Luke 3:1-6 - God's Salvation

Church, if you have a Bible, please turn to the Gospel of Luke.

We'll be in Luke chapter 3.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

When you get out of the Old Testament, there's Matthew, Mark, Luke.

Into the Romans, Corinthians, and all those letters, just go back some.

Again, we will be in chapter 3.

If you don't have a Bible, again, there's some in the back table.

You're welcome to grab those.

Love for you to have one of those and keep that.

We want to be people of the word.

And I'm not anti-technology, okay?

But I do think it's helpful to have God's word before you.

And that those around you see you in God's word, especially, especially our children.

Luke, we'll be looking in chapter 3, verses 1 through 6 this morning.

Before I read, just remember, church, this is God's holy and sacred word given to us.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetriarch of Galilee, and his brother Philippi, Philip, Tetriarch of the region of Iatira, and Traconites, Traconitus, and Lessanus, you guys can tell me how to say that one later, Tetriarch of Abilene.

And during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, excuse me, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.

And he went into the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make his paths straight, every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough place shall become level, shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

You know, Benjamin Franklin once said that the only thing certain in life is death and taxes.

Probably heard that a lot, right?

Death, we don't know about when that's going to come for us, but tax season is here.

It's just right around the corner, so hopefully you're preparing for that.

But the disciple John, he had he would kind of argue with that.

Or, excuse me, Luke, the disciple Luke, the physician who wrote this gospel, would have more to say to Benjamin Franklin about certainty.

For we know that the Gospel of Luke has been given, and there's several themes that people pull out of Luke.

But Luke tells us, right at the beginning of chapter 1 and verse 4, that he's given this account so that we might be certain of the things that have been taught.

Now, certainty is something most people want.

It's something that most people spend a lot of time and a lot of money trying to acquire, to acquire certainty.

We know knowledge is foundational to certainty, but at some point the knowledge we have doesn't answer all the questions that we have.

At some point, we take a step of faith, we believe that, and we trust what we do not fully understand, and what cannot be fully explained to us.

Faith is having certainty not in our knowledge of the faith things of our faith, but in the object of our faith.

Our certainty comes not in our own faith that we possess, but our certainty comes in the object of our faith, Jesus Christ.

And that he will bring salvation, as he has promised to bring.

I have three points this morning.

Here they are, so you can keep track if you want.

One that we see God's salvation in hostile places, we see God's salvation for humble people, and we see God's salvation for his people.

And this idea is that out of the wilderness comes salvation for the nations.

So we just read these first two verses in Luke chapter 3.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

We get a picture of the hostilities in which God's salvation takes place.

So we have all these names of these rulers.

Again, remember, Luke is a physician, he's trying to be diligent, he's trying to be accurate in his information and make sure people understand he's not just a physician, he is a historian.

Luke does a phenomenal job accounting historically the gospel account of Jesus Christ.

So he begins by talking about these different leaders and what regions they're taking place in or they're leading.

And it's helpful for us to understand that we are saying this happened in a real place in a real time.

Sometimes we read the things of the Bible and we know them so well, and they can kind of become ethereal, right?

Like, yeah, sure.

God and Jesus, and he walked the earth, and you know, Nazareth and Galilee and all these things.

But again, Luke's locating this narrative, this story, at a very real point in time and history, real place.

Jesus didn't come 500 years earlier or 500 years later.

He came at this place and this time and under these rulers.

Under these leaders.

Now these names reveal something to us.

One, these are leaders who are evil and wicked.

We know that, again, Rome is predominantly ruling this region.

Rome is in charge here.

And Herod the Great, who was half Jew, half Roman, had three sons and put them in kind of his authority, his place once he died, and gave him the title Tetriarch.

And we see two of his sons here.

One had been removed and replaced by a Roman ruler, Pontius Pilate.

And these names are pagan rulers.

Men who are not seeking to do good or justice or right things.

And then it's odd that we see the name of two high priests, Annas and Caiaphas.

Now, we note in the old covenant, the covenantal system, there would have been one high priest.

But yet here Luke, diligently in his work, lists two.

We know that Caiaphas was the son-in-law of Annas, and Annas had been kind of kicked out, if you will, of his position as a high priest.

So he wasn't, he didn't have a title high priest.

His son-in-law now took that, which I'm sure he worked to arrange.

But it's interesting, he still is somehow one of the guys who is pulling the levers, right?

He's the guy in the back room making the deals, making the decisions.

And obviously it wasn't too secretive either, because Luke knew what was going on.

So there's this place led by rebellious, wicked rulers.

It's here, in the midst of this, that the good news of the gospel begins.

That a Savior would come.

Now, before we get to the next part about the prophesying of John the Baptist and those things, it's just take a moment and just think for a moment how the leaders, in a sense, do represent the people.

We know that the Jews were oppressed.

We know that they were occupied, being occupied by Roman rulers, as I said a moment ago.

But they also, even in their rebellion against Rome, they were not necessarily looking for a Messiah who would come and cleanse their hearts.

Who would come and take their heart of stone out and put in a heart of flesh that would glorify God and worship him.

They wanted a king who would come and just kick the Romans out and who would continue championing their legalistic Pharisaical ways.

But it is in this wilderness that God speaks.

It's in the wilderness here.

The word comes to John, the son of Zechariah.

We know the story of John when he was in the womb, filled with the Holy Spirit before he was born, and that's all.

And now we catch up with him.

Next thing we know, he's in the wilderness.

The Gospel of Matthew tells us that he lived in locusts and honey and wore these clothes that were typical and all these things.

This man in the wilderness, and God's word came to him.

It's interesting.

And there's a pattern that we see throughout scripture.

In the wilderness, the Lord speaks.

He brings his word.

So the salvation, the beginning, sorry, excuse me, God's salvation brings in hostile places.

And we see that God's salvation is for humble people.

John's responsibility, receiving this word in a hostile place, in the wilderness, not exactly a social, uh a social kind of person in on society or uh who had favoritism with the community.

God speaks to him, and then John says he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

It's interesting.

Why was John baptizing people?

Why was he calling them to come and repent to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins?

Now we know that baptism doesn't save us.

And he wasn't saying you must be baptized to be forgiven, or you must repent and earn your forgiveness.

We know that in the old covenant there was a means for Gentiles to come into the family of faith, into the Israelite family, and part of that process was being baptized, which was symbolic for a spiritual reality that you had turned from your sin, that God had cleansed you from your sin, washed you clean.

We know that in Romans 6, this cleansing, this baptism, uh the physical baptism represents the spiritual reality of change, this cleansing in us.

Romans 6, 1 says, What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

By no means.

How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into his death, into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

So here John is saying, proclaiming around the region of the Jordan, the river, saying, Listen, repent.

Come and repent, be baptized, and you will experience the forgiveness of your sins.

But this would require a tremendous amount of humility.

The Jews were not known for being a humble people.

As I said a moment ago, they were prideful and they didn't want someone to come and change them as if they needed changed.

Their father was Abraham.

They needed someone to come and kick the Romans out.

And John's message wasn't come and repent and be baptized and be freed from Roman rule.

Come and be baptized and be identified with the good Jews.

No doubt there were those who seeing this happen, seeing people respond in repentance, as we'll get to Lord willing in weeks to come.

We'll see how people respond to John's message.

They responded for different reasons.

But there was a response that required humility.

To humble themselves and say, Yeah, I need cleansed.

I need to be washed in God's grace.

What would have been tempting for the Jews to think is that this was something they had to do to earn salvation.

This was some other work that they needed to do.

We know that even the excuse me, even the historian Josephus points out to us in his writings that John was clear.

This was not a baptism that was going to earn you favor or to save you, but to acknowledge a repentance, to acknowledge a sorrow over your sin.

The people had to come and repent.

Yeah, we say that word a lot, repentance.

We need to repent of our sins.

Here's a, I think, a helpful definition of repentance.

Repentance is the act whereby one turns from his or her sin.

Idolatry, and creaturely rebellion, and turns to God in faith.

It's this turning from something and to something.

This turning from sin, from the things of the world, the things of Satan, and to God.

Trusting Him, following Him.

There's this turning away from and turning toward God.

That they might receive forgiveness.

R.

Kent Hughes has a helpful quote on this.

He says it's important for us to see the close connection between repentance and forgiveness.

Because while no amount of repentance can ever merit forgiveness in the sight of God without repentance, without repentance, no soul will ever be saved.

Repentance is the telltale mark of the grace of God at work in our lives.

Saving faith and true repentance are always found together.

Saved souls are repentant souls.

Amen.

Saved souls are repentant souls.

And John's declaration, his task to go around to these regions and saying, listen, you need to repent.

Repent.

This isn't a baptism where you just kind of come and you do your symbolic cleansing and you get out and you go on your way.

This is a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of your sins.

Again, this would have felt odd to some people.

Well, doesn't the priest do that for us on the Day of Atonement every year?

Doesn't he go in into the Holy of Holies and do the sacrifice thing?

Don't I sacrifice like all these holidays and do all this stuff for my sins?

Aren't they atoned for?

Paul or John is revealing to them by this declaration, this call to repentance, that there was something more needed.

That they weren't freed from their sin.

And the first thing they had to do is acknowledge their sin.

Acknowledge your sin.

And how easy is it for us to acknowledge other people's sin?

It's just, I mean, I'm you're amazing at this.

I just want to tell you this right now, okay?

You are amazing at acknowledging other people's sin.

If no one ever told you that, congratulations, you know.

You're so good at that.

And I mean that.

And I don't mean that in tongue-in-cheek, I mean you are genuinely good at it.

I'm really good at it too.

I'm really good at acknowledging your sin.

All right?

You're good at acknowledging my sin.

And that's how sin works.

It blinds us to our own sin.

Only when we are humble before the Lord, before his word, do we see, let his word reveal to us our sin.

In our pride, we don't see our sin.

We just see everyone else's sin.

Unless, you know, like it's a big sin.

It's a big sin.

We all kind of see it and acknowledge it.

But if in your life, in your heart, are they just little sins?

Yeah, just little things, little things you say, little judgmental thoughts you have, little fleshly desires or lust or pride, those things, they're little.

You know, and yeah, sure, I have those things, but who doesn't, you know?

We must repent.

Turn from those things.

And that requires humility.

God's salvation is not for those who are prideful and arrogant and think they've got it figured out.

God's salvation is not for those who are like, hey, I'll I'll take some of Jesus, but I, you know, I'll be okay without him too.

Like I can I can figure this out.

God's salvation, if that's if that's where you are at, right?

The salvation doesn't come to those people because you don't want it.

God's salvation comes to people who want salvation, who realize they're dead in their sin, who realize that there's no hope in this world, who realize that they were made to worship something, and they know that because they keep worshiping things.

They worship their job, they worship their spouse, they worship their kids, they worship their computer, they worship their video games, they worship their bank accounts, they worship whatever.

They go from thing to thing to thing to thing and back again, worshiping, trying to find the thing that they were made to worship, which is God.

And when we worship God, there's joy, there's delight in that.

But that requires humility.

God's salvation is for humble people at the end of their rope.

And God's salvation is for his people.

Look at me at verse four.

As is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the and the rough places shall become level places, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

This is a quote out of Isaiah chapter 40, verses 3 and 4, when Isaiah was giving this prophecy.

Isaiah 40:3

This ancient prophecy is coming to pass.

You know, prophets in the old covenant have been looking for generations for this point.

There's other prophecies about Jesus.

We know there's lots of prophecies, but Luke is quoting the one that God gave to John, Isaiah 40.

And here, John the Baptist, the last prophet of the Old Testament, of the Old Covenant, the last prophet, the greatest prophet as well.

And his task is to prepare the way of the Lord.

What a responsibility for him.

In Isaiah, when when Isaiah is talking, he says, the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

This crying isn't just like uh like an announcement.

There's this weeping almost, this bawling out, this desire to get everyone to hear, everyone to understand.

Prepare the way of the Lord.

And then he goes and talks about making this path straight, and the valleys shall be filled, and the mountains and hills shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places smooth.

Roads are a really interesting thing.

We just take for granted all of our somewhat smooth roads we have around here.

But this was a task given to different places.

Hey, a king is coming, a ruler is coming, make the way straight.

Now we know that Isaiah is not saying, hey guys, in Jerusalem, make sure that the cobblestone's worked out and get all that stuff just graded in the right way.

What he's saying is prepare your hearts.

Make a road, if you have, repentance in your heart.

For those who are high, they're prideful, they're arrogant.

May they be brought.

Down and smooth.

And those who who are low and they don't have the perspective, they don't think, they don't have the understanding of God's word.

May they be taught the things of the Lord that they might repent.

May those who are going in all kinds of different directions with their life and thinking they can just do this and do that and do these things and it won't have any effects.

May this there be a repentance, a preparation for the king is coming.

That all flesh might see or shall see the salvation of God.

I think at times we are guilty of this, where we are excited about the things of God.

We're excited that Christ has come, He's died on the cross for our sins, and that He's defeated death, and He's in heaven, and that He's gonna come again for His people.

We're excited for that.

But in the meantime, we just want to do enough things to get to heaven.

We just want to do enough that we're confident we're saved.

I know I'm saved because I go to a good church.

Um, I do read my Bible and confess my sins regularly, and I really try to abstain from sin, especially like the bad sins.

I think we're we're all gonna be guilty of this.

Well, we just want to get to be good enough Christians that we can confident we're Christians, and that other people would acknowledge we're Christians.

And once we reach that place, we just kind of want to, okay, now let's just put cruise control on and let's get to the finish line, right?

And and and I say it like that, that's a very understandable uh feeling and emotion because it's hard following Jesus, it's costly following Christ.

We grow weary in these things, we get discouraged.

We let little things of the world come in and steal our affections for Jesus.

We get caught up on cultural things.

Are we doing this thing right?

Are we doing that thing right?

Are we not doing this thing?

Are we not doing that thing?

We try to maintain.

Can we just maintain until Jesus comes back?

And what happens is it's usually for most people, you become a Christian, the Lord saves you, and then you grow a lot for, I don't know, five, ten years, if that.

And somewhere in that five to ten year mark, you just kind of begin to plateau and you hit that, like, well, let's just make it to glory.

Let's just get there.

And yeah, the road's a little crooked.

Yeah, there's some some big potholes, and it's rough and some patches and all this, but you know what?

I think we're just we'll just hang on and just keep going.

We'll get to glory, it'll be done.

And I just want to say, praise God that that there is hope that we will get to glory, right?

Amen.

Praise God, we're heading there.

But let us not just try to get there, just stumble our way into glory.

Just barely cross the line and hold things together.

Let's prepare.

For the king has come and will come again.

Let's prepare our hearts.

Let's be a repentant people, quick to turn from sin, and quick to examine our hearts.

As Psalm 139 says, Lord, examine me and see if there be any wicked way in me.

May that be a prayer that we have regularly, so that we don't become complacent, kind of bored with the things of the faith.

But yet, we gotta get to heaven.

We want other people to get to heaven, sure.

But rather, may we be obedient to the Lord, desiring to follow him, so that all flesh would see the salvation of God.

Paul or Luke, when he's writing this out, what John's task was prepare the way for the king.

Again, no prophet had spoken for over 400 years.

Nothing had been said.

Where is the hope?

Where's the life?

What's going to happen?

And here the message comes.

Prepare the way so that all shall see the salvation of God.

Don't, hey, prepare the way so that the Romans can get kicked out, or prepare the way so that the Jews can continue their legalistic domineering practices.

But prepare the way for the Christ is coming.

The Messiah is coming for the Jews and for the Gentiles, for all of the world shall see the salvation of God.

And here we are in a church, two thousand years later, thousands of miles away.

Seeing God's salvation.

Seeing God's salvation.

You think about your life, and you think about my life, or just look around.

I encourage you right now, just look around in the room.

I know you guys don't know everyone.

You can look at, if you're looking at me, you're not looking in the right place, all right?

Look around at each other.

There's a lot most of you don't know everyone, or I don't know any of us know everyone, but there's a lot of people you don't know, there's a lot of people you hopefully you do know, and I want to encourage you.

There are dozens of people in this room who've experienced the salvation of God.

This thing that John is talking about.

Out in the wilderness, he gets his word from the Lord and he goes and starts proclaiming this repentance.

Prepare the way.

This thing, this salvation that God would save his people.

It's still happening.

It's happening in my life, it's happening in your life.

Just look amongst us that we have seen God's salvation saving us, taking from us, stuck in our sin, in our death, pursuing worldly things, bringing life and joy and forgiveness, taking away the struggles, the sins, the addictions, the repairing broken marriages, building people up.

We've seen God's salvation, church.

We've seen it in action.

And so we likewise should go.

Go to those around us and proclaim Christ.

Proclaim the good news, the gospel, saying, I see that you're chasing the things of the world.

I see that you're trying to find meaning, or you're trying to find purpose, you're trying to be a good person.

And I just want to tell you, you're never gonna find it.

And you'll never be enough.

But there is someone who was and who is.

His name's Jesus Christ.

Can I tell you about Jesus Christ?

How often we just assume that we live in America, we're in the Midwest, there's churches everywhere.

Surely everyone's heard of the gospel.

Everyone's been given an opportunity to hear about the good news of Jesus Christ.

I just want to challenge us that we would be evangelistic, that we would pray, asking God, give us opportunities to share our faith.

And that we would be preparing for that.

That we would be practicing literally, one to another, practicing.

Well, how do I articulate the gospel?

How do I say that?

How do I answer people's questions when they ask questions?

That we would be diligent to do what others have done for us.

Proclaiming God's salvation.

You know, out of the wilderness comes salvation for the nations.

We are a testament to that.

We are an example of that.

That God has brought salvation.

We trust that God loves us.

And that because of his love for us, we then go share this good news with others.

And we have faith.

We have faith that God will deliver us and overcome darkness.

That truly, in your life, and I mean this literally, this is as real as real gets, that God would deliver you.

And that you would see the darkness overcome in your life.

And that you would have that kind of faith.

You'd have it for yourself, you'd have it for our church and for others as you take this good news out that God will deliver and that he will overcome.

And that all the uncertainties of life and all the things we think we're certain of, we think we know are real or are coming for us.

We know that God will deliver and he will overcome darkness.

And that we have this hope that those who are humble and those who earnestly seek after God will find him.

God is not held up somewhere saying to all of humanity, Well, good luck.

If you can find me, I'll save you.

But God has graciously come for us, come to us.

And those who are humble, who are willing to repent and turn from their sin and seek after God, that He will find them.

He will save them, He will give them new life.

And we believe that there is a love that flows from a heart that has received unconditional love.

That you and I have received this unconditional love, and that love pushes us, motivates us, moves us to love others.

There's just no way for you to comprehend how unlovable you are in God's sight.

I mean that.

We don't have language, we don't have capacity to understand how much we have violated a holy and righteous God, that he would love us.

And yet he does.

He's come for us.

And because he has loved us, not just, well, I'll let you have a few years on the earth, and I'll let there be some sunshine and some grass, although those are mercies of God, good food, a grace of God, not just those things, but I will send my son for you, my one and only son, so that you will no longer walk in darkness, no longer walk in the ways leading to death, but that you might find life, and that you might worship the one you have been created to worship.

And out of that love that He's given us, we then love others.

We're not God.

We can't give love equally or like He gives it, but we can strive for that.

We can be by His grace alone and by His mercy alone.

Non-Christians cannot love the way Christians can.

And I'm not saying, well, pat yourself on the back.

You know, you can do something that they can't.

That's only God's grace in your life.

The only way you're able to love others the way God has loved you is because of God's grace in your life.

And so we love others because He first loved us.

And we take the good news of the gospel to others because He has come for us, and others brought the good news to us.

So whether we're in hostile times, and I just want to tell you, church, we're heading into hostile times as a culture.

There might be four more years of some reprieve, I don't know, but hostile times are coming.

Darkness is coming culturally.

And we're here to say salvation's not stopping.

It is in the midst of that that God brings salvation, and God brings salvation to humble people, and he brings it to his people.

We repent and follow after him.

And so let us be a church, a people of faith that God will deliver and overcome.

Let us be a people of hope that those who are humble and who are seeking the things of God, that he will save them, and a people of love, who have experienced this love and love others as Christ has loved us.

Church, let's pray.