The Announcement
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ME
Announcements are important.
I still remember being in Hong Kong in a sparkling white uniform: white shirt with the school crest and grey trousers. It was during grades 1 and 2 at Raimondi College, a Catholic elementary and high school. Every morning, the P.A. system played the school hymn. It sounds a little bit like this:
(play school hymn)
As you can hear it was all muffled and up to today I still don’t know what the lyrics were, because the music is overpowering the “singers.” Does anyone pay attention to it? Maybe if they invested in better systems and gave it the attention that it deserved, we would focus more on it.
WE
Now let’s talk about an announcement that IS important.
We begin a new series simply entitled Advent. If you were here last week you’d know that Advent means arrival. We’ve also mentioned that before arrival, there is first a time of waiting and anticipating. We are similar to the Israelites at the time prior to Jesus’ birth, yet different at the same time. For those of us who are followers of Jesus, we too are waiting. The Jews as we will see are waiting for the one who is to come. We wait for the one who has already come, but will come again. The Jews’ wait for the first arrival of the Messiah is over, though some Jewish people doubt that Jesus is their Messiah, their Christ, the anointed one from God. Now, we are waiting for Jesus Christ, Lord, Saviour and King to come again and finally bring sin, evil, and death to an end. But whether it’s the first Advent of the past or our current Advent in the future, the hope is in Christ to make all things right.
GOD
We start off in Luke 3 because this is the closest to the point of tension in this gospel. At this moment, Jesus breaks onto the scene and begins his ministry, starting with his own baptism at the hands of John, his cousin. Gospel simply means good news that needs to be proclaimed or announced. This gospel is one of four gospels in the Bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The gospel of Luke tells of the announcement from the mouth of Jesus’ cousin, John, son of Zechariah. John gives a long, drawn out explanation of the Isaiah 40 prophecy. Now if you want some context to the gospel of Luke: Luke was a historian and physician writing an orderly account to Theophilus, a Gentile, somewhat not of Jewish dsecent. The overall theme of the gospel is salvation to the world and the formation of a new community around mid-60 A.D. And the point of today’s message is this:
God proclaims the gospel so that all can be saved lest they be condemned.
God proclaims the gospel so that all can be saved lest they be condemned.
So we begin with chapter 3 and notice that Luke begins with a list of historically verifiable foreign leaders. It includes the top echelon, Caesar down to Pontius Pilate, regional tetrarchs which the Emperor has given land for them to govern, down to the Jewish high priests. However, the most important names are in verse 1 at the beginning, and verse 2 at the end, highlighted in bold.
Luke 3:1–2 (ESV)
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
We will come back to them next week, but notice the word of God came to John. This, along with the reigning monarch’s year in powe,r is a classic prophetic announcement setup like Ezekiel 1, or Zechariah 1. Luke wants us to see this and instantly know a prophecy is about to be made, and that John is a prophet. But before revealing what he actually said, Luke tells us first what was done. Our first point:
I. Water baptism testifies to God’s forgiveness of the repentant.
I. Water baptism testifies to God’s forgiveness of the repentant.
3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
First, John the prophet went around the Jordan offering God’s baptism to fellow Jews. Often we forget John is a prophet because of his title, John the Baptist. He left the wilderness to re-enter into civilization to share an important message. Repentance and forgiveness. Repentance is that word which means a change of heart, a turning around from the wrong direction to the right one, and regretting having gone the old one. And forgiveness is original a monetary term related to being released of your debt owed. So what is God calling for the Jews to repent of? Sin. This word is common in Christian vocabulary but it is also somewhat of a taboo word that we don’t use in today’s society anymore. It literally means a failure to hit the mark. The mark is where the center of God’s will, his goodness, his flourishing, and his purpose is. But we hit everywhere else as an archer, and so either experience or cause badness. We participate in evil, wrongdoing, greed, selfishness, and pride against divine law. If you were here for our last series, you would remember that was the checkered past of the Jews. They rebelled against their creator and provider of their nation and chased after idols. They exploited the vulnerable and favoured the rich and powerful. They lived as anything but the Godly nation they were meant to be. They failed to represent what God’s rule is like here on earth. And so they were exiled, and ruled over by Assryians, Babylonians, Persians. Now add to the list the Greeks, and the Romans. And lesser Kings called Tetrarchs like Phillip or Herod or Lysinias. And still lesser local rulers like Pontius Pilate, whose anti-semitic stance brought him on a collision course with the people and relgiious leaders.
But now John is saying something new, something to be excited about is upon us! Forgiveness, which originally required visiting the temple in Jerusalem and offering an animal sacrifice on the altar to achieve, can now be experienced through baptism. Under Annas and Caiaphas the High Priest father and son-in-law duo, the sacrificial system itself had become a shady business of the haves and have-nots. The place which atones for sin is used for the purpose of sin itself!
John offers a baptism, a symbol of cleansing and forgiveness, in anticipation of the one who will come and offer to forgive. A preview now of what Jesus will ultimately fulfill, if those who come would repent.
In some ways, our Christian baptism is similar in meaning in that it is not in the water which we become forgiven, but it points to a forgiveness we have already attained through trusting in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are made right with God. Previously, the stench of slaughtered animals and crimson blood dripping from the altar reminded the people of the seriousness of sin and that a life needed to be taken away each time. Now, we are reminded of the blood dripping from a rugged wooden cross and the slaughtered lamb of God who was whipped, flogged and humiliated. Through this horrific death we are offered forgiveness. All we do is by faith denounce sin and evil’s control over us, and turn towards God in faith and receive Jesus’ sacrifice in our place. So everytime we come to the meal known as the Lord’s supper as we will do later today during the service, we remember Jesus’ death until he comes again.
If you have heard this message, God wants to offer you this forgiveness today.
If you have not been baptized, God is reminding us through John that water baptism is a witness to other pople of the forgiveness you have received.
Will you accept his offer of forgiveness? And if you have, will you proclaim your new life through the symbolic act of baptism?
Our second point:
II. God sends his Messiah to save the world.
II. God sends his Messiah to save the world.
Luke 3:4–6 (ESV)
4 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.
5 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,
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ”
Now we come to the heart of his message, first from the Old Testament, drawn from Isaiah 40:3-5, though there are some subtle differences if you look at the English translation.
Isaiah 40:5 (ESV)
5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
John is pronouncing the relationship between God and himself. He’s the voice who came out of the wilderness at the end of chapter 3, verse 2.“John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness” that the prophet Isaiah spoke about some 700 years ago. His purpose is to prepare the way of the LORD, and doing whatever it takes to make sure it is unhindered. John uses the imagery of terrains being shaped into a proper way no matter if it’s hills, valleys, crooked or rough, as metaphors for the conditions of the human heart. When Jewish people think of the way that has been tamed for God and his people to walk through, they would inevitably remember their salvation from Egypt into the wilderness to the promise land, which we talked about last week. The Exodus, in which God rescued his people from slavery under Pharaoh’s rule through signs and wonders. John is announcing that a new exodus is upon them, and that they need to prepare themselves for God’s arrival. Isaiah 40:5 in the English Bible refers to all flesh seeing the glory of the Lord together. But in the LXX, the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, we derive our English translation of Luke 3:6. The glory of the LORD we all shall see IS the salvation of God. And if we go back to when we first see the salvation of God in all of Luke, it is with Simeon, a righteous and devout man, who holds baby Jesus in his arms and blesses him, saying:
Luke 2:29–32 (ESV)
29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation
31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”
Jesus is the glory of the LORD!
Jesus is the salvation of God!
God through John prepared all peoples. Luke here also shifts the nature of this salvation from being only for one nation (Israel) to being for all nations.
Jesus is a light, in fact, the light of revelation for Gentiles also to see!
With this, the Jewish focused history in much of the Old Testament is reminded again of God’s original purpose: The nation of Israel was to demonstrate what a God-ruled society is like SO THAT other nations will also return to God. God has not forgotten his blessing all the way back to Abraham:
Genesis 12:1–3 (ESV)
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Now is the time, through the ancestry of Abraham, in which all the families of the earth shall be blessed: the Gentiles! Old Testament and New Testament is perfectly linked as a continuation of God’s history and divine action in the world.
(Is this the best application of this point?)
Sometimes if you are in an ethnic church such as MCBC, you may initially focus on people sharing your ethnicity or culture, and this is good for a time. A Chinese church often has the best chance of reaching out to immigrants of Chinese descent, whether from China, or Taiwan or Hong Kong or other parts of Southeast Asia. However, the focus doesn’t and shouldn’t stop just there. Just as the Jews through Jesus are called to reach the Gentiles, so we as a church, have the opportunity to reach our Arab and Indian speaking neighbours just within the blocks of Hillmount Rd. and Markland St.
Our common language is English and we have a long history of exposure to multiculturalism since a number of us were born in Canada. Others of us are educated and working in companies and organizations which are also multicultural. This makes us as a congregation the best candidates to share the gospel and be God’s witness beyond the Chinese bubble.
How might we cultivate an imagination for a multiethnic congregation in MCBC?
And lastly,
III. God will eventually judge those who bear bad fruit.
III. God will eventually judge those who bear bad fruit.
7 He said therefore 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?
See, I wish John would wrap up his speech with words to pamper and soften things up, but instead he went for insults. Sure, there are holy insults (or do those even exist?), but calling the same crowd he was earlier urging to repent and look forward to what the Lord has prepared “a brood of vipers?" This isn’t exactly attractive and seeker friendly. Jesus also uses this term when he rebukes the Pharisees. What is the significance of this phrase? The brood or offspring of venemous vipers have a particularly rotten habit: they devour and kill their fathers. The parallel is obvious. It could mean that they are just like their fathers, the rebellious ancestors upon ancestors littered in the pages of the Old Testament. It can also mean that they as a people would turn against their ancestors who were righteous and obedient. They are ungrateful, slippery. And their coming out to hear John is not so much out of their love for God, but out of fear of judgment.
We also need to ask ourselves: is our Christian faith because of a love for God, and therefore a healthy fear: an awe inspring response to not offend him and break his heart? Or is it because we’ve heard non-Christians go to hell, and we want to escape that? Perhaps you think that if you believe, you can live however you want and at the end you will still go to heaven?
Perhaps John can remind us:
Luke 3:8 (ESV)
8 Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin 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.
That’s the key, isn’t it? The first part of the message clearly is to repent and be forgiven of your sins. But here it says there’s a way of living, a way of believing and behaving which matches the repentance in you and the forgiveness you receive. This also is another theme Jesus talks about: bearing fruits. It means having a godly, righteous, humble, loving and sacrificial character. Because if repentance is away from selfishness, pride, evil and sinister life, then the opposite is the good fruit. In fact, John turns the whole thing around about the mistaken belief that being children of Abraham would get them a get-out-of-gehenna (hell) card. John says that God can easily, if he wanted to, use stones to start a new race, a new nation which follow the obedience of Abraham (the word stone and children in Aramaic sounds similar). So don’t think your ancestry is a guarantee, if it’s not righteousness by faith in God!
This reminds us of the tension between the once saved, I am always saved Calvinist understanding and the places in scripture where the Bible does warn of people who fall away from their faith. Apostasy, which is what that means, is real. It is true Jesus’ salvation is once and for all, and one for all. But it is also true that if we live our life as if we’ve never been freed from the bondage of sin, if we continue to do harm rather than good, if we live outside of God’s presence, we may find that our defence at the end of it all would be like the children of Abraham defense. If we abide in Jesus, if our life is connected to him, we will naturally bear good fruit. If not, we will bear rotten fruit that is no good for us or anyone else. So by our life and our surrender we will see if we live a life in the reality of being saved.
It gets even more dire:
9 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
John also speaks of the urgency of the call to repentance, to accept it and be forgiven, and to live in the reality of forgiveness. This is because the axe, God’s wrath, is about to chop away rotten fruit bearing roots! This is judgment, and we don’t like to speak about it because we like to hear what’s good and pleasing to us. Our image of God is that he is docile and loving, and he is certainly the latter. But to bring the world to order, to its original beauty, glory and purpose, there is a time limit to make things right. God can’t indefinitely forestall the inevitable destruction of all things evil, impure, sinful and deadly because it’s hurting his creation. He provides a time so that as many as possible repent. I do believe all will be given this chance. The hope in verse 6 is that ALL flesh, Jews and Gentiles (including us) would turn to the glory of the Lord, the salvation of God, the second Exodus and the better Moses and accept forgiveness through repentance, trusting in the salvation through his son Jesus Christ. But the time period will not and indeed cannot last forever because God is holy and loving. His holiness can’t tolerate sin and his love can’t leave us in the state of perpetual sin. He won’t allow the world to forever be plunged into darkness, injustice, oppression, wars, greed, and hatred which all stem from the dark spiritual forces both outside and inside of us.
Back before 2000 which is when I was saved, we talked ALOT about Jesus’ second arrival. But once we turned the century it seemed we stopped talking about judgment. Oh well, maybe Jesus will come back in 2100, we thought. I was reading theologian Fleming Rutledge’s seminal work Advent. I found out that our Advent candles of hope, love, joy and peace with Christ in the middle as the white candle is actually a recent invention of the 19th century. Prior to that, the medieval themes of Advent have always been death, judgment, heaven and hell— in that order!
Perhaps only by dying to our sinful self and sin and acknowleding that we have been judged guilty, deserving of God’s warth and yet acquited because of Jesus’ gift of salvation through our repentance and his forgiveness of sin can we truly appreciate and long for, hope for Jesus’ return. The choice really is between heaven and hell, and the stakes are high.
WE
So how should the Jews respond? How did they respond? And how do you respond to John’s prophetic warning of judgment?
We will pick that up next week and answer the question.
May the LORD remind us that the precious hope of Jesus’ coming is to judge a sinful world to make it right for his arrival, bringing and restoring peace and love as He is enthroned before all the nations.
Amen.
Let’s pray.