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Grace, mercy, and peace be upon you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading. You may be seated. You gotta come hear this new preacher. And that’s how it all began. Word went out about John the Baptist and his amazing preaching by the River Jordan. Out in the Jordan Valley, miles away from Jerusalem. And in fact, really miles away from anything. It’s pretty desolate out there. And there he picked to preach.
Now, you’ve got to think about this. If you’re trying to attract people to God, to choose a remote place probably isn’t the best idea. And yet, you know what? God used it. God used it. Here he is in a desert, wilderness setting, miles away from most all towns, and people are coming to him, not because of him. Oh, that might have been the attraction at first, just to see the sight and to hear the words. But it was the Word of God that flowed from John’s lips, that attracted the people’s hearts, which God captured by His Holy Spirit.
That is the unique thing about John. In fact, when you think about why he chose the wilderness, he chose it because of the history of Israel. When God led the people of Israel through the wilderness for 40 years, the overall teaching that God was doing in those 40 years was, learn how to wait. Later on in the life of the people of Israel, they spent 70 years over in Babylon, Iraq. What did God do during those 70 years? But teach those people to wait upon the Lord for His deliverance.
So really, it was John’s way of saying, by preaching in the wilderness, you as the people of God need to continue to learn to wait upon the Lord. Now wait a second. Wasn’t John right before Jesus came onto the scene? In fact, they were only, what, six months apart from one another in age? And the answer is yes. Because John was the one who pointed to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And was it not John who said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is going to come, or is here at hand?” He said it was here at hand.
So what’s this waiting part for? It’s for you and for me. We, the church, who live on this side of Christ’s first coming, live with the expectation that He will return with glory to judge the living and the dead as we confessed in our creed, the creed of the church. That’s what John was preparing us to do, is teaching us to wait. Because you remember when you raised your babies… Or better yet, when you were the young, impatient little kid, it was hard to sit still. Sometimes it was the glare of your father or mother, a little pinch. Maybe it was taking you out of church for a little warmer bottom than what you had before you came into church.
But either way, you were taught to learn to wait. Do you think God doesn’t use the same ways upon us now, though we are grown up? And do not think that simply because we’re grown up that we don’t become impatient. Lots of people say, “I am so ready to go home to be with my Lord.” Because they’ve been waiting a long time. Others of us are shocked when God decides to take someone home to be with Him before their time. Either way, this waiting is to get us to see and prepare our hearts now, because Jesus is here among you now.
Now John’s preaching, as was mentioned earlier, attracted a lot of people, and that’s because not just his style of preaching, but obviously what it contained. Now you could look at his preaching and think, man, it was fire and brimstone. It was also gospel. Otherwise, why would he say in the Gospel of John, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” John’s preaching had both law and Gospel.
But you know, you and I, because we’re made in the image of our dear Father Adam and dear Mother Eve, we like a little fire and brimstone. It makes us uncomfortable. It gives us that “whoa” feeling. But we only want a dab. We don’t want the full load. That would be too religious, would it not? Because John could also be perceived as a zealot. Oh, we don’t want to be a zealot. We’re not one of those. We’re not one of those.
Well, if you’re not, then are you lukewarm? You see, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, what brought them out is the novelty of John and what he proclaimed. Because John, his position was divinely ordained, mind you. It had been prophesied about him throughout the Old Testament Scriptures that there would be one like Elijah who would precede the Messiah. So if there ever was an alarm to have gone off, when John began preaching, and if he’s six months older than Jesus, then he began preaching approximately six months before Jesus came onto the scene at the age of 30. Because 30 was the year of chokmah, wisdom. When finally you can open your mouth and comment on the Scriptures. Prior to 30, keep your mouth shut and let the adults talk.
So out of line with our culture. So many of these people came out to hear him because his word was the voice of the Old Testament prophecies. But the Pharisees and Sadducees came out for a little dab. They didn’t want the whole load. Because what John was asking of them was, deny your DNA. Deny your cultural heritage. And what that meant was, quit claiming your relation to God through Abraham as your father. Because, ethnically, they were descendants of Abraham. That wasn’t the point of Abraham’s children.
When your children and mine learn “Father Abraham had many sons,” it was not ethnically tied to you. None of you all are Jews. It was tied to the fact that you shared the same faith as Abraham. That’s what the Pharisees and Sadducees missed. They began to look at themselves completely and totally on their heritage and ethnicity. It happens in all churches, not just Lutheran churches. It happens in all churches when we begin to look at our heritage more strongly than the faith. When we begin to look at what our mom or dad did in the church rather than the faith. When we begin to think in terms of, there is this good gene that is transferred over to me rather than the faith. That’s what the Pharisees and Sadducees got wrapped up in.
Which is why John said, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruits in keeping with repentance.” The people that came to him came to do what? The text said, confess their sins. They did not come to get a little dab of Jesus. No. They came to get the full Jesus. The forgiveness that came with that. And John proclaimed this forgiveness to them. He gave them the sure word of absolution and then baptized them for repentance.
But the Pharisees and Sadducees, well, they came to merely be a part of it and fulfill a block and to continue to say, “I have done all.” Now, lest we get too harsh on the Pharisees and Sadducees today, they would put you and me to shame in how well they lived, in how much money they gave, in how pious they were. They would put you and me to shame. They didn’t declare themselves sinners, however. They didn’t confess their sins to John to receive full and free forgiveness because they didn’t want to be like the rest of the people. They wanted to be different.
Do you want to be like the rest of the people? Or do you want to be different? Do you want to be different? Because there are many brothers and sisters of yours, either physically or in the faith, who no longer warm a pew near you because they only wanted a dab of Jesus and not the whole load. There are many people who do not want to get the full load and keep away from the full load only to get the powdered sugar sprinkled on top rather than the complete total load.
That was what John came up against in these people’s lives. Now again, before you realize that John was almost all this law, we pointed out his gospel. Really, you could look at his preaching as saying, you are lost sheep. Come back to your shepherd. He is seeking you. He wishes to bind up your wounds and cleanse you from yourself. Don’t live your life as if you’re not in His presence right now, as if you’re waiting for this Messiah to come. He’s here now. And Jesus was.
But if that was all that Jesus was, then Emmanuel only means from the age of His conception to His death at 33, and then Emmanuel is no longer with us. But that is not what John preached, nor any of the prophets, nor himself, our Lord Jesus. He preached, “He is with you always, to the very end of the age.” But He’s not with you in some abstract, some kind of thought. He’s with you in that word preached and proclaimed and read to you. He’s with you when it is said, “I forgive you your sins.” That’s His voice, not mine. Amen.
He’s with you when He gives you His flesh and blood, and you are joined to Him and to one another. You’re God. You’re Emmanuel. John was trying to get them to see He’s here now. And 2,000 years later, He better still be here now, or this that we’re doing is all just abstract and not concrete. And God would not have become flesh and blood if He did not want Himself to be grabbed as concrete, real. And He sure wouldn’t have come in the eternal supper of His Son as flesh and blood with bread and wine if He did not want to be grasped in a real, concrete way.
Now the people were expecting this Messiah to be king. King. And our Lord came and did kingly deeds, and John pointed it at them. In fact, that statement, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” that is defining a kingly deed of Jesus the Messiah. Do you want to know what a kingly deed looks like? Oh yeah, right above the altar in that bronze or brass cross. That is the kingly deed. To suffer and die for the people. There is no more kingly deed than when Christ died for the sinners.
You and I perceive kingly deeds in another way, but He Himself, our Lord Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, never came to be an earthly king. He came to be the King of our souls. And for a Lamb of God to take away the sin, the Lamb has to die. And what do the people of God do with the lamb that was slain for them? After the lamb has been slain to take away their sins? They eat the lamb. “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Now what about that statement? Jesus will come and baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Right? Sounds a little Pentecostal or charismatic, doesn’t it? Look what follows those words. Jesus said, or John said about Jesus, “His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will clear His threshing floor and gather His wheat into the barn, but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” I don’t remember that happening when I was baptized. And it hasn’t happened since.
So it’s not talking literally about your baptism. It’s really talking about when your baptism comes to its fulfillment. When you are brought into the kingdom of heaven and are freed from this world. So why did the choir proclaim what John preached, “Prepare the way of the Lord”? Because our entire life, living it out as a baptized child of God, is living it out, preparing ourselves for when our baptism comes to its final culmination at our death, or when He comes again with glory to separate the wheat from the chaff.
And by the way, did you get the beautiful gospel in that? No. He will gather His wheat into the barn. The wheat doesn’t gather itself, does it? That’s comforting. He will gather you along with your other kernels of wheat and bring you into the barn and fulfill your baptismal covenant that He made with you. That’s what we’re living here right now. John’s preaching is very apropos for now because we’re learning how to wait again.
Because aren’t we in the wilderness? Is this not our home? No, it’s not. We’re waiting for heaven as our home. So this is wilderness. This is waiting. And what was the problem with the people of Israel, both in the wilderness and in Babylon? Yearning to stay put or yearning to go back to life as it was.
And your God, when He crashed into your life at your baptism, never promised to ever make your life like it was, for that would be damning. He made your life different by crashing in and bringing you His forgiveness. Advent is a time of preparation and hope. And we’re preparing in hope to celebrate His first coming at Christmas. And in the meantime, our entire life in Christ as a baptized child is lived waiting in hope for His second coming.
But as John preached, and as we believe, He’s here right now. The kingdom of heaven is here right now. Receive the King who comes to you bearing salvation and bearing His gifts. In the name of Jesus, amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
