He's a great man, and in Jesus' name I pray, amen.
All right, we're in Matthew chapter 3 tonight.
Matthew chapter 1 gave us that genealogy of Joseph, and it went through the events of Joseph and Mary and the birth of Christ.
Then in chapter 2, we saw the events of the wise men coming and King Herod slaughtering all the children in Bethlehem and all the coasts thereof.
Then we saw Jesus being brought by his parents at a young age, about two years old,
down to Egypt for just a very brief sojourn, because when they got back, it said he was still a young child.
And so they got back from Egypt, they were afraid to go into Judea, so they went up and dwelled in a city called Nazareth,
up in the province of Galilee.
And then in chapter number 3, we start off talking about somebody named John the Baptist.
It says, In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea,
and saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Now, this man John the Baptist, when he comes on the scene, look at this sermon that he preaches.
Now, I'm always very interested in this just as a preacher.
I like to look in the Bible, and I like to look at sermons that actual preachers in the Bible preached.
And obviously this isn't the entire sermon, but this is a little snippet here of John the Baptist preaching what it was like.
I mean, can you imagine going and hearing John the Baptist preach? It would have been amazing.
But look at this man described here. Look at verse number 4.
It says, The same John had his raiment of camels fair, and a leathern girdle about his loins,
and his meat was locusts and wild honey.
Now, think about this man. He lives in the wilderness.
Now, some people misunderstand this word, wilderness.
Wilderness is talking about this kind of terrain that we live in right here in Phoenix.
It's talking about desert, because if you can flip to another gospel in Luke chapter 1, verse number 80,
and it says that he was in the desert.
And so it uses those two words synonymously in the Bible, wilderness and desert.
And so here he is out in the desert. He's living in the desert.
He's wearing a camel hair kind of clothing with a leather belt, and he's eating locusts.
Now, locusts are grasshoppers.
So here he is. He's living in the desert eating grasshoppers and honey.
This is an amazing man.
And I was reading through these different accounts.
I read it in all the gospels where it mentions it, and I was reading all I could about John the Baptist.
And the thing that stands out about this man is his preaching.
And I would call his kind of preaching wilderness preaching,
because it's kind of preaching that's maybe a little bit out there from the norm,
maybe a little bit out there from the mainstream, this kind of wilderness preaching.
But it's amazing how here's Jesus Christ. You've got to think about this.
Jesus Christ is getting ready to start his ministry.
To give you a little background on John, John is actually Jesus' first cousin.
Mary, his mother, her sister's name was Elizabeth, and she gave birth to John.
They were both pregnant at the same time.
And she gave birth to John six months before Jesus was born.
So John is six months older than Jesus.
So presumably John is about 30 years old when he starts preaching,
because we know that Jesus, from the book of Luke chapter 3,
we know that Jesus was exactly, or I think it says he was about 30.
It doesn't say he was exactly 30.
But he was about 30 years old, the Bible says, when he was baptized by John the Baptist.
So the events that we're reading about here, John must have been 30 years old also,
because he had just begun preaching, and here's Jesus.
He's only six months younger than him.
Well, turn, if you would, to Luke chapter 1.
I want to show you something about this man, John.
So Luke chapter 1, just two books later in the Bible,
and it's the longest chapter in the New Testament.
Luke chapter 1, look at verse number 80.
And the Bible says in Luke 180,
And the child grew, and this is talking about John the Baptist,
and the child grew and waxed strong in spirit,
and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.
So here's a young man raised by godly parents, Zachariah and Elizabeth,
who is Jesus' aunt, Elizabeth.
And here he is, he grows up, and he leaves his house,
and he goes and lives in the desert alone.
Now this seems like kind of a strange man, if you look at this.
He's living alone out in the desert, he's dressed funny, and he's eating grasshoppers.
But look at what it says here, it says he waxed strong in spirit.
This is, you know, today, young men, they grow up,
and they go to the little Christian school,
and then they come out of their little Christian school,
and they go to their Bible college.
And it's amazing the contrast here of John the Baptist
versus the typical preacher boy that you see in our day.
The typical preacher boy grows up, he's in the Christian school with his,
he's got to wear a tie, right, so he's got his little pink tie on,
just to be as rebellious as he can be.
So he's got his stinking little pink tie on,
he's got his cute little hairdo with just a little poof right in the front here,
so he can look like the backstreet boys,
and he goes to teenage soul winning,
and spends 59 minutes and 59 seconds out soul winning because he has to,
where he just pretty much, you know, knocks on the door and just runs away,
oh, nobody's home, or just mess around with his friends,
spends the time at McDonald's.
He goes off to Bible college, and at Bible college,
he learns that the King James Bible is not enough,
he's got to go back into the Greek and Hebrew,
and suck a bunch of weird stuff out of his thumb from some language
that he doesn't even understand.
He goes to English classes taught by, you know, a woman in a preaching college,
he's taught by a woman how to have preachers writing seminar,
if you can believe it, trust me, I've been there.
But the thing that I like about John the Baptist is that his Bible college was a desert.
His Bible college was a cave somewhere.
His Bible college was him alone with God.
You say, well, who was his teacher?
His teacher was the Holy Spirit,
and his textbook was the 39 books of the Old Testament.
So this isn't your average type preacher of the church that you go to today.
This is a very different kind of man.
It says that he waxed strong in spirit.
You see, the only way that any of us are going to wax strong in spirit,
everybody in this room, okay,
the only way that we are going to wax strong in spirit
is when we spend time alone with God.
It's not going to be found in a Christian school somewhere.
It's not going to be found in a Bible college anywhere.
It's not going to be found in some kind of higher education.
It's probably not even going to be found in a church service.
It's going to be found when you and God are alone with this book.
That's where you're going to get strong in spirit.
You see, when you're alone with God,
that's where the growth happens.
That's where the fellowship happens with God.
I'll tell you what.
I've been in services that were exciting kind of services,
where the preaching is on fire and everybody's shouting amen
and people are excited and they're singing out the songs.
But I'll tell you something.
I've never been more excited
than when I was just off somewhere alone with God
and I was reading the Bible, I was quoting the Bible,
or I was praying, and that's where the excitement is.
That's where you get the strength.
That's where you have the strong in spirit kind of a walk with God
that John the Baptist had.
That's why John, after his 12 years or so of Bible college,
out in the desert, alone with God,
you think it was fun in the desert.
I think he was probably having fun.
But I don't think it's exactly what you'd consider comfort and relaxation.
It's not exactly a vacation spot.
And he's going out to the desert and he's not eating nice food,
but he's just out there just him and God.
And can you imagine, as he read the Word of God,
as he said the Word of God by himself out in the desert,
how it must have just burned in his heart.
I mean, think about this, because he's not around anybody.
He's studying.
You know he just wanted to just preach and go soul winning,
but God, for some reason, was just keeping him until the right time.
And so here he was, just studying the Bible,
spending time with God, just roughing it out in the wilderness,
you know, becoming a man.
And here he is, waiting.
You know it must have just been burning inside him when he was going to preach.
And then he comes on the scene at 30 years old,
and he just starts preaching.
Look at the kind of preaching.
I would call this wilderness preaching.
We need a revival in this country of wilderness preaching.
That's what we need, because look, Jesus,
even Jesus Christ himself is coming on the scene, right?
You'd think that Jesus would need no introductions, wouldn't you?
I mean, you'd think Jesus would just show up and make things happen,
but look, Jesus said, I don't want to come on the scene.
I don't want to come on the scene at 30 years of age
and start preaching and start my ministry to a bunch of backslidden,
dead, liberal type of people.
He said, I'm going to send somebody before me,
and this is found in verse number 3.
He said, I'm going to send somebody before me,
and I want him to prepare the way for me.
And the Bible says in another place that he was going to basically,
let me turn there because I forget exactly what it says.
Malachi chapter 3, if you turn there.
There's just one book, a couple chapters previous to this, actually.
Actually, it's verse number 5 and 6 here of Malachi chapter 4.
The Bible says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet.
And this is referring to John the Baptist.
We find that out in Matthew chapter 11.
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming
of the great and dreadful day of the Lord,
and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children
and the heart of the children to their fathers,
lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
See, what God is saying here is that Jesus Christ didn't come to condemn the world,
but that the world through him might be saved.
And he says, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse,
lest Jesus just come and just be so frustrated and angry with what he finds,
he says, I'm going to send somebody beforehand just to straighten these people out
and to get them in line before I even show up.
So he sends this man, John the Baptist, who just gets up,
and we've had about three or four hundred years of silence
between the book of Malachi and the book of Matthew
where no great prophets came and preached and nothing was really happening,
and so things had just gotten kind of dead and dry and boring.
And here comes this man on the scene, and he doesn't have a big fancy building.
He's out in the desert in the middle of nowhere and just starts preaching.
And he starts just ripping it up.
And it's amazing that Jesus chose a man like this to go before him and to lay things out.
But look back at the passage, if you would, in Matthew chapter 3.
I want to show you some things about this guy right here.
Look what he says here in verse number 7.
And when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism,
the Pharisees and Sadducees, this is the religious crowd.
These are the people who the Bible says wore really fancy clothes,
and they just walked around. They were super spiritual.
They loved praying in public and big long type,
O thou Father of all, and these big kind of flowery prayers and putting on a big show.
It says that he sees them come to his preaching service out in the wilderness,
and he just points them out. Listen to what he says.
He sees them, and he says, O generation of vipers,
now a viper is a poisonous snake,
O generation of vipers, who had warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Bring forth therefore fruits, meat for repentance.
And think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father,
for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
And he goes on and on, but here he is just pointing people out and just ripping them,
saying, you stupid religious perverts that are lying to people and sending people to hell,
he says, you generation of vipers.
Now the same kind of preaching you'll hear from Jesus in Matthew chapter 23.
In Matthew 23, Jesus looks at the same crowd, and he says, you generation of vipers,
he says, you snakes, you generation of vipers, who shall save you from the damnation of hell?
And he calls them hypocrites, hypocrites down the list.
He just rips these people.
You see, God doesn't have any love for the religious crowd that's sending people to hell.
He doesn't look at somebody like the pope and say,
you know, he's wrong, he's leading people astray, but he is a good man.
Look what he's done for world peace or to feed people.
He says, no, the guy's a snake, he's a viper, and he's going to hell.
He's not going to get saved. He's damned to hell.
And that's the kind of preaching that John the Baptist and Jesus preached.
The wilderness kind of preaching that I'm talking about is a fearless kind of preaching,
a preaching that doesn't care what anybody thinks except what God thinks.
Is John defending people who walk in the back door who are liars and religious perverts,
who would pervert the word of God?
He says, no, I'm going to point them out. I'm going to tell you who they are.
I'm going to warn you about this crowd that's lying and sending people to hell.
I'm going to warn you about it. I'm going to call them by name.
We're living in a day when people don't want to call sin by name.
They don't want to name who the liars are. They don't want to name who the false prophets are.
But John the Baptist said, you know what?
I don't have some Bible calls that I'm worried about what they think.
I don't have some denomination that I'm worried about what they think.
He said, I've been spending time with God, and I'm going to come and preach what God wants me to preach.
That's why John the Baptist's preaching is so similar to Jesus' preaching.
They both have this kind of fiery preaching, and they use some of the same terminology,
the same wording many times.
And John the Baptist comes with this wilderness-type preaching.
Now, I want to show you something in his sermon that I like.
This is a whole sermon in and of itself, and I want to show you something really interesting that he preaches on.
He keeps talking about fruit and trees, and I want to show you something interesting about this.
It says in verse number 8, bring forth, therefore, fruits, meat for repentance.
He's saying, don't just show up to church here.
You think you're dressed up fancy. You're this Pharisee. You've got this title.
He says, no, where's the fruit? Where's the fruit for repentance?
And look here, it says in verse number 10, and now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees.
Therefore, every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.
Now, what John the Baptist is saying here is that here are these men that look good on the outside.
They look like a pretty good tree.
They've got all the right clothes on. They've got all the right lingo.
But he says, bring forth, therefore, fruits, meat for repentance.
And he says, don't tell me who your dad is. I don't care if Abraham's your father.
I don't care what nationality you are. I don't care if you're a Jew or a Gentile.
He says, bring forth fruit.
And he says, the ax is laid to the root of the trees,
and every tree that bringeth not forth fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.
God says, I don't have any time for trees that won't bring forth fruit.
Now, let me show you a few things about this, and I want to take you somewhere else
and show you about this thing of the tree versus the fruit.
Now, first of all, he says the ax is laid to the root of the trees.
And I was thinking about this.
The sin in all life and the sins around us and the sin of this world,
so many times I was thinking how we don't really attack it at the root.
Think about this. We have a problem, and for example, let's say I had a tree in my backyard that I didn't want.
Maybe I didn't want my lemon tree that's out there.
And of course I love the lemon tree, but my wife's getting worried.
Let's say I had a tree that I didn't like. It was just in the way, and it was a burden.
And so I just go out there, and I just start ripping leaves off the thing.
This stupid tree, and just rip all the leaves off.
I mean, how worthless would that be?
And then I started just hacking little branches off.
I mean, it's stupid. It would take forever. You'd never get it done.
By the time you got it done, it would grow more branches and trees. It would be futile.
And so God's saying, look, when you cut down a tree, what do you do?
He says, you take that ax, and you go just down as close to the ground as you can get,
and you knock that tree down.
And God says, that's how I clean things up.
And remember, that's what John the Baptist's job was, to come in here and straighten things out.
And he says, I'm going to take the ax and lay it to the root of the tree.
And I was trying to think of some examples on this.
Immediately what came to my mind was the so-called war on drugs.
You know, in America, supposedly, we're fighting drugs, and just say no to drugs,
and everywhere you see all this stuff about drugs, and drugs are so bad,
and we need to fight drug traffic and so forth.
But that's not the root of the tree at all.
The drug is not. The drugs that are sold and that are taken by kids,
it's not the root of the tree at all. It's not the root of the problem at all.
That's just a leaf, that's just a branch that we're tearing at.
What's the problem, before anybody ever gets into drugs, anybody gets into drugs,
what are they going to do first? Alcohol?
What's something that's, I mean, how many people in America really do drugs?
It's probably, what, less than 10% of the population is probably on dope right now.
I hope so, I don't know.
But how many people drink alcohol? Probably 75% of the people in this country consume alcohol more.
Maybe 90%? I don't know.
But the point is, alcohol is what's killing people in the masses of drunk driving.
Alcohol is what is the number one contributing factor to crime.
Alcohol is what is affecting everybody, not just a few people who are into an extreme sin of drug use,
which they never would have gotten into, except they already tried alcohol and then they got tired of it,
so then they moved on to drugs.
Where's the war on alcohol?
I'll tell you why there's no war on alcohol, because the politicians can't get any popularity by being against alcohol,
because 90% of the people in America drink alcohol, so you start fighting alcohol,
you just alienated about 90% of the people out there who were offended by that.
I was thinking about how preachers love to preach on internet pornography.
Any church you go to, you can go to the most liberal church that will never preach on sin,
that will never name sin, that is just feel good, touchy feely,
but the one thing that they'll preach against is internet pornography.
Why? Because it's just so off the wall, it's such an extreme, it's such an extreme point,
and so they're going, see, think about a tree.
They're going to the extremity, and they're wanting to trim the leaves on the extremity.
Why don't they just go to the root of the problem?
Everybody knows that before you get into internet pornography,
and this filthy, weird stuff on the internet that people are getting into,
you don't go straight from Sunday school to internet porn.
There's a long process there where the first stop is the television,
and then pretty soon it's the PG-13 movies, and then pretty soon it's the R-rated videos,
and let's face it, an R-rated video in 2006 in America is soft pornography.
There's no bones about it.
What is considered an R-rated video today was considered pornography 50 years ago.
It's pornography.
Before they get to the internet porn, they've got the race car magazine with a bikini on every page.
Before they get to the sick, weird, you know, 16 and 17-year-olds on the internet and all the filth,
before they get to that, they've got the Sports Illustrated from Suits Edition.
And so, lay the ax to the root of the tree, preacher, and get the television out of your house,
and then you won't even be tempted to internet pornography because it's so far out there,
you'd cut the ax at the root of the tree and solve the problem right away.
You wouldn't even get to those extremes.
I was thinking about depression.
I was thinking about how, oh, depression is running rampant in America and kids are depressed.
You wouldn't believe it, but the next-door neighbor, her best friend, one of the children,
her best friend committed suicide a few weeks ago.
At 10 years of age, she ingested rat poisoning and killed herself.
Can you believe that?
At 10 years of age.
That doesn't just happen overnight.
A 10-year-old doesn't just live a normal life and then the next day they're committing suicide at age 10.
No, I'll tell you where it comes from.
I was talking to a teenage girl not too long ago.
I believe she was 17 years old.
And I was talking to this teenage girl.
She was struggling with depression.
She was not leaving the house.
And she was on all kinds of dope that the doctors had given her, all this antidepressants
and all these drugs that are supposedly going to help her out.
What's the first question that I asked?
Her mom's like, please, see if you can help her.
Is there anything you can do to help her?
Can you talk to her?
I said, sure, I'll talk to her.
So I went through and the first thing I did to help her, obviously, if I want to get to the root of the tree,
the first thing I'm going to do is try to get her saved, of course.
So I go through the Gospel with her and she got saved and she prayed and got saved.
And so the first question I asked after I got saved, I said, well, what kind of music do you listen to?
Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, all the dark, gothic, and I didn't know all the bands,
but it was very just dark and evil kind of gothic kind of music.
I think it was Rammstein was one of the groups.
And just this very demonic, kind of evil, dark music.
And she's telling me, yeah, my daughter's having these bad dreams.
I'm like, good night.
If I'm listening to Marilyn Manson all day, I'm going to have bad dreams, too.
Anybody would have bad dreams, isn't it?
But they want to just treat the symptoms.
They want to just cut off the leaves and say, oh, here, take this pill to make you feel better for a couple months
until you get addicted to it and then we'll give you another pill and then you get addicted to that
and we can keep you on drugs for the rest of your life.
Why don't they go to the root of the problem and say this girl is depressed
because she doesn't have any meaning to her life because they told her she was an animal at school.
They told her that there's no God, nobody's ever given her any hope,
and then they pump her mind with rage against the machine and Rammstein and ministry
and all these filthy groups, and then you wonder why she's depressed and has bad dreams.
See, the world never wants to go to the root of the problem because the root of every problem is sin, every problem.
Sin is at the root of every problem.
And they just want to say, oh, well, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, he says,
we just need more after-school programs, more after-school programs for the kids to keep the kids off the street.
Why don't you teach the kids? Why in the world?
I was just in Los Angeles. We're driving through Los Angeles. You would not believe this.
I've never seen anything like this in my life.
I don't know if this is a recent development, but I think it's always been this way.
I don't know. I haven't spent that much time there.
We're driving through Los Angeles. Every sign had one of two things.
It was either covered in barbed wire all the way around it and all the way up and down the pole,
or it was covered in graffiti, one or the other.
I mean, every sign. It was the most hideous, ugly thing.
And I was thinking to myself, what if somebody came to visit the United States from another country?
Probably Los Angeles would be a place where they might end up going, and look what they're going to see.
I mean, they're going to think that we're a third-world country.
They're going to think that we're one big ghetto, because you're driving on the freeway.
Every sign in Los Angeles had graffiti on it.
Every sign, every wall of every building on the side, just driving down I-5.
There was just graffiti everywhere.
And then everywhere else, there's barbed wire.
And that in and of itself is just unseemly to see all this barbed wire everywhere.
You feel like you're living in some kind of a prison camp or something.
There's barbed wire and razor wire everywhere.
And then everywhere else, there's all this graffiti.
What are they going to do about it? What do they do?
They just go and just paint over it so they can get graffiti.
Why don't they solve the problem? Why don't they do something to stop it?
I'll tell you what they ought to do.
They ought to do what they were doing down in South America when I was a kid.
I remember there was a big thing.
In South America, they had a graffiti problem, exact same problem.
I forget what country it was in, and they started caning them.
I don't know if you remember this, but they started caning them publicly.
They would take these kids that did these canings that did graffiti,
and they'd put them up in front of everybody, and they'd beat them with a stick.
And then it was amazing how it got under control.
But even that's not really the root of the problem.
That would be great, but that's not the root of the problem either.
You teach people that there's no God.
You teach people that Jesus is not real and the Bible's not true.
And then you wonder why they act like animals.
And you wonder why the police drive down my street every day.
I'll tell you why.
Because we've raised this society of just adults that act like children,
adults that live in sin, and they're taught that there's no right and wrong,
no moral absolutes.
And then you wonder why the police have to drive around.
You wonder why everything's covered in barbed wire.
You wonder why graffiti's everywhere.
And just going to Los Angeles and then spending some time in a bad part of Los Angeles,
I just looked around.
I just thought, am I seeing a glimpse of what the whole America's going to be like?
Maybe it's just starting in these big cities and just going to radiate outward,
just the sin and the ungodliness and the filth,
where people just live in this bondage of barbed wire everywhere,
police everywhere, graffiti everywhere,
this ugly dismal place that we've created for ourselves.
And so he's saying, look, you look good on the outside.
I want to see your fruit.
And he says, we're going to attack the problem at the root of the tree.
Let me show you something interesting.
Look back at Genesis chapter 2.
Genesis chapter 2, verse number 16.
I want to show you this.
Genesis chapter 2, verse number 16.
Now this is back at the very beginning.
God has just created the Garden of Eden.
He's just created Adam.
He has not yet created Eve.
He's going to create Eve in verse number 17 of chapter number 2,
where he talks about creating her in verse number 18
and then he creates her in the rest of the chapter.
But it says right here in verse 16,
boy, I'm really getting these numbers mixed up, huh?
It says, and the Lord God commanded the man, saying,
of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat,
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it,
for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Now what does God mention here?
Does he mention any fruit?
Does he mention any forbidden fruit at all?
He never even says the word fruit.
All he's saying is just talking about trees.
He says, see all these trees?
You can eat of all these trees,
but he says, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
thou mayest freely eat.
I'm sorry, I lost my place.
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat,
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it,
for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
So he says, these are all trees, but that's a bad tree right there.
Don't eat that tree.
Now look at chapter number three and verse number one.
The Bible says, now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field,
which the Lord God had made.
And he said unto the woman, Yea, have God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden,
but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden,
God hath said ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
Now she's looking at it.
Now the command said, God is just commanding.
God is not talking about, God doesn't care what it looks like.
God doesn't care what it seems like.
God's just laying out a very clear command.
He says, see all these trees?
Eat them all, don't eat that one.
Is there a reason?
He didn't give a reason why.
He just said, don't eat this one tree.
I don't care why.
Just don't eat it.
Now the logical thing that we're going to look at is we're going to look at the fruit of the tree.
So the devil comes and says, did God tell you that you can't eat of every tree?
And of course he's trying to make it seem a lot more restrictive than God said.
God said, you can eat all these trees, but just not this one.
The devil phrases it the opposite way and says, he said you couldn't eat from every tree?
It sounds like a huge restriction when really it's this one tree they can't eat from.
Well now look at what Eve is talking about here in verse number 2.
It says, and the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.
He's saying, wait a minute, you know, we can eat the fruit.
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said ye shall not eat of it,
neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
Now she's talking about the fruit.
It says here, and the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as God's, knowing good and evil.
Now look at verse number 6.
Before, what was her emphasis on? The fruit.
God had commanded don't eat of the tree.
She's noticing the fruit.
I mean, good night.
If I walk into an orchard, I'm not looking at the leaves, I'm not looking at the trunk.
The first thing I'm looking at is the fruit.
Okay, this is an orange tree, this is a banana tree, this is an apple tree.
But now look, after she spent some time talking to the devil, and look what she does in verse number 6.
It says, and when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, now she's looking at the tree.
Now she's examining the tree saying, does this tree look appetizing?
And then it says, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, so the tree looked good.
And a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat,
and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.
So try and follow the logic that I'm making here.
God makes a command that's just simple, nothing to do with appearance, nothing to do with why,
or the reasons why he just says, I'm just testing you, I just want you to obey me, don't eat it.
Don't eat of this one tree, you can eat everything else, just don't eat this one tree.
The devil comes and starts talking to her about these different trees, and he's telling her how good this tree is.
First, the only thing she ever talked about was the fruit, saying, we can eat this fruit, and we can eat this fruit,
but that fruit we're not supposed to talk about.
And he says, wait a minute, you're not going to die if you eat of that.
And the next thing she does is she starts looking at the tree, and she starts examining the tree, not the fruit,
and saying, wait a minute, this tree is a very pleasant looking tree, and this tree could make me wise,
and I like the way this tree looks.
And you see, then she takes and eats the fruit.
But here's what we have to watch out for.
Don't examine the tree, examine the fruit.
If you want to decide whether something's good or bad, John said, you've got to look at the fruit.
He said, I don't care about the tree. He said, I'm going to cut down your tree.
He said, the fruit is what I want to see. Bring forth fruits, meat for repentance.
And so often, we look at the tree and say, well, I'm going to decide whether I like the tree the way it looks.
And we're not necessarily looking at the fruit.
Well, what's an example?
Well, think about like, and God constantly throughout the Bible, I don't have time to show you the verses,
but God throughout the Bible is talking about the fruit.
He says, if the fruit is good, then the tree is good.
He says, a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.
Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
He says, you shall know them by their fruits.
So God's telling us we can know whether something's right or wrong.
This is Matthew chapter 7.
You shall know them by their fruits.
But the devil gets us looking at the tree, not at the fruit.
He starts talking to us about the tree pretty soon.
We're looking at the tree, deciding whether it's good or not.
Well, I was thinking about the first example that I thought of was the public schools.
I've worked on fire alarms in public schools many times, and I've seen just the beautiful architecture,
because with them, good money is no object with them, because it's taxed dollars.
So just the most ornate bricks, the marble floors, the artwork, the mosaics, and the wall.
Every classroom just had 30 brand-new perfect flat-screen type computers.
Boy, the sound system and the gymnasium is just awesome.
And you can just go around.
Everything's just, the yard is manicured perfectly.
And I'd say it's a pretty nice-looking tree.
Any public school that's been built any time recently, some of them are old,
but any kind of a nice new public school campus, boy, you go to ASU.
I mean, it's beautiful buildings.
It's not going to be junky, beaten-up buildings.
And you look at that tree and you say, boy, that's a beautiful tree.
But then go to that tree at the harvest time.
Go to that tree at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon or whenever school gets out these days.
Go to the tree and watch the fruit come out the door.
You'll see the guys with the shaggy hair down on their face, with the T-shirt with the swear word on it,
with the T-shirt that says Marilyn Manson and the T-shirt that says leave me alone
and just all this kind of rebellious kind of T-shirts that they wear
and the shaggy pants and their underwear is showing and they're dressed like a gang banger.
And then tell me how good that tree is.
See, don't look at the tree. Look at the fruit.
Look at what it's producing out of the school and decide whether it's a good school.
Don't look at the fancy buildings.
You know, and then you think about some trees that are ugly maybe, but they produce grapefruit.
Boy, think about spanking your children.
There's nothing pleasant about spanking your children.
There's nothing that looks good about spanking your children.
And so the world looks at it and says, that's a pretty ugly tree, but what's the fruit of the tree?
What's the fruit of spanking your children?
You have great, well-behaved children.
And everywhere I go, people look at my kids and say, man, these kids are happy.
They're the happiest kids I've ever seen. They're so well-behaved.
Look how they're dressed. And they love the fruit, don't they?
But then the same people, if I spank my kids in public, are glaring at me, giving me dirty looks,
because they don't like the tree.
But you're not going to get the good fruit without having the good tree.
And maybe the tree doesn't look that good, but it's the tree that produces the good fruit.
Think about just the cathedrals of the Catholic Church, just the huge stained glass.
I mean, many of them are beautiful. I've seen them in Germany and everything.
Beautiful buildings, beautiful architecture.
But the fruit is that somebody goes to hell because somebody told them that they had to trust in that church to get them to heaven.
I was thinking about just promiscuous women out in public, women that are dressed sleazy.
Boy, many of them are beautiful, you know, to die.
And a man looks at them and says, boy, look at this beautiful woman.
But what's the fruit?
The fruit is the disease from the sleazy woman that she's carrying.
And she looks beautiful, but she's got disease in her body, because she's sleazy, because she's wicked.
That's the fruit.
The fruit is having the curse of God on your life, living a life of fornicating with this beautiful woman who was such a beautiful tree, but such a terrible fruit.
Think about another ugly tree.
I mean, think about working a hard job.
Think about slaving and working a hard job, construction or whatever.
And it's not glamorous, it's not fun.
But what's the fruit?
Boy, the fruit is that you can pay the bills.
The fruit is that you can have nice things to buy for your family.
The fruit is that you succeed in life.
And so don't ever look at anything and say, look at this beautiful tree.
God says always look at the product, always look at the fruit.
You want to know a good church, look at the product.
You want to know a good school, look at the product.
You want to know a good anything, look at the product.
You say, you want to know if something's bad, look at the product.
You want to see who's the good parent, the parent who looks good or the parent whose kids are good.
If I was looking for somebody to give me child rearing advice, it wouldn't be the guy that's all slick and he's wearing a perfect suit and he's written books on child rearing.
And he's going to tell me exactly how to raise my children, but his kids are on dope, his kids are messed up.
I don't want to hear from that guy.
And I don't care who it is.
I don't care if he's the pastor of some church somewhere.
I don't want to hear it.
I want to hear from the guy who maybe, he might even seem a little bit like a jerk sometimes, but his kids are all serving God.
His kids are happy, well-adjusted people.
That's who I'm going to get parenting advice from.
Because I'm not looking at him.
I don't care what he looks like.
I want to know what his kids look like.
I want to know what his fruit looks like.
And so, always judge any institution, anything.
If you're going to judge something, judge it by the fruit.
Don't judge.
Judge decisions in your life by the fruit, not by what it looks like on the outside, the tree.
Now look back if you would at Matthew chapter 3.
I've got to hurry because we're running out of time here.
Matthew chapter 3.
And let me just show you a few things real quick in this chapter.
First of all, I want to show you in verse number 3 just while we're moving down the chapter.
Notice how it says,
For this is he, he's talking about John the Baptist, that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah saying,
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye.
Now notice the word ye there.
The word ye is not singular.
The word is plural.
It says, Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Make his paths straight.
Now if you were reading this and you didn't have the King James Bible telling you the ye and the thee,
you'd think that he was saying,
John, you're the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
You prepare the way of the Lord.
But that's not what he's saying here.
He's saying, the voice of one crying was, prepare ye the way of the Lord.
He's saying, this guy, John the Baptist, he's crying, that means he's yelling.
Crying in the wilderness.
He's preaching in the wilderness of Judea.
He says, you need to listen to him tell you how to prepare the way of the Lord.
Jesus Christ is coming and you need to listen to him.
See, what can we learn from that?
Well, a couple things.
Number one, God always commands the follower.
He usually doesn't command very many commands to the leader.
Like for example, he says, children, obey your parents.
And more often than not, he's commanding the child than he is the parent.
The Bible says, wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands.
But nowhere does he say, sir, you need to make your wife submit to you.
He's commanding the follower, saying, no, she needs to submit.
He shouldn't have to force her to do it.
She should just be doing it.
The parents shouldn't have to be forcing their child to obey.
They should be obeying.
And if they don't obey, they're going to get disciplined.
Because the responsibility is on the follower.
And so God is saying here, look, this preacher right here,
he's a voice out crying in the wilderness,
and you need to prepare the way before you.
Before him, I'm sorry.
Prepare the way the Lord make his path straight.
See, God is saying here, it's not going to be one person that prepares the way of the Lord.
It's never going to be just one person that's going to get the job done.
There could be a great leader like John the Baptist, a great leader.
But unless he had people that were willing to get on board with him,
it's not going to get done.
This reminds me of the sermon that I preached about the exponents,
about how the only hope for this church, the only hope for America,
is if other people in this church are going to have to learn how to be soul winners.
If I were the only soul winner in this church, I mean, good night.
How much can one person do?
One person can't do it.
The only way it's going to happen is if I'm a soul winner, and you're a soul winner,
and you're a soul winner, and everybody is a soul winner in our whole church.
And that's why I'm committed.
That's my goal, is everybody who's in this church, I want to be a soul winner.
I'm not satisfied with somebody just coming to this church,
and obviously I'm not going to tell them, hey, look, leave, you're not a soul winner.
But I'm not going to just lay idly by and say, oh, well, yeah, that's just the way it is.
Some people go soul winning and some people don't.
No, I'm going to preach it, and I'm going to try to encourage people,
and say, oh, I'd love to take you soul winning.
I'm going to try to do everything I can to make everybody a soul winner,
because the only way that this church is going to grow to the size it needs to be,
the only way that the amount of souls saved that are going to get saved needs to be,
is if I can reproduce myself in someone else that's a soul winner like I'm a soul winner.
And then you can reproduce yourself into someone else that you went to the Lord,
and then they're a soul winner.
And that's just the way it keeps going, and that's God's plan.
That's what God wants us to do.
Our goal should be to get people saved and then to train that person to win souls,
to train that person to get other people saved.
Or if other people start coming to our church that we don't get saved,
that just come for whatever reason, or they move into the area,
or they're looking for a church, we'll train them to be soul winners.
That's our goal. That's the only goal.
And the whole point is to make them a soul winner,
and God is saying here, John the Baptist, as great of a preacher you are,
as strong in spirit as you are, you spent years and years and years
living a hard life in the desert with God's Word getting ready,
but you are not going to prepare the way of the Lord.
Everybody in the world that I've ever heard preach this said
that John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way of the Lord.
That's not what it says. It says, prepare ye the way of the Lord.
John the Baptist was not able to do this job of preparing the way of the Lord.
He was just a preacher. He was just a voice crying in the wilderness,
and the people there that heard him, John, Peter, they were all there,
the Bible says. Simon, Andrew, all the twelve disciples were all there
listening to him preach. They were the ones preparing the way of the Lord.
The other people, the multitudes that are getting baptized,
they're the ones that were preparing the way of the Lord.
Yes, John the Baptist, but it's plural there, prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Make his paths straight.
And if you go on, it says right here in verse number five,
Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region round about Jordan,
and were baptized of him and Jordan confessing their sins.
You say, well, this kind of wilderness preaching that you're talking about
is going to scare people away. It's going to turn people away.
They're going to be turned off to the gospel.
They're going to be turned off to the things of God.
They're going to leave. You've got to bring it down on their level.
You've got to use their music. You've got to dress like them.
You've got to talk like them.
Hey, look, it seemed like it was working for John the Baptist.
It seems like what he was doing was working.
And he was up there preaching, yelling.
You say, well, I just don't, I just don't mean yelling.
I don't mean a preacher should yell.
I say these preachers that yell, and my pastor never yells.
And they say, I just don't like a preacher who screams and yells and beat the pulpit.
Well, look, John the Baptist is yelling.
He says he's crying in the wilderness.
And you want to know what Jesus thought about John the Baptist?
Well, he tells us in Matthew 11, 11.
He says this, verily I say to you, among them that are born of women,
there had not risen a greater than John the Baptist.
Notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
And so God's saying here, the greatest man who's ever lived
any time that was born of a woman is John the Baptist.
You say, what? And the Bible doesn't even talk that much about John the Baptist.
But Jesus is saying, you want to know who I think is the greatest man who ever lived?
The preacher who got up and just preached and screamed and yelled and ripped in the wilderness.
That's the greatest man who ever lived, John the Baptist.
And yes, he was a Baptist, not John the Presbyterian, not John the Methodist,
and it dead sure wasn't non-denom John.
This was John the Baptist, and this man got up and preached,
and God said, this is the greatest guy I've ever seen. I love this guy.
What Jesus? Here you are. You're 30 years old.
You just left your hometown, Nazareth.
You just came down into Judea for the first time since you were a little kid.
Last time you were there, they were trying to kill you when you were two years old there.
You've just come back to Judea. Oh, wait, it's time to find a church, Jesus.
What church are you going to go to?
He said, well, that's easy. I'm going to go to Wilderness Baptist Church,
and I'm going to go hear Pastor John the Baptist,
because I'm tired of listening to this pansy up in Nazareth where I've been,
and I'm glad to be down here in Judea where somebody knows how to preach,
where people are getting baptized. I'm going to hear John the Baptist.
You say, well, what about this non-denominational church down the street, Jesus,
where the pastor's on TV? This guy's great.
Look at him smiling with all his teeth. He looks like he's a dental ad.
This guy is where you need to go to church. Jesus said, no, I only go to a Baptist church.
But wait a minute. John the Baptist, in verse number 13 or 14, he's refusing to baptize you.
He's saying, I need to be baptized of thee and come aside of me.
Jesus says, suffered to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.
He says, look, I'm righteous. I go to a Baptist church, and you must baptize me,
because I'm not, I'm dead sure I can baptize down the road at the community church.
I must be baptized by John the Baptist.
Now, and notice, this is especially why he had to be baptized in the Baptist church.
Look at verse number 16. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straight way out of the water.
So he dead sure couldn't have been a Methodist because they baptized him sprinkling.
He couldn't have been a Presbyterian because they sprinkled.
He couldn't have been a Roman Catholic because they sprinkled.
He couldn't have been an Episcopalian because they sprinkled, or they pour a little water on his head.
He said, look, I don't need somebody to pour water on my head.
He said, I want to get baptized under water, like the Bible says.
And so he had to be a Baptist. He had to go to a Baptist church, and John the Baptist baptized him.
He says, when he was baptized, he came up straight way out of the water.
And I'm trying to move quickly through this.
But the Bible says here, when he was baptized, went up straight way out of the water,
it says, and lo, the heavens were opened unto him.
And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him.
And lo, a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
I was thinking about this.
God, when somebody is saved, when they're born again, they become God's son, they become God's child.
The Bible says, but as many as received him, that means all of them,
to them gave you power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.
But when does God become pleased with his children?
God says, when you're born again, you're my son.
But when you get baptized, that's when I'm pleased with you.
See, God's pleased by our obedience.
And the Bible says here that when Jesus was baptized, the Son of God said,
this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.
And I was just wondering, I was just thinking maybe I'm taking a little liberty with this interpretation,
but I was thinking to myself, boy, I wonder if whenever anybody gets baptized,
God looks down and says, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.
He says, I'm pleased with you, I love you.
I'm thrilled that you're getting baptized in a Baptist church,
getting baptized underwater at a Baptist church that preaches right.
And so I was just thinking about that.
Boy, God is just so pleased with us. Why?
When we obey, when we get baptized.
And so maybe there's some children that he's now pleased with is what I was thinking.
Because he's saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.
Maybe there's some children that don't necessarily please God when they disobey God.
But I want to be a child that pleases God.
My children, one way or the other, they're always going to be my children.
I'm never going to kick them out of the family.
But I'll be honest with you, there are times when I'm not well pleased with my children.
And I would, God forbid, I would hate for one of them to grow up and I'd say I'm not pleased with them.
But if my son obeys me, if my son does what I tell him to do,
and he lives the life the way that I've taught him to live it from the Word of God,
I want to be able to say to him, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.
That we ought to have a desire to please God with our lives.
We're not living a life motivated by fear of going to hell, fear of getting kicked out of the family.
I don't think my son is afraid tonight of ending up on the street tomorrow.
But I hope that he has a desire to please me because he loves me.
And God says, I love you. You're my beloved Son.
Would you please me? Would you do what I asked you to do? Would you obey me?
And so I want to be a child that pleases God.
But anyway, just to sum up this whole chapter, great chapter,
and I didn't really even know which way to go with this chapter because there's so much to preach in here
because John the Baptist is such a great character in the Bible, such a great man.
Especially as a preacher, obviously I'm going to enjoy reading about John the Baptist.
But let me just give you a quick synopsis of the whole thing.
Here's a guy who lived not a very glamorous life.
He wasn't wearing soft raiment, the Bible says.
Jesus said, what did you go out to see? Somebody wearing soft raiment? Some guy in a pink shirt and tie?
He says, they that are arrayed in that kind of apparel, he said, they're in king's houses.
He said, you went out into the wilderness, what did you expect to see? A prophet?
He says, yea, and greater than a prophet because there's no man that's ever lived that's been greater than John the Baptist.
But look at him. He's a man that suffered. He's a man that lived in the wilderness.
He gets up and preaches for about less than a year.
He has this preaching ministry where everybody's coming to hear him.
Crowds, throngs of people are coming to hear him. They're all baptized.
Thousands and thousands of people are baptized by John the Baptist.
And then what happens? Jesus comes on the scene and the Bible records, the crowds start leaving.
John the Baptist starts going to Jesus.
Pretty soon he's not baptizing hardly anybody.
And people said to him, what do you think about that?
He said, I told you. I'm just preparing the way for him. It's not about me.
He said, I must decrease. He must increase.
And so here's a man who had this great big ministry. It all falls apart.
Next thing you know, he's arrested for preaching against the king saying, you're living in adultery, sir,
because you remarried your brother's divorced wife.
His brother Phillip was married to a woman. I think her name was Herodias. That's what it is.
His brother Phillip, King Herod's brother Phillip was married to Herodias.
And Phillip divorces his wife Herodias. And then he marries his brother's divorced wife.
And he said, John the Baptist preached him and said, it's not lawful for you to have her.
He said, that's against God's word.
And he ended up putting him in prison. And then Herodias was so upset about it that she tricked Herod.
Herod was afraid to kill him. Herodias tricks Herod into beheading John the Baptist.
And, of course, she has her daughter ask for his head on a silver platter brought to the dinner table.
And so here's a man who lives in the wilderness his whole life, preparing for the short-lived preaching career.
His ministry goes downhill. Then he's thrown in prison. He's so disillusioned in prison,
he starts to wonder if Jesus is really even who he said he was.
I believe this is also in Matthew chapter 11. He starts to wonder what this has even cracked up to be.
And then he ends up getting his head cut off.
But let me ask you something. Would you rather, would you like to be John the Baptist?
Would you like to be somebody who Jesus said, this is the greatest person that ever lived?
Here's a son that I'm pleased with.
John the Baptist lived for 30-some years, but he's got all eternity rejoicing.
He spent the last, think about this, he spent the last 2,000 years living it up in heaven,
being the number one big shot in heaven, who Jesus said, this is the greatest guy that ever lived.
You think he cares now? Anything that he went through? No.
And so we need to keep things in God's perspective and say, you know what, let's maybe suffer a little bit now.
Maybe we'll be in the wilderness a little bit socially. Maybe we might end up in the wilderness a little bit religiously.
We might end up being in the wilderness a little bit financially.
But, hey, this world's not our home. We're just passing through.
And when we get to the other side, we want to hear God say,
Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.
And I think we're going to be feeling a whole lot better.
Any suffering that we did is going to seem like nothing, and we're going to be glad that we did it.
And so let's take a lesson from John the Baptist, and let's think about who God says is great in the Bible.
You know, we read the Bible. We see all the great men.
But let's think about who God said was the greatest, and let's see if we can emulate him.
And let's see if we can learn about him and study this chapter and other chapters about this great man, John the Baptist.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, thank you so much for the Word of God, and thank you for the examples in the Bible.