If you would please turn to Luke chapter one, our scripture reading is gonna be from Luke one, and please stand for the reading of God's word. I saw that, Shane, you got there first. We're gonna have two portions of reading from Luke one, verses five through 17, and verses 57 through 79. There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years. So it was that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of incense. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zechariah saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Verse 57. Now Elizabeth's full time came for her to be delivered, and she brought forth a son. When her neighbors and relatives heard how the Lord had shown great mercy to her, they rejoiced with her. So it was on the eighth day that they came to circumcise the child, and they would have called him by the name of his father, Zacharias. His mother answered and said, no, he shall be called John. But they said to her, there is no one among your relatives who is called by this name. So they made signs to his father, what he would have him called. And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, saying, his name is John. So they all marveled. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, praising God. Then fear came on all who dwelt around them, and all these sayings were discussed throughout all the hill country of Judea. And all those who heard them kept them in their hearts, saying, What kind of child will this be? And the hand of the Lord was with him. Now his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied saying, blessed is the Lord God of Israel for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets who have been since the world began that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the highest, for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, with which the dayspring from on high has visited us. to give light to those who sit in darkness in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. So the child grew and became strong in spirit and was in the deserts till the day of his manifestation to Israel. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. And please open scripture to Matthew chapter three. We are gonna be considering John the Baptist this morning. In a sermon a couple months ago, I made a passing reference to a debate from the 90s centering on the idea of lordship salvation, lordship salvation. And the central question that was at the heart of that debate is not a new one, and really, it hasn't gone away. And the question is really, can someone accept Jesus Christ as their Savior, but not live with Him as their Lord? Can someone accept Jesus as their savior without following him in obedience as Lord? Now, there are a number of reasons that someone might answer yes to that question. Yes, you can have Jesus as your savior, but not follow him as Lord. Someone might say yes to that question because of really the history of the church in America in the 19th and 20th centuries that gave rise to something I'll call prayer prayer theology. You see, revivalist and crusade movements in the 1800s and 1900s led to mass conversions, or at least the appearance of mass conversions, where people would rush forward, pray to receive Jesus Christ, and then, for many of them, go on to live lives that were unchanged by Jesus. To them, the theology that we saw in our call to Christlikeness this morning, do not be like the old man put on the new, that whole dynamic was foreign to them. And with those crusade movements, and I'm not saying anything against crusades, there often is little, if any, discipleship. There's no vital connection to the local church. The normal Christian life is shortchanged. The method often is lacking. You pray a prayer and you're good to go. Oh, I'm all for prayer. I remember coming to Jesus in prayer for the first time as a young child. And many of you probably remember that as well. And that is as it should be. But the theology around salvation is very important. We want to think God's thoughts after him and affirm what he affirms. On the other hand, in answer to that question, can someone accept Jesus as Savior and not have Him as Lord, someone might say no, because Jesus seems to say a whole lot about actually following Him, doing things like taking up your cross daily, obeying Him, as we're gonna see when we get to the Sermon on the Mount. Now, this isn't to say that obedience earns salvation in any way. The scriptures unanimously say, not a chance, right? There is no earning your salvation through obedience. However, genuine faith in Jesus for salvation does produce a genuine desire to obey Jesus, and that is because of the new nature that comes with the profession of faith. You see, we don't profess our faith and then be received by God. God changes us, and then we come to Him. The question is one of sovereignty. How does God save sinners? Now, for many people, this question, can you have Jesus as Savior but not live with Him as Lord, is an unnerving question. And I've talked with far too many people over the years who hope that they're going to heaven because they remember praying to receive Christ as a child, but Jesus has been little, if any, part of their life from the days since. Now, our passage this morning is helpful in making sense of all this. See, according to John the Baptist, there is no salvation except lordship salvation. The fundamental confession of the Christian faith is Jesus Christ is Lord. He comes to us on no other terms. So to confess Jesus as Christ is to confess that he is Lord, and to confess him as Lord is to repent of sin and follow him. We come to him as repentant believers, and we stay with him as repentant believers all the way to glory. Now let's see how this plays out in Matthew 3, because I don't want you to take my word for it. Let's see, Matthew 3, verse 1. In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. and saying, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Now John himself was clothed in camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water under 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 fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. You see, the preaching of John the Baptist here really communicates two aspects to one main idea. And that idea is that Christ's coming calls for repentant faith and warns of judgment at his return. We see both of these aspects in what John is saying. Christ's coming calls for repentant faith and warns of judgment at Christ's return. And to understand this, we first need to begin by taking a look at the person of John the Baptist. Who is this guy who shows up in chapter three out of nowhere with questionable attire, an off-putting diet, and in a twinge of weirdness? More than a twinge. Matthew tells us in verse 1 that John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea in those days. Now, in those days doesn't mean to communicate to us that this is happening during the days of what was saying in chapter 2, that while Jesus was a boy and a young child, that's not when John was preaching. No, in those days is simply saying in the time of the Messiah, the days of Christ. Historically, we're actually jumping forward about 30 years from the events of chapter 2. The beginning of Luke 3 tells us that John preached during the reign of Tiberius Caesar when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea. I mean, on that basis alone, we know this wasn't when Jesus was a boy, because Archelaus was reigning as king in Herod's place. And after Archelaus was deposed, that's when the governors came in. And then a later governor was Pontius Pilate. So we know this is happening, fast forward, around the year 26 AD. That's our time frame. And we have this figure coming out of nowhere, John the Baptist. Now, Matthew just assumes that his readers know who this guy is. And he made quite a splash, as we read. John's ministry to the Jewish community, I mean, what does it say? It says that Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him. That's a lot of people. That's quite a region. This was the center point of Israel's life. And the Gospel of Luke tells us that John is the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and that Jesus' mother Mary is a relative of Elizabeth, and so Jesus and John are related in some way. And we also know from our scripture reading in Luke that John was a Nazarite. He had long hair. He did not drink alcoholic beverages. He was set apart in devotion to God from birth. And in verse 1, we discover two things about John. One, that he's a preacher. and two, that he's in the wilderness of Judea. And we'll look closely at the content of his preaching in a moment, but let's shed some light on his geographical choices by looking at verse four. Verse 4, which says that John himself was clothed in camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. He's a preacher. He's in the barren desert area, about a day's journey east of Jerusalem, west of the Jordan River. Not far west, I mean, he's baptizing in the Jordan River. And so this was really not the place that you would go if you were trying to spark a revivalist movement. They didn't have social media, so you couldn't go out into the desert and simulcast how much you're suffering for the Lord and get your message across on Facebook. You couldn't do that. People were coming out by the droves to that wilderness area that people didn't normally just go, hey, let's go on a fun day trip out to the wilderness of Judea. And he's clothed in camel's hair, which is not to say the kind of camel's hair, if you can find any, at JCPenney. This is rough stuff. This was not something that would have been most people's choice of attire. And his diet consisted of locusts, dried locusts, and wild honey. Some of you would say that John is crunchy. In double sense, I just realized, because locusts are crunchy. But for all of that, Matthew's not focusing on John's eccentricity. I mean, no doubt John's eccentric, but that's for a reason, because who he is is bound up with his message and what God means to communicate by him. John's preaching and diet and clothing and location are all part of a bigger picture, which is that John is the new Elijah. John is the new Elijah. This is very significant. You see, a small handful of texts in the Old Testament deal directly speaking about the ministry of John. And a couple of those prophecies are at the very end of the Old Testament in the book of Malachi. Malachi is the last Old Testament prophet before John the Baptist, and he's writing 400 years before the events of Matthew take place. And in chapter 3, Malachi tells us about a messenger, John the Baptist, who prepares the way before Christ. And Christ is referred to in this prophecy as the messenger of the covenant. Listen to what Malachi says about John and Jesus. Behold, I send my messenger, John, and he will prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, Jesus, in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. So John is the messenger at the beginning of the verse whose job is to prepare the way for the messenger of the covenant, the Messiah who's coming. And Malachi 4 is the last chapter of the Old Testament, and it's short. And the entire chapter concerns the coming of Christ and the ministry of John. And because it's just a few pages away, go ahead and go back with me for just a moment to Malachi 4. to see the significance of what's happening in Matthew in light of the last words that we see from the last prophet. This gives us important perspective on who John is in the larger story of the Bible. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly, will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, that will leave them neither root nor branch, but to you who fear my name. The son of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings, and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves. You shall trample the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I do this, says the Lord of hosts. Remember the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. Do you hear in that the prophecy of Zacharias that we read? in Luke. You should, because Zacharias' song at the birth of his son John, at John's circumcision, on that day when he was given the name John, is chock full of Malachi 4. Zacharias knows his son is the one who is to come prepare the way of the Lord. That was the reason John's miraculous birth was given to two barren old saints of God. God was doing something through John, and it was something prophetically significant, preparing the way of the Lord. And so when John comes in the spirit and power of Elijah, clothed like a rugged prophet, living in the wilderness, eating the food that could be found there, the Jews were speculating about whether John was in fact Elijah, and they were right to speculate that. That was kind of the point. And the point about John's rough clothing and diet and ministry in the wilderness is showing in living color that John had indeed come as the new Elijah, not by way of resurrection of the old Elijah, but the continuing prophetic significance and mantle of that great man of God who confronted kings as John himself would confront kings and ultimately die for it. Now along with Moses, Elijah was the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. And so when Jesus is glorified on the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah are the two men that God sends to be there strengthening him in that moment. Moses, the great lawgiver, and Elijah, the great prophet. And so we have by the choice of men who show up on that mount, that the testimony of the law and the prophets, which was to the Jews all scripture, centers on the person who is about to be crucified. And just as Elijah had been a prophetic force in an Israel filled with apostasy, so John the Baptist was an Elijah-like prophet who called Israel to come out of the wilderness of sin and prepare the way of the Lord by cleansing their lives. Now, Jesus would later say about John the Baptist, Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women, there is not a risen one greater than John the Baptist, but he who is leased in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And so with ready ears and open hearts, let's listen to what God is saying through John's ministry, beginning with John's prophecy, specifically the prophecy about his preparation for the Messiah, which we see in verse three. This is he of who was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Along with the two passages in Malachi, Isaiah 40 is the third major prophecy in this cluster of prophecies about John the Baptist. And the location of this prophecy in Isaiah is important. So it's commonly understood that Isaiah is broken into two parts. Isaiah 1 through 39 largely focuses on judgment and warning of judgment because of Israel's sin. But beginning in chapter 40, there's a distinctly different flavor. which is what we began our service with, comfort. Comfort, because through judgment, God preserves his people and then ministers to them the salvation of Jesus, the comfort that they will one day be made new, which is why a great Southern Baptist theologian, James Hamilton's biblical theology is called God's Glory. in salvation through judgment. That's how he sums up the theme of the entire Bible. God's glory is shown in saving his people through the waters of judgment, and this is definitely a dominant theme in Isaiah. And John the Baptist comes here right at the turning point from judgment to comfort, because John's ministry was a preparatory one, warning people of the wrath to come if they did not make themselves ready to receive Messiah. And John's ministry, as fiery as it is, is one that comes in that line of comfort and talks about the first and second comings of Christ. You see, the prophecy about John kicks off the major transition there. And we saw in his ministry God's comfort to his people and that this ministry of preparation for his coming deliverance through repentance. Repentance is critical to the comfort. Without repentance, there is no grounds for comfort, as John is going to tell the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Now, in the immediate context of the Isaiah prophecy, Isaiah has in mind primarily the exiles, those who went away to Assyria and then to Babylon because of the judgment for their sins. But the return of Israel from those historic exiles didn't see anything like the outcome described in Isaiah 40. The time between the Testaments is one that is not described, you could not describe it as saying it was a leveling of the paths, spiritually speaking. That was rough stuff. The people had not repented and turned to the Lord with all their heart as it had been prophesied when they would return from exile, which is why we know that it was never just about returning from Babylon or Syria. It was always about returning from the greater exile of sin and death. Isaiah and Matthew are drawing on royal imagery of a king arriving to a city. So when it says, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, we need to know that when a king would come to a town in those ancient days, preparation was made on the roads. They had work crews out there with shovels and whatever else they used to flatten roads, getting the rocks out, so when the king's entourage would come through, he wouldn't be bumping along on the roads. He would have straight and level paths for his visit, because he was worthy of such preparations. And that is setting the backdrop for the coming of Jesus, the great king, the king of the Jews that got Herod furious. And his arrival required some road work to be done, but it wasn't along dusty roads of Palestine. It was along the rocky roads of the human hearts of Israel. And this is the reason for John's message, which is repentance. And we see this in verse two, that he said, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then in verse five, then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. The call to repentance called for action, and that action for these Jews was John's baptism. It was John's baptism. In the neighborhood that we came from in Washington, there was incredible trick-or-treating opportunities on Reformation Day. And so, we would have our friends over, and we would go trick-or-treating, and before we went out, for Reformation Day, my friend Dave would sit the kids down and he'd say, now listen, you go up to a house, remember, this is the day Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door, so someone opens the door, and you say, repent or perish. And I don't recall that any, maybe my son might have said that once, but that was not really what the kids said. And we all had a good laugh, but there's something to it. You see, my friend was certainly on to something in his trick-or-treat greeting, and that's certainly a way that we could summarize John the Baptist's message. And really, if you distilled it down, what John is telling to these people, and especially to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, is repent or perish. Repent or perish. There is judgment for sin. It is no light thing. Now, that raises the question, what does John mean by repentance? Because I'll tell you that few words are used as often and understood as little as repentance. In a literal sense, repentance means a change of mind. It involves a transformation of someone's thinking. But it's not merely a change of thinking in a disassociated way. It doesn't end at the thoughts, it transforms the heart and the life. One of the most widely regarded Greek lexicons in the New Testament study, in New Testament studies, is called Lounaida. Lou, L-O-U-W, Naida, N-I-D-A, named after the two guys who came up with this brilliant lexicon. And it's very helpful, and I'd like to share with you how Lou and Naida define the word repentance in the sense that John is using it here. They say that repentance is to change one's way of life as the result of a complete change of thought and attitude with regard to sin and righteousness. Repentance is to change one's way of life as a result of a complete change of thought and attitude with regard to sin and righteousness. You see, that is so much more than what we mean when we usually mean that someone changed their mind. I've changed my mind about loads of things through the years. Very few of them have had a transforming effect in my life. Biblical repentance, though, is a completely new relationship to sin. That might be a way you could think about it. It's a completely new relationship to sin. A relationship that now hates sin where before we once loved it. We used to scheme at how to become better sinners so that we wouldn't get caught, so that we can enjoy more of that thing we love. But then when Jesus comes in and we repent, we're scheming in a good way. How can we sin less? How can we glorify God more? How can we help our brothers and sisters in Christ to enjoy Jesus? That's repentance. And if I could capture it in a pithy phrase, I'd say that repentance is a life change that shows a heart change. And really, at root, that's what it is. It's a life change that shows a heart change. John's message was one of repentance, but it was repentance for a very specific reason. And that reason is because the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven, is at hand. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, which is the same thing as saying the kingdom of God, but according to Jewish conventions, they would substitute the word heaven for the divine name out of respect for that name. And Matthew, writing as a Jew for Jews, largely, uses the term kingdom of heaven. So don't get caught up in wondering if there's some subtle difference between the two. There's not. It's simply the reign of God. The reign of God. In its most basic sense, the kingdom of heaven is the rule of God, and where the king is, that's his dominion. And so with the coming of King Jesus, you can see John, in preparing the people for his arrival, said the kingdom of heaven is at hand. There is work to be done, and it's hard work. Later, as Jesus was casting out demons, he would tell the Pharisees, if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, and he did, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. It was here. The king had arrived. The evidence was in his works. And this warning of repentance and the coming of the kingdom explains the severe warning that John gives to the Pharisees and Sadducees who are coming out to spy on this guy who is disrupting their spiritual hold on the people. And we see this warning in verses seven through 10, that many of the Pharisees and Sadducees were coming to his baptism, and he said to them, brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones, and even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." That's a serious warning. Some estimates of John's ministry were that over the course of the days of his baptism, he may have baptized upwards of 100,000 people. I mean, certainly, it's a sizable crowd communicated by Jerusalem and all Judea and the regions around the Jordan. Like, this is a lot of people coming out. That caused quite a stir. And so we should be thinking in terms of a Billy Graham crusade-like crowd coming to John's baptism, so you can see why the religious leaders wanted to know what's going on. Who is this that we keep hearing about on Twitter? What's everybody talking about? The Pharisees and the Sadducees might have had fear of missing out. FOMO, some of you have that. And they wanted to see. Now for us, seeing Pharisees and Sadducees together on any given day is no big deal. It's like par for the course. We've read our Bibles long enough to know these guys tend to come as a set. And in the Gospels, that's true because they're a set opposed to Jesus. But seeing them together, united on anything, should actually show us how significant the disruption of John was, because they were very different groups who did not like each other very much. And I'm sure we're going to get into the Pharisees and the Sadducees more in depth in future days, but just to kind of give you a sense of who these guys are. The Pharisees were a sect that arose during the time between the Testaments. Their very name comes from a word meaning separate. or separate ones, which kind of tells you how they rolled. They prided themselves on not, I mean, yes, the law of Moses, but they especially specialized in all the traditions that had arisen around the law of Moses, things that God had not himself commanded, but that pious ones had come up with to make sure that you were very holy. And actually, I think that the original intention was probably pretty good. But over the years, self-righteousness does what self-righteousness does, and it changes the orientation of the heart. So it's no longer about holiness unto God. It's about the appearance of holiness unto self. Very dangerous. Josephus records that there were about 6,000 Pharisees at the time of Christ. Now, these were laymen. They were businessmen, middle-class workers. They were not professional priests and scribes. The scribes generally tended to be associated with the Pharisees, but the Pharisees themselves were a lay movement. Politically, they were conservative, and their domain was the local synagogue, which was the centers where the Jews would gather for their worship activities and their religious instruction. Now, the Sadducees, they also arose during the time between the Testaments, but unlike the Pharisees, they rejected all tradition and Scripture except for the five books of Moses. That was the only word of God that they received. Like, they wouldn't acknowledge anything else beside that. They were generally professional priests, not laymen. And instead of being concerned with the synagogues, they were the leaders of the temple. They were at the worship center of Israel's life. They were the majority of the great, what do they call it, the Supreme Court of Israel, which is called the Sanhedrin. It was mostly Sadducees, with some Pharisees sprinkled in. And politically, they were pretty liberal. They cozied up to Rome and made friends with their overlords. And so you can see that they're very different from the Pharisees. And so when these guys go together on anything, you're just like, hey, what's happening here? Well, exactly the kind of thing that happens when God gets into the middle of man's plans. Now, John sees them coming and he calls them offspring of vipers. That's what brood of vipers means. In other words, they were spiritually poisonous and dangerous. Not the kind of thing you say to your political and spiritual leaders if you want to get on their good side. So John obviously wasn't interested in being one of the cool kids. He wasn't looking for any favors. And his message is, repent or perish. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance. If the Pharisees and Sadducees were going to withstand the coming judgment of God that Malachi spoke of, they would need to have changed hearts and changed lives. They would need to embrace lordship salvation. They needed to turn away from their self-righteousness and their external law-keeping and instead obey God from hearts that desperately clung to his salvation by trusting in him alone, not in their own works of righteousness. And their spiritual pedigree wouldn't cut it, which is why in verses nine and 10 he says, you're concerned, basically, with the fact that you're from Father Abraham. Guess what? If that was what it was about, God could bring out of these stones children for Abraham. You're putting your faith in the wrong thing. You think it's about your blood. No, it's about the blood of the lamb. No, these guys fell into the trap that so many fall into, which is thinking they had a good spiritual heritage. As children of Abraham, they prided themselves that they were gods, because Abraham's blood ran through their veins, and he's the forefather of our faith, after all. And that's something that continually trips up the Jews throughout the whole New Testament, thinking that because of their heritage, they were right with God. As a former Pharisee himself, Paul would later say this, it is not that the word of God has taken no effect, for they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham. But in Isaac, your seed shall be called. That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed. And what was the great promise to Abraham that from his seed would come the one who would save people from all tribes, tongues, nations, languages, and bloodlines? Not simply from the bloodline of Abraham. And they missed the memo. God is concerned with repentant faith, not the faith of your fathers. It is a great thing to have a heritage of faith in your family line, but it is not everything. It is not the main thing. It is, at best, peripheral. And so many of us are tempted to get tripped up on thinking that because we come from a Christian heritage, that we are somehow in the covenant. Now, there's a great blessing to be had in a covenant line. Okay, so please don't hear me discounting that at all. I love the faith that was in my great-grandparents. I actually have their portrait in my office. But friends, I am not saved because my great-grandparents had faith that they passed on to my mom, that my mom and dad passed on to me. I'm saved because Jesus died for me and I was chosen before the foundation of the world. And anyone in here who is my brother or sister in Christ, the same is true for you. You should never be made to feel that your testimony is less significant because you are the first in your family to come to Christ. And you should never be made to feel like your testimony is less significant because you don't have a wild past. God works in both ways. Evangelism happens in the church nursery, and it happens on the streets, and that's how Christ is building his church. And for both, The message is the same. Repent for the kingdom of heaven for us now is not only at hand, but it is here. The King has come. And that's John's focus. His focus is Christ. His focus is Christ. The same focus every heart needs if we're to heed John's warning to flee from the wrath to come, which is why John doesn't just stop at preaching repentance. He says in verse 11, I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. John's ministry was never about himself. He says elsewhere that he must increase and I must decrease. Specifically, John draws here our attention to the worthiness of Jesus. A worthiness so weighty that the greatest prophet that had been given wasn't worthy to carry his sandals. Think about that for a moment. We may be Baptists, but we're no John the Baptist. And if John saw himself in that light, what does that do to our pride? It brings us exactly to where it's crucified, at the feet of Jesus. Jesus is the blazing focus of John's ministry of preparation. And Christ's coming calls for repentant faith and warns of judgment, because we know what the prophets foretold, but didn't see with the clarity that we see, which is that Jesus, the King, didn't just come once, he's coming again. He came once to save us from our sins. He's coming again in judgment. And in both, he comes with baptism. And so we see here at the end of our text the difference between John's baptism and Jesus' baptisms. So the second half of verse 11, he, Jesus, will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. John's baptism was with water, and it was for repentance, which for the Jews was pretty significant because baptism in those days was done, but it was done specifically for primarily Gentiles. Gentiles who were converting to Judaism. They would, in order to become a Jew, to join with the covenant people of God, a Gentile would have to, with his household, undergo the waters of baptism, which was a symbol hearkening back to the cleansing in Ezekiel and Jeremiah, this cleansing that we read about in our assurance of pardon. They would be sprinkled with clean water. It was a baptism that would take place by self-immersion, where they would bow themselves underwater as a symbol that they were coming to the God of Israel for cleansing. And then the male members of that family would be circumcised, and they would become part of the Jewish people. For John to be baptizing so many Jews was a radical thing because it was a group of Jewish people professing that they had lived as Gentiles. Do you see the significance? We often get this picture that Jesus comes into his ministry out of nowhere and people are just kind of like caught unawares. And certainly it wasn't the coming that they expected, but friends, this preparation work was significant. For Jews to be confessing that they needed the cleansing of God as if they had not been part of God's covenant people, that's the kind of preparation that God was doing for the arrival of his son. Not only were these thousands of Jews confessing that their hearts were effectively unconverted, but they were being immersed by John, not themselves, in the Jordan River as a symbol of the cleansing they needed. And we are comforted by this promise because it's the same cleansing promised to us in the New Covenant. And this cleansing with clean water is what was being pictured by John's baptism. But there was a more significant baptism to come. because Jesus was here. And so John mentions two baptisms that Jesus would bring. The first being baptism with the Holy Spirit for the repentant. For the repentant. John baptized with water for cleansing. Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit for the repentant. Now some see this, the Holy Spirit and fire as being one baptism, that there's only one baptism in view when he says that he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. But I think verse 12 suggests otherwise, that we're dealing with two different baptisms. Now we're gonna look more in depth at baptism with the Holy Spirit next week, but I'll just say that John is prophesying most directly about what would take place at Pentecost. Listen to what is said by Jesus at the beginning of Acts. And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father. Which, he said, you have heard from me, for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now. This is what John was heralding. Jesus would come, Jesus would die, Jesus would rise, and this is the baptism he's gonna give. The newly formed church would be immersed in the Holy Spirit, who came upon them in power in a new way that would define the age of the church until Jesus' return. And of course, the coming of the Holy Spirit was symbolized with tongues as of fire above the people. And so, yes, there may be some kind of a reference there to fire in that baptism with the Spirit. But the emphasis on Jesus' baptizing with the Spirit is that His repentant people are united to Him by the work of the Spirit. Jesus' winnowing fork was in His hand. A winnowing fork was a tool that was used for farmers to thresh out and separate wheat from the chaff so that they could keep the good stuff, get rid of the bad. So they would take this big, large wooden fork, throw the wheat and the chaff into the air, and then the wind, even a little bit of it, would blow away the chaff. and the wheat would fall back down onto the threshing floor. And you had wheat, and the chaff was gone. That's the image that John is drawing up for us when he says this is what Jesus is coming to do. He's going to make a distinction between his people. The wheat will stay, the chaff will go. Think in terms of your theology. When does that happen? At his return. During the time of the growth of the kingdom, wheat and tares grow up together. Wheat and chaff are intermingled. In every church that has ever existed since Jesus started the church, there have been wheat and chaff. But one day, the church will be purified at Christ's return, and those who have not turned to Him in repentant faith will go. Which is why, in verse 12, we see that Jesus' baptism with fire is for the unrepentant. is for the unrepentant. This is the eternal fire of judgment for sin, what Jesus calls the unquenchable fire that burns up the chaff when Jesus returns and cleanses out the threshing floor of the world, where Jesus reigns. The fact is that the promise of coming judgment should be one of the clearest realities before our minds, which drive us into the loving and saving arms of Christ, which drive us to want to make known the salvation that is only through him, because outside of the church, people are headed for that baptism by fire. Eternal judgment is a terrible thing, and the Holy One is the just judge who will consume his enemies forever. And the apostle warns us in Hebrews that our God is a consuming fire, which is why we should worship in reverence and awe, Hebrews chapter 12. The intimate relationship between unrepentance and baptism with fire is seen in Jesus' call to put away sin, to do serious business with sin. We as the church are a people of grace, and we ought to be the chief ministers of grace to one another. Both before, during, and after sin, but make no mistake, one of the greatest tragedies in the American church is to confuse grace with license. Grace, if you look at grace in the New Testament, the majority of the times that grace is talked about are empowering us to live unto Christ, not giving anybody license to sin. Paul super focuses on this in Romans. He says, what are we going to say, that grace may abound, so let's sin more? He said, no, by no means. Or rather, by no means! It's an exclamation mark, right? He's like, don't do that with grace. Then it stops being grace. So Jesus says, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed rather than having two hands to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched. where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame rather than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter a kingdom of God with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into the hellfire, where their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched. You think Jesus is making a point? He warns three times, Jesus does, to flee from the coming wrath by turning to him in repentant faith. And that's exactly what John's baptism is all about. He was, through his ministry, preparing the way for the one who would come and preach the same message and then die for the sins of his people. They were being baptized to symbolize the cleansing that accompanies repentance, and the king would baptize his people with the Holy Spirit. But for those who would not receive him and who do not receive him, they will receive baptism with eternal fire when the king returns. Serious stuff. Now, this raises some questions about the relationship between John's baptism and the kind of baptism we celebrated as Hudson went into those waters today. It raises some questions on this thing called baptism with the Holy Spirit, and we're going to go deal with those questions next week. But for today, I pray that we'll not quickly forget the point that God is impressing on us through the ministry of John the Baptist, that Christ's coming calls for repentance and warns of judgment at his return. And by His grace, we are His people here on this side of His second coming to receive the fullness of that grace and to declare that grace to a world who needs it. Let's pray. God, week by week, we gather with open Bibles to hear You in Your Word. And we are so grateful that you do not mean to keep us in the dark, but to make known to us words of life and words of hope. In this weary world, we need that. And we thank you once again for giving it to us. John's ministry was full of hard words, but they were hard words of love, hard words of truth, hard words of grace. And Jesus, we praise you that you, the one who was to come, you have come. We are evidence of that. We praise you for your baptism with the Holy Spirit. We praise you for the work that you are doing among us. We pray that you would renew our hope, revitalize our hearts, and make us your people in this world that as we go out into this coming week, We would be eager to see sinners reconciled to you, fleeing from the wrath to come. And it is in your name we pray, for the glory of the Father and by the Holy Spirit of our God. Amen.