Luke Chapter 3 Introduction
This morning, we're in Luke chapter 3 as we're continuing our way through this gospel account of the life of Jesus. I've said that in Luke's gospel, Luke is writing to convince Gentiles that Jesus is the Son of God. As we're working our way through this book, we're going systematically, section by section, in order to understand what God would have us know about Jesus. But it's not just about knowledge; it's also so that we might respond to Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
Well, as we come to chapter 3 in this gospel, we see Jesus presented publicly for the first time. That is, not that he had been hidden in private, but he's now going to be declared for all to hear and all to see his true identity as the Son of God. So join me as I read, beginning in verse number 1.
In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontus Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip, Tetrarch of Ichoria, and Therchonitis and Lysanius, Tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zachariah, in the wilderness. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, a voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in. Every mountain and hill made low. The crooked road shall become straight, the rough ways smooth, and all people will see God's salvation.
John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
"What should we do then?" the crowd asked. John answered, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same." Even the tax collectors came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?" "Don't collect any more than you're required to," he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay."
The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, "I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie. And he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork will be in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn. But he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." And with many other words, John exhorted the people and he proclaimed the good news to them.
But when John rebuked Herod the Tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother's wife, and all the other evil things that he had done, Herod added this to them all. He locked John up in prison. When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was being baptized too. And he was praying, heaven was, as he was praying, heaven was open. And the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my son, whom I am well pleased and whom I love."
Now Jesus himself was about 30 years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph. And I'll spare you reading the whole genealogy and conclude with the final verse in 38, that he was the son of Adam, the son of God.
May God bless his word as we consider it this morning. We have here in Luke chapter 3 an announcement of the coming of Messiah. I don't know if you've ever had good news that you wanted to share with someone, but perhaps you had to wait. And the anticipation probably drove you crazy. You wondered if you would slip and make a mistake and say it too soon, or if you might say it to the wrong person.
Perhaps when you were pregnant with your first child, if God has given you marriage and children, maybe with that first child, you waited to make sure that the baby was coming before you told anyone. Now there are big baby reveals on social media and all the rest and all kinds of clever things that people do to reveal their child and even to reveal the gender of their child, but they usually wait at least a few days or possibly a few weeks or until the first three months before they tell anyone. But waiting can be challenging.
It's hard because we know something that we desperately want other people to know, but we have to wait until the right time.
Well, after the birth narratives of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ in Luke chapters one and two, the narrative goes silent. There's an 18-year gap between the end of chapter two and the beginning of chapter three. And it's in this time of silence that John the Baptist was working in the wilderness.
In fact, he was described in the other gospels as a kind of wilderness man. He was rough around the edges, not someone who was cultured and someone who would be refined. He wandered the wilderness, waiting until God would tell him to share the good news about Jesus.
And as he waited and as he worked, he would come to break the silence that had been over Israel for over 400 years. It had been that long since God had spoken through the prophet Malachi and pointed to Messiah yet again, but for 400 years there had been nothing. It's not that God was not working in the lives of faithful believers, but it's that God had delayed the coming of the Messiah, or at least delayed it from the perspective of those who were waiting for him.
Yet now, after those hundreds of years, and after 30 years since the birth of Christ, John is finally commissioned by God to go out and to declare that the Messiah has come. The deliverer of Israel is here. And John is going to call people to repentance.
Call to Confess Sins
As we look at John's announcement and really what's happening in chapter 3, I believe that John is showing that Jesus offers sinners his perfect righteousness. Jesus offers sinners his perfect righteousness. And the first part of John's message, and it's the first point in my outline, is that the Son of God calls us to confess our sins. If Jesus is going to offer sinners his perfect righteousness, it stands to reason that the first thing we must do is confess that we are sinners.
Luke introduces this account of John announcing Jesus at a specific point in time. He says, in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, Jesus had been born under Caesar Augustus, who was Caesar up until about 14 AD. Now Tiberius Caesar was ruling over Rome and he ruled with a rough hand. He was more menacing and more punishing than even Augustus had been. Luke documents the names of these Roman leaders and of the Jewish high priests to put Jesus in human history. Luke said at the beginning in chapter one that he had written a careful account to his friend Theophilus. Luke was making sure that his record of Jesus and his life on earth was accurate and trustworthy so that it would convince his readers.
Well, as he starts this narrative and locates the announcement of Jesus around 30 AD, John the Baptist starts preparing the way for Jesus. And he starts preparing the way because the word of God has come to him, it says in verse number two. The word of God came to John, the son of Zachariah, in the wilderness. And he went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John did not act on his own initiative or craft his own message. He wasn't manipulating or trying to get ahead of God. Instead, he waited and spoke when God directed him.
And what did he speak? It says clearly there in verse number three that he preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The message God gave John confronted the Jewish people who needed to confess their sins. You see, many of the Jewish people considered themselves all right with God because they depended on their ancestry and their religion. Yet John comes along to announce Jesus to say, ancestry and religion save no one, but a Messiah comes to save us from our sins.
So the crowds of people began to hear that John the Baptist was preaching. He was going around up and down the Jordan River where he was declaring Christ. This God-given message that John had been given was confronting hollow and hypocritical religion. The religious leaders in Israel had reduced their religion to simply a list of traditions, but they had ignored their desperate need for forgiveness. Now this doesn't mean that there were not believers among the Jews, but it means that their leaders were leading them away from God.
And John was calling all who would listen to receive a baptism, not for their salvation, but a baptism as a sign of their genuine repentance, that they had recognized their sin and they were turning from their sin to trust the promises of God. John was baptizing anyone who would respond to his message of repentance. But this baptism, especially as he would baptize Jews, went against their culture. You see, the Jews did baptize, but they baptized Gentiles who were being converted to Judaism. So when John started baptizing Jews who were repenting of their sins, it went against the grain. It was startling. It was surprising.
Why is John doing this? Well, he did this because those who were confessing their sins were looking forward to the Messiah that John was declaring. And this now Christian baptism that we practice looks back to the finished work of Jesus. So John's baptism was looking forward, anticipating what Jesus' ministry would be. And our baptism today looks back at what Jesus has accomplished.
John in his message was drawing a straight line from the prophet Isaiah to Jesus so that all people could recognize and receive the promised Messiah. We see that in verse number 6. John quotes Isaiah recognizing the magnitude of his words and recognizing that God had prepared John to follow in the prophet's footsteps as a messenger of the Messiah. God chose John to introduce Jesus instead of politicians or instead of high priests or instead of well-connected people in the society. John was a complete outsider. He was a wilderness man. He looked wild. He was not someone that would be mainstream. He had no political connections in Rome. He had no religious clout in Jerusalem. But God used this wilderness man to prepare the way for the Messiah. This outsider would make the path straight so that people could see Jesus and confess their sin.
The world always values people who are powerful, wealthy, beautiful, intelligent, athletic, and successful. God, however, almost always works through normal people, people that the world considers weak and foolish. To the world, God's servants and messengers are powerless. They're poor. They're plain looking. They're simple. They're ordinary. They may even be backward.
Yet God uses humble, ordinary people to declare the gospel of Jesus Christ so that everyone can believe and the glory goes to him. The gospel is not a message of prosperity so that we can have our best life now. The gospel is actually a message that we are dying to our sin and we are being made alive by our Savior.
That message resonates when it comes through ordinary people. It's not to say that those who are powerful, wealthy, beautiful, intelligent, athletic, or successful cannot become Christians. They absolutely can. But the hope of the gospel is not dependent on human success. The hope of the gospel is depending on what Christ has accomplished.
So John boldly declared Jesus. He boldly preached repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and he confronted self-righteous religion. Genuine repentance involved turning away from sin and turning to Jesus Christ. This would be God's salvation, the thing that he had promised all the way back in Isaiah chapter 7, that he repeated throughout Isaiah's prophecy and really throughout the whole Old Testament.
Repentance Beyond Moral Reform
But the repentance that John preached was not a moral reform; it was not a works righteousness or meaningless religious words. John was calling everyone who had listened to him to confess their sins and be transformed by the Savior. Christians do not confess our sins and continue living unchanged lives.
The people listening to John sensed that his message of repentance would upend them. They understood that in confessing their sins to God, they would have lives transformed. We cannot believe the gospel and go on sinning as if nothing has changed in our life. Belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ and genuine repentance transforms us from the inside out. When we ask Jesus Christ to forgive our sins, he takes control of our lives and he changes the way we live.
The religious leaders who were listening to John took offense at this message and they dismissed him. Yet John comes and challenges their dismissal. He challenges their genuine connection to Abraham because they're not living according to the promises God gave to Abraham. Their lives were not producing fruit, he says verse 8, in keeping with repentance. Their lives were producing the exact opposite. They were not producing repentant, contrite followers of God, but they were producing arrogant, self-righteous people who lorded it over others with their religiosity.
The religious leaders were offended because John confronted their hypocrisy. And Jesus would come to save sinners, including hypocrites like these leaders. So our relationship with God starts with repentance, that we must acknowledge our sin, confess it, and forsake it before God. As we do that, that is what makes us a true heir of Abraham.
John says that they may have boasted that Abraham was their father, verse number 8. But he says, "But out of these stones, God can raise up new children for Abraham." It's not exactly clear what the stones are there, whether he meant literally the inanimate matter of rock that he would turn into his children, or was it an allusion to Gentiles that the Jews sometimes called stones? In either case, John's point to the Jewish leaders who were listening and everyone in the crowd was that God will draw his children to himself, but those children come through repentance. They do not come through their own self-worth or works. They come through confession of their sin.
And some of the listeners responded to Jesus or to John's message with this kind of repentance, and they asked him a sincere question. They said in verse number 11, "What should we do then?" They understood that John's call to repentance would change the way they were living. What exactly did John expect them to do in light of this message? Well, he gave the crowd three specific examples of fruit that was in keeping with repentance. And this was meant for his listeners. John knew his audience, so he spoke specifically to their lives. He gave them these three ways they could demonstrate their repentance.
First, he said repentance would prompt them to share their material resources. John answered them in verse number 11, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none." John was directing his listeners to share their clothes with poorer people. If they had two shirts, they should give one to someone who needed it more than they did. Their lives should be marked by generosity and not greed.
John further exhorted them to share their food. He said, if anyone has food, they should do the same. James, Jesus' half-brother, echoes the exact same idea in his letter bearing his name in James chapter 2, verse 15 through 17. He said, "Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warm and well-fed,' but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead."
Both John in his message of repentance and James in his echoing of the gospel both say that our faith and repentance will be accompanied by our works. The distinction is we don't work our way into heaven. We don't earn salvation by giving of our resources such as clothes and food.
Generosity as a Response
But we give our resources in response to what has been given to us, in recognition that we have been forgiven our sins. So as people who are forgiven, we can't help but be generous.
Well, Jesus, or excuse me, John said that repentance would cause believers to be generous, but he also said that it would cause believers not to take advantage of other people. Apparently, some Jewish tax collectors were among them, and they were well known for cheating people. They had heard John's message of repentance, recognized their sin, and they were confessing their sin, receiving his baptism.
But they still had a job, and their job was to collect taxes for the Roman government, a government that their Jewish people despised. And sadly, many of the tax collectors were also extorting extra money from their own people to enrich themselves at others' expense.
So John told this group of greedy tax collectors, he says in verse number 13, don't collect any more than you're required to. Simply put, John was instructing the tax collectors to stop taking advantage of their position and to quit exploiting other people. Instead, he told the tax collectors to only collect what was necessary. They should demonstrate a willingness to not take advantage of anyone, and that would prove their repentance.
In other words, the tax collectors would stop being greedy because they've received grace. And that grace that they would experience would make them care for other people more than their own self-interests. But John continued, because another group of people came and asked them...
Contentment in Circumstances
A group of soldiers asked what they ought to do in terms of repentance. So John gives a third way that believers should demonstrate their repentance. And he says, repentance would help believers be content in their circumstances.
Like the tax collectors, the soldiers also heard John's message of repentance and they were gripped with conviction. They confessed their sins and they received John's baptism. But they remained soldiers, and soldiers for the Roman Empire were known to use their position of authority to threaten people and to enrich themselves, to defraud people, to make false accusations against people, and really to blackmail them.
But John is saying soldiers could no longer make false accusations. Instead, he told them to be content with their pay. Verse number 14. The idea is that evidence of their repentance would be their satisfaction with what God had provided for them. They would no longer have to cheat people or bully people or take advantage of people in order to garnish their wages, but instead they would be content with what they received from their employer.
What we do with our material resources shows what we really believe about the gospel. And John, like Jesus after him, put his finger on the nerve center of people's real values. As they asked him, "What should we do?" They said, "You should demonstrate your faith by putting your resources out for the benefit of other people." If we only multiply resources for ourselves, and if we take advantage of others to multiply our resources, then we are contradicting the gospel with our greed.
There were Jewish religious leaders who were doing that. And there were also tax collectors and there were soldiers who were doing that. And John says, "That's not right." Instead, he says that believers ought to be generous. Believers should not take advantage of others. And believers ought to be content. When we keep our material resources only for ourselves and we ignore the needs of other people, then our repentance and faith are meaningless. They're just words without actual fruit.
We should ask ourselves a similar set of questions that the crowds asked John. The questions from the tax collectors and the soldiers. What must we do to show our repentance? Perhaps we should ask and answer honestly before God and one another a couple questions like this.
The first question: What can I give to reflect all that Christ has given me? Too many people give God a tip out of their abundance, but they don't give systematically or sacrificially. John was calling the believers, even in that early time, to be faithful in giving their resources to support the work of God and care for other people.
A second question that we might ask ourselves, and this could be more convicting, more embarrassing, or even make you upset, but consider this: How would it impact other people in my church if they knew how much I gave? Now in our church, we don't publish that information. Only our church treasurer knows who gives what. And we don't keep score. We don't come after people and say, "You need to give more. You've not given enough," or "You've given nothing at all."
But the gospel compels us to give. It's good that we don't know what other people give, but God does know. You may be able to hide from the pastors and hide from one another your actual contribution to the life of the church, but you cannot hide it from God. And John's point in declaring the message of repentance is that the people of Israel could not hide from God. Though he had been silent for 400 years, he was breaking the silence. And now he was calling them to live in light of their confession, to live as sinners who have been gloriously saved by grace and to become generous in their graciousness.
Sadly, in every generation, there are people who claim to be Christians who exploit other people. For example, if we're involved in the local church, but we do not give to support the ministry of the local church, then we're taking advantage of those who are serving and are giving. Evidence of our repentance and our faith in the gospel includes giving our material resources and not taking advantage of others.
Notice John told no one how much to give; he simply said to be content with what you have. The idea is not that you give a certain number, but that you give according to what Christ has given you. Christ has given you his very life through death on the cross so that you can have his sinless perfection and righteousness. So what can we give God in response to what we've been given? And the answer is everything. Not that we need to drain our bank accounts and sell our houses and become collectivists. That's not the point. The point is we give God our lives, the reason we live, and our purpose for living. And as we do that, we too become messengers of God declaring his salvation.
But John called the crowds who were coming to him a brood of vipers, verse number seven. Why did he call them this? I skipped over it at first because I wanted to come back to it after establishing that the gospel of repentance makes us generous.
But the crowds who were coming to him were greedy. They took comfort in their heritage as Abraham's descendants, and they lacked Abraham's faith and obedience. So in other words, they wanted to be identified with someone who was religious, but they didn't want themselves to submit to God. They prided themselves in keeping some of the Jewish traditions, but they were not transformed by the confession of their sin.
And John warned them sternly about God's pending judgment. He warned them that God was ready, verse 9, to cut down every tree that does not produce good fruit and throw them into the fire. God was ready to judge Abraham's faithless descendants and transform stones into his children. And the axe of his divine judgment was already over the root, ready to swing. Their only escape could be genuine repentance for the forgiveness of their sins. The escape was not in good works. The escape was not in proving their lineage, but the escape was to confess that they needed the forgiveness of others.
The Son of God calls us to confess our sin. And John preached repentance and he pointed others to Jesus, his cousin. Some of the people in the crowds responded to John's message with a sense of anticipation and even awe. They were looking at what he said and they heard it as good news. They wondered even if John himself was the Messiah. Verse number 15, asking him this question: "Are you possibly the one?"
But John said, "No, no, no, I am not the Messiah. I am simply the one who is pointing others to the Messiah." And he told his listeners that he wasn't even worthy to untie the Messiah's sandals. This would have been reserved for the lowest person in their society. Not even a student would untie the sandal of his teacher because it was too menial, too lowly. And John says, I am that level of servant who is so low that all I can do is point others to Jesus. He pointed people past himself and onto the Savior.
It was only the Messiah who would display God's power. John, it says, baptized people with water, and he did this as an outward sign of their inner repentance. But the Messiah, he says in verse number 16, would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire as a seal of their salvation. And the Messiah would separate the true believers from the religious hypocrites. Jesus would keep the believers and he would punish everyone else. So that meant those who claimed that their identity as sons of Abraham, or that their religious practices and traditions would save them, John is saying they would actually be punished for them. Jesus later says to those who die in their religion, "Depart from me, for I never knew you." And these are the same people who will say, "But look at all the good things that I have done for you."
John is preaching the same message before Christ preached it by pointing people to their need for the Messiah. The good news that John proclaimed, verse number 18, meant that he was declaring the coming Messiah. He was speaking to anyone who would listen, and he would exhort them with many words, it says, many other words, number verse 18. That meant John spent months, over a year, preaching the Messiah and his coming and baptizing people who were confessing their sin. He even confronted Herod the Tetrarch, who ruled over Judea, and his evil deeds, including his immoral marriage to his brother's wife. And it was that willingness to confront people in their sin that cost John the Baptist his life. Because Herod would have John arrested, thrown in jail, and imprisoned, and then Herodias would have him executed with his plate or his head delivered on a platter.
John the Baptist foretold the good news about Jesus. But not everyone heard this good news and believed it. Most of the crowds, in fact, rejected the good news. They considered it bad news. They took offense when John called them to repentance for the forgiveness of sins. They didn't consider themselves sinners. They considered themselves good. They were better than the Gentiles, certainly in their own minds. Yet John said that they need the forgiveness of their sins. He preached this repentance for the forgiveness of sins through the Messiah, but it would cost him his life.
When faithful Christians share the gospel of Jesus, some people will respond in repentance and faith. And they will be filled with the Holy Spirit. And their lives will be transformed by the gospel. Sadly, though, most people, when they hear the good news about Jesus, will either be indifferent or they will scorn him. They either won't see their need for Christ or admit their sinfulness, or they will reject Jesus and say he was just a religious person from long ago, if he existed at all. And they'll have all kinds of excuses for why the message doesn't relate to them.
In our post-Christian American culture, people are openly opposing Christians for their beliefs and questioning whether or not Christians should share the gospel. Last year's shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk struck a nerve among many Christians because he died sharing his beliefs on a college campus. His tragic death helped many believers realize the real cost of declaring Jesus.
You see, we're not a multi-marketing campaign. We're not offering "your best life now." We're inviting people to admit their need for a savior, to confess their sin, and to take up Jesus' cross and follow him.
The call to be a Christian is not a call to a life of comfort and ease, but the call of a Christian is a life of pleasing their Father God. As we do that, it starts by confessing our sins, and the Son of God calls us to confess our sins.
Sinless Righteousness of Jesus
But the second main thing, and I'll be quicker on the second point, is that the Son of God comes in sinless righteousness for sinners. The Son of God comes in sinless righteousness for sinners. John not only announced Jesus, but he also had the privilege to baptize him.
Beginning in verse number 21, we have John interacting with Jesus in public. Throughout his gospel account, Luke is going to highlight the human nature of Jesus. He had normal parents and he lived in an out-of-the-way part of Israel in Nazareth. He was not born to the high priest's wife, nor did he live in Jerusalem around the temple and religious people. Up until now, only a few lowly shepherds, three wise men, and two elderly believers had recognized Jesus as Israel's promised Messiah.
It was against this backdrop that Jesus emerged from his family in Galilee and went to the Jordan River where John was preaching. He listened to his cousin declare repentance for the forgiveness of sins and proclaim his own coming as the Messiah. And as Jesus watched the people respond to John's message of repentance and receive baptism, he himself would enter the waters to receive baptism.
It says in verse 21, when all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. John was surprised by this. In the other gospel accounts, we see him saying, "Why? What are you doing?" But Jesus received John's baptism as an indication of his humanity. He was not admitting sin or saying that he had sins to confess. He was instead identifying as a human being.
The Apostle Paul said it this way in Philippians chapter 2: Jesus made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Jesus received John's baptism to reveal his true identity as the Son of God. We gather that because when he went down to the edge of the Jordan River, he prayed, and it says in verse 21 and 22, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.
All the other people who were being baptized that day went into the water and came out of the water with John's words to bless them. But Jesus entered the water, and the triune God revealed himself as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All of the gospel writers describe the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove. And in the Old Testament, this dove symbolized peace with God. The Holy Spirit was appearing like a dove to emphasize Jesus' identity as the Prince of Peace, the one who would bring genuine and lasting peace to sinful men. The Holy Spirit brought this peace over Jesus as he began his earthly ministry to indicate that he would bring peace to sinners who needed God's forgiveness.
This voice that came from heaven pierced through the atmosphere and caught everyone's attention. Because this voice was none other than the voice of God saying, "You are my son whom I love and with you I am well pleased." John had been talking about the coming Messiah, and now Father God interrupted time and space to say, "Here he is."
This is the first of three recorded occasions when the Father spoke from heaven about Jesus. He did it again at the Transfiguration and again in his last week before the cross. God the Father was publicly declaring Jesus Christ to be the Son of God. Prior to this baptism, people who knew Jesus recognized him mostly as Joseph's son. No doubt he stood out from others and he was different because of his sinless righteousness. But it was at this occasion that God used John's baptism to declare Jesus was his beloved son.
And Jesus was fully God and fully man. He was one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And God the Father took pleasure in his son and commissioned him to save sinners. The Son of God came in sinless righteousness to save sinners. And he did this with incredible miracles because of his righteousness.
After growing up in Joseph and Mary's home, Jesus began his public ministry. He was now, it says in verse number 23, about 30 years old, following the example of the Old Testament priests. And by this point in his life, Jesus had established his identity with his human family. But now Luke was establishing his identity as God's only son.
Luke does this with a genealogy that goes all the way back to Adam. He was proving that Jesus could relate to all human beings who came from God. This fit with Luke's description and quotation from Isaiah, where he said Jesus would be the savior of all people, both Jews and Gentiles. Matthew's genealogy only went back to Abraham, and that was for the benefit of Jewish believers. But Luke's genealogy started with Joseph and went all the way back to Adam for the benefit of Gentile believers. By putting Jesus' genealogy after his baptism, Luke reminded his readers that the Son of God was also the Son of Man, born into a broken world under God's law, and he identified with the needs and the problems of human beings.
And since Joseph and Mary were both descended from David, Luke's genealogy proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus of Nazareth had the legal right to be the heir of David's throne. Luke recorded the arrival of God's son, Jesus, as the fulfillment of God's covenant promises.
God created a people for himself, a group of sons and daughters who would confess their sins, receive Christ's righteousness, and delight in his love. Jesus did what both Adam and the people of Israel could never do. He lived a sinless life and gave himself as a sacrifice for our sins.
And that leads to my last point, and that is: if the Son of God calls us to confess our sins and he came in perfect righteousness to save sinners, then point number three is that the Son of God demands a response.
The Required Response
The Son of God demands a response. Some people came to hear John out of curiosity and thought, "That's interesting. No, thank you." Other people would come to hear Jesus because they heard that he worked miracles, and they would see that and say, "Hmm, that's interesting, but no, thank you."
But when we hear the good news about Jesus Christ, that he came to save sinners and offer us forgiveness, we must respond to him. We must confess our sin with genuine repentance and put our trust in Jesus Christ for his righteousness alone.
The Son of God demands a response. We cannot be neutral about Jesus. The Apostle Paul put it like this to the Galatian believers in Galatians chapter 3: "So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. For all of you were baptized into Christ who have clothed yourselves with him. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise."
Three Closing Questions
Paul said exactly what John was pointing to and what Jesus would preach through his own ministry, that it is through him that we become the children of God.
So as I close, I have three questions for you. The first is, have you confessed your sins and asked God for forgiveness? Because none of us are righteous apart from God. Second, have you put your faith in the perfect righteousness of Jesus? Or are you still depending on your own self-righteousness? There is nothing we can do because all of our works are like filthy rags, Isaiah says. My third question and last is, do you belong to Jesus? Are you an heir according to his promise? Have you accepted Jesus as your savior and your Messiah?
I would invite all of you here, whether you're a child, a teenager, an adult, or a senior adult, to hear what Jesus said and hear what John said about Jesus, that you would confess your sins, that you would put your confidence in Christ for his righteousness, and that you would become one of his sons and daughters. Nothing would please him more.
In conclusion, I wanted to highlight a book that I would encourage you guys to read. We have downstairs, if you make your way down there from time to time, a book area. And we put books there that we want you to read. And one of them is this little yellow book called Conversion. In this book, the author lays out what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It's sort of like the question that John was asked when he preached: "What should we do then?" And this book helps put more specific details on what we should do then if we follow Jesus.
So I would encourage you to go grab a copy of this. They're free. And this is written at a level that... I'd say probably from the sixth grade onward, you can read this and understand it and talk about it as a family. And I would encourage you to confess your sin, to follow Jesus, and then to live in light of your repentance and to demonstrate that you get grace by being generous because Christ, who gave his life for you, is worth giving your life to.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to you this morning, we commit this to you. We ask that you would help us to see ourselves as sinners so that we can confess our sin and we can claim the blood of Jesus to forgive our sins and to wash us white as snow, so that we can be named among the sons and daughters of God. And Father, for those who are here this morning that are not Christians, I pray that they would repent. And for those who have repented, I pray that we would live out our repentance and faith. God, help us as individuals and as a church to be generous because of grace. And help us to lavish the grace of God on others by declaring the name of Jesus to all who would listen. And we pray this in His name. Amen.