I invite you please to take your copy of God's Word and turn with me once again to the Gospel of Luke, resuming our exposition of the Gospel of Luke in chapter 3. In our study of Luke, John the Baptist has now completed his prophesied role of preparing a people to receive the promised Messiah. John's baptism is actually an act of preaching. so that to be baptized is to receive John's message in which you consciously repent of sin and direct faith toward the coming Messiah in anticipation of His Kingdom in which sin will be forgiven. The evidence of this faith and repentance is a life that bears fruit The fruit of compassionate justice. Now, John's ministry was so startling and powerful that many in his day thought that he was, in fact, the Christ. But we learned last week that John explains, no, he is not the Christ, but rather the Christ is coming after him And in contrast with John who baptized in water, the Christ would baptize in the Holy Spirit and exercise the ministry of final and eternal judgment in fire. Now, as we resume our exposition today in verses 18 through 20, the writer Luke is about to remove John the Baptist from the narrative so that he might now bring Jesus Christ to center stage. But before John the Baptist exits, Luke gives us once again a summary of his preaching ministry and then also sounds the onomous and foreboding note that the Kingdom of God comes in the context of opposition and persecution. In verse 18 this morning, we learn first of the reception of John's preaching. So, with many other exhortations also, he preached the Gospel to the people. Now, the NASV's English words, so and also, are to be connected as they are in the original. So also, or therefore also, Luke is giving to us once again a summary statement. He does this periodically throughout his writings. And verse 18 is one such summary verse encapsulating much of the ministry of John the Baptist in the way that chapter 1, verse 66 and verse 80 and chapter 2, verse 40 and verse 52 were summarizing encapsulations of the life and childhood of John the Baptist and of Jesus as well. Here, Luke also introduces us in this verse to a grammatical construction that sets up a contrast We expect that there's going to be a contrast made between what he tells us in verse 18 and then what he says in verse 19, so that we see that the word is not particularly translated in English, but the counterpart is the first word in verse 19, but. So on the one hand, you have what you read in verse 18, and then on the other hand, in verse 19. And Luke is setting the stage in order to show the contrast with how the word of John was received by the people and how it was rejected by most of the leaders in that day. So, here's a summary statement with many other exhortations. Now, the word other here is a word that specifically means of different kind. We would get our English prefix hetero from this Greek. Different kinds of exhortations characterized John's preaching. In other words, John preached about many other things. than that which is given by Luke and his record for us in chapter 3 of the Gospel of Luke. If you look, for example, at chapter 1, verse 16 and 17, we have Gabriel giving a description of what John's ministry will entail. He will turn back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God. And it is he who will go as a forerunner before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Now here, Gabriel quotes from Malachi chapter 4 verse 5 and 6 in verse 17. But what he means in verse 16, that he will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God, that John's ministry would be like the ministry of other Old Testament prophets whose primary concern was to call a wayward people back into covenant fidelity with their God. He was calling the people of God back into a life of holiness, back into a life of worship. Also, John would preach to the issues of domestic relationships. He preached about the hearts of fathers in relation to their children. He preached about the issues of the fifth commandment, about the home life of the people that he preached to. And he preached about disobedience being called back to ways of righteousness. He preached about the matters of ethical living and upright lifestyles. And he did this in the context of the expectation of the coming of the Lord, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. So that when Luke tells us in chapter 3, in verse 18, that John preached all kinds of different exhortations, we have an idea of the kinds of different things that his sermons would direct themselves to. The word exhortation is also a very broad term. It describes a broad spectrum of both content and communication style. It's the verb parakaleo in the Greek. Para, parallel, to come alongside. Kaleo is to call. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are called paraklete. A noun made out of this verb. The one that comes alongside in order to urge and in order to speak. The idea perhaps is familiar to us in a coach who comes alongside the athlete and calls to him and urges him and warns him and spurs him on and motivates him. It's the idea of coming alongside to communicate in a whole spectrum of ways, a whole spectrum of content In this verbal concept is the idea of helping and encouraging and exhorting and motivating. And Luke uses this word in order to describe John's preaching ministry. When we open up the meaning of the word and the way in which it is found elsewhere in the New Testament, we see that it describes a kind of preaching in which summons is given. Invitations and calls. In fact, the word describes the idea of coming together. It even is used to describe people who are coming together to listen to a speaker, to listen to a preacher. It describes the kind of preaching, to speak earnestly with persistence, to implore and to beg and to request and appeal and petition with earnestness. It also conveys the idea of speaking with authority, exhorting and urging with a measure of accountability laid upon the people that what they're hearing is something that is not neutral, that there must be a response, that there must be an obligation to what is being said. But it is also a word that describes a speaking to relieve sorrow, to comfort and to console, to cheer up, and to encourage. And so we see in this summary statement a very broad spectrum of the kinds of things that John preached and the way in which he spoke what he said. And with one final summarizing statement, Luke tells us he preached the gospel. And in the original, that's one word. He preached the gospel. He good-newsed the people. And the verb describes a continuing, ongoing activity. Not just one of his sermons contained a gospel message, but in his preaching, he was good-newsing the people. He was preaching the gospel. Now, in our day, there's an awful lot of confusion about the content of the gospel. And indeed, preachers and seminarians discuss what gospel preaching is. Well, when we look at what Luke tells us, as we hear the testimony of Gabriel in chapter 1, verse 19, we get an idea of what preaching the gospel entails. Gabriel says to Zacharias, I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God. I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. That's the word gospel. To bring you this gospel. And he goes on to describe that the ministry that he has is a precursor to the coming of the Messiah and to the arrival in verse 32 and verse 33 of the kingdom of salvation. The Kingdom of Christ. Now, this matter of salvation, Zacharias articulates in chapter 1, verse 77, that he will bring to his people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. And then, Luke in chapter 3, verse 6, mentions this salvation again, quoting from Isaiah. that all flesh shall see the salvation of God." The good news of the Gospel has to do with this salvation that comes from God. It is a salvation that is accomplished by God. And it is a salvation that is experienced by man. And anything that exhorts and instructs and encourages this truth of the salvation accomplished by God and that salvation experienced by man is all part and parcel of what is entailed in preaching the gospel. John preached concerning the work of the God who was acting to save his people, and then John applied that preaching to the people who were participating in that saving work of God. The accomplishment of the salvation of God, by God, and the experience and application of that salvation to the people of God, all is involved in preaching the gospel. So that when John moved into practical application, and when he spelled out in very practical terms what it means to bear fruit, what it means to demonstrate repentance and faith, he was preaching the gospel. The Gospel was not some mere religious sentiment with a clay nose that could be shaped to whatever size and form that one desired. It was the fulfillment of specific promises rooted in Isaiah in our passage. And those prophecies now being fulfilled in the arrival of the Christ, specifically fulfilled. And it required a specific response. Not just an arbitrary response, your response for you, your response for you, your response for you. No, everyone to give the specific summoned response. Repentance and faith and the evidence in your station and in your place A transformed life that bears the fruit of compassionate justice in the place that God has put you. Be that in your business, be that in your neighborhood, be that in your home life, wherever it is, to demonstrate a life that's been transformed by the Kingdom of God. Answering the question repeated throughout the passage to John, what shall we do? And answering that question, Luke says, is part of preaching the Gospel. Now there are some in our day who would criticize much of the preaching of this pulpit as being, quote, duty preaching. Sermons that are directed specifically to urge people's change in behavior. Exhortations directed to compel people to biblical ethics and righteous lifestyles, all of which are anchored to Christ and to new covenant dynamics, but are nonetheless exhortations and summonings and imperatives given to people. And people would draw back and say, oh, you don't preach the gospel enough. You're preaching duty. And I would say that Luke would come alongside of that kind of preaching and say that's all part of the good news. It's all part of the salvation. It's all part of what it means to have participation in the salvation that God accomplishes and that we experience and work out in the practical realities of our life. Not only is there confusion in regard to the content of the gospel, but also in regard to what it means to preach. Now, the term that the Bible most often describes the manner of preaching, the delivery of preaching, is the word that the English translates as boldness. And what that means is not a brazen tenacity, although there's an element of that, but what the word means more fundamentally is an unimpeded flow. It describes a faucet being opened up with no obstructions and the flow just coming out of a man without any hindrance. It's a word that describes truth flowing without obstruction through human personality. Regardless of the temperament of the preacher, the preacher himself becomes a living spigot. to the truth that he's preaching. He becomes alive in the delivery. And his temperament and personality and human faculties are endowed of the Spirit to flow and to give forth the truth. And he becomes unselfconscious in his ministry. He forgets about himself. And he's not concerned about what people are thinking about him. He's absorbed in the flow of the truth. He's absorbed in getting that truth out unobstructed. The truth ignites different men in different ways. And we can only but imagine the kind of preaching that John the Baptist engaged in when he stood in front of a multitude of people and called them a brood of vipers and warned them of the wrath to come. I wonder what grades he would get in homiletics class in many seminaries in our day. But he became a man ignited with the truth and preached with boldness. And we need to allow and pray that men are not going to be plastic little puppets in our pulpits, but that they become alive with the truth and forget themselves and give themselves, pouring out themselves unobstructed with boldness, biblical boldness, to present truth even though presented in the contours of a human personality. Luke tells us that John preached to the people Now, this could be a very nondescript description of his audience in chapter 3, verse 15. While the people were in a state of expectation, this could mean his audience. But, it's a term that is particularly significant because it's used in the Old Testament to describe the covenant nation of God as distinct from the Gentiles who do not know God. In English, we get our English word, laity. from this term. And obviously that's a word that connotes religious meaning or religious identity. Therefore, I submit to you that this could be a subtle suggestion on Luke's part, that those who listened and responded to John's Gospel were in fact the true covenant people of God. That God's true people were identified by their response to John's message. He preached to the people, to the laity, to the true covenant people. to those new people of God who are emerging as the remnant out of the old to connect to the Messiah and to blossom into the new covenant people of God. A people who began to emerge in response to John's preaching. Notice that Luke does not emphasize the rite of baptism, but rather focuses upon John's message and upon the proper response to John's message. Those who respond properly can anticipate a gift. The gift of the Holy Spirit who would come to them through the ministry of the messianic baptizer who was about to arrive on the stage. Now you would think that as a writer at that point Luke could turn the chapter and begin a new chapter having said what he needs to say about John the Baptist But Luke doesn't leave this scene without sounding a note in the narrative that he's already sounded. He wants to sound it again to develop our awareness that with the coming of the Kingdom of God, there comes warfare. There comes opposition. There comes persecution. So, he tells us of the people and their reception to John's preaching on the one hand. And now, on the other hand, but, verse 19 and 20, We also learn of the rejection of John's preaching. But when Herod the Tetrarch was reproved by him on account of Herodias, his brother's wife, and on account of all the wicked things which Herod had done, he added this to them all, that he locked John up in prison. Now, we've already learned something about Luke's writing style. He pans out and he envelops a whole extended period of time and gives summarizing statements that encapsulate large periods of time. And then after doing that, he'll zoom the lens back in and narrow in on specific detail. And in this instance, even move back in the plot and go to an event that happened earlier than what he just got done telling you about. Because we can piece together the Gospel testimony and conclude that after Jesus was baptized, something that John's not going to tell us about until verse 21, it was after Jesus was baptized that John was in prison. In fact, almost a year after Jesus was baptized. After Jesus was baptized, he ministered. simultaneously with John and his disciples. Hendrickson tells us that John's ministry began somewhere around 26 A.D., likely imprisoned toward the end of 27 A.D., and was probably executed sometime early in 29 A.D., but during the late 26 to early 27, both he and Jesus were ministering simultaneously in the same area. So, Luke is playing a little fast and loose with the chronology. But remember, Luke told us at the beginning of his Gospel that his purposes are not strictly chronological. He's writing for historical purposes, theological purposes, and pastoral purposes to write it out for you, O Theophilus, in consecutive order. And we learned that that was a technical term in the literary world of Luke. That means that Luke, the author, could arrange his material in order to accomplish his particular literary purposes. And his purpose at this point is to conclude what he wants us to know about John the Baptist. He wants us to see John the Baptist concluded, and then he wants to move him off the stage in order to introduce Jesus Christ. But before he moves John off the stage, he wants to sound this theme. Persecution. Rejection. Opposition. And he wants to sound that theme with John the Baptist because he wants us to anticipate that as John removes himself from the stage under this minor key, this ominous note of persecution, and Jesus enters with that minor key resonating in our ears, we're to understand that when the Messiah comes, war is breaking out. Persecution is going to happen. And so Luke has a strategy. And he's not being inaccurate, he's not being wrong, but he's arranging it so as to be pastoral. He's arranging it to accomplish his purposes. He removes John from the stage, but he places him in prison. Chronologically, he's jumping way ahead of himself, but his arrangement is so as to accomplish his literary purposes. He begins with the word, but. I've already told you, this is a direct contrast with what was written in verse 18. In contrast to the people's reception of John, there is rejection and opposition that comes especially from the rulers, Herod the Tetrarch. Now, he is listed, you remember, with those rulers in verse 1 and verse 2 of chapter 3. And when we saw that list of rulers, I said, this is kind of like the way in which a football team or basketball team begins, and you get introduced to the opposing team players. Now, here's the roster of the opposition, and Herod is listed among them. And these men that are cited here, as the narrative progresses, identify themselves as the enemies of Christ and the opponents of the kingdom of God. And Mary has already told us in chapter 1, verse 52, what's going to happen to the rulers who oppose the kingdom of God. He has brought down rulers from their thrones and has exalted those who were humble. But Herod the Tetrarch is anything but humble. John, we're told, reproved him. Not once, because the verb is that of a continued action. John, amongst his many exhortations, preached against Herod. John frequently preached against Herod and evidently to Herod. Notice a record of one of his sermons to Herod in Matthew chapter 7. Mark chapter 7, verse 17 and 18. Which is a wrong passage, okay? If someone will help me, that would be great. Mark says to Herod. Mark chapter 6. Let's try chapter 6. Verse 17 and 18. You didn't think you'd get through a full day without a typo. Change the 7 to the 6 and we're on track. Mark 6, 17 and 18. For Herod himself had sent and had John arrested and bound in prison on account of Herodias the wife of his brother Philip, because he had married her. For John had been saying, the repeated, John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. Dodge that bullet, Herod. We're not talking about an ethical discussion about the implications of the seventh commandment. We're talking about you, Herod. And we're talking about the woman that you have married. The word reprove, as we go back to Luke 3, is a verbal attempt to demonstrate somebody is wrong. To implicate them in wrongdoing. To censor, to accuse, to condemn, and to apply guilt to them. to expose sin to the light of judgment, to show their faults and convince them of their error and summon them to repent. Now, Bach says, that this is a change in John's manner. To the people he exhorted and preached good news, but to Herod he rebuked. We need to be careful because there can be an attempt on some of the modern commentators to be influenced by modern political and social view and somehow the gospel is something of a Marxist revolutionary thing where the upper classes are getting nailed and the common proletariat are being congratulated. That's not the way this should be understood. John called anybody and everybody who didn't bear fruit a snake. And it doesn't matter what class you're from. You are a rotten tree, in his eyes, if you didn't bear the fruit of repentance. Whether you sat on a throne or you sat on a camel, it didn't matter to him. Reprove is a word constantly used in the New Testament to describe what biblical preaching entails. Paul says to Timothy, preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. It's a ministry of Christ through His church in Revelation 3.19. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. If the Bible steps into your life and says you're doing wrong and you need to change, you need to get on your knees and thank Jesus Christ because He is having dealings with you. If He wasn't, He would let you go on your way. and you would amass wrath to yourself for the day of judgment. If you live a life that's not being reproved biblically, then that's a life under the wrath of God. Where in Romans 1, He stands back and abandons you to your sin. But if He intervenes in your life and gets involved and says, what you're doing is wrong and you need to change. That's a testimony of His love. Those whom I love, I reprove and I discipline. Be zealous therefore and repent. Now, Herod was reproved essentially because of his pride and he would not repent. And therefore, as Mary said, he would be thrown down by the kingdom of God. Now, Luke tells us that he was reproved on account of Herodias, his brother's wife. Now, this is a moral mess. This is a real mess. What Herod is doing is explicitly prohibited in the Old Testament in Leviticus 18-16 and Leviticus 20 and verse 21. Let me try to describe to you why John was preaching like this. Herod's father was called Herod the Great. We met Herod the Great earlier in Luke's narrative. He was the Herod that was on the throne when Jesus was born. He was the one who had all of the male infants of Bethlehem slaughtered as Matthew records in Matthew 2.16. He's called Herod the Great. This gets confusing because there's a bunch of Herods and Herodiases. But Herod the Great. Now his son is Herod Antipas. And that's the Herod of whom we're reading now. Herod the Tetrarch. Herod the Great had ten wives. Not exactly the paradigm of moral continence, but he had ten wives. Herod Antipas was the son of one of these ten wives. Now Herodias was Herod's granddaughter through one of his sons, Aristobulus. Therefore, when you put the family tree together, Herodias was Herod Antipas' half-niece. There's a blood tie here, a blood relation here. Now, she had been married first of all to Herod's half-brother. Again, Herod the Great fathering another son by a different woman. Herod's half-brother was Herod Philip. So that she married Herod Philip. Herodias married her half-uncle in her first marriage. She was blood-related to her first husband. Herod Antipas, prior to marrying Herodias, now you'll be quizzed on this, was married to the daughter of an Arabian king in a political arrangement. Both Herod and Herodias divorced their first spouses in order to enter into their present marriage. In this second marriage, Herodias' second marriage, she once again is marrying within bloodlines, within what you call consanguinity, within a blood relationship, because she's marrying the half-brother of her husband. And he is, in fact, through the family tree of all of this ridiculousness, she is his half-niece. So, the two marriages are just an abomination to God. They destroyed their first marriages in order to enter into this unlawful relationship, which was both adulterous and incestuous. So, John gets in the middle of that and says, it is unlawful for you to be married to your brother's wife. Not only did he indict him on these counts, but Luke says, and on account of all the wicked things that Herod had done. Now Luke's account of John repeatedly emphasizes this verb, do, and here we see it again here. Herod's doing is significant, all that he had done. John doesn't care who you are, where you live, what you know, and how you make your money. He's interested in how you live your life. And this is what he's talking to Herod about, all the things that he's done. And Luke just mentions unspecified wicked things. Joel Green comments, we can be certain that these things had to do with infractions related to justice and practical holiness, that is, the sorts of behaviors against which John regularly spoke. In other words, when you extract the moral commandments of this profile of compassionate justice that John calls for in verses 10 through 14, you find him endorsing the 10th commandment, the 8th commandment, the 5th commandment, the 9th commandment, the 6th commandment, and the 7th commandment. And I hope you know the 10 commandments enough for me to be able to just say the numbers and you know what moral laws I'm talking about. He's indicting him on covetousness and stealing and breaking authority and lying and murder and adultery, sexual impurity. These are the wicked things. The word that he uses, wicked, means corrupt and evil, worthless, unprofitable, useless, guilty, blameworthy. When used with a definite article in the Greek, it describes the devil himself, the evil one. The classical Greek used it for something that was sick and malignant. and also referred to a man who was a knave, who was a good-for-nothing coward and base. The moral elite in this day were totally debauched and profligate. They indulged in excesses of every vice without a conscience. They callously, cruelly administered their rule. And they applauded themselves. The more hideously wicked they were, the more famous they became among their cronies. Their sexual pleasures and their cruelties were extolled. And Herod did all the wicked things. And John stood against him. And he stood against him publicly when he preached. And he stood against him personally and privately when he had audience with him one on one. And he indicted him and he indicted her. And he spoke to them, I say I to I. And he spoke to them directly. And he used a second person singular pronoun. It is not lawful for you. And that's the way he came into Herod's life. And Herod, being the little weasel that he was, he got entertained by this. This guy thought this was cute. The one that it really bothered was Herodias. She was a savage woman. She wanted John dead. But Herod, the politician that he was, didn't want to quite go to that extreme because John was very popular. So he went and made a compromise with his wife and locked John up, scholars tell us, in a fortress called Machaerus near the Dead Sea, likely had him bound in chains in a very dark, hot dungeon. And there, in order to appease his vicious wife, who wanted John dead, he put him into prison. And he used to call him out, you know, hey, it's a boring afternoon, nothing happened, let's get the preacher out. Pull the strings, see what he has to say. And John would say, no doubt, a real earful. Then he would send him away and put him back in his cage, as it were. Now in Mark, back again to chapter 6, this time in my notes I hit the 6 and not the 7. We read from verse 18, John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death and could not do so, for Herod was afraid of John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man and kept him safe. And when he heard him, he was very perplexed, but he used to enjoy listening to him. And a strategic day came when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet, and you know the rest of the story, when Salome, Herodias' daughter, by Philip, his half-brother, danced for Herod. And you can but imagine, she wasn't doing the three-step box waltz. And she danced for Herod. And Herod was so impressed By the seductiveness of her dance, she said, I'll give you anything up to half of my kingdom. And her mother pulls her to the side and says, OK, now let's get his head. And he offered up John's plate, head on a platter. Now, that's wicked, isn't it? And all the wicked things that John, that Herod did. But notice when we come back to Luke 3 verse 20, Luke says, all of these wicked things that Herod had done, he added this to them all. Here's the ultimate indictment. Here's the worst thing that this man did. To kill people by snapping his fingers, no problem. In a day he could have people murdered. In a day he could have people pillaged and raped. It was no problem for Herod. But this is the worst thing, says Luke. This is the thing he added to the mall. Here's the thing that topped the whole bunch of the wicked things that Herod did. He added this to the mall. He added this, Luke says, on top of the pile, as it were, in the Greek. He put this as the crowning epitome of the vile wickedness of everything that he ever did. This is the worst that he did. He locked the preacher up. He had John imprisoned and eventually silenced him by separating his head from his shoulders. This is where the story ends with John the Baptist. Now later in chapter 7, Luke is going to bring John once again into the story to serve the purpose of bringing clarity to who Christ is. But we've come up at this point to make some application. And the first is this. Recognize gospel preaching. Recognize gospel preaching. According to Matthew Henry, John was an exemplary preacher. He says, first, he was an affectionate preacher, exhorting, beseeching, and applying to personal issues. Secondly, he was a practical preacher, showing how to make specific application in your duty. Third, he was a popular preacher. The learned and the common man listened to him. Fourthly, he was an evangelical preacher for he preached indeed the gospel. And fifthly, he was a copious preacher. In other words, he preached many things extensively and he preached on a great deal of material and shunned not to preach the whole counsel of God as he varied his preaching content and style so as to penetrate his hearers from all different angles. Gospel preaching must be built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ. It must emphasize the promised forgiveness of Christ, summoning the listeners to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. And provided that that gospel evangelical foundation and frame is retained, and that it contains then all that is declared in Christ's name, gospel preaching with that foundation laid, Christ as its center and goal, gospel preaching can encompass a rather large corpus of topics, especially in the area of human ethics. John's mission was to prepare people for Christ. He preached a baptism of repentance in the hope of the forgiveness of sins through the Christ. But he also preached about the ethics of money management and about the ethics of labor and about the ethics of family relationships. And he even preached about politicians in his day and their moral influence upon the people. He preached personally to people. He preached about their business. He preached about their social life. And He preached about their doctrinal comprehension, all of which continually focusing upon the frame and foundation of the Messiah and His kingdom and the impending coming of final judgment. Learn to recognize gospel preaching. We're conditioned to think that certain areas of our lives ought to be out of bounds for religion and for preachers. If Jesus is Lord, I ask you, from what area of your life is He excluded? If we're the Lord's, then what is not His jurisdiction? If we establish that our lives are built on Christ and lived for Christ, then Gospel preaching is the application of the Bible to any and every aspect of my life. Lordship is Lordship after all. And His Word meets me in every facet of my life. Learn to recognize gospel preaching. Sometimes I find myself a little bit tripping in my step, a little halt, a little glitch when I think, well, we're preaching evangelistically Sunday evenings once a month. And I think to myself, well, what am I doing on the other Sundays? Because the gospel is there. The gospel is heard in its declaration and in its summons. The salvation that God accomplishes and the salvation that men experience in response to that message. Secondly, not only recognize it, but receive gospel preaching. Receive gospel preaching. It's my suspicion that it is the authority of preaching The authority inherent in the Gospel that so irks men in our day. Always has. Men have always been captious. Remember we learned that word? It means to talk back to authority. It means to argue. As soon as a commandment is given, most people in our day ask a question about the commandment. Is that not right? Does that not bear true in your experience? As soon as someone says, this is what you should do, as soon as there is an ethical imperative used in a sentence, immediately we in our generation bristle at that. We stand back and go, what do you mean by that? Who are you to tell me that? Why do we have to do it that way? We see it from our kids all the time. I want you to sit here. Why do I have to sit there? I'd like to sit over here. And you want to argue about that? Right? This is what I want you to have. I don't want that. I want this over here. An immediate response of bristling, resistance, refuting and arguing, questioning. It's become a plague in our day. It's a plague that's infected my generation, And it's a plague, I believe, that is being visited with great ferocity upon the next generation. And frankly, I shudder to think what ministry, gospel ministry, is going to be when I'm 65, 67 years old. And I'm going to be attempting to pastor young adults who are being raised in this generation that when anybody tells them to do something, the first thing they do is turn around and put a fist in your face and say, who are you to tell me to do that? Don't respond that way to the gospel, to gospel preaching, to the full spectrum of gospel preaching. How do you receive it? Do you receive it? Herod didn't. He put the preacher in a prison. He silenced the preacher. And brethren, there are all kinds of prisons that preachers are put into today. It amazes me as a preacher. Sometimes it's amazing to me as a preacher in our culture, in evangelical culture. My experience oftentimes is like I get the bars of a prison smacked right up on my face because I'm a preacher. And people are putting preachers in little boxes today. People are putting preachers in little soundproof boxes today. And it's astonishing. All kinds of prisons are made for preachers. The prison of avoidance and neglect. The prisons of rendering irrelevant. The prison of mindless tolerance, of absent-minded preoccupation. Even while people are present, they can be putting the preacher in a prison and locking him up in their own hearing to a realm that's irrelevant. And while his words are being spoken, They're like the sound of a fan in the closet that you put on your bedroom in order to produce some white noise so that you can relax. The prison of debate, of opposition, and of persecution. We need to be aware, however, that how we treat God's messenger is how we treat God's Word. And how we treat God's Word will be the measure of how God treats us. Hendrickson very penetratingly says that by locking John up in prison, Herod was locking himself up in a far more terrible prison, one from which he was never going to escape. Jesus Christ indicates that the rejection of preaching is a sin of great degree. When He sends out the disciples, He says to them, Go, preach, say, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In Matthew 10, verse 7. And then in chapter 10, verse 14 and 15, He speaks of the preacher's ministry and he says, whoever does not receive you nor heed your words as you go out of that house or that city, shake off the dust of your feet, truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. Because preaching came to that city and they rejected it, their degree of culpability is greater than Sodom and Gomorrah. Final judgment is going to astonish people. It's going to absolutely unhinge people. And they're going to be amazed at what Jesus is going to tell them has been the most important thing in their life. People sentimentalize their lives. They attribute ultimate meaning to chance happenings, to their accomplishments, to their romanticized relationships, all of which are not unimportant. But how many realize that their response to the gospel and to its preaching is the most important thing in their life? You're not going to meet Jesus Christ personally, this side of judgment. What he's going to send to you is a preacher. He's going to send his words to you through the foolishness of preaching. And final judgment is going to show that Jesus sending a preacher to a people was the most important thing that ever happened to them. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to the one an aroma from death to death, to another an aroma from life to life. Who is adequate for these things? You walk out of the car salesman's shopping lot and you don't pick up his car, he's not looking at you walking away and saying, please don't reject my product. If you do, you're going to die eternally. Because my car is the most important thing that has ever happened to your life. Who is adequate for a man to stand up in front of a group of people and say, my message to you is the most important thing that's ever happened in your life. And if you reject my message, be it biblically anchored, then you are to me a saver of death unto death. Because the living Christ has sent you a messenger. And that's the most important thing that's ever happened to you. The message comes in foolishness. It comes in something that's very unimpressive. And those who ignore, refute, and silence it will themselves be ignored, refuted, and silenced. But if anyone does not recognize this, writes the Apostle Paul, he is not recognized. The way you treat the Word and the preaching is the way God ultimately is going to treat you. Don't reject it, lest you be rejected. But thirdly, as we see Herod's rejection, we need to anticipate opposition if we're going to stand for this kingdom, for this king, and for his gospel. Paul says, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Immoral people will inevitably become persecutors of the godly. You live, kids, with a stand for truth. You live amongst your peers with a determination to obey your parents. And you mark it out. You'll be marked for that. You live with a determination to do your work well at school, to respect your teachers, and you'll be mocked. You'll be persecuted. Immoral people cannot be content simply in remaining in their sin. They have to silence the one that makes them aware of their sin. They have to silence the one who points out a rebuke to them by their own example or by their words. Everyone who does evil hates the light. He hates the light. What do you do if you hate the light? What do you do in the morning when the alarm goes off and you hate it? You reach over and you put it to silence, right? Someone comes into your room and they turn the bedroom light on. Oh man, turn that off. You hate it. You want it off. You want it silenced. You want it away. The hatred of the light wants you not simply to tolerate it, you want to turn it off. On September 17, 2003, the Canadian House of Commons passed by a vote of 141 to 110 legislation that categorizes sexual orientation as a protected category in Canadian genocide and hate crimes legislation. Violation of this new law will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison. The bill is expected to pass in the Canadian Senate and then to be signed into law by the Governor General. In the bill, the words sexual orientation are not defined and therefore will likely be given meaning by organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association which lists 24 behaviors under sexual orientation, behaviors including polygamy, bestiality and pedophilia. It appears that in Canada, as in several other European nations, it will soon be a, quote, hate crime to publicly read Genesis 19, Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, Romans 1, and 1 Corinthians 6. Earlier this year, a Saskatchewan man took out space in a local newspaper without comment, simply listing scriptural passages that condemned the sin of homosexuality and was fined by a provincial human rights tribunal. This bill means that clergy who refuse to marry two homosexuals could face criminal charges. So, too, parents who wish for their children to opt out of pro-homosexual health classes. So, too, religious schools which refuse to teach pro-homosexual perspectives. Indeed, any written or spoken disagreement with homosexual behavior will be deemed, quote, a hate crime. The homosexual movement is self-consciously, adamantly despising of Christianity. And it has a huge foothold in our media, our judiciary, and our education. Yesterday's issue of World Magazine, October 11, 2003, in Gene Veith's Cultural Beat essay, reviewing Critics' reviews of the impending unleashing of several religious movies, Mel Gibson's The Passion, and another one by director Garth Drabinsky of Visual Bible International entitled The Gospel of John, which evidently uses good news for modern man text in order to present the Gospel of John on film in its entirety. Visual Bible International happens to be a Canadian outfit. It has been criticized by the Canadian critic Donald Atkinson who says, quote, of the four Gospels, the Gospel of John is the closest to being hate literature. Unquote. In the year 64 AD, the city of Rome caught fire. Nero was out of town at the time. His political adversaries thought that he ignited the city so as to be able to come in and prove himself the hero of the day and put the fire out and be able to get some political profit from that. The fire got out of hand. It burned nearly a third of the city to the ground. Nero found himself in over his head and had to try to blame someone. And so he blamed this up and coming group of malcontents, so he thought, who called themselves Christians. The Roman historian Tacitus writes, quote, Nero substituted as culprits and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty a class of men loathed for their vices whom the crowd called Christians. Those who confessed were arrested and then on their information a huge multitude was convicted. not so much on the ground of incendiaryism, on being arsons, not so much because they were really thought that they started the fire, not so much on the ground of incendiaryism, but for hatred of the human race. Their execution was made a matter of sport. One of the most devastating persecutions of the Christians in 64 AD, which in fact swept the head of the Apostle Paul off his shoulders just a few years later in 68 AD, was justified in a culture that believed that Christians hated mankind. And we are hearing the exact same language today. Are you ready for it? Are we the haters of mankind? We who serve the God that so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son? We who preach the gospel described in Titus 3-4, but when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, Jesus is not the hatred of mankind, God's hatred for mankind. Jesus is the love of God for mankind. But yet, Jesus tells us, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you're not of the world, I chose you out of the world. Therefore, the world hates you. They hate the light. They hate you who are children of the light. And they're going to want to put it out. Turn the light off. Herodias wanted to kill John. Herod put him into prison and ultimately had him beheaded. And you know what they did to the compassionate, sinless Jesus of Nazareth. I believe that we're moving increasingly into a day when Christians in the United States are increasingly going to have to suffer opposition and even persecution for their faith. Young person, are you ready for this? The debate among youth groups in our day is music styles and drama and play and meanwhile adamant forces are infiltrating your judiciary system, your educational system, your mass media and your political institutions and they're accusing you of hatred. Are you ready? Are you prepared? Are you going to accept the fact? to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to embrace persecution. Anticipate it. And get ready for it by being the best Christian that you can be right now. Taking your stand in the schoolroom. Taking your stand in the workplace. Do people at your workplace know that you're a Christian? You think the opposition is bad now because of a couple of snickers and a couple of giggles in the lunchroom? Do they know you're a Christian? Are you taking your stand? Are you identifying yourself with Jesus? With His people? With His kingdom? May we learn these lessons and more. May we preach this message. May we be this message. For the day is upon us. And it's time now to be decidedly Christian. Amen.