Today our teaching scripture comes from Luke chapter 3,
verses one through 18. In the 15th year of the reign of
Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of
Itura, and Tracontis and Lysanisas tetrarch of Abilene,
during the high priesthood of Anas.
And the word of the Lord came to John son of Zachariah in the
wilderness. He went into all the country
around the Jordan, preaching the a baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sin as it is written in the book of the words
of Isaiah the prophet. A voice of one calling in the
wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The Crooked Rd. shall become straight, the rough ways smooth,
and all people will see God's salvation.
John said to the crowds coming out of John said to the crowds
coming out to be baptized by him.
You brood of Vipers who warned you to flee from the coming
wrath, produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not
begin to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father.
For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children
for Abraham. The axe is already at the root
of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit
will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
What should we do then? The crowd asked.
John answered. Anyone who has two shirts should
share with one who has none, and anyone who has food should do
the same. Even tax collectors came to be
baptized. Teacher, they asked, what should
we do? Don't collect any more than you
are required to, he told them. Then some soldiers asked him,
and what should we do? He replied, Don't exhort money
and don't accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay.
The people were waiting expectantly, and we're all
wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the
Messiah. John answered them all.
I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I
will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to
untie. He will baptize you with the
Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in the
hands to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat
into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable
fire. And with many other words, John
exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to
them. This is the word of the Lord.
Good morning. Well, I trust you guys all had a
great Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for braving
the cold morning this morning. In the 15th year of the reign of
Tiberius, who was the emperor when Pontius Pilate was governor
of Judea and Herod was the ruler of Galilee, and his brother
Philip ruler of the region of Eteria and Tracheonititis, and
Licenius ruler of Abilene. During the high priesthood of
Anus and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John son of
Zechariah in the wilderness. There are a lot of names in that
opening paragraph, a lot of really challenging names, a lot
of locations. There's a lot going on here.
Luke is still in the opening section of his narrative of his
gospel. The 1st 2 chapters of the Gospel
of Luke, if you go back and read, they read like kind of the
introduction of characters. I mean, there's, you know, a
little bit of drama happening there as there is here, but
there's a little bit of drama unfolding in those first couple
of chapters. You know, we read an overview of
the opening story where there's the birth of John the Baptist
being foretold and then the birth of Jesus being foretold.
And then the two mothers, they meet and they have this kind of
moment together. And then we read about the birth
of John and the birth of Jesus, and we read a little bit about
what happens in the younger years of Jesus's life.
We find him being dedicated in the temple, for example.
And then the next moment of the story that unfolds is Jesus
returning to the temple at the age of 12, where, you know, he
is caught up in the teachings of the teachers of the day, and he
kind of gets left behind overnight and for a full day.
I mean, there's a little bit of drama that's unfolding, but
mostly what Luke is doing is he's introducing the characters.
And then in Chapter 3, it's almost as though Lee goes all
the way back to the beginning to reintroduce John the Baptist,
but this time as an adult. He says in the 15th year of the
reign of the emperor Tiberius, Luke is dropping us in real time
into a real place. But he isn't just telling us
when the events are unfolding. He's actually telling us what
kind of story is being told. In the opening 2 verses.
He lists 7 main characters that are on the scene at the time.
I just want to run through just briefly who these guys are
because it's actually a really important part of the story.
This this first guy that he names Tiberius Caesar, he's the
reigning emperor of Rome following Augustus.
And his rule, especially in the later years, was known for
paranoia and suspicion and cruelty.
He was like this perfect representation of the brute
machinery of empire. Luke is rooting his story in
global imperial structures and power and domination.
That's what he's doing in those opening lines.
And then he lists Pontius Pilate, who's the governor of
the region in which the story is unfolding.
His primary duty was to collect taxes and to maintain order, and
PILOT was notoriously brutal. We read later that Pilate is
actually the one who ends up sending Jesus to his execution,
and Luke mentions him here to highlight the sort of volatility
of being a Jewish person in the story that is about to unfold.
Next up is King Herod. New Testament scholar Craig
Keener reminds us that King Herod was a Jewish, but only in
name and lineage. He was completely conscripted
into the powers of the Roman Empire at the time.
And Herod's brother Philip was the same kind of person.
He was a Jewish person, but he worked for the government.
There's all of this conscription of power.
On and on and on it goes. Luke basically is saying we are
surrounded by people who are in power over us.
And he begins to name some of the religious leaders as well.
Anas was the former high priest but retained a lot of political
influence through family connections.
And he represents religious power deeply embedded into
politics. And the fact that he's even
being named is an indication that even a retired priest who
who had become so connected to the political structures are
still pulling those kinds of strings.
His son-in-law Caiaphas was the new high priest and he worked
under Pontius Pilate, who is the governor, and continued the
family tradition of trying to align their whole religious
system with the world of politics.
Luke names 7 people with incredible power and influence,
each representing political or religious control, and yet God's
Word bypasses all of them because these are not the people
that God is interested in partnering with.
The Word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias in the
wilderness. In a story that is rooted in
injustice and in the improper use of power and the occlusion
between religion and politics, Let the reader understand the
voice of God comes to a man without any power operating
outside of the religious and the political theater way outside of
the hustle of empire in the wilderness.
Friends, the scriptures are a certain kind of story and it's a
story of hope, but it begins again and again in the margins,
the good news of God coming into the reality.
And the picture that Luke paints is a is a reality that is really
hard. These guys are trapped and
surrounded by forces that are more powerful than they are.
Are you with me? So this is the first Sunday of
Advent. How many of you know that this
is the beginning of the church year?
Advent is the beginning of the church calendar year and it's
name, Advent comes from the Latin Adventist, which means
coming or arrival, and it's meant to hold intention the past
and the present and the future. It's meant to hold intention,
celebrating Jesus's birth and the God who became man, the
arrival of our ongoing awakening to his presence now in our
lives, and the longing for his final return to make all things
new. And originally this season of
Advent, even though in our present day we tend to sort of
rush right into Christmas with poinsettias and lights and
wreaths and all that kind of stuff, originally this held in
it an invitation that was not entirely unlike Lent.
We're actually invited to come into the darkness.
And in a more liturgical church, the lights would be dimmed and a
single candle would be lit, and we're going to light the Advent
candle as a representation of that.
But the idea is that we begin Advent in the darkness, and over
time we come into the light, into the hope of the God who
became a man. So if it's possible, if you
could maybe just close your eyes to the Christmas decorations so
that we can lean into the Advent, I'm inclined to try to
bend us back towards a little bit of that original intention.
Not just because I have a fascination with the earliest
forms of the church, but I find that I've become convinced of
what modern day priest and theologian Fleming Rutledge
calls the Christmas creep. We too quickly look towards the
celebration of the birth without fully immersing ourselves in the
challenge of reality as it presently is.
We have a hard time kind of slowing down and remembering
what this season is meant to do for us.
Yes, we have to celebrate the fact that God came and became
what we are so that we might become as He is, full of love
and grace and kindness. He is returning us to become
just like Him. But Advent really is a time
where we are meant to remember the kind of story that we're in.
It's ultimately a story about the future and about what is to
come. And the theological way of
saying this is to say that the story that the scriptures are
telling is what's called an eschatological story.
It's a story about something that is happening out there on
the horizon, out in the distance, or maybe, you know,
somewhere buried in those last few pages of the text that
you're reading, whatever metaphor that you would want to
use. The story that we are living in
has a future to it, and that future is spilling backwards
into the present, and we are meeting it in real time right
now. Does that make sense?
We live in this tension between the way our world is and the way
that we hope that it could become.
Does anybody feel that tension right now?
You just sort of like in your life, you just like, man, I
really wish that things were different in our world or in my
life. This is why that Luke begins by
painting a rather bleak picture of the circumstances that feel
insurmountable surrounded by 7 leaders that are oppressive on
their Thrones, doing their thing.
And yet when the glory and the word of the Lord comes it, it
comes to a poor man, barely clothed, feeding himself on
locust and wild honey in the wilderness.
What a story. His name is John John the
Baptist, and he shows up on the scene to remind us that Advent
begins in the dark and that the future that God has promised is
making its way towards us from the future leaking back onto the
present. And so we're going to take a
closer look at this Scripture this morning and the message
that John is to bring us in three parts for those of you
that like to know where we're headed, the wilderness, the
wondering, and the wasteland. So first up, the wilderness, the
word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
He went into all of the region around the Jordan proclaiming a
baptism of forgiveness and the repent of of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins as it is written in the book of the words
of the prophet Isaiah. The voice of one crying out in
the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight. Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the
crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
So the good news of John of God comes to John in the wild.
And you know, maybe without even any further commentary, that
might already be a bit of a source of encouragement to you.
How many of you feel like your life is unfolding a little bit
more wild than you had planned? Maybe maybe you imagined life
getting sorted out a little bit different?
How many of you maybe presently or recently have felt as though
you are in the wilderness? OK, some of us have felt
wilderness of late. Maybe, you know, you're not
surviving on locusts and honey. But I know most people do feel
like they're just scraping by a little bit.
The word of God comes to John in the wilderness.
We cannot overlook this part of the story that we live in.
And John is showing up onto the scene as a prophet.
And anybody paying attention to John's life would have known
that John the Baptist is playing a particular kind of role.
He's not so much role-playing, but he has shaped his life to
look a certain way in, to announce the particular
possibility of being heard in a certain way.
The original hearers of this story and the original people
that would have watched John's life unfold over time and begin
to hear him preach, they would have known that he had fashioned
himself to be a prophet, not entirely unlike the prophets
that we read about in the Old Testament.
I mean, these are some like weird guys.
And so John show shows up on the scene as kind of a weird guy in
order to proclaim a certain kind of message.
But friends, these Old Testament prophets and a prophet like John
are not so much into like predicting the future, though
there is a little bit of that from time to time.
The prophets in the biblical narrative are not so much
interested in when something is going to happen, but in what is
happening already. They're being prophetic to the
degree that what is happening already is hidden and is either
in need of being revealed, is already in the process of being
revealed, or something is about to happen that will shine a
light into the darkness. That's what the prophets do.
John is a prophet who has come to reveal reality, and most
prophets are not doing their thing in order to bring comfort,
but to offer clarity. They say something like, hey,
let me tell you what's actually happening behind the scenes.
Let me pull back the curtain that covers up the truth and the
reality of what's actually going on, or let me introduce and
announce something that is happening in broad daylight, but
people are afraid to say something about it.
You guys know that there are really challenging things
happening in broad daylight, not only in our own little lives,
but also just more broadly speaking, there are really harsh
realities that are happening in broad daylight.
And yes, in some corners of our society, people are trying to
give voice to the reality of those harsh things that are
happening. But let's just be honest, those
things pop up into the news and then quickly get subsided and we
just grow numb and our vision grows dim to the hard realities
of what is unfolding. One of the things that prophets
do throughout the scriptures is they function in this role to
help people get present to what psychologists call cognitive
dissonance. Guys, ever heard the term
cognitive dissonance? Cognitive dissonance is a
psychological term for the inner tension that we feel when our
beliefs and our values and our actions are in conflict with one
another. So for example, you know, I
might believe in generosity but ignore someone in in need.
And those two things happening at the same time creates this
sort of inner turmoil, doesn't it?
We naturally try to reduce the dissonance either by changing
our behavior or by justifying our behavior.
Those are really the only two things that we can do in the
face of when the things that we know to be true do not become
true about our lives. And it's this key concept in
psychology because it explains why sometimes people choose to
deny the truth or resist change or justify harmful choices.
We're trying to work out that dissonance that we feel.
And, you know, spiritually, this dissonance can often show up.
For example, we say that we trust God, but we might be
driven by fear. And, you know, the dissidence
itself isn't necessarily bad, but it also is often a signal
that there is some transformation that is sort of
beginning to be birthed inside of us.
And that discomfort that we feel about the way that we long for
the world to be and the way that it actually is is a signpost to
the way in which we hope for that thing to change.
Does that make sense? The kind of language that
prophets in the biblical narrative would use and the kind
of stories they were to tell is to try to reveal to us where
those things are not aligned. And they use this language
called apocalyptic language. Apocalypse comes from the Greek
apocalyptus and it means an unveiling or a revelation.
And it's it's language that is meant to do the work of
revealing what is true. And so John seeking to name
clearly what is at stake and what is what is reality and
trying to reveal to the people that he's preaching to the
reality of their lives. He brings up the prophet Isaiah.
And he says this, Every valley shall be filled, and every
mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be
made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh
shall see the salvation of God. This is prophet speak for naming
and revealing that when God's anointed one comes to make
things right, it will be as impactful of an event as if the
entire topography of the world were flattened.
You know, you wake up 1 morning and all of the hills are gone
and all of the valleys are gone. All of the curvy trails are made
straight. I mean, this would cause you to
make some attentiveness, right? This would cause you to pay
attention if you woke up in the world and everything was
completely flat. This is apocalyptic language to
say something big is on the scene.
Something giant is going to happen.
But this last line is the kicker.
All the humans will see the salvation of God.
Oh, that's interesting. This is Isaiah's way of saying
that as unimaginable as it might be for all of the mountains to
be made low and all of the valleys to cease to exist and
every part of the earth to be made smooth, the most
unimaginable thing that could happen is going to happen, which
is that all of the humans will see the salvation of God.
The Gospel story is a story that begins in the wilderness and not
in the hands of those in power, because the wilderness is a
metaphor of reality. The wilderness is a metaphor of
reality. Luke draws our attention to the
places of power and how kind of messed up things are for the
typical person. And then he describes a scene
where everything gets flattened. This guy, John, steps out of the
desert to remind us that everything is not OK.
And listen, you might be sitting here saying, yeah, like, I did
not need John to step out of the desert to tell me that
everything is not OK. But here he is.
This no name preacher steps out of the desert with matted hair
that probably has not been washed in a very long time.
He's barely dressed in some animal skin.
He has maybe a handful of disciples around him.
And in the middle of a region that is surrounded by governors
and statesman and presidents and senators and religious leaders
and Internet personalities and pastors and priests colliding
with the whole system to rid the whole land of the poor and the
needy, that's what's going on. And this John steps out of the
wilderness and he throws down a mic drop quote from the old
prophet Isaiah. And he begins to preach.
All the humans will see the salvation of God.
So he hands us the gift of seeing our life for the reality
that it is and the reality that actually surrounds us.
And then he reminds us that the story that we're living in is a
story of hope beyond anything that could possibly make sense.
You know, if you've been with us for the past couple of months,
you know, we've been in this series on the Passions, and
you're thinking, is this guy ever going to stop talking about
the passions? And it turns out that this
series on the Passions is a perfect teaching series to lead
us into Advent. It's a series that has helped us
get in touch, I hope, a little bit with the reality of our
lives and all of the ways that our cognitive dissonance shows
up. One last reminder, The passions
are our disordered loves. We cling to lesser goods and are
clinging to the lesser goods. It shows up in these complex
emotional States and obsessive thinking and are over attachment
to the things that we think are going to make us feel better.
The lust and the greed and the envy and the pride and the
gluttony. They're happening just below the
surface. But what we really want for our
life is freedom from all of those things.
So the powers that operate in the world that we live in aren't
just, you know, the CE OS of the big companies or the men and
women on the Senate floor or the world leaders making decisions.
It's not just that there are powers out there organizing our
life, friends. There are powers at work inside
of us that are dictating how our lives show up into the world.
There is a lot of reality that the scriptural story is trying
to help us get in touch with. So how do we respond to the
promise of John's teaching when we're so confronted with the
reality that that there is one who is coming that is going to
straighten everything out and fill all the gaps, and that
there's some story out on the horizon that is pulling its way
back towards us? But then we actually just have
our life that we're trying to live.
How do we live in this tension of the reality of our actual
lives with powers both inside of us at work and powers outside of
us at work, such that it feels like neither in the world around
me or in the world within me are things going exactly the way
that I wish that they would go? You guys get that sense that
it's like where, like inside of me, it's not going the way that
I really wish it to go. Sometimes out in the world, it's
not really going the way that I wish.
It's like, where can I go? Well, that's where the biblical
story comes in. And this brings us to the
wondering. So John paints this picture of
the reality of the lives that the people are walking in.
They're surrounded by powers, they're surrounded by forces.
And he reminds them what the prophet Isaiah said was going to
happen when God's anointed one came to make all of the things
right and fill the whole land with the salvation of God, the
saving power of God to make things right.
And he begins with a message of repentance.
Luke tells us that this is primarily the thrust of John's
preaching. He says the word of God came to
John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness, and he went into all
of the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Just a few verses later, John is talking with the people who are
coming to listen to him preaching.
He says bear fruits in keeping with repentance.
Friends, repentance is is kind of one of those difficult
religious words that kind of makes us feel a certain way,
doesn't it? We think about the word
repentance and we associate it with some angry men holding
sandwich boards on the street corner.
But listen, all it really means is to change your mind.
Change your mind. It means to simply turn your
whole self back to God from wherever it is in your life that
you are standing. You could be incredibly close to
God and have real life with God, and there are infinite ways in
which we just slightly turn away, isn't there?
Repentance is not meant to bring about shame.
It's not meant to be some angry man yelling at you.
It's meant to just bring our attention to say, would you just
turn your shoulders back to God? You could be as far away from
God as you have ever been in your entire life and scrambling
to find comfort in all of the wild things of the world.
And all repentance means is to turn away from those things and
to turn towards God. For some reason, culturally we
have it in us that repentance carries with it this idea of
like a tremendous amount of shame.
But it is simply the recognition that we are not yet as we were
made to be, and we live in and are helping to uphold a world
that does not support who we are on our way to becoming.
Repentance is just an admission of reality, friends.
It's just naming what is true. Like what if we could just name
the truth about our lives like as they really are, without any
sense of shame, without any sense of judgement and trust
that God is the one who is inviting us to partner with Him,
to have to have enough hope. That He is the one that is doing
the heavy lifting of making all of those crooked paths straight
in US and filling all of those valleys in US.
That God is the one who is reshaping the topography of our
life, but that we would just simply be able to say, you know
what? I am not yet who I am meant to
be and I am going to decide to turn my shoulders back to God.
It's about just dealing with reality.
So friends, Advent is a time of waiting for all of the things to
get sorted. But first we have to name
reality for what it is We we learn how to tell the truth
about what is going on in our lives.
That is the work that we've been trying to do in the life of our
church in this season. But it's not that there's not
anything for us to do. It's not that we just named the
reality of our life. We have to see our lives for
what it truly is. But then there is some stuff
that God is going to invite us into, you know, back to just the
reality of your life. What what is the reality of your
life right now? If you could just name
internally some things that have presently come to your attention
that are just a little misshapen in your life.
Or maybe the patterns of your thinking that just feel like
they're not entirely like on key.
Like where have you been able to see that?
Perhaps you're clinging to things or over indulging in
things that you thought would make you feel better, but deep
down you know that these are all lesser goods that are slowly
forming you into somebody that you're not supposed to become.
The grace and the love of God says you can just be honest.
You can just say to God, here is what is true about my life,
because repentance is simply naming reality.
And then we begin to wonder. The wondering part is where we
begin to ask what it is that we're supposed to do in response
to the promise that God has for our life.
So John is preaching this invitation to repentance.
He's saying, could you just look at the reality of the way that
life is working right now? And then the crowds ask him,
what then should we do? And he said to them, very
simply, whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has
none, and whoever has food must do likewise.
Even tax collectors came to be baptized and they asked him,
teacher, what should we do? And he said to them, collect no
more than the amount prescribed for you.
Soldiers also asked him what are we to do?
And he said to them, do not extort money from anyone by
threats or false accusation and be satisfied with your wages.
So this question of what is it that we are to do?
This is the first question that the story of the Scriptures is
meant to kind of elicit in US. But it's on the heels of already
coming to at least begin to grasp that God is already
planning on doing something. Friends, God, God is already
planning on doing something in the world.
He's already planning on rescuing us and rescuing the
entire world. Remember, this is where John
begins. He begins with a vision for what
God is already going to do. Repentance is our way of getting
in on the project that God is already going to bring to
completion. We name the reality of our life
before God. We bear fruits with keeping of
repentance and we basically say that the fruit of our life is
going to name our life for what it really is.
So the crowds are wondering what to do with their life and given
the reality of what what God was about to do.
And John's response to them was really practical.
He says listen, if you have extra, just give it away.
Share with people in need. This is how you join with what
God is already going to do in the world to the tax collectors.
These these are the ones who had already aligned themselves with
all of the powers of the world and colluded with the religious
and the political power structures.
And his response to them was, listen, really practically,
don't abuse your power. Detach yourself from whatever it
is that is driving you to take advantage of people.
Have a change of mind related to all of that stuff.
The soldiers are also standing by.
They're like, well, what are we supposed to do?
And again, John gets really practical about what repentance
looks like. He says, stop overpowering
people. Cut it out with all of those
false accusations. Settle into your life.
Be content with what you have. So friends, as we are turning
our shoulders to this Advent season, I just I want to remind
us that we are in a cosmic story where God is doing an
unfathomable thing. And this unfathomable thing is
really hard to get our minds around.
It's such a big and cosmic story.
And there are moments in our daily lives where, you know,
we're just trying to get a good deal on Black on Black Friday.
We're just trying to figure out whether that sale is still going
to be good on Cyber Monday. I see you.
I get it. Our lives are just very basic
and mundane. And then there's this giant
cosmic story. How do we get involved in the
giant cosmic story when our life and reality is the way in which
it is? It kind of becomes a bit of a
struggle, don't you think? Like there's this giant
narrative that we're supposed to somehow lasso our hope to.
And what John says is the way we get into that cosmic story is we
ask a very basic question of God.
We turn to God and we ask God, what do you want me to do?
And then we listen and God tells us what to do.
We bring this question before God.
And what tends to happen is we hear things that are really,
really practical. Things like love your spouse,
spend time with your kids, call your mom.
There's this really rooted practicality to the life that
God is inviting us into. And it requires us to turn our
attention to God in repentance. And just to say, this is my life
as it truly is. What would you have me do with
my life? So I want to close with the
wasteland. John ends with another
apocalyptic image that is meant to actually bring us hope, but
often times it does not bring his hope.
He says this his winnowing fork is in his hand to clear the
threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary and
the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
So a winnowing fork is a large wooden tool that is used in
grain processing. And the way this works is after
you thresh the grain, the the harvested grain is kind of loose
like on the floor of the barn. And the farmer would then toss
the mixture with a winnowing fork into the air, and the wind
would sort of blow away the chaff, and then the wheat would
settle. Does that make sense?
So the chaff is the really light part of the grain that that kind
of comes off and that you don't really want to eat as part of
your bread. And so there's a big pile of
grain and the farmer lifts it up and the wind takes all the light
stuff away and the heavier stuff settles.
And often times this passage, because there is this
apocalyptic language around unquenchable fire, it becomes
unsettling because a lot of biblical interpreters through
time have been teaching us that this means that that God is is
in this context separating people.
And there are wheat and there are chaff kinds of people.
Let me just be really clear. I don't think that that's what
this is talking about. This is.
That God is separating all of the chaff of your life and the
world around us and burning all of the stuff up that is painful
and that is not in congruence with His Kingdom and is in just
and is unrighteous. All of that is chaff that is
being blown away by the wind. And the reason that this is
hopeful is because in the same way that John began with this
picture of like we are surrounded by injustice, and in
the same way that we have been talking about all of the stuff
inside of us that is also causing trouble.
I want you to imagine that all of it, all of the injustice in
the world and all of the stuff inside of you is what the
Scriptures call chaff. The reason that we have hope is
that Jesus has a winnowing fork, and the Kingdom of God is the
work of throwing everything up and letting the Spirit of God
blow away all of the things that are not meant to be, to allow
the real stuff to settle. Does this make sense?
Our job is to come before God and to say simply, what do you
want me to do? But the one who is doing all of
the heavy lifting is God himself.
And this is where we begin. We begin with the reality of
seeing that we have this giant pile of wheat that needs to be
sifted from the chaff, and we put our hope in the one who's
going to do the sifting. Amen.
Hey, the First Sunday of Advent is about hope.
This is where John leads us in this beautiful picture.
God is burning up everything in your life that is not born of
love. God is burning up everything in
the world. Burning up is apocalyptic
language for God, saying I'm going to deal with it, I'm going
to sort it out. I'm going to make the hill very
flat. I'm going to fill in the valley.
And our hope is in God to do that thing.
And so we turn our attention to God.
I want to invite the worship team to come back up just by way
of a couple of different things that we can respond to as we
head back into a time of worship.
I just had a sense in prayer yesterday that for some of you
there is, there's just a lot of chaff like out there in the
world. You're, you're just like, Oh my
gosh, how could this ever get fixed?
Is it even possible? Is this story that I'm trying to
live in even true? And I just, I just want to
invite you to come and receive prayer.
We'll have some folks up here to pray with us for a little bit.
And then secondly, just that sense of you just have an
awareness that there are things in you that you need to just
repent of. This first Sunday of Advent is
an Advent where we are meant to turn our shoulders towards
repentance, where we just say to God, this is the reality of my
life and I invite you in it. So I want to invite you to
stand. We're going to go into a time of
worship.