We Work While We Wait

Scripture:

Matthew 3:1–12 NLT

In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” The prophet Isaiah was speaking about John when he said, “He is a voice shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming! Clear the road for him!’ ” John’s clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey. People from Jerusalem and from all of Judea and all over the Jordan Valley went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them. “You brood of snakes!” he exclaimed. “Who warned you to flee the coming wrath? Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones. Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize with water those who repent of their sins and turn to God. But someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not worthy even to be his slave and carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.”

We’ve been lied to.

I was reading an article by James Clear this week, who pointed out that our unsuccessful attempts at turning our lives around each year has been led and fed by a misreading spanning nearly 2 generations back.

Dr. Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon back in the 1950’s who noted that it took patients at least 3 weeks to get used to their new looks or their new prosthetic limbs.

The self-help industry got a hold of that statement and quickly morphed it from 3 weeks to 30 days and began pumping out millions of books about how you could change your looks, your life, your mind, and your mannerisms in just 30 days. They left off the “at least” part of his finding.

More recent studies on habit forming says that it actually takes an average of 66 days or more, just over two months. No wonder so many people fail at those new year resolutions, just trying to get through January. It takes anything from 2 to 10 months for those new habits to actually stick.

The world is in a state of flux

The rules keep changing

Things won’t stay like this for long.

They will likely change several more times until we settle someplace better adjusted to this new world.

Thesis: While we wait, we prepare the way: by turning back to God, warning others, and separating ourselves for God’s work in the days ahead.

Prepare the Way

Matthew 3:1–3 NLT

1 In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was, 2 “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” 3 The prophet Isaiah was speaking about John when he said, “He is a voice shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming! Clear the road for him!’ ”

John the Baptist

John the Baptist knew a lot about preparation. He played a very important role in getting the people ready for the big change that was coming into the world through Jesus. His job was to get the Jewish people ready to meet their Savior.

That’s no easy job, especially for one person, which was why he started making disciples from anyone he could. It started with asking them to repent and be baptized.

What does Repentance mean?

Changing your mind or Turning Back to God

Why does it make a difference? It depends on if you are speaking with:

Jewish People

Greek People

For the Jewish people, repentence was turning back to the God they already knew.

The Greeks, or non-Jewish people, who would read this gospel later and be baptized in places all over the world often did not need to do a complete 180-degree turn in their life. There have been many Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Atheist people who lived very noble lives who simply needed to take those noble lives and live them with Jesus to be a Christian. For them, becoming a Christian was a matter of learning the language of Christians and changing their citizenship to God’s kingdom instead of the kingdom into which they were born.

John’s Baptism

Getting baptized by John didn’t mean you were saved, it meant you were joining the team.

Joining the team meant you were willing to work, even if it meant putting yourself at odds with the rest of the world.

How do we prepare for the change we know is coming but we are not sure how it will look?

Warning and Confessing

Matthew 3:4–10 NLT

4 John’s clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey. 5 People from Jerusalem and from all of Judea and all over the Jordan Valley went out to see and hear John. 6 And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. 7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them. “You brood of snakes!” he exclaimed. “Who warned you to flee the coming wrath? 8 Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. 9 Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones. 10 Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.

Warning

John prepared the Jewish people by giving them a warning.

Some of us hear the gospel call after we have already made the decision to follow Jesus, but we find ourselves on the outside looking in where Jesus is working.

The Pharisees were probably the most Godly of all the Jewish people during the time of Jesus, but they were still missing out both before and after Jesus was born. They were trying to do it on their own because they got used to their prayers going unanswered and not seeing God working in the ways they wanted to see Him.

For them, repentence did not mean changing their minds, it meant turning back to the God they had turned their back on. They, of all people, knew better, but when God didn’t show up where they wanted to see Him, they led all the people to turn their backs on God and try to figure it out on their own, using scripture as their guidebook.

The gospels are full of stories about the Pharisees, because it is so easy for us to become just like them. We make the same excuses about being raised in a Christian family or comparing our sins to people we think are worse than us.

We tell ourselves that Jesus will always be with us, that He will take care of us - a promise He gave to those who were going out and making disciples. (Matthew 28:20) While Jesus can be with us in Spirit all the time, the truth is, He left the disciples on their own all the time in the gospels. There were plenty of times He sent them to work and then went off on His own to be with God, spend time at a well in Samaria, or take a small group of them on a retreat. It happened even more in the days after the resurrection. Jesus would simply disappear in front of them after He made His point and move on to the next group of disciples to visit.

The problem is that we allow ourselves to freak out if we don’t feel God’s presence right now and we start to abandon our relationship with Him instead of being faithful to the last thing He asked us to do. God doesn’t give up on us. He just trusts us enough that we can learn to walk on our own instead of always being carried by Him.

Have you turned your back on God?

In your work, at home,

by not taking time to be with Him,

by refusing to let Him guide your decisions,

by not serving with Him and following the calling He has for you?

Confessing

If you want loose of whatever sin has a hold of you, whether it is a poking burr on your sock that you picked up walking through the weeds of this year, or something that is strangling the life out of you: name it and claim it.

Confess it. Turn around, turn back to God, and let Him tell you how to deal with it.

God will do His part, and we have to do our part, and then we will be right back in step with where He wants us to be. Ready to work and preparing for Jesus to come again.

Separating - Repenting and Living the New Life

Matthew 3:11–12 NLT

11 “I baptize with water those who repent of their sins and turn to God. But someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not worthy even to be his slave and carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.”

Cutting ties

We’ve been ready to cut ties with 2020 since March of this year.

Lots of people will make us promises and ask us to put our hope in them.

The world will beg us, plead with us, even pay us to come back to live and work for them. Then they will threaten us if we still refuse.

You can’t say yes to the world and yes to Jesus.

You can’t say yes to living according to your own desires and yes to Jesus.

Saying yes to Jesus means trusting that He will take care of the world and that He will take care of you.

We have to let Jesus separate the wheat and chaff in our lives. That’s His job. If we don’t allow Jesus to do that in us personally, we can’t be His church. We have to repent, and turn back to do the work He set before us so that those who have never known Him can repent, change their minds, and become new disciples - and some of those “new disciples” are our own children. Members of our own family. They won’t find Jesus unless we lead them to Him with our words and living example.

CTA

Here is the good news from James Clear:

We can skip days in our 2 to 10 month journey to new habits. The key is not getting 33 or 66 days perfectly in a row. The key is not giving up when we fall, but instead asking for help, getting back up, and going at it again. We don’t have to start back at step zero. We can move on as if we only tripped once.

Here is the good news from Jesus Christ:

We can mess up in our journey to a new life with Jesus. We don’t have to be perfect every day of our life. When we mess up we don’t have to go back and start first grade Sunday School all over again. We can ask for help, get up from where we are, and move on like we have only tripped once.

Sometimes we do more than trip though.

Sometimes we get in trouble and we know why we are in trouble. Sometimes it is not ignorance, it is disobedience that holds us back from God. You cannot turn your back on Jesus in one area of your life and follow him in others.

That’s hard to hear, but it is truth. We may put on fronts or masks for our friends and family, or have a different public and private face, but Jesus isn’t interested in saving someone who doesn’t really exist. He didn’t die for our lies. He has come to invite the part of us that makes our decide to walk with Him.

So, in our time of preparation for what God is bringing to us, ask yourself,

“How far is too far?”

Where is too far that you won’t follow Jesus there?

What is too much that you wouldn’t do for Jesus?

Be honest with yourself because wherever and whatever those answers may be, they are sacred ground to God and they are the edges that He is growing His Spirit and influence and power in your life. Those are the places you can expect to see God coming into your world.

That is where He is working while we wait.

Will you go and work with him there in those places He is working on you?