Luke chapter 3 verse 1. Now in the 15th year of the reign
of Tiberius Caesar Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod
being tetrach of Galilee and his brother Philip tetrach of
Eturia and of the region of Trachonitis and Lysanias, the tetrach of
Abilene. Annas and Caiaphas being the
high priests, the word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias,
in the wilderness. And he came into all the country
about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission
of sins. as it is written in the book
of the words of Isaiah, the prophet saying, the voice of one crying
in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his
paths straight. Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked
shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.' Then said he to the
multitude that came forth to be baptised of him, O generation
of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin
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 axe is laid
unto the root of the trees. Every tree therefore which bringeth
not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. And the people asked him, saying,
What shall we do then? He answereth and saith unto them,
He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none,
and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also publicans
to be baptised, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, exact
no more than that which is appointed you. And the soldiers likewise
demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said
unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely,
and be content with your wages. And as the people were in expectation,
and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the
Christ or not, John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed
baptize you with water, but one mightier than I cometh, the lachet
of whose shoes I am 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 purge his floor, and will gather the wheat
into his garner, but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable. And many other things in his
exhortation preached he unto the people. 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 when all the people
were baptised, it came to pass that Jesus also being baptised
and praying heaven, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost
descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice
came from heaven which said, Thou art my beloved Son, in thee
I am well pleased. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. To this point, Luke has dealt
primarily with Christ's birth and a short section concerning
his childhood visit to Jerusalem. And as we remarked last time,
now there is a huge leap from the age of 12 until the age of
30. Here are 18 years of the Saviour's
life of which we know nothing. All of the Lord's recorded ministry
appears from this point on until the cross and the resurrection
and his ascension. All of the Lord's recorded ministry
appears to have taken up no more than three and a half years. And as the Holy Spirit has remained
silent upon this period of the Lord's life, there seems little
value in us trying to deduce too much about it. Except perhaps
to note that all through this time, the Lord Jesus Christ was
always the Lord Jesus Christ. He was God's Son who did all
things well. And the end of today's reading,
when the Lord is baptised, has the Father declaring from heaven,
Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased. And that pleasure of the Father
upon the Son, coming as it did, as it were in the 30th year of
the Lord, that pleasure, that approval, that approbation of
the Father had been gained. Can I say it like this? Had been
earned, had been deserved through all these years when the holy,
sinless Son of God was yet largely hid from the world. He was in the world. He was subject
to all the troubles and trials of the world and yet without
sin. I don't know because it isn't
said if the Lord got sick but I suspect he did. I'm sure that
he saw death around about him. I'm sure that he witnessed the
devious and destructive effects of sin in the lives of those
around him. Many of whom he loved as family
and some whom he loved as saviour. I am certain the Saviour was
touched with the feeling of their infirmities as He is with ours,
and was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. In all of this, He ever remained
well-pleasing to His Father in heaven. And just one more thought
upon that, perhaps to enlighten our mind as to the hardships
of the Lord during this time. We read in Matthew chapter 9
that Jesus knew all men's thoughts. Think in that, think in that
for a moment. Jesus knew all men's thoughts. In Luke chapter
nine we read, Jesus perceiving the thought of their heart. And
in Mark chapter three, he was grieved at the hardness of their
hearts. Now, I've linked a few different
verses together here, but I hope you see the point that I'm driving
at. Think about the contradiction
of sinners that Christ endured during all these years. If Lot was vexed, as it is said
he was, with the filthy conversation of the wicked, that's spoken
about in 2 Peter chapter two. What must Christ have felt and
endured in his own precious spotless soul at the wickedness openly
expressed and exhibited and secretly harbored in the hearts of those
amongst whom he lived and worked? Moving on to John the Baptist's
ministry. That ministry is now referred
to by Luke, and he places it in a historical context by giving
us the names of a number of individuals here. We see Tiberius was Caesar
at this time. I think I read somewhere that
Tiberius was the third of the Caesars. But we see these individuals,
these men, being identified and it is in this timescale, in this
context, that the Lord Jesus, that John is first ministering,
his own preaching, and that the Lord Jesus is revealed. Luke and the other Gospel writers
interpret John the Baptist's ministry in the context of the
Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah and Malachi. They see John the
Baptist as being the fulfilment. He is the Elias, the Elijah that
was come in order to announce the imminent arrival and ministry
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And though John was a priest
of the tribe of Levi, as his father Zacharias before him was,
it appears that his spiritual and his scriptural learning was
gained not in the schools of the priests, but in the wilderness
and in the lonely places of the desert. There the Holy Spirit
ministered to him, we may well assume. And when he came forth
into public life, great multitudes from every region, from every
quarter, around about, were attracted to him and large crowds gathered
to hear him preach. There was great fervour in Israel
at this time concerning the Messiah and the coming of the Christ.
And no doubt, John's ministry played into this upswelling,
this rising anticipation that the days of the Messiah were
imminent. I imagine rumours abounded from
all areas about the coming of the Messiah. Some would be entirely
bogus, but some, perhaps, were based on the true miraculous
events of John's birth and Christ's birth. And even although this
had happened three decades earlier, would no doubt continue to excite
the memory and the attention of some of the people who had
heard about these events and stored them up as Mary had done. and also the presence of the
Romans in Israel, both prophetically, because the sceptre of national
self-determination had been lost, and also politically, No doubt
the presence of the Romans stirred up hopes and expectations of
the restoration of the Davidic kingdom at the coming of David's
greater son and the overthrow of God's enemies and the nation's
enemies. But the heart of John's preaching
was not military, it was not political. It was moral and it
was spiritual. John's preaching was the necessity
of repentance and faith, leading to conversion and a transformation
of life. He denounced the Scribes and
the Pharisees especially. We're not told about them specifically
here in Luke but Matthew tells us that it was the Scribes and
the Pharisees that came out to hear him from Jerusalem and he
called them a generation of vipers. So certainly the Scribes and
Pharisees were amongst those that he called the generation
of vipers. He denounced them, but he also
had words of direction for specific groups such as publicans and
soldiers who appeared to have some degree of reformation under
the ministry of John and sought for specific advice from him. And I think it's notable that
John does not turn them to the law of Moses, but rather to expressions
and exhibitions of genuine kindness and love that would flow from
first loving God and then loving their neighbour as themselves. He was speaking to them about
the way in which a true spiritual reformation would manifest itself
in the lives of believers. So that John's teachings don't
imply salvation earned by works, rather he is stressing that salvation
comes from God and especially that it is personified in the
coming Messiah, who is himself the salvation of God. He says,
for example, there he says, all flesh shall see the salvation
of God. He's speaking about the Messiah.
He's speaking about Christ. He's speaking about the salvation
of God being a person. And that shows us that, true
to his calling, he was anticipating Christ's imminent arrival and
ministry, and perhaps even Christ's celebrity and fame, the popularity
that he would gain amongst the common people. and even the interest
that he would provoke from Jewish leaders who would see him with
their own eyes. And then we can enlarge that
again and say that there would also be in John's understanding,
I'm sure, the wider awareness that would arise from Christ's
worldwide ministry amongst the Gentiles who would see him, if
not with their physical eyes, with the eye of faith. So that
John's message is that all God's elect will see God's salvation
when they look to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith. And verse 8, his statement in
verse 8 is perhaps meaningful here as well. That is, worthy
of genuine spiritual, sometimes it's called evangelical, repentance. Begin 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 a powerful acknowledgement that the great changes to be
ushered in by the Saviour's appearance were now imminent. No longer
would the physical lineage of Abraham be of any meaning or
any merit, but rather a spiritual transforming repentance evidenced
by converted lives. And such was the power of John's
ministry that many began to wonder if he himself was the expected
Messiah. Now there were perhaps justifiable
reasons to think that this could be a possibility, but there was
also clear evidence it could not be. John, for example, was
of the tribe of Levi, while Christ must be of the house of David
and the tribe of Judah. Still, Such was John's effect
in the land that questions were asked at the very highest levels
of society. And learning about these misconceptions,
these wonderings, these musings by
the people as to his true identity, John promptly and explicitly
and emphatically points his hearers away from himself, saying, One
mightier than I cometh, the lachet of whose shoes I am not worthy
to unloose. He shall baptise with the Holy
Ghost and fire. And so John is like a true preacher,
like a true minister of the Gospel, pointing his hearers, his congregation
to Christ and he tells them that he will come with a fan in his
hand. Now what on earth is this talking
about? Well, the fan was what the Jews used hand fans to cool
themselves. But I think this is probably
a reference rather to an agricultural implement where there would be
a fan or a wide with a handle and a wide end used to throw
up grain in a a grinding pit where the corn
had been ground out and that would be used to separate, to
winnow the chaff from the grain and I think this is probably
the reference to the fan that we have here. So that the fan
in Christ's hand is the gospel by which he winnows and separates
between men and women. And I think there's a lovely
little thought here for us. You know, some folks struggle
with assurance and they wonder if they are truly part of Christ's
church. Even believers can have these
dark times, these difficult times, these times of doubt and uncertainty. Well, what John's telling us
here is that it is the gospel that divides and distinguishes
between those who are Christ's and those who are not. Do you
believe the gospel of grace? Do you believe in the cleansing
power of the blood of Christ? Do you retain a hope in your
own good works and self-righteousness or do you wholly trust Christ
for salvation? What is it? What think ye of
Christ? Where does this conviction then,
where does this hope come from if not the Lord Himself? It is in His hand that this fan
is held. The Gospel, Christ's fan in His
hand, separates the wheat from the chaff. It is what the saviour
employs to distinguish his people from the world of unbelievers. For the bold testimony of John
and his denunciation of wickedness in the highest places in the
land and even in the king's own palace, the brave prophet soon
found himself in prison and facing execution. But that's a story
for another time. Today, we're just going to finish
by noting that as John the Baptist preached, suddenly and unexpectedly,
there was Jesus standing in the midst before him, standing before
his cousin, And I've wondered if John and Jesus knew each other
and spent time with each other as children and young men. That's
pure speculation, but by some means John recognised the Saviour. And we read in Matthew 3, verse
13. Then cometh Jesus from Galilee
to Jordan unto John to be baptised of him. But John forbade him,
saying, I have need to be baptised of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto
him, Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil
all righteousness. Thus it becometh us to fulfil
all the purpose of God. Whatever else This phrase entails,
it is clear that all the persons of the Godhead came together
to publicly mark and commission the public ministry of the Saviour. The baptised Christ rising up
out of the water, the Father's voice from heaven, the Spirit's
descent and resting upon him all bore witness to the start
of Christ's saving ministry. In a little while, John would
identify Christ to his disciples and to others standing around
as the Lamb of God come to take away the sins of the world, as
no one else could, as no one else did. In the grand scheme
of things, the Lord Jesus Christ has indeed fulfilled all righteousness. living perfectly, obeying the
law, pleasing his father, dying on the cross, and accomplishing
every demand of the divine will according to his covenant obligations. And great as John's ministry
was, and it was certainly powerful in its own way, John knew that
it was coming to a swift end. because he must decrease and
Christ must increase. And so it proved to be. May the
Lord bless these thoughts to us today. Amen.