Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
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You've heard of the wheat and the chaff, one is nutritious and useful as food while the other is worthless and not even fit fro beasts. What happens to the chaff? It gets burned up. Now apply this to baptism, do you want to be baptized into fire or into spirit?
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, a smaller, bite-sized piece from the larger lesson. We hope you enjoy it.
So the prophet in the Old Testament is always the kingmaker. Prophet precedes the king, the prophet anoints the king, right? And then the people are to recognize the king. So the imagery is the idea of preparing the way. Whenever a king would come to an ancient city, everyone would be put on notice in the town. The king is coming to your town. Now, what are you going to want to do? You're going to go out in your yard, you're going to clean up all the trash, right? Because it's not what you want the king to see. And you're going to put out pots of flowers, and you're going to wave flags, and you're going to be joyful. You're preparing the way
for the king. Now, John can't prepare the people's hearts so that when the king came, they would recognize the king. Because our hearts have to be ready. The heart is the most important thing. And the whole picture of what John is about, he is preparing the people for the king, preparing their hearts.
Now, verse 4, interesting guy, right? Had a garment of camel's hair, a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. And so everybody's out to see this strange thing. Who is this John? Then Jerusalem was going out to him, all Judea and all the district around the Jordan, and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins.
Now their sins all relate to their violations of the Mosaic Law, which was the law, was the rule of life for Israel. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, What? This is not what, you know, Joel Osteen would say we are supposed to do from the pulpit. We're supposed to preach self-esteem sermons where you just build people up and you never say anything negative. But he literally called them a brood of vipers and asked them who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. The imagery of the viper, you know, this the snake, the serpent in the Bible is traced back to this really bad guy called Satan. You brood of little Satans who warned you of the wrath to come. So you've got the people coming out to get baptized, and they're being baptized, they're confessing their sins under the Mosaic Law. Then you have the leadership of the people coming out, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And he has a different approach to each of these, because the leadership were really just a brood of vipers. They were not leading them in the path of righteousness. They were leading them in the path of unrighteousness. Because they didn't really keep the law. They'd externalized it all. And the heart was the target of the law, not just external action. So verse 8, therefore he tells them bear fruit in keeping with repentance. In other words, if you have a you should really have a change of mind about your understanding of the Mosaic Law Code because you're not keeping it. Okay. You have an external air about you with all of your fancy dress and all of your gold and all of your high-faluting attitude and behavior, but there's nothing inside of you that is righteous. You are just a brood of vipers. So you need to, of course, repent and then bear fruit in keeping with that repentance. Have a change of mind. And do not suppose, he says, that you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham
for our father. You know, that's enough. We have Abraham, he's our father, and this is all we need to be right with God. We're Jews. Uh they used to say this that, you know, if that no one who was a descendant of Abraham and the Jewish people uh could ever see the darkness of Hades. Um, because there was this place called the gates of Hades up in Caesarea Philippi. And if you go there, Jesus went there. Jesus took his disciples up there. It's where he asked them, Who do the people say that I am? And they say, Well, some say John's, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. And he says, But who do you say that I am? And Peter said, Thou art the Christ, the Messiah, Son of God. And he says, Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven. And he blesses him, right? For this proper analysis of his person. Well, this place is known as the gates of Hades. Well, a Jew would not technically be able to pass into Hades simply because he was an offspring of Abraham. And so Jesus says, Don't suppose you can say to yourselves, we've got Abraham for our father. We're in. He says, Because I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. And we learn in the book of Galatians that we can become children of Abraham by faith, for all those who are justified by faith are children of Abraham. Doesn't make us Jews, but uh, but we are children by faith, spiritual children, right?
So then the big issue begins in verse 10, 11, and 12 regarding this baptism, the two baptisms that we have remaining that are both dry and both real and administered by God. First of all, that of fire. Verse 10. The axe is already laid at the root of the trees, therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Now that doesn't sound very good, does it? You wouldn't want to be cut down and thrown into the fire. That would be obviously a picture of judgment there in verse 10, and it is. It's a picture of judgment on, in this case, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, if they don't get ready. But it's a picture in the bigger scheme of unbelieving Israel. The axe is already laid at the root of the tree, meaning this judgment that is to come upon them, John says, is right around the corner. And you don't want to be a part of this judgment. It is the baptism of fire, verse 11. As for me, John says, I baptize you with water for repentance. That's a water baptism we'll look at in a moment. But he who is coming after me, the one who he prepared the way for, right? The Messiah, is mightier than I. And I am not fit to remove his sandals. He will baptize you with a the Holy Spirit and B with fire. So two baptisms. We've already seen the one with fire. It's not good. Okay. Verse 12, his winnowing fork is in his hand, he will thoroughly clear his threshing floor. Again, not good. And he will gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. So there's two sides, you see. There is the wheat that is gathered into the barn, and there is the chaff that is burned with unquenchable fire. One of these is the baptism of the spirit, and the other is the baptism with fire. If the word baptism means identification, then part of Israel is going to be identified with the Spirit, and the other part is going to be identified with fire. Obviously, those identified with the Spirit are the believing element, what we call the remnant, the believing remnant of Israel. Now, Israel always has a remnant. This time they had a remnant. Romans 11, 1 through 10 teaches that there's always a remnant of believing Israel. There are about 30,000 Jews in Israel today who are believers, which is a very, very small proportion. But these are the latest numbers that we have from around 2016. So perhaps more. There's a lot going on in the land of Israel, but there's of course Jewish believers elsewhere in the world, what we call the diaspora outside of the land, in the dispersion. And all these compose the remnant. And then what John is saying is that when the Messiah comes, he's got these two baptisms to administer. One is the Spirit, and this is the remnant. They are the wheat, they are going to be gathered into the barn. You say, Well, what's the barn? Well, what did he say in verse 2? Why do they need to repent?
Why do they need to have a change of mind and get ready? Because the kingdom was at hand. That's why. The restoration of the kingdom spoken by all the prophets, ruled and reigned by the son of David, the Messiah, was right around the corner. And it was urgent that they get prepared because previous to that kingdom is a judgment. Separate the chaff from the weak. To separate the unbelieving, the non-remnant of Israel, from the believing, the remnant of Israel. So all of this passage looks at the idea that the kingdom could have come in the very first century A.D. And that is what John is preaching to. The generation that saw the forerunner of the king, John the Baptist, and saw the king himself. And they were supposed to prepare room in their hearts for him. And that's what he's trying to get them ready for. And he's warning them when he comes, he's got two baptisms. Which one do you want? You want the fire? You want to be like chaff thrown into unquenchable fire, or do you want the spirit and to be brought into that kingdom?
We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be uh useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.
