"Don't Shoot the Messenger" genre: Spiritual
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	Sermon, December 5, 1999, "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way…’"Mark 1:2
	Lyrics "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way…’" Mark 1:2 It has always seemed to be true. Throughout history we shoot the messengers. It was true for all the prophets, Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, just to name a few. It was true for John the Baptist who is recognized as the last of the great prophets. Okay, for you who are legalists, they didn’t shoot him, they beheaded him. Still, he was silenced. We shoot modern day prophets too. We shot Mahatma Ghandi and we shot Martin Luther King. And we are constantly shooting at Alan Greenspan, Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank, whenever he brings us unwanted news about the money supply or interest rates. Why do we always shoot the messenger? We need the messengers. Even though the messengers usually bring us news that we don’t want to hear we need them. We need them because, as scripture says, they prepare the way. Isaiah prepared the way. He prepared the way for the reclamation of the Promised Land by Israel and He prepared the way for John the Baptist and the Messiah, Jesus. And John the Baptist prepared the way. He prepared the way for Jesus to come. He prepared the way with a hard word, a word of conviction and confrontation so that the Word of Grace and Truth might enter in. Listen to the messages of life. These messages are always outside interruptions and interference in life. They are often a message of confrontation and conviction, but they prepare the way for the Lord. They prepare the way for the message of Grace and Truth. The message prepares the way for Life. Does it always take a hard message, a crisis message to prepare the way for us to listen to the Truth and Grace about ourselves? I’m not sure. For many of us, especially early in our spiritual lives we need a crisis message to get our attention. But I hope and pray that as we grow spiritually we learn to kick less and less against the messages of life. We learn, like Samuel (1 Samuel 3:10), to say, ‘speak Lord, your servant is listening.’ Even though we shoot the messenger we can’t silence the message. Remember, we shot Jesus too, but we didn’t silence the message. If it is a message of truth it will not be, cannot be silenced until it bears fruit. You can shoot the messenger but the message will never die. And in that we take comfort. As Isaiah wrote over 2600 years ago, "Comfort, comfort my people…., the word of our God will stand forever." Isaiah 40: 1, 8 Arthur John 1:14

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