Don't be a Viper

How many of you really really like snakes, how many of you ever wanted to be one? From a biblical perspective being called a snake must be one of the worst insults you can come up with, after all it was a snake who tempted eve and started all the sin in the world. Of course we know that is was Satan in disguise rather than a real snake but I am not sure that this makes it any better.

Did you know that one of the most well known men in the bible called some of the most respected religious leaders of his time a bunch of snakes.

Luke 3:1–20 NASB95

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight. ‘Every ravine will be filled, And every mountain and hill will be brought low; The crooked will become straight, And the rough roads smooth; And all flesh will see the salvation of God.’ ” So he began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? “Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. “Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds were questioning him, saying, “Then what shall we do?” And he would answer and say to them, “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.” And some tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than what you have been ordered to.” Some soldiers were questioning him, saying, “And what about us, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.” Now while the people were in a state of expectation and all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he was the Christ, John answered and said to them all, “As for me, I baptize you with water; but One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. “His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” So with many other exhortations he preached the gospel to the people. But when Herod the tetrarch was reprimanded by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the wicked things which Herod had done, Herod also added this to them all: he locked John up in prison.

Along comes John and he is preaching in the wilderness, he is the forerunner of Jesus and he has been sent to make things ready for Jesus and to make the paths of Jesus straight but what exactly does that mean. Do you suppose that God and Jesus were up in heaven and God looked over at his son and said I am not sure you will be able to handle this by yourself, I know you created the universe and everything in it and I know you are all powerful and that you are the incarnate God but maybe this task is too difficult for you so I better send you a human to get everything ready for you.......NO!

John was not sent down because Jesus needed help so he must have been sent down because someone else needed help, because we humans needed help. His job is to get everyone ready for Jesus to come and the methodology chosen to prepare people for Jesus to come was to call for repentance and baptism.

Why would John call for repentance and baptism in those who wanted to be ready to see Jesus, because sin separates us from God. When the first sin was committed the first reaction of Adam and Eve was to hide from God, to try to conceal their sin and the response of man has never changed. Sin makes us want to hide from God so that he does not see our sin, even thought he knows everything and nothing can be concealed from God we still try to avoid God when we know that we have sinned.

Imagine if you had a chance to see God in the flesh, what a glorious thing that would be, to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from him and hear his words, experience his presence. But sin makes us want to hide, not draw close so John wanted everyone to repent and be baptized so that they would be and feel cleansed and so feel free to seek God out rather than hide from God.

Another Gospel sets the scene, it was the Pharisees that came out and were called a brood of vipers and that was who he accused of not keeping fruits in keeping with repentance. These were some of the most outwardly religious people in the Jewish faith. They were the conservatives of their time. Yet John, and later Jesus, accused them of being pretenders.

Of course this confused and frightened the people. Here are all the ultra conservative and ultra religious people, the ones they have all been told were the best of them all, the most religious of them all, the closest to God. If you wanted to be one of the most devoted people to God in the Jewish faith this is the group you would have wanted to join and now John is calling them vipers and condemning them. If they are that bad what are the rest of us.

So naturally the people asked John what shall we do. His answer was stunning, it was revolutionary, it was simple and direct and cut to the heart of the matter. Here was John, the man chosen to prepare the world for the arrival of Jesus, the man about whom Jesus would later say that no greater man has been born from woman than John, this man. In order to prepare us for the arrival of Jesus what did he say, how did he answer.

Luke 3:11–14 NASB95

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

In other words change your behavior. If you have been blessed and others have need help them. If you have authority use it correctly, do not abuse your power or use it to cheat or oppress others. Be honest and do the right thing.

Now I suspect that if those people had sat in a Sunday School class and been asked if it was okay to cheat or steel or be a bully or abuse power none of them would have honestly said yea I think those things are OK. But those things were done, those things are done today on a regular basis.

If those things were only done by the people who make no claim to be followers of Jesus it would still make the world a more dangerous place and it would still be quite inconvenient for everyone around them but it would kind of be what you expect.

If you hired someone to run the cash register at your business and on their previous employment history they had told you that they were a professional thief and their last three jobs had been to steal things then you shouldn’t be surprised when they pocket the money out of the cash register. That is what we would expect someone who is a self professed thief to do.

But what if they were the preacher at your church, or a deacon, or an upstanding member of the community. What if a politician who rails against crime and tells anyone who will listen that he wants tougher laws and more jail time, someone who says over and over that we need to be protected from thieves and criminals, what if that person is caught stealing. Somehow that is even worse.

So the Pharisees were supposed to be the ultra conservative, ultra religious people of their time and they were abusing their power and refusing to repent.

Would you like to be closer to Jesus. Would you like to feel comfortable with the idea of Jesus showing up in your home, or at your work? Would you like to have the feeling that you could walk into the presence of God anytime you had a question or anytime you had a problem and feel at home there.

God has not changed and people have not changed. Since we are the same and God is the same then it stands to reason that the things we need to do to feel comfortable in the presence of God have not changed. It has been the same since Adam and Even.

When there was no sin between God and the first couple they walked with God and talked with God and when God showed up they were glad he was there and they didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.

John told the people of his day the same thing, repent and be baptized, that is a good start. Of course you cannot repent once and be good for life. So how often should you repent, as often as you sin. This cycle of sin and repentance has been around as long as there have been people and repenting is a great way to deal with sin.

In fact repentance is God’s recommended way of dealing with sin. God wants us to repent and he calls us to repent but did you know that there is an even better way of dealing with the problem of sin that repenting. There is a way of handling this issue that is preferred a thousand times more than repentance. Do you know what it is, no it is not sacrifice. I am not even talking about the sacrifice of Jesus.

The best way of dealing with the problem of sin is not to do it. If you don't sin you don’t have to repent, If you don’t sin then your sin won’t separate you from God. Of course I know that all have sinned, the scripture tells us that all have sinned but it does not tell us that all must continue to sin, but even that is not all.

Imagine we are talking about eating healthy. If we acknowledge that everyone has eaten in some way that was not healthy before and we will probably all eat in a way that is not healthy again but here is the thing.

If you eat healthy 99 % of the time and 1% of the time you eat unhealthy and maybe just a little unhealthy it does not take much effort to correct the error. However, if you eat like me, as much chocolate as you can find and lots of fatty and red meat then the corrective measures are a lot more significant and they it takes a lot more to get back where you need to be. In some measure it works the same way with sin. You can repent of all your sin at once, turn your back on sin and start doing right, you can be forgiven of all your sin at once and immediately but the consequences of all your sin may be more difficult and time consuming to deal with just like you can start eating right immediately and turn your back on red meat and chocolate, perish the thought, but it will take a while for the consequences of your previous habits to be overcome.

So the best options is to not sin at all, the second best option is to limit your sins to as seldom and as insignificant as you possible can so that there are less dangerous effects for you to deal with once you do repent. Although sin is sin and all sin separates you from God most of us would agree that the sin of going 5 miles an hour over the speed limit (disobeying the law when it does not conflict with the law of God) will probably have less enduring consequences than say the sin of murder or the sin of adultery, those can be forgiven too but they may well have serious consequences.

How do you prepare for Jesus to come into your life, you repent, turn your back on your sin and eliminate the things that are separating you from God. Once you are saved you have continuous access to God, but the more you sin the less likely you are to seek God out and the more likely you are to avoid God and the things of God. Keeping short accounts, repenting, is the second best way to deal with that, of course the best way is what John recommended, once you have initially repented and been baptized, stop sinning. Stop doing things that separate you from God. Seems pretty logical to me, but is difficult to do, you have to work at it.