A Voice in the Darkness

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.

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John, chapter 1, verses 6 -8 and 19 -28. There was a man sent from God whose name was

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John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.

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He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light. And this is the testimony of John.

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When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you?

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He confessed and did not deny. But confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him,

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What then? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? He answered, No. So they said to him,

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Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?

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He said, I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet

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Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. So they asked him, Then why are you baptizing if you are neither the

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Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet? John answered them, I baptize with water. But among you stands one you do not know.

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Even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie. These things took place in Bethany, across the

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Jordan, where John was baptizing. This is the gospel of the Lord. You may be seated. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. Darkness. Darkness. Darkness is a powerful metaphor for evil in our world.

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It is one that we all understand, even going back to our childhood.

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In fact, a theologian who passed away this week, actually, once quoted, is saying that the reason why we are afraid of the dark is because we were always intended and created to be children of the light.

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Kind of fascinating that we don't have to teach our children to be afraid of the dark. It comes quite naturally. In fact, over and again, kids around the planet, when the lights go off, fear the monsters under the bed.

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It's kind of cute, but at the same time, you know, we don't have to teach them this. They know this. The new

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Star Wars movie that was released this week, and one of the permanent features in the Star Wars movies, is a universe where there is a conflict between darkness and light.

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The evil characters are under the sway of the dark side of the force. At least that's how the story goes. And you know, these are just examples from our imaginations regarding this theme of darkness and light.

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But the fact that our imaginations even have this category of light and darkness is quite telling.

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We all know this, and nobody has to tell us. The world is not a safe place at all. Our history as the human race is one of constant struggling between light and darkness.

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And I must say, unless you've been sticking your head under a rock, then you are fully aware that in our day, darkness is growing.

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This is a fact. Now, I'll give you some of the less important highlights first.

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Read the news. We find that North Korea now is openly demonstrating that it is on a quest to perfect a nuclear weapon, in the hopes of also developing a delivery system that will enable it to attack the

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United States. That sounds like loads of fun to me. This past week, ISIS, although in disarray, has vowed that, quote,

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Berlin will burn. And this is a chilling threat that they've given against Germany and the

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Christmas markets that they have in Germany. Australia, a week and a half ago, joined the growing list of nations that has legalized same -sex marriage.

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Mass shootings in the United States this year, in Las Vegas and in churches and other places, has resulted in literally the deaths of hundreds of people, and it doesn't seem like anybody has any solution to these problems.

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In fact, the bigger point is that hundreds of millions of Americans this year have persisted in sin and unbelief, despite the growing darkness.

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They do not recognize the unraveling of our society as a judgment from God. And by the way, if we're going to talk about darkness, we must understand that we shouldn't talk about it in terms that only limit it to us discussing it out there.

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Don't even get me started about the darkness here in Oslo. Don't even get me started.

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Romans 1, verses 28 through 31, gives a very interesting list that if you are paying attention, you'll find that each and every one of us can sit there and say, yeah, there's darkness in me.

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Romans 1 .28 says, Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind.

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To do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

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They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They're gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents.

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Yeah, I always like to highlight that one. Been there, done that. Been on the receiving end too. Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

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It's as if when Adam and Eve took of that fruit that they were commanded not to eat, it was as if the great light of the good creation that God had created had somehow gone out.

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Think of it in terms of the Great Depression. The Roaring Twenties. People were making money hand over fist.

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And then the stock market crashed. And all these people who had all of this wealth found in a matter of minutes they were totally bankrupt.

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Some of them, when the realization of just how dire their situation had become, chose to throw themselves off the skyscrapers of New York and their broken bodies crashed onto the streets of Wall Street.

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Darkness. In the midst of darkness there is no peace. In the darkness of this kind of darkness is only fear, hatred, hostility, backbiting.

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While sitting in this darkness, there is no rest. This isn't the kind of darkness that you can get a good night's sleep in.

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This is the kind of darkness where your bones are chilled and you can never quite get comfortable.

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And in the midst of all of this, it turns into something like a horror movie where we are all just waiting in the darkness for the next one of us to be taken by the

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Grim Reaper whose schedule we don't even know what it is. We just know that we could be the next person.

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And this isn't some pretend haunted house attraction designed to scare with cheap costumes and pretend zombies who shout boo at you in the dark.

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This is the real thing. And we know it. We see it. We feel it. We dread it.

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And we all know that it is our sin, yours and mine together, that is responsible for the dark mess that we find ourselves in.

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And in the midst of that darkness, we cry out in the misery of our stinking sinful condition,

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God, where are you? And then we listen for a reply.

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And we hear nothing. It's getting colder. God, please have mercy on us. Please come and save us.

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Lord, we are perishing. Still only darkness and silence. But then our

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Gospel text does something amazing. Off in the distance, out in the wilderness, today in our

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Gospel text, we hear a voice. We hear a voice. And our

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Gospel text begins with these words. There was a man sent from God whose name was

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John. You think about Moses. Moses, out there wandering in the wilderness, tending sheep.

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And God sends him. And one of the things that God tells Moses is, I have heard the prayers of my people.

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I have seen their suffering. And so our text begins with these words. There was a man who was actually sent from God, sent into our darkness, the darkness of our sin.

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And he came as a witness, to bear witness about the light.

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The light that we've never seen. So that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light.

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Verse 9 says, The true light which gives light to everyone was about to come into the world.

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He was in the world. The world was made through him, and yet the world did not know him. What a tragic situation.

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I mean, the darkness is so dark, that when our Creator walks into it, we don't even recognize him for who he is.

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Such is our sinful condition. Yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, his own people.

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They did not receive him. And then we hear these wonderful Gospel words. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

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Children who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but children who are born of God.

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This is quite the salvation. Verse 19 then goes on to say,

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This is the testimony of John. And so, we're listening to this voice in the wilderness, in the darkness, and all of Jerusalem is going out and they're repenting of their sins.

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They're confessing their wickedness and being baptized in the Jordan River for the forgiveness of their sins.

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And word gets back to religious headquarters in Jerusalem, and so they send a contingent out.

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But you're going to note here, these priests did not come out to listen to John's message. They did not come out to be baptized by him.

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And Jesus, later on, will literally rebuke these fellows for not being baptized by John.

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So understand this. These fellows who've come out in the darkness to hear this voice and get some answers about this voice, they're not there to repent.

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They're there for their own reasons. Selfish. So they ask him, Who are you?

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And then the text says something a little bit confusing, but we'll unpack this properly. John confessed.

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He did not deny, but he confessed. I am not the

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Christ. The reason it says that is because these fellows were quite willing.

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If John had said, I'm the Messiah, they would have hitched their wagon to him because he was quite popular, and they would have been all too happy to have some of his glory on themselves.

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And so John says, I am not the Christ. So they asked him,

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What then? Are you Elijah? Notice what he says. I am not.

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If you know your Bible, you know that the very last chapter of the Old Testament, the prophet that I like to consider the

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Italian prophet, Malachi. It works. The very last portion of this

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Italian prophecy says this, Behold, I will send

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Elijah, the prophet before the great and awesome day of Yahweh comes. He will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.

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And the Jews of this time literally thought that God was going to literally reincarnate

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Elijah. Hence the question, Are you Elijah? And notice he says no.

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How are we to understand this prophecy? Because it says, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the great and awesome day of the

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Lord. Well, thankfully, we have kind of an exegete that is unexpected that helps us understand the true sense of this prophecy.

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And if you would turn with me to Luke 1. I'm going to start at verse 5. And the exegete in question is none other than the angel

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Gabriel. He gives us the true sense of this prophecy from Malachi. Here's what it says, verse 5.

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In the days of Herod, the king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abijah.

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He had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. They were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the

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Lord. I have to comment on this. Over and again in the Hebrew mind, and you'll see this repeated in the Old Testament, in talking about people who have faith, they are righteous before God and they walk blameless before others.

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Righteous is vertical. Blameless is horizontal. Righteousness before God is by grace through faith, even for people in the

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Old Testament. Blameless before others means that they obey God in His commandments and do good works for the sake of other people.

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And here we see that Elizabeth and Zechariah were righteous and blameless.

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But they had no child, which in those days is a black mark against a woman. It's considered something like a scourge.

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It culturally means that maybe the reason why you're not having children is because God is punishing you.

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That's at least how the town gossip and whispers go. But Scripture rules that out for them.

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But they had no child because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years. Now, while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by Lot to enter the temple of the

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Lord and to burn incense. The Proverbs tell us that all of the decisions of the dice of Lot's are decided by God Himself.

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And so God, by Lot, chose Zechariah to serve Him that day. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense.

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And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.

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Zechariah was troubled when he saw him. Fear fell upon him, which is the standard response to when an angel arrives and shows up.

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Fear fell upon him, but the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zechariah. Your prayer has been heard, and your wife

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Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. Do you think for a second that Zechariah and Elizabeth, in their advanced age, were still praying for a child?

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At some point, when the hot flashes stop and things change in a female's body, you say, well, that's not going to happen.

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And so you're going to note then that God heard their prayers from when they were young.

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And don't think for a second that God does not hear your prayers. He does. Prayer is a very powerful and mighty thing.

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And we must always believe that when we pray to our Heavenly Father, that we as children of God who are blood -bought, that our

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Father hears us because He does. Now, if He says no or He says wait, don't despise or lose heart.

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He still hears. And sometimes He protects us by not giving us what we want when we want it.

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But the text goes on. The angel Gabriel then sang, You will have joy and gladness, many will rejoice at His birth, for He will be great before the

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Lord. He must not drink wine or strong drink, and He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from His mother's womb, which will happen just later in this exact chapter.

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And then it goes on. He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their

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God, and He will go before Him in the, listen, spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready for the

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Lord a people who are prepared. And so here the angel Gabriel gives us the proper sense of the prophecy from the

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Italian prophet Malachi. We are to understand not that Elijah is going to raise from the grave, but that the one who precedes the

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Messiah would come in the spirit and the power of Elijah, which is not a foreign concept in Scripture, because remember the fellow who came after Elijah was

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Elisha, and Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah's spirit, and it was granted to him.

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That is what is going on in this text. Now, the next question put before John the

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Baptist by this contingent from headquarters was, are you the prophet?

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Notice it doesn't say, are you a prophet? Are you the prophet? Now, that's referring to a very specific prophet, and that prophecy regarding who this prophet is is found in Deuteronomy 18.

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I'll begin at verse 15. Here's what it says. Moses, prophesying in his time, said,

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Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers.

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It is to him that you shall listen. Just as you desired of Yahweh your

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God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, let me not hear again the voice of Yahweh my

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God or see his great fire anymore lest I die, and Yahweh said to me, they are right in what they have spoken,

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I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers.

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I will put my words in his mouth. He shall speak to them all that I command him, and whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name,

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I myself will require it of him. You'll note that Deuteronomy 18 is a prophecy about Jesus Christ, the

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Messiah himself, and so one of his titles was the prophet. And so there's

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John the Baptist kind of being grilled at this point. Are you the Christ? No, I'm not the Christ. Are you Elijah?

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No. Are you the prophet? No, I'm not. Well, headquarters isn't satisfied, so they said to them, then who are you?

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We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? He said, I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.

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Make straight the way of the Lord as the prophet Isaiah said. And here then he's referring to our

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Old Testament text from last week, from Isaiah 40, that says a voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the

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Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. And see, in the darkness,

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John the Baptist preaches to each and every one of us, calling us to repent of our wickedness, our sinful darkness.

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You see, because the darkness is inside of all of us. Each and every one of us is guilty before God of idolatry, of blasphemy, of not keeping the

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Sabbath day holy and desiring to hear God's Word. Each and every one of us are guilty of breaking the fourth commandment by dishonoring our own parents and the people whom we have worked for.

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And each and every one of us is guilty of murder and adultery, of lying and bearing false witness against our neighbors, and coveting and stealing and all the things that the commandments tell us not to do.

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And so, the voice of the one crying in the wilderness in the darkness calls to us to make straight our crooked paths and to recognize it's not about the darkness out there, it's about the darkness in here.

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Then we learn in verse 24 that this contingent that had been sent to John, they were from the

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Pharisees. And you can hear the soundtrack getting more ominous now. Dun, dun, dun.

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These guys, there's nothing good about them at all.

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They, according to Christ, are men who like to be welcomed in the marketplace, who wear long flowing robes, they make their flacketerries big, they love the best seats at all of the most important parties, and they're all about money and fame and glory.

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These are people who need to heed the preaching of the voice in the wilderness and repent, but they don't.

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So now they get a little bit nasty. See, they're kind of going like this.

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So he's not the Christ, he's not Elijah, he's not the prophet. Whew, good. We don't have to recognize that now.

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So they turn on him. So then they said, well, why are you baptizing? If you're neither the

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Christ nor Elijah the prophet, why are you baptizing? You didn't get a license from us to do what you're doing.

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We didn't sanction this ministry. Who do you think you are? So John, his answer is kind of like this.

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So what of it? I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know.

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He stands before you right now. Now to help you understand this, have any of you ever heard like a

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TV preacher make the claim that I believe that the Antichrist is living on the earth right now?

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He's probably somewhere on the planet, maybe Africa, learning his ABCs and his one, two, threes.

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It's like the movie The Omen with the Damian figure, right? That he's somehow wandering the earth.

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And I always wonder, why are you doing that? Because the fellow making that claim is taking on the role of being

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John the Baptist for the Antichrist. It doesn't make any sense. But in this sense though,

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John is saying, he's here right now.

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He's walking among you right now. The person you have had your hopes on in the darkness, he's here right now.

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And he says, I am not worthy to even untie the straps of his sandals.

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And so, here we see this voice in the wilderness assuring us that God has heard our pleas for mercy.

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God has heard our misery, seen our suffering, seen the condition that we are in because of our sin, and He has had mercy on us.

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And before He arrives, He sends one to say, repent. Repent.

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Make straight the paths of the Lord. Believe in Him. And if you think about it for a second, fast forward to the resurrection day when

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Jesus rises from the grave. Go to the end of the Gospel of Luke, and you will see that Jesus commissions the church to do something.

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To proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His name to all nations.

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You see, the church now, pastors and Christians, take on the role of John the

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Baptist. Having been forgiven of our sins, washed in the blood of Christ in our baptisms, united with Him in His death and His resurrection, given the good news of God's mercy and grace, we now pick up our voices and create a choir.

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A choir where our voice is joined to John the Baptist's and in the darkness we cry out, repent.

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Make straight the paths of the Lord. He's coming. He's almost here.

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Be forgiven and live. In fact, the text goes on to say, in verse 28, the next day after this,

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John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and he said, Behold, the

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Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is He of whom I said after me, come as a man who ranks before me because He was before me.

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I myself did not know Him, but for this purpose I came, baptizing with water, that He might be revealed to Israel.

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And behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In John 8 -12,

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Jesus Himself says, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of light.

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Our psalm talks then about the great reversal of fortunes.

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For those who were languishing in darkness, under the penalty of sin, those who were under the judgment of God, those who waited and feared death, that all of a sudden when the light appears, everything changes.

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Psalm 126 says, when the Lord Yahweh restored our fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.

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Then our mouth was filled with laughter, our tongue with shouts of joy. Then they said among the nations, the

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Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad.

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Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.

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He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing

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His sheaves with Him. Our Old Testament text says this, the Spirit of Yahweh Elohim is upon me because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

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He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.

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If you've ever seen an old world ancient prison, they were not known for their, well, good conditions.

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They were generally holes in the ground. They were dark. They were dank. They were wet.

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They were stinky. They were smelly. They were awful. And so the Lord has told us to proclaim good news that those who have been bound in Satan's prison under the dominion of darkness,

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He has thrown the doors wide open, come out of the stinky darkness into the light of life.

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Proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, the day of vengeance of our God. It's Scrooge on Christmas morning buying the

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Christmas goose. That's the picture here. I then shall greatly rejoice in the

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Lord. My soul shall exult in my God because He has taken my stinking, sinful carcass and has clothed me with garments of salvation, the very righteousness of Christ.

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He's covered me with the robe of righteousness. And as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels.

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We all know what a bride looks like. And it's so wonderfully dazzling to look at a bride coming down the aisle.

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The white dress, the pearls of the diamonds and the jewels, the snow.

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And that's light. So therefore my soul shall exult. For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the

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Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spout up before all the nations. You see, this turn of fortune is likened to a spring morning.

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And we all know what that's like here. Spring doesn't arrive until what, May? Man, I think it starts in January in Southern California.

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But here it arrives in May. And everything from November until May is dead.

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It is cold, it is dark, it is dead, it is ugly, it is miserable.

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But then, one day, it's like God flips the switch and there's leaves and there's flowers and there's color everywhere.

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This is what it's like to bask in the light of life. And this is our fortunes, brothers and sisters.

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We who are in Christ. This day is coming when the darkness gives way to the spring day of a new earth.

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So repent. Make straight a path for God. Confess that you have fallen short.

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Do not be afraid to confess. Confess it freely. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

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And the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just, and He will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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Because Christ Himself, the One we have been waiting for, the light of life, the light of the world, has taken our darkness into Himself on the cross and bled for it and died for it.

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And I don't know if you've noticed this about light, but when the lights are turned on, the darkness just seems to disappear.

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And so let the light of light shine on you and let Him be gracious unto you. Because He desires to flip your fortunes and to give you this great turn, to take you out of the darkness and walk you into and introduce you to the true light, a light that will never end.

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In the name of Jesus, Amen. And again that address is

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