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"The Kingdom of Heaven is Near"
In a particularly fiery sermon on John the Baptist extolling
his passion, his zeal, his steadfast determination to call
the people of God to repentance a pastor built his message
to a crescendo and with dramatic appeal he ended with,
“What this church needs is more Johns!”
Now, if you have ever been here at intermission of one of the
concerts in our concert series you might see the humor in that
statement. Of course, more restrooms is not at all what that
preacher had in mind. Indifference, despair, a distracted
busy-ness with the things of this life, and arrogance were,
are, and will be the death of us if we do not hear the real
message of Advent.
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching…It is like the
opening line a sweeping epic novel that embraces all time and
eternity. I am very anxious to get to January and start the
sermon series we’ve been announcing called “Thy Kingdom Come.”
I am anxious because I am convinced that if you will come you
are going to experience the Bible in a new and engaging way.
You can be the judge, but my experience is this – that for
many people, worship, sermons, Sunday school, becomes a
disconnected series of lessons about what we should and
should not do if we want to be happy, or successful, or
most importantly get to heaven. In other words our
experience with the Bible is like a medicine cabinet
that we come to seeking a remedy for the aches and pains
of life when we’re not feeling the best.
We have lost the grandeur of the Bible as the story of
God’s magnificent work for us. The Bible is one unified
true story from beginning to end with a very simple plot
line. God created us because He is love and love is
expanded when it is experienced and expressed by others.
God created us, but then he lost us, but now He is coming
back to get us. That is the story of the Bible that we
believe is true and is the guiding, governing force to
all history – God created us, but then he lost us, but
He is coming again to get us.
Now hold that in your mind for a moment and listen again –
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert
of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is
near.” This is the one who was spoken of through the prophet
Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the
way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”
The medicine cabinet approach to this text would be something
like – repentance is a critical lesson or skill that you must
learn if you want to be saved. Then I’d try and explain what
repentance is and try to figure out whether you have or haven’t
done it, or done it enough, or done it recently. After which
I would challenge you to new levels of repentance. Mind you,
I’ve preached that sermon and it certainly is not a wrong way
to approach the text. There are things we need to know and
skills we need to acquire.
But believe me when I tell you that it gets harder and harder
to preach these same texts year after and year and to have
something new or interesting to say about them and I will
believe you when you tell me that it gets harder and harder
to listen to them, dare I even use the word boring?
But what if we looked at this text as part of the story of
God and an opportunity to enter that story and become
connected to it as it continues to unfold in our lives.
That’s what I want to do all next year in “Thy Kingdom
Come.” This is a little foretaste of the feast to come!
The text before you my friends is the turning point in the
story of God. In those days…drum roll please, something big
is about to happen. This is the one Isaiah spoke about 700
years ago…crescendo the orchestra and prepare yourselves for
beginning of the final chapter and the glorious and ultimately
satisfying ending.
The history of the world had rolled on for centuries prior to
the events in our text. Behind the scenes God had been meticulously
and carefully at work preparing to execute his mission to rescue
and restore the human race. Now the time has fully come and God
is about to play his trump card that will secure his victory
and our salvation.
The people who came out to see John and be baptized by him sensed
a critical moment. You almost have to step back into their world
to grasp the intensity of the events happening in our text. You
have to remember a people founded and established by God when He
called Abraham and promised that through him, through one of his
descendants the restoration of the world would be delivered. There
are a lot of twists and turns and near misses as these people tell
the story of God over and over from one generation to the next.
John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather
belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. And
if you have lived back then and you knew the story you would have
made the connection – this looks like one of the prophets, in fact,
it looks like Elijah, who the Bible says, one like him will come
just before the promised arrival of the Messiah, God himself
coming down to dwell with His people, to establish justice and
restore all things. And they got it – people went out from
Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region of the Jordan.
In the desert John preached. And at the Jordan river people met
him. It was in the desert that these people had wandered for 40
years following God as he made his presence known to them through
Moses. They were in the desert because they had been unable to
trust God when they first came up out of slavery in Egypt. They
refused to enter the promised land and take possession of it as
God had intended to advance the story to prepare the place for
His coming as the Messiah. It was in the desert that they had
learned what it meant to repent, to turn back to God, to fear,
love and trust in Him above all things. And it was through the
very waters of the Jordan river that they had been baptized into
the promised land after their years of wandering. The waters of
the river had stopped, they were held back by God’s hand so that
the people crossed over on dry ground to carry the story forward.
I will tell you more about these parts of the story as we come to
it next year, for now, just know that it is vivid in the minds of
the people coming to see John. They are on the edge of their seats.
Confessing their sins, they were baptized by John in the Jordan
River. They were ready, they were anxious, they were excited. But
it had been a long, long time coming. Indifference, despair, a
distracted busy-ness with the things of this life, and arrogance
threatened to overshadow and obscure the critical moment.
“When John saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where
he was baptizing, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned
you to flee from the coming wrath? And do not think that you can say
to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out
of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax 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.”
Indifference, despair, a distracted busy-ness with the things of this
life, and arrogance threatened to overshadow and obscure the critical
moment. It has been a long, long time again since John the Baptist
called the people to prepare. We are in danger of going the way of
the Pharisees and Sadducees – going through the motions of faith
without any genuine, deep down confidence and certainty that the
story is advancing and that we are part of it.
Repentance it turns out is not a lesson or a skill to be learned and
mastered. Repentance is a daily new and fresh turning back to the story
of God. Repentance is recognizing your indifference maybe even your
ignorance of the story of God and living like hell when heaven is
your home. Repentance is admitting your despair, that things have
gotten so out of control in your life that you have a hard time
imagining that there even is a God, much less a story with a happy
ending for you. Repentance is stopping long enough to realize that
your rat race is boxing you in and isolating you from caring about
anybody but yourself. Repentance is the sudden slap in the face that
in your arrogance you have imagined that your sins are not so bad
and surely are covered by dragging yourself into church once a week
to salve your conscience and keep up an appearance of godliness.
Lloyd H. Steffen wrote in The Christian Century that King Frederick
II, an eighteenth-century king of Prussia, once visited a prison in
Berlin. The inmates tried to prove to him how they had been unjustly
imprisoned. All except one.
That one sat quietly in a corner, while all the rest protested their
innocence. Seeing him sitting there oblivious to the commotion, the
king asked him what he was there for. "Armed robbery, Your Honor." The
king asked, "Were you guilty?" "Yes, Sir," he answered. "I entirely
deserve my punishment." The king then gave an order to the guard:
"Release this guilty man. I don't want him corrupting all these
innocent people."
Repentance my friends is your daily new and fresh turning back to the
story of God and marveling that the one whose way John prepares is
Jesus. Your repentance is His work in you as you see Him offer himself
for you on a cross. This is God’s story – He comes down to you and
takes your indifference, your despair, your distracted busy-ness with
the things of this life, your arrogance into Himself and dies to set
you free from it all. When you see that, really see it for what it is,
your heart changes, you cannot stay the same. And then comes the
resurrection, your resurrection, you’re brought back to life in
Jesus and God sends you out with a passion, a zeal, a steadfast
determination that God is on your side, that He is at work in you
and through you, that your life, every part of it is significant in
accomplishing the story that is headed toward a glorious and ultimately
satisfying conclusion.
John jumps to the very end of the story in the closing verses of our
text. “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come
one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He
will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
The baptism John talks about is not so much our Christian baptism,
although it is certainly in view for it is through the water of our
baptism that we are connected to the story. But the baptism John is
looking at is the last day, the final judgment, when the trees that
have not produced good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire,
when the wheat will be separated from chaff which will be burned up
in unquenchable fire. That’s where this story is headed.
Repentance produces good fruit and blows away the chaff so that you
now look forward to that glorious and ultimately satisfying conclusion
of the story with great excitement and anticipation. Repentance is living
in such a way – boldly, confidently, whether your crying tears of unbearable
grief or celebrating the joys of a lifetime – repentance is living in such
a way that people look at you and say “I want what he’s having.”
Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near! A joyous invitation to enter
and live continuously, eternally in the story of God.
Amen.
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