True Repentance Series
God's Highway to the Heart
Luke 3:7-8
 
Let's open our Bibles to the third chapter of Luke. The first six verses of the third chapter describe for us the setting of the ministry of John. If you are familiar with the ministry of John the Baptist, you remember he is the forerunner to Messiah. He's going to announce the Messiah has come. He's going to prepare the people for Messiah's arrival.
 
And so verses 1-6 give us some information about that. Then we come to verse 7 and we actually hear John preach. John the Baptist is officially on the scene. Thirty years since his birth have passed.
 
Jesus will appear on the scene about six months after John begins his ministry. This is the time for the real work of redemption to begin. All of it will center on Jesus Christ, God’s Messiah. And John the Baptist has the responsibility as the last Old Testament prophet to declare His coming. 
 
And so, John speaks beginning in verse 7
 
Verses 7-18
 
Now here is a sample of John's preaching. This would be typical of John's preaching day after day after day. The encounter with the multitude, the encounter with the tax gatherers, the encounter with the soldiers are all simply reminders that no matter who was in the crowd or what was going on, this is the message of John the Baptist. 
 
Now John serves as a model in at least a couple of ways. First of all, he is a model for preachers. He is a standard for how to preach. We learn from John how to confront unbelievers with the message of the gospel.
 
But he is a model also of what to preach. He called sinners to forgiveness. He told them good news, God will forgive your sins if you repent and receive Jesus Christ as Messiah and Savior. That was his message.  He was a preacher of repentance and a preacher of faith in the Lord Messiah, Jesus Christ.
 
Now if you are a student of John the Baptist, then you will remember that John was a preacher of repentance. Virtually every message that John preached was about repentance. If you came to Sunday morning church, you heard about repentance. If you went to his Sunday School class, it was about repentance. His devotions were about repentance. Sunday night? More repentance. 
 
Repentance was at the heart of his message. In fact, I would suggest to you that if it is a gospel message, it must have repentance in mind because repentance is at the heart of any gospel message. You cannot truly preach the gospel of forgiveness, you cannot preach the gospel of grace unless you call sinners to repent.
 
Now the question that I want to pose, as we look at this passage, and we’re going to take four weeks to look at it, is, “what is repentance”? How does the Bible define true repentance? 
 
 
You may have never had anyone explain to you the definition of repentance. You may have never fully understood what it means to repent. Well I want to make you this promise: come for the next three weeks and I will do my very best to explain the subject in clear, understandable terms so you can understand what God demans when He calls us to repent. 
 
The answer is found right here in Luke 3 in extremely clear terms. In verses 7-11 we have a definition of true repentance, the kind of repentance that saves the sinner.
 
So let’s begin this morning by looking at this text. We’ll zero in on verses 7 and 8 today.  
 
Now people came out to see John. In fact, the scriptures tell us that all Jerusalem and all Judea came out. And there is a reason for that. I'm sure people knew about John. I'm sure the story had circulated through the 30-year period that an old priest by the name of Zacharias and Elizabeth were able to conceive a son miraculously and that Gabriel the angel told Zacharias it would happen and that the son would be the forerunner of the Messiah and that that son was alive and he was out in the wilderness and he was a prophet of God.
 
News just kind of gets around. This week we had a little break-in at the office. You probably heard about it. I was hearing about it from church members almost before it happened. In fact, I said if we could get folk to talk about Jesus as quickly as they talk about a robbery we could win the world!
 
But I’m convinced people knew about John the Baptist, and now he’s out there preaching, and that might mean Messiah would be close and people came out to see what was going on. 
 
And many begin to respond. He’s baptizing and they are repenting and Jesus shows up and everything ends happily ever after, right? Not quite. 
 
Because before this story is over very few of those who began the journey at Jordan on this day will still be hanging around to do the work of the kingdom. In fact, I think an argument can be made that their repentance was a shallow, false repentance. 
 
We really don't have a difficult time in proving that because as the story of Jesus unfolds it becomes apparent that most people do not acknowledge Him as Messiah. In fact, they finally come to the place where even though they have celebrated Him as Messiah on Palm Sunday, they cry for His blood on Friday at the crucifixion. And when you get to the book of Acts and the believers in Jerusalem are gathered in the Upper Room, there's only 120 of them and that's after the full ministry of John and Jesus is completed.
 
So, there was a lot of superficiality going on. And John was preaching a strong message and still there was superficial faith. How much more superficiality is there when a very weak message is preached? John understands the reality of shallow faith. John understands the reality of shallow repentance, false repentance.
 
 
And this sample of his preaching demonstrates that concern and it demonstrates the message that needs to be preached. And all across this country in churches all across this land a shallow message is being preached, a shallow gospel, a shallow call to repentance that is giving people the tragic and damning illusion that they are saved when they are not.
 
So how can we recognize real repentance? How can we recognize it as best as possible? How can we see the real thing and separate it from false and shallow repentance?
 
Let's look at this passage. In it John gives us six elements of a true, genuine, saving repentance.
So let’s look at them. 
 
1. True Repentance Accepts Personal Responsibility for Sin
 
Look back to verses 3-5. There’s a quotation there from Isaiah, and it’s a quotation that describes John. John comes and he comes in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. And John, according to verse 4, is the voice of one crying. He is the voice. And what is he crying?
 
Well, he's out there in the wilderness and he's crying, "Make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." All right, he's the forerunner of the Messiah, he's saying get ready, do the necessary preparation, Messiah is coming.
 
What he's talking about here is heart preparation.
 
Before there can be any national reception of the Messiah, there has to be individual reception of the Messiah. So he says in verse 5, taking the language of Isaiah 40, "Every ravine shall be filled up, every mountain and hill shall be brought low. The crooked shall become straight. The rough roads smooth. Then you'll see the salvation of God."
 
In other words, if you want to experience the salvation of God individually and then collectively, as individual's believe, you must then make the path ready. And spiritually the pathway is through the wilderness of the heart.
 
So in essence, John is saying, “You need to do a real search of your heart. You need to reflect on your personal sin. You need to see the depth and the dark and the low and the gross and base elements of your life. You need to see the height and the high things and the proud things of your heart and the perverse and crooked thing and every other hindrance in your life for what it is...obstacles that prevent the King from coming into your heart.”
 
Why? Because that’s where true repentance always begins. It requires a complete and full admission of one's sinfulness...depth and height and length and breadth. Sin must be recognized and reflected upon in one's own life.
 
Now for the second one, we go back to verse 7.
 
2. True Repentance Realizes there are Consequences for Sin
 
Notice the phrase “the wrath to come”. 
 
Now why does he begin like he does? Because he wants them to do an honest heart-searching of their sin. He wants them to reflect on their personal iniquity. He wants them to see their sin at its depth, its heights, its length and breadth. He wants them to do that honesty and so naturally he warns them about divine wrath.   There are consequences to sin.
 
And what he's saying to them is, “You better deal with your sin because it has such immense and eternal consequences. True repentance comes out of the fear of divine wrath. This motivates it. People coming to John and seeking the baptism that he gave, having to confess the fact that they weren't in the Kingdom but outside, no better than a Gentile, and needed to come inside by repentance, they were willing to repent because they wanted to flee the wrath to come.
 
You can be sure that John was a preacher of wrath, a preacher of judgment.
 
Notice verse 9
 
When you're going to chop the tree down the first thing you do is take the ax over there and set it down while you get ready to pick it up and cut the tree. He says the ax is already there and God is about to swing it.
 
Now the Jews were very aware of this. They knew all about God’s wrath. All they had to do was study their history books and their prophetical writings.    They knew that when Messiah came it would not only be for the fulfillment of Abrahamic promise and Davidic promise, but that it would also be for judgment.
That is clearly outlined for them. The Old Testament is full of such warnings. 
 
All the prophets preached judgment. John preached judgment. Any true preacher preaches judgment. And when you give a witness for Christ to another individual, you have to talk about the consequences of sin. 
 
Jesus made that a theme of His preaching. He preached more on hell than He did on heaven. He preached more on hell than anybody ever preached on hell. Why? Because He didn't like sinners, because He wanted to damn sinners? No, because He wanted to warn sinners. And one of the things that you must preach when you preach for a true repentance is the seriousness, the eternality and the suffering of eternal hell.
 
It is essential in true repentance to understand the wrath to come, to recognize that reality. There is a hell and it is a forever alienation from God and a forever conscious punishment, conscious torment. That's what makes forgiveness urgent. That's what makes forgiveness good news.
 
Thirdly: 
 
3. True Repentance Doesn’t Rely on Good Works
 
Verse 8
 
The Jews were so used to a works-based approach to God. They believed God accepted you if you just prayed the right way or gave money the right way or went to church at the right times.
If you followed the law and lived a good moral life everything was OK.
 
And now apparently someone has told them, just to cover all the bases, you better go down and let John baptize you. 
 
And now John is saying to them, Who told you to come down here and try to escape the wrath of God by being baptized? Do you think that's enough?”
 
Verse 8 he says, "You better bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance. Isn't going to do you any good just to be baptized. That's not what God is looking for. Do you think you can scramble like scrambling snakes in front of a fire and all you want to do is head for the water? And you get down here and you slither into the Jordan River and it's all well and good?"
 
Now there's no ceremony, there's no ritual, there's no baptism that can save anybody. There's no salvation in baptism then and there's none in it now. The strongest words Jesus ever spoke were directed at those who depended on their good wroks to be right with God. 
 
All the stuff they depended on is what Paul called manure apart from repentance. 
 
Churches are full of people going through the motions. People who were baptized as babies, people who were baptized as young people, people baptized as adults, people who go to the church and go through whatever ordinances their churches call for them to go through.
They might call it confirmation or they follow the instruction of a priest who tells them to say so many Hail Marys and they go through their beads and they go through whatever patterns of penance  they go through, etc., etc., etc., light so many candles, or whatever, pray so many prayers, in the end it has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
 
You cannot flee the wrath to come by scrambling and diving in the water. Verse 8 says you have to bring forth fruit that demonstrate repentance.
 
What they needed was a change of nature. It's impossible for any sinner to escape judgment by any amount of good works. 
 
And then number four is very similar,
 
4. True Repentance Doesn’t Depend of Family Connections
 
Look at verse 8 again. "Do not...he says...do not, I warn you, do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father.'" Now what was this?
 
Apparently they believed salvation is genetic, it just gets passed down, we're Jewish, we have Abraham for our father. They were basing their eternal hope on their genes. They were Abraham's offspring. They were the people of the promised blessing. They were the people to whom God had made great unilateral, irrevocable, unconditional, eternal promises both to Abraham and to David. They were the people who were promised the land and blessing and a kingdom. They had been promised redemption, according to Galatians 3, that was in the Abrahamic Covenant.
They were also promised a Redeemer in the Abrahamic Covenant with the seed who was not many seeds but THE seed, Messiah. They were counting on that descent.
 
In John chapter 8 the Jewish leaders enter into a discussion with Jesus, and they say, "We are Abraham's offspring." And Jesus says to them, "I know you're Abraham's offspring...verse 37...yet you seek to kill Me because My word has no place in you."
 
In verse 39, "If you're Abraham's children, do the deeds of Abraham." You are the children of Abraham, but look, Abraham didn't try to kill God. That's what you're trying to do. You're doing the deeds of your father, he says, and your father is the devil.
 
Not all Israel is Israel. And he is not a Jew that is one outwardly but one inwardly. You can’t depend upon what your granddaddy did to get you to heaven. You might benefit from, or you might have to overcome in, but nobody is getting into God’s heaven just because the rest of the family served God faithfully. 
 
Listen you may live in a garage, but that doesn’t make you a car. Being in the house of Israel doesn't protect you from eternal death. Repentance, faith in God does.
 
You may be Jewish and shut out of the Kingdom of God. You may have been raised in a Christian family but that  doesn't make you a Christian. The fact that you may have been baptized as an infant doesn't secure your salvation.
By the way, you remember the rich man that died and went to hell? He says, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me," he was Jewish. What's he doing there? Boy, Jesus made it pretty clear. Heritage doesn't save you.
 
Zaccheus was a Jew, chapter 19 of Luke. He needed salvation. Jesus went to his house, he was saved.
 
So, John says then in very sarcastic words, again at the end of verse 8, "Don't you begin to 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.'" That's no big deal. God can make children of Abraham out of the rocks. You think you're special? God can make as many children of Abraham as He wants out of the dirt.
 
Abraham's true children, according to the Scripture, are those who follow the faith of Abraham. It's not genetic. You're Abraham's child if you follow the faith of Abraham. All you got from Abraham by birth was a sin nature and judgment.
 
So, what is true repentance? True repentance calls for honest reflection on personal sin. It realizes there is consequences for sin. It rejections any dependence on good works or family affiliation as a means of salvation. 
 
There are two more that I’ll just mention and we’ll cover one next week and one the following week: True Repentance results in a spiritual transformation, and then finally, the heart of it all, True Repentance acknowledges the true Messiah. We'll see all of that in the rest of the text.
 
But you don’t have to wait til next week. If you’ve never repented of you sin, I cannot stress to you the seriousness in which you are living. 
 
There's no more important thing than responding to the gospel. The fact that John is so harsh and so strait-forward is evidence that the issue of repentance is so serious.
 
People have to come to grips with personal sin, they have to recognize the reality of divine wrath to motivate them to seek forgiveness and escape. But they must reject any external religious ritual and renounce any ancestral kind of genetic hope or any kind of ceremonial hope passed down from their parents if they will be saved. 
 
So I say to you, “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at Hand!”
 
Let's pray.