Matthew 3:1-12 - Fruit or Fire?

One of the most remarkable things about the Christmas season is getting to hear the Gospel proclaimed in places you least expect it. Our culture has decided that there is no room for Christianity in the public square, and that the claims of Jesus Christ are an embarrassment to all forward-thinking, intelligent individuals.

And yet, this is the time of year when you can be walking through the produce aisle at WalMart and hear the whole world being called to rejoice because “The LORD has come! Let earth receive her King!” Or turn on the radio and hear a song about the New Birth of salvation: “Adam’s likeness now erase, stamp Thine image in its place/ Second Adam from above, reinstate us in Thy love!” Or a choir that openly rejects the deity of Christ as an article of their faith sing “The Kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ / And He shall reign forever and ever!” This is the only time of the year when you will hear people singing Gospel songs who have no interest in the Gospel!

Or is it?

Our text this morning tells the story of one of the greatest religious revivals in human history, led by the greatest prophet in human history. In Matthew 11 (which we will look at more deeply next Sunday), Jesus says that “among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist...” (Matt. 11:11).

Look with me at verses 1-4:

Matthew 3:1–4 ESV

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’ ” Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.

Even though his story is recorded here in the New Testament, John was the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets—the very last one to call God’s covenant people to return to Yahweh in repentance and obedience. It had been four hundred years since the last prophet, Malachi, had appeared in Israel. Malachi’s last words of prophecy (that we read earlier) foretold the coming of the Day of Yahweh:

Malachi 4:1 ESV

“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.

The Day of the LORD was coming like a great fire, and the sign that that Day was coming was the appearance of “Elijah the prophet”

Malachi 4:5 ESV

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

If you read Elijah’s story in 1 Kings 18, you’ll see he was best known for his confrontation with the 400 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. Elijah prayed and the LORD sent fire down from heaven to consume the offering--and the people repented when they saw it!

1 Kings 18:38–39 ESV

Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.”

So that was Elijah’s ministry. Now if we take that story of Elijah and Malachi’s prophecy of the Day of the LORD and bring that here to our passage, what do we see? Here is John, a fiery prophet (who even dressed like the fiery prophet Elijah—v. 4, cp. 2 Kings 1:8), comes declaring the arrival of the fiery Day of the LORD!

Look at how many times he mentions fire in his announcement of the Kingdom’s arrival:

Matthew 3:10–12 ESV

Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

And just like Elijah before him, when John preached fire, the people repented!

Matthew 3:5–6 ESV

Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

It’s been well-said that “hard preaching makes soft hearts, and soft preaching makes hard hearts”. John faithfully declared the fiery arrival of the Kingdom, and the people heard and confessed their sins. John called on his hearers to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance” (Matt. 3:8).

And the same choice lies before us today—fruit or fire? Because just as the people in Matthew 3 were living in the last days before the appearance of Jesus Christ in His First Coming, we are living in the days before the appearance of Jesus Christ in His Second Coming—which will again be a fiery return:

2 Thessalonians 1:7–9 ESV

and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,

And just as it was in John’s day, so it is today:

The only escape from the fire of God’s judgment is to bear the fruit of repentance.

And so this is the question we need to have God’s Word answer for us this morning: How do we know we are bearing the fruit of repentance in our lives? How can you know that when the fiery judgment of Christ’s return is revealed from Heaven that you will be found bearing that fruit, and not be condemned to that fire?

My aim this morning is to show you from God’s Word here in Matthew 3 that there are at least three characteristics of fruitful repentance that we must look for in our lives—three marks of the kind of repentance that Jesus Christ will look for when He returns.

The first mark of fruitful repentance in our lives is that

I. Fruitful Repentance is Continual (Matt. 3:5-7)

John was preaching a “baptism of repentance” there on the banks of the Jordan River in the Judean wilderness. Now as we noted earlier, John was the last of the Old Testament prophets—and in the Old Testament, baptism was a symbol of being cleansed—Leviticus 15 gives guidelines for how a person could become ritually clean after a defiling disease, for instance. Also, whenever a Gentile wanted to join the covenant community of the Jewish people, the custom was to baptize them as a sign of their being “cleansed” from their Gentile impurity and being brought into the covenant-keeping people of Yahweh.

And so when these people were coming out from Jerusalem and Judea for baptism here in this passage, they were essentially saying “I am a sinner—I have sinned so greatly it is as if I have been completely outside the Covenant. This baptism is my confession that I need to be cleansed of my sin and rebellion against Yahweh and be restored to right covenant relationship with Him!”

Now verse 7 tells us that along with the general population coming out for this baptism, there were a number of Jewish religious leaders, the “Pharisees and Sadducees”. The Pharisees were theologically and politically conservative—they believed in the literal fulfillment of the Old Testament promises about the arrival of the Messiah who would deliver Israel from its Roman oppressors. So they taught that the way to “Make Israel Great Again” was to turn back as a society to the Word of God in the Torah.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, were the political and theological liberals—they rejected all of the Old Testament except for the first five Books of Moses, and denied the existence of any kind of supernatural dealings between God and man (miracles, angels, resurrection of the dead, etc.) They had real political power in the Roman government, and were in control of the Temple in Jerusalem.

And verse 7 says that “many of the Pharisees and Sadducees [were] coming to his baptism”. Now, any other preacher might think to himself, “Look at that! The most powerful and influential leaders of Judaism are coming to my baptism! I’m really on a roll!” But not John—he immediately called them out for their hypocrisy:

Matthew 3:7 ESV

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

They were coming to be baptized, but John knew that they were doing it all for show. They were like the people who sing Christmas carols but reject the Gospel that those carols are written about—they were caught up in the religious fervor of the moment—happy to carry out this one-time show of repentance, but they were not interested in actually being repentant!

But fruitful repentance is

Not a one-time affair

There are a lot of people today who have come to believe that their repentance before God for their sins was a one-time affair. When you ask them about their spiritual condition, they point to that time twenty years ago when they walked down the aisle after a sermon and prayed to accept Christ. Or they signed a postcard at a revival meeting, or they got baptized when they were a baby. And they point way back to that event, because there is nothing in their current life to indicate that they are Christians!

But I say to you that if you are identifying yourself as a Christian on the basis of signing a card or walking an aisle or getting baptized and you are not living a life of continual repentance and faith—that commitment card, that baptism certificate will burn with you someday!

Because so-called “repentance” that is limited to a one-time affair is fruitless repentance! Jesus tells you

Matthew 16:24 ESV

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Fruitful repentance is repentance that is a continual turning away from sin and towards Christ, a daily denial of the passions and lusts of your flesh, an ongoing and constant death to this world and life to Christ! As the Apostle Paul says in Romans,

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

When God has brought about the New Birth in your life, your heart is a heart that longs to turn away from sin and towards God—it is a life of continual repentance, and it

Bears the fruit of holiness (Romans 12:1-2)

in your life! Because each time that you turn away from sin and toward Him, God’s Spirit works more and more to transform and renew your mind so that you become more and more like Him every day, more and more able to think His thoughts after Him, more and more conformed to His likeness! The fruit of continual repentance is a holy life.

Fruitful repentance is continual, and secondly we see that

II. Fruitful Repentance is Personal (Matt. 3:9)

Look at verse 9:

Matthew 3:9 ESV

And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

The Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t think they even needed to repent, since they were descended from Abraham himself, the one with whom Yahweh made His covenant. They saw all of the other people getting baptized as an expression of their repentance, and said to themselves, “Well, we have never done anything so bad as to put ourselves out of fellowship with God! We are Abraham’s children—he is our father, and God counted him righteous, so that means we have that righteousness, too!”

But fruitful repentance is

Not a family affair

, is it? How many times, when you ask someone about where they stand with the Lord, will immediately start talking about their dear saintly old grandmother who used to read the Bible to them every day, and who used to take them to Sunday School every week? Or will answer your question about their spiritual state by saying, “Oh yes, my uncle is a pastor, we go to his church sometimes!”

But the Scriptures are clear that fruitful repentance is not a family affair! I tell you the truth, that if you answer the question of where you will spend eternity by pointing to your saintly old grandma, that the Scriptures tell you that someday she will rejoice before God to watch you burn in Hell:

Revelation 19:3 ESV

Once more they cried out, “Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.”

On that day of the appearing of Jesus Christ in fiery judgment, He will not ask you if your grandma took you to church, or whether your wife was a Christian, He will not care that your sister taught Sunday School for twenty years, He will care about one thing only: Did you obey His Gospel by calling on His Name for the forgiveness of your sins by the sacrifice of His blood on the Cross?

Because so-called “repentance” that never confesses the depth and depravity of your own sin before God is fruitless repentance—and is fit for nothing but fiery judgment.

But personal repentance bears fruit in your life. The word confess in the New Testament means to “agree with” or “say the same thing as” someone else. When you “confess” your sin before God in repentance, you are saying the same thing about your sin that He does—your sin is not a “mistake”, it’s not a “bad choice” it’s not a “failure to live your best life now”—it is a horrifying, murderous and wicked offense against the holiness of an infinitely offended God that deserves your eternal damnation in Hell.

And when you confess your sins before God in that kind of personal repentance, that repentance

Bears the fruit of grace (1 Cor. 15:9-10)

in your life.

Before his conversion, the Apostle Paul was a wicked, blasphemous and murdering persecutor of Jesus Christ. But his honest personal confession of the depths of his sin brought about the fruit of humility in his life. He writes in 1 Corinthians 15

1 Corinthians 15:9–10 ESV

For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Paul’s deep, honest personal repentance for his sin led him to rejoice in the grace of God working in his life! That grace of God that inhabited Paul’s life overflowed into the lives of everyone he met—there was no one he could despair of, no one so lost that Paul could give up on, because he knew how powerful God’s grace was to save him! When you bear the fruit of personal repentance in your life, there is no one you can give up on, because you know what your heart was like before the grace of God rescued you!

Fruitful repentance is continual and bears the fruit of holiness. Fruitful repentance is personal, and bears the fruit of grace. And in verse 10 we see that

III. Fruitful Repentance is Immediate (Matt. 3:10)

John warns his listeners

Matthew 3:10 ESV

Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

The Pharisees and Sadducees thought they had plenty of time to deal with their spiritual condition—the Pharisees figured Messiah had delayed for 400 years, so what’s another few decades of their lives? (And the Sadduccees didn’t think there was such a thing as Messiah!) But John warned them that repentance is

Not a “Someday” affair

When John says “even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees”, the image is of a woodsman standing next to a tree, measuring his swing by touching the blade to the trunk—within seconds, that tree will feel the bite of that blade, and within minutes it will topple to the ground! The truth was that Messiah was on His way even as John was preaching! The very next verse after the end of our passage today tells of how Jesus arrived there by the Jordan to be baptized by John—it may very well have been as soon as John finished speaking in verse 12!

Beloved, there are so many people out there who believe that repentance is a “someday” thing—that they can “get right with the Lord” after they’ve had their fill of all the false promises that sin makes them. Like the country song on the radio,

Heaven knows that I ain’t perfect, Raised a little Cain / And I plan to raise a whole lot more, before I hear those angels sing / Gonna ‘get right with the Lord’, but there’ll be Hell to pay, ‘Cause I ain’t in no hurry today” (Writer/s: Zachry Alexander Brown, Wyatt Durrette, James Allen Otto : Warner Chappell Music, Inc., Reach Music Publishing, Blackstone Entertainment)

If that’s your attitude towards repentance today, my friend, please hear what the Word of God says to you: The axe is laid at the root of your tree now! You do not know how much time you have—do you have a year left to you? A month? Do you know where you will be this time next week? I tell you the truth, there are thousands of people every day who thought they had years left to “get right with the Lord” who found themselves suddenly pitched into a Christless eternity: You do not know how much time you have.

If you have been resting on some one-time affair of some outward act: You walked down the aisle at church when you were ten but have been walking wherever you damned-well please ever since, you do not know how much time you have. If you have been resting on the fact that Grandma Bessie prayed over you every night but you’ve never prayed for your own soul even once, you do not know how much time you have. If you’re just checking your phone right now to see how much longer you have to sit here and you just want to get home and not think about this again, you do not know how much time you have.

Friend, I want you to hear this Good News from God’s Word this morning: You may not know how much time you have, but you have this moment! It is no coincidence that you are here this morning—God has brought you here in His mercy to you so that you will reach out and find Him today!

2 Corinthians 6:2 ESV

For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

You can be free of the dread of the arrival of the Day of Judgment—the axe can be laid at the root of the tree but you can be ready! Your heart may be stone-cold dead in sin, but God can raise up a child of Abraham out of that stone heart of yours! If you call on Him today in true repentance—not as a one-time thing, but as the first day of a lifetime of turning away from sin and towards Christ! Not relying on your family or your spouse or your parents but a personal repentance of your guilt before God! Not “someday” but today! You can come down front and talk to me or one of the deacons and we can pray with you so that you can be sure that you are ready—that instead of the dread of fiery eternal judgment in Hell you will

Bear the fruit of peace (2 Timothy 4:8)

in your life, knowing that you belong to Jesus Christ by faith, knowing that your sins have been forgiven knowing that there is “laid up for you a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to you on that day, and not only to you but to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8)!

So bear the fruit of holiness in your life because you live a life of continually turning away from sin and towards God through the New Birth He has given you! Bear the fruit of grace in your life because you know personally how deep the grace of God was to save you! And bear the fruit of peace in this world, that no matter how tumultuous, how dangerous, how unstable this world becomes, you are looking for the Day when Jesus Christ will return for you, to crown you with His own righteousness “when He comes on that day to be glorified in His saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thess. 1:10). Bear fruit in keeping with repentance today, so that you may look eagerly ahead to the glorious appearing of the Righteous Judge—your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

2 Thessalonians 1:11–12 ESV

To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

What happens when people validate their identity as a Christian on the basis of one initial act of repentance (getting baptized, coming forward in church)? What is the place of continual repentance in a believer’s life?

Romans 8:1 says “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”. How does this verse help us understand the role of continual repentance in our Christian lives? Is our repentance motivated by continual guilt before God? What does “turning away from sin and towards Jesus” look like in your life?

Do you know someone who believes that they have a right relationship before God because of a family member who is a strong Christian? How can you show them from this passage that they must make a personal confession of sin before God in order to be saved?

Are you thinking about becoming a Christian “someday”? How does John’s warning to the Pharisees and Sadducees show you that repentance is not a “someday” affair? If Jesus Christ were to appear today to “gather His wheat into the barn” and “burn the chaff with unquenchable fire”, would you be ready? Do you want to be ready?

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