Luke 3:1-20 with Sam Anderson

Transcript

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Come to this place today would be a really weird way for me to start my sermon. It's exactly how John started. John the Baptist started a sermon that we're going to look at today. I did have a reason for starting out that way outside of I thought it'd be kind of fun for me, maybe not so much for you. But also, right, so it's a weird way to start a sermon. And John was a weird guy. We can just call it what it is. He lived in the wilderness, ate locusts and honey, just wore weird things, camel skins, camel hair shirts, just weird stuff. But also had an incredibly effective ministry. I think that as I was approaching this sermon, I had a meeting with Aaron and Jared a few weeks back. And as I was researching this topic, I kind of said to myself, why John the Baptist? Like Jesus is coming. We have these hundreds of years of silence from God. Jesus is about here, his ministry. He is going to be the most effective minister ever. Every word that comes out of his mouth is literally going to be the word of God. Why John the Baptist? Why send someone before to also have an effective ministry? And I'm hoping that as we go through this today, you guys will get a little bit more insight as I did. I think that sometimes we, at least for me, so I'll just put this on me, not on you guys. With John the Baptist, I think sometimes I overlooked his ministry because of what was to come. And of course, that's I think what he would have wanted. He would have wanted us to overlook him, as one who, as we're going to talk about today, was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for Jesus to come. But also I think there's some, as I kind of researched this passage of scripture, which by the way is only one through 20. So if you're really excited about 21 and 22, you've got to come back next week. But so as I kind of thought about why John the Baptist, I think that there's this idea of as he was preparing the way, as he was speaking to the people of Israel, who had, by all purposes and all and kind of a good analogy, is they had fallen asleep at the wheel. They're on a highway, they've fallen asleep at the wheel, danger is approaching, and they're not seeing it. And they needed to be woken up. And that's what John was doing. He was waking them up. He was preparing the way for Jesus to come. He was making sure that they had realized and counted the cost, that they had considered whether or not this is really the life that they should be living and what they want to be doing. So as I thought about that, I thought of a story from my own life. As many of you may know, or some of you may not know, I'm a police officer. And I've been doing that for about 14 years now, and about 14 years ago, just because I just had my anniversary, we started at the police academy. So after you get a job as a police officer, you don't start out on the street, you go directly into the police academy, you have to go through the academy, pass a state test, then you go and actually learn kind of pretty much how to do the job at your police department. I don't know if I was sufficiently warned of what the police academy would be like, especially the first day. But as I was thinking about the first day, and I'm just gonna kind of set the scene for you, it was uh 2012, it was January, I think, like 4th, cold, freezing cold, early in the morning. We were told we had kind of had an orientation about a week prior at the police academy, and they were telling us where to go, where to park, what to do when we first got there. And they said, Stay in your cars. The instructors are gonna come out to you. This is like six in the morning, completely blackout. Uh they come out with a bullhorn, they start yelling and screaming at everybody. Uh, every movie that you've seen about like military, like going through drill, going through boot camp, uh, that was their vibe. That's what they were shooting for, so you guys can kind of imagine kind of where their tone was at. So we had to unpack all of our stuff that they had told us to grab. They had given us like three sheets of things to grab, very detailed, specifically what they wanted us to have when we came. I literally had a travel suitcase, full size, full of all my stuff that I had to go back and forth with every single day, because we always had to have all of our things. And so they wanted us to do an inspection out in the cold, stand at attention, wait for an instructor to come by. They were going to inspect all of our things, and as you can imagine, any little thing that was wrong, push-ups or front leaning rest, which if you don't know what that is, it's like you're about to do a push-up, but you just stay there. It's kind of like a plank, but you're up on your arms in the cold parking lot. Uh, it was miserable, and luckily, I think the instructors were just as miserable because then they moved us inside, which made it a little better, but maybe not so much better, um, because then they took their time. And luckily, there was a few people who had it worse than I did. Um, like I said, we had like three sheets of paper. I had a full travel suitcase, and one kid brought like a rope backpack, and that's all he had. So you could imagine how much stuff he was missing that day and all the things that would happen after. Uh, right after that, yelling and screaming and getting us into formations, uh, they put us through our physical training, our PT. And it was tough, very tough. They tried to break us as much as they could. Then after that, we got them in the classroom and we're like, cool, now we're good. They'd come in from the back room and yelling and screaming about something that someone did wrong in the hallway, or we didn't say, sir, good morning, sir, to uh one of the instructors as they were out in the hallway and stand at attention quick enough. And what I later learned, and what I probably should have known if I had been maybe a little older, a little more mature, is that no matter what we did that day, it was a design failure. Like they were gonna lay into us, even if we did everything right, they would have found something wrong. That was just what they wanted to do. And I think that their intentions were good. Their intentions were to get us to this point of realizing, is this what I want to be doing? If you can't handle an instructor yelling at you in a controlled situation, how are you gonna handle it when you're out on the street and you have someone yelling and screaming in your face? If you can't handle the physical training that they were putting us through, how are you gonna handle yourself if it's a fight, a life or death fight? And so their uh, I think what their intention was worked, and it worked for me because I remember, I think it was the the first Wednesday, we were halfway through the week, I was heading home, they told us we'd be out by five, I think it was like seven. I'm going home realizing I gotta come back, I gotta be back in less than 12 hours, and I'm like, is this what I want to be doing? I asked myself, and I'm like, do I really want to come back to this place tomorrow? And I did, and I got through it, and it was good. But there was a weeding out, right? So there was a time where they where they were trying to weed out anyone that was maybe not as sincere as they should have been. And so, as we're gonna see today, that is exactly in the one snippet of the passage or the uh message that we get from John, that is exactly what he's doing by starting in this very strong way of you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the wrath to come. So I know I changed up the words just a little bit, but that was his idea was to weed out the insincere, to wake up the Israelites who had fallen asleep at the wheel, who were on the highway heading towards disaster, because again, the things that they were so concerned about were not the things that God was concerned about. Um so we're gonna read through our passage of Scripture today. So, like the uh slide says, we're gonna be in Luke 3 and we're gonna be going through 1 through 20. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, Tetrarch of the region of Eturia, and Trechanidas, and Lysansis, Tetrarch of Abalene. During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to the son of Zachariah, uh to John, the son of Zachariah, in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight, every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all the flesh shall see the salvation of God. He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the rat from the wrath to come, bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 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. And the crowds asked him, What then shall we do? And he said to them, Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise. Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, Teacher, what shall we do? And he said to them, Collect no more than you are authorized to do. Soldiers also asked, And we, what shall we do? And he said to them, Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages. As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John whether he might be the Christ. John answered them all, saying, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people, but Herod, the Tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all that he locked up John in prison. Let's pray before we dig in today. Lord, um we come before you just uh humble. I come before you just humble. Just presented with uh just your wonderful scripture, Lord, your inspired words given to us for teaching, for reproof. Lord, we know that your word is sharper than a two-edged sword, and uh we know that it cuts. And Lord, I pray that we would all be cut. I pray that uh my words would be your words. I pray that anything that is of me would harmlessly fall away, and that you would just be glorified today as we just examine your word and um apply it to our lives. I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. Uh so we have our first two verses, which I'm not going to read again because some of the words are really hard, some of the names are really hard. Um I had to listen to like a Bible app and try to see if I could get some of the pronunciations right. I think I only got two or three. Um, but what's really cool here, so we have right, so Dr. Luke. So we have Luke. Um he wanted to provide an orderly account of the gospels, of the story of Jesus. And so what does he do? He starts out like this is like a history lesson, right? He starts out with placing this story, John's ministry, into a specific place in time. Something that historians could go back to and be like, cool. Yep, we know when this guy was Caesar, we know when this guy was uh when this we these two people were high priests, we know when this person was over uh Judea, Herod. And so it's cool how he just places this into a time and place in history, so we know kind of when John the Baptist and his ministry started. And speaking of John's ministry, it says in verse 3, he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And so I kind of mentioned before how I had kind of asked uh as I was researching, just kind of to get some more input from uh Aaron and Jared, just about why John the Baptist. And Aaron had said something which hit me, and he was saying that uh for him that sometimes he doesn't remember how effective John's ministry was and how widespread it was. So I wondered how widespread was it? Uh it says he went into all the region around the Jordan, and so got a map. Maps are fun, maps are good, right? And so uh this is talking about John the Baptist's ministry, and so we see the Jordan River from the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea. Uh, we see all these places in between. You know, this is a larger piece of, uh, this is a big piece of land, and it says all the region around the Jordan. And so his ministry was incredibly effective. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. Again, you have to remember from the time of uh Malachi to our gospels, right? So we have no prophets, we haven't God not God has not been speaking for anyone. And now all of a sudden they get this prophet, John the Baptist, and he's filled with the Holy Spirit, and so he has this very effective and far-reaching ministry. And so I thought this would be helpful just for you guys to see, just kind of how far it went. And one of the things that he was preaching, which is why I think he kind of stayed around the Jordan, uh, was because he was preaching baptism. It says that he was proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And this is not to say that baptism was an uncommon thing to the Jews, right? So this was not new. Baptism was a thing. What was not a thing was for Jews to get baptized. So baptism was for Gentiles that wanted to convert, essentially. So this was not a normal thing that Jews would submit to baptism because it would be like a lowering of themselves and demeaning of themselves. And probably makes sense why John was preaching and proclaiming a baptism of repentance. And this repentance that he was preaching, this repentance for the forgiveness of sins, this was not simply a feeling. This was not just a feeling of I'm sorry. Right? So as I was thinking about this, I for those of you who have kids can probably relate. Um, so my kids hurt each other. And every once in a while, they didn't actually mean to hurt each other. Most of the time they do. Uh, and so when they do hurt each other and it's accidental, um, usually it's a little bit easier to get them to go say sorry. But a lot of times I'll walk up to my child who's on the floor crying uh and holding a stomach, an elbow, a who knows what, and they'll just go, sorry. And I try to parent them and try to say, uh, do you think that they felt that you were sorry? Right? Did did that, or like whether you feel it or not, did they feel like you were sorry? And so this repentance that he was calling them into was not just a feeling of sorry, there was an action behind it. So, in the same way that I would tell my kids in those moments, why don't you go kneel down and say, like, are you okay? Like, I'm really sorry, like I didn't mean to do that, or I did mean to do that. Um, right, so there's a there's action behind it. And that is what John is preaching. There's an action to showing that you're sorry. And so we're gonna see this later on, that there's a response to this conviction from these people, what shall we do then? And I think that's the response that we should have when it comes to repentance. Uh, this repentance that John was preaching is obviously different because it's one step shy of the repentance that we see that we're called into later, because this is prior to Jesus' ministry. So it's not a repent of your sins and have faith in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection for salvation. So we see that this is just a little bit different. This is again the Jewish people, Israel, they have fallen asleep at the wheel. Okay, they've been negligent, they are disobedient, they are hung up on the tiny little letters of the law, yet they have these giant sins that they're just letting run free. And as we see then in verse four, we hear from Isaiah 40, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight, every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see that the salvation of God. And so, as I uh was researching this passage, I of course there's imagery here, I think there's deep meaning here, there's maybe not uh there's some things that are not quite as literal, but again, this would have hit differently with people of the first century, because again, not our culture, right? So, examining this from the first century hearer of this, they would have thought about this differently than what we did because we take it as maybe not as literal, maybe uh more figurative, right? They would have probably taken it as a little bit more literal, because in that time when the king was coming into a town, they were going to visit one of their towns, the people would actually literally make a new road for them. If they had a good road, maybe they might be repaving it. If they didn't have a good road, they would actually be making a brand new road for the king as he came into the city. And of course, there's an idea of honor there, right? Like we want to make a new path for the king into the city. But there was actually more than that, too. It was the idea of the king or the foreign dignitary, whoever it was that was coming into the city, had work to do in that city. They didn't want them to spend their time trying to figure out how to get in because of these crooked paths or uneven paths, as maybe they came in with horses and with carts and wagons, and they didn't want there to be trouble getting in because what their work to do in the city was so much more important. And so I think as we kind of think about now John and Jesus, it kind of starts to click in a little bit more because as I wondered myself, why John, right? Why John the Baptist? Because could Jesus have done exactly what John did? Could Jesus' ministry done exactly what John's ministry did? Absolutely. 100%. But John could not have done Jesus' ministry, right? John knew he wasn't even worthy to untie the sandals of Jesus. So he knew that he could not do what Jesus' ministry was. So what he was doing is what he could do, right? He could try to wake up the Israelites, the Jewish people, so that way when the king came, he could do the business, he could be about his business in the city, in the nation of Israel, that only he could do as his paths were made straight. Also, kind of the more figurative to this is that John's ministry was of conviction and repentance. And it was preparing the way for the Messiah. So, an application point which we're going to come back to, but the repentance of that John preached invites the fullness of God to dwell in us. There's this idea, this more figurative idea of making every valley filled and mountains low. It's imagery for how we truly invite God's fullness to dwell in us. Because repentance, true repentance, breeds action. And our hearts should be wide open for God to work. We should be holding nothing back. So there's the obviously the more literal first century understanding of making those paths straight. But then there's this idea of that true repentance is filling the valleys, making low the mountains into our hearts so that we can invite the fullness of God to come in. Moving on to the one snippet of John's message that we get. And obviously we see in verse 18 later on that there were many other sermons and messages that he had, but we just get one snippet here. And he said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come, bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 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. So again, we have to remember, too, that this was not just some guy that decided to go on a bend with yelling at people, right? This is John who is filled with the Holy Spirit preaching repentance and preaching conviction. So his words are purposeful here. And as we already kind of talked about, what he's doing is he is weeding out the insincere. He's weeding out the hypocrites, he's weeding out those who hear that, who hear you brood of vipers, and coil back and say, I'm, what do you mean? I'm a good person. Yes, harsh, but if I were to call you a relentless sinner like I did earlier, is that a lie? When was the last time you went 24 hours without sinning? 12 hours, six hours, three hours. I'll keep cutting it in half, right? I'm sure that I'm going to fall into sins at some point today, probably right after this message. It's we are relentless sinners. We are. Right? But we move towards righteousness, we move through repentance, through conviction, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so he was rooting out the hypocrites and the insincere. He had no time for those who were not fully committed. He was preaching something, he was trying to wake them up, and he didn't need to waste his time on the people that were going to sit there and be like, I'm not a sinner. I haven't done anything bad today. And then he goes straight into a command. First, he kind of criticizes, maybe you know, them. But again, it's in the Holy Spirit. But then he says, Bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. So his first command is to bear fruit as proof of faith. Remember that works do not save us, right? Works without faith, completely useless. Grace have you been saved. But faith without works is also dead, right? We see that in James 2.17. And so that's what he's calling them into. Again, it's a conviction, a call to repentance, and then a call to action. If we miss one of those steps, we're gonna miss out. And that's what John is telling them to do, to bear fruit. Because faith without works is dead. Works are the proof of the faith that we hold. It's one then the other, because if we have true faith, why would we continue to pursue sin and death and separation from God? Why would we not pursue righteousness? And then we get the first of his two warnings. The do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. It's his first warning. Israelites, Jews. It's kind of this idea of the thought that was coming that the God's chosen people for all of history were not going to necessarily be the only people that God used for his new church, building his new church. I even thought back to the time with Moses when God literally said to Moses, you know what, I'm gonna wipe out these sinful people and raise up a new people for you. And Moses begged him, please don't do that. But I think that as we see that cycle time and again with the Israelites of sin and redemption and sin and redemption throughout all the Old Testament, I think there's a warning here of saying, listen, you were God's chosen people, you still hold a special place, but that alone is not going to be enough anymore. Do not say that we have Abraham as our father. Our association and our situation is not an excuse for disobedience or negligence. I go to church, that's wonderful. Are you living obediently? I go to a small group, I go to BSF, that's great, wonderful. Love that you do that. How are you living out God's word in your life? And then we get the next warning. The one that I got stuck on almost immediately as I first read through this passage as I was considering and um studying this. Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. This imagery there, the idea of this, I just thought of this woodcutter's axe laid up against the root of a tree. It's a warning because there is going to be the great judge that comes, and any tree that does not bear good fruit is going to be cut down and thrown into the fire. It's a warning, it's a wake-up call for these Jews. And luckily they heard it. They heard this warning because then there's a genuine response. And I think that again, we have our conviction, we have this idea of repentance that we want to turn away from our sin and turn towards righteousness, but then there's the genuine response of action. And the people have it. What can we do? And it's interesting that John's three responses, right? They're not, they're actionable. They are actions, but they're not necessarily what we would have thought. Go and hear, go to the temple more, pray more, fast more, right? They're more along the lines of morality about how we treat others and how we treat our possessions and finances. And so it's interesting that these three responses have to do with that. And I think it's very telling, right? Because so I'm not saying that this is the only things that we should be convicted of and have repentance about, but I think that this is the snippet that Luke, inspired by God, used for this message. I think that there's fruit there of reminding us of how we're living out our faith in our lives. How are we treating others? How are we treating our finances? If you look at how your treatment of others and how the world treats others, is yours distinctly different than what the world does? If you look at your finances and how the world treats finances, how does yours differ? Is it distinctly different? Because what John in all three of these is preaching is generosity and giving of our possessions. We're inviting the fullness of God to invade all spaces of our hearts, and I think that John is saying here that there is a special hold that greed has on our hearts. There just is. Money is the root of all kinds of evil. And I'm not saying money is evil, but we know that our possessions and our money can have that great hold in our hearts. And so he calls us to be generous with others, our treatment of others. If you have two tunics, give to those who have none. If you have food, give to those who have none. Be honest. Teacher, what shall we do? The tax collector said. Collect no more than you are authorized to do. Be honest in your finances. Don't lie about them. What shall we do then? Do not extort money, the soldiers asked. And so John said, Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be content with your wages. So, how are your finances? How do they look different? Are you being generous with your finances? Are you tithing? Like we're just gonna call it what it is. Sometimes it feels funny to talk about money, but there's a lot of scripture that talks about how we're supposed to treat our finances, and it's giving back to the Lord. And if you're not doing that, it's not that God needs your money. God does not need your money. Okay? God provides, and I know this comes on the heels of us just hearing that our building was paid off, right? So God provides in the way that God provides, and that's up to Him. He could give gospel collective enough money today that we would never need another cent for anything. But what God also knows is that you need to give your money. You need it for your heart because it our possessions and our money have such a hold on our lives sometimes, because we find our security in it, we find our value in it, we compare ourselves to others. And so God knows that you need to have hold everything with open hands. He has stewarded to you possessions, he has stewarded to you money. He wants you to steward it well. And so part of that is not letting that have a hold in our hearts. So these examples, our application point two, this is an example of what repentance should look like in our life. It starts with a recognition of our sin and ends with an action to move from sin to righteousness. Our response to conviction is what can we do? God, what can we do to fix this? Moving on into verse 15, we get an interesting verse. As the people were in expectation and all were questioning in their hearts whether John, concerning John, whether he might be the Christ. So is John the Messiah? No, we know that. But it's not silly that they thought this. It was not like a you know a core misunderstanding that they might have thought this. Again, God had not spoken through a prophet in hundreds of years, and John shows up, and although he's a little bit of a weirdo, right, he has this incredibly effective, spirit-filled ministry where he is convicting the Holy Spirit through his words, is convicting the hearts of man and turning them back towards God. And so why would they not think that maybe this is the Messiah? Because they didn't have this understanding that God was not just going to send another worker, but that he was going to send his own son. God was going to send his own son to be the Messiah. And John knew this. Uh, Jesus' cousin, right? Forget that sometimes too. Uh, but John answered them all, saying, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with holy with the Holy Spirit and fire. Immediately he's saying, Jesus is superior. So again, going back to kind of the first century mindset of the people of this day, back in that day, something that we don't necessarily see so much of today, is we have this rabbi and disciple relationship. Rabbi teacher, right? So somebody who is ministering for God, and somebody who is speaking with wisdom from God, who studies God's word, and then we have their disciples, people who are going this relationship, they would go and learn under their rabbi. They would walk with him. Wherever he went, they would go. And as he as they walked with him, they would learn from him. And eventually they would start ministering beside him. And then the goal was always that they would then go off and start their own ministry away from the rabbi. But while they were the disciple of the rabbi, there was kind of this idea that they did whatever the rabbi needed. The rabbi had work to do, the ministry of God. The disciple was to take care of all the little things. And a lot of times, in a lot of ways, they were almost considered as slaves. If they needed water, you got water. If they needed food, you got them food. If they needed a place to say, you did that. You did everything for them that they needed, so that way they could focus on the work that they had to do. But the one task that was too lowly, too demeaning for the disciples to do was considered to be untying the rabbi's sandals. That was too lowly, too much. That's going too far. You can't even ask a disciple to do that, a slave to do that. So for John to say, whose mightier and I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie would have hit hard. John is saying, You think I might be the Christ? I'm not even worthy to be his disciple. I'm not even worthy to be his slave. I'm not even worthy to do the one thing that no disciple would ever be asked to do because it's too lowly and demeaning, and I'm not even worthy to do that. And John goes on because he is unequivocally stating that Jesus is far superior, and he says, I baptize you with water. Again, first century mindset, right? Not understand we still have water today, but cleansing with water, it's important. We need to bathe, we need to clean things. Water washes the outside. But Jesus is going to baptize with fire. And there's deep meaning there because fire, especially in that first century mindset, was the ultimate purifier. You needed to purify something, right? They didn't have lysol, they had fire. Okay? It was the ultimate purifier. Water washes the outside, but fire can cleanse and purify to the core. What he was saying is that Jesus is coming and he's going to purify your hearts. He's going to get to the heart. I can see your sin on the outside. I can say whether or not you're bearing fruit or not bearing fruit based on the things that I see. But Jesus has no need to call out you brood of vipers to try to weed out the insincere and the hypocrites because he already knew who in the crowd was insincere and hypocrite. John says his winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. Jesus sees the heart. Again, we have no ability to judge anyone other than by the actions we see, and that's why God calls us to not judge, because we don't see the heart. All we can see is the outward fruit. But Jesus sees the heart. And so he is coming, and he is going to judge. This idea of clearing the threshing floor, right? So as the wheat is gathered, it gets put on the fleshing floor and it gets separated out from the chaff. The wheat is stored in a barn as it is good and useful, and the chaff, as it is separated out, is burned. We all will be judged. We are all going to see judgment. And so the judgment that we will see for many of us, and I hope everyone in here, is the judgment where our judgment will be Christ saying, But he is mine, my blood has covered them. But remember that we are not guaranteed another breath. And so this call from repentance, right? So there's this is when we're talking about sin, there is the unrepentant sin, and then there's the repentance sin. So as we talk a little bit more about this conviction, I don't want anyone to be like, I'm just struggling every day with the sin moment by moment. I'm stuck in it. That's not who, this is not who some of these warnings are for of unrepentant sin, because we see some harsh warnings in scripture, these danger warnings of saying when the idea of repentance, right, is turning away from our sin, seeing our sin, turning away from it, and running into the arms of our Father. An unrepentant sin is the opposite. It is running into our sin headlong. So I get it. We're all there at times where we are struggling day by day, moment by moment, with sin in our lives. All sorts of things: pride, greed, money, sex. There's all sorts of things that we struggle with in our lives. And when we are clawing our way out, that's not who these warnings are for, right? Because we are relentless sinners. We need to continue to move and be convicted and towards action. But again, it's the action of the unrepentant sinner to run into the sin headlong. And for those people, we aren't guaranteed another breath. And again, I don't see your heart, but God does. And again, repentance breeds action. So if your actions are running to sin, right? If we have true faith. So moving on to verse uh 18 through 20, we see kind of the end here to uh this story about John. There's still a little bit more to his story, unfortunately. He doesn't really make it out of prison. Um but before that, it says that he preached many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people. But Herod, the Tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, Herod married his brother's wife, not good, and for all the other evil things that Herod had done, not a good dude, added to them that he locked up John in prison. And I think this is another good sign of just the effectiveness of John's ministry, because Herod, who was so quick to kill, to murder anyone that stood against him, was too afraid to murder John, to kill John, at least at this point. He was afraid because of the reprisal of the people. John's ministry was very effective. So going back to our application points, are we making the path straight? Are we making our the path straight to our hearts? Are there places in our hearts that we refuse to let God fully enter and work through? Do we have unrepentant sin? This idea of the valleys and the mountains, is there a place in your heart that you're holding on to, that you have that stronghold, that you're refusing to let God enter and work? Jesus' work started in us. Then he gives us the Holy Spirit to complete that good work in us. We are immediately justified through the work of Jesus, and we are have live a lifetime of sanctification through the work of the Holy Spirit. But he says the Holy Spirit will complete. The good work in you. It's not that you have to do the work because you are honestly incapable of it, but allowing the Holy Spirit to come in, that's what he asks for, is just for us to give up those places in our hearts that we're holding on to. So what are those places? Well, they could be many things, but let's focus on the two that we see in this passage today. The treatment of others and our finances. Right? Because those two things can stem out from all sorts of sin, right? So how are we visibly living out the change in our lives? The faith that you have when other people see your life, could they see the distinction between you and someone who is unsaved? You and somebody who is of the world. You and someone who has not seen the light, does not have the Holy Spirit convicting them, who is not being sanctified. Again, in most of these things, it's our heart posture. Are we surrendering the things that we have, our pride, our possessions, to God and saying, God, these are yours to use. I thank you for the blessing that I have, right? Getting money is not evil. Being blessed with uh financial security is not evil. There's nothing evil about that. It's what we hold on to and how those things can replace God and with the things that we're supposed to be seeking in God, our security, our value. It's all things found in God. Uh for my third point, and I promise I'm gonna land the plane here. So just well, I'm just gonna take a little segue here, uh, and I'm gonna talk about Netflix, okay? So thank you, my daughter. Yeah, right. I'm gonna land the plane, just hold on. So uh for for those kids out here, you probably don't understand, uh, but back in the day, Netflix was this weird thing where they would mail you DVDs and that was really it, right? And so maybe you did that. I think I was doing that, and then all of a sudden, somebody uh somewhere, I believe around like 2010 was like, hey, you can go on your computer and you can stream things. Stream? What does that mean? I kind of heard of YouTube, but what does that mean? Hey, there's movies and TV shows that maybe you've missed, and you can binge. That's a new thing too, right? We can get on our computers and binge a whole series. Well, that's what I did. Uh you could even get it on your phone, that was another thing, right? Smartphones, iPhones were out, you can get this on your phone. Um, and so when I so one of the first series that I did binge was a series called Friday Night Lights. Okay. So there's the movie Friday Night Lights and the series Friday Night Lights warning, right? So they're PG 13. They are not about saved people. There's inappropriateness in them. I am not saying go watch it with your family. That's up to you, right? Okay. But there are good values in the show, right? So a lot of times I feel like in so many shows that we watch today, it is I'm cheering for the bad guy because there's a worst guy, and the bad guy is kind of bad, but not as bad as the worst guy. That wasn't this show. This show was about a football team in Texas. It was about a coach that came into a hard situation, players got hurt, and all this stuff, and it was many seasons, so I'm not going to go over all of it. But it was about a football, a high school football team in Texas and how they kind of persevered through these things and they learned. And so there was good values there of family, of loyalty, of working hard, of working hard in a team. So there was good stuff there. All right, that's my disclaimer on that show. But one of the things that I'm pulling from this show, uh, and you may have already kind of been saying it in your head, is there was a slogan that the team adopted. And it was the slogan of clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. And it would be their chant kind of before their games. And it would be the thing that they would, I think they even had it posted up before they would walk out onto the field. They had like a little sign above it. And so their meaning of it was clear eyes, right? So we're gonna put everything else behind us. We're not gonna be thinking about anything outside of football, right? We're gonna focus on the game, focus on football, full hearts, right? So their heart is full, they're going to give 110%, they're going to do whatever they need to do to protect their brothers, to win the game. And the idea the last idea is can't lose. They go out, they put everything else aside, they give 110%, lose or win the football game, they've done their best, so they can't lose. So, where in the world am I going with this? I this came into my head, and so that's why I'm talking about it. But as I thought about this, is that I'm going to take what they were using for football and kind of try to pull it back into a more spiritual realm. So clear eyes. Do you clearly see your sin for what it is? Do you clearly see the sin in your life as something that needs to be murdered, that you need to kill, that you need to put to death because it is damnation and eternal separation from God. That is what sin is. Is that the way that you see it in your life? Because the world around us, and I think one of Satan's biggest deceptions is that your sin, well, there's minor sins, and there's major sins. Consequences-wise, that may be true, but sin is sin. Is that the way that we see it in our lives? And if so, what are we doing about it? Are those the clear eyes that we have to seeing where we were? We are all poor in spirit. We need to recognize that before we could possibly have salvation. Do you recognize that you and of yourself, before Jesus' redeeming work in you, you had nothing. You were dead before being called into life. But I think there's the other part because some people get stuck there and just, I'm a sinner, I'm worthless, that's the way they get stuck. But we have to have clear eyes about Jesus' redeeming work as well. That he died on the cross for our salvation, that he took on the sins of us, that he took on our sins, and that his redeeming work in us is of worth. It's something that we can be proud in, in his work in us. Not that in of ourselves that we could do it, but that he could do it in us. Full hearts. What is your heart full of? Is it full of the things that this world says it should be full of? Cars, houses, possessions, fame? Or is it full of the things that God says it should be full of? Are we truly inviting repentance into our life? Letting God come into every nook and cranny of our hearts and purify it, redeem it, work through it. He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it. We just need to allow him that space. Can't lose. Are you living in a way that is assured of eternal life? We have clear eyes. We are sinners in need of a savior. We have a savior who did that for us. By grace have we been saved. And then we allow the Holy Spirit to come in and work in our hearts and work in our lives, then we can't lose. We may lose our life, we may lose our possessions, we may lose family members. This world is broken, it is hard, there's full of sin. But are you living in a way that is assured of your eternal salvation? That this is not our home, this is but temporary. So whatever you do here, you are still assured of your salvation because of your faith that is producing works, your faith in Jesus, then we cannot lose. So are you living that way? Because are we living in a place of fear, of reprisal, of persecution? It happens, it's gonna happen. But we know that we won't lose. We know in the end that Jesus' work will cover us. Let's pray. Dear Lord, I thank you for this time. I thank you for your word. I thank you for your truth. I thank you for your redeeming work. By grace are we saved. And Lord, we know that true faith in you, loving you, does just produce good works, good fruit in us as we strive to be like you, to obey you, Lord. And you give us your Holy Spirit, your helper, in order to help us do that, Lord, as we cannot do it on our own. So we throw ourselves at your feet in humility. We recognize that we are poor in spirit. We also recognize the power that you have and the work of your Holy Spirit in our lives. I pray, Lord, just that as we walk away today and go through our weeks, Lord, that uh we would consider the things in our lives, that we would meditate on the things in our hearts, that we would root out sin in our lives, and that we would turn from it and turn back towards you. Let us be convicted today by your word, not by my words, but by your words, by your actions, by your gift. I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.