True Repentance Series
God's Highway to the Heart
Luke 3:15-17
 
We return this morning for our fourth and final visit for now to John the Baptist’s message in Luke 3. Now remember, as you come in to chapter 3, John is now launching his ministry. John, this great prophet, known as John the Baptist because of his baptizing ministry, is the forerunner of Messiah. He is the herald who announces the Messiah is coming.
 
In about six months, Jesus will appear publicly and begin his earthly ministry. In the meantime, John is on the scene and he is preaching a message, according to verse 3 of chapter 3, of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
 
If one is to have a relationship with God, if one is to receive the blessings the Messiah brings, the sin must be forgiven. If one is to receive forgiveness, there must be repentance. So the beginning point, and the theme of John's preaching is repentance. Simply stated, John's message is this, God will forgive your sins if you repent and then embrace the Messiah.
 
Now, as we started in verse 4 and moved on through all the way to verse 17 in this section, we've been looking at the essence of true repentance.
 
John identifies true repentance by six characteristics. And we’ve already covered them over the last three weeks, and this morning I don’t want to spend all of our time re-preaching those messages. 
 
So I will just touch on them to refresh our memories and focus our attention on this morning’s message.
 
First of all, true repentance accepts personal responsibility for sin. 
 
We saw that in verse 5
 
That's an analogy of what has to happen in the human heart. If God is going to come to the human heart, He will travel by way of the highway called repentance. 
 
Secondly, there must be a realization of the consequences of sin.
 
John, at the end of verse 7, preached the wrath to come.  Any gospel message will remind its hearer of hell. 
 
Thirdly, true repentance doesn’t depend on good works for salvation.
 
In verse 8, John says God requires more than just jumping in the river to be baptized. That's not what's going to save you, because it is only an outward symbol of a heart work.
 
Fourthly, true repentance doesn’t depend upon family connections to be right with God. 
 
Again in verse 8, they were depending upon the Jewish ancestry to be enough to get them into heaven. A lot of people think they're going to get into God's Kingdom because of their parents or grandparents, and certainly the Jews felt that way.
Being a child of Abraham doesn't save you from your sin. And just because you were a part of a family that had religious heritage isn’t enough to make you right with God either. 
 
Fifthly, true repentance will always result in spiritual transformation. 
 
He says in verse 8, "Bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance." In other words, if this is real repentance, I'm going to look at your life and see the evidence. If it's the real thing then God is changing you and you're going to be a new creation, you're going to be a different person. And that change will primarily be expressed through the way you react and respond to the people around you."
 
And then as we say last week, 
 
True repentance recognizes and confesses the true Messiah. 
 
You could go through all of that repentance and fall short if you didn't embrace the true Messiah. Acts 4:12, "Neither is there salvation in any other name. There is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved."
 
So John says in verses 15 to 17, there's one coming, He's mightier than I, He's the one you've got to look to. Don't look to me. 
 
Now we discovered in verse 15, "The people were in a state of expectation, they were wondering in their hearts about John as to whether he might be the Christ."
.
And in response to that, notice what John says.
 
verse 16
 
John says don't get us confused. I can take you down here into the Jordan River and I can dunk you, and really, anybody could do that.
 
That is not a supernatural act. But "The coming One, who is mightier than I, I'm not even fit...John says...to untie His sandals."
 
Now the task of taking somebody's sandals off and washing their feet was so low on the service ladder that you couldn't get lower than having to do that job and it was a job usually assigned to a Gentile because it was beneath the dignity of a Jew to do it. John says I'm not even fit to climb up to the point where I could untie His sandals.
 
And the reason we're so far apart is clear. "I baptize with water," end of verse 16, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."
 
And that’s where I want to focus this morning; on that phrase. 
 
What he's saying here is the One who is coming will do things that only God can do. Only God can immerse you in the Holy Spirit. Only God can immerse you in fire. So John is pointing out the deity of the Messiah.
 
Now the Jews who were listening to John must have immediately understood what he was talking about. 
 
You notice there's not a big explanation about this because the Jews knew that when Messiah came He was going to be a dividing line drawn. They knew that when the Messiah came there would be blessing and salvation through His kingdom. But they also knew when the Messiah came there would be judgment and death and punishment. 
 
You see, the Jews knew about the New Covenant because of the prophets
 
God relationship with Israel was one of covenants accompanied by promises. In other words, when God was making covenants with Israel, He gave them promises in those covenants.
 
One of the covenants that is important to know about is the one made with Abraham. God promised Abraham that He would bless his descendants if they were faithful; if they would be His witness nation.
 
It wasn't that He wanted to only bless them. He wanted to bless the whole world through them. But if they would be faithful He would bless them. And all that blessing is laid out to Abraham and to Isaac and Jacob.
 
Another covenant was made with David, and in that one God promises David that He would bless them with a Kingdom that would stretch over the whole earth.
 
And the Jews knew about these covenants and promises. It is inherent in who they are. They expected those things to come to pass. They wanted those blessings.
But God gave them another covenant called the Sinaitic Covenant or the Mosaic Covenant. He made that covenant with Moses on Mt. Sinai, and it was the covenant of law. 
 
And it said, in order for you to be blessed you've got to keep the law. Well they couldn't keep the law and so all the law did was damn them and cut off the promises of Abraham and the promises of David from them.
 
So here they were caught in that situation. God made promises. They couldn't receive those promises because they couldn’t keep the covenant requirements. 
 
This covenant, the Law, required perfection, and they couldn’t meet the requirements. So God had to introduce another covenant to deal with their inability to keep the Old Covenant. 
 
What is it? It’s called the New Covenant and it is a covenant of forgiveness. And it is prophesied of several times in the Old Testament. 
 
And when you read New Covenant passages, whether you're reading Ezekiel 36:25 to 27, or whether you're reading Jeremiah 31:31 to 34 you find in the New Covenant, God says I'm going to give you a New Covenant and in there is the forgiveness of sins. God's going to forgive your sins. If you'll come to Him and ask and repent, He'll forgive your sins and He'll make a New Covenant and once you come through the New Covenant, then you can have the promises to Abraham and David fulfilled.
 
So they knew the New Covenant. They knew it because the prophets wrote about it.
 
Now from an Old Testament perspective, the New Covenant promised two primary things. 
 
One of those was the giving of the Holy Spirit.
 
Look at Ezekiel 36:25
 
Here is God’s promise: God's going to put His Spirit within you. And they knew that when a person was really converted, when a person was genuinely forgiven, even in Old Testament times, God's Holy Spirit took up residence in that person. They knew that.
 
A lot of people mistakenly believe that is a church age phenomenon. Not so. Listen to Psalm 51:11, David said, "Don't take Your Holy Spirit from me." He had sinned so greatly that he was fearful that he had gone too far and God would reject him. Don't take Your Holy Spirit from me.
 
So folks got saved in the Old Testament days the same way they are saved now. There is always and forever only one way to get saved and that is through the finished work of Jesus on Calvary’s cross. 
 
Before it took place folks looked forward to it and believed, and today people look back to it and believe. But always we are saved through the promises of the New Covenant. 
 
 
God forgave those people who repented and asked Him to forgive them on the basis of what Christ would do because in the mind of God it was already done because God lives in one eternal present and that's why God calls Jesus the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.
 
So anybody who was ever saved was saved by the New Covenant terms. And in the New Covenant, according to Ezekiel 36, God's Spirit is planted in believers. So they knew when the Messiah comes, He's coming to bring the blessing of the New Covenant and He's going to bring the Holy Spirit.
 
So they associated the coming of the Messiah with salvation and salvation in New Covenant terminology meant the granting of the Holy Spirit.
 
So John says...Look, when He comes He's going to come and immerse you in the Holy Spirit. They would understand that.
 
And before I leave that idea of the Holy Spirit, we might ask, “So what's the difference now and then?" The only difference is in degree. The work that the Holy Spirit does now through the church is in some sense different than it was in the Old Testament, but it's the same Holy Spirit.
 
He is Eternal God; always has been, is right now and forever shall be. So an Old Testament saint who had sinned against God pleaded for the Holy Spirit to not be taken from him and we in the church age enjoy a a new dimension of the Holy Spirit he didn’t have. 
 
 
I don't know the details of what all that means. But I know they were not without the Holy Spirit since He is essential in the New Covenant. God said “I'll plant My Spirit within you”.
 
So, what John is offering them is this, the Messiah is way beyond me because He dispenses the Holy Spirit. And I’m not Him because I can't do that. No man can do that.
 
The second thing the New Covenant promised was fire, and John says, The One Who is coming is greater than me because He's going to bring fire.
 
Now if the Jews heard the word "fire" in connection with Messiah, they had plenty of Old Testament scriptures to pop into their minds.
 
Many times in the Old Testament "fire" is associated with judgment. And I'm not going to take the time this morning to give you all those scriptures, but, let me give you one example.
 
Turn to Malachi 3. Now Malachi 3 is a prophecy about John the Baptist. 
 
Notice verses 1 and 2
 
God says, I'm going to send My messenger, he'll clear the way before Me.. God says I'm coming, again this indicates that the Messiah was in fact God incarnate. I'm going to come and I'm going to send My messenger to clear the way.
 
That was what John did; he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, clearing the way for the coming of Messiah.
I'm going to send John before Me and then the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple. And the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming.
 
And when He comes, verse 2, who can endure the day of His coming? Who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire. When He comes He's going to come to bring the Holy Spirit. And He bringing a refining fire.
 
Here we have a reference to God’s judgment upon saints. It is a refining fire. Paul talked about that to the Corinthians believers. One of those days you will appear before the Lord, and the fire will test your works to see what they’re made of. Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or stubble. 
 
So a part of the “fire” of the Messiah is a refiner’s fire that will eventually refine us to be like Jesus.
 
Then go over to chapter Malachi 4:1-3
 
So when the Messiah comes there's going to be a forerunner, according to Malachi 3. Then the Messiah is going to come and He's going to come in fiery blazing judgment that's going to refine the saints and reveal them to be like Jesus, and consume the ungodly and turn them into ashes.
 
And that’s what John is saying in Luke 3. When the Messiah comes, He's going to do the supernatural work, He's going to immerse some with the Holy Spirit; He's going to immerse the rest in fire.
 
 
 
Now what that boils down to is a work of separation.
When Messiah comes, He comes to separate.
 
John pictures that through His baptism. His baptism separated, but it only separated visually, or physically. There were the baptized and the non- baptized.
 
But when Messiah comes, His separation is at a supernatural level. He will separate those who are immersed in the Holy Spirit, who received promises made to Abraham and David, who receive all the blessings of salvation, who receive the Holy Spirit and eternal life. And on the other hand will be those who are going to be burned eternally in everlasting hell.
 
That’s the principle given in verse 16. Then John provides an illustration in
 
verse 17.
 
Now here's the imagery, very interesting. This separation the Messiah is going to do can be illustrated by an agricultural illustration that was very familiar to the Jewish people.
 
Grain was grown in all the lowlands of Israel.  When all the grain was gathered, it was brought into a flat, hard floor and there were winnowing shovels that were thrust under a pile of this grain and then thrown in the air. The breeze would then blow the lighter chaff, or straw, away from the grain and the grain being heavy would fall straight down.
 
 
 
At the end of that process when the entire floor had been picked up and thrown into the air, all the grain would be piled in the middle and the chaff would be lying on the perimeter. And when the separation was done, the wheat would be taken to the barn, and the chaff would be burned with fire.
 
So here you have the picture. When Messiah comes everybody will be dealt with.
 
And I want to point something out to you in verse 17. Notice the phrase "to thoroughly clear".
 
That's very interesting phrase because this is only time in the New Testament this phrase is used. And what it means is no traces are left, nothing is left, everything is dealt with. The separation is complete. Nobody escapes. The separation that will take place is complete. You either fall in the pile of grain, or the pile of chaff. You are either burned with the grain which means you go into the glories of heaven, or burned with the chaff which means you go into the terrors of hell.
 
That means when Messiah finishes His separation, there are only two piles, the barn and the burnt.
 
And notice another interesting word in verse 17: Unquenchable.
 
With the word unquenchable you move from the analogy to the reality. The fact is that the fire that burned the chaff eventually went out. When all the chaff was consumed and there was nothing left to fuel it, the fire went out. But the fire that John is talking about and the fire that Messiah brings is a fire that never goes out.
That is a reference to eternal hell. Messiah, when He comes will judge with an eternal fire. Hell is an eternal punishment. 
 
So John's preaching was very straightforward. He called people to true repentance and he called them to turn and acknowledge the true Messiah.
 
John says, I can baptize you with water, but the One Who is coming will immerse repentant people in the Holy Spirit and the unrepentant He will immerse in eternal fire. Jesus is going to do what only God can do, save people and damn people, glorify people and punish people.
 
So the call is to repent. And true repentance means you come to an honest understanding of your own personal sin. You recognize divine wrath. You reject ritual and ancestry. You demonstrate transformation in the fruit of true repentance. And you receive the true Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.