Repentance

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Last Sunday evening at the ABF at Brandon and Christina’s home we had a question and answer session about the morning sermon… hopefully you will recall I preached on The Lord’s Prayer last week, and I spent a good deal of time on the subject of forgiveness.  One of the questions came from part of a quote that I read… here is part of that quote:

I forgave her and it took me a whole year and I had to forgive her in small sums over that whole twelve months.  I paid those sums whenever I spoke to her and kept myself from rehashing the past.

Luke 7:18-35

As we come to our text today we are going to find John the Baptist in prison.  Let me remind you how he got there:

Luke 3:15-20:: Now as the people were in expectation, and all reasoned in their hearts about John, whether he was the Christ or not, 16 John answered, saying to all, “I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” 18 And with many other exhortations he preached to the people. 19 But Herod the tetrarch, being rebuked by him concerning Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, 20 also added this, above all, that he shut John up in prison.

John the Baptist preached boldly… he preached a message of repentance.  He even called the religious leaders of his day a “brood of vipers.”  John did not stop short of declaring the whole counsel of God.  Yet what did John have to show for it? 

Luke 5:27-32

“As soon as I get well I am going to make an appointment to go see the doctor.”  What do you think of that statement?  I think we would all raise our eyebrows and say that person certainly isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.  I think it is quite obvious that doctors are for sick people… not for those who are well.

Luke 3:1-9

Remember the big picture… “Station God” has been off the air for roughly 400 years, but all that is about to change… and change in a big way.  God is about to speak again loudly and clearly through a prophet (John the Baptist) and then through His Son.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Luke 3:1,2: Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene,  2 while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.