Episode 1496: Passion

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1, 496 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:08] Janey Pitts: I'm Janey Pitts. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence, and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your Having the ability to really understand who you are in Christ is key.

[00:00:28] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

[00:00:45] Scott Maderer: Shiny silver, we can see God's face reflected. And when that happens, then we've leaned into our faith so completely that it consumes us and it ripples out. And begins to transform the world [00:01:00] around us, not through judgment and hate, but through the shining face of Christ's love. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:12] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:40] In today's Spiritual Foundation episode, I talk about Malachi 3 1 4 and Luke 3 1 6. I share how we often want to skip Advent because of the challenge it brings, and also share how we are able to prepare with passion because it isn't our preparedness or even our [00:02:00] passion that matters. Malachi chapter 3 verses 1 through 4 says, See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.

[00:02:13] The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the days of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like a washer's soap. He will set as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi, and revine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

[00:02:39] Then the offering of Judea and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old, as in the former years. Luke 3, verses 1 6 says, In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the [00:03:00] region of Iteria and Trachonitis, and Lyserius ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Cephas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

[00:03:11] He went into all the regions around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight, every valley shall be field and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

[00:03:41] The second passage is referencing John the Baptist and I think every holiday season or every event around the holidays needs a John the Baptist. Every church worship planning team needs a John the Baptist. Somebody who doesn't hold back, someone who says what he [00:04:00] or she thinks, someone who believes with every fiber of their being, someone who is so vitally and fully present that everyone else can just be drawn to them.

[00:04:15] But on the other hand, if you've ever been around such a person, you also know that they're a little challenging, a little hard to take. They often have a lot of rough edges and they don't fit neatly into the image of what we want someone to be. And besides all that, John dresses funny. At least in the passages by Matthew and Mark that they give a, an account of what John is wearing, but Luke doesn't even mention it.

[00:04:46] It's interesting that Luke doesn't seem to really care about what John dresses like or what John eats. Maybe it's because Luke was writing more to the Gentile Christians, and [00:05:00] so he isn't really as stressed about what John wore or what John ate. But there's also a message here, or perhaps a simple message here, or reminder at least, that we need to look beyond the surface to hear the voice of God.

[00:05:15] Because the voice of God often comes from surprising people, or at least surprising to us. Not surprising to God, not surprising to the God who sins, the God who calls. Luke says that John was doing what was written in the word of Isaiah. John was doing the words of a prophet that had come hundreds of years before John was even alive.

[00:05:40] He was acting on someone else's words. But we see it really isn't Isaiah's words that motivate John at all. A few passages before, it says that John actually was acting out the word of God. Maybe John was raised on the book and knew the words. [00:06:00] Maybe he did. Maybe he grew up in synagogue schools like the other boys his age.

[00:06:05] His cousin, Jesus grew up on the words of the books and seemed to know them as if he'd written them himself. But John, maybe. I don't know about you, but I can picture John being that restless young man who wasn't able to sit still and sit in class long enough to let the words sink in. But it isn't Isaiah's words that motivate John to come out of the wilderness.

[00:06:27] Instead, no, what calls John out is that the word of God came to John in the wilderness. Luke seems almost amazed that this has happened. After all, we have ruler after ruler, power and authority all over the place, but the word of God wasn't coming to them. It didn't seem to be attracted to places of power, to places of action and might and force and corruption and narcissism and greed and oppression.[00:07:00]

[00:07:00] No, the word didn't come down there to the bright lights in the big city. Instead, it came to John and it came to John in the wilderness, no less. And John took action. He picked up and got busy. He began to go out and spoke. He let the word become his words. And then he invited, he encouraged, he cajoled, he shouted, he begged, and he pleased, he pointed, he accused, he cried, and he challenged.

[00:07:29] He let the word leak out of him in every way possible. and then it spilt out on those who gathered in front of him. The word cascaded down over them, just like the hands full of water that he poured over their heads. They were bathed in the words and cleansed in the words, just as much as they were bathed and cleansed in the baptism that he brought.

[00:07:53] And he allowed them through that, for them to be able to claim the word as well. His words [00:08:00] and that water, their repentance and their willingness. Made the word come alive again and again in them and through them. And the words and the word became of them. It became their choices, their actions, their priorities, their attitudes.

[00:08:18] They then begin to live out that word. Of course, Malachi, which we also read this week, was given his own words. so much. He says, Who can endure the day of his coming? You want it howling? Malachi was writing in the period after the exile, meaning the people had returned home after being exiled in Babylon.

[00:08:47] Malachi means my messenger. So it might have been that the author was telling his own story or he was a messenger who was coming before the Lord to call the people into right living. He [00:09:00] says there are still expectations, there are still standards, and God calls God's people into clean living, into whole and healing relationships, into service that builds up rather than tears down, into service that shows others that they too are of God rather than points out their flaws.

[00:09:19] God's law is still a measure by which ethics or community is judged, but it's not done by our judgment, but by God's. It might sound like a threat. Malachi here is calling it out and saying, who can stand up to this refining fire? He talks about washing with soap and fire and these sorts of almost violent imagery.

[00:09:42] That's one reason that oftentimes we chose to skip over Advent and get right to Christmas. Because getting ready for things, getting things ready can be painful. It sounds like he's talking about washing with soap, but it's not just like this light ivory soap that we have in the shower. No, this [00:10:00] is like that lava soap that we use to clean the grease out from under our fingers.

[00:10:07] We might be able to burn that out, but he talks about fire, even that. Refiner's fire, which is meant to burn away impurities. so that we can come out better, stronger, cleaner. But why would we choose this kind of process? Who could endure the days of his coming? And the message here is we can. Who can endure?

[00:10:29] We can. That's the message of Advent in a nutshell. We can, but here's why. We can not because we're strong enough, not because we're good enough, not because we're doing all the right things. No, we can because we're not alone. Because the one who calls, the one who brings that soap, the one who stokes the fire, that is the God who walks with us.

[00:10:54] Emmanuel, God with us. Malachi talks a [00:11:00] lot about silver. In fact, he talks even more about silver than gold, and yet gold is more valuable, right? Gold is the gold standard, the top of the line, yet silver is called out even more in Malachi. Because purifying silver is harder than purifying gold. It's much more labor intensive.

[00:11:20] It's much more active on the part of the smith. They have to stay there. They have to stay close to the fire. You can't just put it in the fire and leave it alone. It has to be attended. And they have to lean in, risking the heat themselves, wary of those impurities spitting out and molten silver dripping onto exposed flesh.

[00:11:43] In fact, jewelers will tell you, you can tell a silversmith by the scars that they have. God is with us. That's the promise hidden within what sounds like a threat. Who can endure? We can, but we can only because God is with us. [00:12:00] In the struggle, in the joy, in the pain, in the celebration, in the failures, in the successes, God is with us.

[00:12:10] That birth we celebrate at Christmas time is not an ancient remembrance of a long ago event, but rather it's a daily promise and a constant presence. Be born in us, we pray. That is the cleanliness that we're talking about. That's the rolling up your sleeves and making all of the corners of our life, even those that we don't really like to shine light into, bringing them out into the open and cleaning them up, getting rid of the clutter and the brokenness.

[00:12:42] Not so that we can convince ourselves we're clean enough. Because that will never measure up to anyone's standard. So instead, together, we set about the business of cleaning, of healing, of repairing, so that it can become clean enough that even the Lord can see [00:13:00] we've been washed clean. And this isn't easy, this cleaning process.

[00:13:05] It's personal. It's our journey. It's not ours to put that journey on anyone else. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes blood, and sweat, and tears. And it seems like we'll never be clean. But eventually the silversmith of God will tell us that metal is ready to be worked into shape. And that jeweler's purpose, in that shiny silver we can see God's face reflected.

[00:13:34] And when that happens, then, We've leaned into our face so completely that it consumes us and it ripples out and begins to transform the world around us, not through judgment and hate, but through the shining face of Christ's love. Thanks for listening.

[00:13:58] Thanks so much for listening to the [00:14:00] Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, go over to facebook. com slash inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market.

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