For our family, getting ready to move from one parish to another has involved not just packing things in boxes to come with us, but taking trailer loads of rubbish to the dump.
Just when does something become rubbish? The generation that came through the Great Depression learned the habit of saving all sorts of things because "we might need it one day". Whether you need a piece of wire, a second-hand nail or screw, a small square of hardboard, a corner of laminex, there's a chance it is somewhere in the collection! If you are well-organised, you can quickly locate it. Otherwise you'll be saying, "Now, where is that thing? I'm sure I've seen it somewhere!"
The benefit of moving from time to time is that you have the opportunity to review your priorities. You find yourself saying "Will we ever need this?" about something that you had earlier thought "might be handy one day". But you know something is wrong when the load of hopeful treasures begins to prevent you from doing what you need to do. It's well and truly time for a "spring cleanup" - whatever time of year it is!
We can do that in our inner lives too - collecting "spiritual junk" that should have gone to the dump ages ago.
Sometimes it is the little mementoes of the past - the painful memories of what we have done or of what others have done to us. It is so hard to let go. It is tucked away there - who knows, we might need it some day! But it is junk, poisoning our spirits, making it difficult to be and do what we need to be and do today. Whatever the situation has been, it needs to be dealt with. We can't afford to keep the junk!
At other times it is a personal sin which we insist on retaining. We want to be saved, to be forgiven, but we are not letting go of this! It has become such an important part of our lives! Perhaps it is particular reading matter that feeds unwholesome thoughts. Perhaps it is an area of dishonesty - after all, others do it too! Perhaps it is an unhealthy relationship that should have been broken off ages ago. Perhaps it is a negative attitude towards someone else which we have justified and treasured. But we can't afford to keep the junk!
We need to understand that spiritual junk is destined for the garbage tip - and we'll end up there ourselves unless something happens about it!
That had been an issue between the Lord and his chosen people Israel for a very long time.
It was so easy to get caught up in the sins of the surrounding nations and even worship their gods. After all, what everyone else seems to be doing can't be so very bad! For David it was the temptation of another man's wife and the act of eliminating Uriah when he realised that Bathsheba was pregnant. For Ahab it was the longing for another man's vineyard and the act of eliminating Naboth so that he could take it as his own. For David, it wasn't the end of the story - the Lord warned him through a prophet and David came to a point of spiritual clean-up. The Lord sent a prophet to Ahab too and he was stricken with remorse - but still kept most of his junk.
John the Baptist came to the desert of Judaea and started preaching, "Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near!" It's clean-up time! The Kingdom of God is about to break in and you had better be ready!
It was an unusual sight. Nobody had heard of him. Some have speculated that John had spent time with the little-known Essene sect. Certainly Isaiah 40 was one of their favourite Bible passages, as the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown. But John was different. He didn't stay in some hidden desert community, bemoaning the corruption of the priesthood and questioning the validity of the worship that went on in the Temple. He became literally "A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him'."
Suddenly he appears, wearing his camel-hair clothes, leather belt around his waist and a diet of "locusts and wild honey" - quite a nutritious diet - publicly calling on people to repent of their sins and, to show that they had repented, to be baptised in the Jordan River. This was quite new. These Gentiles who wanted to adopt the Jewish religion - they had to be baptised as well as circumcised - but then, they had to wash away the contamination of all their Gentile associations. John was calling for Jews to repent and be baptised.
He spoke with both directness and urgency. "Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near!" The Lord truly is Lord! He truly is the King! He's coming! You'd better be ready for him! Don't play around any more! Clean up your lives! Get rid of all the junk! Repent - turn away from your sins!"
Pharisees and Sadducees were coming to him to be baptised, representatives of the two major lay and priestly movements within Judaism. What were their motives? Had they come to spy out this popular movement before it got out of hand? John senses their insincerity. He likens them to snakes in the desert which come out of their holes to escape the fire. So you've heard that God is going to send punishment on his people, have you? Then you had better do those things that show you have genuinely repented! Don't think you are safe because of your ancestry! The time of judgement is ready to begin - "every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
Someone is coming who is far greater than I am. His harvest is about to begin. Watch out! He's going to baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He's ready to begin to thresh all the grain so that he can gather his wheat into the barn. But watch out! He will burn the chaff in a fire that never goes out!
Threshing was the process for separating out the grains from the husks and chaff. The sheaves were spread out on the threshing-floor and animals trampled over them. Another method was to beat them with a threshing-sledge, a flat board which curved upwards at the front. But the grains and stalks were all mixed up on the floor. In the morning or evening, when there was a breeze, the farmer took a wooden fork with broad prongs, picked up a pile of chaff and grain and tossed it into the air - this is called winnowing. The heavy grains fell into a pile and the lighter chaff was blown away to fall into a separate pile on one side of the floor. The grains were then collected and stored, later to be turned into flour for baking.
The Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma are both used for "spirit" and "wind". There is little doubt that John understood his words to refer to the impending divine judgement in which the holy wind and fire of God would separate out the wheat and burn up the chaff. And that may well be why, when he was in prison, he had serious questions as to whether Jesus was in fact the one he had been waiting for.
Then Jesus arrives at the Jordan and says, "I've come to be baptised!" John immediately senses that the time has arrived. Before him stands the one person who has no need of repentance, the one person who has no need to be baptised! John was baptising others, but here was one who should be baptising him!
But Jesus insisted. This was the point at which he was beginning his public ministry - a ministry whose climax would be bearing the sins of all humanity on the cross. It was fitting that, at this point, the sinless one should identify himself with sinners in their repentance - since by his own death on the cross he would be making it possible for them to be forgiven.
And at this crucial beginning point, God the Father and God the Spirit bear testimony to God the Son. The Spirit of God coming down like a dove and alighting on him... The voice from heaven, "This is my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased." It is not that, at this point, he received the Spirit or became the Son, as some writers have suggested. But this is when the ministry was starting. No longer the carpenter of Nazareth and Mary's son. Now on one mission - to seek and to save the lost!
But it's clean-up time! Time to get rid of all that junk!
And Jesus the Son of God gave his life for our life so that as we truly repent we can truly be forgiven. And we can know the Wind and Fire of God, not destroying us, but cleansing, renewing and empowering us.
God has something new for you in 2002. Get rid of all the junk and get ready to move forward with him!
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