December 21, 2003

Service Theme – "Our God Sends Us"

Luke 1:76-79

Called to Be Prophets

  1. Introduction
    1. Illustration – One Sunday as they drove home from church, a little girl turned to her mother and said, "Mommy, there’s something about the preacher’s message this morning that I don’t understand." The mother said, "Oh? What is it?" The little girl replied, "Well, he said that God is bigger than we are. He said God is so big that He could hold the world in His hand. Is that true?" The mother replied, "Yes, that’s true, honey." "But Mommy, he also said that God comes to live inside of us when we believe in Jesus as our Savior. Is that true, too?" Again, the mother assured the little girl that what the pastor had said was true. With a puzzled look on her face the little girl then asked, "If God is bigger than us and He lives in us, wouldn’t He show through?" (as cited on SermonCentral.com)
    2. Context – Cute story, isn’t it? But most of us don’t have a problem with the fact that God living inside of us is supposed to show through in what we say and do. The truth of the matter is that we struggle to let God shine through, and we struggle to proclaim His truth to a world that needs Him desperately. That is why, as we’ll see today, we’re called to be prophets.
    3. Now, I know most of us have some misconceptions about what a prophet is supposed to be. (NEW SLIDE)We tend to think of someone like Moses, as we see in this poster from the classic Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments. We think a prophet stands up on the mountain and sees God’s glory and passes it down to us mere mortals. We’re a little afraid of a person like that, because we’re afraid of even a reflection of God’s glory hitting such sinful people as ourselves. The Israelites of Moses’ time certainly were.
    4. (NEW SLIDE) Or maybe we think of Elijah, here depicted on Mt. Carmel on a tapestry from the Church of St. Therese in France. We think of a prophet as one who is so close to God that he challenges all takers to a once-and-for-all match to determine if God is really God. And we’re a bit insecure about our chances of winning, not because God isn’t powerful enough, which He is, but because of our own potential incompetence at getting it right. We don’t want to take a chance at calling forth miracles because we’re afraid our own inadequacies would keep them from happening. The Israelites of Elijah’s time could certainly identify with us on that score.
    5. Or maybe our hang-up is what we think a prophet is supposed to look like. (NEW SLIDE) Maybe we tend to think that a prophet should look like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings – you know, long beard, long wild hair, flowing robes and a voice of command. Well, I don’t see anybody here who looks like that, do you? We don’t go up on mountains to talk with God, we don’t challenge all takers to battle over who is God, and we certainly don’t have that prophetic look. So what are we supposed to do? If we’re called to be prophets, what is that supposed to look like? Let’s look at Luke 1:76-79 to see what being a prophet in this context means.
  1. Scripture Passage
    1. Luke 1:76-79 (from the New Living) – (NEW SLIDE) "And you, my little son, will be called the prophet of the Most High, because you will prepare the way for the Lord. 77 You will tell his people how to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins. 78 Because of God’s tender mercy, the light from heaven is about to break upon us, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace."
  1. Go Tell it on the Mountains!
    1. When Zechariah made this prophecy, he wasn’t speaking to Moses or Elijah or Gandalf or anybody like them. He wasn’t even speaking to an adult. (NEW SLIDE) He was speaking to a baby, his son John, only eight days old. We get this idea in our heads that any and everything we do for God is all up to us. We forget that God takes hold of us even when we are like spiritual babies and makes us into people who can do His will, who can proclaim His message, who can live by the power of His Spirit.
    2. You see, the message of this passage isn’t just that John will grow up to prepare hearts for the coming of Messiah. The message of this passage isn’t that you have to be specially called and announced by an angel in a temple. (NEW SLIDE) The message of this passage is that Jesus is the Messiah and that we can proclaim that truth! We don’t have to go down to the river and call people broods of snakes. We don’t have to wear camel skins and eat bugs and honey. We don’t have to become hippie types who reject everything in the world. John certainly didn’t. We can, like the prophets of old, proclaim the truth that Jesus has come!
    3. What keeps us from doing this? What keeps us from proclaiming that marvelous message? I believe we have a couple of misunderstandings about this passage. (NEW SLIDE) First, we confuse the role of the prophet with the gift of prophecy. A person with the gift of prophecy has been specially enabled by the Holy Spirit to forth-tell God’s truth, to proclaim it without compromise. One with this gift can be a bit of an in-your-face kind of person, especially if you’re not living the way God calls you to. Many of these folks make excellent preachers. We have several people in this church with this gift. Great, so why not simply delegate the responsibility to them? Because we are all called to fill the role of the prophet at various times in our lives. (NEW SLIDE) God calls each one of us when the need arises to proclaim, or forth-tell, His truth. That doesn’t mean we have the gift or that we’re called to fill the office of prophet all the time, but it does mean that we have to be willing to listen, to follow God’s leading, and to proclaim His words of truth when He tells us to. That’s the role of the prophet, and one that every one of us will fill at different times in our lives. That’s our first misunderstanding about this passage.
    4. Our second misunderstanding of this passage involves the message itself. (NEW SLIDE) We don’t fully understand the message or how importance it is to our world. That doesn't mean we're bad people or that we don't love Jesus. It just means that the message gets lost in all the other noise of our lives. We've got to reprioritize our lives so that the message comes first. So what is the message? (NEW SLIDE) First, verse seventy-six tells us that we are to prepare the way for the Lord. In other words, by how we live our lives we are to prepare hearts to receive Christ. When we live for Jesus and by the power of His Spirit, we plant seeds of faith. When we speak words of faith and encouragement, we plant seeds of faith. We are either the best or the worst advertisement in the world for Jesus Christ. If we try to prepare hearts by living a Christian life in our own strength, we will be the worst ad in the world for Jesus because we can’t do it! But if we prepare hearts by living in the power of the Holy Spirit in close personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we will succeed. That’s how prophets live – in the power of the Holy Spirit through close personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But remember – it’s not up to us whether or not the seeds bear fruit. We’re simply supposed to plant them. That’s what preparing the way for the Lord is all about.
    5. (NEW SLIDE) Second, verse seventy-seven tells us that we are to tell people how to find salvation through the forgiveness of sins. This is what we’re supposed to be all about – salvation through Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice for our sins. This is the best news the world has ever heard, and WE GET TO PROCLAIM IT!!! That’s awesome! That’s also an awesome responsibility. By living in the power of the Spirit we prepare hearts, but by sharing how Jesus has changed our lives and transformed our hearts we tell people how to find salvation through the forgiveness of sins. Prophets don’t just do prophet-type stuff. There always comes a time when a prophet has to open their mouth and deliver God’s message. And God will call us to share what He has done for us and to share how to receive Christ and be transformed. That’s what happened to Leonard several weeks ago. God told him to go and share, and someone’s life was transformed because of what he shared. That’s what proclaiming salvation through the forgiveness of sins is all about.
    6. (NEW SLIDE) Third, verses seventy-eight and seventy-nine tell us that we are to share God’s tender mercy and the hope we have in Him with our world, shining the light of Jesus’ love on all those in darkness and in the shadow of death and guiding them onto the path of God’s peace. That means we are to be beacons of light in a hopeless world. There are lots of folks who don’t know Jesus, and many of them literally are not far from physical death. They all live in the shadow of spiritual death, and for some of them it will be permanent before too long. It’s especially important then that we target at least a part of our efforts on the sick and the elderly. They can and do come to Christ, just like Leonard’s friend, and just like many in a nursing home near our Willakenzie church who are being led to the Lord by the ministry of that church. And people who are physically down tend to be much more open spiritually than those who are not. I know I was much more open to God’s leading while I was recovering from my last surgery. The point isn’t that we pick one particular group and ignore others; the point is that we become intentional about shining the light of Christ wherever and whenever we can. Any of us who have loved ones who don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ know how important being beacons of light really is. John was a beacon of light, and he prepared the way for the ultimate beacon of light – Jesus Himself. (NEW SLIDE) Jesus was willing to do anything legal, moral, and ethical to shine the light into the darkness and bring people to Himself, and we’ve got to be willing to do the same. We’ve also got to actively show God’s compassion, mercy and hope to those who need the light of Christ. Elijah lived with a widow and her son during a severe famine, but he didn’t merely mooch off of them until all the food was gone. He used the guidance and power God gave him to provide flour and olive oil to meet all their needs until the famine was over. Likewise, we are to follow the guidance and power of God in helping those who are needy to know the mercy of God and the hope we have in Him. That means that we are to seek to meet needs wherever and whenever we can, sharing God’s mercy and love both physically and verbally with those who are in need. Just like John the Baptist, we are called to share God’s tender mercy and the hope we have in Him with our world by the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s what shining the beacon of light and guiding people on the path of God’s peace by the power of the Spirit is all about.
    7. Illustration - An anthropologist was studying a primitive tribe in South America that years earlier had been reached by a Christian missionary. After having lived among the tribe for several weeks, the anthropologist met with the tribe’s leader. He said, "You have a wonderful culture, but it is a shame that the missionary came and infected your tribe with his religion." The chief replied, "See that rock? That’s where we would break the skulls of our enemies. See that tree? That’s where we would sacrifice them to our God. And if we had not learned Christ was our Lord, you would be our dinner tonight" (as cited on SermonCentral.com). We don’t have to have the gift of missionary to proclaim God’s truth. We don’t have to have the gift of prophecy to proclaim God’s truth. We don’t have to have the gift of pastor or teacher or exhortation to proclaim God’s truth. (NEW SLIDE) All we have to do is to be obedient when He calls us to proclaim it. All we have to do is have a heart after His own heart. All we have to do is think and feel about those who don’t know Him the way He does. All we have to do is let Him use our mouths and our lives. Then we will be prophets. Prophets who God uses to save people from their sins, just like that tribe. We can all do that, when we do it by the power of His Spirit.
  1. Conclusion
    1. Please bow your heads and close your eyes. Let’s spend a few moments asking God to reveal to our hearts how well each one of us has been doing at being God’s prophet and proclaiming His good news.
    2. What has God been whispering to your heart? Do you need to begin a personal relationship with His Son this morning? Confess your sins to Him, ask Him to forgive you, and ask Him to come into your heart as your Lord and Savior. Ask Him to transform your life beginning right now. Do you already have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? If so, how well have you been doing at filling that role of prophet when He calls you to? How well have you been doing at living in such a way that when you are called to speak, your life and your words match up? If you've been struggling with living this way, or speaking when He calls, or both, and you want to make a fresh start, begin right now. Tell Him right now how sorry you are for sinning against Him, and tell Him you are allowing Him to change your thinking about this sin. He knows the sincerity of your heart. Ask Him to forgive you right now, and be specific about what it is you need to be forgiven for. Ask Him right now to help you overcome the habits and fears of a lifetime, and to start anew with Him, beginning this very moment. Ask Him to change your heart. Thank Him for His love and His help, and thank Him that you will change as you live by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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