December 5, 2021 ~ Second Sunday in Advent ~ Sermon & Zoom Worship Video Link

Zoom Worship Video Link

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/sQsJhZ7vSuwby2F_19M3tDSArBm-hOEgrd753u1nYxQkPmQY3lo0XSBaAzrfIwEv.dPPdwWAxdKkpJnvA

2^nd Advent/Communion                                                                     12/05/21—Highland—Meute

“Hints of Hope” Advent Series: “God Is Refining”

Malachi 3: 1-4: Luke 3: 1-6

Pearl: Hope rests in God’s people, the church, submitting to God’s purifying discipleship.

Function: To motivate listeners to seek the refining, transforming work of the Holy Spirit in order to be the salt and light of the world, change agents in an unjust world of need.

The optimists among us, and I am among them, will lead the way in promoting the idea that there is always a “hint of hope” because God’s refining, purifying Spirit continually transforms us so that God’s will can be realized on earth.

1. Yet the Advent sermon series is “Hints” of hope, not “Oceans” of hope.
   1. It’s just a “hint” in the prophecy of Joel:
      1. “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him…?”
         1. Did you notice that even with all of that “turning, repenting, and heartfelt resolve,” is a big “who knows” as to whether the Lord will show up and make everything right?
         1. You might expect a much more confident pronouncement of hope that everything’s going to be all right.
         1. We preachers and teachers want to go there as soon as possible and as fast as possible. We don’t want to remain in doubt or remain in questions as to whether things will resolve.
            1. But even the prophet Joel concluded with “Who knows” what the Lord will do even after his people have turned and repented.
2. Many people are doing much good as motivated by the goodness of their hearts and yet the world continues to be in peril.
   1. So it seems that many more people should press in and submit themselves to the transforming Spirit of God to refine us so that we can be about God’s redemption of all things.
      1. And then, who knows?! Maybe God will take it from there.
   1. Well, no matter what God does, realizing the kingdom of God on earth is a noble cause and so very worthy of our effort.
3. The prophet Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament and was the last significant word of God at that time. Then came the period between the testaments which lasted about 400 years. During this time there were no frequent words from the Lord.
   1. Within Malachi’s prophecy, within this last word for a long while, is this image of God refining and purifying the descendants of Levi. There is this picture of God as the refining fire and as fuller’s soap.
      1. Do you remember the old threat of your mom, it was usually mom, to wash your mouth out with soap for something that you said? Did any of you experience this dreaded consequence? Show of hands, please?
         1. I am picturing Ralphy in the movie “A Christmas Story” sitting in the bathroom with a big bar of soap sticking out of his mouth.
   1. Malachi provides an image of God doing something akin to this.
      1. “Fuller’s soap” was an agent of washing fabric to make it whiter and to remove impurities. The fuller was the dyer of fabric. The fabric coated with whatever detergent was then laid in a shallow stream on rocks and young boys would then run all over it in order to wash it and cleanse it.
         1. Recall when Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, it is written that his “clothing became dazzling white, such that no fuller on earth could bleach them” (Mark 9:3).
   1. There is a “hint of hope” for our planet if people will submit to the refining and washing of the Lord and attend to what needs tending.

We should welcome, no, we should actively seek the transforming influence of God.

John the Baptist went wild in order to detach and focus on God’s agenda. Not only did he go into the wilderness he went wild himself wearing camels hair clothing, eating roasted locust and wild honey. He did this to seek the influence of God first and foremost.

1. What will we do to come under the influence of God above all else?
2. The theological concept for what I’m talking about is “sanctification.”
   1. We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, aligned with Christ, and then begins the process of sanctification by which we are to become more like our Lord Jesus Christ and more acquainted with the Lord’s plans and programs.
   1. “To sanctify anything is to declare it as belonging to God” (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia).
      1. This is a big aspect of our two sacraments of baptism and communion. In both of these sacraments we realize our belonging to God.
      1. Belonging to God means being dedicated to God and to what God wants in the world.
         1. Belonging to God means realizing his realm on earth.
3. Belonging is being discipled by God. It is being under the influence of God.
   1. But we the church, God’s people in many ways are being discipled more by media sources, false messiahs, and conspiracy theorists than by the gospel of the kingdom for which our Lord lived and for which he died!
      1. We are not acquainted well enough with the nature of the kingdom of Christ. We are not saturated in the Way of Jesus!  
   1. Others have said this very thing and I have felt it more and more that God’s people do not really understand the nature of the kingdom of God and what it demands of us.
   1. Growing as disciples needs to be a much bigger priority for the church.
      1. We cannot rest on some former myth of glory.
      1. The kingdom demands our full attention now and for the rest of our lives.
      1. The stakes are high and getting higher.
         1. People need to listen to the Spirit and attend to Christ’s teachings and the witness of his life.
         1. That should be our prime influence.
      1. Like King David we should constantly pray as recorded in Psalm 139: 23, 24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
         1. “Testing” is “refining.” David prayed for the Lord to refine him.

Advent reminds us that we are preparing for the return of the Lord to judge the earth. This is the heart of preparing for Christmas. In Advent we prepare for the celebration of the appearance of the salvation of the Lord by detaching and returning to the Lord and to the Lord’s way.

1. We are being called to come under the influence of the teacher, our Lord Jesus, and to come under the influence of his kingdom, and to reaffirm our calling as his disciples.
   1. Our call, should we chose to accept it, is to learn the height and depth and width of the kingdom of Christ. And in so learning follows the doing.
2. As we do this, and we must do it, we can then have a “hint of hope.” But as preached in a sermon at Riverside Church in New York by Bill McKibben, our hope is an “extremely qualified hope,” that the Lord will then intervene and help us. McKibben’s sermon was about climate change and the plight of our planet. It was preached eight years ago and things have only become more dire (The Scandal of the Gospel: Preaching and the Grotesque, Campbell, Charles L., 2021).
   1. People of God, we have a vital role in all things.
   1. We have to step up and claim that role.
   1. We have to come under the influence of the righteous reign of God above any and all other competitors.

The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper can serve as our invitation to the refining fire of God. God’s fire does not burn or scorch. It purifies just like the bush that Moses saw burning but not being consumed.

1. At this Table we are aligned with Christ, that is, we are declared as belonging to the Lord. This is who we are.
2. In eating the bread and drinking the cup rededicate yourselves to the discipleship you are meant to constantly experience, way more than any other influence.