Overcoming temptation: Luke 4:1-13

The other day I came across an old VCR tape in a thrift store of the movie called Highlander, which spawned a popular TV series by the same name back in the mid eighties.  I remember watching the TV show a few times.  And I was thinking that this particular movie might have given birth to a whole genre of good versus evil movies, where the hero is seeking some sort of immortality by doing battle with these evil forces.  For some reason they love to use swords.  I guess it’s more dramatic to see these titans in some epic sword play that goes on and on, whereas in a more modern context, they would just pull out a gun and shoot one another.  But there seems to be some fascination with sword fights in these epic films.

Today, in our study of Luke, we come upon the greatest, most epic battle between good and evil in the history of the universe.  It’s presented here in chapter four without any undue fanfare or drama, but believe me, it was a battle with  universal consequences, more so than any conflict that the human mind can imagine.  But this battle wasn’t fought with swords, at least not the kind you can see.  This battle was fought with words.  The Word of God doing battle with the word of Satan.

In a spiritual battle, spiritual weapons must be used.  In Isaiah 46 the prophecy concerning the Messiah states: “He has made My mouth like a sharp sword.”  And in Revelation 2:16 Jesus says, “I will make war with them with the sword of my mouth.”  So there is a sword being used here, but it is a spiritual sword for a spiritual battle.  In Ephesians 6, the Christian is told to equip himself in spiritual armor for a spiritual battle, “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

We are told then to put on the helmet of salvation and take up the shield of faith, having our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel, but what I want to draw your attention to is the weapon we are given;  “the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.”

So what I want us to see as we look at this epic conflict between Christ and Satan, is that not only was it important for Jesus to be victorious in this battle so that He might be able to be the spotless Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the earth, but that he also might be our example, so that when we are tempted, we might know how we are to respond.  As Peter said in 1Pet. 2:21 “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH.”

And so I call this message today, “Overcoming temptation,” because not only did Christ overcome temptation by the devil, but He also presented an example of how we too can overcome temptation.

First of all though, I think it’s important that we understand why this happened.  What was the purpose of Christ being led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, the Judean desert, to be tempted by Satan.  Because that is what the text tells us, isn’t it?  It wasn’t an accident that Jesus found himself there in the desert, famished and weak after 40 days of fasting, to be attacked by the forces of evil.  But the text tells us in verse 1 that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Now for starters, that goes against a whole bunch of people’s theology right there.  They have been taught by snake oil salesmen masquerading as religious figures on television and in many pulpits that if you are really of the faith, and you have enough faith, then nothing but good things are going to be in store for you.  God wants you to have the best of everything, and will withhold nothing pleasurable from you, because He just wants you to have all the desires of your heart.  So it’s incongruous to a lot of people in churches today to think that God would allow hardship and suffering to enter into our lives.

But Luke tells us specifically that when Jesus came up out of the Jordan River having been baptized by John, having had the witness of the Holy Spirit come upon Him in the bodily form of a dove, and having had the voice of the Father speak audibly from heaven saying “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” right after this mountaintop experience, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus out into the middle of nowhere, in the midst of no man’s land, a craggy, rocky, desolate place in the middle of the desert, and He fasts for 40 days being tempted by the devil the whole time.

I can assure you that this passage is a good example of a common theme in scripture; that often our highest moments are followed by our deepest trials.  The mountaintop experience is quickly forgotten in the lowest valleys.  And I’ll tell you why.  Because God is able to teach us more in suffering than He can through  blessings  like abundance and prosperity and good health and happy marriages and so forth.  Once again, Jesus is our example.  As it says in Hebrews 5:8 “Although He was a Son, [Jesus] learned obedience from the things which He suffered.”  But God never tempts us to sin, rather God tests us so that our faith might be proven, that we might be refined like gold. Proof tested.

Now there was another reason that the Holy Spirit led Jesus out to the wilderness to be tempted.  And that is because just as Luke is presenting the credentials of Christ in the first 3 chapters, this too is another credential of Christ.  The Messiah had to be able to overcome sin and temptation, to defeat the devil, if He was really deity.  God is demonstrating the deity of Jesus by overcoming temptation and sin and defeating every trick of the devil.

If Jesus would triumph in the wilderness, then He would triumph at Calvary and He would triumph in the garden. He would triumph at the cross and triumph at the tomb. And if Jesus could conquer Satan, then we can be assured of that triumph and that He is able to redeem His people from their sins. And we know that He did triumph in the wilderness and later He triumphed at the cross where He bruised Satan's head with a fatal wound, where He destroyed sin, where He provided escape from hell for all who believe. And then we know He conquered death, rising the third day, now ascended to heaven He continues to conquer all sin and all accusation laid against His people because He ever lives to make intercession for us. So that in His securing love, in His conquering grace we are more than conquerors for whom nothing can ever separate us from the love of God.

It’s interesting that in the last chapter we see the human lineage of Christ go back all the way to Adam.  And we know that Adam is the father of the sin nature, which was passed on to all men, and all men have sinned as a result of this inherent sin nature.  But we know that Jesus was not born with that inherited sin nature, because He was born of a virgin, and the sin nature is passed from the males to the next generation.  But even so, Christ could still be tempted.  Hebrews 4 says that Christ was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”

But lest we think that Jesus temptation is less severe than ours because He was deity in man, let’s contrast the first Adam and the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Adam was in the best of circumstances; he lived in Paradise which was perfect, he was full, fed, everything made for him perfectly.  Jesus had nothing, poor, hungry, alone, in the desert, physically beyond weak.  Yet Adam fell, and Jesus did not.  You may blame your circumstances on your sin, if I only had this or that I wouldn’t sin.  But Adam had everything in abundance, and yet he sinned. Where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded. In the first Adam we all died, in the second Adam we all live.

So Christ demonstrates his power over sin and over temptation.  He demonstrates to the devil and his demons that He is the Messiah, God in the flesh.  And we will see that in coming studies, the demons recognize Him, they shudder, they call Him the Son of God and they are under His authority.  But at this moment, in this desolate place in the wilderness, far away from everyone, Christ stands alone at His weakest moment, to contend against Satan himself.

And I don’t think that Satan comes to Christ in this moment slinking around like a little red horned toad with a spiked tail. He doesn’t come looking like a zombie wearing a black hoodie.  I believe Satan comes in all his glory and power, in all his brilliance and all his splendor in sharp contrast to the humility and weakness of God in this emaciated human flesh.

Who is this devil?  I don’t have time to go into too much detail about him today, but I can tell you that Satan is not the way he has been presented in our popular media.  In Ezekiel 28:11 to 15, Isaiah 14:12 to 14, you read about him. Before the fall he was the anointed cherub which many commentators think means he was the praise and worship leader of heaven. He was heaven's chief musician. He was the one who led all the angelic praise.  He was the most beautiful of all the angels, and perhaps the most powerful.  He was the covering cherub, above the throne of God Himself. And because of his surpassing beauty, he rebelled in pride against God saying “I will be like the Most High.”  When He was cast down from heaven, the Bible says he took 1/3 of the stars of heaven, (speaking of the angels of heaven) with him.  He has millions of fallen angels, demons as they are now known, under his authority.

We should learn from this the way Satan works.  As he comes to Christ full in his glory, full of his power and in his pride, so Satan comes to us not looking like some caricature of a comic book demon, but like a friend, a companion, a trusted ally.  Someone who has it all together.  Someone that we can admire, someone powerful, having or seemingly able to provide all the things that we desire.

And so Satan comes to Christ in his extreme physical weakness.  After 40 days, it says he was hungry.  I think Luke is prone to understatement.  I read recently of someone who attempted to fast for 40 days and it killed him.  At 40 days, Jesus was probably physically so gaunt, that His clothes were falling off of him.  He was practically unable to move, to take care of himself.  He was weak to the point of being unable to stand.  And here comes Satan, full of beauty, clothed in splendor, reeking of majesty and power, usurping all that rightfully belonged to Jesus as he laid there on the hot, dusty desert floor, his body so weak He could hardly move.

Now the scripture says that Satan had tempted him for 40 days.  So in addition to the physical limitations of his body, he had been under spiritual attack for 40 days.  But now Satan culminates his temptation with three distinct temptations.  And though there are three temptations, there are really just two major areas in which he was tempting Jesus, and you can reduce that even further to just one common theme, attacking the word of God.

So the first temptation of Christ was an attack against His identity.  Look at verse 3, “"If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”  His attack is on who Jesus was.  Remember, that this event directly follows the baptism of Christ in which the Holy Spirit comes down like a dove and lights on Him, and the voice of the Father speaks from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”  And so Satan is sneering at Jesus lying there 40 days later, seemingly abandoned by God, starving to death, as weak as He could be.

In the third temptation, the same sneering insinuation is made; “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.”  The devil is challenging the voice of God with the voice of hell.  God said Jesus was the Son of God.  Satan insinuates that if He were really the Son of God then He wouldn’t have allowed Him to suffer in this way.

And doesn’t Satan come to us in this same way in our temptation?  Doesn’t he tempt us to doubt the love of God when bad things happen in the world?  Don’t we oftentimes find ourselves doubting the goodness of God, the love of God, the providence of God when the wheels start coming off and things start going bad?  The devil, Diablos, comes to insinuate, to question, to accuse, as he has from the beginning when he came to Eve in the garden to question, “did God really say?” Did God really mean that?  Isn’t God just withholding something good from you for no good reason?  He comes challenging our identity found in the Word of God.

And that is what is so beautiful about Christ’s response.  Christ responds with the written Word of God, quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God.”  Not only is Jesus attesting to the goodness and provision of God, that real life is not found in food but in God who gives life, but He is also attesting to His own deity.  As John would write in chapter one of his gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  He is saying that He has life in himself.  That’s how Jesus could say in John 14:6 "I am the way, and the truth, AND THE LIFE; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”  Jesus is not only the Word of God made flesh, but He is the life, the source of all life, by Him all things were made that were made.

So when Satan comes attacking our human identity, our identity in Christ Jesus, our identity as children of God, attacking the love of God for us his children, then our response is to be like Jesus, and rely upon the Word of God.  We need to hide the word of God in our hearts, that we might not sin against Him.  We need to make every effort to study and store the word of God so that in the moment of temptation we have a ready resource, a ready answer from the promises of God to counter every attack of Satan.

And the second thing Satan attacks is an assault on Christ’s ministry.  When God spoke audibly at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” what He said was a direct echo of two scriptures.  The first one is found in Psalm 2:7; “'You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.”  And the second one is found in
Isaiah 42:1 "Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights.”

Satan knew those scriptures as well.  Satan was well acquainted with the prophecy of Isaiah that talked of God being pleased to crush His Servant, putting Him to death.  He was well aware that the plan of God called for suffering as the road to glory for the Messiah.  He understood the symbolism of the sacrificial lamb that was slain on the day of Atonement.  Satan knows the scriptures much better than most theologians.

This is proven in his temptations.  Satan quotes scripture back to Jesus, to try to use the Word of God to tempt the Word of God.  I’ve said it before, you can prove almost anything you want to prove by taking one verse of scripture out of context.  But remember this, scripture will never contradict scripture.  The full counsel of God’s word must be considered to know how to rightly divide the Word of truth.  Satan is a master of half truths.  But a half truth is just a whole lie.

Jesus also knew that the plan of God that He had submitted to before the world began would be a path of suffering and death.  But Satan offered Christ an alternative, a shortcut.  Oh, he claimed to be after the same goal, that of Christ’s glory, but it was only a deception.  Remember when Satan tempted Eve?  He tempted her by saying that if she ate of the tree, then she would be like God.  Isn’t that a good thing?  Aren’t we supposed to want to be like God, to be godly?  And yet his shortcut required that she disobey the word of God.  And so his promise was really a lie that resulted in her being disavowed by God.  She obeyed the voice of the creature rather than the Creator.

Satan is trying the same old trick on Christ.  Offering Him a shortcut to glory.  “If you throw yourself off this temple, then the Bible says that the angels of God will catch you so you don’t kill yourself, and then all the people will know you are the Son of God, and worship You.  Isn’t that the goal?  To have the people worship Jesus?

I fear our modern day “worship” of God has fallen for this trick of Satan.  The end justifies the means.  People think they are worshipping God, but they do so devoid of truth, because they don’t know the truth.  The Word of God has been eliminated from our worship, and the substitution of music and skits and drama and videos and good works have taken center stage.  Doesn’t it get a lot of people to come to the services?  Aren’t things a lot more exciting?  Isn’t the entertainment getting them introduced to the church?  Isn’t that the goal, to get more people in the door?

The devil loves to make a confusion of means and ends.  His message is that the end justifies the means.  He offers shortcuts and compromises while telling us that the goal is good.  He does the same in other areas of our life, for example, in business, or in sexual purity before marriage.  He offers shortcuts to what may be a good goal but a wrong means.  

The last temptation of Christ is the same thing.  Offering Christ the kingdoms of the world if He would just worship Satan.  Sell himself to the devil so that He might win the nations.  But again Jesus answers him not with arguments or clever dialogue, but with the written word of God. “Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY.'" Every issue was settled in Christ’s mind by the Word of God.  There was no negotiation.  There was no compromise on the truth of the Word.  Christ was saturated in the Word of God.  That’s what it means by the way to be filled with the Holy Spirit and then to be led by the Holy Spirit.  It doesn’t mean you want to do something and then you see an opportunity to take a shortcut to glory and then you feel some exhilarating sensation that you attribute to a confirmation of the  Holy Spirit and so go off to the races, fulfilling your carnal desires.  No, being filled with the Holy Spirit and being led by the Holy Spirit means being filled with the Word of God and then being led by the Word of God.  The Holy Spirit will never contradict the Word of God.  God cannot deny Himself.  2Tim. 2:13

We live in a world today filled with many voices trying to drown out the Word of God.  We live in the information age, the age of Ipods, and I pads, TV’s and car stereos and computers and we’re being fed voices and messages from the world all day long, 7 days a week.  We have to deliberately counteract the destructive attack of these voices that are raised in opposition to what God has said in His Word.  And the only way to do that is to study the Word of God.  To get under the teaching of sound doctrine.  To be faithful to every opportunity to learn the Word of God.  And then to study privately the Bible as the Bereans did, to see if those things are so.  To have a private time with God every day.  Tally up your time spent with God this week.  And then tally up the rest of the time that you spent listening to the voice of the world.  It’s no wonder that we fall so easily when temptation comes.

The devil tells us to make our own laws, our own decisions, our own judgments on what is right and appropriate.  And so we become our own little gods, our own idols.  Satan will tempt you to doubt God’s word, then to take matters into your own hands to do what you think is right, what you think is appropriate.  We need to saturate our lives with the Word of God, that we might do what is right and live holy and righteous lives in the midst of an evil world.

God has sent Jesus to be tempted and suffer and die for us, that having been found righteous He might purchase with his blood our righteousness. Christ defeated every temptation of Satan that He might defeat death and hell, and having been raised from the dead, He sits at the Father’s right hand to be an intercessor for us, that we might have life in Him.  He died so that we might also be set free from the power of sin and death.

 “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, HAVING GIRDED YOUR LOINS WITH TRUTH, and HAVING PUT ON THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, and having shod YOUR FEET WITH THE PREPARATION OF THE GOSPEL OF PEACE; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take THE HELMET OF SALVATION, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.”  (Eph. 6)  Amen.

Born of a woman, Luke 3: 23-38

Those of you that are regular attendees of the Beach Fellowship know that I preach in a style known as expositional, which means that we study the Word verse by verse, chapter by chapter.  And while I believe that the merits of this style of preaching usually far outweigh any negatives, today we come upon a passage which I would be tempted to skip over.  It’s been said that smart preachers should always avoid teaching on genealogies. 

So I guess I’m not very smart.  I wanted to skip over this passage, but it seemed that the Lord impressed on me that there are things here that are of great importance, and it would be to our benefit to study this section of scripture. 

Another thing that those of you who are regulars here will know, is that I do not normally use our time in the scriptures to pander to secular holidays.  So I had no intention of trying to preach a Mother’s Day message today.  Ironically, however, as I resolved to be faithful in preaching the next passage of scripture on the genealogy of Jesus  Christ, I found that there is a Mother’s Day message of sorts hidden in this text. 

Now you may find that hard to accept, looking at this long list of names.  There are 77 names in this list, and all of them are names of men.  So the logical question I’m sure you are asking is how can this be relevant to mothers if all the names are of men and no women are mentioned?

But before we answer that question, let’s answer another question.  Why does Luke include the genealogy of Jesus Christ here anyway?  Of what significance is this record?  And the answer is that Luke is presenting the credentials of the Messiah.  He has already given us the testimony of witnesses, like Mary, the shepherds, the angels, Simeon, Anna, and the prophecy of Zacharias and Elizabeth.  He gave us the witness of John the Baptist, and last week we looked at the testimony of the Holy Spirit and of God the Father at the baptism of Christ.  So Luke is presenting the credentials of the Messiah.  And the genealogy of the Messiah is yet another absolutely necessary credential. 

It was necessary because it was well known that the scriptures explicitly prophesied that the Messiah would come from the lineage of David. In 2 Samuel 7:16 the prophet Nathan speaks God’s words about David saying, "Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever."'"  And this promise was reiterated over and over again throughout the OT. 

For example, in Isaiah 9:6 there is the familiar passage:            “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of [his] government and peace [there shall be] no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.”  So it is necessary then to present the lineage of Jesus in order to establish that He was from the line of David, the royal line which gave Him the right to the throne of David, in fulfillment of prophecy. 

Now there are two genealogies given for Jesus, one here in Luke and another in Matthew chapter 1.  Matthew, if you will remember, was written primarily to the Jews, and comes at it from a Jewish perspective, starting from Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish race, and then on to David, and from David to Solomon on down to Joseph, who was the legal father of Jesus, by adoption. 

Luke was a Gentile, and writes for a primarily Gentile audience, who starts at the other end, starting with Jesus and working backwards.  Luke wants to show how the Messiah links with all of humanity. He goes back through David, back through Abraham all the way to Adam and finally to God taking that universal approach connecting the Messiah to all humanity. But interestingly, Luke’s genealogy is different from Matthew’s in some names as well.  Luke’s genealogy from David to Joseph is completely different than that of Matthew’s.   And the reason comes from verse 23, “being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph…”  Literally, the original says, “as it was being thought.” 

So here is the nod to the mother’s today in Luke’s account See, in Luke, the genealogy is maternal, it follows his mother’s line.  Matthew’s genealogy is paternal, it follows his legal father’s line, even though Joseph was not his actual father, but his adoptive father.  And that is why Luke says, it was thought that Joseph was His father.  Jesus actual father was the Holy Spirit.  Mary was a virgin who conceived a child through the Holy Spirit.  So even though genealogical records of that day were traced through the males, Luke starts from Joseph, saying he was commonly thought to be the father of Jesus, and then skips over to Mary’s father, Eli, and then traces his line back to David.  When you read Matthew’s account, the line goes back to David through Solomon, David’s firstborn son.  But in Luke, the line goes back to David through Nathan, Solomon’s brother.  So we see that in both his mother and his legal father’s lineage, the line goes back to the throne of David, which is the main point that Luke is trying to make. 

However, I think it’s particularly interesting that Mary’s line doesn’t stop with David, or even Abraham as Matthew’s did, but goes all the way back to Adam, who it says was the son of God, literally of God.  Because Luke is not only interested in presenting Jesus as the rightful heir of David, but also as the Son of Man. That was our Lord's favorite title for himself, one he used more frequently than any other name. As you read the Gospel of Luke, the one you meet here is, of course, the same person you read about in Matthew and Mark. However, in Matthew the emphasis is upon his kingliness. Matthew presents Jesus as the King, and in Mark Jesus is presented as the suffering Servant. But in Luke, the emphasis is quite different. Here Jesus is presented as the Son of man---Jesus, the man. The perfect man.  His essential manhood is constantly being set forth throughout this Gospel.

It’s an important dynamic that needs to be understood, that Jesus had a heavenly Father, but He had an earthly mother.  And this is what Luke is pointing out.  To better understand this turn to Galatians 4:4 “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,  so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

Now this is the mystery of godliness that Paul speaks of in 1Tim. 3:16            “By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, Was vindicated in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory.”  God becoming man is a great mystery, but a key to understanding it can be found by going back to the Garden of Eden when Eve, the mother of the human race was deceived by Satan and sinned against God. 

But though Eve sinned, and then tempted Adam to sin with her, the Bible doesn’t speak of sin being passed down from Eve, but it speaks of sin being passed down through Adam. Romans 5:12 says, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

The sin nature is passed from man to the next generation.  We have inherited it from our forefathers.  Adam’s sin was in a way even greater than Eve’s sin in that he chose to obey man, rather than God.  Eve at least was deceived.  Adam sinned with both eyes wide open. 

But even so, the end result was a catastrophe for the human race.  God had created man in his own image, male and female.  And I believe that as it says in Genesis 1:26, “our image” and then it says “our likeness” did not mean that man physically looked just like God, but that man was made like God as a triune being; spirit, soul and body.  When God warned that man would die if he ate of the tree, he was not only speaking of eventual physical death, but immediate spiritual death.  When man sinned, the spirit of man died. 

Man was created to have spiritual communion with God.  We were created to have an intimate knowledge of God, but when sin entered into man, that capacity was shattered.  So then ever since, man has been aware of some great spiritual need, but unable to fill it.  Unable to achieve peace with God, because he cannot know God in his sinful condition. 

But God gave a wonderful promise back in the Garden, after Eve had sinned.  God said to Satan  in Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel."  It was a promise of the Messiah, that one would come through the woman who would one day bruise Satan on the head.  Satan would bruise Jesus on the heel, so to speak, when he crucified Him, but Christ would bruise Satan on the head, a mortal wound, when He rose victorious from death and hell.

So then Luke presents his genealogy from Mary’s father all the way back to Adam, the son of God, because he wants to show that Jesus is the promised offspring of woman’s womb that would bring about defeat of death.

There is another passage of scripture that I think is tied to this, and it’s 1 Timothy 2:15, “But women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.”  In some versions, it may read saved through the bearing of children.  The Greek word is sozo, the common New Testament word for salvation. The word can also mean “to rescue,” “to preserve safe and unharmed,” “to heal,” “to set free,” or “to deliver from.”

This is not saying that a woman can go to heaven by virtue of the fact that she has given birth, but it means that the human race will be saved by the birth of the Messiah, coming through a woman. So a better way to approach this passage is based on the grammar in the original Greek language. In the original, it says she will be saved in the childbirth.  And it means that through a woman will come salvation for man.

Going back then to Galatians 4:4, Christ was born of a woman, born under the law. The law of God condemned man to eternal death.  We were powerless to do anything about it.  We could not reach up to heaven.  We could not bring God down to earth.  We could not attain to the righteous standard of God’s holiness.  Man was lost, condemned under the law.  The law wasn’t made to provide a stepladder to heaven, as if we could only climb up each rung and never make a mistake then reach heaven.  It is impossible, because of our sin nature inherited from Adam.  

Job realized this and said in Job 25:4, “"How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman?”   And his cry was answered in the angel  Gabriel’s prophecy to Mary in Luke 1:37            "For nothing will be impossible with God."  Gabriel announced, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.”

Man could not come up to God, but God could come down to man. And while history is filled with men who would be God, only one God would be man.  And He did so by becoming born of a virgin, conceived by the heavenly Father. Luke who was a doctor, confirms this great mystery of godliness, God becoming man, and tells us that One entered the human race who was born of a virgin; because Mary had never known a man. Yet she had a son, and his name was called Jesus. The wonder of that mystery is given in this simply told genealogy that Luke presents to us.  He presents the grandeur of God’s great plan from the beginning to redeem man from sin through Mary’s lineage, by going from Eve all the way to Mary, to show God’s fulfillment of His promise that from one born of a woman would come One to bruise Satan’s head and save the human race from death.

Jesus himself attests to that purpose in what is the key verse of the whole book of Luke, chapter 19 verse 10 when He calls himself by that special name, which we now know has special significance, the Son of Man, saying, "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost."  He is not only talking about coming to save lost people; he has come to save that which is lost. Not only is it men who are lost, but also it is man’s purpose of his humanity. We no longer know how to be what we were intended to be. The whole dilemma of life is that we still have, deep within us, a kind of subconscious memory of what we ought to be and what we want to be, but we do not know how to accomplish it.

Our soul is searching for that other place, the lost Holy of Holies, which is behind the veil, impenetrable. We cannot enter there. We know there is something more, something deeper, just beyond the edge of our soul.  This is the place where God intended to dwell, and which is the intended center of human life. It is the spirit of man. But because the spirit is dead in fallen man, men rise only to the level of intelligent animals, beholden to their baser instincts. Yet there is something mysterious, reserved, lying deep in an area which they cannot enter, pricking their subconscious.

But in Luke’s genealogy, he traces the coming of One who at last penetrates into the secret place, who enters the spirit of man, the place of mystery, and rends the veil, opening it up so that man might be reborn in his spirit, knowing the mystery of the purpose of his being, and thus find fulfillment through Christ Jesus.

Consider for a moment what it meant for Christ Jesus to come to earth as a man to secure our salvation. The King of heaven left His throne and took a stable for a nursery. The very Son of God was hunted by a tyrant king and became an infant exiled in Egypt. The source of all wisdom and knowledge was born into poverty and lived without earthly wealth and luxury. Holy and without sin, the Messiah was assaulted by every temptation Satan could thrust on Him, yet He resisted each one. The King of creation willingly subjected Himself to all that it means to be human--pain, hunger, thirst, sorrow, physical exhaustion, the full range of human emotions--yet did so without sin.

In an unfathomable act of selfless, sacrificial love, He left heaven's glory to die on our behalf. He offered mercy to a people who deserved only His wrath. He stooped to accomplish that which we not only could not do, but also would not do. In love, the God of the universe stepped from eternity to do what was impossible with man, to come to the world and save those wholly unable to save themselves.

Look in closing at verse 38. Christ’s lineage comes full circle, it is traced all the way back to God. He is the Son of God. He goes all the way back to God with whom He existed before the world began. Adam also was a son of God by creation. And when Adam was created he fully bore the image of God. He was a son of God, a real child of God like God designed men to be, able to know God. He bore the image of God body, soul and spirit uncorrupted until he fell into sin.  But when Adam sinned, the original image of God was shattered, it was broken and no one has ever entered into the world a true son of God like Adam was, except Jesus. Man’s spirit died, his nature became sinful, and everyone of Adam's descendants has been stained with the sin of Adam ever since. But Jesus came into the world without that sin nature which was passed on by Adam by the fact that He was born of a virgin.  And not only was any sin nature found in Him, but He lived fully pleasing God, as God said in verse 22, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." He was man the way Adam was designed to be, sinless, perfect man bearing absolutely perfectly the image of God. He was the true Son of God, the only true Son of God that had ever come into the world since Adam.

But He's not only Son of God, He is Son of Man. He is like us, tempted, troubled, suffering, persecuted, hated, reviled and killed. He is a Son of Man suffering the penalty of death completely for man all the way down to the pit of Hades, yet rising triumphant over death. He is fully man in every sense, yet fully  Son of God. God in His deity, Man in His humanity. He is Son of God, Son of Man, deity and humanity.

Then He is Son of Abraham as to His nationality. That is He is the promised seed. When God made a promise to Abraham it was to a seed, Galatians 3:16 says, and He is the promised seed who will bring all the blessings promised to Abraham. And He is also Son of David, royalty, the promised King who will usher in the glory of all the Kingdom of Heaven of which there will be no end, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. 

So that is my Mother’s Day message, a message buried in the genealogy of the most favored mother of all mankind, who brought forth a Savior as was promised even as judgment was being cast upon the sin of the mother of all mankind.  God is a God of justice and mercy.  And in the end, “mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2:13)

I trust that you know the mercy of God, by accepting the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ on your behalf, confessing your sins, repenting and calling upon God for mercy.  David said that a broken and contrite heart God will not despise.  For those that humble themselves and confess Jesus as Lord of their life, He promises to save them.  That’s what Jesus suffered and died for, to redeem us from the penalty of sin.  But for those that reject Him as Savior, there remains for them nothing but the judgment.  The choice is yours. 

identified with sinners: Luke 3:21,22

If you are a regular member of our services, then you will know that we study the Bible verse by verse here at the Beach Fellowship.  And we have been going through the book of Luke for a couple of months or so now.  Today we find ourselves at a very significant passage of scripture, which is the story of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist at the Jordan River.

I’m sure most of you are very familiar with this story and perhaps have seen it acted out on film or seen pictures or paintings of this event which may have influenced your perception of it to some degree.  But today, I would like to take you a bit deeper than just the obvious storyline, and delve into the doctrinal implications of Jesus’ baptism.

As I began to study this passage, I found myself asking a similar question that John asked in the parallel  account of  Matthew chapter 3: 14, 15; “But John tried to prevent Him, saying, "I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?"
But Jesus answering said to him, "Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he  permitted Him.”

John was confused why Jesus would come to be baptized, after all, the baptism of John was a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” it says in our text.  And so rightly John objects to baptizing Jesus, because he knows that Jesus is without sin, the Holy One of God.  And that prompts my question as well – why did Jesus become baptized?  He couldn’t have been a sinner.  The author of Hebrews said in chapter 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”  Peter also attested to his sinlessness in 1Peter 2:22 “WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH.”  So did the Apostle John in 1John 3:5 “You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.”

So then if He wasn’t baptized in  repentance for the forgiveness of sins, then why was He baptized?  Jesus answered John’s question “permit it at this time, for in this way it is fitting to fulfill all righteousness.”  And I believe that we can take that verse two headings which will help us answer the question why.  Number one, it was fitting and number two, it fulfilled righteousness.

Let’s consider why it was fitting for Jesus to be baptized first of all.  If you think about all that has been presented by the author of Luke up to this point, you notice that there is one example after another of witnesses and testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ.  Testimony that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Son of God.  He states this in the very beginning of the book; chapter 1: “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.”

See, what Luke has been doing is presenting eye witness accounts and testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ.  He started with the old priest Zacharias and Elizabeth, and recounted all the wonderful events that transpired in their lives and their testimony about Jesus who was yet to be born.  He then presented the testimony of the angel Gabriel to Mary and Gabriel testifies that Jesus is the Holy Child, the Son of God.  Then there is the testimony of Elizabeth who called Jesus her Lord while He was yet in Mary’s womb.  Zacharias testimony is next that Jesus would be the Sunrise from on high, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi that the Sun would rise with healing in his wings, speaking of the Messiah.  Then Luke records the testimony of the angels who appeared to the shepherds, announcing that Jesus would be the Savior, the Christ, or Messiah.  Then Luke presents the testimony of Simeon, an old man serving the temple in Jerusalem who had been promised by God that he would not die until he had seen the Lord, and when he saw the baby Jesus called out, “I am ready to die now Lord, for my eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord.”  And then Luke records the testimony of an elderly widow named Anna who had faithfully served the temple up to the age of 84, and her testimony of the Lord as her Redeemer.

So all of Luke’s testament up to now is one account after another of reliable witnesses to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, the coming Messiah.  And so next he presents then the witness of John the Baptist, as John began his ministry preaching a gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and crying out, “Make ready the way of the Lord, make your hearts right before the coming of the Messiah.”  He said, “I baptize you with water, but One is coming who will baptize you with the Spirit and with fire.

Now, the parallel account found in the Gospel of John, the Apostle John, records the fact that though John knew about Jesus, and was preaching about the Messiah,  he had not yet met Jesus.  And so it is fitting that Jesus comes to be baptized by John so that John can give testimony that this Jesus was in fact the Coming One, the Messiah that he had been sent to prepare the people’s hearts to receive.  John says in John 1:33, “"I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, 'He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.  I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God."

So it was important that Luke records that John the Baptist testified that Jesus was the Son of God.  It is fitting in the long list of testimonies that Luke has given, that John’s testimony is also recorded, and it happened as a result of Jesus being baptized and fulfilling a heavenly directive that John would know He was the Messiah by the fact that the Spirit would descend and remain upon Him.  And Luke records that that happened just as God told John it would.  So we have then the full testimony of John the Baptist.

Secondly it was fitting that Jesus was baptized so that we might receive the testimony of the Holy Spirit.  It’s important to understand that Jesus was not devoid of the Holy Spirit prior to His baptism.  Go back to Gabriel’s testimony to Mary and you will find that he announced that Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit.  Gabriel said to Mary, “"The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.”  Jesus was indwelled by the Spirit of God from before His birth.  What you have here at this baptism is nothing less than the divine inauguration of Jesus Christ to begin His ministry.  We have inaugurations in our culture today, don’t we?  We elect a president and when he is ready to begin his term he is inaugurated.  For a king, it’s called a coronation.  And we could call this event either of those things.  But the main point is that this is the testimony of the third person of the Godhead – the Holy Spirit.  This is a great illustration, by the way, of the trinity, one of the core doctrines of Christianity.  That God is one in three distinct persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 1John 5:7 says,  “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” And here in this place we see all three at one time, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Father all distinctly working in one place, at one time, establishing the truth of the doctrine of the trinity.

So at the baptism of Jesus then we see the Holy Spirit come down from heaven in the form of a dove and lighting upon Jesus and remaining upon Him.  Another term that aptly defines this coronation is the word ordination.  This is the ordination of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus’ ministry here on earth. John says the Spirit remained upon Him.  Now the Bible does not explain why the Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove.  But we can speculate that there are at least two reasons.  One is that a dove was the approved sacrifice of the poor.  If you remember in chapter 2, Joseph and Mary could not afford the lamb for the required sacrifice for a first born son so because they were poor they were allowed to bring two doves.  So we have a picture there of a dove as a sacrifice.  And secondly, the dove was a picture of peace with God.  Noah, if you remember, sent out a dove three times from the ark to see if God’s wrath was finished upon the earth and the water had receded.  The dove symbolized man having peace with God.  And so we see that the dove indicated that God would come as our sacrifice in the form of a man, that man might have peace with God.

By the way, verse 23 says that Jesus was 30 years old when He began his ministry following his baptism.  A priest could not begin his service in the temple until he was 30 years old.  And there was an ordination service for the priests, just as we have ordination services for pastors today.  There is a confirmation, a laying on of hands as other preachers attest to the call of God upon the young pastor’s life, and they publicly confirm him to the call to ministry.  And I believe that is the significance of the Holy Spirit coming in bodily form and lighting upon Jesus. The Holy Spirit laid hands upon Him, if you will.  This is the only time in the Bible that the Holy Spirit comes in bodily form as a the third member of the trinity.  And that was simply so that John might recognize Him.   Because you can’t see a spirit.

The third reason it was fitting for Jesus to be baptized was so that we might receive the confirmation and testimony of God the Father.  Vs. 22; “a voice came out of heaven, "You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased."  This is the last great testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ.  God the Father himself opens heaven and speaks in an audible voice confirming that Jesus is His Son, that He is sinless, and that He is pleased with Him.  There can be no greater testimony than that.  God audibly speaks again at the transfiguration to Peter and John, but this is significant because it is the ordination of Christ’s ministry.

Furthermore, it was a direct fulfillment of scriptural prophecy found in Isaiah 42:1 where God says, "Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations.”

So the baptism of Jesus was fitting because it was the coronation of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and the ordination of our Great High Priest and the beginning of his ministry here on earth.  It was fitting so that a complete record of eyewitness testimonies might be made complete for us here today, from Zacharias all the way to the Holy Spirit and God the Father.

And the second phrase from Jesus answer to John was that it was necessary for Him to be baptized by John to fulfill all righteousness.  Now what does that mean?  Well, it means that Christ had to be made in all points as we are yet without sin, as it says in Hebrews 4:15.  Christ came to identify with sinners, that He suffer all that we have to suffer, yet without sin, fulfilling all the requirements of righteousness.  As I said a couple of weeks ago, another reason Christ did not begin his ministry until the age of 30 was He had to live a full righteous life to exchange for our sinful lives.  He had to live a full life, going through all that we have to go through, and yet do so without sin.  That was why God’s testimony “I am well pleased” was so significant.  He had lived through 30 years without even the smallest sin, and would continue in that sinlessness for another 3 years until He was crucified.

But I want to illustrate John’s baptism so that you can relate to it perhaps a little better, and understand what Jesus was doing that day. John the Baptist came preaching that the world was populated by sinners and that as sinners we needed to repent that we were sinners, that we might receive forgiveness of our sins in order to be accepted by God in preparation to receive the Messiah.

It’s as if John came out here on the beach this morning and drew a line in the sand and called out, ok, I want all the good people – the God fearing, patriotic American church going, upper middle class people over on this side of the line, and I want all the sorry, good for nothing low lifes to get on this side of the line.  Ok, let’s go.  And there is a mad rush for the good side by all the good upstanding citizens of Sussex County.  They all go over to the good side, elbowing their way, to make sure that they have a predominate spot on the good side.  After all, that’s one of the benefits of being good, is that people get to see you being good and therefore it increases your public standing, in fact, it’s even good for business.

But on the bad side of the line is left this sorry, no good group of low lifes with their heads hanging down, kicking the sand, trying not to stand out too  much.  They are ashamed to be there on the bad side, but they know that they belong there, and they are pretty sure that everyone that knows them realizes that they belong on that side.

So there ends up being a large crowd on the good side, and a few sorry individuals standing rather sheepishly on the bad side feeling like they want to go run and jump in the ocean.  And suddenly, here comes Jesus Christ, walking across the beach, as John would the next day proclaim, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”  As God himself proclaimed when Jesus came up from his baptism, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  God in human form comes walking across the sand of the beach, and wonder of wonders, Jesus walked over to the bad side of the line and stood with them.  This sinless man, God in the flesh, identified with sinners, because these were the people that He came to save.  So He got in line with the sinners who needed to be baptized in repentance for the forgiveness of sins, because God was going to place our sins upon Him and His righteousness upon us.

Jesus said in Luke 19:10 "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."  Jesus didn’t come to save those that think they are righteous. John called that group a brood of vipers, they were of their father the devil.  Outwardly they looked religious, but they didn’t have a converted heart which brought the fruit of righteousness.  They never confessed their sinfulness, so they were still dead in their sins.  But Jesus came to save those that know that they are sinners, who knew they were cut off from God.  The problem is that those that think they are righteous aren’t saved by the righteousness of Jesus, they are attempting to be righteous by their own works.  And their own works will never be enough.  Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  It’s like trying to jump the Grand Canyon.  If everyone here had to jump the Grand Canyon or be put to death, then everyone would line up and get a good running start and jump as hard as they could.  Some would jump just a few feet and fall and some might jump many feet, but still fall short.

Romans 3:20 says “by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.” And “So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.” Romans 9:16

So Jesus came to be the bridge between God and man, that man might receive the forgiveness of sins, because He became our substitute.  That we might be made righteous, because He has become our sacrifice.  2Cor. 5:21: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

See, baptism is a picture.  It is a picture of repentance first of all.  A recognition that I am sinful and lost and without hope, unable to attain to the standard of God.  And then we are buried in the water with Jesus, as Jesus died for sins, so we too die to our sins, acknowledging that the wages of sin is death, and that I need to die to my sinful desires, crucifying my flesh, and then we are raised into newness of life even as Jesus was raised from the dead in triumph over sin and death, so in our new life we have triumph over sin and over death.

Jesus identified with us that we might identify with him. He consecrated himself so that we might be consecrated to him.  And He received attestation from the Father and the Spirit that we might receive attestation as children of God.

Galatians 4 explains it this way, vs.3, “So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.”  Christ found us under the condemnation of the Law, unable to achieve it, and unable to escape it’s condemnation because of our sin nature which was bound to the elemental things of the world. Bound by our lusts and desires of our sinful nature.

Gal. 4:4 “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”  Christ voluntarily submitted himself to the Law and kept it perfectly, that He might be the spotless lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. For those that repent and accept Him as Lord of their lives they are credited with His righteousness in exchange for their sins that they might be adopted as children of God.

Then Gal. 4:6 “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.”

See, because Jesus identified with sinners, because He offered himself as our substitute and became our sacrifice, we too are given the Holy Spirit in our bodily form, that we might have new life through Him.  Through the indwelling of the Spirit, He gives us new desires, a new hunger for the Word as He leads us in the Word, and the strength to live the life He has called us to live.  And because the Holy Spirit has given us new life, we too can be called the sons and daughters of God, “in whom He is well pleased.”  Because we have the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 53:6 “All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. Isaiah 53:5 “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.”

The missing ingredient; Luke 3: 1-17

Those of you that know my wife knows that she likes to cook.  She particularly likes to bake.  Her idea of a fun evening is finding a new recipe book and she is constantly collecting new recipes that she would like to try out.  Usually, she tries them out on us at home and that can either be a good thing or a not so good thing.  Sometimes, some recipe that she tries turns out to be a keeper, and she makes a note on it perhaps and stores it in a place where she keeps the good recipes.  But sometimes, a bakery item does not turn out all that good.  And she has found that even though a certain recipe by some famous cook may be published in a book and have a picture of a beautiful cake or pie, when we try to eat it, we find that something is wrong.  It doesn’t taste right, or it didn’t rise the way it should.  Something was missing in the recipe.  We end up throwing it out because it wasn’t any good.  It seems that among certain chefs, they sometimes deliberately leave out an important ingredient as a way to preserve their special recipe.  They want the accolades for having a delicious bakery item, but they want to keep it for themselves.  They don’t want to share it.

Oftentimes in the church we see a sort of Christianity that is somewhat like those bakery items that don’t really turn out.  Someone comes to the church, they go through the right motions, say some of the right things, seem sincere enough perhaps, they may even seem to have some sort of religious experience but over time it becomes apparent that something is missing.  There is an ingredient in their faith that seems to be missing, and as a result, their walk doesn’t quite add up.  Their faith doesn’t turn out to be all that it should be.  Perhaps, they fall away over time and go back to the world.  Perhaps they go back to the same sins that once enslaved them.  Bottom line, they never produce the fruit in their lives that that should have been expected from someone who was really converted.

And I think that the message of John the Baptist that we have been looking at for the last couple of weeks is really about that missing ingredient that is too often not considered to be all that essential, yet without it, the final product doesn’t turn out the way it’s supposed to.  They may go to church, they may sing the songs, they may talk the talk, but because they are missing an essential ingredient, they end up falling short of the grace of God.  They were never converted and so they never produced the fruit of their conversion.

Jesus warned that this would be a very real issue in the church.  He said in Matt. 7:16 "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  So then, you will know them by their fruits.  Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.  Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'”
What a terrible thing.  To live a life that appears to be righteous on the outside, that may even do good things in society, that may appear to be very religious even to the point of supposedly doing miraculous things, speaking prophecy and casting out demons and yet at the judgment be told that it didn’t count as righteousness.  Christ never knew you as a son or daughter of God, and all your so called righteousness was not worth any more than filthy rags, it was nothing more than lawlessness.  You didn’t produce the fruit  of true righteousness.  Because you were missing the essential ingredient.

God forbid that we find ourselves in that condition.  So what then is the essential ingredient that makes us righteous, that converts us from children of darkness into children of God?  That causes us to be known of God?  Well, John tells us in chapter 3 verse 8 of our text;  “"Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance.”  See, repentance is the missing ingredient.  The fruit follows after.  Works without repentance is just self righteousness.  First must come repentance and then God credits you with righteousness so that you become holy, and having become holy by the gift of God, then you are adopted, grafted into the family of God, and then having become grafted into the tree of life you produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

Let me make this absolutely clear.  Terrifyingly clear in accordance with what Jesus said about the day of judgment;  salvation without repentance is not possible.  Salvation without repentance is not possible.  That is why John came preaching it says in verse 3: “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Listen, altar calls to come to Jesus so that you can live your best life now is not repentance.  Altar calls to come to Jesus so that you can have a relationship with Jesus is not repentance.  There can be no relationship between sinful man and a holy God without forgiveness of sins, and a transference of righteousness to our account.  And John is preaching that repentance is necessary for forgiveness of sins.

Until you understand that you are sinful, separated eternally from God because of your sins, condemned to eternal hell because of your sins, then you will not understand that you need to repent.  That you need a Savior.  Before Jesus can be your friend, He first had to become your substitute and your sacrifice.  And having become your substitute and your sacrifice He then became your Savior.  2 Cor. 5:21; “[God] made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” God has already cast judgment upon sin. Jesus paid the price of that judgment upon our sin. And  so then repentance is our answer to our sin, a cry for mercy and a willingness to forsake it.

So then we must understand first of all, that true repentance is marked by our understanding of the reprehensible nature of our sin. We saw that in an earlier message in verse 5. "Every ravine has to be filled up, every mountain and hill be brought down, the crooked become straight and the rough roads smooth." That's an analogy of what has to happen in the human heart. Before God can come to the human heart, the highway is going to be made, a highway of forgiveness into your heart. It is a highway of repentance.

Secondly, there has to be a realization that we deserve divine wrath. John at the end of verse 7 preached the wrath to come. To be a faithful preacher I must preach on hell. There must be a realization that wrath is promised to elicit a true repentance.

Thirdly, there must be a rejection of religious ritual.  John calls them a brood of vipers, and says, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Going through some ritual, or ceremony such as baptism cannot save you.  You are still sons of your father the devil.  You haven’t been converted.  Baptism is an outward testimony to an inward change, from being children of the devil to becoming children of God.  Baptism is a public declaration of that, but it can never accomplish conversion alone.

Fourth, John preached that your ancestry is worthless.  That was a big thing to the Jews, they thought that being children of Abraham made them saved. And a lot of people today think they're going to get into God's Kingdom because of their parents or grandparents, and certainly the Jews felt that way down in verse 8. He says, "Don't begin to say to yourselves we have Abraham for our father, because I'm telling you God can make children of Abraham out of rocks. That's not going to save you.”  And let me add this – being an American won’t save you either.  I’m as patriotic as the next guy.  But while my salvation may make me a better American, yet being an American has no benefit for my salvation.  Christianity is not one of our inalienable rights as  an American.  

Then fifthly, true repentance produces  spiritual transformation.  Vs. 8: Bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance.  If you are a new creation, then you’re going to bring forth  a different kind of fruit than you did in the past.  New fruit is not the means of salvation, but it is the produce of salvation. It is the evidence of conversion.

And Luke illustrates this in this passage starting in verse 10.  The crowds were asking John, “What then shall we do?” And he would answer and say to them, "The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise." And some tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, "Teacher, what shall we do?" And he said to them, " Collect no more than what you have been ordered to." Some soldiers were questioning him, saying, "And what about us, what shall we do?" And he said to them, "Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages."

Notice something.  They all asked the same question; “what shall we do?”  Repentance produces not only a godly sorrow, but a change of heart, resulting in a change of action.  A good example of this is the familiar story of the prodigal son.  He thought he knew better than his father.  He wanted to take his inheritance and live life the way he wanted to live it.  And so he spent his inheritance in riotous living.  One day when his money had run out and his friends had left him, he found himself in a pig pen eating the husks they fed the pigs.  He realized his predicament.  He was sorry he was in his predicament.  But that wasn’t repentance.  Sorry just would have left him there in the pig pen.  But he said to himself, I will go back to my father and beg for his forgiveness.  I will offer my life to him as a slave.  Now that was repentance.  He recognized not only his predicament and was sorry for his predicament, but he recognized that his father’s house offered him the way to life and so he got up and went back to what he knew was good. Repentance turns you around and starts you in the other direction.  A turning from your ways and a turning to God’s ways.

John’s answer to this question of what shall we do is pretty simple.  He’s talking about a change from doing things to serve yourself to doing things to serve God and serve his people.  The prodigal son said I’ll go back to my father and serve him.  And that is the fruit of repentance, service to God.  A life that is now dedicated to serving God, whereas before our lives were marked by self service.  My rights, my time, my money, my, my, my is the cry of the unconverted.  So having repented of our ways and our desires and our lusts, we now turn to serving God by serving others.  It’s not some great super complicated thing God asks of us.  It’s to be faithful to God in the small things, serving each other, serving His body, as unto the Lord.  Micah 6:8 “He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”

You can break down each of John’s answers and you find at it’s root a change of heart about my stuff;  my possessions, my power, my money, my time.  It’s a change from a heart that is always seeking after more and more and more and never able to be satisfied, to that of being content in all circumstances.  If we have food and covering with that we shall be content.  (1 Tim. 6)  If we have two tunics, then that is one more than we need, give the other away.  If we have enough to eat, then give away what we have extra to him who doesn’t have any.   Don’t take advantage of other people to accumulate more money.  Do justice and love kindness.  Be content with your wages.  Focus on storing up your treasure in heaven, not on this earth.

Now this may have sounded simple, but it’s actually revolutionary stuff.  If we really applied this attitude of repentance in every facet of our lives and modeled what John taught then I think the world would be impacted with the gospel.  But when they see Christians hypocritically seeking after money at the expense of others and selfishly treating others unfairly, then our churchy self righteousness does nothing but turn them against the gospel.  So the multitudes were wondering about John because of his preaching.  They were wondering if he was actually the promised Messiah.

And that leads us to the final point;  true repentance receives the true Messiah.  So John makes it clear that he isn’t the Messiah.  And he does so by contrasting his ministry with that of Jesus’ ministry. Vs. 16 "As for me, I baptize you with water but One is coming who is mightier than I and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." John says don't get us confused, folks, we are worlds apart. I can baptize you with water, but it’s only a picture of what Christ will do. I can take you down here into the Jordan River and I can dunk you under the water.  But that is not a supernatural act. It doesn’t actually cleanse you inwardly. There is no supernatural power in the water.  It’s just the plain old Jordan River. There is no holy water, by the way.  There is no holy oil.  There is only a Holy God that credits sinful people with holiness and then calls us to live holy lives, even as He is holy.

But says John, here is the contrast, there is One who is coming, the Coming One, the Messiah, who is mightier than I.   "I'm not even fit...John says...to untie the thong of His sandals."  The task of taking somebody's sandals off and washing their feet was so low on the service ladder that you couldn't get lower than having to do that job and it was a job usually assigned to a Gentile because it was beneath the dignity of a Jew to do it. John says I'm not even fit to climb up to the point where I could untie His sandals, I’m not even in the same class as Jesus.

And he goes on to contrast himself with Jesus.   "I baptize with water," end of verse 16, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." That is a great statement filled with tremendous profound truth. John says...Look, I can immerse you in this Jordan River, which is only symbolic of an inward change but what I can't do is immerse you in the Holy Spirit or immerse you in fire. Only Christ can do that.

Listen, there is a lot of confusion concerning a second baptism of the Holy Spirit as if once we are saved you need to go seeking for another baptism of the Spirit.  Folks, don’t be deceived.  You can’t be saved apart from the Holy Spirit.  The idea of being baptized by the Holy Spirit is to be immersed with the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the means of our regeneration.  He is the means of our new creation.  We are born again of the Spirit, Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3.  You can’t be born again without being filled with His Spirit.

The difference between Old Testament salvation and New Testament salvation is that in the OT, the Spirit was not a permanent fixture.  So they may have had the desire to keep the law, but they did not have the ability to keep the law.  They were weak in their sinful flesh.  However, God promised a new covenant for us through the blood of the Messiah.  It’s found in Ezekiel 36:26 "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”  See?  Now we have the Spirit of God living in us, we are permanently immersed in the Spirit of God, filled with the Spirit, who gives us the desire to serve God, and gives us the strength to serve God, and gives us spiritual gifts to equip us to serve God.  The Spirit of God is not a bunch of mumbo jumbo to make us feel excited or happy or ecstatic.  The gifts of the Spirit are not a toy box, they are a tool box, to equip us to do the will of God.  To do what He requires of us, to keep his laws and his ordinances.   And the Holy Spirit is given without measure at the moment of salvation, when God makes us righteous by the gift of Christ’s holiness, in exchange for our sins.  Then having been made holy, we become the temple of the Holy Spirit who  lives in us to empower us to do His will.

And that's why on the day of Pentecost when Peter stood up to preach, Acts 2:38, he said, "Repent, receive the forgiveness of sins and you shall also receive the Holy Spirit." You see, nobody is converted, nobody is saved, nobody is forgiven, nobody is transformed by some human act. When a sinner is truly repentant and comes to God in a broken and contrite spirit and asks for forgiveness and God forgives and transforms, it is the working of the Holy Spirit.

And secondly, John says, I baptize you with water but the Messiah will baptize you with fire.  Again, there is a lot of confusion about this fire.  Some think it’s talking about the tongues of fire that came upon the heads of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost.  But it’s not talking about that fire.  It’s talking about the refiner’s fire.  The Messiah will bring a refiner’s fire, that will burn up the chaff, and reveal the gold.  The refiner’s fire is a cleansing fire.

And this is very clear in the last book of the OT where God was talking about the coming of the Messiah, and the forerunner, John, who would come before him to prepare his way.  Listen to Malachi 3:1 "Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming," says the LORD of hosts. (2) "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap.  (3) "He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness.”

Look at the next chapter; Malachi 4:1 "For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze," says the LORD of hosts, "so that it will leave them neither root nor branch."

So when the Messiah comes, the coming One arrives, it's going to be a day like a furnace that's going to consume everything. "But...verse 2...for those who fear My name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in His beams. You're not going to be burned, you're going to go forth and skip about like calves from the stall and you're going to tread down the wicked and they're going to be ashes unto the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing, says the Lord of hosts." Gold isn’t burned up in a fire, dross is burned out, and gold is made better, stronger, refined.  But the chaff will be gathered together and burned up.

Listen, Christians and non Christians are going to go through the refiner’s fire.  But one will come out as gold and the other will be burned up.  As a Christian, don’t be surprised James said at the fiery ordeal which has come upon you.  It’s only temporary, for your testing, so that you will be refined and come forth as gold.

Verse 17,  John  illustrated the principle of baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire. It's like a winnowing process. "And His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into His barn so He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." . The separation will take place completely. You either fall in the pile of grain, or the pile of chaff. You are either separated with the grain which means you go into the glories of heaven, or burned with the chaff which means you go into the terrors of hell.  And it says it is an unquenchable fire, that is an eternal fire that will never go out.

Folks, the only other subject that isn’t preached on as much as repentance is the subject of hell.  We don’t want to think about it.  Truth be known, we don’t really believe in it.  Somehow we think in the back of our mind, God will be merciful and let people escape hell if they were nice people.  And of course, there is good in everyone, so no one will really have to go to hell, except for people we don’t like of course.  But if we really got a glimpse of hell, we would go home this morning and throw ourselves down on our knees in front of our loved ones and beg them, implore them to get right with God, to repent for the forgiveness of their sins.  But we don’t really believe that our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers are going to spend eternity in the torment of unquenchable fire.  Do we?

Folks, examine yourselves today. 2Cor. 13:5 “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?”  Are you missing the essential ingredient in your life?  Have you truly understood the graveness of your sin, the predicament that you are in and repented, calling out to God for mercy and forgiveness?  Or have you decided that you aren’t so bad a person after all, and by adding just a little bit of religion to your list of ingredients you are going to turn out just fine.

Don’t be deceived, salvation isn’t possible without repentance.  Jesus gave a parable in Luke 18:10 "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 'I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.' "But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!'
"I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Repentance is the only way to receive justification.  Let’s pray.

Flee from the wrath to come; Luke 3: 7-9

Today we are continuing in our study of Luke and we  just began to look at the ministry of John the Baptist.  We introduced him last week in the first 6 verses, and we will start to look at his message today and hopefully finish it next week.

Just to briefly review, last week we looked at the scope of John’s message.  It says in verse three that he came “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  If you remember last week’s message we said that the baptism of repentance was normally reserved for Gentile proselytes;  Gentiles that desired to convert to Judaism.  But John is preaching to Jews, and he is saying that they need to repent just like everybody else.  That their heritage as Jews was not sufficient for their salvation.  John was saying that their self righteousness which came through the law, and through their religion and through their lineage was useless in God’s eyes, because their hearts were in rebellion against God.

So Luke gives an illustration from the Old Testament, which is actually part of the prophecy concerning John, found in Isaiah chapter 40.  And this picture that is presented is that of a highway  which needs to be smoothed out, to be made ready for the coming King.  And the highway is a metaphor for men’s hearts, which need to be made ready for the coming King.  It says in verse 4, "THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, 'MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.  EVERY RAVINE WILL BE FILLED, AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL WILL BE BROUGHT LOW; THE CROOKED WILL BECOME STRAIGHT, AND THE ROUGH ROADS SMOOTH;  AND ALL FLESH WILL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD.'"  What this scripture is illustrating is that before one can see the salvation of God, there needs to be repentance, a preparation of the heart in order that God can  be the King of our soul.  Every deep, dark crevice that hides our sin must be brought up to the light,  and every mountain and hill of our pride and self exaltation must be made low, every crooked way must be made straight before the way of the Lord.

Now in continuation of that message of the need for repentance, John addresses in verse 7 the crowds that were coming out to hear him and be baptized by him.  “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father,' for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.  Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

And in that first sentence I take the title of this message this morning.  The title is “Flee from the wrath to come.”  The message of John the Baptist is a harsh message.  It is not the way to win friends and influence people.  But as I said last week, John the Baptist was a dying man preaching to a dying people in a dire situation.  And they needed to wake up and realize the urgency of the situation they were in.

I was struck this week with the images I saw on the internet and television of the bombing in Boston.  It was eerily reminiscent of the bombing of the twin towers on 9-11, but of course on a much smaller scale.  Still, as you looked at those images of the smoke and the carnage and the crowds running away in fear, you couldn’t help but notice the panic on people’s faces.  Something unexpected, something horrific was happening that they didn’t understand and they were fleeing for their lives.  It reminded me of the images when the twin towers fell and the look on people’s faces as they tried to run from that unimaginable horror on 9-11.

There are already people out there starting to question the Boston bombing as they did about 9-11, whether or not there was some sort of advance warning, or some way we could have been better prepared for that situation.  If one were to know in advance that something like that was going to happen and they did not raise the alarm, then such people would be guilty of criminal neglect, a dereliction of duty.

And if a preacher of the gospel knew that a wrath of God was coming that would make the bombings of 9-11 and Boston pail in comparison and yet we said nothing about it, we did not give the warning, then what punishment would be sufficient for us? Ezekiel  33:6 says, “But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman's hand.  Now as for you, son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My mouth and give them warning from Me.”

God has appointed his preachers as watchmen.  And He has clearly said in his word that there is coming a day of God’s wrath to judge the whole world.  John the Baptist spoke of it 2000 years ago to the nation of the Jews.  He came to prepare the way, to proclaim a warning, that the King was coming, and that God’s judgment was going to  be poured out on the Jews first.  So his message was harsh, it was urgent, because the wrath of God was coming.

This warning was clearly presented in the last book of the Old Testament which had been given 400 years earlier in the book of Malachi chapter 3 vs. 1;  "Behold, I am going to send My messenger [that was John the Baptist], and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming," says the LORD of hosts. "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness.”

The warning is repeated in the next chapter in Malachi 4:5 "Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.”

So here comes John, in the spirit of Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord, and he calls the people who come to hear him a brood of vipers.  I tell you what, I’ve been accused of being unloving before, but I never called people a brood of vipers, to their face at least.  But John wasn’t just calling people names to be mean, he was making a very important point.  He was saying you think you are ok because you are Jews, because you are Abraham’s children.  But God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. What John is saying is that rather than being children of Abraham they were actually children of the devil, the serpent of old.

John was saying they were sons of the devil because they did the same deeds that the devil did.  And when Jesus started his ministry, he preached the same thing.  John didn’t preach judgment and Jesus preached love.  No, Jesus preached the same message of repentance that John had been preaching.  He said in John 8:44 "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  He is saying very clearly, that if you do the deeds of the devil, then it’s obvious you are sons of your father who is the devil.  Jesus said again in Matt. 23:33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?”  By the way, Jesus preached on hell more than any other preacher.

I was accused a while ago of always preaching “doom and gloom.”  They said I preached too much about sin and the coming judgment.  But I only need to point to John and Jesus and say that I haven’t even began to scratch the surface of what they preached concerning the wrath to come.

“Therefore,” John says in vs.8,  “bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance.”  Oh, the Jews were willing to go through another ceremony, to be dunked in a river if necessary, if it meant they would be guaranteed their salvation.  They were lining up to be baptized by John.  But John wasn’t going to let them off the hook quite so easily.  He was saying that in your natural state, your sinful state, you are of your father the devil.  And so you did the deeds of your father.  But if you repent, and you become converted to be a child of God, then you should be doing the deeds of your Father who is in heaven.

In other words, there is no such thing as cheap grace.  There is no such thing as raise your hand if you want to have a relationship with Jesus, and come forward and repeat some words after me and step over here and go down in this pool and now you’re good to go.  You never have to worry about hell anymore, never have to worry about the wrath of God anymore and you can go live like the devil again.  I’m sorry, but that isn’t the truth of the gospel.  The truth of the gospel is that once I was blind, but now I see.  Once I was lost but now I’m found.  Once I was sinful but now I’m righteous.  Once I was carnal but now I’m holy.  Once I was a child of Satan but now I am a child of God.  Once I did the deeds of my father the devil and now I do the deeds of my Father in heaven.  That is the message of repentance.
So John warns these Jews that in response to their rebellion the wrath of God is coming and the axe is already laid at the root of the tree. Vs. 9; “Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." Now what does he mean by that?  Jesus told a parable that helps to illustrate this prophecy in Luke 13:6  “And He began telling this parable: "A man had a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and did not find any. "And he said to the vineyard-keeper, 'Behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any. Cut it down! Why does it even use up the ground?' "And he answered and said to him, 'Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer; and if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, cut it down.'"

The sad truth is, that God had been waiting for Israel to produce the fruit of repentance for hundreds of years and yet they stiffened their necks and kept on rebelling in their idolatrous ways.  They had an outward form of religion.  They said they trusted in the one true God.  They had been entrusted with the oracles of God.  They had been entrusted with the laws of God.  God had sent them prophet after prophet to dig around the roots and put in fertilizer and yet they did not produce the fruits of repentance.  And so God’s patience ran out for Israel.  He raised up sons of Abraham from the stones by turning to the Gentiles with the gospel.  And in just 35 years from John’s message, God’s wrath came down upon Israel.

In 70 AD, the emperor Nero quashed a Jewish rebellion and went through Judea with 60,000 Roman soldiers methodically executing Jews as they marched to Jerusalem.  They laid siege against Jerusalem and eventually Titus sacked the city and laid the temple in ruins and desecrated the altar.  The sacrifices and offerings of the Jews were stopped.  Most of the Jews were executed or committed suicide.  What Jews were left alive ran for their lives and were dispersed throughout the remote parts of Asia.  The wrath of God had begun to be poured out.  Israel did not heed the warning of John the Baptist concerning the wrath to come.  And they have been hounded out of one country after another ever since for almost 2000 years.

During that 2000 years, God raised up another people, children of Abraham who would not be known by the circumcision of their flesh as had the Jews, or by their lineage from the tribes of Jacob, but by the circumcision of their hearts. Rom. 2:29 says, “But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.”
And Phil. 3:3 “for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”  Christ called this people of God his church, his body.  And God entrusted his church with the oracles of God, with the commandments of God.  And God has sent preacher after preacher, revival after revival in an attempt to call out a people who would produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

God has established in our days watchmen to warn the people of the coming wrath of God upon the unrighteous.  And as watchmen we are charged with the task of warning people today with the same message as that of John the Baptist.  “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.  You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance.  For the axe is already laid at the root of the tree that has not born fruit.” And I’m afraid that the church today is in the same place spiritually that Israel was 2000 years ago.  We have a form of religion, we have Judeo-Christian values, we think we are exempt from the wrath of God, because we trust in our heritage, in our lineage, in our church membership and yet our hearts are in rebellion and produce no fruit.

The message of repentance is still needed today, and it is the last message to the church from Jesus Christ.  The Apostle John saw in a vision the last message of Jesus to what He called the seven churches, which were actually 7 historic churches, but which I believe are also symbolic of the worldwide church today and He had this to say starting in Revelation 2 to the church at Ephesus, that great church started by Paul and pastored by Timothy; “I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.”

To the church of Pergamum He said, “I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. Therefore repent; or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth.”

To the church of Thyatira He said, “I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality.
Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds.”

To the church in Sardis He said, “'I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.  Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.
So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.”

And to the church at Laodicea He said, “'I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.  Because you say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.  Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.”

The Apostle Peter said in 1Peter 4:17  “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? AND IF IT IS WITH DIFFICULTY THAT THE RIGHTEOUS IS SAVED,  WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE GODLESS MAN AND THE SINNER?”

Listen folks, the message needed in the world today is the same old message that John the Baptist preached and Jesus Christ preached and the Apostles preached.  The gospel hasn’t changed.  But I’m afraid the church has changed.  And not for the better.  We have left our first love.  We love the world and do the deeds of the world which are the deeds of their father the devil.  Our light has gone out.  The world looks at us and sees just a self righteous reflection of themselves.  We think we are alive and yet we are dead.  We have become so relevant to the ungodly world that we are no longer relevant to God.  We are neither cold or hot, we’re lukewarm.  The world cannot find God because the light has gone out in the church.  And the church is dark because it has turned away from the truth of God’s word.  The Bible says, “thy word is a lamp unto my feet.”  But the lamp has gone out like the lamps of the unwise virgins who thought that the Bridegroom wouldn’t be coming any time soon. But Romans 1:18 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

Oh, people, we need to prepare our hearts.  The wrath of God is coming and is coming soon.  We need to flee from any so called gospel that doesn’t call for repentance. We don’t know how much longer we have, but we know that the day of the Lord is coming soon.  We need to get ready.  We need to flee from sin and fly away to the refuge of repentance.  We need to prepare our hearts for the King.

In the early 1700’s there was a revival that swept across America known as the Great Awakening.   One of it’s foremost preachers was a man named Jonathan Edwards who died at 54 years old.  His most famous sermon is still being studied in classical literature today, titled, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.”  Yet I doubt he would be featured on TNN today. He, like me, read his sermons and preached too much about sin and the need for repentance.   However, he was a faithful watchman to what God revealed to him through his word.  Listen to part of his sermon.

“The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God's vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.

“O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.”

The wrath of God, long held back due to the kindness and patience of God, is coming upon this world.  Peter warned again in 2Peter 3:10 “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.”

I’m not a big fan of celebrity Christians.  I find their walk and their talk to be too far apart in most cases.  However, I do believe that Johnny Cash seemed to know the Lord, especially in the last few years of his life.  And in what was perhaps the last song Cash wrote before his death, he quotes several passages of scripture from Revelations regarding the great and terrible day of the Lord.  Some of his theology may be a little warped, but I think he gets the idea about the coming wrath of God.

"And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder. One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.' and I saw, and behold a white horse"

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names,
And he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same,
There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down.
When the man comes around.
The hairs on your arm will stand up,
At the terror in each sip and in each sup.
Will you partake of that last offered cup,
Or disappear into the potter's ground?
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin'.
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum.
Voices callin', voices cryin'.
Some are born and some are dyin'.
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come,
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks,
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks,

Till Armageddon no shalom, no shalom.
Then the father hen will call his chickens home,
The wise man will bow down before the throne.
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns,
When the man comes around.
Whoever is unjust let him be unjust still.
Whoever is righteous let him be righteous still.
Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still.
Listen to the words long written down,
When the man comes around.

Where then are we to flee this wrath to come?  What are we to do?  How are we to be saved?  The answer is found in Isaiah 55:1 "Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance.  Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, According to the faithful mercies shown to David. Seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.  For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up, and instead of the nettle the myrtle will come up, And it will be a memorial to the LORD, for an everlasting sign which will not be cut off."