Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Matthew chapter 3, verse 12 is a sobering verse.

John the Baptist is talking about Jesus coming.

And John the Baptist says his winnowing fork is in his hand,

and he will clear his threshing floor

and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff, he will burn with unquenchable fire.

This imagery may not be very familiar to us, so how a farmer would separate grain from chaff.

He would basically take a farmer would take a winnowing fork.

He'd toss the grain and the chaff together into the air, and when he did that, the grain, which is heavier, would fall to the ground while the chaff would blow to the side.

And so the farmer would keep the grain, and then he'd sweep all the chaff together and throw it into the side. And so the farmer would keep the grain and then he'd sweep all the chaff

together and throw it into the fire. So when John the Baptist is talking about Jesus, he says

his winnowing fork is in his hand. Basically, he's saying that Jesus is coming to judge the world.

The part of the purpose of his coming is to separate the grain from the chaff,

that he's going to separate those who turn from their sins and trust in him and those who don't.

Those who don't repent, this verse says he will burn with unquenchable fire.

The language is serious.

The axe is at the tree, John the Baptist says, and he's cutting down.

Jesus is going to cut down every tree that doesn't bear the fruit of faith and throw it into the fire.

Unquenchable fire, this picture of eternal punishment, fire that can never,

ever, ever be quenched. So this is the essence of the gospel. God is king, he is righteous,

he is holy, he is holy set against sin. We are sinners.

We have sin in our lives.

...