Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is Near, Part 2

4^th February 2012

We saw last time that, as the time for Jesus Christ to be revealed as the Messiah approached, John the Baptist preached the simple message, "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is Near" and many people confessed their sins and were baptised. However, not everyone who came to hear John preach intended to respond to his message:

Matthew 3v7
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptising, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?

Naturally, many of the religious leaders of the day – the Pharisees and the Sadducees – came to see what was going on, to check John out to make sure he was sound. After all, new religious movements are all very well, so long as their leaders agree with us, as long as no-one is expecting anything much to change. As long as the status quo is respected.

The Pharisees were the religious party that sought righteousness before God by keeping the law, and the Sadducees were the religious party that sought righteousness before God by observing all the religious rites, such as temple sacrifice. And still today, there are people in positions of religious authority who urge us to slavish submission to the letter of scripture, while missing the spirit of scripture, and others urge us to conform to their ideas about exactly how our meetings should be organised, what should and should not be said and done while breaking bread, who can lead the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and so on. The Pharisees and the Sadducees are always with us.

When they got there, they saw a man who lived in the desert, and ate locusts and honey, and dressed in clothes made of camel hair, and had a leather belt round his waist. A man who was making no effort to fit in with the religious authorities.

And John greeted the Pharisees and Sadducees with strong words of judgment: You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? John was calling them a family of poisonous snakes, and saying again that the wrath of God was coming to them unless they repented. Remember the last words of Malachi warned of God’s curse on the land:

Malachi 4:5-6
"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse."

And John instructed them:

Matthew 3v8
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

To avoid God’s curse, we must repent. But to repent is more than to be baptised, more than to confess our sins, more than to say the right things. Repentance must involve a change of life. It must produce fruit. If your life does not change, then you never really repented.

Matthew 3v9
And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.

Many Jews, both then and now, thought that they have a right relationship with God merely because they could trace their ancestry back to Abraham, the man of God. But, just as we can't rely on keeping the law 100% perfectly, and we can't rely on observing rules about how we worship, we also can't rely on our lineage, our heritage, or our upbringing. We are not justified by our parents' faith, or our national identity. John explicitly tells them that that’s not enough. We must share Abraham’s faith and his godly life:

John 8:39
"Abraham is our father," they answered. "If you were Abraham’s children," said Jesus, "then you would do the things Abraham did".

Romans 9:6-8
It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.

If we're Jewish or if we're Gentile, we're saved through repentance and faith in the blood of Jesus. Here, very early in Matthew’s gospel, John tells us that gentiles too can be included in the people of God; we “stones” can become children of Abraham, together with our Jewish brothers and sisters! As Paul wrote later:

Galatians 3:14
He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

And John warned the religious leaders that God's judgment on them was imminent:

Matthew 3v10
The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

When you lay the axe to the root of a tree, it’s because you’re taking the tree right out of the ground – this is not pruning, it’s final judgment. John says as clearly as he can that, whoever we are and whatever our position, if our lives don’t prove that we’ve repented, then we’re doomed to the fire.

I don't often write about these things, but it would be irresponsible of me never to mention the judgment of God. Wouldn't it?