“A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS”
JOHN 3:1-6
DECEMBER 4, 2011
We’ve heard the message numerous times.
We are watching television or listening to the radio and
suddenly we hear,
“This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.”
Then it ends with the words, “If this had been an actual
emergency, you would have been instructed to tune to one of the broadcast
stations in your area.”
Our government originally developed The Emergency
Broadcast System to warn us if the Soviet Union launched a nuclear attack.
Naturally, the U.S. government developed stringent
safeguards to see to it that a genuine attack would never be confused with a
false alarm or a simple test.
To ensure that this would never happen, sealed envelopes
containing a set of authenticator codes were regularly sent to broadcast
facilities in the United States.
Despite these safeguards the unthinkable happened.
At 9:33 AM EST on February 20, 1971 the signal for a
real attack was mistakenly given.
The wire services picked up the signal and distributed
the chilling words, “This is not a test.”
What do you suppose was the response to this inadvertent
activation?
Well, the majority of the U.S. radio stations either chose to
ignore it, or figured, correctly, that it was a mistake.
Only one broadcast station, a television station in
Chicago, shut down as required by federal law.
I thought of the Emergency Broadcast System when I
thought of the role of John the Baptist in the Advent drama.
God assigned John the task of alerting the people of
Israel that the Messiah was on his way.
Some listened and some did not.
John the Baptist has often been referred to “as the
voice of one crying in the wilderness.”
How appropriate for this second Sunday of Advent for
without Christ the world is indeed a wilderness.
Without Christ, the world is a prisoner of war camp and
we are enslaved by the power of sin.
Without Christ, this is a cold, dark, meaningless world.
In the second chapter of C.S. Lewis’ book
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, little Lucy stumbles
through the back of a wardrobe into the imaginary world of Narnia. Although it’s
summer in England, where the wardrobe sits, it’s winter in Narnia.
Shivering in the cold, Lucy soon meets, Mr. Tumnus, who
is part human and part animal, who tells her what winter time is like in Narnia.
It’s the result of a spell cast by the White Witch.
“It’s she who makes it always winter,” Tumnus says.
“Always winter and never Christmas!”
What a wonderful description of the world without
Christ: “Always winter and never Christmas ...”
Turn with me to our passage for today, John 3:1.
In the fifteenth
year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of
Judea, and Herod was the ruler of Galilee ... and skipping
over the difficult to pronounce names to the middle of verse two
... the word of God came to John
son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
He went into all the region around the Jordan,
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as is written
in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “A voice of one crying out in
the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make his paths straight paths.
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill made low, and the
crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh
shall see the salvation of God.’”
John’s message was twofold and it was simple.
First, he announced
the Messiah is coming.
That’s it.
The Messiah is coming.
That was the heart of his message.
One is coming after me who was before me.
One is coming whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.
One of the humorous moments of the last presidential
campaign involved the almost fervent messianic expectations that some of Barack
Obama’s supporters had about him.
His opponent John McCain made self-deprecating jokes
about it.
At a dinner for politicians and journalists in Manhattan, McCain
declared, “Maverick I can do, but Messiah is above my pay grade.”
The then Senator Obama also poked fun at the idea.
“Contrary to the rumors you may have heard,” Obama said, “I was not born in a
manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-El, to
save the planet Earth.”
Well, the President is not the Messiah or even Superman.
Whenever life gets difficult, people often pray for a
leader who will lead them out of darkness into light.
Israel had been looking for several hundred years for
such a leader.
They were under Rome’s iron fist.
They were looking for a deliverer.
Then John the Baptist appeared and announced that the
coming of the Messiah was finally at hand.
Many of us are familiar with the 1957 motion picture
The Bridge Over the River
Kwai.
It was selected as one of the 100 great films of the 20th century.
It is the story of a group of British prisoners of war
held by the Japanese in northern Burma.
Ernest Gordon, at one time a chaplain at Yale
University, wrote a book called
Through the River of the Kwai, which shared his
experience as a prisoner in that camp.
Gordon says that when the young soldiers in that camp
realized that they were going to be there for a while, they began to have Bible
studies and to pray diligently that they would be delivered from their
circumstances much as Israel prayed for deliverance from Rome.
He said, at first, their praying for deliverance was
shallow and superficial.
They railed against God for letting them be in that
situation.
As time went on, however, something happened and their railing
against God disappeared.
They began to move toward a more mature faith.
They began to pray about their relations with one
another.
No longer was it “Why, God?” but it was “How should we act, God?”
Gordon said the most spiritual moment of that experience
was Christmas 1944. Out of deference to the holiday, the men were not given work
detail that day and were given a bit more food.
He said that as they moved around the prison yard, they
sensed that things were different.
In one of the barracks a British prisoner began to sing
a Christmas carol.
It echoed over the infirmary where men were dying.
Then all around the camp, men began to sing, and those
who could, those who were ambulatory, came to the parade field and sat in a
great circle.
Gordon said, “God touched us that day.”
This former Yale chaplain called it the most sacred
event in which he had ever been involved.
No preaching, no church paraphernalia, just men united
by their common misery, singing of God being with them.
Those prisoners experienced the coming of the Messiah to
their prisoner of war camp in Burma.
They experienced a momentary shining of light into their
darkness.
Maybe you have experienced that sometime when you had a difficult time
in your life.
That is part of what Christmas is about.
It’s not really about glitter and gifts.
It’s about people in all kinds of circumstances
experiencing God’s presence.
John’s message, first of all, is a message of hope.
The Messiah is coming.
I mentioned earlier that John’s message was twofold and
it was simple.
Part one:
the Messiah is coming.
Part two:
prepare for his
coming by repenting of your sins.
Verse 3:
John preached a baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins.
Now repentance means more than being sorry for our
behavior.
It means doing something about that behavior.
It means turning around and going in a different
direction.
It means stopping doing what is wrong and now we are going to do
what is right.
Beginning with the tenth verse, John describes what that
involves.
Listen to what he says to the crowd ... verse 10 ... follow along with
me.
And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?”
In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must
share with everyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”
Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked
him, “Teacher, what should we do?”
He said them, “Collect no more than the amount
prescribed for you.”
Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?”
He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by
threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”
Again ... turn around.
Go in another direction.
Turn toward the Messiah, and all he represents, and away
from questionable behavior.
In South Africa, a man went into a church service.
He hadn’t been to church in years, and God convicted him
of sin. The next morning he went to a beautiful home and asked the owner,
"Do you recognize this old watch?"
"Why, yes," answered the owner. "Those are my initials;
that is my watch.
I lost it eight years ago.
How did you get it, and how long have you had it?"
"I stole it," came the reply.
"What made you bring it back now?"
"I was converted last night," was the answer, "and I
have brought it back first thing this morning.
If you had been up last night, I would have brought it
back then."
The Messiah is coming.
Repent.
Turn from your old ways and turn toward the Messiah and
all he represents.
Funny, though, how we continue to ignore John.
Patricia Greenlee tells a story about her son who is a
West Virginia state trooper. He stopped a woman for going 15 miles an hour over
the speed limit.
After he handed her a ticket, she asked him, “Don’t you give out
warnings?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“They’re all up and down the road.
They say, ‘Speed Limit 55.’”
It is amazing how deaf and blind we can be to warning
signs.
John warned the people of Israel that the Messiah was coming.
John wanted the people to repent because he wanted them
to experience the richness and the joy of that coming.
Remember how Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart
for they shall see God”?
Get our hearts right and we will experience God.
A little girl named Stephanie was orphaned after both of
her parents died.
With no other relatives to care for her, she was put into foster
care.
Eventually she came to live with the Weavers.
Mrs. Weaver found Stephanie sullen, withdrawn, and
uncommunicative.
She asked to see her records.
The first foster family wrote, “Stephanie is a quiet,
shy girl.”
The second family wrote, “She obeys, but she doesn’t
participate much in the family.”
Mrs. Weaver doubted if Stephanie would be with them
long; she seemed so unreceptive.
Still, she decided to keep Stephanie through the
Christmas holiday and then talk to her social worker about a transfer to another
home.
At Christmas, the Weavers exchanged presents, including
gifts for Stephanie.
As they did Stephanie handed Mrs. Weaver a brown paper
sack with a rough drawing of a Christmas scene on it.
Mrs. Weaver opened it to find a rhinestone necklace with
a couple of stones missing and a little bottle of perfume, half empty.
As she put on the necklace and dabbed perfume behind her
ear, Stephanie said, “Mom’s necklace looks good on you.
You smell good like she did too.”
Mrs. Weaver’s heart melted.
She vowed to renew her efforts to love Stephanie, and
she succeeded!
By the following Christmas, Stephanie had become her adopted
daughter.
God seeks to break into our world, just as Mrs. Weaver
sought to break into Stephanie’s.
One way we can help that happen is through repentance.
The Messiah is coming.
Let’s prepare for his coming by repenting of our sins.