Memory Verse for the Week: Matthew 3:3 (ESV)

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INTRO: When have you had an ‘event’ in your life that required planning?

THE PREPARATIONS (vv.1-6)
Repentance & Baptism

THE FRUIT (vv.7-10)
Do Not Presume

THE PROMISE & THE WARNING (vv.11-12)
Spirit & Fire

YOU CAN PRAY WITH US …

1. Worship the LORD, the sovereign King, for He is God Most High and Emmanuel, God with us. Praise Him, Father, Son and Holy Spirit for His Presence and His grace to prepare a place with Him for all who trust in His saving grace.
2. How have you lived unprepared and presumptuous toward God’s grace and mercy? Confess your prideful trusting and boasting in your own efforts, asking Him to forgive you and remind you of your desperate need for His rescue and His righteousness.
3. Give thanks to Jesus, the promised King, who humbly entered into history to seek and save you.  Praise Him for His work of conquering the world, the flesh, and the devil that we might be eternally His.
4. Who do you know who is perhaps playing with fire by delaying a reckoning encounter with Jesus?  Ask the Lord to help them to see that His kindness is intended to draw them to repentance and that the “axe” is laid to the root of every person’s tree (See Mt. 3:10)
5. Ask the Holy Spirit to bear in you the fruit of repentance, that you would have a true sense of your sinfulness, an apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ, grief and hatred for your sin, a true turning to God, and a Spirit-granted resolve toward new obedience.