We're going to now listen to our reading first from the prophet Isaiah, a prophecy of the king who is to come and then from the gospel of St. Matthew, a theme we began in our worship this morning, heating and understanding the message of John, the baptizing. Our reader this morning, Andrew might sell us on the floor, Andrew reads, I would like to read this in clear. Almighty God, in the midst now of all the changing words in our generation, help us to listen to hear your word that never changes. As a response to you, the God who loves us, as this speaks to us, as a response to you, they, understanding and obedience, we pray in Jesus name. From the prophet Isaiah, chapter 11, verses 1 through 10, a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse from his roots of branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness he will judge the needy. With justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth, he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked, righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples, the nations will rally to him, and his place of rest will be glorious. From Matthew's gospel, chapter 3 verses 1 through 12. In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the desert of Judea, and saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. This is he who is spoken, who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. John's clothes were made of camel hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locust and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem, and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan, confessing their sins they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them, you brood of viper's, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not think you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his stretching floor, gathering his wheat into the barn, and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. The word of Lord. Thanks be to God. Christmas is a time that is absolutely replete with longing. It's a time where people re-tell millions, re-tell what one only will be called the greatest story ever told. There's something compelling even to people I think who don't necessarily believe that it's factual or true. There's something about the story and the longing stuff the story evokes. Frankly, the longings that all good stories evoke that somehow seem to come home in the Christmas story. I love to tell stories to my kids, I love to read stories to them, and some of my earliest memories are of being mesmerized by a great story. My grandmother was a master storyteller. I called her Gaga. I was the first grand kid, and you know how whatever you were allowed, you know, you kind of brand them with that name for the rest of their natural life. She became Gaga, you know, no choice in the matter to all the other grandchildren and children. But Gaga lived with us, and she loved to tell stories, and she grew up in North Georgia, and I remember her telling me stories about what it was like during the Depression of 1912, and then finally, in 1914 their family came and settled in Atlanta as farmers. Came to Atlanta as farmers, describing what our city was like in 1914 with vivid, crisp memories. She could tell a story and you'd smell everything she was describing. I remember being mesmerized because she was telling me, really, by telling her story, she was telling me who I was. And you say all the great stories have a way of somehow telling us one of those great questions, don't they? They tell us who we are, or they tell us that good will triumph over evil really, that really is a happy ending. Or they tell us that evil is real, or they tell us that transformation is possible even though it's an unfair world, maybe the beauty will be revealed? I think that's how you have to understand the power, the impact of the ministry of John the baptizer. I don't say Baptist because that confuses people, you know, you just imagine him as a contemporary religious strife, and I think that's really not what they mean. By Baptist, they mean baptizer. He was baptizing people, he was watching people, and they were gathering around him in the Jordan. And what you see, what John was saying was the stories we've been told all our lives, the stories are coming true. They're not just stories people, they're really true. Myth is become fact, that's what John was saying. That story from Isaiah 11 that we read, the prophet saying, oh, you know, not once upon a time, but a time is coming. Where? The king we always dreamed about, the out of Jesse, you see Jesse was the father of David, David was the great king. He was the king of hope, he was the king to whom God had promised that happily ever after. But they lived in a time where to look at their own monarchy or to look at Roman oppression, it was laughable to say that any of those promises were anyway being experienced. And this man who dresses like Elijah, like a prophet is out of the wilderness, basically saying, no, even though the stump looks like it's dead, a shoe is coming out and it's alive, and it's real, and it's going to change everything. And he says this about the story because he says the story is about a person. God come to us and he says this about it, he says, the one who's coming after me, in other words, I'm the front man for the Messiah, I'm the one here basically getting things ready for him. And what I want you to know is this, there is one coming who is going to baptize you with a Holy Spirit and fire. You kind of have to understand those people to understand why that resonated with them so much because you see the Holy Spirit and fire, there was a belief, and I think it's a sensible, biblical idea, that when God comes, it would be like a deluge of fire, fire on the one hand that would eradicate and destroy evil, a purifying fire, but also the fire that would purify and bring out the glory and everything and everyone. Actually, the fire that would make everything new and true to our dreams and true to our hopes. And that is what John is saying to them, the stories are true, there is one coming who will give you the Spirit and bring the fire. Why were there so many people going out to a bad location out in the desert to hear a man talk about the fire, the Spirit and the fire? It's my first point because they knew their stories told them, and friends, I think you know we've lost the Spirit and the fire. We've lost the Spirit and the fire. One of my heroes and a writer who I think articulates this loss is better than anybody is CS Lewis. Let me give you a little pasties of some of the things he says. He says this is our inconsolable secret, our inconsolable secret, the sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, with a longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality. If you're really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home here? How could an idiotic chance universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself? Our life long nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside is no near neurotic fantasy, but the truest index of our situation. Dear, what are you saying? We really were built for the Spirit and the fire, and we've lost it in our Percy. Another one of my favorite writers put it this way. We have lost something. We don't know what it is, but we are sick to death with the loss of it. We have dreams, we have hopes. They always elude us. And if you're young and you're full of optimism, this is why you meet so many older cynical people. The dreams always, even when they come true, this is the really scary part, when the dreams come true, they still don't feel. Our dreams are better than reality. Why? Why are we this way? They say the biblical answer is to say you were built for, to know, you were built to know personally, the God who made you and who loves you. That's the fire. That's the Spirit. Him within you, personally knowing him as your Lord, your Creator, the one who made you for glory and alone who can give you glory. And our problem is we try to find the fire, we try to find the Spirit and the fire in things other than God. I know you all are not averse, hopefully, to me chasing rabbits and sermons. I do tend to do that from time to time. But I want to take a moment here to address something as I make this point that we've lost the fire, the Spirit and the fire. To say that this is the great value, not only of the biblical story, but it's also the great value of stories. Because stories reinforce, they reinforce the truth that it's easy to suppress. And that truth is the dreams, the hopes, the fact that we're built for more, you know, the castles, the fairies, the enchanted land, all of that is in fact putting its finger on something very real. You're built for glory. And that means you're built for God. C.S. Lewis said stories are our greatest form of pre-avangelism because we recognize an ache and a hunger and a reality in them. And this is important because a lot of people are nervous about fantasy and they're nervous about stories that create alternate universes. I'm going to say I am absolutely beside myself with anticipation of the Lord of the Rings movie. I mean, I'm just nearly, I just can't stand it. I'm so ready for this movie. I love these books so much. And the reason is because it is a story that so well through creating Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien in 1939, he wrote an essay called On Fairy Stories. And he basically said, what happens is this. A writer is someone created in the image of God who lives within the primary universe that God made. But when that author creates a secondary universe, actually it's a vehicle to make people see all the things they've shut down and not seen in the real world. G.K. Chesterden put it this way. He said, we've only seen the back of the real universe. It's everything stooping and hiding a face. And you see fantasy stories, the mythical worlds, the magical worlds that come out in this kind of fiction, these kind of stories and the great myths in the great fairy tales and the great stories. What those things do is they force us to acknowledge our longing for more and that we're built for more. Tolkien said this and I think this is so helpful. And I'll just point out two things. He said, there are really two things these kinds of stories do. He said, number one, they give us recovery, recovery of the clear view of creation. They help us recover a clear view of creation, freeing us from the drab blur of familiarity which is impaired our sight. Stories, the fantasy stories, open the cage, letting all those things which have been locked up fly away. And then the second thing he says is this. They also give us consolation, consolation. He says, a happy ending. I imagine this is a story or a great movie. A happy ending doesn't deny sorrow or failure. Actually, they often are filled with sorrow and failure. But the reason they resonate with us is they say that the joy of deliverance is real. The joy of coming home, of finding the true love, that's real. And that is why by the way, Christians so resonate, we can be watching a movie that has nothing to do. Formerly, with the gospel story, and yet we resonate with it because we're not escaping in a sense of living reality, we actually believe there is a reality with a happy ending. And therefore, we're not being naive. We're saying this is true. There really is joy. There really is deliverance. There really is a happy ending. Now my apologies to the French and the audience who believe that movie should be end coherent and should never have a happy ending. I sincerely apologize. I'm not saying that your movies are not, you know, somehow not beneficial to the Christian thinker, but just for a moment let me indulge you with Tolkien to say that there's actually something very valuable, very real, about the happy ending that forces you to deal. It forces you to bring up irrepressible questions and longings that are true to who you are. The Christmas stories the same way. Now some people get very nervous with stories like the Lord of the Rings because they deal with mythical things, fairies and elves and wizards and such thing. The Bible is concerned with witchcraft, for example, and I have heard a lot of, I would say, hullabaloo about people who say, you know, this is dangerous, anything that deals with wizards or witches or fairies or goblins clearly the Bible condemns this. And I would say that's really not accurate. I think there's a lot of misinformation out there about that. Because the Bible, if you look at it carefully, has a very focused concern. And that concern is real people in the real world trying to look to anything that enables them to find the fire in the spirit without God. Now witchcraft, real witchcraft, the wicked variety, the pagan variety, that's what it is. It's a way of saying you can bypass the personal Lord of the universe and find the fire. The zodiac is the same way. People who say, you know, you can bypass the personal Lord and you can get control over your life through understanding the mysteries of the stars. Now that's the heresy. Now just so you know, when you look at that biblical concern, that really has nothing to do with the kind of fantasies you see in Cinderella or Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings. I would say there's absolutely nothing in common between them. They're completely different. When King Saul committed the great evil of going to see the witch at Endor, he didn't get on a magic train and go learn how to fly a broomstick. Okay. He actually went to see a pagan who believes you have power over the creative world apart from God. They don't have anything in common. They don't. And my concern is that people become naive about what it is the Bible. The Bible truly is warning us against. You know, there's all sorts of things in paganism that come up in our fiction and literature. My kids like veggie tails just as much as they like Harry Potter. And you could say now really the ancient religion taught one of the things they taught was that the animals have spirits and the vegetables have spirits. They take a fundamentalist reading of the Bible, a literalist reading of the Bible, and denounce these wicked veggie tails because they are leading our children to believe. What? That the carrots have spirits, that the carrots have brains. Do you see? It's kind of a hopeless way of applying, I think, of applying the Bible. And I think the sad thing is you miss the important thing the Bible wants us to know about spiritual reality with which is what? What is the true demonic? The true demonic is thinking you've been finding the fire of the spirit anywhere other than God. Anywhere other than God. So you see, it's not. Listen, the person who falls into the silliness of which crack. And that's the best word I can think of for the silliness. It's so utterly hopelessly naive to believe that you can manipulate the universe. You don't have power to manipulate the universe. You don't. You turn to those kinds of things because you're desperate. That's why you go there. But don't you see the person who does that, that kind of rebellion against the personal lordship of God over the universe. He is no different than the person who thinks I can find the fire to remind wealth and success. It's just as demonic and probably more prevalent than the thing you should be more concerned about. Materialism is no, it's not a different demon. It's the same lie. I can find the fire through gaining wealth or through finding perfect love. Any of these things are our ways I can find the fire that I'm missing and I don't have to go to the personal lord. And can I just make an application here out of this text and the rabbit trail is coming back around home. I hope and it's this. You can do it through religion too. Same demons can feed you, can lie to you through religion. That's who the Pharisees were by the way. The Pharisees got to join the baptizer and they had taken one of the images of Isaiah, which was to say remember that you were Hune from the rock of Abraham. And they misinterpreted that to mean don't you see we're different just because of our race because of our position and our religion. We're Hune from the original rock of Abraham that is we have the fire no matter what we do no matter how we live. Nobody takes the fire away from us. You see the demon lie they had come into is we can really avoid personal obedience to the Lord, personal knowledge of the Lord. The humility before him is the only source of the fire, the only source of the life. And it's ours. We've got the copyright. And John the baptizer says to them what he says, don't you understand God can make children of Abraham any points to the rocks out in the desert. God can make children of Abraham out of these rocks people. Don't you understand you can never be the source of the fire in the life. And any philosophy any methodology that you turn to to in an essence say I can find the fire is a lie. That's the big lie. That's the demonic threat. Now that leads us to the point which John the Baptist then makes which is aren't looked you've lost the spirit and the fire. Our great stories tell us that we were built for the spirit and the fire that we long for the glory all right. But the great point he's trying to make on this and it's the Christmas message is Jesus Christ myth become fact story become truth reality. Space time in history Jesus Christ came to bring the spirit and the fire. He's the funnel. He's the personal way through whom the spirit and the fire come into your life. That's why he came. C.S. Lewis tells a story of his conversion in one of his books surprised by joy and he talks about being friends with Tolkien. You know Lewis gave us the fantasy stories of of Narnia and he has elves and doors and goblins and witches and and Tolkien gave us the Lord of the Rings by the way Tolkien hated the Chronicles of Narnia. So you know they were friends though he hated the Chronicles of Narnia because Lewis didn't understand that in the ancient stories you know goblins never supposed to be with doors and these sorts of things Lewis Lewis just kind of threw them all together in the Chronicles of Narnia. And in fact on one crazy day when he was riding in the line the witch in the wardrobe he decided to throw Santa Claus in there. And Tolkien was reading that and that's he just put it down and he said I can't know you can't put Father Christmas in a fairy story. But there were friends and Tolkien was influential in Lewis's conversion he was singularly influential. They took a walk around if you've ever gone to modern college at Oxford University where they both taught just outside the grounds there's a there's a pasture and there's a dirt path that goes around that's linked to Joseph Addison it's called Addison's Walk. And they walked around Addison's Walk to like two o'clock in the morning and the story was basically this and I think it's so similar to what John the Baptist was saying. This one great scholar to another saying don't you see all the story say the same thing one way or another there's a there's a death and a rebirth there's a new life and there's a hope that's better than your dreams. And it was on that night that Lewis finally saw it basically what he saw is what if what if the myth really became fact what if it's really true what if and all the other hopes and all the other stories God is basically saying it's really going to happen. And that's who Jesus Christ is that's what God did that was the moment of his conversion don't you see it think of think of the stories that your children understand so often better than you do. What is the gospel the gospel is understanding that there really is a prince not just a story of a prince there really is a prince whose kiss can break the spell of death. There really is a love so real and personal and powerful that it can transform the beast the hideousness and the beauty and if I'm going to really try to get down here on the level let's say there really is a lion king who is going to return to pride rock. And the shadows and the darkness will disappear and the life will break out again those aren't just myths they're not just stories they are pointing to something you long for and in Jesus Christ the real. Now here's what you see though in the story of Jesus before Jesus could bring the fire of the new life life the personal life with God bringing you into the relationship we were created for that you dream about before that could happen. Jesus says this for example in Luke 12 he said I have come to cast fire upon the earth and what that fire were kindled in other words like John the baptizer said I have come to bring the fire that's why I'm here oh I wish it were here but you see his frustration and his anxiety was before he could bring the fire he had to receive the fire. And the gospel tells us that that is what happened on the cross the fire of the wrath of God was poured in the soul of Jesus Christ on the cross the fire that John warns about the fire of judgment is poured out on Jesus so that the fire of God's life would not destroy us but would give us glory that's why isn't that interesting that Jesus talks about the fire to come John warns about the fire to come. It's poured out nobody saw it coming it's poured out on Jesus and when Jesus sends the spirit remember the one who will give you once and for all in a final table baptize you will will change an alter spiritual reality by giving the Holy Spirit that happens in the day of pinnacle us we talked about that face last week 40 to 50 days after Jesus ascended into heaven the spirit of God the personal presence of Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit. It's given once and for all to the church to all who would believe and we're told that when the miracle happened fire appeared on the heads of the disciples it didn't sing their hair what was the point Jesus brought the spirit and the fire and that fire was the glorious life of God within your soul with him through him knowing him as Savior and Lord. Now let me let me make some application here quickly if you're here today and you are are not a Christian you've heard me basically make two points here which is you know the biblical stories which are we believe given to us by God but also so many of the other stories tell us the long for something. And I've said to you that we have lost the spirit and the fire and that Jesus Christ claimed to come to bring it and you can only receive it in him now John also this is a very stern passage and I would be neglectful if I didn't say to you this Christmas maybe you're curious maybe you're open you're thinking about spiritual things but John says that Jesus is the one who came to baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire and then he says his winnowing fork is in his hands. And with that fork if you take the farm imagery he says on the one hand that's how he gathers the wheat in the barn that is he's come to share the harvest in a generous and loving way. But he also says with the same fork he throws the chaff in the fire and it's unquenchable that is to say the presence of God is spirit and fire. It is spirit and fire it is pure penetrating infinite glory and it is coming Jesus is coming back it is literally coming back and when it comes back or when you die you're either going to meet it as a presence of absolute glory or absolute an unimaginable horror. If you rebel against him and you turn your heart against him you will still experience the spirit in the fire but it will not be to your joy it will be to your everlasting destruction why am I am I trying to be a Bible bumper am I am I am I trying to to scare you only because I love you and more importantly God loves you and the message John the Baptist is given and by the way you can't cut and paste this out of Christmas is there is a God. There is a God and you can't ignore him it doesn't matter if lots of people are doing it you can't ignore him and I want to invite you he's coming you will stand before the one who made you will it be a moment of joy or a moment of unimaginable agony and horror. I realize that that's scary but for a lot of you the very idea that the stories may be true may scare you you've seen a lot of bad religion you've seen a lot of people manipulate people through religion people like those Pharisees which is read about. I know it can be scary but my invitation to you if you are not a Christian or if you're just not sure where you stand is to say listen this Christmas get in those gospels let us speak with you after the service today there will be people here at the front of the service who would love to pray with you or talk to you we want you to know that you really can open your life to the spirit in the fire. I begin to experience the life that Christmas is all about it's not it's not all sentimentality it's real it became fact my neighbor just bought an electric car behind the inside and I'm so curious about it is it the wave of the future or would I get halfway to Texas and not be able to plug in anywhere you know and that's a legitimate fear it's a it's a suspicious thing to say I think I'll alter my reality but it's true don't you see you need to at least look you can at least be open take it you know say Lord I'm open for a drive you know help I believe help my unbelief Christians let me let me speak to you now a word of application those of you who are believers the Bible tells us that Jesus did bring the spirit. He brought the spirit in the fire on the day of Pentecost that life has been brought to us but then there's that question of how we experience and know the spirit of God. If you look at history the church historians have a term they point called revival which is merely a way of saying that the way Jesus releases the power of that spirit even though it's been given once for all there's a sense of which it comes in surges it comes in surges unbelief is surge protection okay you you won't experience it but but in faith we seek out a work in surges surges Jonathan Edwards one of the great pastor fathers of the church a few hundred years ago put it this way he said there are remarkable communications there are remarkable effusions of the spirit of God remarkable effusions of mercy where the church experience is incredible renewal people were converted Christians who've lived stale selfish lives change and my question to you is this this admin is we hear about the message of why Jesus came as a church we this has been a theme for us this year. Are you really open to are you really welcoming of personal renewal would you love to see a surge of the spirit life of God of the spirit fire of Jesus Christ surge through this community. Even if it's changing your life or changing your church or changing your comfort would you welcome it would you long for it I do think that's something I say to you corporately but it's not something that I must say to you personally this Christmas could you begin to ask and pray for a personal outpouring Jesus you came to give us the spirit and fire would you give it to me would you give me a deeper drink a deeper experience of grace. A deeper freedom from my son a deeper love for my neighbor do you need that do you I'm going to close you know there was a book that came out a few years ago it's a great book club kind of book as written by Barbara King solver it's called the poison wood Bible story about a missionary and you get the feeling when you read this book this woman is not very high on missionaries you had a bad experience with Christians and I wonder this is my question for you. When I think about this book do people see the spirit and fire in you in a way that is attractive that makes them want to know who Jesus is makes them want to know that the hope is real or or are they turned away you know in King solver's novel there's this missionaries name is Nathan price in 1959 he goes to this family down to the Congo they go down there and he starts preaching in this. The language of the tribe he goes to and the first thing is he preaches these sermons the people will come out because they're curious and he preaches these sermons and the first thing he says in the sermons he talks about how they all need to be baptized and when he says the word baptize in their language he actually uses the word for terrify they live near a river with crocodiles and so every time he does the water image you know and he says you know Jesus Christ wants to terrify you they think Jesus wants to feed over the crocodiles. Jesus is service and he says you know Jesus Christ they're already afraid of Jesus and he says Jesus Christ is mandala which he thinks is their word for precious but it is in fact their word for the poison would tree which is a tree that makes you itch like the Dickens and so in essence the message of his life is Jesus wants you to itch like the Dickens before he feeds you to the crocodiles now listen some of the non Christians here are probably suspicious alright. Because that's the message we sent them do you want to be a person who's life says Christmas is true he came to bring the spirit in the fire and I want to live it and I want to show it let's pray for that Lord Jesus we believe that you came we believe that you have been raised that you are seated at the father's right hand and that you do pour out the spirit in the fire. And our prayer Lord said we might know it that we might experience it and that we might experience a deeper draft of it. I really want to pray for those who struggle to believe that you really did come to kindle the fire that you really long to see the fire spread the fire not of judgment but the fire of mercy the fire of renewal for the person who does not believe or who finds barriers to faith. First of faith I pray that this morning would be a significant day of believing that the fire is real and for those of us who are believers perhaps overwhelmed by life perhaps cynical would you would you renew us this Christmas to believe the greatest story that it's true. We ask this in Jesus name.