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December 9, 2007
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Advent
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"The Repentance of Christmas"
Isaiah 11: 1-10; Matthew 3: 1-12; Romans 15: 4-13; Psalm 72: 1-8
The earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance
- It was a brilliant plan! Karen and I had worked out a short play in which to enact the message. The idea was that she would be on the stage at a table with a lamp on as if having devotional time. She would read the passage from Matthew 3 and then be pondering the character of John the Baptist. Then I entered the sanctuary dressed - well not like John, mind you. We had no camel hair togas so I wore a black robe, with a gnarled staff, and worked to make my hair a mess so I would look the part and I came ranting and raving, declaring God's Word to the people.
Karen then in quieter reflection brought out the impact of the statements and the application of the message. It worked, for us anyway, but I remember as Margaret Miller left that day she looked at me and said, "Did you know your hair was a mess while doing that play?"
All she could see was my hair and had wondered if I knew it wasn't combed. Little did she know the amount of hairspray used to get it to look that mess! I don't know if she heard a message. This dear woman was also the one who sat counting the number of times I said "um" in a message and told me after worship one day - another sure way to miss the message.
But even if some missed the message when Karen and I pulled that off in San Jacinto, California, and perhaps people have missed John's message at other times over the years since this remarkable man lived - none greater has ever been born on the earth, Jesus said - the people of John's time certainly heard him.
For them such a man as John the Baptist had never been seen. There had not been a prophet in Israel for over 400 years. There were no TV evangelists. God had been silent. We don't know what that is like. They had been living what the Prophet Amos had predicted. Through Amos some 600 years before Jesus was born God had declared: "The days are coming when I will send a famine through the land- not a famine of food or a thirst for water but a famine of hearing the Words of the LORD" (Amos 8:11). And this famine had come.
While the synagogues were still holding worship, God was not speaking to His people. Heaven was silent.
30 years prior to this moment in history when John steps out of the desert into full view, news had traveled about great visitations - a village girl had been visited by angels, the Messiah was coming, it was rumored.
But now in Matthew 3, 30 years have past since those stories involving Zechariah and Elisabeth and Mary and Joseph-people have died wondering what would come of all those stories. Then John the Baptist steps like a dinosaur from the past into their modern times.
- "In those days" we read in the beginning of Matthew 3 - in those ordinary days since Jesus was born. Nothing extraordinary had happened. Joseph and Jesus had worked side by side in the shop until Joseph's untimely death sometime after Jesus' 12th birthday. Jesus had carried on the work until he was 30 supporting his family. Into these ordinary, non extraordinary days stepped a "Word from God". God intersected ordinary life to declare this message through John: "repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near".
Matthew tells us who John is - he is the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy of a "voice calling in the desert prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him."
Matthew describes what John is wearing - not as a fashion statement but to further clarify the fulfillment of prophecy. First his description would have echoed for any first century person the Old Testament description of two passages. First, 2 Kings 1:8 where the Prophet Elijah is described: "He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist." Second, Malachi 4:5-6 which gives God's most recent declaration, the last one before the 400 silent years, which said, "See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. HE will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers…"
It is no wonder people came in droves to be baptized. They came from Jerusalem and ALL Judea and the WHOLE region of the Jordan. Note Matthew's all inclusive description. This was the greatest thing happening at that time. Nothing could equal this bold, dynamic prophet - some perhaps came to gawk, but it seems most came, called by God to return to the Lord for the Kingdom of Heaven was near.
- John's message was to repent - by which he meant to "turn". I say that was his message for he came in fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi. Indeed that was the scripture quoted by the angel Gabriel to John's father Zechariah in the temple visit described in Luke 1. In that visit the angel interprets Malachi's prophecy saying that this one will come in the spirit and power of Elijah and will "turn many to the Lord their God, turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord" (Luke 1:16,17).
They began to be prepared for Jesus by confessing their sins, by repenting - by turning back from the place where they had wandered, back toward God, and in this manner back toward their families and back toward the wisdom of their elders.
John's tough words with the religious leaders who came to observe and listen, not repent and be baptized were words of challenge. He calls them children of the devil, by calling them a "brood of vipers". He tells them in no uncertain terms that they ought to be seeking to flee from God's wrath through repentance and baptism; indeed that it is God who is calling them to return to Himself. He invites them to leave off being of satan's works and be trees that bear fruit, reminding them that to trust in their Jewishness will not protect them from wrath. Only relationship through repentance, only returning to the Lord will save them from the fire of hell.
John's message was bold and straight forward in order to prepare people for the coming Messiah. It was the message to "turn".
- Christmas is a time to repent - to turn towards our children and our elders and also to our God more fully.
It is a season set apart in anticipation of the coming of Jesus in order to make that coming happen more fully in our hearts and be able to carry that out into our lives more fully during the coming year.
So, how would God like you to prepare the way for Him, how would God like you to make straight paths for Him in your life?
As much as I love the privilege, preaching is a terrible thing to do. Every time I begin to work on a scripture, God sets to work on me. I have known of this topic for weeks now and as I anticipated preaching on the "repentance of Christmas" I have encountered all kinds of things from which to repent in my life especially during the past weeks.
There was a family situation in which I totally overreacted - really went overboard in my thinking and acting to correct a situation that did not need correcting. When Karen the next day spoke to me in a very quiet voice about my actions saying she felt I had overreacted and had acted inappropriately as a dad in the situation. I said, "NO WAY DID I OVERREACT!" I even overreacted to her statement to me about overreacting. When I heard myself say it I knew the noose was tight. As John Towne says, "I was hung on my own petard."
Indeed I had overreacted to the situation and taken actions that were inappropriate - it was time for repentance.
Often, I hate to repent. I hate to admit that I am wrong and I have done wrong. I hate to bring the words across my lips and mean them, but God has given us no other way to live our lives.
This week Larry from across the street gave me an old dresser he was throwing out so I could burn it in the fire. There was plenty of good wood without paint on it to use. So, I brought it home and it took me 10 minutes to tear it apart. It was a wonderfully freeing exercise. It was a decaying thing better for kindling than clothing.
But as I was doing this, dismantling it, I thought of the places in my life that need to be dismantled. The places of control, pride, of isolation, of attitudes that do not glorify God, of selfish ambitions, of doubt that need to be demolished.
I thought of the places where I will believe a lie about myself and ponder it allowing it to lead me into the depths of despair and believe it is all true for the longest time - this tendency needs to be demolished.
I thought of how I am given a night a week just to hang out with Gabrielle and how much I must focus in that evening upon her and discover more about her and continue to work to build my relationship with her. I must not "waste a moment" in her life. I must repent from any tendency to do so. This week we practiced the discipline of "NOT" answering the phone during that time to focus more fully upon the father-daughter banquet of the Scripture discussion and then the reading aloud of an old book together.
What needs to be dismantled and burned in your life?
From what do you need to turn?
Rather than just buying gifts for people, how can you somehow invest in your relationship with them? How can you "turn" toward them with new openness, with a new ear to listen to them, with a new desire to know them?
What about the relationships you share in the church? How deep are they? What person do you know only by face but not by name?
How forgiving have you been of others in the life of the body? How willing are you to let a new person help in what has been someone else's task?
I have spoken to people who have been injured by the words and deeds of older members of the congregation-they were not intentional slights, I know. But they were brusque, reactive words or gestures that hindered for a time the work of Christ in another's life. Now it is the work of God that we repent of these. Keep watch my flock over your lives and allow the Spirit of the Living God to show you all that HE would like to dismantle in your hearts and lives, all that He would like you to turn from in order to prepare for His coming. I don't want you to miss a thing!
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