Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on March 3, 2024.

I invite you to take your Bibles today and turn to Luke chapter three. While we’re having service today, if you think about it, pray for the junior high, it’s middle school here, is it right? What do we call it? Middle school.

I grew up in junior high. I think there are 23 that are gone on the middle school retreat. So pray for them as they’re wrapping up into decision time and how God is working in their hearts that they will make commitments and changes there that need to last. We’re continuing our series in Luke. We’re in chapter three today. And as we’ve said before, if you can go back one screen there, I just like to talk a little more about that.

Thank you. The gospel is all about writing information about Jesus Christ and who he is and what he came to do and what he means to us. And it begs this question with all the information that the gospel writers give us, do you believe what is written here? That’s the question that is continually being asked. But it goes beyond that to will you now follow Jesus? The example is in Luke five, where they had cast their nets out into the boat, I mean, to the water, and they caught the enormous amount of fish because they believed Jesus when he said, cast your nets on the other side.

But it did not just stop there because then they came to shore and then they were asked, will you follow me? You have to go beyond just believing to following Christ. That’s the difference between what a demon has in knowledge in regard to faith and what a true believer does. Because scripture tells us that the demons have faith, the demons believe, but they do not choose to follow the Lord. So today we’re going to be talking a lot about faith and repentance. And do you believe has to do with our faith and will you follow has to do with repentance.

And when we profess the gospel to people, we tend to dwell a lot on faith. But in the passage today, John is calling people to repentance. And just so you can keep a little bit in mind here through the whole thing, things kind of changed after I finished my PowerPoint on Thursday, got a little different direction.

So if you’re real OCD about filling in those blanks on there, I’m going to try to give them to you, but everything may not fit exactly. Are we okay with that? But what we have to keep in mind is what the Reformers nailed down, that our salvation is in Christ alone. It’s not in anything. It’s not in any person. It’s not in ourselves.

It is in Christ alone. Salvation is by grace alone. Grace means it’s a gift. We can’t purchase it. We can’t earn it. And it comes to us by faith alone.

Now I want you to keep this in mind because today we’re going to be talking about repentance that can sound like a work. And we’re going to be talking about how repentance produces fruit so that we have this idea of works that are supposed to be in our life. But what we have to keep in mind is that the fruit and the works come after repentance and faith and forgiveness.

We must not reverse it and say, well, if I have enough fruit and works in my life, then I will have forgiveness. So as we’re going through the message today, just keep this in mind. What we’re saying is that salvation is not by works, but we’re going to talk about works today.

And we’re going to talk a lot about how faith and repentance are actually both sides of the same coin and how and what is expressed in scripture, they go hand in hand together. So with that being said, let’s go to the passage now. In Luke chapter 3, we’ll read verses 1 through 20.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, God’s word came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the vicinity of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:

A voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight!
5 Every valley will be filled,
and every mountain and hill will be made low;
the crooked will become straight,
the rough ways smooth,
6 and everyone will see the salvation of God.

7 He then said to the crowds who came out to be baptized by him, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don’t start saying to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

10 “What then should we do?” the crowds were asking him.

11 He replied to them, “The one who has two shirts must share with someone who has none, and the one who has food must do the same.”

12 Tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?”

13 He told them, “Don’t collect any more than what you have been authorized.”

14 Some soldiers also questioned him, “What should we do?”

He said to them, “Don’t take money from anyone by force or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

15 Now the people were waiting expectantly, and all of them were questioning in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I am is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out.” 18 Then, along with many other exhortations, he proclaimed good news to the people. 19 But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the evil things he had done, 20 Herod added this to everything else—he locked up John in prison.

May we pray.

Heavenly Father, once again, we thank you for your word. We thank you that your spirit is here in us and amongst us to give us understanding of what it means. Father, we pray especially today that if people are confused about what true faith and repentance is that leads to salvation, that you will give them a clear understanding through your word, and that you will move in their hearts in such a way to draw them to you that they might have eternal life. We thank you that that life comes in your Son, Jesus Christ, that he came and lived among us, he died on the cross, he shed his blood, he was buried, and he rose from the dead, and that we might have a right relationship with you. And it’s in his name that we pray. Amen.

The historical context today. Luke has already given us the testimony of some credible witnesses in Simeon and Anna that nobody discredited. They knew they were godly people, and they all proclaimed who Jesus was. Luke has already shown us that we’ve seen so far the involvement of the Trinity, that the Trinity was involved in acknowledging that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. Luke has presented the miracles of the birth of John and the miracle of Jesus’ birth, again, as proof that Jesus is the Christ.

He’s shared the message of the angels, he’s shared the testimonies of the shepherds, he’s shared Mary’s testimony, all of this, he carefully went back and wrote it all down, after much research, because he’s wanting to give us all these evidences that Jesus is the Messiah. And now he’s going to go into great detail here in a few verses to authenticate the time period. He gives us the names of real people here that really existed that we can read about in historical documents, to know that this is really what happened. And I was very careful, Luke is saying, in what I wrote. He mentions Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas, and Caiaphas. All these people are in the historical record.

It all gives credence to the gospel that this is true. But not only does he give us a historical context, but then we have a new testimony. We have a prophetic witness here, because now we have a prophet who has received the Word of God and has come to God’s people to deliver the Word of God. Thus we read in verse 2, God’s Word came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. We know that he’s a prophet mainly because God’s Word came to him, but if we were to go back earlier, his whole area of the country knew that John was different, that something special was there about him. If we go back to Luke chapter 1, after they had named him John, we read that fear came on all those who lived around them, and all these things were being talked about throughout the hill country of Judea, and all who heard about him took it to heart, saying, what then will this child become?

For indeed the Lord’s hand was with him. From the time that John was named, even before that the miracle of his mother’s pregnancy at such an old age, people something was different, and for 30 years they kept wondering, what is going to become of this child? It tells us in verse 80 of chapter 1 that he grew up, he became strong in spirit, which describes what type of person he was. He was not timid or shy in any way, and he lived an unusual lifestyle, because once he grew up he was in the wilderness all the way until the day of his public appearance to Israel. He grew up away from walking with people, because he was walking with the Lord all of that time, and it’s this person that people recognize as a prophet that came to share that Jesus is the Christ. We go on now to verse 3.

It says that he went into all the vicinity of the Jordan, proclaiming this message, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Everywhere he went, it was the same message. He was telling people, you need to be baptized, and the reason for this is for the repentance for the forgiveness of your sins, and he was doing this as it was written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah. He was fulfilling this prophecy. Now what we need to take some time today to understand are these two words, faith and repentance, how they’re the same coin. It’s just two different sides, and we have to look at how it’s used in the Old Testament, how the Hebrew language speaks of it.

Remember the first question the gospel has, do you believe? That is faith. Why is faith important? Hebrews 11 6 says, now without faith, can you tell me the rest?

It is impossible to what? To please God. If we’re going to have a right relationship with someone, we have to please them. If we want to have a right relationship with God, we have to please God, and scripture tells us that if you don’t have faith, you can’t please God. Therefore, it’s so important that we understand what real faith is. Paul preached in Acts just like John did.

In Acts 26, he told the king there, he said, everywhere I went, I preached, repent and turn to God, and do works worthy of repentance. I’m just saying that because we’ve got, again, this idea of repentance and faith leads to forgiveness that leads to these fruit or works. Not only was John preaching it, but Paul was doing the same. Let’s think about what faith is. Faith is reliance upon and trust in God. Reliance upon and trust in God.

It’s not just an intellectual assent that God exists. We go back to the demons. They have faith. They have this intellectual assent that God is God, and even when they were meeting with Christ, when they were in people, they would pronounce, you are the Christ. They recognize that, but saving faith is different than just knowing in your head. It’s this reliance upon and trust in God.

It’s more than an intellectual acknowledgment. It’s a heart change whereby we now rely upon God’s provision of salvation through Jesus Christ instead of trusting ourselves for salvation. We’re not trusting that I can save myself. We’re not trusting that someone else can save me. We’re not trusting that there is some object or thing or action that can save us. We know in our head, but we have this full assurance, I’m trusting today that I’m saved because of what God has done for me.

That’s what faith is. Do you believe? Do you have faith? But with that, you have to go beyond it to will you follow? And this is where the word repentance comes in. Because the word repentance, the simplest definition of it means to turn.

So in faith, we’re turning to God, and repentance means that. It means to turn. From a cultural point of view, if you repent to someone that you’ve wronged, you say, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings when I said that today. That’s an apology. Repentance goes beyond that. It says, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings when I said that today, but I’m going to turn and be different.

I’m not going to say anything like that to you again. But when we come to the biblical definition, it’s also a change of action and it’s a change of attitude. So throughout Scripture, it’s a change from living in sin.

Instead, we turn toward God and we live in obedience to him. In the Old Testament, it was demonstrated by a number of different things. We get back to this, when you have repentance, it leads to these actions on the other side. In the Old Testament, when people repented of their sin and they knew they were forgiven, they would show a public display of mourning. They would weep in public. They would mourn.

They would tear their garments. They would tear their hair. They would pull their hair out or they would wear sackcloth or they would put dust on their head. They did something external because they wanted other people to know that they had repented. They also made restitution for wrongs that were committed. We think of the tax collector in the New Testament.

No, Zacchaeus, the wee little man. I’m having a senior moment today. You know, when he came to repentance, what did he do? He went back and he gave back what he’d stolen and more. There was this external fruit that resulted from repentance that was real and true. Another thing would be someone abasing themselves before the wronged party.

It could even be a king that if he had wronged one of his subjects that he would abase himself by kneeling down before that person and saying, I want to demonstrate to you that I am truly repentant and will not hurt you again in this way. And then after these initial demonstrations, there’s this turning. There’s a walking in a new direction. It’s a walking on a new path. Instead of going this way, repentance is now I’m going to turn and go this way. We’re turning from walking on our own path to walking on the path that God wants us to follow.

The basic Hebrew word which is used to express this meaning simply to turn, but in the Jewish mind, in the Hebrew language, it has connected with it this idea of going on a journey, going on a pilgrimage, going for a hike, going for a walk, but it’s this lifetime change where instead of walking by ourselves or somebody in this world, we repent and we start to walk on a new path and that new path is a walk with the Lord. It exemplifies a fundamental sense that we’re to have a right attitude and a right relationship with God because now he’s walking beside us all the way. It’s a journey. It’s a pilgrimage and we see that throughout the Old Testament. Enoch walked with God. There was repentance in his life, so he chose a new direction.

He turned and went that way. We see it in the life of Abraham. He was called out of Ur of the Chaldees and he was continually now, instead of going this way, he had to turn and repent and go on this journey with the Lord and he was continually living in tents, walking with the Lord and all the other patriarchs lived the same way. Life with God is a journey of walking with him and we see this as a metaphor all the way through the Old Testament. Let’s go to Psalm chapter 1 if you have your Bible because it’s not up on the screen, but here’s a prime example of this turning, this repentance, which actually means to walk in a new direction with someone. And here as we look at Psalm 1 in the first verse, we’re giving the negative side, trying to point out a positive side.

It’s like you can tell your kids, you need to brush your teeth. That’s positive. On the negative side, you’d say, don’t forget to brush your teeth. So sometimes we look at the negative to understand what the positive it is. So here we read, how happy or how blessed is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers. The psalm is telling us, don’t be like these people that are on this journey with sinners going this way.

Instead, repent and turn and go on a journey with the Lord instead. And it describes what that means. It says, instead of going this way, delight in the Lord’s instruction and meditate on it day and night. God speaks to us through his word. We learn what people are like. We grow close to them.

We understand them when we listen to their words and when we spend time with them. Mary and I are going on again, is it 39 years? It always is 39. It’ll be 40 this year. I know Mary very well because we’ve spent a lot of what together? A lot of time.

We don’t just get together on Sunday mornings and show up here for two hours for you to see us together, okay? We’re together all the time. That’s how we get to know God, when we walk with him, not just on Sunday morning, not even just during your quiet time in the morning, but it’s this continual spending time in his word. And it goes on to say, to further emphasize that meditating on it day and night, this journey with the Lord, this walking in the way, is what repentance really means. Verse 6 of Psalm 1 goes on to say, for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin. So here we have both ways.

The way of the wicked leads to ruin, but we’re supposed to turn and walk in the way of the Lord that leads to righteousness. The whole Israeli calendar was filled with these times of repentance and walking on a physical journey. At Passover, they all had to take a journey to Jerusalem. At the Feast of Booths, they all had to go to Jerusalem. At the Feast of Pentecost, they were all to go to Jerusalem. It was this continual reminder that throughout their paths, they’ve always followed the Lord.

They’ve been pilgrims. It pictures this relationship with God, going on a journey with Him that requires preparation and constant attention. When you go on a trip, you’re very intentional about where you’re going and how you’re going to get there and what you have to take along the way so that you’re ready to do it. So we have it in their calendar. We have it in the Psalms. We also have it in their prophets.

Take your Bibles and turn to Hosea chapter 6. Hosea was a prophet in the Old Testament. He probably had the worst marriage of anybody ever. His wife was continually going after other men. And you have to think, this was a society back when women didn’t really pursue that. You might have expected from a husband.

And in today’s world, you’ll see a wife doing that. But his wife continually, one after another, sought after other lovers and other men. She was walking which way? In her own path. She was walking in the path of the wicked. She was sitting in the seat of scorners.

But Hosea, what did he do? He continually said, come back. Have faith in me. Repent of your ways and turn and come back to be with me. He does that over and over and over. If you’ve ever been in a marriage where your spouse is unfaithful or you’ve had kids or parents in that situation, you know how hurtful and harmful that is.

How devastating it is to even try to get over an unfaithful spouse. But Hosea does that over and over and over because he is a picture to us of what the Lord does. So Hosea lives out this example and then he tells this to all of Israel. Hosea 6, verse 1. Come, let’s return to the Lord. Return.

You see the idea? The repentance. Come back. Walk in the Lord’s path. And then he goes down in verse 3 and to accompany that, not only are we to turn but let’s strive to know the Lord. And once again, I emphasize we get to know people by spending what with them.

By spending time listening to their words and talking to them. So we have this repentance in their calendar. We have it in the definition of their terms. We have it in the life of all of the patriarchs. We find it in the New Testament too. Luke records a parable about a young man and we call it the parable of the prodigal son.

That’s also a picture of this. The son was living at home. His father was wealthy. It was great and it was awesome. But he had to go out on his own. He had to do his own thing.

Instead of walking with the father, he decided, give me money. And the father was so kind that he gave him money and then he begins to walk in the way of sinners, sitting in the seat of the scornful and eventually what happens to all his money? You know the story. It’s all wasted. It’s all gone. He ends up in a pigsty feeding the pigs and he’s so hungry that he’s thinking about eating the pig slop, whatever it is that they’re eating.

It’s a picture of complete destitution, especially for a Jew who would not eat pork, much less touch pork or own a pig or anything. It’s utterly abasing to be there. But while he was there, he had this thought, you know, I have faith in my father that if I return that he will accept me and at least let me be what? His servant. He had this intellectual knowledge. Now he could have stayed there in the pigsty and said, yeah, my dad would take me back.

I’m feeding pigs today. Next day, yeah, my dad would take me back. I’m feeding pigs today. He could have just done that indefinitely. It had to go from a mental ascent to what? He had to place real faith in his dad.

There had to be this repentance and turning. Instead of continuing this way, he had to say, I believe my dad will do this. I have faith in him and now I’m going to turn and I’m going to go back where? I’m going to go back with the father, not just to see him once, but to live with him from that point on. The son believed that returning to his father was an answer to his miserable life that he had created for himself. The faith in his father resulted in repentance or returning to the father.

Faith, if it’s real, is joined with real repentance, returning and going the father’s way. Therefore, repentance is a change in direction. It’s a change in attitude. It’s a change in actions. But I want you to go back to the Isaiah 6 passage and see that even though we’re placing our faith and we’re repenting, it’s still God that is doing the mighty work in our lives. Repentance is only effective if we place our faith in God to change us and that’s what Hosea promised.

If we return to the Lord and we seek him, we read, and he will heal us and he will bind up our wounds. He will revive us after two days and on the third day he will raise us up. The work and the change in our life is all about what God does for us, but it requires true faith, which is united with real repentance, and then it leads to forgiveness. Let’s go on to the next phrase here in John’s message in verse 4. He tells us to prepare the way for the Lord. Make his paths straight.

Every valley will be filled and every mountain and hill will be made low. The crooked will become straight, the rough ways smooth, and everyone will see the salvation of God. Prepare the way for the Lord. Again, this is part of what repentance looks like. It’s making the way clear to follow on this path. We’re willing to do whatever it is that we need to do.

We’re willing to remove whatever obstacles are there that would inhibit God being there to walk with us. The picture here is of a small town who hears that the king is coming. They want to make everything as wonderful as possible, so they’re gonna wash the windows, they’re gonna sweep the sidewalks, they’re gonna get the donkey dung out of the streets.

I mean, they are preparing for the king to come, and they’re even gonna go beyond that. They’re looking at the roads outside of the town. I said, yeah, there’s some rocks there.

We should go move those because we don’t want the king’s chariot to have to jostle, and yeah, if we cut that mountain down just a little bit, it’d be a lot easier for his horses to come up and over it. Taking all of these things out of the way. The same thing happens at our house. I remember times, mom, someone’s at the door.

Mary was like, get the cat off the couch, put the jommies away, move the shoes, you know, and she always says, go clean the toilet, you know, because somebody’s coming in. You got to make it ready because you’re wanting them to come in and have a place to sit so that you can converse with them and enjoy the time. That’s what we’re supposed to do in our life. Remove these things, whether they’re sins or habits, objects, it can even be our children can be in the wrong places in our life that they inhibit God from walking with us in this life of faith and repentance. True repentance anticipates and welcomes the coming of the Lord, and true repentance removes every obstacle that would keep him from coming quickly and easily into our life. Verse 7, who was John speaking to?

He said, he said all this to the crowds, everyone who came out to him. He was talking to Sadducees, he was talking to Pharisees, he was talking to tax collectors and common people and soldiers. It’s interesting, we don’t hear that any of the Pharisees or Sadducees said that, what should we do? It was all these other people in his life. The people had faith in repentance, it produced forgiveness in their life, and now what we’re going to see is they’re going to ask him, what do we need to do? What are the fruits?

What is the work? What is the change that happens in our life when we start to work on, walk on this path? And remember, please keep in mind, we’re not saying that works or fruits save you, where do they come at the process? At the end of it, they don’t come at the beginning. Verse 8, John says, this is what you need to do, produce fruit that’s consistent with your repentance. Repentance led to forgiveness, and fruit is an example of repentance, therefore all of them have to go together.

When we have genuine repentance, it goes hand-in-hand with genuine faith, and it results in both forgiveness and fruit, which means that if there is no fruit in our life, in my life, in your life, then that means that there’s no genuine repentance or faith. There’s something that is wrong. Without repentance, there’s no true faith, and without fruit, there is no true repentance. Therefore, without fruit, there is no true saving faith. Again, we go back to the demons. They have the intellectual, they have the faith, but they’ve never repented to follow the Lord, and obviously the fruit in their life does not honor the Lord.

There’s also a warning here, because John knew what they were thinking. They had in their mind a substitute for repentance and faith. I call it a pedigree. I said, well, we have Abraham as our father. My grandmother was a great believer. She prayed all the time, and she took us to church, and my grandfather poured the foundation of this building and put the shingles on himself.

They brought me to church all the time. They were wonderful Christians, so that means that I’m a Christian. That’s false. We don’t inherit Christianity. It is not something that is passed on to us in our DNA, and that’s what John is telling them. Don’t take pride that Abraham is your father.

He might be your physical father, but what’s more important, we find out in other parts of Scripture, is that the spiritual children of Abraham are those who will inhabit the kingdom. What then should we do, verse 10 says? There was true repentance and faith, and now there’s a desire to produce fruit. John tells to the crowd, share what you have with other people.

If you only have two shirts and somebody wants one, you’re supposed to give them one of your shirts. If you’re a tax collector, don’t steal by overtaxing people, and if you’re a soldier, don’t use your position to extort people. Be content with your wages, and it’s these external works that make people say, wow, there’s there’s something different here. I don’t have a coat, and Susie just gave me her favorite coat that she wears to church every Sunday, and she kept her old one. Wow, what’s different about that woman? People went to pay their taxes at the booth, and instead of it being one denarii, the tax collector says, it’s only a half a denarii, and they’re like, wow, wait a minute, I’ve been paying a whole denarii every year.

I’ve been paying $100,000, and now you’re telling me it’s just $50,000 for my taxes? What’s going on here? And he has to admit, there’s fruit in my life, because I’ve been forgiven, and what I’ve been doing is wrong to you. I’m gonna make it right today. What a difference and a testimony it would make to that person that this thing called a relationship with the Lord really changes people, and even so with the soldiers, instead of extorting people and using them and leveraging their power, now they’re being kind and careful, and they’re not using their positions of authority to do anything wrong. What a difference that would make in people’s life.

That soldier’s so different than the rest. Why is that? It’s because there was faith and repentance that led to forgiveness, which now results in fruit and work in their life. We go on to read in verse 16. Everybody was wondering, well, maybe John is the Messiah. Look at what he’s doing.

Look at what he’s saying. But John answered them all, I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I am is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. He’s making this presentation that Jesus Christ is the one that I want to present to you, and it was one of these times when he was preaching these sermons about repentance and faith that, behold the Lamb of God, Jesus actually came down and he presented him to the people. John also gives us a warning in the text. If repentance and faith that are real produce fruit, what does that mean for people that don’t have any fruit in their life?

Well, John gives us a dire warning here, because he says that where repentance and fruit go together, if there is no fruit, what that’s connected with in the text is fire. Because people that don’t have real repentance and faith that leads to fruit in their life are going to spend eternity in hell. Let’s look at verse 9. The axe is already at the root of the trees, therefore every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit, in other words there’s no fruit at all, will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

And then it’s emphasized again in verse 17 in a different way. His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out. A fruit tree produces fruit, a wheat plant produces another type of fruit that we would call it the grain or we would call it the wheat. If there’s no fruit, there’s no life in something. The chaff doesn’t provide anything toward life. The tree itself doesn’t.

There has to be fruit there. And John is saying you need to examine yourself that if there isn’t fruit, maybe the reason is because there isn’t real repentance and there isn’t real faith. Hell has not been prepared for people. It’s prepared for Satan and his demons. It is not God’s intention that people should go there, but when you follow the path of the wicked, you’re actually walking in the path of Satan. And if you refuse Jesus Christ’s way, you’re saying I’m choosing to walk in Satan’s way, and if you walk in Satan’s way in this life, you will continue to walk in the way of Satan in the afterlife.

When he is in hell, you will continue to be with him there. The message is a dire message. It should make us examine ourselves. It should make us desire to share with others so that they would come to faith.

Lastly, here we have a proclamation. It tells us in verse 18, then along with many other exhortations, what he continually did, he proclaimed the good news or the gospel to the people. The good news isn’t good news unless we have bad news. I’m getting my hands. Unless we have bad news, we can’t have good news. That’s why we need to explain the gospel to people, and we’ve got it up here on a banner.

I just want to go over today. What is this good news? Well, to the Jews, they already believed that God had created the world, but in our modern society, there’s some people who never even heard Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So we have to go back, and we set this up that God gave us a good creation, meaning there was nothing evil in it. He provided everything that mankind would need, and everything was good there. But Adam and Eve made a choice, and that choice was destructive because it messed up everything that was good.

Immediately, they were arguing. Immediately, they were blaming one another. They felt shame. They were hiding from God because they knew that they had done wrong. They felt guilty. All of these negative emotions and words that didn’t exist immediately entered the world because they made a destructive choice.

They had been on this path with God. They didn’t even know about this path over here, but when they did, they chose to veer off, to go this way, Satan’s way instead. And the problem is that that left their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, all of the descendants of Adam and Eve were now left with this deadly condition. We don’t start out walking this path with God. Now we all are in this deadly path, and we’re all born walking this way. Some people try to give money to the church so that they can come this way.

It doesn’t work. Church attendance, even baptism, all these things that they do, or they say prayers. Other religions, they try to find ways for things that they can do, but there isn’t anything we can do or achieve. We have to depend on God alone. That’s why he gives us the gracious cure, the gift that Jesus Christ provides for us, because when he died on the cross, he took upon himself the punishment that we all deserve. And just like somebody that goes to jail and they serve their time and they’re out, they’re free, we don’t have to go to jail.

Jesus just says, I have gone to jail for you. You’re free to walk in the right path. And when we accept that, we now are a new creation. That means we’re changed. God is restoring everything back to the way it was for a good world. We don’t experience all that now.

I mean, when I get to heaven, I’m hoping to have more hair again, okay? It’ll be a good world without any problems. But it hasn’t happened here, because we’re still living in sin, and we’re still confronted with disease and sickness and death, but God ultimately will make us a new creation. But we have to respond to that, because a demon’s going to believe all of these things. But in order to be a believer, we have to repent. We have to walk in the new way.

Faith and repentance, if they’re true, go hand in hand. And that happens in our life when we say, God, I understand this. I have a problem because of my sin. I don’t want to walk in the world anymore. I want to walk with you. I believe and I trust that what Jesus Christ did for me is sufficient.

And now I can walk in your way, and I want to do that. That comes about when we express that to God in some form of prayer, either verbally or in our head. We just say, God, I accept your gift of salvation today. I have faith. The scripture goes on to say then that we are also willing to proclaim to everyone else that he now is my Lord and Savior. And if you say he’s your Lord and Savior and you keep walking this way, nobody’s going to believe you.

Because a person with true faith and true repentance, when they say Jesus is my Lord and Savior, people should say, we can see that in your life, because you’re on this path here today. We’re left with some questions to ask ourselves. One question might be, is your heart prepared for the second coming of Jesus? Are you truly a believer? Because when he returns, that will be the end of this age. Are you producing Christian fruit in your life?

If you’re not producing fruit, you need to examine yourself. Has there been a time of real repentance and faith? If it’s possible that maybe you just know it, but you’ve never trusted. Are you practicing your faith in the public manner? That means are you walking in this path with the Lord in such a way that people see it? Are you, like John, continuing to proclaim the good news or the gospel?

Have you practiced true repentance? Again, I go back to the words of Hosea. What does that look like? Return to the Lord and strive to know the Lord. We go to the New Testament, where we think about Jesus, talked about the vine and the branches. As long as the branch stayed in the vine, it was able to produce fruit, but it can’t produce fruit on its own.

The branch, normally you can’t just stick it in the ground or set it to the side and it produces fruit. It has to remain attached, and again we find this back in Hosea that we have to focus on our walk with the Lord, and then the works will come about. Don’t focus on the works. Don’t think, well, what do I need to do this week? You know, I need to go to church. I need to have my devotions.

I need to do this. I need to talk to that person. If you focus more on spending time with God and dwelling with Him, those things are just going to happen naturally. If we focus on what we’re doing instead of on God, then we’re going to start to get prideful about it and say, well, yeah, you know, I can mark off my list. I did all these things this week, but if we focus, our list should be, did I spend time with the Lord? Did I focus on His Word day and night?

It’s the walk with the Lord that’s most important. Will you bow with me? Heavenly Father, we just ask that you would help us to examine our lives. Are we just believing in our head, or are we really turning to walk with you? Do we have the desire to hear your words and spend time with you? Father, we ask that you would challenge us to revisit this in our life, especially if there’s anyone among us today who has not come to saving faith, Father, and they want to know that they are walking on the right path with you.

I just pray that they would reach out to someone with a badge, Father, with their name to explain this more fully, that they might come to faith in you today. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

I invite you to take your Bibles today and turn to Luke chapter three. While we’re having service today, if you think about it, pray for the junior high, it’s middle school here, is it right? What do we call it? Middle school.

I grew up in junior high. I think there are 23 that are gone on the middle school retreat. So pray for them as they’re wrapping up into decision time and how God is working in their hearts that they will make commitments and changes there that need to last. We’re continuing our series in Luke. We’re in chapter three today. And as we’ve said before, if you can go back one screen there, I just like to talk a little more about that.

Thank you. The gospel is all about writing information about Jesus Christ and who he is and what he came to do and what he means to us. And it begs this question with all the information that the gospel writers give us, do you believe what is written here? That’s the question that is continually being asked. But it goes beyond that to will you now follow Jesus? The example is in Luke five, where they had cast their nets out into the boat, I mean, to the water, and they caught the enormous amount of fish because they believed Jesus when he said, cast your nets on the other side.

But it did not just stop there because then they came to shore and then they were asked, will you follow me? You have to go beyond just believing to following Christ. That’s the difference between what a demon has in knowledge in regard to faith and what a true believer does. Because scripture tells us that the demons have faith, the demons believe, but they do not choose to follow the Lord. So today we’re going to be talking a lot about faith and repentance. And do you believe has to do with our faith and will you follow has to do with repentance.

And when we profess the gospel to people, we tend to dwell a lot on faith. But in the passage today, John is calling people to repentance. And just so you can keep a little bit in mind here through the whole thing, things kind of changed after I finished my PowerPoint on Thursday, got a little different direction.

So if you’re real OCD about filling in those blanks on there, I’m going to try to give them to you, but everything may not fit exactly. Are we okay with that? But what we have to keep in mind is what the Reformers nailed down, that our salvation is in Christ alone. It’s not in anything. It’s not in any person. It’s not in ourselves.

It is in Christ alone. Salvation is by grace alone. Grace means it’s a gift. We can’t purchase it. We can’t earn it. And it comes to us by faith alone.

Now I want you to keep this in mind because today we’re going to be talking about repentance that can sound like a work. And we’re going to be talking about how repentance produces fruit so that we have this idea of works that are supposed to be in our life. But what we have to keep in mind is that the fruit and the works come after repentance and faith and forgiveness.

We must not reverse it and say, well, if I have enough fruit and works in my life, then I will have forgiveness. So as we’re going through the message today, just keep this in mind. What we’re saying is that salvation is not by works, but we’re going to talk about works today.

And we’re going to talk a lot about how faith and repentance are actually both sides of the same coin and how and what is expressed in scripture, they go hand in hand together. So with that being said, let’s go to the passage now. In Luke chapter 3, we’ll read verses 1 through 20. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iteria and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene. During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, it was during this time that God’s word came to John, the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the vicinity of the Jordan, proclaiming baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

As it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley will be filled and every mountain and hill will be made low. The crooked will become straight, the rough ways smooth, and everyone will see the salvation of God.

He then said to the crowds who came out to be baptized by him, brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don’t start saying to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones. The axe is already at the root of the trees, therefore every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. What then should we do? The crowds were asking him. He replied to them, the one who has two shirts must share with someone who has none and the one who has food must do the same.

Tax collectors also came to be baptized and they asked him, teacher, what should we do? He told them, don’t collect any more than what you have been authorized. And some soldiers also questioned him, what should we do?

He said to them, don’t take money from anyone by force or false accusation and be satisfied with your wages. Now the people were waiting expectantly and all of them were questioning in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah. John answered them all, I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I am is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out.

Then along with many other exhortations, he proclaimed good news to the people. But when John rebuked Herod the Tetrarch because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the evil things he had done, Herod added this to everything else. He locked up John in prison.

May we pray. Heavenly Father, once again, we thank you for your word. We thank you that your spirit is here in us and amongst us to give us understanding of what it means.

Father, we pray especially today that if people are confused about what true faith and repentance is that leads to salvation, that you will give them a clear understanding through your word, and that you will move in their hearts in such a way to draw them to you that they might have eternal life. We thank you that that life comes in your Son, Jesus Christ, that he came and lived among us, he died on the cross, he shed his blood, he was buried, and he rose from the dead, and that we might have a right relationship with you. And it’s in his name that we pray.

Amen. The historical context today. Luke has already given us the testimony of some credible witnesses in Simeon and Anna that nobody discredited. They knew they were godly people, and they all proclaimed who Jesus was. Luke has already shown us that we’ve seen so far the involvement of the Trinity, that the Trinity was involved in acknowledging that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. Luke has presented the miracles of the birth of John and the miracle of Jesus’ birth, again, as proof that Jesus is the Christ.

He’s shared the message of the angels, he’s shared the testimonies of the shepherds, he’s shared Mary’s testimony, all of this, he carefully went back and wrote it all down, after much research, because he’s wanting to give us all these evidences that Jesus is the Messiah. And now he’s going to go into great detail here in a few verses to authenticate the time period. He gives us the names of real people here that really existed that we can read about in historical documents, to know that this is really what happened. And I was very careful, Luke is saying, in what I wrote. He mentions Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas, and Caiaphas. All these people are in the historical record.

It all gives credence to the gospel that this is true. But not only does he give us a historical context, but then we have a new testimony. We have a prophetic witness here, because now we have a prophet who has received the Word of God and has come to God’s people to deliver the Word of God. Thus we read in verse 2, God’s Word came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. We know that he’s a prophet mainly because God’s Word came to him, but if we were to go back earlier, his whole area of the country knew that John was different, that something special was there about him. If we go back to Luke chapter 1, after they had named him John, we read that fear came on all those who lived around them, and all these things were being talked about throughout the hill country of Judea, and all who heard about him took it to heart, saying, what then will this child become?

For indeed the Lord’s hand was with him. From the time that John was named, even before that the miracle of his mother’s pregnancy at such an old age, people something was different, and for 30 years they kept wondering, what is going to become of this child? It tells us in verse 80 of chapter 1 that he grew up, he became strong in spirit, which describes what type of person he was. He was not timid or shy in any way, and he lived an unusual lifestyle, because once he grew up he was in the wilderness all the way until the day of his public appearance to Israel. He grew up away from walking with people, because he was walking with the Lord all of that time, and it’s this person that people recognize as a prophet that came to share that Jesus is the Christ. We go on now to verse 3.

It says that he went into all the vicinity of the Jordan, proclaiming this message, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Everywhere he went, it was the same message. He was telling people, you need to be baptized, and the reason for this is for the repentance for the forgiveness of your sins, and he was doing this as it was written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah. He was fulfilling this prophecy. Now what we need to take some time today to understand are these two words, faith and repentance, how they’re the same coin. It’s just two different sides, and we have to look at how it’s used in the Old Testament, how the Hebrew language speaks of it.

Remember the first question the gospel has, do you believe? That is faith. Why is faith important? Hebrews 11 6 says, now without faith, can you tell me the rest?

It is impossible to what? To please God. If we’re going to have a right relationship with someone, we have to please them. If we want to have a right relationship with God, we have to please God, and scripture tells us that if you don’t have faith, you can’t please God. Therefore, it’s so important that we understand what real faith is. Paul preached in Acts just like John did.

In Acts 26, he told the king there, he said, everywhere I went, I preached, repent and turn to God, and do works worthy of repentance. I’m just saying that because we’ve got, again, this idea of repentance and faith leads to forgiveness that leads to these fruit or works. Not only was John preaching it, but Paul was doing the same. Let’s think about what faith is. Faith is reliance upon and trust in God. Reliance upon and trust in God.

It’s not just an intellectual assent that God exists. We go back to the demons. They have faith. They have this intellectual assent that God is God, and even when they were meeting with Christ, when they were in people, they would pronounce, you are the Christ. They recognize that, but saving faith is different than just knowing in your head. It’s this reliance upon and trust in God.

It’s more than an intellectual acknowledgment. It’s a heart change whereby we now rely upon God’s provision of salvation through Jesus Christ instead of trusting ourselves for salvation. We’re not trusting that I can save myself. We’re not trusting that someone else can save me. We’re not trusting that there is some object or thing or action that can save us. We know in our head, but we have this full assurance, I’m trusting today that I’m saved because of what God has done for me.

That’s what faith is. Do you believe? Do you have faith? But with that, you have to go beyond it to will you follow? And this is where the word repentance comes in. Because the word repentance, the simplest definition of it means to turn.

So in faith, we’re turning to God, and repentance means that. It means to turn. From a cultural point of view, if you repent to someone that you’ve wronged, you say, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings when I said that today. That’s an apology. Repentance goes beyond that. It says, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings when I said that today, but I’m going to turn and be different.

I’m not going to say anything like that to you again. But when we come to the biblical definition, it’s also a change of action and it’s a change of attitude. So throughout Scripture, it’s a change from living in sin.

Instead, we turn toward God and we live in obedience to him. In the Old Testament, it was demonstrated by a number of different things. We get back to this, when you have repentance, it leads to these actions on the other side. In the Old Testament, when people repented of their sin and they knew they were forgiven, they would show a public display of mourning. They would weep in public. They would mourn.

They would tear their garments. They would tear their hair. They would pull their hair out or they would wear sackcloth or they would put dust on their head. They did something external because they wanted other people to know that they had repented. They also made restitution for wrongs that were committed. We think of the tax collector in the New Testament.

No, Zacchaeus, the wee little man. I’m having a senior moment today. You know, when he came to repentance, what did he do? He went back and he gave back what he’d stolen and more. There was this external fruit that resulted from repentance that was real and true. Another thing would be someone abasing themselves before the wronged party.

It could even be a king that if he had wronged one of his subjects that he would abase himself by kneeling down before that person and saying, I want to demonstrate to you that I am truly repentant and will not hurt you again in this way. And then after these initial demonstrations, there’s this turning. There’s a walking in a new direction. It’s a walking on a new path. Instead of going this way, repentance is now I’m going to turn and go this way. We’re turning from walking on our own path to walking on the path that God wants us to follow.

The basic Hebrew word which is used to express this meaning simply to turn, but in the Jewish mind, in the Hebrew language, it has connected with it this idea of going on a journey, going on a pilgrimage, going for a hike, going for a walk, but it’s this lifetime change where instead of walking by ourselves or somebody in this world, we repent and we start to walk on a new path and that new path is a walk with the Lord. It exemplifies a fundamental sense that we’re to have a right attitude and a right relationship with God because now he’s walking beside us all the way. It’s a journey. It’s a pilgrimage and we see that throughout the Old Testament. Enoch walked with God. There was repentance in his life, so he chose a new direction.

He turned and went that way. We see it in the life of Abraham. He was called out of Ur of the Chaldees and he was continually now, instead of going this way, he had to turn and repent and go on this journey with the Lord and he was continually living in tents, walking with the Lord and all the other patriarchs lived the same way. Life with God is a journey of walking with him and we see this as a metaphor all the way through the Old Testament. Let’s go to Psalm chapter 1 if you have your Bible because it’s not up on the screen, but here’s a prime example of this turning, this repentance, which actually means to walk in a new direction with someone. And here as we look at Psalm 1 in the first verse, we’re giving the negative side, trying to point out a positive side.

It’s like you can tell your kids, you need to brush your teeth. That’s positive. On the negative side, you’d say, don’t forget to brush your teeth. So sometimes we look at the negative to understand what the positive it is. So here we read, how happy or how blessed is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers. The psalm is telling us, don’t be like these people that are on this journey with sinners going this way.

Instead, repent and turn and go on a journey with the Lord instead. And it describes what that means. It says, instead of going this way, delight in the Lord’s instruction and meditate on it day and night. God speaks to us through his word. We learn what people are like. We grow close to them.

We understand them when we listen to their words and when we spend time with them. Mary and I are going on again, is it 39 years? It always is 39. It’ll be 40 this year. I know Mary very well because we’ve spent a lot of what together? A lot of time.

We don’t just get together on Sunday mornings and show up here for two hours for you to see us together, okay? We’re together all the time. That’s how we get to know God, when we walk with him, not just on Sunday morning, not even just during your quiet time in the morning, but it’s this continual spending time in his word. And it goes on to say, to further emphasize that meditating on it day and night, this journey with the Lord, this walking in the way, is what repentance really means. Verse 6 of Psalm 1 goes on to say, for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin. So here we have both ways.

The way of the wicked leads to ruin, but we’re supposed to turn and walk in the way of the Lord that leads to righteousness. The whole Israeli calendar was filled with these times of repentance and walking on a physical journey. At Passover, they all had to take a journey to Jerusalem. At the Feast of Booths, they all had to go to Jerusalem. At the Feast of Pentecost, they were all to go to Jerusalem. It was this continual reminder that throughout their paths, they’ve always followed the Lord.

They’ve been pilgrims. It pictures this relationship with God, going on a journey with Him that requires preparation and constant attention. When you go on a trip, you’re very intentional about where you’re going and how you’re going to get there and what you have to take along the way so that you’re ready to do it. So we have it in their calendar. We have it in the Psalms. We also have it in their prophets.

Take your Bibles and turn to Hosea chapter 6. Hosea was a prophet in the Old Testament. He probably had the worst marriage of anybody ever. His wife was continually going after other men. And you have to think, this was a society back when women didn’t really pursue that. You might have expected from a husband.

And in today’s world, you’ll see a wife doing that. But his wife continually, one after another, sought after other lovers and other men. She was walking which way? In her own path. She was walking in the path of the wicked. She was sitting in the seat of scorners.

But Hosea, what did he do? He continually said, come back. Have faith in me. Repent of your ways and turn and come back to be with me. He does that over and over and over. If you’ve ever been in a marriage where your spouse is unfaithful or you’ve had kids or parents in that situation, you know how hurtful and harmful that is.

How devastating it is to even try to get over an unfaithful spouse. But Hosea does that over and over and over because he is a picture to us of what the Lord does. So Hosea lives out this example and then he tells this to all of Israel. Hosea 6, verse 1. Come, let’s return to the Lord. Return.

You see the idea? The repentance. Come back. Walk in the Lord’s path. And then he goes down in verse 3 and to accompany that, not only are we to turn but let’s strive to know the Lord. And once again, I emphasize we get to know people by spending what with them.

By spending time listening to their words and talking to them. So we have this repentance in their calendar. We have it in the definition of their terms. We have it in the life of all of the patriarchs. We find it in the New Testament too. Luke records a parable about a young man and we call it the parable of the prodigal son.

That’s also a picture of this. The son was living at home. His father was wealthy. It was great and it was awesome. But he had to go out on his own. He had to do his own thing.

Instead of walking with the father, he decided, give me money. And the father was so kind that he gave him money and then he begins to walk in the way of sinners, sitting in the seat of the scornful and eventually what happens to all his money? You know the story. It’s all wasted. It’s all gone. He ends up in a pigsty feeding the pigs and he’s so hungry that he’s thinking about eating the pig slop, whatever it is that they’re eating.

It’s a picture of complete destitution, especially for a Jew who would not eat pork, much less touch pork or own a pig or anything. It’s utterly abasing to be there. But while he was there, he had this thought, you know, I have faith in my father that if I return that he will accept me and at least let me be what? His servant. He had this intellectual knowledge. Now he could have stayed there in the pigsty and said, yeah, my dad would take me back.

I’m feeding pigs today. Next day, yeah, my dad would take me back. I’m feeding pigs today. He could have just done that indefinitely. It had to go from a mental ascent to what? He had to place real faith in his dad.

There had to be this repentance and turning. Instead of continuing this way, he had to say, I believe my dad will do this. I have faith in him and now I’m going to turn and I’m going to go back where? I’m going to go back with the father, not just to see him once, but to live with him from that point on. The son believed that returning to his father was an answer to his miserable life that he had created for himself. The faith in his father resulted in repentance or returning to the father.

Faith, if it’s real, is joined with real repentance, returning and going the father’s way. Therefore, repentance is a change in direction. It’s a change in attitude. It’s a change in actions. But I want you to go back to the Isaiah 6 passage and see that even though we’re placing our faith and we’re repenting, it’s still God that is doing the mighty work in our lives. Repentance is only effective if we place our faith in God to change us and that’s what Hosea promised.

If we return to the Lord and we seek him, we read, and he will heal us and he will bind up our wounds. He will revive us after two days and on the third day he will raise us up. The work and the change in our life is all about what God does for us, but it requires true faith, which is united with real repentance, and then it leads to forgiveness. Let’s go on to the next phrase here in John’s message in verse 4. He tells us to prepare the way for the Lord. Make his paths straight.

Every valley will be filled and every mountain and hill will be made low. The crooked will become straight, the rough ways smooth, and everyone will see the salvation of God. Prepare the way for the Lord. Again, this is part of what repentance looks like. It’s making the way clear to follow on this path. We’re willing to do whatever it is that we need to do.

We’re willing to remove whatever obstacles are there that would inhibit God being there to walk with us. The picture here is of a small town who hears that the king is coming. They want to make everything as wonderful as possible, so they’re gonna wash the windows, they’re gonna sweep the sidewalks, they’re gonna get the donkey dung out of the streets.

I mean, they are preparing for the king to come, and they’re even gonna go beyond that. They’re looking at the roads outside of the town. I said, yeah, there’s some rocks there.

We should go move those because we don’t want the king’s chariot to have to jostle, and yeah, if we cut that mountain down just a little bit, it’d be a lot easier for his horses to come up and over it. Taking all of these things out of the way. The same thing happens at our house. I remember times, mom, someone’s at the door.

Mary was like, get the cat off the couch, put the jommies away, move the shoes, you know, and she always says, go clean the toilet, you know, because somebody’s coming in. You got to make it ready because you’re wanting them to come in and have a place to sit so that you can converse with them and enjoy the time. That’s what we’re supposed to do in our life. Remove these things, whether they’re sins or habits, objects, it can even be our children can be in the wrong places in our life that they inhibit God from walking with us in this life of faith and repentance. True repentance anticipates and welcomes the coming of the Lord, and true repentance removes every obstacle that would keep him from coming quickly and easily into our life. Verse 7, who was John speaking to?

He said, he said all this to the crowds, everyone who came out to him. He was talking to Sadducees, he was talking to Pharisees, he was talking to tax collectors and common people and soldiers. It’s interesting, we don’t hear that any of the Pharisees or Sadducees said that, what should we do? It was all these other people in his life. The people had faith in repentance, it produced forgiveness in their life, and now what we’re going to see is they’re going to ask him, what do we need to do? What are the fruits?

What is the work? What is the change that happens in our life when we start to work on, walk on this path? And remember, please keep in mind, we’re not saying that works or fruits save you, where do they come at the process? At the end of it, they don’t come at the beginning. Verse 8, John says, this is what you need to do, produce fruit that’s consistent with your repentance. Repentance led to forgiveness, and fruit is an example of repentance, therefore all of them have to go together.

When we have genuine repentance, it goes hand-in-hand with genuine faith, and it results in both forgiveness and fruit, which means that if there is no fruit in our life, in my life, in your life, then that means that there’s no genuine repentance or faith. There’s something that is wrong. Without repentance, there’s no true faith, and without fruit, there is no true repentance. Therefore, without fruit, there is no true saving faith. Again, we go back to the demons. They have the intellectual, they have the faith, but they’ve never repented to follow the Lord, and obviously the fruit in their life does not honor the Lord.

There’s also a warning here, because John knew what they were thinking. They had in their mind a substitute for repentance and faith. I call it a pedigree. I said, well, we have Abraham as our father. My grandmother was a great believer. She prayed all the time, and she took us to church, and my grandfather poured the foundation of this building and put the shingles on himself.

They brought me to church all the time. They were wonderful Christians, so that means that I’m a Christian. That’s false. We don’t inherit Christianity. It is not something that is passed on to us in our DNA, and that’s what John is telling them. Don’t take pride that Abraham is your father.

He might be your physical father, but what’s more important, we find out in other parts of Scripture, is that the spiritual children of Abraham are those who will inhabit the kingdom. What then should we do, verse 10 says? There was true repentance and faith, and now there’s a desire to produce fruit. John tells to the crowd, share what you have with other people.

If you only have two shirts and somebody wants one, you’re supposed to give them one of your shirts. If you’re a tax collector, don’t steal by overtaxing people, and if you’re a soldier, don’t use your position to extort people. Be content with your wages, and it’s these external works that make people say, wow, there’s there’s something different here. I don’t have a coat, and Susie just gave me her favorite coat that she wears to church every Sunday, and she kept her old one. Wow, what’s different about that woman? People went to pay their taxes at the booth, and instead of it being one denarii, the tax collector says, it’s only a half a denarii, and they’re like, wow, wait a minute, I’ve been paying a whole denarii every year.

I’ve been paying $100,000, and now you’re telling me it’s just $50,000 for my taxes? What’s going on here? And he has to admit, there’s fruit in my life, because I’ve been forgiven, and what I’ve been doing is wrong to you. I’m gonna make it right today. What a difference and a testimony it would make to that person that this thing called a relationship with the Lord really changes people, and even so with the soldiers, instead of extorting people and using them and leveraging their power, now they’re being kind and careful, and they’re not using their positions of authority to do anything wrong. What a difference that would make in people’s life.

That soldier’s so different than the rest. Why is that? It’s because there was faith and repentance that led to forgiveness, which now results in fruit and work in their life. We go on to read in verse 16. Everybody was wondering, well, maybe John is the Messiah. Look at what he’s doing.

Look at what he’s saying. But John answered them all, I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I am is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. He’s making this presentation that Jesus Christ is the one that I want to present to you, and it was one of these times when he was preaching these sermons about repentance and faith that, behold the Lamb of God, Jesus actually came down and he presented him to the people. John also gives us a warning in the text. If repentance and faith that are real produce fruit, what does that mean for people that don’t have any fruit in their life?

Well, John gives us a dire warning here, because he says that where repentance and fruit go together, if there is no fruit, what that’s connected with in the text is fire. Because people that don’t have real repentance and faith that leads to fruit in their life are going to spend eternity in hell. Let’s look at verse 9. The axe is already at the root of the trees, therefore every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit, in other words there’s no fruit at all, will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

And then it’s emphasized again in verse 17 in a different way. His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out. A fruit tree produces fruit, a wheat plant produces another type of fruit that we would call it the grain or we would call it the wheat. If there’s no fruit, there’s no life in something. The chaff doesn’t provide anything toward life. The tree itself doesn’t.

There has to be fruit there. And John is saying you need to examine yourself that if there isn’t fruit, maybe the reason is because there isn’t real repentance and there isn’t real faith. Hell has not been prepared for people. It’s prepared for Satan and his demons. It is not God’s intention that people should go there, but when you follow the path of the wicked, you’re actually walking in the path of Satan. And if you refuse Jesus Christ’s way, you’re saying I’m choosing to walk in Satan’s way, and if you walk in Satan’s way in this life, you will continue to walk in the way of Satan in the afterlife.

When he is in hell, you will continue to be with him there. The message is a dire message. It should make us examine ourselves. It should make us desire to share with others so that they would come to faith.

Lastly, here we have a proclamation. It tells us in verse 18, then along with many other exhortations, what he continually did, he proclaimed the good news or the gospel to the people. The good news isn’t good news unless we have bad news. I’m getting my hands. Unless we have bad news, we can’t have good news. That’s why we need to explain the gospel to people, and we’ve got it up here on a banner.

I just want to go over today. What is this good news? Well, to the Jews, they already believed that God had created the world, but in our modern society, there’s some people who never even heard Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So we have to go back, and we set this up that God gave us a good creation, meaning there was nothing evil in it. He provided everything that mankind would need, and everything was good there. But Adam and Eve made a choice, and that choice was destructive because it messed up everything that was good.

Immediately, they were arguing. Immediately, they were blaming one another. They felt shame. They were hiding from God because they knew that they had done wrong. They felt guilty. All of these negative emotions and words that didn’t exist immediately entered the world because they made a destructive choice.

They had been on this path with God. They didn’t even know about this path over here, but when they did, they chose to veer off, to go this way, Satan’s way instead. And the problem is that that left their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, all of the descendants of Adam and Eve were now left with this deadly condition. We don’t start out walking this path with God. Now we all are in this deadly path, and we’re all born walking this way. Some people try to give money to the church so that they can come this way.

It doesn’t work. Church attendance, even baptism, all these things that they do, or they say prayers. Other religions, they try to find ways for things that they can do, but there isn’t anything we can do or achieve. We have to depend on God alone. That’s why he gives us the gracious cure, the gift that Jesus Christ provides for us, because when he died on the cross, he took upon himself the punishment that we all deserve. And just like somebody that goes to jail and they serve their time and they’re out, they’re free, we don’t have to go to jail.

Jesus just says, I have gone to jail for you. You’re free to walk in the right path. And when we accept that, we now are a new creation. That means we’re changed. God is restoring everything back to the way it was for a good world. We don’t experience all that now.

I mean, when I get to heaven, I’m hoping to have more hair again, okay? It’ll be a good world without any problems. But it hasn’t happened here, because we’re still living in sin, and we’re still confronted with disease and sickness and death, but God ultimately will make us a new creation. But we have to respond to that, because a demon’s going to believe all of these things. But in order to be a believer, we have to repent. We have to walk in the new way.

Faith and repentance, if they’re true, go hand in hand. And that happens in our life when we say, God, I understand this. I have a problem because of my sin. I don’t want to walk in the world anymore. I want to walk with you. I believe and I trust that what Jesus Christ did for me is sufficient.

And now I can walk in your way, and I want to do that. That comes about when we express that to God in some form of prayer, either verbally or in our head. We just say, God, I accept your gift of salvation today. I have faith. The scripture goes on to say then that we are also willing to proclaim to everyone else that he now is my Lord and Savior. And if you say he’s your Lord and Savior and you keep walking this way, nobody’s going to believe you.

Because a person with true faith and true repentance, when they say Jesus is my Lord and Savior, people should say, we can see that in your life, because you’re on this path here today. We’re left with some questions to ask ourselves. One question might be, is your heart prepared for the second coming of Jesus? Are you truly a believer? Because when he returns, that will be the end of this age. Are you producing Christian fruit in your life?

If you’re not producing fruit, you need to examine yourself. Has there been a time of real repentance and faith? If it’s possible that maybe you just know it, but you’ve never trusted. Are you practicing your faith in the public manner? That means are you walking in this path with the Lord in such a way that people see it? Are you, like John, continuing to proclaim the good news or the gospel?

Have you practiced true repentance? Again, I go back to the words of Hosea. What does that look like? Return to the Lord and strive to know the Lord. We go to the New Testament, where we think about Jesus, talked about the vine and the branches. As long as the branch stayed in the vine, it was able to produce fruit, but it can’t produce fruit on its own.

The branch, normally you can’t just stick it in the ground or set it to the side and it produces fruit. It has to remain attached, and again we find this back in Hosea that we have to focus on our walk with the Lord, and then the works will come about. Don’t focus on the works. Don’t think, well, what do I need to do this week? You know, I need to go to church. I need to have my devotions.

I need to do this. I need to talk to that person. If you focus more on spending time with God and dwelling with Him, those things are just going to happen naturally. If we focus on what we’re doing instead of on God, then we’re going to start to get prideful about it and say, well, yeah, you know, I can mark off my list. I did all these things this week, but if we focus, our list should be, did I spend time with the Lord? Did I focus on His Word day and night?

It’s the walk with the Lord that’s most important. Will you bow with me?

Heavenly Father, we just ask that you would help us to examine our lives. Are we just believing in our head, or are we really turning to walk with you? Do we have the desire to hear your words and spend time with you? Father, we ask that you would challenge us to revisit this in our life, especially if there’s anyone among us today who has not come to saving faith, Father, and they want to know that they are walking on the right path with you. I just pray that they would reach out to someone with a badge, Father, with their name to explain this more fully, that they might come to faith in you today. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.