Advent Peace
Advent 2020 • Sermon • Submitted
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The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”
John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.
And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.
I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
INTRO: At Advent, we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus, and look forward to His 2nd coming.
The themes of advent remind us of the difference Christ makes.
Week 1: Hope- Christ brings hope to our lives.
Week 2: Peace
With God and with each other as we live God’s way
The problem that interferes with Peace is our own sin. Sin has separated us from God. Guilt and consequence of sin keeps us from having peace within ourselves. Sin and its impact on others hampers them from having peace.
Advent, is not a call to recognize our sin, which it is, but it is an invitation to change our lives. The hardest thing in the world is perhaps to change our lives.
The Messenger
The Messenger
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way,
In our text this morning, we see the work of John the Baptist. John the Baptist comes out of the desert, the last of the great prophets. It’s been over a hundred years since the people of Israel, the children of Israel, had seen and heard a prophet.
And he is very recognizable, because he is dressed like Elijah the prophet, the clothes are Elijah the prophet, the words are the excitement of Elijah the prophet — the greatest prophet who never wrote a word but was the greatest and the first of the great prophets of Israel.
John was the first to recognize Jesus
Before birth:
In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah,
and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit,
and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!
And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
AS Jesus appeared in public ministry
He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.
The Purpose
The Purpose
the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”
Elijah and John had the same purpose: Preparation. The Lord has come. Prepare yourself for the coming of the Lord. Prepare yourself. Make straight His paths.
What he means by that is straighten yourselves out. Make straight His paths.
I remember a very good explanation of the real meaning of that “make straight His path” is the Chinese saying about certain people are all crooked and turned. It’s a very good description because that’s what we very often are.
We are born that way!
Sin warps us and keeps us from fulfilling God’s purpose for us.
When we sin, we are misusing our lives.
That leaves us “crooked and turned”
So much so, that we call what is right, wrong, and what is wrong, right
BUT: Jesus came to make that right.
What is the opposite of that?
Being honest with yourself. Being truthful to yourself. Don’t lie to yourself. Don’t pretend to be something that you’re not.
Make straight the path, so that the Lord can come and transform you
It begins with that brutal honesty with ourselves of admitting our need.
It is indeed God Himself who comes to walk down the straight paths and into our hearts.
That leads us to see...
The Message:
John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Specifically: John called on them to repent and display that through baptism..
Repent
Turn from the crooked to the straight
Stop where you are Stop headed down the crooked path
Pursue righteousness
Turn and follow Jesus!
Albert Einstein used to say, when he was told that the Declaration of Independence in America was “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he used to say the pursuit of happiness is for idiots.
That’s kind of startling. But what he meant was this …
They said, “Well, what should we pursue?”
He said, “You should pursue truth. You should pursue beauty. Not running around trying to be happy, happy, happy, buying things, doing things that will make you happy, happy, happy. Because they’re never going to make you happy.
“But if you pursue truth, if you pursue the things that are really what your own hearts hunger for — love, forgiveness, compassion — these are the truths that are worth laying your life down for.”
And that is what Jesus comes to give you.
He comes not only to teach us, He comes to live it. Love, self sacrificing to the point of death.
That is how he brought peace!
Peace with God:
He overcame sin and death by paying the price for us
This alone makes all other aspects of peace possible
Peace within
Knowing we are forgiven, can remove the inner turmoil
Peace between us
As God conforms me to His image, I can live more at peace with His people
I won’t steal, lie, murder, sleep around
Thus I won’t be harming myself and others causing troubles
*recognize, we will still be surrounded by sinners, and thus won’t have perfect peace on earth
That peace is the beginning of the new world that the little Child brings to us.
That is why we are called to repent. He wants to change us from the inside out.
AP: There’s a story about change and how difficult it is.
It’s about a bird sitting on a tree, on the bough of a tree, in some South Pacific island.
And he was quite happy in his little paradise, except things don’t look too good. There’s threatening signs around him, maybe of air pollution or what have you, but the paradise isn’t exactly a paradise.
Anyhow, he’s very content. He’s sitting there and a bird flies over.
And he says to the bird that flies over, “Where are you going?”
He says, “I’m going to a place not too far from here. But if you fly it will take three days and you will land in this place and this place is wonderful. It’s got green trees. And it’s got flowers. And it’s like a whole new place in which we birds can feel at home and safe and sound.”
And so the bird sitting on the tree says, “Well, that’s okay for you.”
And the other bird says, “No, no, come with me.”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s okay here.”
Well, about three days later, a storm comes and it tears half the tree apart and now he’s only got this straggly little branch that he’s sitting on.
And another bird comes and he says, “I’m going to show you this wonderful place. Come with me and I’ll bring you to that place.”
And the little bird looks up at him and he says, “No, no, I’m quite satisfied here.”
And this goes on for a couple more years.
And another bird comes and he says, “This is your last chance now. Because a terrible typhoon is coming, a terrible typhoon, and it’s going to destroy everything on this island.”
And the little bird says, “Well, I don’t know. I just can’t make up my mind.”
Finally, the next day, the typhoon comes. And this typhoon grabs the tree and throws it up into the sky.
And the bird, it grabs the bird and it hurls him twenty miles up in the air, and it catches him and throws him out into the seas and half drowns him, and, finally, after a long time, it throws the bird onto a beach.
The little bird goes to the beach and he sees the poor bird standing there and he says, “You finally made it. What took you so long?”
\And he would love to have said, “I chose to follow your good advice,” but the truth is “I was blown here by the typhoon.”
And the other little bird says, “It doesn’t matter how you get here, as long as you get here.”
And so all the birds live happily ever after.
I like that story because it strikes me that, very often, the great problems of life come from the freedom that God gave us.
It doesn’t come from where you were born or whether you have a good living or a bad living or a friendly living or what have you.
It doesn’t come from coming from a different country or a different nation. The pain comes from us having to choose.
And this is what John the Baptist was saying.
He is saying make straight the paths because God Himself is coming.
And He is going to take you into a world that you cannot dream of. But it will be a world very unlike the one you’re in now, living in fear, constant threats, all these things. And He will make you safe. And He will make you whole.
And, of course, this is the promise of the Messiah, who comes to heal us, to save us, to teach us how to live, to teach us how to become what He himself has planned that we will become.
God has come to make us human and not ashamed of it, that we might become divine and rejoice in the new life that He comes to give us.
So this Advent is not a time of groaning. It’s a time for recognition that John the Baptist stands before you and says, “This is your God Himself.
“The One who created you, who loves you and will give you everlasting life, is coming. It’s time to choose.”
And what do you choose?
You choose to be truthful, to be honest, to care, to share and to understand that the God who is coming has already come.
And He is going to bring you to the next step.
And the next step is that He is going to make you a person who knows by living your life throughout the world, by living it in honesty and care, by living it in the way you deeply want to live it in your own hearts, that you will become a messiah to the world.
And so it is this Christmas we should already be full of joy and peace and happiness.
But it must be a human choice.
And the choice is not out of fear, not out of dread, not out of anything to keep the little bird hanging on to the bough.
The only way is to learn to love, and to learn the lesson that is given to us to learn, and, each day, that we too might become one with the little Child, one with the Messiah, one with the Saviour of the World.
