Let's be turning to Luke chapter
3. Luke chapter 3. When the Lord brings salvation
to a people, he comes with power, with power and great glory. The psalmist tells us, speaking
of the Lord, that he rideth upon the heavens of heavens which
were of old. Lo, he doth send out his voice,
and that a mighty voice. We need the voice of our God. And when He gives His voice,
when He soundeth forth, He comes with glory and might and power. And when He comes to His people,
nothing is the same. Nothing is the same after He
touches the heart of His people. He changes His people. He stirs
His people. He causes a wrestling in His
people with the Lord. so that they know themselves
to be but creatures and that they know themselves that what
they have to do is with the Lord. They seek the Lord. They cry
out to the Lord. They tremble and shake before
the true and living God. We're told in Genesis, right
in the beginning, Genesis 1-2, that the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters. And the waters there being a
figure of peoples and nations. It's a picture of the people
that he's created. And when the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters, what happened? It was never the
same again. The very next thing says that
he brought forth light. He brought forth the uncreated
light, the light of his grace, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
what it declares there. God said, let there be light.
And there was light. And nothing was ever the same
in this world again after that. All things were changed. All
things were changed. And so our God gives his people
a living understanding. A knowledge of the true and living
God that was not there before. That is not there by nature.
It's not obtained by nature. It's not increased by nature
or improved by this flesh and this nature. It's given by God. It's grown by God, it's taught
by God, it's helped by God, and it's all of the Lord. It's of
the Lord's doing. And so what our God does is He
causes us to look away from this flesh. to turn from this flesh
and to look to God, to look to the one whom he reveals, the
one whom he declares to us is salvation. And when God stirs
the heart, there's a humbling of the creature. We're brought
low in ourselves. We're brought to see ourselves
as nothing before the true and living God. And another thing
is that Almighty God is the one who separates and divides his
people, separating out the sheep from among the goats, the wheat
from among the chaff. Our God does that. He does it
himself. And when God has done this work
of grace in the heart, he makes his grace effectual unto the
end, so that we continue in faith unto the end. God does that. We don't do that for ourselves.
We would fail. We would fall. We would come
short if God laid anything on this shoulder. Now, this work
of God, it shows forth his faithfulness, that he effectually brings forth
light, life, salvation in the hearts of his people. When he
moves among the people, he does this for them. He brings his
effectual grace. He gives his spirit. He stirs
them up. And he works powerfully in their
midst. And he does this. He causes us
to hear and to believe God. And he brings all his blessings
upon them. When he does this for people,
these are the effects of his gracious power. And it's made
evident. It's made evident. Old things
are passed away. Behold, all things are become
new. Now, in Luke 3 here, picking up in verse 15, we're coming
to the end, the end purpose of Luke's ministry. What is Luke's
ministry? He was sent of God to prepare
the hearts for the coming of Christ. He's there. He's picking
up there the very end of the prophets there. All that was
promised and spoken of Christ was now coming. It was now coming
to pass here. The whole purpose of John's ministry
was to prepare the people for the coming of Christ. And that's
really the whole purpose of our ministry. It's to prepare the
people for the coming of Christ. to enter the hearts of his people
so that they shall never be the same again. They shall be his
people, his creatures, the people of the Lord God Almighty. And the reason why the Lord prepares
his people is because we don't know him by nature. When Christ
comes, it's entirely contrary to what we think. He's not like
us. We think God is like us. God
isn't like us. He says, my thoughts are not
your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. And so he prepares his people. He does a work in his people. We see this with the Jews. They
understood something. They understood that when Christ
came, he would reconcile and make all things right again.
He would restore that which was lost. And what they knew about
blood redemption is they thought there was going to be blood,
but they thought it was going to be the blood of their enemies. They
thought it was going to be him conquering his enemies. They
didn't understand that it would be by his own blood, that he
would redeem his people, that he would purchase his people
as their sacrifice, laying down his life to redeem us from death,
to deliver us from death, and to obtain eternal forgiveness
for our sins. They didn't understand that.
He does conquer the heart, though, of his enemies, and he makes
them his own. He turns us from death. He blesses
us where we should have no blessing and no understanding, but he
gives us this freely in his darling son. Now, just as the Jews have,
we can't sit there and just condemn the Jews because just like they
were in darkness and ignorant of the things of God, that's
how every one of us is today. That's how every one of us comes
forth born of our parents, ignorant to the things of God, dead to
the things of God. unfeeling, unknowing, blind,
deaf, dumb to the things of God until God comes to us in his
power, by his spirit, in grace, and gives us life, raises us
from the dead, gives us a new birth, a spiritual birth by his
spirit. And so when he does that, he's
very gracious to his people. He causes his people to hear
his word, to hear his voice. to hear Him, to be turned from
themselves, to receive Him and to believe His Son, to trust
Him for all their righteousness. And he does that through the
preaching of the gospel. When Philip was brought by the
Spirit into the wilderness and he saw the chariot of the Ethiopian
eunuch, he came up alongside of him and heard him reading
from the prophet Isaiah in chapter 53. And he asked the eunuch,
he said, understandest thou what thou readest? Do you know what
this is saying? And the eunuch said, how can
I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that
he would come and sit with him. The Apostle Paul, also drawing
from Isaiah, spoke of these things. Our brother just read it this
morning from Romans 10 verse 14 and 15. How then shall they
call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they
believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except
they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring
glad tidings of good things. And so when the Lord is moving
among a people, he brings them the gospel. He sends them a pastor
to preach the gospel to them because he will be gracious and
merciful to a people there. He gives them that blessing,
the blessing of the gospel. And the Spirit of God takes the
things of God and gives them to your heart. He applies them
to you. He gives them to your understanding.
He gives you life, not the preacher, but the Spirit of God, taking
the things of God and giving you life in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now these things are seen and
made evident in John's ministry here. We see these things in
John's ministry and they show us what to expect when the Lord
moves among his people. What to expect when the Lord
is doing a work in the midst of his people. I want to identify
four characteristics with you that we see witnessed in John
the Baptist's ministry here. First, we see that God moves
men to consider Him. He moves men to consider holy
God, to think on God. God engages man, how? Through the ministry of the gospel,
through the preaching of the gospel. That's how the Lord engages
His people. He calls His people by His word
to hear Him. to stop considering and looking
at themselves and to hear God Almighty. James 4.8 says, Draw
nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands,
ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. What's he doing
there? He's making us to know, wait
a minute, I got a problem. He's calling me a sinner. And
God is holy. I'm a sinner. I'm double-minded.
I've got problems. And God is making us to know
that. He's making us to know what we are and who the true
and living God is. And in verse 15, we see this. Luke 3, 15, as the people were
in expectation, they're being stirred up. They're looking now. They're looking. And all men
mused in their hearts. of John whether he were the Christ
or not. You see the Lord had been doing
a work now in Israel for some 30 years approximately 30 years. What he had spoken by the prophets
was now witnessed if you knew the scriptures If you knew the
timing when Christ would come, you saw, you recognized, wait
a minute, the scepter has passed from Judah. We're now under the
sole authority and rule of Rome. Something's different here. And
the Lord spoke of that in his word by Jacob, that Shiloh would
come, peace would come when the scepter departed from Judah. And it had now. They were under
the rule of Rome. And there were other things coming
to pass. There were little things going
on there. There was in Jerusalem, Zacharias prophesied. A priest
in the temple prophesied. When they circumcised John and
named him, he prophesied of Christ. And there were those there that
heard that. And there were other things, right? The shepherds,
when Christ was born, the shepherds came from out in the field, being
told by the angels, go to Bethlehem, and in a manger, you'll find
the babe. And they came in there. And you don't think Mary and
Joseph were the only ones in the little private room there
in the manger, right? There were others from the overflowing
that had no room in the inn. They were there, too. And they
heard the testimony of the shepherds say, we heard the angels. And
this is what they said. And they sent us here. And lo,
there he is, a babe swaddled, lying in a manger, just like
they said. And then when they brought Christ
in eight days later into the temple to circumcise him, Simeon
took the baby up and declared that he had seen the salvation
of God. And then Anna spoke of these
glorious things to all those who looked for redemption in
Jerusalem. And they heard these things.
And now, here comes this man wearing leather, eating locusts
and honey. And he's preaching a voice in
the wilderness, declaring the things of God. And they were
stirred by these things. They heard these things. And
he came baptizing them with water, implementing something new. that
had not been done, he was baptizing them, and he was exhorting them
in the things which he spoke. And the people mused in their
hearts, meaning they reasoned, they considered, they began to
speak to one another, wondering, is this the Christ? Is this the
Christ? All these things are coming together
here. Is this the Christ? Is this him now? And so the people
were stirred. And that's what the Lord does
through the preaching of the gospel. He stirs the people up. He stirs us up. He troubles us.
He moves the waters. He moves upon us. And he makes
us to consider who we are, who our God is, and who we are before
the true and living God. Why? Well, we're very religious. But that's not necessarily a
good thing at all because we're idolaters in our religion. We're
vain worshippers, and except God be gracious to us, we'll
continue on in darkness and death, doing dead things that cannot
save. And we'll trust in them, and
we'll glory in them, and we'll boast in those things until God
removes them, strips them from our hands, strips them from our
heart, takes them from our mind, and puts our eyes upon the Lord
Jesus Christ, till he removes that blindness and shows us Christ.
We don't know these things. Isaiah said, the ox knoweth his
owner, the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, my
people doth not consider. Just yesterday, the grandsons
were outside there. And when I came out there, I
have a cat now, a wild cat that I mostly keep outside. And she
came running past everybody else to me, because she's my cat.
She knows who primarily feeds her and takes care of, otherwise
she'd be gone. And so she came to me, because she knows that.
But we don't know that of God. We're ignorant of who God is. And so when our Lord comes, he
shakes things up. He shakes it up to destroy and
remove those things that we have made. That which is eternal and
lasting remains. He said, whose voice then shook
the earth when he was here, he shook things. He turned everything
upside down. He shook things up. But now he
hath promised, saying yet once more, I shake not the earth only,
but also heaven. also heaven there's a shaking
that our Lord does and what falls down what falls apart and trembles
and is removed that which we've built up with our own flesh that
which is of the earth that which is born of the flesh crumbles
and falls And he does that for the things that are made, that
those things which cannot be shaken may remain. So those idols
and those things we've built up, those high towers that we
build and climb into that exalt themselves against the knowledge
of God, he tears them down by the gospel, brings them to nothing. And so this flesh is made to
tremble and quake when God draws near to his people, and his people
near to himself. Let me give you two quick points
here of what God is doing in making you to tremble before
him by his word, through the preaching of the gospel. First,
the Lord makes every one of his children to know, I'm a sinner. I cannot make myself righteous,
and I'm not righteous. I need God. He makes every one
of his children to know, I'm the problem. I'm the sinner.
I've done wickedly before God and trespassed against him. He
makes us to know what the scripture hath concluded, that all are
under sin. We don't know that. I read this book for decades
and did not know that what it was saying is, you and me, we're
all sinners, unable to make a righteousness for ourselves. I thought it was
a how-to manual, how to get myself saved, how to make myself better.
It's not. It's showing me that I can't
save myself, that I'm a sinner undone before Holy God. And the
second thing the Lord does is He shows us Christ, that He's
the Savior. He makes Christ precious to His
people, because if Christ doesn't save you, you cannot be saved. If His blood doesn't cleanse
you of your sin, you shall not be forgiven with God. We come
in Christ alone. The Spirit of God makes the child
of God to know that Christ isn't just a good man or a prophet
or telling me how to get myself saved. Christ is salvation. He is very salvation. He's the
very life and hope of his people. He's the very light and life
of his people. And so God declares this truth
in his gospel. by the preaching of the word,
to make this known and plain to his people. And he takes it
and makes it effectual in the hearts of his people. How so? Just by me saying it? No. He
gives his spirit to take that word and make it effectual in
your heart. Otherwise, we're ever learning,
yet never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Our Lord said, ye must be born
again. You must be born again. I must be born again. Without
that new spiritual birth, we have no part in heaven. We shall
never understand heavenly things. But if Christ has shed his blood
to redeem you, you shall be born again. It's of his grace. It's of his power. It's why we
glory in him and rejoice in him and speak of him before you. It's why we declare Christ, because
he's all our hope. He's all my righteousness. He's
all I have. all my acceptance with God, and
that's all I want. That's all I need. Second, what
our Lord does is he exalts Christ, just like I did there. He exalts
Christ before your eyes. The people being stirred now,
musing in their hearts whether John was the Christ or not, John
said this in Luke 3.16. John answered, saying unto them
all, I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than
I cometh. latchet of whose shoes I'm not
worthy to unlatch. He's saying I'm not even worthy
to carry his shoes and among the Jews that was the lowest
form of a servant apparently if you had a Hebrew servant you
were not to make that servant carry your shoes because it was
the most degrading thing and John's saying I'm not even worthy
to carry his shoes to be the one who stoops down and buckles
his shoe or unbuckles it takes his shoes and follows behind
him I'm not even worthy of that. And that's what the Lord does.
Why? Because Christ is exalted. Christ is exalted. And so John,
as a figure of the church, directed their attention to Christ, to
Christ. And that's what the Lord does
in the ministry of the gospel. That's what he's brought us to
do. John, the apostle John, in 1 John 5, verse 8, said, there
are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water,
and the blood, and these three agree in one. These three witnesses
all agree in what they speak of. They declare Christ. That's the agreement. The Lord
Jesus Christ is what these three witnesses all agree in. The first witness is the Holy
Spirit. How do you know it's the Holy
Spirit? Because he testifies of Christ. The Holy Spirit doesn't
boast of himself, doesn't glory in the gifts he gives to the
church. The Holy Spirit testifies of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
what Christ told his disciples. He shall testify of me. John 15, 26. The second witness
is the water, the water of the word, which is the scriptures. All the scriptures speak of and
declare and bear witness to Jesus Christ. They all speak of him.
Listen to what Christ said. After he rose from the dead,
Luke 24, 44 and 45, Christ said unto his disciples, These are the words which I spake
unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be
fulfilled. Here's the water of the word,
which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets,
and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding
that they might understand the scriptures. He can read these
scriptures and have no understanding, no knowledge of God. until God
opens our understanding and we see Christ. Christ in Moses,
Christ in the historical books, Christ in the Psalms and the
poetical books, Christ in the prophets, Christ in the New Testament,
the Gospels and the Epistles. Christ is all. That's everything
that this word is speaking of. It's testifying, agreeing with
the spirit of Jesus Christ. It speaks of Him. And third,
the third witness is the blood, referring to the blood-bought
Church of Christ. What does she speak of? What
does the Church speak of? of her redemption. She sings
the redemption song of the Lord Jesus Christ by his blood, testifying
what he has done by his righteousness and faithfulness unto the Father. And so John as a figure of the
church, he says, don't look at me, look to Christ. All three
witnesses agreeing, coming together, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Spirit, the Word, and the Blood, all testifying of Christ. So we have nothing to celebrate
in glory in man. We don't puff up man and celebrate
what you do. You and I haven't done anything.
Christ has done it all. Christ has done everything. And
so we tell others not what they need to be doing better, not
what they need to stop. We declare what Christ has accomplished
for his people. For the works were finished from
the foundation of the world. They've been finished. He's accomplished
it all. We declare his redeeming grace. When Christ came, he came to
save sinners. He was sent to the Father for
this very purpose. to lay down his life for the
sins of his people, to sacrifice himself to satisfy the justice
of God, and deliver his people from the jaws of eternal death,
and to give us life in himself, an expected end of his inheritance,
and life with him forevermore. He accomplished that, brethren.
And because he accomplished it, that's why this gospel goes forth
to this day in your hearing, because these are all the blessings
that he obtained for his people in his death. So the gospel goes
forth, and the Spirit attends that preached word, and the Spirit
makes it effectual in your hearts, and all the witnesses come together
in your heart and mind, showing you Christ, Christ, Christ is
all. He's all, brethren. He does that
for his people. And we preach him. We speak of
him. We preach not ourselves, Paul said, but Christ Jesus,
the Lord, and ourselves, your servants, for Jesus' sake. For
God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has
shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. There is your
salvation. He is your Savior. Look to Him,
believe Him, and thou shalt be saved. And He makes these things
known in faith. Now third, the third characteristic,
our Lord divides the sheep. There are some people who hate
that message, who hate Christ, who hate the effectual power
and grace and glory that is all of Christ's. They hate it, and
despise that word, and rebel against it, and won't hear it.
They want to go and hear what they can do, what they've done,
and what they can do better. They want to go and celebrate
what man does, even though he does nothing, nothing. And so the Lord, by his ministry
of the spirit, and the word, and the blood, He separates and
divides the people. He brings this in there. Christ
is the one with great, wonderful, all excellency and glory. It's
all of Christ. All authority and power is given
to the Lord Jesus Christ, who accomplished the will of his
father. And he manifests this salvation
in the hearts of his people with great power and great glory,
to the honor and praise of his name. Luke 3 16 and 17 John answered
saying unto them all I indeed baptize you with water but one
mightier than I cometh the lachet of whose shoes I'm not worthy
to unloose he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with
fire, whose fan is in his hand. And he will throughly or thoroughly
purge his floor and will gather the wheat into his garner, but
the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." So our God has given to
the church wonderful ordinances to bless his church, to minister
and feed his church. We have the preaching of the
gospel. He's also given us water baptism so that you, upon your
profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, are dipped in that
water. We are given the Lord's Supper,
which will be taken today, of the bread and the wine, remembering
our Savior, remembering what He did for us. And He's given
us public worship. where the sheep are gathered
together as one to hear this blessed word, and to sing songs
of praise and hymns to our God, and to speak of these things
to one another, to rejoice and be glad in our Lord together.
But none of these things by themselves imparts grace to us. These things
in themselves, by our power, there is no life in them. It
doesn't incrementally build us up with little grace steps and
little improvements here and little improvements there. The
power is not in us. The power is of God. It's of
the Lord Jesus Christ who takes these things and makes them effectual
in our hearts, who ministers this grace to us by His glory
and His power. He uses these means. But the
means themselves have no power. It's our God. It's our grace
and our God. That's what John was saying is,
I came and baptized you with water, but there's one who baptizes
with fire, who gives his spirit. He gives life. I can't reach
into your heart and circumcise your heart. I can't take that
veil of flesh, which is over the heart in us by nature. I can't remove it. I can preach
the gospel all day long to you. and I can't remove it. I can
baptize you every day and I can't remove it. We can take the Lord's
Supper every time we come together and I can't remove that veil
of flesh. and we can worship every day every hour and I can't
remove that veil of flesh but he can and he does he reaches
where no hand of flesh can reach and he circumcises the heart
he removes that veil and turns the heart to the Lord to believe
the Lord to hear him and to believe his word And so that's what he's
saying. It's the spirit that makes us
hear that word effectually. It's his baptism with fire and
his baptism with the spirit that gives life, that turns me. It's his grace and power that
makes me feed upon the spiritual blood and bread of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It's by his grace and power that
I come here with you, my brethren, rejoicing and being joyful in
the spirit by his grace and power. I can put on a show. You can
put on a show. We're all capable of being hypocrites
and putting on a show with outward acts, but the grace, it's made
effectual in the hearts of his people by our God. We need his grace. We need his
power. And so to that end, he says,
the fan is in Christ's hand. He's the one that blows the fan
and sends the chaff scattering away from the wheat. And he gathers
that wheat into the garner, into his kingdom. He does that through
the ministration of the gospel. And we preach it to all, but
we leave it to the Lord. We leave it to the Lord. We trust
the Lord to do it. because the fan is in his hand,
and he separates whom he will. Now fourth, the fourth characteristic
and final that we see here in John's ministry is that our Lord
makes faithful men, and he makes them faithful unto the end, even
unto death. He makes them faithful to the
end. Let's read Luke 3, 18 through 20. And many other things in his
exhortation preached he unto the people. But Herod the Tetrarch,
being reproved by him for Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, and
for all the evils which Herod had done, added yet this above
all, that he shut up John in prison. Now, according to man,
Herod had some authority on the earth. He was a ruler there in
Jerusalem, and he had some authority. And John was made bold to speak
the truth, to preach and declare the truth of God before Herod,
telling him that what he was doing and having his brother
Philip's wife was adultery and many other things he spoke to
Herod about. And Herod bore with it only for
so long, and then he shut him up in prison. And it wasn't soon
after that that he put him to death, beheading him, taking
his head, because Herodias told him to do it. And so he did those
things. But that man would have no power,
no authority to do those things to John, except God permitted
it. And God gave him that authority and allowed him to do that. What's
wonderful, though, in all that, is that the Lord, had made his
work effectual in the heart of John so that John faithfully
ministered those things without any regard for his life. He didn't
care for what would happen to him. He faithfully preached Christ. That's God's work. That's what
the Lord does in his people. He works faithfulness in the
heart of his people to trust him. even when it's difficult,
even when it's impossible for us to believe God, He keeps us
ever looking to Christ, our hope and our salvation, our forgiveness,
our inheritance, our all. With holy God, He keeps us looking
to Him even unto death. And so, these things testify
of God's grace, of God's work in the midst of His people. He testifies of these things,
always turning us to behold, to look to the Lord Jesus Christ.
You trust Him. You look to Him. It's a testimony
of His mighty grace and power, effectually working in the hearts
of His people. So these are four characteristics
of our God's power, all testifying of His great glory, His great
and mighty work. I pray that the Lord bless that
word to our hearts, brethren. Amen.