Sunday, July 1st

Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Obadiah, Psalm 82-83

Today's scripture focus is Matthew 3:1-12

Happy Canada Day!!


3 In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea ² and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” ³ This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:

“A voice of one calling in the desert,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
    make straight paths for him.’”

⁴ John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. ⁶ Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? ⁸ Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. ⁹ And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. ¹⁰ The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”


John MacArthur says....
Matthew wrote his entire gospel to present Christ as King.  And Matthew well knows that all kings have a herald.  All kings have an announcer.  All kings have a forerunner or someone who straightens out the path, who gets things ready for his arrival.  And, consequently, Matthew goes to great lengths to introduce to us this herald in order that he might affirm from another angle, that indeed Jesus Christ was a king.  Like any king, He had a herald, and not just any herald, not just any forerunner, but according to Matthew 11:11, John the Baptist was the greatest man who had ever been born up until his time.  Indeed, a great man.  So Matthew introduces us to John because it fits his theme.  And John's message was the message of repentance, the message that was needed to get Israel ready.  Because the tragedy of the matter, as we have seen, was that even though the King was coming and even though the kingdom was imminent, the people were not ready and the people could not receive the kingdom.  There was sin in Israel.  Israel was lost.  In fact, Israel was no different than Gentiles at this point.  And that's why John preached a baptism, because baptism was actually the rite which a Gentile proselyte went through to become a part of Israel.  And John was, in effect, saying you're on the outside looking in.  The good news, the King is coming; the bad news, you're not ready.  You've got to be converted.  You've got to be changed.  The word repentance, literally, is converted.  You've got to be transformed.  You've got to turn your life around and get ready for the King or you will not be able to receive His kingdom.  And so it was bad news that John preached before it was good news that he announced.  The bad news...look at verse 2...repent.  The good news, the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  That was the twofold message that John preached.  Before the kingdom could be received, repentance had to occur.  Before they could ever enter into the place of blessing and be a part of what God had planned, the kingdom, they had to come to a place of conversion, transformation, 180 degree turning around, away from their sin, a fundamental change in their relationship to God and the way they were living their lives.  And as I said, it was to be symbolized by baptism, the symbol of Gentile proselytes entering Judaism.  And, really, the Jews were outsiders.  This was a shocking message.  So, repentance keynoted John's message.

True biblical repentance involves the mind, the emotion and the will.

First, repentance involves the mind - the knowledge and recognition of our sin.  That's the first step.  We obviously cannot repent of sin we do not acknowledge we've committed.

But it doesn't stop there.  After all, Pharoah (Exodus 9:27), Balaam  (Numbers 23:29-30), Achan (Joshua 7:20-21) and King Saul (1 Samuel 15:24) all acknowledged their sin - but they didn't truly repent.  True repentance recognizes that sin is hateful to a holy God, and the recognition of our sin should result in overwhelming feelings of guilt and remorse.  True repentance does not stop at our intellect - it goes from our mind to our emotions.  MacArthur adds this key thought.... when I talk about emotional pain over sin, I mean that the pain is over the violation of a holy God, not over the consequences.....It's got to be a sorrow directed toward God.  Sorrow that is merely a sense of shame because everybody found out or sorrow that is really fear of the consequences is selfishness.
Just being sorry you got caught, or just being sorry that because you got caught there are huge consequences or loss of reputation - doesn't make you repentant.
True repentance doesn't think of consequences, it doesn't think of other people's opinion and it doesn't think of excuses; it does think of transgressing God, it does think of being personally guilty....And when there is genuine repentance, there will be this deep sense of sorrow directed toward a holy God who has been offended. 


But there's still another huge step in biblical repentance - and that's a matter of the will, a matter of choice, a matter of changed behaviour.
But no matter how convinced the mind is about sin and no matter how pained the emotions become even in the right way...there's got to be an act of the will.  There's got to be a turning around....When this really, honest, legitimate, intellectual, emotional, volitional turnaround and transformation occurs under the power of God as a gift from God, when God does this miracle in a life, there will be fruit, there will be results.  All true repentance will bear fruit.  John's message then is true repentance.  And John is very concerned with validating anybody's supposed repentance on the basis of whether or not they manifest what?...fruit.  If it isn't there, then the repentance isn't valid because where there is real repentance, there will be real results.  Where there is a transformed life, where there is conversion and transformation, there's got to be a by-product.  And so that's the main message that John uses to confront the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

You can say you're sorry 100 times, if you're behaviour doesn't change, you didn't mean it.  A husband can tell his wife over and over again that he's sorry he cheated, but if there's no change, then all he was sorry about was getting caught, and maybe even sorry that she left him - but that's not repentance. Talk is cheap.  Talk means nothing if it's not followed up by action.

And John has some strong words for those who claim repentance but show no fruit of true repentance....
 ¹⁰ The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
John pictures God, as it were, coming to find the fruitful tree, the tree where the fruit of repentance is visible.  And where he doesn't find it, He lays the axe, as it were, at the root, indicating the axe is resting there waiting to do its work of judgment.  The tree without the fruits of repentance is cut down and burned.  
Just like Jesus Himself said in John 15!

And the judgment continues...
¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
here we find the Lord Jesus Christ and He's got His threshing floor....And He has His shovel and He is throwing these things in the air and the wheat falls straight down, is gathered into the grainery, the rest of the stuff blows aside, is picked up and burned with unquenchable fire.  By the way, this is a picture of ultimate judgment.  And in the ultimate judgment, Christ oversees the whole project but it's actually carried out by the angels.  The angels actually do the winnowing.  The angels actually do the separating.  The angels are the ones given this unique responsibility and we'll find that out later on as we study the book of Matthew.  So at the second coming of Jesus Christ, He's gonna come in judgment and He's gonna separate. ...Good grain into the storehouse, into the grainery, into Heaven, the kingdom.  And the godly who repent, they are the good grain.  The godly who manifest the fruit of repentance, they are the good grain.  The true children of the kingdom, they are the good grain and the rest is chaff....And the chaff goes into the fire.  And what's the fire?...Hell....And so we see this fearful picture of judgment.... Hell on the one hand and Heaven on the other.  And so does John confront them, condemn them and warn them of the fire of God's vengeance if they do not manifest the fruits of repentance...


Beloved, all I can say to you is the same message stands today.  Jesus came as a Savior or a Judge, to offer Heaven or Hell, blessing or cursing.  And you are either wheat to be gathered to the grainery or you are chaff to be burned with unquenchable fire.  And you will make the decision by virtue of whether or not you bring forth the fruits of repentance that manifests that you have in your mind become aware of your sin, that you have in your emotions recognized personal guilt and that you have in your will called upon the Lord Jesus Christ to change you from the way you have been.  If that has occurred in your life, if true repentance and conversion has occurred in your life, you are wheat and you'll be gathered to the grainery.  

Thankfully, there is verse 11.
¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
First was John's baptism of repentance. This was not a Christian baptism - it was a pre-Christian baptism, an Old Testament act of faith and repentance.  The second baptism referred to in this verse is the baptism of the holy spirit which occurs when we become a Christian. And the final baptism referred to here is fire, again likely referencing judgment.  Those who accept Christ are baptized in the Holy Spirit, those who reject Him are baptized with fiery judgment.

That is John's message.  The King is coming and to those who bear the fruit of true repentance He will baptize in the Holy Spirit and separate them from the chaff and bring them to heaven.  The choice is ours - will we choose to leave our sins and go to heaven, or keep our sins and go to hell?

Will we bear fruit of true, biblical repentance?

Tomorrow's scripture focus: Matthew 3:13-17

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage:  2 Kings 1-4