Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 180th episode. In this episode we’re going to continue our study of the book of Matthew. We are in chapter 3. Remember this chapter shows us John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness and calling on all people to repent of their sins for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Crowds of people from all different demographics began showing up to respond to John’s message – but among the crowds were the religious elite. Many of the religious elite saw no need to repent because the wickedness of their hearts was masked by their own self-righteousness. They were self-righteous for several reasons – but two of the main reasons were their lineage as sons of Abraham as well as their strict adherence to religious law. Scripture says our own righteousness is like filthy rags compared to the righteousness of Jesus. So John calls them out and reminds them that they, too, will perish unless they repent and give themselves to Christ. Let’s read verses 7-12:
Mat 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Mat 3:8 “Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance;
Mat 3:9 and do not suppose that you can 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.
Mat 3:10 “The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Mat 3:11 “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
Mat 3:12 “His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
If you had to summarize the theme and purpose of John’s preaching you could say it was repentance. It was a call to repent because the kingdom of heaven was at hand. This passage shows us the application of John’s preaching. Anytime you listen to a sermon you should be paying attention for potential application. Application is what takes theoretical ideas and makes them concrete realities. Application is you imitating Christ by taking His word and allowing it to shape who you are. Jesus is called the Word made flesh. One of the firsts things we notice in this passage is that John directs his attention toward the religious elite who were called the Pharisees and the Sadducees. For the general population John considered it sufficient for a basic call to repentance – but with this group he decided to speak more specifically. The Pharisees and the Sadducees made up two of the major divisions of Judaism at the time. The Pharisees were lovers of the Law and they embraced the power of the Church. They were zealous when it came to religious rituals and ceremonies but they rejected true godliness. The Sadducees were extreme in the other direction – they didn’t believe in the spiritual realm, the afterlife, or the future eternal state.
You might wonder why the Pharisees and Sadducees bothered showing up to John’s baptisms at all. It’s likely they were curious and they wanted to hear what he had to say. Sometimes when a leader is attracting a lot of attention people will show up purely out of curiosity to see why all the other people are interested. There may have been a handful of the religious elite who submitted to John’s baptism but it’s likely most of them did not. In the same way there are probably a lot of people who go to church from time to time and partake of the ordinances even though they have no relationship with Jesus.
John didn’t mince words when it came to the religious elite. He called them a brood of vipers and insinuated they were only interested in baptism because they feared God’s wrath. He didn’t reserve this conviction for the Pharisees though, he also declared it to the multitudes of people. So when it came to preaching repentance John aimed straight for the heart and didn’t hold back. He didn’t try to preach around the religious elite or placate them into cooperating with him. He wasn’t interested in being a salesman or manipulating them for his own gain. He simply laid out the truth about them directly in their presence because he wasn’t afraid of human backlash. John was full of the Holy Spirit and that meant he was full of power, boldness, and wisdom.
The Pharisees were probably accustomed to being treated with honor and reverence. They likely had official titles and were normally welcomed with applause and approval. John gave them the opposite. He greeted the religious elite with the crushing indictment of calling them a generation of vipers – which by the way is the same name Christ gives them in chapters 12 & 23 of this gospel account. John called them vipers because they were crafty, venomous, and full of enmity toward all that was good. Calling them a brood of vipers suggests John charged them with being part of a lineage of people who were possessed by the same wickedness. The religious elite flaunted themselves as children of Abraham but John revealed them as children of Satan. The one thing they all had in common was the wickedness which attended their arrogant attitudes.
You could read it as harsh that John preached conviction to these people. There are some churches today who will stray away from polarizing topics or the conviction of sin. Many churches prioritize the comfort and attendance of their people over their spiritual condition and the salvation of souls. The call for repentance can sound harsh but often it’s the best possible thing a person can hear. If someone is wrong in all sorts of ways then the most loving thing you can do is help them see the areas where they need to change. Pastors and preachers need to be bold in their willingness to reveal sin and it begins with the pastor himself. It’s super important that a pastor continuously reminds his congregation that he is no better than they are and they should expect sin and brokenness to be a part of his or her life until the afterlife when he is entirely sanctified.
The Pharisees and Sadducees had hearts which were hardened in sin. The self-righteous parade the Pharisees made out of religion caused their hearts to become hardened. The fundamental disregard for spirituality itself caused the Sadducees to have hardened hearts. Having a hardened heart simply means you’ve become unresponsive to the conviction of your sin. It’s almost like you become blind to your own sins and therefore lose sight of your need for forgiveness and a Savior. That’s why the religious elite failed to recognize Jesus when He was standing right in front of them. When John asked them who warned them of the wrath to come his question implied these hypocrites were in danger. It really takes a miracle to redeem people who are so possessed by ideology like these ones were. But our God is a God of miracles and all things are possible with Him.
I have mixed feelings about the lost coming to faith out of fear. I don’t believe we should fear God in a way characteristic of a tyrant. But I do think reverential fear is important and if a person comes to authentic faith in Jesus purely because they were afraid of the possibility of Hell then maybe that’s a good thing as well. Ideally you would come to Christ because you heard the gospel, recognized your need for a Savior, and then accepted the forgiveness, love, and grace of Jesus. John suggested the Pharisees only showed up because they feared the consequence of missing something important. It’s possible they feared the wrath of God but were unwilling to sacrifice their proud egos to admit it.
God’s grace is impossible to measure and He is exceedingly merciful, so throughout our lives He gives us continual warnings of the wrath to come and the need for repentance. He’s given us these warnings in His word, He gives them to us through His ministers, and He also delivers them straight to our very own conscience. That’s why self-righteousness is one of the leading causes of a hardened heart. A self-righteous person reads their own facsimile of holiness into the Scriptures, a self-righteous person surrounds himself with teachers who whisper sweet-nothings, and a self-righteous person buries the conviction of his own conscience until he can no longer feel it.
When you think about repentance you might consider the process in three phases. Phase one is the recognition of God’s holiness and the acceptance of your brokenness by comparison. This is realizing you need a Savior. Self-righteous people never encounter phase one because they believe they are inherently good. Phase two is accepting your Savior in Jesus Christ and believing on Him that His righteousness is sufficient to redeem you. Phase three is being transformed into a new creation by the power of the Holy Spirit. Basically when you turn to Jesus the Spirit of God indwells you and enables you to become more like Jesus. A natural consequence of this process is that you will begin to love what God loves and be less inclined to sin. This kind of person becomes low and humble in his own eyes. He is exceedingly grateful for the mercy God has extended to him.
Part of being like Jesus means patience in the midst of adversity. A Christlike person will not whip himself up into a panic when bad things happen. Too often people use bad circumstances as a justification for sin. The problem with practicing this justification is that your sin will only serve to make your bad circumstances even worse. Instead you must remain calm and sober-minded when going through difficult trials. Keeping the mind of Christ during hard seasons will allow you to remain vigilant against bad choices which carry with them the possibility of turning your suffering into needless, self-inflicted misery. As the Spirit of God continues to work in you not only will you become less inclined to sin, but you’ll also become more faithful in your godly duties. Christ is the King who chose to manifest as a servant so He could demonstrate the divine nature of servant-leadership. A faithful person carries out necessary duties with a joyful heart and not a begrudging spirit. A faithful person is also charitable in their judgment of others. One of the most valuable elements of true repentance is the understanding that you were once lost. When you understand how badly you messed up or how desperately you needed help, you’ll be more inclined to extend grace and forgiveness to others who are going through their own repentance.
When the prophet Jeremiah was speaking to Israel he told them they must wash their hearts from evil. He also asked them how long would they allow their wicked thoughts to lodge within them. The Pharisees who heard John’s call for repentance had the same issue because ultimately they didn’t want to repent. Because of their self-righteousness, they convinced themselves that being sons of Abraham was sufficient for their salvation. A modern equivalent is the person who gives himself over to evil while claiming to be following God because of his church attendance. You can imagine someone – and very likely you don’t need to imagine someone – who does all kinds of good works for the church in the sight of others but who in actuality is committing heinous sins behind closed doors. If this person is truly self-righteous and fails to see the error of his ways, he will also be very vocal in his condemnation of others for their own sins.
It’s not hard to rationalize or develop your own justifications for sin. If you struggle with a sin it’s better to realize the sin for what it is than to alleviate your guilt through rationalization. You’re in a far better position when you accept a sin is wrong – even if you continue to struggle with it – than you are if you deceive yourself into self-righteousness. You might be able to trick the people around you into believing your justifications, but you must remember God has been listening to the contents of men’s hearts from the very beginning. He knows all of the false resting places the human soul makes for itself. If you fail to repent you will harbor a lie inside your heart which will corrupt your spirit. Satan is called the Accuser because his desire is for you to feel so much shame that you will be too scared to own the lie. The enemy wants you to fear God in such a way that you will never confess your sins to Him. Jesus came to show you that God is gentle and lowly in heart, and that in Him you will find rest for your souls.
It’s possible some of the Pharisees felt too much shame to repent, but I think it’s more likely they were blind to their own iniquity. As religious Jews, they believed John’s call for repentance was aimed at the sinful Gentiles. This kind of in-group-out-group tribalistic mentality is no stranger to us today. Here’s a good test you can run to ensure your heart remains humble and guarded against self-righteousness: when you read the Bible, listen to a podcast, or hear a sermon where repentance is being discussed – do you catch yourself thinking it’s meant for someone else? Do you catch yourself thinking calls for repentance are meant for the un-redeemed or the degenerate? If your mind immediately shifts toward your enemies when discussions of sin are brought up then that’s evidence of a tribal mentality. A good way to remain humble is to keep in focus the truth that repentance from sin is meant for you. This is the essence of what Jesus means when He says to remove the beam from your own eye before trying to remove the splinter from the eye of your brother. The Pharisees got this backwards. They were so focused on the sins of others that they became blind to the wickedness of their own hearts.
Another way you see this problem show up in the modern world is when people essentially make a deal with death itself. Usually they start with the presupposition that none of us know what happens when we die. That’s fair enough because if you are truly agnostic then Pascal’s Wager should be sufficient to bring you to faith. For those who don’t know Pascal’s Wager it essentially says that it’s better to believe and find out there is no God than to disbelieve and find out there is one. If agnosticism resulted in humble ignorance then it might not be so dangerous. But humble ignorance about the total nature of reality is not where this presupposition ends. What ends up happening is the culture or the individual himself grafts his own invented moral system onto the universe. The person invents his own religion and his own description of God. Using this contrived description he brings solace to his own wicked heart that he’ll be just fine in the afterlife. The darker side of this form of idolatry is when a society uses their invented moral system to justify the mass murder of groups of people who fail to accommodate their tribal ideals. That’s exactly what happened in the twentieth century via totalitarians who emerged after the supposed death of God. The modern deal with death says since none of us know what happens when we die, I’m going to invent in my imagination a fool’s paradise which I myself am naturally qualified to enter for eternity.
John told the Pharisees they would find no favor in God’s sight simply because they were descendants of Abraham. Repentance from sin was meant for them just as much as it was meant for the Gentiles. The basic truth presented in this passage is that religiosity is meaningless if you don’t have God. Your wealth and your worldly successes mean nothing for your salvation. Your social status and how respected you are by the people in your community means nothing for your salvation. Simply growing up in the Church by itself means nothing for your salvation. Turning prayer into theatrics by trying to show yourself as religious means nothing for your salvation. When it comes to your salvation the only thing that matters is have you repented of your sins and are you in relationship with Jesus Christ?
It is a biblical truth that God’s Church will remain in the world even until the second coming of Christ. The Pharisees knew about the promised permanence of the Church, but their arrogance led them to believe since they were God’s chosen people through the Abrahamic covenant, God could not cut them off and risk violating His own promise. That’s when John told them if God wanted to He could raise up sons of Abraham from the stones. At this point John may have been baptizing people in the part of the Jordan River where the twelve stones – which represented the twelve tribes of Israel – were placed as memorials. John may have been saying that God’s supernatural power was such that He could simply create a new Israel right from these stones. Some interpreters also think John was referring to the sinful Gentiles as the stones from which God could raise up a Church and confer the blessing of Abraham. Regardless of where John was pointing the truth remains the same: there was nothing special about being a descendant of Abraham and the need for salvation is equal among all of us. Furthermore, the staying-power of God’s Church in the world is not dependent on us as His followers. Even if an entire generation fails to steward the Church properly, God will simply raise up new people to do the work for Him. There is a certain peace of mind which comes with this understanding because you realize God is in control and He will work all things together for good.
Part of the Pharisees’ misunderstanding of Scripture meant they failed to recognize the signs of the times. If their hearts had been more humble they would have realized the Kingdom of God is at hand. This meant their time for judgment wasn’t far away and repentance better happen now or never. All throughout Scripture we see God exercise tremendous restraint with humanity. Before Israel conquered the land of Canaan all of the nations that lived there had given themselves over to brutal paganism. Child sacrifice was common and easily accepted in such places. Even so, God gave the Canaanites 400 years before allowing them to be conquered. The Bible says He waited until their sin had reached full maturity before He destroyed their societies. The same is true with Sodom and Gomorrah. God was willing to withhold destruction from these cities if even one righteous person could be found in them. But their evil and cruelty had festered for so long that the entire place became corrupt. It’s also the case that God’s judgment is more swift with those who have been given more means to know Him. For example, a theologian who has known God for decades is held to a higher standard of responsibility than is a person in a desolate land who is cut off from the Scriptures. But all people are held to the equal minimum responsibility of repentance in order for true heart-transformation to take place.
Every tree that does not bear fruit in keeping with repentance is cut down and thrown into the fire. This means it doesn’t matter how mighty or how small you are. It doesn’t matter how well you’re able to feign spiritual maturity or how outwardly religious you are. Sometimes God will make a healthy tree go through a pruning process so it can be rid of dead branches and grow more effectively. This happens in the Church when unhealthy congregants or elders are removed from the organization. It also happens on the individual level when you are progressively sanctified and God continues to remove sin from your life. You shouldn’t resist the pruning process because it’s indicative of a healthy core and good potential. When a person is given fully over to evil there is nothing left to prune and the entire tree is hewn down and cast into the flames.
John was careful to explain to his listeners that water baptism didn’t derive any special power from himself. Like communion, baptism is merely a symbolic representation of a spiritual reality which garners its power from the fact that Christ instructed us to do it. Baptism is a physical display of something much deeper and much more important happening inside your soul. You go under the water to show your old self being put to death and when you come up out of the water it shows how you’ve been resurrected into new life with Jesus Christ. Jesus said there was no mortal person greater than John the Baptist, but that even the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than John the Baptist. This means the Spirit of Power had graced John so thoroughly that some onlookers thought he was a reincarnated prophet. But greatness as measured here on earth means nothing compared to greatness in Heaven. John understood this because when speaking of Jesus he said, “One is coming after me who is much mightier than I, whose sandals I am not fit to remove.”
It’s comforting to know how all-powerful Jesus Christ is. The omnipotence of God means all we need to do is remain faithful and He will see us through by His own authority. Scripture says the power of God is made perfect in our weakness. So you might think you’re not capable of surmounting the challenges in front of you – but if you remain faithful God will use your weaknesses to display His own strength and bring glory to Himself. If you want to be honored in the sight of God you must first humble and abase yourself. God will not bestow honor on a person who refuses to glorify Jesus. If a pastor or church leader rises to great influence and uses that influence to bring glory to himself instead of God, it won’t be long before that leader is reduced into a rubble of humility. Jesus lifts up those who are low in their own sight and whose heart’s desire is to honor God.
John tells his listeners that when Christ comes He will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Throughout the Old Testament the Spirit of God rests on individuals and makes them able to do miraculous things. We see the Spirit of God settle on Christ like a dove from Heaven during His own baptism in the Jordan River. The gifts of the Spirit are conferred upon the apostles in the book of Acts and through His power they are able to do extraordinary things. You should seek the indwelling of the Holy Spirit because He is the One who empowers you to become the kind of person who is characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He is also the one who comforts you in the midst of difficult seasons and graces you with peace which extends beyond all comprehension.
And then there’s this idea of God being described as fire. This is not the first time in the Scriptures where God presents Himself as fire. In Revelation the seven spirits of God appear as seven lamps of fire. Fire brings light and the Spirit of God illuminates your spiritual understanding. Fire brings warmth and the Spirit of God burns within you to comfort you and keep you warm as you walk through the cold and often loveless world. Sometimes the Spirit of God can burn so strong within you that you yourself become a source of warmth and light for others. Fire purifies and the Spirit of God purifies you of your insufficiencies and your sins. When something is cast into the fire it becomes hot just like the fire itself – in the same way the Spirit of God makes you holy like Jesus is holy. Just as fire raises itself towards Heaven, the Spirit of God moves you on a path toward your final destination in eternity with God.
This passage ends with John pointing out that in addition to being our Savior, Christ is the ultimate Judge of all people. The eternal wisdom of the Father which characterizes Jesus means He sees in secret and He examines the hearts of all people by the only true light. The illustration John used is that of wheat being sorted from chaff on a threshing floor. The Church as we know it functions like a threshing floor. True believers are substantial and useful while hypocrites are empty and useless. Both give the same external professions which is why Christ is the One who judges who is who and not us. He is able to see straight into your heart and look past the many manipulations you may be using on your peers. This is a scary thought for those who are given over to a spirit of deception, but it’s comforting for the faithful. If you’ve ever been improperly judged by a Christian then you understand the comfort and gratitude which comes with knowing Jesus is the final arbiter of truth and He does not improperly judge. If human beings were in charge of determining who is saved and who isn’t we would all be in trouble.
God has carried out this sorting process many times throughout history. In Scripture it happens most notably when He judges Israel and wipes them out – preserving only a remnant of those who remained faithful. But there is a day coming in the future when the final judgment will be rendered and sinners will be separated from saints for eternity. We can rest in God’s promise that not a single person who believed on Him will be lost. This world is dangerous for followers of Jesus and so often it feels like evil reigns supreme. But in Heaven the saints will be gathered together once and for all – never again to be scattered or lost. You will be safe. The sting of death and the pain of suffering will be no more. Never again will you be subject to the wicked intentions of your neighbor and never again will you be tempted by the wicked affections of your heart. So while things are certainly difficult in this life and while you are guaranteed to taste the grief of tragedy, even more so are you guaranteed to taste the goodness of eternity with God. Allow your spirit to find peace in this promise and keep your eyes focused on Heaven. Viewing your own life and viewing the world in light of eternity will bring you the rest you need – but it will also spark a light within you which will allow you to be like Jesus. You’ll carry a little piece of Heaven with you everywhere you go.
If you enjoy this podcast, please rate it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to it. You can follow The MHB Podcast on Facebook or Twitter @mhbpodcast. Tell your friends about it and share it on social media. If you’d like email notifications of new episodes or if you’d like to support my work directly, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on my website at mhbpodcast.com. This work is made possible by listener support so your generosity is greatly appreciated. Thank you all for joining me, and I will see you in the next episode.
The MHB Podcast 