Prepare your Heart

Good evening and welcome to another night here at church. I am glad that we can be gathered together. One of the joys of preaching is the preparation. Some insight for you into my preparation is that I often study more than one passage of scripture each week for the message. Now some might see this as uncertainty in knowing what passage I want to preach. I instead approach it from an attitude that God is speaking and he needs to let his passages speak to me. Each sermon is planned and worked on and is laced with prayer. To approach it any other way just isn’t right.

Tonight i wanted to share with you the passage that didn’t quite make the cut. Or i should say the one that i felt was more appropriate for tonight instead of this morning.

Turn with me to Matthew chapter 3 as we read the story of John the Baptist.

Matthew 3:1–12 NIV

1 In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea 2 and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 3 This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’ ” 4 John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. 5 People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6 Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Preparing the Way

A lot of Christmas is about preparation. Think about it for a moment. We spend a lot of time getting different things ready. We have to take the time to think about what we want to buy as presents for people. We have to make sure we have wrapping paper. We have to plan out parties and family get together. We make travel plans to go see family or to have family come see us. We have to work to prepare the way for the coming holiday.

John was the man who was called to plan the way for Jesus to begin his ministry.

His story always amazes me because of that. He knows that he is not the one that people need to look to but he is called to start the work. In many ways he is called to start softening the hearts of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. John does this by calling them to repentance.

Repentance is a interesting idea. When we talk about repentance i often wonder if we do a bad job of explaining what it really is.

For many people repentance is just saying to God that your sorry. Than they go on their merry way back to life like nothing has changed.

We have to be honest that is what many people think and believe. However that is not what Repentance is about.

Repentance involves the whole person.

Heart, Head, and Hands.

Turning to God needs to be more than just an apology it is about the fact that we are trusting in the Lord and his faithfulness to save us and transform us but also changing our very lives to come into step with him. To live a life of holiness and purity. This doesn’t always mean that we have it perfect right away. We know that Holiness and a life of purity is a process and takes time. Yet, it is a call to change who we are. To move beyond our past life and to be a new person living for God.

To be marked as different.

John was different too. He lived a life that many of us probably would never want to live. I don’t know about you but i am not ready to go live in the wilderness and wear only some camel hair and eat locus and honey. John though was living a life that he practiced out and lived a simple life so he could call people to the message that God had placed in his heart.

Pharisees and Sadducees

One of the more interesting parts about this passage is John’s encounter with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees and Sadducees are so often looked at as the villians of the story in the Gospel. To be honest for good reason. They were often trying to catch Jesus in his teachings and challenging him.

See they had a lot to loose when people like John and Jesus showed up because they were looked to as the moral and spiritual leaders of the community. John was disrupting that. He was calling people to something different.

The idea that John calls them a “brood of vipers” is a powerful statement. This is an attack that portrays the Pharissees and Sadducees as those who have the appearance of devotion, but they only really speak and practice evil. This was often the case because many Pharisees and Sadducees were men who looked to bring glory in their life to themselves and not God. They were proud of their heritage and their works and they didnt’ realize that they were falling way short of what God intended for us.

Modern day Pharisees

Unfortunately in today’s world there are many people who profess Christianity that have become the modern day Pharisees. They live a life that they claim is Christian and yet the fruit they produce is rotten or destructive.

They want to bring the glory upon themselves instead of on God. This is why it is so important for us to live out what John says to us in Matthew 3:8

Matthew 3:8 NIV

8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

When i see passages like this it reminds me that we are called to be reminded of where we have come from. That there is nothing special about us in our seeking repentance but it is the work of God in us that is the message of hope. It is God’s transformation of our entire being. It is in this humbleness that we find the message of the Gospel.

This also means that we must work to spread the message of God to the world. To bear out our fruit in our actions. Sharing the message with those we encounter. Showing love to the stranger who comes to church for the first time on a Sunday.

John’s Humbleness

We see this with John. He recognized that he wasn’t something special but he was just a vessel of God.

Matthew 3:11–12 NIV

11 “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

John knew that though he had a message to share with the world that it was the message of God and it was for his glory not to build up John. Holiness isn’t a call to puff up our chests and to make ourselves look good. It is about bringing glory to God.

To share an example with you.

My story of alcohol.

I don’t ever want to use my victory over this substance to make me look good but i want it to instead be a message that glorifies God. We must be reminded that we need to be humble and to present ourselves, all of ourselves as a people who are living for Christ.