June 27, 2000

• Luke 3:1-3 Setting the Stage for Jesus

   

  Setting the Stage for Jesus, Part 1

  Luke 3:1

  As Luke begins chapter 3 he is launching the story of Jesus Christ.  The birth narrative of Jesus and John is contained in chapters 1 and 2.  Thirty years have now passed since the birth of John and the birth of Jesus and it is time for the beginning of the ministry of Jesus Christ.  Thirty years have intervened in the life of John and the life of Jesus.  They're both around the age of thirty when John begins his ministry of announcing the arrival of Messiah and about six months later Messiah steps on to the scene.

  But because Luke is a careful historian, he wants to create for us the historical setting, the social setting, the political setting and the religious setting that really creates the context in which the story of Jesus unfolds.

  In both cases you have 30 very private years.  Gabriel is silent for 30 years, he doesn't tell anybody who John is or who Jesus is.  Zacharias and Elizabeth by now have died and gone on to glory.  Joseph has, no doubt, died.  Mary is in her mid forties.  Simeon and Anna were old at the time they met the baby Jesus and surely they're gone as well.  No angelic host has appeared in the heaven to make any announcement.  The prophet John hasn't said anything in the thirty years and Jesus only one comment, and that at the age of twelve, acknowledging Himself to be the Son of God.  So they are thirty silent years.  And the Messiah living in the obscure, out-of-the-way, off-beat path town called Nazareth and nobody in Nazareth was pointing to Him saying, "This is the Messiah," not even Mary.  There was no prophet.  There was no word from God.  There was no angelic visitation. 

  And John far from the cities lived out in the desert for his thirty years.  He was, in every sense, a wilderness man.  He wore a camel's hair garment which and his diet, according to Matthew 3:4, was locust and wild honey.  This is really a mountain man, in every sense an unrefined, tough kind of life, but he was uninfluenced by the establishment.  He was apart from the social and religious establishment.

  In Luke 3:1, the real story begins and God breaks 425 years of prophetic silence.  "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea an Trachonitis and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness."

  So on to center stage comes John, the first prophet in over 400 years, the last of the Old Testament prophets.  And he has two tasks.  One, to prepare the people for the Messiah.  Two, to present the Messiah to the people.  So part of his ministry focuses on the people getting them ready for the Messiah, and the other part on the Messiah, presenting Him to the people.  And we'll see that unfold in the rest of chapter 3.

  We haven't heard anything from John since the brief comment in chapter 1:80 that says he was growing, becoming strong in spirit and living in the desert until his ministry began.  But then look at verse 2, the end of the verse, "The word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness."

  The phrase "the word of God came to John" deserves some scrutiny.  When you see a word, the word "word" in Greek, in English I should say, you only have one word for it.  The word has only one English word, "word."  But in the Greek "word" is a translation of two Greek words.  It can be logos, which is probably the most common one and the other is rhema.  Logos has to do with the general concept.  So we read ton legon te theo in Luke 5:1, "the word of God," and that's a general reference to Scripture, or general reference to revelation.  Logos is the more general of the two words.  This is the word rhema.  Rhema actually means "a specific statement," it is not general, it is particular.  And so what you have here is not the idea that scripture came to John.  John did not reveal scripture, John didn't write scripture, John the apostle did, as we know, but not John the prophet.  This rather is a specific word coming to him from God calling him into ministry.  This is the rhema of God, the special statement from God launching him into ministry.

  This is his divine calling.  The divine silence of 425 years is broken as God calls John to his prophetic ministry.  Now it's very important to notice this little phrase "the word of God came to John," because that is a classic phrase that any Jew would immediately recognize.  Luke uses it very thoughtfully because of what he wants us to understand.

  If you go back in to Genesis 15 you run into the great patriarch Abraham.  In Genesis 15:1 it says, "The word of the Lord came to Abraham."  In 1 Samuel 15:10 it says, "The word of the Lord came to Samuel."  In 2 Samuel 7:4, "The word of the Lord came to the prophet Nathan."  In 1 Kings 17 it says, "The word of the Lord came to Elijah."  And so the word of the Lord, or the word of God coming to someone was indicative of a calling from God, and we find that particularly illustrated among the prophets.

  Jeremiah 1 says, "The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign."  So it was a way to introduce a prophet to say "the word of the Lord came."  And in Jeremiah's case, the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.  And the introduction of John the Baptist very closely parallels that, as we'll see in a moment. 

  That is the way Ezekiel is introduced.  Ezekiel 1:3, "The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel."  Hosea 1:1, Joel 1:1, Jonah 1:1, Micah 1:1, Zephaniah 1:1, Haggai verse 3, and then Zechariah 1:1, Malachi 1:1, all the same, the word of the Lord came...the word of the Lord came...the word of the Lord came.

  That constituted in the Jewish mind a calling for a prophet, a calling for one who would be a spokesman for God, going all the way back to Abraham.  So Luke carefully chooses words to put John in the prophetic succession.  Even though it's been 425 years, it does not mean that the prophetic office has ended.  There has been a gap but the Old Testament prophetic office doesn't culminate until the arrival of John.  So John is spoken of in very familiar terminology to place him in the succession of prophets and, in fact, as we know from Matthew 11, of all the prophets who ever prophesied, John is the greatest prophet who ever lived because he was given the greatest privilege and that was to actually introduce on sight the Messiah Himself.  And that is why Jesus said of him, "Among the prophets, among those in the Kingdom there's never been a greater than John the Baptist."

  Luke identifies then the call of God in the life of John.  He identifies John so we have no mistake, he is John, the son of Zacharias, not any other John, but the son of Zacharias the priest to whom was promised a child who would be the forerunner of Messiah.  And it is the John, the son of Zacharias, in case there might be another Zacharias with a son named John, the one who is in the wilderness.  And we go back again to chapter 1 verse 80 where it tells us John spent his whole life in the desert, or the wilderness.  So this is that John. 

  The wilderness of Judea would be from the north end of the Dead Sea, about half way up the Jordan River, to the Sea of Galilee.  It is a barren, devastated area, and goes from the hill country of Judea on the west of the Jordan River, north toward the Dead Sea.  Most people would draw a sort of a northern boundary at the Jabbok River, there's a little river called the Jabbok River that comes from the east and flows into the Jordan.  Somewhere halfway toward the Sea of Galilee, that area would be the area of wilderness where John was living.  Eking out an existence, believe me, that would be a very difficult place to live and the difficulty of it demonstrated by his diet of locusts and wild honey.

  So here is this wilderness man, this prophet called by God, born by a miracle conception between two people who were barren and pass child bearing capability, this one who is to prepare the people for and present the Messiah to when He arrives.  And with the launch of John in his ministry, the privacy is over and the whole presentation of John becomes very public.  In fact, the whole country was going out eventually to hear John preach, his ministry was so public and followed by the ministry of Jesus which was public.  In fact, it was so public in Acts 26:26 the apostle Paul is talking to King Agrippa and he says to him, "For the king knows about these matters," the matters of Christ, His life, His death, His resurrection Paul had been preaching about.  He says, "Agrippa, I know you know about these matters because none of these things escape your notice because this has not been done in a corner," Acts 26:26.  The ministry went from 30 years of being very private, to three years of very public ministry.  And that all is launched by the call of John who steps on to center stage to get people ready for the Messiah and present Him about six months later when He arrives.

  To understand the ministry of Jesus, to understand His difficulties as He ministered, to understand the hostility, His execution, to understand the hostility toward John who eventually got his head chopped off, to understand the whole drama recorded in Luke's gospel, we need to get the setting.  "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Iduraea and Trachonitis and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John..."  Now all of that is a tapestry that provides a backdrop for the drama that is going to unfold.

  We're going to see the historical setting, the geographical setting, the theological setting and the prophetical setting.  We're going to see how this fits in history, how it fits geographically, theologically and prophetically.  And those four will unfold for us as we look at these opening verses.

  Let's look at the historical setting. Luke starts out by saying, "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar...if all he wanted us to know was a specific year, then why did he give the next six names?  The idea is not to identify a chronological time.  The idea is to identify a context historically, politically, and religiously.  He wants to paint the picture, whether it was in 29 or 26 A.D. that was the specific year, whatever the month might have been we don't know that, the issue is to understand the context.

  These were dark, desperate, opressive times for Israel.  These were dark times.  They were apostate times, hypocritical times, times when the promises to Abraham to David and to Jeremiah in the New Covenant were not being realized.  They had been under oppression for a long, long time by Gentile powers.  They resented and fought against that.  The Gentiles had brought idols in, they had desecrated Israel and the temple.  They continued to do that even under the Roman rule as they had done it under the Greeks.  There had been rebellions, the most notable of which was the Maccabean revolt to throw the Greeks out because of their idolatrous impositions on Israel's life.  These were very difficult times when they did not enjoy their freedom, when they couldn't see the promises of the covenant coming to pass but it looked like the very opposite.  There was no true king in Israel.  There was no true land given to them as had been promised to Abraham.  There were no real blessings and the whole nation was even religiously corrupt, as well as being politically oppressed and in bondage by an occupying Gentile, Roman idolatrous power. 

  Luke wants us to get a feel for this and that's why he gives us these seven names.  And these are names that we know about in history so we can reconstruct the scene.

  The first name is Tiberius Caesar...in the fifteenth year of the reign, really the Greek word is not a technical word, it's just a generic word for the governing.  It's hegemonias(?), the ruling, the governing.  In the fifteenth year of the governing of Tiberius Caesar.  And again the fifteenth year is mentioned and that's helpful to us, Luke isn't setting a date or he wouldn't have bothered to give the other six names, but he does give us a little help on fixing the point of time.  He's more concerned about the conditions then he is the chronology, but the fifteen year does help us because it allows us to establish some very important dates which do show up at the entrance of Jesus on Palm Sunday into the city in fulfillment of precise dates given by Daniel. 

  When did Tiberius Caesar start to reign?"  There are some who say he began his official reign the year that the predecessor died, Caesar Augustus.  We know exactly when Tiberius died according to Roman record, he died in August 19 of the year A.D. 14.  So if Tiberius took over that year, you can add fifteen years, that would mean that John receives his call from God and launches his ministry in the year 29...14 plus add 15, that's 29.  That would put John's ministry in the year 28 or 29.  And there are scholars who have marshalled reasons to support that view.  We cannot be dogmatic about this, although I have a preference and I'll try to explain it to you.

  There's a more traditional view that carries for me great weight and that is the view that fifteen years is not to be counted from the death of Augustus, but it's to be counted from a number of years before he died so that it gets us to a different date at the end, and I'll explain what I mean.  Tiberius became was made Caesar by the Roman senate.  It was not a monarchy passed down generationally.  But the Caesars tended to be very power hungry, as you can imagine, and Augustus was no different.  So Augustus, they were sure, would want to keep this in his family and pass it on to his sons and so the senate made the provision that his authority would end at his death and that it would not be able to be passed on to his sons.  This was done in order to preserve the Senate's right to choose the next Caesar.

  But Augustus was wily, influential and powerful, and in order to avoid losing this power in his family, before he died, before his responsibility ended at his death, he appointed a co-caesar, and the idea was that he could appoint this co-caesar years before his time was up and then it would automatically pass to this man who would be the man of his choice and through that man could pass his own heirs.

  Unfortunately the co-regent that he appointed died before he did.  That didn't stop him, he selected a second choice, he selected a man named Tiberius who happened to be his son-in-law.  Now the historians tell us he hated him.  Most of the Caesars hated everybody, but Augustus hated Tiberius, his son-in-law, but he wanted to be able to pass the emperor's position on to his grandsons and so he chose Tiberius and made him co-caesar.  In fact, he adopted Tiberius and made Tiberius his own son by adoption, and in the Roman world that was...that was better than being a born son.  If somebody adopted you, that was by choice.  If you were born into the family, that was just the way it happened.

  So in 4 A.D. Augustus made Tiberius his own adopted son and then in 11 A.D. he made Tiberius co-caesar, again not because he liked him but because he wanted to pass the throne through him to his grandsons.  So if you start when Tiberius actually began governing, the fifteenth year of his governing, if he took his co-caesar position which, by the way, Augustus forced the senate to affirm so that it was legal, the senate actually affirmed it, if that happened in 11 A.D. add 15 years to that and you have 25 or 26 A.D., preferably 26 A.D.  So I take it that that's the better way to understand this, that it starts in 11 A.D., the year then is 26 A.D.  That means the calendar that we use which is based on the other chronology is off four years. Christ would have been born then in 4 B.C. and by the age of 30 it would have been 26 A.D. which is consistent with this chronology.

  Now there are other matters that get introduced into this discussion, such as Syrian calendars, and such as the fact that the Jews may have only counted the reign of a king from the Jewish new year following his enthronement.  And there are people who want to throw all kinds of things into the gears on this issue.  But I really do prefer the 11 A.D. time because that is the time when he became officially the Caesar, had all the power of Caesar over all the provinces as co-caesar with Augustus.  That takes us to 25 to 26 A.D. scenario.

  I'll give you just a few quick supporting arguments.  Luke, the writer, could understand a co-regency because in verse 2 he understands the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas and although Caiaphas was the official high priest, Annas was the real power and so you have there, he says, the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.  That shows that he understood a co-regency in a high priest role and could well be an analogy for him understanding the same with regard to Tiberius and Augustus.

   It is also very important to note that Josephus, the Jewish historian, in his Antiquities, tells us that Herod the Great began to build the temple in the year 19 B.C., nineteen years before B.C. begins.  In 19 B.C. according to Josephus, Herod began to build the temple.  That would be the eighteenth year of his reign which began in 37 B.C., so it's 19.

  When you come to John 2:20 the Jews said the temple had been being built for 46 years.  The temple has been under construction for 46 years, they said, when Jesus came to the Passover.  Jesus comes to the Passover, and He says He's going to destroy this temple and raise it up, they think He's talking about the temple of Herod which he started in 19 B.C., he's been building it for 46 years, they said that would make the date for that Passover 27 A.D. and that would mean that Christ's ministry began in the latter part of 26 and John's ministry began six months earlier.  So 26 is a very reasonable assumption.

  Another thought is many scholars believe that the events around Christ's birth told in Matthew 2 lead us to believe that He was born shortly before the death of Herod the Great.  Herod the Great, you remember, wanting to destroy all the babies, so that Jesus would have been born shortly before the death of Herod the Great.  So he died April 4 of the year 4 B.C.  So Christ could have been born in 4 B.C., just before the death of Herod in April and that would mean you add 30 years and you're back at 26 again.  And Jesus, according to verse 23 of Luke 3, you can see it there, began His ministry at about 30 years of age.

  The reason I give you that is because all the way through the chronology of the life of Christ, this comes into play because there are certain Passovers, certain prophecies being fulfilled.  And when I wrote the MacArthur Study Bible, the notes on the study Bible, this is one of the great challenges you have, you have to pick a chronology and then it has to be consistent.  If you look in the charts at the beginning of the New Testament, you'll see a time line for the New Testament and you'll see I have chosen the year 26 to begin that time line which I think is consistent with that and makes for a consistent chronology all the way through.  Therefore in actuality Christ would have been born, if we adjust the calendar, Christ would have been born in 4 B.C., so those people who believe that Jesus has to come two thousand years after His birth have already missed it by four years.  

  The reign of Tiberius Caesar is linked with a number of trials, linked with treasons, sedition.  There were lots of Jews when he was the emperor, when he was the Caesar, there were lots of Jews deported out of Israel and taken to Rome for trials and sedition and things like that.  He was a typical Caesar with all of the bizarre machinations, all of the expressions of cruelty, all of the self-centeredness, all of the ego gone mad...the whole thing was all part of Tiberius.  And in his latter years he descended into dementia, to one degree or another.  His mental abilities were so severely hindered that the last part of his rule has been called "A reign of terror," a combination of his wickedness unchecked because of his irrationality.  He was in many ways the worse possible kind of ruler.

  Over the life of Israel hangs this great cloud, this dark ominous cloud by the name of Caesar Tiberius and he is oppressive and he at any time can reign down all the evil of the Roman purpose on their heads.  To be ruled by a Gentile pagan, uncircumcised idolater is the worst possible scenario for the Jewish people.  And then in addition to that, one more name, Pontius Pilate, familiar to all of us, and just reading his name heightens the drama, doesn't it, because we know how he plays such an important role in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  And it says, "Pontius Pilate was governor."  It's not a noun here, it's actually a participle.  He was governing, it's the same generic word from hegemoneuo.  He was ruling in the land of Israel, in the land of Palestine. 

  We know about him because in 1961 there was a plaque discovered and a dedicatory statement discovered in Caesarea.  Caesarea was the center of Roman occupation, you can visit the ruins today and still see some of the original Roman ruins there.  But in Caesarea where the Romans had their main occupation center in the land of Palestine, apparently there is a building built there called the Tiberium, named for Tiberius. The city of Tiberius which you can visit in Israel today was named for Tiberius.  It's on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee.  But in 1961 there was discovered there a dedicatory plaque on a building called the Tiberium and on that dedicatory plaque is the name "Pontius Pilate."  Pontius Pilate is a real person.  He has the dedicatory plaque because he built the building in honor of Tiberius and called it "Tiberium."

  On that plaque he is called "Prefectus."  Prefectus was the official title, a Roman Prefect or Procurator.  He ruled over the land of Palestine in Israel from 26 to 36, so he came into power when John came into his prophetic office.  The way that happened is fascinating.  When Herod the Great died, Herod was an Idumaean, not a Jew, from Idumaea.  Herod ruled that area.  He was sort of a petty king.  The Romans let him rule because they needed somebody to rule there, he was familiar with the people and the tradition and the customs, he had the power base there and he was favorable to Rome, he was compliant to Rome, he did what Rome wanted, so they left him there.  When Herod died in 4 B.C., as I already mentioned, he had three sons, Archelaus, Philip and Herod Antipas, three sons.  And when he died he wanted the kingdom split to those three sons.  He wanted a third to go to Archelaus, a third to go to Philip, and a third to go to Herod Antipas, that's the way he wanted to divide it up.

  That happened when he died.  However, Archelaus who got Judea, Samaria and Idumaea which is south of Judea, that's really the main part of Palestine, he was so bad that ten years later he was deposed.  He survived for ten years until 6 B.C. 

  They had to have somebody else to rule that are, Judea, Samaria and Idumaea.  They just combined it into one area, called it Judea and put in a series of prefects, the fifth of which was Pilate.  So you had Archelaus ruling that area for ten years, and then you had a succession of four rulers and finally in 26, the same time John steps in, you have Pilate.  So those dates coincide very well.  It was at the time when Pontius Pilate had just stepped in to governing Judea because Judea was now the name for all three areas.

  So Pontius Pilate brings some tremendous interest to anybody who understands anything about the story of Jesus.  Pontius Pilate, what an amazing person he was.  He had a deserved reputation of being implacable, inflexible, self-willed, wicked.  One writer says his rule was characterized by briberies, insults, robberies, outrageous, wanton injuries, frequent executions without trial and endless savage veracity...Pontius Pilate.  And, you know, it was under Pontius Pilate that Jesus was executed by the Romans.

  You not only have this interesting figure Pontius Pilate, but you also have Herod, the next one, Herod the tetrarch of Galilee.  Herod was Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, the brother of Archelaus who originally had ruled where Pilate was now the Roman ruler.  And Herod Antipas had Galilee and Peraea, he was given that in 4 B.C. when his father died.  And by the way, he ruled until 39 A.D., so whenever from now on in the story of Jesus you read Herod, it's this Herod.  Herod the Great is dead, he dies just after the birth of Jesus in 4 B.C. and now Herod Antipas rules through the whole life of Jesus.  Herod Antipas was a full brother of Archelaus.  herod Antipas was, as we shall see as the story unfolds, also a part of the execution of Jesus.  He received Jesus from Annas and Caiaphas to hold a sort of mock trial as the petty king and mocked Jesus in really frighteningly blasphemous ways, as the story unfolds at the end of the account of the life of Jesus.  He incensed the Jews, Herod Antipas did, he built a capital city, he built Tiberius only he built it on a Jewish cemetery.  And then he put idols in public places.  They hated him.  He just flaunted idolatry in their faces, he flaunted their traditions and their sacred ground.

  His devotion to Rome was so strong and he was such a wicked man that it was Herod Antipas who chopped John's head off because he made a promise to a girl who seduced him with a dance and said I'd give her anything she wanted and she wanted John's head on a platter, and he served it up.  As I said, Herod Antipas, we'll see in Luke 23, plays a part in the execution of Jesus.

  There is mentioned of his brother Philip who was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, that's northeast of the Sea of Galilee.  And he ruled from 4 B.C. to 34 A.D., a long rule of 37 years.  The capital of that region is a city way up at the head waters of the Jordan River called Caesarea Philippi, another city named after Caesar.  Philip was a brother, another Herodian, a member of the Herodian family and he ruled that area.

  One other person is named, Lysanias, tetrarch of Abilene. For years critics said Luke's history is bad here because the Lysanias we know about in history lived...died 34, 36 B.C. and he was killed by Marc Antony, so Luke's way off because Lysanias has got to be dead for fifty-some years by this time.  That was until recent archaeologists have discovered some tablets with inscriptions showing Luke's accuracy to be precise.  The record of these inscriptions tells us there was another man named Lysanias who ruled precisely in the time of John and precisely in the region of Abilene which is north of Galilee and west of Damascus.  And so the archaeologists have aided us in supporting the testimony of Luke. 

  They're all Gentiles and all to one degree or another wicked.  And they all have power over the holy land that was promised to Abraham.  And they are all rulers and it isn't David and it isn't a Jewish king and it isn't anybody in the Messianic line.  The word "tetrarch" is repeated here three times.  A tetrarch was a low-level, low-ranking king, a petty king, a small-time king, a petty prince.  And here is Israel under the dominating power of the Gentile Caesar and being ruled by a quartet of petty princes, all Gentiles, all uncircumcised pagans, all idolaters, and there is no fulfillment and there is no freedom and things couldn't have been worse.  They are occupied and oppressed.  They're in bondage to the most powerful, most perverse and most petty of idolatrous Gentiles, far from having the promises of God through Abraham and David and Jeremiah fulfilled.  With all that Gentile heathen cloud ominously hanging over them, their life was very fragile and they had really no freedom to enjoy.  And worse, and this is for next time, it was also, verse 2 says, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.  And if you think the Gentiles were bad, you haven't seen anything yet.  These were far worse because they were corrupt in the name of God.

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  Setting the Stage for Jesus, Part 2

  Luke 3:2-3

  Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior of the world, the Deliverer of Israel began His ministry publicly at a time when Israel's condition was most desperate and He was most needed.  And Luke wants us to understand that.  He opens this third chapter launching the ministry of John and Jesus with seven names, knowing that we would explore those names and find out the setting and the scene at the time when the Messiah began His public ministry.  These names are filled with historical significance, spiritual significance and they create for us a marvelous historical setting to understand the ministry of John and the ministry of Jesus.

  In general, the five names given in Luke 3:1 are all Gentiles, and they tell us that the people of God and their land was under the power and control of pagans, idolaters with disdain for Jehovah and for the Jews.  The two names in Luke 1:2, Annas and Caiaphas who were the high priests, also tell us about the religious condition of Israel at the time, for they were corrupt, perverse, apostate leaders.  Given the highest spiritual responsibility in the land, they were the basest of men.

  And when you look at these seven names, as Luke knows any Bible student will, you begin to see the darkness of the time when the Lord began His ministry.  It was a time of corruption, wickedness, hypocrisy and legalism.  It was a time when the nation desperately needed to repent, and that's why in verse 3, "The word of God came to John, John began his ministry," and in verse 4, "He preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."  The great need in the land of Israel was for spiritual revival.  The great need was for repentance and forgiveness. 

  It was the darkest of times both politically and religiously.  It was the darkest of times spiritually.  The people were under the political power of pagan idolaters.  The people were under the religious influence of wicked high priests.  The people were under the spiritual pervasive dominance of a legalistic, hypocritical form of religion.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  This is part of what the apostle Paul calls "the fullness of times."  When Bible students study Galatians 4 and the statement that God sent forth His Son in the fullness of time, you can understand a lot of things about what made it the fullness of time, Roman roads had been built everywhere in the known world and therefore there was a very easy way for the gospel to be spread.  The Roman peace had basically leveled every wall and opened every border so that again the gospel could be spread over the world, as it were.

  But also, it was a crucial time in the nation Israel.  They had not any realization of Abrahamic Covenant promise.  They were not in the land that God had given to Abraham.  And they were being literally oppressed and held in bondage by Gentiles who had the real power over the land that was promised to them.  It was not a time for blessing, it was a time of suffering and of pain, and a time of bondage. 

  They certainly weren't enjoying what had been promised to David in the Davidic Covenant.  They did not have a kingdom and a King in the line of David, they had no king of their own.  And they not only did not have their own kingdom, but they weren't ruling over the rest of the world and influencing others.  None of the promises to Abraham and David seemed to have been realized.

  Even the promises made to Jeremiah and Ezekiel in what was called the New Covenant, they did not enjoy. They didn't even enjoy a true salvation, true forgiveness, the granting of the Holy Spirit because the nation as such was engulfed in legalism and hypocrisy. 

  The conditions were as bad as they could be and they had been that way for hundreds of years.  The Old Testament had finished with the promise that the sun of righteousness would arise with healing in His beams.  And the Old Testament closed with the hope of the Messiah, but four hundred-plus years had gone by and there is no Messiah and Gentile power is becoming more and more and more entrenched.  The Jews are sort of hoping against hope that they will get Abrahamic Covenant blessing, that they will get Davidic Covenant blessing, New Covenant blessing.  The realities of the promises of God will come to pass, but where is the Savior?  Where is the Deliverer?  Where is the Messiah?

  "In the fifteenth year in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness."

  John was called by that word from God, called into his prophetic ministry which he had been waiting for for thirty years.  Now that the private life is going to go public and soon after the very private life of Jesus will go public, as well.

  In presenting to us all these names, Luke is giving us the historical setting.  Down in verse 3 he will give us the geographical setting, and then he will give us the spiritual setting also in verse 3, and then verses 4 to 6 the prophetical setting.  

  You can read these in a matter of seconds, but you would miss so much that establishes the environment for the ministry of Jesus and leads inevitably to the execution of John and the execution of Jesus.  It's a sad way to treat the revelation of God that's been awaited for hundreds of years.  And just the mention of names like Caesar, Pontius Pilate, and Herod, Annas and Caiaphas catapult you immediately to the other end of the life of Christ and His own death because those people play a role in that. 

  It's a dark night then in the land as Jesus comes to begin His public ministry, as John comes some months before Jesus to announce that He's coming and to get the people ready.  But, you know, the darkest night is usually right before the dawn and in order that we might see the brightness of the light of Jesus, the backdrop of darkness needs to be carefully understood.

  Israel has no true king.  Oh they had lots of petty kings, lots of tetrarchs.  They are small-time kings, petty kings, but it has no true king, it has no king from the loins of David, none to whom the kingdom really belongs.  It has no unity as a nation, it is fragmented, it is split up into four parts, one ruled by Pontius Pilate, one by Herod, one by Philip and one by Lysanias.  And all of that is under the power of Tiberius Caesar who has really unilateral power to do whatever he wants to do across the great Roman Empire.

  There is no true religion.  The high priests, Annas and Caiaphas, are corrupt.  The priesthood is divided into fragments.  There are legalistic, hypocritical priests called Pharisees and there are liberal anti-supernaturalist priests called Sadducees.  There is no real spiritual leadership and there's very little hope for change.  It's been a long time, no prophet, no word from God, and no Messiah and that's the background.

  You have five characters mentioned, all are non-Jews and all rule in Israel. They all have some measure of power.  Tiberius Caesar, of course, having the great power as the Caesar who is literally over the entire Roman Empire.  But under Caesar comes these four rulers who are ruling in Israel.  The reason for that is because Herod the Great, the Idumaean king who ruled the whole land, before he died in 4 B.C. just some time after the birth of Christ, before Herod died he asked that the Romans would split his kingdom into four parts and give one part to each of his four sons.  And they did that, believing, or course, that they could gain what they needed out of the sons of Herod, they put them in place and they became tetrarchs which means a ruler over a fourth.

  The first one was Archelaus.  Herod dies in 4 B.C., so Archelaus steps in.  Herod, just as a note, was an Idumaean, not a Jew.  He was given power by Rome and he ruled for 36 years.  And when he died they split the kingdom in four parts.  The first part went to his son Archelaus who was a vicious, wicked, brutal man.  He takes power in 4 B.C., ten years later in 6 A.D. he is deposed and he was deposed, he was ruling Judea which is where Jerusalem is, north of that Samaria, south of that Idumaea, the main populated part of the land was his area.  He's deposed in a ten year span from 4 B.C. to 6 A.D., he is deposed.  In his place the Romans put a series of five prefects, they were called.  The fifth one is Pontius Pilate.  He rules from the year 26 which is precisely the fifteenth year from the reign of Tiberius Caesar, so he came into power right at this time, till 36.  He rules a ten-year span.  The ministry of Jesus was a three-year span, so he was there through the ministry of Jesus, of course.  He was very, very much a player in the death of Jesus and then ruled for some time after that.  So he gets one of those sections, the main section which once belonged to Archelaus who was deposed.

  The second section went to a man called Herod, that's Herod Antipas his official name.  He took over Galilee, the north, and Peraea, a section as well in the north.  And he reigned a long time 42 years, also a wicked man.  He covers the entire ministry of Jesus.  His reign starts in 4 B.C. and goes all the way for 42 years through the entire time of Jesus.  So when in the life of Jesus you're referring to Herod, that's the Herod being referred to, Herod Antipas, one of the sons of Herod the Great, also a wicked man who beheaded John the Baptist.

  The third mentioned is Philip.  He is another son of Herod.  He was, I suppose you could say, the best of a bad lot.  They were all pretty bad, he was the best of the bad.  He ruled from 4 B.C. for about 38 years, until 34 A.D., ruling again in an area in the north called Ituraea and Trachonitis.

  The fourth section is ruled by a man named Lysanias about whom we know very little, except he did live at that time.  There's another name by the same name who lived a lot earlier and died in 34 to 36 B.C., being killed by Marc Antony, but this is another Lysanias who ruled in the fourth area.

  The land is all fragmented, all cut up, all by petty monarchs who do whatever they want to do to exact upon the people whatever they want to exact, who really have a sort of unassailable power who are basically wicked, evil, idolatrous people.  All these petty monarchs in Israel are under the sovereign power of the immensely dominant and sovereign Caesar Tiberius, successor to Augustus, who came into rule in the year 11 A.D.  And so fifteen years later, this is about 26 A.D.  He ruled all the way to 37 A.D. so he had a long rule from 11 to 37.

  This is a wicked, idolatrous environment for the Jewish people.  This is their land, this is God's land, Jerusalem is the apple of God's eye, this should be God's land and God's people and what are these uncircumcised, wicked Gentiles do controlling all of it?  This was a terrible thing for them to endure.  And in some ways they wouldn't even admit it.  In John 8 they said to Jesus, "We have never been in bondage to any man."  What a ridiculous statement that was.  That was not reality.  

  The reality of the condition was they were under Gentile control but in the heart they wouldn't acknowledge it.  "We're not in bondage to any man."  We are a people only answerable to God was what they were holding out for in the heart.  But the reality was they despised this Gentile occupation and this fragmenting of their land under these whimsical, wicked rulers.  And they didn't like idolatry and the Roman world was filled with idols, including Caesar who was a god by his own designation and to be worshiped as a god, as deity, and that caused no end of problems for them.  Here was Caesar, the ultimate ruler of Israel, who himself was taking a place reserved only for Jehovah and violation of the first command to have no other gods.

  In all honesty, the Jews weren't always so good about despising idolatry.  We remember back in the history of Israel that they engaged in all kinds of idolatrous practices, and were judged repeatedly by God for it.  The kingdoms were split after Solomon.  The unified kingdom was under Saul, David, Solomon, and after Solomon the kingdom split, the northern kingdom known as Israel, the southern kingdom known as Judah, made up of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, all the other ten tribes in the north.  There never was a good king in the whole northern kingdom, the whole kingdom engaged in idolatry and eventually in 722 B.C. was conquered by the Assyrians who took them captive and they never came back.  So idolatry had wiped out the northern kingdom. 

  It wasn't long after that that the southern kingdom, engaging also in idolatry, was judged by God.  In 586 B.C. the Babylonians came, destroyed the country, Jerusalem and the temple and took them captive there.  Seventy years later the southern kingdom, Judah, God allowed to return from captivity.  They were led back by Zerubbabel when Cyrus, the Babylonian king, gave them their release.  They came back, built the city, built the walls and reestablished the nation.  Never again have they engaged in idolatry.  They were basically cured from idolatry by the Babylonian captivity.  They got the message, the price was infinitely high.  They saw what happened to the northern kingdom, Israel, which never returned. They saw what happened in the south and they hated idols.  Their religion wasn't true, it was legalistic, superficial, ceremonial.  Their hearts were far from God.  They had a zeal for God but not according to knowledge.  And that's why Paul said he wished himself accursed for the true salvation of Israel, but at least they were not idolatrous.  And so the occupation of Romans dragging in all their symbols of idolatry, chafed on them...and they despised all of that.

  Where was the promise of God to Abraham for their own land and their own blessings?  Where was the promise of God to David for their own King and their own Kingdom?  They had been slaves to the Gentiles for many, many years, all the way back to the Greeks, all the way back to the Persians when they were in Babylon.  And after that, when they finally got back in the land, the Greeks conquered them and, of course, they desecrated the holy place, the sanctuary and Gentile rule had continued since then.

  They were occupied and oppressed.  They were in bondage to the most powerful, most perverse and most petty of Gentile idolaters.  This is a hard time, dark, dark, dark times.  None of the promises for which they had waited so long even look possible. 

  As if that's not bad enough, verse 2 says, "In the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas..." and, folks, that opens up a whole proverbial can of worms.  Luke knows and the Holy Spirit knows that we're going to find out an awful lot about what that tells us.  And knowing these kinds of things makes the drama of the life of John and Jesus all the more wonderful.

  There was only supposed to be one high priest.  But now we have the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.  This is not according to the pattern that God had originally established where there would be one high priest and that high priest would have come through the Levitical line, that is he would be one out of the tribe of Levi who inherited the right to be a priest and was then chosen to be high priest.  But during Roman times the Levitical line was ignored.  During Roman times the Romans appointed the priests, the high priests.  They had to approve of and appoint the high priests.  So what that meant was that you became high priest by somehow currying the favor of Rome. 

  We don't know anything about the lineage of Annas.  We don't know anything about the lineage of Caiaphas, really.  They were in the position they were in because they had somehow gotten the favor of Rome and been placed there.  It is even said by some historians that the office of high priest was often bought with money, or granted as some kind of political favor.  Annas had garnered that favor from Rome and he was in that place because he served Rome's purposes, not God's.  It wasn't that he was a priest truly or that he was in the priestly line.  We don't know any of that background.  But it was that he was there because he served the purposes of Rome well.  

  In some ways Annas, who is the older of the two, had a death grip on the high priesthood.  Now remember this.  Caesar was the most powerful figure in the world.  The four rulers of the segmented land of Palestine had a certain amount of power in the area they were in, they were sort of delegated to them by Caesar.  But the real power over the Jewish people was not Gentile power, that was only the threat of power, that was only the terrible invasion of idolatry and a certain kind of mental bondage.  The real power exerted over the people of Israel on a day-to-day basis was exerted by the most powerful man in their recognized structure, and that would be the high priest.  He was the real power because he represented, theoretically, God.  And what he brought to bear on them was not an intrusion into their life, but was reflective of what God had ordained, and that is that they be ruled by priests and a high priest.  So he represented the leadership they could accept and had to accept by virtue of its ordination by God, even though in this case it had been terribly corrupted.

  Whoever was in that place really had the day-to-day power.  Sure the Romans exacted taxes which the Jewish people hated.  The Romans hired Jews would be considered as traitors and outcasts who would operate Roman tax franchises for a price.  They literally sold themselves to Rome to extort money from their people for an oppressing occupying nation.  They were the worst of the worst among the Jewish people by the admission of the Jews themselves.  They were considered as the worst.

  The Romans did bring some terrible things to bear on the Jewish people, but nothing really as bad as the priests because of the power that was inherent in being the priest.  Now Annas had a death grip on the high priesthood.  He was high priest from the year 7 to 14 A.D., 7 to 14 A.D.  During the silent years, the private years of John and Jesus, during those 30 years when Jesus was living in Nazareth and John was out in the wilderness, 7 to 14 A.D., not a long period of time, but he was succeeded in the priesthood by five sons and one son-in-law.  That son-in-law is Caiaphas.

  He had a death grip on the priesthood by virtue of the fact that behind the scenes he controlled everything.  It was really Annas, that's why he's constantly identified as the high priest.  When you go to John 18 and they go and arrest Jesus, they arrest Jesus and they say, "We've got to take Him to Annas first."  It says, "Caiaphas was the high priest that year, but they took Him to Annas first."  He was the real power behind the priesthood.  And the priesthood was not just a position, not just a position of spiritual leadership, it was a crime family.  It was the Jerusalem mafia, and the mafioso boss was Annas.  He still had the power.  He probably maintained the title all his life.  Until they die they always bear the title.  Apparently the high priest would always bear the title of respect because, after all, there was no higher ranking in the land than that and that was a title of dignity and people were always to be known by that title.  So he would always be the high priest in terms of title because he once held it. 

  It wasn't just a titular designation, the fact is he ran everything and that's indicated when they took Jesus first to Annas before they went to Caiaphas who was the high priest because they knew that Annas had the final say and if it didn't get by him, no use going anywhere else.

  The basic operation of the high priesthood was conducted in the temple and it was tremendously lucrative.  Annas and his sons and son-in-law managed to turn the high priesthood into an incredibly profitable business. In fact, if you want to lay the responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus at anybody's feet, you can start with God because God sent Him to die for sinners, and then you can move to Annas and Caiaphas, they drove the plot.  They were the ones who cornered Pontius Pilate and had him in a position where in blackmail he had to do what he did and that was authorize the execution of Jesus.  But they were the ones who drove the plot.  And the reason they hated Jesus had a little to do with His theology and mostly to do with the fact that Jesus interrupted temple business. 

  When Jesus first showed up on the scene, He went to the temple and He made a whip and he cleaned out the place.  At the end of His ministry, He did it again.  This did not make them happy.  If you want to carry the analogy a little bit, what happened at the cross was they finally found a hit man to execute the guy who was intruding into their operation.

  The business went something like this.  When people came to the temple, they needed to do two things.  They needed to give offerings and they needed to give sacrifices.  The offerings could be a temple tax which was a certain amount that everybody paid.  It could be an almsgiving.  There were a number of fashions in which people gave, money to poor people, and there were other offerings that were given as a part of some ceremony, or some purification.  There were required tithes, bringing all your tithes into the storehouse.  They had to give what's called the Levite's tax, the ten percent of all their income for the year had to be given to the support of the Levites.  They had to give another ten percent beyond that, a second tax.  Every three years they had to give ten percent so it breaks down to three and a third a year which they gave for the poor.  Ten percent went to the Levites, ten percent went to fund the national festivals, and three and a third percent went to the poor.  So they were giving about twenty-three percent of their income every year.  They were putting it into coinage, into these receptacles in the temple.  There were thirteen trumpet-shaped receptacles around the wall of the Court of the Women in the outer court, and they came and they gave their offerings.  Some of the Pharisees, you remember, when they came they got a guy who blew a trumpet so everybody would watch them do it so they could parade their spirituality.

  When they came to the temple to do that, the high priest, Annas, had developed very effective system.  Rome rules the world, so you have common coinage.  All these people are coming in as pilgrims from all over the world, they're bringing Roman coins but every coin that Rome produced had stamped on it whose picture?  Caesar.  Matthew 22, Jesus pulls out a coin, He says to the people, "Whose picture is on this?"  And they say Caesar's.  That's an idol.

  They would not allow Roman coins in any of the receptacles in the temple.  You had to deposit the Jewish coin and so you had to get your coins changed and you could only get them changed from a temple licensed coin changer.  So Annas can now charge whatever he wants to charge for that enterprise.  This was exorbitant, this was larceny, this was robbery.  That's what they were doing.  The people had absolutely no choice.  This is a monopoly.

  For convenience sake they said there would be licensed coin changers, licensed by the high priest, all throughout the temple.  And you remember that's what Jesus did.  Who's table did He throw over?  The money changers because they had taken the house of prayer and turned it into a den of thieves. That's what was going on, just stealing the people blind.

  The other thing that a Jewish person had to do when they came to a ceremony or a festival at the temple was bring a sacrifice.  Now there was a standard for that sacrifice, it needed to be without blemish sacrifice.  You're going to come in and you say, "Look, I think this lamb is without blemish."  You've come down from the Jordan Valley, you brought some little lamb and you say, "This is a good lamb, this is the best lamb I have in my flock.  I've got a lot.  I've checked them out.  This is the best one."  The guy in the temple says, "Ah, sorry, it doesn't pass inspection.  See this little deal over here, no, that's a blemish.  You're going to have to buy one of ours.  Ours are pre-certified."

  Pretty soon you're not going to drag your animals down from Galilee anymore because when you get down there you're just as liable to get turned down as not because the system works best with a temple enterprise if they certify everything and that just means yours doesn't qualify.  So what they were doing basically was telling the people that their animals didn't qualify but that there were plenty of pre-certified animals.  They then could sell those pre-certified animals whether the person was going to buy a lamb or whether they were so poor they had to buy a bird.  They would then be able to sell them for whatever they wanted because you had to have a certified animal so you had to pay whatever they want you to pay and you had larceny going on again. 

  They were just making a fortune and the high priest and his family were just cleaning off the profits.  Annas was behind this.  He was the big boss, running this entire system through his family.  He really did function like an organized crime boss.  And when Christ came in, He just turned everything over and cleaned the place out twice.  This didn't make Him popular with Annas, or with Caiaphas. 

  Caiaphas was just a puppet of his father-in-law.  He held office for 20 years, two decades.  He was finally deposed the year 36, 37 A.D.  His father-in-law was from 7 to 14, he takes over about 17.  The guy who followed Caiaphas in 36, 37 lasted 50 days as high priest.  So that's indicative of the power behind the thing demanding a certain kind of performance at that office.  Caiaphas is in there for two decades and he's taken out of office 36, 37, so he is the high priest officially at the time of Jesus' public ministry, and he is in charge of part of the mock trial.  Annas has part of it, Caiaphas has part of it that leads ultimately to the death of Jesus.

  There are about a hundred years of actual Roman occupation, prior to that there was a Greek occupation, but about a hundred years of Roman occupation.  And as best we can tell historically there were 28 high priests.  So 28 high priests, you take 7, 8 years of Annas and 20 years of Caiaphas and you've got this say 30 years, so you've got 26 left for a seventy-year period.  So they ran through that office pretty fast.  For a person to stay there 20 years was pretty remarkable.  Caiaphas was there for 20 years.

  From a theological standpoint Caiaphas was a Sadducee, a religious liberal.  They didn't believe in the supernatural, angels, supernatural character of Scripture or in the resurrection.  They were materialists. 

  They were opportunists and because they were materialists and anti-supernaturalists, they were the kind of people who could run an enterprise like this in the temple and not worry that they were just going to be incinerated by God, turning His house of prayer into a den of thieves.  They had a very low view of Scripture.  Frankly, they were very much like modern Jews.  They had a high view of tradition and a low view of Scripture.  They were anti-supernaturalists.  They were really sort of traditionalists rather than scriptural in their commitment.

  These two men were the real power over the people and they were as wretched as wretched could be.  They weren't any better than the pagans.  So this is a dark time in the land of Israel.  They are apostates who blaspheme the God of Israel, really.  They blaspheme the God of Israel right in God's own temple.  I can't imagine those guys going to the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement and wondering whether they'd ever come out.  They were the ones who drove the conspiracy to execute Jesus because He tampered with their business and they couldn't agree with the Pharisees on anything except to kill Jesus.  The Pharisees hated Jesus because He attacked their religious system.  The Sadducees hated Jesus because He attacked their economic system.  And they all got together and cornered Pilate and got Pilate to agree to execute Jesus with the threat that if he didn't they're going to complain again about Pilate to Tiberius Caesar, and Pilate was already on some serious thin ice because of things he had done in Israel.

  It's a sordid world into which John steps.  It's a sordid world into which Jesus comes.  It's a sad and dark day.  Political, religious, wickedness, machinations from the mind and hands of corrupt brutal apostate leaders. The whole list of names here just sort of..just sort of initiates thoughts of evil and intrigue and nepotism and manipulation and degeneracy and death.  That's the historical setting.

  Now let me just briefly look at the geographical setting.  Verse 3, "And he came into all the district around the Jordan."  John came into all the district around the Jordan.  You would think that the statement should read when it says in verse 2, "The word of God came to John," that was the call to start his prophetic ministry, 30 years of privacy is over, John, you can't be wandering around out here in the desert anymore with a camel's hide garment and a belt around your waist eating locusts and wild honey, you can't be the wilderness man anymore.  Time to launch your ministry.  It should say, "And the word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness and he came into Jerusalem."  I mean, that's what you think.  Let's go where the people are, let's go in there and let's go talk to the people at the temple and let's get the word out that the Messiah is here.  He's been born.  He's going to be entering His ministry soon and you need to prepare your hearts, etc., etc.  It doesn't say that.

  He stayed exactly where he was.  He had been there 30 years.  Chapter 1 verse 80 tells us, that's the last we've heard of John.  "He grew and became strong in spirit," talking about John.  "He lived in the desert, or wilderness, till the day of his public appearance in Israel."  There he's just a wilderness guy.  He's out there in the wilderness, that is the wilderness of Judea that extended across the Jordan River from the Dead Sea to the Sea of Galilee up the Jordan River.

  John's family lived in the hill country of Judea which would be the western border of that wilderness, which would go from the top of the Dead Sea half way up to the Sea of Galilee to where the river Jabbok came in and it would go west of that and east of that.  That is a very barren area.  It's called the Great Rift Valley and it goes all the way down into Africa.  But that area, that very desolate desert area, George Adam Smith called it the devastation.  You don't want to go too far from the Jordan River if you're there in the time of John.  And so that's kind of where he lived for 30 years.

  We don't know what he did.  We can assume, of course, he was a godly man.  He was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb, that he walked with God, that he was a righteous man.  We're very confident that Zacharias, his father, and Elizabeth told him he was the prophet who was sent to prepare the people for the Messiah, that the Messiah had been born.  So John and Jesus were cousins of some level.  And John knew Jesus was in Nazareth.  He knew that the 30 years that he was wandering around the desert and we don't know what he was doing, he was surviving.  He may have been close enough to visit his family and have a connection.  He may have been doing some preaching.

  He certainly knew that Jesus was living in Nazareth also waiting patiently.  Jesus was working in a carpenter's shop, along with His father in Nazareth.  There was tremendous privacy, there was no announcement, there was no public information being disseminated about either of these.  And the patience of these men as they awaited for this moment is remarkable.

  When the ministry begins, it's amazing that it says he came into all the district around the Jordan.  He stayed where he was and went everywhere around that wilderness of Judea, around the Jordan from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea...the Jordan flows pretty much straight down that whole area...and that's where he ministered, right where he was, up and down, both sides of the river.  John 1:28, John 3:23, John 10:40, and others position him at the river Jordan.

  It defies the political establishment and it defies the religious establishment.  They're all in the main population centers.  They're in Jerusalem predominantly and John is in the desert.  And by doing that there's a certain amount of disdain shown toward that establishment.  God has no regard for Gentile idolaters and God has no regard for Jewish legalistic hypocrites and apostates.  This is not a part of the establishment. 

  John is going to do two things.  One, he's going to attack the establishment.  No question, that's how he got his head chopped off.  The first part of the establishment he attacks, we'll see later in the chapter, and you can take a glance down at it.  Among those who come to him are some of the leaders of Israel, some of the scribes and Pharisees, and they come to him.  He really blisters them and there's indications of that in Luke's account and more indications in the other accounts.  So the first thing he attacks is the religious establishment.  And he stays separate from it.  It's almost parabolic.  It's almost another one of those great prophetic object lessons that you see with the prophets in the Old Testament where they do things that physically act as object lessons to demonstrate some spiritual reality.  John keeps his distance from the establishment in order that he may be perceived as not having anything to do with it.  And from that posture attacks the establishment, first of all, the spiritual establishment, the religious establishment.  Later on, you remember, he attacks Herod for his illicit marriage and his adultery and that's why he gets his head chopped off.  He never wants to get mingled.  He's apart from it.  And I think there's a great message there.  It's all about separation again.  It's all about keeping yourselves pure from that which we must confront. 

  There's a second thing.  In order for somebody to come to the truth, they also have to leave that establishment.  And you say, "Well, John's out there in the wilderness, the people are all in town.  The only people he's ever going to see down there are people wandering from one place to another traveling, traversing.  How's he going to reach the crowd?"

  In Matthew 3:5, it says, "Then Jerusalem was going out to him and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan, they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins." You know what happened?  Everybody went to John.  And again you have almost an illustration of the necessary disconnect from the system that is required when someone comes to the truth.  And so the Lord leaves John out in that barren, barren place, apart from the establishment because like Isaiah, like Jeremiah, like Ezekiel and some other prophets, John is going to have to keep his distance, he's going to have to be untouched, unpolluted.  For 30 years he's had nothing to do with that.  He's not influenced by it at all.  And so his message to them is very clear and very confrontive.

  His whole ministry is apart from the establishment and its kept him pure from any of those corrupting compromises that could have come.  And then he calls the people to do the same, to come out from those places.  And, of course, they're all pouring out there and that's when the religious leaders got to go and find out what's happening.

  When the Son of God came to earth He didn't come to the temple.  He wasn't born in the temple.  He wasn't born in Herod's palace.  He was born in a stable, placed in a manger.  And when His forerunner comes he doesn't come to the temple either and he doesn't go to the palace of one of these tetrarchs, one of these rulers.  He doesn't seek an audience of nobles.  He doesn't seek an audience of kings.  He doesn't seek an audience of priests.  It's just like the angels who came out of heaven and when they came to announce the birth of the Savior, they went to the lowest people on the socioeconomic ladder, shepherds.  And here is John out in no place, really the poorest, an anti-established man if ever there was one, the humblest of the humble.  And God seems to always delight in doing that.

  In 1 Corinthians 1:26 Paul said, "Consider your calling, brethren, there are not many wise according to the flesh...humanly wise...not many mighty, not many noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.  God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong; the base things of the world, the despised God has chosen, the things that are not that He might nullify the things that are that no man should boast before God."  God delights in choosing the humble and the lowly.  And that's what you see with John.  And people see John as the humblest of the humble.  He's not a part of anything.  He's not a part of the political system.  He's not a part of the religious system.  He's not even a part of the social system.  And in order to come to the truth you have to disconnect from all of that and come out, as it were, to the barren place, the wilderness place.  And I think there's a wonderful picture there.  God is still requiring that. 

  And so it is, the darkest of times in Israel.  That's the temporal setting...history, geography.  Next time we're going to see the eternal setting...the spiritual and the prophetical.  The time was desperate, the time was depressing.  Under the bondage of pagan rulers, under the leadership of apostate priests, both had stolen the lives of the people, taken their freedom, taken their joy, taken their hope.  This is a wonderful time for the Messiah to come.  This is the darkest of times.  And it's under the pale of that darkness that the light breaks, that hope is realized and the Messiah comes to offer salvation, the forgiveness of sin and the fulfillment of promise. 

  The sad reality is that they killed John, the politicians killed John and the religionists killed Jesus.  But in the death of Jesus came the salvation of the world.  We're going to see a lot more about that as we go through this gospel. 

  ---

    

  Setting the Stage for Jesus, Part 3

  Luke 3:3

  The Jewish people have for centuries waited for the coming of their promised Messiah.  They had waited long for the Savior, the One who would bring them salvation, who would bring them blessing, who would fulfill all the promises made to the fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all the promises made to David, all the promises made to and through the prophets, particularly Isaiah, then Ezekiel, then Jeremiah.  And the people were, at this point, wearied with the waiting.  Many centuries had gone by and they had been beleaguered by a succession of Gentile, idolatrous oppressors by internal turmoil, by apostate religion, by relentless and seemingly fruitless rituals.  But the time for the coming of Messiah had finally arrived in God's plan and before the Messiah comes to begin His ministry, about six months ahead of His arrival on the scene, God sends the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets, this man named John, to announce Messiah's arrival and to prepare the people for His coming.

  As John steps center stage in the drama of redemption, the work of Christ is really set in motion.  "The word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness."  He had been in the wilderness as chapter 1 verse 80 says, for all of the 30 years of his life.  He was basically alienated from society, from politics and from religion.  He was a prophet of God who was a true believer in Jehovah.  He knew his role, he knew his responsibility.  We don't know anything about his ministry over those 30 years but we do know that at this point the word of the Lord which constitutes the call into his public ministry comes to him and he steps center stage in the drama of redemption to announce the arrival of Messiah and to ready the people for His coming.

  Idolaters dominated the land that belonged to Jehovah.  It was the holy land.  It was the sacred land.  It was God's land.  And here it was being ruled by idolaters.  And even though some of the Herods outwardly identified with Judaism and took some kind of a public stand with Judaism, they were at heart ungodly idolaters.  And, of course, over all of this is Tiberius Caesar who is not only an idol worshiper but is himself an idol having affirmed himself to be god and demanded worship in his empire.  The worst possible scenario for a people who have been cured of idolatry is to have idolaters ruling their land.

  Then in verse 2, even worse yet because the involvement of the Gentiles was in some ways only sort of an oversight.  You have in verse 2 the mention of two other names, Annas and Caiaphas, they were the high priests...Annas the, in effect, high priest, Caiaphas the actual high priest, Annas running things from behind the scenes was the father-in-law of Caiaphas.  But worse than having Romans with political power was having two corrupt priests who were themselves Jewish, who held the highest ranking position within the framework of the Jewish nation, and that is to be the high priest of the true God, who themselves were corrupt, exploiters of their own people.  It greatly bothered the Jews, obviously, to have Roman presence, but what was worse was to have the corrupt domination of these wicked priests and their system of exploitation and manipulation.  They were literally running an unbridled crime center in the temple of God, acting like a Mafia family, taking advantage of their own people.  So it was a sorted world politically, it was a sorted world religiously into which John stepped.  That's the historical setting.

  The geographical setting, we see it there also in verse 3, he came into all the district around the Jordan.  That's the Judean wilderness.  That's where he had lived for the thirty years prior.  He was a man of the wilderness, wearing a camel's hair garment, eating locusts and wild honey.  He was not a farmer, he was a man who just lived on the land in a wild sense.  He was an uninvolved man.  He wasn't in the social structure.  He wasn't in the religious structure.  He wasn't in the political structure.  In fact, he would confront all of that as a man apart from it and uninfluenced by it and I think certainly by the design of God.  He launched his ministry then right where he was, in the wilderness, with obvious disdain for the social establishment, political establishment, religious establishment.  In fact, his ministry would confront all of those establishments and condemn those establishments as he exposed the wickedness of the people in every area. 

  Jewish leadership, the reigning Jewish leadership couldn't have been used to announce the coming of Messiah, they were too corrupt.  The reigning Gentile establishment couldn't have been used to announce the coming of Messiah because they didn't even believe in the things of God.  God had to take a man and keep him completely isolated from the evil machinations and influences of those systems to keep him pure so that he could confront those systems.  It was the religious establishment that executed Jesus.  It was the political establishment that executed John.  Neither of them was in a position to be used by God for the announcing of the Messiah.  And so God has His own wilderness man.

  The time then was desperate.  It was a depressing time for Israel, under the bondage of pagans and apostate priests who had stolen the lives of the people, taken their freedom, taken their joy.  It was the time when there was sort of hope against all hope and at that very time the Messiah is about to come.

  Now let's look at some of the eternal things.  First of all, theology.  Let's look at the theological setting.  It's given to us at the end of verse 3.  "When John came he came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."  And that again with an economy of words is a great statement of what every true preacher of God has always and will always preach.  We preach a message that is no different really than the message of John.  It is the message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  That is the message that God brings as good news into a world that is cursed by sin and damned to eternal punishment.

  Understanding the theological context is really important to understand the message of John.  You might say, "Well, if John was preaching in a Gentile city, if he was preaching in a Roman city, if he was preaching in a Greek city, or somewhere else we might understand this, but why does he come into Israel, into the midst of Judaism, into quote/unquote 'Old Testament religion' and preach repentance?  Isn't that the wrong place to preach that?  Aren't they on the right track, don't they just need a bump or a boost to get them moving a little further ahead to understand the New Covenant in Messiah?" 

  Not at all.  In fact, that's what was so shocking about the Sermon on the Mount.  That's why when Jesus preached that sermon it was just absolutely riveting for the people to hear it because Jesus didn't say..."You know, you're really doing well, could you do a little better?  You're concerned about the law, you're serious about the law, you're keeping the law, you're working at it, you're hanging in there on the Sabbath, you're doing the sacrifices, you've got the things going.  Can I just kind of bump you up a few notches?"  But rather He says to them in the opening of His Sermon on the Mount, "You have to realize you're absolute, total spiritual bankruptcy, you have nothing.  You have to consider yourselves poor in spirit, you have to mourn over your bankruptcy, you have to be meek and hunger and thirst for a righteousness you don't have."

  Jesus said, "The problem with you is," another time in His ministry, "you're like the man who went to the temple to pray and said, 'I thank You that I'm not like other men.  You know, I fast and I tithe, and I do all these religious things, and I know You're really pleased with me, God.'"  That's the way they saw things.  They saw themselves as the possessors of a covenant relationship with God.  They believed that because they were circumcised, because they came out of the loins of Abraham, that they were protected from eternal judgment and they belonged to God in a very special way.  And if they just did their best to keep the law they would certainly be reconciled to the true and living God and they would enter in to the fullness of Abrahamic promise, Davidic promise and ultimately into the Kingdom of God forever.

  John comes into the situation and says, "You're all wrong."  At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, "You're problem is you have a religious house, you just built it on sand.  You've got to go back to the very foundation, you're wrong from the get-go."  The whole system is bankrupt.  Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Your prayers are useless.  Your fasting is useless.  Your self-righteousness is useless.  Everything you do is useless in terms of reconciliation with God."  And that was essentially what John said.  John said his message is very clear, "God will forgive your sins if you repent."  That was the problem in Judaism.  The problem wasn't that they didn't understand forgiveness, they did and they understood that God was a forgiving God.  They understood repentance.  But they didn't believe it applied to them because they had convinced themselves that they were righteous and self-righteous and were unwilling to humble themselves.  That's why He starts that Sermon on the Mount by saying, "You've got to realize your spiritual bankruptcy."  That was the issue.  Your poverty, you have nothing and you have to humble yourselves and demonstrate a hunger for righteousness which you don't have and can't achieve.

  I want you to understand the Jews were not idolatrous, they were cured of idolatry by the Babylonian captivity.  Their history in the Old Testament, you go back, follow the history of the nation after Abraham and you find that they struggled with idols.  The northern kingdom, the southern kingdom, they struggled with idols.  The norther kingdom 722 B.C. taken captive, the southern kingdom 586 B.C. taken captive to Babylon, those great acts of divine punishment were on the people who had turned from God to idols.  Well when they went into captivity in Babylon, that cured them.  When they came back 70 years later they were cured of idolatry.  And even to this day those who are serious about their Judaism have no place for idols.  And you can say that to the credit of even the Jews at the time of Jesus, they hated images of Caesar on the coins, they hated images of Caesar on the banners, or flags, or breastplates, or any paraphernalia that belonged to the Roman presence.  They hated that because they had been cured of idolatry.  But in the place of idolatry where they were worshiping some other god, they were now worshiping themselves in a self-righteous effort to achieve a right relationship to God by their own effort.  Their religion then was legalistic, it was superficial, and it was hypocritical.

  The best assessment that I know of of their religion at the time of the New Testament is found in Romans 2.  I think Paul really nailed the issue when he defines their religious perspective.  In chapter 2 of Romans and verse 17, he says to them, "If you bear the name Jew and rely upon the law and boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are essential being instructed out of the law..."  That's exactly what they did.  They bore the name Jew as an indication of covenant blessing.  They relied upon the law of God, they were putting their faith and trust and hope in their eternal future on the law of God.  They were boasting in God, their God, Jehovah God, the one and only true God and they know His will.  Why?  Because they have the scriptures.  And they were approving the things that are essential.  They understood the nature of God, the attributes of God, things like that.  They were instructed out of the law relentlessly and constantly by fathers in the home, by rabbis and scribes and everybody else and priests.

  So as a result of all of that intake and all of that commitment to the true God and the Scripture, he says, "You are confident...verse 19...that you yourself are a guide to the blind, you are a light to those who are in darkness, you are a corrector of the foolish, you are a teacher of the immature."  In other words, you are the people who can straighten out everybody.  You have the true God, you have the true Word, the true Scripture, the true knowledge, the true instruction and so you can guide the blind and you can light the dark and you can correct the foolish and you can teach the immature because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth.  And that's exactly how they saw themselves.  They had all the answers for everybody.

  And then he says this, verse 21, "You therefore who teach another, do you not teach yourself?  What's your problem?  You who preach that one shouldn't steal, do you steal?  You who say that one shouldn't commit adultery, do you commit adultery?  You who hate idols, do you rob temples?"  And that could be a reference to the temple of the true God.  "You who boast in the law through your breaking the law, do you dishonor God?"

  In other words, you are holding up the standard for everybody else and you can't live it.   You can't even teach yourself to be obedient to God's law.  You can't preach yourself into submission to God's law.  You tell others not to steal and you steal.  You tell others not to commit adultery and you commit adultery.  You boast in the law, verse 23, but through your breaking the law you just dishonor God.  And this is Paul literally dismantling their confidence.  In fact, in verse 24 is one of the most shocking statements, I'm sure, they would ever have heard, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."  It isn't that the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles in spite of you, but because of you, because of your phoniness, your superficiality, your legalism, your shallowness, your hypocrisy.  You dishonor God, you bring blasphemy on His name.  I mean, this is a tremendously penetrating indictment.

  That's exactly the condition they were in when John arrived.  They thought they had it all.  They knew the true God.  They had the true Word.  They were in a position to guide the blind, to light the dark, to correct the foolish, to teach the immature.  They were literally the embodiment of knowledge and truth because they knew the law.  And they were very busy making sure that they held the law over everybody else's head, the fact was, however, they had no internal power to keep it themselves and they were the cause of the Gentile blaspheming the name of God.

  The problem is in Romans 2:28, "He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh, but he's a Jew who is one inwardly."  The heart wasn't right.  There was ceremony, ritual, tradition and religious formality.  There was a measure of external observance of the law of God, but the heart was not God's.  They were hypocrites.  They were legalists on the outside as Jesus describes in Matthew 23, they were like tombs, whitewashed on the outside and inside they were full of stinking flesh and rotting bones.    

  In Matthew chapter 23 Jesus indicts them again.  And this is another good insight into the nature of the theological setting.  Jesus says, verse 13 of Matthew 23, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees," woe means damnation or judgment, why?  "Because you're hypocrites, you shut off the kingdom of heaven from men."  I can't think of anything worse for a religious person to do than to shut people out from God's kingdom.  I don't think that was what they thought but that's exactly what they were doing.  You are shutting off the kingdom of heaven from men for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

  There are people actually trying to get in the kingdom and you prevent it.  Verse 28, "You are outwardly appearing righteous, inwardly you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."  Now there is a both a Pauline and a Christ-given assessment of their religion. 

  Now what did they need?  Did they need just a few bumps.  Hey, you know, you're doing fine, you're so far along you just need a few more notches up?  No, John comes in and says, "Here's your problem, your problem is you need forgiveness."  And, folks, I've said this so much, this is simply the message from the beginning of redemptive history to the end.  God will forgive sin, that's the message, that's the good news, that's the gospel.  It isn't Jesus will fix your life, Jesus will fix your marriage, Jesus will make you happy.  The issue is a sin issue.  God will forgive your sin.  And that is what John came preaching and that is what Jesus came preaching and that's what the prophets preached and that's what everybody who has ever been faithful has preached.  John came doing exactly what everybody else who was a true spokesman for God has done, and said to sinful people, "God will forgive, but you have to reassess your condition and it calls for repentance which is a very, very great leap for a person who has spent years convincing himself he doesn't need that.  The attitude of Luke 18 again, "I thank You that I'm not like other men, I tithe, and I fast and I pray and I do all these wonderful things, aren't You happy with me, God?"  That's a far cry from the publican who won't lift his eyes, pounding his chest, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner."  Jesus said that man went home justified, not the other.

  That in an illustration form is sort of a microcosm of what was going on in the whole nation.  So John comes and he preaches the one message that every true preacher preaches, and that is God forgives the sins of those who repent.  That was his message, that's always the message, that's the gospel.  God will forgive sinners who repent.  And He will, He always has, He always will. 

  The theology of John and his message then is forgiveness comes from God to those who truly repent.  Now there are three elements in the statement...forgiveness of sin, repentance, and baptism.  And we need to look at these, obviously, those are huge subjects. 

  Let's talk about forgiveness of sin as if we were in the time of John and living in Israel and caught up in that kind of religion.  On the one hand, you're told to believe that if you do the ceremonies and you do the sacrifices and you do what you're supposed to do and you make a great effort to keep the law of God and you don't violate the Sabbath and you don't take a trip and you don't carry your burden, and...etc., etc., etc., you keep the law of God, the ceremonies of God and all the Jewish traditions as much as you can, if you really work hard at that, you're going to come to the Kingdom of God.  You're really going to get there.

  But, the Jewish people also understand, and this may have been something of the schizophrenia they were living in, that the Bible keeps talking about forgiveness and at some point there must have been a tension in the mind of a person saying, "Well, I just can't get there.  I can't do it and so I am left with this weight of guilt."  And the more they emphasized the rules to me, like Matthew 23 where Jesus said they bind heavy burdens on men which they are not even able to bear and they don't lift as much as a finger to help them bear them.  Here came the religious leaders dumping more law, and more law, and more law on these people and telling them to carry this burden, and carry this weight, and carry this thing and be perfectly obedient to all of these interpretations of laws and ceremonies and traditions.  They couldn't carry it.  There must have been under all that almost a schizophrenia saying...This is the only way I'm going to get saved but I can't get there and I know the Old Testament talks about forgiveness.

  When John came preaching forgiveness, it must have rung somebody's bell because it says, "All Judea and Jerusalem went out to hear about it."  I mean, I think that they were under such a weight they knew that they weren't getting there, many of them did.  Their whole lives were taken up with matters of sin.  They couldn't keep the law of God so they had to go make sacrifices, over and over...the whole system was a bloody system of sacrifices.  As I've said before, priests were primarily butchers, they just slaughtered animals and offered sacrifices for the people.

  The people lived under the law of God, the Mosaic Covenant, the Law, the moral law, the ceremonial law and the burden of that law...they couldn't keep it.  They knew they were then sinful.  They went and offered sacrifices to show God that they recognized their sin and that they recognized the price and the cost of their sin was death.  So they lived with ideas of sin and punishment, sacrifice. 

  They also knew the Abrahamic promise that God had promised the land and blessing and prosperity and all of that.  They knew the Davidic promise God had made to David that a greater King would come, the Messiah, He'd rule and His Kingdom would be a Kingdom of peace, prosperity and would stretch over the whole world and they weren't getting those things, there was no fulfillment of the promises to Abraham, the promises to David.  There was no fulfillment of all the promises that the prophets had reiterated about the coming Kingdom and the glory of Messiah and salvation filling the earth and peace filling the earth and the glory of the Lord filling the earth, and all of those great hopeful things.  They didn't experience that.

  Here they were under Gentile oppression and being led around by corrupt priests and I think they realized that they weren't getting anywhere.  And there was a hunger in the hearts of many of them for forgiveness.  They knew the New Covenant promised forgiveness.  They knew that if they knew the New Covenant, and I'm certain that many of them did. 

  In Jeremiah 31...you know, the only way they would ever receive the Abrahamic Covenant promise and Davidic Covenant promise would be through New Covenant salvation.  And the New Covenant, Jeremiah 31:31, "I'll make a New Covenant," he goes on to talk about the New Covenant, and what is the character of it?  Verse 34, here it is, "I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more."  That was what their heart longed for.  I mean, the sacrifices were a beleaguering, wearying process, endless.  Where was New Covenant forgiveness?  When were they going to experience that, that forgiveness Isaiah wrote about?  Also Ezekiel wrote about that in that profound sixteenth chapter where he says in verse 60, "I will remember My covenant with you, the days of your youth I will establish an everlasting covenant with you..."  And then in verse 63 He says, "When I have forgiven you for all that you have done."  So they knew that there was forgiveness out there.  But how to get it?  How to get it?

  Here comes John and he's preaching forgiveness and that is really a great message of hope to a people under such immense weight.  They also knew that God was a forgiving God.  I mean, they as a people knew their Old Testament.  They would have known that God was a forgiving God.  In Micah chapter 7, "Who is a God like Thee who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession?"  There's no God like You who forgives sin.  They would have known the cry of David in Psalm 32, the cry of David in Psalm 51 that God would forgive him and wash him and make him clean.  They would have remembered Psalm I think it's 103:12 where God says I'll remove your transgressions as far as the east is from the west.  They knew God was a forgiving God.  They would have remembered and they had to remember, they happened to be involved in it every year when they went to the Day of Atonement and the sacrifice for the sins of the nation for the year was offered.  They would then take a live goat, according to Leviticus 16:20-22, the priest would come, he would put his hands on the head of this life goat and he would literally recite all the transgressions of the people and transferring them symbolically to the goat.  That's exactly what Leviticus 16 says, so he's transferring all the sins to the goat and then there's a man standing by who takes the goat way out in the wilderness from which the goat never comes back. 

  The picture there is that God forgives sin and sends it completely out of His presence.  They understood that. They understood God as a forgiving God by nature.  They understood that there was forgiveness promised in the New Covenant.  They understood that there was forgiveness in atonement as indicated by what's called the scape goat, the goat that takes away the sin to indicate that God removes it forever from His presence.  They understood all of that.  And I would venture to say there were many people, even though they were pressing down this path of self-righteousness, who were literally knowing in their hearts that what they really needed was forgiveness.  And, in fact, Zacharias when he held little baby John in his arms back in chapter 1 and verse 76 said, "You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways."  He said this in verse 77, "To give His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins."  That is the only way people are saved.  That's the only possible way to have a right relationship to God or to get into heaven by the forgiveness of sin.  And there surely were people who were coming to grips with that reality.  That is very likely why the whole of Jerusalem and Judea was pouring out into the wilderness of Judea down by the Jordan River to listen to this man, John, who was preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins and then a baptism as a public confession of that repentance.

  This was the theological condition at the time.  Sure they were longing for Messiah, but they weren't really ready in heart to receive Messiah because that form of superficial, hypocritical, legalistic, self-righteous religion didn't ready anybody for Messiah.  They had to come to a true recognition of their condition which was that they were wicked, sinful, alienated, separated and doomed even though they were the people of God.

  What brings that forgiveness?  Notice verse 3, "repentance."  That's the word metanoia, some form of that word is used about fourteen times by Luke, it's a wonderful, wonderful word because it's the path to forgiveness.  It always has been, always will be.  That isn't even new.  They understood repentance.  They are not ignorant.  They could have gone back, for example, among a number of possible passages, maybe the most notable one Isaiah 55 and that, by the way, would have been a section of Isaiah by which many Jews would be very familiar.  Verse 6, "Seek the Lord while He may be found, call on 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, or forgive."  They knew Isaiah 55:6-7 had pronounced forgiveness on those who came and sought it.  They also knew that great eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel which is the chapter on individual responsibility and it says in verse 30, "Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct, declares the Lord God.  Repent and turn away from all your transgressions so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you.  Cast away from you all your transgressions which you've committed.  Make yourselves a new heart, a new spirit.  Why will you die, O house of Israel?"  Repent, repent, repent, that's not a new message and God offers forgiveness for those who repent.

  What is repentance?  Well, it's not an intellectual change of mind about what you believe, it's not some level of superficial remorse about the consequences of sin or the effects of sin.  It is a radical turning in one's mind that causes a person to see the reality of his own sinfulness...its effect, its ugliness, its dishonor of God, its shame before men and its eternal consequence.  It's when you really turn around and see your wicked condition and then you say, "God, there is no hope for me to correct this, I have to ask you to forgive me, I cannot make it right, I can't do enough things to cancel out the bad things.  I can't do anything righteous.  It's all sin." 

  It's a radical recognition that You are sinful at the core and you see the ugliness and the effect and the dishonor and the shame and the judgment that's connected to that sin and you come to God and you say, "I'm hopeless."  That's when you come broken in spirit with a spirit that's called poverty of spirit, bankrupt, meek, mourning over your sins.  When you come like that, God provides forgiveness.  And that is the message John preached, and that is still the message that we preach.  And then John also added baptism to it and I'll explain the significance of that because was the outward indication of a genuine repentance, public confession.  That's John's message and it's not any different, than any other message by any other faithful preacher in any other time in redemptive history.

  One of the things I love about eastern Europe is that whenever they talk about someone becoming a Christian they say, "He repented."  That's how they refer to it.  I'll never forget, well in all of my occasions of preaching over there I've seen this, but I'll never forget the first time I saw it I was really surprised because I didn't expect it.  And I was preaching in the central church in Kiev and the place was jammed wall to wall, so many people there that as many were standing inside and outside in the cold looking through the windows as were seated and there's a general slow motion as people exchanged seats.  There's a certain sort of unwritten wonderful code where you can only sit so long and then you get up and somebody who has been standing sits and you change places.  And this kind of goes on all the time.

  At the end of the service which is always a long time because there are three sermons and a lot of singing.  The pastor said, "Does anyone want to repent?  You've heard the gospel which I've preached, does anybody want to repent?  If you want to repent, come forward and repent."  And so that's exactly what began to happen and went on for a couple of hours.  People would kind of wiggle their way and come through the crowd and when they got to the front he would hand them a microphone and he would say, "Now repent."  They'd take the microphone and repent.  And then after a person repented they hugged the person, embraced the person and sing a hymn...and then the next person would repent and they'd hug him and sing a hymn...and the next person would repent.  And that went on for a couple of hours and that is the right approach.  That's exactly what John was preaching...repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

  The theological condition of Israel was desperate.  The political condition was desperate.  Even the place where John ministered was pretty desperate, it was a wilderness desert.  But the most desperate of all settings was the hearts of this group of people.  They had the Law of God, they had the true God, they didn't know Him and they were on their way to eternal judgment unless they repented, unless they could turn against their pride, unless they could say no to their pride and humble themselves and fall on their faces and beat on their breasts, as it were, and plead for forgiveness knowing they couldn't save themselves.  If they did that, they would be ready for Messiah's kingdom.

  As the story unfolds, apparently many did, most of whom were superficial as the rest of the story indicates.  There really isn't any way to guard against that.  We'll see how that unfolds, but next time we'll pick up a little more about repentance and I'll describe to you this baptism, and it's not like any baptism you might assume in the New Testament, it's a unique one.

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  Setting the Stage for Jesus, Part 4

  Luke 3:3

  "The word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness and he came into all the district around the Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."  Before John would introduce the Messiah to his people and his people to the Messiah, he needed to prepare them and that by preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  This was the message by which the people could be made ready for the arrival of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

  Now we've come to the theological setting.  We know what the history was like.  We know something of the geography.  Now we're talking about the theology, what was going on theological in the world at that time and in Israel at that time so that we can understand the character of John's ministry and the character of Jesus' ministry and the emphasis both of them gave in their preaching.  And we find the answer to that at the end of verse 3 where it says, "When John came after the word of the Lord came to him, he therefore came and preached...obviously what God wanted him to preach...and he was preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."  

  Three things obviously out of that phrase, forgiveness of sins, repentance and baptism, define for us the theological condition of the people at that time.  The message that John brought to Israel was the message of the forgiveness of sins.  It really wasn't the message that they initially thought they might hear because they prided themselves on being self-righteous.  They prided themselves on being the sons of Abraham, the children of Abraham, the children of the covenant, the blessed of God, the people of God.  They prided themselves on their own righteousness, their own ceremonies, their own religiosity, going to the temple, doing all of the things that needed to be done, associating with the synagogues and worship there.  And they thought themselves to be a religious people

  On the other hand, John confronts them with the fact that they are just the opposite of what they think they are, they are people deeply, profoundly affected by sin so that they are headed for the judgment of God and greatly in need of the forgiveness of sins.  They don't need to be just a little bit better, they need to recognize that they're actually horrible from top to bottom and what they need is forgiveness.

  The message of God to humanity is always the same.  The message of God to fallen man is forgiveness.  That's the good news, God is willing to forgive all your sins, that is the gospel, that is the good news.  All true preachers preach it, all true prophets say it, it's always been the same whether Old Testament or New Testament or in modern times or ancient times, the message has always been the same...the good news is God will forgive your sins. 

  You're in a very serious condition of sin, your sin runs so deep that it is systemic, it is endemic, it is passed from one generation to the other, it's so much of a part of the fabric of your nature, you can't do anything about it, you can't change it, you can't alter it, you can't overcome it and you can't cancel out the offenses you've made against God therefore you're headed for judgment and damnation in hell, but God is willing to forgive your sin.  He is willing to literally wipe it all away and hold it not against you at all...which frees you from punishment, frees you from hell, frees you from eternal judgment and opens the gates of heaven to you.  That's the good news.  That's always been the message that all true preachers have preached.  But the forgiveness of sins comes to those, according to verse 3, who repent.  It is repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  You cannot discuss the ministry of John, of any prophets, Old Testament prophets, New Testament preachers, apostles and you certainly can't discuss the ministry of Jesus without discussing the issue of repentance.

  Now one of the key words associated with forgiveness, associated with Christianity, associated with the gospel is the word repentance.  In all presentations of the true gospel repentance must be discussed.  Where there is no discussion of repentance, you do not have a full presentation of the gospel.  Yes God will forgive your sins, but only if there is repentance.  That is where John focused his ministry.  He was preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Down in verse 8 there were people coming to him and he was warning them, he was saying to them, "Bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance."  It was his message...repent, repent, repent the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, the Messiah is near.  And, of course, even when Jesus came on the scene, for example, in Matthew 4:17 it says, "From that time," that is from the time that John was imprisoned and no longer preaching, and Jesus began, it says, "From that time Jesus began to preach and say, 'Repent.'"  In Luke 5 Jesus said, "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."  In Luke 13:3-5, He said, "I tell you, unless you repent you will likewise perish."

  The ministry of Jesus was a preaching ministry and He was preaching repentance.  The apostles preached repentance.  In Acts 20 Paul preached repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.  In our modern world repentance is not a popular topic.  It is, for some people, not theologically correct.  It always amazes me that there are some people who from a theological viewpoint want to argue that repentance isn't necessary.  I never really realized how widespread that strange view is until I began to write the book many years ago called The Gospel According to Jesus which created no small stir.  In fact, it created the biggest stir I have ever created and I have created a few.  It was the biggest stir ever created, anything I've ever said or wrote because I demanded that a biblical presentation of the gospel include repentance.  And that was greatly assaulted and attacked by people who theologically disagreed.  So for some it is theologically incorrect to preach repentance, for others it is politically incorrect to preach repentance because it makes people feel bad...and it's not politically correct to do that because it's not friendly to do that, it's not nice to do that and they might not come to Jesus if you're not nice to them.

  Repentance has fallen on hard times.  Those who theologically put it aside, those who sort of politically put it aside.  Both finding it an incorrect emphasis have literally stripped the gospel of its essence.  Repentance is critical in salvation.  And when we talk about repentance, what we're talking about in terms of what the Scripture says about it is a repudiation of sin essentially.  It is a repudiation of one's old life.  It is a coming to a point where you reevaluate yourself, where you say, "I look at myself and I see sin and I don't like what I see, I resent the sin, I don't like the guilt, the shame, the fear, the anxiety that comes as a result of it.  I live in fear of the consequence of sin which is eternal judgment in hell.  I say to myself that I'm wretched.  I look at my own life and I see my sin and I want to be delivered from it."  That is a repentant attitude.  It is looking at your life and instead of loving darkness and hating light, you have begun to hate darkness.  You have begun to repudiate your old life.  You desire to be delivered from the dominance of sin and its consequence.  That is a penitent attitude. 

  True repentance never exists except in partnership with true faith.  True repentance never exists except in partnership with true faith.  And wherever there is true faith, true saving faith, there is true repentance.  They go together.  They're the two sides of the very same coin.  You cannot have true faith in Jesus Christ apart from true repentance from sin.  You cannot have true repentance from sin apart from true faith in Jesus Christ.  Why?  Because it is one work of the Holy Spirit.  It is the Holy Spirit who convicts the sinner of sin and then moves the sinner toward Christ.  Repentance then is a radical redefinition of one's person.  It is a definitive mid-course correction.  It is a point in which you look at your life and instead of saying, "I cherish my sin, I want my sin, I cling to my sin, I will not abandon my sin, in fact it's not even sin, it's just who I am and that's the way it is and these are the things I like to do"...it is turning from those kinds of attitudes to saying, "I am bankrupt spiritually, I hate my sin, I resent what I am, I want to be delivered from its power and its penalty."  That is an attitude of repentance.  It is a definitive redefinition of who I am and a turning to God alone to remedy that.

  Now that happens as, obviously at the point of salvation, as a once-for-all conversion.  That's why in 1 Thessalonians 1:9 the Scripture says that the people in the Thessalonica church had turned to God from idols.  That's what repentance is.  We don't want to worship false gods anymore, we don't want to be bound to our sin anymore, we turn from that to God.  That's repentance.  And in the book of Acts the preaching, chapter 5 verse 31, Peter and the apostles and Peter says, "He is the one...speaking of Christ...whom God exalted to His right hand as a prince and a Savior to grant repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

  You don't get the forgiveness of sins without the repentance.  But God grants both.  It is God who grants repentance and God who grants forgiveness.  So when God saves someone, there is a work-producing repentance, and a work-producing faith which results in forgiveness.

  In Acts 11:18, it says, "And when they heard this they quieted down...these are people in Jerusalem hearing the report of Peter about the Gentiles who were saved...and glorified God saying, 'Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance unto life.'"  The repentance that leads to life and that's what's always required if there's going to be spiritual life there must be repentance...and it's God who grants it.  Acts 5:31 and Acts 11:18 both say it comes from God.  It's not a human work, it's a divine work.  In Paul's testimony to King Agrippa in Acts 26:19 he says, "Consequently, King Agrippa, I didn't prove disobedient to the heavenly vision...talking about his conversion on the Damascus Road...and the subsequent call of God but I kept declaring both to those of Damascus first and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea and even to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God."  That's what the apostles all preached...repent, turn to God.  What does that mean?  That means reevaluate your condition, see yourself as a sinner and turn to God, the only hope, the only one who can save you.

  In 2 Timothy 2:25 Paul mentions again the same principle.  He says God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.  Again it is God who grants the repentance but the repentance leads to the knowledge of the truth.  It leads to turning to God.  It leads to the forgiveness of sin.

  Repentance is not a human work by which you earn salvation.  Salvation isn't given to you because you earned it by repenting.  Let me say it another way.  Repentance is not a pre-salvation attempt to set your life right.  When I wrote the book The Gospel According to Jesus, some people accused me of saying that...which, of course, I didn't say, that somehow if you can pick yourself up by your own bootstraps and straighten out your own life, God will give you salvation.  That is not what repentance is, that is not what any knowledgeable person would ever say of repentance.  Repentance is not doing anything to change your life.  Repentance is recognizing your true condition and part of your true condition is that you can't do anything to change your life.

  A repentant person isn't saying, "I'm going to fix my life and then God will save me."  A repentant person is saying, "I can't fix my life, and I have finally come to the recognition of how vile it is and that I can't fix it and I am turning to You who alone can do what I can't do."  That's repentance.  It involves the mind, recognizing my sin and its consequence, both in time and eternity. It involves my emotion, grieving over that condition, and then it involves my will acting to remedy that situation by turning to the only remedy, which is God through Christ.

  When you're talking about repentance, you're not talking about somebody on their own in some pre-salvation human act, gritting their teeth, pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps and saying, "I'm going to get my life right and then God will reward me by giving me salvation."  Not at all.  You're talking about a person who looking at his life comes to a true understanding of what condition he's really in...that he is deceitful and desperately wicked, that there's nothing good in him, that he is sinful to the core, and that recognition of one's lawlessness and the hatred of that sin stirs up emotions that produce grief which activates the will to turn to the one who alone can remedy the situation.  That's repentance.  The sinner is in such dire condition, the sinner is in such true understanding of his condition, such grief over that condition that he turns to plea to Christ, embracing Christ as the only one who can provide forgiveness.  Believe me, that is not a human work.  Left to himself man will never come to that conclusion.  Let to himself man loves darkness rather than light, right?  Because his deeds are evil.  Left to himself there's nothing good in him and there's no pursuit of what is right.  But when God begins to move on his heart, God produces a true understanding of his condition, that's John 16, the Spirit of God convicting the world of sin.  That conviction starts and you begin to see the reality of your life. 

  How can you say you stand up in a pulpit and preach the gospel when you don't preach repentance?  When you don't preach the wicked sinfulness of sin?  The profound depth of human depravity with all of its consequences?  That's where it all has to start. 

  Actually the Jews understood this.  The Jews, as I pointed out last time, understood the forgiveness of sin.  You'll notice in verse 3 there's not a lot of explanation, I'm giving you a lot of explanation because you, in many cases, we in this culture don't know what they already knew very well.  They knew the Old Testament promise that God would forgive sin.  They knew that.  We pointed that out last time in detail. 

  They also knew that they were sinful.  They had guilty consciences.  They could feel the pain and the grief of their own sin.  And here came John and he's preaching forgiveness of sin.  They know God is a forgiving God, God is a pardoning God, the prophets said that.  They remembered the penitent's Psalm 32, the penitent's Psalm 51 and other penitential pleas in the Psalms and they knew that God forgave sinners.  They knew that and many of them, of course, knew they were sinners who needed that forgiveness.

  They also knew about repentance. That was not something unfamiliar to them, they understood repentance.  2 Chronicles 7:14 says,  "My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven...will forgive their sins and will heal their land."  When you come to a true recognition of your condition and you turn away from those wicked things toward God and seek forgiveness, God gives it.  That's not anything new to them, they were very familiar with it.

  They were also familiar with the prophet Isaiah 1:16, "Wash yourselves...make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from my sight, cease to do evil."  God's saying...You know, you've got to deal with your sin, you've got to take a look at what you really are.  This is an indictment against them.   Then he says in verse 18, "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins are as scarlet, they'll be as white as snow, though red like crimson they'll be like wool."  God is saying you have to see your true condition, you are sin stained, you are red with sin, you are crimson with sin.  It's like a stain on your life and it runs deep and you need to be washed and you need to be cleansed and you need to be made pure.  That's a call again to the cleansing and forgiveness that comes when you're willing to take a look at the reality of your condition.

  There are a number of places where you can find this.  In Ezekiel 33, "When the righteous turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, he'll die in it."  You show me somebody who is a superficially outwardly righteous person and commits iniquity, then that may be the reality of the truth of his heart.  He may look right on the outside, but on the inside his heart is wicked, it will show up in committing iniquity and he'll die in it.  But when a wicked man turns from his wickedness, practices justice and righteousness, he'll live by it.  That's repentance.  When you turn from the wickedness of your heart toward righteousness, that becomes the pattern of your life.

  There are numerous other places where you can find those kinds of issues dealt with.  Isaiah 55 which we talked about last time is another passage, maybe I'll just mention verses 6 and 7 to you there.  "Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He's near.  Let the wicked forsake his way, the unrighteous man his thoughts.  Let him return to the Lord and He will have compassion on him; and to our God for He will abundantly pardon or forgive."  The same thing in Jonah chapter 3 and verse 10, that where the pagans repented God forgave their sin.  The Jews knew that. 

  As John takes the center stage in the drama of redemption, his message isn't anything new, it's certainly not anything unfamiliar to the people.  It's the old familiar message of forgiveness.  God will forgive your sins if you repent.  Repent means reassessing your condition, not seeing yourself as righteous, self-righteous, pleasing God, making it on your own merit, but seeing yourself as sinful, wicked to the very core and understanding the guilt and the consequence of that sin both to your own self in time as well as in eternity in punishment in hell, understanding now that you want to be delivered from that.  You turn to God and cry out for forgiveness.  That is the kind of repentance that John was preaching and that any true and faithful preacher preaches.

  It is not just changing your mind about what you believe about Jesus, some have said.  It is not just some simple remorse over the consequences of things that you did or the effects of them.  Repentance is a radical change in how you view yourself that causes you to see the reality of your wretchedness and sinfulness.  It's ugliness, it's effect on you in time and eternity.  Then it produces a radical reassessment of who you are.  It turns you completely a hundred and eighty degrees and sends you in the pursuit of something completely different than you've been pursuing.  It creates disdain for the old life for what you are and have been.  And you begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

  The best definition I know in the Bible of true repentance is in 2 Corinthians 7 which sums up the essence of repentance.  The Corinthians had sins, obviously, Paul had confronted them in writing to them and even in going there.  And he got word back that they had repented and he was glad about it.  So in verse 9 he says, "I rejoice, I rejoice that you...not that you were made sorrowful," no, that's not the point, not that you felt bad, a lot of people feel bad about their sin, feel sorrowful about it, I don't rejoice that you were made sorrowful, "but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance," that your sorrow went where it should go, all the way to an honest assessment of your true condition.  "You were made sorrowful according to God," actually in the Greek, "it was godly sorrow."

  That means you saw yourself the way God sees you.  Your verdict on you was the same as God's verdict on you.  And it wasn't just...Oops, I made a mistake.  That's the way you hear the people talk today, isn't it?  Oh, I made a mistake, I'm sorry for the mistake I made.  I'm sorry for the miscalculation I made.  Well, I've made a serious misjudgment, I'm sorry for the misjudgment.

  Your sorry because you got caught and it wasn't a misjudgment.  And that's not repentance.  Repentance is seeing your sin just exactly the way God sees it.  That's why Paul was rejoicing that they had seen their sin the way God saw it.  Their sorrow was all the way to repentance, it went all the way to reassessing their true condition and being resentful of what they were as sinful.  Verse 10 says, "The sorrow was according to God, or the sorrow that is godly, the sorrow that makes the assessment that God makes produces a repentance without regret."  In other words, there's no hesitation and it leads to salvation while the sorrow of the world produces death.  You know there are people who have sorrow and they go out and drink themselves to death, or they go out and take drugs until they're dead to try to dull the sorrow, or they go out and commit suicide.  That's the sorrow that produces death.  There's no virtue in that. That's not to be confused with repentance.  The sorrow of the world produces death, repentance produces life.

  So he says, "I'm really rejoicing that your sorrow was the sorrow that leads to repentance, that is it leads to a true assessment of what you really are."  It is a sorrow that leads to repentance that holds nothing back.  There's no regret at all.  You really honestly, openly, willingly assess yourself for what you are and that leads to salvation, godly sorrow, the sorrow produced by the Holy Spirit, the sorrow granted by God that leads to repentance, brings a person to salvation.

  Repentance is at the very heart of and launches the work of salvation.  Now then he defines this repentance in verse 11 with a series of words or phrases.  First of all, he says "Behold what earnestness, when I look at your repentance the first thing I see is earnestness," or as the New King James says, "Diligence."  It means eagerness.  This is an initial mark of true repentance.  It's not reluctance.  It's not hesitating.  It's aggressive, it is eager, it is this hunger and thirst after righteousness.  Where you have true repentance you don't have somebody quibbling and equivocating and hesitating and halting but rather there is this open kind of confession, this earnest, eager diligent acknowledgement of one's true wretched sinful condition and an aggressive pursuit of righteousness.  It is the attitude that ends indifference to sin and complacency about sin.

  Then he says, "This godly kind of sorrow produced not only earnestness in you but what vindication, or perhaps better, what clearing."  The idea would be...Look, I want to clear my name of the stigma that is a part of my life because of sin.  I want to be cleared, I want to be vindicated, I want to be exonerated, I want to be forgiven.  And there's no hesitation.  I mean, there's an openness, like I told you a few weeks ago when you repent of your sins in the Russian church they had you a microphone and you repent.  And you don't mind that, you're not trying to cover, not trying to hide, not trying to shade anything, or shelter anything, or keep anything back.  There's this clearing, this openness, there's this desire to bring it all before God.

  What indignation...he says.  There's another word.  Indignation means holy anger.  You resent sin most in you, what fear, this is reverence toward God, a healthy fear of God's justice, God's punishment.  What longing or as the New King James says, what desire, what strong desire, what yearning.  We could say in Matthew 5, what hunger you have, you desire this, you yearn for this, you hunger to have your sin dealt with and have your relationship to God restored.  What zeal.  Zeal is a word that combines love and hate.  You love something so much you hate anything that negatively affects what  you love.  And this is a zeal for righteousness, a zeal for what is right.  What avenging of wrong, a desire to see justice done, a desire to see sin exposed and sin covered and sin dealt with.

  And then he closes it, "In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent."  Really that's just a synonym for repentant, to be open, to be clear, to be pure.  The Greek word actually means to be holy.  You demonstrated your desire to be holy.  

  What is true repentance?  It's a reassessment of yourself, seeing the sin of your life for what it is and desiring to be holy.  That's repentance.  That's John's message and believe me, folks, that is the message that every true preacher preaches and if they don't preach that message then they're not preaching the truth of the gospel. 

  John came preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  And that's what we preach.  That's what's always been preached.  That's what Jesus preached.  And again I say, there's no suggestion here that repentance is some kind of a human work that's rewarded by God who gives forgiveness because you picked yourself up from your bootstraps.  Repentance isn't anything you do to change your condition.  Repentance is a new assessment of your condition and a recognition that you can't change it, and in that you reach out to God who alone can through the work of Jesus Christ.

  There's another component here that I find absolutely fascinating and that is, back to verse 3, Luke 3, John also was preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  By the way, a footnote may I add here?  If you're truly saved, you repent at that time, but I also want you to know that that becomes a pattern in your life if you're a true Christian.  If you're a true Christian then there's an ongoing attitude of repentance.  If you think you're saved because you made some commitment in the past, but you do not have a penitent attitude in general, then you're probably not saved at all.  In fact, the longer you live as a Christian, the longer you've been a Christian the more you hate sin.  Repentance, you could say, is the bench mark of a saved person.  Saving faith and true repentance are always found together and it isn't that you repent once when you're saved and never again, it's a way of life.

  But what was this baptism?  This is very unique and was the clout in John's ministry.  There were a number of ceremonial washings, ablutions they were called, known among the people of Israel.  But no baptism of Jews, this is new and this is why, by the way, that John got a nickname.  He was actually called John cause that's what God wanted him called.  That's what the angel told Zacharias to call him, that's what they named him.  But he became known as John the Baptist.  That became his nickname because he did something no prophet had ever done, he baptized people.  In fact, in Matthew chapter 3 verse 6 it tells us people out of Judea and Jerusalem were all going down to the Jordan River and John was dunking them in the river.  So he became John the Baptist.

  What was this baptism about?  Now we know what Christian baptism is about, it's about symbolizing the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, that's clearly identified for us in the New Testament epistles, particularly Paul in Romans 6, and elsewhere.  But Jesus hadn't died and hadn't risen again.  Christian baptism hadn't been instituted yet.  There was no such baptism of Jewish people in Israel.  So John was doing something that was completely unique and brand new.

  It didn't produce forgiveness.  The Jordan water doesn't produce anything.  I've been there many times.  People come home from Israel with little bottles of the Jordan water to do all kinds of things with, it doesn't do anything.  There wasn't anything in the ceremony, there wasn't anything in the rite.  It didn't do anything.  Baptism didn't do anything.  Mark this, but it did say something very significant.  It didn't do anything, it said something.  It didn't produce forgiveness automatically.  Baptism did not, does not do anything, but it does say something.

  In the Christian realm it says that I am identifying with Jesus Christ in His death, burial and resurrection and I know live a new life.  It's what we say in baptism, it's not what baptism does to us because it doesn't do anything. 

  But then what was it saying for them?  In Matthew 3:6 it says they were baptized while they were confessing their sins.  Now this is a little different.  When we are baptized today, when somebody is baptized today what do they confess?  They confess Jesus as Lord.  Okay, that's different.  When people were baptized in John's ministry, they confessed their sins.  Our baptism, Christian baptism is a baptism that pictures new life in Christ.  This baptism has something to do with sin and I'll tell you what it had to do with it.  There was one emersion, there was one ceremonial baptism that was carried out in Israel and the only one, it is the only one time baptism the Jews performed and it was only performed on Gentiles.  And whenever a Gentile wanted to come in to Israel and identify with the religion of Israel and identify with the people of Israel, they were required to go through this ceremonial baptism as a way of demonstrating their uncleanness, confessing their uncleanness, confessing their separation from the covenant and the covenant people, confessing their separation from the true and living God.  And so that...a Gentile proselyte coming in to Judaism and wanting to be included in the full, it had to go through this Gentile proselyte baptism in which he confessed himself to be unclean, outside the covenant, apart from the true God and His people in need of cleansing.  That was the standard, and every Jew knew...every Jew knew that baptism because they knew that that's what happened when Gentiles came in to the covenant, in to the people of Israel.

  What was happening was this, John...that's why I said this was the wallop in his ministry...was saying if you want to be forgiven you have to repent and you have to repent to the point where you recognize that you are no different than a Gentile.  You think that was a big crow for them to swallow?  You better believe it was.  How far are you willing to go in your recognition of your sinfulness?  Are you willing to say you are disconnected from the true and living God of Israel?  Are you willing to say you are outside the covenant of Abraham?  Are you willing to say circumcised or not you are outside the covenant that God promised to David?  Are you willing to say you are outside all of the promises of God that were given to the New Covenant?  Are you willing to confess your sin to such a degree that you acknowledge you have no relationship to the true and living God and are no better than a pagan?

  That's the level of repentance John was calling for.  That's why he baptized them.  They were literally going through Gentile proselyte baptism.  They were saying my national descent has not brought me into the covenant with God or prepared me for the Messiah.  They were saying my racial descent hasn't prepared me for the Messiah.  They were saying my circumcision hasn't prepared me for the Messiah.  They were saying my tribal identity hasn't prepared me for the Messiah.  They were saying I have nothing to do with God, I have nothing to do with the covenants of God, I have nothing to do with the salvation of God, I have nothing to do with the Kingdom of God, I am an outcast, I am a Gentile and I acknowledge it.

  That's a pretty serious call for repentance.  That's what he was asking for them to do.  So I say the baptism didn't produce anything, but, boy, did it say something.  Here were these people literally saying we're no better than Gentiles.  And you know how they felt about Gentiles?  We've talked about that. They didn't want to go into their house.  They didn't want to eat their food.  They didn't want to touch their utensils.  They saw them as despised.  You remember the prayers that the rabbis used to pray when they got up in the morning every day?  "I thank You, God, that You didn't make me a woman or a Gentile."  And now they were going to have to go out there and confess they were no better than Gentiles.  Literally they were stripped bare.  That's the bankruptcy that the gospel brings to the religious person.  These are not people who are apart from the scriptures, these are people who are Jewish people who have been basically nurtured and raised on the Old Testament.  These are quote/unquote "the people who have had the truth," and they have to confess before God that they are completely outside the covenant, completely disconnected from the true and living God.  They had to be baptized as if they were Gentiles.

  The amazing thing is that all Jerusalem was going out to him, Matthew 3:5, all Judea, all the district around the Jordan and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan as they confessed their sins.  Somehow he got them to the place where they were willing to make that kind of confession.  We don't know how long-lasting that was.  It appears as the story goes on that many of these baptisms by John were superficial, right?  They were superficial. 

  Up to that point, you know, they maybe recognized their sin, they recognized they needed cleansing, but when it came time to put their trust in Jesus Christ, they couldn't do it. They wouldn't do it.  He didn't turn out to be the kind of Messiah they hoped for, you know, the one who would knock off the Romans and create a permanent welfare state. 

  John's impact on the Jewish people was profound.  He got them all the way to the place where they would acknowledge they were no better than Gentiles, outside the covenant of God.  This is a powerful thing, folks, because now what you've got is essentially the whole nation Israel confessing their spiritual bankruptcy.  Confessing their spiritual bankruptcy.  That's where they needed to be to get ready for the one who could come alone and solve that problem, right?  So John's ministry was critically preparatory.  As you've got a whole nation of people now confessing their bankruptcy, desperately in need of a Savior and the Savior is on the scene and He comes and they don't want Him.

  Was it true repentance?  There is no such thing as true repentance apart from true faith in Christ.  True faith in Christ always includes true repentance, but true repentance always includes true faith in Christ.  For some of them, I'm sure, it was true repentance and there was also faith in Christ when the gospel unfolded around Christ.  For others it was a momentary repentance and without true faith in Christ never produced forgiveness and salvation. 

  They thought they were secure and John strips them bare.  Don't start saying to yourselves...he says...we have Abraham for our father, don't go back and say...oh, yes, we are the people of God, we're in the covenant, we have Abraham for our father.  I'm telling you, if God wanted to He could make children of Abraham out of rocks.  You're not so special.  There's no security in your Abrahamic ancestry.  In John chapter 8, one of the dialogues that Jesus had with the Jews really precipitated their hatred of Him.  He said, "I know you're Abraham's offspring," John 8:37, "but you seek to kill Me."  He later says, "If you were Abraham's children then do the deeds of Abraham, but as it is you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God.  This Abraham didn't do."  Abraham didn't reject God's Word.  Abraham didn't kill God's messenger, don't tell Me you're the children of Abraham, you're not acting like Abraham.  "You are doing the deeds of your father," and in verse 44 He says, "your father the devil."  Wow, you're not the children of Abraham, you're the children of the devil, He says.

  That was about the last straw.  But that's essentially what he's saying here.  You have no relationship to God...John the Baptist is saying...you're like a Gentile, you're like a pagan, you're like an idolater, you have no connection to the covenants.  You see, there's no true forgiveness for anybody without repentance and there's no true repentance without confessing openly one's true sinful condition and spiritual bankruptcy.  John was asking the people to say you have to confess the wretched wickedness of your heart and the fact that no matter what religion you're involved in, even if it's Judaism, you are separated from the true and living God, outside the covenant, outside His Kingdom.  That's repentance.

  When a person comes to the point where they will acknowledge their true sinful condition and alienation from God and see themselves for who they really are under the prompting convicting work of the Spirit of God, they then can turn to God who alone provides the solution through faith in Jesus Christ.  That's gospel preaching and that's what John did. 

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