The sermon by Peter Allison on 'John the Baptist Begins to Preach' focuses on the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. It highlights the political and religious context with leaders like Pontius Pilate, Herod, and high priests Annas and Caiaphas. John preached a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, emphasizing the need for genuine repentance and transformation. He challenged both religious authorities and the rulers of the time, applying God's law to their actions. The sermon explains the importance of turning to the Word of God for revival, noting the historical context of John's ministry. While John's baptism is linked to Old Testament purification rites, Christian baptism involves the Holy Spirit. The message underscores the need for inward spiritual change, not just outward religious rituals, and calls for applying God's principles to every aspect of life.

Please turn in your scriptures to Luke chapter 3. Hear God's word beginning at verse 1. Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Viteria and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias Tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. The word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness, And he went into all the region around Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, Make His path straight. Every valley shall be filled, Every mountain and hill brought low.

The crooked places shall be made straight, And the rough places smooth, And all flesh shall see the salvation of God." Then he said to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, "'Brute of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

So the people asked him saying, what shall we do then? And he answered and said to them, He who has two tunics, Let him give to him who has none, and he who has food, let him do likewise." Then tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, Teacher, what shall we do? And he said to them, collect no more than what is appointed for you. Likewise, a soldier asked him, saying, What shall we do? And so he said to them, Do not intimidate anyone, or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages.

Now as the people were in expectation and all reasoned in their hearts about John whether he was the Christ or not, John answered saying, To all I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire His winnowing fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire and With many other exhortations he preached to the people. But Herod the tetrarch, being rebuked by him concerning Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, added this, also added this, above all, that he shut John up in prison. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Heavenly Father, Thank you for bringing your Word to us.

May it come to us with the power of the Holy Spirit. May it come to us with the conviction of your Holy Spirit. And may you feed us this morning with the bread of heaven. May you cause us to rejoice in your promises and tremble at your warnings. In Jesus' name we ask, Amen.

Well, events, as we know, are always dated in the year of the reigning king. That is how time, that is how events are marked throughout the Old Testament. That's how things are dated throughout the Old Testament. And this is how Luke dates the beginning of the public ministry of John the Baptist. And it's actually still how we date things today in the year of the reigning king.

Luke dates the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. So Tiberius is the adopted son, the heir, the one who became the heir of Caesar Augustus, the Caesar that we read about earlier that had a tax on all the world and why Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem. This was the tax of Caesar Augustus. We are now approximately 30 years later. The 15th year of Tiberius would be about 8026, the beginning of the ministry of Jesus and John the Baptist, or John the Baptist and Jesus six months later or so.

Because both began their public ministries at about the age of 30. That was the age in the Old Testament that the priests began their ministry. So this is the age that John the Baptist began his ministry. This we know is AD 26 for several different ways. The 15th year of Tiberius was, he began in AD 11 to be a co-regent with Augustus his adopted father And he became he was the soul king from about AD 14 three three years later but This has to be the dated from the time that he became co-regent with Augustus in 8011, because it would be too late for Jesus' ministry to be beginning in AD 29 or AD 29.

So the 15th year of Tiberius, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip, tetrarch of Uteria and the region of Trachonitis and Lesianus Tetrarch of Abilene. This is a very very complete historical entry as to when all this happened and I'd like to take a minute just to quickly explain who all these people are because it is rather confusing but it becomes relevant in in later events that Luke talks about. So, remember Herod the Great? That's the Herod that we heard about in the previous chapters that the Magi were interacting with. This was the Herod that wanted to kill all the babies in Bethlehem.

This is the Herod. Herod the Great is the one who fled, or who caused Jesus and Joseph and Mary to flee to Egypt to escape his plans. So this is Herod the Great, and we talked a little bit about him at that time. But when he died in 4 BC, shortly after they would have fled to Egypt, his kingdom, Herod the great's kingdom was divided among his three sons and so their Herod Archelaus Or art Archelaus was given a was a was a tetrarch of Samaria Judea and Edom and his brother Herod and tippeter or an antipas that's the Herod mentioned here in this chapter, was the tetrarch of Galilee. Actually Herod Archelaus was called an ethnarch of Judea, Samaria, and what would be Edom or Udemyah.

He was a, okay, so you had one son of Herod, who is an ethnarch of Judea, Samaria, and Edom. You have another brother, a full brother, that is a Herod antipater or Herod antipas, who is the Herod that we read about in the rest of this gospel. This is the Herod, Herod antipodus. It's the Herod that Christ went before and the Herod that's mentioned when anytime Herod is referred to, that fox, Jesus called him that fox. This is Herod Antipodes.

He was a full brother of Herod Archelaus. And then there is a half-brother, Philip, it says his brother Philip, tetrarch of Uteria and the region of Trachinitis. This Philip, who is a half-brother of the other two guys, is a tetrarch, that's a ruler of a fourth, he's a tetrarch of a region that's to the east of the Sea of Galilee. So up in the north, across the Jordan River, east of the Sea of Galilee. This is where these two regions were.

Galilee would have been the region to the west of the Sea of Galilee over to the Mediterranean Sea. So you have these two brothers or kings up here and then there's this ethnarch who was given half of the kingdom down in the south. But the king who was given the southern portion, Archelaus, was a very cruel man. He killed 3, 000 Jews and there was a great outcry against his reign. So he was deposed in 86 and he was replaced by governors, prefects.

There were a couple different kinds of Roman governors. There were military governors, they commanded armies, and then there were prefects who were lesser type of governors. They were administrators responsible for collecting taxes and keeping the peace. And so Pilate, Pontius Pilate, was the fifth governor after Archelaus was deposed. He was the governor of Judea and He's very familiar to us because of his role in the trial of Jesus and the crucifixion of Jesus.

So he's the prefect and he was, records would indicate the governor from about 8026 to 8036, which is right over the period of Christ's crucifixion. So he is a brand new prefect or governor of Judea. So you had kings, these terms are a little bit confusing, but you have kings who are subjects ruled by Roman consent, but they are called a king because They have great latitude, they have the authority of a king. A little less authority would be an ethnarch like Herod Archelaus was. And then a little bit below that would be a tetrarch, a ruler of a fourth.

And that's what Philip and Herod, tetrarch of Galilee, although he's also called King Herod in some places. So these are the civil rulers at this time that John the Baptist begins his ministry. Now these, you can imagine, are not righteous people. They're rather wicked people. And John the Baptist addresses that.

We'll get to that in a minute. But I give you this introduction so you can understand this context, the civil context, the political context into which John the Baptist is coming, because John the Baptist preaches to the rulers, the political rulers, the civil rulers of his day. So to review here you have Herod the antipater or the tetrarch of Galilee, that's the King Herod that we hear in the Gospels after Herod the Great. You have his brother who was initially an ethnarch of the southern region but was deposed and replaced by governors and that's where Pontius Pilate is ruling in Judea. And then you have a half brother, who is the son of Herod the Great, but a half-brother to these other two Herod's, who is ruling on the eastern, east of the Sea of Galilee.

And then you have Lysanias, a tetrarch of Abilene. Abilene would be just north of the region where Philip was tetrarch. And for many years people that didn't believe the Bible thought that Luke was an error because there was no other record of a Lysanias at this time. There was a record of one earlier, but he died far too early to be this person. So people thought that Luke was just mistaken or wrong.

But God's Word is always true, even if everybody in the world thinks otherwise, even if every scholar thinks otherwise. God's Word is true, even if the best science of our day would seem to suggest it's wrong, or would declare it's wrong. It's true. And so, sure enough, years later, in more modern times, inscriptions have been found 15 miles east of Damascus in a temple that reference this man. And it makes it clear that it had to be a person by that name in this time frame, because it talks about the lords of Augustus.

And there was only a short window where there were multiple people bearing that title. So this what Luke is telling us here is a very complete picture of all the rulers all the civil rulers at the time John begins his ministry. They're wicked rulers. And he also tells us who is high priest. Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests.

Now there weren't two people who were formerly high priests. There was only one person who was formerly high priest. But what Luke is telling us here is the way it really was. There's what the form says, there's the formal titles, but then there's the real situation. Where are the real powers?

And what we had, what most people believe was going on, was that Annas had been high priest and he had been deposed. And after a string of other high priests, Caiaphas, who is his son-in-law, is made high priest. But Anas remains the power behind the office. It's his will that's often getting done. He's just not having, he doesn't have the title.

But Luke recognizes that he is the power behind the high priest and so he says that Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. Caiaphas was the high priest, Annas was the power behind that office. But these were also very corrupt people. These high priests, as it were, had conflicts of interest. They sold the sacrifices that the people had to offer and they had a bit of a monopoly on this market.

And this is what Jesus was attacking when he cleansed the temple. Was there corrupt system of, and monopoly over the animals, the sacrificial animals that were purchased at the temple? They got rich off of this. They got rich off of the people. They took more than what was allotted them under the Mosaic law.

They were allowed certain parts of the sacrifice that was theirs. They were allowed payments, redemption money was theirs by right, but they wanted more, and they got more, and they got wealthy taking more than what God had given them. And so You have a very corrupt political scene and you have a very corrupt church when John the Baptist begins his ministry. So the Word of the Lord came to John the Baptist. The Word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

That is Old Testament language. It is never used in the New Testament, but it is very standard Old Testament language. Whenever God was sending his servants, the prophets, we read, the words of the Lord came to so and so. And so the word of God comes to John while he is in the wilderness and he went into all the region around Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

Repentance is a turning away, a turning around, a change of course. And that is what is necessary if there is to be the remission of our sins, if our guilt is to be expiated, if our sins are to be covered, there must be repentance, a turning away from that sin and a turning to Christ. And so John is preaching a baptism of repentance. Now This is a little different baptism than the Christian baptism we practice today. I say that only because when Paul was in Ephesus, there were some disciples who had never heard of the Holy Spirit, and Paul said to them, well, who were you baptized into?

Because Christian baptism is into the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And they said, well, we were baptized into John's baptism. And Paul said, John indeed baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on Him who would come after them, that is on Christ Jesus. There is forgiveness in none other than in Jesus Christ. There is forgiveness, There is no forgiveness without repentance, without a turning around, a turning away from our sin, a turning away from serving our self, and a turning to Christ, and without the Holy Spirit coming and washing us, and regenerating us, and bringing faith.

So they were baptized, these disciples were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus then. So John, Paul re-baptized Christians who had only gotten the baptism of John. So for that reason, this is a little different baptism than what we practice as Christian baptism, but it's teaching the same thing. This is a baptism that was taught in the Old Testament. The baptism that's taught in the Old Testament is described in Numbers 19.

It's the process of purifying those who have been polluted. It's referenced in Corinthians as the baptism for the dead because touching a dead person meant that you were defiled and you were unclean. But there was a baptism signifying that there was cleansing, there was a hope in the resurrection. Hope for those who had died. Those who had died in Christ would rise again and live.

And Paul says, if there is no resurrection, then why do we have a baptism for the dead? Because there would be no hope for them. So the very fact that there is this baptism of the dead signifies that there is a hope that death will be conquered, and it was in Christ. And so this is the baptism then that is taught in Numbers 19. This is the baptism that was practiced in the Old Testament.

This is the baptism that Every Jew would have been baptized as an infant with this baptism. And John is coming preaching the significance of this baptism. He's preaching the significance of what does it mean? What is it symbolizing? What is it teaching?

It's teaching that we're polluted, that we're dead in our sins, and that we need the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, and we need to turn from our sins to Jesus Christ, for there is no remission of sins outside of him. And so he is the voice of one crying in the wilderness as Isaiah says. He is come as the herald to prepare the way of the Lord, to make a highway for the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley will be filled, every mountain will be brought low. The crooked places straight, the rough places smooth, rough ways smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." Whether this is a symbolic or not, I wouldn't be dogmatic, but certainly every valley shall be filled, every false humility will be removed, and every mountain and hill, Every high thing, every arrogant thing will be brought low, possibly.

But whether there is a symbolic meaning here, or whether this is simply proclaiming that John is there to make a highway for Jesus Christ. The point is that John is here to proclaim salvation, the salvation of God in Jesus Christ. And so there are multitudes that come out to him. John comes preaching the Word of God. He came preaching the Word of God.

This is the hallmark of every revival that the church has ever had. It starts with the preaching of the Word of God. It starts with turning back to the Word of God. We go through the Old Testament, every time there was a revival, it came because the people discovered the Word of God, and they started to read it, and they believed it, and they began to practice it. So John comes preaching the Word of God.

The Word of the Lord came to John. John was a prophet. He was the last of the Old Testament prophets. He's called the Elijah. Elijah would come.

He's called the greatest man born of women. He's the last of the Old Testament prophets or the first of the new. He is the one who bridges that gap. The Word of God had not come to Israel like this for over 400 years. For over 400 years there had never been somebody of whom it could be said the Word of God came to them.

God did send a messenger, Gabriel, But he brought that to specific people Gabriel went to Elizabeth went to Zacharias and went to Mary specifically as individuals, but John came with the Word of God a prophet after 400 years where God had not sent his word, John comes with the word of God. John comes preaching the word of God, and God begins to work through that word. This is the way it has always been. Every reformation, every revival, the great awakenings came because men came preaching the Word of God in powerful ways, in the power of the Holy Spirit. In the reformation, it was because men began to preach the Word of God, began to open up the Scriptures to explain their sense, to proclaim salvation through Jesus Christ alone.

And John begins with a warning to the church, a warning to the children of Abraham, Because judgment begins with the house of God. If we want revival in our land, if we want reformation, if we want to see the kind of response that John received, then we need to start with our own house. We need to repent of our own sins as the people of God. So John says to the multitudes that come out to him, you brood of vipers. That's not exactly pleasant words.

He didn't speak kind and nice and pleasant things to them. He didn't give them the assurance of the gospel, he gave them the wrath of God. Brood of vipers. He called them snakes, liars, deceitful people. You brood of vipers.

You brood of snakes. Who warned you, he said, to flee from the wrath to come? What are you doing here? He didn't just say, oh, I'm so glad you came, have a seat, here's some water. We're here to praise the Lord, glad you came.

There was none of that. He knew what they practiced. And so he said, Who warned you to flee from the wrath that come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father.

These were Jews who had, as Paul said, the covenants, they had the promises, they had the blessings of God, they had the oracles of God, they had circumcision. They were the seed of Abraham and they could trace their heritage and their lineage back to Abraham. And they thought that because they were the seed of Abraham that therefore God was happy and satisfied with them. But John comes telling them a different message. Circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law, but if you're a breaker of the law, your circumcision is no circumcision.

For He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But He is a Jew, He is a child of Abraham who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter. We could say the same thing to us today. You are not a Christian who is one outwardly. You are not a Christian because you are in this room and you are a member of this church and because you have been baptized and you have the seal of the covenant of grace on you.

For he is not a Christian who is one outwardly, nor is baptism that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Christian, he is a follower of Christ who is one inwardly, whose baptism is in the Spirit, not in the letter." The same warning that John the Baptist gave to these Jews is very appropriate to us today as well. We need to examine our own lives. Are we bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Not just outwardly what everybody sees, but inwardly.

The thoughts of our heart. The thoughts of the righteous are right. What are the thoughts of our heart that God sees? Are we bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Don't begin to say to yourself, you grew up in a Christian family And you've gone to church all your life.

That doesn't make you a child of God. It doesn't make you one whose sins are remitted. God is able to raise up children from these stones. And even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees, and every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. The branches Jesus said that don't bear fruit are cut out and cast into the fire.

What do you mean cut out branches from the tree? He's talking about people who are in the church. People who look like they are in the church. People who are partaking of the covenant signs and seals. They eat of the Lord's Supper.

They've been baptized. They sit in the pew they Not at the right time. They say the right words they look outwardly to be doing the right thing, but Jesus described such people as sepulchers, graves that look nice on the outside but inside are full of dead men's bones. Their decay and death is inside. There's no fruit worthy of repentance.

There's no fruit of the Holy Spirit in these lives. Even though on the outside they may look like very nice and clean and neat and orderly. Every tree, every branch that doesn't bear fruit, Jesus said is cut off and cut out and burned. John said even now the John said, even now the axe is laid to the root of the tree. He preached powerfully.

He preached the truth to these people. He preached the Word of God, which is that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness. He preached especially to the Jews a message that was humbling. They were the ones who they thought of themselves as better than the Gentiles. They were God's people who were clean.

And when Gentiles became saved in the Old Testament, they were baptized. We call it proselyte baptism. When Jews over the hundreds of years had been scattered, and gentiles would come and want to follow the Lord, they were baptized, just like Numbers 19, because these were unclean people, they had to be baptized. They had to be purified before they could be circumcised and become Jews. And so John is coming to the Jews and saying, you need to be baptized.

You are unclean. You're no better, you're no different than these Gentiles that you proselyte baptize. You need to be baptized. You need the washing of regeneration. John was no respecter of persons.

He told the Jews, the Jews who prided themselves on being clean before God that they needed to be cleaned, they needed to be baptized. He told the king, he rebuked the king and said that he was an adulterer and that the person that he had as his wife, the woman that he had as his wife was not his wife and that he was sinning against God. Think about that. John the Baptist, John, this prophet with the word of God, is telling the king that he is wrong. That's the sort of thing that you lose your head for.

And that's what he lost his head for. But he was faithful. He had a word from the Lord and he gave it without respect of people. Notice He applied the law of God to a pagan king. And it wasn't a law about murder.

These guys murdered lots of people. He didn't say, you're wrong to murder. And theft, as we see, they took a lot of things that didn't belong to them. He didn't say, you're guilty of theft. He went to adultery.

What our generation likes to say is fine. Whatever consenting adults do is their business. What the president does in his personal life, that's his business. No. John came without respect of persons and he told the king that he was wrong, that he was an adulterer, that the woman that he was living with as his wife was not his wife And and this is a guy who wasn't even pretending or claiming to be a Jew he wasn't claimed pretending to be a Christian but the Word of God applied to him too.

The Law of God applies to him too, even as the King. His own personal life matters, and it ought to matter for us today as well When we elect and choose our rulers So what he accused the king this is Herod it in Herod the tetrarch so remember you had Archelaus who was deposed but then he had and Pilate was a prefect over Judea But then you had his full brother Herod who was the tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipater. And Herod Antipater took his brother's wife, another son of Herod who isn't mentioned in this text other than indirectly as his brother's concerning Herodias, his brother's Philip's wife. Now that is a different Philip than the Philip who is Tetrarch of Euteria and the region of Trachonitis. OK, in verse, there's a Philip that's a brother of Herod.

In verse one or two, that's a different Philip than the one who married Herodias originally. But they're both sons of Herod the Great So you can imagine this one brother Herod the Tetra the hered of the by of the Gospels after Herod the Great He took his he made his his brother's wife divorced his brother her half-brother and she married her husband's half-brother so that's wrong on many accounts but it's wrong because it was adultery and and so Herod was rebuked, John rebuked him concerning Herodias, his brother Philip's wife. And it says he also rebuked him for all the evils which Herod had done. Herod was a wicked man. And John the Baptist was a faithful minister of the gospel and no respecter of persons.

And he rebuked the king for all the evil that he'd done. Now, how was John defining evil? Well, he was defining it according to the law of God. That means that John is applying the law of God to this pagan civil magistrate and telling this pagan magistrate that what he is doing is wrong because it is contrary to the law of God. John the Baptist was a theonomist, we might say.

And because of that, He shut him up in prison. And it was this Herodias, it was her daughter, Salome, that danced for Herod Antipater. And when Herod Antipater promised this daughter of Herodias, and Herodias wasn't, or Salome was not Herod Antipater's daughter, she was the daughter of the other Herod, the first husband of Herodias. And when he promised her anything, she, by the instigation of her mother Herodias, asked for the head of John the Baptist. And Herod Antipodes gave it to her.

This word that John preached, to repent, to turn away from their sin, because there's no forgiveness without repentance. He said that they should bring forth fruits that are fitting for repentance, because true repentance is characterized by fruit. True repentance results in fruit. If there is something that doesn't that looks like repentance but it doesn't result in fruit, then it's not repentance. Only the Holy Spirit can produce fruit that is acceptable to God.

So John came preaching the Word of God brought a warning to the church he was no respecter of persons And he brought a word that transformed every area of life. The word of God that John brought transformed every area of life. The people begin to ask, what should we then do? This wasn't just a thing that they did over here on Sunday. This gospel, this baptism of repentance and remission.

This wasn't just something they thought about on Sunday. The people are asking him, what should we do? And John answers them, you need to show kindness to others. Look out for the needs of others, not just yourself. When that's a characteristic of the fruit of the Spirit, to be able to look out for others' needs and put them even ahead of our needs.

Don't just think about yourself. He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none. And he who has food, let him do likewise. Give the food to those who have none. Because we are just stewards of all that God has given us.

It's not ours. It's not our power that enabled us to get what we have. It's easy to think that it is. When we look at our nice house and our nice car, we think, oh, look at all that I have. But God warns us about thinking that way.

Don't think in your heart that it's by your own power that you got all the wealth that you have. It is the Lord who gives you the ability to get wealth. What you have, what we have, we have as stewards. God has given to us and we have to be faithful stewards. And John instructs these people then to Look out for the needs of others.

Don't just think about yourself. The tax collectors come to him. And John didn't say, they asked him, what should we do? Teacher, what should we do? And John didn't say, oh well, you're a tax collector, the Bible doesn't have anything to say to you in your job as a tax collector.

No. John applied the word of God to them as well. And he said, collect no more than what is appointed for you. That's a message our Internal Revenue Service needs to hear as well today. To collect no more tax than what is appointed for them to collect.

We have today a very similar situation, where we have a tax collector that collects as much as he can collect. And they use every sort of intimidation and power of the sword to collect as much as they can possibly extract. Tax collectors collect no more than what is appointed for you. We have a tax system today that is deliberately ambiguous because it's easier to collect more when it's ambiguous as to what is due, and when it's unclear, and when it can be read five different ways, then it opens itself up to being abused. The soldiers also come to him saying, what shall we do?

And he says, don't intimidate anyone or accuse falsely and be content with your wages. That again is a message that those who enforce the law today need to hear. Intimidation. When you have the power of the sword and you can bully people you can intimidate them You can command them to do things And John says don't intimidate people don't use your authority that God has given to you for the punishing of evildoers to abuse and intimidate people. Don't accuse falsely.

This is an endemic problem today. The police planting evidence on people, framing people to get them Convicted because they can get money from it. They can plant drugs on a car to be and then seize the car They can plant evidence on people and convict them falsely of crimes that they didn't commit in order to meet their quotas in order to And get promoted It's endemic. It's it's it's endemic in our land. It's endemic in our police.

There's rampant corruption like this, where evildoers are protected. And righteous people are intimidated and falsely accused, so they can take wealth. All These civil forfeiture laws allow the law enforcement today to seize money and assets that are people's hard earned wealth that they come and just take. John's message, the word of God to them is, do not intimidate anyone, do not accuse falsely, and be content with your wages. When the Word of God comes, when revival comes, It is applied, it transforms every area of life.

There is no division between this area of our life and that area of our life. Everything we do from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday to Friday, Saturday, Sunday, It's all before the Lord. It is all to be lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. It's all to be lived in accordance with the Word of God. God's Word speaks to every area of our life.

So, if we apply John's message to us, we need to be examining every area of our life. Even our business days, are we bringing forth fruits that are fit for repentance? Only the power of the Holy Spirit, as He lives in us and works through us, only the Holy Spirit can bring forth these fruits that are worthy of repentance. We cannot live this life that John is calling us to live in the flesh. We cannot live it without the power of the Holy Spirit.

We cannot live this life without that fellowship and communion with the Lord in prayer and in His Word. If we're going to Have the word transform every area of our life then we need to be disciples and students of the Word of God We need to be in fellowship in close communion through the Holy Spirit May God so bless us His people, with His Word that we might be transformed through the renewing of our mind to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice wholly acceptable to the Lord, which is but our reasonable service. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, for its power, for its truth, and we ask that you would transform our thinking where it is wrong, that we might bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of God, to the obedience of the faith. Lord, we cry out to you for your Holy Spirit to so fill us and fall upon us that we can bring forth these fruits that are worthy of repentance. Fruits with which you are well pleased because they are the righteousness of God by faith.

In Jesus' name we ask, Amen.