Baptism of Repentance

John the Baptist has begun his work and Luke, as always the careful historian, gives us the context. He talks about who the emperor is in Rome, who is the governor in Jerusalem, and the tetrarchs in three other provinces. He describes the Jewish high priests. This is all to give context and to root John’s preaching in a historical time period. This is when John started to preach and to teach.

John the Baptist's job, his life work, is to prepare the way for the Lord. He's telling everybody, "Get ready. Get ready to see God's salvation because it's coming. The Lord himself is coming. Prepare the way because God is coming."

The Old Testament prophets, both the minor prophets and the major prophets in the Old Testament, speak of the day that is coming when God's going to meet with his people. They talk about it as the day of the Lord. It is a great and glorious day of celebration for the people who are God's chosen ones and who live righteous and holy lives the way God called them to do and instructed them to do. But for those who are rebelling against God, whose behavior isn't up to the standard of the holiness that God expects of his people, the day of the Lord is a great and dreadful day, terrifying. For God will come in majesty and justice and hold people accountable. His judgment is coming on the unrighteous.

And John the Baptist has that warning in his preaching. When he sees people streaming down the riverside to come to where he's preaching, he calls them a brood of vipers. "Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?"

It sounds awfully harsh, doesn't it? It's not the type of language we would use. Maybe it's a different culture, but he grabs people's attention. God's judgment is at hand. God's wrath is coming. And fleeing is the right thing to do.

Vipers though are venomous snakes like the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve at the very dawn of time. And when our first parents listened to the serpent, they plunged all of creation into brokenness and rebellion. Being called a viper is not a nice comparison.

Yet, to their credit, they are fleeing the coming wrath. God's people are streaming down to the Jordan where John is preaching and baptizing and they're coming to hear what he has to say, to receive the forgiveness that he offers in the name of the Lord God Almighty. They're eager to escape God's wrath at their sin, at their disobedience.

John is called the Baptist not because he's some forerunner of the Baptist denomination that we have a couple Baptist churches in town. That's not at all what he's related to. He's called the Baptist because long before the Baptist denominations existed, John was the one who baptized people in the Jordan River.

Here's a picture of one of the sites that they expected that he was active in baptizing people. I don't think all those stairs and other stuff was there when John was there. That probably came a little bit later.

But John's baptism is a symbol of repentance. As people wade into the river with John and as they get dunked under and raised up again, it's symbolic that their sin and their dirty deeds and dirty thoughts and foul language gets washed away. In God's grace, they are forgiven for their sins. It's a symbol of cleansing from wrongdoing, cleansing from disobedience. This is a baptism of repentance. And repentance is more than just asking somebody for forgiveness. Repentance literally means to turn around, to go the opposite direction. Repentance means a long-term change in behavior.

John's challenge to the people who are coming to him down by the Jordan River is for them to demonstrate new obedience to God by loving God as number one in their life and being kind and generous to their neighbors. We see that in John's examples. The examples that John gives warn people away from greed which is idolatry and toward loving their neighbors.

John uses horticultural imagery about bearing fruit to describe what he's talking about. "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance," he says.

Is that a helpful image? I mean, because one way to figure out what kind of tree you have in your yard, if you're not good at reading the bark and telling from the leaves, is to wait until it produces fruit. And if your yard becomes full of chestnuts, you can be pretty sure that that's not an apple tree.

It's the same thing with other people and ourselves - you can see some of the fruit that somebody's producing. And if it's consistent with their profession of faith, with their confession before God that they need God's help to change their behavior, changed behavior is the fruit of repentance. If behavior doesn't change significantly, the repentance hasn't gone particularly far, has it?

And then John tackles the sense of entitlement among God's covenant people. "Do not begin to say to yourselves," says John, "that we have Abraham as our father." You see, John's Jewish audience seemed rather convinced that being God's covenant children, being descendants of Abraham, being children of the promise, carries more weight before God than faithful obedience to God carries.

You might think that sounds odd, but I've heard that kind of thinking in a church before. I mean, I've heard people say that it's okay for a teen or for a 20-something to spend a season in wild living, suggesting that after a season of being far from God and doing whatever they seem to think is right in their own eyes, they usually come back and come back to the faith, and everything's good after they've sown their wild oats for a season. You heard that before?

John quickly pops that balloon. If God wants children for Abraham, well, he can transform the stones into children of Abraham. God's people have to shape up and act like God's covenant children. If they aren't living a faith-filled life, well, then they're not legitimate children of Abraham anymore.

Abraham lived by faith, and that was a sign of his righteousness. And anybody who is a child of Abraham has that same kind of faith, that same kind of righteousness.

John's next warning carries imagery of God's judgment - imagery that we find in the Old Testament book of Isaiah the prophet. "The axe is already at the foot of the trees. And every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."

Does that remind you of anything? Oh, please say yes. I had a whole sermon on this on November the 30th. We talked about how the trees of righteousness will stand firm, but that God is coming to chop down the trees.

This is what it sounds like in Isaiah chapter 10: "See, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will lop off the branches with great power. The lofty trees will be felled, the tall ones will be brought low. He will cut down the forest thicket with an axe. Lebanon will fall before the mighty one." You hear the similarity between Isaiah the prophet and John the prophet using the same imagery about God's judgment as if people were forests that get cut down if they're not fruitful.

I've seen this kind of thing happen when I lived in Niagara area. When an orchard was no longer producing good fruit, every tree got chopped down and yeah, there were big bonfires that happened then as those trees were burned, and new ones got planted in their place.

But amid this warning that Isaiah gives of God's judgment coming to his people, there's a wonderful promise that's in the next chapter in the first verse. And so we miss the continuation there, right?

"A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots, a branch will bear fruit." Even though in Isaiah's day that tree of Jesse had been cut down, the shoot was coming up and was going to bear new fruit. The shoot of Jesse identified as Jesus Christ the savior who came into the world.

And so John's message comes with a similar promise: God is coming to rescue his people. John speaks of the salvation of God that's about to come. So when people start wondering, "Well, maybe John's the Messiah. You think John's the Messiah? Maybe John. You think John's the Messiah? He's the Christ, isn't he?" John says no.

He points to someone who's still coming. "I baptize with water," he says. "But one who is more powerful than I will come. The straps of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." John's quite clear. He's not the Messiah. He's the voice in the wilderness preparing the way for the Lord, preparing the way for the Messiah.

It's a message that we mentioned during Advent during our countdown to Christmas celebration. We were reminded that Jesus is the Lord God Almighty who came down from heaven to live in his own creation. God himself became human like you and me and everybody else in order to be our rescuer. But Advent's also the reminder that Jesus is coming back. Jesus' second coming will also be the day of the Lord, great and terrible for vipers and for those who are rebellious against God. And the day of the Lord will be great and wonderful for those who produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

And so it's not enough that your parents brought you to be baptized. It's not enough that you were baptized a believer if there's no other evidence of repentance for sin in your life, in your behavior, no other evidence of faith in God, no other evidence of your efforts to live as a dearly loved child of God's.

I had a conversation with a teenager in my first congregation. He was a really sharp guy and he understood that there's fruit that's expected from repentance. He knew that faith and good, appropriate behavior go together. And yet when I said, "Well, you're maturing. You're understanding this stuff. Why don't you profess your faith this year?"

He said, "No."

And he explained, "If I profess faith, then I've got to live as a Christian. I'm about to go to university. And while I'm at university, I’ve got things that I want to be doing that don't really fit with faith in Jesus Christ. So, no, pastor, I'm not going to profess my faith now. Maybe later."

I love his insight. He got it. But man, I hate his decision. He missed the boat completely.

It's not as if it's our efforts and good behaviour that somehow save us and rescue us from the punishment for sin. No, not at all. Our efforts, our good behavior show that God has rescued us and saved us through Jesus Christ.

So that now we are putting on our new self to be like Jesus as we grow up. We're striving to love God and striving to love our neighbor as the fruit of our repentance. This is the fruit of faith that you can see that we truly do believe because we behave as people who have been rescued from sin and brokenness at the cost of Jesus' life.

And so then it's exciting to hear somebody's testimony that when they repented from sinful behavior, they experienced God's help in avoiding wrongdoing. As a pastor, I get to hear these stories more often than most people. These are the of stories that we talk about when the elders and people coming to profess their faith sit down together and we hear how people experience salvation but also what repentance looks like. Living a new life of faith in Jesus Christ that transforms their attitudes, transforms their behavior, transforms their imagination and how they deal with temptation.

I remember the excitement of one person as they described how God even took away the desire to do destructive sinful behaviour. It still took self-discipline, but he was talking about the good news that God has rescued from that and in the power of the Holy Spirit. He didn't even feel temptation to do that kind of stuff anymore.

And self-control is listed later on in the New Testament as Fruit of the Spirit, a demonstration that God the Holy Spirit is transforming the way that you operate because now you're able to exercise self-control. That in your own strength, willpower just didn't cut it anymore. Self-control is the Fruit of the Spirit that John the Baptist is talking about. One of the fruit that John is looking about that we need to produce fruit of repentance.

You see, Jesus came to renew our relationship with the Lord God Almighty. A relationship that was broken by sin and by disobedience. And John the Baptist is there standing on the bank of the Jordan pointing to Jesus, his relative, that he is the Messiah. And he is so holy and so majestic. John doesn't even feel like he is able to untie his shoes because that's how majestic and holy Jesus the Messiah is.

Jesus is the one who's coming to clear his threshing floor. Jesus is going to gather all the good grain, all the fruitful stuff, and bring that into his barn while the chaff is just going to be lifted up, blown away, and allowed to burn with unquenchable fire.

This is possible because at the cross, Jesus took the punishment for human sin upon himself. My sin, your sin, he took it on himself to forgive us for our wrongdoing. And in his resurrection, Jesus raises you, me, all believers to new life. Raises us to new heights of faithful living and righteousness.

It is Jesus and our connection with him. The life that he gives, that's the sap that makes his believers fruitful. He pours out his Holy Spirit so that we can demonstrate that life is within us. And it's the work of the Holy Spirit then that makes us bear the fruit of repentance so that we're able to love God as number one in our life and we're able to expand express love and generosity to our neighbors. The kind of way that we would want to be treated ourselves we use for the people around us.

When you look at the examples that John the Baptist gave when people said “Well what should we do?”

It seems like each of the three groups of people had trouble with greed. Listen to the examples.

The crowd asked, "Well, what should we do then?”

Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one that has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.

And then when tax collectors who collaborated with Romans and put in bids to say, "Well, I can collect a million dollars of tax." No, no, no, no. I can get $1.2 million in tax. Well, that's the guy that got the contract. This is the kind of way that these things went. “When they asked, well, what should we do?”

The instruction was don't collect any more than you're required to.

And then soldiers were standing around. I don't know if these were sentry guards in the temple of Jerusalem or if these were Roman soldiers. But they came and asked John the same question. “Well, what should we do?”

Well, don't extort money, he said. Don't accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay.

You see how all this has to do with greed, with wanting stuff that actually doesn't belong to you, putting stuff as number one in your life.

As you ponder these instructions, as you think about it and chew it over what John's description of righteousness and repentance looks like, do you see any connection with your own life with the things that tempt you?

If there's this spectrum between greedy on the one side and generous on the other side, it seems that John had much of his audience kind of over on the greedy side. Wouldn't you say? Where would you rate yourself?

Now, I know there's some people in our congregation are very generous. You're over on the generous side. There's others of us who struggle a little bit with hanging tightly to stuff that God's given us. Where would you rate yourself?

And then as part of your repentance, part of the transformation of your life, your imagination that God is doing by his Word and Spirit, what would it look like if you were to move one notch towards the more generous side?

How would you pray for the Holy Spirit to help you on that?

What would look different in your finances and your generosity if you ask God, God, help me to be less greedy, to be more generous as a sign of my repentance, as a sign of the new life from Jesus Christ in me.

What would that look like?