‘FILLING THE POTHOLES’

Rev. Brent Russett

By Rev. Brent Russett

Pastor of Sunnyside Wesleyan Church in Ottawa: 

http://www.sunnysidechurchottawa.com/                

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PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, December 9^th, 2012:

http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/10149/good_news_030_dec09.mp3
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Broadcast Notes:

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‘Filling the Potholes’

                Good morning and welcome to Good News in the Morning. This morning our theme is filling the potholes. My name is Brent Russett and it is my hope that after listening this morning that you will both be encouraged and you will be encouraged to encourage.

            This program is sponsored by Good News Christian Ministries, Box 184 Rideau Ferry, ON , K0G1W0 – or Google-  Good News Christian Ministries and you will find us.

            I grew up half way between Arnprior and Renfrew just off the trans-Canada highway. When I was a kid that highway kind f meandered through the countryside, like a cow path through a pasture. It went west and then it went south and then it went north as if the road planners had never heard of the adage, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

            Around the time I as seven or eight, bulldozers moved into the neighbourhood. They ploughed through swamps, and dynamite was used to explode rocks and levelled hills, and there was a swath cut through the forest and the New Highway was built in a relatively straight line between Arnprior and Renfrew.

            I am going to be looking at a scripture taken from Mark 1.

1  The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

 2  It is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way"--

 3  "a voice of one calling in the desert, `Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'"

 

            In other words, build a new highway. There was a custom of sending out an officer before the king travelled in the countryside. That officer would make sure the potholes were filled and the ruts were filled in so that when the king came the journey would be smoother.

            The officer that God sent to clear the road for his son Jesus was John the Baptist. He was to prepare the way, straighten the road, smooth out the journey so the Son of God would have a straight run at our hearts.

            Interestingly enough, when they built the new highway in my neighbourhood, they had to rename that old meandering highway. The powers that be chose to call part of that highway Russett Drive, because four generations ago, the Russett homestead was located on that stretch of road.

            That road kind of serves as metaphor for me in my journey towards God.  There is no question that I am journeying towards God, but sometimes to avoid the rocky hills, and the difficult to navigate swamps, and to stay out of the forest, I take the road that meanders. While there is no question that I am on the journey, there is a big questions as to how much closer to God I am now than I was a year ago.

            Maybe you can relate. You do the right things. You attend church, you engage in worship, during the week you sometimes read your bible, and pray. You give your money and your time. You know you are on the journey – you are just not all that sure how far you are getting.

            Some of you feel like a hamster on a wheel. You are pushing hard in your spiritual life, but not getting very far.

            Some of you have pulled over and parked in your spiritual journey – You are just taking a break trying to get your bearings.

            This is the second Sunday of Advent. Advent is a season where we prepare our hearts to receive Jesus in a fresh deeper way. We believe that Jesus came that first Christmas, he comes to us again and again by his Spirit. The word of God’s call to you is to “prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him”.

Music Amy Grant –  A mighty fortress/ angels we have heard 5:01– A Christmas Album

This morning I believe that God wants to give you the keys to the bulldozers, and teach you how to drive, so that you can fill in the swamps, and level out the road, and fill in the potholes. And in many ways that’s all that you can do. You prepare the way, and then you wait, and God comes to you. You make space for God, and God fills the space.

So come back with me to Mark chapter 1 Verse 4. Mark 1:4  And so John came, baptising in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

            I have been in this wilderness someplace between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. It is a desolate place. Now when we think river, we think of the Ottawa River. When you think of the Jordan River, think, big creek. But it is here in this desolate place where John ministered.

            He did not choose this place at random. He preformed his ministry in the wilderness to make a point. The wilderness in Israel’s history symbolized rebellion and disobedience. You remember the story of how God led his people out of Egypt, but they disobeyed God, and they wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. Even in the wilderness, God’s mercy was there. He fed them every day, he protected them, and he waited, until his people were ready. To get out of the wilderness they had to change their mind about who God was, and who they were because of God.

            Now John is in the wilderness preaching a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” What you need to understand is that this was something out of the ordinary in Israel. Baptism was something that Gentiles did if they wanted to convert to Judaism. The baptism of the Gentiles was a ritual washing from all the defilement of their past.

            But now John was asking the Jewish people, God’s chosen people do something they had never done before. He was calling all Israel to be baptized as a sign that they recognized their defilement and need for cleansing.

            The baptism by John was a baptism of repentance. Repentance means turning away from something and going in a new direction.

            Here are the keys to the bulldozer. Repentance is what starts the engine that leads to a smoother road.

            I am sure there were people in Israel that were saying, but wait a minute, we are Abraham’s children. We are God’s chosen people. We have a very religious culture. And now you have this man, a way out in the middle of nowhere, and he wants me to act like a Gentile and admit I’m defiled, and that I need to repent.

            There is something in Christian culture that says repentance is for the really bad people. Repentance is something that the pimps, and human traffickers, and drug pushers need to do – but not me. After all I am a nice – and compared to a lot of people I am really good.

            As a pastor, I get a window into a lot of people’s spiritual lives. Here is what I have observed. The people furthest down the road on their spiritual journey are the people who are most familiar with repentance. Repentance isn’t just for people becoming Christian. Repentance creates a path for Christ to walk into our lives.

            Mark tells us how that repentance started. Verse 5:  Mark 1:5  The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 

            Confession is making a statement about your life that agrees with what God says about your life. If God calls something a sin, confession is saying, yes God I agree with you, you are right I did wrong – And in saying that I acknowledge my need of forgiveness. Confession opens the door to repentance ---Repentance creates a path for Christ to walk into our lives.

            I love Verse 6’s description of John. It says “John wore clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt round his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.” 

            “The reference to John’s clothing and diet emphasizes that he was not mainstream”.  This was not what the fashionable were wearing in downtown Jerusalem. John the Baptist would not have been welcomed in the Jericho Hilton or the Jerusalem Hyatt. He was dressed somewhere between geek and country bumpkin.

            And in forcing Israel to go out into the wilderness, the place that reminded them of their disobedience and sin, and there preaching confession and repentance, and then asking them to be baptized – a thing that was only required of the gentiles, - and to be baptized by someone who was so far away from mainstream that it was hard to find the tributary he was on – pushed them a way out of their comfort zone.

 It says something to us who have a comfortable spirituality.

It says that if we want to stop our meandering and make a straight path for our God that we might have to move beyond what we consider normal. John the Baptist entered the normal rhythms of life in Israel, and up set them, because people were going to have to move out of the mainstream if they were going to be ready to receive Jesus.

            This won’t come as news to you, but we live in a very secular country. Here is what I have discovered, when the culture around us trumps what God has revealed about himself and how we should live, --- life gets really warped.

            Slavery seemed normal and an economic necessity until people like Wilberforce and Wesley and a host of others said, yes this has been our normal – but this isn’t right. Culture trumped theology, until finally theology trumped culture.

            The list could go on and on from the civil rights movement of the 60’s to South African Apartheid in the 90’s. When culture trumped theology bad things happened

            But it is very easy to point fingers, but we live in a secular culture –

            I wonder what we have made normal that shouldn’t be. If God would open our eyes to see where we are – then maybe we could get on the road of confession and start the engine of repentance, and get off this meandering spirituality and make straight the highway of our God.

            Let me see if I can catch some of the normalcy in our culture.

            I think we are prone to judge God rather than let our culture be judged by God. We try to judge God by science. Richard Dawkins and his book “the God Delusion” was an attempt to do that. ---I am all for science, because science is the discovery of what God has put in place. But should Science progress to a place where it finds a Grand Unified Theory, and I hope it does, it still will not encompass God; for God moves in a different realm than science.

            God can explain science, by science will never explain God.

            In our culture we are prone to judge God’s Word by our feeling, instead of letting God’s word have authority over our feelings, and shine light into our feelings.

            The way that gets worked out is we behave as if God has nothing to say about our sexual activity. We behave as if God has nothing to say about the use of our time and our money. We behave as if God has nothing to say about our relationships. But if culture trumps the word of God, and if your feelings trump that word of God, things get warped.

            In this culture we are prone to judge ourselves and others by cultural standards. Do they look good, are they educated, can they articulate a proper point of view. You know the list. As you walk into Christmas parties this year, watch how you assess people. But God looks at people differently. He loves them deeply. Your value comes from being a child of God, being made in the image of God, not in your performance and not by what those around you say. God desires profoundly that they would know him. And when you judge others on the basis of our cultural standards, life will get warped.

            In fact if you judge, God, his word, yourself or others on the basis of feelings and circumstances and the cultural values around you, the spiritual pathway you are on gets warped. You will find yourself meandering about spiritual: first, this way, and then that way, but never making a whole lot of progress in your spiritual life.

            It is time of you to move away from the mainstream, be John the Baptist different, and confess your sin and repent. That is the only way to get off the meandering path.

Music Paul Baloche Just as I am 1:05 – A Greater Song

Mark 1:8  I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." 

            To be baptized in the Spirit is to be immersed in the Holy Spirit. Repentance moves us into a place where the Spirit of God can fill us to over flowing.

            And when you are immersed in the Spirit, there is a love and a joy a peace that is in you. Your heart is marked by a sense of well being that filters out into all of your life. Where you live in the situation you are in right now, in a way that brings glory to God, and the way where you do what you were created to do. You live in a way where you partner with God in this world to see good things happen, both in you and around you.

            Repentance is the key to getting off the meandering spiritual life and building in a highway where Jesus can come to you.

            I don’t know if you have been down Arnprior way lately, but that highway they built when I was a kid, they are now turning it into a four lane highway. It won’t be long before we can roll faster between Arnprior and Renfrew.

            There are some of you here who have given Christ a straight run at your life for a long time. You determined long ago, that what Christ asked for Christ would get. Could it be though that God wants to expand the highway to your heart, where he and all he wants to bring you can come rolling in on four lanes.

            A little while ago I went for a two day silent retreat. I do this periodically as a Spiritual discipline. I don’t know if you have ever been on a silent retreat – with no agenda but there is a lot of time to fill. I read scripture, I journal, I do some spiritual reading. But when my heart is calm, I sit before the Lord and say, Lord is there anything I need to repent of.

            Now I tend to keep short accounts with God. If I blow it, I tend to be fairly quick in confessing my sin, and agreeing with God and asking for forgiveness. So when I enter into a time like on this silent retreat, I go in feeling like I am caught up – but it is amazing when you give God the chance what he will bring to your mind.

            God walked through my life and said, and what about this, and what about this and what about this. But repentance is the key that builds a highway for the king of glory to come in.

            You don’t need to go on a silent retreat to make this happen. But you do need to make space for God to talk to you. This advent season, will you take some time before God and say Lord, I want you to have a straight shot at my heart, I want to be immersed in your spirit, will you show my heart  to me so I can agree with you and repent.

            This morning I would say to you what John the Baptist said to Israel – Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.

Let’s Pray:

Lord Jesus, we ask that you would come and that you would show us our heart; that you would show us what needs to happen in our heart; if there’s anything we need to confess to you; to repent of. I pray that you would show that to us. We want you to have a straight shot to our heart on this Christmas season.

We ask, Lord, that you would walk in our road and that you would draw us deep into the Kingdom of God.

Lord, I pray that you would fill our lives with yourself; that you would allow us to be the kind of people you created us to be; and I ask that you would make us into the people who are full of love and joy and peace. And Lord, in this season when things get hectic, I ask Lord that you would help us to walk through the season well, walking with you.

I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thank you, Listeners for your words of encouragement, and for keeping us in your prayers. The music today was provided by Salem Christian Storehouse. Keeping this program on the air continues to be a work of faith. If you can help with that, please make out a cheque payable to Good News Christian Ministries, Box 184, Rideau Ferry , On. K0G  1W0.

There now are several ways of accessing our programs. If you have Rogers Cable, you will find it on Channel 927 at 6:30 on Sunday mornings as well as over this radio station.  Also I encourage you to visit our Good News Christian Ministries website and follow us on Twitter or comment on our Blog.

May you know Jesus Christ personally and profoundly.  May the Holy Spirit reside deep within your heart. And may the heavenly Father surround you with His constant and abiding and accompanying love.

Music – Michael W Smith – Worship Again  - Give you my heart  3:26

Rev. Brent Russett

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To listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:

http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/10149/good_news_030_dec09.mp3