But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
I wonder what many seminaries would think if John the Baptist enrolled and walked into class. He may get some unsolicited advice on his appearance and preaching style so he would be more welcoming and “attractional”. He would be told to dress young to bring in that crowd. He would be told to “tone down the rhetoric” and lay off the “brood of vipers” stuff. It hurts visitor retention. We do not need to wonder what John would reply because it would be remarkably similar to this diatribe against the elite leadership of the day. He would dare to mention sin and repentance.
We need more John the Baptists in our pulpits today that tell us we are sinners and make us uncomfortable. We need people to know that sexual immorality distances them from God and that it is not acceptable that the culture accepts it. We need people to know that with salvation comes responsibility and that people will know us by our fruit. They will know we are Christians by our love, not by our polemics. We need people to know that their only true right is the right to Hell. We completely earned it. People need to know that, though we are all these things, there is a way out of the hands of an angry God for sinners…
Run into his arms.
Pastor Brad Boyer
Cape Community Church