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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our
Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The
word of God came to John the Son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, send us the Holy Spirit so that by your grace we may believe
your holy word and live godly lives here in time and there in eternity, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In Luke chapter 1, we read about an amazing
event where Mary goes and meets her relative Elizabeth. Mary is pregnant with
the baby Jesus, and Elizabeth is pregnant with her baby John. At first, this
doesn’t look like a very strange event at all—no different than two pregnant
women today getting together for afternoon tea. But actually, in God’s eyes
this is the most important thing happening in the world at the time.
If we had been alive back then, at the time
of the birth of Jesus, what do you think would have been in the headlines on
the news? Certainly not Mary and Elizabeth greeting each other and spending
some time together! And yet, Luke tells us about this in great detail: Mary
goes into the hill country to Elizabeth, she greets Elizabeth, the baby John
leaps in his mother’s womb, and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and
speaks a prophecy about Jesus and Mary. And then we read where Mary speaks a
wonderful prophecy too, which we call the Song of Mary: My soul magnifies
the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked on the
humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call
me blessed. Sometimes this song is known by its Latin name: the Magnificat.
Anyway, listen to those words: He has
looked on the humble estate of his servant. The most important aspect of
this event is that God looks on them. What a wonderful thing it is to be looked
upon by God! Today, we might think that we have come to church to look to God
and to look to Jesus, however, the greatest blessing is that God actually looks
upon us. The Lord blesses us and keeps us. The Lord makes his face shine on
us and is gracious to us. The Lord looks upon us with favour (he lifts up
his face towards us) and gives us peace.
What a wonderful blessing! Our lives would be
nothing, our lives would not be worth living at all if God did not look upon
us. And yet we have so many promises in the Scriptures, where God looks upon
his people.
Let’s have a look at our Gospel reading today.
We read: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius
Pilate being the governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and
his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitus, and
Lysanius tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
We have here a list (we might think a very
uninteresting list!) of all kinds of people who were in charge of the known
world and its affairs. We read about the emperor (the Caesar), the governor of
the local region, the tetrarchs of the nearby regions (which is also a
governor), and the high priests. We might think about if they had newspapers
and news reports back in this time, who do we think might have been in the news
every day? Maybe these world leaders? What do you think? And yet right at the
end of this list of names, we read: the word of God came to John the son of
Zechariah in the wilderness.
After listing all of these world leaders,
Luke shows us who God was looking on at that time: our old friend, the hairy
bug-man, John the Baptist.
Now, why does Luke mention all these people?
Well, because in many people’s eyes, they probably were the important people at
the time. Luke wants show us that John the Baptist was not some kind of
mythical figure, dancing around with the pixies playing a flute. He actually
conducted his ministry at a certain time, when certain world leaders were
ruling.
This teaches us something very important:
that worldly glory, and worldly power, is something very short lived. Who do
you think are the most important people alive today? Who are the big names? Who
are the big players? Barak Obama, Vladimir Putin? Or what about in our own country
– Malcolm Turnbull? And yet, the people who are important in the world’s eyes
are very different to the people who are important in God’s eyes.
We might look back at the last hundred years
in Australia—I don’t know about you, but I certainly can’t tell you the names
of all the Australian prime-ministers during that time. Many of them are almost
forgotten, and yet during their prime-ministerships, they would have been in
the newspaper every day.
So when we read our reading today, we might
find there a very uninteresting list of names, but we have to realise that when
Luke was writing this, he was telling his readers about all kinds of people
that they would have known, and known vividly, and known well. These were the
important people of the day. And yet, in God’s eyes, they were nowhere near as
important as one man eating locusts and honey out in the desert near Judea.
The irony is, of course, that here we are
2000 years later, and what’s happened? Well, John the Baptist is a more
well-known person that any of those people now. When they were all alive, John
the Baptist would have been considered just another nuisance. But now, the
tables have turned. The most significant thing about Tiberius Caesar is that he
was the emperor at the time of John and of Jesus. The most significant thing
about Pontius Pilate was his involvement in the life of Jesus. And we could go
through the rest of the list.
History doesn’t revolve around world leaders.
It revolves around God. God is the one who raises up leaders, and brings down
leaders. Many world leaders have come, and many world leaders have gone. But
also many world leaders, who were the most famous people in their day, have
been forgotten. And yet, God’s word is not forgotten. God has not forgotten his
people. God has not forgotten his faithful followers. He still looks upon them,
and shines the light of his face upon them. In Isaiah we read: Can a woman
forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her
womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved
you on the palms of my hands. Tiberius Caesar might have engraved his face
on coins, but what is a greater honour: to have your face engraved on a coin,
or to have your face engraved on God’s own hands?
But now let’s look at what Luke writes about
John. He says: The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the
wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a
baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
In Matthew and Mark, we read a whole lot of
detail about how John dressed and what he ate. But Luke doesn’t focus here on
any of that stuff at all. He simply focusses on his preaching and on his
baptising. But we read that he was in the wilderness. He didn’t live in
luxurious palaces of the days and in a comfortable home: he lived out in the
bush somewhere.
Actually, a couple of chapters earlier, we
read about John after he was born: The child grew and became strong in
spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to
Israel. Here was a child who has elderly parents—in fact, his whole birth
was a miracle. He was like Isaac, who was a miracle child to old Abraham and
old Sarah. John was a miracle child to his parents too, to Zechariah and
Elizabeth. And yet, it seems as though quite early on he ended up in the
wilderness. Maybe his parents died when John was still a child, which meant
that John had to fend for himself. This might explain why John looked as though
a mother hadn’t cared for him for years! And yet, here he is, dressed in his
camel shirt, eating locusts and wild-honey.
We read about John in our reading today: The
word of God came to John. This whole passage is not really about John, it’s
about the word of God. And where the word of God comes to a person, where the
word of God is preached is the most important place on earth. When the word of
God comes to a person and a place, then all of a sudden that place becomes the
most luxurious palace on earth, the most wonderful place to be—it becomes a
Garden of Eden, a paradise! If only we saw things as God sees them! If only we
valued God’s word and knew just how precious a thing it is—wouldn’t we run to
hear it?
We read: He went into all the region
around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of
sins.
We know that John didn’t do this work dressed
in a nice tailored suit. We know that he wasn’t considered polite or
respectable. And yet, God uses him in a wonderful way. In fact, Jesus says: Among
those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.
The work that John is called to do is
completely against the grain, it is completely against the culture of the day.
And the same goes whenever the church takes its message out to new places. The
gospel is always new, it is always different, it always goes against the grain.
I remember hearing a story about a Christian
man of strong faith who had a flat-mate. The flat-mate said to him, “Living
with you is like living with an Old Testament prophet!” The flat-mate meant is
as an insult, but the man took it as a compliment!
We always have to realise that God has
created all kinds of people, with all kinds of different personalities, with
all kinds of unusual aspects. And yet God can use all of these things. There is
a special ministry for the church when it is goes against the culture, and
against the grain.
We often make a mistake in thinking that
outreach and evangelism, for example, all rests on us. But in actual fact, it
doesn’t rest on us at all—it has to do with the word of God. Sometimes it is
said that the most important thing about outreach is “relationships”. But what
about John the Baptist? Did he have meaningful relationships with people? It
doesn’t really seem like it. It seems to me that he was a loner, who just said
what needed to be said. Of course, we should make friends with people, and seek
to be kind to people. Relationships with people are a good thing. But we also
shouldn’t beat ourselves over the head, thinking that it will be the quality of
our relationships that will convert people. If I look back at my own life, some
of the most profound spiritual conversations I have had with people have been
with people I never saw before and I will probably never see again, sometimes
on planes, or buses, or in strange places. The reality is that, just like John,
God will use us where and when he wants to use us. God will arrange the time
and the place.
But you see, even in our reading, none of
this rests on John. It’s got nothing to do with John. The important thing in
our reading is not that John was in the wilderness. The important
thing is that the word of God came to John in the wilderness.
So Luke writes: As it is written in the
book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying 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 become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all
flesh shall see the salvation of God.
John’s ministry is a wonderful ministry.
What’s so important about what John says is that he cuts straight to heart.
Every word he speaks is a sharp arrow. Every word goes straight for the
jugular. This is the way God speaks to us. He prepares the way for the Lord—he
cuts right to heart. When the Gospel comes, it comes in through a straight
path.
We might think about the freeway which goes
past Mt Barker. The most important part about a freeway, it that it takes you
where you need to go with no obstacles in the way. I was in Crafers recently,
and someone was telling me about when the freeway first went through there—it
had to go right through the town and chopped it in half. It was quite traumatic
for the people that lived there.
Sometimes this is what repentance is like.
God has no regard for the quaint little villages that we build in our hearts
that are not built for him. He simply comes along with his dynamite and his
bulldozer and goes right to heart of our sin. He makes the rough places
straight. What thing in your heart needs to be bulldozed? Prepare the way of
the Lord, make his paths straight.
Or have you ever noticed a train-line going
through the hills? Sometimes there is a hill and the train-track goes straight
through it, but then just around the corner, there is a little valley, and the
train-track is built up, the valley is filled in. Even though the hills go up
and down, the train keeps going in a straight line wherever it needs to go.
This is how God’s word is with us. Every
valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the
crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways.
Sometimes, when God wants to build a freeway
and a train-track, it can seem very painful for us. We don’t want to
acknowledge our sin. We don’t want God to change our hearts and our lives for
the better. But once God has built his freeway, then he sends his Gospel
to us faster than 110kms an hour. God sends us his forgiveness, he sends us the
blood of his son Jesus, he sends us the Holy Spirit. We are the destination for
God’s grace, and if there are hills and valleys in the way, then God will simply
cut through them to apply his medicine, his comfort, his peace to us.
We read about John that he proclaimed a baptism
of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repentance isn’t for nothing—God
works repentance in us in order to apply to us the forgiveness of sins.
Psalm 147 says: God heals the
brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Deuteronomy 32: See now that I,
even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound
and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. We also read
in Job: He wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal.
Maybe you have entered a time in life, where
you feel as though God is bulldozing you and cutting you down. Don’t despair.
The only reason why God does it is to make a straight path for his gospel and
his comfort. Trust in him to give it to you. He will deliver it to you! The
banquet is already prepared for you, and it is already on its way. Heaven is
already prepared, and your foretaste of it is arriving so incredibly soon! Welcome
Jesus as he comes to you on his wonderful highway! Welcome him as he comes to
you via the fastest route possible!
Blessed is who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest! Amen.
Dear Lord Jesus, we thank you that you shine on
us people who are insignificant in the eyes of the world. But we know that like
John we are precious in your eyes and that is the only thing that matters. Send
us the Holy Spirit, and all of your precious comfort, and send it to us by the
fastest route possible! Amen.
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