Advent Week 1 | Reality, Repentance, & Hope

Today our teaching scripture comes from Luke chapter 3,

Luke 3 · chapter mention

verses one through 18. In the 15th year of the reign of

Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,

Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of

Itura, and Tracontis and Lysanisas tetrarch of Abilene,

during the high priesthood of Anas.

And the word of the Lord came to John son of Zachariah in the

wilderness. He went into all the country

around the Jordan, preaching the a baptism of repentance for the

forgiveness of sin as it is written in the book of the words

of Isaiah the prophet. A voice of one calling in the

wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord,

make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in,

every mountain and hill made low.

The Crooked Rd. shall become straight, the rough ways smooth,

and all people will see God's salvation.

John said to the crowds coming out of John said to the crowds

coming out to be baptized by him.

You brood of Vipers who warned you to flee from the coming

wrath, produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not

begin to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father.

For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children

for Abraham. The axe is already at the root

of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit

will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

What should we do then? The crowd asked.

John answered. Anyone who has two shirts should

share with one who has none, and anyone who has food should do

the same. Even tax collectors came to be

baptized. Teacher, they asked, what should

we do? Don't collect any more than you

are required to, he told them. Then some soldiers asked him,

and what should we do? He replied, Don't exhort money

and don't accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay.

The people were waiting expectantly, and we're all

wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the

Messiah. John answered them all.

I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I

will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to

untie. He will baptize you with the

Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in the

hands to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat

into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable

fire. And with many other words, John

exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to

them. This is the word of the Lord.

Good morning. Well, I trust you guys all had a

great Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for braving

the cold morning this morning. In the 15th year of the reign of

Tiberius, who was the emperor when Pontius Pilate was governor

of Judea and Herod was the ruler of Galilee, and his brother

Philip ruler of the region of Eteria and Tracheonititis, and

Licenius ruler of Abilene. During the high priesthood of

Anus and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John son of

Zechariah in the wilderness. There are a lot of names in that

opening paragraph, a lot of really challenging names, a lot

of locations. There's a lot going on here.

Luke is still in the opening section of his narrative of his

gospel. The 1st 2 chapters of the Gospel

of Luke, if you go back and read, they read like kind of the

introduction of characters. I mean, there's, you know, a

little bit of drama happening there as there is here, but

there's a little bit of drama unfolding in those first couple

of chapters. You know, we read an overview of

the opening story where there's the birth of John the Baptist

being foretold and then the birth of Jesus being foretold.

And then the two mothers, they meet and they have this kind of

moment together. And then we read about the birth

of John and the birth of Jesus, and we read a little bit about

what happens in the younger years of Jesus's life.

We find him being dedicated in the temple, for example.

And then the next moment of the story that unfolds is Jesus

returning to the temple at the age of 12, where, you know, he

is caught up in the teachings of the teachers of the day, and he

kind of gets left behind overnight and for a full day.

I mean, there's a little bit of drama that's unfolding, but

mostly what Luke is doing is he's introducing the characters.

And then in Chapter 3, it's almost as though Lee goes all

the way back to the beginning to reintroduce John the Baptist,

but this time as an adult. He says in the 15th year of the

reign of the emperor Tiberius, Luke is dropping us in real time

into a real place. But he isn't just telling us

when the events are unfolding. He's actually telling us what

kind of story is being told. In the opening 2 verses.

He lists 7 main characters that are on the scene at the time.

I just want to run through just briefly who these guys are

because it's actually a really important part of the story.

This this first guy that he names Tiberius Caesar, he's the

reigning emperor of Rome following Augustus.

And his rule, especially in the later years, was known for

paranoia and suspicion and cruelty.

He was like this perfect representation of the brute

machinery of empire. Luke is rooting his story in

global imperial structures and power and domination.

That's what he's doing in those opening lines.

And then he lists Pontius Pilate, who's the governor of

the region in which the story is unfolding.

His primary duty was to collect taxes and to maintain order, and

PILOT was notoriously brutal. We read later that Pilate is

actually the one who ends up sending Jesus to his execution,

and Luke mentions him here to highlight the sort of volatility

of being a Jewish person in the story that is about to unfold.

Next up is King Herod. New Testament scholar Craig

Keener reminds us that King Herod was a Jewish, but only in

name and lineage. He was completely conscripted

into the powers of the Roman Empire at the time.

And Herod's brother Philip was the same kind of person.

He was a Jewish person, but he worked for the government.

There's all of this conscription of power.

On and on and on it goes. Luke basically is saying we are

surrounded by people who are in power over us.

And he begins to name some of the religious leaders as well.

Anas was the former high priest but retained a lot of political

influence through family connections.

And he represents religious power deeply embedded into

politics. And the fact that he's even

being named is an indication that even a retired priest who

who had become so connected to the political structures are

still pulling those kinds of strings.

His son-in-law Caiaphas was the new high priest and he worked

under Pontius Pilate, who is the governor, and continued the

family tradition of trying to align their whole religious

system with the world of politics.

Luke names 7 people with incredible power and influence,

each representing political or religious control, and yet God's

Word bypasses all of them because these are not the people

that God is interested in partnering with.

The Word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias in the

wilderness. In a story that is rooted in

injustice and in the improper use of power and the occlusion

between religion and politics, Let the reader understand the

voice of God comes to a man without any power operating

outside of the religious and the political theater way outside of

the hustle of empire in the wilderness.

Friends, the scriptures are a certain kind of story and it's a

story of hope, but it begins again and again in the margins,

the good news of God coming into the reality.

And the picture that Luke paints is a is a reality that is really

hard. These guys are trapped and

surrounded by forces that are more powerful than they are.

Are you with me? So this is the first Sunday of

Advent. How many of you know that this

is the beginning of the church year?

Advent is the beginning of the church calendar year and it's

name, Advent comes from the Latin Adventist, which means

coming or arrival, and it's meant to hold intention the past

and the present and the future. It's meant to hold intention,

celebrating Jesus's birth and the God who became man, the

arrival of our ongoing awakening to his presence now in our

lives, and the longing for his final return to make all things

new. And originally this season of

Advent, even though in our present day we tend to sort of

rush right into Christmas with poinsettias and lights and

wreaths and all that kind of stuff, originally this held in

it an invitation that was not entirely unlike Lent.

We're actually invited to come into the darkness.

And in a more liturgical church, the lights would be dimmed and a

single candle would be lit, and we're going to light the Advent

candle as a representation of that.

But the idea is that we begin Advent in the darkness, and over

time we come into the light, into the hope of the God who

became a man. So if it's possible, if you

could maybe just close your eyes to the Christmas decorations so

that we can lean into the Advent, I'm inclined to try to

bend us back towards a little bit of that original intention.

Not just because I have a fascination with the earliest

forms of the church, but I find that I've become convinced of

what modern day priest and theologian Fleming Rutledge

calls the Christmas creep. We too quickly look towards the

celebration of the birth without fully immersing ourselves in the

challenge of reality as it presently is.

We have a hard time kind of slowing down and remembering

what this season is meant to do for us.

Yes, we have to celebrate the fact that God came and became

what we are so that we might become as He is, full of love

and grace and kindness. He is returning us to become

just like Him. But Advent really is a time

where we are meant to remember the kind of story that we're in.

It's ultimately a story about the future and about what is to

come. And the theological way of

saying this is to say that the story that the scriptures are

telling is what's called an eschatological story.

It's a story about something that is happening out there on

the horizon, out in the distance, or maybe, you know,

somewhere buried in those last few pages of the text that

you're reading, whatever metaphor that you would want to

use. The story that we are living in

has a future to it, and that future is spilling backwards

into the present, and we are meeting it in real time right

now. Does that make sense?

We live in this tension between the way our world is and the way

that we hope that it could become.

Does anybody feel that tension right now?

You just sort of like in your life, you just like, man, I

really wish that things were different in our world or in my

life. This is why that Luke begins by

painting a rather bleak picture of the circumstances that feel

insurmountable surrounded by 7 leaders that are oppressive on

their Thrones, doing their thing.

And yet when the glory and the word of the Lord comes it, it

comes to a poor man, barely clothed, feeding himself on

locust and wild honey in the wilderness.

What a story. His name is John John the

Baptist, and he shows up on the scene to remind us that Advent

begins in the dark and that the future that God has promised is

making its way towards us from the future leaking back onto the

present. And so we're going to take a

closer look at this Scripture this morning and the message

that John is to bring us in three parts for those of you

that like to know where we're headed, the wilderness, the

wondering, and the wasteland. So first up, the wilderness, the

word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

He went into all of the region around the Jordan proclaiming a

baptism of forgiveness and the repent of of repentance for the

forgiveness of sins as it is written in the book of the words

of the prophet Isaiah. The voice of one crying out in

the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths

straight. Every valley shall be filled,

and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the

crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth,

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

So the good news of John of God comes to John in the wild.

And you know, maybe without even any further commentary, that

might already be a bit of a source of encouragement to you.

How many of you feel like your life is unfolding a little bit

more wild than you had planned? Maybe maybe you imagined life

getting sorted out a little bit different?

How many of you maybe presently or recently have felt as though

you are in the wilderness? OK, some of us have felt

wilderness of late. Maybe, you know, you're not

surviving on locusts and honey. But I know most people do feel

like they're just scraping by a little bit.

The word of God comes to John in the wilderness.

We cannot overlook this part of the story that we live in.

And John is showing up onto the scene as a prophet.

And anybody paying attention to John's life would have known

that John the Baptist is playing a particular kind of role.

He's not so much role-playing, but he has shaped his life to

look a certain way in, to announce the particular

possibility of being heard in a certain way.

The original hearers of this story and the original people

that would have watched John's life unfold over time and begin

to hear him preach, they would have known that he had fashioned

himself to be a prophet, not entirely unlike the prophets

that we read about in the Old Testament.

I mean, these are some like weird guys.

And so John show shows up on the scene as kind of a weird guy in

order to proclaim a certain kind of message.

But friends, these Old Testament prophets and a prophet like John

are not so much into like predicting the future, though

there is a little bit of that from time to time.

The prophets in the biblical narrative are not so much

interested in when something is going to happen, but in what is

happening already. They're being prophetic to the

degree that what is happening already is hidden and is either

in need of being revealed, is already in the process of being

revealed, or something is about to happen that will shine a

light into the darkness. That's what the prophets do.

John is a prophet who has come to reveal reality, and most

prophets are not doing their thing in order to bring comfort,

but to offer clarity. They say something like, hey,

let me tell you what's actually happening behind the scenes.

Let me pull back the curtain that covers up the truth and the

reality of what's actually going on, or let me introduce and

announce something that is happening in broad daylight, but

people are afraid to say something about it.

You guys know that there are really challenging things

happening in broad daylight, not only in our own little lives,

but also just more broadly speaking, there are really harsh

realities that are happening in broad daylight.

And yes, in some corners of our society, people are trying to

give voice to the reality of those harsh things that are

happening. But let's just be honest, those

things pop up into the news and then quickly get subsided and we

just grow numb and our vision grows dim to the hard realities

of what is unfolding. One of the things that prophets

do throughout the scriptures is they function in this role to

help people get present to what psychologists call cognitive

dissonance. Guys, ever heard the term

cognitive dissonance? Cognitive dissonance is a

psychological term for the inner tension that we feel when our

beliefs and our values and our actions are in conflict with one

another. So for example, you know, I

might believe in generosity but ignore someone in in need.

And those two things happening at the same time creates this

sort of inner turmoil, doesn't it?

We naturally try to reduce the dissonance either by changing

our behavior or by justifying our behavior.

Those are really the only two things that we can do in the

face of when the things that we know to be true do not become

true about our lives. And it's this key concept in

psychology because it explains why sometimes people choose to

deny the truth or resist change or justify harmful choices.

We're trying to work out that dissonance that we feel.

And, you know, spiritually, this dissonance can often show up.

For example, we say that we trust God, but we might be

driven by fear. And, you know, the dissidence

itself isn't necessarily bad, but it also is often a signal

that there is some transformation that is sort of

beginning to be birthed inside of us.

And that discomfort that we feel about the way that we long for

the world to be and the way that it actually is is a signpost to

the way in which we hope for that thing to change.

Does that make sense? The kind of language that

prophets in the biblical narrative would use and the kind

of stories they were to tell is to try to reveal to us where

those things are not aligned. And they use this language

called apocalyptic language. Apocalypse comes from the Greek

apocalyptus and it means an unveiling or a revelation.

And it's it's language that is meant to do the work of

revealing what is true. And so John seeking to name

clearly what is at stake and what is what is reality and

trying to reveal to the people that he's preaching to the

reality of their lives. He brings up the prophet Isaiah.

And he says this, Every valley shall be filled, and every

mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be

made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh

shall see the salvation of God. This is prophet speak for naming

and revealing that when God's anointed one comes to make

things right, it will be as impactful of an event as if the

entire topography of the world were flattened.

You know, you wake up 1 morning and all of the hills are gone

and all of the valleys are gone. All of the curvy trails are made

straight. I mean, this would cause you to

make some attentiveness, right? This would cause you to pay

attention if you woke up in the world and everything was

completely flat. This is apocalyptic language to

say something big is on the scene.

Something giant is going to happen.

But this last line is the kicker.

All the humans will see the salvation of God.

Oh, that's interesting. This is Isaiah's way of saying

that as unimaginable as it might be for all of the mountains to

be made low and all of the valleys to cease to exist and

every part of the earth to be made smooth, the most

unimaginable thing that could happen is going to happen, which

is that all of the humans will see the salvation of God.

The Gospel story is a story that begins in the wilderness and not

in the hands of those in power, because the wilderness is a

metaphor of reality. The wilderness is a metaphor of

reality. Luke draws our attention to the

places of power and how kind of messed up things are for the

typical person. And then he describes a scene

where everything gets flattened. This guy, John, steps out of the

desert to remind us that everything is not OK.

And listen, you might be sitting here saying, yeah, like, I did

not need John to step out of the desert to tell me that

everything is not OK. But here he is.

This no name preacher steps out of the desert with matted hair

that probably has not been washed in a very long time.

He's barely dressed in some animal skin.

He has maybe a handful of disciples around him.

And in the middle of a region that is surrounded by governors

and statesman and presidents and senators and religious leaders

and Internet personalities and pastors and priests colliding

with the whole system to rid the whole land of the poor and the

needy, that's what's going on. And this John steps out of the

wilderness and he throws down a mic drop quote from the old

prophet Isaiah. And he begins to preach.

All the humans will see the salvation of God.

So he hands us the gift of seeing our life for the reality

that it is and the reality that actually surrounds us.

And then he reminds us that the story that we're living in is a

story of hope beyond anything that could possibly make sense.

You know, if you've been with us for the past couple of months,

you know, we've been in this series on the Passions, and

you're thinking, is this guy ever going to stop talking about

the passions? And it turns out that this

series on the Passions is a perfect teaching series to lead

us into Advent. It's a series that has helped us

get in touch, I hope, a little bit with the reality of our

lives and all of the ways that our cognitive dissonance shows

up. One last reminder, The passions

are our disordered loves. We cling to lesser goods and are

clinging to the lesser goods. It shows up in these complex

emotional States and obsessive thinking and are over attachment

to the things that we think are going to make us feel better.

The lust and the greed and the envy and the pride and the

gluttony. They're happening just below the

surface. But what we really want for our

life is freedom from all of those things.

So the powers that operate in the world that we live in aren't

just, you know, the CE OS of the big companies or the men and

women on the Senate floor or the world leaders making decisions.

It's not just that there are powers out there organizing our

life, friends. There are powers at work inside

of us that are dictating how our lives show up into the world.

There is a lot of reality that the scriptural story is trying

to help us get in touch with. So how do we respond to the

promise of John's teaching when we're so confronted with the

reality that that there is one who is coming that is going to

straighten everything out and fill all the gaps, and that

there's some story out on the horizon that is pulling its way

back towards us? But then we actually just have

our life that we're trying to live.

How do we live in this tension of the reality of our actual

lives with powers both inside of us at work and powers outside of

us at work, such that it feels like neither in the world around

me or in the world within me are things going exactly the way

that I wish that they would go? You guys get that sense that

it's like where, like inside of me, it's not going the way that

I really wish it to go. Sometimes out in the world, it's

not really going the way that I wish.

It's like, where can I go? Well, that's where the biblical

story comes in. And this brings us to the

wondering. So John paints this picture of

the reality of the lives that the people are walking in.

They're surrounded by powers, they're surrounded by forces.

And he reminds them what the prophet Isaiah said was going to

happen when God's anointed one came to make all of the things

right and fill the whole land with the salvation of God, the

saving power of God to make things right.

And he begins with a message of repentance.

Luke tells us that this is primarily the thrust of John's

preaching. He says the word of God came to

John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness, and he went into all

of the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of

repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Just a few verses later, John is talking with the people who are

coming to listen to him preaching.

He says bear fruits in keeping with repentance.

Friends, repentance is is kind of one of those difficult

religious words that kind of makes us feel a certain way,

doesn't it? We think about the word

repentance and we associate it with some angry men holding

sandwich boards on the street corner.

But listen, all it really means is to change your mind.

Change your mind. It means to simply turn your

whole self back to God from wherever it is in your life that

you are standing. You could be incredibly close to

God and have real life with God, and there are infinite ways in

which we just slightly turn away, isn't there?

Repentance is not meant to bring about shame.

It's not meant to be some angry man yelling at you.

It's meant to just bring our attention to say, would you just

turn your shoulders back to God? You could be as far away from

God as you have ever been in your entire life and scrambling

to find comfort in all of the wild things of the world.

And all repentance means is to turn away from those things and

to turn towards God. For some reason, culturally we

have it in us that repentance carries with it this idea of

like a tremendous amount of shame.

But it is simply the recognition that we are not yet as we were

made to be, and we live in and are helping to uphold a world

that does not support who we are on our way to becoming.

Repentance is just an admission of reality, friends.

It's just naming what is true. Like what if we could just name

the truth about our lives like as they really are, without any

sense of shame, without any sense of judgement and trust

that God is the one who is inviting us to partner with Him,

to have to have enough hope. That He is the one that is doing

the heavy lifting of making all of those crooked paths straight

in US and filling all of those valleys in US.

That God is the one who is reshaping the topography of our

life, but that we would just simply be able to say, you know

what? I am not yet who I am meant to

be and I am going to decide to turn my shoulders back to God.

It's about just dealing with reality.

So friends, Advent is a time of waiting for all of the things to

get sorted. But first we have to name

reality for what it is We we learn how to tell the truth

about what is going on in our lives.

That is the work that we've been trying to do in the life of our

church in this season. But it's not that there's not

anything for us to do. It's not that we just named the

reality of our life. We have to see our lives for

what it truly is. But then there is some stuff

that God is going to invite us into, you know, back to just the

reality of your life. What what is the reality of your

life right now? If you could just name

internally some things that have presently come to your attention

that are just a little misshapen in your life.

Or maybe the patterns of your thinking that just feel like

they're not entirely like on key.

Like where have you been able to see that?

Perhaps you're clinging to things or over indulging in

things that you thought would make you feel better, but deep

down you know that these are all lesser goods that are slowly

forming you into somebody that you're not supposed to become.

The grace and the love of God says you can just be honest.

You can just say to God, here is what is true about my life,

because repentance is simply naming reality.

And then we begin to wonder. The wondering part is where we

begin to ask what it is that we're supposed to do in response

to the promise that God has for our life.

So John is preaching this invitation to repentance.

He's saying, could you just look at the reality of the way that

life is working right now? And then the crowds ask him,

what then should we do? And he said to them, very

simply, whoever has two coats must share with anyone 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? And he said to them, collect no

more than the amount prescribed for you.

Soldiers also asked him what are we to do?

And he said to them, do not extort money from anyone by

threats or false accusation and be satisfied with your wages.

So this question of what is it that we are to do?

This is the first question that the story of the Scriptures is

meant to kind of elicit in US. But it's on the heels of already

coming to at least begin to grasp that God is already

planning on doing something. Friends, God, God is already

planning on doing something in the world.

He's already planning on rescuing us and rescuing the

entire world. Remember, this is where John

begins. He begins with a vision for what

God is already going to do. Repentance is our way of getting

in on the project that God is already going to bring to

completion. We name the reality of our life

before God. We bear fruits with keeping of

repentance and we basically say that the fruit of our life is

going to name our life for what it really is.

So the crowds are wondering what to do with their life and given

the reality of what what God was about to do.

And John's response to them was really practical.

He says listen, if you have extra, just give it away.

Share with people in need. This is how you join with what

God is already going to do in the world to the tax collectors.

These these are the ones who had already aligned themselves with

all of the powers of the world and colluded with the religious

and the political power structures.

And his response to them was, listen, really practically,

don't abuse your power. Detach yourself from whatever it

is that is driving you to take advantage of people.

Have a change of mind related to all of that stuff.

The soldiers are also standing by.

They're like, well, what are we supposed to do?

And again, John gets really practical about what repentance

looks like. He says, stop overpowering

people. Cut it out with all of those

false accusations. Settle into your life.

Be content with what you have. So friends, as we are turning

our shoulders to this Advent season, I just I want to remind

us that we are in a cosmic story where God is doing an

unfathomable thing. And this unfathomable thing is

really hard to get our minds around.

It's such a big and cosmic story.

And there are moments in our daily lives where, you know,

we're just trying to get a good deal on Black on Black Friday.

We're just trying to figure out whether that sale is still going

to be good on Cyber Monday. I see you.

I get it. Our lives are just very basic

and mundane. And then there's this giant

cosmic story. How do we get involved in the

giant cosmic story when our life and reality is the way in which

it is? It kind of becomes a bit of a

struggle, don't you think? Like there's this giant

narrative that we're supposed to somehow lasso our hope to.

And what John says is the way we get into that cosmic story is we

ask a very basic question of God.

We turn to God and we ask God, what do you want me to do?

And then we listen and God tells us what to do.

We bring this question before God.

And what tends to happen is we hear things that are really,

really practical. Things like love your spouse,

spend time with your kids, call your mom.

There's this really rooted practicality to the life that

God is inviting us into. And it requires us to turn our

attention to God in repentance. And just to say, this is my life

as it truly is. What would you have me do with

my life? So I want to close with the

wasteland. John ends with another

apocalyptic image that is meant to actually bring us hope, but

often times it does not bring his hope.

He says this his winnowing fork is in his hand to clear the

threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary and

the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

So a winnowing fork is a large wooden tool that is used in

grain processing. And the way this works is after

you thresh the grain, the the harvested grain is kind of loose

like on the floor of the barn. And the farmer would then toss

the mixture with a winnowing fork into the air, and the wind

would sort of blow away the chaff, and then the wheat would

settle. Does that make sense?

So the chaff is the really light part of the grain that that kind

of comes off and that you don't really want to eat as part of

your bread. And so there's a big pile of

grain and the farmer lifts it up and the wind takes all the light

stuff away and the heavier stuff settles.

And often times this passage, because there is this

apocalyptic language around unquenchable fire, it becomes

unsettling because a lot of biblical interpreters through

time have been teaching us that this means that that God is is

in this context separating people.

And there are wheat and there are chaff kinds of people.

Let me just be really clear. I don't think that that's what

this is talking about. This is.

That God is separating all of the chaff of your life and the

world around us and burning all of the stuff up that is painful

and that is not in congruence with His Kingdom and is in just

and is unrighteous. All of that is chaff that is

being blown away by the wind. And the reason that this is

hopeful is because in the same way that John began with this

picture of like we are surrounded by injustice, and in

the same way that we have been talking about all of the stuff

inside of us that is also causing trouble.

I want you to imagine that all of it, all of the injustice in

the world and all of the stuff inside of you is what the

Scriptures call chaff. The reason that we have hope is

that Jesus has a winnowing fork, and the Kingdom of God is the

work of throwing everything up and letting the Spirit of God

blow away all of the things that are not meant to be, to allow

the real stuff to settle. Does this make sense?

Our job is to come before God and to say simply, what do you

want me to do? But the one who is doing all of

the heavy lifting is God himself.

And this is where we begin. We begin with the reality of

seeing that we have this giant pile of wheat that needs to be

sifted from the chaff, and we put our hope in the one who's

going to do the sifting. Amen.

Hey, the First Sunday of Advent is about hope.

This is where John leads us in this beautiful picture.

God is burning up everything in your life that is not born of

love. God is burning up everything in

the world. Burning up is apocalyptic

language for God, saying I'm going to deal with it, I'm going

to sort it out. I'm going to make the hill very

flat. I'm going to fill in the valley.

And our hope is in God to do that thing.

And so we turn our attention to God.

I want to invite the worship team to come back up just by way

of a couple of different things that we can respond to as we

head back into a time of worship.

I just had a sense in prayer yesterday that for some of you

there is, there's just a lot of chaff like out there in the

world. You're, you're just like, Oh my

gosh, how could this ever get fixed?

Is it even possible? Is this story that I'm trying to

live in even true? And I just, I just want to

invite you to come and receive prayer.

We'll have some folks up here to pray with us for a little bit.

And then secondly, just that sense of you just have an

awareness that there are things in you that you need to just

repent of. This first Sunday of Advent is

an Advent where we are meant to turn our shoulders towards

repentance, where we just say to God, this is the reality of my

life and I invite you in it. So I want to invite you to

stand. We're going to go into a time of

worship.