Sermon Text: Luke 3:7-18
Date: December 15, 2024
Event: The Third Sunday in Advent, Year C
Luke 3:7–18 (EHV)
So John kept saying to the crowds who came out to be baptized by him, “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Therefore produce fruits in keeping with repentance! Do not even think of saying to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ because I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones. 9Even now the ax is ready to strike the root of the trees. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is going to be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
10The crowds began to ask him, “What should we do then?”
11He answered them, “Whoever has two shirts should share with the person who has none, and whoever has food should do the same.”
12Tax collectors also came to be baptized. They said, “Teacher, what should we do?”
13To them he said, “Collect no more than what you were authorized to.”
14Soldiers were also asking him, “And what should we do?”
He told them, “Do not extort money from anyone by force or false accusation. Be satisfied with your wages.”
15The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might be the Christ. 16John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But someone mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His winnowing shovel is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor. He will gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
18Then with many other words, he appealed to them and was preaching good news to the people.
Repentance Produces Joyful Fruit
When young children are first being introduced to the idea of receiving gifts, what do parents often have to instill in them? Showing their thanks. Now, that doesn’t mean they aren’t thankful or appreciating for a present or other kind gestures, but a parent will help the child learn how to express that to the gift-giver. Are you thankful? Say, “Thank you!” For children (or even some adults), this concept can be a bit of a foreign one, and it’s only with modeling and direction that it starts to become ingrained and automatic (though, hopefully not thoughtless) to thank the person giving you something or who has done something kind for you.
This morning, we will be spending time with John the Baptist again as he’s teaching some of the crowd about thanksgiving, not to people, but to God. We are building on the concept of repentnace this morning, and focusing on the fruit of repentance, the things we joyfully do because God has taken away our sins.
The opening verses of our text might sound a little rough, might sound a little harsh. John calls the group gathered before him “offspring of vipers.” It’s even harsher sounding in the more standard English translation, “brood of vipers,” indicating that the people he's talking to are vipers themselves.
However, John’s point seems more about the parentage than the offspring. While it’s completely logical that vipers produce vipers, this dressing down seems aimed at the parents rather than the children, and in this case, it is aimed directly at the spiritual parents—the religious leaders of the day. “Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”
The assumed answer to that question is, “No one,” because the religious leaders tended to focus on what the people should do to be worth something to God. They directly tied the people’s value to the Almighty with their actions. The Pharisees felt pretty comfortable in their own behavior and thus their status with God. But in a message that is all, “Do better! Do more!” there is no sense of repentance of that U-turn we talked about last week. There is no call to examine your life and acknowledge that there are places where you have sinned, places where you have failed and should do different and better.
It's almost as if the religious leaders lumped people into two groups: those who were doing great and those who were beyond hope. The ones who were beyond hope were the outcasts of society, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the “sinners.” And so John, in his message of repentance, is calling on the people to examine their lives. He wants everyone, no matter their social status or occupation, to recognize that they haven’t been good enough for God because they have been perfect and, just as importantly, to recognize that there is forgiveness for all of those failings from God.
That is repentance: sorrow over sin, trust that it’s forgiven, and a desire to change your ways. This morning John is taking us on the next step of that spiritual journey, to the fruits of repentance. What comes aftewr true, God-worked repentance? The life the rejoices in what God has done! And John doesn't want the people to fall into that false sense of security that the Pharisees may have led them to think that just because now I'm repentant, well, now I must be good with God. Just because Abraham is my father, I must be good with God. There’s no confidence in that! God can generate biological children for Abraham from stones! Being in Abraham’s family line has no impact on eternity.
And in fact, John says, “Now the ax is ready to strike the root of the trees.” A life lived in rebellion to God, a life lived in rejection of repentance, a life lived without the fruits of repentance ,will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
With this solemn warning, the crowds began to ask him, “What should we do then?” And I think we do well to take this not as a question of fear, but as a question of legitimate desire for direction. This is not a request of frightened people trying to make God happy with them. This is people who understand the imporance of all of this, and desperately want to live a life filled with the fruits of repentance, to respond properly to God’s love and forgiveness. And so they come to John for some specific direction and guidance
John’s responses are, perhaps, surprisingly… normal? Even boring? There’s no grand spiritual journey and high-falutin ceremony to perform. No, what does it look like to have the fruits of repentance in your life? “Whoever has two shirts should share with the person who has none, and whoever has food should do the same.” The unremarkable direction continues when some tax collectors and Roman soldiers, two groups that would have been reviled by Jewish society then, ask John the same thing. John’s answer to them? “Collect no more than what you were authorized to … Do not extort money from anyone by force or false accusation. Be satisfied with your wages.” Just do your job honestly; that is a life filled with the fruits of repentance.
John addresses this idea of the fruits of repentance vocationally. What does it look like to have a life filled with the fruits of repentance and the joy of knowing that we are forgiven? Well, that will vary depending on the places God has put us in and the opportunities he has set before us. Parents have opportunities to produce fruits of repentance as they raise and nurture their children in youth and contnue to provide stability and direction for them when they're grown. Workers will have the opportunity to do their job faithfully, regardless of what industry or specific occupation and vocation they have. Everyone can be a good, kind neighbor to those who live near us or even to perfect strangers—yes even the person that cuts you off on the road or makes that long flight across the country uncomfortable as your seat-mate.
Living our life in a way that pleases and thanks God in every circumstance is a life filled with the fruits of repentance. Because those works are done not just out of a sense of obligation or because it’s the “right” thing to do but because you know you have a God who loves you, has freed you from your sins, and will bring you home to eternal life. These are actions that we take in joy, in celebration, rejoicing in knowing our sins are forgiven, that the Lamb of God, Jesus, has taken away not only the sin of the world but my sin; my personal failures are gone because the promised Savior came and lived and died for me; he's done exactly the same for you.
Of course, as John started his work and gained popularity and notoriety, there was a little buzz about him. He was a bit weird. He lived in the wilderness; he didn't wear conventional clothing or follow a conventional diet. And so all these things combined with his powerful preaching and teaching made the people wonder if John might be the Christ. Might this be the promised Savior? Might John be the one who came to save us? And John is very quick to deflect and shut down those rumors. “I baptize you with water. But someone mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
We could spend a lot of time this morning trying to parse out the different options of what it means that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. But let’s focus on one option this morning. In this brief discourse, we have fire mentioned three times. The first is what will happen to those fruitless trees that get cut down. The last is the separation of the wheat from the chaff, the good grain from the worthless leftovers. The fruitless tree and the useless parts of the plants are burned up. And then we are also told that that Messiah will come and baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.
I would suggest that the difference between the Holy Spirit and fire in Jesus’ baptism is the difference between faith and unbelief at this preaching and teaching. The Holy Spirit comes to anyone who hears God’s Word, his promises, and the work that has been accomplished for us. For some, the Holy Spirit stays and creates and strengthens faith in the hearts of those who hear. For others who reject the message and the Holy Spirit, fire replaces him. The heart that refuses to have fruits of repentance, that refuses to acknowledge joy or see anything special or good in what God has done for us is going to be that tree that's cut down and thrown into the eternal fire of hell, the chaff that's burned up with that unquenchable fire, the one that that our coming king will send to that eternity of abandonment by God, baptized with fire, not in a spiritual or refining sense, but in the sense of condemnation.
But my brothers and sisters, you and I are not destined for that fire. By God's grace, we cling to our Savior as the solution to our sin. We know that we couldn't do anything on our own, and he has done it all for us. So now we have that joy because we have been baptized with the Holy Spirit. We have that faith that God has produced in us, whether through our literal baptisms, preaching or hearing and reading his Word, and strengthened by the Lord's Supper. Here the Holy Spirit, given by Jesus, does his work to keep us forever in the true faith.
Your sins are gone. How do you want to live your life? Joyfully, in rejoicing and thanksgiving to the God who loves you. The end is coming. We still have Judgment Day in view here in the latter part of Advent. But that need not be a scary thing. That need not be a fearful thing for us. Instead, it will be a joyful thing because that will be the fulfillment of our forgiveness, the fulfillment of our redemption. And in heaven, we won't need fruits of repentance because we will have nothing to repent from. At that point, sin will be but a distant memory.
Until that rescue, until that day, what should we do? What does it look like to have a life filled with the fruits of repentance? Perhaps Paul’s direction to the Corinthians best summarizes John the Baptist’s teaching. Whether you eat or drink, or do anything else, do everything to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria
Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.
