Charles Spurgeon Commentary Matthew 3:9

"and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." — Matthew 3:9 (ASV)

And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones—

In the bed of Jordan, where he was baptizing—

To raise up children to Abraham.

John told them not to boast of their descent from Abraham; yet that was the great thing in which they took pride. They despised the Gentiles as so many dogs outside the true fold. Note how John the Baptist really preaches the gospel to us indirectly while he is denouncing these people's confidence in their carnal descent.

Regeneration is not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Do not imagine that God needs you in order to fulfill His promise to His servant Abraham, for He can make each stone in Jordan into an heir of grace. Do not presume upon your ancestry and think that all the blessings of the coming kingdom must be yours because you are of the seed of the father of the faithful. God can as easily make sons of stones as of a generation of vipers. He will never be short of means for fulfilling His covenant, without bowing His Gospel before the caprice of vainglorious men. He will find a people in the slums if His Gospel is rejected by the respectable.

Let none of us, because we are orthodox or exceedingly Scriptural in our religious observances, dream that we must, therefore, be in the favor of God and that we are under no necessity to repent. God can do without us, but we cannot do without repentance and the works which prove it true. What a blessing that He can transform hearts of stone into filial spirits! Wonders of grace to God belong!