Grace
and peace to you from him who is and who was and who is to come,
We’ll
begin with some thoughts about basic teachings of the Bible. All people were born in sin and it is
our nature to run from God. Even so, he
didn’t abandon us in our folly, but sent Jesus to live and die for us and to
rise again and to make us new people. He
claimed us as his adopted daughters and sons.
He says to us, “You are mine, you are in my family.” He will love us and bless us.
As
it happens, our preparation for Christmas brings us to reflect on John the
Baptist this morning. He was different
from other people of his time and certainly different from folks today. His example teaches us how worldly and
short-sighted our lives can be. This is
one of the messages God wants us to take from John the Baptist.
A
down-to-earth man, he lived close to the soil.
He knew the pattern of the wind and the rhythm of the seasons. He used word-pictures from everyday life to
tell the people what God wanted them to hear – trees, and an axe, a barn, and
so on.
God’s
people in those days didn’t analyse everything as we so often do. They saw the world as a whole, ruled by
God. They understood what one of the
Psalm-writers meant, for example, when he said that rivers clap their hands and
hills rejoice. They believed that the
Lord ties everything together into a unity – that life comes from him and is
under his direction. Things that are
very different from each other, such as our souls and our bodies, nature and
spirit, are all parts of God’s creation and fit together into his plan.
But
many of the Israelites strayed from their heritage. They ran away from God in their hearts and
became like the pagans around them. They
were in danger of losing their salvation and needed to reverse direction and
return to the Lord who loved them, so the Heavenly Father sent John the Baptist
to help them get ready for the Savior who was about to come to them.
Before
they could receive Jesus, though, and appreciate him they needed to hear what
God thought of their present spiritual condition. Using picture language he knew they’d
understand, John said that God wanted his people to produce fruit in keeping
with repentance. Every tree that doesn’t
produce good fruit will be thrown into the fire. The fire:
a word picture that the people could easily visualize. If God’s people don’t turn to him with
repentant hearts, sorry for our sins, he will consider us useless and throw us
into the fire like rubbish.
Everyone
knows how destructive fire can be – to the wilderness, to homes, to human
life. John is speaking about a more
worrisome kind of fire, however, eternal punishment for those who make a
lifelong habit of ignoring God and disobeying him. He forgives; he restores repentant sinners;
he forgets. But he promises to punish
impenitence and stiff-necked pride.
Somebody wrote, “to become hell-fodder, a soul must have a pronounced
and ineradicable streak of arrogance, a belief that his or her judgment is
infallible…anyone who is driven by pride in their own power or skill, their own
beauty or genius, or their own unaided intellect is a candidate for eternal
damnation – anyone who tries to be like God.”
Because
of our trust in Christ, though, our customary humility before God, and because
we accept his forgiveness, you and I don’t worry about the fires of hell. Heaven is our home and our destination, but
Biblical warnings of hell-fire do help to keep us on track. They remind us to
trust in God and not our own achievements or the fact that we live in an
advanced civilization. God’s ways are
not our ways. It is wise not to lean on
our own understanding, but to rest in him.
That
is not the final word, however. John
used the word “fire” another way, too, that Jesus will baptize with the Holy
Spirit and with fire. John does not mean
the fire of condemnation now, but a divine fire that is connected with
God. You may remember that Moses saw God
in a burning bush and that when he received the law, God came down to Mt. Sinai
in fire, and that a pillar of fire guided the Hebrew people at night as they
traveled through the wilderness through the Promised Land. The Holy Spirit came
to the apostles at Pentecost as flames that rested on their heads. Luke wrote in Acts: “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire
that separated and came to rest on each of them.” God also uses fire, then, to guide and
protect and as sign of his presence for purification and refinement.
One
of the Old Testament prophets, who was distressed at the way God’s chosen
people thought and behaved wrote that God had told him two-thirds would be
struck down and perish, “yet a third will be left in it,” the Heavenly Father
said, “and this third I will bring into the fire; I will refine them like
silver and test them like gold.”
The
prophet Isaiah wrote that God would cleanse the blood stains from Jerusalem by
a spirit of fire.
Our
Father in heaven cleanses every believer.
St. Peter said that we rejoice in temporary trials of all kinds so that
our faith, which is worth more than gold that perishes even though refined by
fire, may be proved genuine. The Lord
cleanses all his children with a loving fire.
“Yes, I have refined you,” he said in the Book of Isaiah. “I have tested you in the furnace of
affliction.” And a faithful man of Old
Testament times who suffered greatly said: “the Almighty knows the way that I
take. When he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.”
In
other words, God’s fire drives away our complacency, our worldliness, and our
self-satisfaction. His fire clarifies
our souls so that we rejoice in him and not the world and so that we think to
turn to him every day with our burdens and our needs and the things we’re happy
about. Furthermore, God’s fire also lifts up and inspires. One of our hymn texts for Pentecost asks God
to revive our drooping faith, remove our doubts and fears, and kindle in our
hearts the flame of never-dying love.
And Martin Luther asked the Lord to inspire every believing soul with
his own pure and holy fire.
God’s
fire, then, that cleanses and purifies also inspires us with love for him and
our neighbors and zeal for our faith. God’s fire never rests; it prods and
guides and invigorates; it lights our path so that we may always find our way
to Jesus by faith.
Now,
returning to the Lord is one of the main themes of the Advent season, when the
church helps us get ready for the celebration of Jesus’ birth. “Return to me with all your heart, with
fasting and weeping and mourning,” God said in the Old Testament. “Return to the Lord your God, for he is
gracious and compassionate.”
Our
sins are not great crimes like those of hard-hearted tyrants; we don’t worship
false gods like some of the worldly kings of the Old Testament; we don’t lift
ourselves up to challenge God, like the Egyptian Pharaohs who held God’s people
in slavery. Still, things of the world
can draw us away from the Lord, cares and amusements can infiltrate our
souls. We may grow sluggish. God’s fire
comes to our rescue. It burns up the
chaff that sticks to our thoughts and feelings.
It shines with a more reliable warmth than the beguiling light that
glimmers from the world. God’s
chastening and encouraging fire assures us that he is at work on us; it keeps
our wills focused on him, for he has promised not to let us go or lose us or
give up on us.
John
the Baptist warns us not to let the pride and vanity of earthly life deceive
us. The way to truth and strength is
through repentance and faith in Christ.
The divine fire that chastens does not harm. It is good for us. We don’t rebel but accept the corrections of
God.
To
conclude, then, we’ll say that the wise Heavenly Father gave John the Baptist a
role in public life. The church today
carries on John’s mission by putting the Lord’s truth before our neighbors and
pointing them to Christ. Though we may
not be aware of the results of our work, a member of our family or a friend may
see in us the joy and confidence that come with faith in Christ. A neighbor may learn something from our
refusal to take part in the excesses that lead up to Christmas and follow our
example by seeking refreshment through rest in the Lord. We trust that God’s fire will continue to
work on us during these chilly December weeks.
May our families and loved ones find in us the warmth that comes from
our contact with the fire of God’s love.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
The
peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the
knowledge of Christ Jesus, AMEN.
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