A, Palm/Passion- Isaiah 50:4–9a "That Sinking Feeling"

We’ve all experienced that terrible sinking feeling somewhere and at some time in our lives. 

It may have been only for the briefest of moments.  It may have lasted for a considerable amount of time.  That terrible sinking feeling may have occurred in public before many people; it could have happened when you were alone or with one other person.  You might be feeling it right now!  In any situation, this feeling gives a sense of ugliness, feeling dis-easy, your skin and mood descends into clamminess and coldness.

Impending doom, loss of control, something gone horribly wrong gives one this feeling.  The moment before impact, the moment after the doctor gives the diagnosis, so much pain you think you’re going to die, so much pain you worry you’re not going to die, watching someone suffering.  Am I God forsaken?  Are we forsaken!  That sinking feeling.

The pain of grief and loss, tears so bitter they hurt.  The loneliness after the loss, that sinking feeling.

Being caught out, publicly humiliated, guilty facing your accuser, that sinking feeling.

The calm suddenly becomes chaos, conflict with others, anger, confrontation, harsh words spoken, accusations flying, going past the point of no return, regret, that terrible sinking feeling.

The injustice of the situation, falsely accused, no one believes the truth, helplessly unable to stop the inevitable, depression, anxiety, despair, hopelessness, that sinking feeling.

Promises broken, expectations shattered, the height of joyful excitement stopped with fright and fear, desire unfulfilled, frustration, that sinking feeling.

We’ve all experienced that terrible sinking feeling somewhere and at some time in our lives.  All these contributors, from whatever it was, that’s caused that terrible sinking feeling, is a sense of death that causes the fight or flight instinct to kick in. 

When that sinking feeling occurs, do you run to God or run away from him?  Do you struggle with God, or do you give up on him?  Do you seek a knowledge of good and evil, or a knowledge of Jesus Christ, trusting in yourself, or trusting in what Jesus promises in his Word?  When that terrible sinking feeling of death touches you, how do you respond?

Feelings were running high when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.  But the tone changed, the crowd turned, victorious excitement turned into vicious incitement.  Sunday saw Jesus ride into Jerusalem in majesty, not to overthrow the Romans as expected, but to overturn the tables of the traders in the temple. 

The Jewish leaders felt fury when Jesus taught crowds, while confronting, confounding, and silencing them with the very words in which they sought to trap him.

The feelings of the disciples were sorely tested, when Jesus told them the temple would be torn down, and the coming of the kingdom of heaven will be proceeded by chaos and tribulation.  Judas feeling his way as he betrayed Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, feelings running so deep one of the captor’s ears is cut off.

That sinking feeling was present everywhere, in so many ways!  The disciples scatter, Judas regrets what he does, he changes his mind, he loses his mind, he hangs himself.  Peter too promises much, but three times fails, outside he wept so bitterly. That sinking feeling was everywhere!

The rage of the chief priests and the elders,  Pilate’s wife sends word, “have nothing to do with this man”, the crowd cries, “crucify him”, Pilate feels trapped, that sinking feeling.  He washes his hands, injustice, and Barabbas is released.  The women of Galilee watch on from a distance, they see the unfairness, they see the wrong.  O can anyone stop that sinking feeling?

See him nailed to the cross.  Six hours of suffering till he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  He breathes his last, he hangs his head, it is finished!

Much happened in Holy Week!  High emotion, feelings flying to-and-fro!  Just like us when we have those negative sinking feelings, so too did those in Jerusalem.

These feelings led folk to fight or flee.  Even once Jesus was dead and the graves opened, and the dead came out of their tombs, and when the soldier realised Jesus was the Son of God.  That sinking feeling! 

When the temple curtain tore from top to bottom, and the Jews suspected Jesus would be stolen from the tomb, placing a guard to protect their image, rather than protect the glory of God.  That sinking feeling.

These sinking feelings are all feelings of death.  Everyone was feeling a sense of death.  People scrambling left, right, and centre, to preserve their position, their ideals, their futures, their advantage from death.  When that sinking feeling of death approached, everyone sought to protect their knowledge of good and evil!

What was Jesus feeling during Holy Week when the crowds joyously welcomed him on a donkey?  When he taught and tested in the temple?  What was Jesus feeling when he celebrated his last supper, sharing his bread with Judas Iscariot, who would betray him, and not be around to see his resurrection, believe and receive forgiveness?  With Peter, who was promising so much but would deny him, not just once, but three times?

Of Jesus we hear in Isaiah, “The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.  The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward.  I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.  But the Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.  He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me.  Behold, the Lord GOD helps me; who will declare me guilty?”  (Isaiah 50:4–9a ESV)

Jesus was sent into this sinking world with our sinking feelings of death.  The stink of death was constantly before him.  Unlike us, he never put it aside, tried to forget about it, while secretly worrying about it.  He never fought or fled from the situation before him, even when everyone else did. 

Jesus felt that sinking feeling.  He wept over death, he lamented over Jerusalem, he suffered under sin.  He became estranged from his Father, abandoned on the cross.  Yes, Jesus felt that sinking feeling, your sinking feeling that gives you a taste of death, and died for you.  Your sinking feeling led him to sink into death, for you to feel forgiveness, receive forgiveness, hear, and taste forgiveness, so you  believe his forgiveness!

When you were baptised into Jesus’ death and resurrection, he was baptised into your terrible sinking feelings of death!  Jesus was baptised into your guilt, your conflict with your work colleagues, your estranged family, your shame and embarrassment, your failures, the unfairness you bear, the prejudices you produce, the injustice you induce. All that causes that sinking feeling in you, Jesus was born into, was baptised into, die for, and has risen over.

When he was incarnated in Mary, he saw your mess.  When he rode into Jerusalem, he carried all your cares.  When he healed, he took on your illnesses.  When he confronted the proud and arrogant, he called out your vanity and selfish ways.  When tempted by the devil with sinking feelings, know he overcame your temptation before the devil.  Know, when the Holy Spirit allows a sense of death, in that sinking feeling, he is leading you from death to life in Jesus Christ!

Whatever it is, causing that sinking feeling of death, fall into the arms of Jesus.  Let Jesus carry you to the cross.  He is the only one who can carry us through death and into life as it should be. 

When that sinking feeling is forced upon you, at the moment you realise your good and evil is incapacitated by death, let Jesus Christ love you with his flint-like face!  Let his good over evil be your only good!  Let your death be his death!  Let his victory be your victory! Amen.

C, Post-Pentecost 11 Proper 16 - Isaiah 58:9b,13–14 Hebrews 12:22-25 "Pleasure"

Isaiah 58:9b,13–14 (ESV) If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness.  If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honourable; if you honour it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;  then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

Tina Arena wrote and released a song called, It’s time to go to church, on  April 30, 2021[1].  In it she sings, “I forgive you for everything.  For all the nights I couldn't sleep.  I forgive you for surfacing.  When I was looking for what I need.  Now I tell you everything.  Now I know my worth.  It's time to go to church.  It's time to go to church.”

Being a listener of her music, I must say I was surprised by her song when it came out.  After all, she sings, it’s time to go to church.  And being a pastor in a church, thought, “Okay!  That’s a pretty good thing to sing!”  I was tempted to justify it as a wholesome song.  But the lyrics are vague and unclear.  Who is she addressing in the lines of the song, and what is the church to which she believes it’s time to go?

Don’t get me wrong, I like the song very much.  But because I do, there’s a strong desire within me seeking to justify the ambiguity, as I like both the song and the artist.

She sings on, “Love forgive me for not listening.  To myself and to my truth.  I forgive you for questioning.  I'm still breathing, that's my proof.  Now I tell you everything.  Now I know my worth.  It's time to go to church.  It's time to go to church.”

The “you” she addresses in this verse reveals itself as “love”.  She asks love to forgives her for everything.  Tina forgives love for the nights she couldn’t sleep, for surfacing, for questioning, and now tells love everything.  Because of love she now sings, “I know my worth.  It’s time to go to church.”

What is one’s church?  If you are thinking of a building or a denomination, yes, these are what you could consider as a church!  However, I invite you to think broader of what church can be in one’s experience as well as what kind of church God is seeking to bring you into.

In Tina Arena’s song, she addresses love.  Love here is still ambiguous, and I believe it is most likely unclear for a deliberate reason.  To make it pleasing to the ear, love is vague so the listener can make love anything they want.  Love could be a person, an object, an animal, or even the self.

Love in our age is left unclear so we can love whatever or wherever we find pleasure.  One can go to a church, a creation within, for worship of what one loves.  Or, what pleases the person.

On any given Sunday one can drive around and see people attending to activities of pleasure.  These activities of love don’t just happen on a Sunday, but over the years have invaded our lives.  Sundays have become increasingly busy, diverting people from coming to rest in God’s presence, in his church.

All people find time to go to church!  However, the church most seek, and most attend is the place of their pleasures.  This actively involves turning one’s back on God because it requires one’s pleasure to be above God.

One could say they, “find church in themselves”.  They stimulate their feelings of pleasure by gathering around themselves things that give them pleasure.  

The problem is these things kill.  Whereas, trusting God, letting him serve you and bind himself to you, gives life.  All other pleasures in which we put our trust become yokes, burdening, and binding us to unhappiness and uncertainty.  They make us anxious and eventually they lead to death.  

Look what happens in humanity’s first worship event without God, when they seek not to rest with him, in his pleasure. 

“…when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.  Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.  And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”  (Genesis 3:6–7 ESV)

In these two verses from Genesis three, we see the extremes of desire and shame.  Knowledge of good and evil in the one event!  What appeared to be good was also evil!

Eve sees the fruit is good, it delights her, and the promise of wisdom also stimulates desire.  Did it taste good?  We’re not told!  However, immediately there is knowledge, and a wisdom that leads to shame of their nakedness. 

Over the years humans have continued to worship without God.  In these times our worship of the self, plays out in the same theatre of good and evil.  This is not without effect on our conscience as conscience literally means, “with knowledge” or “knowing within”.

Like Eve, we look and delight in what we see.  A feel-good chemical is released, and we want more.  Ironically one of the devices used to get the feel-good release is called an apple device.  But it’s not smart phones that are the issue.  No, it’s the yoked and bound individual who can’t let go of the electronic apple.  Why?  Because it gives the feel-good hormone, leading one on the path of least resistance to pleasure.

It’s not just the phone that yokes us in addiction to pleasure.  We get something new – we get the feel-good kick.  We eat chocolate or something else we like – we get the feel-good kick.  Receive a phone or snap chat notification – there’s the feel-good kick.  Coveting in the catalogue – O, it feels so good.  Look at porn or lust after someone you’ve seen in the street – and there’s an injection of feel-good hormone that gives pleasure.

Tina Arena sings, “Something within places I've been.  Blood running thin, I'm sorry.  Somewhere between Heaven and sin.”

So, the chocolate becomes guilty weight.  The pleasure of porn turns to shame and hatred of self.  The joy of the app, computer game success, the social media message, a Facebook like, or a product purchase; they don’t last, they don’t give the pleasure we sort from them.  To get that feel-good buzz.  You want more, more, more! 

These things all act like drugs because they produce a natural drug within you, called the dopamine hormone.   Eventually you’re yoked and addicted to the feeling this pleasure hormone gives, becoming no longer an isolated want, but a need you can’t do without.  Your worth is now reliant on the thing you love, and one must worship what they love, even when one hates it and dislikes what it’s doing.

The Israelites were God’s chosen people and yet they, like Adam and Eve, and us, were always being drawn away from God to other pleasures, and Isaiah was sent to proclaim God’s word to them.

He says, “If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness.  If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honourable; if you honour it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;  then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” ( Isaiah 58:9b,13–14 ESV)

We live in a time when the pleasures of this age have drawn our children away from God’s church.  Also, many who are brought into God’s church, resist, because they’re under the bondage of the pleasures to which they are yoked for the other six days and eleven hours of the week. 

How am I to break freed from this bondage?  How can my children be freed too?  How can we look on God once again as the one and only true God?

We need to let our brains and our bodies rest with God from busying ourselves from the pleasures we’ve become addicted to.  We need put aside our pride and no longer be the rulers of our synagogues of sin, the creators of our own churches, and let the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ deliver us into the holiness of God’s Church.  This only happens when the Holy Spirit can lead you to the stillness of Jesus on the cross.

There is hope only in your Lord Jesus Christ.  It was his pleasure to endure the cross for your victory.  There too is forgiveness, when you have perverted God’s church into a church of selfish pleasure as did the ruler of the synagogue. 

If Jesus can heal a woman bound by Satan for eighteen years, Jesus can make you straight by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the support of others whom he is healing too.

Are you coming to church but not allowing the church of God to come to you.  Are the things you worship so powerful they are rewiring your brain, away from resting in God, being busied pursuing pleasure and its deadly trap?

You have a pastor that struggles to rest in God too.  He along with all of us are products of the fallen world in which we live.  He will not condemn you in your struggle or confession.  But, in love for the Lord and you, he will name God’s forgiveness in your confession and assist you to keep your eyes on Jesus and what the Holy Spirit brings you into when you come to God’s church.

“…you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,  and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,  and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.  See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.  For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven.  (Hebrews 12:22–25 ESV)

Amen.

---

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ9Y7jif1C8

C, Easter 5 - John 13:31-35 "Love that Glorifies God"

John 13:31–35 (ESV)  When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.  If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.  Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus had just washed the feet of his disciples and revealed Judas as the betrayer.  The text before us today follows these events ending with the statement, “And it was night.” (John 13:30b ESV)

It was as dark as it could be.  Here, Jesus knows all will now take place according to the will of his Father.  He knew exactly what Judas would do.  He knew the mob would come when he was praying.  He knew what the Sanhedrin would accuse him of.  He knew what Pilate and Herod would say.  He knew what the Roman soldiers would do to him at the cross.  He knew Peter and all the disciples would be scattered.  He knew his death and descent into hell was forthcoming.

Knowing all of this he says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” (John 13:31 ESV)

In the darkest of times, Jesus announces that he and God the Father are glorified.  How are Jesus and the Father glorified?

Firstly, the sheer magnificence of this act of salvation is beginning to unfold.  Every Old Testament event prior to this one and every microbe of creation has been waiting patiently for this salvific event to occur.  This event will far supersede Noah’s salvation through the flood, or Israel’s rescue from the Egyptians through the Red Sea.

From the incarnation of God in the womb of Mary, the Son of God was born in the flesh of sinful humanity, was plunged in the Jordan by John the Baptist to fulfill all righteousness.   From there he walked in human weakness for forty days in the wilderness, tempted, but yet without sin.  Why? Because of the magnificent event that awaited him on the cross.

Secondly, the glory of God, concealed behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies, in the temple, was about to be brought out into the open for all to witness.  After three hours of darkness, all witnessed Jesus yield up his spirit as the curtain ripped in the temple.  After three hours of night in the middle of the day, the glory of God was released, and light shone on one who had kept the law perfectly, innocently, without self-interest, without a hidden agenda.

Knowledge of good and evil, was put right in the goodness of the guiltless Son of God, as he bore the evil of humanity on a tree, which would give humanity back its life.

Not only had all creation been waiting for this glory of God to shine, not only was Jesus born to fulfil the law and die under the law to release us from the law.  But now, thirdly, Jesus, gives us this glory to share with each other.    

However, these days are dark.  In fact, Jesus says many will be deceived in these dark days.  Many people, both pastors and parishioners, will be carried away from God, through doubt and deception as the darkness swirls all around us.

Just as it did in Jesus’ day, as he awaited the return of Judas with his accusers, we are called to trust Jesus in the same way in which he trusted his Father. 

Like Jesus we have knowledge of what will happen.  He tells us beforehand in his Word and sends the Holy Spirit to work endurance and perseverance within us as we share in his suffering.  We now turn our backs on a knowledge of good and evil and look to the knowledge of Jesus Christ found on the tree of life.

As we share Jesus’ weakness of being human, the Holy Spirit will work the faith required to show us evil in this world is sabotaged by the cross, as forecast in the Word of God. 

Because of Jesus’ victory on the cross, we can daily return to our baptism and in repentance wash ourselves of all partial and presumptuous sins, thinking we have to fix, only what God can fix.

It’s quite easy for us to fall into the trap thinking we need to fight God’s battles.  However, the truth is, rather than fight, we are called to stand and suffer as Christ suffered.

We are like, James and John, who after witnessing the rejection of a Samaritan town, were rebuked by Jesus after they asked, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:54 ESV) 

Jesus does not need us to be his crusaders.  We have two thousand years of evidence where working for the greater knowledge of good, not only usurps the Holy Spirit, but actually champions the accusatory work of the evil one.

Returning to the text for today, instead of calling together a posse of zealous fighters, as the night darkened at his impending arrest, Jesus teaches, and he prays.  But he begins with a new commandment which is the text before us.

Knowing all that would occur he says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” 

He called them to love as he loved.  To serve as he had just served them in all humility washing their feet, even Judas Iscariot’s feet!

However, like Peter, we are just as lacking in our perception of what truly pleases God.  When push comes to shove, our pious works are short lived and not what God wants.  Our piety leads to cutting off the ears of those who need to hear the Gospel, leaving only Jesus to restore them.  And after we do this, like Peter, all our piety goes out the window as we end up denying Christ and fleeing.

Two thousand years, since Jesus gave this new commandment, Peter flees, and we too with him.  Yet Jesus saw this on the night when he was betrayed and even right now as we realise our own self-righteousness and guilt, Jesus’ words are just as true as they were then, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.

God has been calling us to love one another as he has loved us for two-thousand years.  And yet we still struggle to know what love is. 

God struggles with us, to love us.  He also struggles within, so we love others the way Jesus has loved us.  We resist God the Holy Spirit when we exchange the work of the Holy Spirit with the presumptuous work of the human spirit, the old Adam.

Even with the best of intentions, when we desire to do God’s work, it’s not what God desires and he rebukes Satan within us, just as he had to with Peter.  Nevertheless, God is glorified, and so is Jesus, as he does this work of the cross within each of us. 

So how do we glorify God?  Especially when any glimmer of his light in these darkened times will alert the world, and the enforcers of its powers and principals bringing suffering and tribulation down upon us?

We love one another as Jesus has loved us!  We allow the Holy Spirit to work the good confession of Jesus Christ within us.  

This is the confession to the world that we are sinners being forgiven.  Not confessing in pride that we sin!  But that despite our sinful nature and the sin that bleeds from it, we have freedom to confess it.  This is, in fact, the greater works Jesus teaches we will do, in John fourteen verse twelve, which are greater than his works.

As truly confessional people, confessing sin, but also confessing his forgiveness of our sin, and our trust in that forgiveness, the Holy Spirit will bring others to seek that same forgiveness.  As we share the forgiveness with which God has forgiven us, then we will be truly loving others as God loves us.

This justifies Jesus’ death!  This justifies God’s magnificent plan of salvation in Jesus Christ.  This also justifies the work of the Holy Spirit and his being sent to us from the Father and the Son, to bring us in faith to the Father and the Son. 

Loving others as God loves us, we confess our sin to create freedom for others to confess and receive forgiveness.  And as we do, the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.  Amen.

C, Advent 2 - Luke 1:76-80 "Salvation Through Forgiveness"

Luke 1:76–80 (ESV) And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins,  because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”  And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.

There was silence in the land of Judah for four hundred years.  God was absent since the days of the prophets when Malachi was called to petition problematic priestly practices. Now Zechariah stood in the temple at Jerusalem to fulfil his priestly duties.

The glory days of Israel and its kings were long past.  The Jews, a fragmented dispersed people, after the rule of Alexander the Great and his Greco-Macedonian government,  now were being ruled by Rome and their appointment of Herod as the subordinate King of Judah.  To the displeasure of the Jews, Herod was not a Jew but an Edomite.

Zechariah came about his turn of duty in the temple through being chosen by lot.  Zechariah would have been honoured to have been chosen to perform this task.  His life would have been a quiet existence and this service at the temple would have been a high point even though events at the temple would have been far less grand than during the time of David and Solomon. Little did Zechariah know things were about to change.

And change things did!  Four hundred years of silence from God and then an angelic messenger speaks to him while he is in service to God.  Now having heard the message, Zechariah is struck with silence as a result of not believing he and his barren wife, Elizabeth, were to have a son and name him John. 

The angel says of John, “He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God,  and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” (Luke 1:16–17 ESV)

Four hundred years beforehand, Malachi had proclaimed similar. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.  And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.” (Malachi 4:5–6a ESV)

The silence of God for four hundred years is broken.  Now Zechariah endures nine months of silence, knowing God was to announce the Christ through his son which his wife, Elizabeth, was carrying. 

After John’s birth and at the time of his circumcision, full of the Holy Spirit, Zechariah’s lips are loosed, the silence is broken.  Zechariah praises God for John and what John was born to do. To be the messenger of God preparing the people for the way of the Lord.

Here again, Malachi had announced this, some four hundred years beforehand, saying, “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.” (Malachi 3:1 ESV)

Even during Jesus’ journey to the cross, he points to what Malachi had prophesied about the witness of John the Baptist. Jesus says, “What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.  This is he of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’  I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” (Luke 7:26–28 ESV)

But before Jesus’ ministry began, John had also been silenced.  He grew and became strong in the Holy Spirit, but he was consigned to a place in the wilderness until it was time to fulfil God’s mission to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins… to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:77& 79 ESV)

So, in God’s time, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ” (Luke 3: 2b–6 ESV)

When Zechariah’s lips were loosed, he reveals how John was going to prepare people for Jesus. This is by a knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.  Sin was put on the agenda.  John was proclaiming and giving a baptism of repentance to all who heard his call. John the Baptist was showing people that they were in darkness and needed a light.

We too are being prepared for Jesus’ coming!  Advent is a time of light in the darkness.  John the Baptist was called to be a messenger of light in the darkness, today as we travel through Advent towards the celebration of Jesus’ birth at Christmas, we too are called to see the shining light in the midst of our darkness.

However, what most of us seek for a saviour is not Jesus.  There are so many other things in the world that promise empowerment, luciferous light, and love.  It seems since we have seen the salvation of God, we struggle to stay in the light, and hinder hearing the Holy Spirit reveal Jesus through his word to us increasing faith.

We live in a dark world.   But we are further deceived when we relegate the darkness as something we are without, as if we are not contributors to the darkness.  We live in a dark world because of the darkness within!  Within each of us burns the light of human desire that seeks to make us shine as lights of the world. 

We all do well to determine what kind of light we are seeking to shine.  Are we reflecting and shining knowledge of salvation?  Or are we shining a knowledge of our good and evil? 

This light of good and evil is a little light of Lucifer.  It is a deception leading one away from the light of God. Many are finding themselves and many more will find themselves in complete darkness and all alone. This light of Lucifer is a temporary temptation to follow a light that’s transitory then terminates. This light does not give us the gift of the knowledge of salvation.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.  If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.  If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5–10 ESV)

It’s time for us as the church of God to allow the light to shine on sin. It’s time to practice the truth!  Just as people came to John the Baptist confessing their sin, and received a baptism of repentance, we too are called to return in repentance to our baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Know and believe you have the light of Christ within you, willing you to confess your sin, so you receive the forgiveness of sin.  The Holy Spirit is shining the light of Jesus in the darkness within you, so you can stand before God without the consequences of sin. We have had our darkness demolished and it continues to be destroyed with the love and light of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father, when we seek relief from long-felt grief turn us to the light of Jesus. When temptations come alluring, send your Holy Spirit to make us patient and enduring; guide our feet into the way of peace show us that bright shore where we weep no more. Amen.