Luke's Gospel

So Luke chapter 3, from verse 1. In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias Caesar, when Punch's pilot was governor Judea, herod Tetrauch of Galile, his brother Philip, Tetra, Vira, and Drakeonitis and Lysanias Tetrauch of Abilini during the high priesthood of Annis and Kaya first the word of god came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. He went into all the country around the Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah prophet, A voice of 1 calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight.

The rough ways smooth. And all people will see god's salvation. John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, produce fruit in keeping with repentance, And do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father for I tell you that out of these stones, god can raise up children for Abraham. The ax has been laid to the root of the trees and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. What should we do then?

The crowd asked. John answered. Anyone who has 2 shirts should share with the 1 who has none. And anyone who has food should do the same. Even tax collectors came to be baptized.

Teacher, they asked, what should we do? Don't collect any more than you're required to, he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, and what should we do? He replied, don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely be content with your pay. The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah.

John answered them all. I baptized you with water, but 1 who is more powerful than I will come. The straps of who 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 he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

And with many other words, John extorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them. But when John rebuked herod the Tetrauch because of his marriage to herodia, his brother's wife, and all the other evil things he had done, herod added this to the mall, who locked John up in prison. Let me pray, before we start. Father, please prepare our hearts to hear this word. Knock out everything else that's an obstruction a barrier, please remove that from from hearing your word, preached here tonight, Carmen.

Okay. So back in Luke, it's been a while, been a couple of weeks, but we're back into the story. And everything that's happened up to this point really has been the introduction. It's been the introduction to the main event. And the introduction ended really 30 years ago.

We know that because it's the fifteenth year of Tiberias' reign that gives us a date. It's about 30 years ago. 30 years since we left that little baby in the stable. 30 years since the angels appeared to the shepherds in the fields and set the sky on fire with glory of the lord. 30 years, and precious little information apart from a brief and brilliant encounter in the temple with a 12 year old Jesus.

And now Luke says the story really gets going. It really begins. Now there's big wheels turning and they're turning in earnest. I mean, it kind of feels like it kind of feels like what's going on? I mean, if you were those shepherds and you've been given that news and then 30 years goes by and you think, well, where's he gone?

What did he die and no 1 heard about it? What's happened to him? Was he not the Messiah? I I don't know. And and for all the world, it looks like the big political names of the day are running the show, doesn't it?

All those names that Luke gives at the start, the emperor, the governor, the Tetraks, the high priests, they look like they're in charge. Where's the Messiah? What's he up to? Wait. What's he what's he doing?

All these powerful and corrupt men, the ones that appear to be running the show. But actually, what's more accurate is that they're just small cogs in the grand machine which is god's salvation plan. Because along with this list of names comes John. And what Luke wants us to see is that John's the big wheel of the day. John is the cog that god is using to drive the most important events of the day.

And like Jesus, we haven't seen John for 30 odd years, The last thing we heard about John was at the end of chapter 1 when he went off to live in the wilderness, until the time came for him to appear publicly and he's living a life of of austere isolation. Mark in his gospel records this about, Jesus at the beginning of his gospel account. And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins The whole Judeian countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist and he ate locusts and wild honey. So John, after a couple of decades of living in the wilderness, is is really looking the part now.

Camel's hair clothing, leather belt, locusts and honey as his as his diet. He was looking every bit the part of an old testament prophet. More specifically, he was looking identical to 1 of the greatest prophets in Israel's history, Elijah. And his like hadn't been seen in living memory. In fact, the last time anyone had seen a profit of this mold was hundreds of years ago.

And what a reappearance it is. Massive of people are coming out to the desert to hear him preach. Thousands baptized. This is this is revival time. This is the stuff of revival.

Huge things are going on here. But look, when a profit comes to town, you have to take the hard to hear news with the nicer news with the good news. You have to take the hard stuff at the same time and you've gotta take it on the chin if you're gonna hear the message. If you know anything at all about old testament prophets, you will know that when they come, it's with a message of repentance. It's always with a warning and an urgent encouragement to change your ways.

Change course change direction, and if the warning's not heeded, then judgment and destruction surely follow. You see that pattern, don't you? So take David than bathsheba and and the prophet Nathan comes to David to to warn him to tell him of his sin of his his wrong doing. Against Eria and bathsheba and ultimately against god. And David, because of this man of god coming to him, is brought to a true and heartfelt repentance.

And he seeks forgiveness from god, right response. Yeah? The crisis averted in in in 1 sense, although there's consequences, On the other hand, take Ahab and Jezebel when confronted with Elijah rather than heed the prophetic warnings and take multiple opportunities that they get to repent and denounce their false gods in wicked ways, they instead seek to kill god's prophet. And if you know that story, neither of them end very well. Or you could look at Isaiah, Jeremiah, take any 1 of a number of old testament prophets and you will know that largely they're not listened to largely they're even killed.

By their own people for the message of repentance and warning that they're preaching to the people and as sure as anything judgment, and destruction follow. Profits come to call on the people for repent in order that they might avoid destruction. That's the job of a prophet. They bring god's word to warn the people and it's no different here with John. In fact, if anything, it's more applicable here with John than it's ever been before because John is here to warn and prepare everyone that none other than the lord himself is coming.

None other than the lord himself is on his way. So get ready. Look at the Isaiah prophecy about John in verse 4, a prophecy by a prophet about another prophet who's gonna come and tell people about the lord coming. Look at verse 4, a voice of 1 calling in the wilderness. Prepare the way for the lord.

Make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth, and all the people see god's salvation. This is no joke. It's a time for preparation.

It's a time to make sure that everything is ready for his arrival because I tell you what, you don't want to find yourself unprepared for the king's visit. Not when you've been warned like this, and the way John goes about that is to bring a message of repentance because the place that the lord is coming to see is the hearts of humankind. Just imagine, so imagine this for a second. Imagine imagine your heart and imagine it's like town and this town is walled off. Just to picture that and gaining access to it isn't easy.

It's a town called Hart. It's a hard place to get to. The roads in and out have fallen into disrepair. They've left they've been left to crumble. There's huge potholes.

The weeds are sprouting out from the tarmac. The roads going up to it are twisted, hard to drive on. You're lucky if they're tarmaced at all. Land slides have wiped away sections. It's up in the mountains over the valleys.

There's no bridges over the valleys. There's no tunnels through the mountains. This is a seriously difficult place to get to, almost entirely inaccessible, and yet the king has said I'm coming to this region, and I wish to visit. And so John is sent in front of him and John is going to build some roads before the king. He's gonna build highways into the hearts of the people.

That's the message. That's the preaching. That he's bringing. However, in order to build roads, you need to demolish some of the stuff that's in the way first, don't you? Before the new tarmac starts going down, there's some heavy duty work of bulldozing obstacles leveling potholes, tunnelling through mountains, whatever's in the way isn't gonna stand up against John.

He's going straight through the middle of it. That's John's preaching here. He is a fiery preacher. So if you've come here looking for a quieter nicer message tonight. It's John's going straight down the line.

This is as fiery as it gets. I mean, look, sometimes there's preacher, you require a certain element of subtlety in your preaching. And other times, you just need a scalpel blade, a surgical cut, But for this, I don't think you can say that of John's tactics here. When faced with the heavy opposition of entrenched and inaccessible human heart, John brings out the heavy duty tools to clear the path before the king. He will have direct access on a bright smooth highway into the town called Hart if John's got anything at all to do it.

And let's face it. You do not build roads subtlety or scalpel. You need the heavy machinery. So let's look at the machinery. Step 1 The machinery really is repentance.

It's this message of repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins and step 1 of repentance, step 1 of John's message is realize you're sinful. Did you see the way he began his sermon? Did that catch your attention? Cause it certainly caught mine. Right.

So imagine I came up here this tonight. I hadn't said anything else to you. You'd all come in and I I lean over the top and I go, You brood of vipers. Who told you to come here tonight, Pym? Honestly, who warned you to come here?

What are you doing here, Pym? You viper, Pete. Viper, what are you doing here? Who warned you to flee the coming wrath? Well, I don't remember doing that, but that's how John starts his sermon.

That's his opening gambit. I mean, he's not messing around. He's going straight through whatever's in front of him here. Imagine that was how we preached. I mean, sometimes I think I could do with more of that.

I need I need a bit more of a working over. My heart needs some tenderizing. It gets a bit and hard sometimes a lot of the time and it seems like tonight here would probably be the perfect opportunity I mean, look, this verse has has been doing a job on me for the last month or so. So I fully expect that you guys can put up with the next 2 hours or so of of pummeling that we're we're about to have. John is saying to them, you vipers, you sinners, you sinful people, He's drawing in saying that on another Isaiah passage.

In Isaiah 59 5, the vipers of the rebellious Israelites who turned the ways of god into crooked roads. They took the good things, the loving commands of god that he had given them and they twisted them, added to them, subtracted from them until they were unrecognizable. Notting themselves up in sinful patterns in the process and severing the connection with god, making themselves inaccessible The lines of communication are cut. God's straight ways bent. And John looks at these crowds coming at him and he recognizes exactly the same thing in this generation.

Exactly the same thing Isaiah was sent to preach to hundreds of years earlier. John sees the same thing. They're just a new generation of evildoers with ever new ways of committing evil who need to repent if they're ever going to see the lord Jesus. And I'll tell you what is our generation any better if anything is worse if you if you can say worse? At best, it's just as bad, isn't it?

I mean, look, the Israelites had everything. They had the prophets, the priests, the history, the stories. They grew up with it. They knew all about god. They knew all of the things that he had done for them, and they still rejected and twisted his ways.

Similarly, here in the UK, we have a culture that is so heavily shaped by the Bible and yet we've moved away from it. It's unrecognizable from anything to do with the Bible really if you look at it. Me and Bernadette, we were at the British Library, a couple of weeks ago. And we went to see this exhibit. It was on Saxon Kings and all the writings of the Sax and times and how that's influenced and informed our our current day and age.

And I'll tell you what stood out to me is that the very earliest writings in those times were Gospels. It was Luke's gospel, John's gospel, Mark's gospel, Matthews's gospel. Over and over and over again. That's it seems like that's all they were writing down. I mean, that's a great thing if if they, you know, if that's all they're writing and, hey, could be a lot worse, couldn't it?

I mean, it's probably from a bad translation, but still, And then the interesting thing to see was how that was informing laws and how that was informing how the king put laws out in in how people were treated and basic rights that people had, some really interesting stuff. What I'm trying to say is that we've we've got this heritage. We do have this heritage in this country. And we've had prophets, haven't we? Hundreds of prophets, spurgeons and Lloyd Joneses bunnions and my goodness, you you you couldn't even count the rest.

Whitlifts, tyndale's, woodcocks. All the others that exist today, the hundreds, thousands of prophets that god has sent to this nation. And I'll tell you what sometimes it just feels like no one's listening. John says you broodify I'll tell you what, if he came to London today, I don't think he'd say any different. You've bent god's ways.

You've bent them out of shape. You don't have anything to do with them and you you seem to think that you're good and you're right and that everything's okay and you've gone so far as to say, I don't even exist anymore. And you say, that's good, and that's right, and that's okay. How far? We've gone and come away from that.

You're brutal vipers. I think that's what John would say. I'm I'm sure I'm a hundred percent sure that's what John would say. And that message, it it doesn't just stop there, does it? It's just as true for us in this room sat here.

If you're thinking at this moment in time, oh, well, I'm not included in that statement. If you're thinking that that when John says you brood of vipers, it it doesn't include you also, then I want to say be careful. Be very careful indeed. If you can't see that you are a sinner in need of repentance, then you're in danger. You are in serious danger.

You're in danger of closing the roads to your heart of not letting the king in to do his work, of rejecting him and his message, be very careful indeed because that statement applies to every 1 of us in this room. We have vipers at our core, poison in our hearts. And if you cannot see the sin in your life, my goodness. How'd you even begin to repent of it? How'd you even begin to take it to the cross?

How does any of that even begin to work on your life? Step 1. See the sin in your life. Step 2 of repentance. Stop making excuses and get on with the hard work of repenting.

It's basically it. So do you see what John goes for in verse 8? He goes for something quite specific here. He says and do not begin to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our father. They thought that simply by being a Jew that made them right with god.

Regardless of the state of their heart, or how they live their lives or treated other people for them being a Jew simply enough. And John is saying to them, don't even begin to think it. Don't come here and say, Hey, look Abraham's our father. We're all good. There is no guarantee John says that god will accept simply because of the blood that flows through your veins.

In fact, if he wants, he doesn't even need you guys He'll just raise up more children out of these rocks. So blood's got nothing to do with it. Belonging to Abraham has nothing to do with it just because you know he's father of all the nations and the promise came through him, well, god can make new children. Don't think that that saves you. They seemed to think that god didn't really care how they lived.

They got the wrong idea about who god was in their heads. He was no longer a god of relationship who wanted to know them and they were his children and he was their father They seem to care, think that he didn't care how they lived. And if he doesn't care how you lived, then he doesn't love you, does he? Well, I'll tell you what, When I do something wrong, Bernadette tells me about it, and I go, Ah, she loves me. And the more I do wrong, the more she tells me about it.

And the more I know she loves me. It's brilliant. I'll have to repent and change my ways That's hard work. But look, they were totally lacking the thing that god was looking for in the human heart. And that was repentance.

At its core, a repentant heart is the is 1 that's fundamentally changed direction. It's it's 1 that's no longer mastered by sin, but is battling sin. It's so important that we understand this because at no point can we say I don't sin? I've known people that have said that and it's rubbish it's utter rubbish. I've known people that have argued that now they're a Christian, they no longer sin.

And I'm like, well, am I not am I not a Christian? Because I, you know, I'm sitting right now thinking about what you're telling me. It's annoying me. Like it's it's it's rubbish. It's total rubbish.

A repentant person sure they hate sin and they love god. But that's not to say a repentant person doesn't sin. The fact that they do still sin makes them hate it all the more. Do you feel like that? I can someone agree with me because I feel like that?

Thank you. Cause if I'm on my own up here, I might as well get down and go. There was a time when when you sinned and you didn't care about it, wasn't there? You didn't even think it was a problem. But now that you've been made aware of it, and suddenly you find that you're intolerant to it.

And so when you fall victim to it, it causes you pain and you cry out to the 1 you love all the more. Isn't that the way it works? Why am I doing this again? Sometimes I tell you what I hate myself. Why am I going through this again?

Why have I done exactly actually the same thing that I hate so much. I don't want it. Lord save me from it. Please rescue me from it. Take me back to the cross.

Let me see that blood flowing again. Let me see the lord Jesus taking it all there because I can't do this on my own. I know I can't do on my own. I've just proved it again. We need that sort of a spirit, don't we?

The repentant person's a battler, and battlers have scars, and battlers often get hit and it hurts. And they lose battle sometimes. They do, but they get back up. They get back into the fight, and they go again because they know They've got someone on their side that's won the war for them already so you can go and fight those battles. Sometimes it's all you can do just to face it with a grim faced determination and just keep pushing forwards.

But I tell you what when you know that the lord Jesus died for you on the cross do it with joy in your heart still because you know ultimately he's done it. If we don't see sin in our lives as a problem and if we're not willing to do anything about it, then I think safe to say that you're not repentant and not a child of god actually. And it's quite easy to put on a show. To be a nice person to come to church, to come here to Cornerstone every week. It's easy to fool other fall other people, isn't it?

Who can't see into the depths of your heart? Many of us know that. Many of us in this room of known brother or people who we thought were brothers and sisters and watched them walk away and it hurts. It's painful. It's easy to put on a show, but I'll tell you what, either way, you cannot fool god.

Because god will know and judge you by your fruit, and that's the third step of repentance. Know you're a sinner, fight the sin in your life in the power of the Holy Spirit and Jesus' payment for it on the cross. And third step, produce repentance fruit. That's what John says, produce repentance fruit. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance a repentant life produces repentance fruit.

However, he says a non repentant life is like a tree with no fruit. And those trees fruitless fruit trees are good for nothing but being cut down and thrown into the fire. In fact, he says the ax is already at the root. It's already there, meaning it's imminent. The times come.

There's no time to waste. That's all the fruitless fruit trees good for burning into ash destruction. Jesus himself, he draws on these sorts of illustrations, doesn't he? I mean, Remember the fig tree. Do you remember the fig tree he cursed?

And he sees this tree and he he's hungries with the disciples and there's this fig tree and it's in leaf. And if a fig tree is in leaf, it means it should have fruit. And they go, brilliant. Let's go over and see the fig tree and they get closer and they see, actually, there's no fruit on this victory. It's it was a show.

It was a smoke screen. It's all the facade. There was no never any fruit. Was just putting on the appearance of having fruits. Just fooling everyone that goes by.

Just uses that as, as an illustration of what's going on in the temple. Lots of activity, very busy, no fruit, No fruit in keeping with repentance. That fig tree gets cursed. It withers it dies. It's destroyed.

Good for nothing. And John seems to hit the mark with his preaching. Because the people turn around and say exactly the right thing at this point, what do we do then, John? If being a child of Abraham doesn't save us, then what do we do? What do we do?

Tell me what we do if we're sinful people and being a child of Abraham, being an Israelite, doesn't it doesn't save us. What do we do then? And John goes, good question. Why didn't you ask me sooner? Go and love people.

That's what a repentant heart does. Go and be generous towards people. That's a sign of repentance. Look at his answer. Anyone who has 2 shirts should share with the 1 who has none.

And anyone who has food should do the same. And it doesn't stop there. He gets some of the most despised people coming to him, even the tax collectors are cut to the heart. Now, that's a hard heart to get to, isn't it? But John's bulldoze the path through.

He's managed to build a road there for his preaching and it's straight in there. And they're going, well, what should we do then? We're taking money off our own people. What do we do? Do I stop being a tax collector?

John goes, no. Course not. We need taxes. They build roads. In fact, I I should probably tax you guys for this sermon building some roads here.

I won't, but, you know, he says, just do it fairly. Someone's gotta collect the taxes. Do it fairly. Don't steal money. Don't steal from the people, be honest about it.

Then the soldiers come to him. What they're they're more like local heavies, really, like a local militia police force. They're probably on the Temple payroll or they're the enforcers for the taxmen. I mean, these are the guys that are going around breaking bones and leaning on people saying if you don't pay up, we're coming back later. And I'll tell you what, if you don't pay us, then can't guarantee your shop's safety.

I mean, if you don't pay us to protect it, then someone, not saying who, but someone might come and smash it up. You pay us and pretty sure someone's not gonna come and smash a shop up. They're extorting money from people They're falsely accusing people in order to blackmail them. They're using all their strength and their position. To do those things in society, my goodness, that's a hard heart.

To get to. And they are cut to the heart by John's preaching, and they're coming to him saying, well, what do we do then? And John's just saying again, it's simple guys. Don't use your strength to extort money out of people and don't lie about people. Use your strength to protect uphold.

Stop chaos in society. We need some soldiers. We need some police. They're the ones who stop it all going to complete pot. In other words, in all these things, what John is demanding is that they wear their repentant hearts on their sleeves because a heart that's repented of sin and has turned towards god Well, that should have a profound effect on that person's life and how they live, shouldn't it?

It stands to reason, doesn't it? Anyone who says 1 thing and does another cannot be trusted and neither can the message that they're preaching. A person who's claiming to be a follower of god should have a life that is marked by generosity and fairness honesty and sacrificial love for other people. Why? Because these are the things god's shown us.

That's how he's treated us without rageous fairness, without rageous mercy. With more of that than we could ever deserve, we deserve the opposite. But god's shown us those things. That's how he's dealt with us. And the effect is that you should deal with people in the same way.

It's not a case here of John's not saying, go out and do good in order to keep in god's good books and be saved. He's saying do good because you've already been saved. And this is how you express your joy and gratitude, isn't it? And this is how god works through people to bring more people in to win more people over to him. Now at this point, John's preaching is so powerful that the people are wondering if if he actually isn't the Messiah, they're thinking it might be him.

Looks like he might be. Sounds like he might be. Probably is him. And John knows what's going on in their hearts. If you take it from the text because he answers them without them even asking.

He just answers and and he says, no, not me. Not me. He says, remember, I'm just here to build roads. I'm a road builder. I'm preaching the word so that when the lord does arrive, he finds the way straight and the access to your heart smooth so he can begin the real work.

I can only go so far. He will do the real work. Look, says John, look, I baptize you with water. It's just water. It's nothing more.

Nothing less. It's water. That's all it does. But the 1 who's coming, well, the difference between me and him, it couldn't be any greater. I'm not even fit to untie his sandals, which is like the lowest of tasks that Ernest like could do for another risk to touch another Israelite's feet or anyone else's feet, grim feet back in those days.

They didn't have cars so they walked and it would have been disgusting. And even a slave wouldn't do that. I'm not even fit to do a slave's work and untie the 1 who's coming sandals. That's the difference between me and him. I simply baptize you with water.

That's all I do. It's just a symbol of the repentance which has already begun in your heart. What I do is just symbolic of what's already going on. It's symbolic of what the Holy Spirit's already doing. His baptism, well my goodness, that baptism is going to change you beyond imagination.

When the king arrives, the real work begins and I'm just preparing the way Don't mistake me with him. And so we get this difference between John and Jesus. This this comparison between John and Jesus. And we just see how how grand it is. The 2 baptisms, John with water, Jesus with the Holy Spirit and Fire.

Verse 16, I baptized you with water, but 1 who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire. That's a wonderful image, isn't it? Being washed in the Holy Spirit of God. Going down underneath, being submerged and totally surrounded and engulfed by the Holy Spirit. What a wonderful picture.

And what does the Holy Spirit do? Well, he speaks out the word of God. Doesn't he? He speaks out God's word. But the Bible, this book here This is the Holy Spirit inspired word of God.

So when we're baptized in the Holy Spirit, we're baptized in his word. And it's through his word, the Bible that he goes to work on our hearts applying it to us in a thousand different ways. To Timothy 3 16, that famous verse tells us that all scriptures God breathed Holy Spirit inspired and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of god may be thoroughly equipped equipped every good work. That's like being baptized in the Holy Spirit, isn't it? I mean, those are the tools of daily repentance right there.

It's basically another way of saying the first 3 points about repentance of this sermon. If you remember step 1 was realize you're a sinner, teaching and rebuking. I need to be taught and shown my sin and a thousand among other things and I need to be rebuked. I need a strong rebuke you viper. You viper Chris.

Listen up. I'm talking to you. Step 2, training in righteousness training in righteousness. My goodness, if I'm gonna fight sin, I need to be trained in righteousness, don't I? I need to I need to know how to fight I need I can't do it on my own.

I'm going to need his help. And step 3, so that you may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Produce repentance fruit. The Holy Spirit sears our conscience in line with his word and look his word ultimately at the end of the day all about Jesus. It's in the word that we meet Jesus, that we see him, who he was, how he lived, How he treated people with kindness and compassion, how he healed and saved, how he was working from the beginning of time to create and ultimately how he gave himself to be the acceptable sacrifice to pay for our sin even though that meant the most humiliating and barbaric of death on the cross.

That's the real story, isn't it? God's redemption plan so that everyone who believes in Jesus and his sacrifice has the right to be a child. So Jesus baptizes us when he baptizes us with his holy spirit word. He also baptizes with fire. It's a baptism of the spirit and fire.

He washes us with fire. He burns us with fire. It's literally it. So as the sin in our lives is brought up to the surface, it's burnt up. It's dealt with washed away.

It's like like metal being purified in a furnace. She must have heard this illustration before. It's as old as time. And as the metals melted down, the impurities rise to the surface and it's called the dross and it gets skimmed off. And then melted down impurities rise up and skimmed off.

It's the refiners fire and we are being refined. And again, it's all rooted in the repentance brought about by the reading and preaching of his holy spirit word. You see how it starts to all fit together? It's like a big jigsaw. It's like a big puzzle all fitting together.

As we sit under this week after week, as more and more impurities are brought up to the surface to be dealt with to be repented of, to be battled against, to be fought. We are being made piece by piece more like our lord Jesus until the day when He returns or takes us up to be with him and we will be made completely pure because he is completely pure. He was the pure sacrifice on our behalves. But look, that's not the only thing he uses to fire for. John gives us this image of wheat and chaff and winnowing fork.

And he says that when the Lord comes, he comes with the winnowing fork in his hands. He will sift the repentant from the unrepentant. He will clear the threshing floor and gather the wheat into the barn and the chaff outside the barn to be consumed with unquenchable fire. If you know anything about the illustration, you've got the pile of the wheat and the chaff. The chaff is like the stalks and the bit that you can't use for anything really.

And as he digs into it with the winnowing fork and shakes it and throws it up, the chaff, well, the wheat falls down onto the floor and the chaff is left and the chaff is chucked onto the fire. You must have done something like this in the garden before, like raking leaves or something. I don't know. But as he sorts through as he sifts it as he sieves it out, he gets what he needs as the as as the weight as the valuable part, the part that can be used, and he stores it away safely in his barn. The chaff on the other hand is thrown onto the fire because you can't use it.

He will shift the repentance from the on repentance. John's calm in order to prepare us. He Jesus has come in order to prepare us to come to him. He's come to us to prepare us to come to him. That's his whole mission.

To rescue, to save, to bring the repentant home. Is it not? So here's the question. What is your response to this gonna be? Are you like the people when they hear John's preaching cut to the heart and say, what should we do then?

What do I do about my hopeless position here? Well, listen to the words of John and repent and be baptized. Reduce repentance fruit in keeping with the baptism of the Holy Spirit and Fire. Look, if you would call yourself a child of god, then the warning is here to carry out a temperature check, isn't it? Take a walk in the orchard and see if there's any repentance fruit hanging on the trees.

Be careful that you're not being like the Jews who came out who still needs needed to repent and become Jews. They were coming out thinking they were saved, but they weren't. They were coming out thinking they were right with god, but they weren't. Don't fall into that trap. Don't be don't be fake Jews.

Don't be fake Christians. Don't be fake followers of the lord Jesus Christ. Check the fruit. Take the opportunity. Check your lives for the fruit of repentance.

And if you find that you can't see any. Well, then you can turn and repent. Can't you? The opportunities here tonight. The invitation is here tonight.

To do that. Or like herod, you could choose to be insulted. Be careful if that's you. If you're insulted by this message in any way, you should be cut to the heart by this message, not insulted by it. Herrod was insulted, and he threw John in prison and eventually cut his head off.

He silenced the word of god He was totally unrepentant and if you know anything at all about herod, you'll know he met a particularly sticky end judgment came on him in a fashion. He wasn't expecting it, and he was caught in his own repentance and burnt up with the chaff. Cut down with the fruitless fruit trees. The invitation to repent is here tonight. So which will you choose?

Don't delay because judgment comes swiftly and the fire's hot. It's a happy Christmas, everyone. Glad I could deliver this message to you tonight and we timed it quite well. But seriously, no, I mean that happy Christmas because in 2 days time, we get to remember the coming of the lord jesus Christ into this world and what a savior? What a message?

A god who will come and die on a cross for you. Where else do you hear that message? Where else does a message exist like that? What god would do that? Would Allah, would Buddha, would the Hindu gods, would any other person do that?

And the answer is no, we have an amazing savior, a rescuer who came to us to suffer so that we we don't have to. To pay the price so that we don't have to stand before god and try and explain it away and then get burnt up with the chaff. Let me pray. Lord, thank you for the this message. Thank you for sending prophets Thank you for sending John.

Thank you for being so straight down the line with us that there really is no room for maneuver. There's no room to misunderstand. There's there's no way that we can be in 2 minds about what is being said to us. But repent except that we are sinful and we've rebelled against you and turned to you. We we thank you for such a simple message, and we thank you for such a simple message of of rescue.

That you give as well. Thank you for the lord Jesus Christ that you send into this very messy and confused world to save people. We prayed that we would all be looking tonight to to check our lives to to check ourselves for daily acts of repentance. Are we are we recognizing sin in our lives? Are we dealing with it?

Are we producing repentance fruits? So we do pray that by your Holy Spirit, you'll be working in all of us here tonight.