Last week, as we began our celebration of Advent, we spoke about the humanity of Jesus Christ.  Jesus, Son of God, was at the same time, the Son of Man.  Jesus was fully human and, in his humanness, experienced death for us, that we might not taste of death ourselves.  Jesus’ death did not mean our bodies would not falter into death, but Jesus’ death did mean we would not perish.  Instead, through the grace of Jesus’ redeeming grace we would be live abundantly now and eternally with God.

          This week, in our second week of Advent, I would like for us to explore the actions Jesus’ undertook in coming in human form.  Namely, Jesus came to share the prophetic words of God.  Now the words, “the prophetic words of God,” form an interesting phrase.  Whenever I get together with other pastors, I experience an inward groan and distress when a pastor begins a sentence with the words, “God gave me a prophetic word to preach on Sunday.”  I feel this distress because too often what follows is something like, “God gave me a prophetic word to preach on Sunday that we should enter into a capital building campaign” or something similar to that.  I cringe because I do not think of promoting a capital building fund as a prophetic word of God.  It may be true that the Holy Spirit moves people to think more deeply about the future work of the kingdom but I struggle with the notion that God said something to that pastor like “If you build it and they will come.”  Why do I say that and why does it matter?

          Our New Testament reading from the opening Book of Hebrews helps us in this regard.  The opening verses talk about Jesus coming to share the prophet word of God.  The Scripture says, “1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he (God) appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.  After he(Jesus) had provided purification for sins, he (Jesus) sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven” (Hebrews 1:1-3). 

The Scripture here tells us two things about the prophetic word of God. First, the prophetic word had been shared and recorded for us in the Old Testament through the likes of people named Joel, Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Malachi just to name a few.  And when the ancient prophets spoke, they made it clear they were not speaking their own words but words that God had given them.  The prophets would issue their prophetic proclamation and add terms like “Thus declares the Lord” or “Thus says the Lord.”  Moreover, the message of the prophets was almost always uncomfortable for people to hear.  The words that God had the prophets speak often served as mirrors.  The Prophets, if you will, held up a mirror to the world or to a person providing a way for things to be seen clearly and plainly. The mirror provides the way into seeing how God sees things, not as we imagine we see them.

Second, this Scripture tells us that God brought a close to the prophets of the Old Testament and instead the prophetic word of God was spoken by his Son, Jesus, who is the exact representation of God.  And Jesus, having spoken what was needed to be said returned to his place of glory in heaven.  If this is true, and I believe it to be so, why would God then find the need to share a new prophetic word through the likes a pastor and to do so in the context of collecting money.  Hence, I inwardly groan and get distress when someone says, “God gave me a prophetic word to share.”

That inward groan comes also from the opening to Chapter 2 of the Book of Hebrews that say, “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. 2 For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, 3 how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him” (Hebrews 2:1-3).

I like the opening, “We must pay the most careful attention.”  It is not sufficient that we pay attention or that we pay careful attention, but we must pay the “most careful attention.”  To what?  “To what we have heard.”  What have we heard?  The prophetic word of Jesus concerning salvation, which was first announced by the Lord.  Why must we pay most careful attention to Jesus’ words about salvation?  Because it would be easy for us “to drift away.”  The Scripture tells us that Jesus came to give the prophetic word of God, not just occasionally, but every time Jesus spoke.

What were Jesus’ words to which we must pay most careful attention? Let’s begin with the first words attributed to Jesus when Jesus began his public ministry.  Jesus said, ““Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17).  These are prophetic words because they represent a call for people to change, that is to repent, in the present in order that they will have a future, in the kingdom.  It is the role of a prophet to call people to change in the present to have an assured future.  Jesus’ words to “Repent” are prophetic words because they represent a mirror for the people to see how their relationship with God is and not how they imagined it. Jesus’ call to “Repent” was a call to turn away from their own ways and to turn back toward God.  Jesus’ call was to leave behind sin and pursue holiness.

Now the people in Jesus’ time thought they had a fine and acceptable method of repentance.  The people and priests offered ritual sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem.  For example, there was the chatat (sha tat’).  This was a sin offering to atone for and purge a sin. It was to be an expression of sorrow for the error and a desire to be reconciled with God.  The Hebrew term for this type of offering is chatat, from the word chayt, meaning "missing the mark."  The size of the offering varied according to the nature of the sin and the financial means of the sinner.

So why wasn’t the ritual offering sufficient?  Why did Jesus say, “Repent.”  We know that familiarity and repetition can remove the meaning from any ritual or often repeated expression.  The sacrificial system only had merit when people reflected upon their behaviors leading to the sacrifice and underlying intent of the sacrifice.  We know this to be true from the story of the very first sacrifice recorded for us.  In Genesis 4, we would read, “Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.” (Genesis 4:2b-5a).  Two sacrificial offerings were made to God.  One sacrifice, from Abel, represented the very best that Abel had and Abell gave it over to God as an act of genuine worship and thanksgiving to God. God found favor with the sacrifice because God found favor with Abel’s attitude and worship.  The other sacrifice, from Cain, was what Cain felt he could afford to give to a ritual.  God did not find favor with Cain’s sacrifice because God did not find favor with Cain because Cain performed a ritual without reflection, without worship, without repentance.  By Jesus’ time, the highly developed sacrificial system at the temple in Jerusalem had become a ritualized practice devoid of reflection, worship, and repentance. The prophetic words of Jesus called upon people to genuinely repent, and quickly, as the kingdom of God had arrived. It was not a call for ritual sacrifice, it was a call for inner repentance.

We too share the risk of our ancient ancestors that what we do often can become ritual lacking in reflection, worship, and repentance. What might that be?  Let’s consider just one example, why do we come to church?  Do we come to church because it is our habit, our ritual for Sunday?  If we do, we begin to resemble a Cain like attitude of completing a ritual.  Or do we come to church as an expression of an inner desire to put aside the distractions of life and genuinely seek reflection, worship, and repentance with God and the body of Christ?  That would be an Abel like attitude.  Are you here today more like Cain or more like Abel?  It is important that we pay most careful attention to what Jesus said as it will reveal our true attitude and inner desires.

Now the prophetic words of Jesus that called for repentance were only the beginning and not the only way Jesus offered the prophetic word of God. The Gospel of John placed an important prophetic event early in Jesus’ public ministry.  John shared with us this story.

“13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!’ 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’” (John 2:13-17).

Jesus had unleashed the prophetic word of God in a dramatic and unforgettable way.  The unthinking ritualized sacrifices we talked about a moment ago had turned the temple itself into a supermarket of sorts where the rich and the poor could purchase, for a profit, of course, an animal suitable for the desired sacrifice. The temple had become a place of commerce, littered with animal dung.  The temple was supposed to be about prayer, a place of sanctuary, a place of reflection, worship, and repentance.  Instead, the temple had become polluted and defiled and Jesus dramatically gave the prophetic word of God, “Get these out of here!  Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” It was a call to look into the mirror and see how things were and not as the way people imagined.

We latter saw Jesus shared again the prophetic word of God through a parable regarding the purpose of the temple.  Jesus said, 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’  13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’  14 “I tell you that this man (the tax collector), rather than the other (Pharisee), went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:10-14).  The temple was indeed intended to be a place of reflection, worship, and repentance. This was something the tax collector, a sinner, understood.

          We too share the risk of our ancient ancestors that what we do here can become a supermarket and not a place of reflection, worship, and repentance.  Certainly, we carefully control selling things in the church, particularly in the sanctuary itself.  So what is our risk?  Our risk is that we, as some churches have done, might turn the sanctuary, the pulpit, into a supermarket of contemporary and novel ideas about who God is and what the role of the church should be in society.  I listened the other day to a pastor preach on the fall of humanity in Genesis when the serpent deceived the woman leading to the woman and her husband eating the fruit God told them not to eat, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The pastor’s take on this Scripture was novel.  According to the pastor, God had lied to Adam and Eve and that it was the serpent who spoke the truth.  That is novel.  Eve was the heroine of the story who acquired the knowledge of good and evil that God denied to humanity, knowledge, the pastor said, that stunted the maturing of humanity to its fullness.  The pastor then went on to say that because Eve had eaten of the fruit, women now were uniquely equipped to discern the rightness and necessity of abortion.  I think if we listen hard enough to the pastor’s message, we could hear Jesus in the background saying, “Get these out of here!”  Our time here is not to be a supermarket of profane thought or social reengineering.  In our time here, is important for us to pay most careful attention to what Jesus has said to us.

          Jesus spoke the prophetic word of God in simple sermons, interesting parables of contrast, and in dramatic ways that overturned tables and upset a great many people.  Jesus did so because Jesus was born to do so.  We mark this time of year as a time in which Jesus came to give us each a gift, a mirror, through which we could examine our inner attitudes with deep reflection about our desire to worship God and the need to repent.  This should not be a burden to us but should be a joy.  The writer of Hebrews said, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).  “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard.” (Hebrews 2:1a).  Let us pray.