Luke 3:1-20
Please turn in your scriptures
to the gospel of Luke to chapter 3. Today, our reading is Luke’s
gospel, chapter 3, verses 1 through 20. And you can find that in
the pew Bible on page 858. If you would like to use that
copy of God’s word. Let us hear God’s word together.
In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate
being governor of Judea, and Herod being the tetrarch of Galilee,
and his brother Philip, tetrarch of the region of Iteria, and
Trachondinus and Lysanias, tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood
of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son
of Zechariah, in the wilderness. And he went into all the region
around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book
of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, the voice of one crying in the
wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled
in every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall
become straight and the rough places shall become level ways. and all flesh shall see the salvation
of God. He said, therefore, to the crowds
that came out to be baptized by him, you brood of vipers,
who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Bear fruits in
keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves,
we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from
these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the ax
is laid to the root of the trees, Every tree, therefore, that does
not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. And
the crowds asked him, what then shall we do? And he answered
them, whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has
none. And whoever has food is to do likewise. Tax collectors
also came to be baptized and said to him, teacher, what shall
we do? And he said to them, collect
no more than you are authorized to do. Soldiers also came to
him and we, what shall we do? And he said to them, do not extort
money from anyone by threats or by false accusation and be
content with your wages. As the people were in expectation
and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether
he might be the Christ. John answered them all saying,
I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is
coming. and the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the
Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his
hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into
his barn, but the chafe he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
So with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the
people. But Herod, the Tetrarch, who had been reproved by him
for Herodias, his brother’s wife, and for all the evil things that
Herod had done, added this to them all, and he locked up John
in prison. Let us pray together. God, the Holy Spirit, we ask
that you would make the reading and especially the preaching
of your word this day an effectual means of convincing and converting
sinners and building us up in holiness and comfort through
faith unto salvation. Lord, this is our greatest need,
so grant it. We do pray by faith, and we pray
it in Jesus’ name, amen. I think ever since I can remember,
I have been warned all my life. By your parents, you’re warned
not to touch the electrical outlets. You read in magazines, I think
it was in my lifetime, the Surgeon General’s warning about using
tobacco products, or not drinking alcohol while pregnant, or Not
drinking and driving or not driving without wearing your seatbelt.
And on and on those warnings go. Today you can watch evening
television and if you don’t have a certain alarm system you can
be robbed and marauded by those who will invade your home and
take everything they have and so you better get an alarm system.
On and on and on the warnings go. It comes in the area of food. We don’t want to have too much
cholesterol. We don’t want to have too much salt. We don’t
want to drink too much coffee. We don’t want to do this, that
and the other. And with these warnings come a pronouncement. If you obey the warning, you
will be blessed. But if you disobey the warning,
you just might be cursed. Well, The ministry of John the
baptizer is something like that, but his warnings and the blessings
and the curses which he pronounces to the people of God in the Judean
countryside along the Jordan River in about the year 26 AD,
the warnings he gives have an eternal weight to them. It’s not about whether or not
skipping brushing your teeth will cause gingivitis or you’ll
have to have a crown or a cavity filled or that sort of thing.
It’s whether or not God, the judge of the earth, will bring
you home to be with him forever in heaven, or you will be cast
out of his presence into eternal darkness. And so there are warnings. There are warnings all over our
lives. And there are warnings in the
scriptures. And today in Luke’s gospel, we hear a bit of the
warnings that John the baptizer issues. Now, John, the baptizer,
the word of God tells us is a a herald. He is a proclaimer. He is a preacher
of good news. And in a sense, you may think
he’s a little negative in his proclamation and he is. But in
a sense, he is the first one to walk into the world and say
to the people of God, joy to the world, the Lord is come.
Let Earth receive her king. Make room in your hearts, prepare
for the coming of King Jesus and let him in your own hearts. The time is around 26 AD. It’s
about the time Jesus is going to begin his public ministry.
And in the next few verses, we’ll see Jesus’ baptism and his temptation. But John’s ministry is listed
here by the writer Luke, Dr. Luke, who also wrote the book
of Acts. And he has placed the beginning of the ministry of
John the baptizer in about 26 AD. Now, if we were to mention
some dates, you would Have immediate historical context come to mind.
If we mentioned the 1960s, you would probably think about the
crazy culture that grew up, that popped up in that period of time.
With this week’s events, with the confirmation of a Supreme
Court hearing, if I were to mention the year 1973, you would think
Roe versus Wade. Or maybe 1987, you would think of getting borked. Remember Judge Bork? Or maybe
1991, you would think of the great scandal with Anita Hill
and with the justice of the Supreme Court that barely escaped the
sword, as it were. You begin to recognize the times
with the dates. Well, AD 26 doesn’t really mean
a whole lot to you. But remember, it had been 400
years since. The last prophet had spoken the
word of God to the people of God. It had been a period of
darkness, a period of quiet. God had not spoken to his people. And so in around the year A.D. 26, in the Judean desert, along
and around the Jordan River. God came. And our text tells
us that the word of God, the word of the Lord came to John,
the son of Zechariah. Remember in our previous studies,
all that had been prophesied and now is the moment we’ve been
waiting for. John, the baptizer, the son of
Zechariah, the child who should not have been born to those aged
parents has now reached the age and the time of his ministry. Now these are interesting times
as well as John ministers. You see a list of about six names
at the beginning of chapter three. And some of those names you will
recognize, at least three of them are gonna pop up later.
Who’s gonna condemn Jesus to death on behalf of the Roman
government? Pontius Pilate. Who is gonna condemn Jesus to
death on behalf of the Jewish rulers? Well, Caiaphas and Annas. who served in those places. You see, John was ministering
the word of God in a dark time after many years of silence from
God. And we have at the beginning
of chapter three, a rogues gallery, if you will, of people who will
serve not Christ like John, but who will serve the serpent. and attempt to undo or keep from
taking place the wonderful salvation that God has planned for his
people through the ministry and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And yet with this robes gallery we read in the beginning of chapter
three. We have to remember that the angel of the Lord came to
Zechariah. We have to remember that the
angel of the Lord came to Mary, that there was Mary and Joseph,
that there was Zechariah, there was the baby John born, the baby
Jesus born, there was Elizabeth, there was Simeon, there was Anna,
there were the shepherds and the Magi. And so as the word
of God came to the people of God through the mouth, of John
the baptizer, the son of Zachariah. We have to remember that in the
midst of darkness, God can bring forth. He can break into that
darkness with marvelous light. It was a dark time, a trying
time, an evil time. And yet the word of the Lord
through the mouthpiece of his last prophet before the great
prophet Jesus came was now upon the people of God. Now, what
do we learn from the proclamation, from the exhortation? What do
we learn from the ministry of John the baptizer? Well, our
passage tells us that he came preaching a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins. He came preaching judgment. He
came preaching new life. And his whole life and ministry
pointed to one greater than he, Jesus. of whom he says, I am
unworthy to stoop down and to untie his shoes. I’m not even
worthy to serve him is what John is saying. And so I want us to
pick apart a few of these great themes that we find in our passage. John is a mouthpiece of God.
And he has come onto the scene to the people of Israel to preach
to them, to proclaim to them, to exhort them in the good news. Well, if you’re going to tell
the good news first, you must tell the bad news. And so he
comes to tell the people, you are in a spiritual condition
that will bring the wrath and judgment of almighty God upon
you. And even hence at the future, the eschatology, the days of
judgment to come, he says, God has his winnowing fork. And he
will throw the weed into the air. The chaff will blow away
and only the good grain will remain. He will cut down what
is not bearing fruit and whatever is not fruitful will be cast
into the fire. And he gives these and other
images of judgment. And so, dear brothers and sisters
of the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to understand the good
news, we need to understand the bad news. And the bad news is
this. Because of Adam’s sin, we are
born into sin. And in just a chapter or so,
when we get to chapter four, we’re going to see that Jesus
is the second Adam who obeys God perfectly in the wilderness
and when Adam failed to obey God perfectly in paradise. But we need to remember that
when we are born, when we are born from ordinary generation
after Adam, we are born with original sin, with corruption.
And from that original sin comes our actual sins. And so we do
daily break God’s law and thought, word and deed. And so in order
to understand the good news, we have to understand the bad
news that we are sinners and that the wages of sin is death.
But the good news, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ
Jesus, our Lord. And so John comes preaching bad
news in order to preach good news. And then there’s repentance.
This is a word we hear very often. Repent simply means to turn.
A lot of you men don’t know what this means. You’re riding down
the road and your wife says, honey, you’re going the wrong
way. And you’re so stubborn because you want to admit that you’ve
not looked up the map or that sort of thing. And so you keep
going. That’s not repentance. Repentance is saying, I am going
the right way, wrong way. And in order not to get to a
bad or wrong destination, I’m going to turn around. And so
we turn in our repentance from following after evil, from following
after darkness, from following after the world, from following
after the flesh. And we say, I don’t want to follow the world.
I want to follow the word. I don’t want to follow the devil. I want to follow Christ. And
I don’t want to follow my own flesh. I want to live by the
Holy Spirit. And so repentance is a change of mind saying, I
will turn and I will return back. to God. We see that so wonderfully
illustrated in the story of the prodigal son. After a while,
the passage says of the prodigal son, he comes to his senses. The word of God, the training
that he received in his home came back to him and he remembered
the love of the father, not just his own earthly father, but he
remembered the love of the heavenly father, which he must for sure
have heard in his home. And he realizes that I can return. And I can repent. I can change
my mind. I can change my ways. And not
only will my father, but my heavenly father will receive me. And so,
dear friends, if you are headed in the wrong way and you hear
the bad news that you are a sinner and that you are headed blindfold,
as it were, on the pathway to hell and to destruction, you
must hear the gospel and say, I need to turn. I need to return
unto my God. And so there is repentance. And
he speaks of John here preaching, proclaiming, exhorting the good
news by telling the bad news, by preaching repentance, but
also speaking of forgiveness, a word that simply means release. Some of you may have paid off
your mortgage, maybe you paid off a car, maybe you’ve paid
off your student loans and you’ve been released from that debt.
There’s been a liberty. Maybe you had a note burning. After that debt was paid off,
friends, that’s what forgiveness is like. God has released you
from your sins and trespasses because they were laid on Christ
at the cross. Christ, our Passover lamb, died
for us. And he is the great high priest
who not only offered up his own life, a perfect life as a sacrifice
to God, he also took on your sins like that scapegoat of the
Old Testament. And so as Jesus took on your
sins and paid for them, You in the sight of God have been forgiven
of all your sins, past and present and future. You have been released.
You have been set free and you have been put at liberty. You
see, this is good news. This is worth proclaiming. This
is worth exhorting. This is worth pleading with people.
You need to come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You need
to quit living a sinful life, a flesh life, a worldly life,
a satanic life, and you need to turn and come to Jesus and
he will forgive you. The message of the good news
includes bad news. It includes repentance. It includes
forgiveness. It includes baptism. He baptized
in the Jordan River. He washed people of their sins. They were filthy and they were
in need of cleansing. Now, how well does it go over
when you tell somebody you’re filthy? You’re stinky. You’re odious. You smell bad.
You look bad. You aren’t good. That doesn’t
go over very well today. And it definitely does not go
over well in the seeker sensitive movement that we have seen over
the years. In fact, John, the baptizer, though he was upheld
by God and called by God and sent by God and commissioned
by God to preach good news, he would not fly in today’s modern
evangelical world. John, you’re too rough on people.
John, you can’t say that to people. They won’t hear what you have
to say. John, you can’t talk to people like that. That’s unkind.
That’s not nice. And that’s too judgmental. But dear friends, we have to
speak of the wrath that is to come. We have to speak of God’s
righteous judgment. God’s righteous judgment that
justly punishes sin. We have to preach it. We have
to be reminded of it. We have to live with fear and
trembling. We have to live with thanksgiving.
Those of us who have faith in Jesus to say, I have been saved
from his wrath and judgment. Thanks be to God. I now no longer
fear Mount Sinai and the law and the wrath that is to come.
But we must preach repentance and forgiveness and judgment.
We must give the bad news in order to give the good news.
John also in this passage speaks of new life. You’ll notice there’s
a couple of classes of people that pop up in his crowd. There’s
some tax collectors, there’s some soldiers and there’s the
general crowd. And what do they say after they are, as we like
to say in our theology, they are pricked in heart by the word
of God. They’re thinking, they’re feeling,
they’re struggling, they’re counting the cost of coming to Jesus.
And the crowd say, what must we do? And so the first thing
of new life that John speaks to this crowd, he says, you’ve
got to be hospitable. You’ve got to share with people. If
you’ve got two tunics, share one. If you’ve got food and another
has none, share food. And to the tax collector, don’t
take any more than you’re authorized to take. Quit being an extorter.
Quit being a cheater. Quit being a thief. And then
to the soldiers. He says, be content with your
wages, be content with your wages and quit shaking people down
and getting money by threatening them and therefore adding to
your income. Do your job. Do it joyfully without
extortion, without threats, without false accusations. And be content
with your wages. You see, when we call people
to repent. And we promise them, as the gospel
does, that God and Christ will forgive them of their sins. And
we warn people of judgment. We recognize that there is a
command on disciples of Jesus not to live as you were continuing
to sin and presuming on the grace of God, but to bear fruits and
keeping with repentance. And this has become a a sticky
subject in our American theological and church cultures. Because
on the one hand, when you tell people to obey, somebody will
cry, that’s legalism. We don’t have to obey God. Jesus
has obeyed for us. And so we don’t have to do anything
except trust in Jesus. And when we sin, repent of it
and he’ll forgive us. And all those are true things.
But remember the book of Ephesians, for you have been saved by grace
through faith. And you have been appointed to
do good works that God prepared for you to do before the foundation
of the world. You see, friends, when you become
a Christian, you belong to God. He is your Lord. He is your master.
He is your savior. And he has made you a new creation
in him by the work of the word and the Holy Spirit. And your
calling as a Christian, as a disciple, is to desire and strive after
living a faithful Christian life. That is not legalism. That is
being a faithful disciple. But on the other hand, we can
live a life of license and say, I’m so glad that Jesus died for
me. It doesn’t matter what I do. I can drink, smoke, cuss and
dance and whatever we’re not supposed to do in the South.
We can do that and just ask for forgiveness. That’s antinomianism,
that’s licentiousness. But what is right down the middle
of the scriptures? It’s for the Christian disciple
out of a sight and out of a sense of the anger and wrath of God
due to us for sin. We recognize that we are sinners
and in need of God’s grace and that that grace is offered in
the Bible. And so we repent, we turn and
we receive the forgiveness of almighty God. And as his new
disciples, we desire, we endeavor, we strive after, we work out
our salvation with fear and trembling. We fight the good fight. We run
the race with perseverance. We do not forsake the assembling
together with the saints. We let the word of God dwell
in us richly. We sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
And every day we get up and live a life of faith, a life of repentance
and a life of obedience. And we hope that by God’s grace,
he blesses us with his spirit and we will win some, we will
lose some, we will sin, we will fall short, we will triumph.
In the end, God will receive us into his heaven because of
what Christ has done. but we will have lived a faithful
Christian life, striving after obedience. Friends, that’s what
God is calling us to. And John’s message is very strong. He says to a group of people,
don’t you rely on being an ancestor of Abraham. Don’t you rely on
having been a founding member of the church. Don’t you rely
on your parents’ religion. Don’t you rely on your good works
or that you’re a pretty nice guy 90% of the time or gal. Don’t you rely on anything you’ve
done? We sang Rock of Ages, Cleft for
me, let me hide myself, not in me and the things I’ve done,
but indeed. Let the water and the blood from
my ribbon side, which flowed be of sin, a double cure cleansed
me from its guilt and its power. Nothing in my hands I bring empty
to the empty of my hands or I come to the cross and cling to it.
Friends, we come to Christ empty, we come to Christ sinful, we
come to Christ and he pardons us and he forgives us and he
washes away our sins and he gives us new life. And that’s what’s
important to us. That’s what is the very heartbeat
of the Christian. And John is calling people to
do that. Don’t rely on the fact that you’ve been to church all
your life. Don’t rely on the fact that you’re A.R.P. Don’t
rely on the fact that you know the five points of Calvinism
or you’ve memorized the shorter catechism. Do you have faith
in Jesus Christ? Have you repented of your sin
and turned from it because it is evil in God’s sight and he
will come and judge us? Have you fled? Have you run?
Have you clung to the cross? of Calvary because otherwise
you’ll find yourself in that camp that John warns about. You’ll
be the chaff that flies in the air and is scattered with the
wind. You’ll be like the fruitless trees that are put into the fire
because they are useless. John exhorts, John pleads, John
preaches good news. And do you notice to the extent
at which he goes? And I don’t know of a preacher
that has the guts like John the baptizer to go to Herod and say,
you’re a cheater. You’re sleeping with another
man’s wife. In fact, you’ve stolen her from your brother. You’ve
caused divorce. I mean, this is, this is pretty,
you know, this is like Dallas on Friday nights years ago. This
is like dynasty. This is like daytime soap operas.
And John speaks into that message or into that mess with the message
of hope. And it cost him his neck. it
cost in his life. Dear friends, dear friends, you
need to remember, we need to remember very well. The apostle
Paul says it so greatly, the message of the gospel, the message
of good news. It is a fragrance to those who
are being saved, but it is a stench in the nostrils of those who
are not being saved. And you see it as a stench. and
the nostrils of Herod. It’s a stench in the nostrils
of Herodias. It’s a stench in the nostrils
of the children of Abraham who say, I don’t need repentance.
I don’t need forgiveness. I don’t need faith. I’m a descendant
of Abraham. Chapter 12 in the Bible, my name
is there. And I don’t need this Jesus business. Dear friends, which is the gospel
for you? Is it A? pleasing aroma? Has it arisen
into your nostrils and you say, I am so glad that Jesus loves
me. Jesus loves even me. Or does the gospel come into
your ears? Does it come into your nostrils and your heart
is so hard and you just say, I’m good. I’m fine. Christianity is a crutch and
it’s for weak people. It’s the opiate of the masses.
It’s intellectually pitiful and poor. I can get to heaven another
way. Or do you recognize the wrath
of God that is to come? And that wrath is due to us for
sin. And the only way to escape it
is to flee to Jesus Christ on the cross. How do you hear the
gospel? How do you respond? What does
it mean in your life and in your heart? Let’s pray together. Our Lord, we want most of all
in this life, faith in Jesus Christ. We want the saving grace
so that we can receive and rest upon Jesus alone for our salvation
as he is so clearly laid out for us in the gospel. Oh Lord,
we want to have a true sense of our sin. We want to have a
apprehension, an understanding of the mercy of God in Christ.
And we want to have grief and hatred of sin. And we want to
turn from it unto God. and have a new purpose and desire
and endeavor and striving after new obedience. Lord, grant faith
to those this day who do not have it. Strengthen the faith
of those in this place that do have it and strengthen it by
your word, strengthen it by your spirit, strengthen it through
the word of God read and prayed and preached and sung. Lord,
encourage us, nurture us, and lift our hearts up toward heaven
in order that we might lay hold of Christ and treasure him above
all, for there is no greater treasure than he. And it’s in
the great name of Jesus we pray. Amen. We respond to God’s word
today by singing from our hymnals number 453, just as I am without
one plea.