The Freedom and Power of God

There is a deep connection between historical facts and events and the Word of God. The two are synonomous. They are interconnected. They are united in telling of many stories which ultimately lead to one epic tale.

Speaking of epic tales. I love a good story. For example, Star Wars is an epic tale. Spanning over a nonet of movies, several animated series, a widely popular show called The Mandalorian, and many future shows… the tale is one that could never end.

One of the amazing tales I’ve been hooked on lately is written by a man named Robert Jordan. The Wheels of Time novels, of which I believe there are twenty of them, is a riveting tale of good vs evil. Jordan weaves a masterful tale, that is tying together several other stories which all lead back to the overall story.

Have you noticed, that the Bible does the same? It tells many different stories, through many centuries, but continues to point us to God’s love and mercy as seen in His Son, Jesus.

The story, as told from the beginning, never changed. Sure, it was told through the lives of people like Adam, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Joshua, Ruth, Boaz, Deborah, Samson, Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Nehemiah, Mary, John, Paul, and of course the God-man Jesus. Among many others. Several stories, many individuals, thousands of years… all to tell one main story; God’s never ending love and commitment to His creation, through His sovereign will which governs all of history, in order to reestablish our relationship with Him by faith. In essence, the main story of the Bible, is Jesus.

Unlike Star Wars or The Wheels of Time novels, this story is true. It is set in a rich historical timeline. Names, places, events… all testifying to the validity of these words and trustworthiness of God’s promises.

John - A Promise Fulfilled and Promise Given

As we look at today’s scripture, we are once again brought into a short history lesson by Dr. Luke. The first verse is filled with many great testimonies to the accuracy of God’s Word. Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Ciaphas and even the relatively obscure Lysanias, are all recorded through extra-biblical records as being in these particular stations or offices at the same time… for our purposes we will use the year 26 AD. This is the most widely agreed upon date for Jesus to begin his ministry throughout the Judea and Galilee.

For this morning, though, we are focused on John. The child born to Zachariah and Elizabeth… remember… all the way back in chapter 1? The time has come for John to make an appearance. As promised.

This is essential to understand. Remember, this is a writing that Luke is undertaking as a retelling, of sorts, of Jesus and His work in the redemption of sins. (This is going to be important here in a minute.) So, picture the recipient… a Theophilus… who would be very aware of the historical aspects as he would have lived through it… giving a personal reference to it… picture Theophilus reading this letter (much like we read our Bibles) and he gets to this part about John. He would have remembered the promise given to Zechariah and Elizabeth. They would have a son, his name would be John, he would be great and more importantly the prophetic message from Luke 1:16-17,

Luke 1:16–17 ESV

And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

These promises have all either been completed or in action at that moment. He was born, his name is John, and he is now going before ‘him’.

Let us not miss this. These promises were both personal and universal. They were personal to Zechariah and Elizabeth in that they will have a child when it seemed all hope was lost. A personal promise from God sent through the messenger Gabriel. Now… a universal promise, sent from the prophet Isaiah

Isaiah 40:3-5.

What makes this prophecy so significant is what we see in the last part of verse 2, “The Word of God came to John.” Like all the prophets of the OT, John’s authority and power did not come from himself, but from God. Back in chapter 1, verse 15 we read that John was filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb. And so now he comes to preach a word from God in the power of God’s Spirit… which was promised several hundred years before John was born.

That means that even though we live more than 2,000 years later, we also need to not only listen to John’s message, but to see the faithfulness of God in the promises that have been fulfilled. In real history. In real people’s lives. This message that John is going to preach is not his, but one from God… and there is nothing else in this world that we need more right now than a clear word from God for our souls… that we can trust in, because He has already proven himself faithful.

The Toronto Ward Museum tells us the story of a nineteenth-century man named Isapo Muxika. He is more commonly known as Crowfoot. He was the chief of the Siksika Indian tribe. He was known for his peaceful relations with Canada during a time of great violence.

When the Canadian Pacific Railroad was being built and they needed to build part of it on his land, the Canadian government approached Crowfoot with an offer. They said, “If you will give us the land we need for the railroad, you can ride it whenever and wherever you want.” 

So they made a deal. They finished the Canadian Pacific Railroad and Crowfoot received a lifetime pass. It was put in a beautiful case. Crowfoot is said to have carried that case around his neck for the rest of his life. It entitled him to go wherever he wanted where the railroad could take him.

There was just one problem. As far as we know, Crowfoot never stepped foot on that train. He had the right to travel anywhere he wanted, but he never availed himself of that right.

There are a lot of Christians like Crowfoot; they possess God’s promises; they quote them; they frame them; they hang them on their walls; they even post them on social media, but they never actually make use of them.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, “God never gives us a promise he does not intend for us to use.” So what should you and I do? Read them, get to know them, and then apply those promises which speak to your current condition, whatever that condition might be.

Proverbs 16:20 

Proverbs 16:20 ESV

Whoever gives thought to the word will discover good, and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord.

The Promise of Salvation

In verse 3 John preaches a hard message. John is speaking of… a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins… and that would have been terribly offensive to the Jews. In the context in which John lived, baptism had one main significance among the Jews; it was a symbolic rite that proselytes had to go through to become Jewish. But now John is stating that unless the Jews were willing to repent, and accept a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of their sins, they cannot rely on their Jewishness for salvation; they have to be changed in their heart toward God.

This is a monumental statement. Meaning… the way is open for Gentiles to repent and be forgiven. The promise of salvation is not just for the Jews. If Jewishness does not save, and Gentileness does not condemn: the issue then is repentance toward God. The way Luke shows us that John’s baptism and preaching had this significance is in the way that he quotes from Isaiah 40.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all quote from Isaiah 40:3 for their description of John’s ministry,

Isaiah 40:3 ESV

A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

But Luke is the only one who goes the extra step to quote from Isaiah 40:4-5

Isaiah 40:4–5 ESV

Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Why? I think the reason, especially in light of the context of John’s preaching, is that he was speaking of the salvation that Jesus will bring; that it is for all flesh… not just for Isreal. The mountains are lowered, the crooked ways are straightened, the rough ways are smoothed, so that all flesh, all people, all might see and have access to the promise of salvation.

The promise that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Acts 4:12

Acts 4:12 ESV

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

The promise that the blood of Jesus, which was spilled for the redemption of sins is sufficient to save all who call upon His name. Romans 10:13

Romans 10:13 ESV

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

The promise that the obedient Son has secured salvation for the disobedient sinner is a promise that is not based on our merit, but in Christ’s worthiness. Revelation 5:12

Revelation 5:12 ESV

saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

This promise of salvation is one in which we find safety… a peace with God… from His holy, and justified, wrath. Romans 5:1

Romans 5:1 ESV

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Forgiven and Saved From Wrath

Verse 7: “He said therefore to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” ’ With this first sentence, John does four things.

First, he very bluntly tells the whole crowd that they are in a rotten condition. You are a brood of vipers. What does that mean to Jews schooled in the Old Testament? In Genesis 3 Satan is pictured as a serpent or a viper, and God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between … your seed and her seed” (Genesis 3:15). So when anybody said you were the seed or the brood of a viper, it was the same as saying you were sons of the devil. That’s exactly what Jesus said in John 8:43f. to another crowd,

John 8:43f ESV

Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

So John’s first word is an indictment of his listeners: you are people in Satan’s grip. You are his children with his nature.

Second, John warns that there is wrath on the way. God will bring judgment upon Satan and all his allies. In verse 17 John pictures the Messiah’s coming like this, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” There is wheat and there is chaff. There are sons of God and sons of the viper, and the one will be gathered into the barn of heaven and the other thrown into the fire of hell. So John warns that there is a coming wrath which makes the plight of vipers extremely precarious.

Third, John mentions that there is an escape from wrath. You can flee from it, and the vipers are fleeing in the right direction, namely, to the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. When God forgives sins, it is the same as removing his wrath. There is no more condemnation for those who repent and receive forgiveness.

Finally, John hints, by his question, that the crowd’s decision to come to him in search of salvation was not something they came to on their own. Someone showed them they needed to repent. I understand John’s question to mean something like this: “Well of all things, the sons of the devil are fleeing the impending wrath. Who could have possibly made it plain to you that you needed to repent?” John is amazed, I think, that they have really been made aware of their need to flee God’s wrath. It was no small thing for a Jew to admit he was under the wrath of God and liable to be burned like chaff in unquenchable fire. But here they were offering themselves for John’s baptism. And John is amazed. If we could ask John, “What is the answer to your question: Who did warn them to flee?” what would he have said? I think he would have said, “God warned them.” If Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father draw him,” then surely it would be true earlier that no son of the viper can come to repentance unless God draw him. So in an indirect way, John’s question was giving tribute to the grace of God for impressing on these people their need of salvation.

The Freedom and Power of God to Save

Remember, this message would be seen as offensive to the Jews. Especially the Pharisees. They disagree about the freedom and the power of God.

Some of the Jews think that by virtue of their physical Jewishness they’ve got God in a corner. He must bless them. He can’t pour out wrath on them, because he always keeps his word. So it does not matter finally if they are repentant or not. They are relying not on God’s mercy but on their own ethnic human distinctive. What they fail to see, and what John shows them, is that God is not as boxed in as they think. He is able both to keep his promises to Abraham and to put a stop to their boasting in their physical descent from Abraham. How? He can wipe them out in his wrath and raise up out of nothing a new people for himself who will bear the fruits of repentance and trust not themselves but in God’s free mercy alone.

What these Jews had forgotten—and it’s what all people forget when they try to obligate God by any of their human distinctives or human efforts—they forgot the freedom of God to have mercy on whomever he wills. They forgot the power of God who can always find a way to rebuke human self-reliance while keeping his promises. So verse 9 repeats the warning implicit in verse 7. “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Don’t trust in the kind of tree you are. If there is no fruit that accords with repentance, you will be destroyed. It doesn’t matter if the tree is Jewish or Gentile; what matters is repentance and its fruit.

Let me conclude by defining repentance afresh now that we have seen in a new way what the Jews were being called to turn away from and what they were being called to turn to. It should make us tremble to think that a people who had such a strong God consciousness and who believed that God would keep his promises could nevertheless be called a “brood of vipers” and be threatened with hell fire. Are there not religious people today who don’t believe this much but feel secure? We must look very carefully to see what repentance is here, that we too might flee the coming wrath. In view of what we have seen in John’s warning, I would define repentance like this:

Repentance is turning away from any and all reliance upon what I am by birth (like Jewish or Gentile) or what I have done by my own effort, and turning to the absolutely free mercy of God for the hope of salvation.

Mercy by its very nature cannot be constrained or obligated by human distinctives or efforts. As Paul says in Romans 9:15-16

Romans 9:15–16 ESV

For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

But for our comfort and assurance, God has revealed that there is one thing that always receives mercy, and that is reliance on mercy, which is what the New Testament means by faith. Repentance, therefore, is the altering of what we rely on in life, what we hope in, what we are counting on for salvation in the age to come and for help now. The repentance that leads to forgiveness of sins is turning away from what we are by birth or achieve by effort to rely wholly on mercy, God’s free and sovereign grace.