St John the Beloved
Sermon and teaching audio from St John Church in Cincinnati Ohio.
St John the Beloved
I’m The Problem
We trace how the conflict of Christmas moves from a cosmic battle to a personal struggle, using Zechariah’s story and a mini ramp to show why fear, unbelief, and the need for control block grace. Exposure hurts, but it is the wound that heals when we trust God’s word.
• dropping in as a picture of trust
• Advent framed as inner conflict
• fear as hiding from holiness
• exposure and walking in the light
• disappointment hardening into unbelief
• God’s delays as wisdom and love
• difference between clarity and control
• trusting God’s word without conditions
• choosing whom to trust
• prayer and communion as responses of surrender
Come and receive him today in these elements, be refreshed, be strengthened, be built up
My boys and I used to do a lot of skateboarding, uh, and a big milestone for anybody learning to skateboard is learning how to drop in to a mini ramp. And so many of you, if you skated when you were a youth, this might be the one thing that you learned how to do. It's it's it's a um it's a foundational skill. Uh, what's a mini ramp? Well, you might know it as a half pipe, although technically it's not quite the same thing. But dropping in is when you set your tail, you set the tail of your board on the edge of the coping, you're at the very precipice of the ramp, you lean your body out over the edge, and you fall into the ramp and you commit, and then off you go. For people who've never done it, it's absolutely terrifying, even if it's a even if it's like a three-foot ramp, even if it's very small. Um of your impulses and your survival instincts fire at once, and everything in your body is telling you you're not supposed to fall over the edge. Don't fall forward. That's a bad idea. In order to do it, you have to overcome your own instincts. You you literally have to get out of your own way. Because the physics of it are actually very simple. It's not complicated. They're so simple that a traffic cone can do it. And I did this exercise when I was teaching my boys to do it, but you can put a traffic cone on a skateboard, you can push it off the edge of the ramp, and it'll go down in the ramp and the cone won't fall off. It's it's very simple because the ramp itself does all of the work, the board does all of the work. All you have to do is not jump off. All you have to do is just be the traffic cone. Just just let it happen. Um, most people are not able to do that. Most people get scared and they wipe out and they fall when they drop in. It's not because they lack skill, it's not because it's complicated or the physics are complicated. It's because they're afraid. The only thing you have to overcome is yourself. This Advent season, we're looking at stories of conflict and resistance, how the arrival of the Prince of Peace is met with struggle. And last week we looked at Revelation 12, which sort of set the stage. It's a sweeping cosmic picture of the conflict of Christmas, the conflict between light and darkness. But today, Luke brings this conflict much closer to home because the conflict is not only out there in the world or in culture wherever it is that we are, but it's also in here. It's in our own hearts, it's in our ourselves. Zechariah's story teaches us that even the best of God's people resist God. Even the best of God's people resist God. Even the priest here in the holy place on what was probably the greatest day of his life pushes back against the word of God. God moves to save his people, and the very people that he is acting to save resist him every step of the way. Of all of the enemies that you will have to face in this life, the most formidable is yourself. I'm the problem. So the main idea is that God's people resist God. How is it that we do that? Three things that we see in this story through fear, through unbelief, and through a desire for control. These are the things that we have to overcome in order to make space for the Lord to work his salvation in our lives. Our own fear, our own unbelief, and our own desire for control. Maybe you can't relate to any of that, but as we unfold them, hopefully you can see yourself in this story. So, point one, fear. We hide from God in fear when we should be open to him in reverence. Uh let's first look at Zechariah. Zechariah, if I can speak in a crude manner, Zechariah was a better Christian than all of us. Uh verse 5 tells us that he was a priest. His whole life was devoted to the service of God. In verse 6 adds that he and his wife Elizabeth, it says that they were righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. That's quite a statement. Um I want to get that inscribed on my tombstone, that he was walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. It's quite a thing to say. It doesn't mean that they were perfect. No one's perfect, excuse me, but it does mean that they lived a life of trust, of integrity, and of obedience to God. So, in other words, if anyone should have been ready to receive the Word of God, it was Zechariah. He represents the very best of God's people. As a priest, Zechariah served at the temple two weeks out of every year. But verse 9 tells us that this year something incredibly extraordinary happened to him. It says that he was chosen by Lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And this would have been the greatest moment in his ministry, maybe the greatest moment in his life. It was so rare for this to happen to any priest. Um, excuse me, because he wasn't the high priest, this was the closest he would ever come to the presence of God in his entire life. There were thousands of priests, and most served uh faithfully for decades and were never chosen. They were never chosen by Lot for this sacred task. Burning incense in the holy place symbolized Israel's prayers rising before God. So Zechariah was standing before the altar, bringing the cries of the nation before the very throne of heaven, as Israel outside prayed and lifted up their prayers in the outer court. This was a day that he would tell his children and his grandchildren about if he had any. He and his wife did not have any children at this point. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime grace, an opportunity. And then at the holiest moment of his life, something even holier and more surprising happens. It says in verse 11, he's in the holy place all by himself with the incense. In verse 11 tells us, there appeared to him an angel of the Lord. In verse 12 says, And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. This response is fairly standard in Scripture. Every time an angel appears, humans fear, they collapse in fear. And this is why the first words of the angels are so often the same as Gabriel's in verse 13. He says, Do not be afraid. But what do we see there? Luke is showing us something more than just normal shock or surprise that he was surprised to see another person there, but it reveals something something deeper. It's a fear that is more similar to Adam and Eve's fear in the garden, when they hear the Lord God walking in the cool of the day. It is the fear of exposure before a holy God, a fear that makes you want to hide, a fear that makes you want to protect and preserve yourself, a fear rooted not in reverence, but in self-protection. Zechariah is afraid. He feels threatened. God is acting to save his people, but his people resist him because we are afraid. We are afraid of being exposed. We are afraid of drawing near to the holiness of God. But God does not desire that we would hide from him in fear, but that we would be reverently open to him in faith and open to what he wants to do in our lives. I recently gained access to a warehouse space with a few other carpenter friends, and we use it for tool storage and fabrication. It's not far from here. It's an old city warehouse. It's a wonderful blessing. But there's one little quirk. The light switch is at the furthest possible point of the room from the entry door. So and there's no windows. So when the lights are off, I open the door and it's like it's like stepping into a big dark cave. It's absolutely pitch black. So I open the door and I have to walk across the dark warehouse to where the light switch is, and then I can turn it on. And when I'm leaving, it's the opposite. I turn the lights off and I walk back through the darkness toward the door to get out. Sometimes I'm doing this at night. In such a situation, my imagination can get the better of me. What if some ancient demon or cryptid is lurking in this? This is an old warehouse. I don't know what the people there before me did. You know, would you they're just waiting for me to turn out the lights? What if a burglar or a marauder is hiding behind the stack of plywood and he wants to take all my Milwaukee tools? I'm not going to let him do it without a fight. If one of those things jumped out at me, I know exactly what my reaction would be. It would be fight or flight. We would all feel that. The same instinct, that gut-level desire to hide or to defend or to flee, is what is what rises in our hearts in the presence of God. And it's it's um we have an anxiety about the presence of God and drawing near to God. We don't mind the idea of God sending help from a distance, but for God to draw near, for his presence to invade our lives, when we must deal with him directly, his holiness exposes us, and our first instinct is to recoil in fear. But fear is not what God desires from his people. He invites us not to hide, but to come to him and to be open to him. So what does this mean for us? To experience God's salvation in your life, you must be exposed. John puts it like this in his letter in 1 John. He says, We must walk in the light. We must walk in the light as he is in the light. And when you walk in the light, you're exposed. All of your weakness and your sin is exposed in the presence of God. We must allow the light of God's presence to expose our brokenness, our sinfulness, and our ugliness. And then to take to heart Gabriel's words do not be afraid. Do not be afraid of being exposed. Zechariah's fear is our fear. When God draws near, our instinct is to protect ourselves, to hide. But exposure is not God's cruelty. He does not expose us in order to shame us. It's his mercy, because the fact of the matter is that we cannot be healed until we are brought into the light. Exposure is necessary for healing. I was speaking with a friend recently about this. All of us say that we want healing. That's often why we come to church, why we're part of a church. We we want healing. We feel broken and we want healing. But often what we really want is pain management. I would argue that we don't often truly want healing. We would rather have pain management. We want something that will dull the pain, that will take away the pain, distract us from the pain, but we are not sure that we are prepared to pay the price for real healing because real healing hurts. Real healing hurts. Sometimes you get injured, and the only way to be healed is to undergo surgery. Things have to get worse before they can get better. I have an old injury on my elbow, and I recently went to see a surgeon to see if there was anything that they could do about it, and turns out that they can, but it's a wildly expensive, wildly invasive surgery. I'm just gonna live with a bum elbow for the rest of my life. I'm not gonna do that surgery. Healing hurts, it's costly. Real healing is costly. Pain management, we'd we would much rather have that. It cannot fix the problem, but it's not as painful. In the same way, the salvation that God wants to work in our lives is a real and a total healing. He wants to set our bones correctly, to heal our wounds correctly, a healing that comes only through the painful process of exposure and repentance. So do not fear. Do not fear when God draws near, when things are being exposed in your life. The light may sting, it may wound you at first, but it's the wound that heals. It's the pain that leads to life, it's the beginning of salvation. Do not be afraid. Point two, unbelief. We are slow to believe the goodness of God. Luke introduces us to a painful reality in Zechariah and Elizabeth's life. In verse 7, says, But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years. Barrenness is always a heartbreaking thing, but in the ancient world it carried an even heavier stigma because in their world, children, they were your legacy, they were your retirement plan, they were your future security, they were your namesake, your joy. Without children, life felt like law, uh many felt like life had lost its meaning and hope. So Zechariah and Elizabeth have carried this pain for decades. And into that pain, Gabriel brings some astonishing news. In verses 13 through 17, he says, Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son. And he goes on to talk about this son named John. John will not only be a joy to his parents, but he will be a prophet who prepares Israel for the coming of the Lord. And this is actually a double answer to prayer. I think God loves to do this. He loves to bring about situations that answer many prayers at once, the prayers of many people who don't even know that they're all praying together. But it's a double answer to prayer. First, it answers the present prayer of Israel, because as Zechariah is offering incense, the people outside are praying for this very thing. They're praying for the redemption of Israel. And God is answering those prayers through the birth of John. But secondly, it's an answer to an old prayer, a prayer that Zechariah and Elizabeth prayed long ago, a prayer for a child, a prayer that at some point they probably gave up on, that they probably stopped praying. Well, how do I know that? Because Zechariah's response to this shows it. He's very surprised. He says, How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years. These are not the words of a man who expects God to be good to him, who expects an answer to this prayer. These are the words of a man who stopped believing that God's goodness could still break into his life, even as an old man. A man who believes in God and is faithful to God, and yet his disappointment has calcified into some kind of unbelief in his heart. But Luke wants us to see something really important here: that when we cry out to God, his answers may come at a surprising time, in a surprising place, and in a surprising way, but they are always better than anything that we could have planned. And oftentimes he brings about a situation that's an answer to many prayers at the same time. He's not only answering Zechariah's old prayer, but he's answering Israel's prayer for redemption at the same time, something that only God can do. John's birth is the beginning of the coming of the Lord. So when we cry out to God in our confusion and pain, and when God seems silent or unresponsive, we mustn't let our disappointment calcify into a bitter unbelief. But we must stay hopeful and joyful, expecting God's goodness, holding fast to the fact that God is good and he's wise. And even if he didn't answer this prayer at this moment in the way that we thought that he should, that he's good. Have you ever ordered something online and the delay lasted so long that you completely forgot that you ordered it? Julie placed a pre-order about six months ago. It's for a phone. It's basically a landline. It looks like an old landline phone, but it connects to Wi-Fi. And it's it's kind of marketed for families and kids. It was an unexpectedly popular product, so the release kept getting delayed. So she pre-ordered it, but they kept pushing it back and pushing it back. And at some point we just stopped thinking about it. I bet you totally forgot that we had ordered it. I'm reminding you now. We don't know when it will arrive. But one day, a strange package is going to show up at our door, and it will be the thing that we asked for. It will be the gift that we forgot that we even wanted, the gift that we forgot that we ordered. At some point, we just stopped expecting it because it had been so long delayed. And that's what unanswered prayer often feels like: that we ask and we wait and we pray and we wait and we pray again and we wait, and eventually we just stop expecting that anything will happen because disappointment slowly turns into somewhat of an unbelief in God's goodness and his care for us. But Scripture insists that God hears and that he cares about our needs, and that he even cares not only about our needs, but about our desires, and that when he delays, it is never from negligence, it's never from indifference, it's never because there was an unexpected backlog of other prayers that he has to get to first. That's not why he delays. When God delays, it is always a delay of love. Sometimes it's just not the right time. Sometimes we're not ready for the things that we're asking for. Often giving us what we want when we want it would do far more harm than good. So God's delays are always done in wisdom and love. One pastor put it like this I think this is a good way to think about. It is that God always gives us in prayer what we would have asked for if we knew everything that He knows. He doesn't always give us exactly what we ask for, but He always gives us what we would have asked for if we knew everything that He knows. God delights for His people to make their requests known to Him, and He delights to meet those requests. He loves to answer prayer, but He always does it at the right time and in the right way, for our good and for His glory, and often in a way that's an answer to many prayers, not just our own. So don't give up on the goodness of God. Zechariah had stopped believing that God would still be good to him in this particular way. And many of us live with that same quiet unbelief, and we've stopped praying like we used to, and we've stopped expecting like we used to, and we've lost the optimism that we should have, a Christian optimism. But Jesus directly addresses this in Luke 18, later in the same gospel. He says, He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. That they ought always to pray and not lose heart. We ought always to pray and not lose heart, even if the prayer has been on our lips for years, even if we cannot imagine how God would answer this prayer, even if we can't imagine that God would answer this prayer for us. He's good when he answers quickly, and he's good when he delays, and he's good when he says no. Our God is good to us at all times. Um the goodness of God. Do not lose faith in the goodness of God. We have to overcome that. And then number three, point three, desire for control. We cannot grow spiritually without giving up the illusion of control. Look again at Zechariah's response to Gabriel. Gabriel tells him that his prayers have been heard, and his wife will conceive and bear a son, who will be a great prophet in Israel. And Zechariah's response is this in verse 18. He says, How shall I know this? How shall I know this? For I'm an old man, and my wife is advanced in years. He's pointing at all of his circumstances that make this impossible. How shall I know this? His response sounds similar to Mary's response to the angel when the angel visited her. When the angel tells Mary that she will conceive and bear a son, she says, How will this be? Aren't they saying the same thing? Mary seems to be celebrated, Zechariah. It seems that he blew it on this one. But aren't those the same response? Not at all. Mary's response, how will this be? Is a legitimate question about logistics. She's unmarried and she's a virgin. How will it be that she will bear a son? Perfectly legitimate question. She's not doubting, she's seeking clarification and more information, which she is given. Zechariah's response, how shall I know? That's a different question. That is a demand for evidence. It is an implication that God's word alone is not enough. That more supporting data is needed. Zechariah is not given any evidence, but instead a rebuke. Gabriel says in verse 19 and 20, he says, I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you, puny human, and to bring you this good news, which you should be happy about. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time. Gabriel offers no further evidence than simply God says. He says, Zechariah, this is God's word. And he rebukes Zechariah because if God says something, we should believe him. No other assurance is necessary, no other supporting arguments or data is necessary. If God says something, we should believe him. The need for further assurance is actually a desire to be in control. Because Zechariah is not really asking for more information like Mary was. He's not asking a clarifying question. He's asking for more certainty, not for more information, but for more certainty. But what could be more certain than the words of God? Nothing is more certain than the words of God. To simply trust God and to depend on his word alone is to surrender control to him, to not be in control, but to allow God to be in control. Because we cannot both fully trust another person and also fully control the outcome. You cannot fully trust another person and fully control the outcome. Trust, by its very definition, is a relinquishing of control. That's exactly what you're doing when you're trusting another person. In other words, God expects us to trust his word. We cannot say to God, I will trust you once I feel safe enough or once I know enough about what's going to happen in my life and what your plans are. Once I'm certain how things will turn out, and once you've supplied the sufficient evidence and certainty for me, then God, I will trust you because that's that's not trust at all. That's still me being in control and just um just sort of agreeing with with what God will do as long as it's as long as I'm okay with it. We cannot control God. We can only trust God. The desire for more assurance always seems humble, as if we just want to be careful, we just want to we just want to play it safe. And for those of you who love to be safe, you're gonna love next Sunday's sermon. Um, it's called safety second, not safety first, but it's a you know desire to be careful. But underneath, it's it's often just a desire to stay in control because assurance feels like we're in control. It lets us feel like we can manage the risk, we can predict the future, we can protect ourselves. But that's not faith, it's not trust. That's us saying, God, I will obey once you've met my conditions. Once you've met my conditions, I will obey you. And so Gabriel refuses to give Zechariah anything more than God's word. Because if God's word is not enough, then nothing ever will be. If we do not trust God on his word alone, there is no amount of other supporting information that will ever move us to trust him. And if we will not trust him without control, we will never trust him at all. In uh Christopher Nolan's Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, who's a highly skilled extractor. An extractor is someone who is able to enter other people's dreams and steal information. I wanted to be an extractor growing up, but I became a pastor instead. Cobb is living at large. He's unable to return to his family in the United States because he's accused of crimes there. And Saito is a rich Japanese businessman who recruits Cobb not to steal information, but to plant an idea in someone's head, inception, an act that they're not sure is possible. Cobb is about to walk away from the job when Saito promises that he can fix his situation. He can make it so that he can return to America and he can see his children again, and that gets Cobb's attention. And Cobb says, if I were to do this, is a very iconic, famous moment in Inception, he says, if I were to do this, I'd need a guarantee. How do I know that you can deliver? How do I know that you can deliver? And Sato replies, You don't, but I can. So do you want to take a leap of faith? Is what he says. Or become an old man filled with regret, waiting to die alone. Cobb's question and Zechariah's question are the same question. How do I know? How do I know that you can deliver? How will I know that this is so? And Sato's response is the heart of faith that we don't know, we don't, but God can. And so will we trust him? Our relationship with God is a relationship of faith. We never get all the information that we think that we need. We never get the level of control that we want. At some point, we must act, not because we fully understand, but because we choose to trust the one who is calling us. But the reality is that control is an illusion anyway. We're never in control of our lives, even if we think that we are, and we never have certainty about anything, even if we think that we do. At the end of the day, and at the end of the arguments, when everything's been said, all of us must make a choice of faith. We must all choose whom we will trust, whether we will trust God or someone else. So who will you trust? Will you trust at the end of the day, being never having enough information? Will you trust yourself and your own experience? Will you trust today's scholarly consensus, which is changing all the time? Will you trust the opinions of your peers? Will you trust your parents and what they think? Or will you trust the word of the Lord? Those are the options that we have. It's not a choice between faith and reason, it's a choice between different kinds of faith. Even the best of God's people resist God. He seeks to work out salvation in our lives, and he is met with our fear, he's met with our unbelief, and he's met with our desire for control. So may the Spirit work in our hearts to drive out fear with love, as we see Jesus Christ, who came in order that we would be clothed so that we would not have to be afraid, that our shame would be covered, who came in order to demonstrate the goodness of God toward us as he laid aside his own life as he died on the cross for our salvation, and who himself gave up control, whose hands were stretched out and nailed to a cross so that we would be saved, to lead us to surrender our illusion of control and to trust in the Lord to this end. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you that you are persistent to work out your salvation. We thank you that you are the main character, you are the protagonist, you are the one who is always advancing the good and advancing the plot line in our lives. We we are not the main character, we are often the problem, we are often resisting you. We're like the prophet Jonah. We're running from you, we're resisting you, but your purpose is advanced not because of us, but because of you, because of your faithfulness and because of your determination to work out your will in the world and in our lives. We thank you, God, that we are beneficiaries of that, that you work out our salvation even though we are not very um we're not very compliant partners in that, that you overcome our unbelief and our resistance to you and our fear and our desire for control. We pray, God, that you would have that victory in our lives more and more, that you would have that victory in our lives today and this week. Help us to surrender ourselves to you and to trust in you that your wise and good plans might be worked out in our lives for your glory. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Stand with us. I don't know how the Lord's gonna answer that prayer, um, but maybe maybe pray that God would show her that the Holy Spirit is all the magic she needs. Um we come now to the Lord's table, which testifies these things to us. Uh testifies to us that God has drawn near, that he has drawn near to us not to we we need to come into the light, we need to be exposed, and he has drawn near not to shame us, not to condemn us, not to destroy us, but to heal us, to save us, and that we ought to be open to God. We ought to surrender to him and repent and allow him to have his way in our lives. We know that God came for our salvation and for our help and our benefit because of Jesus Christ. And we look at what he did, how he taught, and how he healed, and how he fed, and ultimately how he suffered and how he laid down his life, and how he rose again, and how he ascended to the right hand of God and poured out his Holy Spirit upon us and now intercedes for us. The bread is a symbol of his body, which he took up for us, a like nature, a nature like ours. He took up a body, a nature like ours, in order to suffer and be crushed. And the wine is a symbol of his blood, which he poured out for us and for our salvation. If this describes what you believe, if you are a Christian, you have taken the name of Jesus, he has put his name upon you in your baptism. Come and receive him today in these elements, be refreshed, be strengthened, be built up. But if that's not you, maybe you're visiting with us today and just considering the message of the gospel. We're very glad that you're here. Um but we would just ask that you let these elements pass you by until you're ready, until you're ready to trust him, to surrender to him. That doesn't mean that you're perfect or that you have all the answers. As a matter of fact, it means that you know that you that there's so many answers you don't have. You don't have all the answers. You don't, you have many more questions, and yet you will choose to trust him with your life. That's all the only requirement to come to this table. That being said, on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and he broke it, saying, This is my body which is broken for you. Take and eat all of you. And likewise after supper, he took the cup and said, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for you. Take and drink, all of you. I'm gonna ask Ben, one of our elders, if he would come to assist me, please. Thank you, Ben. And he will be at one end of the room, and I will be here at the table. You can come to whichever of us is closest to you. We do have both wine and grape juice. The uh grape juice is in the outermost ring, and the wine is in all of the inner rings. You can take as you desire there. And we also have uh a gluten free bread option that's only here at the table, so if you need that, come to me. And we just ask that you hold on to the elements, take them back to your seat. When we're all served, we will partake together. You can go ahead and come up as you feel ready.