Prayer: Open our eyes and ears that we might know who you are this morning; Jesus, Messiah.
Wasn’t it wonderful to see so many people gathering on St Luke’s front lawn last Sunday evening? They kept coming from the community and beyond. Walking up the path, finding a place to sit and listen to the greatest message of hope sung through Christmas carols and heard through a simple story. Now I’m no John the Baptist, (though I was wearing red and green clothing with a funny hat with bells on it!) but as a church we testified to Jesus and his coming to earth as God’s son. We shared a message of hope and joy and peace and love. And we prayed that people would respond. We weren’t offering an immediate baptism like John, but we did invite people to join us. And I had an encouraging email on Wednesday – a woman who I don’t know sent me a message saying how much she enjoyed the carols, and that she would like to join us for our Christmas community lunch and bring an elderly neighbour! She listened and responded. How wonderful is that?! Thank you, Jesus.
How have you been doing with sharing your testimony and talking about your Christian faith; since our ‘sharing our faith’ series earlier this year?? It’s been great to hear that some of you do feel more comfortable and confident in talking about your faith with others. Christmas time gives us a wonderful opportunity to share what it means to us, not Santa and lots of presents and food, but our joy in celebrating the coming of Jesus, God’s greatest gift. His love.
John the Baptist had an amazing testimony and he testified for Jesus…He confirmed whom Jesus was. Our reading skipped over these verses this morning declaring this…
14 the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
We heard a bit about John the Baptist from Erna last Sunday. Today we concentrate on John’s testimony in his response to the priests and Levites questioning who he was. It seems they were wondering if he was the Messiah…
John was not the Messiah…he was the one to prepare the way. He was born of Elizabeth and Zechariah…in their old age and considered barren. He was in fact related to Jesus…Elizabeth was Mary’s older cousin. But we have no indication that these men knew each other. Elizabeth lived in the hill country and Mary and Joseph had gone to Bethlehem for the birth and then escaped to Egypt for some time before returning to Nazareth. It remains a mystery what kind of childhood John had before he went off into the desert…what did his parents tell him about his most auspicious conception and that of Mary? Elizabeth and Zechariah possibly died while he was still quite young.
But John seemed to know who Jesus was…even before he was born if you remember he leaped in his mother’s womb when Mary came to visit. The Holy Spirit was upon him. And Zechariah had prophesied about his son, as Erna quoted last week from Luke 1: 67-80.
“and you my child, will be called a prophet of the Most-High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him” ….to give knowledge of salvation, etc.
John testified for Jesus, which was his role…to reveal who Jesus was, to prepare the way and point others to him.
Testimony was very powerful in the old and new testaments. In John’s gospel it appears that Jesus is on trial right from the beginning…but firstly it is John the Baptist who is questioned by the Jewish authorities. They ask him who he is. But he doesn’t answer their question straight out… rather he replies by telling them who he is not! “I am not the Messiah” (John probably figured that might have been the thought behind their questioning – as the Jews were waiting for the Messiah to come).
Not satisfied they ask him again “Who are you? Are you Elijah?” ‘I am not”. Do you notice the negative statement here…this is, in contrast to Jesus who says, “I am” … John says, “I am not”. They continue to press him, but John doesn’t give much away until they say, “who are you…give us an answer to take back to those who sent us!” They were beginning to get exasperated I imagine.
John replies in the words of Isaiah the Prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, Make straight the way for the Lord”.
John was clear on who he was not and on who he was. Let’s go back to the beginning of the chapter…It says that John was sent by God to be a witness who would testify to the light…Jesus. John himself was not the light…he was a witness to the light.
John knew his place…even though naturally he had born before Jesus…he states in verse 15 that Jesus was before him. John has the Holy Spirit supernatural understanding of who Jesus was…that he was the creator of the world…and he was before anything came in to being. ‘In the beginning was the word….”
When pushed by his questioners John says he is ‘the voice’ of one crying in the wilderness…prepare the way of the Lord. He was getting people to be ready, to be repentant so that they would then follow Jesus, not him, when the time came. That is why John points his own disciples to Jesus and says – there is the Lamb of God. Once Jesus own ministry begun it was time for Johns to decline. His job was done. His life’s purpose was to reveal who Jesus was and to testify to him, it was never about himself. He was a humble man, if somewhat strange – dressed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and honey. And yet there was something about him as people flocked to hear him and be baptized. It could have been so tempting for John to begin his own following. But he never failed to defer to Jesus, declaring that one greater than I is coming…he will baptize with power and the Holy Spirit.
Like John, Jesus also quoted from the book of Isaiah to confirm whom he was. We read in Luke chapter 4, that immediately after Jesus returned from his testing in the wilderness he stood up in a synagogue in Nazareth and read from Isaiah 61, the words we heard this morning.
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,[a]
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour
He sat down and declared that the scripture was fulfilled that day. Jesus was the anointed one bringing good news and freedom for all. He was also the rejected and despised one that Isaiah speaks of, and that was evident that day in Nazareth, when the leaders were furious and tried to throw him off a cliff! But his ministry had only just begun, and he walked right through the crowds and for the next 3 years his life and works testified to whom he was as he taught and healed and performed many miracles.
Now we may not be prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist, but as disciples of Jesus we are all called to testify and share the good news.
I love reading Christian biographies, testimonies that increase my faith in Jesus, like this one, Seeking Allah, finding Jesus. A devout Muslim encounters Christianity. By Nabeel Qureshi.
He grew up as a strict Muslim in the United States but made very good friends with a Christian man at university. They were both in the forensic club, they were interested in investigating the truths about things. He was also studying to become a doctor.
When his friend David encouraged him to investigate the Christian faith, Nabeel did so over a few years, thoroughly. The 3 points that were challenging for him, were that Jesus died on the cross, that he rose again and that he was the Son of God. You see Muslims believe in Jesus the person, but not that he is divine.
It is a great read. Nabeel eventually concluded that Jesus did die and rose again, but the biggest stumbling block was that it went against all his Muslim teaching and would cost him a lot to confess it – to declare that Jesus was God incarnate…that Jesus was the Messiah.
It was in John’s gospel especially where he found that message loud and clear and came to understand that because Jesus was God, who died and rose again…he could pay the price for our sins so that we might have eternal life.
I encourage you to continue to consider your testimony and how you would testify for Jesus; what is the message that speaks deeply to you that you can share with others? You may not think you have an amazing story to tell- but we all have the most amazing story to tell- the story of the gospel. John the Baptist would have had a great story himself, but he wanted to talk about Jesus. Nabeel Qureshi had an amazing testimony, but he wanted his book to testify to who Jesus was more than it being his own testimony. Nabeel’s friend David invited Nabeel to explore the Christian faith, we can invite people to do that.
In all that we do, like John The Baptist, and like Nabeel and Nabeel’s friend David, let us point to Jesus this Christmas and proclaim him as the Messiah, the Son of God who brings healing and sight and comfort and joy. Pray and ask God to lead you to share a simple message of hope this coming week leading up to Christmas. Or maybe there is someone you can invite to our community lunch or to a Christmas service. Talk and encourage one another to do this over morning tea today. And pray and pray and pray for your friends, family and neighbours. Pray for opportunities, boldness and courage, Jesus is the greatest gift, a gift for us to share at Christmas and always.
Let’s pray: Lord, we thank you for the prophesies of Isaiah fulfilled in John the Baptist and in Jesus. Give us courage to bear witness and testify to Jesus. Help us to spread the message of the real meaning of Christmas. We thank you for those who are responding, and we pray that many more will turn their hearts to you, receiving the greatest gift of love, joy and peace. We pray this in your son’s name, Jesus, the Messiah, sent to rescue us. Amen.