Fruits Meet for Repentance

Good morning. It's good to be here this morning.

Thank you for your prayers. That means a lot. I always get very nervous when I get up here. And that helps. It helps to, uh, to have prayers about that.

I would like to think today about the subject of repentance. And this is the same subject that I shared about when I went over to Perry County. And I was impressed over there with how well my subject lined up with the rest of their service. But, you know, one time, one time's a coincidence. And so you sort of, you know, it's just, it just happened to be that way.

But I'm impressed again with how well the service lined up with what I'm going to share about. And so I'm inclined to believe that either God knows all these things and He's lining it up, or repentance is a central enough theme that no matter how you start your service, it's going, it's going to align with that. And I, I'm, I tend to believe the latter. Repentance is a very important part of what we, what we are as Christians. It's, it's part of how we live out the life of, of following Christ. It's very central to what we, what we are and what we believe.

And so I'd like to think about it a little bit today, what it is. You know, often when I think of repentance, I, I tend to always think of it as a one-time event. You know, someone gives their heart to the Cri, to Christ. They get baptized. They've repented. And then that's kind of the end of it.

A kind of an apology. I'm sorry I did something. But repentance goes a lot beyond, a lot further beyond that than just a single one-time event. It's, it's a series event of events, if you want to look at it that way. It's, it's a process. And it's not, it's not just one thing. There is a start to it. But it's something that continues to go on throughout the rest of our lives. At least that's what, that's what it's supposed to be.

And so I'd like us to think about that in that way as we go down through here. You can turn to Matthew chapter 3. We're looking at John the Baptist and his message. And I think, I like this story because I think it shows us very clearly the elements of what repentance is and, and, and what it means as an ongoing process in our lives.

So, Matthew chapter 3. We'll start reading here at verse 1. "In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, 'Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, 'The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his path straight.' And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair and a leather girdle about his loins, and his meat was locusts and wild honey."

So, this is, to me, this is sort of an interesting picture of a person. Um, there, there may be more information out there about who John was and his life than what, than what I'm aware of. But basically, the extent of my knowledge is we, we read about, uh, him as a baby.

His parents, Zacharias and Elizabeth. Um, his father was a priest, was serving in that responsibility. And then it kind of goes quiet. And then suddenly he pops up here again in the wilderness. He's not totally unexpected. It says here that the prophet Isaiah predicted his coming as one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord." And that was his message. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

So, here we have this man. Sounds a little eccentric. He's dressed in camel hair. I looked that up. Camel hair apparently grows up to 15 inches long. And so I guess they would take that and somehow weave it together to make a garment out of it. I can only imagine that it was a rather rough-looking thing.

I would also have to imagine that it probably didn't smell the greatest.

But that's what he was dressed in. And he had a leather belt, probably to hold the whole thing together, I'm guessing. And maybe even to carry some of his cooking utensils. I don't know. Whatever he had probably was attached to him.

And it says his meat was locusts and wild honey. So, he pretty much ate bugs and whatever he could find along the way.

What strikes me here is this is a man who had a very single, singular purpose in his life. His purpose was to bring a message. And he was not attached to this world in any way except the very, very basic way. You know, we look at the things around us and what, when I look at things that I need to survive, um, obviously I need, uh, shelter. So, I have a house. I, I got to eat something. So, I have food.

Obviously, I got to drive to church. So, I'm going to have to have a car. Um, you know, he wouldn't want to walk around town dressed in camel's hair. So, I got to have some decent clothes to go to town. And I wouldn't wear those clothes to go to work. So, I'm going to have to have some, you know, work clothes.

A lot of the things that, that I, I see that I need apparently aren't true, aren't the case. You can survive on very little. And what I like about this picture is he stripped away all of the things that attached, that will attach you to this world. Anything that's going to distract you. Anything that would have distracted him from that message. It would be interesting to know what hit, what the backstory was. Like, what, what the rest of his life up to this point looked like. What process did he go through to get to this point?

Um, he was human. So, I can only assume that he went through some of the same things that we do. What, what did it take to get his mind around this message? To get, to get himself to a place where he was able to put off everything in this world for the sake of this one message.

To tell people that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The time is now. You need to repent. You need to get your life in order.

Reading again at verse 5. "Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. And when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said to them, 'O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?'" So, we have this rather eccentric man living in the wilderness. And I thought maybe, you know, back in that day, maybe this wasn't a terribly uncommon thing. You know, maybe there were preachers who lived in the wilderness and had messages that people came and listened to. I mean, maybe, I don't know. It's kind of strange to me now.

But maybe that was a common thing back then. I did a little bit of research. And according to that, it was not a common thing to, to have this kind of a thing going on.

And if you think about it, if you're a preacher and you want people to hear you, where do you go?

Church, synagogue. You go somewhere where there's people. Where was John? In the wilderness. There may have been a few shepherds around. But it was pretty much him and him in the wilderness. There wasn't much there.

We're going to use our imaginations for a second. It's Saturday morning. You get up early. You get the family together. You bundle into your car. And you drive to Renovo, Pennsylvania. Has anyone here ever been to Renovo, Pennsylvania?

Have you ever heard of Renovo, Pennsylvania? Probably not. It is a little single street town along the Susquehanna River. And according to what I found, it is thought to be one of the remotest, remotest areas in Pennsylvania. It is northwest of State College. It's about three hours from here.

And it looks pretty remote. To let you know how remote it is, Amazon does not have delivery to Renovo, Pennsylvania. And the nearest Walmart looked to be about an hour and a half away.

So, you get the family in the van. You drive to Renovo, Pennsylvania. You hop out. You walk down to the river. And there is a man there dressed in animal skins shouting out that you need to get your life in order.

This, this is interesting. Would I, would I do that? Would I, would I go to hear this message?

Based on what, based on my response to, to things like that that happened, I think I probably would probably talk about it at the shop. You know, you hear about that guy up in Renovo, Pennsylvania. Where's Renovo? Would I take the time to go listen to someone preaching the kingdom of heaven?

I don't know. It's a good question to ask.

But these people obviously wanted, wanted to hear this message. They were obviously interested in this. Because they went to this place, which was not close by. And not only did they go to listen to what he had to say, but they believed him. It says they repented and he baptized them.

So, I don't know what all his message was. We get bits and pieces of it. But overall, he, he was warning them that the kingdom of heaven is here and you need to repent. And I think they were familiar with what repentance was.

And they listened to him. They, they, they listened to his, his warning and they took heed. And they were baptized.

There were two groups of people that showed up.

The first group, I'll just call them the commoners. They were the typical people. The people who were probably working hard to make a living. Um, probably most of them were, we'll call them middle class. You know, just, just your standard, standard American.

And then there was another group of people. These were the religious elites. The Pharisees and Sadducees. And the way you can think about that is these, these sort of represented the two factions of their religion. You know, on one hand, you had the people that were sort of the conservatives, the traditionalists. They were trying to keep everything exactly the way it was supposed to be.

And then you had another group who was, we'll call them the liberals. They were a little more loosey-goosey with the way they did things. They were a little more progressive, we might say. Had some different ideas about some things.

But one thing they all had in common is that they liked their power. They liked their status. And they came down to see this man who was preaching.

Obviously, he didn't, uh, he didn't think much of their status. He called them vipers, which was very much of an insult. And he gives them this rather, I take to be, sarcastic comment, "Who warned you to flee of the wrath to come?"

I don't think he thought that they were there to repent. I think they were probably on a reconnaissance mission to see what was going on. That's the, the idea you get here. And I think he knew that. I would say he probably had his run-ins with these people a few times. The same as Jesus did.

And, so then he preaches this message.

Starting at verse 8. "Bring forth, therefore, fruits for meat 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 axe is laid under the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree which bringeth forth, which bringeth forth not good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. But he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Whose fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garner.

But he will burn up a chaff with unquenchable fire." And I want you to keep that, that fire term that he uses in mind. We're going to come back to that in a minute.

But he preaches this message.

The, the phrase that sticks out here, to me, it's the summary, the sort of the summary phrase here. "Bring forth, therefore, fruits meat for repentance." Let's look at that a second.

What is, what is fruit? When the Bible says, you know, fruit, what's it referring to a lot of times? Well, it's referring to the things that we do. The things that we, that are, I think of them as outputs. Things that we, that come out of us. We have the fruits of the Spirit. You know, love, joy, peace, long suffering, all of those sorts of things. Those are all things that come out of us. Those are the fruits of what we produce.

That's our deeds, our actions, our character. Then we have this word meat. And this is not a word that we typically use in this way anyway. And it simply means suitable or appropriate. And then, of course, we have the word repentance.

And for now, just think of repentance as the outcome. So, I'll use this illustration. When I'm in, when I'm in my shop and I take a board and I put it in a saw, what comes out? Shorter pieces of wood.

If I take a screw and a screw gun and I screw two pieces of wood together, what comes out of that? Two pieces of wood that are fastened together. If I put enough pieces of wood into the saw and I put enough pieces of wood into a screw and a screw gun, eventually I'm going to get something that looks like a kitchen cabinet. Or a piece of furniture.

Or a house. Or something.

I'm inputting something and I get an output. If I get enough outputs, I get an outcome. And that's the way I think about this phrase. The fruits that we output, all of the little things that we do, accumulate to become an outcome.

Whatever those outputs are is what kind of an outcome we're going to get. It doesn't have to be a good one. If we output bad things, we get a bad outcome. If we output good things, we get a good outcome. So, when I see people complaining about, you know, how their life just went sideways and, you know, they don't understand, you know, it just doesn't make sense. It's not fair. You know, I wound up in this situation.

Most of the time, it's because they were outputting bad things. Which came from bad inputs. And so, their outcome is bad.

But I would like to challenge us. If you focus, if you put as much time into your, into, to getting good outputs so that you can get a good outcome as what some people put into their bad outputs, you're going to make out a lot better.

But that's how I think about this phrase. Output good things, you're going to get a good outcome. Output good fruit and you're going to get satisfactory outcome. Repentance.

So, then he says, "Don't think 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 the same thing that these, these people used when Jesus a little later on. When Jesus said, "Repent." And they said, "What? We have Abraham to our father?" And he said, "No, it doesn't work that way."

The point is, your heritage is not going to save you. Your traditions are not going to save you. Your, your emotions are not going to save you. Your outputs aren't even going to save you.

Just because you came from a certain place doesn't make you, doesn't save you.

So, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, building their, their impressive religious background, their, their traditions and all the things that building up their, their structures the way that they had them, that was no excuse for the way that they were living. And it wasn't going to save them in the end. And he was very clear about that.

He said, "Now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree which bringeth forth not good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." Again, it's reference to good fruit. Make sure that the output of your life is good.

John had a limit. He could only take this so far.

He said here in verse 11, "I baptize you with water unto repentance." His limit was that he could bring people to that point of repentance. He could baptize them unto repentance. But that was as far as it could go at this point.

And I think this is sort of an interesting, an interesting thing. If I back up and just look at this whole scene. We've, we've talked in the last, you know, several months about, you know, where Israel came from and how God prepared the way to get to this place.

John basically stood in that sliver of a gap that was left between the old thing, the Old Testament, and the new. And he could bring people right up to that knife edge of where the switch happened. He could bring people right up to that point of repentance. They could repent, but it wasn't finished. It was still missing a piece of something. John couldn't give that to them.

And he admits that right here.

He said, "I'm not even worthy. There's a, there's someone else coming. There's someone else who is much greater than I am who can take you beyond what I can take you. I'm not even worthy to take your shoes off.

I'm baptizing you with water. I'm baptizing you with water unto repentance. I'm getting you to this point. But this person that's coming after me, he's going to baptize you with the Holy, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, and with fire. He's going to take you beyond what I can do. I can only take you so far."

This, this idea of fire, I like that. And you see that a lot. This, this, the symbol, you see that a lot in the, in the Bible. It depends on which side you're on as to what fire is going to look like to you.

If you're a repentant person, if you're a person who's right with God, fire is a good thing. It's cleansing. Think of gold. Often, the reference is made to gold burned in the fire. It clears out the impurities. It's not always comfortable, but it makes you a better person, a purer person at the end. Because if you're in line with God, you're going to survive the fire. But the impurities and all the, the, the nastiness that's still in you, that's not going to survive. It's going to get cleared out.

If you're not a repentant person, you're not going to survive the fire because there's nothing good there. You're going to end up being a hollow shell whenever the fire comes because there's nothing left. And when I look around society and I see people putting a lot of energy and a lot of effort into, you know, building their, their, their lives and their, their businesses and their, like, all the things that are, that society holds up as important, valuable things. And then some of those people, you see later, you know, something happened, something catastrophic, and their, you know, their business was destroyed or their life was destroyed in some way.

There's nothing left. They're depressed. They're sort of rock bottom because there was nothing there to start with. There was nothing of value, true value there to start with.

And so, when Jesus brings that fire into our life, we want to make sure there's something valuable there. We need to be repentant people. We need to be living that life of Christ so that when Christ comes with that cleansing fire, we don't get completely consumed. What's left is valuable.

And we become valuable people.

All right, verse 13. "Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John to be baptized of him. But John forbade him, saying, 'I have need to be baptized of thee, and thou comest to me?' And Jesus, answering, said unto him, 'Suffer to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fill all righteousness.' Then he suffered him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water, and lo, the heavens were opened unto him; and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him. And lo, a voice from heaven, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'" Did Jesus need to repent? I don't think so.

The Bible said he was sinless, so he didn't really have anything to repent of.

But I thought about, you know, why, why, why did he go through this process of, of baptism? Which, I mean, we see that as a symbol of repentance. I think some of it is in what he told John here. When, when John didn't want to baptize him very badly, he said, "Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness."

There was something about this process that was necessary. It was necessary, it's necessary for us. It was even necessary for the Son of God to go through this. And I'm not going to pretend to know all the answers. I, I'm sure there's a lot more here than what I can understand. But what I take away from it is baptism symbolizes something. It symbolizes a change.

A change in direction. A change in what your focus is on. It's a visible sign of something. If you think back to the early Christians, getting baptized was a big deal. A much bigger deal than what it is now.

There were times when being publicly baptized pretty much gave you a death sentence. So, it meant a lot at different times in history. And it should mean a lot now. And granted, we're not, we're not persecuted for baptizing. But there's, there's something very important here. If Jesus, if this is something that Jesus had to do to fulfill righteousness, then it's something that we need to do and take very seriously.

If nothing else, it gives us an example to follow. An example, and that's what Jesus set out to be. An example to us. And so, if, if, if, if there was nothing about this that did anything for Jesus, it does something for us as an example. It's something that we can follow.

I like the phrase here, "to fulfill all righteousness." I think there's a lot here, and I'm not going to be able to, to get through all of that. I'm not even sure if I fully understand what all that means.

But here's a couple of things that I take away. First and foremost, repentance is obedience to God. Mark 1:15, this is Jesus, He said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent ye and believe the gospel." It's a command. If you want to follow Christ, if you want to be a part of His kingdom, you have to repent.

Repentance is a change of habit. It's a change of focus. It's a lifestyle change. Luke 9:23 says, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Philippians 1:6, "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ."

How many of you have ever been on a diet?

Diets are great. You read, magazines used to, to, to have diet. Every, every magazine, it seemed like it had a diet in it for a while. Maybe they still do. I don't know. You know, the two-week all-meat diet or the two-week, I don't know, noodle diet or something, whatever. There was always something that they focused on really much. But the thing that always stuck out to me was there was always a time limit on it. You know, after the two weeks or the month or the, you know, six months was up, that was it. There was nothing left.

And I think most of us realize by now, if you want a diet to work, you have to make it a lifestyle. It has to be something that you, that's sustainable. You know, you can't live on noodles the rest of your life. So, maybe a noodle diet isn't the greatest thing. You've got to pick something that's sustainable, and it's got to be something that you can build your lifestyle around and continue for the rest of your life.

Repentance is that way. It's not a one-time thing where you just, you know, make things right and you apologize, and now you're good to go again. It's a lifestyle change. It's a change in direction. I was going this way. Now I'm going this way.

You have to continue going that way in order to keep going that way. You can't turn around and expect to end up over there somewhere.

Repentance is restorative. The way I like to think about this is it, it builds us back into the type of person that God intended us to be from the beginning before sin messed us up. Matthew 3:3 says, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord."

Clear out all the, clear out all the garbage. Get the junk out of your life. Make a way. Ephesians 4:21-24, "If indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness."

We need to get rid of the old stuff that we had that wasn't working and put on the new stuff. Again, that's that, that's that change in direction. It's a change in focus. You can't keep the old stuff around and expect to have something new.

I refinished my kitchen a while back. I had to take the old finish off. If I put the new finish on top of the old finish, it would have fallen off along with the old finish which was falling off. You've got to get rid of the old before you can get the new in. And it's a process. I mean, Jesus doesn't, God doesn't expect us to do that all at once. It's a process, and He reveals that to us as we go along. But we have to, we have to take, take the hint. When He tells us of something that needs fixed, some old stuff that we need to get out, we need to go get it out because He has something that He wants to put in its place.

Basically, when I read this story, there are two groups of people here. There's the group of people who came and heard and repented. And there's the group of people that came and heard and didn't repent. And nothing much has changed. We're still, we still, there's still those two groups of people today. There's the group of people that hear the word of God. They know what they should do, and they don't do it.

And then there's the people who hear the word of God. They know what they should do, and they go out and do it. And they start that process, that lifestyle of repentance.

For the repentant people, God's going to restore you. He's going to use you for your intended purpose. He made you specifically for a very particular purpose. And if you allow Him to work in your life, to clear out all that old stuff, all the stuff that I want to hang on to, and replace it with the new things, the things that He wants to put into my life, He can use me for the thing that He intended me to be used for.

And over our lifetimes, He will continue to restore us. He will continue to, to clean up our lives and replace it with new, fresh stuff and continue to work out His, His will through us the way that He originally intended.

For a non-repentant person, you're also going to be used of God, but not in a very good way, probably. It goes back to that idea of, you know, if you fill your life up with the wrong things and a fire comes along and all that stuff gets burned out, there's nothing really left.

We tend to look at those things as statistics. You should have done this thing to prevent this damage.

If you're a non-repentant person and you're not willing to make those changes, some, the fire will come along the same as it comes along for every person. Those challenges are going to come along. But you're not going to have anything to hold on to. It's going to get destroyed, and you're going to be left an empty shell.

Don't be a statistic.

The choice is ours. Each one of us is to make. It's my choice. It's your choice. That's the choice God gave us in the beginning, and it's still our choice today. Choose wisely. Is there any response?