Response Goal: Individuals prompted by the Holy Spirit will pray the last verses of Psalm 139.
REPENTANCE POINT {paradigm shifts or changes in our thinking}: We need to get sober for Christmas. We need to admit Jesus came to save sinners like us. He didn’t come just for people like drug dealer and dead beat parents. He came for mass murders and terrorists as well as nice people like you and me.
PATTERN: INDUCTIVE Question - Answer
IDEAS for Bible Readings, Prayers or Songs
James 4:4-10
Hosea 14:1-9
When we drive long distances, as some of us just did for Thanksgiving, it is very easy to be lulled into a state of preoccupied semi-consciousness. You know what I’m talking about. You are driving down the freeway, and your mind is a hundred miles away. You’re thinking about all kinds of things. You’re thinking about the time you just spent with your family and friends. You’re thinking about the conversations you had, things they said that made you mad, things they said that made you laugh. You’re thinking about how much you ate and how long it’s going to take you to fit back into your clothes. In fact, you are so lost in thought that it takes you a while to realize that there is a highway patrol car coming up fast behind you -- and the lights are flashing! What happens?
Immediately your mind snaps back into the present. Your heart starts pounding. Your foot automatically goes over to the brakes to release the cruise control. Your eyes are riveted on your speedometer and then to your mirror. Every nerve in your body is wired for action. You are completely alert. Your attention is focused outward.
How so you feel when the officer passes you and zips on down the road? Words cannot describe the relief and gratitude you feel, right? That is what you might call a sobering experience.
So often we drive down the road but lost in a daze of thought until a rock hits the windshield or the truck in front of us loses its tire. All of a sudden, we’re jarred to complete attention. We straighten up, and take whatever corrective action is necessary. Our focus goes completely outward.
Friends, that is exactly what God has in mind to prepare us for the experience of Christmas. We need to get sober for Christmas. We must snap to attention in order to prepare the way. We need a waking up, a coming to complete awareness. As the Old Testament prophet Isaiah put it, we need to straighten up and fly right in order to "see the salvation of God."
Essentially that is what is happening when the people go to hear John the Baptist out in the wilderness. That’s exactly what the words of John the Baptist accomplish.
Movement ONE
You’ve heard about preachers who preach fire and brimstone. Well, John the Baptist certainly was one of the best. He came proclaiming "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." Through the call to baptism he was saying: "You need to be cleansed from sin." The emphasis was repentance: "You need to turn from preoccupation with ourselves to an outward alert focus on God."
So, with the sobering affect of the highway patrol’s lights behind us, John tells the people that there is an axe against their necks, that the fire of God’s wrath is ready to fall, and that they better straighten up and fly right.
John is using this harsh judgment language in order to say, "Hey! Wake up!" He’s giving them an absolutely necessary call so that they can be ready for the visitation of God.
The crowds who took him seriously were all ears. They were completely sobered. They were wired for action. And they were begging him, asking him, "What should we do? If the presence of God is just round the corner, how do we get ready?"
That, my friends, is the question of Advent. During Advent, we ask the question: What should we do to get ready?
Movement TWO
Perhaps you’re wondering, "What is Advent?" Good question.
Advent is a time in the church’s life that is set apart to prepare us for the significance of Christmas.
Perhaps the best word to describe this time of preparation is the word humility -- recognizing that we really have been lost in our own thoughts. Humility -- recognizing that we really have been a million miles away from God’s presence and purposes in our lives.
Have you heard the story about a pastor who was officiating at a funeral? When he was done, he was asked to lead the funeral procession as it made its way to the cemetery. So he got into his car, and he started driving at the head of the funeral procession. He flipped on his radio and became preoccupied, lost in thought; he forgot where he was going. About that time, he passed a K-Mart and thought about something he needed to pick up.
So he turned into the parking lot. As he was looking for a parking space, he just happened to glance into the rear view mirror and saw a string of cars following, all with their lights on! So he pulled out of the parking lot, and led everyone to the cemetery feeling so very humbled.
That kind of thing happened to Israel. God put His chosen people out in front to lead the way, so that all peoples could see the way to the one true God. Then Israel took their eyes off God. They became preoccupied with themselves. And now we see them in this text looking in the mirror, so to speak, and being humbled.
Friends, this is the movement of Advent. Moving us from preoccupation with ourselves, which is sin, and moving us, sobering us, preparing us for the presence of the Holy One. That’s the purpose of John the Baptist. He calls us to wake up, to get sober and to turn to an outward attentiveness, to an outward sense of expectation before God’s presence appears. It is an absolutely necessary, divinely ordered call.
You and I both know that there are always those who refuse to get sober because they don’t think they need it. There are always individuals refusing to be humbled because they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong. And we find out several chapters later in Luke that there were many that refused to be baptized by John the Baptist. We also see that these people reject John’s call to baptism because they didn’t think there was anything they needed to be cleansed from. They were good Jews. They were Abraham’s descendants. They were citizens of God’s kingdom, righteous in all of their deeds.
Then, the same people who refused to receive John’s baptism of humility also refused to receive Jesus. Christmas came right to them, and they missed it. They refused it because they were not ready. God made the two to go together. John comes first to prepare us and then Jesus comes to bring God’s presence into our lives. We cannot skip to Jesus without the message of John. We cannot skip to Christmas without getting appropriately sober, and appropriately humbled. That’s what Advent is all about.
Advent moves us from preoccupation with ourselves to humble, outward expectation.
Movement THREE
Recently, I read about a Christian counselor, who was having trouble with the teaching in her church. They had done a whole series of lessons on the new confession of faith put out by the Presbyterian Church, called a "Brief Statement of Faith." The problem that she had was with one line in this confession, which says, "We deserve God’s condemnation." The counselor asked, "Do you realize how many people I see in my practice who are so beat down with shame that they can hardly function? When they come to church on Sunday mornings, they don’t need to hear that they deserve God’s condemnation. They need to hear that they deserve God’s love."
She raises a good point, something that we need to clarify before we can move on. What does it mean to be humbled before God? What does it mean for me to say that I am a sinner who needs to be cleansed, that I need baptism, that I need repentance, that I need forgiveness? What does it mean for us to say that we are sinners who deserve God’s condemnation?
John Bradshaw wrote a book called Healing the Shame that Binds You. At the beginning of that book, he talks about two kinds of shame. One shame he describes as toxic shame. That is the shame that binds. It is the shame that does not come from truth. It is the shame that does not come from love. It is the shame that cripples and condemns. It’s the shame that this therapist I read about is concerned about. It is the shame that God weeps over and seeks to heal.
Bradshaw goes on and says there is also a healthy shame. There is the shame that heals. This is the kind of shame that comes from God’s truth, the kind of shame that comes from God’s love. It is the shame that sobers. It is the shame that recognizes a wrong direction. It is the shame that recognizes that my preoccupation with myself has led me astray, the shame that recognizes, "I have been so self-centered, Lord, that I have forgotten about you and your ways."
That is the shame that caused even John the Baptist -- that Jesus described as the most godly man ever born -- to a say to the crowds who wanted to make him the Messiah, "Wait a minute! There’s One coming who is much greater, much more powerful than I am. In fact, I am not worthy even to bend down and untie his sandals. I am not worthy to approach God even in the lowest way imaginable."
Healthy shame realizes that none of us deserve God’s presence, none of us deserve God’s love.
I am not worthy. You are not worthy. None of us is worthy to meet the love that comes to us at Christmas in Jesus Christ. And that is the only way we can be ready to receive him. We need to get sober, completely humble, knowing that we are completely unworthy.
False shame cripples and condemns but healthy shame prepares us to receive Jesus.
How do we know if we really are ready for Christmas? Well, the genuineness of your readiness will be seen in the genuineness of your soberness. And the genuineness of your soberness shows up in your behavior. "Bearing fruits worthy of repentance" is what John said. Those who get sober will straighten up, and they will be tuned outward. Those they live with and those they work with will see those that get sober and turned outward.
Did you notice the questions that were asked when the people and the tax collectors and the soldiers came to John the Baptist? They asked, "What should we do?" John’s answers had to do with their behavior at home and at work. They were behaviors that were marked by outward orientation, marked by loving kindness, marked by generosity. They were not concerned about their own needs. They were concerned about others.
But the point that you need to hear is not the importance of the works. It’s the importance of the genuineness of a sobering before God.
Malcolm Muggeridge, a journalist, said about himself: "It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact [for good]…. Yet, I say to you and I beg you to believe these tiny triumphs can be multiplied by a million, added all together, and they are [less than nothing]. They cannot compare to one [sip] of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are."
When we get truly sober for Christmas, we will act like it. We will wake up and pay attention to God. We will listen to His Spirit as we read the Bible and pray. We will love the people he loves. We will experience Jesus and our lives will be changed by His presence.
I heard a story about a lady who went to an airport lounge with a small package of cookies that she purchased. She sat down and began reading her newspaper between flights. As she was reading, she heard a rustling noise next to her. She looked from behind her newspaper and was flabbergasted to see that a neatly dressed man was helping himself to her cookies.
Well, she didn’t want to make a scene, so she leaned over and took a cookie herself. A few minutes passed and then came more rustling. He was helping himself to another cookie. By this time they had come to the end of the package; she was so angry, she didn’t trust herself to say anything.
As if to add insult to injury, the man took the remaining cookie, broke it in two, pushed half of it over to her, ate the other half, and then left. She was absolutely fuming.
A little while later, she was still fuming, but her flight was announced. She reached into her purse to get her ticket, and when she did, to her shock and embarrassment, she found her package of unopened cookies!
How humbling for her! How generous of him!
Thesis:
Humility and generosity -- that is the order of Advent.
REPENTANCE POINT: How should we change?
We need to get sober for Christmas. We need to admit Jesus came to save sinners like us. He didn’t come just for people like drug dealer and dead beat parents. He came for mass murders and terrorists as well as nice people like you and me.
RESPONDING TO GOD: What can we do right now?
Join me in praying for a sobering experience with God’s Holy Spirit.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:323-24)
