When I was 16 years old, I got my very first speeding ticket. I don't get many of those anymore, but man, I got a lot in the early years. I wasn't ready for the whole idea of having to actually go to court. I don't think I had to, but my dad went with me. But I remember we went in there and it was my turn to get up in court, and the person there in the courtroom, I don't know who reads it in Colorado, if it's the bailiff who announces what's happening next, but they announced that it was the state of Colorado versus Matthew Whitman. What? We actually say that? Because that seems like a lot. I'm 16, I like baseball and Nintendo, and I like to skateboard with my friends, and I'd have really ever had a state be versus me before, but I guess I have that now. And just the authority and the pomp and circumstance of the whole judge and the other people in the courtroom, and guys had guns and stuff by the door. And I got a stern lecture from the judge. And I was really happy to have the whole thing over. I've had never before, and I don't think ever since, sat in the seat of one who is being judged by an authority figure in a very formal sense with consequences and teeth. But it was intimidating, and I didn't like it. And I didn't like that man. I respected him, but I didn't like being told I was wrong in front of everybody. And I don't think we like getting to the parts in the Bible very much where we get told we are wrong. Happy, friendly God stuff in the Bible, where he affirms us or calls us his sons or his daughters or talks about the inheritance we have in God or how he's going to make everything better. We like that, understandably, because we're very attracted to the tender, loving, gracious side of God, which is fully who he is. But we're a little freaked out like I was in the courtroom when we see the judgment side of God. But both logically and biblically are absolutely necessary. You don't want a God who's like, well, you know, I just I love everybody so much that all of the horrible, victimizing, worst things that have happened in history, that is just gonna go uncorrected, unspoken to. Who am I to judge as God? So Hitler and like people who do sex trafficking and Mao and other great murderers and tyrants from history, and even people who wronged you in more subtle, smaller ways that still sting your heart. I'm not gonna make any pronouncement on that. I don't want to be a judgmental God. Everybody. No. We want to believe that on some level, however, it gets sorted out in terms of a sentence or lack thereof, a commuted sentence, we want to believe, and I think we can rightly believe, that there is a being who loves justice very much, is crystal clear on what justice is, has a proper knowledge level, both of circumstances and even the motivations of the human heart, that unlike Twitter and politicians and people who yell about things and judgmental friends, this being could actually call things out for exactly what they are, with no argument, no complaining because the judgment is always exactly correct, and pronounce, no, that was screwed up. The Holocaust was screwed up. You were bad and what you did was remarkably bad. That person who victimized that person, that was screwed up. But if that's all we have from God, then we're gonna swing from our own gallows eventually, because by comparison to God's standards of goodness, we're gonna be a dumpster fire too, just maybe not as dramatically as we might imagine some of the worst people in history to be, but we are victims and victimizers. This is the story of our life, which means we need the God of comfort, who shows care for our victimhood, but we also need the God of grace, who shows mercy and forgiveness by the work of his son on the cross for our failures. You gotta have both for God to make any sense, you gotta have both for God to be in a position to fix what's wrong with things. So as we've discussed, Matthew 3 7, he says to the Pharisees and Sadducees, you brood of vipers, we talked about the level of deep insult that comes with that. Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? So obviously he's suspicious of their motivations, doesn't believe they're here out of goodwill, believes they are here to evaluate the quality of what he's doing and decide whether or not this is something they'll approve of. And he does not believe that they're coming in good faith, like everybody else is coming, to repent. Because that was his message that he called people with. Remember, it's turning the page, uh, this is one of these repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. I actually had that memorized. I don't know why I had to turn the page. But then he goes on to say something we haven't looked at closely in verse eight. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Why is that verse there? Well, I think it's in contrast to the previous verse where he's questioning what their motives are and why they're showing up. You want to know what it looks like to actually get this right and to truly be responding to the message repent. That is change your ways because a dramatic thing that God is about to do is at hand. You want to know what it would look like to get it right? Legitimately change. Okay, it's one thing to have a religious experience and say some religious stuff, but what he's really driving at is embrace the values of this kingdom that I'm telling you is coming. You might not fully understand what all of that means yet, but we're literally only like one chapter away from getting that answer in the book of Matthew. But reject this broken, selfish stuff and prepare your heart and your actions for this better thing that's coming down the pike. So he tells them, produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And don't think that you can say to yourselves, we broke this down a ton over the last couple of episodes, we have Abraham as our father. I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. And what he's doing here is anticipating their pushback on his, hey, you guys need to repent and produce fruit in keeping with it. Like, uh, we're descended straight from Abraham in terms of our position and our role. We have this succession that we can point to ethnically, religiously. So uh, yeah, I think we're good. And what John is saying is, no, you ain't good. And don't think that God couldn't just make up children for himself out of nothing if he felt like it. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Yikes! Well, this is getting very intense. And John is intentionally ratcheting up this language to say there are consequences to this. It's not just I Twitter flamed you because I don't agree with how you do religious stuff. It's there's someone something much bigger than me going on. There's someone much bigger than me behind all of this stuff. And this isn't just a call to sign up for my team. This is a call to change, and it's a warning that it's time to change, but it's also quickly shifted into an invitation that it's time to change towards something good and proactively good that all religion aside, even if you don't think there's a God, is legitimately the best thing for everybody. And that is these kingdom values that I keep talking about that we're gonna get into in more depth later. He goes on to say, I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I'm not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering the wheat into his barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. And I'm not gonna take us into the positive content here until next time around. We'll look at what John is pointing toward, but I do want to linger for a minute on the negative content here that is the conclusion of his rebuke saying that there is this great judge who is positioned properly to judge. He sees who you are and what you actually are, and there is a judgment that is coming, which is, I mean, let's just call it what it is, it's terrifying. I don't want to be on the wrong side of that judgment. But uh the language here is winnowing fork is in his hand. So this is the the device that was used to separate out the good stuff from the bad stuff when you brought in a grain harvest, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering the wheat into his barn, and then what's left? Well, what's left is the stuff of a different weight that gets separated from the wheat that is absolutely useless. What do you do with that when you're done? Well, you throw it into the unquenchable fire. The language here is something that has captured the imagination of hymn writers and, well, for that matter, country musicians. Johnny Cash has a song called When the Man Comes Around that is more drawing on revelation, but it evokes some of the same judgment language that is sprinkled throughout the New Testament. But um, you might remember the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which is a very odd hymn accomplishing a very odd set of things. But there's the one verse toward the end that is, He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat. He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat. Oh, be swift my soul to answer him. Be jubilant, my feet are God is marching on. That line, he is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat is an enormously poetic English turn of a phrase characterizing this Hebrew turn of a phrase that John is employing. Look, the judgment of God is freaky. I get it, and we're gonna have to talk a lot more about it because it's part of the equation here. I would say again that you can't have the beautiful, majestic, wonderful to look at tiger without the claws. The power that makes the tiger so alluring is also dangerous. And if you have a God who is powerful enough to do the redemptive stuff that we saw referenced so often in chapters one and two in the birth and infancy narrative of Jesus, a God who's powerful enough to remember, like level out the mountains and raise up the valleys and straighten out all the crooked roads, and he has the power to take everything that's broken and murderous and selfish and wrong about the heart and soul of humanity and fix it. That kind of power is something that has to be taken seriously and respected. Now, look, I know there are a lot of you who listen to this who think that there is no such power and there is no such deity, and maybe you think it would be nice if there were. I always try to be straightforward with where I'm at. I've been in that position of doubt or even atheism at at least a moment in my life. Right now I'm in a position and have been for a long time where I would say, no, I think there is a God that is such a character behind all of this. And if there is such a God, whether in the hypothetical portions of the more atheistic or agnostic mind, or in the less hypothetical portions of my mind, either way, conceptually, you cannot have a God with the kind of power it would take to make things better without simultaneously having a God with enough power to know what right and wrong are and to have the authority to judge and judge rightly. Proverbs 9 10 is a very applicable, famous one here. It says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. As we get into the stuff that involves Jesus' promises of hope and deliverance, the description of him as a king and the kingdom values and this kingdom that he is establishing, we're going to be enormously encouraged. But part of the reason we need to be enormously encouraged is because all of this beautiful stuff is going to have a displacing effect against all of the icky stuff. And the same thing that we do primitively as we look at that which is awful and judge it to be wanting, even purely evil, is more perfectly carried out in the mind of an all-knowing God who divides these things flawlessly and never fails in his judgment. As a result, we're going to run into some passages that freak us out. And if I go barking this stuff at people, frankly, I think I'm probably out of line because I don't know what I'm talking about. But John played a unique role. And if God goes around saying stuff like this or saying stuff like this through someone uniquely positioned for it like John, uh the better response, I guess, might be to listen and consider whether the thing has some merit. I appreciate you tremendously. I want to say thank you as we get to the end of the week here to all of you who support the program at patreon.com/slash the TMBH podcast. You really are the engine behind this thing. Thank you for doing it. I know a bunch of you went out of your way to support the sponsor this week. It's a Dwell Bible app. That means a tremendous amount as well. So I can't wait to get into more of this with you. I'm so glad we get to do this together. I'm Matt is a 10-minute Bible hour. I'll catch you soon.