John, the cousin of Jesus, had an important role in the redemption story. He headed up the advance team. His role was to prepare the way for Jesus, to get Israel ready for him, and to announce his arrival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
John became known as \u201cJohn the Baptizer.\u201d His baptism was not the traditional Christian baptism, symbolizing death with Jesus to the old life of sin and resurrection with Jesus to a new life of righteousness. His was a \u201cbaptism of repentance.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nAnd he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 3:3).\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
John calls the various classes of people who came to hear him to repentance, reminding them that repentance is vital to the preparation process. But I am most intrigued by the wisdom he demonstrates in this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nAnd the crowds asked him, \u201cWhat then shall we do?\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And he answered them, \u201cWhoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, \u201cTeacher, what shall we do?\u201d And he said to them, \u201cCollect no more than you are authorized to do.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soldiers also asked him, \u201cAnd what shall we do?\u201d And he said to them, \u201cDo not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation and be content with your wages\u201d (Luke 3:10-14).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
John becomes very specific with seekers. Why? Because he knows human nature. He knows that as long as he speaks about repentance in generalities, most people won\u2019t get it; they won\u2019t truly understand what repentance means. Furthermore, they won\u2019t understand their hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he says to the crowds, \u201cWhoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise,\u201c he is helping seekers identify the materialistic, selfish, distrustful nature of their hearts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When John says to the tax collectors, \u201cCollect no more than you were authorized to do,\u201d he is helping them identify the greed, injustice, and idolatry in their hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he says to the soldiers, do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be content with your wages,\u201d he is helping them identify the cruel nature of their hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is exactly the tactic used by Jesus when he said to the Rich Young Ruler, \u201cSell what you have, and give to the poor, and then follow me.\u201d With that command, Jesus shone a powerful spotlight on the greed and idolatry of a young man\u2019s heart. It turned out that he wasn\u2019t nearly as righteous as he thought he was. He thought he loved God and people, but it turned out that he loved his money and the advantages money offered him more than he loved God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my own life, I have noticed that when God wants to take me deeper, he will dig around in my life in very specific areas! He gets specific. And he does this to show me myself, to humble me, so that he can purify me, refine me, and shape me more into the image of Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When repentance becomes specific, spiritual expectation rises too (Luke 3:15). Repentance is not the goal; Jesus is! Repentance makes the heart ready for the coming of Jesus (Luke 3:16-17). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nFather of Jesus, I pray with a Psalmist this morning, \u201cCreate in me a clean heart\u2026\u201d In Jesus name, amen.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When repentance becomes specific, spiritual expectation rises too (Luke 3:15). Repentance is not the goal; Jesus is! Repentance makes the heart ready for the coming of Jesus (Luke 3:16-17).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8,9,10,11,12,13,7,14,15],"class_list":["post-10786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devotionals","tag-bible","tag-christian","tag-devotion","tag-jesus","tag-john-the-baptist","tag-non-formal","tag-sgc","tag-shepherds-global-classroom","tag-training","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17296,"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786\/revisions\/17296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shepherdsglobal.org\/ne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}