The Gospels/The Life of Christ

Transcription

1 The Gospels/The Life of Christ NT504 LESSON 04 of 24 Terry C. Hulbert, Th.D. Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Columbia Biblical Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina Let s pray as we begin today. We thank You, Father, for the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank You for His person, His purity, His love, His grace. We thank You for taking on flesh to come and live in this world of ours. Now, as we contemplate His life and ministry, I pray that You will give us a sense of awe, a sense of reverence and wonder, and a great appreciation for who He is. Not just who He was, but who He is and who He can be in our lives today. Help us to appropriate all that He is as we study about Him, for we pray in Jesus name. Amen. We come in this session to the ministry of John the Baptist, which is sometimes overlooked, sometimes treated very briefly. But it has a very great significance in the ministry of Jesus. Remembering why Jesus came to reveal the Father, to redeem people from sin, and to rule in His kingdom the ministry of John the Baptist is highly significant. It sets the tone for all that Jesus was and for the purpose of His coming. He is a forerunner, not just in some casual sense, but he is the introducer of Messiah. He, as it were, puts a frame around the person of Jesus Christ. If you put yourself back again in their sandals, you ll realize that although they had expected some kind of a Messiah, they expected some kind of a leader that would release them from their subservience to Rome and paying taxes and so on. We find that the message of John the Baptist sets a much higher tone. He speaks of a spiritual dimension to this kingdom. The first words that he utters are, Repent, for the kingdom is at hand! (Matthew 3:2). He did not say, Revolt, the kingdom is at hand. He said, Repent. So there is a great spiritual dimension to this. And we want to take a hard look at John the Baptist s ministry today, because in a sense it will condition all of our understanding and thinking about the message and the ministry of Jesus Christ. We look first at the purpose of Jesus coming. He does come to reveal the Father. John 1:18: No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. He has exegeted Him to reveal the Father. And 1 of 16

2 later in His ministry, He could say, He that has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9). He came to reveal the Father. Second, He came to redeem people from sin. Behold! The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world! (John 1:29). He came as a Revealer and a Redeemer. Third, but He also came as a Ruler, One who would rule in His kingdom. Of course, this is expressed in the many references to the kingdom and to the king, and especially in John s initial introduction when he says, The kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2). Often we debate the meaning of this word kingdom. Was it a spiritual kingdom? Was it a physical kingdom? Let s go back and just get some perspective on this to get a feel for this kingdom concept, because it s so very important, not only in John s ministry, but of course in Jesus ministry. So we think back in eternity, there was a time when only God existed, when He, as the Trinity, created angels. We have no idea when that took place back in eternity somewhere, we presume. Then one of the angels, Lucifer, whom we know as Satan, rebelled with some of his angels, perhaps a third of them. At that time, God could have destroyed Lucifer. He could have destroyed Satan. He had created him, so He could have de-created him. He could have put him out of existence, but He didn t. He allowed him to set up what we might call a rebel kingdom, in other words, a counter kingdom. God did this, of course, because through this counterattack, through this revolution, He was going to show His glory and His majesty in a way that would not presumably be seen otherwise. So we have God s eternal kingdom. And if you picture that as a line across the top of the page, starting at one edge of the page and going to the other, for it is eternal, God s eternal kingdom. And this is invisible. Then Satan starts this rebel kingdom. This also is invisible. But of course, it does not start at the edge of the page because it was not eternal. So we have two invisible kingdoms. There is a great conflict between these kingdoms. How will this conflict be fought out? How will the war be waged? How will we know who wins? God creates the universe. He creates the heavens with the stars and the planets. He creates this planet. He creates the earth. He creates everything in the earth. In Genesis 1, He finally creates man in His own image and puts Him on this earth. The challenge to Adam and Eve is to obey Him, to become citizens of His kingdom. And I think we could say that as they were put in the Garden of Eden, they were not citizens of either 2 of 16

3 kingdom. But, of course, the test was: Would they bow to one sovereign or to the other? Satan comes in as the sovereign of that rebel kingdom, and it challenges them. He seduces them. He leads them away, and he says, If you ll eat this fruit, you ll be as God. You will be like God (Genesis 3:5) very much like the New Age movement today: You will be God. And they choose Satan. They say, I will! Just as Satan himself has said, I will be like the Most High (Isaiah 14:14). They said, I will! This constituted them then as citizens of Satan s kingdom. But God was not finished. God was not giving up. And God set Himself standards of performance, we might call it in human terms, by which we would know who won this great struggle between these two invisible kingdoms. And I might add here that with the creation of the heavens and the earth and man on the earth, we find that the battle now is waged on a visible battlefield. So I see the whole universe as the visible battlefield created by God for the conflict of the ages between God and Satan, these two invisible kingdoms. How then will we know who has won? Then God gave the Abrahamic covenant, and I see the Abrahamic covenant as God s standard of performance. He says, I will make you a great nation. He said, I will give you a land and a seed and a blessing. And He promises to this people a land. And not because they were particularly worthy of it, but because He singled them out perhaps even we might say difficult people. But God is going to show His power in one sample segment of the human race, namely the nation Israel. He promises them a land. He promises them a seed. He promises them a blessing. As we ve seen in an earlier class, the seed was of course, first of all, the descendants of Abraham, which was by a miracle of the birth of Isaac to begin it. And then also the seed would include the Lord Jesus Christ, as we saw in that prediction from the Davidic covenant. And finally, the Seed of Abraham was, in terms of all those who had come to faith as Abraham had come to faith, used in these different ways in Scripture. He also promised a blessing. Not much is given by way of detail to Abraham about this blessing. What did it mean? We find later on (in Jeremiah 31 in the new covenant), we find detail concerning that blessing. And it is to be an eternal kind of thing. It is to be a salvation. It is to be a new heart, a cleansed heart. And there are two parts to this: (1) The one is the cleansing of the heart, and (2) the second is the giving of power to remain clean. In other words, to live a life that is godly. So it s not just the taking away of sin, 3 of 16

4 but it s also the giving of power to live a life of victory over sin. Dr. Schaeffer used to use the illustration of: If a person is shot with a bullet, you take the bullet out, but that does not give the person life. There must be a taking away of the cause of the problem and then the giving of life and the ability to live after that. You say, What does all that have to do with the ministry of John the Baptist and of Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ came to earth the first time, I believe, to fulfill this Abrahamic covenant. I hasten to add that as events turned out, He did not fulfill it at that time, but He did do certain parts of it. He came to redeem and to rule. Now, in this Abrahamic covenant, there is implicit the concept of a rule of God on earth. Throughout the Old Testament, especially in the prophets, we find many, many references to a kingdom. What kind of a kingdom? Well, Isaiah 11 and Isaiah 35 speak of a kingdom in which the lion lies down with the lamb; in which they beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks; in which they make war no more; in which there are no deaf, there are no dumb, there are no lame. There are no personal problems. And later on, it said that Satan is bound. So he cannot deceive the nations anymore. And, of course, this would mean peace on earth. This is the kind of outcome which would prove God was sovereign over, and more powerful than, Satan. In other words, this was His standards of performance. If I may use just a very mundane parallel: What would it be like to play football on a field which had no goalposts and no yard lines? How would you know who won? How could you play tennis without lines or without a net? And so I see the Abrahamic covenant as the yard line, so to speak, the goal line. And the goal line was the establishment of the kingdom on earth, which would parallel but be greater than the kingdom that was lost in the Garden of Eden. So the Edenic conditions will be more than repeated as God gloriously restores what was lost. Now Jesus, I believe, came to do this. And when John said, The kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2), he was speaking therefore, I think, of the promised evidence of victory over Satan as defined by the prophets. The fact that He did not establish that kingdom on earth and I think we don t have to read very far in Time or Newsweek magazines or the daily papers to realize that this situation does not exist today does not mean that God will not perform this. Indeed, if He does not perform it, He has failed, because this was His standard that He set to do. So when Jesus comes, He comes to redeem and to rule. And this is why John could say, The kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2). 4 of 16

5 Later on, at the end of Jesus ministry, the cry at the trial was, the final word was: We have no king but Caesar! Away with Him! We have no king but Caesar! (John 19:15). His blood be upon us and upon our children (Matthew 27:25). These are perhaps some of the most tragic words ever uttered by human beings. The result was that Jesus did not establish that kingdom. The result is that God will yet establish that kingdom. And this is why Jesus Himself, during His ministry, spoke of His return that when He returned, He would do certain things. And this accounts, of course, for the Olivet Discourse that we ll get into later. So I just wanted to give that word of background so that we can get some kind of a concept of this kingdom. Let me go on for a moment on the idea of the kingdom itself. It is generally understood by generally understood, I think most evangelicals would accept the fact that the Jewish leaders and most of the people of Jesus day desired a Messiah who would overthrow Roman rule in Palestine and would establish an independent state. This kind of hope is often expressed by the statement: The Jews wanted a political kingdom. And that s quite true. But it s often concluded from that, that because this desire was selfish and carnal (and it certainly was), the alternative could only be a spiritual kingdom in the heart; in other words, an invisible kingdom. Since Jesus would not satisfy the unworthy desires of these proud and unrepentant people of His day (especially the leadership), it is then assumed that He could not be associated with any kind of kingdom that was physical or visible. I think this is the fallacy. Because He did not accept their definition and their desire at that moment, does not automatically exclude His literal fulfillment of the promises made by the Old Testament prophets. So the issue is simply this: Did Jesus speak exclusively of a spiritual kingdom that is, an invisible heart relationship with God as He spoke of the kingdom? Or, did He also (and I emphasize also) refer to a visible kingdom on earth as real as David s? And, I might add, as predicted by the prophets. If it were the latter, then it would not be that so-called crass, materialistic, political kingdom which the Jews sought. Would it be that? No. In other words, to establish a physical kingdom does not mean that it would be under the conditions that the Jews laid down or the kind of kingdom they were talking about. It doesn t have to be that way, and indeed it wasn t. Incidentally, one of the strongest evidences of that is that Jesus often referred to the fact that, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). And so there is a 5 of 16

6 spiritual dimension to this. And I think the difference between what the Jews wanted of His day and what is actually the fact, is not the issue of whether or not it was to be a literal, physical, visible fulfillment of the Old Testament prophets, but the issue is whether or not they were going to be spiritually prepared for that situation. Because you go back to the Garden of Eden, and you say, How come they lost it? They lost it by rebellion. They lost it by sin. So if it s going to be established, then: What s the condition? The condition is repentance. Repent, the kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2). Get rid of the sin! And we ll see more about that specific sin. Well, here are some perspectives that might help us on this. God s promises to Abraham and they re listed, of course in Genesis 12, 13, and elsewhere and His repeated revelations through the prophets (and I ve mentioned some of those) predicted a visible, physical kingdom located in Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. As a matter of fact, in Genesis 15 when God ratified the Abrahamic covenant to Abraham, He specifically told where it would be: from the river of Egypt to the river of Euphrates and so on (Genesis 15:18). Second, John and Jesus appeared in Judea predicting the imminent establishment of a kingdom. They did not define the term. And so if the term kingdom has been used for hundreds of years in the Old Testament to describe something which is definable in geographical terms, then they would have to have redefined it unless they were deceiving the people. Instructed Jews would assume that they used the term as the prophets had, to refer to a real kingdom in Palestine. If the case had been otherwise that is, if John and Jesus had used the term in some spiritual sense then either the prophets had misled their people by portraying a visible rule of Messiah, or John and Jesus were misleading the people of their day by not telling them that the word had been changed in its meaning. Well, we must also notice that Jesus had not redefined the use of the word kingdom, as indicated by Peter s response before the ascension. After He had been teaching them for 40 days and we don t know how much of that time, of course, but for those 40 days about the kingdom of God, it says that is what He talked about. Peter said, Will you, at this time, restore the kingdom to Israel? (Acts 1:6). And Jesus did not say, You ve got it all wrong, Peter. By the way, Jesus was not averse to correcting Peter very bluntly. But He didn t. He said, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons (Acts 1:7). Obviously, a tacit acknowledgment of 6 of 16

7 the truth of what Peter said, but simply not giving the information concerning the time. Well, a few conclusions that I would draw on this. The question is not whether Christ s kingdom would be political or spiritual, that s not the question. Repeated calls for repentance and a new birth to enter the kingdom clearly indicate that it has a spiritual character. Indeed, if it were not the case, it would be like any other world empire. You didn t have to have a spiritual rebirth to get in the Persian or the Roman Empires. And then the fact that the Jewish people desired a state that is a physical kingdom that would replace Roman rule, and that they wanted this without repentance or regeneration, does not mean that Christ would have no interest in establishing a visible kingdom as promised. In other words, He doesn t have to change the nature of His kingdom because there are wrong expectations and attitudes on the part of the people. The Jews problem was not their concept of a physical kingdom, but their unwillingness to meet God s standards of righteousness for entrance into God s kind of spiritual and physical kingdom. That s the nub of it right there. That s why they said, Away with Him! We have no king but Caesar. Not because they didn t want his kind of kingdom, but because they weren t willing to pay the price for it to come. The third thing that we should conclude and believe is that Jews looked for the kind of kingdom the prophet had predicted. To become citizens of it, they understood they had to repent, and they did so. Citizenship in the spiritual kingdom Colossians 1:13: You ve been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His dear Son is the essential prerequisite for citizenship in the kingdom, predicted by the prophets. And then, fourth, Jesus did not establish the predicted physical kingdom. Why? Because the nation Israel rejected Him as king. The nation Israel officially that is, the Sanhedrin rejected Him. Many of the people believed, at least 120 believers were in the upper room after the ascension on the day of Pentecost. There were many believers those whose relatives had been healed in Galilee, the throngs that followed Him, those who came in the Triumphal Entry, His disciples that believed. And Jesus Christ will return to fulfill all that was predicted concerning the kingdom. Again, if He does not, then God has not met what I believe are His standards of judgment. We ll see some more of this as we move along. One other thing I need to mention here is that given the situation 7 of 16

8 in the world at Jesus time (and for that matter at our time) and given, on the other hand, the righteous kind of conditions in the kingdom that will be established, that was promised where there is no war, where there is no interpersonal conflict and so on, and no sickness and no disease there is a great gulf fixed between those. In other words, you just don t sort of slide into one, or as some would tell us, that we would bring in the kingdom in some way and create this. There is no way that human effort can create this. And there s no way that we re just going to wake up some morning and it s going to be; something has to happen in the meantime. And the difference will be judgment. This is why I believe that in many places in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, we read of judgment to come; so that the Day of the Lord is seen to comprise, first of all, judgment to make the break between where we are now and then the kingdom conditions during that period of time which is predicted. So the Day of the Lord and we ll find several references to the Day of the Lord starts with judgment and then moves into this kingdom age. So the Day of the Lord begins with judgment. I mention that because in John s ministry he speaks of judgment to come, the fire to come. So that when Messiah comes, it is not only kingdom, it is first of all judgment. Now with that background, we can move into the ministry of John the Baptist. And I think we do need that background in order to understand what he is meaning when he says, The kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2), and as we find this referred to later on. First of all, let s look at the ministry of John the Baptist. It is a unique ministry. There has never been anything like this before, and there would never be anything again. Let s always keep in mind that John ministered at a unique period in history. As a matter of fact, he is the last of the Old Testament prophets, because he alone could say The kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2). The others could say, The kingdom is coming. Isaiah, 700 years before, could predict much about the kingdom that was to come. But only John could say, The kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2). He was the forerunner of the King. So his ministry was to prepare for and announce the coming of Messiah. This was the first evangelistic preaching that we know about in 400 years. He was a real evangelist. He got up there and he said, Repent, judgment s coming. And he announced the arrival of the King to establish His kingdom. And he warned that the King must first judge sin, The ax is laid to the root of the trees (Matthew 3:10), we ll read. And then he preached a message that 8 of 16

9 those people needed to hear in a unique way. He preached that though descendants of Abraham, Jews were sinners. Now that was a heavy statement. This wasn t just like Billy Graham preaching in a sports stadium or wherever, in which he invites people to come to faith in Jesus Christ. This had a special dimension to it. I m not saying it wasn t the same gospel. I m not saying that people aren t saved the same way. But I m saying there s a special need there. Because as you walk out among people today and say, If you were to die tonight, where would you go? Would you go to heaven? Well, I hope so, I trust so. I ve done a lot of good deeds. Or My grandfather was a Baptist preacher. Or I m as good as anybody else. Or I have my own religion or whatever. But if you went in the streets of Jerusalem, and said, If you were to die tonight, where would you go? They would say, To Abraham s bosom. And you d say, Why? On what basis? Because I m a child of Abraham. And so the message had to be, Though you re descendants of Abraham and physically in the Abrahamic covenant, you are not spiritually in the Abrahamic covenant. As a matter of fact, this comes out very pointedly at the conversion of Zacchaeus, toward the end of Christ s ministry, when Jesus said after Zacchaeus had repented, Now are you a son of Abraham (Luke 19:9). So John is preaching this unique message for that moment to these people, in which he is saying, Don t claim your Abrahamic ancestry as your ticket to citizenship in this kingdom. When it s established, you ll be on the outside if all you ve got to prove is your Jewish blood. That won t do it. That was a great shock to them. That s one thing of which they had to do: Repent! A few moments ago I mentioned the specific sin. Now, of course, they were sinners. They were born sinners. And they come with repentance for salvation as any of us would have to come. But there was a special dimension to their repentance, namely: I have trusted in my Abrahamic ancestry. And this is what Jesus did when He spoke to Nicodemus. Jesus, in His conversation with Nicodemus, reinforced everything John said. In fact, He just preached his message again. He said, That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of Spirit is spirit (John 3:6). Then as we ve looked at His ministry, we look now at His baptism. What s the purpose of His baptism? Well, first of all, I don t believe it was related to believer s baptism today. And I get that from Acts 19:3-5 when Paul went to Ephesus and he found that some of the leaders of the church, about a dozen of them, were 9 of 16

10 not really behaving themselves. And he said, Were you baptized in the Holy Spirit? In other words, I don t see any evidence of the Holy Spirit here in your lives. And they said, We ve only heard of the baptism of John. So Paul could have said, As long as you ve been baptized with John s baptism, that s okay. But he didn t. He said, You ve missed a lot. You re in a time warp. And he informed them further. So there seems to be a special connotation, a special character to the ministry, to the baptism of John the Baptist. We ll see more of that in just a moment. It was preparatory for Messiah s coming. So as we baptize people today, we re not baptizing them because they repented, that the kingdom is at hand. I m not trying to make a special point of this. But I m just trying to sort of sharpen up our focus on it. It was made necessary by the sins of the people, and it was based on confession and repentance. Incidentally, this baptism did not cleanse. And the text itself gives evident proof of this. Because if you came down to the Jordan River, as thousands of people apparently did from all around the region, including sophisticated religious Jerusalem, and you said, John, you re baptizing all these people. That looks like something good. That s something I ought to get in on. John, I want you to baptize me. He says, Have you repented? What do you mean? Well,... And then he tells them what repentance means. And he says, Sure, I ve repented. What does he say? What does John do? Take them down in the water. And so they go into the water with sins, and they come out of the water without sins? No! He says, Before you leave that bank, you ve got to give me evidence that you ve repented. And when does the salvation come? When does the cleansing come? It comes with the repentance, not with the water. So they were already clean before they went into the water. He wouldn t let them in the water unless they had done business with God and repented and got their sins taken away. What then was the purpose of the baptism? It was a ceremonial cleansing. Remember, John was of the priestly line. His father was a priest. And the Old Testament speaks of the ceremonial putting on of water with hyssop on a person who has been cleansed (Leviticus 14:4). It was an outward ceremonial sign, evidence of inward cleansing. And then, of course, it also identified the separate believing remnant of Israel as distinct from those who are unbelieving. This is going to become very important as we go along, because we re going to find that the whole we can almost say the whole of the people had hardly any contact with Jesus at all. Divide it into two groups: (A) Those who believed on Him and 10 of 16

11 repented and were born from above and ready for His kingdom and rejoicing with Him and receiving Him, believing Him, trusting Him; and (B) those who were resisting Him and saying, No, I ve got my own righteousness, and I m a son of Abraham. And you re not going to move me. And I m all right. And get out of here! And you re a threat to our standards, and so on. You re messing up our theology. Divide it into groups A and B. And so those who went down in the river, having given evidence of their repentance and he specifies it and were ceremonially touched with this water, that that identified them as in group B, we might say (that is, the group that was ready for Messiah). So if Jesus had established His kingdom at that moment, they would be citizens of it. And all the rest of them, including most of the Sanhedrin, would be on the outside looking in except for Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea and perhaps a few others. Incidentally, I wonder if the apostle Paul was around during this period, because he sat at the feet of Gamaliel. And it is quite possible that he was an observer of all of this. What s John s message? The message is: You re sinners and not ready for Christ s kingdom. Repent of your sins and your dependence on heritage and ritual and produce evidence in a real change of heart. Submit to baptism. What was the significance of baptism in that day? Well, they had baptism. There were no Baptist churches, but they had baptism. What they used baptism for was interesting. It was the last stage of the ritual by which a Gentile became a Jew. And there were quite a few Gentiles in that day. They got fed up with Gentile polytheism and all of the gods of the Romans and the Greeks. They saw some good qualities, some high moral standards in the Pharisees and in other Jewish leaders, and they said, I want to become a Jew. As a matter of fact, we find in Acts several God-fearers, like Cornelius, for instance, who was a God-fearer. And God said, Your alms, your giving, your attitude, your actions, have come up before me, and I ve observed you. And so there were many like that. So some of them wanted to become Jews, believing that that s how you got to get in relationship with Jehovah. Interestingly enough, this became an issue in the early church, because many of the Jews who were in the early church were saying, You ve got to become Jewish. And you ve got to go through the Jewish rituals. And you ve got to follow Jewish Law. And that was what the Council of Jerusalem was about in Acts 15. Anyway, if you wanted to become a Jew then, you went through a series of lectures, teachings, and conditions and so on until you were ready 11 of 16

12 for acceptance into Judaism. And the last stage was baptism. So the baptism there was dis-identifying yourself as a Gentile, and identifying yourself as a Jew. That becomes very interesting when John says to Jews, You must be baptized. Because what he s saying in effect is, You are no more of a legitimate citizen of the kingdom than those Gentiles. And just as you baptized them to transfer them from Gentile life into Jewish faith, now you ve got to be baptized to show that you have had this kind of a change as well now into God s kingdom. This would shake them up considerably. Then we will go on in a moment to see something of Jesus baptism; but first, let s trace this in the text in section 23. Having this background, we now move to the text. And I will probably do this from time to time. We will of often survey where we re going, and then move into the text itself. You ll notice how Luke gives a very careful identification of the time that this was to take place. This is somewhat parallel to the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah 1:1 that lists who was ruling at the time. This is how they measured their time in those days. Notice Luke 3:2: In the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. We are going to see them again. Annas had been high priest. He was into a number of activities that we ll see shortly that interfered with his being high priest. He was actually deposing Caiaphas son-in-law who was high priest. But they are sort of called high priests, and the reason is that they were the ruling officers of the time. Section 24, quotation there from Isaiah that had predicted this forerunner coming. The message is, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matthew 3:2). And in Luke s account, Preaching a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins (Luke 3:3). Remember now, these were children of Abraham who were having this preached to them. So in section 24 and I m going to give sort of a title to each of these sections, just to focus our attention I think in section 24 the emphasis is on purpose: The purpose of his ministry. Then farther on in that section, over the page in the Harmony, I think the emphasis is on his person; in other words, the person of John the Baptist. And this speaks about what he wore and what he ate. Notice verse 3:5 of Matthew s account, Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around Jordan. We cannot overestimate the popularity of his teaching, at least the drawing power of it. And you ll notice that they were being 12 of 16

13 baptized in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins. So this was a widespread movement. Incidentally, in Luke 7, when John is imprisoned, two of his disciples come to Jesus and they say, Are you the one that is to come, or do we look for another one? (7:20). And Jesus sends them back with evidence of His miracles and so on. And He says, Tell him what you ve seen and heard (7:22). And then, after they ve gone, He says, What whence you out into the desert to see, a reed shaken in the wind? and so on (7:24). And He refers back to this same period of time. Section 25 emphasizes his message. Notice when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming (Matthew 3:7). Now we ve studied something of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees, the conservatives, were the ones who resisted any kind of accommodation to Rome or to Hellenization. The Sadducees were those who accommodated themselves. They held different theological beliefs. They probably had many arguments in the Sanhedrin, especially as Paul on one occasion precipitated an argument by saying, I understand that there s a debate about the resurrection, and that got them going (Acts 23:6-7). But they came out together. And John pulls no punches. He says, You brood of vipers! [You re a bunch of snakes, unclean animals!] Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? (Luke 3:7). Wrath to come? You see, this is the judgment that s to begin the Day of the Lord, and he s referring to it here. Therefore, bring forth fruit keeping with repentance (3:8). In 3:8, he emphasizes this issue of Abrahamic ancestry. Don t suppose that you can say to yourselves, We have Abraham for our father. For I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. It is interesting that the first child of Abraham was Isaac, who was a miracle birth (Genesis 21:2). But God didn t even, we could say, need Sarah to give birth to Isaac. He could have done it from stones if He wanted to. And he says, You re no more important to God than all these stones. He can make children of Abraham. That is not His problem to make children of Abraham. The problem is for you, as children of Abraham physically, to become children of God. That is where the issue lies. You ll notice in 3:10, he mentions, The ax is laid to the root of the trees. When do you lay an ax to the root of the tree? To take aim, to chop it down. In other words, the time of judgment has 13 of 16

14 come. That verse ends with fire. Then actually the next verse on in [Matthew s] account, in 3:11, ends with fire, and the next verse, verse 12, ends with fire. Likewise, verses 10, 11. and 12 in Matthew s account, each of them ends with fire. But going on in this section 25, in Luke s account, he tells them exactly what the response should be. So in section 25, we have the message, that is, in the first part of it. Then on that next page we have, in Luke s account, the response that is to come. As he says, in verse 3:14, he tells them what they should do: Don t take any money from anyone by force and be content with your wages and so on. It reminds me of what else is to come later on. You remember the woman at the well. Jesus said, Go, call your husband (John 4:16). And then to a rich man, He says, Go, sell all that you have (Mark 10:21; Matthew 19:21). In each person s life, there is an issue that needs to be resolved and repentance. And so He lists three of them here; and we will see more later. Section 26, this is the relation of John to Christ. I think we should look in Luke s account. Luke 3:15: Now while the people were in a state of expectation, and all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he might be the Christ... Why? Because he s talking about the kingdom being at hand. Why? Because he is an outstanding evangelistic preacher; he s promising a kingdom. And you see, they did not know. Or at least, they did not realize about the forerunner coming before the Messiah. So when anybody starts to talk about the kingdom being at hand, they don t think in terms of forerunner and then Messiah will come. They re just thinking about the final person. They are thinking of him as Messiah. And John answers in verse 16, As for me, I baptize with water; but One is coming who is mightier than I. Am I [I am] not fit to untie the thong of his sandals. A disciple would not usually even do this; a servant would do this. The lowest form of servanthood was to untie the sandals, presumably to wash one s feet. And again, he speaks of this judgment which is to come. We move on then to the baptism by John of Jesus; and this is in section 27. And we ask the reasons why Jesus was baptized. John did not want to do it. He was reluctant because of the superiority of Christ. And he certainly thought there was no reason why Jesus should be baptized. He wasn t repenting from any sin. But if we keep clearly in mind what the baptism was and what it wasn t, we ll be able to understand why Jesus was baptized. Jesus was baptized not to cleanse Him from sin, but to declare Him clean from sin. In other words, they came through because they were cleansed. Jesus went into the water because He was clean. And in doing 14 of 16

15 this He identified Himself with sinners and He was made known to Israel. We will pick this up in John s account By this He was made known to Israel. Then, it marked His public empowering by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came upon Him in the form of a dove, visibly. You say, Why visibly? Was there really a dove? Yes, it says there was a dove. A dove actually came down. Was that the Holy Spirit? No, but it was a visible form, just as God used visible forms of a lamb and various birds and other living creatures and things in the Old Testament to evidence something. Just as the smoke went up from the altar of incense, the smoke wasn t the prayer, but it gave evidence that the prayer was there. So this is marking the public empowering by the Holy Spirit. Not the filling of Christ by the Spirit. He was always controlled, always filled by the Spirit, from before His birth. But this was a public evidence of it. Immediately after that Jesus moves out into the wilderness for temptation. This brings us to the temptation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And let s just introduce this as we conclude this section. We note, first of all, that this temptation in the wilderness (probably in the hills of Judea just above where the Jordan River was, where He was baptized) that God initiated this. It was not Satan trapping Him into a difficult situation. God was initiating this. The Holy Spirit led Him into the wilderness. It was an attack on Satan, not a defense by Christ rather. Satan was on the defensive, not Jesus Christ. And of course the location of it contrasts the circumstances of Adam and Eve in the garden. Everything was perfect for them. And they failed in their testing. Everything was most difficult for Jesus. And yet, He succeeded in this. But the tests parallel Satan s approach to Adam and Eve. We are going to see that in our next session, the paralleling of Genesis 3. It also reminds us of Israel in the wilderness as well. It s interesting that the three quotations that Jesus gives from the Old Testament are all taken from Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy was given to them as they were coming out of that wilderness experience, referring back to it. So in this testing, Christ s victory over Satan demonstrated His moral right to rule in this kingdom of righteousness. If He is saying The kingdom is at hand, if He is to be the king of a kingdom of righteousness, then He is taking the initiative here. The Holy Spirit is taking the initiative, to put Him in a situation where He can demonstrate that He has the right to rule in this kingdom. As we will see, in our next session, the parallels between this testing 15 of 16

16 and the testing of the grace of God and the Word of God and the authority of God in Jesus life, even as they were tested back there in the garden. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 16 of 16