Affliction and Comfort

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Please be seated. [00:00:06] Speaker A: Well, in college, among all the things that I studied, I was a music major. [00:00:15] Speaker A: And I just really loved music. And we worked with a definition of music that has kind of stuck with me over the years. It's real simple. Music is. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Well. [00:00:30] Speaker A: Music is a pattern of. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Sounds and silences. [00:00:38] Speaker A: Do you ever think of it that way? Now, there's more to it, for sure. There's all sorts of complexities and rhythms and this and that, but it's. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Sounds and silences, organized sounds and silences. So when you're listening to a grand piece of music, some great composer. [00:01:04] Speaker A: They play upon this in a big way. [00:01:10] Speaker A: Big musical movements. For example, let me give you some that come to my mind. Brahms, Second Symphony, the fourth Movement. He does this. He takes. And the orchestra's playing, and he gets them to just come down to a real, real quiet moment. And then bam. Everything just comes live in the orchestra and everybody's playing, and there's all sorts of rhythm and all sorts of sounds going. [00:01:44] Speaker A: If you were asleep. [00:01:47] Speaker A: You weren't anymore. Or the William Tell Overture. [00:02:04] Speaker A: It goes on like that, right? And you kind of get lulled into this sort of, oh, I don't know, idyllic sort of scene. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Pastoral fields and little forests off into the distance. And maybe a little brook that's sort of wending its way through a valley. And it's so peaceful. And out of nowhere, these trumpets. [00:02:34] Speaker A: You know how it goes, right? Well, it's those. It's those hunters and their hunting dogs coming over the hill after something. I don't know if they're after a rabbit or a fox or whatever, but it's all this nice quiet. Then all of a sudden. [00:02:52] Speaker A: Or Beethoven's Ninth, now, we're familiar with it. We have hymns, the Ode to Joy. Joyful, Joyful. We. That's in the fourth movement. But the first movement. [00:03:07] Speaker A: Beethoven's Ninth, the violins start. Da da da da da da. [00:03:18] Speaker A: Da da da da da da. [00:03:24] Speaker A: And then something strange happens. It's like, you know how it sounds when the orchestra's tuning up? It's like everybody's sort of playing their notes and checking their tuning and everything. And everybody does it at the same time. So it's got this sort of. Sort of strange sound to it. And in Brahms 9th Symphony, right there at the beginning, he's got the da da da da thing going on. And then everybody's sort of like they're tuning up, and then out of nowhere again, wham. The orchestra just comes alive. [00:03:55] Speaker A: Or another example, the New World Symphony. The. The first movement, he does it. Okay. I could go on and on. Okay. But the point is. [00:04:10] Speaker A: These composers. [00:04:13] Speaker A: They set you up. What's about to happen next in the music is of ultimate importance. [00:04:24] Speaker A: Let's pray. [00:04:29] Speaker A: Father, here in your world and your care for us. [00:04:39] Speaker A: Is what happens next. Help us to see it as of ultimate importance. [00:04:48] Speaker A: Amen. [00:04:51] Speaker A: So we heard today about John the Baptist. And John the Baptist was. Well, he was about as outrageous as people come. He certainly. He was never boring. I mean, look at his clothing. Camel's hair and leather belt. That was not the dress of the day, let me just put it that way. You know, they had more like robes and gatherings of cloth and this and that. So, you know, it's like he's got this hairy stuff hanging off of him and his choice of diet. What did you think of that. [00:05:28] Speaker A: Again? Just so strange. And I'll tell you, no one slept through his sermons. And. [00:05:34] Speaker A: People thought he was a prophet. [00:05:40] Speaker A: That's what we understand from the text. They thought he was a prophet. You know what prophets do? They foretell God's plans for people and they forth tell God's plans for people. And we see this all through the prophets of the Old Testament, this foretelling and this forethelling. And, well, prophets had been in short supply in Israel. Well, that's not even true. There was no supply of prophets in Israel at this particular time in history. And so maybe that's why John was drawing these large crowds, because he's a prophet and people then would really understand this. In fact, we notice it because they kept going out to him. Lots and lots of people, large crowds going out to him. Listen again. This is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. [00:06:49] Speaker A: The very words Isaiah spoke are. [00:06:54] Speaker A: Foretelling and foretelling about John the Baptist. It says John wore garments of camel hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. [00:07:09] Speaker A: Is that on your menu today? [00:07:13] Speaker A: You know, you could just get one of these. They're like grasshopper thingies, right? You just dip them in the honey and crunch away. It just sounds terrible to me. And it says then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him. It's like the Super Bowl. We're going to pack the stadium. And they were baptized by him. That is John in the Jordan river confessing their sins. See, they're participating in what John is preaching. [00:07:52] Speaker A: We just skip over these words, don't we? It was sort of like, it's the gospel lesson, John the Baptist, okay, so on and so on. Okay, but for the people, then. [00:08:04] Speaker A: We need to understand. It had been 400 years since there had been a prophet in Israel and 600 and 700 and even 1000 years since anybody had been doing any written prophecies about the Messiah. There's something going on here. 400 plus years of silence and then bam. John the Baptist and bigger bam. Jesus the Messiah. I mean, the very idea had to evoke in the people. God is saying something here. God is speaking. [00:08:42] Speaker A: And what's about to happen. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Is of ultimate importance. [00:08:50] Speaker A: That's how it was with the Exodus. God's people had been in Egyptian slavery. They'd waited 400 years for God to come and rescue them from that slavery. And now Christ, who comes. [00:09:06] Speaker A: After 400 years, there was like this preconditioned silence. [00:09:14] Speaker A: You might be tempted to say, that is a pretty dry season. 400 years. You might be tempted to say, wow, God really seems silent. [00:09:26] Speaker A: You might be tempted to think, well, God isn't speaking to me. I wonder why that is. [00:09:36] Speaker A: Well, you can evaluate that. But maybe it's not because God doesn't care about you. Maybe it's not because God doesn't love you, not because God is trying to get even up on you. But maybe, maybe it's because what he's going to say next, he really, really wants you to hear. [00:09:57] Speaker A: Like, what is coming next is going to be life altering. And so here we have John the Baptist. After all of that time, he's saying, the gospel. [00:10:13] Speaker A: Is here. [00:10:16] Speaker A: Jesus is here. [00:10:21] Speaker A: The way is being prepared, the paths are being made straight. [00:10:30] Speaker A: I always think of. [00:10:34] Speaker A: Oh, I don't know, heavy road equipment, big bulldozers pushing along, like right out here on i25, where the turnoff for Bertha used to go like this, remember? And you'd go, I wonder why we're doing that? [00:10:52] Speaker A: Something was wrong with it because they came along with their big, powerful bulldozers. They made that thing straight. [00:11:05] Speaker A: Well. [00:11:07] Speaker A: John was. [00:11:11] Speaker A: Disturbing. [00:11:13] Speaker A: And inspiring. [00:11:17] Speaker A: All rolled up into one. [00:11:21] Speaker A: He was challenging people and he was inviting them. He was hitting them with God's law and with God's gospel. He brought about knowledge of the hammer of God as well as the heart of God. See, both John's preaching and Jesus for that matter. Jesus preaching. [00:11:48] Speaker A: If you really pay attention, it's there to afflict the comfortable, but also comfort the afflicted. [00:12:00] Speaker A: So this passage. [00:12:03] Speaker A: The people of Israel coming out and, oh, there's Lots of invitation in that. Come be baptized, he says. Come repent, he says. Come be forgiven, he says. [00:12:15] Speaker A: Then there's the Pharisees coming out. And he says to them, he says, you brood of vipers, who told you to flee the coming wrath? See, there's invitation, there's challenge. [00:12:32] Speaker A: Well, you heard those words, right? Listen again. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. [00:13:00] Speaker A: See, these Pharisees and Sadducees. [00:13:08] Speaker A: They had not come out to hear the word of God. They had come out to, well. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Sit in judgment upon it. See, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. [00:13:24] Speaker A: They were the ones who thought they were. [00:13:28] Speaker A: Just okay because, well, they were children of Abraham and they were Jews, and they were the chosen ones, and they were the people of promise. And they in particular were the ones who were keeping the law of God and telling everybody else how to do that. And here's the funny thing. They were like. [00:13:51] Speaker A: I think Jesus is trying to talk to us about repenting. Well, we don't have any need to repent. [00:14:01] Speaker A: And John the Baptist is saying, oh. [00:14:05] Speaker A: You might want to check that just a little bit. Be careful. John warns. He called them vipers, relatives of that old viper. [00:14:14] Speaker A: Serpent Satan himself, who knew God's word inside and out and sat in judgment over it, too. So John warns him, he says, even now the axe is laid at the root of the tree. Every tree, therefore, that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. In other words, hey, Pharisees. [00:14:38] Speaker A: Look. Come. Be chopped down in repentance now and grow into new life by the power of the Holy Spirit or be chopped down by the judgment of God's word and die. [00:14:54] Speaker A: Your choice. [00:14:58] Speaker A: You know, it's this time of year where we send and receive greeting cards, right? [00:15:06] Speaker A: Christmas cards. Oftentimes they have nice Bible passages in them, Beautiful artwork and everything. How would it be if you got a Christmas card card and on the outside it said, merry Christmas, and you open it up, it says, you, brood of vipers. [00:15:23] Speaker A: Or how about this one? May your dead branches and useless chaff be burned with unquenchable fire. Happy Holidays. [00:15:35] Speaker A: Or the ax is laid at the root of the tree. Happy New Year. See, when John really got cranked up. His words must have had just like this blistering effect on everybody. The judgment of God, it roars through John's lips and fire is on his mind with images of dead wood and chaff being tossed into it. It's full of challenge. [00:16:02] Speaker A: It'S full of law. It's full of the hammer of God. [00:16:08] Speaker A: But make no mistake, invitation as well. Christ is coming, he says Christ is coming to raise people up. He intends to gather the good, produce the wheat of his kingdom into his barn, a place of safety, a place of security, a place of purpose and use. See, there's gospel there, there's good news there. There's the heart of God. [00:16:34] Speaker A: See? We might want to ask, what's John the Baptist doing here? Well, he's trying to keep people moving forward in faith once again. [00:16:45] Speaker A: Because God's people. Seems like we're always on this cycle of following God. [00:16:54] Speaker A: And then getting complacent and then looking around at other gods and falling away and getting into trouble and crying out to God. And he comes and he rests, rescues them. And this goes on over and over again. Just read the Old Testament, you see it over and over again. And John the Baptist is aware of this. And he doesn't want people to be caught in that static revolving wheel anymore. He says, I need to keep people moving, sometimes with comfort, sometimes with affliction. It's like the example I used with the kids. Somebody training for sports. A good trainer knows when to comfort and when to afflict, to get that ball moved down the field. There's challenge and invitation. There's law and gospel. There's the hammer and the heart. [00:17:52] Speaker A: I think John provides us today with maybe one of the greatest tests of whether or not we fit that Pharisee, Sadducee sort of image. Because the test would be if we're standing outside of a movement of God and observing and evaluating, but never participating. [00:18:14] Speaker A: Unfortunately, this is a curse of our modern era. We are taught to detach ourselves from everything so that we might sit back and be armchair quarterbacks. We've been taught the scientific method. We've been taught how to evaluate literature through textual criticisms. We set things aside and step back and we cross our arms and we judge. [00:18:44] Speaker A: The Pharisees and the Sadducees. If you study them, they are almost always standing outside of the circle of something big happening, with their arms crossed and their judging, but never really participating. [00:19:01] Speaker A: John's call for us today is the call of the good news that is for even us today, both inspiring and disturbing. And he's saying, don't just stand outside of what God is doing, but get down into the middle of it. Participate in it. [00:19:20] Speaker A: O Lord, let the Holy Spirit fall afresh on us here today. I mean, look at Jesus, for example, who had every right. I mean, Jesus is arguably the theologian of all theologians, wouldn't you say? He wrote the Word of God. He is the Word of God. Can you imagine if he comes along and he stands on the outside of. Of what John the Baptist is doing and observes and evaluates and judges all of what John is doing? Is he doing it right? Is he holding the water right? But no. What does Jesus do? He participates. [00:19:59] Speaker A: He dives in. He goes to be baptized. John says, oh, no, no, no. I need to be baptized by you, Jesus. But Jesus comes right back. He says, no. Let me demonstrate what a true rabbi is supposed to look like. One who gets involved in the work and the Word of God. One who is willing to fully immerse in the Word and work of God. One who is willing to expend every amount of energy. One who is willing to get his hands and his feet bloodied for the sake of the work and Word of God. [00:20:38] Speaker A: The challenge today. [00:20:41] Speaker A: Well, pretty simple, really, to not stand on the outside of the work of God. [00:20:49] Speaker A: And what he wants to do and is doing in our lives. [00:20:55] Speaker A: We can observe, we can evaluate. [00:21:02] Speaker A: But the call is to participate. [00:21:07] Speaker A: To get involved. [00:21:10] Speaker A: To give ourselves fully to him and fully expect the Holy Spirit to fall afresh on us. [00:21:23] Speaker A: O Lord, help us to keep moving forward in faith. [00:21:28] Speaker A: Amen.