He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3:7-9)
It is fitting that this last day of 2024 would begin by looking at a man who prepared the way for Jesus. Why so fitting? Because the people of 2025 desperately need to know the Savior!
As I picked up where I left off, John the Baptist was still center stage. He is not the lead actor, but his scene prepares the way for the one who will take the greatest role in human history. Because John is preparing the way for Christ, it is imperative to know how to be prepared.
In my previous post, I considered how John confronted the people with the necessity of dealing with sin. This morning, I saw him clarifying that anyone who was baptized with his “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” was to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance.”
How we need this today! So many who have confessed faith in Jesus are living just as sinfully as the worldlings who reject the Savior! John would certainly help such hypocrites prepare their hearts for genuine repentance that turns into “the obedience of faith”.
When John told the people not to use their earthly ancestry back to Abraham as a trump card against repentance, he was also preparing the way for us to let go of any earthly heritage, even the most religious and spiritual experiences we may have had apart from Christ, so that when we take a good look at Jesus as the Christ we would realize that he alone can save us from the horrid realities of our sin.
And when he added, “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9), he was warning people then, and us now, that Jesus would just as much expose those who were under judgment for their sin as he would liberate sinners into the “righteousness of faith”. The same Savior who would save repentant sinners would be the one to carry out divine justice against every unrepentant person.
Luke’s summary statement about John the Baptist was, “So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people” (vs 18). This tells us that everything John taught the people about his baptism of repentance, and everything he explained about the sinfulness of sin, and all he did to prepare people for the Christ by baptizing them, was all “good news”.
Why? Because “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and, apart from Jesus as the Christ, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
And that means it is very good news today as it was then that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And John is preparing the way for this last day of 2024, and the new year of 2025, to be a time for people to experience newness of life by repenting and trusting in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, the one and only Savior of the world.
© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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