A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent
A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent
Philippians 4:4-7 & St. John 1:19-28
by William Klock
The days are short and the clouds are heavy. I was walking home for lunch yesterday and thinking that it felt more like dusk than noon. It seemed very appropriate for Advent. These dark and dreary days build anticipation for Christmas, for the birth of Jesus—they’re very fitting. Think of Israel two thousand years ago—in those days of Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, and King Herod. The world was dark. The nations were enslaved to false gods and pagan kings. Even little Israel, called to be the light of the world, lay in darkness. The candlestick in the temple was kept lit, but the cloud of glory that had once filled the holy of holies, the very presence of God, had been absent for five-hundred years. God’s people were ruled by pagans and pretenders. But the people knew the words of the prophets, the promises of their God. It would not be this way forever. That’s the setting for today’s Gospel, which begins at John 1:19. Here’s what John writes:
This is the testimony John [the Baptist] gave when the Jews sent priests and Levites to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” “What then?” they asked him, “Are you Elijah?” “I am not,” he replied. “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” “Well, then who are you?” they said. “We’ve got to take an answer back to those who sent us. Who do you claim to be?” He said, “I am ‘a voice calling in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord,’ just as the prophet Isaiah said.” (John 1:19-28)
The priests were the spiritual gatekeepers of Israel and when they heard of this prophet, John, preaching and baptising, they sent their people to ask him what he was about—to see if he was legit. People were talking about John like he was the Messiah. You have to understand that everyone was eagerly waiting for the Messiah. He would come to drive away the darkness and to set things to rights. He would deal with the pagans and then sit on the throne of David to usher in a new age. Was John the one?
So they ask, “Who are you? Who do you claim to be? Elijah?” Some people thought Elijah would come back as Messiah, kind of like King Arthur coming back in Britain’s darkest hour of need to save the nation. Remember that Elijah never died. He, the greatest of Israel’s prophets, was carried up to heaven in a fiery chariot. Malachi had prophesied that he would return, writing:
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. (Malachi 4:5)
But John says, “No. I’m not Elijah.” He hadn’t come to earth in a fiery chariot. He was the son of Zechariah the priest and his wife, Elizabeth.
“Are you the prophet?” they asked. In Deuteronomy 18 the Lord had promised that he would one day raise up a prophet like Moses, who would declare his words. Many people thought this prophet would be the Messiah. But again John answers, “No, I’m not the prophet either.” We get a sense of the longing and expectation of the Jews in those dark days. They were in an Advent season of their own. Like a kid waking up every morning in December and asking his parents, “Is it Christmas yet?” So the Jews waited expectantly for the Messiah to come and drive away the darkness: to vindicate their faithfulness, to end their long exile, to restore the presence of the Lord to his temple. They knew the Lord had promised all of this long before and they knew from their own history that the Lord is faithful to fulfil his promises. He would surely come and rescue them just as he’d rescued them from Egypt and just as he’d rescued them from Babylon. So for five hundred years, they woke up each morning eagerly asking, “Is it today? Will the Messiah finally come today?”
John says “No”, but in Matthew and Mark, Jesus affirms that John was fulfilling the prophecy of the return of Elijah. I think John denied these things because he knew people associated the prophecies of Elijah and the Prophet with the Messiah. John knew he wasn’t the Messiah; he was the Messiah’s herald. And so when the priests finally let him speak for himself, he quotes Isaiah 40:3, and says, “I am ‘a voice calling in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord.’” In other words, John was indeed fulfilling prophecy—not as the Messiah, but as the one sent to prepare Israel to receive the Messiah.
They were surprised. People in the past had claimed to be the Messiah. No one claimed to be his herald. That was weird. So they dig deeper. Look at 25-27:
They continued to question him, “So why are you baptising, if you aren’t the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet?” John answered them, “I’m baptising with water, but there is one sanding among you whom you do not know—someone who is to come after me. I’m not worthy to untie his sandal straps.”
Baptism was a symbol of cleansing and of ritual purity. At this point the other gospel-writers are helpful as they expand on John’s answer. Mark tells us that John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance—it was a preparatory act in light of the coming judgement the Messiah would bring. And Matthew and Luke also report John continuing about this one who will come, this one greater than John: “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matthew 3:11, Luke 3:16). In other words, John is calling Israel to repentance in anticipation of the Messiah, who will fulfil the Lord’s promises to set Israel to rights by filling his people with his own Spirit. The law written on stone tablets would be inscribed on the hearts of God’s people so that they could finally fulfil his law of love. But the Messiah was also coming in judgement. He would baptise the repentant with God’s own Spirit, but he would baptise unrepentant Israel with fire.
These are the two sides of the gospel coin. You can’t have one without the other. Jesus’ advent, on the one hand, brought mercy to the repentant, but on the other it also brought judgement on the unrepentant within Israel. What’s important for us here, Brothers and Sisters, is that this exchange between John and the priests reminds us of the Messiah’s place in Israel’s story and of the faithfulness of God to his promises. It is this manifestation of the Lord’s faithfulness (and of his goodness, mercy, grace, and wisdom) to Israel—something we see brought to its climax in the birth, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus, that has drawn us—you and I—to the God of Israel and that, by faith, has incorporated us into the people of God. Through our union with Jesus, through our incorporation into this people, through our being made adopted sons and daughters of Abraham, you and I have come to know God’s mercy and the life of the Spirit, too. Because of the faithfulness of God, revealed in Jesus and in the power of the gospel, the darkness that Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, John the Baptist and Jesus knew, that deep, deep darkness full of false gods and wicked kings and demonic power has been driven away by the light. The light has come into the darkness, his gospel has thrown those powers down and lit up the world. And you and I have seen—we live in—the glory of that light. And this is where our Epistle today takes off. Brothers and Sisters, it means something that you and I have been incorporated into the people of God. God has a purpose and a mission for his people—for us. This is where our Epistle takes off.
Paul writes those wonderful and challenging words in Philippians 4:4:
Rejoice in the Lord always; I say again, rejoice.
What prompted Paul to write this? Well, just two verses earlier, Paul exhorted two women, Euodia and Syntyche, to agree with each other. They had once been fellow labourers with Paul, but they’d had some kind of falling out. There’s something providential in the fact that Paul doesn’t give us the details, because with no details I think we all end up thinking of the fallings out we’ve had with our own brothers and sisters in the Lord. This isn’t just about two women in Philippi. It’s about each of us. In response to that falling out, Paul calls the Philippian Christian to rejoice in the Lord. Instead of a public display of disunity or resentment or anger—whatever it was that was going on between these two women, the Church was to put joy on display, to celebrate the life of God. They were people of the light, but they were living in the dark. It was imperative that they come back into the light. Brothers and Sisters, the devils and the evil powers of this age want nothing more than to undermine our gospel witness in the world, to flip the switch and turn off our gospel light. Don’t let that happen. Jesus and the gospel should overcome and drown out the darkness whenever it tries to creep into our church family. Here’s how it works. Paul writes:
Let everyone know how gentle and gracious you are. (Philippians 4:5a)
Gentle and gracious. Paul uses the same description in 2 Corinthians 10 to describe the meekness of Jesus as a model for Christians. This is gospel light lived out. What Paul’s getting at is that Jesus is the King, but in him we see this amazing display of gracious gentleness. This is the gentleness we see revealed as Jesus, the one to whom heaven and earth belong, humbled himself to be born one of us, to die on the cross, and to show mercy to his enemies. This kind of meekness or gentleness is unique to Jesus, and yet Paul stresses that as his people, as stewards of the gospel, we’re called to witness this same gentleness amongst ourselves. As it should be the resolution to so many disputes in the Church, it was the resolution to whatever had driven Euodia and Syntyche apart.
Brothers and Sisters, when we demand our rights, when we grasp for power, when we nurse grudges, we undermine our gospel witness—we put on display the very darkness from which we’ve been delivered by the one who is light. In contrast Paul calls us to rejoice in the Lord and to manifest Jesus-like gentleness in our relationships. Jesus’ gracious gentleness has forgiven and restored us and that same gracious gentleness ought to shine through us and through the life of the church. Consider that every time we hold a grudge, allow a relationship to break down, or follow the world’s advice to cut those problem or negative people out of our lives, we undermine the Church’s witness to the world. But that’s not all. Paul goes on:
The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything. Rather in everything let your requests be made known to God, by prayer, supplication, and with thanksgiving.
There’s that Advent theme again: Jesus has given us a job to do. He’s given us a gospel treasure to steward in his absence. In the meantime, rather than being anxious, we should take our needs to God. Jesus made the same point in the Sermon on the Mount. The pagans worry about what they’ll eat, what they’ll wear, and where they’ll sleep. God’s people should know better than to worry unduly about these things. God will provide just as he always has. He is faithful to his promises. The story of his dealings with Israel is the proof and even more so, so is his gift of Jesus, who died and rose again to set us free from sin and death. So go to the Lord with your needs and ask. And while you’re at it, give thanks, because you know his faithfulness and his love.
This is part of the witness of the people of God—it’s how we are light in the darkness—and it ties back into rejoicing. When Paul talks about rejoicing, at least part of what he’s got in mind is a public display or a public witness. The pagan Greeks in Philippi regularly held public celebrations to honour their gods. And yet the pagans, as Jesus said, were always anxious. Why? Because their gods never delivered. Pagan religion was a non-stop game of trial and error, trying to guess what the gods wanted, trying to guess what you may have done wrong to offend them, and then guessing at what you might offer to appease their anger or to ingratiate them to you in order to get what you needed or wanted. The pagan gods were silent and they were notoriously capricious and unreliable. And in this context Paul exhorts the Philippian Christians: Rejoice yourselves. Let the pagans see you celebrating the fact that the Creator of the universe has, through Jesus, made you his own and lives in your midst by his own Holy Spirit. Let the pagans, who know only mean and capricious gods and who live in a dog-eat-dog world, let them see the gracious gentleness of God in you. Live in such a way that they see in you the God who humbles himself to die for the sake of his enemies. And let the pagans see you living in faith, praying in confident thankfulness to the God whose story reveals an unfailing pattern of promise and fulfilment. Shine the light of Jesus into the darkness of the world. And the result of all this? Look at verse 7:
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in King Jesus.
I think we tend to look at Paul’s exhortation here as something we should do in order to experience the peace of God ourselves, but given the context in Philippians, I think Paul’s point is actually more about our witness. If we truly live as stewards of the good news about Jesus, if we truly live as people who know the faithfulness of God revealed in Jesus and particularly in his death and resurrection, if we truly know the life of the Spirit, the peace of God—rather than the strife and anxiety of the world—will guard our hearts and minds in a way that will astound the pagans around us.
I said last Sunday that we are called both to proclaim and to live the gospel. This is how we live it. Put together with our proclamation, to truly live in light of Jesus and what he reveals about God, should cause the world to stand up and take note. This is our way of being John the Baptist in our own age. And as it did for John, for us—if we are faithful—it will result in many giving glory to God for his faithfulness and then coming to him in faith as we have. But it will also threaten many who are invested in the pagan and sinful systems of the world. Brothers and Sisters, we are now the voice calling in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the Lord!”
So we need to ask: Does the world see our joy? Are we the voice crying in the wilderness? Are we the royal heralds the Lord has called us to be, summoning the word to let go of its false gods and to come to the Lord Jesus, calling the world away from sin and self and to come to the cross? And we need to ask how the world is responding to us. If we’re faithfully proclaiming the good news about Jesus, if we’re faithfully calling people to repent and to believe, if we’re faithfully proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and that his kingdom has come—well—people will respond in one of two ways. Either they’ll believe or they’ll get angry—as Herod got angry with John. There’s some of both out there in the world, but overwhelmingly, when I look at how people respond to or think of the church these days in our part of the world, it’s often just indifference. Why?
Because we have not been the witnesses God calls us to be. We have been mealy-mouthed and, quite often, just plain silent in our proclamation, because we have too often sought to please people rather than God, and because we have been half-hearted and unfaithful in our gospel living. Like old Israel, we pray to God, but we’ve failed to tear down the old altars to Baal and Asherah—or Mammon or Aphrodite or Caesar. We name Jesus, but we deal dishonestly in business, we sell our souls to the commercialism that surrounds us, we look to politics or to science as our saviours, and we dabble in the sexual immorality of the age. We’ve failed to proclaim the gospel and we justify it, saying that we’ll preach it with our lives. But if we stop to ask what the world sees in our lives, is it really very different? Does the world see us rejoicing in the Lord? Does the world see us manifesting the gracious gentleness of Jesus? Does the world see us living in faithful prayer and trusting in God, or does it see people just as anxious as everyone else? Does it see enmity and strife and broken relationships or does it see a gospel people living out the healing and reconciling love of Jesus? Does the world see the peace of God ruling our hearts and minds? Does the world see us, holding high the gospel, as a challenge to its gods and its kings and its sins? It should. But sadly, I think that for the Western Church at large, the answer is often “no”.
And, all too often, when we do proclaim the gospel, we do so without power or authority. Think of John boldly declaring the coming judgement and calling Israel to repentance. It was urgent and powerful. In contrast we tend to hold the gospel out as good advice, rather than as the good news that it is. Friends, the gospel is the royal summons to submit in faith to Jesus, the world’s true Lord—the Lord who has come with mercy so that the repentant will escape when he comes one day in judgement. This was the power behind John the Baptist’ preaching. But all too often we present the gospel as just another option on the religious smorgasbord—something you might want to try. See if you like it. See if it works for you. If not…oh well. Brothers and Sisters, that’s not the gospel. The gospel is good news to the people living in the midst of darkness: the king who will set the world to rights has come. And that means the gospel, when preached as it should be, will challenge and upset the Herods and Caesars of our age and all those invested in the false gods of the world.
The Advent message is to be prepared. Jesus has given us a gospel mission to take the good news of his death, his resurrection, and his lordship into the world. Brothers and Sisters, pray that we will be faithful to our mission—faithful enough to provoke persecution, because that’s the kind of faithfulness that also reaps a harvest for the kingdom. Pray for the holy boldness of John the Baptist and the gracious gentleness of Jesus. Pray that we will be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Pray that the joy of the Lord will overcome us. Brothers and Sisters, Rejoice! Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice.
Let’s pray: O Lord, come among us, we pray, with your power and strengthen us with your great might; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness we are grievously hindered in running the race that is set before us, your bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, now and for ever. Amen.