Sermon Tone Analysis

·         *JOHN THE BAPTIST*                                                           17-Jun-07

·         *Reading** – Luke 3: 1- 2 & John 1: 29 - 37*

·         *Theme – Preparing the People*

·          

·         Mal 3:1 ¶  "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, Even the Messenger of the covenant, In whom you delight.

Behold, He is coming," Says the LORD of hosts.

·         *2  "But who can endure the day of His coming?

And who can stand when He appears?*

For He is like a refiner’s fire And like launderer’s soap.

·         Mt 3:3  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.’"

·         John was given this great privilege and responsibility to prepare the people for the arrival of God in the form of a man.

What a job to ask anyone and how do you do that.

·         Especially when the prophet Malachi had said “who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

·         John’s task was to prepare the people for such a meeting – and how do you do that, how does anyone do that – how do you prepare the people to meet with God.

·         And yet is that not also the privilege and responsibility we all have as Christians to prepare the people to meet the same God.

·         Is this not the great commission we all have – “to go into the all the world and make Disciples of Christ,” the same God man that John prepared the people to receive?

·         And how do we prepare the people – the same way that John did as we shall see by preaching the truth of the gospel.

·         We all know what it means to prepare for something, over these recent weeks many have prepared themselves for exams, they have done this through study and revision and constant supervision and testing by concerned parents.

·         People go to great lengths to prepare themselves to go to work, it can take some young ladies what seems an eternity to get ready, and I know what it is to prepare for a meeting and what happens if you are not prepared.

·         Last week I had to give a presentation of the company I work for to a potential new customer, so I had to get my PowerPoint presentation ready, literature, company capability and capacity lists, reference lists etc and have my answers ready for any questions they where to ask.

·         In every area of our life we are constantly preparing for something, but are we preparing ourselves to meet with God, and are we preparing others as well.

·         The bible tells us that one day we all have to give an account for everything that we have done and should have done, and it is in this life that we need to prepare for that meeting.

·         We all have this appointment with God we might not like to hear that, or even think about it, we might bury our heads in the sand and try and ignore it but nevertheless it will happen.

·         The bible is very clear about this Heb 9: 27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so each of us will one day stand before God.

·         The message of the gospel is the glorious truth you need in order to be prepared for that day.

*This was the way that John prepared the people to receive the Christ.

*He preached a message of repentance and trust in the one that was to follow shortly.

·         Is not this the same message we have today, how else do we prepare the people to meet God but through repentance and faith in Christ.

·         We too today have to make the paths straight so that others to can see the glory of Christ and find acceptance with God.

·         Like John we might have to *be that lone voice in the wilderness of sin*, preaching with authority and conviction that Christ is the only solution, and we have to take up the mantle like John did.

·         It is through the foolishness of preaching that people are prepared to meet God, it is by spreading the gospel message through the pulpit, through personal witness, and through godly lives that influences the sinner.

·         God through his Holy Spirit uses this to prepare the people to meet him.

·         *So* *the aim this evening is to see from the life of John that we face the same challenge today that he faced all those years ago, and that it is only by preaching what Christ has done and what he accomplished on the cross that will prepare ourselves and others to meet with God.

*

·         *John the Baptist*

·         If you where to look at the character of John you would see that he was a man who knew what self control and obedience was, he was courageous and a powerful preacher, he was humble and yet had a burning zeal for his work, he was look at by others as a holy man and had the great accolade from Christ as being the greatest man to be born of a woman.

·         We know eventually because of his uncompromising nature was martyred for his faith but he leaves us an example we all can learn from and follow.

*Recap history*

·         Little is known of John’s boyhood, except that he “grew and became strong in spirit” (Luke 1:80).

·         The silence of his early years, however, was broken when he burst onto the scene with the message of repentance some time around a.d.

28–29, shortly before Jesus began His ministry.

·         Matthew reports that the place where John preached was the wilderness of Judea (3:1).

Like Galilee, this lay within the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, under whom John was later arrested imprisoned and killed.

·         The gospels are unanimous in their report that John lived “in the wilderness.”—a

vast inhospitable land full of crags, blistering wind, and relentless heat.

·         John called the people away from the comforts of their homes and cities and out into the wilderness, where they might hear him preach.

·         Not only did he dress like Elijah, in camel’s hair and leather belt he was also as uncompromising and dedicated to his ministry as Elijah was, to coin a Lancashire phrase “he called a spade a spade” he told as it was.

·         John was no doubt as rugged as the desert itself.

Nevertheless, his commanding righteousness drew large crowds to hear him.

·         What they encountered from this “voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Mark 1:3) was a call to moral renewal, baptism, and a messianic hope.

·         The real sting of John’s preaching was that it challenged them to see themselves as God saw them; it exposed their greed, avarice, hypocrisy and false religion.

·         His command to share clothing and food (Luke 3:11) was a painful jab at a society that was hungry to acquire material objects.

When he warned the tax collectors not to take more money than they had coming to them (Luke 3:12–13), he exposed the greed that was at the heart of each of them.

·         And the soldiers, whom he told to be content with their wages, must have winced at the thought of not using their power to take advantage of the common people (Luke 3:14).

·         He criticized the people for presuming to be righteous and secure with God because of their heritage as children of Abraham (Matt.

3:9).

·         John laid an ax to the root of this presumption.

He warned that they, the Jews, would be purged and rejected unless they demonstrated fruits of repentance (Matt.

3:7–12).

·         John knew with a certainty what he was to say, and he preached with love, sincerity and conviction, he preached with authority and many listened and believed.

·         Why could he preach like this because it was not his message but God’s and so with that came all the authority and conviction that what he said was true, infallible and of absolute necessity.

·         *The Post-modern dilemma*

·         There was not doubt in his message, there was no stammering lip, he did not preach in a sort of apologetic way.

He did not say this is what I believe to be true, but you know what is true for me may not be true for you.

·         *John was not what is known today a postmodernist*.

·         That is someone who does not believe there is such a thing as absolute truth.

·         And in the context of the church it is someone who does not believe that the Word of God is complete and absolute truth in and of itself.

·         A postmodernist would suggest that if objective truth exists, it cannot be known objectively, (without a bias or with any degree of certainty.)

·         John MacArthur would sum it up like this if you were to boil it down to one single thought then postmodernism is the “rejection of every expression of certainty” – you cannot be sure about anything

·         You cannot say that the bible is the final authority – certainty or truth is regarded as inherently arrogant, elitist, intolerant, oppressive and therefore always wrong.

·         This is not really that new - I am sure we have all been faced with this accusation when we have challenged anyone with what the bible says

·         Well that is what you believe the bible to say, but I believe it says this” as though the truth it contains is not absolute.

·         So then all that this does is reduce biblical truth so that it meets individual or personal needs even when these needs blatantly contradict other truths and commands the bible tells us.

·         E.G We say that the bible clearly teaches there is a narrow road to heaven and few are on it, and there is a broad road to destruction and many are on that – but a postmodernist will say - there are many narrow roads and they all reach the same place in the end.

And what right have you got to be so arrogant to suggest this; you cannot know this how can you be sure?

·         The end result has to be that we cannot have a definitive authority; we cannot say that our gospel is the only way, because absolute truth cannot be known.

·         In fact uncertainty is the new truth – in the church especially in America the emergent church movement which holds this view, would promote doubt and scepticism as a form of humility, that right and wrong should been defined in terms of subjective feelings and personal perspectives.

·         You accept other points of view as valid as an act of humility even though they are wrong, and what is right for you might not necessarily be right for me but that does not matter.

What matters is that we have love.

·         What does this mean, it means that we cannot stand and preach that Christ is the way the truth and the life and that only through him is access to the father and eternal redemption.

·         Because what they have done is undermine the word of God, it is no longer seen as being the final authority; you cannot have absolute truth, so the bible is not completely rejected but it is put to one side.

·         Rob and Kristin Bell are the husband and wife team who founded Mars Hill – a very large emergent church in grand rapids Michigan they said this in Christianity today 2004 - “they found themselves increasingly uncomfortable with church.

·         Life in the church had become so small, “Kirsten says,” it had worked for me for a long time.

Then it stopped working.

The Bells started questioning their assumptions about the bible itself – *discovering the bible as a human product as rob puts it rather than the product of divine fiat (Authority).*

The bible is still in the centre for us rob says but it’s a different kind of centre.

We want to embrace mystery rather than conquer it.

I grew up thinking that we’ve figured out the bible Kristin says that we knew what it means.

Now I have no idea what most of it means.

and I feel like life is big again – like life used to be black and white and now its colour”

·         *Brian McLaren* probably best-known figure in the emerging church movement writing in Christianity today says – I don’t think we’ve got the gospel right yet…….

I don’t think the liberals have it yet.

But I don’t think we have it right either.

None of us have arrived at orthodoxy.

(*Orthodoxy* The body of doctrines taught by Scripture)

·         *Brian McLaren in his book “a generous orthodoxy*” says - how ironic that I am writing about orthodoxy, which implies to many a final capturing of the truth about God, which is the glory of God.

Sit down next to me in this little restaurant and ask me if Christianity (my version of it, yours, the Pope’s whoever’s) is orthodox, meaning true and here’s my honest answer: A little but not yet.

Assuming by Christianity you mean the Christian understanding of the world and God, Christian opinions on soul, text and culture….

I’d have to say that we probably have a couple of things right, but a lot of things wrong”

·         *Brain McLaren in his book “A new kind of Christian*” I drive my car and listen to the Christian radio station, something my wife always tells me I should stop doing (because it only gets you upset).

There I hear preacher after preacher be so absolutely sure of his bombproof answers and his foolproof biblical interpretations….. and the more sure he seems, the less I find myself wanting to be a Christian, because on this side of the microphone, antennas, and speaker, life isn’t that simple, answers aren’t that clear and nothing is that sure”.

·         Today we live in an age where no one has the right to stand up and declare that the bible is the only infallible truth in this world, that it is inspired by God, inherently true, sufficient for all the needs of man, and clear in its teaching.

·         This way of thinking is what colours all society; this is why Prince Charles would rather be called the defender of faiths and not the defender of the faith.