John Baptist Preaching

Luke 1

John had three charges from the Lord to deliver in his preaching.

1.     Return the hearts of the fathers to their children. V. 17

2.     Turn the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. V. 17

3.     Make ready a people prepared for the Lord

This is the preparation of the gospel. We need preaching that convicts fathers of their fatherlessness. We must call men to repentance. Is it any wonder in our age that we have a homosexual juggernaut? American men have been failing the test for a long time. They bought the lie of sexual freedom and it has resulted in emasculation.

Men, turn to the children. Don’t conceive them and kill them. Don’t propogate them and dessert them. Don’t bring them into your home and fail to bring them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Understand that what you sow, you will reap. And not only you. We are now reaping a harvest of boys who do not know how to be men. Is it any wonder?

Second, John was to call the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. The just are the justified, those who belong to God, in Christ, and follow after His ways. Frankly, in light of our unSupremes recent decision, this will be easier. It is clearer than ever that we have an outbreak of disobedience. From the leftist homoanything to the rightist libertarians, lawlessness is the rule of the day. So, we pass laws that are no laws at all in God’s eyes and wonder why we are never free in the land of liberty? Preachers, Christians, saints big and small, male and female, call upon the disobedient to heed the wisdom of God as revealed in His Word. Only there will they find peace for their troubled soul. Only there will they find a perfect Father.

Third, to make ready a people for the Lord. Evangelism in America has changed. We use to be able to assume basic congruencies. Americans thought there were absolutes, things like right and wrong, good and bad. We even use to think there was male and female, since that was the way that God created mankind. No more. The absolutes aren’t. We have to rethink our basic structure of communicating to a world that can no longer communicate.

What might I suggest? See numbers one and two. The foundational gospel. There is a God. You are created in the image of God. Sin has marred that image. God is not pleased with disobedience and there is a day of reckoning. The wicked shall be judged and not inherit the kingdom of God. Hell is real and real people go there. People who will not repent of their sins and submit to the Lord Jesus Christ. But thanks be to God, where sin abounds, grace does much more abound! There is forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

1Cor. 6:9-11   Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,  Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

So, do not deceive yourself. If you are a drunkard, or fornicator, or adulterer or homosexual, you CANNOT go to heaven. You will indeed go to hell. The only way out of this certainty, is to run to Jesus Christ, bow your knees in humble contrition, seek His forgiveness and turn from your sins. In this, there is grace, hope of resurrection and life eternal with Jesus and His Saints.