Fri.’s Devo- John - The Baptiser

Read Luke 3:15-20 Who are these people who would travel out into the wilderness to hear a man dressed in camel skin? They are the people that are expecting God to move. They were looking for the Christ that scriptures promised and they believed. They wondered if John could be the Christ but John knew he wasn’t. He told them that he could baptized them in water, but the Christ was going to do much more than that. This Christ they were waiting for was going to baptized them with the Holy Ghost and with fire. The Bible talks about many baptisms: one is the baptism of repentance that John taught (Mark 1:4), another is the baptism in the Holy Spirit that was prophecied by John and fulfilled at the day of Pentecost after Jesus had ascended. We need both. The first has to do with water that washes our sins away and gives us a clean conscience. The other has to do with fire that purifies our hearts and gives us power to be witnesses. Jesus holds the fan that cause the flames to burn hotter. With his fire he will purge the floor of his temple or the hearts of his people. After the fire of adversity has burned up all the flax and excesses in our lives, he will come back and glean the righteous seed that would not burn in the fire. He will reduce us seed and this seed will be gathered into his barn. To John, everything was black or white. He spoke truth no matter who it offended. He even reproved the tetrarch, Herod by preaching he should not be living with his brother’s wife and all the other sins he had done. He made Herod mad enough to put him in prison to silence him. John had been baptized in the Holy Spirit from the womb so he had the power to witness. No guilty tetrarch was going to keep him from preaching the truth. A true prophet speaks the truth and defends it to the end. John did this. Lord, baptize us anew in your Holy Spirit. Give us your strength to stand in the days of adversity use like John did.