Unusual Peace

Transcript

You know how something bugs you until you get it right. All right, well, turn with me to the Gospel according to Luke, chapter three. The Gospel According to Luke, chapter three. And when you have found that, go ahead and stand for the reading of our gospel text this morning.

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Notice these words found in Luke 3. And we'll start with verse 1.

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In the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was ruler of Galilee and his brother Philip, ruler of the region of Itera and Tractonidus and Licinius, ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as is written in the book. The words of the prophet Isaiah. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.

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Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth. And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

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Lord Jesus, we thank you for your holy word to us right here in this room. And, Lord, now we need the help of your Holy Spirit, because what we want most of all is your voice in our life. We want to hear your voice over our own, over the preacher, over politics, over all the other noise on social media. We want your voice. So would you give us your voice today?

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We pray in your name. Amen. You can be seated.

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Well, here we are, the second Sunday of Advent. And this Sunday actually has to do with peace, as you heard from our peace candle. And again, you can see back here at the back, we've got a representation of the four Sundays of Advent. Hope, peace, joy, and love. Or other iterations of that are hope, love, joy, and peace.

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Again, it doesn't necessarily matter which order per se. But here's the thing that's interestingly consistent with the second Sunday of Advent across all three years of the church cycle. Is this John the Baptist. He shows up in the second week, always and always when we recount the story of Christmas, we cannot ever skip over John the Baptist in a real way. He is the greatest end of the prophets, because Jesus is going to end prophecy, specifically speaking, because he is the greatest of all prophets, right?

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Just like he ends sacrifices, because he is the greatest of sacrifices, ends it in the sense that it finds its final fulfillment, its teleological end in him. All right? And so today we remember peace, but also John the Baptist. But John the Baptist never has really struck me as like a dude of peace, you know, because he's crying out in the wilderness, for crying out loud, right? I mean, we even think.

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I mean, at least in my mind's eye, I think of him kind of as a wild haired, you know, leather belt, camel hair wearing guy, you know, that's out in the wilderness. He's not a city guy. Maybe, maybe it's one of these kind of characters when you go to the city, he's the guy that doesn't really fit in, you know what I mean? Kind of like that dude on the street that's got the end of the world's coming, right? Maybe it's that guy.

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Maybe he's a little crazy, maybe he's a little out of it looking. And yet Jesus says, listen, born of women, he is the greatest. That's pretty high, isn't it? And he's the end of the prophets. In other words, he's going to end classical traditional prophecy all through the Old Testament.

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He's going to culminate them all, draw them all down, and he's going to prepare the way. And ultimately we see the fulfillment of that sort of thing as he quotes even Isaiah here concerning himself, a voice crying out in the wilderness. And I find it fascinating today where this text begins. Did you notice it's all these names, right? Maybe these names that we're not very familiar of, familiar with.

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Maybe it's these names that are even geographically located. We're told there's a lot of specificity here, isn't it? Geography. In fact, there's actually nine proper names mentioned here. All right?

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And there's also five geographical territories and one exact date, very specific date, right at the meal in the 15 year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Now, you couldn't have gotten any clearer. Historically, he's the emperor, not just of a local area of the world, right? We're talking about, this is Rome after all, okay? This is the emperor of the world, all right?

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And so you're set. You're dating something by something, someone that is so well known that it's unmistakable, okay? The certainty level goes way up. And you might say, well, Pastor, why would this be significant? I often find, you know, when people try to read the Bible, they get all caught up with names and places.

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And some Bibles even have, you know, like this one apparently has maybe a map or so at the back, right? And we don't know always what to do with that, do we? But here's the point of our faith is this. Our faith is not a faith that is legend. Our faith is not a faith that is mythic.

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Our faith is not a fairy tale, you know, because unbelievers will oftentimes mistakenly, and maybe they really don't know because they haven't read it. So we can't just immediately blast people for this. But if you've never read the Bible, you might assume that what's here in the text is actually a fairy tale. But you know how fairy tales work. Fairy tales begin a certain way, don't they?

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And they end once upon a time, okay? And then they end. Everybody lived happily ever after, okay? We don't find that exact method here. And so we can't.

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It's not fairy tale. When we start looking at myth, when we lay the Bible beside myth, ancient Near Eastern myth, which would have been simultaneous to a lot of the Old Testament, okay? Again, such a difference, such key differences that we have to conclude the Bible's not mythic and it's not legend. It's not something historical that we kind of just piled on various things to where now it's so far removed from reality that you know, it's not true. Instead, our faith is grounded in time and space.

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Time. And again, remember, time is measured by motion, right? And then everything's in motion, by the way, all of life, okay? The Buddha that was one of his main points in life was this, but also later Aristotle. That's when his everything's in motion.

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If it's in motion. It had a cause, right? Real simple argument for God, okay? If there's something in motion that if you see a ball roll across the, like I did back here in the back, it's like, stop throwing a ball. You know, in the church, right?

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That's. That was kind of part of the problem back there, if you, if you know it, if you get my drift here, okay? There was something that caused it. That little cause was a 10 year old, you know, that kind of thing. And so you look for a cause when you see motion.

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Well, we see motion everywhere. Therefore there's a cause of everything. And that cause of course goes all the way back up to God. And so our faith is not one that is abstract and spiritual in the sense that it has no bearing in time and space, which is that fabric that even Einstein, remember, tells us makes up our world, okay? That we're in, whatever that might mean, but we're in it.

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You're here, okay? And you can't be here and in China at the same time. And so time and space, we get that in the Bible. And that's why the Bible labors at times, okay, to ground our faith in the physical world. Which is why even here, in what we have around us, we don't just come in here and everything is blank.

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Okay? You know, and we just kind of meditate and we lower the lights and we try to drown out the physical world. No, our faith invites to see the physical world as caused by God, as actually his creation, as actually pointing up to him. In other words, if you follow the cords of all of the causes, ultimately the source is the one true living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So rather than, oh, okay, I gotta think Christian, which means I gotta leave the world behind and go up into some spiritual, you know, whatever, mysticism.

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No, no, no, no, no, no. It's grounded in a meal, isn't it? It's grounded in. Remember what John's doing here. Baptism water.

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You feel the water, you eat the bread, you drink from the cup. You hear a voice, right? Look at the candles, you look at the trees, you see the lights. You see the sweaters today, right? I mean, the point is, we have a faith that so often we try to untether from the physical world.

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And Christ comes into the physical world, not just into it in some sort of spiritual reality, but as a baby. We said this way, as a stinking baby, right?

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It's true. He comes right to a manger, doesn't he? Surrounded by animals. He's in a feeding trough when he's born. And before that, in the womb, like all of us, gestating and growing, you see, because Christ comes down for us, because he is incarnate of the flesh, the physical world.

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What is spiritual God is spirit, right? Becomes physical. Let that set in. That is a profound mystery. But he sanctifies the physical world.

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By doing so, he sanctifies the womb by doing so, he sanctifies being an infant. He sanctifies being a toddler. You remember, at eight days old, you remember this? He was raised up in the temple. He was circumcised.

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And then at 12 years old, he's seen in the temple again. And then at 30, and then upon his last days, also seen in the temple.

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See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. That's the Malachi reading. He'll suddenly, as a little baby, can you. I would love to have been at that scene when that old man you remember holds up.

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Remember it was an older man and an older lady. Simon. Simon, yes. And. Huh.

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Yeah. And Anna, he holds this little baby up. Infant. I mean, eight days. Have you ever held a baby?

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Listen, when.

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I wish I had a story. Because part of what we're talking about today is peace. And you can't be at peace if you're lost. You know, you're pretty frantic when you're lost. But I don't know a time where I've ever been physically lost.

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You know what I mean? Like, I just don't. I can't remember a time. Like everybody always kind of has. Yeah, it was one time out in the woods.

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I don't really go out in the woods. Like, just not my thing, you know, to go hunting. And if I do, I know where I'm at, you know? And so I've never really been. But I thought to myself, what is the story of me being lost?

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I'll tell you a story of me being lost was when Jackson was born, my firstborn, and they. He came out of the womb. Less graphic here. Came out of the womb. They handed that baby to me, okay?

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That big old dude back there, they handed. He was a little bitty baby, you know, infant baby. I had never held another human being that small in my life. I don't even know if I'd ever held a baby. And I'm sitting here and I was completely lost.

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I didn't know what to do. And when I got home, still didn't know what to do. And sometimes now I still don't know what. I feel lost. Sometimes in parenting, I hope I'm not alone, and I don't think I am.

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Okay? Sometimes it's like, what do we do? And when you're lost, you need to hear a voice. This is what we do. It's like, dad, what do I do?

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It's like, well, hold him like this. Well, typically I call, as you all know, I call for Jessica. Right? Jessica. That's my.

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You know, my family makes fun of me because I call for her. So much for helping. I'm a needy dude. I can't help it. But I'm like, jessica, help.

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I don't know what to do. And so here's a voice that appears in the wilderness crying out. And I can imagine. Now all of a sudden, the Christ child appears under Roman rule. Think about this.

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Under one of the worst regimes the world has ever seen, okay? They were, you know, all about Rome. It's awful. I mean, way worse than our situation Here in America, okay, and here it is. And he suddenly appears in the temple.

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What a scene. What a scene. And of course the song of Zechariah is celebrating some of that as well. And so we get here first and foremost, nine different names. And interestingly, you start with the largest name there is, right?

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The king of the world, the emperor of the whole world, Tiberius. And you dial it into Pontius Pilate. Again, you remember him. We say him every single week because of his participation in the worst thing humans have ever done, which is to crucify the pure, innocent Lamb of God. And then you dial it into Herod, okay, who was self proclaimed king of the Jews.

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And then brother Philip and so on and so forth. And then get this, two priests, two high priests in fact, Annas and Caiaphas. Annas had been deposed by the Romans and so many still observed him as the high priest. And yet Caiaphas was the actual high priest. And so there were actually two high priests at this point.

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And of course we know there's really a third here around who is Jesus the high priest that will end all high priests, because he takes that role, because all the high priestly role was pointing to him the whole time. And so you get all these names and notice, notice about the names. And then you actually get a 10th one, which is Isaiah. Now think about it. You have here prophet Isaiah, priests, right?

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Annas, Caiaphas, and what King, Prophet, priest and king. In other words, these are all secularized or religiousized names that Luke, who remember, is a physician. He is a Greek physician, he's not a Jew. He's one of the only writers of the Bible, much less the New Testament documents, that is a gentile, not a Jew. Very significant.

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So he's very concerned with kind of grounding the faith in history for our certitude, in other words, for us to be certain of what we believe. And so like a physician who I'm told always takes notes, you meet with a patient, you take notes, right before you meet the patient, you take, you look at notes, okay, they're all about the notes, they're all about the details. He's here giving us these secularized historical, literally time and space details and saying this is when all of a sudden there was a voice that came crying out in the wilderness. It was during this time with all the prophets, all the priests, all the kings coalescing around then the forerunner of the prophet, priest and King Jesus.

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And it's interesting, I love the little semi just if you still have it open the Word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. So all these greats, we could think of them as stars. And in fact, in the ancient world, rulers were seen as stars. Because, you know, in the ancient world, your GPS was the stars, right? If you travel by night, it was the stars.

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During the day, it's the sun, which is a star, right? And so you always oriented yourself by the stars, by the celestial beings. And so they became the celestial beings. And you know this from myth as well, they become stars or rulers. So rulers were seen as stars by which we are oriented.

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And even that, they bring peace. Because if you're lost, well, look up, right? Really simple principle. If you're lost, look up. Whether it's night or whether it's day, you can orient yourself to the stars.

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And so all of these stars are mentioned. And today, sometimes we, like I said a couple weeks ago, we don't really get the whole king thing. And we're not on board as Americans. Like, oh, no, kings are not for us. And yet so quickly, so quickly, we might not give our power to kings, but we give them to celebrities, don't we?

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And what do we call those celebrities? Stars, right? Dancing with the Stars, you know?

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Yeah. We give our power, our influence. We listen to their voice and obey celebrities, of all people.

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There's one star of the show, it's his show, and he is the light of the world.

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Let's not be drawn away with these stars that will mislead us. Instead, let's fixate upon the sun himself, Jesus Christ. Okay, so this word. But notice the word comes where? Where?

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In the palace. Think about this. Think about this with me. In the palace with a king. No, in.

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In the halls of the temple. No, no, in the desert. The Judean desert, to be exact. That's where the word of the Lord comes. Now, if you've read the Old Testament, immediately we ought to say.

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You know what? That's kind of typical, isn't it? In the Old Testament, where does the law come from? In the wilderness. Right.

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In Mount Sinai. On Mount Sinai. Out in the wilderness? Trust me, it's not. In Great Egypt, they left this notice.

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They left the city of man and went to Zion. Okay, which is known as what? The city of God. That's Jerusalem. On the way, they stop at Mount Sinai.

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Horeb. Mount Horeb, which is where the law is given. So God speaks to them in the wilderness. You remember when Elijah went through his tough time? Where does he go?

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He goes to the wilderness. In fact, he goes all the way back to Mount Sinai, and this is where God then speaks to him in a whisper. Just in a whisper, right? Which is why we kind of call our devotional life Quiet Time, is because if you're gonna hear a whisper, you gotta get quiet, right? You gotta get quiet.

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You can't have the radio blasting. You can't be looking at all the other stars and listen to podcasts and look, I like to do all those things too, okay? Gotta get quiet. Gotta shut out some of the voices of this world, your own voices. Think about that.

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How many times do my voice. Is my voice the loudest in my head? Shut that out for just a minute. Let's receive a word from God. The word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.

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Here's Luke once again grounding it, but showing us that it's in the wilderness that the word of God comes. And listen.

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Let's look at our life and say this. Isn't it often in the desert when we're able to finally hear his voice?

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It's not when we're wining and dining in the city and everything's going well. It's not in the good times, but it's in the times where all of a sudden everything dries up in your life. You ever had those times? I mean, things were working and now they're not. What you were doing was great and now it's not.

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You're still in the same house, you still got the same life, but things are not the same. It's dried up, you're in a desert. But that's maybe when we can finally see our need for God. We so easily just live our life as if we don't need God. As practical atheists, we profess, oh yeah, I believe in God, you know, so and so forth.

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And then we go and act like it's all on us.

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That's what practical atheism is, when we actually are living it out, walking it out, we don't really think God has our best in mind. I gotta do it. If I'm gonna find happiness, it's gonna be. It's gonna be through my actions here, not through trusting him. And of course, that is anti faith.

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No, instead he wants to shine in our life, showing us the way, even in the wilderness. Notice the Luke reading, which was our canticle reading, says this. Well, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. That's all of us, by the way. The shadow of death is upon all of Us and to guide our feet into the way of what?

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Peace. Peace. You see, rulers are supposed to bring order, which then brings peace. Peace is not just the absence of conflict. Not in the Bible.

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Shalom, that Hebrew word that we're familiar with of peace is not just absence of contention in our life, absence of trouble. That's not what. It's not just the erasing of trouble in some kind of neutral ground. No, no. It is the fulfillment of things.

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It's everything in its right place, everything operating as it should.

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Like when I go to crank my car, it should operate like this. And this year we found out that across all of our cars that we had not the case. You know, there's problems, okay? It's things functioning like they're supposed to at top performance. That's what this idea of peace.

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And rulers are supposed to bring that about. And so often they don't. In fact, history, is it not? It's riddled with ruler after ruler after ruler and religious leader after religious leader. Fail, fail, fail.

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That's why Christ must come. He is the new David. David gets close, but he's not even close compared to the new David. Jesus, who then takes on upon himself prophet, priest and king, and is the perfect prophet, priest and king and representation of humanity. In fact, the reason Jesus comes is to draw us point blank into the life of God himself.

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The very life of the Holy Trinity. Which is why when we're baptized with water, how are we baptized but in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit. It's initiation into the very nature of God himself. It's not just about your sins being forgiven so you don't have to go to hell. If that's what you think the gospel is.

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That is a deficient gospel. You are being drawn into the very life of God to be like him, to be one with Him. And forgiveness is necessary. Absolutely. But it is the beginning place.

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For he wants to draw us in and destroy sin forever. In fact, he wants to bring us to a place of freedom. Notice again in the Luke reading the canticle. He has come to his people and set them free.

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Where do they go when they've been set free? The children of Israel, you remember, where do they go when they're set free from Egypt? Wilderness. Where does Jesus go when he's baptized? Wilderness.

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Where will he take us? And by the way, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, remember? Where will he take us? He's going to take us to the wilderness so that we can become close to Him. He wants us to Hear his voice.

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The word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. And here we have this voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.

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Every valley shall be filled and every mountain hill shall be made low. What is he saying here? He's saying the dark times in life, you know, valleys, they're gonna be lifted up and then the mountains, the things that seem like mountains to us, challenges to us, insurmountable. We might say he's gonna bring them low and it's gonna be a flat place, a clear road. We could say it with Isaiah, a highway of holiness.

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And what is our job during Advent but to prepare the way for Christ into our own hearts. How do we do that? Well, I always like the image of clearing a place for a helicopter to land, right? So like if you're in war, you know, it's like, man, we gotta get, we gotta get this dude out. He's injured, we gotta get him out.

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We gotta find a landing zone. So you gotta clear an area so that the helicopter can land and that person be saved. I wonder if we could just see our own hearts and lives today and ask the Lord, what do you want to clear away so that you can land in my life to save me? What is it in your own hearts? What has encroached upon the throne of your own heart that he would say, I would like to cleanse you of that so that I can make your crooked straight, your rough smooth.

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That's what he's doing. That's what the Holy Spirit comes to do, so that all notice, all flesh shall see the salvation of God. All flesh.

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Are you hearing the voice of the Lord in your life? Are you refusing to go into the wilderness? Some of this wilderness language spiritually can be self imposed. In fact, through mortification, as we call it, fancy term for self denial. And did you know we don't often talk about this often, but did you know that Advent is a season of preparation, like Lent, which is to say it is a time of not feasting but fasting.

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And so I just want you to practice real quick and just think with me. Do you have a habit, worse, a vice, an addiction that somehow you could put to death? Just today, maybe like today, Sunday, or maybe this week, you say, you know, I'm just not going to do that. I normally do it, I'm not going to do that. So for instance, I normally overeat, I'm not going to do that.

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Just using that as an example because Well, I do that. I'm just going to stick with this one plate and I'm going to finish there and leave a little room. Like, I could still eat a lot more, but I'm not. Now that's an innocent one. Some of us have way more nasty things than that.

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And I may as well. Okay, and let's think of that. Let the Lord put that in there. What do you always tend toward? Let's put that to death.

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Because preparation for Christmas is now. Now is the day of salvation. Let's put that out. Okay? Now think of this.

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Think of somebody that you don't like.

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Some of you got them quicker than others, Right. Hopefully not in this room. Right. Hopefully not sitting beside you. Now pray for them.

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Like actually just do that right now. Just pray for them. Say that name to the Lord. Pray for their salvation.

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That's somebody that gets on your nerves. Let's talk about those people just in your head, not out loud. Let's think of somebody that just. Oof. Let's do something nice for them.

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Just like a little something, maybe, like, maybe you work with them. I don't know, handwrite a little letter. Hey, just really appreciate your work. Thanks for being on the team. Whatever.

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Something like that. Now, don't lie. But, you know, like, hey, really appreciate you. Merry Christmas. Something simple, okay?

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Maybe it's your spouse, maybe for you, maybe you got something you need to forgive. I don't know. Listen, there's a lot of ways to do this. Let's clear the way. Let's clear some of this stuff out so that Christ can come anew and afresh and land in our life with his light, so that he can light us up, so that we can be what he says we are, which is the light of the world.

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Now we're coming into the darkest days of the year, aren't we? I mean, there's a reason why Christmas is at this point. There's a reason why Jesus birthday, he chose to come in the darkest days of our calendar.

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That's why we've got light that's representing these little light pockets. And then the full light will come, the light of the world. Listen, we need to trim the hedges so that the light can fully shine in.

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So allow the Lord to work in your own mind and heart now to say, listen, I want to trim this out. I want to trim this out so that my salvation will fully come to your life, so that the word of God can come to the wilderness of our heart.

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Do you want that? You want Jesus to come fully in your life. I sure do. Lord, I pray for my brothers and sisters. That is the same.

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In the name of the Father, Son and Spirit, amen.

Total Duration 00:34:44