January 7th, 2024 John 1:43-51 Series B Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who loves you with his very life. Amen.
I head a saying recently that stuck with me. I don’t know how true it is, but it sounds good. Here it is, “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” Again, I don’t know how true this is historically speaking, but it seems to apply to Israel in our text.
Israel has grown, not weak, but complacent. I’m not talking about their army here. At the point of history in our Gospel lesson today, the people of israel, the tribe of Judah, are under occupation by the Roman Empire. There isn’t much they can do on that front. No. I’m talking about spiritual complacency.
I like to think of it as a difference in knowing about the Bible as opposed to knowing the Bible. The example that jumps to mind from our culture takes place in the stage production, “Fiddler on the Roof.” The main character frequently says, “as the good book says,” and then he makes something up. Just because something sounds good, or godly, doesn’t mean it is, doesn’t mean it’s from the Bible.
The ancient people had that problem. They Jewish people had grown complacent, taking their relationship with God for granted. There was this idea that just because they were descendants of Abraham, that God would grant them special favor. Like, it didn’t matter what they did or believed, they could simply claim a heritage and gain favor in God’s sight for it.
More than that, on the other end, the fiddler on the rood end, the people had started adding to God’s laws, adding things that sounded good and pious, but ultimately proved not to be. They build this, like fence around the commandments. They had an idea that if they added their own laws to God’s, that if they broke a law, it would be only one of theirs and not actually one of the commandments. Then they could still be blameless in God’s sight, having not broken God’s laws.
For example, lots of laws were added to the Sabbath day. Jesus encounters this all the time in his ministry. He engaged in debate time and again with the phraisees on weather or not it was lawful for him to heal someone on the Sabbath day. Is healing a work? That’s what their hearts asked. In trying to keep the law, they ended up breaking the law. They had grown complacent, and overconfident at the same time.
So to these people God sent a wake up call. God sent the people John the Baptist, the greatest of all the prophets, as Jesus would call him. John the Baptist came looking like Elijah. Rough and tough. He’s not the guy you want to cross. He also is bold, confident in what God wants him to do. In other gospel accounts we hear John scolding the complacent, calling them snakes, calling them rats who are escaping a sinking ship, telling them hell is on the horizon.
But this same John comes to the regular people too. He calls them to the Jordan River to be baptized. This isn’t the same baptism Jesus commands of us at the end of Matthew. Jesus hadn’t been baptized yet. John is calling the people to wake up and repent.
When we go back into the history of God’s people, back in the Old Testament, we learn something rather important. The people of israel entered the promised land by crossing over the Jordan river. After Moses died, Joshua led the people of isreal into the promised land. But they got there not from the south through the desert, the came from the east, over the river.
So John the Baptist is at that place. He is at the place where Isreal entered into the promised land. He is calling to the people, telling them they need to leave the proimsed land and come back again. They have so fallen away from being God’s people, they need a do-over. They need repentance. They need to wake up from their spiritual complacency and over confidence and they need to believe in God again. To trust in God for their salvation, not in their works, not in their ability to keep their own rules they made up. They need to trust in God for salvation, hot their heritage or bloodlines.
And john calls to them to repent and they come out by the droves. Thousands of people hear the call of God’s prophet and repent. Repent of their sins and their complacency. They come to be forgiven. And there, in the water, their sins are washed away, a baptism for the repentance and forgiveness of sins, as Mark tells us in verse 4. The flowing stream of the river takes the filth of sin and washes it away. Repent. Turn. Believe. Wake up. Christ is coming, salvation is near.
And the baptist message rings true in our ears too. It is very easy for us to become complacent with what we believe. To take forgiveness for granted, to take our faith for granted. We grew up in the church, have been coming for years, some of us for decades. We know the bible, we know what God wants, or so we tell ourselves. Yet our actions betray us.
Paul’s words in our text from Romans today call to us, “what then shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means!” But we do. We take for granted our salvation. We knowingly and willingly skip church. We knowningly and willingly don’t give a proportional offering. We don’t help our neighbors. We trust so many things ahead of God. We dont pray, we don’t read our bibles. We are so comfortable with the gifts that we have known our whole lives that we lose the impact of what has happened.
So John calls out to us. Repent and be baptized. Prepare yourself. Someone great is coming. Someone who knows the truth of the situation. Someone who can see through our fake rules we put into place, who sees the spiritual problems in our hearts. Someone great is coming who knows not just our outward appearance, but our hearts, our spirits, our very souls.
And John points us to Jesus, who comes to baptize us, not just for forgiveness, but with the Holy Spirit. Be baptized in the Holy Spirit isn’t some mystical thing that a charismatic church would have you believe. It means that you are united with Jesus. To say it a different way, what happens to Jesus will happen to you.
Jesus died. We will die. Jesus rose from the dead, we will too. Jesus lives in God’s kingdom, so will you. Jesus didn’t die for us to keep sinning, for us to forget about how God wants us to live our lives. The son of God didn’t come to earth so we could do whatever we want, build our own rules, have a weak complacent faith.
No. Jesus came that we would walk in a newness of life. That we would live our lives in a way that is pleasing to God, in a manner that shows that we trust in God, that we believe God is real and that we want to honor him with our thoughts, our words and our actions. We do this not like the pharisees who Jesus calls “whitewashed tombs - they look good outside but are filled with death.” nope. We do this in truth.
Your death has been washed away. Now you can live in the Spirit. Live a life of faith, of good and pious works. To love God by serving your neighbor. To not be complacent. To live like a Christian. Someone who speaks the truth. Someone who learns about God, who prays to God, who serves God in their daily lives.
More than that. You have a new life, new in every sense of the word. Walking in the newness of life is walking in God’s new creation. God’s perfect paradise prepared and opened to us because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. You are united in Jesus death, his life, and the life yet to come. We will walk, with our own feet on a new creation made of stuff. We will see God with our own eyes, worship him in his temple along with all the saints who have gone before, as we share the new life in the world to come.
So is that saying true? Do hard times create good men or whatever? I still don’t know. But I do know this: The Holy Spirit is working in you to create a new heart, a heart pleasing to God. And I know this: The hardship that Jesus endured on the cross brings about the best, our forgiveness, life and salvation. Amen.
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