Matthew 3:7-12

Friends. We get into another week and you will be on my mind while I go to work as I hope we are on yours. Please pray for us in the coming weeks as the weather is changing and Avery is getting sick again. Being back in daycare isn’t helping much. But we must trust the Lord in all things.

In Him, David
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But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think 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 ax 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. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. 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 His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Matthew 3:7-12
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When the religious leadership comes to confront John at the Jordan, he gives them a harsh rebuke. He calls them the children of snakes which is a allusion to the serpent in the garden of Eden. He knows they are not there to repent, but to see what John is doing. They had the people under their own control and power, they refused to imagine God’s Kingdom as being better than their own. 

Pharisees also called “separatists” were the legalists of the Jews. They were the root of the Talmudic Jew. Devoted to the Law of the Lord, they forgot the Spirit of the Law and the mercy of the Lord. They went extreme with their oral tradition of the Law. Sadducees were liberals and rationalists who denied the inspiration of the Word and did not believe in the resurrection. 

Baptism by fire could mean the coming judgment of the Lord on the earth since it is written God will destroy the earth by fire in the end times. There might also be a double meaning here in that the fire is the Holy Spirit coming on us and revealing our hearts to make us more like Christ. Fire is often seen as judgment in the Bible. There is a lot of discussion around the water and the fire. It was the works of the religious leadership and the people that John is here describing. Our own works before the Lord will be tested. Not to prove our faith but to express and define our faith.