Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent - Gaudete - Isa 40:1-8

 

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.