precede that state visit. Every detail, her travel arrangements, where she will stay, the food she will eat, everything is detailed and prepared. Where she will go, how she will get there, where she will stand or sit when she gets there, who will be introduced to her, how they will be introduced to her, it's all detailed. In these state visits, they actually produce a book. And in that book is the details of everything that she does in any given day, detailing where she has to be, what she's doing. It's amazing. It's amazing to see the visits that are made to Buckingham Palace and all these books that date back over the past 50 years of all the state visits that all the parties have, that everybody knows that has been prepared in advance. Huge, huge events. Very impressive and rightly so. Great fanfare and justified in many ways. You'd expect for the coming King of Kings that the whole of Jerusalem would have been bedecked and there would have been a fanfare And there'd be legions of soldiers preparing the way. And everybody would have known the time and the place and the events pertaining to His coming. Now it would be natural to have expected that. What do we read about the coming of the King? Do we read something that is highly impressive? Do we read something that is full of color and noise? Do we read of a large royal event? Something that is very, very pleasing to the eye, as it were? Something that really engages us? What do we read as the precursing event of the coming of the King? Well, look at Matthew chapter 3. In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist and his food was locusts and wild honey. In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now John wore a garment of camel's hair, a leather belt round his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. The King of Kings is coming. His coming is to be heralded. His coming is to be proclaimed. What of the man that God has chosen to herald that coming? Look at the unimpressiveness of this individual. There is no background given at all about this man, John the Baptist. He just steps on the stage, claiming his message. Look at his appearance. Can we say that his appearance demands our attention? If John was to walk into the room, would you be overwhelmed by his regalia? Would you associate what John was wearing with that of regally, with royal status? Would you be impressed by the one that John is representing by virtue of the garment that John wears? Would you say that man, John the Baptist, must represent somebody very, very powerfully given the clothes he is wearing? Is that the sense? that you would have when you meet this man John the Baptist. A garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist. Basic, austere clothing. What of his diet? His food was locusts and wild honey. Leviticus chapter 11 verse 20T tells us, 22, that there were four varieties of locusts that could be eaten. Locusts were eaten after they had swarmed. Their wings were taken off, they were roasted and then eaten, and they were eaten by the purr. The wild honey was not the sweet honey that's today, it's just ordinary honey that existed naturally. It's not a very profligate diet. It's not something, if you were to stand and watch this man eat his dry locusts and wild honey, would you get a sense that he was laboring for someone who was very important and very significant. This is the most basic of basic meals. And this was his constant and daily diet. Here is a man who in terms of his garments and in terms of his diet is wholly unimpressive. You'd have walked past this man in the street and you wouldn't have turned your eye to him. What of the place in which he is going to herald the coming of the King? the central regions of Jerusalem, the Palace of Herod, the most significant buildings in the community. Where is it that we read John takes as the place where he is going to declare the message of the coming of the King of Kings? He preaches, we are told, chapter 3, verse 1, in the wilderness of Judea. Verse 6, in the valley of the river Jordan is where he exercises his ministry of word and baptism. Here is the wilderness, a wilderness area because it was uninhabited, because being in the valley of the river Jordan There was intense heat in this situation, this ravine, and therefore no one desired to live there. He didn't choose to go to this place. He went to this place because he was sent to go to this place. Verse 3 tells us that he is one who is sent as one, a voice crying in the wilderness. Here he is, an unimpressive individual exercising his responsibility to declare the coming of the King of Kings in a wholly unimpressive place. And he is there by virtue of the fact that he has been told to go there and declare the coming of the King. What do you think would have been the expectation of this unimpressively garmented individual when he had gone to this unimpressive and uninviting place, the wilderness. What do you think was his expectation as he got to his feet and he began to proclaim the message? Do you think that he stood there and he said to himself, well I'm wearing the best clothes that money can buy, I have the best food in my stomach, and I am in a place that will undoubtedly impress people So they are going to come and they're going to listen to what I have to say, because when they see me, they will know that I'm speaking about someone who is very important. And when they see me in this place, they will realize that I'm speaking about one who demands their attention. Do you think that that would have been the expectation upon which John would have got up every morning and thought to himself, well, they're going to flock out here to see me dressed like this and sit in the heat of the day to hear my message? Or would it have been the case that he could have thought to himself, well how am I ever going to get anyone to listen to what I have to say? Look what I'm wearing. I'm wearing the clothes of a prophet. Look at my diet. It's the diet of the poverty stricken. Look at the place where I am ministering. I am ministering in the wilderness where no one can because The intensity of the day means that no one will come in and live in this place or habitate this place. What hope have I of communicating to anyone the coming of the King? And yet, what do we read? Verse 5, Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him. And they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Did his dress sense put people off? It may well have done. Did the fact that he gather in the people in the wilderness, did that prevent people from coming? Well, initially it might have done so. But the reality is that this man, when he does what God requires of him, because we read in verse 3, and we shall see this further in a minute, this man acts not on the basis of his own desire, but as an expression of his own will. John didn't dress the way he dressed, didn't eat what he ate, and didn't minister in the wilderness simply because he thought that he was going to make himself different and therefore be attractive to people. He wasn't one of these men who thought I'm going to go against the flow just for the sake of going against the flow and if I go against the flow then one or two people will hang on around me. That's not the reason why this man was dressed the way he was. That's not the reason why he ate what he ate. He ate what he ate and he dressed the way he dressed because he was following in the footsteps of those who were prophets in the Old Testament. We read in 2 Kings 1 verse 8 that Elijah was equally as well in terms of his garments, that's what he wore. But this man went out to this place and he went out at the clear and specific instruction of God and because he exercised his responsibility as he understood God to require him to exercise that responsibility, then God moved the people of Jerusalem, God moved the people of Judea, God moved the people of the region to come out to the Jordan to hear Him preach. Real religion does not depend on how impressive we are. Real religion does not depend on the building that we have. Real religion does not depend on us exercising our desire by making music attractive to people so that they will come and desire to be with us because they feel as though they're getting something out of it. Real religion is achieved when men and women do what God requires them to do, unimpressive as that may seem to the world, unimpressive as that may be, but they do the thing that God requires them and then God works through that unimpressive thing and makes it highly attractive and he fulfills his plans and purposes. Why? Why do they do that? Because then people know that they're engaged by God and they're not there just for a good time. Real religion is not about people having a good time and being made to feel good It's not about people having an uplifting experience. Real religion is unimpressive in many ways. But yet it is highly attractive. Highly attractive. And when God works through real religion, men and women come to it. Men and women are attracted to it. And surely that's what we have seen in the history of this congregation. We have seen that as many have left the church in Scotland, many have turned their back on the ways of the risen Lord. We have seen that as we, an unimpressive bunch of people, there's not much song and dance about what we put on. on a Sunday. But as we have by our lives articulated that real religion is about God and the demands of God upon the lives of men and women, has God not brought people in? Now there haven't been huge numbers of people brought in. We can't sit here tonight and say the whole of Erdre has come to our place of worship. But we are moving against the trend of our day. We are moving against the trend. And it's not that we're just being merely successful in entertaining people. And so then people move on when they feel their experience is not being met. Is it not that we have experienced real religion in our lives? Is it not that we have experienced the reality of God's dealings with us? Is it not that we have come under the conviction of His Word and that our sins have been dealt with? And that we are pursuing the reality of this? Is not God at work in our lives? Now that's wholly different from us merely expressing an emotional response to the fact that God makes us feel good. It's not the same. It's not the same being in church and being made to feel, I feel good tonight. Because God's word tells us that the life of the Christian is more about suffering than feeling good. that the way of obedience is not marked by a sense of perpetual joy and happiness. It's often marked by suffering. That's the reality of it. That's the reality of real religion. It's religion that's marked that requires obedience. Not obedience that's marked by suffering. Can't avoid it. Can't avoid it. And so we will continue continue in a way that many deem unimpressive. Because we see it is highly attractive. Because it is God at work. It is God who draws. Because it is God who desires to be glorified. And he will not be glorified by man taking his place and playing games. Real religion, secondly, is about real change. Real change. This man, John, preaches a message because he is a messenger from God. We know from the other Gospels that John was born of a family and his father was a priest. He was one of the tribe of Israel who were marked as those who would communicate God to the people. We know from Luke chapter 3 and verse 2 that he did not speak on his own behalf, but that the word of the Lord came to him and through him. During the high priesthood of Ananias and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. We know that he came as one who was sent in fulfillment of a 700-year-old promise. We read of that promise in chapter 3. For this is the prophet. This is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord. make his paths straight. God had given this, this promise, this prophecy to Isaiah 700 years previously. And here now is this man and we are told that he is coming as a fulfillment, as a messenger of God in the fulfillment of this promise. And he was fully aware of this fact. He himself speaks of it in John's Gospel chapter 1. He speaks of how he came in fulfillment of this. And this is a testimony of John when the Jews were sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? He confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, what then? Are you Elijah? And he said, I am not. Are you the prophet? And he said, no. So they said to him, who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? He said, I am the one. I am the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness. make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. He knew himself to be the one of whom Isaiah had prophesied. And the Lord Jesus Christ, speaking later in Matthew, indicates that he accepted John the Baptist as the one whom God had prophesied concerning in Isaiah previously. This is he of whom it is written, Jesus says, Behold, I am the messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. So John is a man who comes as a messenger of God. And as a messenger of God, he brings a message from God. His message is clear. His message is simple. Verse 2. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent. turn and change. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand." What a phenomenal statement. God's kingdom is now here. John is speaking here about the kingdom of heaven that the Jewish people, the people of God, had been waiting for for centuries. He is speaking about the arrival of that kingdom, not as a distant reality and a future prospect, but as something that has actually happened now. He is breaking in in the history of the world. He is breaking in as a messenger from God. This man with his garment of camel's hair and a leather belt, this eater of locusts and wild honey, God has sent him, as it were, cascading into the history of time. And now he is bringing a message which the world had never heard before and which the world will never hear again. It was a one-off event. The kingdom of heaven is here. It is at hand. It is now. It is nigh. It is present. Therefore, turn and change your heart, change your mind, and seek that kingdom. The message of the Lord is clear and it is simple. It is a message that demands real change. We see that in his speaking with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He sees the Pharisees coming. The Pharisees were those who, in the religious terms, had the rabbinical traditions all written around the law of God. And they were very tight in their observance of that. They were known as the religious men of the day. They had a routine of religion. They had a tradition of religion. They had a manner of religion. You would have known a Pharisee by the way that he dressed, by the way that he walked, by the way that he talked, by the way that he lived his life. He stood out like a sore thumb because his life was based on fulfilling certain traditions that he perceived were required of him in order to have a right relationship with God. The Sadducees, on the other hand, they were the guys who lived a sort of a wilder life. They didn't accept this tradition. They didn't accept the idea of resurrection. They didn't accept the idea of angels. They didn't accept the idea of immortality. They didn't accept the idea of the coming judgment. God was to be enjoyed and lived for now. And these two were the opposing camps in the Jewish tradition. the Pharisees on the right and the Sadducees on the left. And now the twain should meet, except when there was something that suited both parties to meet, then they would join up. And here we find both parties coming out, and they're coming out for baptism. Look at the greeting they receive from the messenger of God. Isn't it great to see the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming out into the wilderness I'm delighted that you're here today. I'm thrilled by the fact that you've come to hear me proclaim the coming of the kingdom. I have been dealing with the ordinary people of Jerusalem and Judea and I have been waiting until the day would come when the leaders of the church and the leaders of religion in Jerusalem would come today. And I'm so thrilled, I'm so pleased that every one of you have come. You brood of vipers! Who warns you to flee from the wrath to come? That's a real message of building bridges there. There he is, bedecked in his garment of camel's hair and his leather belt, eating his locusts and his wild honey, standing in the blazing sun of the wilderness. And the high floating leaders of the Jewish religion, the respected men of the day, come out to be baptized, would you not think you'd have opened his arms and embraced him? Surely having these men on his side would have been a great coup. He could really have written home and said, parents, do you know who came out today? The leaders of the Pharisees and the leaders of the Sadducees. Imagine that. The right wing and the left wing never have time for each other but they came out to hear me preach. They came out for me to baptize them. Imagine, I have united them. These two traditions, standing in opposition to one another, and I, the messenger of God, have been enabled by God to unite them. That's the way it will be sold today. That's the way it will be presented today. That's the way that many church leaders would want to deal with people today. They would want them to come, no matter who they are, and say, Come in and be part of us. Come in and join our happy flock. Come in and experience God the way that we would have you to experience God. You can live your life in whatever way you want. In fact, it's appropriate that you live your life the way we want, because we want you to build a bridge to the world. And as you live your life the way that you want to live it, then you'll be able to enter great people into the life of the church. They will come and they will experience God. As long as they have a little bit of Jesus in their life, as long as they go to church once or twice a year, as long as they turn up for the festivals, as long as they present themselves on a Sunday, what else matters? This is not a message of peace for everyone. This messenger doesn't bring a message of hope and expectation for everyone. He brings a message of repent, change, subject yourselves, submit to the authority of the King. He's speaking here to the highest authority that there is in his religion. And what has he said to them? You brood of vipers, who warned you? Because he saw what was happening. They would come out, they would be baptised, they would be like everybody else that was talking about the baptism at that time. They would go back, they would live their life. Anybody says to them what he is doing, oh we have been baptised too. We're covering all the bases. We're keeping ourselves right with God. We'll be baptized too. If this is the latest fad, well, let's have it. Let's join in. Let's go along. Let's be part of it. Let's turn up. What harm can it do? And the message of real religion is not a message of turning up to cover the bases. It's a message that requires men and women to bend the knee and submit to the authority of the King. Not to tell him how he should run his church. Not to commit to him the ways of that they think is the right thing to do. They must bend the knee and they must change. Surely one of the problems in our church in this land today is that the church is mired by the fact that people object to being told what to do. I won't do that. Well, it says in the Word of God you have to do that. But that's not the way I see it. Well, who matters whether or not you see it? That's the way that God requires you to do it. But I don't like you telling me to do that. But whether you like me telling you to do that or not is irrelevant. It's not a matter of whether I like telling you that or not. I am a messenger for God and I have to bring you God's word and you must submit to that word or you will reject it. If you choose to submit to it, great. If you choose to reject it, you suffer the consequences. But I don't like it. I'll go elsewhere. And many ministers, their hands are tied behind their back by themselves Because they accept that pressure and so they will not declare the truth. They will not be messengers. They will not bring the message from God that they've been sent to do. Because it's unimpressive. They feel it's unimpressive. It will pit people off. And here is this unimpressive individual expressing the message that God has given him and demanding real change. And he says there's a consequence for it. He says, if you don't change, verse 8, and if you don't bear fruit in keeping with your repentance, if this is not a real change, if this is not a life change, if this is not a change of heart and mind that will flow in a change of actions and words and speech, if this is not a change that is really evident in the life that you live, then, verse 10, be aware that the axe is at the root of the tree. and it will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Cut down and thrown into the fire. There is no escape from those who reject the message of real religion. There's nowhere to run and there's nowhere to hide. The consequence is clear. You either repent and you believe and you bear fruit in keeping with that repentance, or you suffer the consequences. And John is very clear here when he speaks to them. And verse 9 is a characterismic verse in the Scriptures, because it proclaims to them that Abraham is not going to be an escape route for them. There's no point in them saying, we have the father Abraham, then we are saved and we are sorted. because Abraham is the father of the nations. John says to them, God can raise up stones and raise them to be children of Abraham. And that was what he was proclaiming. That God is going to raise up the Gentiles and these Gentiles are going to be children of Abraham the same. And that must have gone like an arrow to their heart because they had lived their lives thinking that because they were Jews who had been circumcised, because they were descendants of Abraham, they were safe. And John, in one swoop of one sentence, half a dozen words, says, do not think that you are safe because you are descendants of Abraham. God can raise up even stones to be children of Abraham. See, real religion is about God doing the unimpressive thing through unimpressive people that brings real change into people's lives. Real change. Real change. And the student who was speaking on Thursday spoke about hundreds of people how they would come to this church and then over a period of a year they would leave again. Just in and out like a turd style. New people in, people out. In and out. In and out. In and out. In and out. In and out. Why? Because there's no change. They get tired of the building. They get tired of the music leader. They get tired of the messages. So they just go along this road to the next new building and the next music ministry and the next pointless, worthless, godless, wordless message. And they would spend time there and there'd be no change. There'd be no fruit. born, their minds wouldn't change, their hearts wouldn't change, there wouldn't be any real pursuing after God. Now I'm not saying, and hear me, I'm not saying every person that goes to a church like that is not a Christian. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that at all. But what I'm saying is that that type of impressive, seeking, yearning church does not in general, produce real change. The sad thing is, many churches in our land today, sadly, sadly, sadly, have no desire to see real change in people's lives as well. Because the message they bring is not a message that demands change. It's a message that just says you live as you want and God will be happy with you. Real religion. It's unimpressive in many ways, but it's highly attractive. And real religion is about real change. Real change. Real change that bears fruit. Real change that leads to changed lives. And anyone who is not prepared to undergo that change will experience the axe at their heels. And that axe will sweep through, that axe will cut them off, and that axe will be followed by a fire, a fire that is unquenchable. So don't be afraid. of the unimpressive nature of our worship. Pursue the message of repentance. Desire that real change in your life. If an unbeliever, seek God's change in your life. As a Christian, hunger after the ongoing change in your life. Look out in 2008 as a year of potential growing change in your life, real change, thoughtful change, imaginative change, Christ-driven, God-facilitated change in your life. Desire to become like Christ in 2008. Organize your day, organize your week, organize your month to be changed by the power of God through His Word. that you might bear much fruit for his glory.