Unlikely Joy

Transcript

Thank you, sir. All right, well, turn with me to the Gospel According to Luke, chapter three. The Gospel of Luke, chapter three.

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And when you found Luke three, go ahead and stand for our gospel reading this morning. Now, we're really just picking up from last week, if you remember. And so, interestingly, for three weeks now, we've been dealing with John. You know, here's this prophet, okay? And he is always getting in the way of our Advent preparation, isn't he?

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And so you're not going to be ever able to avoid John. And so we don't want to avoid John because Jesus says he is the greatest of the prophets. Interesting, isn't it? Born of women, he is the greatest. Okay, Notice these words here as we look at Luke 3.

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And starting with verse 7 here, John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin 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 the ax is lying at the root of the trees, and every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. And the crowds ask him, what then should we do?

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In reply, he said to them, whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise. Every even tax collectors came to be baptized. And they asked him, teacher, what should we do? He said to them, collect no more than the amount prescribed for you. Soldiers also asked him, and we what should we do?

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He said to them, do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages. As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I is coming. I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

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His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary. But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. So with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. Lord Jesus, thank you for this word this morning. May it be a word for us in this place now, in this time, in this space.

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By the power of your Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. And you can be seated well, this particular year C, which is dealing with Luke, and this third Sunday of Advent in Luke always has this reading, okay? And it's interesting because today is supposed to be the advent of joy, right? We lit the candle of joy.

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Okay, but when I read the gospel reading today, did you find a lot of joy? I mean, could I just remind you how he begins? You bunch of vipers. Let me translate. You bunch of snakes.

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You family. You den of snakes. Who told you to come and repent? That's pretty sharp, isn't it? Doesn't sound like a joyful tone, perhaps.

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You know, I one time I had a parishioner here at the church, and they came and told me after the service. They said, you know, I just can't deal with it. You're just so negative. You're just so negative. Your message is always negative.

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And, you know, I thought about it for a second. I said, well, I don't know what else to do, because here's a reality in the Bible is before there's good news, there's bad news.

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And of course, I join, unfortunately, if you want to put it this way, a whole host of prophets who have a lot of bad news, don't they? Judgment's coming. In fact, if you've ever read the Old Testament, there's a lot of talk of judgment, and in particular, the prophets, okay? You've got the major prophets, of course, Isaiah, Jeremiah, right? Ezekiel, okay?

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Even Daniel has his place in this. And then you've got all the minor props, all 12 of them. And one of the things, and I just taught on this recently, again, one of the things about the prophets, okay, is this. They call people to repentance. Now, what does that mean?

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Turn around. In other words, you're going the wrong way. Turn around now. Can we ever get turned around if we don't understand we're going the wrong way? You see, before we can get on the right path, we must realize we're on the wrong path.

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And that's bad news, isn't it? Nobody wants to be wrong, and nobody wants to be found on the wrong path. And to be honest with you, prophets like the long train that I'm in here, because this is prophecy is preaching. The reality is I very much identify with Jeremiah when he says this in his book. Do you remember this from Jeremiah?

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He goes like this. He goes, you know what, Lord? I don't want to be the guy who everybody's making fun of, because here comes Mr. Judgment Guy. Here's Mr.

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Negative. That's literally what he said. That his name had become a household joke because of how much judgment he had to preach. He didn't like it. And he said, you know what?

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I'm going to stop. I'm going to just stop all this. I'm going to turn this around, and I'm only going to be positive. You know what he said? He said, but there's a fire in my bones, and I got to let it out.

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It's got to come out.

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Unfortunately, that parishioner left and, you know, went on to do their own thing. But I hope. I hope they know that equally, the bad news is not even on a par with the good news. It's not like, oh, we move from bad news to equally good news. No, no, the good news far supersedes the bad news.

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And we must preach that if we are always on the bad news side of things, we've got to get that corrected. And it's always been, honestly, a reminder to me of, hey, listen, if you're going to talk about bad news, great, it's necessary. But let's make sure the good news always supersedes the bad. And so we want to make sure of that today. But how?

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How do we do this with a brood of vipers? Think about it. An ax laid at the root of the tree, okay? A winnowing fork, lots of fire here in our text, seeming judgment, looming judgment. Where is the good news, Pastor?

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Well, let's get to that good news. What does he mean here when he brings up this indictment of you brood of vipers? It's interesting that most of the time we associate the Pharisees or the Sadducees, perhaps with this brood of vipers, because in Matthew and other places, other gospels, it is associated with them. However, here in Luke's account, he just says it to the whole crowd. You brood of vipers, what does this mean for us?

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It means this. We. I like to think of things as clear, right? As we say in the black and white of judgment. And that is to say that we have our bad guys in the world, right?

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And we have our good guys in the world, okay? And we know who those are. Okay? Maybe you can think of some right now. And it wouldn't take long for us to just talk about certain maybe religious prophets right now that we know are false prophets.

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And we can say, oh, yeah, that's the bad ones. That's the bad. But here's what I would love for us to consider today, and it's this. The line of evil is not out there. Now hear me.

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The Brood of vipers is not out there, but in here, we all have a den of snakes, you know? Cause snakes are sneaky, right? That's the whole point of, like, the snake analogy here. Okay? And this is also why I don't like snakes.

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Can I just throw that out there like some people say? Well, look, it's something God created. You shouldn't not like snakes. But the problem is, you know, metaphorically, snakes are always used to be the bad guy, aren't they? Yeah.

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I mean, have you watched Harry Potter? You know, okay, remember the Basilisk? Remember? Okay, we want that thing to die, right? It's in the piping.

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It's unseen. It's sneaky. You remember this? Okay, well, thing here in the Scriptures is it's used as something not good. Okay?

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Now the eagles, you remember eagles? Hey, that's a good. That's a good animal, right? You remember Lord of the Rings, et cetera. Okay, again, Harry Potter, same thing.

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Eagles. Eagles are good, right? Cause they eat snakes. They kill snakes. All right?

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They can do that. All right? That's why. And so here's the good news about this. Bad news, if I could put it this way, is this.

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Once we realize that there's a den in us, that there's something sneaky about us, that there's something lurking behind the scenes in us, the sooner we can allow the Holy Spirit to go after that, to kill it in us. This is why we must die to ourselves. It's not an option. For all Christians are called to die to yourself. Why?

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Because within us is this fallen, sneaky snake like brood of vipers. The line of evil runs right through us. And the sooner we recognize it, the sooner God can begin to deal with it, because we must confess it. We must kneel before him like we do in our Holy Communion liturgy. And we say what we are, and that is sinners in need of God's salvation.

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And so UBRU to vipers leads John to then say, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. All right, now, in our own tradition of Methodism, okay, because we're Harvest Point Methodist Church, which is a Wesleyan theological tradition. Wesley in means it comes from John Wesley. In other words, we see him as our founding father of this particular branch of Christianity. And here's the thing about Wesley, he used to say this.

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Two things, actually, I want to share with you that he used to say. He'd say this. Know your disease, know your cure. Say that with me. Know your disease, know your cure.

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It's a very simple. But something that has stuck with me ever since I read it. Know your disease, know your cure. In other words, what he's wanting to apply to our lives, we will never understand if we don't know our disease. And our disease is sin.

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Our disease is a selfishness. Remember St. Augustine again in cravatus inse, a heart turned in on itself. We want to seek our own every single chance we get. If left to our own devices, we would turn into the worst demonic sort of thing, left to our own.

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Thank God that we don't have that kind of power. Thank God that He has limited our ability, that he limits the ability of evil in the world, in fact, through his prevenient or preventing grace. And have you found it in your life, like mine, that he has prevented me at times from doing evil toward others? Thank God he has. Even when I couldn't see it, he has prevented me.

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And that is his grace. Thanks be to God. So, but then also this. Know your disease, know your cure. But here's the other thing.

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To be a member of one of the early Methodist societies, which was society meant church for them, to be a part of the local church. In other words, in Methodism, here was the one requirement. You ready? Flee the wrath to come. You must confess that you want to flee the wrath to come and be saved from your sins.

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In other words, that was the one requirement to be a member, was to say, I want to flee the wrath to come and be saved from my sins. Now just think about that, because it sounds to our modern 21st century ear, maybe as a little outdated wrath. Pastor, God's a God of love, right? He is. He is.

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That's why there's wrath against sin.

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Isn't it love that compels justice when someone has done your loved one wrong? Isn't it love that compels justice to be served There the pursuit of justice absolutely comes from love. And so it is with God and his wrath against sin. And so John says, look, bear fruit is worthy of repentance. Then in other words, to repent means an action.

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It's never mental. It's never just mental. It must move from our head to our heart, where our will resides again, metaphorically, of course, but nevertheless, it's where action comes from, you know? Cause we even say this, right? We look at a kid that's playing a sport and we say, your heart's not in this, right?

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What does that mean? Their will is elsewhere, okay? Their will is divided. In other words, they're on the field, but they don't really love what they're doing, right? It's like.

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And you know, maybe you found this as an adult with your job, right? It's like, oh, boy, you know, my heart's not in this. What do we mean? My will is not really here right now. I've got way too many other things going on.

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I'm divided. Okay, well, repentance leads us to a will turned toward God and not ourself. We're not willing our own. But like Christ in the garden, we say, not my will, but thine. Now that is a prayer that I hope you've prayed more than once in your life because it's a prayer worth repeating over and over again.

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Because as that brood of viper sneaks in to our life, we must say to our Lord, not my will, but thine. Take these snakes from me. Take this sneakiness, this sinfulness from me. And it's interesting what he says next. He goes.

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He goes, hey, don't think that Abraham, being ancestor of Abraham, Abraham's your father, is going to save you somehow, right? And of course, we already know this. We don't believe, you know, in the modern world that ancestors save us, okay? That's for tribal pagan religions, right? We've left that behind.

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But in their day, to be associated with a group meant salvation, okay? And there's still. There's a truth there, okay? Because you remember, if you were associated with Noah, you were saved. If not, right?

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Everybody's with me on this, okay? If you're associated with Moses, you're saved. Not. You're not, okay? But what the misunderstanding was, was that because I'm in the biological family, I'm spiritually saved.

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And John here says, no, no, here's the principle. Eastley Jones, I think, says it best. He says plainly, God has no grandchildren. Let that sink in. For God has no grandchildren.

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He only has sons and daughters, which means it's a direct line of salvation. It must be the individual and not my father or. Or my mother that their faith saves me. No, no, no. It must be my faith.

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I must become a son of God. You must become a daughter of God. It's not up to your parents as much as they would love it. It's on you to act and to repent. And this is a call to repentance, and it's a call to action, isn't it?

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You say, I don't know. I thought we were just saved by faith. Yeah, well, notice. And the crowds ask him, what then should we do? Not just what we should believe.

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They already have the belief part. Down. Remember, they're Jews, okay? They've got the theology down. They know the Bible.

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What, John, should we do then?

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And there's always. We talked about this at group this Wednesday. There's always two ditches. We end up falling in on this point real quick. Let me just.

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This is helpful. I think there's two ditches. All right? On the one hand, we have works without faith, right? It's like, I'm gonna work my way, you know?

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In other words, we think of it like in our American way. I've done so many good things. God will definitely approve me now. I've been a good boy, right? That is not the way of salvation.

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You can do as many good works as you'd like in this life. But if you don't trust and meet Jesus Christ and he put his spirit in us, that is not something we can work up. His spirit is. He blows where he wills.

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He is sent by Christ, not by us, not by our works. No, one ditch we fall into is work, work, work, our way to heaven. And if we're good, and this is kind of the moral, therapeutic, deistic route that is very common, by the way, in American Christianity. If you ever hear somebody say, yeah, it's just about being a good person. No, it's about meeting the best person, who is Jesus.

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That's what it means to be saved. Not just being a good person. Being a good person only comes after we've met the greatest good person, who is Christ. Okay? So, no, no, we can't fall in the ditch of works without faith.

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But likewise, we can't fall into the ditch of what faith without works. They go together. They are meant to be married. And we are not to divide them. Because as soon as we divide them, we're over in the ditch and not on the way of salvation.

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For salvation is by God's grace, always. He always comes first. He's the one who condescended to us, okay? To save us. We just said it in the creed, according to the Scriptures, remember?

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We say it in the Nicene Creed as well. He came after us. He's always the first touch. He's always there before we ever do anything. And yet he calls us to act, doesn't he?

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At every instance, on every page, he calls us not just to think about it, but to act. What does he say to his disciples? Follow me. Not just believe a set of doctrines, but follow me. That means we have to trust him.

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That means we have to put our whole faith in Jesus. And then the fruit comes, you see? When we remember what Jesus himself said, when we abide in the vine, that's when the fruit comes. The fruit doesn't come unless we abide in the vine. So let's not fall in either ditch here.

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John is calling us to action. Yes, but it's a faith action, by the way. Faith is an act, too, we could say. All right, so here's what he says. Look, whoever's got two coats, if you see somebody that doesn't have one, give it away.

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Give away. Now that's challenging in itself, isn't it? I think it is. I think it is because it's broader than just the coats you might have on now. But how many of us actually like our stuff?

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You know? I mean, I like my stuff. You know, I always have. I take care of my stuff. In fact, I got here and one of my things was broken kind of.

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And I was like, oh, man. You know, because we use this building, my stuff gets broken, you know, And I put that thing together and now it's broken. But it's just like, well, hang on. Okay, what is stuff? Is stuff more important than people?

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And then we come to that same principle that I have trouble with with my kids, you know, and those animals that we have around the house as well is this. It's nice to have them around until they break stuff, right? And they're always breaking stuff. They're always using stuff. I mean, the kitchen, I had it pristine, okay?

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Beautiful. And then all of a sudden, everybody's got to eat and it's a disaster. Again, anybody put an amen there? Exactly. Okay?

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And you're thinking, ah, but isn't that the purpose of having a kitchen is to be able to feed our children, to feed our spouse? I mean, yes, yes, yes. And yet we gotta make sure that stuff. And this is a great lesson during Christmas time, isn't it? Stuff isn't more important than people.

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People are the work, not the stuff. You can accumulate all kinds of stuff. Like I've said before, and I just seriously warn you of this because it's so tragic every time I see it happen. Two people fall in love, they get married, they have kids, they have a family, they get a bunch of stuff, and then the focus gets on the stuff and the kids and the marriage rots. And they're in a house that they don't even want to be in anymore.

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They have all the stuff that they set out to have. They got the pool, they got the cars, they got the house, they got the money now, and they don't want to be there. Why not? Because of the stuff. You see, the stuff comes and goes.

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It's the people that matter in our life. And if we're ever to have joy, please just. I think we've already gotten. We ought to already know this by now. I already ought to know this, okay?

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If we want to have joy, it's the people that matter, not the stuff. Not the stuff, you know. Excuse me. Every time I ever preach on joy, I always am reminded of Carrie Lawrence. That was one of her favorite words.

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Really was. And, in fact, that's why we had these gaudy yellow Harvest Point shirts that we wore to her. Who wears yellow to a funeral? But you know what? We knew Carrie's mindset, and she would want us wearing yellow.

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Some crazy bright, highlighted color of yellow. And so we did. And it was the most joyful funeral service I've ever been at. The most worshipful one.

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And that lady believed in joy. And now she knows joy like we don't yet. But can we start participating now? This is the way this works. We start participating in that joy.

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We have joy even when we don't always feel it. Rejoice always. Not some of the time, not when things are going well, but rejoice always. We are called and commanded to have joy. But that means sometimes we've got to let the stuff in our life fall to the wayside.

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It does not matter as much as people. And people, that's where the joy is. I'll be honest with you. That's where the joy is. I can think of my pappy, who now also has gone to be with the Lord.

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And he used to, you know, he was. He was proud of me. You know how much that means to somebody like me. He was proud of me. And he told me, he said, son, I'm so proud that you preach the gospel.

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It brought joy to his heart, what I was doing. Why? Because, listen, things are not that important. It's people that are important. And it's fascinating here what John does next.

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He goes, I'll tell you what to do. So even tax collectors were coming. Do you know that tax collectors and soldiers were the most hated people in Israel now, why were they the most hated? Well, tax collectors worked for the Roman government, didn't they? Grabbing your money and giving it to the beast.

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Okay, Rome soldiers, they worked for Rome doing the nasty business. They came to be baptized. And they even said, john, what do we need to do, man? You know what he didn't say? Here, quit your job.

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He didn't say, quit your Job. Fascinating, isn't it? In other words, you can actually be a stinking tax collector and still follow Jesus.

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You can be a soldier and still follow Jesus. I'll just leave that there because we don't have time to go into either one of those. But he says this. Don't extort people. Don't be using these positions for your own gain.

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Because both of these positions were known for extortion and so on and so forth. The same thing happened to me in Haiti before I could go into this thing that I wanted to go into. Being the only white dude around there. The guy as big as most Haitians are, about this big, you know, this guy was huge, and he had a knife in his hand. He was standing there like this, looking dead at me, and.

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And he's like, I'm not letting that guy in until you pay. I was like, can you pay him, man? Because, you know, I don't want to get in the pickle here because the guy holding the knife can extort you in a different country. I had to submit to whatever was going on, you know? Now I was thinking of an escape plan and all this, you know, I had it in my mind, but trust me, I had no weaponry and I was out of my element.

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You know what I'm saying? In fact, I was actually in a suit and tie, so it was nuts. Okay? He says, don't do that. Don't do that.

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I know you can. I know you can use your positions to increase your wealth. Don't do that. Be satisfied with your wages. Some of us need to hear that.

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And as they were all filled with exercise, they were questioning your heart. John, is John the one? He says, no, I'm not the one. There's one more powerful than me. I can't even untie his sandal.

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Now, washing feet, that was the job of a servant. But a servant, the idea was untying someone's sandal is even lower than a servant. That's where John is putting him compared to Jesus. And they were thinking John was a messiah. So just think about that gap.

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I must decrease so that he might increase. We are supposed to be John here, who is decreasing so that we can make room for the Savior in our life.

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He says this. He, I baptize you just for repentance, Right? That's as far as it goes with John's baptism. But Jesus, baptism is a baptism of the Holy Spirit. And what fire?

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Now, what about this fire thing? Too much to go into. But the short of it is this fire is used all throughout the scriptures, okay? It begins really with the priestly fire that was supposed to be in the temple, burning at all times. So first in the tabernacle, then in the temple, all right, There was a fire.

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This is why, even today, candles for us, even in our modern life, you say, pastor, why do we. Why are we having candles and trying to do all this? Well, because this is a long traditional symbol, the Holy Spirit, which is fire. There's fire actually burning in our church right now, visibly, physically pointing to the fire that should be burning in our hearts. And, you know, love is symbolically represented with fire, right?

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You remember Cupid? He shoots an arrow of fire, right? Because, you know, when the love bug bites. Have you all seen it happen? I'm seeing it happen with some of my boys.

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It's like a fire and you gotta start stomping. Hey, hey, hey. Whoa, whoa. Back it up, bud. Back it up, right?

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I mean, you know, it's hard to contain these wildfires of love. The heart's just bleeding over with fire. You know, it's out of control. It can be out of control, right? Well, that's the point.

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Let the fire of the Holy Spirit be burning through our hearts, surging through, purifying us, purifying our love. It's interesting. There's two tools here in our text. Did you notice Acts and the winnowing fork? And in the icon of John the Baptist, of Jesus, even being baptized, there's always a little place in that painting where there's a.

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There's a little axe that's laid up against a tree because of this verse right here. If the tree doesn't produce fruit, he's gonna chop it down and throw it into the fire. And then the winnowing fork. You remember how this works, right? You scoop up the wheat, throw it in the air, the wind blows away the chaff.

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The stuff that's not of the husk, not of substance, it blows away. And what falls back to the ground is the granary, right? The weight, the fruit. So you just keep doing this process. And he's going to separate the wheat from the chaff.

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And guess what he does to the chaff? Throws it into the unquenchable fire. What is this a picture of, but of hell and the unquenchable. Now, fire's used then in two different ways. Here you have the axe.

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The tree goes in the fire. The winnowing fork separates the wheat from the chaff. Chaff goes into the unquenchable fire. All right? That's a fire of Judgment, isn't it?

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We understand that that's a fire of judgment, okay? But also in the middle is the Holy Spirit and fire. This is the fire of presence. And we find this in the prophets. The prophets were set on fire with a word on fire, okay?

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But then also the kingly fire of judgment, but also of blessing. Now, here's the thing. We don't want to separate the fire, because here's the reality. The fire is one. The fire is one.

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That is to say, the same fire that judges is the same fire that blesses. The same fire that judges is the same fire that purifies like the sun. It's how we approach the sun that actually matters. If you go out and spend eight hours out there, you're going to get burned, all right? But if you clothe yourself and tanning lotion or whatever, or clothes, then you can be in the sun and not be burned.

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Remember Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the fire and not burned. And a fourth shows up who's like the Son of Man. The burning bush that comes to the bush itself but does not consume the bush. That's the fire of the Holy Spirit. He comes in not to destroy us, but to purify us and to transform us.

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Because that's the nature of fire, is to transform.

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And so we face a dilemma, like these hearers.

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Will we be judged by this fire, destroyed or purified and transformed? What makes the difference is whether we repent and believe. That is the difference. And that's why I think the best way to end is to go back to our reading in Philippians and be reminded of what Paul says here. Rejoice in the Lord always.

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And again I say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. Gentleness, gentleness. The Lord is near. He's in our midst.

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Remember, from the Zechariah reading, do not worry about anything, but in everything notice by prayer and supplication with thank thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds, your intellect and will in Christ Jesus. So today rejoice, because we can define the bad news, but look to the good news of how much more we have. Because Christ has come and he has sent us his Holy Spirit. And so today, maybe you've been baptized.

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Have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit? Has his fire broken out? In your life? Have you fallen? Think about this.

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Have you fallen in love with God? Is that fire burning? Stoke it today by repenting of your way and getting on the right way. And go ahead and do some acts of repentance to bear that fruit out this week. In other words, give some things away.

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Do some forgiveness this week. Be an encouraging voice to someone that doesn't deserve it. I've been the recipient of that. Have you? Go and do likewise.

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

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