Advent
3
Isa
40:1-8
12/11/23
John
the Baptist certainly got people’s attention. John wore a garment of
camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist. His dress called to mind the prophet
Elijah. He showed up, preaching in the
wilderness of Judea. The wilderness had been the place from which God brought
Israel into the promised land as Israel conquered it. We know from other examples, that when
prophetic figures showed up in the wilderness, people got excited. It prompted
hope that God was about to act to rescue them from the Romans.
John
certainly declared that God was about to do something great. He proclaimed, “Repent, for the kingdom
of heaven is at hand.” Any Jew knew that
the kingdom of heaven was not a place.
It was instead the end time reign of God, and John said it was at hand.
It was just about to arrive.
God’s
reign was about to arrive, and because this was so, there was only one thing to
do: Repent! John left no doubt about why
this was necessary. He said about the
One who would bring God’s reign: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming
after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 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.”
The coming One would bring God’s end time judgment. All people are sinners, and so all needed to
repent. John was known as “the baptizer”
because the unique thing about his ministry was that he applied a washing of
water to people. Ritual washings were very
common in first century Judaism. But these were all self-administered.
John stood out because he applied the water to other people. By receiving
John’s baptism, people demonstrated that they were repentant, and they were
ready for God’s reign to arrive.
Matthew tells us about John, “For this is he who was spoken of by
the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the
wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’”
Matthew refers to our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah chapter 40.
Isaiah
wrote in the eighth century B.C. He
confronted the sins of God’s people. In the very first verses of his prophecy
he wrote, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: ‘Children
have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The
ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel
does not know, my people do not understand.’ Ah, sinful nation, a people
laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of
Israel, they are utterly estranged.”
God revealed
through Isaiah that in the end, the southern kingdom of Judah would not
repent. They would not return to Yahweh.
And therefore, he would bring judgment upon them, just has he had warned in the
book of Deuteronomy. He would send them into exile in Babylon, away from the
land. This happened in 587 B.C. when the
Babylonians destroyed the temple and the walls of Jerusalem, and took all but
the very poorest people into exile.
However,
through Isaiah, God also spoke a word of comfort and hope. Our text begins with
the words, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and
cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.” God had
punished Judah. But now he was going to
rescue her.
And so our text
says, “A voice cries: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the
LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley
shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground
shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” The imagery used here is of
God coming to his people in Babylon. The way before him is described as a
highway that is even and level. Nothing would impede God.
God was coming
to rescue his people. Isaiah announced: “And the glory of the LORD shall be
revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD
has spoken.” God did rescue Judah from
exile in a most dramatic and surprising way.
In fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophesy, God used the Persian King Cyrus who
defeated the Babylonians. Then in 538 B.C. Cyrus issued a decree that the
people could return to the land and rebuild the temple.
Just as God had
rescued Israel from Egypt, so God rescued his people from exile in
Babylon. Yet each of these actions
pointed to something even bigger – something that would be rescue for all people.
And so Matthew tells us that John the Baptist is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s
words. He came to prepare the way for
the Lord. He was “The
voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight.’”
John’s message
of repentance sounds forth today to us.
His words prepare the way as we are about to celebrate the birth of
Jesus Christ. In our text Isaiah says, “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be
made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” Every obstacle must be removed. We must repent of the sin that cuts us off
from God – the sin that brings God’s judgment.
Repentance is not what the world has
on its mind right now. Well, actually it
never does…. But especially right now this is the furthest things from
its mind because it is the Christmas season.
The world says this is a time of joy. It is the time of lights and
decorations. It is the time to buy gifts, and to look forward to the gifts that
we are going to receive.
It is easy for us to get caught up
in this. Yet in the life of the Church we are in the season of Advent. This is
a time of preparation. We are preparing
to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. And that preparation must focus on the
reason that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary
as God sent his Son into the world. He
did it because of our sin.
We must do what Judah was unwilling
to do. We must repent. We must confess
our sin. We must confess how we have gossiped about our neighbor by sharing
information that puts him or her in a bad light. We must confess how we have
spoken angry words to a family member. We must confess how we have coveted the success
or wealth of others.
Repentance means that we confess our
sin. It also means that we then turn in
faith to Jesus Christ who has won forgiveness for us. Zechariah said of John the Baptist when he
was an infant, “And you, child,
will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go
before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his
people in the forgiveness of their sins.”
John proclaimed
that the coming One would bring God’s judgment.
Yet the great surprise of Jesus Christ is that first, he received
God’s judgment in our place. That’s
what happened on Good Friday as Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?” Jesus received the wrath
of God against our sin. That is why he said, “the Son of
Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a
ransom for many.” God revealed his saving glory as Jesus died on the
cross.
Because of Jesus’ death on the
cross, our sins are forgiven. Jesus’ body was buried in a tomb. But John the Baptist could not have been
right about the coming One if Christ had stayed there. And so on the third day, God raised Jesus
from the dead. This is exactly what he said would happen. Just before Holy Week Jesus told the
disciples, “See, we are going up
to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests
and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over
to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will
be raised on the third day.”
By his
resurrection Jesus has defeated death. He has given us eternal life. And God
has vindicated Jesus as the coming One who will bring God’s judgment on
the Last Day. John said about the coming
One, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 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.” Jesus is the risen and ascended
Lord who will return in glory on the Last Day. He will burn up the sinful in
his judgment. But, we who are forgiven
by faith in his death and resurrection, will be gathered to be with him
forever.
As John said, Jesus
is also the One who has given us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Christ called
us to faith. He gave us the new life in the washing of rebirth and renewal of
Holy Baptism. And this brings us to the other side of repentance and
forgiveness. Jesus said, “Bear fruit in keeping with
repentance.” Repentance does not simply
mean we confess and receive forgiveness because of Christ. It also means that we then turn away from
sin. We cease to do it. We struggle
against it, so that we don’t commit it.
Repentance
means forgiveness for us. But it also
means that we seek to live in the ways of Christ as his Spirit leads and
enables us. When the people asked John
the Baptist, “What shall we do?”, he answered, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has
none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”
We share and care for others around us.
When the Tax
collectors also came to be baptized they asked John what they should do. He said to them, to him, “Collect no more
than you are authorized to do.” We seek to do our job honestly – to do it in
the right way as we work unto the Lord and not unto man. We do this knowing that through our vocation
we become the means that God uses to care for our neighbor.
Most of all, we
who have repented and have been forgiven, now forgive one another. We share the
forgiveness that Christ has given to us.
St. Paul told the Ephesians, “Be kind to one
another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave
you.” The place to begin this is in your
own home. Husband and wife, son and
daughter, brother and sister all forgive one another because God has given us
forgiveness in Christ. And from there this forgiveness received in
Christ spreads out to include all those around us.
In our text
today Isaiah says, “A voice cries: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the
LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley
shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground
shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” We learn that these words have found their
great fulfillment in John the Baptist, and his preaching of repentance as he
prepared the way for Christ. He
continues to call us to repentance as we prepare to rejoice in the in the
incarnation by which the the glory of the LORD has been be revealed. We know
this now by faith, and on the Last Day all flesh shall see it
together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
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