Category: English Sermon

Exposition of Matthew (10) Cries To Repent

Matthew 3: 1-10

John the Baptist was a prophet who has a task like the prophets of the Old Testament but was taken by God to live in the New Testament. He is preparing the way for the coming of the Lord Jesus. It was he who ran over the whole valley and hill be made flat to the presence of the Son of God who became the Son of Man in God’s time (the day of the Lord). For 400 years, God’s silence to Israel because of all the prophets killed, the Word of God expressed underestimated. If God speaks to us, we must not forget and underestimate. We are so worthless, and He died to make us worthy. Many preachers distort this case that human beings have worth then Christ died for us. No! He died and made us valuable. All must be God-centered and not self-centered. He is God. We think God is so patient, generous, He can not be angry. A.W. Pink says, “God is punishing, angry God, God’s wrath”, the sentence is far more than the phrase “God is love is”. Let us be truly does not make God angry with us. Let us be truly understand and learn the history that God is able to wrath, and when He is angry, his anger is not unbearable. There are people who continue to think that the Israelites were the chosen people. At the time Israel entered into the land of Canaan, God is pleased with them, God defend them to kill all enemies. Really! But this is not the reason God loves Israel.

Actually, the Lord will uphold the holiness in the promised land, it is a land that is devoted to God. God would uphold that He is a holy God. At that time the whole world, especially the area near the ancient East are the ones who are so unclean. Their sex, do gamble, do tidah wrong even sex with animals. What God is He brings a small community, led by Himself to go in and eradicate all evil because of His holiness must be upheld. But when He straightened His purity, several hundred years later, Israelis themselves are not sacred, trespassed, have a life and worship that made no difference to the world. What happened? That Israel should be eliminated. We always remember Israel kill nations but we do not remember Israel wiped out even today. It would declare the holiness of God must be upheld. When God tricked by his own people, he would be much more upset than mocked by the other nations.

Let us see Amos 9: 1-6. This verse is stated by the Lord through the mouth of Amos to the people of his own choice that the people of Israel. If God has been angry with his chosen people, He is so angry outstanding, surpassing his anger on the nations that do not know God. People who do not know God, they sinned and aroused the anger of God. But people who know God and confess “Jesus God”, “I had the choice,” he rebel against God, his mistake two or three times because he had sinned and already know who the real God but mock God. What God has revealed to the nation of Israel, never He told Nebuchadnezzar, he never talked like this to Assyria, to talk like this to the people who redeemed him. You are now like this, you escape to ataspun, I will pull you down. You get in the water in the oceans most, I’ll pull you out, I will kill you there. Even if you are captured by the enemy, I can not accept. I will still pursue you because I want your blood gushing. Why would God like this?

Then the most terrible is in verses 5 and 6, namely the last sentence “God is his name”, what does it mean? This is the Doxology, this is a song of victory, this is a song of praise to the Triune God. At the end of the service, we got up and sang the Doxology is the glory of the Triune God, hymns of the Doxology, a glorification means that all this service began with the Triune God, is terminated by the Triune God, preaching the Word of God the Trinity and everything for the glory of the Triune God. The meaning of these verses is, “I’m mad, I kill you, your blood gushing and I am glorified”. God is able to silence, God can hurt, jealousy and grief, we do not play against him! He is the living God, not the projection of religious talk about God but it’s not true. Let us may know the true God, let us understand the true Christ’s true that’s who.

So John the Baptist shouted in the wilderness instead of in the church. He shouted from one place to