And sort of the surprise, we know it's coming and someone in
my house in June announced 6 months till Christmas and I was
like, oh, panic in my soul right here.
It comes and it comes every year.
But but one of the things and the reasons why Advent is so
important is that it actually causes us to slow down and to
consider the hard messages to which Christmas is an answer,
the hard messages, the hard truths to which Christmas is an
answer. And so we're invited in the
season of Advent, and Advent actually the beginning of the
Christian calendar. So if you had a Christian
calendar that was put up on your refrigerator or your bulletin
board, it would actually begin with December or even in
November, in the first week of Advent.
And that's the beginning of the Christian calendar.
And so today's message again is on the dark side of Christmas
and that it introduces us to one of the most essential elements
of our lives, one of the essential invitations of God to
living well and to being at home with him.
And that is the curious case for repentance, not just as
something we do once and then, oh, I'm saved and now I'm
baptized, but something that we do every day and any occasion
that the Lord moves in our lives, we can repent.
That may sound like a really strange religious word, but
hopefully by the end of today's message, you will like, I know
that I think I'm going to repent.
Our text is a traditional Christmas text.
It's the story of John the Baptist.
And so we're going to start with his birth announcement that came
by the mouth of Zechariah. It's actually a birth song, so
none of you would remember if your parents sang when you were
born. Maybe you don't want to remember
such a thing, but Zechariah's song When John the Baptist Was
Born and Being Named 7 or 8 Days Later is recorded here in the
scripture. And we're going to start with
his song to help us look at John the Baptist, his assignment to
prepare people for Jesus and to call them to repentance.
So let's start with the text in Luke chapter 1, beginning in
verse 57. When it was time for Elizabeth
to have her baby, she gave birth to a son.
Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown
her great mercy and they shared her joy.
On the 8th day they came to circumcise the child and they
were going to name him after his father Zechariah, but his mother
spoke up and said no, he is to be called John.
And they said to her there is no one among your relatives that
has that name. They made signs to his father to
find out what he would like to name the child and he asked for
a writing tablet and to everyone's astonishment he wrote
his name is John. Immediately his mouth was opened
and his tongue set free and he began to speak, praising God.
All the neighbors were filled with awe and throughout the Hill
Country of Judea people were talking about all these things.
Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking what then is
this child going to be for? The Lord's hand was with him.
His father Zachariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and
prophesied. Praise be to the Lord the God of
Israel, because He has come to His people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the House of
His servant David, as He said through His holy prophets of
long ago. Salvation from our enemies and
from the hand of all who hate us.
To show mercy to our ancestors and to remember His holy
covenant, The oath He swore to our Father Abraham, to rescue us
from the hand of our enemies and to enable us to serve Him
without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all our
days. And you, my child, speaking to
John the baby, you will be called a prophet of the Most
High, for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for
Him. To give His people the knowledge
of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun
will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in
darkness and in the shadow of death.
To guide our feet into the path of peace.
What an extraordinary excitement to a child.
And then notice the way he grew up.
The child grew up and became strong in spirit, and he lived
in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.
He was a wild child. This John the Baptist was a
fierce and strong person, and God had given him a special
assignment. Prepare the way for Jesus.
Prepare the way for the Lord. John and Jesus were actually
cousins, separated by about three months, and John just
ahead of him had a task and assignment from God where
Zechariah reaches all the way back to the Isaiah prophecy,
where Isaiah prophesized that there will be one who prepares
the way of the Lord. It became so notable that when
Matthew wanted to describe John's ministry and what he did,
he also referred to the text. Notice what Matthew says.
This is still Luke talking. We'll get to Matthew.
Here we go. So Luke describes the beginning
of the ministry of John. He says 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 Etruria and Trachonitus, and Lysanius
tetrarch of Abilene. During the high priesthood of
Anas and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John, son of
Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the country
around the Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins 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 for the Lord,
Make straight paths for him. Every valley be filled in, every
mountain and hill made low. The crooked Rd. shall become
straight, the rough way smooth, and all people will see God's
salvation. Now Zacharias had envisioned a
people changed by the one to whom John would point that when
John pointed to Jesus and said, behold the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world. Zacharias had envisioned that
John's life would have an impact on a people who would get to
know the Messiah. Look at these five things that
he said would be true about these people.
These people would have a knowledge of salvation through
the forgiveness of sins, that this would be something they
know not just that they know about, but they would know it in
the very interior life of their heart and world.
They would know experientially that God had forgiven them a
sin, that they would experience the tender mercy of our God.
Now this is such a contrast. John is a wild child who becomes
a wilderness man, a survivalist if you will, who knew how to
live off the land, live in the wilderness, but also had a
fierce message calling them. But even though John's message
was fierce, Zachariah says these people are going to experience
the tender mercy of God. Imagine that you see a child
running into the street. What are you going to do?
Wow, what are you going to do? You're going to stop him?
What if he's too far away? What are you going to do?
Stop. No, you're going to shout.
Any parent who's had this moment knows that there's this
immediate move to shout. Shouting is reserved for an
emergency stop. And so John, he sounds harsh,
but what he's actually inviting them into is the tender mercy of
God, the embrace of our Father who loves them, that they would
have an encounter of the rising sun from heaven.
I don't know about you, but I love those mornings when I see
even by 8 O clock now, a little glimmer of sun on the horizon.
I'm like, ah, there's the light of day, There's the light for us
today. And that light then reveals
something in our lives, but it also casts something away.
He says they're delivered from the shadow of death.
The shadow of death would keep you in fear.
The fear of death will cause a fear of living.
And he says that the light of Christ, the Messiah to whom John
would point, would bring about a confidence of a people who don't
live in fear of the shadow of death.
In fact, he says, their whole life trajectory is different
because they're guided into paths of peace.
Wow, a people who are known for walking in the path of peace.
Their heart is at peace. Their way is to create peace.
Their way is to know the ways of a God of peace.
And John was pointing to the one preparing them who could give
them this. When we this little line, the
path of peace also quotes from Isaiah.
We read that long text in Isaiah 59 today which seems so stark
and dark about the presence of sin.
And it says of this people who were caught in a trajectory of
sin, they do not know the ways of peace, which indicates that
all their relationships become conflictual.
They're an argument waiting for a place to happen.
They do not know the ways of peace.
What an extraordinary picture from from John and Zacharias you
see intertwined in preparing a people for Jesus is this matter
of repentance. To prepare for Jesus, to prepare
for God to do something extraordinary in their lives and
hearts, they would have to repent and turn.
The word repent basically means turn, turn around, turn away,
turn toward something, turn away from something, turn to the
other to prepare for Jesus. Then how did John go about his
message? I've alluded to it.
Let's see how he did it. John said to the crowds that
were coming out to be baptized by him.
You brood of Vipers, you bunch of snakes, you're in House
Slytherin. Basically, that's what he's
saying. Who warned you to flee the
coming wrath? It's almost as if he's lifting a
phrase right out of Isaiah 59. It might have resonated with
some of them to go what? He's calling us a bunch of
sinners. He's calling us a bunch of
snakes. It's right out of Isaiah 59 that
we read earlier, and he lifts it out, seemingly with a pointing
finger. Who warned you to flee the
coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with
repentance. And do not begin to say to
yourselves, we have Abraham as our father.
In other words, we have a legacy that keeps us safe with God.
We have a heritage that keeps us safe with God.
Our ancestors keep us safe with God, he says.
Don't say that, 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 did not, does not produce
good fruit, will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
This sounds so stressful. He's not the kind of preacher
you want to go see at Christmas. I'm sorry, but here he is.
Few years ago, quite a few now, we had a plum tree that was in
the back of the yard. It had produced no plums.
I was ready to cut it down. In fact, the axe was at the root
of the tree almost. And Ellen said wait, don't cut
it down yet, give it a chance. Give it a chance.
They say sometimes you have to stress a tree.
So I I took the axe of the saw actually, and I turned it around
and I whacked it against the tree.
I gave it a warning. I said your days are numbered if
you don't produce fruit. You know what happened the next
year? There was fruit.
That tree was stressed. Do you see?
I, I don't understand someone's why the Spirit of God has to
bring some stress in our lives, some conviction in our lives,
some sense of, oh, they're supposed to be a different kind
of fruit in my life. It feels a little bit painful,
but there is a call and opportunity for repentance for
turning, even when that comes because we're envisioning and
we're seeing a future that we don't like or a future that we
love. And we're like, I want to turn
towards that future. I want to turn towards the
person of that future. And so this is John's
invitation. There is one coming.
Who is for you? Why do we resist repentance when
we've been given a vision of what could be good in our life
if we leave something behind? Why do we resist changing?
Why do we resist the repentance of even adding something good
into our life? There's so many amazing pictures
from the Old Testament about resisting repentance.
One is hardness of heart. It's the most common to have a
hard heart towards God. Another one is to be stiff
necked. That means you don't turn very
well. You're not limber.
It's Speaking of an animal that won't be turned.
A horse that won't respond to the bit but is so set on going
forward. How many of you have ever had a
Crick in your neck? You know it's terrible.
You can't turn your neck. It's so painful, that stiff neck
and so somewhat over here speaks to you.
So you go and but he's saying you never turn to listen when
God calls out an uncircumcised heart.
You have no sensitivity towards God turning the shoulder, where
instead, as you get up, having heard the voice of God, you just
turn the shoulder. You know, have you ever given
someone a cold shoulder? Maybe you've been in the car,
someone was driving and you were mad at them, so you just turned
away and looked out the window. That's the cold shoulder.
And this is the description of resisting repentance, of saying
I've just turned my shoulder and act like God's not there,
stopping up the ears. La, la, la, la, la, la, la.
Don't talk to me. I'm not listening.
I can't hear you. La La, La, La, La, La, straying
and wandering like a sheep. This one's actually very kind
and forgiving because it just says it's part of our nature to
resist the good way we wander off.
And then here's my favorite backsliding.
Have you ever gone sledding at Queen Elizabeth Park?
And at the end of the day, the snow is some so compact.
And I see you don't need a sled. All you need is your back and
you can flop down on your back and you will race down that
hill. And here's the description of a
non repentant person is that they used to be at the peak with
God, but now they're just sliding backwards, losing all
the ground they had received, refusing to return, grieving and
quenching the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit calls, and you
grieve the Spirit with that resistance, and then here's a
great one kicking against the goads.
Anybody know what this is? Who was this said to?
This was said to the apostle Paul, who we know as Saul, who
was out to murder the church. And Jesus appears to him, and
Paul says, Who are you, Lord? Who are you?
And says the Lord whom you are persecuting, why are you kicking
so against the goads? OK, so this is the description.
You're a horse and there's a stick.
It's the goat and the stick is being used to prod you.
Or you're a donkey and the stick is being used to prod you
towards the way to go and instead you kick against it.
Active resistance to God. I want you to think about
yourself for a moment in your life with God.
Which one of these describes you?
Keep it to yourself. Which one of these describes
part of your life in the past? Which of these describes your
current way with God today? Being at home with God requires
repentance. It requires a shift and it must
be conscious. I do believe that the Spirit of
God, when we're close to the Spirit of God and we've been
walking with Jesus, it can become reflexive to repent
quickly, to confess quickly, to agree with God quickly.
God provokes us with something in his word in the morning and
we're like, yes, Lord, you're right.
Yes, Lord, you're right. I agree with you.
And it sets our feet on a step of being at home with God,
continuing to be at home with him.
But repentance is required. Jesus said it himself.
Notice what Jesus does. When Jesus heard that John,
that's John the Baptizer, had been put in prison, he withdrew
to Galilee, leaving Nazareth. He went and lived in Capernaum.
And from that time on, Jesus began to preach, repent, for the
Kingdom of heaven has come near. In other words, the Kingdom of
heaven is so close that the Kingdom of God wants to be at
home with you right here. And for this Kingdom to be at
home with you, and for you to be at home in the Kingdom of God,
you must repent. This verse was quoted by Martin
Luther when he nailed A thesis to the door of Wittenberg in
1571. Can you imagine making a long
list of 95 statements, taking it to a door and nailing it?
That's sort of the mythology of Martin Luther, that he did this.
We know he printed lots of pamphlets with it, and what he
was trying to do was to argue against the idea that you only
needed to repent once, or that you could get situated in life
by paying a little bit of money or by doing a little thing that
would situate in life so that no repentance was required.
You could be a mafia Christian. A mafia Christian comes to
church, listens to the word of God, says it rolls off like
water on a duck's back, and then they go and murder whoever they
want, does whatever bad deed they want.
That's a mafia Christian and Martin Luther was resisting that
and he says this in his first thesis.
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, he willed
the entire life of believers to be 1 of repentance.
That's the best translation from English.
That life is repentance. I'll take that thought on for a
moment. Life is repentance.
Here's some helpful pairings that I have found in trying to
bring me more aware of the discrepancies or hypocrisy that
could reside in my own heart and life in regards to repentance.
And the first is to pair attitudes and actions.
The scripture says, watch yourselves and make yourselves
clean. Come cease to do evil.
Learn to do good. Have you ever gotten in at the
end of the day? And one of your parents said,
what's that? You need to go take a bath?
You need to take a shower. You've been out playing all day
long. You've been sweating in the gym.
Go take a shower. And you said no, don't, no, no,
don't. Don't need that.
The stink is good. And so you resist.
The stink is good. There's an attitude shift that
says, oh, the stink's not so good.
I think I'll go take a bath. I think I'll be cleansed of
this. And then not only that, think
I'm going to cease. And sometimes in relation to sin
in our lives, there's got to be both attitudes and actions that
are paired together. Sometimes we have right actions,
but our attitudes stink. In fact, Paul said if you do all
kinds of good things and don't have love, it's awful.
It's like death beliefs and behaviors.
Sometimes I need to change my beliefs as well as my behaviors.
The Kingdom of God has come near.
Repent and believe the good news.
Jesus is saying hey, there is an announcement that must be
believed that the Kingdom of God is here.
Not just some out there future age, but here and now and over
and over. I found that there's beliefs in
my life about me, about God, about my future, about the stuff
of earth, about other people that must be changed so that my
behavior can actually change too.
Belief and behavior, and then motives and missions.
This suggests that we really do want sincerity of heart and
alignment of our motives and what we're doing, that it lines
up with the mission of God. But this also tells me I can
have a shadow mission. I can have a shadow mission
that's always lurking in the background, sort of informing
what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.
And shadow missions fuel a life of deception, dishonesty,
hiding, despair and destruction. And so if I'm to be at home,
then repentance may start at the surface but continually goes
deeper. That's the invitation.
And here's the beauty of this is that the way we start the
Christian life is the way we continue it.
We are meant to start the Christian life by faith, by
grace. And we continue even in
repentance by faith, by grace, when Paul wanted to address the
fact that some people were saying, Hey, Paul, you seem to
have two messages, go ahead, a message for the Gentiles and a
message for the Jews. And he's like, no, there's,
there's one message. They must turn to God in
repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the message. This is what it is to be
Christian, to have repentance towards God and faith in Jesus.
We start with faith, we start with repentance, we start with
faith and both continue on in our lives.
The way you live as a Christian today is by repentance and by
faith. And so I want to ask you again,
what have you heard in the last month, the last week today where
God is prodding you towards repentance?
It's a little a little move that in the long time will change
your life. We call this the Kairos moment,
that this moment where you know that something has happened in
your life. There's stress, there's pain,
maybe you've seen it before and here it is again.
And So what is God saying to you and how will you respond if God
is speaking to you? Will you repent, change your
mind, your attitudes and actions, beliefs and behaviors,
motives and missions? And then what do you do in
response? That doing may be just a two
degree shift, but all of you know studying vectors, that 2° /
a long course of time is a trajectory of great change.
And that's the invitation of God day in and day out as a disciple
to let him shift and change you. This is why Advent matters.
Back to Zechariah. Which of these do you long for?
Which of these are you longing for?
Which of these do you need? One of the favorite you can just
leave it there. One of our favorite Christmas
movies is or stories is A Christmas Carol right by Dickens
going to invite the worship team to come on up And in that story,
Ebenezer Scrooge what does? What is Ebenezer Scrooge's
famous line? Bah humbug, right?
Bah humbug. He hated Christmas.
Bah, humbug. And yet there were people around
him who with less and who had struggles in their lives, who
loved Christmas and actually their motives and lives seem so
pure. Tiny Tim, you know, he, he says,
oh, God bless them all, every one of them.
But Ebenezer Scrooge refuses until Marley's warning when his
former Co laborer, former boss appears.
And Warren Scrooge, you're going to suffer a terrible thing if
you don't turn. He didn't say the word repent,
but he could have. Did you know that A Christmas
Carol is a story of repentance? It's an invitation for cultural
repentance, individual repentance, the ghost of
Christmas pass. So Scrooge, his humble
beginnings, his lonely childhood, but also his joyful
apprenticeship that there were people in his life showing him a
different way and he could have chosen it.
There was the picture of Christmas present, of people who
were living in poverty and quiet, but also living with
warmth and goodwill, and who seemed so at home with
themselves and with God. And then there's the Christmas
yet to come. And Scrooge has shown a grim and
desolate future where no one cares that he died and that his
possessions were stolen. And then he was forced to
confront his isolation and he wakes up.
The invitation to repentance seemed tough.
Now, what was Scrooge going to do?
What was he going to do? And he woke up and became a
changed man. He embraced Christmas.
He changed his life. And then his name became one
filled with irony, Right? Ebenezer Scrooge.
What's a Scrooge? Tight fisted, wretched, greedy
person who holds on to everything.
But what's a person whose name is Ebenezer?
Does anybody know what Ebenezer means?
It's right out of the scripture. It means hit her.
By your help. I've come.
It points to the Lord and says all the good that I have in my
life today has come because of you.
And so there's Ebenezer who couldn't formally acknowledge
all the good things that had come in his life ultimately
because God showed him some kind of grace and he was being tight
fisted. But then the new Ebenezer, he
could have done away with the name Scrooge.
He became a generous person at home with God and at home with
others. His pathway there is through the
narrow door of repentance. Our pathway there is through the
narrow door of repentance with Christ Jesus.
And it's possible because Jesus himself entered that door and
showed us the way. He opened it up for us with His
own body and with His blood, with His very life, by coming to
dwell with us. One of the questions that
sometimes accompanies the Lord's Supper is an examination
question to say, Have I been obedient to the last thing I
heard from the Lord? Only you can answer that
question. Let's stand together.