This sermon was delivered to Holy Trinity in Ayr,
Ayrshire, Scotland on the 17th December 2017
(a Scottish Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries).
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 John 1:6-8,19-28
Psalm 19:14: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen.
Introduction
Over a week ago, I was in a shop last week in Ayr, where a woman in the queue in front of me turned to her friend and said in a loud voice, “I’ll be glad when this is all over”. … What? Christmas? … I like Christmas … it’s the going back to work in January that I don’t like.
And we all have our Christmas wishes, I wished not to get another John the Baptist sermon and yet here we are, John the Baptist. … And I don’t say this lightly, because John is a very complex character … and if you think about it, there is not really that much written about him in the bible … and we all know his story … and there seems to be an inordinate amount of Sundays dedicated to John in our lectionary.
This makes it very difficult to give you something new … and my first reaction was to rehash an old John the Baptist sermon from the past, but I don’t like doing that as I feel all sermons are topical to the moment, so I gave in and thought I would look at John again from a fresh perspective, and see if there is something I have missed … and I am glad I did, because there was.
To make a start, I need you to share to this story with you to a make certain point. … Many years ago, my wife and I found ourselves at Irvine maternity hospital, awaiting the birth of my son. It wasn’t straight forward and he was delivered under caesarean section. … There were also minor complications with my son, and both were retained in hospital for a while. … And I remember travelling home that day, not knowing what to think. … I did know however I had to inform both our families of the birth. … I was the one charged with communicating that news. Can you relate to that … a situation where you, and only you, are charged with delivering news?
Snakes in the desert
If you can’t, there is a good story in the book of numbers where the Israelites were in the desert, making their way to the promised land, grumbling and complaining all the ways, and God got so fed up listening to them, that he decided to punish them by sending a great number of poisonous snakes into their camp, snakes which then began to bite the people who then died from their poison. … Numbers 21 verse 6 “And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died”.
And when Moses saw the people dying, he was very upset about this … and he cried out to God reveal a cure,, which he did. … He said in Numbers 21:8 “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live”.
Imagine Moses at this moment as he was standing there looking out over 2 million people who were dying all around him … then realising that he alone knew the cure for their sickness … he alone had the responsibility of communicating this cure … and he must tell the people good news of what God had said.
Introduction of John
Now I want you to consider verses 4 of John Chapter 1, “In him (Jesus), was life; and (Jesus) was the light of men. … And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not”. … This verse is describing a world that was engulfed in the darkness of wickedness and sin … a darkness where few were seeking the lord … rather they were seeking and following their own selfish desires.
And it was into this dark world that God sent Jesus … Jesus the light of the world, “not to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” … but before Jesus, there came John the Baptist to prepare the way for him, and that he did.
John’s calling
John the Baptist was the only man prepared and commissioned to be his voice … heralding the greatest of news to his fellow man, that the “kingdom of heaven is at hand”. … This was the message the people needed and wanted to hear … however they were told by John to repent first … and turn away from their darkness and come into the light … that way, they could understand that their spiritual separation from God was due to their love affair with themselves, and their sin.
This was an extraordinary task that John was asked to do … and with an extraordinary a task came an extraordinary man. John lived in the wilderness wearing extraordinary clothes, eating extraordinary food, meeting extraordinary people who put extraordinary demands on him, thinking he was Elijah. … But John was effective because many came to hear for themselves what he was proclaiming, and many followed him … and as proof of his effectiveness, we read that the religious establishment disliked him, they even feared him and so they were quick to rejected him … much in the same way they would do today.
John was not of the establishment, but his birth had been foretold, and he had been raised to become a priest, a prophet and a herald, and the people kept coming to hear his message. … And his sermons too were full of fire; he was an Old Testament man, and he spoke as he found. Can you imagine the boldness of this man as he told the king himself what he thought of him; … confronting Herod about the wrongful affair he was having with his sister-in-law, and yet … the king respected John for his honesty … although he too was even afraid of him.
The religious establishment were afraid of him as well; … because he was even more effective in telling the people to repent from their ways than they the church leaders were … because the people were actually acting on John’s message, … while gaining in popularity in his humble capacity.
What I am getting at here is that, do any of us have that same zeal to promote the Lord? … … Are we such ambassadors to carry and promote his message; attracting people to the faith? I for one am not, I am sorry to say … I do not have ability as there are many things I lack, and so I was happy to write this sermon hoping I would find something in the life of John that give some encouragement … and I think I have … I have discovered three inner qualities that may help our quest … three inner qualities that we must aspire to and prevail, so that Jesus is seen and receives the glory … so that others may hear and believe his words.
1 Self-Denial
And the first quality I have noticed is that of self-denial, and I say this because the religious leaders came and pressurised John as to who he thought he was … Verse 19, “ … when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? … John confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. … And they asked him, What then? Are you Elias? And he saith, I am not. … .... … Then said they unto him, Who art thou that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What say you of youself”?
Those accusations are pretty strong … because they really did want to know who he was … and we could suppose that John could have replied, “I am John the Baptist. I am the forerunner of the Christ, and I have come to prepare you, so as to meet him. … He could have said, “I am the Messiahs greatest prophet, commissioned by God himself”, which he was … or worse, he could have said, “see the Messiah that is coming, that’s my first cousin”. … John could have answered their questions a number of ways to draw attention to himself … and to steal that wee bit of glory, but he didn’t … he said in verse 23 as you know, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness”. That’s it, just a voice … just a messenger … just a witness.
Until we recognises who we really are, until we come to the place in our lives that all we care about is promoting Jesus, then we’ll continue in trying to steal the show … so there must be this inner quality of self-denial in our lives, a willingness to put Jesus before everything else … even our own ego’s … because when our ego’s become enlarged, we start stealing the attention that belongs to him … edging him out … and lifting ourselves in pride … so we better watch who we are promoting!
2 Servant’s Heart
And this brings us to the second inner quality that we must desire, and that is of a servant’s heart. … When John said that he was just a voice, what he was also implying was that Jesus was Lord … and he, was definitely not. … Yes God had called and commissioned him to prepare the way, and he did, but John never once deviated from this task … he never put himself first … I mean, look at the way he dressed … look at what he ate … and look where he lived … look what he lived for. … Never once did he try to feather his own nest, rather he spent his entire life preparing the way for the Lord; … and that is some dedication.
The point here is that we need to come to grips with here is, who exactly is in charge of our lives. When we make Jesus our Lord, it then follows that His interests are to become our interests, and His ways are to become our ways. … Yes this is difficult, however a person with a servant’s heart is a person who has the best interests of others on their mind … serving out of a genuine concern for others. John therefore had a great concern and love for the people … as well as love for the Lord, and I never really noticed that before as every depiction of John the Baptist in the movies always should him as a horrible character which I now think was wrong.
… And when you think about it, Moses too served his people better than he served himself … even praying at one point that if it were possible he would trade his salvation for the salvation of all the Israelites. … And the apostle Paul suffered as well in order to promote the gospel. … He had a servant’s heart … and yet, did you noticed that both Moses and Paul … and I like this … did not started out that way; both of them started out by trying to steal the show … trying to do God’s work for him … however God intervened, and their ways were changed forever; from the inside out. When we have a servant’s heart, our greatest satisfaction will come from seeing the personal growth and the betterment of the people we are trying to serve.
3 Absolute Surrender
And this brings us to our last inner quality that we should develop and that is … an absolute surrender to do the will and the work of the Lord.
In our passage, the Pharisees wanted to know why John was baptizing the people in the name of the Lord if he wasn’t the Messiah … and this wasn’t an unfair question to ask as many of them were taking offense as they considered themselves to be the only ones authorised to lead God’s chosen people. … And yet, here was a man, not ordained by their religion, telling them, that they are separated from God because of their sin, and they too must repent and be baptized, ready for Christ’s coming; I mean, how dare he.
Yet … when they asked John why he was doing all this if he were not the Christ, and he answered them in verse 26, “I baptize with water: but there stands one among you, whom you do not know … he who is coming after me who is preferred before me … whose shoe's I am not worthy to tie, … His (meaning Jesus) authority comes from God”. There is a lot in that verse, but John was bluntly telling them, that if they were worried John’s authority, they better watch out, because the one who is coming has even more authority, and he will certainly sort you out … and this in a way, reinforced John’s view that he was at best, nothing in comparison with the Saviour who was about to come.
Conclusion
I am going to finish there, but can you see that these three inner qualities are constantly being developed in our hearts by our love for the Lord. These inner qualities of: Self-Denial; a Servant’s Heart and; Absolute Surrender do not happen overnight, but they are happening. By worshiping the Lord, these qualities have to happen or we cannot bring glory to the Lord, so the Lord will certainly change us, as we cannot do it ourselves.
Today we stand today at the front lines of the great spiritual conflict, the lines between darkness and light, and like John, we’ve been called to proclaim Jesus to a dying world in whatever way we can … to prepare people to meet with the Lord as he has the antidote for sin and communion with almighty God himself.
Amen
