[Machine transcription]
And John went into all the regions around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints, this last Thursday the children from Upbring came over for their chapel and
they were asking why we changed the colors in here and what those candles were doing.
I told them it’s Advent, it means we’re getting ready for Christmas.
And we talked about the birth of Jesus and this marvelous fact that this child, this
birth, was promised long beforehand.
In fact, I told the children, it wasn’t just that the birth of Jesus was promised ten years
before it happened or fifty years before it happened, but hundreds and thousands of years
before it happened.
Four hundred years before this child’s birth, it was promised that he would ride into Jerusalem
on a donkey, 500 years before his birth, that he would be born in Bethlehem, the least of
the tribes, the cities of the tribes of Judah, 600 years before he was born, that he would
be the righteous branch, or 700 years before he was born, that he would be born of a virgin,
that he would be smitten and afflicted by God, that he would bear our sins and carry
our sorrows, a thousand years before He was born, that He would be the seed of David,
that He would sit on the throne, that He was begotten of the Father before all eternity,
but He would sit at the right hand of the Father until all things were made subject
to Him, that He would cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
1,445 years before he was born.
Let me, hold on, let me adjust that.
1,406 years before he was born,
that the Lord would raise up
a prophet like Moses.
Or even before that,
1,700 years to the father Abraham,
that in his seed all the nations
of the world would be blessed,
and also Isaac, and Jacob, and Judah, whom the sword would not depart until Shiloh the
king had come.”
In fact, this promise of this birth of this baby goes all the way back to the very beginning.
Maybe the earth is only nine days old or eight days old when God comes and finds Adam and
Eve in the garden covered in fig leaves, hiding with the devil from Him, and the Lord preaches
to the devil that he would be crushed by the seed of the woman.
This is a birth long foretold, and in Advent we hear of all of these promises, all of these
great prophets who stood before the world and preached into the darkness of this world,
preached this light that Christ is coming.
And then comes the last prophet of all, John the Baptist, who preached not a far-off Christ
or a far-off kingdom, but the kingdom which had arrived.” In fact, Jesus calls John
the Baptist the greatest born of woman up to that point. He is the greatest of
all the prophets. In fact, I was thinking about this, that not only is John a
prophet, but John is a prophesied prophet. He’s so important that the prophets who
came before Him prophesied that He would come. We have one of the prophecies from Isaiah
chapter 40 in the Gospel reading, and we’ll talk more about that in a few minutes. But
John was promised as the one who would come to prepare the way for the Lord. And so John
is often pictured pointing. In fact, we have a John the Baptist window. It’s the closest
large window on this side over here by the lectern, and you see that the symbol of John
the Baptist is simply a hand pointing at the Lamb. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world because John, this last prophet, didn’t have to preach this far-off
kingdom but the kingdom that had arrived in Christ Jesus. And that’s his work, to prepare
the way of the Lord.
Now that work is prophesied by Isaiah the prophet, especially in chapter 40. And the
picture that Isaiah gives to us is of a⦠of a highway builder. We⦠we probably think
of the interstate highways going through the hill country, and that’s the vision that
I have of it. It’s actually kind of nice because you have all these hills, and if you
were just building a road, that road would kind of curve around the hills. It would follow
the creeks and contours of the land. But if you want to build an interstate, if you want
to build something that moves things quickly, you got to carve out the hills and you got
to lift up the valleys. The Romans were experts at this actually. In fact, one of the things
that the ancient Romans are known for is they had this great massive complex of roads, so
you could get from one end of the kingdom to the other pretty quick. And that was important
because they wanted to be able to get their soldiers from one end of the kingdom to the
other pretty quick. In fact, they had a⦠I was trying to figure out how to work this
into the sermon, so this is a bit of an aside, I’ll just tell you, is they had a rule,
And that is that if you had a land or a farm or a estate or something like this and one
of their roads went through your land, it was your job to take care of it.
You had to make sure that the road didn’t wash out, that it didn’t grow over, that the
rocks weren’t settling in it, that you⦠you kept the valleys lifted up and the⦠and
the high points raised low, that you kept the road smooth.
you, and that service to your neighbor of maintaining the road was called your liturgy.
That’s what⦠that’s where we get the word liturgy from, the public service that
you would perform.
I don’t know what to make of that, but it’s interesting.
These roads were important, but here John the Baptist is described in the mouth of Isaiah
as the one who is doing all of the work to prepare the way of the Lord.
He’s lifting up the valleys, he’s tearing down the mountains, he’s straightening
out the curves, he’s throwing off the stones so that the way is smooth for this Messiah
to come. Now how is he doing it? Preaching in baptism. And he was doing this in a really
quite revolutionary way. But we don’t want to miss this in the text, because all the
people were going to John. I mean, Jerusalem was basically empty because everyone was
down at the Jordan River to hear John preaching. And John was commanding large audiences who
were listening to him and wanted to follow him,
and there was a great opportunity there.
Perhaps a temptation for John to gather people to himself,
to gather wealth to himself,
to gather soldiers to himself,
to present himself as the king who would deliver
the people from the Romans and
overthrow their rule in that place.
In fact, explicitly Luke tells us that tax collectors, that was the rich people, the
bankers, the ones who could finance a revolution, that they came to John and said, what should
we do?
And he didn’t say, well, you can give your money to me.
He said, quit taking bribes, only collect what you’re supposed to.
Or soldiers came to John and said, what should we do?
And John could have easily said, well, follow me, go gather your fellow soldiers, let’s
start an army and overthrow
the Romans now, but he didn’t.
He said, don’t take bribes.
Don’t harm people.
Do what you’re called to do.
In other words, John brought a revolution,
but it was not a political revolution.
It was not a societal revolution.
It was not a cultural revolution.
It was something very different.
The mountains that he was tearing down and
the valleys that he was raising
up were in the human heart.
God. His preaching was a preaching of repentance.
Now we want to be clear on what repentance is. I think we often hear repentance described
as a⦠Here’s how I’ve heard it described. Repentance is doing a U-turn. You’re going
this way and then you turn around and you go the other way. So you’re sinning and
living your life in darkness and despair and hedonism, and you decide, no, I don’t want
to do that. I instead want to go this way and I want to follow God. That is what John
calls the fruit of repentance, but not repentance itself.
Repentance means a change of mind or a change of heart. Better, let’s think of it as a change
of heart⦠of conscience, and it⦠and it has two parts. The first is this, that we
hear the law of God, we hear His commandments, and we hear them accusing us.
We know that God’s law is not just to accuse those out there, but it is in fact to show
us our own sin.
And so John brought the Lord’s law so that we could see that we are truly sinners.
That God has commands and that we’ve broken them.
That God has requirements and that we have not met them.
That God has expectations and that we’ve disappointed them.
And that⦠that because of that, we deserve His anger, His wrath.
Everybody⦠and repentance is not just knowing that you’ve done something wrong.
Everybody knows they’ve done something wrong.
We say this kind of stuff all the time, oh, to err is human.
Everybody makes mistakes.
You ask somebody, hey, are you perfect?
They’ll say, well, no, I’m⦠of course I’m not perfect, but nobody’s perfect.
So we’re happy that humanity is graded on this grand curve as if we just have to be
better than 50 percent of our neighbors to get into heaven.
No, this is not how it goes.
James says if you’ve broken one law, you’re guilty of all of the law, and this is what
the law does.
It condemns us, us, you and me, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God.
We are tempted, every one of us, every person born of Adam and Eve is tempted to exalt our
own goodness, to build up a mountain of our own works, to lift up the picture of our own
accomplishments.
And John comes with all the prophets and with all of the law of God to tear it down so that
we might truly confess not only that we’ve made mistakes, but that our mistakes have
offended the holiness of God.
It is not enough to know that you have done something wrong.
This is what we need to know most of all, that what you’ve done wrong has offended the holiness
of God, and that you and I truly deserve, as we confessed a few minutes ago, that we truly deserve
God’s temporal and eternal punishment, so that every mountain shall be made low.
But then the Lord comes to lift up the valley.
And this is the second part of repentance, the good part of repentance.
This is the gospel part of repentance, because the first part of repentance is contrition,
knowing that we’re sinners, but the second part of repentance is faith, knowing that
Jesus has come to bleed and die and suffer for sinners.
That Jesus has seen the lowly estate that you possess.
that Jesus knows the things that you’ve done wrong,
that he’s observed
the commandments that you’ve broken,
that he knows every wayward thought,
and word, and act that you’ve committed,
and still he came to be your Savior,
the Savior of sinners.
This is why he came,
this is why he was born,
why he suffered, why he died,
so that he might save you,
deliver you, and rescue
you from all of your sins, and he has done it.
Dear friends, it is accomplished.
That’s why John and
his work is a message of comfort.
Comfort ye, comfort my people.
Speak to them that their warfare is ended,
that their iniquity is pardoned,
and that the Lord has given
them double for all their sins.
This is John’s preaching.
Double for your sins.
That is, not only has the Lord
taken all of your sins
and done away with them,
him, but that he’s now replaced it with the righteousness of Christ.
Can you picture it this way?
Can you picture that all the things that you’ve ever done wrong are written down on someâ¦
some huge, big chalkboard?
You say, pastor, where are you going to find a chalkboard that big?
Just imagine it.
Now the Lord Jesus comes, and He has in His hands a bucket filled with His own blood,
and He just washes it away so that it’s pure and clean and there’s not a single speck on
it.
That’s the first thing that Jesus does.
That’s the forgiveness of sins.
But then Jesus takes the chalk and He starts to write on that board all of the things that
He has done right, all of the commandments that He has kept, His righteous life and suffering
and death, and that is given to you, to you.
I know you don’t believe it unless it’s written down in the Holy Scriptures that
he who knew no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in
Him.
And that’s what the text means, that the Lord has given you double for all your sins.
So Jesus comes to the repentant heart, to the heart that’s overthrown by the revolution
of God’s law and gospel, Jesus comes, in other words, to you. To bless you, to keep
you, to deliver you, and to bring you through all the difficulties of this life to life
everlasting. Your sin does not stand in the way. Neither does your death. Neither does
your sorrow, neither does your suffering, neither does your affliction. Jesus comes
to you. He comes today and claims you as His own. So God be praised that John the Baptist,
the greatest of all the prophets, could point to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world. But God be praised that we can point to Him the same. Here is Jesus
and His Word. Here is Jesus in His body and His blood with the promise that your sins
are forgiven. Dear saints, Jesus is with you. And because of that, you will be with Him
forever. God be praised. Amen. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard
your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
