Sermon Tone Analysis
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Scripture
Introduction
Things are not always what they seem are they?
many say that reality is in the perception of the individual.
For example one could totally believe that the President should be impeached, while another can say that he should not.
These are matters of perception.
What one person calls right another calls wrong.
We are in a day in which there is no middle ground.
Very often what we expect is not what we get and when things do not meet our expectations we feel cheated, let down, disappointed.
One of the things Christians should practice in these matters is discernment.
Discernment is about distinguishing between things and choosing the good.
Sometimes the things might be good and bad, but often we have to make up our minds about choosing between two or more good things.
Discernment is “the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence of God—both in ordinary moments and the larger decisions of our lives.”
Ruth haley Barton in Pursuing God’s Will Together: A discernment Practice for Leadership.
Why all this focus on discernment?
Because this is precisely what John is doing.
Exegesis
I began this sermon by saying things are not always what they seem.
This is John’s problem.
He knew Jesus. he baptized Jesus, yet he is not sure who Jesus is.
So he sends the disciple to see if what he hears is true.
Hence, Do you hear what I see?
John’s disciples travel some hundred miles to where Jesus is ministering in Galilee just to ask him if he is the Messiah or not.
Jesus answer on the surface is odd.
Why doesn’t he just say yes or no?
Well, actions speak louder than words.
Jesus without point out specifics in prophecy, point out portions of the Jewish Bible that pertain to the activity of the Messiah.
As we learned last week John preached a gospel of divine holiness with divine destruction.
That is judgement will come form the one who is to come.
Yet Jesus preached a gospel of divine love and holiness.
This kind of Messiah was wholly unexpected by John.
Many believe John was showing doubt in Jesus.
I don’t think it was doubt at all.
I think it was John being open to God doing something totally different then he thought, but wanting to discern if this is the case.
Of course we are not told what John’s reaction to what Jesus said.
We do not know if John became a disciple of Jesus.
But we do know that John prepared the way for Jesus, or pointed the way in the painting on the back of the bulletin.
However, for Matthew’s audience and us we have no such dilemma.
It is easily discerned that Jesus is Messiah.
We can easily recognize and respond to the presence and activity of God in Jesus of Nazareth.
Blessed and privileged are we to witness these things.
We are challenged to stay firm in our relationship with Jesus.
The word offended in verse 6 literally means to stumble or fall.
Know who Jesus is.
Believe in the coming one or you may stumble and fall over God’s true revelation in Jesus Christ.
Jesus goes on to praise John.
He rhetorically asks the crowd what they went to the wilderness to see.
John most certainly was not a “reed shaken by the wind.”
Today we would call that somone who is a waffler, or better just goes with which way the wind is blowing.
They have no foundational values thus are swept away hut what ever is “cool” or in style.
Jesus point out that John was the last of the OT prophets, a bridge if you will between the Old covenant and the new covenant in Jesus.
Jesus echoes what Matthew has earlier written that John was the one preparing the way.
But even as great as he was, it is even greater to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Application
We are privileged to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Yet, it is OK if you do not have it all figured out.
John who preached with such conviction and power about the one who is to come, had his doubts about him when he got there!
As convinced as we may about about our own agendas for what we believe to be the right way of doing God’s work, we need to possess the humility that allows God to do something different.
John possessed this humility or he never would have enlisted his disciples to help him discern if Jesus was the one to come.
On scholar comments that Jesus reply of prophetic fulfillment pointing the way to his messiahship forced John to look at the facts of his ministry and adjust his expectations to fit God’s activity.
I submit to you it was John’s humility that allowed him to consider that he might have been wrong in his expectations in the first place.
I like how its put by another writer here:
As convinced as we may be about our own agendas for what we believe to be the right way of doing God’s work, having a healthy personal humility allows room for God to adjust our agendas.
The religious leaders and even the crowds missed, and even distorted, the message of both John and Jesus because of their stubborn refusal to hear God’s voice in their messages.
As we move closer to Jesus birth, we need to consider how Mary and Joseph had to be open to God doing a new thing.
A pregnancy created by the Holy Spirit in a 13 year old.
God being incarnate in a little baby.
Making a new home in Egypt and later in Nazareth.
Having to make a strenuous journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, on foot, with your betrothed close to birth.
Your child God incarnate being born in a cave-stable.
Shepherds, the lowest of the low paying a visit to adore the child.
Later the magi coming to pay tribute.
For John, he wanted to discern that what he heard is what is to be seen.
Jesus says this,
“Go and tell John what you hear and see . .
.”
Do you hear what I see?
Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy
Do you hear what I hear
Ringing through the sky shepherd boy
Do you hear what I hear
A song, a song
High above the trees
With a voice as big as the sea
With a voice as big as the sea
Life does not pause.
We are given in marriage.
The rains come and go.
The winds blow, the season change.
There are wars and rumours of wars.
Death, birth, pestilence and disease.
best of time worst of times.
Life.
But we listen for a song high above the trees.
A new song, that we must be ready for.
God is always doing a new thing and if we do not have the humility of John or the help of a community for discernment.
We might not ever see what John heard.
The song may be high above the trees but we could never hear it, if we are not open to an incarnational God who is involved in our everyday lives, in totally unexpected ways.
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