Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Grace in Focus. Today we’re talking about John the Baptist, how he confronted the people of Israel, with a message of repentance and baptism and remission of sins, but was his message mainly to individuals or to a nation? Let us consider this in the next few moments. 

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And now with our discussion today here are Bob Wilkin and Philippe Sterling. 

BOB: We have a question, I think, is it from Paul? 

PHILIPPE: Yes, Paul asks, I have a question about Luke chapter 3 verse 3. Does this verse mean that John the Baptist was expecting people to renounce all their sins? And once they did that, they would then be permitted to be baptized in the river so they could receive God’s forgiveness. Like I said, be good to read Luke chapter 3 verse 3. 

BOB: Yeah, do you have that there?

PHILIPPE: “And he went into all the region around Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” 

BOB: Okay, so it’s important to recognize that both John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus in their ministry said “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is in hand.” You’ve got that in Matthew 3:4 and Matthew 4:17. That wasn’t the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus’ ministry began earlier with the wedding at Cana and John chapter 3. But in His public ministry, that was early in His public ministry. Those were calls for what we would call national repentance. What’s the difference between national repentance and individual repentance? 

PHILIPPE: Well national repentance, specifically focusing on the nation of Israel, deals with their being in harmony with God, so the kingdom that was promised could be established. 

BOB: Right, let’s put it this way. Individually, there’s only one requirement to be born again, right? 

PHILIPPE: Yes, and that is simply to believe the promise of everlasting life in Christ. 

BOB: But corporately for the nation of Israel, that’s not enough, right? Let’s say the majority of Israel at the time of Christ had believed in Him, but they had been an unrepentant nation. They had been a nation in sinful practices, wicked ways, and they were not turning to the Lord. Now, they didn’t as a nation believe in Him. So I get that. But even if they had, there’s that second condition of repentance, right? 

PHILIPPE: Right, they had to turn away from sinful patterns and to be obedient to the stipulations of the covenant with God that they had. And this was a national matter for the Messiah’s kingdom to be established. And had that generation done that, with John the Baptist, with Jesus and the apostles, Jesus still would have died and risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. 

BOB: Right, that was required. 

PHILIPPE: That was required. But then within the seven year period of the 70th week of Daniel, having established, He would have returned and established the kingdom. Now, the nation still would have suffered, you know, the persecution and all of that. But because they were in harmony with God, then all of the promises would have been fulfilled and Christ would have established the kingdom.

BOB: Potentially in the first century, could have been as early as 40 AD. But because they did not, then we get 70 AD with the destruction of the temple, which Jesus had prophesied, by the way, that there wouldn’t be one stone left unturned. Also, the death of over a million Jews, and also they were kicked out of the Promised Land until 1948.

PHILIPPE: Yes. Now they have to return, but Zechariah talks about a time yet to come, where the nation will finally acknowledge the one whom they have pierced, and then He will return. 

BOB: And the one whom they’ve pierced, who is returning, is the Lord Jesus Christ. But at the end of the Tribulation, Israel will fulfill what it didn’t do in the first century. That is, it will be a believing nation so that all of the adult Jews will be believing in Him. Any unbelieving adult Jews would have died during the Tribulation. But secondarily, they will all be calling on the name of the Lord, like Romans 10:13, and Joel 2:32, they’ll all be calling on the Lord in terms of corporate worship, because they’re all going to be in fellowship with Him, right? 

And so they’ll meet that requirement. And so at the end of the Tribulation, he’ll set foot on the Mount of Olives, and He will destroy all the enemies of Israel at Armageddon.

PHILIPPE: Yes. Now this could have happened in the first century. You know, had the indeed, the nation as a whole, repented of sins and experiencing the cleansing, the cleansing for fellowship and communion with the Lord. And then even though persecuted, you know, still will have been preserved in some fashion, and the return of Christ will have occurred. 

BOB: Okay, so coming back to Luke 3:3, what was the purpose of John’s baptism? We’re told it was a baptism of repentance, but why did he baptize people? Because the prophets in the Old Testament, for the most part, were not baptizing people. But here we have now this forerunner of the Messiah, and he’s baptizing people. 

PHILIPPE: So he is preparing for the Messiah. 

BOB: Isaiah 40.

PHILIPPE: Isaiah 40. So it was to prepare a people to receive Christ—

BOB: And the kingdom 

PHILIPPE: And the kingdom. 

BOB: So ultimately, this repentance was not some tangent. This was central to the kingdom coming. 

PHILIPPE: Absolutely. 

ANNOUNCER: We will rejoin in just a moment. But years ago, Zane Hodges wrote the Gospel Under Siege. Sadly, this is still true. And GES president Bob Wilkin has recently written its sequel. Bob’s new book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege, is a book about theological clarity on the Biblical teaching about eternal salvation. It is available now. Secure yours today at the Grace Evangelical Society’s bookstore. Find it at faithalone.org/store. That’s faithalone.org/store. Now back to today’s content.

BOB: We shouldn’t just think John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus were only seeking to get individuals born again. They were there to prepare the nation, so that the nation would receive Messiah in repentance and faith, and the kingdom would come. 

PHILIPPE: Yes, especially as we look at the gospel of Matthew, we do see the preaching of John the Baptist, and then the preaching of Christ which is repent and be ready. And then in the sending forth of the apostles, and their first mission was to the house of Israel, with a message of repentance. 

BOB: Absolutely. In fact, they were re-offering the kingdom in the Book of Acts early on. This is a dispensational perspective, of course, but had they have responded during the early preaching of the apostles, then the kingdom could have come, let’s say, in 50 or 60 or 65 AD. But because they didn’t, it fell. 

Now, let me give you a verse that relates to this. Matthew 12:41, can you turn there, Matthew 12:41? This is where Jesus has been preaching in Israel, and He’s been calling upon the Jewish people to repent, and they’ve been unresponsive to His ministry.

PHILIPPE: And this is where Jesus says, “The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation, and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.” 

BOB: What happened if you read Jonah chapter 3, Jonah comes in and says 40 days and then comes destruction. Nineveh is going to be destroyed. All the people—men, women, and children, they’re all going to die in 40 days. What do they do? 

PHILIPPE: They repent on sackcloth and ashes and even on the animals. We made themselves and the king himself lays aside his robe, sits down in a pile of dust. And as a result, God relents of that destruction. 

BOB: Jonah 3:10 says that it says, because they turned from their wicked ways. So coming back to Paul’s question, was he calling them to turn from all their sin? Well, he said, renounce, renounce is probably the wrong word, because renouncing your sins isn’t quite the same as turning from them. They turned from their wicked ways, and it says, God saw their works. Repentance is a work, and Israel needed to turn from its wicked ways. Now, fortunately, idolatry wasn’t a major problem, or at least as major a problem at the time of Christ as it had been during much of Israel, right? 

PHILIPPE: Yes, after the exile and everything the Jews, as a people, turn away sin from idolatry for centuries. But yet, you know, were they willing to acknowledge their dependence on God, and we see the promised Messiah as Isaiah had forecasted as Genesis 3:15, and all of that. 

BOB: And they were still a corrupt wicked people, even their religious leaders were seeking the acclaim of men. They were doing these long prayers, so that people would be impressed. They were giving their money, so people would be impressed. 

PHILIPPE: There was a great deal of economic corruption that was occurring, where, of course, Jesus cleansing the temple at the beginning of His ministry, and then again, at the end. 

BOB: Exactly. And that was what they needed to turn from, all of these things. But here’s my point, if you think of Matthew 12:41, implicitly, what the Lord Jesus is saying is because you didn’t repent in My preaching, you’re going to experience what Nineveh didn’t. You’re going to be destroyed. And it wasn’t going to be 40 days. It was going to be more like 40 years, but it was going to occur, and that’s what happened in AD 70. 

So I think it’s important to recognize that Israel needed as a nation to be believing and repentant. And if they weren’t, the kingdom was not going to come. And that will happen at the end of the Tribulation. 

But we need to avoid the error, which so many people make of saying, so in order to be born again, you’ve got to repent and believe. 

PHILIPPE: Yeah, there’s that distinction between believing for everlasting life, and repentance and works for reward and for experiencing fellowship and harmony with God.

BOB: That’s on the individual level. 

PHILIPPE: On the individual level. 

BOB: But on the national level, if Israel does not repent, the kingdom’s not going to come. And on the national level, we’ve seen this before. God didn’t allow the Canaanites to be destroyed for 400 years, because their sins were not yet filled up. 

PHILIPPE: God is forbearing, 2 Peter. Not willing that any should perish, have that destruction occur. 

BOB: Yeah, because He’s very, very longsuffering, very forbearing, very loving, very merciful, very gracious. Well, thanks so much, Paul, great question. 

You know, I love this issue of repentance. In fact, I have a book called Turn and Live, The Power of Repentance from Ezekiel 18 and Ezekiel 31, [sic] that expression. “turn and live” occurs.* Check it out if you get a chance, go to faithalone.org. 

PHILIPPE: Of course, there’s the book by Zane Hodges, Harmony with God. 

BOB: It’s great, it’s powerful. So you might check that book out as well. Well, thanks so much, and Philippe, what are we going to do? 

PHILIPPE: We’re going to keep grace in focus. 

ANNOUNCER: We invite you to check out our Monday, Wednesday, and Friday five minute YouTube videos at YouTube Grace Evangelical Society. You will love the content and learn a lot. Maybe you’ve got a question or comment or feedback. If so, please send us a message. Here’s our email address: it’s radio@faithalone.org, that’s radio@faithalone.org. Please make sure your question is as succinct and clear as possible, that would be a great big help.

Come back for our next episode, talking about a Muslim convert being baptized, against parents’ wishes. Hope to see you then, and in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.

* Ezekiel 18:30-32