Hope Worth Having: Four sermons at St Matthews Shenton Park for Advent 2015
Today is Advent Sunday. We got started early so are now up to the second sermon in our Advent Series, “Hope Worth Having”. It would hardly be Advent without some mention of John the Baptist, Jesus’ forerunner. So let’s see what we can learn from John that might be important to us now. When I sent some titles to Roger I gave him this morning’s as “Elijah the Prophet”, but as I have pondered what to say I think a more suitable title might be, “Are we Safe?” Because when you look at what John said and did the seriousness of God’s judgement is overwhelming.
A couple of years ago I had a rather different experience on a flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town. I don’t like being shut up in an aeroplane for longer than necessary so I always try to get on last. I also like to read the news, but not to buy the newspaper, so I generally try to pick up a discarded one in the departure lounge. On this occasion I had scored three and had stuffed them into pockets where I could. I found my seat and was standing stowing my gear when the young woman I was about to sit next to looked up and said, “Would you mind if I read one of your newspapers; you seem to have enough?” I handed her one and continued with my preparations, which included fishing my Bible out and putting it into the pouch in front of my seat. Aeroplanes are also good places to catch up with your Bible reading. “Is that a Bible, she asked” and I said it was, and she said, “Oh well I guess I will be safe then.” All this and I still hadn’t sat down. I think I grunted something and then corrected myself and said, “Well maybe not; I’m getting close to 70 you know and the Lord might want me home.” She squealed, rather loudly and said, “But I’m still young.”
I have to tell you that I was not conscious of taking off, nor of the landing until the bump as we hit the ground two hours later in Cape Town. We never let up talking the whole way. I cant remember all that the subjects we ranged over. She started it by pulling out a Hebrew prayer card and I realized she was Jewish; I learned she was an accountant or something financial and was travelling for her company. The Jewish bit led to a discussion about the Jewish tradition of removing all yeast from their homes before Passover. I had preached on it a week before and was interested to know if it was practiced in her family. Anyway, it led on to her telling me about her love life: “I am a Jew, but I’m not strict, but my mother is strict. And my boyfriend is Dutch Reformed, and he’s not strict, but his mother is strict. Do you think it will work?” That one kept us going a long time. She had quite a carrying voice, and when she asked that question the young chap sitting in front of up suddenly appeared over the top of the seat and asked if he could listen in. I gathered he was Dutch Reformed and also had a mother who was strict. As I say, it went on for two hours, but the reason I tell the story is what she said about judgement. I cant remember how it came up, but it did, and she became very passionate. “My God would never judge anyone, she said. The thought seemed to terrify her.” I suggested she read her own Hebrew Scriptures, and I hope she may have by now. One never knows where these travel conversations will go. You’re not likely ever to see the person again until Judgement Day. It was without a doubt one of the oddest conversations I had ever had with a stranger, and made me realize how troubled people are by the idea of judgement.
Recently a school chaplain in Perth was invited to preach to the congregation that uses his school chapel. It was not a hell-fire sermon – one rarely hears such things today – but he did touch on it at one point – judgement, that is, not hell-fire. The congregation was shocked. He has been forbidden ever to preach to them again. Complaints were made to the School Principal and to even the Archbishop. You will be happy to know the both of them defended him, but it shows that something radical has happened to the way people are thinking about God.
The Messiah is the Judge. That was John the Baptist’s understanding. He preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and when they asked him whether he was the Messiah he said no, and drew a strong contrast between himself and the one who was to come after him.
Luke 3.16 “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
It seems that uppermost in John’s mind about what the Messiah would do was judgement. He pictures a great separation of the righteous and the wicked. The righteous are those whom God approves, the wicked are those who for one reason or another are rejected.
Before the days of combine harvesters separating wheat from chaff was a business. Many towns had a threshing floor, often a big flat rock where they would pile the harvested wheat. The cattle and donkeys walk around all over it for a few days until all the wheat was broken out of the husks. Then when the wind from the Mediterranean was sweeping across the land a man would come a long-handled fork with long thin prongs – that is a winnowing fork – throwing the wheat and chaff into the air. The wind would blow the chaff to one side and the heavier grain would fall in a heap. At the end the wheat is gathered for storage and the chaff is burned. They still do it that way in some places. So here is John’s picture of the last great judgement: the wheat will be separated from the chaff and the chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire. Horrible! No wonder people want to wish it away.
Some people say John got things wrong. After all, Jesus just did not come judging people; quite the reverse. He said himself that he did not come to condemn the world, but to save it. (John 3.17) That is true, but what did he come to save it from? It is true that when he was in prison John was confused about whether Jesus really was the coming one, but that doesn’t mean his message got screwed up. Luke does not think that. Look at the way he begins this chapter, the beginning of his telling of Jesus’ adult story.
Luke 3.1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
An impressive beginning to a work of history! Notice that the great event which is marked with this date reference is not the beginning of Jesus’ career, but the coming of the word of God to John. Luke has no doubt that John was a true prophet who spoke the word God gave to him. All the gospels agree on this. Jesus himself said that John was the greatest man who ever lived. Certainly John did the job he was sent to do and did it well. He was a prophet, the greatest prophet of the Old Testament era. What he said was the word of God.
And Jesus himself never denied that judgement was part of the task God had committed to him. “The Father judges no one, but has committed all judgement to the Son, that all may honour the Son, just as they honour the Father.” (John 5.22-23) But judgement is not something he relished. Luther called it the work of his left hand. His work of his right hand is salvation: things that belong to his loving nature. Perhaps when he fasted forty days in the wilderness he was asking God to hold off on the judgement: give them more time. He urged people to come into God’s kingdom, to accept God’s grace. He died to make forgiveness possible. Nevertheless, he warned that if the offer of forgiveness was ignored, judgement would inevitably come. And he said he would return one day to judge the world. And that is what the early Christians believed and preached. Paul told the philosophers in Athens that God had set a day on which he would judge the world with justice “by a man whom he has appointed.” (Acts 17.31)
This new religion of total inclusiveness and “love-is-all-there-is”, and “God would never judge anyone” is, is not Christianity nor Judaism.
The thing that confronts us as we think about the coming of Christ and the OT promises that came before is that these prophets not only believed that judgement was inevitable, they looked forward to it. Psalm 98 calls on the whole earth to shout for joy. Why? Because God is coming: “he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the people with equity.” Does this mean they were vindictive or vengeful? Far from it! But in a world of so much injustice, so much violence, cruelty, lies, so much pushing down of the weak by the strong they longed that God would set things right. Think of the young man in Iraq about to be beheaded; is he not right to wish that God would come and judge? Or the woman who sees her daughter taken for a sex slave, and then killed herself because she is too old? If God does not give the final word, and if it is not a true and fair word, then he is not worth bothering about. Perhaps that is why so few do bother about him today. They have no fear of God, because we have been persuaded that God would never judge anyone. I want to put it on record for you to remember this even if you forget everything else, that we will all be judged. As surely as God created the world and placed it in the hands of men, he will require an accounting. We will all be judged. Whatever uncertainties and confusions you may have about this or that, know that you will be judged.
Of course, the very idea fills us with fears and misgivings. What about my loved ones? Is it fair that God should forgive some and not others? Could God reject anyone eternally? Is hell not too severe? Deep down I guess we are thinking, “Will I agree with what God judges? Will I judge it to be just?” We need to talk sense to ourselves. “Will not the judge of all the earth do right?” said Abraham. Can we not judge that God will do what is right? And since God has trust all judgement to his Son – is there someone you would wish to do the judging other that Jesus? Would you really like to be the final judge. Is not the one who created us the best one to judge us? The one who gave us our moral instincts? The one who pleaded with God to forgive those who drove the nails through his hands? Can we not trust this judge to do what is right? And yet it is Jesus himself who pleads with to do anything to avoid being cast into hell.
So are we safe? We are not, unless we act. It is a question each of us must face personally.
John believed that Messiah’s task was to bring about the great separation, to save the righteous and destroy the wicked. He was sent to get Israel ready, lest when Messiah came there would be no righteous to save.
What did God want? John called on people to repent and be baptized.
What does repent mean?
It does not mean to resolve to try harder to be good. God saved Israel from slavery. He did this because he is kind. It was grace, not something they deserved. He have them his law. This was to be the way they would live as his people, showing gratitude to their Saviour and the provider of everything good. And God knew they would sin so he gave them a way to be cleansed from sin. So why did John the Baptist not call on them to practice the Law more carefully and make fuller use of the sacrificial system, as the Pharisees did? It was because their situation was much more serious. Their problem was not occasional breaking of the law, it was that they had turned from God in their hearts. “Their hearts are far from me.” They were apostate, like idol worshippers.
Why does John call them “a brood of vipers.” It is because he thinks they are the seed of the serpent, sons and daughters of the Devil.
They need to be converted. This is what repentance means. To repent means to turn around, and what is in mind first is not sin, but God. John called people to return to God. And this means that he understood that they were away from him. They were not Israelites saved by grace, needing to keep the law and make fuller use of the sacrifices, they were apostates, so sinful that they had cut themselves off from the covenant community.
“Do not think to say to yourself, ‘We have Abraham as father’, for God is able to raise sons for Abraham from these stones.” This is what John told the people. Repentance means conversion.
What this means, by the way, is that the position of a Jew is pretty much the same as that of a Gentile. Neither is faithful, neither belongs to the people of God; we are all far from him. All of us, Jew and non-Jew fall into the category of the wicked. We need to come back to God, to be converted, if we would be saved in the great separation.
So how do you do that?
First you acknowledge that you are away from God. You have pushed him from his rightful place as Maker and Lord and you are living your life pretty much as though he didn’t exist. This is true whether or not you would say you believe in him.
Second, you ask him to take you back, to allow you to be his servant, to forgive you and restore you.
Third, you may acknowledge this publicly in some way.
So John preached that people should turn back to following God so that when the Messiah came he would forgive you and not sweep you away in the judgement. And then he called on the people who were ready to do that to come and be baptized.
What did that mean?
The Jews had a thing called “proselyte baptism”. That means convert baptism. When a Gentile wanted to convert to Judaism they had to be baptized and then circumcised, if they were a man. The baptism was a symbolic way of joining the Jews in their experience of escaping from Egypt through the Red Sea. John took Jews down to the Jordan River – the place where they first entered the land – and baptized them. That was radical. They were saying in effect, “I have forfeited all right to be considered one of God’s people; I need to be saved again.”
This was a conversion baptism and it is the origin of Christian baptism. At the end of the Gospel of Luke the risen Jesus says to his disciples, “this is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations …” Forgiveness is available because the Messiah has come and has taken his people’s guilt on himself and made forgiveness possible. So we baptize people not just in the name of God, but of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Trinity God. But it is still a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It is the way we signify publicly that we are turning away from our godless life to trust in Jesus and to receive his forgiveness. If you haven’t been baptized you should think carefully about this. It doesn’t save us, but it is the formal entry into trusting Jesus, which does save us. Come and discuss it with me or Ben, or Roger when he returns.
As with every popular movement, there are those who jump on the bandwagon. John is very aware of those who will say yes to his mission, even to the point of baptism, but whose hearts will still be far removed from God. So he warns us to be fruitful.
Luke 3.7 He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 9 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
We learn here that true repentance is fruitful. There is counterfeit repentance. Jesus spoke of those who are enthusiastic about the message of the kingdom, but they do not stay with it. When trouble comes, or when wealth or business make it inconvenient to continue, they fall away. Repentance makes a difference in how we live from here on. Jesus tells us that every branch who does not bear fruit will be cut off and cast into the fire. (John 15.1-8) He is following on from John’s message.
This is very serious. We must be careful not think that our baptism, or our church membership, or our ancestry if we are Jews, assures our safety in the coming judgement. Only the forgiveness of God, secured by the Saviour dying in our place puts us in a place of safety. But God requires that we be reconciled to him, and that means a true conversion, a repentance which shows its genuineness by the fruit of good works.
John pictures an axman coming into the orchard. He looks around and makes a note of every fruitless tree. Then he sits down to have a cigarette before he starts work. Messiah is near John warns them. This is their last chance. They need to act now. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire.
Is our situation so different? We do not know when the Lord will return to judge the whole world. None of us knows when our life will be cut off and our opportunity to repent will be gone.
And there is another danger. Jesus did not carry out the last judgement when he came. Instead he announced the arrival of the kingdom and a free amnesty of forgiveness to all who would come to him. But those who resisted John’s call to repentance, who refused to face up to their real sinfulness, of course could not see their need of the grace of the gospel. They turned from God’s free offer of forgiveness and doomed themselves to life in the world without God. And that is a fearsome thing. For Israel then it meant national disaster at the hands of the Romans. No one knows what it may mean for us individually, or as a nation, if we decide we can do better without God. We need to act now.