Get Ready for the Revolution
Scripture
"In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: ’A voice of one calling in the desert, ’Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.’ "John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit worthy of repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ’We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. "I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come One who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering His wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire." (Matthew 3:1-12)
"Get Ready For The Revolution."
Introduction
Uh-Oh! Johnson’s going too far again! Now, he’s trying to cause a revolution. Watch yourself preacher! Well, first of all, we didn’t say "a" revolution, we said Get ready for "The" revolution. Secondly, no need to be alarmed because, the word revolution carries a stigma of negativity that is quite unfortunate. In other words, when we hear this word, we immediately begin to think of riots, wars, and other violent acts where innocent people are hurt and even killed.
Misunderstanding is a device that Satan uses to keep us contained. It is a device that Satan uses to keep us entrapped. It is a device that Satan uses to keep us slaves to sin. It is a device that Satan uses to keep us from getting to the root of all of our problems. US! Its right and proper for US to "Get Ready for The Revolution." Because you do know that Jesus is the Greatest Revolutionary ever known or ever will be known, don’t you? Before Him there were none after Him there shall be no more!
There are thousands, more like millions of stories, poems, songs, and declarations spoken or written about the word revolution. Consequently, countless numbers of profound quotes, made by great and "not-so-great" men and women, have been etched into the annals of history. Here are just a few that have stuck with me over the years:
American Patriot, Patrick Henry, speaking of a geographical revolution (in other words, they were fighting over land) said "Give me liberty or give me death!".
Black Nationalist, Malcolm X speaking of a social revolution (primary racial equality in these yet to be United States of America) said that he intended to get equality, "By Any Means Necessary!"
Great humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, also speaking on a social revolution, said "I have a dream… that one day all God’s children, black men and white men…"
James Brown, recorded a single entitled "King Heroin" back in the early 70’s, speaking on the revolution against drug addiction, he said, breaking the habit, "is a revolution of the mind, get your mind together…"
Gil Scott Herring said, "You will not to stay home brothers. You will not be able to turn on, tune in, and cop out because the revolution will not be televised brother". He was speaking of a political revolution.
Kirk Franklin, who revolutionized Gospel music, said that he was, "Sick and tired of brothers killing each other and tired daddies leaving babies with their mothers."
The President of the most powerful nation in the world - George W. Bush, said, "I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer…" (By Amy Goldstein and Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, January 30, 2002; Page A01). His "War on Terrorism" is a revolution.
But, in the text from which we preach, the revolution that John the Baptist has in mind is vastly different from all of the aforementioned revolutions. When John the Baptist screams, "REPENT!" He’s talking about THE Revolution. He is talking about the Spiritual Revolution!
He appears in the Gospel reading with eyes blazing, finger pointing at us, and thundering judgement. This John the Baptist is an uncomfortable reality. He shouts "REPENT!", startling us in the midst of our worship.
Have you noticed that there’s no place for John the Baptist in the popular television evangelist programs? Yet here he is in the Gospel reading, as he has been for the past 1500 years. He is like a recurring nightmare. Just when you think it is safe to start enjoying the service, here comes John the Baptist to cast a cloud of gloom and guilt over everything. We’re ready to sing "He’s Done Great Things", but he shouts, "You brood of vipers!"
I’m not going to just pick on the TV evangelists. John the Baptist doesn’t have a place in the contemporary/modern day church either. We want to feel good about ourselves and we expect our "religion" to serve our every need. Guilt and personal responsibility are out of fashion and sin is a bad word - the bad news of bad religion. We want good news only! We don’t want to hear John the Baptist hollering at the top of his voice, "Repent!" We want to sing "Stir Up the Gifts!" But God sends us a wild-eyed, desert prophet.
Listen… John is not going away! Not if you take the four Gospels seriously. In each one of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, John the Baptist is the introduction to the story. Mark, in fact, points to John as the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Can you believe that? Mark calls "Bad News John" the start of the Good News! (For those who care, that’s Mark 1:1-4). All I’m trying to say is, you can’t escape John the Baptist! The early church and the gospel writers make him integral and necessary to the good news we know as the Gospel.
Body
Take Matthew for example. He compresses the Christmas story into one tight chapter, and the next thing you know, at the beginning of Chapter 3, here’s John the Baptist crying, "Repent!" out in the wilderness. Luke, on the other hand, sort of warms up his report before he gets to John. But not Matthew. Suddenly, unexpectedly, intrusively, here comes John the Baptist.
John The Baptist is like an embarrassing relative that shows up on every special occasion. John was not a pretty sight! He lived like a hermit in the desert, dressed in camel hair, and his diet was locusts and wild honey. He acted like a man who had spent way too many hours in the blazing, desert sun. There was nothing conventional about this brother. In fact, I suspect he was quite frightening! (You know, like when you roll up your windows and lock the doors when a homeless person gets too close to your cars while you’re sitting at a stoplight.)
And John the Baptist’s sermons! My God! It makes you wonder how he attracted such large crowds. He wasn’t trying to win friends, nor was he trying to impress anybody. I mean, listen to the introduction to his sermon. "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Repent!" And the main part of the message was something else too. "Do not presume to say to yourselves, ’We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now as the ax is lying at the root of the trees… Bear good fruit or be thrown into the fire!"
I don’t know why the crowd came, but I do know John wouldn’t get many invitations to today’s pulpits. And he certainly wouldn’t get past the first round of interviews of any Pastoral Search Committee! He was a terrible dresser. And the food he ate, we won’t even go there. I mean, where can you take him for lunch? Really though? Would you dare take him out in public? You had no idea when he was going to snap and go into one of those fiery sermons. No my brothers and sisters, he was no new millennium type of guy.
So what’s your point preacher? Why is John the Baptist part of the story? Why does he appear to make us feel bad? And, why is John the Baptist in the story at all? Well, Matthew clearly tells us why.
Notice the first word out of John the Baptist’s mouth: "Repent" (Matt.3:2). Then look at the first word out of Jesus’ mouth in the very next chapter, "Repent" (4:17). And notice that John’s and Jesus’ first sentences of ministry are identical: ”Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
Repentance is a primary theme of the Christian message. The day of Pentecost, that moment of spectacular blessing and the birth of the Christian Church, was a time to repent. At the end of Peter’s sermon, he urged the people to repent. The Bible ends with a message of repentance. Revelations is a letter from the risen Christ to the seven churches of Asia Minor. Christ commands five of the seven churches to repent. Repentance is the first word and a necessary part of the Gospel.
Like the word revolution, many biblical words have been affected in negative ways because of the way we use them. Overuse has emptied repentance of its meaning. In the Bible, the root word repent has a moral center far deeper than the idea of shedding tears of remorse. And repentance certainly means more than the reformation of our behavior.
John didn’t invent the word repent. The Old Testament prophets used the word often. In Hebrew, the word repentance, like many Hebrew words, presents a picture. It means ’to turn" or "return", to reverse our direction in life, to change. It means revolution!
The moral power of that picture is obvious in Jeremiah 3:14. It is there that God tells Israel, "Return [repent], faithless people," declares the Lord, "for I am your Husband." In other words, an adulterer must bring home more than his or her body. A changed heart must come with the "return."
Jesus put it like this: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (Matt. 16:24). That’s a fundamental change of direction in which our agendas, our self-interests, our desires, our goals, our dreams, and our behavior turns from ours to Christ’s! That requires a radical change, a revolution to the core of our being.
Saul experienced THE Revolution. On his way to Damascus with mayhem on his mind and murder on his heart, the risen Christ appeared to him and knocked him off his horse. Saul landed on his knees - where he belonged. After hearing Jesus’ voice, Saul, blinded, immediately asked two things, "Who are you?" and "What am I to do Lord?" (Acts 22:8,10) Jesus identified Himself and then told Saul he must get up, go into the city, and there he would be told what to do. A few days later, Saul headed back to toward Jerusalem with love in his heart and the gospel in his mind. He had turned around, repented, and experienced a complete change of heart and mind. He was changed from Saul to Paul, from a sinning man to a praying man. Saul experienced THE Revolution!
Jesus explained why repentance is the first word in the Gospel. He told His listeners that sin and evil were not fundamentally things their hands did or things their eyes watched or things their mouths said. It is much more profound than that. Evil comes from deep, deep within us and causes our hands, eyes and mouths to misbehave.
The root of evil is the issue we must confront.
- That reservoir of bitterness deep in our soul.
- That well of anger stored in the center of our lives.
- That place where unhappiness lives.
- That place where resentment smolders, and where lust lurks.
All that is what we must turn from. Now, don’t get mad at me and tune me out because there is some good news. That same place deep inside us is precisely the location from which goodness comes. Reforming our behavior is not enough; we must change the source of it all!
Let me see if I bring it to you “real down-home-like.” I learned about that place deep in my heart when I was a child. I went to live with my Aunt in Cleveland, OH while I was in the second grade.
Everyday before I went school, my Aunt Betty looked me straight in the eyes and said, "When you get home from school I want you to stay in this house until I get home from work." She never failed. The last words I always heard were, "…stay in the house until I get home from work."
Well, you know how that works. You know what that statement did to my little seven-year-old mind. I figured that there must be something really great going on outside between the time I got home from school and the time that Aunt Betty got home from work. The grass did look mighty green out there. I wanted to go outside and play so bad that I could taste it. But my Aunt’s words rang in my ears and she held my will in her grip.
Then one day Juan, my best friend, made an interesting and logical case that made plenty of sense to me. He asked me, "what time does your Aunt get home?" I replied, "5:45 on the dot." That’s what time the city bus always arrived. I knew that because everyday I would look out the window until I saw Aunt Betty getting off the bus and then I would run outside to meet her. Anyway, Juan went on to say, "That means you can come outside and play until 5:30 and then go back in the house before she gets home - she’ll never know!" What a great idea! It would have worked except for one thing; that is, we were having so much fun that I didn’t "pay no tention" to the time.
Sure enough, before I knew it Aunt Betty had come home and was reminding me of what she told me but this time she added a little sign language using a leather strap. Since I had already learned to shift blame and justify my sinful behavior, I tried to convince her that it was all Juan’s fault. I didn’t yet understand the real issue. It wasn’t that I had found a way to get outside or that I had actually gone outside. I could control my outward behavior. The root of my problem was that I WANTED to go outside and I had no control over that desire.
When I became a man I began to understand the demand of the Gospel. Jesus said the one thing necessary is that I love God with all my being and then treat my neighbors like kings and queens and myself like a slave. That demand I cannot seem to do, no matter how hard I try.
That’s why I think… that maybe… we need a new word for repentance. And I suggest that the word revolution would do quite well. It will put some steam, some fire power, some juice back into the process. Jesus calls us to radical change at the core of our being. The gospel may be free, but it is not cheap and it is never easy. Jesus didn’t come to make us feel good about ourselves but to change us at precisely the place where we don’t want to change.
The fact of the matter is we can’t change at the core by ourselves. I can’t love God completely or my neighbors sufficiently. That’s why the Second Word Of The Gospel Is Grace. That is, God supplies precisely what God demands. Did you miss that? That was shouting material right there! Jesus calls us to a radical change, a revolution, and He is the One who does the changing!
Remember Saul? When he called out to the Lord, "What to you want me to do?" The revolution began. His surrender opened the door for the transformation. Hatred turned to love. Cruelty turned to affection.
That’s the good news that is only good news if the bad news comes first. "Repent" the gospel cries. "I can’t" we reply, "I can change you,” answers Christ. That’s grace brothers and sisters. It is a gift from God!
But there is a third word that ties together the first word of the gospel, "repent" and the second word of the gospel, "grace." It’s a simple but, wondrously, powerful word: HELP! That’s the word the blind beggar cried out to Jesus. "Oh Lord, have mercy!" he cried. Those words lie deep in the sacrament of the church and deep in the heart of the Christian faith. "Oh Lord, Help."
Conclusion
That’s why John the Baptist keeps us there. We need to be reminded to keep crying, "help." We forget so easily. Did you notice that John the Baptist’s harshest words were directed at the most religious people of that day? It was the so-called "good" people, the Pharisees and Sadducees, that he called a bunch of snakes trying to escape their doom. It was the church, which he said was about to fall under the ax of judgment.
Self-sufficiency lies at the heart of most human rebellion. We don’t want to fall on our knees and cry, "help." A wise Bible teacher once said, "Sooner or later God will bring self-sufficient people to the place where they have no resource but Him — no strength, no answers, nothing but Him. Without God’s help, they’re sunk." Religious pride is the most damning form of self-sufficiency. It dresses up pride and goes to church where it masquerades as faith.
Maybe that’s why Christ came as a helpless infant, who is, in fact, the final revelation of Almighty God. I suppose that’s why Jesus took a child, put her in the midst of His disciples and told us all that if we don’t become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of God. And maybe that’s why John the Baptist keeps showing up in the gospel story. He reminds us that when we fall down God is waiting on us to cry out, "Help me, Lord!"
If you are hungry, just say, "Help me Lord!" because He is bread in a starving land. He is the Bread of Heaven.
If you are thirsty, just say, "Help me Lord!" because He is water in dry places. He is the Well that never runs dry.
If you are down to your last dime, say, "Help me Lord!" because He is a way out of no way! He is Jehovah-Jireh.
If you are sick and can’t get well, cry out, "Help me Lord!" because He is a healer. He is Jehovah-Rapha.
If you are lonely, tell Him, "Help me Lord!" because He is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. He is Jehovah-Shammah.
When I don’t have anything else, I say "Help me Lord" because He is my all and all! He is my refuge and my strength… a very present help in a time of trouble.
You may be asking: How does He do it? The answer is: With His Power! Well preacher, how did He get so much Power? I thought you knew… One Friday Jesus died on a cross... but He arose first thing Sunday morning with all power in heaven and earth in His hands...
Listen to how the story ends. In the book of Revelations chapter 7, verses 16 & 17 the Bible says, "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes."
So, why should I be discouraged? Why should the shadows come? Why should I feel lonely and long for heaven and home? When Jesus is my portion. A constant friend is He. His eye is on the sparrow and I know He’s watching me. I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free. His eye is on the sparrow and I know He’s watching me. And, guess what else? One great morning… when this life is over… I’ll fly way… If you don’t remember anything else said today, remember this:
REPENT!
CRY OUT FOR HELP!!
RECEIVE HIS GRACE!!!
and
GET READY FOR THE REVOLUTION!
