Sermon from 14th January 2007
Here is the sermon from our Vicar, Cameron Barker, based on the reading from Luke 3:7-18
We’d best begin with a straw poll! So, who was here – and listened to the sermon! – last week? Congratulations to you on coming back for Part 2, then! For the rest of you, please just stick with it, and all should become clear.
“You snakes! Who told you that you could escape from the punishment God is about to send? (GNB) / You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? (NIV)”
In terms of how to win friends and influence people, a line like that is never going to be hugely successful. But John the Baptist wasn’t the slightest bit interested in trying to win any friends. Mind you, he was very interested in trying to influence people. And there’s plenty of evidence that he did so very successfully too! So, what was John’s secret – and what does his message have to say to us today?
Last week we began to look at the life and times of this man who God sent to prepare the way for Jesus. We learned when he appeared – between 28-30 AD. We discovered what the circumstances were at that time – just how bad it was for Israel, and for how long that had been so. And we found out too why the word of God came to John in the desert. His calling was to prepare the way for the Messiah – and to do so in a fashion that enabled everyone to see God’s salvation. We also had a short summary of John’s work. He told people to repent, to turn away from their sin, and to be baptised as a sign that they were serious about it.
What we left for this week was the practical working out of John’s message. Today we also need to think about how John set the scene for Jesus, who followed on soon after him. Talking about how things fit in, this is the start of our series that will take adults through to Easter. We will work our way through the early part of Luke’s gospel, seeing how he followed up the Christmas story. And this is how Luke launched into the next stage of the story of Jesus – with the groundwork done by John the Baptist. As we’ve heard, it was very much an in-your-face work that John did! What’s so amazing is that this is how John preached to the people who were desperate to hear from God!
As we learned last week, it had been 400 years since there was last a prophet in Israel. John spoke and acted in a way that was very similar to the Old Testament prophets. Like them, John pulled no punches about who was chiefly responsible for the sorry state of their nation. It was the people of Israel themselves who’d brought slavery onto their own heads – by turning away from God as they had. But John didn’t lay it all at the door of collective responsibility. As we heard in today’s reading, John really wanted God’s people to take personal moral and social responsibility for how they lived.
Before we get to the details of what John said about that, we need to note this fact. For John, there was no hiding place – for anyone. He warned his hearers straight not to think that having Abraham as their ancestor cut any ice with God. John told them that if they thought that, then they really had missed the point. God hadn’t chosen their nation because they were so great. Far from it: God had actually chosen Israel because they were so small and insignificant! God’s purpose was to show the world who he is – by what he could do in the life of this insignificant people. God was just as capable of turning stones into people to do that same job, John reminded his hearers!
There’s an obvious, and important, application of that truth for us too, of course. But first we also need to note how for John there was a real urgency to his message. God’s axe was already ready to cut down the tree at its roots. And John’s hearers would have known that the tree was a common Old Testament image for Israel. Their responsibility as a nation was to produce the kind of fruit that made other peoples ask who their God was. If they failed in that task – as Israel often had – then they weren’t doing what they’d been chosen to do, and so they faced the penalty for their failure. It’s a very sobering thought for anyone who calls themselves a Christian – because God hasn’t changed his requirements of us.
The urgency that John felt about all this was because of who he knew himself to be. As we heard at the end of our reading, people got very excited when John appeared. So excited in fact, that they even wondered aloud if he, John, was the Messiah! John knew that he wasn’t, though – and he told people so too. John knew that his calling was ‘only’ to prepare the way for the Messiah. He couldn’t do more than baptise people in water. The Messiah would be so much greater, do so much more – and John said that he wasn’t worthy to do even the most menial task for him.
John was convinced that the Messiah would appear soon - even if he didn’t know when, or who that would be. John also knew what this Messiah would do when he came. We heard John’s views on that in our reading too. He said that the Messiah would come with his winnowing shovel / fork in his hand. He would use that to separate the wheat from the chaff; the fruit from the deadwood; the productive from the useless. The Messiah’s baptism would be one of fire! It would consume the useless chaff in a blaze of God’s judgement – while the good wheat would be stored.
Now that may not be the most common picture we in the West have of Jesus today! But we have to depart a long way from the Old Testament and New Testament truth to escape the fact, that we believe in a God of judgement as well as of love. Those two - love & judgement - are more like sides of the same coin, which need each other to balance out. Where is love if there is no judgement to go with it? The good news of the gospel is that we believe in a God who loves us enough to save us from judgement. We may prefer to focus more often on the aspect of God’s love. But if we truly hear this message of John the Baptist then we dare not ignore the other side of the coin – where we see God’s judgement.
Jesus had just as much – if not more – to say about how his followers need to produce the right kind of fruit. He had plenty to say about God’s judgement too. Jesus didn’t just talk about what God’s kingdom looks like: he wanted his followers – then and now – to live as members of that kingdom, by its values. So if we want to say that we are a Christian there needs to be the evidence of a changed life to support that claim. It needs to be the kind of evidence that the presence and the power of God’s Holy Spirit alone makes possible. And there’s no escaping from this uncomfortable fact: what God wants is the kind of change that has to begin – and continue – with repentance.
Repentance lay at the heart of the message of John the Baptist; as it did of Jesus! The Greek word literally means to turn around, through 180 degrees. It involves heading in a completely new, and opposite, direction. As I said last week, repentance is both a turning from and a turning to. The major, and key, act of repentance that anyone ever makes is when we turn from a life of sin to a life with God. That was what John called his hearers to. John urged the people of his day to turn away from a life focused on themselves, and to a new life focused on God. If they did that as a matter of principle then God would forgive them their sin – and help them to live a new life, John assured them.
That remains God’s promise today, by the way. So if you have never taken that initial step, then today is surely the day to turn from your sin, and to a new life in God. But many of us will already have done so, as John’s hearers had. So they asked John what they were to do then. And of course his answer speaks to us as loudly today as it spoke to the crowds then. John told people to live lives that showed the fruit of repentance – with evidence of real, Godly change. This may only be a summary, or a sample of what John preached, but it’s all good, practical stuff. John told them that if they had more than they needed – food or clothes – then they were to share it with others who had less.
That’s the sort of advice that most of us are in a position to follow, because generally we have more than we need. We may need to apply the principle more than the specific advice – like by giving away our money to Godly causes, rather than giving our things away. If we do have more money than we need, might we not give some of it to a project that supplies clean water to a village in the Third World, for example? More controversially, perhaps, might we not consider spending some of our extra money on paying a higher price for goods that have been fairly traded, so that the producers are paid a fair price?
But perhaps we can take it one step further too. The i-phone has been all the rage in the media this week. Maybe Christians should refuse to buy one – and other products like it – as part of the fruit of repentance! Is it not obscene, sinful even, to spend that amount of money on developing technology that’s needless in the context of a world where so many people are starving? How about repentant Christians using our consumer power to send that message to producers, perhaps with words to the same effect?
John was very much into ordinary people doing what they could to live out repentance in their ordinary lives for God. Luke gives two concrete examples here of how people with ordinary - though much-hated - jobs asked John what they could do. We don’t have time to go into why tax collectors and soldiers were quite so hated back then. But do note that John didn’t tell either of them to find new jobs! Instead he told them act justly in the jobs they already had – not to cheat, lie, rob, or abuse their position. That was to be their repentance, their changed life for God. They had to stop doing the wrong thing in their jobs, and to start doing the right thing. And it surely can’t take you very long to work out how that principle applies for you in your life!
We can tend to think of repentance as stopping doing the major things wrong. Of course ‘major’ is usually defined as anything that’s worse than what I happen to be doing! But in God’s eyes sin is sin is sin – and by that standard we all have things that we need to repent of. Then we need to live a life that shows the fruit of our repentance – by finding new, Godly ways to live out our faith. The process begins by us recognising sin for what it is – those ordinary ways in which we live for ourselves instead of for God. We need to repent of those ways, to say sorry to God – and to mean it!
The way that we show that we mean it is by living a new and different life – for God instead of for ourselves. That is what it means to be a Christian. It’s not about speaking the right words, or coming to church on Sundays (though of course that’s important). It’s about living a new, different and changed life that’s obedient to the ways of God. So, in summary, here are the 4 Rs that we need to do: Recognise our sin for what it is; Repent of it; Receive God’s forgiveness; and then Replace the sin with the fruit of repentance. No, it’s not easy, or simple, but it is what God has always required of his people if they are to be his people. So let’s hear the word of God today, and obey it – which means, repent! Amen.
We’d best begin with a straw poll! So, who was here – and listened to the sermon! – last week? Congratulations to you on coming back for Part 2, then! For the rest of you, please just stick with it, and all should become clear.
“You snakes! Who told you that you could escape from the punishment God is about to send? (GNB) / You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? (NIV)”
In terms of how to win friends and influence people, a line like that is never going to be hugely successful. But John the Baptist wasn’t the slightest bit interested in trying to win any friends. Mind you, he was very interested in trying to influence people. And there’s plenty of evidence that he did so very successfully too! So, what was John’s secret – and what does his message have to say to us today?
Last week we began to look at the life and times of this man who God sent to prepare the way for Jesus. We learned when he appeared – between 28-30 AD. We discovered what the circumstances were at that time – just how bad it was for Israel, and for how long that had been so. And we found out too why the word of God came to John in the desert. His calling was to prepare the way for the Messiah – and to do so in a fashion that enabled everyone to see God’s salvation. We also had a short summary of John’s work. He told people to repent, to turn away from their sin, and to be baptised as a sign that they were serious about it.
What we left for this week was the practical working out of John’s message. Today we also need to think about how John set the scene for Jesus, who followed on soon after him. Talking about how things fit in, this is the start of our series that will take adults through to Easter. We will work our way through the early part of Luke’s gospel, seeing how he followed up the Christmas story. And this is how Luke launched into the next stage of the story of Jesus – with the groundwork done by John the Baptist. As we’ve heard, it was very much an in-your-face work that John did! What’s so amazing is that this is how John preached to the people who were desperate to hear from God!
As we learned last week, it had been 400 years since there was last a prophet in Israel. John spoke and acted in a way that was very similar to the Old Testament prophets. Like them, John pulled no punches about who was chiefly responsible for the sorry state of their nation. It was the people of Israel themselves who’d brought slavery onto their own heads – by turning away from God as they had. But John didn’t lay it all at the door of collective responsibility. As we heard in today’s reading, John really wanted God’s people to take personal moral and social responsibility for how they lived.
Before we get to the details of what John said about that, we need to note this fact. For John, there was no hiding place – for anyone. He warned his hearers straight not to think that having Abraham as their ancestor cut any ice with God. John told them that if they thought that, then they really had missed the point. God hadn’t chosen their nation because they were so great. Far from it: God had actually chosen Israel because they were so small and insignificant! God’s purpose was to show the world who he is – by what he could do in the life of this insignificant people. God was just as capable of turning stones into people to do that same job, John reminded his hearers!
There’s an obvious, and important, application of that truth for us too, of course. But first we also need to note how for John there was a real urgency to his message. God’s axe was already ready to cut down the tree at its roots. And John’s hearers would have known that the tree was a common Old Testament image for Israel. Their responsibility as a nation was to produce the kind of fruit that made other peoples ask who their God was. If they failed in that task – as Israel often had – then they weren’t doing what they’d been chosen to do, and so they faced the penalty for their failure. It’s a very sobering thought for anyone who calls themselves a Christian – because God hasn’t changed his requirements of us.
The urgency that John felt about all this was because of who he knew himself to be. As we heard at the end of our reading, people got very excited when John appeared. So excited in fact, that they even wondered aloud if he, John, was the Messiah! John knew that he wasn’t, though – and he told people so too. John knew that his calling was ‘only’ to prepare the way for the Messiah. He couldn’t do more than baptise people in water. The Messiah would be so much greater, do so much more – and John said that he wasn’t worthy to do even the most menial task for him.
John was convinced that the Messiah would appear soon - even if he didn’t know when, or who that would be. John also knew what this Messiah would do when he came. We heard John’s views on that in our reading too. He said that the Messiah would come with his winnowing shovel / fork in his hand. He would use that to separate the wheat from the chaff; the fruit from the deadwood; the productive from the useless. The Messiah’s baptism would be one of fire! It would consume the useless chaff in a blaze of God’s judgement – while the good wheat would be stored.
Now that may not be the most common picture we in the West have of Jesus today! But we have to depart a long way from the Old Testament and New Testament truth to escape the fact, that we believe in a God of judgement as well as of love. Those two - love & judgement - are more like sides of the same coin, which need each other to balance out. Where is love if there is no judgement to go with it? The good news of the gospel is that we believe in a God who loves us enough to save us from judgement. We may prefer to focus more often on the aspect of God’s love. But if we truly hear this message of John the Baptist then we dare not ignore the other side of the coin – where we see God’s judgement.
Jesus had just as much – if not more – to say about how his followers need to produce the right kind of fruit. He had plenty to say about God’s judgement too. Jesus didn’t just talk about what God’s kingdom looks like: he wanted his followers – then and now – to live as members of that kingdom, by its values. So if we want to say that we are a Christian there needs to be the evidence of a changed life to support that claim. It needs to be the kind of evidence that the presence and the power of God’s Holy Spirit alone makes possible. And there’s no escaping from this uncomfortable fact: what God wants is the kind of change that has to begin – and continue – with repentance.
Repentance lay at the heart of the message of John the Baptist; as it did of Jesus! The Greek word literally means to turn around, through 180 degrees. It involves heading in a completely new, and opposite, direction. As I said last week, repentance is both a turning from and a turning to. The major, and key, act of repentance that anyone ever makes is when we turn from a life of sin to a life with God. That was what John called his hearers to. John urged the people of his day to turn away from a life focused on themselves, and to a new life focused on God. If they did that as a matter of principle then God would forgive them their sin – and help them to live a new life, John assured them.
That remains God’s promise today, by the way. So if you have never taken that initial step, then today is surely the day to turn from your sin, and to a new life in God. But many of us will already have done so, as John’s hearers had. So they asked John what they were to do then. And of course his answer speaks to us as loudly today as it spoke to the crowds then. John told people to live lives that showed the fruit of repentance – with evidence of real, Godly change. This may only be a summary, or a sample of what John preached, but it’s all good, practical stuff. John told them that if they had more than they needed – food or clothes – then they were to share it with others who had less.
That’s the sort of advice that most of us are in a position to follow, because generally we have more than we need. We may need to apply the principle more than the specific advice – like by giving away our money to Godly causes, rather than giving our things away. If we do have more money than we need, might we not give some of it to a project that supplies clean water to a village in the Third World, for example? More controversially, perhaps, might we not consider spending some of our extra money on paying a higher price for goods that have been fairly traded, so that the producers are paid a fair price?
But perhaps we can take it one step further too. The i-phone has been all the rage in the media this week. Maybe Christians should refuse to buy one – and other products like it – as part of the fruit of repentance! Is it not obscene, sinful even, to spend that amount of money on developing technology that’s needless in the context of a world where so many people are starving? How about repentant Christians using our consumer power to send that message to producers, perhaps with words to the same effect?
John was very much into ordinary people doing what they could to live out repentance in their ordinary lives for God. Luke gives two concrete examples here of how people with ordinary - though much-hated - jobs asked John what they could do. We don’t have time to go into why tax collectors and soldiers were quite so hated back then. But do note that John didn’t tell either of them to find new jobs! Instead he told them act justly in the jobs they already had – not to cheat, lie, rob, or abuse their position. That was to be their repentance, their changed life for God. They had to stop doing the wrong thing in their jobs, and to start doing the right thing. And it surely can’t take you very long to work out how that principle applies for you in your life!
We can tend to think of repentance as stopping doing the major things wrong. Of course ‘major’ is usually defined as anything that’s worse than what I happen to be doing! But in God’s eyes sin is sin is sin – and by that standard we all have things that we need to repent of. Then we need to live a life that shows the fruit of our repentance – by finding new, Godly ways to live out our faith. The process begins by us recognising sin for what it is – those ordinary ways in which we live for ourselves instead of for God. We need to repent of those ways, to say sorry to God – and to mean it!
The way that we show that we mean it is by living a new and different life – for God instead of for ourselves. That is what it means to be a Christian. It’s not about speaking the right words, or coming to church on Sundays (though of course that’s important). It’s about living a new, different and changed life that’s obedient to the ways of God. So, in summary, here are the 4 Rs that we need to do: Recognise our sin for what it is; Repent of it; Receive God’s forgiveness; and then Replace the sin with the fruit of repentance. No, it’s not easy, or simple, but it is what God has always required of his people if they are to be his people. So let’s hear the word of God today, and obey it – which means, repent! Amen.
posted by Parish Administrator at 5:17 pm
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