(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

And tonight I'm gonna be preaching on John the Baptist and I'm gonna be focusing a little bit on this particular account of John the Baptist in Luke chapter number three. But before I get too much into this passage itself, let's just talk a little bit about who John the Baptist was and what his purpose was. He was often been called the forerunner of Jesus Christ. But what does that mean to be Christ's forerunner? Why did Christ need a forerunner? What's the point of having John the Baptist come on the scene six months before Christ begins his ministry and to do the preaching that he did? Well, first of all, you're there in Luke three. Just back up a couple pages to Luke chapter one. And in Luke chapter one, we have the birth of John the Baptist being predicted. And it says in verse number 16 of Luke chapter one, and many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God and he shall go before him, meaning going before the Lord their God, because Jesus Christ is the Lord their God in the flesh. And so it says he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. So if you look at the ministry of John the Baptist and the kind of preaching that the Bible gives us a little bit of a sample of in his ministry, what we see is that John the Baptist is preaching right living. He's preaching things like obeying your parents, working well on your job, doing right, being a good person, those kind of things. He's basically preaching hard against sin. He preached hard against Herod for marrying his brother Philip's wife. And so he's not necessarily preaching a lot against the theological errors of his day as much as really just preaching against sin and trying to get people right with God in general. Now if you would flip back to the book of Malachi, go back to Malachi chapter four. We're going to come back to Luke in a moment. Malachi chapter four, but again the emphasis of John's preaching is he's preaching against sin and he's preaching that people should turn from those sins and that they should live a righteous life, that they should live a godly life, that they should obey the Lord. And I'm going to explain why that's important. Look at Malachi chapter number four. It says in verse one, for behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven. Now keep in mind this little short chapter is the last chapter of the Old Testament, right? So this is just perfect for leading us into the New Testament on the next page. It says for behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven and all the proud, yea and all that do wickedly shall be stubble. And the day that cometh shall burn them up, sayeth the Lord of hosts that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the son of righteousness arise with healing in his wings and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. So the symbolism here is the idea of the sun, S-U-N, right? The sun can either be a blessing that rises and brings warmth and daylight and illumination to this world, right? It's a good thing when the sun comes up in the morning. Or the sun can be something that scorches and burns people to a crisp, okay? I know you don't know anything about that, living in Arizona in late June, but the sun can do both, right? The proud and those that do wickedly, they're going to be burnt, they're going to be destroyed, they're going to be completely consumed. Whereas to us, the same sun is a blessing, right? When Christ returns, the wicked are going to be saying to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne. When we see Christ returning, we're going to look up and see that our redemption draweth nigh. So that day is a great day for us, it's a blessed hope for us, but it's a horrific scary day for the unsaved. Same sun, but a different effect depending on who you are. So unto you that fear my name shall the son of righteousness arise with healing in his wings and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall and ye shall tread down the wicked for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet and the day that I shall do this sayeth the Lord of hosts. Now look at verse four, remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel with the statutes and judgments. Now again, keep in mind, this chapter is preparing us for the coming of Christ. It's getting us ready for the New Testament, it's ending the Old Testament, so he's leaving us with some final thoughts, okay? So he says look, keep the law of Moses, follow the law of Moses, follow the Old Testament. Verse five, behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Now we just read a moment ago in Luke chapter one that it was John the Baptist who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, right? And remember, Jesus Christ said that he was Elijah, which was four to come. And so it says that I will send you Elijah the prophet, we know that's John the Baptist, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And watch this, he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with the curse. So again, we see that John the Baptist ministry has to do with just getting people right with God in general and getting people living right and following God's commandments and doing the right thing, being good people, children that are obedient to their parents, parents who love their children, right? He's going to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the heart of the children to the fathers. He came in the way of righteousness, the Bible says, right? He preached against sin. And the Bible shows us that in Luke chapter three when we see some of the things that he specifically preached, go if you would to Luke chapter three. In Luke chapter three, we're going to back up and see all of this in context in a moment, but I just want to lay down this foundation. What are some of the things that he preached? In verse number 10 of chapter three, and the people asked him saying, what shall we do then? He answerth and sayeth unto them, he that hath two coats, let him apart to him that hath none. And he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Now again, what kind of preaching is this? It's preaching against sin, greediness, callousness, hard heartedness. It's about loving people, right? He's talking about obeying parents and parents loving their children. Here we see that it's about imparting your bread to the hungry. It's about clothing the naked, being a good person, being a nice person, doing what's right. And then came also verse 12, publicans to be baptized and said unto him, master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, exact no more than that which has appointed you. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him saying, and what shall we do? And he said unto them, do violence to no man, neither accused any falsely and be content with your wages, right? So the kind of preaching that he's doing is again, preaching against sin, preaching about doing the right thing, not being a greedy, selfish, unloving, callous person, but being a loving, godly, righteous, kind, good person, okay? John the Baptist is preaching in the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, right? The New Testament hasn't arrived yet. Christ has not yet come on the scene. Christ certainly has not died on the cross. And so he's trying to prepare a people for the coming of Christ. Now what is the purpose of him coming on the scene and preaching hard against sin and preaching right living and so forth? Why would this prepare the way for Christ? Well a few different reasons. One reason is that the Bible says that the law of God is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, right? Because the law of God, preaching against sin, preaching this is right and this is wrong, ultimately that shows us our own sinful condition. Because when we hear the preaching of John the Baptist, when we listen to the law of Moses, we know that we come short of the glory of God. None of us is able to perfectly follow the prescriptions of either Moses or John the Baptist. Now obviously we in our lives can try and obviously we should try and obviously some people are doing better than others, but at the end of the day, none of us is righteous enough to go to heaven just by being a good person and following these kind of moral prescriptions. It's just not going to get us there. But here's the thing, if we're not even hearing the law of God preached, if we're not even hearing the do's and don'ts, if we're not even aware of sin versus righteousness, then we're not going to understand and see our sinful condition, then we're not going to see our need for a Savior. This is why when we go out soul-witting and we give people the Gospel of Jesus Christ, what's the first thing that we talk to people about? We tell them that they're a sinner. And the first thing we lay down is that we've all sinned and that we're all doomed without Christ. We all have come short of the glory of God and we all deserve hell. Now why do we show them that? Because without that, what's the need to be saved? You got to be saved from something. So we have to show, first of all, here's the problem, okay? So that's one reason why it makes sense that John the Baptist as the forerunner of Christ would be emphasizing right living and preaching against sin and trying to get people right with God, trying to get people in a frame of mind where they're thinking about sin versus righteousness, where they're trying to do what's right, where they're trying to live right, where they can look at the law of God and let it be their schoolmaster to bring them unto Christ. I mean think about it, today we're entering a stage in our country of de-Christianization where today everything is up for grabs. All beliefs are up for grabs. I talked a little bit about it this morning just with all of the strange things that are out there in our culture, but think about this, we're living in a day where people literally when they talk about sin in this world, they'll put sin in quotation marks like it doesn't even exist. I mean you know some people think it's a sin, whatever that means, who's ever heard or seen something like that? Yeah, where sin goes in quotes because I mean it's not even a thing. I mean I'm telling you today there is a huge percentage of our population today in the United States of America that doesn't even believe that sin exists. Forget defining what is sin and what is not, they just don't even think there's such a thing. What's sin? What's sin? You know I guess some people think it's a sin. How can Christ come and save us from our sins if we're living in a society where we're not even sure if sin even exists? We're not quite ready for that message, are we? I mean if somebody doesn't even know if sin is even a thing, if somebody doesn't even believe that right and wrong even exist, if somebody just believes that we're just a glorified animal or that just whatever we do doesn't matter and that everybody just does what's right in their own eyes, well then how can Christ save the people from their sins? That message isn't going to make sense to somebody if they don't know what sin is, if they're not thinking about sin and so a person who's thinking about sin is going to be more receptive to that message of Christ coming to save us. I mean if I knock on somebody's door and they believe that sin exists and they have a concept that yeah, God's real and someday God is going to judge the wicked. Someday it's going to burn like an oven and the proud and all they do wickedly are going to be burned up. You know when people have that in their mind at least they know that hey, they're ready to hear about Jesus Christ. Whereas if I knock on the door of somebody who doesn't even believe that there even is a God, they don't even believe that right and wrong even exist, then I got a little bit further to go to get that person saved. I could still get that person saved possibly but man, it's going to take a little while. They're not prepared. They're not ready. They haven't done the prerequisites and so I'm going to have to take them on a much longer journey to try to get them there and chances are it's probably not happening today. I can hopefully plant some seeds, I can hopefully get them thinking about it but you and I both know that the person who already has a concept of sin, they already have a concept of right and wrong, they already understand that God is up in heaven and He's going to judge the quick and the dead. Hey, that person you know and I know is more likely to be prepared to receive the message of God's saving grace. Now here's the thing, you don't have to clean up your life to be saved. You don't have to repent of your sins to be saved. You have to believe on Jesus Christ to be saved because salvation is a free gift by grace through faith, not of works that any man should boast and it's not by you reforming yourself and repenting of this sin and repenting of that sin and cleaning up this act and that, no. But that being said, although you don't have to turn from your sins to be saved, although the law of God is not going to justify anybody in God's sight ever, never has, never will, the law of God still plays a role, doesn't it? What does it do? It gives people that concept that they are a sinner. It shows them it's the schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. So just because John the Baptist is preaching hard on sin, just because of the fact that he wants people to turn from their sinful life and live a righteous life, hey, that doesn't mean that that's how you get to heaven, how you get to heaven is through the grace of God, but in order for God's grace to mean anything, there has to be knowledge of the penalty and the punishment and the justice that comes from the law of God first. I mean, think about it. How would it make any sense to say, hey, your debt is forgiven and you're like, I'm not even in debt. What are you talking, you know? Hey, great news, your debt's forgiven. You're just like, I mean, what if there was a news article tomorrow and said, hey, your student loans are forgiven. Who here has never taken a student loan? You're just like, I don't need this message. This is not good news unto me. What does gospel mean? Good news. Hey, if you open the newspaper tomorrow and all student loans are forgiven, you're not going to be like, whoo. You're like, dang it, I wish I would have taken out some loans. Is it too late to borrow some money real quick from Uncle Sam? It's not good news to you because you didn't even have a debt. Okay, you got to have the debt in your mind. You got to understand the debt for the grace of God to even mean anything to you. Right now, all of a sudden, the student loan forgiveness, now look, I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands of who has racked up the student loans, but I guarantee you, God bless you, I see that hand. I guarantee you there's some people in here that have got some big student loans and if that came out tomorrow, hey, student loans are forgiven. You would be hooting and hollering and rejoicing, whoo. Well guess what? That's what John the Baptist is there to tell everybody. This is the debt. This is your wickedness on display, okay. Now obviously he's telling people to live right. He's telling people to do right. That doesn't mean that doing right is going to get you to heaven. It just means that God wants you to do right. God commands you to do right. The law demands that you do right and that's why we need a Savior because you're not perfect at doing right and in fact, you're not even close and neither am I. That's part of the reason why. Another reason why John the Baptist needed to come on the scene as the forerunner of Jesus Christ and preach this message about righteous living, following the law of God and so forth is that Jesus Christ is going to need workers for his ministry, he's going to need disciples, and he's going to need apostles. And guess where those disciples and apostles of Jesus Christ came from? Guess where those members of the early church came from? They came from John the Baptist's ministry. I mean if you read John chapter 1, John the Baptist has two of his disciples with him and he says, Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. He points them to Jesus and these two disciples, they go follow Jesus now. So they're already John's disciples and then they go follow Jesus. One of them is Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, okay? And here's the thing about the disciples, they're all baptized by John the Baptist, all of them. Jesus didn't baptize people. Jesus' apostles baptized people. Well who baptized them? John the Baptist baptized them, okay? Jesus Christ drew his disciples from John the Baptist. John the Baptist had already been getting them ready, preparing them, teaching them. Why do I preach on sin? I mean if we're all saved by grace anyway, if we're all going to heaven just by believing in Jesus anyway, why do I preach on sin? Well here's the thing about that is that the more we get our lives in line with God's standards, the more effective we're going to be at sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. I mean am I going to be better at winning people to Christ as a worldly, fleshly, carnal individual or as a guy who follows God's commandments? I mean the more that I'm following God's commandments, the more God's going to be able to use me to reach a lost and dying world with the gospel. So obviously even though I'm preaching a message of just salvation by grace, not of works, I still need to make sure that I'm following God's commandments in my own life so that I can be effective. So if Christ is going to have effective disciples and effective apostles, well John the Baptist came along to get people's heart ready and get people prepared for their God. Get people right with God so that Jesus could have a better church, so that Jesus could have a stronger group of people. That way he doesn't show up and just have to grab a bunch of backslidden guys who've been kind of just hanging around the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and you know they've drifted and they're not fired up. No, no, no, he wanted to get some people that are already ready so they went through a six month boot camp with John the Baptist ripping their faces with hard preaching, now they're ready to follow Christ and do something big for God. And so John the Baptist was a forerunner first of all, number one, to show people their sinful condition and to preach hard on sin to get people in a frame of mind where the grace of God can even mean anything because you've got to think about the judgment and wrath of God before the grace of God even has meaning. And then also just because he wants to get people living right and doing right so that they'll make better servants of Christ when he shows up so that he can have some good raw materials for that first church where Christ is the pastor of that first church. And so these are some of the reasons why John the Baptist came on the scene and why he preached the particular message that he did. Now let's go to Luke chapter three with that in mind. Obviously there are many places we could go about John the Baptist. We could go to Matthew chapter three, we could be in Luke chapter three, we could be in Mark chapter one, we could be in John chapter one, other places like Matthew eleven are going to talk about John the Baptist, Matthew fourteen, different places he's going to come up. We're not going to look at all of it tonight, I just want to give you a little bit of an overview of the ministry of John the Baptist and I want to focus in on Luke chapter number three in particular. So the Bible says in verse number two of Luke chapter three, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priest, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness and he came into all the country about Jordan preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Now do not misunderstand this into somehow thinking that, oh baptism is what conferred the remission of sins. That's a false doctrine, that is not what the Bible teaches. All you have to do is just do a simple search on the word remission and let's see what the Bible says about how to get the remission of sins. First of all the Bible says without the shedding of blood there's no remission. Remission of sins comes from blood being shed and the Bible says it's not possible for the blood of bulls and of goats to take away sins, nope, it's the blood of Jesus Christ his son that takes away our sins, okay? And so did animal sacrifices take away the sins of people in the Old Testament? Did people get saved by performing an animal sacrifice and the death of that animal saved them? Absolutely not. Did getting dunked under water by John the Baptist wash away people's sins? No. Just like the blood of bulls and of goats can't take away sins, water baptism in the Jordan River can't wash away your sins either. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus the song says, okay? You gotta be saved by the blood of Christ, okay? Baptism is just a picture, just like animal sacrifices are just a picture. Keep your finger in Luke chapter 3, go over to Romans chapter 3 and in Romans chapter 3 we have a powerful passage about remission of sins. How do we get that remission of sins according to the Bible? It's not through being dunked under water. We'll come back to Luke 3 in a moment, but the Bible says in Romans chapter number 3, verse number, let's start in 23, the famous verse, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. Now look, his righteousness is what gives us remission of our sins. Not all righteousness, not us cleaning up our life, turning over new leaf, repenting of all our sins. No, it's his righteousness, it's his blood that gives us remission of sins according to verse 25. Verse 26, to declare I say at this time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law of works, nay, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. There it is folks, remission of sins through his righteousness, remission of sins through faith in his blood. But in case you don't think that's enough evidence, remember that the entire Old Testament is pointing us to this truth because here's what it says in Acts chapter 10. To him give all the prophets witness that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. So how many prophets are telling us that the remission of sins comes through faith in Jesus? All of them, all of them. To him give all the prophets witness that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. That's what all the prophets are pointing us to. Okay, so with that in mind look at Luke chapter 3 once again where we are. When the Bible says preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, this does not mean the baptism of repentance in order to receive remission of sins. That means baptism of repentance because of the remission of sins. For example, if I said he is wanted for murder, it doesn't mean he's wanted because I need him to do a murder for me. Wanted for murder means wanted because of murder. Because he has murdered, he's wanted. The Bible says that John preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins because of the remission of sins, not in order to get the remission of sins. Otherwise he's contradicting all the prophets because all the prophets say that it's whosoever believeth that shall receive remission of sins. Not whosoever gets dunked under water. You know, it's so silly to think that being dunked under water is somehow going to save you or that offering an animal sacrifice is going to save you. Folks, salvation takes place in the heart when you believe on Jesus. It's not by works. It's not by some physical ritual that you go through. These rituals are symbolic. Keep your finger there and go to Romans chapter number six. Romans chapter number six explains the purpose of baptism. And we could turn many places on baptism. But in Romans chapter six, it says in verse three, know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death. Romans chapter six verse four, therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. So likeness, it's a likeness. It's a picture. It's a figure. It's a symbol. When you're in the water, it's a picture of Christ on the cross. When you're buried under the water, you're buried with him by baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we also should walk in newness of life. So baptism is symbolic of the repentance of sins in many ways because you're basically saying like, hey, I'm burying the old man and I'm going to put on the new man and follow Christ, right? And as long as we baptize, people will say buried in the likeness of his death, raised to walk in newness of life, right? Because we also should walk in newness of life. Here's the thing, baptism is not salvation. Baptism pictures Christ's resurrection and Christ's resurrection is our salvation. We're saved by the resurrection, but baptism itself doesn't save. Baptism pictures a few different things. Number one, it pictures the resurrection of Christ, which does save us, but number two, it pictures our willingness, our desire to live the obedient resurrected life. You see, if a person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior and doesn't take that first step of obedience of getting baptized, you know, they're probably not taking other steps of obedience either, right? The person who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, but does not come to church, but they don't get baptized. You know, this person's Christian life is probably not going very far. How many of you here today would say, pastor Anderson, after I got saved, I've been baptized. Put up your hand if you've been baptized. So virtually everybody in here, you know, you're here, you are, you're in church, you're serving God, right? You're wanting to learn more, grow more, do more for Christ. You're living a life desiring to obey Christ, which is why you're in church on Sunday night because you want to obey Christ. But you know what? There are a bunch of people out there that have believed on Christ and they haven't been baptized and you know, without taking that first step of obedience, it really isn't surprising to see their lives don't change much. Now people who don't understand this would say, well, you know, maybe they're just not saved if they didn't get baptized. Well maybe they are saved and they just didn't get baptized because you can run into a lot of people today who didn't get baptized until years after they got saved, even a decade after they got saved, way after they got saved. Pastor David Berzins got saved, didn't get baptized until like nine years later. And guess what? During that nine years, he didn't do much obeying Christ. Then he got baptized, then he started walking in newness of life. Why? Because baptism is a step of obedience and it's just symbolic. It doesn't literally do anything. It's what it represents. And it's a symbol of somebody saying, hey, I'm going to follow Jesus Christ in believers baptism and guess what? Then I'm going to follow him more. I'm going to bury the old man, be crucified with Christ and live the resurrected life, put on the new man, walk in newness of life. That's what baptism represents. It's baptism because of the remission of sins. Because first you get remission of sins by believing in Jesus, then you get baptized. What comes first? Do you get baptized or saved first? Which one comes first? You got to get saved first, right? We believe in believers baptism, right? Hey, what doth hinder me to be baptized? If thou believeth with all thine heart thou mayest. That's what hinders you from being baptized if you're not saved. If you believe on Christ and you're saved, well now you're ready to get baptized. Okay. And again, who gets baptized in Luke chapter three, Jesus, Jesus was Jesus washing away his sins. He didn't have any sins. Why did Jesus get baptized then? The same reason why you and I get baptized. Jesus got baptized to symbolize his death, burial and resurrection, just like we symbolize his death, burial and resurrection. And why do we get baptized? As a step of obedience. Jesus did it in obedience to the father. But baptism does not save. Jesus didn't need saving because he had no sin. Baptism isn't to wash away your sins, otherwise Jesus would skip that. If there was some ritual about washing away your sins, Jesus could skip right over that because he doesn't have any sins. But he did it for the symbolism. He did it as a step of obedience. That's why we say that we follow the Lord in believers baptism. We follow Christ's example. He was baptized. We follow Christ in baptism because we also want to be obedient unto the heavenly father by being baptized and symbolizing that important truth about the resurrection. So the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins is because of the remission of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, oh, by the way, one more thing. You know, the Bible says that baptism is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but it's the answer of a good conscience toward God. First you have a good conscience toward God because you believe on Christ and are saved. And what's the response to that? The response is the next logical step, baptism, salvation, then baptism. That's the biblical order. And if you never get baptized, you're still going to heaven as long as you believe on Christ because baptism is not required. There's no verse in the Bible that says if you don't get baptized, you're not saved. You'll never find a verse that says if you don't get baptized, you're not going to heaven. But you will find verses that say if you don't believe, you're not going to heaven. And so the Bible says here, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, saying the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Now is he sitting and like boo hooing? Is that what crying means? No crying in the Bible typically means yelling because what we would think of as boo hooing is called weeping in the Bible, right? Now today we say, oh, he's crying, the baby's crying. In the Bible they would say the babe wept, right? Jesus wept. That's the boo hoo. When the Bible says cry, it actually means crying out or yelling. So he's a voice crying in the wilderness. Now what does that mean, a voice crying in the wilderness? Well literally he's a guy out in the desert yelling. I mean that's just the surface literal interpretation because when the Bible says wilderness it means desert. It's used interchangeably with desert. If you look at Matthew, Mark and Luke and compare, you'll find that the words wilderness and desert interchange. Now when we hear wilderness, we picture like the Everglades or something, but that's not what the Bible means when it says wilderness. It's not like a jungle or a forest, right? When the Bible says wilderness, you want to know what it is? Look outside. That's what it is, right? I mean not right outside, but look at South Mountain and look at Camelback and look to the north, south, east and west of Phoenix. That's wilderness, okay? The deserts, he's in the deserts. John the Baptist was preaching in the desert, the Bible says. Prepare in the desert a highway for our God, the Bible says. In fact, since you're right there anyway, keep your finger in Luke chapter 3. I just want you to believe me. Go to chapter 1 verse 80. You're still there in chapter 3, but just glance at 180. The child grew and waxed strong in the spirit and was in the what? He was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel. So what's the wilderness? It's the desert. Everybody understand that? Alright. The voice crying in the wilderness in its most literal interpretation is John the Baptist is preaching loudly with no PA system. He's yelling the word of God in the literal desert. Everybody understand that? But there's also a symbolic meaning of being the voice crying in the wilderness is that the wilderness or the desert is a place that's empty of people in general, right? It's generally a place that's uninhabited for the most part. It's sparsely inhabited and so the voice crying in the wilderness symbolizes a person who is saying something that no one else is saying. So people will often use this metaphor and say, well, so-and-so is kind of a voice crying in the wilderness, meaning that, you know, you don't hear a lot of people saying what he's saying. He's out there all by himself saying something. He's not in the temple being given the teaching slots by the Levites and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He's not being invited to preach in all the synagogues. You know, he's the voice out crying in the wilderness. He's out kind of by himself on his own saying something that other people aren't saying. And so John the Baptist was prophesied in Isaiah as being the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be brought low and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways shall be made smooth and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Now notice the ultimate goal is that people will see the salvation of God. And of course you want to know what that's Jesus. Jesus is the salvation of God. I mean in the book of Luke itself, chapter two, when Simeon is in the temple and he's looking at baby Jesus, he says, mine eyes have seen thy salvation. And so all flesh will see the salvation of God. They're going to see Jesus. John the Baptist is going to point people to Jesus and Jesus name means that he will save his people from their sins. Jesus is salvation. Jesus is the savior. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. And in order for people to see that salvation and for it to mean anything to them, they have to know that there's a problem. They have to know that there's something to be saved from. And that's where John the Baptist comes in to help people see the salvation of God. To clear the way of obstacles that would stand in the way of people seeing the salvation of God. You see, if you have a landscape of mountains and valleys, you're not necessarily going to be able to see very far. But if every valley is exalted and every mountain and hill brought low, well now all of a sudden you can see for 100 miles, can't you? Because it's all flattened out as opposed to an area that's very mountainous and hilly, you might only be able to see one mile in front of you or maybe even a half mile, maybe not even that. Because you're down in a valley, right? And you got mountains in front of you and you got mountains and valleys and all these landscape features that make it impossible to get that line of sight. The idea is that, metaphorically, there are all these things that are blocking people's view of Christ. People like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they're teaching a bunch of false doctrine, they're confusing the issue of what God is saying in His Word, they're obscuring the message of the Bible, and all of these things are hindering people from seeing the salvation of God. Also, in our lives, if sin dominates our lives, then that can block our vision of Christ. You know, if all we're saying, we're like those cartoon characters where they just have like a dollar sign on their eyes, like ding, ding, ding, that's all they see, okay? If we're just enamored with the things of this world and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches, you know, those things will block our view of Christ. Right? Turn your eyes upon Jesus, the song says, and the things of earth will become strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. Because there are all these things that are competing for our view of Christ, right? These mountains and valleys could be sinful things in our lives, greediness, covetousness, the love of money that gets in the way of us seeing what spiritually we need to be saying, and then there's also all kinds of false teaching and false doctrine that can obscure our view of Christ. You know, John the Baptist is coming in there to clear the way so that people can see Jesus. His goal is to point people to Jesus. And that's why I believe that a big part of His message had to do with greediness, and we're going to get to that in a moment. I gotta hurry up for sake of time here, but I want to make sure we cover the essence of Luke chapter 3 here. He said, All flesh shall see the salvation of God. Verse 7, Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits, meat, or fruit, I'm quoting from Matthew, sorry, I should actually look down at my Bible and read this, bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father, for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. Now, speaking of Matthew, in the Matthew passage, the Bible tells us what it was that provoked John to go on this particular tirade. Why is he laying into the crowd and saying, O generation of vipers? Well, he doesn't see the entire nation that way. But the Bible tells us in Matthew chapter 3, that when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, that's when he said, O generation of vipers, right? Those are the people that provoked this particular outburst from John the Baptist, because those were the real snakes, the Pharisees and Sadducees. Now why did the Pharisees and Sadducees come to John's baptism? Well, you know what Jesus said later? He said that, he said, you didn't believe in him. Now look, did Jesus know everything? Did he know the hearts of men? The Bible says that Jesus knew what was in man. He knew the hearts of men. And Jesus Christ said, you did not believe. John came unto you in the way of righteousness and ye believed him not. He said in Matthew 21, but the publicans and harlots believed him. But he said, you didn't believe him. And remember, he pins them down and says, hey, the baptism of John, was it from heaven or was it of men? And they're like, oh, well, you know, we can't say, we don't know. So why are they coming to his baptism then? You know why they're coming to his baptism? Because they're just following the crowd. They knew that John was popular, and they don't want to be seen as refractory. They don't want to be seen as, oh, you know, we're unspiritual. We're not responding to John's message. They had a mentality that said, well, if you can't beat him, join him. So if we can't beat John the Baptist, let's join him. Hey, let's go. Okay, we'll go down and get baptized too. So then we can tell people, oh, you know, well, we got baptized by John the Baptist too, so what now? They're going through the motions, but they didn't actually believe. John said, or excuse me, Jesus said, you didn't believe John's message. They later admit, well, we don't even know if John was even legit. We don't even know if he's from heaven or of men. We don't even know. John the Baptist saw through that, and when they showed up and came to his baptism, he said, oh, generation of vipers, who was warned beautifully from the wrath to come. He speaks it generally to the crowd. In Luke chapter 3, it just says that he says it to the multitude because he doesn't just take the Pharisees and the Sadducees aside and say, hey, come on, guys, what are you doing here, guys? What are we doing? No, he gets up and calls them out in front of everyone, and here's the thing. He makes it a general message because there could be other people in the crowd that are in the same boat as the Sadducees and the Pharisees who are just there because everybody's doing it. It's the cool thing to do. They're jumping on the bandwagon, but they're not actually, you know, believing the message that John's preaching, and John the Baptist, of course, preaching about the Messiah that's going to come after him. In Matthew 21, it says that John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believe not, but the publicans and harlots believed him. In Acts chapter 19, Paul said that John preached the baptism of repentance, saying that they should believe on him who was to come after, that is on Christ Jesus, on Acts 19 verse 4. And so here, he says, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Like, are you really here because you realize your sinful condition and you realize about the coming judgment, or are you just here pretending and you're fake and you're not even trying to get right with God at all? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance. You know, he's basically saying, you know, I'm going to need to see some evidence that you guys are even serious about this because I know what phony hypocritical pieces of garbage you are. That's what he's saying. You're a bunch of fakes, you're a bunch of liars, you're a bunch of frauds, and so bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance. And don't even begin to give me this thing about, oh, well, Abraham's our father. That doesn't mean jack squat. Who cares if Abraham's your father? So what? It's meaningless. You know what? You want to know what's so dumb about this whole Abraham's our father thing? I have a father, right? My dad, he goes to Verity Baptist Church, Raymond Anderson, and you know what? My dad and I are pretty close relatives, aren't we? I mean, half my DNA came from my dad. That's a pretty big piece of who I am. I got half the DNA from mom and half the DNA from dad. I mean, that's a close relative. I mean, I spend time with my dad, and obviously my dad and I are going to have a lot in common physically, spiritually, mentally. I mean, there's just going to be a lot there, isn't there? Now what if I hang around with my grandparents? You know, there's still quite a bit there. Not as much as with my parents though, right? I mean, obviously I'm going to have a lot more in common with my mom than with my grandmother. And if I look at pictures of myself and my brother and my sisters and then I look at pictures of our parents, you know, there's a pretty strong resemblance that's going to pop up and you're going to see the connection there pretty easily. Am I right? If I look at my grandparents, there's a little bit less of a connection, but still pretty good connection. But you know, by the time I get to my great grandparents and my great, great grandparents, they pretty much mean nothing to me. I mean, how many of you really just have some close bond with your great, great, great grandparents? First of all, they died before you were born. You're lucky if you've even seen a picture of them. Most people in here couldn't even name all their great grandparents. I'm hoping that everybody can at least name your grandparents, but I'll bet you that it would be difficult for most of us to even name great grandparents. But put two greats on their great, great grandparents, fourth generation, have fun trying to name your great, great grandparents. I can't do it. And I've, I've done, you know, just as a hobby, I fooled around with my genealogy and traced all that stuff. I used to draw family trees even when I was a little child, when I was an elementary school child, I was always making family trees and I thought that was cool. And I don't even know anything about those people. And then, you know, I have some relatives that are Mormons, okay? And because they're Mormons, they're super into genealogy, so they've put together like books about our ancestors and everything. And I've had the chance to look through some of those books about our ancestors and seeing these black and white pictures of my great, great, great, great, and I'm looking at, it's just a guy. It's just a guy. He doesn't really look like me. I don't have anything in common with this guy, spiritually, especially if he's not, if he's a stinking Mormon, but like, you know, I don't have anything in common with these people spiritually. If I hung out with these people, it's just like, they're kind of nobody to me. Let's face it. Our parents are really meaningful. Our grandparents are really meaningful. You know, the further you go, the meaning diminishes. I mean, I think we could probably all agree that if we went back and met, if we could get in a time machine and meet my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, he's just a guy. He could be anybody. He's just a random guy. I'm not even, he's not going to look like me. He's not going to talk like me, act like me. And guess what? If I go back 10 generations, I'm going to have like a thousand of them, a thousand dudes. Hey, I'm your great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. Because anybody who's actually made a family tree realizes that if you go back more than a couple of generations, you're going to need a really big piece of paper. You're going to need like a receipt from Walgreens in order to draw that family tree because it just goes like, it gets so wide. It gets so long. It becomes impractical to put it on a piece of paper. Okay. Family trees are fun to draw a couple of generations and then yeah. Otherwise you get these endless genealogies, right? As the Bible calls them. Here's my point. The fact that Abraham's your ancestor from 2000 years ago means jack squat. Give me a break. I mean that's so crazy. Well, you know, I'm a direct descendant of Abraham. Oh really? So that means one, one millionth of your DNA is from Abraham. So cool. One what you're, Oh, I mean, think about it. Like what if I said, Hey, I'm half native American or I'm one quarter native American or Hey, I'm one eighth. You know, at one point, at what point does it just become like, Oh, you're one, 256 Cherokee. Oh well, you know, yeah, let me, let me show you to your reservation, sir. You know, we have your reservation right here in the reservation book. It doesn't make any sense because it's like, if I'm one 512th, is that even meaningful anymore? No, because really the only thing that has a lot of meaning is really just the last few generations folks, but you get what I'm saying? Okay. Well, that's why it's so stupid to sit there and say, well, you know, I mean, you surely, you know, my ancestor, Abraham, who gave me one millionth of my DNA and everybody else on the planet has a little piece of them too, because it's been so many thousands of years. I mean, it's just kind of dumb at that point. It's just kind of absurd at that point. Or like when people try to tell us, well, you know, the Baptists, you know, you Baptists, you guys came out of, you know, the church of England 400 years. It's like that was so many generations ago that doesn't even matter anymore. What is that? You really think that Roger Williams or something in Providence, Rhode Island really has anything to do with me standing here preaching today with the Bible right here? You think it's really that influential on my doctrine and my Christian life? Because it isn't. Okay. But you know, the church that I grew up in had a big influence and probably that pastor's pastor is indirectly influencing me. But you know, you start going back too far and it just kind of becomes meaningless folks. And so, you know, it doesn't really matter at that point. What really matters is you. What do you believe? Where is your heart right now? Not, well, we have Abraham to our father 2000 years ago. You know, why don't we talk about something a little more recent? And now also the ax is laid under the root of the trees, verse nine, every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. And the people asked him saying, what shall we do then? He answerth and sayeth unto them, he that hath two coats, let him apart to him that have none. And he that hath meat, let him do likewise. What's he saying? If you have an abundance, you have extra stuff, you got extra clothing and this guy's naked, give him your clothes. You got extra food and he's starving, give him your food. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Don't be greedy. Don't be hoarding everything for yourself while other people go without. Share the wealth. Be generous. Be good to people. Love other people. Isn't that what he's saying? Now what does this have to do with preparing people for Christ? Well you know what? A materialistic, greedy sucker is not going to be someone who's able to focus on the salvation of God because all he has is those cartoon dollar signs on his eyes. He's too fixated on the things of this world. Notice how the other things also have to do with greediness. Then came also publicans to be baptized and said unto him, master, what shall we do? Here's what they're saying. Look, I don't want to just get baptized and just go through the motions of getting dunked. I want to actually show that I want to obey because if baptism is supposed to be a first step of obedience, then it should be accompanied by a heart that says, hey, we should walk in newness of life. Well if I'm going to walk in newness of life, what does that mean for me as a publican? What does that mean? Well here's what it means, not exacting more than is appointed. Not ripping people off, not taking extra in taxes so that you can lie in your own pockets. What is it when a publican is exacting more than what is appointed? You know what he's doing? He's being greedy. He's not satisfied with his wages as a publican. No he wants to greedily take more, take extra. Greedily hanging on to your two jackets while one person is freezing to death. Greedily hoarding food while people are starving. Greedily taking extra because your paycheck's not enough so you're skimming off the till, you're stealing from the job. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him saying, what shall we do? And he said to them, do violence to no man because obviously soldiers are going to go into combat and obviously they're required to fight. I mean as soldiers, he's not saying don't fight. I mean you can't be a soldier without fighting. But you know some of you have been soldiers before. Let me ask you this, you guys, whether you've been in combat, not been in combat, you've I'm sure thought a lot about this because you're military guys, who here has been in the military? Put up your head if you've been in the military. Lots of people all over the building. Okay well here's my question, do you think that there are some people in the military throughout say U.S. history for example or any country including the U.S. who've done some violence to some people that were not enemy combatants? You know maybe they just got mad and just beat somebody up. They just beat up a civilian or just raped a woman or just you know killed someone who was unarmed or something. I mean look there could be some sick evil people who they're not doing the job of hey we're supposed to go on the battlefield and fight against this enemy. But they're actually just hey I'm just going to kill an extra person that I wasn't even ordered to kill. I'm just going to kill someone else. I'm just going to abuse someone else. I'm just going to violate someone. And look let's face it unfortunately throughout history soldiers have committed rape. It's disgusting. It's evil. It's wicked. But it's a part of warfare. Now what about a saved Christian who's in the military? Don't you expect them to never do such a heinous thing? So isn't that what John the Baptist is saying hey don't do violence because rape is violent. Murdering civilians is violent. Just beating people or killing people just for the heck of it is violent. And he's saying don't do it. What else is he saying? Neither accuse any falsely. So he's saying you know don't claim that people are combatants that aren't. Don't claim that these people have done wrong when they haven't. And then he also says be content with your wages which connects this to the two coats, the food, the publicans, content with your wages. What do all four of those things have in common? Don't be greedy. Take what's coming to you and don't take anything extra. Be content. Don't be greedy. Share, be generous, don't live your life just about what you can obtain and acquire and how much stuff and possessions you can amass because that materialistic attitude is going to blind people to the spiritual mission that we're on because they get so caught up in just what they can achieve monetarily, financially on this earth. Look you can't serve God and mammon. And so if John the Baptist is going to prepare people for serving God, he says hey let's get you baptized but don't just go through the motions. How about you actually want to walk in newness of life? Well how do I do that? Well don't be greedy that's how. If I wanted to just sum up John the Baptist's sermon to four different groups of people in one little phrase it says don't be greedy. Don't be greedy. A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth. So don't be greedy. And as the people were in expectation, verse 15, all men mused in their hearts of John whether he were the Christ or not. I mean John the Baptist is preaching hard and they're wondering like is this the Messiah? Is this guy the Christ? Maybe they didn't really know the Bible super well about what Christ is going to be like but here this is just such a powerful prophet, this is such a powerful man of God, they're wondering is this Christ? Is this who we've been waiting for? John answered saying unto them, all in verse 16, I indeed baptize you with water but one mightier than I cometh. So he's saying look I'm not the Christ, there's somebody else coming after me that's mightier than I. And let me tell you how far beyond me this guy is, I mean the latchet of whose shoes I'm not worthy to unloose. I mean I'm nothing compared to the guy who's coming after me. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire whose fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly purge his floor and will gather the wheat into his garner but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable. You know Jesus Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost. He came to gather the sheep into the fold. He came to gather the wheat into the garner. He came to draw all men unto himself but he also came to burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. He preached that hell fire and damnation and one day he will return and literally bring hell fire and damnation with him on this earth when he pours out his wrath in the book of Revelation. Verse 18, and many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the people. So what we have here in Luke chapter 3 is just a sample of the type of stuff that he preached. And again, what type of stuff was it? Hearts of the fathers to the children, hearts of the children to their fathers. Don't steal, don't rip people off, don't falsely accuse people. Basically just do right, live right, love people. Why preach a message about doing right, getting sin out of your life, walking in a good Christian life? Because reason number one is that it's the school master to bring us to Christ. John the Baptist by preaching righteousness shows people their sinful condition and helps them to be ready to grasp the grace of God when it shows up. And number two, people that already get that, people that are already saved and already understand salvation, it is to prepare them to be a better servant of God. Because you know what? If I'm greedy and worried about material things, I'm not going to be focused on serving God like I should. I'm not going to be able to forsake everything and follow Christ. I mean, think about it. Jesus is going to show up and say, follow me. And they, they, they forsook the nets and follow Jesus. Well, you know, if they were into making money, they're not just going to forsake those nets. They're not going to walk away from that business. That business is everything to them. Well, you know what? Christ is everything. And so that's what John the Baptist is doing. That's what his ministry meant. Of course, in the rest of the chapter, in Luke chapter three, Jesus actually shows up and John sees the Holy Ghost descending from heaven in bodily form like a dove upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, he points to him as the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Folks, it's not baptism that takes away the sin of the world. It's not John the Baptist that takes away the sin of the world. It's not repentance and saying, hey, I'm going to give my coat to somebody who doesn't have one that takes away the sin of the world. Those are good things. But what it is that takes away the sin of the world is Jesus. It's the blood. It's faith in his name. That's what the Bible says. And so that's what it means for John the Baptist to have been the forerunner of Jesus Christ. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for Christ and his sacrifice that takes away our sins, Lord. Thank you that all the prophets have pointed us to that message of Christ as the Savior of the world. And, Lord, help us today to listen to John the Baptist's message and get the greediness and covetousness out of our heart so that we can be prepared to follow Jesus Christ with our lives. And it's in his name we pray, amen.