Luke 3:7-1812-16-2012 # 1837Page 1
7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” 10 “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. 11 John answered, “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.” 12 Tax collectors also came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” 13 “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. 14 Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” 15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and preached the good news to them.
Hi Kids,
[Show a piece of nice fruit] What is this that we can eat? [Show a piece of the same fruit that is moldy and rotten] This is the same kind of fruit. Which of the two would you pick to eat? [point to the rotten fruit] Why didn’t you pick this? It is rotten and could make us sick. What should we do with this rotten fruit? We throw it into the garbage. If the plant keeps making this rotten fruit, what would we do with that plant? We would cut it down and get rid of it, maybe by putting it on the pile of things we will burn.
In the sermon you will hear about something called “fruit of repentance.” Say “repentance.” To repent means that there is a change that happens in our heart. We admit to God that we have sinned. We have done and said things that God says are this rotten fruit [display the rotten fruit]. We are sorry that we have disobeyed him, that we have stolen something, that we have hurt someone. We turn to God and ask him to forgive us because Jesus paid for all our sins. We also promise to God that we will try to stop doing the sins and instead, we will do what pleases him [hold up the good fruit]. We will “do fruits of repentance” like being kind to others. We will read and believe the Bible. We will thank God for the blessings he gives us and be satisfied with them. This shows that our heart has been changed and we have repented.
Dear Redeemed who are comforted and encouraged by the good news that God has forgiven us through Jesus,
God was silent for 400 years after the Holy Spirit had breathed into Malachi the final word he wrote in his book. God had nothing new to say until the time came for his Son to be born a human being so that he could keep all the gospel promises reported in Genesis through Malachi. And when Jesus came as the Messiah, the Christ, his arrival was a quiet event. There was no mass email or posting on Facebook. There was no birth announcement dropped in the mailbox of every home around the world. God reported that Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah and John, some shepherds and some Bible students from places to the east were the only ones aware of Jesus’ birth and its special significance. Oh yes, and some people who heard the shepherds’ report.
The Gospel reading from Luke 3 is a continuation from last week. It informs us in general about the ministry God gave to John, son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. He was sent with the task of preparing the hearts of people to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, the one whom God has promised through the Old Testament centuries to send to destroy Satan and remove the eternal punishment against our sins. The way John dressed, the food he ate, the place he used as a church in which he preached, and the message he told people attracted crowds of curiosity seekers. And, we are told in this morning’s reading, the crowds came to John “to be baptized.”
John was assigned the ministry of removal, leveling and straightening. His work was to lead people to believe that Jesus was their personal Savior. You see, every person’s heart from the instant of conception is 100% blocked from loving God and believing in Jesus. That blockage is called unbelief. It is caused by sin. It is a high and thick barrier. The very nature of sin is to be crooked, deceptive, a liar. This blockage and deceit has to be removed. It has to be replaced with a straight path that sees Jesus as our Savior and believes in him. John’s job was to use God’s law as a bulldozer to push sin out of the way by exposing sin and then with the gospel lead the person to repent and trust in Jesus as the one who redeemed us from eternal death. Today we see that JOHN STRAIGHTENED THE CROWD’S BENT THINKING ON BAPTISM.
The first order of business for John was this, (1) He confronted their poisonous lack of repentance. One would assume that since God told John to baptize people that the crowd coming to him for that purpose was a good thing. They were coming to take advantage of a blessing the God was offering, namely “the forgiveness of sins” (v. 3). The atmosphere in the crowd I perceive likely was…upbeat, maybe even kind of festive. Perhaps some brought a picnic lunch to munch on as they took in the sights along the Jordan River and observed John and his preaching. But John wasted no time making it clear that they didn’t understand baptism.
What would be your reaction if a minister said, “You brood of vipers!” Would you be angry, or confused, or just surprised? It definitely would get our attention for one reason or another. John chose the label “brood of vipers” because… he was pulling the plug and deflating the people’s unbelieving heart. The people needed to see that their heart lay flat and lifeless because of unbelief like the blow-up lawn decorations when the fan is disconnected. The thinking among the Jews about the Messiah was all wrong. And John’s sermon will make this clear.
You may be asking “How is John’s question “who warned you to flee” related to baptism?” God chooses to use baptism as a way to bring us his love that we do not deserve. When the water is put on a person and God’s name is announced as the one who is giving the blessing, the person receives the forgiveness of sins. But the crowd in front of John didn’t think they needed forgiveness. And so, before baptizing these adults, John brings them to realize the special blessing in baptism by convicting them of their sins and offer to them “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (v. 3).
I don’t know if John’s words “the coming wrath” are a reference to the total demolition of Jerusalem and the Temple 40 years later, or Jesus’ return on the Last Day. In the crowd’s thinking the Messiah had not yet come the first time, and so a Second coming isn’t on their radar. Perhaps both are included for the audience’s future reference. But the point is that John’s sermon began with a pointed warning alert about their trouble with God’s wrath. John made reference to their life actions and attitude for his evidence.
The crowd obviously thought they had an OK relationship with God with their lifestyle and background. John said this was not so. “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” John’s message told them that their life didn’t correspond with repentance. The difference between repentance and fruits of repentance is… that “repentance” is an attitude and “fruit of repentance” are the actions that come from that attitude. To repent means to have a change of mind, a change of heart. It means we turn away from what is sinful and turn to God for forgiveness. The impact of the imperative “produce fruit in keeping with repentance” is… that John hammers home that the crowd doesn’t have a repentant heart. The result is that all their actions, all the things they were doing in following their religion were rotten fruit. “The axe is already at the root of the trees” makes it clear that… the people were still saddled with all their sins. And it wasn’t their life choices that John referred to. He was talking about their heart, the root from which our sin comes, the source of our choices.
When we are unwilling to admit that our heart still has a part that wants to sin, that is attracted to sin, that doesn’t love, honor and obey God, then we have not repented. We do not desire to turn away from sin and turn to God for his mercy. And if our heart is not repentant, then our life actions are not fruits of repentance either. We are putting on a false front. “and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” The tool is sharp, aimed and ready to cut right now, ready to bring God’s judgment of eternal punishment by the fire of hell to everyone who rejects his grace!
A big lie that Satan had great success with among the physical descendants of Abraham was the idea that having Abraham’s blood in your veins somehow gave you eternal life. Since Abraham was the person God’s grace had chosen out of all the world’s civilizations to father the promised Savior, the children of Israel, the Jews, had developed the false sense of eternal security that Abraham’s physical heirs were automatically going to heaven. John minced not words. Plain old rocks have no fancy pedigree and can be made as blood line of Abraham if that is what God set as the saving criteria. To this day that false notion still exists in the minds of some Christians who think that all the Jews will one day become a world power and be saved because of their pedigree. Such thinking, however, doesn’t believe God’s information that “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel,” (Rm 9:6). Only those who believe the Gospel (Jew and Gentile) as Abraham did are the saved children of Abraham who have eternal life [Gal 3:6].
JOHN STRAIGHTENED THE CROWD’S BENT THINKING ON BAPTISM. crowd is brought to spiritual consciousness: Therefore, what are we to do? To those who listened, (2) He taught them good works that are fruits of repentance. When our heart has repented, this naturally will be visible by life that obeys Gods. When Martin Luther described baptism he explained how it applies to our daily life. He said that a visible result of baptism is … “that our Old Adam with his evil deeds and desires should be drowned by daily contrition and repentance, and die, and that day by day a new man should arise, as from the dead, to live in the presence of God in righteousness and purity now and forever.”
Note who asked questions about changing their life. It was chiefly the common people. There was the general crowd of Jews to whom John said they should love their neighbor as themselves by sharing their extra clothing and giving food to those who have none. “Tax collectors” were Jews who had deserted their people and contracted with the Romans to tax fellow Jews. John told them to collect only the taxes that were required. The “soldiers” would have been the Roman police. To them John gave the instruction not to use their power to extort or intimidate people to get their way, and at the same time be content with their wages. As we hear John’s answers, we can see that they apply to you and me as well. We help those in need. We don’t take advantage of others, but are fair and honest with them. We don’t use our position as parent or supervisor to manipulate others so that we get our way. Such actions of following the ten commandments out of humble faith in Christ match a heart that is repentant.
Our verses present one more way that JOHN STRAIGHTENED THE CROWD’S BENT THINKING ON BAPTISM. He promised Jesus’ special Pentecost baptism and universal judgment. The crowd was wondering if maybe John was the Christ because he preached with such great power and confidence. He made it clear that he was not. “I baptize with water” was John’s way of saying that his baptism was valid and gave the blessing of forgiveness, new life and eternal salvation. It was like our baptism by which the Holy Spirit put’s God’s name on us and fulfills to us all his Gospel promises. But John’s baptism pointed people to Jesus and connected them with their Savior, the one more powerful and more important than John was. John prophesied about Pentecost when the Holy Spirit would assemble the New Testament Church on the Gospel in a miraculous way. That event is another sermon in itself.
John’s job was not…to redeem people. No mere human being can do that. We can’t pay the price to release another person from the debt they owe God for their sins. John was an evangelism witness. He testified to people who Jesus is and why we need to believe in him as the Savior whom God has promised. Jesus has the tool in hand, “the winnowing fork,” that removed the straw stalks to leave the grain kernels for food. Jesus will separate the unbelievers from the believers and burn the unbelievers in the unquenchable fire of hell at the same time he takes to heaven the Christians.
John preached the gospel with many other encouragements.” God wants all to be saved and none to be lost to eternal death. John was to reach out to whoever came to hear his preaching so that this will of God is done. We are to do the same. Repenting of our sins and coming to Communion for forgiveness is a witness to your faith in God’s grace. Reading your bible and gathering with one another to encourage each other with God’s word brings you blessings also. John commanded us to live our baptism daily using it to produce fruits of repentance. Jesus has saved us. Faith holds on to him for eternal life. This is great news because it is all God’s gift. Amen.