Sermon on 2/1/09

A Voice In the Wilderness

 1 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, 2 and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" 3 For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying:
      " The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
      ' Prepare the way of the LORD;
      Make His paths straight.'"^[a]
4 Now John himself was clothed in camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him 6 and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, 9 and do not think to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. 10 And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.^[b]
12 His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

 

Voices are funny things. Some of them are very high. Some of them are very low. For instance, have you ever met a man that looked big and burly and tough, and all of the sudden this high pitched voice comes out of his mouth. I have. It was hard to keep from laughing. The same is true of Jennifer's stepbrother's daughter, in the opposite way. She is this small cute little girl, but she has this very deep husky voice for a toddler. At this point, it is adorably cute. You can like someone, think they are attractive, and then they open their mouth, and their voice wants to make you get as far away as possible. My pastor in high school, a man named Ron Elerick, was 6'9" and over 500 lbs. He was a biker evangelist and a gifted pastoral counselor. He had this deep voice that made you feel very safe around him. His deep voice also tended to be so soothing that it was difficult to stay awake for most of his sermons. The content of his sermons were not bad, but that voice made you want to take a nap.

 

People's voice can tell you a lot about who they are. Are they strong or insecure? Are they tense or are they laid back? Are they well educated or not very well educated? Are they from the Northeast or the Deep South. Often a voice can tell you all of these things. I am a loudmouth. So my mother sometimes told me to use my inside voice. I do the same with my dog when he starts barking. "Jake, use your inside voice".

There is more to our voices than pitch and volume though. A lot of times when we get to a good place in our relationships and our careers we talk about having, "Found our voice". We talk about people being a "voice of encouragement" or a "voice of concern", meaning that what they say speaks into our lives. When we talk about someone's voice, we means much more than the way the voice works. We mean how the person uses their words to disrupt or make peace, to bring together or tear apart. Or to hide and say nothing.

The Bible calls John the Baptist a "Voice crying in the wilderness". A Voice CRYING in the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord. John is introduced as THE VOICE that sets the stage for the ministry of Jesus. What kind of voice did he have? And how did he use his voice?

There are a lot of ways that you can describe John's voice, and we may get to many of them, but perhaps the best description of this voice crying in the wilderness was urgent. The voice was urgent.

The fact that he was an urgent voice accounts for all of the other things we notice. The Bible says that he was a voice CRYING. CRYING OUT. This indicates that it was a message that needed to be heard immediatey. If this voice was so urgent, you may ask, why did he go out into the wilderness to meet God? Why not go to Jerusalem? Why not go to the cities. Why not go out into the highways and byways to prepare for Jesus?

First, and most obviously, to fulfill Scripture. Even more, the reason to go out into the wilderness is because he was a prophet, and he wants people to truly listen . Prophets sent by God are sent to shake people up. To get them out of their apathy and their standard way of seeing things, and to see the urgency of reconciling with God. Because John was an urgent voice, he had a prophetic and strange voice. An urgent voice is a shocking voice. And his actions needed to match his words. You see, a little bit like a children's message in worship, the prophets tried to make the Word of God as visual as possible. Isaiah walked around naked to make his point. Ezekiel laid on his side and cooked food with his own dung. Hosea married a prostitute to tell the Israelites that they were hoaring after other God's. Prophets acted out their message as they spoke it. Part of that for John was to go into the wilderness and live on locusts and wild honey.

The wilderness has special significance for the Hebrew people. The wilderness is where God spoke to people. In the pretty places, in the places with enough food and enough money, enough friends and enough power, these are not the place in Scripture where God most powerfully speaks to people. Throughout Scripture, God met people in the desert. This is most especially true with the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. In was in the wilderness God provided Bread from Heaven. It was in the wilderness God sustained them with water from a rock. While they were wandering in that barren desert that God gave his people the Ten Commandments. It was to the wilderness that David was able to find safety as King Saul was trying to kill him in biblical history. And it was in the wilderness that the prophet Elijah ran, and heard God speaking to him on a mountain through a still small voice. The wilderness, where there was not much more than the Dead Sea and caves, is where John the Baptist preached because that is where God most often met his people. It is urgent that they are ready to listen to Jesus. It is urgent that they recognize Jesus as he comes. John the Baptist understands this urgency, and adapts his message accordingly.

So John goes to the desert, and he says, REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND. John goes out to the desert, and urges people to REPENT. To turn around. To prepare their hearts to be receptive to God's Word. And he says to not REPENT soon. Or to think about repenting. To think about turning your heart toward God. No John urgency says REPENT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD Is AT HAND. At hand means to right in front of you. Very close. Imminent.

The gospel not only encourages us to listen with urgency, it encourages us to act with urgency as well. The word REPENT means to turn around. To allow God to change the direction we are going, and to put you in a totally different course.

There is no such thing as the status quo if we are going to listen to Jesus, and act upon what we hear. We can not just stand firm in our relationship with Jesus. We must be either moving toward him and with him, or he is moving away from us. We must either be growing or dying.

Because this call of God is important and urgent, it is not something to be trifled with. It is not something to be considered lightly. Gospel listening and living is not something you can just float along with and play at. It is life or death important. It is life or death urgent.

The Bible says that the Pharisees and the Saducees came out to see John the Baptist. And that John thought that they were not taking his message, and the coming of Christ seriously enough. So he challenged them. He told them if they just wanted to play at repenting and following Jesus, that God would know, as well as the rest of the world. And if they were not treating this message as the urgent message it was, well, then, they would have to pay the price. God would know.

So what does all of this mean? What does all of this talk of urgency mean to us in our day to day living?

It means that if we have yet to trust Jesus enough to accept him as savior, we should not wait. The nature of the good news of Jesus is that it requires a response. Either we say yes to Jesus or say no to Jesus. We should not say, maybe tomorrow.

If you have not accepted Christ, I urge you to accept him into your heart today. Trust him today to save you. He has lots in store for you. He has a mission for you to fulfill. He has blessings available for you. He has a hope and a future for you, but you need to accept that hope and that future.

This means as a church that we have an urgent message and an urgent mission that requires our immediate attention. Our commitment to this Backyard Mission Project is one step in this journey. There are needs that need to be met urgently. And you as a church recognize this. And you are acting to be the hands and feet of Jesus reaching out in your community not in a summer far off, but this summer.

But this is just one step. Deep down in our souls there needs to be this passion. This passion to tell others what Jesus has done for us, and can do for them. This passion to reach our friends and our family with this call to repent and be made new by Jesus. We need to seize the opportunities to be kind to our neighbors in Jesus name. We need to seize the opportunities to encourage other people to know the Jesus that has changed our lives.

We cannot just hope that people will come walking through the door of this church. People will not do that. We need to be like John the Baptist. We need to be a little strange and a little peculiar. We need to stand out for Jesus. We need to use our voices to testify to his goodness in our lives, and to encourage others to repent and follow as well. We cannot just stand on the sideline. As long as we have a VOICE, we must use our VOICE to praise Jesus, proclaim Jesus, to cry out in urgency to a world that does not understand the relevancy and the urgency of our Jesus.

So use your voice….

Use your voice to say YES to Jesus.

Use your voice to say YES to Christ's call to repentance.

Use your voice to say YES to the call to go out to the world on a mission.

Use your voice to say YES to Jesus. And let your actions match that yes. As you live your life. As you come to this table. Where we remember Christ's death for us. Say yes to his love. Say YES to his gift.

Amen.