Because Jesus Came

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Transcript:

Open your Bibles tonight, if you would, to Luke chapter 3, and we’re also going to look at John chapter 1 a little bit, where we were this morning. Luke chapter 3. Do any of you, does anybody else in here like entertaining, like having guests at your house?

Or do you like to have your house all to yourself and have nobody come? I know people like that too. You practically have to have an act of Congress to go into.

. . I have an aunt, and I don’t think she’d mind me telling this story, but I have to laugh.

She has a sign on her front door that says, if you are not invited, you are not welcome here. And she’ll yell at solicitors, and she’ll yell at the Jehovah’s Witnesses, political candidates. I always like when those people come by, because I like to tell them what I think.

But she just, you know, this is my house and don’t come here. I’m kind of the opposite. I like to have guests.

Used to all the time have people over for lunch or for dinner at the house in Arkansas. And one thing we did was had Bible study groups through the week, especially on Thursdays, and would have people come over for that and just enjoyed having people at the house, whether it was for a Bible study group or if we were just getting together to have lunch. And many of you have done that, I’m sure, through the years.

You’ve had people over to your house, and you know there’s preparation that has to be done. There’s work that has to be done ahead of time. But there are certain things that when the person you’ve been waiting for shows up, the work really is not over.

At least it never was in my house. It seems like things kind of sped up. You know, when the guest gets there, you don’t just get to sit down and put your feet up.

And I promise I am going somewhere with this tonight. In my case, when we can be waiting on somebody, waiting on somebody to arrive, we know they’re going to arrive any time, and we’ve been busy making what preparations we can, but when the person we’re waiting for gets there, well, then there are several things that need to happen then. I’ve got to corral the dogs and throw them out in the backyard so they don’t jump all over everybody.

We’ve got to let everybody in, take their coats, offer them something to dream, show them a place to sit. There’s stuff to be done. And then it just goes on from there depending on what you’re having them over for.

But you can wait and wait and wait on somebody to get there, but it doesn’t mean that just because they’ve arrived that all the work is done. Now where I’m going with this tonight is the job that we have to do because Jesus came. We’re going to look a little bit at the story of John the Baptist. We’re going to look a little bit about his ministry.

And certainly he came to prepare the way for the one that we were expecting. Because don’t forget, God had promised for 4,000 years that he was going to send Jesus Christ. It’s not as though they should have been caught off guard. So many of the Pharisees and scribes and Sadducees and even the regular Jewish people were caught off guard, but they shouldn’t have been because God didn’t just decide one day, hey, I think I’ll send Jesus to be there among them.

Now, he’d been telling them for 4,000 years that he was going to send the Messiah. Whether they realized it or not, Jesus was the Messiah they’d been waiting on. And John certainly made some preparations for him to come.

But now that the one who has arrived, now that the one we’ve been waiting for has arrived, there was work for John to do still and there’s work for us to do today. Just as we still have things to do when people that we’re waiting on show up. We’re going to look at a few verses here in Luke chapter 3.

And then we’re going to look at a few verses in John chapter 1 and then talk about the work that we have to do. because Jesus has come. Starting in Luke chapter 3, it says, Now in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Eteria, I always have trouble with that word, and the region of Trachonidas, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

So we’ve taken two whole verses there just to explain when it happened and that the word of God came and spoke to John, the son of Zacharias, who we know to be John the Baptist. Now, why this is important is because this is yet another clue that we have in the scriptures that it’s not just made up stories. It’s not just fairy tales. I’m sorry.

I don’t know about y’all. I don’t have a habit of lying, but I do know that if you’re going to lie, you keep it simple. You get caught in the details, don’t you?

If you’re going to make up a story, keep it vague. And I’m not encouraging you to lie. I’m just saying, even in fiction, keep it vague.

That’s why the fairy tales that we grew up hearing start with once upon a time. They don’t tell us, you know, back in the 1400s during the reign of so-and-so, they don’t give us a specific time. They keep it vague.

They keep it general. If somebody were coming along later on and making up stories that never happened, inventing John the Baptist, inventing Jesus, inventing these events, why on earth would they go to all the trouble of saying it was in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, it was in the year of so-and-so of Pontius Pilate being the governor of Judea, enlisting Herod the Tetrarch of Galilee, Philip the Tetrarch of Aturia and Trachonidas, and Lysanias the Tetrarch of Abilene, and by the way, those are just the Roman rulers, and then we’ve got Annas and Caiaphas who are the high priests. Why in the world would you set it up and tell when it happened and who all was it? Because you’re bound to make a mistake.

And some people have looked at it and said, well, it’s obviously made up because they couldn’t find evidence of which of these guys they’re talking about. But I’ve looked at all of them and it fits. And if they’re making it up, why make up all these names and places?

The Bible, the New Testament, none of it reads like a fairy tale. There’s always specific information, it seems like, that’s telling us where and how this took place, that you’re only going to see if it’s a true story. They said, During the reigns of all these men, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

You know what? He seemed to be in the wilderness a lot as we read about him. But that seemed to be a good place for him because that’s where he seemed to experience God and seemed to hear from God.

You know what, if there’s some place, if there’s some circumstance where you hear from God, I would imagine that you would go back. I tend to have some of my best conversations with God while I’m driving. That’s why I don’t mind long car trips, especially if I’m by myself.

But he was in the wilderness and he heard from God. And because of this, in verse 3, it says, And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Now, we don’t know between verses 2 and 3.

It doesn’t say in Luke’s account here what it was that God said to him. But we can sort of piece it together from what we know of what happens in the rest of the story, that God came and revealed to him that Jesus Christ was on his way to begin his earthly ministry. He was already alive at this time.

I mean, you know what I mean. He’s always been alive. He’s eternal. But he was alive in human form at this time.

But he was about to begin his earthly ministry. And so God has revealed to John that the time has come that the Messiah is about to begin his earthly ministry. He’s about to come and make the provision for sins to be forgiven.

And so John begins preaching all around the Jordan River Valley about baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Now, let’s not get confused here. When he’s preaching about the baptism, it’s not the baptism that brings the remission of sins.

It’s the repentance. It’s baptism of repentance, but it’s the repentance that brought about the remission of sins. When we would recognize, and even today, we recognize there’s an element of repentance involved when we recognize that we’ve sinned against a holy God and that we are in need of a Savior.

There’s confusion about what repentance means, and some people think it means you’ve got to get your whole life straightened out or you can’t be saved. That’s not what repentance means because that’s works-based salvation. Repentance in the Greek means a change of mind.

And you know what, even as a repentant person, my life is not going to be completely straightened out because I’m still a person. Don’t forget the person part of repentant person. And yet there’s a change of mind because the natural man says, I like my sin nature.

I like my sin. I like the darkness. I’m going to wallow in it.

It’s clear about that in the Bible from John chapter one that we read this morning. And yet there’s an element where the mind changes and we realize we’ve sinned against a holy God and we realize that that’s a problem and we realize we need a Savior and we humble ourselves enough to ask God’s forgiveness. See, the natural man doesn’t care about God’s forgiveness.

And so they would realize because he’s been preaching about sins and he’s been telling them to repent that they would then repent and God forgives sins when we repent and then they would be baptized as a sign of what happened outwardly. Now the only difference here between what they’re doing here in this passage and what we see today is that they were looking ahead to what the Messiah was going to do and we look back at what he did. They were saved though in the same way.

They got remission of sins, forgiveness of sins, in the same way that we do through what Jesus Christ did on the cross. Just like the people in the Old Testament though, they were looking forward to it as we look back on it. So he came to 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 path straight.

And John the Baptist identified himself with that passage. That God had said he was going to send someone to prepare the way. He talked about it in Isaiah.

He talked about it in the book of Malachi, I believe, where God said he was going to send someone to prepare the way for the Messiah. And John the Baptist was that man. And he did prepare the way.

He got the people to begin thinking about repentance, to begin thinking about sin and judgment and the need to turn to God. Verse 5 says, 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. Now, that sounds to me like a pretty good description of the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. Because through the preaching of Jesus Christ, and through the preaching of John the Baptist before him, The religious people of the day, and guys, I’m not knocking religious people.

I would be classified as a religious person, I guess. But the religious people of that day were self-righteous in their religion. On the contrary, I see that I have nothing good to offer God.

Anything good in me is what he put there. But the religious people of that day were puffed up and proud. They exalted themselves because of how great they thought they were.

And then there was a class of people down here that you’ll never be as good. That’s why it was so daunting when Jesus told them, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, not just equal to it, but more than these people up here. And yet Jesus sort of evened that out, didn’t he?

Put everybody on the same playing field. It didn’t matter if you were one of the so-called righteous Pharisees or if you’re one of the regular people down here in the gutter. We all are on an equal footing before God.

We’re all equally sinners before God. I won’t say we have sinned equally. Some people sin a lot more than others.

But it doesn’t matter one sin or a billion. It puts us on the same footing before God where we are sinners and that we are doomed apart from the mercy that God offers. And so he talks about, Isaiah talked about the one coming to prepare the way of the Messiah, that filling the valleys and bringing down the mountains and straightening out the crooked and smoothing out the rough things.

And it says in verse 6 that all flesh shall see the salvation of God. All flesh would see the salvation of God. That doesn’t mean all flesh would experience, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that all flesh would experience the salvation of God. Because there is still that pesky free will where men rejected Him then and reject Him still. But the salvation of God has been made available to all men through Jesus Christ. And you know what?

When Jesus Christ walked the face of the earth, we got to see the salvation of God in flesh, in human form. The very salvation of God personified. Jesus Christ personified the salvation of God.

John the Baptist pointed to the salvation of God. And so everything Isaiah said about that came to pass. And we see here in Luke chapter 3 the beginnings of John’s ministry.

Let’s turn to John chapter 1 briefly and look a little further into his ministry. Starting a while after where we left off this morning talking about the nature of Christ, we’re going to look at starting in verse 22. the scribes and Pharisees, then they say unto him, to John the Baptist, who art thou, that we may give an answer to them that sent us?

Sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaiah. So they came and asked him, who are you? And that’s not just a question, we want to know who you are.

That’s who, who do you think you are? Because John the Baptist created quite a ruckus. Kind of like Jesus after him, I don’t think was very popular with the Pharisees and the scribes and the religious leaders.

So they came and said, who are you? So that we can go back and tell the people who sent us. And he identifies himself as the one that God sent to prepare the way for the Messiah.

And they which were sent were of the Pharisees. And they asked him and said unto him, why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elijah, neither that prophet? And when they say neither that prophet, they’re probably referring to Jeremiah.

It’s possible that there are others. It could be, but in all likelihood, it seems to me like it’s Jeremiah. And so they said, well, then why, when he says, I’m the one that God spoke of in the book of Isaiah, who was coming to prepare the way for the Messiah.

They said, well, if you’re not the Messiah and you’re not Elijah, you’re not Jeremiah, you’re not one of these prophets, then why are you baptizing? Again, who do you think you are to baptize? Who gave you this authority?

And John answered them saying, I baptize with water, but there standeth one among you whom ye know not. He it is who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe latchet I am not worthy to unloose. And these things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan where John was baptizing.

Guys, watch this. Verse 29. The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

This is the whole point of his ministry. Guys, the whole point of his ministry was to point people to Jesus Christ. They came and asked, are you the Messiah? He said, you better believe I’m not.

I’m paraphrasing, of course, but you better believe I’m not. Well, then why do you baptize? Because there’s one coming whose shoes I’m not even worthy to unbuckle.

Because the Messiah is coming. Everything he had to say to the religious people of his day was about the fact that there’s a Messiah coming. And then when he sees him, he’s still not talking about himself and his ideas.

He points this following that he’s developed behind him as he’s out teaching and as he’s out preaching. He sees Jesus and immediately he says, follow Him. Behold the Lamb.

Look at Him. This is the one I’ve been talking about. This is the Messiah who’s come.

It’s all about Him. See, the whole reason for John’s ministry was that Jesus came, or that Jesus was coming. The whole reason for John’s ministry was that Jesus was coming.

And guys, as believers tonight, the whole reason for our ministry is because Jesus came. we’re not here as as individuals we’re not here as a church we’re not here as as christians throughout the world to tell everybody look at us and how good we are guys we ought to have something a lot better to point the world to than just how good we are aim a lot higher than than than what we are because we’re probably pretty good people by human standards but human standards really don’t count do they by god’s standards we you know it’s been said so many times it’s probably probably sounds cliche, but we really are sinners who’ve just been saved by grace and thank God for it. We’re not here to tell people how great we are or what we think or what our opinions are.

We’re to point people to Jesus Christ. It’s the whole reason for his ministry, a whole reason for our ministry. And so because he has come, like John the Baptist, we have work to do. And I want to share four things with you tonight that we need to take from John’s ministry and apply to ours because we, everybody in here who is a believer is supposed to be in ministry, right?

It’s not just me. It’s not just the preacher. It’s not just the music director, the Sunday school teachers.

You don’t have to have a title to be in ministry. If your title is born again Christian, I hate to break it to you whether you realize it or not or whether you want to be or not, you’re in ministry. Only one amen out of that.

Well, whether you amen it or not, it’s true. And there are things that we can learn from John’s ministry tonight to apply to our own. First of all, because Jesus came, we have a story to tell.

Because Jesus came, we have a story to tell. Because he was coming, John went and told the story that he had to, as he’s talking about the fact that the Messiah is coming, I’m sure he had to refer back to things that happened in the Old Testament. That’s how they knew who the Messiah was.

The Messiah, the idea of a Messiah is not something that John made up. It’s something that, as we talked about this morning is rooted in everything that the Old Testament talks about. You can’t read the prophecies without seeing the Messiah.

You can’t read the ceremonial law without seeing the Messiah. Jesus is, I mean, the sacrifices, once you start, once you accept the premise that the whole Bible is about Jesus Christ, you start seeing him in things like the sacrifices. It’s incredible that the moral law points to Jesus, the history and the narratives, they point to Jesus, they point to the Messiah.

The whole thing is about the Messiah. So no doubt he just like the apostles who came after him, opened the Old Testament scriptures and began to tell people about, tell people the story of the Messiah that God was sending. And we have the benefit of being able to look back and tell the story that has happened.

It’s not just speculation to us, not that it was speculation to them, but people could have easily said, well, that you’re talking about things that you think are going to happen in the future, you have no proof. We’re talking about historical fact. We’re talking about things that have already happened.

We get to point back and know how the story ends. That the Messiah did come. That the Messiah was not just an earthly king.

There have been all sorts of kings. Kings at this point in history are a dime a dozen. We’ve had so many throughout human history.

When you count up all the time that has gone by and all the kingdoms that there have been kings are a dime a dozen that this messiah came and he was the most remarkable man even from his conception that he was born of a virgin that does not happen every day and he lived a sinless life the bible written within just a decade or two much of it written within just a couple decades of his life portrays him as sinless and you know you know that if he’d done something wrong and there had been somebody there who saw it and knew about it they would have that’s not the way it happened. I mean, just like today, we see politicians who get up and run for office and portray themselves as the best family people, most patriotic Americans, best things since sliced bread. And there’s always somebody waiting in the wings to say, well, I knew them in high school and you got to hear what they did.

I knew them in the army and here’s what happened. That they’re sniping about that all the time on the, on the news. And I didn’t, I know they didn’t have the media in their day and age like we do, but certainly they’re in Jerusalem, they’re in Galilee, they’re in Judea.

There would have been people who knew Jesus, and if he wasn’t as sinless as the Bible portrayed him to be, it would have immediately exposed the gospel accounts as frauds. And yet, even at his arrest and trial, they had to try to find people to lie about him because they couldn’t find anything to accuse him of. Born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, performed miracles.

Months ago when I talked about the resurrection to you and talked about some of the accounts of Jesus Christ being a historical figure, even non-Christian writers, Jewish, Greek, and Roman historians who did not believe that he was the Messiah, didn’t even believe in a Messiah maybe, wrote about him and said he did miraculous things. Now they didn’t believe he was the Son of God, but even they didn’t deny that he did miracles. Lived an incredible life, ministered, healed the sick, turned water into wine, raised the dead, and then died for our sins.

His reason for coming, despite what some preachers on TV will try to tell you or what you’ll hear in the media, his reason for coming was not to teach us to be nice to each other. I mean, that is a good thing. Don’t get me wrong.

And that is part of it. That was not the importance of his life and of his ministry. The importance of his life and ministry, his very reason for coming.

He spelled out in Luke 19. 10 when he said, I have come to seek and to save that which was lost. He died for us because we’d sinned against a holy God and could not save ourselves. And even though he didn’t have to, even though God the Father didn’t have to orchestrate all of this, and even though God the Son didn’t have to come, they willingly worked in such a way that Jesus Christ came and lived this miraculous, incredible, unique life.

And then he died for our sins so that our sins could be paid for and God the Father could forgive us. And then to prove that he could do what he said he would do. To prove that he could forgive our sins.

He rose again from the dead. Guys, he’s alive even today. We have an incredible story to tell the world.

Because Jesus came, we have an incredible story to tell the world. And I think we’ve heard it so much that we forget how miraculous it is, how incredible it really is, until we break it down and think about the components of the story and that this does not happen every day. And guys, why are we not talking about this every day?

And when I say we, I’m right in there. I’m excited about it now. I’m talking to y’all.

Why am I not going to be tomorrow morning? It’s an incredible story and it’s an incredibly true story. And because he came, we have this story to tell and we have the privilege.

We have the responsibility, yes, to tell it, but we have the privilege of getting to tell a lost and dying world this story when they desperately need to hear it. Second of all tonight, because Jesus came, repentance is due. Because Jesus came, repentance is due.

John wasn’t preaching the baptism of repentance just to get everybody to behave and be nice. Just like we don’t preach, you know, you hear people talk about church and us just to tell you how to live. No, it’s really not.

Because we can, we can preach and preach, behave, do good things, be nice to each other, wash behind your ears, eat your vegetables. We can preach all these things and all we’re going to do is end up with a bunch of good moral people in hell. There’s so much more to it than that.

He was preaching about the need for repentance. It’s not just about what we outwardly do. We can be outwardly good people and stay in line and do what we’re supposed to do and inwardly be as depraved as anybody you know.

What he’s talking about was repentance and a change of mind and a change of heart, something inward. That because Jesus Christ has come, we should recognize the seriousness of sin. If sin wasn’t serious business, Jesus wouldn’t have gone through what he went through on the cross for us.

If sin wasn’t serious business, Jesus wouldn’t have stepped out of heaven and put on human flesh and come and dwelt among us and dealt with all of the struggles and the strife and the suffering that he would have to put up with from us on a daily basis for the 30 years that he was here. The fact that Jesus came reminds us that sin is serious business, that God takes sin seriously. And because of that, there is judgment and there is wrath on sin.

And that our only hope is because of what Jesus did to repent and to trust him. And so when faced with the story of Jesus coming and when faced with the story of everything that Jesus did, the world has a decision to make. Just like every one of us in here has or has had a decision to make.

When we heard the gospel, when we heard the story of what Jesus did, We have the decision to make whether we’re going to believe it and accept what he did and humble ourselves before the God we’ve offended with our sins and ask his forgiveness with a humble heart or whether we’re going to persist in our sins and persist in our stubbornness and say, I don’t need that or I don’t believe it or I believe it but I choose not to accept it because I love fill in the blanks even more. Guys, because Jesus came, repentance is due. Now is the time for men to repent.

It says in, I believe in Acts 17, I honestly never can remember where in the book of Acts this is found, but it was written that the times of ignorance God winked at, that God let men get by for a season. Not because he thought it was cute, that’s not what it means by him winking, but that God was merciful and let men get by with what they were doing, running amok for a season, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. Now that Jesus has come, we see the seriousness with which God looks on sin.

We have the offer of salvation. We have the offer of forgiveness. We have everything we need.

And God says now is the time to repent. Because Jesus came, we need to carry a message of repentance to a lost and dying world. I’m not saying stand out on the street corner with a sandwich board that says repent and scream at people with a bullhorn.

Even as a solid Bible-believing Christian in college, it got on my nerves when people would come and scream at the students at OU. Because a lot of times they would be provocative just for the sake of being provocative. And I thought, you’re undoing a lot of the work that Christians here on campus are already trying to do.

And talking to people about sin and judgment and forgiveness. I’m not talking about screaming at people to repent. I’m talking about taking to them the message that sin is real, sin is serious, and that there is a coming judgment.

And so the time is now to repent and turn to trust Christ and turn to God while there’s still an opportunity. That’s why he came to all the country around Jordan preaching the message of repentance. And I’ve got it written down in my notes.

I just hadn’t turned that far yet. It is Acts 17, verses 30 and 31, what I was talking about. Third of all tonight, because Jesus came, forgiveness is available.

Some of this overlaps and I get ahead of myself a little bit. Repentance is due because forgiveness is available. Guys, the only reason God forgives our sins is because of what Jesus Christ did.

The first time I heard that, I thought, well, that doesn’t make sense. But think about it. If there was any other reason why he could forgive us or any other way that our sins could be forgiven, why would he send Jesus to the cross?

Any other way is something that we’ve done. The only reason he forgives us is because Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sins. And so now forgiveness is available.

This is the whole thing he came to do. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. He came to die and he came to do everything that was necessary so that God’s forgiveness could be extended to all of mankind, whoever would hear and would receive him. As it said this morning where I read in John chapter one, as many as received him, to them gave he the power to be called the sons of God.

And that’s why when he’s talking about this baptism of repentance, again, it’s not the physical act of baptism, it’s the repentance. But he talks about the remission of sins. Remission means forgiveness, means that it goes away.

That’s why we say somebody’s in remission from cancer. What is it when they’ve gone five years without cancer? We say it’s gone, they’re in remission.

Guys, because of what Christ did, our sin is in remission. Our sin is gone. It’s been remitted, it’s been forgiven, and God’s wiped it away.

He’s chosen to remember it no more. Another verse in Acts that I like, or passage, it’s two verses. He says in Acts chapter 13, Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.

That through Jesus, as he’s talking to them, reminding them that Jesus didn’t just get himself crucified for being a revolutionary. Jesus came to forgive sins. And so through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.

The forgiveness that we couldn’t get by being good enough, by being smart enough, by being likable enough, by being any of these t

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