WEBVTT
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We meet him every year about this time.
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He was Jesus's cousin,
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or at least his mother was Mary's cousin,
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but he doesn't sound much like Jesus when he preaches.
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He preaches not in some high lifted up pulpit
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in some beautiful church like this one.
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But rather, he preaches out in the wilderness.
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If you wanted to hear sermons like his,
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you had to go out into the desert, out on the margins.
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Hear today's gospel.
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In the 15th year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius,
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the word of God came to John,
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son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.
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John went into all the region around the Jordan
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proclaiming of baptism, of repentance
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for forgiveness of sins.
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As is written in the book
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of the words of the Prophet Isaiah,
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"A voice crying in the wilderness.
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"prepare the way of the Lord
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"Make his way straight.
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John said to the crowds who came out to hear him,
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"You brute of vipers,
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"Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
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"Bear fruits worthy of repentance.
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"Do not begin to say to yourselves,
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"we have Abraham as our ancestor.
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"I tell you God is able from the stones
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"to raise up children!"
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To Abraham, "Even now the ax is lying
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"at the root of the tree.
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"Every tree, therefore that does not bear
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"good fruit will be cut down and thrown to the fire.
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"The crowds ask him, well what should we do?"
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In reply John said to them,
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"Whoever has two coats,
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"must share with anyone who has none.
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"Whoever has food, must do likewise."
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Even tax collectors came to be baptized.
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And they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"
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He said to them,
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"Collect no more than that is prescribed for you."
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Soldiers also asked what should we do?
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He said to them,
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"Do not extort money from anyone by threats,
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"or false accusation, be satisfied with your wages."
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People were filled with expectation.
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And were questioning their hearts concerning John,
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whether he might be Messiah.
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John answered, saying, "I baptize you with water
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"but one is more powerful than I coming.
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"I'm not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.
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"He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and fire.
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"His whittling fork is in his hand
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"to clear the threshing floor,
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"to gather the wheat into his granary.
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"But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
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So with many other exhortations,
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John proclaimed the good news to the people.
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This is the word of the Lord.
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Thanks be to God
Thanks be to God.
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You had to go out,
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out to the wilderness to hear
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a preacher like John.
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When I was growing up, I remember that
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as a teenager, sometimes on Saturday nights
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we would go out to a field, out on the edge of town.
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And there was pitched a huge tent.
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And we would pull in there in the parking area
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and roll down the windows.
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Wouldn't get out of the car, we just roll down the windows
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and try to hear that tent preacher preach.
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There under that big tent with a folding metal chairs,
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field hands, and mill workers gathered
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and they would listen, and sometimes shout back
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at the preacher.
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It was amusing to us.
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These traveling tent preachers.
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In our big downtown church,
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you never heard preaching like that.
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To get a preacher who shouted
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and whooped, and who knew how to
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handle a guitar, or a snake.
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You had to go out to the margins.
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You had to go out to the edge of town,
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where the rednecks and the lint heads, and the poor,
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and the dispossessed,
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you had to go out to where they talked to God.
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People who's lives were virtually owned
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by the genteel folk, who listened to easier
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preachers down and the big downtown churches.
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But if you wanted to hear preaching like that
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you had to go out.
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You had to go out to the edge of town.
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And sitting there, we wondered,
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who would, who would want to hear preaching like that?
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Well, as it turns out a lot of people.
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Multitudes, the gospels say.
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Multitudes went out when John preached.
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City folk dropped whatever they were doing
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and they went out there to the wilderness
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to hear him preach.
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And what they heard,
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Oh, you bunch of dead stones in the muddy water,
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God's gonna make a family out of these stones.
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God's gonna, you heap of dry chaff, mixed in with the wheat,
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God's gonna burn you.
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God's gonna start a fire.
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Oh, I wash you with water,
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there's one coming after me
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that's just going to burn you up.
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The judge is about to hold court,
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and he's got your summons.
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If you cheated somebody,
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you go, you make it right.
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'Cause the ax, the judge, the fire, the flood.
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Why would anybody go out to hear preaching like that?
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Sometimes I go around,
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and I discuss preaching with preachers.
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And we talk about the need to listen
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to the biblical text, and then you stand up
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and you boldly, you tell the congregation
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what you've heard in the biblical text.
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And whenever we've began to talking like that
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as preachers, there's always somebody
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some preacher, who will say
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wait a minute, laypeople don't come to church
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to hear the truth.
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Laypeople don't come to church on Sunday
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to hear things that disturb them,
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and bump them, and jolt them.
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They come to have me stroke, they come to be soothed,
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to hear what they've always heard.
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Well if that's true,
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why did so many people go out to the desert,
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to hear John talk about an ax,
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and a judge, and the fire?
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My Jjnior year of college,
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I started thinking about going to seminary
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to be a preacher.
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And I finally got up the courage
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to tell my mother what I was thinking about.
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She had other things in mind.
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Thought I should go to law school,
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thought maybe I should be a teacher.
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She didn't like my plans.
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And she told me flat out, she said,
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"Well, I don't think you have many gifts
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"for being a preacher.
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"I think you're gonna be a failure."
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(congregation laughing)
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And I said, "Every other mother in America
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"wants her son to grow up to be a preacher."
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She says, "Well, I don't."
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(congregation laughing)
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Ministers have got 300 bosses,
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Pastors have always got to be nice to people,
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they gotta tell people what they want to hear.
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You don't have any of those gifts.
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(congregation laughing)
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I thanked her for her maternal encouragement.
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And then I asked, "Well, if you're right about that
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"then explain to me why so many people
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"went out to hear John preach."
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Some of you have obtained copies of my sermons
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out of the narthex after the service.
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And a lot of you complain that
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when you get that printed copy of the sermon
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that's been done up about a week ago
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and you compare that printed sermon
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to what you heard from the pulpit,
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it's not the same sermon.
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And you wonder why.
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Well I'll explain to you.
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Some of my best sermon revision
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takes place about 8:30 on a Sunday morning
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and I'm drinking coffee, and I'm sitting there
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and I read over what I prepared to preach.
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And I say to myself,
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"I'm not going to go out there and say that to those people.
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"Are you crazy?"
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I like living in Durham,
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we've got the grapes hung in the parsonage.
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I don't wanna move, I'm not gonna say those things.
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And so I go through, I work on that sermon,
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that's why there's often a big difference
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by what's said there on the paper, and what,
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you have to be careful, you can't just go out there and
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look people, well if that's true,
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how come so many people went out
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to hear John preach?
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Multitudes.
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Great multitudes came out from the capital city.
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Fire breathing preacher, not from a limestone pulpit,
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but out there in the dust.
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Calling them "you brute of vipers."
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We don't have the full text
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preserved of John's sermons,
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but we got enough to indicate what kind sermons he preached.
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These images, John said, "I'm like the ax of the Lord,
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"I'm gonna cut these trees down
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"and throw them in the fire.
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"I'm the dog that's growling just outside the door.
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"You better get washed up.
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"You're dead.
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"You smell the fire."
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And multitudes tramped through the brambles,
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and the brush to hear John preach.
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I wonder what John might tell us preachers.
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We preach in the air conditioned comfort
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of the big church, big pulpit.
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Hide behind limestone.
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I wonder if John would say to us preachers
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you know you sell your people short.
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There are these moments
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when I see what John's talking about.
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Maybe I slip up, and I say something
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a bit more directly than maybe I intended.
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I say in effect, you know you're not right.
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You need a bath.
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Some part of you, you know needs to be cut out, removed.
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There's part of you that just needs
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to be burned away and purified.
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And you say, okay.
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Just go ahead, go ahead preach.
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Preach like John.
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And that's why they came out to hear John preach.
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Somebody, when John was preaching,
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John made basically two points in his sermons.
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Point one, God is coming.
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And point two, you can change and be ready.
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You, you can get cleaned, purified, washed,
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start over like a newborn.
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It's hard.
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It's hard sometimes as a preacher
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you go to visit somebody that's just had a baby.
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And the mother will say,
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mother's there in the room resting,
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and says, "I want you to go by the nursery
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"and see our baby."
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And I say, "Well which baby will it be?"
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"Oh, you'll know the baby, just go there,
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"you'll look, has looks just like his father.
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"You go look."
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I go in there and they all look the same to me.
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They all lined up there.
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And why is that?
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Well, because they're just so fresh,
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and they're new, and young.
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And they're sleeping peacefully,
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and why shouldn't they sleep peacefully?
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They don't yet have any history,
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they yet have any failures, any regrets.
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And I think that's one reason,
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particularly this time a year,
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we just love these babies because wouldn't it be great
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to start over, to be fresh, clean, and new?
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I think that's why they came to hear John preach.
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When John preached,
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well, when you first heard those harsh words
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but then when you thought about it,
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those words became good news.
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It was like the desert broke into blossom.
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The dry dust became a garden, fresh and new.
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Fred Craddock reminds me of an old movie,
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The High and the Mighty.
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I don't know if any of remember the movie
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The High and the Mighty,
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but toward the end of the movie,
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they're flying out over the Atlantic,
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the voice of the pilot comes over the PA, and says,
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"There's a problem with the airplane,
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"we don't think we can fix it.
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"I don't think we're gonna make it.
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"And I wanna tell you this now, so that you can
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"do whatever you need to do."
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And at that point, back in the cabin, there is a woman,
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elegantly dressed woman.
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And she began, at the hearing of that announcement to,
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she takes off the diamond necklace from around her neck.
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She removes a brooch, she takes of her rings,
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and she begins methodically to wipe off the makeup
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from her face.
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And when she does, she wipes off that makeup,
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and you can see that the makeup has been covering this
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huge scar across her face.
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Now it's visible.
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You see, she's taking off the mask.
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She will now end her life as she really is.
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As the movie turns out, the flight is saved.
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They make it to the airport.
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But when that woman gets off that plane,
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she is a very different person.
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Somebody offered her honesty.
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And she took it.
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Somebody offered her the opportunity
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to take off the mask, and face God
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as she really is.
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And she did it.
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And that's why they came to hear John preach.
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I don't know whether it was the O.J. Simpson trial
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or maybe the Clinton impeachment hearings,
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I don't know, one of those legal embarrassments.
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And I, in my sermon, I made some little remark about
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attorneys, and so naturally,
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I was on guard when one of you came out of the,
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an attorney came out of the chapel
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and said to me, about the sermon, he said,
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"Thanks, thanks for that, we deserved it."
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I said, "Thanks?"
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He said, "You know, it is great to come to church
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"and hear the truth."
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I believe a man like that would go even out into the desert,
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to hear John preach.
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I was preaching up in Akron, Ohio one weekend in the winter,
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they kept me at a downtown motel,
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and at night I decide I'd go out and risk life and limb
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take a walk around Akron,
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but it was so depressing after a couple blocks,
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I just went back to the motel.
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These burned out buildings and these dirty alleyways.
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Well, I woke up the next morning on Sunday
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and I looked out the window
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and there had be an unexpected snow.
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And all of the town was blanketed in this
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pure, white blanket.
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And I rushed put on my coat, went outside,
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and I walked for blocks,
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just marveling at the poetic transformation.
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One of the prophets says,
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"Your sins, which are many,
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"shall be whiter than snow."
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Well, John preached that.
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And at our best in some shining moment
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when we are forced to look in the mirror of truth,
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forced to admit that we are not the people we ought to be.
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And somebody like John just holds that mirror up
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so that we can't avoid it.
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Chastened, we go to our knees
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and we ask God, take an ax.
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Kindle the fire, purge me, wash me,
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purify me, change me.
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John preached that, the possibility
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of turn around, metanoia.
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Get ready, God is coming.
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That was John's message.
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John.
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John preached that nobody is beyond
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God's gracious reach.
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God comes to us, out in the wilderness,
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so that we might come to God.
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John preached that.
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I don't know if you've ever heard John preach or not.
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Multitudes have.
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You will.