Your Fruit Will Bloom

[00:00:00] Please be seated. [00:00:04] Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:11] This morning we hear about John the Baptist out in the wilderness, and he's calling us into the wilderness as well. He calls us into the wilderness so that, as we just sang in the hymn, God's beauty would spring in every place. [00:00:30] He calls us into the wilderness where not many things are growing. This isn't like a lush wilderness. [00:00:37] The region around the Jordan river where John was preaching, at least today, there's nothing really there. It's like dirt and rocks and maybe a few shrubs. You know, you wonder how the Bedouins find any grass or anything good for their sheep to eat. [00:00:56] It's that kind of wilderness that John is preaching in, the kind of wilderness that doesn't naturally have very much growing. [00:01:05] You need springs in the wilderness, and that's what Jesus is coming to do. So John is out in the wilderness preaching repentance because that's the reality of our spiritual situation. [00:01:20] As fallen human beings. We're a wilderness apart from God's Word, which comes to us and waters us and gives us life. [00:01:32] That's where our life is found. That's why John is calling us to the wilderness, to repent of ourselves and to recognize we don't have anything of ourselves to make God happy. We can't produce anything of ourselves apart from God and his Word and spirit. [00:01:50] It's a call to faith. Repentance always goes along with faith. It's not repentance for its own sake. It's repentance. A turn. A turn away from sin, whatever we might idolize. [00:02:06] A turn away from distraction, which is a turn in the wrong direction. A turn to. To God and his son, Jesus Christ. [00:02:20] Well, to add to this picture of desert, wilderness, dry, nothing growing, and God's promise to make beauty spring in every place. [00:02:34] God's promise to water us and make us grow, to give us paradise. [00:02:42] John the Baptist, in his preaching, uses the image of a tree. [00:02:47] He says bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And then he says that already the ax is laid at the root of the trees, and any tree that doesn't bear good fruit is going to be cut down and thrown into the fire. [00:03:01] So let's talk for a moment about trees. I don't know a whole lot of things about trees, but tell you what, I can identify a fruit tree. I can tell you which fruit tree it is. [00:03:15] That's really what I mean. It's like, can you tell always, like, which one's a nectarine tree and which one's a peach tree? [00:03:24] Well, there's one way to find out. When that fruit comes out, you can see which one it is. [00:03:33] Okay, that's the nectarine tree. And if you're still not sure, you know, sometimes I second guess myself. Well, peaches are fuzzy, right? But you could taste it. You could ask somebody else, or somebody's going to know by its fruit what kind of tree it is. It's actually pretty simple. [00:03:51] And that's the obvious reality that John the Baptist is using here in his preaching. [00:04:00] He's saying, okay, so you're repentant, where's the fruit? [00:04:06] Show me the fruits of repentance if you're truly repentant. [00:04:12] So they say, well, what should we do? [00:04:15] It gives them some ideas. [00:04:22] He answered them, whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none. [00:04:29] And whoever has food is to do likewise. [00:04:33] So, well, the alternative would be to just hang on to what you have. Well, pretty glad I've got two tunics and my neighbor doesn't have a tunic, but I could really use two. Makes me feel extra secure. [00:04:47] It's good to have two around. Well, there's a lack of love and concern for the neighbor. It's sinful. It's self centered. [00:04:59] Okay, so is John the Baptist saying, God's going to be happy with you if you give a tunic to somebody else, then everything's going to be good? [00:05:09] No, John's drilling down to the heart, not sharing with those in need when we see them around us. The unwillingness to look beyond ourselves in love to our fellow human beings, our neighbors, that's a faith problem. [00:05:30] And the reading in Malachi really brings that out. [00:05:37] I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner. And do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. The last line is really key. And do not fear me. You see, he named all the fruits of not fearing him and then he mentions the cause and do not fear me. It all hinges on faith. That's the thing. [00:06:13] God's concerned for the way that they're acting. But it's not simply because, oh, it's so bothersome to see them acting this way and whatnot. Like, if it could just stop, then. No, it's because God wants their hearts and do not fear me. He wants them to fear him and therefore receive from him the proper shape of their life. He wants them to be fed and watered by him. [00:06:42] He wants them to be a good tree bearing good fruit. Fruit for others to enjoy, you could say. [00:06:55] So John calls them to repentance. You're not bearing the fruits of repentance. [00:07:03] Repent well, to do that is to enter the wilderness. You can think of it this way. [00:07:15] As trees. We seek water and sustenance from somewhere. Like we're looking for nutrients and water. We want to bear fruit. [00:07:25] It's just that we're tempted to look in the wrong places. [00:07:32] Maybe you come up to an existential threat, like some kind of health crisis, or maybe it's a little bit harder to pin down. Maybe you're feeling anxious and your anxiety is causing you to worry and you're fretting, and then maybe you're just looking to be distracted and. [00:07:57] And there are lots of different places you can turn for that. [00:08:02] But we all, at various times, come up against our weakness and our mortality. And today, more and more, maybe just the meaninglessness that characterizes our society increasingly. [00:08:18] So where do we turn? [00:08:22] John calls us into the wilderness. Not to try to be satisfied by other things, but to recognize our spiritual malaise, our spiritual maladies, and to look to God to fill those. [00:08:39] Not to turn to something else when we're anxious, but when we're anxious to pray, to bring it before God and to receive the peace that surpasses all understanding, let that guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus and not anything else. [00:08:58] John calls us into the wilderness to, say, lean into the wilderness, almost to embrace it. [00:09:09] It's hard to do until you have no other choice. [00:09:14] It might be easiest to lean into the wilderness. Not that it's easy anyway, when everything's taken away from you and when you find that you just can't stop being anxious or you really can't improve your physical health, you run into a wall and there's no moving forward. Well, where do I turn? [00:09:40] I can't turn to the doctors. It's like there's no way forward. What do I do? Or I've tried all these things and I'm still anxious and I'm still going crazy. What do I. [00:09:51] That's a kind of wilderness. [00:09:54] The wilderness has a purpose. [00:09:57] John the Baptist calls us into the wilderness to hear the message of repentance, to recognize our wilderness and to look to him who can give us the water of life without limit. [00:10:10] Him who can give in us, making us a spring of life giving water. The one who can give us Jesus Christ himself, the source of life and his spirit, the one who can make us into the right kind of tree, restore our nature. [00:10:33] But it's painful. [00:10:36] The wilderness is painful. [00:10:39] Malachi. God, in our reading from Malachi, talks about his messenger that's coming, Jesus Christ, who John the Baptist says comes to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. [00:10:53] Well, the way it's put in Malachi is he's like a refiner's fire. [00:10:58] Yeah, and fire hurts like a refiner's fire. [00:11:03] I mean, what that fire does is, well, it's got to be really hot to refine gold. It has to be something like 1,800 degrees hot. [00:11:13] And that hurts for everything that doesn't belong. [00:11:18] But the gold is just fine. The gold's not going to be hurt. [00:11:22] Get it that hot, and some things burn away and the gold remains. [00:11:31] So the question that occurs to me is, well, if he's coming like a refiner's fire, what of me is going to be left from the fire doing its work? [00:11:46] It's like I've got, like, all these things about me, my. My thoughts and understanding and my desires and my fears and the way that my inner life is composed. And then I've also got my actions and my patterns of life, my habits. [00:12:06] What's going to be left from the refiner's fire? [00:12:12] I think one way to answer that is to say whatever is in Christ. [00:12:19] Or you could say it the other way. What's going to burn away anything not in Christ? [00:12:27] Christ is the gold. [00:12:31] The shiny, glorious, attention worthy, valuable, precious metal. [00:12:44] Christ is the gold. [00:12:47] And he came as a baby at Christmas and lived a human life. He became one of us, but without sin. That's gold. [00:12:58] And then he drew us to himself and united us to himself in his death and resurrection, to take us through the fire, through death, the ultimate wilderness. Did Jesus experience the wilderness? [00:13:11] Yeah, in all kinds of ways. And then ultimately, in his death, having everything taken away from him. So he takes us through death. He takes us through the fire. [00:13:24] He's united in his death and resurrection through baptism, so that all of me by faith is in him. And you know what happens? [00:13:35] Things get burned away as he calls us to repentance, as we repent and die, to sin and live to Christ. [00:13:43] He burns those things away. And so from a faith perspective, we can see. [00:13:49] Thank you for smashing my limited or sinful understanding. [00:13:58] I feel pretty silly now. [00:14:01] I'm humbled and embarrassed that I was thinking that way and then acting that way. But you took it away. You smashed it. And thank you for that. You see how it's painful and we appreciate it in faith, looking to him. That's the humility of faith that comes with repentance. [00:14:20] It's recognizing the wilderness that we are and then being content to be that wilderness of ourselves fed by Jesus Christ. [00:14:32] That's what Advent is about. [00:14:35] It's about recognizing our impurities as we wait in hope for the coming of Christ, the refiner's fire. It's about recognizing our sickness so that when Christ comes, we don't say, nope, all good here. [00:14:54] He's like, well, I'm the. [00:14:56] You don't understand. I'm like, I'm the skilled physician ever to. [00:15:03] I'm the one that can help you. No, no, I'm good. You know, may it not be as Paul would say, you know, let it not be. [00:15:12] Advent is about recognizing our sin and confessing it and repenting. [00:15:21] Repentance goes along with faith. It's about repentance and recognition of the reality of our own wilderness. [00:15:29] But in order to be found in Christ with nothing of our own, not hanging on to anything, but simply happy to be in his arms, happy to be carried through death, through the fire, hoping in the life that he gives alone. In Jesus name, amen.