3v1-12

About-Face!

Matthew 3.1-12

About-face! Webster defines this term as “a sharp turn in the opposite direction, esp. in response to a military command; a sharp change in attitude or opinion.” While the specific phrase about-face is nowhere found in the Bible, the concept sure is. In Scripture the command is summed up in one word: Repent!
This command is not declared in the Bible by a commanding officer of an earthly army. Rather, it is the clear and distinct message of all the prophets, all the apostles, and of the Lord Jesus Himself. Repent! Turn around! Change your attitude and opinions about sin and the Savior!
By virtue of the fact it is given in Scripture as a command and therefore not an option, we can be assured that there are negative consequences experienced by anyone who does not obey this command…
Pr 28:13 He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. NKJV
Purpose: 3 marks/characteristics of genuine, biblical repentance

Genuine Repentance Results in Life Change (1-8, 10-11)

Conviction of your sin (Jn. 16.8)
Jn 16:8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:NKJV
Contrition over your sin
2 Co 7:10 For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.NKJV
Worldly sorrow:

· Sorrow for getting caught; for being exposed

· Sorrow over the pending consequences

· Sorrow over restitution that must be paid

· Sorrow over alimony and child support that’s going to cripple you financially

· Feeling bad about something because you know it’s wrong, but you keep on doing it.

Confession of your sin (v.6)
Confessing sins…using God’s terminology

· adultery, not an affair

· drunkenness, not substance abuse

· immorality, not an indiscretion

· Call sin by its name; confession literally means “to same the same thing” (i.e. you say the same thing about your sin that God does in His Word)

Cessation from your sin (2, 8, 10-11)
Repent means more than regret or sorrow (cf. Heb. 12:17); it means to turn around, to change direction, to change the mind and will.
It does not denote just any change, but always a change from the wrong to the right, away from sin and to righteousness. Repentance involves sorrow for sin, but sorrow that leads to a change of thinking, desire, and conduct of life.
Repentance before God is one of the most frequently recurring messages in all the Bible. No less than 969 times, God thundered, “Repent!” It was the first message Jesus preached. Matthew 4:17 says, “Jesus Christ came preaching, ‘Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” The last message Jesus left with the church was a message of repentance. Some people think the Great Commission was His last message to the church, but almost 60 years after Jesus gave the Great Commission He gave this message to the church in Revelation 3:19 “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore and repent!”
Pharisees—They were an association very much in the mainstream of Jewish life and made a point of being noticed and admired.
Mt 23:5-7 But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, ‘Rabbi, Rabbi.’NKJV
The Pharisees formed a self-righteous, “holy” community within the community; they were legalistic isolationists who had no regard or respect for those outside their sect. They believed strongly in divine destiny and that they alone were the true Israel. They considered themselves to be superspiritual, but their “spirituality” was entirely external, consisting of the pursuit of meticulous observance of a multitude of religious rituals and taboos, most of which they and various other religious leaders had devised over the previous several centuries as supplements to the law of Moses.
By their strict adherence to those traditions they expected to reap great reward in heaven. But they were the epitome of religious emptiness and hypocrisy.
Mt 23:28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.NKJV
Sadducees—The Sadducees were at the other end of the Jewish religious spectrum-the ultraliberals. They were compromisers, both religiously and politically.
They scorned the legalistic traditions of their antagonists, the Pharisees. In New Testament times they were still closely associated with the priestly class (see Acts 5:17), to the extent that the terms chief priest and Sadducee were used almost synonymously (as were the terms scribe and Pharisee). But they cared little for religion, especially doctrine, and denied the existence of angels, the resurrection, and most things supernatural (Acts 23:6–8). Consequently they lived only for the present. They considered themselves masters of their own destinies.
The Sadducees were much fewer in number than the Pharisees and were extremely wealthy. They ran the Temple franchises-the money exchanging and the sale of sacrificial animals-and charged exorbitantly for those services. It was therefore the Sadducees’ business that Jesus damaged when he drove the moneychangers and sacrifice sellers out of the Temple (Matt. 21:12–13).
Religiously, politically, and socially the Pharisees and Sadducees had almost nothing in common. The Pharisees were ritualistic; the Sadducees were rationalistic. The Pharisees were strict separatists; the Sadducees comprising collaborators. The Pharisees were commoners (most of them had a trade), while the Sadducees were aristocrats. Both groups had members among the Sanhedrin.
During New Testament times about the only common ground they exhibited was opposition to Christ and His followers (Matt. 22:15–16, 23, 34–35; Acts 4:1; 23:6).
They had one other common religious and spiritual ground. The Pharisees expected their reward in heaven, while the Sadducees expected theirs in this life, but the trust of both groups was in personal works and self-effort.
It is clear from John’s response to them that he considered their basic problem and need to be exactly the same.
They were not seeking God’s truth or God’s working in their own lives. They were not repentant; they had not confessed their sins; they had not changed at all-as John well knew. They were the same smug, self-righteous hypocrites they had been when they started out to find John.
7b. They intended to carry their hypocrisy even to the extent of submitting to John’s baptism, out of whatever corrupt motives they may have had.

· Luke’s account makes it very clear that the Pharisees and Sadducees left w/o being baptized (Lk. 7.14-30).

Vipers were small but very poisonous desert snakes, which would have been quite familiar to John the Baptist. They were made even more dangerous by the fact that, when still, they looked like a dead branch and were often picked up unintentionally.
The question with which the Baptist confronted them has this sense: “Who suggested to you that you would escape the coming wrath?” Thus John’s rhetorical question takes on a sarcastic nuance: “Who warned you to flee the coming wrath and come for baptism – when in fact you show no signs of repentance?”
He didn’t candy coat his message. John is using sandpaper, the real rough kind. John uses sandpaper to rub the multitudes raw: “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? What is John’s purpose for using this sand paper message? John is preparing the surface for the gospel so it will stick. Now, it wasn’t very nice for John to call these respectable Jews a bunch of poisonous snakes. It would be like me standing before you during the welcome time and saying, “Greetings you bunch of sorry rattlesnakes, who told you to slither in here on your bellies?”
Their true spiritual father was Satan—as He specifically charges in John 8:44.
The implication is that the Pharisees and Sadducees were expecting John’s baptism to be a kind of spiritual fire insurance, giving protection from the flames of the wrath to come. True repentance and conversion do protect from God’s wrath and judgment, but superficial and insincere professions or acts of faith tend only to harden a person against genuine belief, giving a false sense of security.
8. Genuine repentance from sin changes a person’s life (10-11)!
The marks of a truly repentant heart are fruit in keeping with repentance, or as Paul described them to King Agrippa, “deeds appropriate to repentance” (Acts 26:20). In his parallel account Luke mentions several examples of the kind of fruit John was talking about (see Lk 3.11ff.)
True repentance not only should but will have correspondingly genuine works, demonstrated in both attitudes and actions. Those who claim to know Christ, who claim to be born again, will demonstrate a new way of living that corresponds to the new birth.
Gipsy Smith: When I was in South Africa, a fine, handsome Dutchman came into my service, and God laid His hand on him and convicted him of sin. The next morning he went to the beautiful home of another Dutchman and said to him, "Do you recognize that old watch?"
"Why, yes," answered the other. "Those are my initials; that is my watch. I lost it eight years ago. How did you get it, and how long have you had it?" "I stole it," was the reply.
"What made you bring it back now?" "I was converted last night," was the answer, "and I have brought it back first thing this morning. If you had been up, I would have brought it last night."

· Genuine repentance: causes you to stop looking at pornography, stop lying, cheating, drinking, drugs, cursing, mistreatment of family; stop being selfish, gossiping, being angry w/o a cause, being disrespectful…

· Movie: The End of the Spear—

· Peace Child, by Don Richardson

Recognition of personal sin is the important first step. But by itself it is useless, even dangerous, because it tends to make a person think that mere recognition is all that is necessary. A hardened pharaoh admitted his sin (Ex. 9:27), a double-minded Balaam admitted his (Num. 22:34), a greedy Achan acknowledged his (Josh. 7:20), and an insincere Saul confessed his (1 Sam. 15:24). The rich young ruler who asked Jesus how to have eternal life went away sorrowful but not repentant (Luke 18:23). Even Judas, despairing over his betrayal of Jesus, said to the chief priests and elders, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4). All of those men recognized their sin, yet none of them repented. They were experiencing what Paul called “the sorrow of the world” that “produces death” instead of the “godly sorrow” that “produces a repentance” (2 Cor. 7:10–11).
The sorrow of true repentance is like David’s; it is sorrow for offense against a holy God, not simply regret over the personal consequences of our sin. Sorrow over being found out or over suffering hardship or discipline because of our sin is not godly sorrow, and has nothing to do with repentance. That sort of sorrow is but selfish regret, concern for self rather than for God. It merely adds to the original sin.
Even acknowledgement of sin and feeling of offense against God do not complete repentance. If it is genuine, it will result in a changed life that bears fruit in keeping with repentance.
It was clearly not God-given repentance that the Pharisees and Sadducees professed before John. They were hypocrites and phonies, as John well knew. He had seen absolutely no evidence of true repentance, and he demanded to see such evidence before he would baptize them. As in the case of all baptisms since John, they are to be outward signs of inward transformation.
10. A fruitless tree was a worthless and useless tree, fit only to be cut down and thrown into the fire. Jesus used a similar figure in describing false disciples.
Jn 15:6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.NKJV
Fruitless repentance is worthless and useless; it means absolutely nothing to God.
Fire is a frequent biblical symbol of the torment of divine punishment and judgment. Because of their exceptional wickedness, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by “brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven” (Gen. 19:24). After Korah, his men, and their households were swallowed up by the earth and “went down alive to Sheol…fire also came forth from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering the incense” (Num. 16:32–33, 35).
In His role as a righteous Judge, God is frequently called “a consuming fire” (Ex. 24:17; Deut. 4:24; 9:3; etc.).
John was speaking specifically to the unrepentant Pharisees and Sadducees, but his message of judgment was to every person, every tree…that does not bear good fruit, who refuses to turn to God for forgiveness and salvation and therefore has no evidence, no good fruit, of genuine repentance. Salvation is not verified by a past act, but by present fruitfulness.
11. The Holy Spirit was promised by Jesus to His disciples:
Jn 14:16-17 And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.NKJV
At Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4) and during the initial formation of the church (Acts 8:5–17; 10:44–48; 19:1–7), the promised Holy Spirit did come upon the disciples, baptizing them and establishing them in the body of Christ. Though without such dramatic attending signs, every believer since that time is baptized into the church by Christ with God’s Spirit.
1 Co 12:13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.NKJV
John’s word about the Holy Spirit must have been comforting and thrilling to the faithful Jews among his hearers, those who hoped for the day when God would “pour out [His] Spirit on all mankind” (Joel 2:28).
Many see this as a double baptism, one in the Holy Spirit for the righteous and one in fire for the unrepentant (cf. the wheat and chaff in v. 12).
There are good reasons, however, for taking “fire” as a purifying agent along with the Holy Spirit. The people John is addressing are being baptized by him; presumably they have repented. More important the preposition en (“with”) is not repeated before fire: the one preposition governs both “Holy Spirit” and “fire,” and this normally suggests a unified concept. Fire often has a purifying, not destructive, connotation in the OT (e.g., Isa 1:25; Zech 13:9; Mal 3:2-3).
When John says Jesus will baptize you with fire, it means you will be immersed in the cleansing, refining fire of the Holy Spirit. When you are immersed in the life of God, holy living is always the result. Fire has a way of destroying those things that are impure and evil in your life. You must always respect fire because of this destructive characteristic.
In 1665, the bubonic plague swept through London. Thousands of people were dying from this plague spread by the multitude of rats that infested the city. Some experts believe the entire population of the city would have died except for the intervention of a strange remedy. In 1666, a small fire broke out and soon the entire city was engulfed in flames. When the blaze, known as the Great Fire of London, finally burned itself out, most of the city lay in ruins. How tragic. Not really, because they made an amazing discovery after the fire. The rats were killed, and the fire stopped the spread of the plague. The same fire that destroyed buildings of the city saved the city.
The fire of God in your heart will do the same thing. It will cleanse you of the recurring sins that threaten to destroy your effectiveness and your joy. Jesus came to immerse you in the wonderful life of God and to keep you clean and holy before Him.
You will either be immersed in the holy fire of purity—or the harmful fire of punishment…

Genuine Repentance Shuns False Securities (9)

As has often been put somewhat colloquially, “God has no grandchildren.” Our parents’ religious affiliations afford no substitute for our own personal commitment (cf. v. 9).
They believed that simply being Abraham’s descendants, members of God’s chosen race, made them spiritually secure. Descent from Abraham was not a passport to heaven.
Some rabbis even taught that Abraham stood guard at the gates of Gehenna, or hell, turning back any Israelite who happened that way.
Nobody goes to heaven because they have/had godly parents/grandparents, because they grew up on a mission field, in a Bible-believing church, because they got baptized, gave money, sang in choir, took communion…all these are potentially FALSE SECURITIES!
In the OT God repeatedly cut off many Israelites and saved a remnant. But not only may God narrow Israel down to a remnant, he may also raise up authentic children of Israel from “these stones” (perhaps stones lying in the river bed – both Hebrew and Aramaic have a pun on “children” and “stones”). Ordinary stones will suffice; there is no need for the “rocks” of the patriarchs and their merits.
In Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus, it is overlooked that the rich man in hell addresses Abraham as “Father,” and Abraham, speaking from heaven, calls the rich man his “Child.”
Lk 16:25-26 But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’NKJV

Genuine Repentance Avoids God’s Judgment (12)

2 Co 7:10 For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation [and therefore not to condemnation which requires God’s judgment], not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.NKJV
In Palestine, as in many other parts of the ancient world, farmers made a threshing floor by picking out a slight depression in the ground, or digging one if necessary, usually on a hill where breezes could be caught. The soil would then be wetted and packed down until it was very hard. Around the perimeter of the floor, which was perhaps thirty or forty feet in diameter, rocks would be stacked to keep the grain in place. After the stalks of grain were placed onto the floor, an ox, or a team of oxen, would drag heavy pieces of wood around over the grain, separating the wheat kernels from the chaff, or straw. Then the farmer would take a winnowing fork and throw a pile of grain into the air. The wind would blow the chaff away, while the kernels, being heavier, would fall back to the floor. Eventually, nothing would be left but the good and useful wheat.
The final separation and the ultimate judgment will be only at Christ’s second coming, when the unsaved “will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:46).
The adjective unquenchable implies that fuel will always remain to keep the fire burning and speaks against the doctrine of annihilationism (the idea that unbelievers simply cease conscious existence after death).
Pr 28:13 He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. NKJV

· Fifty years ago, Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and the three other American missionaries dared to make contact with the most violent society ever documented by anthropologists. This week End of the Spear, the story of their martyrdoms, hits the theaters, and the film makers hope contact will be made with another violent and spiritually blind society—our own. It is a story that should be told in this age of ethnic cleansings, gulags, holocausts, genocide, and riots.

· When the film's director, Jim Hanon, traveled to Ecuador to get permission from the Waodani (formerly Auca) Indians to make the movie, the tribe initially refused. But when Steve Saint, Ned Saint's son, told them stories about situations like the Columbine shootings, the Waodani were electrified. "If this story will help your culture not live so violently," they said, "then we [want you to] tell our story."

· For those unfamiliar with the five men who risked and gave their lives to make contact with this remote and violent tribe in Ecuador, End of the Spear brings their story to life. But while the story of their deaths is important, what emerges more powerfully from this film is the life of those who carried on. Rachel Saint, Nate's sister; Steve Saint, his son; and the widows all risked their lives to travel into the Amazon basin and finish their loved ones' work.

· In the movie, Steve Saint meets his father's killer, a Waodani named Mincayani and fights an internal battle. Revenge is at the heart of the generations of conflict in places like the primitive jungles of Ecuador—or the Middle East, or Croatia, or Africa, for that matter. Will he spear the one who speared his father? Or will he be able to conquer the impulse for revenge? Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian who was teaching seminary students while Serbians were establishing rape camps in and around his hometown, wrestled with this question in his 1996 book Exclusion and Embrace.

· Volf comes to the same powerful conclusion that is portrayed in the film End of the Spear. The only way to break the cycle of revenge is through the triumph of the cross of Christ. Volf writes this: "Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one," he writes, "can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without … transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness."

· As Steve Saint and his father's killer embrace at the film's close, Steve recalls, "For years, many people would tell me that they could identify with our loss, but they never could imagine how we'd experienced gain." This is the gain of the cross, and here, of course, is the real message of the movie: The Bible provides the only worldview that provides for reconciliation. No other religion does—not the Hindus, who know no salvation, not Muslims, no philosophy.

A Dutch theologian, Johannes Halkendijk, tells this story that took place in World War II. During the Nazi occupation of Holland, the Nazis planned to deport Jewish children to concentration camps. A Dutch resistant group had been formed and one arm of this resistance decided to do what they could to save these children. A group of 300 people, children and resistance leaders, were gathered together and hiding. What they did not know was that someone in their own group betrayed them to the Nazis. They were found and taken to a detention center.
There they heard they would be taken not to a concentration camp, but to a crematorium where they would be killed. When the day to be taken away came, both Christian resistance leaders and Jewish children boarded the same cattle cars together to share the same fate. The trip lasted a few days. One morning, just after sunrise, the crowded train stopped and word was given they were to get out of the train. They got out, expecting to find themselves surrounded by Nazi guards.
They expected to see the crematorium belching out ugly smoke. Instead, they were standing in the middle of a sunlit pasture with majestic snow-covered mountains in the distance. They were not in Germany but in Switzerland. What they did not know was that on the first night the train had been taken over by some of the Dutch resistance fighters. Instead of delivering them to their deaths, the train had transported them to safety. As a result, these 300 people were not recipients of the death they expected, but of a new life. That’s what has happened to every one of us who are saved.
If we got what we all deserved, we would face the fire of judgment for our sinful nature and our sinful behavior. But thanks be to God! He has saved us and delivered us through Jesus – so now we can really enjoy life!