Performing or Transforming?
Second Sunday in
Advent
December 10, 2017
Performing
or Transforming?
Matthew 3:1-12
Preparing
for Change
There is hardly anything
more life-transforming than the birth of a child, especially your first. It was thirty-five years ago this year that
our daughter, Meredith, made her entrance into the world. When Diane was expecting, my mother-in-law
bought a house for us to rent. She
didn’t want her grandchild living in an apartment in L.A. Diane twisted my father-in-law’s arm to paint
and wallpaper the bedroom which would become the nursery. (Like the baby would really care!) In the meantime, I pretty much cowered in the
corner. I knew my life was about to
change, but had no idea to what extent.
We’ve all had to prepare
for change in our lives. If it wasn’t a
new baby, it might have been a new job or, even more challenging, a new
boss. The issue of change and new
realities was the landscape of the beginning of each of the four Gospels. John the Baptist set up shop out in the
wilderness and started calling people to get ready for a massive change.
The
Word – Matthew 3:1-12
In those days John the
Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand.” For this is he who
was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,
“The voice of one crying
in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the
Lord;
make his paths straight.’”
Now John wore a garment
of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts
and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all
Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were
baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many of
the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood
of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We
have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to
raise up children for Abraham. Even now
the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not
bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water
for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals
I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and
fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand,
and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but
the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
John the Baptist’s
Mission
It seems as if John the
Baptist was a wild and crazy guy. Don’t
let his outfit and diet throw you off.
Both would have been typical of a nomadic desert dweller of the time. His appearance would have reinforced the idea
that his message was counter-cultural - including the poor and the
disenfranchised of his day. He wasn’t
privileged or particularly attractive by the world’s standards. But Jesus said of him, “Truly, I say to you,
among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist”
(Matthew 11:11).
John was the last of the
Old Testament prophets. The Scriptures
foretold that a prophet like Elijah (Mal. 4:5-6) would precede the coming of
the Jewish Messiah. In the words of
Isaiah, he would “prepare the way” – the idea of laying a roadbed, raising the
valleys and leveling the hills. His
message was provocative and simple: “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven is
right at your front door.” It was the
same message that Jesus preached at the beginning of his ministry. There was a sense of urgency – an imperative
to get ready because things were going to radically change. Those who repented demonstrated their change
of heart by being baptized in the Jordan River.
When we think of
repentance, we think of giving up our private sins and becoming more
religious. We have our list of “don’ts”
that we forsake and our new list of “do’s” that we obligate ourselves to. But John’s first-century listeners would have
considered “repentance” a much deeper change than a code of morals. The Jews of that time had a standard of
morality that would rival or surpass any code of ethics and behavior in the
world’s history.[1] It was not simply a matter of changing one’s
behavior that would enlist a person in the kingdom of heaven. It was a matter of your life’s agenda. The right behavior then would follow the
right orientation.
There is a secular story
that is contemporary to the writing of Matthew’s gospel that is helpful in
understanding what John the Baptist meant in his call to repentance. Josephus was a well-recognized historian for
Palestine in the first century. He was
also an officer in the Roman army, sent to quell a rebellion in Palestine
around 60 A.D. The Jewish people always
chaffed under Roman rule and rebellions were common. They were always subdued
with a heavy military hand. When
Josephus confronted the Jewish rebels, he used words similar to John the
Baptist and Jesus when he advised them to “repent and believe in me.”[2]
To repent in the gospels
means to abandon one’s personal agenda and put yourself under God’s rule. It is not simply a call to behavioral change,
but one that is much more radical. It’s
not a matter of performance – the good works that you do (remember, the people
at the time were very moral) – but rather a matter of being transformed,
changed from the inside out. The
behavior will be the fruit of inward orientation towards God’s rule.
Who Were the
Pharisees and Sadducees?
The
narrative pivots and abruptly changes when John observes the religious leaders
in his growing audience:
“But
when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said
to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to
come? Bear fruit in keeping with
repentance. And do not presume to say to
yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from
these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”
At
the time, there were three primary religious sects in Judea: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the
Essenes. The Essenes were a radical
group, fed up with the political posturing of the Pharisees and Sadducees. They lived monastic lives in desert
communities. Some believe that John the
Baptist might have been an Essene. The
Sadducees controlled the Temple: its service and its worship. They were theologically and politically
liberal. They also didn’t believe in the
resurrection. (And that was why they were
sad, you see…) The Council, the ruling
body of Jewish society was made up of both Sadducees and Pharisees so it was
natural for some of them to come and check out the commotion that John the
Baptist was causing in the desert.
What about the Pharisees? Throughout each of the gospels, they always
get a bad rap. That fact should grab our
attention. Like it or not, we share some
of the very same values and practices as them.
The Pharisees had probably the highest moral behavior of anyone at the
time. There’s a reason why Pharisees
were so particular in their behavior.
They had learned the hard lesson of God’s judgment from the Exile to
Babylon five hundred years before and they never wanted to experience it
again. So they made up all kinds of
rules to make sure that they weren’t violating God’s Law and thus, incur his
judgment. Not only did they have a
strict code of moral conduct, but they were committed to the Word of God,
faithful giving and prayer. Most likely,
many pastors today would be happy to have them in their church. They were models of religious
citizenship. (Pause)
Why then, was John the
Baptist so harsh with them? The answer
lies just beneath the surface of our text and becomes obvious as the story in
the gospels progress. They were
self-righteous. They believed they were
on God’s side by their good intentions and behavior. But they were promoting their own
self-righteous agenda. John calls them
to repentance and to bear fruit as evidence of their change of heart. It wasn’t an issue of good works but rather
of who was king – God or their own exalted self. The issue wasn’t performing good works. It was the question of transforming their
soul.
Nicodemus
Jesus’ conversation with
Nicodemus in John 3 is helpful in grasping what was missing in the Pharisee’s
orientation. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a
teacher, and a good moral man. He
eventually became a follower of Christ and helped to bury him after the
crucifixion. But John 3 narrates his
first encounter with Jesus.
Now
there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man
came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher
come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with
him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again
he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be
born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be
born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water
and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the
flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel
that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes,
and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it
goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus
said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the
teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?
Nicodemus was probably
typical of the Pharisees in his understanding.
He was a religious teacher and yet he did not grasp the necessity of
being “born-again.” The truth that Jesus
was presenting was probably the greatest stumbling block of all the religious
leaders of his day. It still remains to
this day. It is not what you do
that brings you into the Kingdom of God; it is a matter of your heart. The Old Testament prophets spoke of the new
heart that God would give his people:
“For
this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those
days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on
their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Jeremiah
31:33
“I
will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your
uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you
a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the
heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my
Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey
my rules.” Ezekiel 36:25-27
John the Baptist, and
later, Jesus preached repentance – turning from our own agenda (as good as that
may seem) and aligning our lives with God’s kingship and purpose. That is the new heart promised by the
prophets.
The Question for
Us
Now what do Pharisees and
repentance have to do with us this morning?
I believe this message applies to two kinds of people. First, it is a warning to moral religious
people that your own good works will not bring you into God’s kingdom. You must be born again. You need a new heart. You need to turn from your own agenda that
you can control and realign your life to follow Jesus. Without that kind of repentance, you will not
enter the kingdom of God but you already stand under condemnation. Read the rest of John 3. Along with repentance – turning to God – you
must turn to Jesus Christ and trust in him – his death and resurrection on your
behalf.
The second group for whom
this message is intended lies heavy on my heart. I pray that you will have ears to hear. You are the ones who, at one point, have
received Christ as your personal Savior but you are no longer being changed and
growing.
I’m terrible with
houseplants. There is only one type that
I can grow and that is because it can take a lot of neglect and abuse. Every other plant I buy for the house wilts
and dies within six months. And Diane is
not any better. We found that it is much
better to decorate our house with silk flowers.
They don’t need water or any kind of care. They look good, but they never change. They never grow.
A lot of Christians are
like that. They look good, but they
never change. They don’t grow.
Like the Pharisees, we’re
really good at making up rules to make ourselves look spiritual.
·
Don’t drink.
·
Don’t smoke.
·
Don’t dance.
·
Don’t cuss.
·
Wear your best clothes on Sunday.
·
Attend all church activities.
·
Give at least 10% of your income to the
church.
·
Do your daily devotions.
I’m not preaching against
those things. But I am saying it is
possible to do those things and still live in the kingdom of Bob…or whoever you
are. We sometimes follow this list in
order to make people think we are under Christ’s lordship and condemn those who
don’t follow our list to a tee.
Sorry. The gospels condemn those
kinds of antics.
I sometimes wonder where
Jesus might hang out today. I never went
into a bar to drink or to socialize, but I worked a late-night restaurant shift
one summer. We’d always get heavy
business at 2 AM as the bar next door would close. Let me tell you, there were some really
messed-up people. And most of them would
be glad to open up their lives to you.
Broke my heart. I’ve often
wondered if we wouldn’t sometimes find Jesus in a place like that today because
that’s where all the broken people are.
And
as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and
sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the
Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with
tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well
have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this
means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the
righteous, but sinners.”
Matthew
9:10-13
It’s easy to look
like a Christian. We’ve got rules to
live by but we still control everything.
It is far harder to live like one. God has control of your life and you are
surrendered to him. Friends, this
performance-based Christianity is pervasive in our churches. It has become part of our culture. It seems to do no harm because it looks so
good on the surface. But there’s no life
there. It’s oppressive, and there are
many people – especially young people – who see it for what it is and stumble
over it – walking away from the Christian faith. We think we have to do things for God. Such thinking will never bear any fruit because
it comes from us. I like what Beth Moore
says: “It’s not what we do for Jesus that bears fruit, but rather what
we do with him.” Jesus said,
“apart from me, you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
Are you a silk flower
that looks good on the outside but never changes? Or are you a real plant, rooted in God and
dependent on him for nourishment and light?
Whose agenda are you pursuing?
Yours or God’s? Are you focused
on performing for God or allowing Him to transform your life?
Today is the Second
Sunday of Advent. We lit the peace
candle earlier in the service. When the
angels announced the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago, they proclaimed peace to
those with whom God is pleased. In other
words, peace is the possession of those who are aligned with God. Our journey throughout each day is full of
potholes that threaten to jar our spiritual life out of alignment. Advent provides us with an opportunity to
slow down, consider, and reflect on our life with God. Are you going at breakneck speed, pushing God
out of life these days? Repent. That means turn 180 degrees and act
differently. Intentionally carve out
some time to read the Scriptures and pray between now and Christmas Day. Selecting one of the Gospels would be a very
good choice. Is a particular sin getting
the better of you? Repent. Remember the strategies that we taught about
a month ago for resisting temptation:
1.
It starts with a decision. Decide that you are not going to engage in
that behavior.
2.
Set your boundaries. Stay out of the bakery aisle if you struggle
with gluttony.
3.
Enlist the help of a trusted friend to
help hold you accountable.
4.
Immerse your mind in Scripture.
5.
Fix your eyes on Jesus.
We tend to think that
repentance is only for gross people.
It’s not for us. Well, John the
Baptist certainly blew that assumption away.
The fact is, repentance needs to be a regular part of every Christian’s
life because we are “prone to wander.”
Repentance is a good word – a redemptive word. Repentance is what Advent is all about, and
it is the only way to true peace.
Won’t you turn to him
today?
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