Luke 3:1- 20 – To Follow or Not To Follow the prophet?
Last Sunday night, we began to talk about John the Baptist’s message. We found out that people from all over the country were gathering to hear this guy. John had achieved a cult status and all sorts of people were coming out to hear him. You don’t believe me? Turn in your bibles to Luke 3
Read Luke 3:1-20
Luke records that crowds were coming out to be baptized by him. It wasn’t just a crowd – but it was crowds. The Greek word used here indicates that they were a confused throng, a great mass of people, a mixed bunch of people. If you were at church last Sunday night you would remember that there were Gentiles there, Jews there, Tax Collectors, Soldiers, Pharisees and Sadducees. Why was John so popular – because he was a prophetic character who was so out of place in the time and place. God’s prophets had been quiet for about 400 years and now here is a new one bursting onto the scene who reminded everyone of the great prophet Isaiah. Like Isaiah, John was a fairly unusual character with an unusual message. Not only that, but he spoke with authority and conviction – with immense power and appealed to their moral convictions. And so people gathered from near and far to hear him.
What was he saying to them ? …
- Avoid the Axe of God’s judgment. He told the crowd “God’s axe is ready to strike you and to avoid you need to do 3 things. Those who were with us last Sunday night will remember what we talked about. To avoid the axe we need to ….
1) Hear the tough words that our actions don’t match upto our words. Often we say we want to follow God with our whole life but our actions and fruit don’t indicate that this is the case …
2) Swallow the bitter pill of repentance and confession. When we hear the tough words and are convicted by God’s spirit, we have to turn around and come back to God asking him to forgive us.
3) Live and Bear fruit. Once we are cleaned and forgiven, we need to bear the fruit that is indicative of a life being lived with God.
John came to prepare the way for the Lord. He came to make the paths straight, to level the mountains, fill in the valleys. But he came to do this not physically in the dirt, rocks and clay of the Palestinian countryside, but in the hearts and minds of people in the crowds that came to listen to him. John wasn’t a ditch digger or a road worker, he was a heart surgeon. And he came to perform radical heart surgery on people so that when the Messiah came, people would be ready to follow him and surrender fully to him.
Today we have just inducted our Board members. They are leaders in our church and as such, I want to spend a few moments talking directly to them. If you are a leader in any of our ministries here in this church, this probably also applies to you, so don’t tune out completely. To you, the leaders of our church and particularly the board members I want to challenge you to follow John the Baptist’s example in 3 areas? After that I’ve got 2 things I want to say to our whole congregation. Let’s have a bit of a look at John the Baptist first …
1) John held a realistic view of himself
Firstly John came as a prophet to prepare the way for the Messiah. As a prophet, he was not interested in gaining a following for himself. He could have - there were crowds that flocked to him. But as a prophet, he was keenly aware that he was simple an instrument used by God. He was not in charge. It wasn’t his program. And there was not any intrinsic importance in or of himself. Listen to what John said when the people in the crowd started to lift him up on a pedestal on which he didn’t belong.
15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
The people began to wonder whether John was the Messiah – Could it be? But John is under no illusions about what part he plays in God’s plan. He was not the Messiah. He baptizes merely with water. The Messiah will baptize people with the Holy Spirit and fire. John recognized his position – he was lower than the lowest of slaves owned by the Messiah. The description that John gives of himself here in vs 16 is fascinating. Sandals were the most common form of footwear in use at the time and because of all the walking around in the dirt and filth of the streets, it was not a really pleasant task to have to touch a person’s feet let along their sandals which would have trodden in all manner of rubbish. The removal of a sandal was assigned to one of the lowest slaves to do. John here says, I’m not even worthy enough to untie his sandals – not worthy enough to be his slave.
Another interesting aside here is that teachers who lived during this time were not paid. Their students showed their appreciation by serving them in various ways. There was a saying of the day which went like this … “Every service which a slave performs for his master shall a disciple do for his teacher except the loosing of his sandal thong.” If you were a disciple or a follower of a great teacher, you didn’t stoop to untie his sandals – that was left to the slaves. So John – even though he was named by Jesus as the greatest man ever born of a woman (Matt 11:11), was under no illusions of his position. Though a disciple, he would never think of claiming his rights.
This morning I want to challenge those of us in leadership positions to follow John’s example in the area of our self assessment. Do we have a self inflated view of our own importance or are we humbly recognizing our lowly position before the Messiah? A correct view of ourselves only comes when we recognize how glorious is the one we serve - When we recognize we are simply an instrument of the Most High God. ... Do we recognize that today as leaders - or are we proud of the work we do, thinking it is an essential cog in the wheel of this church? John the great prophet didn’t regard himself worthy enough even to untie Jesus’ sandal. What’s your view of yourself this morning – Are you arrogantly thinking of yourself important enough to hold his robe, his scepter or his crown? Let’s model John’s humility in leadership.
2) John had a correct focus for his ministry
Secondly, John had a correct focus for his ministry. His work was preparation for the coming Messiah who would come as a judge to sift and destroy. He came to help people escape judgment There are two vivid images of judgement here in these couple of verses. There is the picture of the ax at the root of the tree which is bearing no fruit (vs9). We talked about that at length last Sunday night so we won’t spend more time on that one – borrow the tape if you are interested. The other image is of a threshing floor (vs17). John says that Jesus will come with a winnowing fork ready to sift out the good grain from the chaff. You’ve probably seen pictures of how people used to cut the grain off, tie it together in sheaves and then carry it to a central location with a hard floor. The sheaves were then thrashed against the floor to break off the grains on the stem tips, but in the physical beating, often other bits of leaf and stem were also broken off, so at the end of the day, after all the sheaves were beaten, the people would come along with a big fork or a big shovel and would scoop all the grain and rubbish up and throw it into the air. At evening there would be a nice breeze blowing and it would catch the lighter material (which was the leaves and the rubbish) and blow it off the threashing floor. The good grain would fall back down where it could be collected and stored. After the winnowing operation, all the rubbish material was burned – John says in an unquenchable fire. John is saying that the Messiah is coming as a judge to sort out those that are good and those that are rubbish. Those whose lives don’t line up with God’s standard will be burned in the unquenchable fire of judgment.
John’s ministry was to prepare the way for the Lord – to straighten crooked hearts so that they would be ready to face the Messiah when he came. His job was to help people become good grain rather than chaff and so escape the judgement of God. And he did this with passion, with conviction, with determination and with a sense of urgency. In fact, his non-compromising stance cost him his life.
As leaders of this church, what is your job? No it’s not to balance the books, or to oversee Ladies or Men’s ministry or Children’s ministry or Pastoral Care. As leaders of this church, our job is to prepare people’s hearts and minds to accept the salvation that comes from God and to be found as grain not chaff when Jesus comes again or when people die and go to meet him first. Our church’s vision is Being the family of God and Bringing others into the family of God. While both are important, I want to challenge you that John put more emphasis on the later. His emphasis was Bringing others into the family of God and as leaders in this church we need to have this as our primary focus. Everything we do, needs to have this as its focus – we need to be out there preparing the way for the Lord. So let’s follow his example in regard to our self assessment and our focus.
3) John saw people’s needs not a crowd at a program
The last challenge I want to bring to the leaders of this church before I turn to the rest of the congregation is to say that John saw the people’s needs not a crowd at a program. He wasn’t interested in numbers. He didn’t preach radically to attract a crowd. No – he preached to call people to repentance that would lead to forgiveness of sins and therefore to salvation
John was interested in individual people. We read how he applied the message of repentance, forgiveness and living a life that would bear fruit to tax collectors, soldiers and the ordinary man. It is noteworthy that in vs 7, Luke uses a Greek word oclois to describe a huge throng. There was a great confused multitude that were gathering, but John saw them not as a confused mass of people, a oclois, but he saw them as a laon (vs18) - a group of people that had assembled with needs and with purpose. They were not numbers or an indistinguishable mass of people to John, but were individual people in need of salvation and he exhorted them and preached the good news to them hoping that some would repent.
As leaders, do we count people coming in the door. I know I am too often inclined to do that and use that as a measure of success of the program I’m running, but as leaders, we need to see the people not as a crowd, but as individual people all of whom need Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord. How would this change the way you thought about your ministry to see people instead of crowds – to see lost souls instead of numbers. I believe it would give us a purpose for ministering.
If we who are leaders are seeking God’s will for this church, I believe that we need to follow John’s example and become more like him – we need to
1) hold a realistic self assessment of ourselves - as servants - not worthy to untie his sandals.
2) have a correct focus for his ministry – to prepare the way for salvation and Bring others into his family
3) see people’s needs not a crowd at a program
Now 2 quick words to everyone here this morning – leaders and non-leaders.
1) Our leaders need your prayers
If we want to see leaders like we’ve just been talking about, we need to begin praying for them. Our leaders in this church here are as fallible and sinful as anyone else sitting in this room and to do these three things I’ve just outlined is going to be incredibly difficult for them. They need your prayers. Will you commit to pray for our church leaders this year? Today you would have received a little 5-5-5 card on it. This is a prayer reminder card for the 40 Days of Purpose campaign, but we want to expand it out to cover the whole of the work of our church this year. The idea is that you pray for 5 leaders for 5 mins at 5:00 everyday. I’ll let you decide am or pm or both. Pray for the board members, the ministry coordinators, the leaders in different ministries here. Pray for the organizers of the 40 Days of Purpose campaign. Pray for the campaign and your involvement. Will you commit to pray for our leaders? Will you commit to pray for Pastor Roger and myself? Use this 5-5-5 card to remind you to pray - 5 leaders for 5 min at 5:00 every day. I ask you to do this because I know we need it.
2) Our leaders are not the Messiah
And lastly, While I challenged our leaders to follow the example of John, I want to challenge you not to follow the prophet, but to follow the Messiah. Too many people want to follow God’s servants and forget to follow the the Messiah. The crowd gathered around John wanted to put him on the Messiah pedestal, but he said “No – don’t even think about it.”
When I look around, I see many people following other people. Some follow great Christian leaders, like Billy Graham, Bill Hybels, James Dobson, Chuck Swindoll Chuck Missler or Rick Warren. You hang on their every word and wait for their latest book. Others follow charismatic leaders or people who are making a name for themselves in popular culture. I see plenty of young people going crazy about Guy Sebastian and others almost worshipping sporting heros. But these are just people and we need to remember that we are called to follow the Messiah not his creatures or even his prophets.
In this church, there may be some of you who are coming along here or serving in a particular ministry just because of a particular leader and their influence on you. Some of you take for granted whatever your leader says without searching scripture for yourself. You need to be careful that you don’t unquestioningly follow that individual, but that you follow Christ our Savior. Don’t fall into the trap of following the prophet and miss the Messiah. So the challenge today is to follow the prophet’s example, but not to follow the prophet himself.
For our leaders particularly, – follow the example of John …
1) hold a realistic self assessment of ourselves - as servants - not worthy to untie his sandals.
2) have a correct focus for his ministry – to prepare the way for God’s salvation and Bring others into his family
3) see people’s needs not a crowd at a program
And for all of us
1) Pray for our leaders – for wisdom, strength and a humble heart,
2) Don’t follow our leaders at the expense of following the Messiah.
I pray that as we leave from here that God will burn these things on your hearts and minds so that they become part of your daily life.
