I go to school at Crossroads Bible College in Indianapolis. We dig into the Scriptures and allow the truth of God’s word to search our hearts as we search the Bible.
And as I continue in my studies I always have to guard against simply giving the answers that I think might get an A or that I think might impress the professor. When that becomes the motivation, the life long usefulness of the studies fades out.
At that point I stop asking, “Okay, what does God want me to get out of this? How can this lead me closer to Him?”
It isn’t the grade He is concerned with; it is my character, my resolve — my faith that God is enlarging.
Not my ego. Not my academic standing.
All that said, we were answering a question from the book “God With Us” by D.A. Carson. The book is a study of the book of Matthew, the first Gospel in the New Testament.
And, in a discussion of the ministry of John the Baptizer, Carson asks the questions: “What areas of our lives are we most likely to exclude from the all-embracing sweep of repentance? What would John the Baptist say to such shallow repentance?”
Now, to answer that question, you first have to know John the Baptist. This was not a guy who bit his tongue. When he felt something needed to be said, he said it. He didn’t care if you were a peasant, a commoner, a religious leader or the king.
He had one message and that message was this: REPENT.
And as we'll read in a moment, if he thought you were hanging around without a true desire to find God, he called you out.
He had no time for people who were only out for there own good. He had an agenda, an agenda created for him before he was even born. That agenda was, prepare the way for the Messiah.
The Bible talks about John the Baptizer as the one who would make the paths straight and level out the hills for the people to make their way to their coming King.
In other words, John was sent to prepare the hearts of the people, to be open to their need for the Redeemer.
John is discussed in all four Gospels. We are going to take a look at the gospel of Luke. I think it draws a very clear picture of the man.
First in Luke 1:13-17 we’ve got the Angel of the Lord telling Zachariah that he’s gonna have a little boy, and this is not just any little boy, this is the forerunner for the Messiah.
Read that one again. Verse 16 is key, because later on, when John is actually preaching to the people, they ask what repentance looks like and he gives them all these commands. And it is common in the church world to look at the rules that he sets down and forget this reason given in verse 16 for those rules.
Yes we are to follow these commands, but the “why” is SO important, if you skip this verse you loose everything, you just look at repentance as a moral code, and that is where we get stuck. Let’s move on:
17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
Now jump over to Chapter 1:68-79 here we read Zachariah’s word from the Lord about the Messiah and about John the Baptizer right after John is born;
That was all talking about Jesus.
What Zachariah is saying here is; there was a pattern throughout the law and the prophets — throughout the Old Testament — the pattern, or the cycle, ever since the fall of Adam was this:
The people would be blessed by God.
They would thank God and honor Him for a period of time.
Eventually though the people would become complacent, they would begin to take God’s blessings for granted and they would fall away.
— They would turn to the temptations of other people and turn to false gods.
This turning away, this sin, the idolatry of the people would set God off.
He, in his holiness equates their idolatry to what we would consider adultery. And His Righteous anger is similar to what we would see in a man who catches his wife with another man or vise versa. It ends badly for the nation of Israel.
So God’s anger, that wrath, burns against the people. Sometimes he sent poisonous snakes, sometimes a plague, sometimes he would just open up the earth and swallow up entire families.
God didn’t and still doesn’t take sin lightly.
Other times He would not go after the people directly, sometimes He would just withdraw.
And, without His hand in their lives, without His hedge of protection, the other nations were then able to attack and do massive damage to the people.
Then the people would be brought down to a point where they could finally see their spiritual poverty, and they would see their need for God again.
This need would lead them to repent of their sin and turn back to God.
And their repentance would usher in a return to fellowship with God and blessings would be poured out on the people of Israel.
Then the cycle would start all over. And it went on and on and on like that for centuries until one day God just stopped talking with His people and there was a more than 400-year gap in their communication.
So as Zachariah speaks prophetically here about his son, he is also saying Thank God! The Lord has not abandoned us. It’s been quiet for 400 years but He is still our God and we are still His people. A new era of fellowship is here!
Now skip a page or two to Luke 3:2-19 and all those predictions about John, come to pass:
And now we get into the area that we can abuse and turn into a works based salvation message, if we don’t remember Luke 1:16.
All of these things coming up are the FRUIT of REPENTANCE. In other words, he about to say, this is what it might look like, this is the evidence that we might see, that we may have in us, if we are truly turning back to God.
11 John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."
12 Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"
13 "Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told
them. 14 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."
15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. 16 John answered them all, "I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 17 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." 18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and preached the good news to them.
Okay, so now we know John, He doesn’t beat around the bush, He is far from what we would see as a “seeker-sensitive” pastor today.
He just laid out the facts and got to the business at hand. He did his job to prepare the hearts of the people.
With all that said, let’s look at the questions from D.A. Carson again: “What areas of our lives are we most likely to exclude from the all-embracing sweep of repentance? What would John the Baptist say to such shallow repentance?”
Now I gave a good answer to this for my professor. I said something like:
“Many of us shy away from true “all-embracing sweep of repentance” in the areas where it might hurt our reputations or social standing or in the areas that we have become comfortable in our sin. And John would likely say that first off, we must take our sin seriously and be honest with ourselves about the utter wickedness of our lives, even in the “small sins.” Secondly, we must weigh our momentary reputation with the eternal consequences of our rebellion against God."
This answer was all well and good, but as we discussed the matter in class, I began to really ask myself what is God saying to me here?
And I began to really look at the areas of repentance in my own life.
First, I thought about the areas at the time of my conversion, then I looked forward to where I am today.
And it struck me that early on I saw dramatic evidence that I was being transformed by the Holy Spirit into a new being.
The sins that used to chain me down were fading away.
Not only was I not destroying my life with alcohol anymore, God had removed my desire to drink.
And the unwholesome talk that used to spew out of me like vomit, began to be replaced — first with silence — and eventually with encouraging words.
What I thought I was seeing was the fruit of true repentance.
And I felt like God was pouring blessings on me that I never thought were possible.
But as time moved on and as the major defects began to clear away, God revealed other areas of sin that had to be dealt with.
But what I did with these other sins is I just kind of played lip service to them.
I saw the sin, sure, but in my heart, I didn’t take it seriously.
I thought of these other sins as “small sins.” I wrote them off as harmless. I paid very little attention to them.
So, what was the difference? It’s simple.
I didn’t think the other “small sins” were affecting me in any external way.
Yes I felt guilty, but that’s internal.
Yes there was conviction on my heart, but that’s internal. I could hide it or ignore it.
And I would occasionally try to hunker down and stop sinning (on my own strength), but there were not really any external consequences. So, I eventually drifted back into those sins.
The difference was, I was getting by with these other sins in the world.
So if that was the difference, I had to come to the question of, was my repentance the product of devotion to God, or devotion to saving Ken’s bacon?
And what I eventually discovered was that it was the “small sins” that had owned me.
The drinking was gone, the destructive words were gone, but God was saying, okay lets look at WHY you drank and WHY you said all of the things you said.
And I was shown that my “big sins” were really just a byproduct of what I was calling the “small sins.”
I thought I was dealing with my disease and really I was just attacking symptoms.
Yes I had lived my life in a bottle but it was largely due to the fact that I was full of bitterness and resentment and fear and pride. Those were the sins that God wanted me to repent from.
And just as much as I wanted to escape the world I also wanted to escape myself. And God wanted me to repent from turning to other things beside Him for relief, for satisfaction, for refuge.
This message tonight is a bit of a departure from the Sermon on the Mount series that we’ve been in, but really as I finished preparing I saw that it just drills home what we’ve been talking about all along.
If you look back over the last several weeks, We’ve been looking at areas where God has been talking about this very situation.
In Matthew 5:27-30 Jesus said yes Adultery is a sin that we need to repent of if we have sinned in that way. We need to turn away from that and find healing, but that’s just the external.
Jesus says there must first be repentance in our hearts for our lust, for our covetousness. Those are the things that grip us and enslave us.
And in Matthew 5:21-26 Jesus says yes murder is a sin that we need to repent of if we have sinned in that way. We need to turn away from that and find healing, but that’s just the external.
There must first be repentance in our hearts for our anger, for our pride and for our unforgiveness. Those are the things that grip us and enslave us.
I guess what I’m trying to say is it is possible to hear about those two issues, murder and adultery. Or even their starting points of anger and lust and it is easy to write it all off as someone else’s sin. And it is easy to say. I’m okay, let’s move on.
But, remember, John 21:25 makes it clear that not everything that Jesus said and did made it into the Bible.
In Matthew 5:21-30, Jesus talks about two areas of sin that are common in people, but really He could go on and on until He struck the nerve where you live, where you sin (if you don’t only sin in anger or lust).
The base truth is still the same, it’s what John the Baptist preached and what the prophets of the Old Testament preached and it is what Jesus told His disciples to preach before He ascended into Heaven,
Listen to Luke 24:47 …repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his (God’s) name to all nations…
So that’s it. that’s what He is telling us to say from the front, REPENT!
Repent, not only from the external sins that everyone can see, but also Repent from those internal sins that are holding you back from fellowship with God.
We are heavy on our preaching of grace here. But, I feel I have not been as true to Jesus’ message of the coinciding need for repentance as I should have been.
That is an area that I must apologize to you for, but I also repent before God.
With God’s guidance and by His will, may we never neglect such a core piece of our faith again.
Let’s pray.
