1.
Please pray with me.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing
in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The
message for our 2nd Advent Midweek Service is taken from Matthew
3:1-12, where we hear John the Baptist say in verses 2 &3,“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand. . . . ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’ ” (Mt
3:2–3) The sermon is entitled, “Stir Up
the Power of Preparation,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
A pastor was once
visiting with the adult daughter of one of his fellow minister friends and
talking about their family Christmas traditions. Here’s basically what she told
him: “I’m not crazy about Christmas. In
my home, because my father was the pastor, we were so busy with church work we
really didn’t have time to enjoy Christmas. It was exhausting.” I know what she meant. Pastors, and often
their families, are so focused on helping others have a wonderful Christmas
that they don’t have much time or energy left to enjoy it themselves. One
pastor came home from church one Christmas Day, fell to his knees, and prayed, “I thank You, Lord, that this Christmas that
You have given me is over.” Maybe
it’s the same for you. Maybe you’re so focused on helping your family, friends,
and church have a happy holiday that you wear yourself out and aren’t
experiencing the joy of Christmas yourself. If that’s true, maybe it’s time we
step back and look at our preparation for the arrival of God’s Son.
3.
The Collect for
the Second Sunday in Advent, the second “stir up” prayer for our midweek, helps
us get on the right track: “Stir up our
hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of Your only-begotten Son, that by His coming we may be
enabled to serve You with pure minds; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.” Maybe you remember from
English class in school that when a sentence begins with an active verb and
there’s no subject before the verb, it’s understood that the subject is “You.”
So what the collect really says is, “You stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready”—to prepare—“the way.” If Advent preparations exhaust us, maybe
we’ve got it wrong. See, we actually don’t do the preparing. God does. God prepares
us, through Word and Sacrament, so when Jesus comes we serve Him in purity.
4.
Here’s how God
does it. First, through Word and
Sacrament, God prepares us to serve his Son in purity as we confess our sins. Christ’s advent, his coming, whether as a
baby or at the end of the age, is always in the shadow of judgment. God’s hope
for man was that we would love and serve him in holiness forever. It didn’t
work out that way. God created us with a mind of our own, and we’ve all freely
chosen to love and serve ourselves rather than God. That’s called sin. And sin
calls for judgment. For sinners to get
back in fellowship with God and escape judgment, we need to repent. We need to
confess our sins. We need to turn from sin and seek God’s forgiveness. That’s
the message of John the Baptist. “Prepare
the way of the Lord,” John cries (v 3). “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (v 2).
5.
If we don’t heed
his message, we can expect a terrifying encounter with God when Jesus comes: “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” (v 12). “Flee from the wrath to
come” (v 7). “The axe is laid to the root of the trees” (v 10). That’s pretty violent and scary stuff! It’s
supposed to be. This is God’s Law. God’s intent here through his Law is to move
us to see the danger we’re in so that we’ll repent, turn in faith to Christ,
and change our ways. As we do, we have God’s assurance of forgiveness. That’s Gospel, the Good News. Gospel is also
part of John’s message. As we repent of our sins, as we are baptized, God’s
gift of forgiveness is ours. Mark tells us, “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” All the people “were going out to him and
were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (Mk 1:4–5).
6.
If you want to be
prepared for Christmas, if you want to be prepared to meet the Son of God when
he comes, confession, repentance, Baptism, and forgiveness are what you need.
And all of these God makes happen through his Word and Sacraments. You don’t have to buy a thing. God does all
the work. He gives us his Word in proclamation and Sacrament. Through these,
the Holy Spirit opens our ears to hear and our hearts to receive. As we hear
and receive the Good News of Jesus’ suffering and death for our sins, we’re
forgiven, we think differently about sin, and we start walking in a new
direction, toward God, not away from him.
When that message sinks in, we can relax and have a happy Christmas.
7.
Second, through
Word and Sacrament, God prepares us to serve his Son in purity as we bear fruit. I have an insight on this. It’s that most people, even those who profess
to be Christians, think everybody goes to heaven regardless of faith. It’s no
longer that you have to be good enough to go to heaven—which is a false
doctrine in itself—but you have to be bad enough not to. Only really bad people are barred from
heaven. That’s what many people think these days. But if that’s what we think, we’re not
prepared to meet Jesus when he comes. According to the Bible, spending a happy
eternity with God is in the context of repentance of sin and faith in Christ,
which always leads to bearing the fruit of righteousness. “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance,” John tells the crowds who
come to him (Mt 3:8). Otherwise, “Every
tree . . . that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire”
(v 10).
8.
John’s message
wasn’t too popular with some people. Herod was more than happy to let John do
his preaching and baptizing as long as John required nothing of the king
personally. But repentance wasn’t just for the common people or the religious
people; it was for the ruling people as well. So when John rebuked Herod for
stealing his brother’s wife and having an affair with her, Herod threw John in
prison. And later, he ordered that John’s head be cut off. John’s message still isn’t popular. Many of
us like to think of ourselves as Christians but have no real concern for
repentance or bearing the fruit of righteousness. We’re materialistic, always
wanting more than we have. We’re sexually immoral, even celebrating it in our
entertainment. Our culture is becoming meaner and ruder, egged on by popular
music, radio and TV talk shows, video games, politicians, and Internet bloggers.
9.
And if those
things aren’t
true of us, we’re probably self-righteous. We may think, we’re better than everyone
else, and God must be happy with us. Well, he’s not. If you read the Gospels,
the people Jesus scolds aren’t the tax collectors and the prostitutes or the
thief on the cross dying beside him. No, it’s the self-righteous, those who
think of themselves as good. These are the people John calls a “brood of vipers!” (v 7). The point is, everyone needs to repent, or
we’ll end up in the bonfire on Judgment Day. We don’t want this to happen to us.
So, we need God to change us through his Word and Sacrament. Through these, we
learn repentance and faith and what constitutes the righteous fruit God wants
us to bear.
10.
So what kind of
fruit are we talking about? One text always comes to my mind, Gal 5:22–23.
There St. Paul tells us, “The fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control.” Elsewhere, Paul says, “The greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). But you can’t legislate how the fruit of the
Spirit grows, in fact, the fruit of the Spirit grows in different ways.
Nobody’s the same. Nobody’s fruit is going to look exactly the same. John told
those with extra food and clothing to share with those who had none. He told
tax collectors to collect no more than they were authorized to. He told
soldiers to be content with their wages and not to threaten or falsely accuse
people (Lk 3:10–14). You could also say
the fruit of the Spirit is just living according to the Ten Commandments,
loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving your
neighbor as yourself.
11.
Finally, through
Word and Sacrament, God prepares us to serve his Son in purity by giving us the Holy
Spirit. John tells us, “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” (Mt 3:11). Now that’s a Baptism to look forward to! We need the Holy Spirit! We need him because
without him we’re dead in our sins and powerless to do anything. We can’t work
up repentance and faith. We can’t produce the fruit of righteousness in our
lives. Without the Holy Spirit we aren’t alive to God. We’re helpless. But with the Holy Spirit, who
comes to us through the Word and Baptism, we can do and be everything God wants.
12.
I think key to
understanding why this is true is knowing what the Holy Spirit’s name is in
Greek. It’s pneuma,
meaning “breath” or “air.” If you and I don’t have breath or
air, what are we? We’re dead! But with breath or air, we’re alive. Remember what God did when he made man?
Genesis says, “The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living
creature” (Gen 2:7). The breath of life is the Spirit of God without which
man is dead. When Adam sinned, you could say the Spirit left; Adam died to God,
even though he was still moving around.
13.
But through the
Word of God and Baptism, the Spirit comes back. Life from God is breathed into
us once again. We come alive to God and are enabled to serve him and worship
him in purity. But without the Spirit, we can’t. Jesus once had a conversation about this with
a Samaritan woman at a well in John 4. She was feeling uncomfortable with some
of the things Jesus said. He seemed to know everything there was to know about
her. So, she changed the subject. “Our
fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you [Jews] say that in Jerusalem is the
place where people ought to worship.” Do you recall how Jesus answered? He
said, “The hour is coming, and is now
here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth”
(Jn 4:20–23).
14.
How do you
worship God in spirit and in truth? Clearly it has nothing to do with location,
whether on a mountain or in a temple in Jerusalem. But it has everything to do
with spirit and truth. Spirit means life.
And this life comes through the Holy Spirit as we hear the truth of God in the
Word and are baptized. As we hear, as we are baptized, as we confess our sins
and repent, as we believe in Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away our sins, as
we bring forth the fruit of repentance, we are ready to serve our Lord in
purity and meet him when he comes at the Last Day. Prayer:
Lord Jesus, through your Spirit,
working repentance and faith in our hearts through Word and Sacrament, make us
ready to greet you now as we serve you daily, in the hour of our death, and
when you come again. In your name we pray. Amen.
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