Flee from the wrath to come; Luke 3: 7-9

Today we are continuing in our study of Luke and we  just began to look at the ministry of John the Baptist.  We introduced him last week in the first 6 verses, and we will start to look at his message today and hopefully finish it next week.

Just to briefly review, last week we looked at the scope of John’s message.  It says in verse three that he came “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  If you remember last week’s message we said that the baptism of repentance was normally reserved for Gentile proselytes;  Gentiles that desired to convert to Judaism.  But John is preaching to Jews, and he is saying that they need to repent just like everybody else.  That their heritage as Jews was not sufficient for their salvation.  John was saying that their self righteousness which came through the law, and through their religion and through their lineage was useless in God’s eyes, because their hearts were in rebellion against God.

So Luke gives an illustration from the Old Testament, which is actually part of the prophecy concerning John, found in Isaiah chapter 40.  And this picture that is presented is that of a highway  which needs to be smoothed out, to be made ready for the coming King.  And the highway is a metaphor for men’s hearts, which need to be made ready for the coming King.  It says in verse 4, "THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, 'MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.  EVERY RAVINE WILL BE FILLED, AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL WILL BE BROUGHT LOW; THE CROOKED WILL BECOME STRAIGHT, AND THE ROUGH ROADS SMOOTH;  AND ALL FLESH WILL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD.'"  What this scripture is illustrating is that before one can see the salvation of God, there needs to be repentance, a preparation of the heart in order that God can  be the King of our soul.  Every deep, dark crevice that hides our sin must be brought up to the light,  and every mountain and hill of our pride and self exaltation must be made low, every crooked way must be made straight before the way of the Lord.

Now in continuation of that message of the need for repentance, John addresses in verse 7 the crowds that were coming out to hear him and be baptized by him.  “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father,' for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.  Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

And in that first sentence I take the title of this message this morning.  The title is “Flee from the wrath to come.”  The message of John the Baptist is a harsh message.  It is not the way to win friends and influence people.  But as I said last week, John the Baptist was a dying man preaching to a dying people in a dire situation.  And they needed to wake up and realize the urgency of the situation they were in.

I was struck this week with the images I saw on the internet and television of the bombing in Boston.  It was eerily reminiscent of the bombing of the twin towers on 9-11, but of course on a much smaller scale.  Still, as you looked at those images of the smoke and the carnage and the crowds running away in fear, you couldn’t help but notice the panic on people’s faces.  Something unexpected, something horrific was happening that they didn’t understand and they were fleeing for their lives.  It reminded me of the images when the twin towers fell and the look on people’s faces as they tried to run from that unimaginable horror on 9-11.

There are already people out there starting to question the Boston bombing as they did about 9-11, whether or not there was some sort of advance warning, or some way we could have been better prepared for that situation.  If one were to know in advance that something like that was going to happen and they did not raise the alarm, then such people would be guilty of criminal neglect, a dereliction of duty.

And if a preacher of the gospel knew that a wrath of God was coming that would make the bombings of 9-11 and Boston pail in comparison and yet we said nothing about it, we did not give the warning, then what punishment would be sufficient for us? Ezekiel  33:6 says, “But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman's hand.  Now as for you, son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My mouth and give them warning from Me.”

God has appointed his preachers as watchmen.  And He has clearly said in his word that there is coming a day of God’s wrath to judge the whole world.  John the Baptist spoke of it 2000 years ago to the nation of the Jews.  He came to prepare the way, to proclaim a warning, that the King was coming, and that God’s judgment was going to  be poured out on the Jews first.  So his message was harsh, it was urgent, because the wrath of God was coming.

This warning was clearly presented in the last book of the Old Testament which had been given 400 years earlier in the book of Malachi chapter 3 vs. 1;  "Behold, I am going to send My messenger [that was John the Baptist], and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming," says the LORD of hosts. "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness.”

The warning is repeated in the next chapter in Malachi 4:5 "Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.”

So here comes John, in the spirit of Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord, and he calls the people who come to hear him a brood of vipers.  I tell you what, I’ve been accused of being unloving before, but I never called people a brood of vipers, to their face at least.  But John wasn’t just calling people names to be mean, he was making a very important point.  He was saying you think you are ok because you are Jews, because you are Abraham’s children.  But God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. What John is saying is that rather than being children of Abraham they were actually children of the devil, the serpent of old.

John was saying they were sons of the devil because they did the same deeds that the devil did.  And when Jesus started his ministry, he preached the same thing.  John didn’t preach judgment and Jesus preached love.  No, Jesus preached the same message of repentance that John had been preaching.  He said in John 8:44 "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  He is saying very clearly, that if you do the deeds of the devil, then it’s obvious you are sons of your father who is the devil.  Jesus said again in Matt. 23:33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?”  By the way, Jesus preached on hell more than any other preacher.

I was accused a while ago of always preaching “doom and gloom.”  They said I preached too much about sin and the coming judgment.  But I only need to point to John and Jesus and say that I haven’t even began to scratch the surface of what they preached concerning the wrath to come.

“Therefore,” John says in vs.8,  “bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance.”  Oh, the Jews were willing to go through another ceremony, to be dunked in a river if necessary, if it meant they would be guaranteed their salvation.  They were lining up to be baptized by John.  But John wasn’t going to let them off the hook quite so easily.  He was saying that in your natural state, your sinful state, you are of your father the devil.  And so you did the deeds of your father.  But if you repent, and you become converted to be a child of God, then you should be doing the deeds of your Father who is in heaven.

In other words, there is no such thing as cheap grace.  There is no such thing as raise your hand if you want to have a relationship with Jesus, and come forward and repeat some words after me and step over here and go down in this pool and now you’re good to go.  You never have to worry about hell anymore, never have to worry about the wrath of God anymore and you can go live like the devil again.  I’m sorry, but that isn’t the truth of the gospel.  The truth of the gospel is that once I was blind, but now I see.  Once I was lost but now I’m found.  Once I was sinful but now I’m righteous.  Once I was carnal but now I’m holy.  Once I was a child of Satan but now I am a child of God.  Once I did the deeds of my father the devil and now I do the deeds of my Father in heaven.  That is the message of repentance.
So John warns these Jews that in response to their rebellion the wrath of God is coming and the axe is already laid at the root of the tree. Vs. 9; “Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." Now what does he mean by that?  Jesus told a parable that helps to illustrate this prophecy in Luke 13:6  “And He began telling this parable: "A man had a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and did not find any. "And he said to the vineyard-keeper, 'Behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any. Cut it down! Why does it even use up the ground?' "And he answered and said to him, 'Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer; and if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, cut it down.'"

The sad truth is, that God had been waiting for Israel to produce the fruit of repentance for hundreds of years and yet they stiffened their necks and kept on rebelling in their idolatrous ways.  They had an outward form of religion.  They said they trusted in the one true God.  They had been entrusted with the oracles of God.  They had been entrusted with the laws of God.  God had sent them prophet after prophet to dig around the roots and put in fertilizer and yet they did not produce the fruits of repentance.  And so God’s patience ran out for Israel.  He raised up sons of Abraham from the stones by turning to the Gentiles with the gospel.  And in just 35 years from John’s message, God’s wrath came down upon Israel.

In 70 AD, the emperor Nero quashed a Jewish rebellion and went through Judea with 60,000 Roman soldiers methodically executing Jews as they marched to Jerusalem.  They laid siege against Jerusalem and eventually Titus sacked the city and laid the temple in ruins and desecrated the altar.  The sacrifices and offerings of the Jews were stopped.  Most of the Jews were executed or committed suicide.  What Jews were left alive ran for their lives and were dispersed throughout the remote parts of Asia.  The wrath of God had begun to be poured out.  Israel did not heed the warning of John the Baptist concerning the wrath to come.  And they have been hounded out of one country after another ever since for almost 2000 years.

During that 2000 years, God raised up another people, children of Abraham who would not be known by the circumcision of their flesh as had the Jews, or by their lineage from the tribes of Jacob, but by the circumcision of their hearts. Rom. 2:29 says, “But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.”
And Phil. 3:3 “for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”  Christ called this people of God his church, his body.  And God entrusted his church with the oracles of God, with the commandments of God.  And God has sent preacher after preacher, revival after revival in an attempt to call out a people who would produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

God has established in our days watchmen to warn the people of the coming wrath of God upon the unrighteous.  And as watchmen we are charged with the task of warning people today with the same message as that of John the Baptist.  “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.  You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance.  For the axe is already laid at the root of the tree that has not born fruit.” And I’m afraid that the church today is in the same place spiritually that Israel was 2000 years ago.  We have a form of religion, we have Judeo-Christian values, we think we are exempt from the wrath of God, because we trust in our heritage, in our lineage, in our church membership and yet our hearts are in rebellion and produce no fruit.

The message of repentance is still needed today, and it is the last message to the church from Jesus Christ.  The Apostle John saw in a vision the last message of Jesus to what He called the seven churches, which were actually 7 historic churches, but which I believe are also symbolic of the worldwide church today and He had this to say starting in Revelation 2 to the church at Ephesus, that great church started by Paul and pastored by Timothy; “I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.”

To the church of Pergamum He said, “I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. Therefore repent; or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth.”

To the church of Thyatira He said, “I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality.
Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds.”

To the church in Sardis He said, “'I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.  Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.
So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.”

And to the church at Laodicea He said, “'I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.  Because you say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.  Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.”

The Apostle Peter said in 1Peter 4:17  “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? AND IF IT IS WITH DIFFICULTY THAT THE RIGHTEOUS IS SAVED,  WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE GODLESS MAN AND THE SINNER?”

Listen folks, the message needed in the world today is the same old message that John the Baptist preached and Jesus Christ preached and the Apostles preached.  The gospel hasn’t changed.  But I’m afraid the church has changed.  And not for the better.  We have left our first love.  We love the world and do the deeds of the world which are the deeds of their father the devil.  Our light has gone out.  The world looks at us and sees just a self righteous reflection of themselves.  We think we are alive and yet we are dead.  We have become so relevant to the ungodly world that we are no longer relevant to God.  We are neither cold or hot, we’re lukewarm.  The world cannot find God because the light has gone out in the church.  And the church is dark because it has turned away from the truth of God’s word.  The Bible says, “thy word is a lamp unto my feet.”  But the lamp has gone out like the lamps of the unwise virgins who thought that the Bridegroom wouldn’t be coming any time soon. But Romans 1:18 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

Oh, people, we need to prepare our hearts.  The wrath of God is coming and is coming soon.  We need to flee from any so called gospel that doesn’t call for repentance. We don’t know how much longer we have, but we know that the day of the Lord is coming soon.  We need to get ready.  We need to flee from sin and fly away to the refuge of repentance.  We need to prepare our hearts for the King.

In the early 1700’s there was a revival that swept across America known as the Great Awakening.   One of it’s foremost preachers was a man named Jonathan Edwards who died at 54 years old.  His most famous sermon is still being studied in classical literature today, titled, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.”  Yet I doubt he would be featured on TNN today. He, like me, read his sermons and preached too much about sin and the need for repentance.   However, he was a faithful watchman to what God revealed to him through his word.  Listen to part of his sermon.

“The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God's vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.

“O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.”

The wrath of God, long held back due to the kindness and patience of God, is coming upon this world.  Peter warned again in 2Peter 3:10 “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.”

I’m not a big fan of celebrity Christians.  I find their walk and their talk to be too far apart in most cases.  However, I do believe that Johnny Cash seemed to know the Lord, especially in the last few years of his life.  And in what was perhaps the last song Cash wrote before his death, he quotes several passages of scripture from Revelations regarding the great and terrible day of the Lord.  Some of his theology may be a little warped, but I think he gets the idea about the coming wrath of God.

"And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder. One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.' and I saw, and behold a white horse"

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names,
And he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same,
There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down.
When the man comes around.
The hairs on your arm will stand up,
At the terror in each sip and in each sup.
Will you partake of that last offered cup,
Or disappear into the potter's ground?
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin'.
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum.
Voices callin', voices cryin'.
Some are born and some are dyin'.
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come,
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks,
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks,

Till Armageddon no shalom, no shalom.
Then the father hen will call his chickens home,
The wise man will bow down before the throne.
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns,
When the man comes around.
Whoever is unjust let him be unjust still.
Whoever is righteous let him be righteous still.
Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still.
Listen to the words long written down,
When the man comes around.

Where then are we to flee this wrath to come?  What are we to do?  How are we to be saved?  The answer is found in Isaiah 55:1 "Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance.  Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, According to the faithful mercies shown to David. Seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.  For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up, and instead of the nettle the myrtle will come up, And it will be a memorial to the LORD, for an everlasting sign which will not be cut off."