Let's read Matthew chapter three. Look at verse seven. This is
John the Baptist, as you know. He's baptizing in the wilderness. He's out away from the popularity
of false religion in Jerusalem that was led by the scribes and
the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And it says here, but when he
saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism,
He said unto them, O generation of vipers. Now that doesn't sound
like, it doesn't sound like John the Baptist read Dale Carnegie's
book on how to win friends and influence people. But these scribes
and Pharisees, he says, O generation of vipers, that's poisonous snakes. He said, who hath warned you
to flee from the wrath to come, bring forth therefore fruits
meet or appropriate or worthy of or for repentance. And think
not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father. For I say unto you that God is
able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And
now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees, And therefore
every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down,
cut down and cast into the fire. And we'll close our reading there. John the Baptist, his message,
think about this. His message was the message of
salvation by God's free and sovereign grace in and by the Lord Jesus
Christ. His ministry was continually
pointing sinners to Christ, who he proclaimed to be the Messiah,
the one sin of the Father to establish righteousness for his
people. And that was his message. And
he continually called sinners to faith in Christ, look unto
Christ, behold the Lamb of God, and repentance of dead works
and idolatry. And that's what Israel at this
time in the majority, they were ensconced in dead works. And
so John's message was run to Christ, believe in Christ for
salvation. And here he mentions repentance.
Well see, both faith and repentance are gifts from God. There is
no faith in Christ unless God gives it to a sinner. How many
times, you all know, you can quote this verse, by grace are
you saved, through faith, that not of yourselves, it's the gift
of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. The apostles
spoke of the gift of repentance. God granted repentance unto the
Gentiles, that is, unto his elect among the Gentiles. They're both
gifts from God, and they're not natural to any of us in an unregenerate
state. Faith is not a choice that you
make out of some goodness that resides in you naturally. And
it's not some choice you make out of so-called free will. The
Bible teaches the natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God. So when John says, bring forth
therefore fruits meet for repentance, he's calling them to repentance.
And he's calling them to faith and repentance because faith
and repentance go together. You can't have one without the
other. Faith is the revelation of God, the knowledge of God,
in the glorious person and finished work of Christ that brings a
center to Christ for salvation, for forgiveness, for eternal
life, for righteousness, for glory. Repentance is that which
turns away in our minds and in our hearts. It's a change of
mind, a change of direction, turning us away from ourselves,
from our works, where we by nature seek righteousness by our works,
turning us away from that, from the God who we imagine accepted
that, which is idolatry. That's why we call it repentance
of dead works and idolatry. Dead works are the works of sinners
seeking to establish a righteousness of their own. And the God that
we by nature imagine who will accept such works is an idol. So that's why we call it repentance
of dead works and former idolatry. Well, you can't have faith without
repentance and you can't have repentance without faith. Someone
said it's like a piece of paper. You can't have one side without
the other. And that's the way it is. So John calls them to
faith in Christ and repentance of dead works. He points them
to the Savior. He tells them plainly over and
over again that he's not their Savior. He's not the Messiah. He said, I'm not even worthy
to untie his shoes. He said, I must decrease, he
must increase. All of that. And so his message,
his lifestyle, was clearly outside of the religious majority who
taught salvation by the works and the wills of men. And that's
the scribes and the Pharisees. Turn over to Romans chapter nine.
The Apostle Paul, I mean, we can talk about a lot of the things
that the Pharisees and the Sadducees, you know, the Pharisees, they
were kind of like the moral majority. They were the most sincere, dedicated
religionist of their day. The Sadducees, they were religious,
but they were like the liberals. They didn't believe in, for example,
they didn't believe in a resurrection. an afterlife in that sense. They
didn't believe in hell, things like that. They were more of
a political wing. They really had control of the
temple, the priesthood. It was very political. So when
you look at, think about, you look at the history there, you
hear the man Caiaphas, who was the high priest, he was a Sadducee.
So you had both. Now the Pharisees and the Sadducees
hated each other. But there was one thing they
all agreed on. They hated the Lord Jesus Christ
and the message of God's grace. And we're told in Acts chapter
four that they all got together, Romans, Jews, Pharisees, Sadducees,
Gentiles, they all got together and formed a union in their hatred
to crucify Christ. And that is indicative of the
whole human race by nature, including me and you, by nature. Because we would have been right
with them, you know? I told you the story about the preacher
up in Akron, Ohio, who made the statement, if he'd have been
there, talking about the crucifixion of Christ, he said if he would
have been there, he would have stopped it. Man's crazy. He doesn't believe the Bible.
If he'd have been there, he'd have been just like you and me
and the rest, and we'd have been crying, crucify him. And that's
what we do in our natural state. That's what depravity is. That's
what being fallen in Adam, being totally depraved, being spiritually
dead is. that by nature we hate the gospel. Now that doesn't mean we're all
gonna grow horns and fangs and take up arms and stuff like that.
That hatred shows itself in different ways and different degrees. But
1 Corinthians 1.18 says that those who are being saved, the
gospel is the power of God. To those who are perishing, it's
foolishness. And so we hate the light. I'm
gonna talk about the light this morning in the message. We hate
the light that exposes us for what we are. We hate the light
that exposes that what we hold in high esteem, our morality,
our sincerity, our charity, as making us right with God, that
that's dead works. Romans 7 calls it fruit unto
death. So here in Romans chapter nine, look at verse 31. This
is a summation of the teaching mainly of the Pharisees. But
it was the Sadducees too. And really it kind of encapsulates
all false religion in various ways. And it says in Romans 9.31,
but Israel which followed after the law of righteousness. Now
in Israel that would be the law of Moses. In the Gentile world,
that would be the law of conscience. But it's the law, the morality
by which we understand right and wrong. And it says they followed
after the law of righteousness. They're trying to be righteous.
They know in order to get to God, you've gotta be righteous.
They hath not attained to the law of righteousness. They didn't
make it. And that's what the gospel shows
us. that when we seek to follow after the law for righteousness,
we can't make it. And that includes the best of
us, the worst of us, and everybody in between. And it says, wherefore,
or why, why didn't they make it? What was the problem? Verse
32, because they sought it not by faith. Now to seek righteousness
by faith does not mean that God accounts our believing as making
us righteous. That's not what that means. Because
faith is the gift of God and it comes forth from Christ by
the power of the Spirit. To seek it by faith is to seek
it where God says it is. Where can we find righteousness?
Not within, not by our works. There's only one place and that's
in Christ, the Lord of glory. Christ, the surety, the substitute,
the redeemer of his people. Righteousness is in him. It's
in his blood. It's in the merits of his obedience
unto death, the very righteousness of God. And it's not to be found
anywhere else. And so if we seek it by faith,
we're looking to Christ for righteousness. It's his righteousness imputed
to us. That's what it is. And anything
less than the perfection of righteousness, or we could say it this way,
the perfection of the law. Anything less is sin in the sight
of God and cannot recommend us to God, no matter how noble or
moral that we think it is. We gotta be measured by God's
standard. So they sought it not by faith, but as it were, by
works of the law, and they stumbled at that stumbling stone, and
that's a direct reference to a prophecy in Isaiah concerning
Christ. He's the stumbling stone. Verse
33, as it is written, behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone
and rock of offense, and whosoever believeth on him shall not be
ashamed. So this is what the Pharisees
and the Sadducees taught the people and the people followed
them. Look at chapter 10 here. Verse one, brethren, my heart's
desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be
saved. As long as a person is seeking righteousness by their
works or their wills or whatever, they're lost. And that also describes God's
elect by nature. That's our state in this world
as we're naturally born. But he says in verse two, I bear
them record that they have a zeal of God. The problem is not that
they're not religious. They're religious. The problem
is not that they're not moral in the eyes of men. You know,
when we talk about moral or ethics, we gotta have it measured by
a standard. Well, man's standard is a sliding
scale. It's comparing ourselves with others. But now God's standard
is not a sliding scale. And look at it, he says, I bear
the record they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
They don't know the standard. They don't know the reality of
righteousness. And verse three says it, for
they being ignorant of God's righteousness, they're ignorant
of God's standard of perfect righteousness. Remember in Acts
17, 31, God's gonna judge the world in righteousness by that
man whom he hath ordained, and he has given assurance unto all
men, he raised him from the dead. And going about to establish
their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto
the righteousness of God. Well, what is the righteousness
of God? What is the righteousness of faith? Verse four tells us,
for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believeth. Now let's go back to Matthew
three. Now that's what the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes,
that's what they taught the people, led the people, and the vast
majority of the people followed them. Well John the Baptist,
his message was totally opposed to that, just like our gospel
is opposed to the natural religion, even false Christianity today.
Our message is what sets us apart. Our message is what distinguishes
us. And listen, it's not our morality.
Now that's not to say we're not to be moral, we are. Our morality
is set apart, but the only way you can know that is by how the
light of the gospel shines on it. To let people know that,
hey, this is about God's glory, not us. This is not our righteousness,
Christ is. You see what I'm saying? I'm
gonna deal with that a little bit in the message later on.
But he says, old generation of vipers. Why does he call them
poisonous snakes? It's because their message is
deadly. Just like a snake's venom is deadly to our bodies, righteousness
by works is deadly to the souls of men and women. It's poison. It's called different things
in the Bible. It's called leaven. Beware the leaven of the scribes
and the Pharisees. It's called an abomination. That
which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination to God.
And here they come out, and I'm sure that the context here kind
of shows you that they were coming out here just because they were
curious. And they knew that a lot of people
were listening to John the Baptist. And they knew a lot of people
were submitting to John's baptism. And so here they come to see what this fellow is saying. And they understood that his
message was different. And here, John, the disciple
of Christ, his message of salvation by God's grace, righteousness
by God's grace through Christ, it was totally the opposite of
their message. And so they went down to see
him. They didn't come to submit to John and his baptism. They
came to expose him. They came to stand against him.
And here's what he says. Verse eight, bring forth therefore
fruits, meat or appropriate for repentance. And basically the
idea here is this. If you all really were seeking
the truth, if that's why you came, If you all were seeking
salvation, this is what would happen. God would grant you repentance. Now we know that no sinner's
gonna seek the Lord until God inspires and motivates that sinner
to do so by his grace. No man can come to me, Christ
said, except the Father which has sent me draw him, and I will
raise him up at the last day. Sinners by nature will not seek
the Lord. Romans 3 verse 10, there's none
righteous, none good, no, none that seek the Lord. And what
that say, now men will seek religion, they'll seek idols, they'll seek
themselves, but they won't seek the true and living God until
God moves them to do so by his drawing through the spirit under
the preaching of the gospel. But John is saying this is the
issue of salvation. This is the result. A sinner
who is brought to repentance, bringing forth fruits, meet for
repentance. And that's what it is to flee
from the wrath to come, as he says. Flee from the wrath. Who's warned you to flee from
the wrath to come? Well, what is the wrath to come?
Well, here it is. God's wrath abides on any sinner
who stands before him having sin imputed to him. That's why David said, blessed
is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. That's why God
assures his people who stand before him in Christ, he says,
I will remember your sins no more. That's why it says that
who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect, it's God
that justifies. Understand that. The only way
that you and I are gonna survive the just wrath of God is to stand
before him washed in the blood of Christ and clothed in his
righteousness, and that's the very thing that the Pharisees
stumbled over. The stumbling stone. When Christ
came preaching that, repentance evidences itself in turning away
from that, and turning to Christ. And one of the best, I printed
this passage out for you over here in the section on your lesson
on Matthew 3.8. Repentance is described by the
Apostle Paul in his own experience as recorded in Philippians 3,
7 through 9. And listen to it, listen to this.
This is faith and repentance right here. But what things were
gained to me Those things that I thought recommended me unto
God, and remember how Paul listed them in Philippians 3, 4 through
6? I was a Hebrew of Hebrews, a
Pharisee, I was as touching the law a Pharisee. Those things
that were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ. That's a fruit of repentance.
The things that I thought were noble and good and made God smile
in essence, as you might say, I put them in the, they're not
in the profit column anymore, they're in the loss column. And
he said, yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss.
Now what brought Paul to that repentance? Look here, I count
all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord. When the Holy Spirit revealed
Christ to Paul, the glory of his person, the power of his
finished work, his righteousness, his blood, That's when I counted
all things but loss. That's when repentance came,
right with faith. They come together. And he says,
for whom I've suffered the loss of all things and do count them
but dung. See that strong language? That
I may win Christ and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ. And I believe that is a good
translation of that. It's not faith in Christ here,
it's the faith of Christ. Speaking of Christ's faithfulness
to do what the Lord sent him to do. The righteousness which
is of God by faith. We receive it by faith. But how
does God apply it? By imputation. And that's the
way God justifies us, based upon Christ's righteousness imputed
to us. Well, what are other fruits meat for repentance? Well, repentance
evidences itself not only in our turning away from our dead
works, but also godly sorrow over sin that brings us and motivates
us to engage ourselves in the warfare of the spirit against
the flesh. We're in a warfare. We're not
people whom God saves only to say, well, let's just let all
fly out the window, let it go, and let's sin as much as we want
to, let's do whatever we want to without any questions, without
any motivations to obey. No, repentance brings a change
of lifestyle. Now, for a lot of people, just
like Paul, Paul, in the eyes of men, was a moral man before
he was brought to repentance. And like I said, read what he
said about himself in Philippians chapter three, verses four through
six. I would venture to say that most of you, before you were
brought to repentance, you would have been looked on in the community
as being moral, responsible, what man calls good people. Am
I right? Now I know there are some instances,
you can think about instances like Zacchaeus, who was a tax
collector and who was well known in his community as being a dishonest
cheat. And of course when God saved
him, that changed. And it should have changed, should
have changed before God saved him, but it didn't. And then
you have others, you know, just like the Gadarene demoniac. He
was demon possessed, all of that. And we can look at instances
like that. But most of us got religion before Christ found
us and brought us to salvation. Am I right? I'd say I'm right. I've heard people say, well,
I've been baptized so many times that the tadpoles know me by
my first name, you know. Well, you really weren't baptized
in a real sense, in a genuine sense, until you came to know
Christ. You were just dunked in water.
But that all represents man's natural religion and morality. But what happens when repentance
comes, That morality and that obedience and that honesty and
all those things that we are trying to be and should try to
be, it's put in a totally different light, isn't it? Now it's not
for salvation. Now it's not to recommend us
unto God. Now it's not to earn our rewards
in heaven. Now it's for the praise of the
glory of God's grace in Christ. It's for the good of the brethren.
It's an expression of love and grace and gratitude. And when
we mess up, and we do, now that doesn't mean that sometimes we're
sinners and sometimes we're not, because we're always sinners.
Sinners saved by grace. But sometimes when we mess up,
and we do, I do, you do, we all do, we're brought to feel sorry
for it by the Holy Spirit. And that's that godly sorrow
over sin that doesn't condemn us, but drives us back to Christ
to find our assurance and drives us to do better, to be forgiving. Can we forgive? It's hard, isn't
it? I'm the first one to say so.
But can we forgive one another when we breach that? Well, that's
that godly sorrow over sin that leads to repentance. And so we
have that initial repentance of dead works and idolatry. Brother
Wages has a great message on that. It's on Sermon Audio. It's initial repentance. And
then we have that continual repentance. And that's the fruits meet for
repentance. Now we worship God. before we
worshiped an idol. Now we serve the Lord and our
brethren before we actually served ourselves. And listen, we can
serve ourselves even when it looks like we're serving others.
That's why he says, bring forth fruits, meat for repentance.
Well, look at verse nine. He says, and think not to say
within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father, for I say unto
you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto
Abraham. This is what I call in preaching,
cutting them off at the pass. Because many times when we preach the
gospel clearly or witness the gospel, people will bring up
objections of things that they believe that really prove that
they are saved in their minds. And of course one of the things
that the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the unbelieving Jews thought
is that they had to be right with God if they were physical
descendants of Abraham. We're Abraham's seed. Remember
I've told you there were basically three things that the Jews boasted
in that to them proved that they were saved. their physical connection
with Abraham, the physical circumcision of the males, and that was so
important to them, and then their keeping of the law of Moses,
which they didn't do, but they claimed to. And so he says, now
don't think to say that Abraham's your father. That's not gonna
help you. And why does he say it this way?
He says, for I say in you that God's able of these stones to
raise up children unto Abraham. Here's what he's telling them.
It's not God's purpose in the salvation of people only merely
to populate heaven or populate the new earth. In other words,
God's just not trying to get people into the new kingdom.
It's not his purpose. It's God's purpose to glorify
himself in bringing a people into the kingdom. You see? And if God only wanted to just
get people there, he could turn those stones into children of
Abraham. And he could do that, couldn't
he? He could just zap the stones. But that's not God's purpose.
God's purpose is to glorify himself. See, all things work together
for good to them that are called according, who love God, who
are the called according to his purpose. And what's God's purpose?
To glorify himself. And how does God glorify himself?
To show himself as both a just God and a savior through the
glorious person and finished work of Christ. Salvation is
to the praise and to the glory of God. It's not just in doing
something without any purpose. His purpose is to glorify himself.
And so that's why John says, don't think to say Abraham's
your father. God could raise up stones to
Abraham. That's nothing to God. but God's purpose is to glorify
him. And he says in verse 10, he says, and now also the ax
is laid to the root of the trees. Now trees here represents people
who have a profession of salvation. And he says, therefore, every
tree which bringeth not forth good fruit, that's those fruits
meet for repentance. It's the fruits of the spirit,
the fruit of the spirit rather, singular. It's the fruit that
Christ spoke of when he spoke in John 15. I'm the vine, you're
the branches. You bear fruit, fruit of faith,
fruit of repentance, fruit of obedience, fruit of perseverance. And he says, every tree which
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down. They're cut down
and cast into the fire. Every sinner who comes before
God without a perfect righteousness which is only to be found according
to God's grace in Christ Jesus, will be cut down." They're under
the wrath of God. Flee from the wrath to come,
John says. How do we flee? Where do we go?
Run to Christ. He's the only place you can get
away from the wrath of God. Because that's what he did. He
went under the wrath of God as the surety and substitute and
redeemer of his people, having our sins imputed to him, and
he drank that wrath dry. That cup of God's wrath, he drank
it dry. And so those who stand before
God, that's the good trees that he's talking about that will
stand before God in that day. All right.