Click here for PDF file of sermon for printing.
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our
Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
I
baptise 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 baptise with the Holy Spirit
and with fire.
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.
Here we all are in the middle of our Advent
season, preparing for Christmas—there are Christmas carols in the shops, Santa
Claus is supposedly coming to town, the Christmas lights are up—and yet, here
we are in church today, and our Gospel reading starts how? With John the
Baptist, our hairy bug man, yelling out: You brood of vipers! Who warned you
to flee from the wrath to come?
What do we make of this? You know, today we
live in what is often called a “post-modern” world. And what is often meant by
this is that people don’t believe there is such a thing as truth. This is a
real shame, because Jesus says: I am the way, the truth and the life. Instead
of believing that there is such a thing as truth, people say: What’s true for
you is not necessarily true for me. People say, We need to be accepting of
other people’s opinions, and not make them feel uncomfortable. In fact, the
worst thing one can possibly do is to tell someone else that what they believe
is not true.
Many people claim to be tolerant, loving,
respectful, but as soon as someone comes into a room and says: Christ is
risen! and actually believes the thing to be true, they are cut off from
conversation. People are often not as tolerant as they often make out.
But because people don’t believe in truth,
they often judge a person not on whether their opinions are true, but whether
they seem to be nice and not offensive. In today’s world, and sometimes even in
today’s church, the worst thing is not to speak error and to say something
which is false, but to offend someone.
John the Baptist would certainly be rejected
outright in this kind of situation. Imagine someone coming into our church
today and saying: You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath
to come?
“That person has an anger problem!” we would
say. “He’s rude”, we would say. “He hurt my feelings”, we would say. “I don’t
like being spoken to like that”. “I feel threatened, persecuted, and unsafe!”
Sometimes there are pastors or prominent people
in the church who are bit like John the Baptist. They don’t have good social
skills, they are not necessarily polite or respectable, and yet what they say
is true. And when people reject such people because of their bad social skills,
or bad hygiene, or bad eating habits, they could even reject the very voice of
the Holy Spirit himself. This is the beginning of our reading today.
So what is John saying to these crowds? John
knows that the baptism which he is carrying out is only for sinners—not pretend
sinners, not sinners in name, but sinners in truth, real hard-boiled sinners.
And if you’re not a real sinner, you’re not welcome.
So John sees in the crowd some people who are
pretend sinners. Maybe they think: Yes, I did sin once when I was rude to a
tele-marketer. Or: I’ve lead a pretty good life, but I know I’m not perfect.
Or: I’ve done my best, but I could do with a good dose of spiritual lift.
John says: Stop mucking around! That’s not
repentance—that’s self-righteousness dipped in honey. Get out of here! Go home!
says John. This baptism is for real dirty sinners—and there is no
self-righteousness welcome here.
John says: Bear fruits in keeping with
repentance. What does this mean? The word repentance means “turning
around”. We are walking down an alley and we come to a dead end, and we realise
that we were walking in the wrong direction. What do we do? We turn around. We
often walk down a path in life which is not God’s, but then we realise that we
were wrong and God was right. And so we turn around. And we say to God: God,
you were right and I was wrong. Forgive me.
That’s repentance. Now when we say this, we
can’t then keep turning around and going back towards our dead-ends again. God
wants to find fruit on the tree he has planted. We should do good works, not
because they will save us, because they are good—good works are good. God
actually doesn’t need our good works, but the people around us do. We want the
Holy Spirit to work in us good works, so that our lives produce a fruitful harvest.
But what was happening with the people who
were coming to John? John says: 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. 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.
The people thought, “I don’t really need to
do anything, or to change my ways, because I have a good family lineage. I’m a
Jew, and I’m from Abraham’s family. I don’t really need to repent.” John says,
no. “If you don’t repent, God doesn’t need you to be part of his kingdom. He
won’t leave it empty. He will find some other people—some Gentiles, some
non-Jews—to come and be part of his kingdom. He will take other cultures that
have been bowing down and worshiping statues and stones, and whose hearts are
like stones, and he will make them beat with blood and with energy. But if you
don’t repent, your heart will turn to stone. And if your tree doesn’t bear good
fruit, then the axe is laid at the root of the tree.”
John is really encouraging us not to be lazy,
but to offer ourselves constantly for God’s service, and continually to look
for opportunities to do good for other people. The Jewish people could not rely
on their family heritage—all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of
God. But Christ died for the ungodly. He died for sinners. And if you know that
you are a real hard boiled sinner, then you can be absolutely certain that you
are precisely the kind of person for whom Jesus died.
Now, just about family lineages—in the
church, we still sometimes have a problem with this. I remember meeting a woman
who asked me what I do for a living. When I told her, she said: “A Lutheran pastor,
hey? Well, I’m Latvian!” Many people in Latvia are Lutherans, but the fact that
this lady was Latvian, but no interest in the Christian faith, didn’t give her
some kind of automatic passport into heaven.—Many a time, we might be standing
in a Lutheran church narthex and we hear a conversation like this: Hello, my
name’s John Jackson.—Jackson, hey? How does a man with a name like Jackson end
up in the Lutheran Church?—Well, my mother was a Frozenschnitzel, from
Eudunda.—Really? my grandmother’s maiden name was Frozenschnitzel too, but she
was from Kapunda.—Well, there were actually three Frozenschnitzel brothers who
came out on the boat from Germany, one settled in Eudunda, one in Kapunda, and
one in Tanunda.—So we’re related then?—Yes, but my mother was one of the eleven
children of Pastor Siegfried Frozenschnitzel who was the pastor at Gnadenberg
for 45 years… And so the conversation goes on! Anglicans, Catholics, Uniting
Church, Presbyterians, Baptists all have similar kinds of stories.
To be part of a family, and to have a proud
long family lineage is a wonderful thing. It’s a good thing. To be a physical
descent of Abraham is a great honour. However, all of that does not give us any
right in the church, as if we have some kind of ownership to it, or as if we
don’t need to continually examine our hearts, and repent. The church is not a
family club. It if that’s what we want it to be, then the axe is already laid
at the root of the tree. The church is a hospital for sinners. The devil
himself has bashed us up and left us on the street, and the Holy Spirit has
brought us into the emergency ward of Jesus himself, where he bandages up our
wounds and pours out his own medicine. What a wonderful privilege is it to
receive all of these wonderful gifts day after day, week after week, year after
year, from our wonderful doctor, our wonderful Jesus, who knows everything, and
has a medicine and a cure for everything. The most wonderful cure will be when
he finally raises our bodies from the dead so that we will be perfect and
sinless like him.
The next part of our reading tells us about
different people asking John what they should do. We want to bear fruits worthy
of repentance, but what are they? Where should we start?
So we read: And the crowds asked him, “What
then shall we do?” And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share
with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”
This is a wonderful encouragement to all of
us. We should look around and see who God has put in our path. What do they
need? Can I help them? How can I and the things that God has graciously given
to me be of service to them? St Paul says in Philippians 2: Let each of your
look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Let
love start small, and let the Holy Spirit flame it into a large fire which
burns brightly.
Sometimes when it comes to charity, people
say: “Well we have government welfare—I don’t need to help people. If people
still need help, it’s their own fault.” That’s rubbish. Jesus says: You
always have the poor with you. There is always someone who falls between
the cracks, and needs help. Wherever the gospel is preached, the devil is never
far away, attacking people, stripping people of their rightful possessions, and
laying them in the dirt. Paul says in Galatians: They asked us to remember
the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. God has lavished his mercy and
his grace upon us, sending his only Son to die for us, and forgiving each and
every single one of our sins. If this is what God has done for us, what can we
do for others?
After this, we read: Tax collectors also
came to be baptised and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said
to them, “Collect no more than you are authorised to do.” Soldiers also asked him,
“And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from
anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”
Here we have to different group of people who
had particular callings, particular vocations, in life, and they wanted to be
baptised. They want to know what they should do. The same question should be on
our minds. We are baptised people—what should we do? How should we live? The
forgiveness of sins should not be an excuse for us to sit around on our
backsides. After all, Jesus paid for your sins with his own blood and his own
death. Isn’t there something you would like to do in thanks to him?
John doesn’t tell the tax collectors to give
up their jobs. He doesn’t tell the soldiers to leave their posts. He only asks
them to be good, honest tax collectors. Tax is good thing—and collecting it is
a good thing. But if you have to do it, do it properly. Do it well. Do it as if
you are serving God, and not people.
The same with soldiers—it’s not a bad thing
to be a soldier. And sometimes people think: But soldiers sometimes have to
kill people, and the commandments say, “You shall not murder.” However, there
are numerous passages in the bible, where God allows certain people with
certain callings to have weapons, and if necessary, to defend their country and
its citizens, like soldiers and police. It’s a good thing to protect a country
and its citizens. It’s even a good thing for a policeman to shoot someone who
is threatening to harm others. Throughout my ministry, here and in Gippsland, I
have always had people in almost every congregation who have served in the
armed forces, and we should pray for them and encourage them, and assure them
that God is pleased with their work. As a private citizen, you are not allowed
to kill anyone. The terrorists in Paris did commit murder, but the police and
soldiers who shot the terrorists to protect the people did not commit murder.
God allows soldiers and police to use arms in his service, and in service of
others, and this is work that Christians can do with good conscience. Romans 13
says: He is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for
he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger
who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
So in the same way, John doesn’t encourage
the soldiers to leave their posts, and to throw away their arms, but to be good
soldiers: Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation,
and be content with your wages.
Now, we might think: What is my calling? What
is my vocation? What are the temptations of my calling? These are the kinds of
things that with the Holy Spirit’s help, we should fight against, and seek to
be good and honest citizens in whatever we do, and wherever God has placed us.
In the last part of our reading, we read: As
the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts
concerning John whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all saying, “I
baptise you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of
whose sandal I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit
and fire. 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.”
When pastors preach, we have to preach two
things: God’s law and the Gospel. The law is when we point to you and to your
sins and call you to repent. But the Gospel is when we point to Christ and to
the complete and total forgiveness of your sins because of his death and
resurrection. This is what John does. He has told the people what they should
do and what they shouldn’t do. He has called them to repent and to bear fruits
worthy of repentance. He has struck terror into the hearts of his listeners,
and made them aware of God’s expectations, and their great failings.
But now, there is something else to talk
about—there is one coming after him. He is a Saviour. He will die and pay the price
for your sins. He will send you the Holy Spirit in full measure, he will
cleanse your heart with fire. And he will gather you like wheat into his barn.
He will also see those who think they don’t need to repent, who don’t need to
learn the bible, or to seek a Christian life—he will burn them like chaff in
the fire.
Maybe you worry that you are not good enough
for Jesus. Maybe you worry that your life has not borne enough fruit. Maybe you
think that you’ve tried to live a good life, but you always let yourself down.
Let me tell you something—your worries, your struggles, your disappointment
with yourself already shows that the Holy Spirit is at work in you. You already
know that you are a sinner. That is a wonderful fruit of the Holy Spirit. And
now, it is time for you to stop looking at yourself, because you won’t save
yourself. Look to Jesus—he has baptized you, he gives you his body and blood to
eat and to drink, he has forgiven you all your sins. He doesn’t forgive you
only if you have succeeded a little bit to lead a good life. If you are a
complete failure and you know it, then his forgiveness is precisely for you,
like a glove on a hand, like a hat on a head.
So let’s place ourselves into the hands of
this wonderful Jesus, the strap of whose sandals we are not worthy to untie. He
comes down and unties our sandals and washes our feet from all the dust and
dirt of our lives. Let’s trust in him to send us the Holy Spirit through his
word, and to encourage us in all of our efforts to live a Christian life.
Come Lord Jesus, come! Blessed is he who
comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest! Amen.
Dear Lord Jesus, we are yours. We belong to
you. Work in us the fruits of your Holy Spirit, the fruits of repentance, and
make our hearts alive and joyful with the wonderful good news of forgiveness of
sins and the promise of eternal life. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment