The Fruits of True Repentance, Part 2

Matthew 3:7-12

     Matthew 3, verses 7 to 12.  This is a sample of the kind of preaching done by the forerunner of Jesus Christ.  Let me read it to you beginning at verse 7, Matthew 3.  "But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come for baptism, he said unto them, 'O generation"...or offspring..."of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bring forth, therefore, fruits befitting repentance, and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham as our father, for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.  And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees, therefore, every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.  I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.  He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire, whose fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly purge His floor and gather His wheat into the grainery, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.'" 

     Now, in those brief few verses, we find a sample of the preaching of John the Baptist.  And basically, his message is always the same as we see it indicated to us in the gospel record.  It is a message calling for repentance.  It's no different here.  We find that as we note in verse 8 that he calls for the fruits of repentance.  And in verse 2 of the chapter, we see that his message was "Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." 

     Let me back up a little bit before we approach the text.  God promised His people a Savior.  We're all very much aware of that.  God promised them a Messiah, a King.  And even throughout the time of Israel's moral and spiritual decline, even throughout the time of Israel's decadence, even throughout the time of Israel's chastening, the Holy Spirit continued through the mouth of the prophets to speak about the coming of the King, the Messiah, the Christ.  And hope was always kept alive, at least in the hearts of the godly remnant as the Holy Spirit used men like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Joel and Zechariah and Malachi to sing over again and again the songs of the splendor of the King and of His coming kingdom.  Even in times of decadence and even in times of chastening, the message was still there.  And for those that were godly, it was heard and it was believed and the anticipation filled their hearts.  This went on throughout all of Israel's history until the great silent period after Malachi.  The Old Testament ends with the prophecy of Malachi.  And that's the end of the prophetic voice as far as the history of God's people is concerned.  And, in fact, Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, ends this way:  "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.  And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."  The last statement of the Old Testament is that there was going to come a man who would be really in the spirit and power of Elijah and he would turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God and that was really a prophecy of what man?...John the Baptist.  So that the Old Testament ends with a statement about the coming of John the Baptist, the New Testament then begins with the ministry of this man.  And in between is this 400-year period of silence, four long centuries from Malachi to John the Baptist where no God-inspired voice spoke the message of the Messiah, the coming kingdom of righteousness and of peace.  But just as suddenly as the silence began, just so suddenly was it broken by the powerful and bold preaching of a desert prophet by the name of John the Baptist or John the Baptizer.  Either is correct.  In chapter 3, verse 1, he is introduced, "In those days came John the Baptizer..."  And he hit the silent sky like a comet.  He was the first prophetic voice in 400 years and his message was the most anticipated of any message that could ever be delivered.  His message was the kingdom of Heaven is at hand, the King is coming, the thing for which Israel had hoped, the anticipation of the kingdom, the One which they had longed to see, the King Himself, was nigh, was near.  And we've learned in our study that John the Baptist was the herald of the King.  He was the announcer.  He was the forerunner.  And so we have met him because this fits Matthew's plan.  Matthew wrote his entire gospel to present Christ as King.  And Matthew well knows that all kings have a herald.  All kings have an announcer.  All kings have a forerunner or someone who straightens out the path, who gets things ready for his arrival.  And, consequently, Matthew goes to great lengths to introduce to us this herald in order that he might affirm from another angle, that indeed Jesus Christ was a king.  Like any king, He had a herald, and not just any herald, not just any forerunner, but according to Matthew 11:11, John the Baptist was the greatest man who had ever been born up until his time.  Indeed, a great man.  So Matthew introduces us to John because it fits his theme.  And John's message was the message of repentance, the message that was needed to get Israel ready.  Because the tragedy of the matter, as we have seen, was that even though the King was coming and even though the kingdom was imminent, the people were not ready and the people could not receive the kingdom.  There was sin in Israel.  Israel was lost.  In fact, Israel was no different than Gentiles at this point.  And that's why John preached a baptism, because baptism was actually the rite which a Gentile proselyte went through to become a part of Israel.  And John was, in effect, saying you're on the outside looking in.  The good news, the King is coming; the bad news, you're not ready.  You've got to be converted.  You've got to be changed.  The word repentance, literally, is converted.  You've got to be transformed.  You've got to turn your life around and get ready for the King or you will not be able to receive His kingdom.  And so it was bad news that John preached before it was good news that he announced.  The bad news...look at verse 2...repent.  The good news, the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  That was the twofold message that John preached.  Before the kingdom could be received, repentance had to occur.  Before they could ever enter into the place of blessing and be a part of what God had planned, the kingdom, they had to come to a place of conversion, transformation, 180 degree turning around, away from their sin, a fundamental change in their relationship to God and the way they were living their lives.  And as I said, it was to be symbolized by baptism, the symbol of Gentile proselytes entering Judaism.  And, really, the Jews were outsiders.  This was a shocking message.  So, repentance keynoted John's message.

     Now, repentance is an important thing.  It's a great, great, biblical truth.  And I want you to understand it before we look again at his message.  The great theologian Eric Sauer said this, and I think it's a good summation of the thought of repentance.  He said this, quote, "Repentance is a threefold action.  In the understanding, it means knowledge of sin.  In the feelings, it means pain and grief.  And in the will, it means a change of mind," end quote.  And all three have to be there.  In general, then...and stay with me on this, cause I want to explore these three for just a moment...in general, then, repentance involves first of all, insight in the mind, understanding, secondly, despair in the emotions or the feelings and thirdly, a change of life, changing the pattern, turning around, coming to the place where you see the truth in your mind.  And then you cry out with the apostle Paul, "O wretched man that I am..." and you have despair.  And then you remove all self-redemption possibility and you turn around and become totally dependant upon the grace of God.  We know in the New Testament that redemption is presented as a gift.  God has granted redemption it says in Acts, chapter 5 and chapter 11.  Redemption is a gift according to II Timothy, chapter 2 and verse 25 where the Bible says, "In meekness, instructing those that oppose them, if God perhaps will give them repentance."  It's a gift from God.  God grants this gift in a threefold measure.  Let's look at them.  We've already mentioned them.  Let's look at them specifically.

     First of all is that intellectual part.  And by the way, each of these, the intellectual, the emotional and what we'll call the volitional element of repentance has a different word for it in the New Testament.  Most interesting.  Each of them has a different word so that they are delineated by the Holy Spirit as well.  First of all is the intellectual.  Repentance begins when there is a knowledge of sin, when there is a recognition of sin.  So John, like any good preacher of repentance, confronted people with sinfulness.  There had to be an understanding of sin involving a sense of personal guilt, a sense of personal defilement, a sense of personal helplessness.  Now, all three of these are illustrated very aptly in Psalm 51.  Take your Bible and turn to it with me for a minute and I'll point this out to you.  We see the intellectual element of repentance in Psalm 51 in verse 3.  This, by the way, is David's repentant heart crying out to God after his terrible sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah.  He committed adultery with Bathsheba and then in order to eliminate her husband he got him out in a battle and instructed his soldiers to get him in the heat of the battle and then leave him there until he was killed.  And in response to that, his heart is broken and he repents.  But first of all is the intellectual part in verse 3.  "For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me."  Verse 7, "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.  Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow."  Verse 11, "Cast me not away from thy presence.  Take not thy Holy Spirit from me."  Now, in all three of those verses is a recognition of sin.  Verse 3, explicitly, "For I acknowledge my transgressions, my sin is ever before me."  Verse 7 and 11, implicit, the sense that he needs to be cleansed, the sense that he needs to be purged, that there is something wrong, that God may leave him, verse 11, the Holy Spirit may be removed from him.  And so there is an acknowledging, an acknowledging of sin, a recognition of what we are before God.  That is the beginning of repentance.  The story goes that Lady Huntington was invited...or rather invited, I should say, the Duchess of Birmingham to come to hear George Whitfield preach.  The Duchess responded in this manner, quote, "It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth.  It is highly offensive and insulting," end quote.  Well, Lady Huntington was insulted when George Whitfield attempted to call her to the recognition of sin and consequently she never entered into the act of repentance.  Mr. Moody, after preaching to the prisoners in a Chicago jail, visited them cell by cell.  In the first cell he found two men playing cards and they said, We're here because false witnesses have testified wrongly against us.  In the second cell the man said that the guilty man had escaped and I was only an accomplice and I am here.  And in the last cell, only, Mr. Moody found a man crying over his sins and there it was that Mr. Moody stopped.  You see, the recognition of sin intellectually is where repentance begins.  Henry Drummond, who wrote the wonderful little book on The Greatest Thing in the World on I Corinthians 13...some of you may have read it...after hearing the confession of sinners on one occasion said this, "I am sick of the sins of these men.  How can God bear it?"  Recognition of sin is the beginning, but it is not the end.  It's just the beginning.  True repentance involves more than that. 

     Let me show you why I say that.  A hardened Pharaoh in Exodus, chapter 9 and verse 27 says, "I have sinned."  A double-minded Balaam in Numbers 23:34 said, "I have sinned."  A remorseful Achan in Joshua 7:20 said, "I have sinned."  An insincere Saul in I Samuel 15:24 said, "I have sinned."  And a desperate, despairing Judas said, "I have sinned."  But in none of those cases does the Bible ever record that true repentance took place because the intellectual element is only the beginning of it, not the end of it.  There must be secondly, the emotional, and as Eric Sauer says, this what we have in the feelings.  We go from the mind to the feelings and it becomes a recognition not only of sin, but that sin is hateful to a holy God and then there is an overwhelming sense of guilt in the emotions.  Psalm 51 again...in this Psalm where David is facing his sin, we find this element in verse 1.  "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin."  You see, here is a man crying for mercy and the only man who needs mercy is a man who is what?...guilty.  You see, innocent men don't need mercy.  Justice will do fine for them.  It's guilty men that need mercy and David recognizes here that he is guilty and his emotions are stirred.  In verse 10, "Create in me a clean heart"...he sees the evil in his heart..."O God, renew a right spirit in me."  Verse 14, "Deliver me from blood guiltiness..."  And David even felt the anxiety and the pain in his physical body.  He cries out to God in the midst of this sin in terrible anguish in his heart.  In fact, back in Psalm 32 he says, "When I kept silent about my sin, my bones became old through my roaring all the day long...day and night thy hand was heavy on me.  My moisture is turned into the drought of summer."  Like your tongue dries up when you know you've done something wrong and you're facing the test, David just dried up.  His bones hurt.  He had physiological responses to the emotion of guilt.  And we see that repentance involves not only an intellectual element but an emotional sense of guilt, a deep recognition t