The missing ingredient; Luke 3: 1-17

Those of you that know my wife knows that she likes to cook.  She particularly likes to bake.  Her idea of a fun evening is finding a new recipe book and she is constantly collecting new recipes that she would like to try out.  Usually, she tries them out on us at home and that can either be a good thing or a not so good thing.  Sometimes, some recipe that she tries turns out to be a keeper, and she makes a note on it perhaps and stores it in a place where she keeps the good recipes.  But sometimes, a bakery item does not turn out all that good.  And she has found that even though a certain recipe by some famous cook may be published in a book and have a picture of a beautiful cake or pie, when we try to eat it, we find that something is wrong.  It doesn’t taste right, or it didn’t rise the way it should.  Something was missing in the recipe.  We end up throwing it out because it wasn’t any good.  It seems that among certain chefs, they sometimes deliberately leave out an important ingredient as a way to preserve their special recipe.  They want the accolades for having a delicious bakery item, but they want to keep it for themselves.  They don’t want to share it.

Oftentimes in the church we see a sort of Christianity that is somewhat like those bakery items that don’t really turn out.  Someone comes to the church, they go through the right motions, say some of the right things, seem sincere enough perhaps, they may even seem to have some sort of religious experience but over time it becomes apparent that something is missing.  There is an ingredient in their faith that seems to be missing, and as a result, their walk doesn’t quite add up.  Their faith doesn’t turn out to be all that it should be.  Perhaps, they fall away over time and go back to the world.  Perhaps they go back to the same sins that once enslaved them.  Bottom line, they never produce the fruit in their lives that that should have been expected from someone who was really converted.

And I think that the message of John the Baptist that we have been looking at for the last couple of weeks is really about that missing ingredient that is too often not considered to be all that essential, yet without it, the final product doesn’t turn out the way it’s supposed to.  They may go to church, they may sing the songs, they may talk the talk, but because they are missing an essential ingredient, they end up falling short of the grace of God.  They were never converted and so they never produced the fruit of their conversion.

Jesus warned that this would be a very real issue in the church.  He said in Matt. 7:16 "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  So then, you will know them by their fruits.  Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.  Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'”
What a terrible thing.  To live a life that appears to be righteous on the outside, that may even do good things in society, that may appear to be very religious even to the point of supposedly doing miraculous things, speaking prophecy and casting out demons and yet at the judgment be told that it didn’t count as righteousness.  Christ never knew you as a son or daughter of God, and all your so called righteousness was not worth any more than filthy rags, it was nothing more than lawlessness.  You didn’t produce the fruit  of true righteousness.  Because you were missing the essential ingredient.

God forbid that we find ourselves in that condition.  So what then is the essential ingredient that makes us righteous, that converts us from children of darkness into children of God?  That causes us to be known of God?  Well, John tells us in chapter 3 verse 8 of our text;  “"Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance.”  See, repentance is the missing ingredient.  The fruit follows after.  Works without repentance is just self righteousness.  First must come repentance and then God credits you with righteousness so that you become holy, and having become holy by the gift of God, then you are adopted, grafted into the family of God, and then having become grafted into the tree of life you produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

Let me make this absolutely clear.  Terrifyingly clear in accordance with what Jesus said about the day of judgment;  salvation without repentance is not possible.  Salvation without repentance is not possible.  That is why John came preaching it says in verse 3: “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Listen, altar calls to come to Jesus so that you can live your best life now is not repentance.  Altar calls to come to Jesus so that you can have a relationship with Jesus is not repentance.  There can be no relationship between sinful man and a holy God without forgiveness of sins, and a transference of righteousness to our account.  And John is preaching that repentance is necessary for forgiveness of sins.

Until you understand that you are sinful, separated eternally from God because of your sins, condemned to eternal hell because of your sins, then you will not understand that you need to repent.  That you need a Savior.  Before Jesus can be your friend, He first had to become your substitute and your sacrifice.  And having become your substitute and your sacrifice He then became your Savior.  2 Cor. 5:21; “[God] made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” God has already cast judgment upon sin. Jesus paid the price of that judgment upon our sin. And  so then repentance is our answer to our sin, a cry for mercy and a willingness to forsake it.

So then we must understand first of all, that true repentance is marked by our understanding of the reprehensible nature of our sin. We saw that in an earlier message in verse 5. "Every ravine has to be filled up, every mountain and hill be brought down, the crooked become straight and the rough roads smooth." That's an analogy of what has to happen in the human heart. Before God can come to the human heart, the highway is going to be made, a highway of forgiveness into your heart. It is a highway of repentance.

Secondly, there has to be a realization that we deserve divine wrath. John at the end of verse 7 preached the wrath to come. To be a faithful preacher I must preach on hell. There must be a realization that wrath is promised to elicit a true repentance.

Thirdly, there must be a rejection of religious ritual.  John calls them a brood of vipers, and says, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Going through some ritual, or ceremony such as baptism cannot save you.  You are still sons of your father the devil.  You haven’t been converted.  Baptism is an outward testimony to an inward change, from being children of the devil to becoming children of God.  Baptism is a public declaration of that, but it can never accomplish conversion alone.

Fourth, John preached that your ancestry is worthless.  That was a big thing to the Jews, they thought that being children of Abraham made them saved. And a lot of people today think they're going to get into God's Kingdom because of their parents or grandparents, and certainly the Jews felt that way down in verse 8. He says, "Don't begin to say to yourselves we have Abraham for our father, because I'm telling you God can make children of Abraham out of rocks. That's not going to save you.”  And let me add this – being an American won’t save you either.  I’m as patriotic as the next guy.  But while my salvation may make me a better American, yet being an American has no benefit for my salvation.  Christianity is not one of our inalienable rights as  an American.  

Then fifthly, true repentance produces  spiritual transformation.  Vs. 8: Bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance.  If you are a new creation, then you’re going to bring forth  a different kind of fruit than you did in the past.  New fruit is not the means of salvation, but it is the produce of salvation. It is the evidence of conversion.

And Luke illustrates this in this passage starting in verse 10.  The crowds were asking John, “What then shall we do?” And he would answer and say to them, "The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise." And some tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, "Teacher, what shall we do?" And he said to them, " Collect no more than what you have been ordered to." Some soldiers were questioning him, saying, "And what about us, what shall we do?" And he said to them, "Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages."

Notice something.  They all asked the same question; “what shall we do?”  Repentance produces not only a godly sorrow, but a change of heart, resulting in a change of action.  A good example of this is the familiar story of the prodigal son.  He thought he knew better than his father.  He wanted to take his inheritance and live life the way he wanted to live it.  And so he spent his inheritance in riotous living.  One day when his money had run out and his friends had left him, he found himself in a pig pen eating the husks they fed the pigs.  He realized his predicament.  He was sorry he was in his predicament.  But that wasn’t repentance.  Sorry just would have left him there in the pig pen.  But he said to himself, I will go back to my father and beg for his forgiveness.  I will offer my life to him as a slave.  Now that was repentance.  He recognized not only his predicament and was sorry for his predicament, but he recognized that his father’s house offered him the way to life and so he got up and went back to what he knew was good. Repentance turns you around and starts you in the other direction.  A turning from your ways and a turning to God’s ways.

John’s answer to this question of what shall we do is pretty simple.  He’s talking about a change from doing things to serve yourself to doing things to serve God and serve his people.  The prodigal son said I’ll go back to my father and serve him.  And that is the fruit of repentance, service to God.  A life that is now dedicated to serving God, whereas before our lives were marked by self service.  My rights, my time, my money, my, my, my is the cry of the unconverted.  So having repented of our ways and our desires and our lusts, we now turn to serving God by serving others.  It’s not some great super complicated thing God asks of us.  It’s to be faithful to God in the small things, serving each other, serving His body, as unto the Lord.  Micah 6:8 “He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”

You can break down each of John’s answers and you find at it’s root a change of heart about my stuff;  my possessions, my power, my money, my time.  It’s a change from a heart that is always seeking after more and more and more and never able to be satisfied, to that of being content in all circumstances.  If we have food and covering with that we shall be content.  (1 Tim. 6)  If we have two tunics, then that is one more than we need, give the other away.  If we have enough to eat, then give away what we have extra to him who doesn’t have any.   Don’t take advantage of other people to accumulate more money.  Do justice and love kindness.  Be content with your wages.  Focus on storing up your treasure in heaven, not on this earth.

Now this may have sounded simple, but it’s actually revolutionary stuff.  If we really applied this attitude of repentance in every facet of our lives and modeled what John taught then I think the world would be impacted with the gospel.  But when they see Christians hypocritically seeking after money at the expense of others and selfishly treating others unfairly, then our churchy self righteousness does nothing but turn them against the gospel.  So the multitudes were wondering about John because of his preaching.  They were wondering if he was actually the promised Messiah.

And that leads us to the final point;  true repentance receives the true Messiah.  So John makes it clear that he isn’t the Messiah.  And he does so by contrasting his ministry with that of Jesus’ ministry. Vs. 16 "As for me, I baptize you with water but One is coming who is mightier than I and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." John says don't get us confused, folks, we are worlds apart. I can baptize you with water, but it’s only a picture of what Christ will do. I can take you down here into the Jordan River and I can dunk you under the water.  But that is not a supernatural act. It doesn’t actually cleanse you inwardly. There is no supernatural power in the water.  It’s just the plain old Jordan River. There is no holy water, by the way.  There is no holy oil.  There is only a Holy God that credits sinful people with holiness and then calls us to live holy lives, even as He is holy.

But says John, here is the contrast, there is One who is coming, the Coming One, the Messiah, who is mightier than I.   "I'm not even fit...John says...to untie the thong of His sandals."  The task of taking somebody's sandals off and washing their feet was so low on the service ladder that you couldn't get lower than having to do that job and it was a job usually assigned to a Gentile because it was beneath the dignity of a Jew to do it. John says I'm not even fit to climb up to the point where I could untie His sandals, I’m not even in the same class as Jesus.

And he goes on to contrast himself with Jesus.   "I baptize with water," end of verse 16, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." That is a great statement filled with tremendous profound truth. John says...Look, I can immerse you in this Jordan River, which is only symbolic of an inward change but what I can't do is immerse you in the Holy Spirit or immerse you in fire. Only Christ can do that.

Listen, there is a lot of confusion concerning a second baptism of the Holy Spirit as if once we are saved you need to go seeking for another baptism of the Spirit.  Folks, don’t be deceived.  You can’t be saved apart from the Holy Spirit.  The idea of being baptized by the Holy Spirit is to be immersed with the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the means of our regeneration.  He is the means of our new creation.  We are born again of the Spirit, Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3.  You can’t be born again without being filled with His Spirit.

The difference between Old Testament salvation and New Testament salvation is that in the OT, the Spirit was not a permanent fixture.  So they may have had the desire to keep the law, but they did not have the ability to keep the law.  They were weak in their sinful flesh.  However, God promised a new covenant for us through the blood of the Messiah.  It’s found in Ezekiel 36:26 "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”  See?  Now we have the Spirit of God living in us, we are permanently immersed in the Spirit of God, filled with the Spirit, who gives us the desire to serve God, and gives us the strength to serve God, and gives us spiritual gifts to equip us to serve God.  The Spirit of God is not a bunch of mumbo jumbo to make us feel excited or happy or ecstatic.  The gifts of the Spirit are not a toy box, they are a tool box, to equip us to do the will of God.  To do what He requires of us, to keep his laws and his ordinances.   And the Holy Spirit is given without measure at the moment of salvation, when God makes us righteous by the gift of Christ’s holiness, in exchange for our sins.  Then having been made holy, we become the temple of the Holy Spirit who  lives in us to empower us to do His will.

And that's why on the day of Pentecost when Peter stood up to preach, Acts 2:38, he said, "Repent, receive the forgiveness of sins and you shall also receive the Holy Spirit." You see, nobody is converted, nobody is saved, nobody is forgiven, nobody is transformed by some human act. When a sinner is truly repentant and comes to God in a broken and contrite spirit and asks for forgiveness and God forgives and transforms, it is the working of the Holy Spirit.

And secondly, John says, I baptize you with water but the Messiah will baptize you with fire.  Again, there is a lot of confusion about this fire.  Some think it’s talking about the tongues of fire that came upon the heads of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost.  But it’s not talking about that fire.  It’s talking about the refiner’s fire.  The Messiah will bring a refiner’s fire, that will burn up the chaff, and reveal the gold.  The refiner’s fire is a cleansing fire.

And this is very clear in the last book of the OT where God was talking about the coming of the Messiah, and the forerunner, John, who would come before him to prepare his way.  Listen to Malachi 3:1 "Behold, I am going to send My messenger, 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. (2) "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.  (3) "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.”

Look at the next chapter; Malachi 4:1 "For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze," says the LORD of hosts, "so that it will leave them neither root nor branch."

So when the Messiah comes, the coming One arrives, it's going to be a day like a furnace that's going to consume everything. "But...verse 2...for those who fear My name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in His beams. You're not going to be burned, you're going to go forth and skip about like calves from the stall and you're going to tread down the wicked and they're going to be ashes unto the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing, says the Lord of hosts." Gold isn’t burned up in a fire, dross is burned out, and gold is made better, stronger, refined.  But the chaff will be gathered together and burned up.

Listen, Christians and non Christians are going to go through the refiner’s fire.  But one will come out as gold and the other will be burned up.  As a Christian, don’t be surprised James said at the fiery ordeal which has come upon you.  It’s only temporary, for your testing, so that you will be refined and come forth as gold.

Verse 17,  John  illustrated the principle of baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire. It's like a winnowing process. "And His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into His barn so He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." . The separation will take place completely. You either fall in the pile of grain, or the pile of chaff. You are either separated with the grain which means you go into the glories of heaven, or burned with the chaff which means you go into the terrors of hell.  And it says it is an unquenchable fire, that is an eternal fire that will never go out.

Folks, the only other subject that isn’t preached on as much as repentance is the subject of hell.  We don’t want to think about it.  Truth be known, we don’t really believe in it.  Somehow we think in the back of our mind, God will be merciful and let people escape hell if they were nice people.  And of course, there is good in everyone, so no one will really have to go to hell, except for people we don’t like of course.  But if we really got a glimpse of hell, we would go home this morning and throw ourselves down on our knees in front of our loved ones and beg them, implore them to get right with God, to repent for the forgiveness of their sins.  But we don’t really believe that our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers are going to spend eternity in the torment of unquenchable fire.  Do we?

Folks, examine yourselves today. 2Cor. 13:5 “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?”  Are you missing the essential ingredient in your life?  Have you truly understood the graveness of your sin, the predicament that you are in and repented, calling out to God for mercy and forgiveness?  Or have you decided that you aren’t so bad a person after all, and by adding just a little bit of religion to your list of ingredients you are going to turn out just fine.

Don’t be deceived, salvation isn’t possible without repentance.  Jesus gave a parable in Luke 18:10 "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 'I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.' "But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!'
"I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Repentance is the only way to receive justification.  Let’s pray.