Yr. C, Advent 2                December 8, 2024
Luke 3:1-6                        Pastor Ryan Wolfe

“When the Lord Comes Near, we find peace in his call”

Are you feeling the pressure of Christmas yet? Maybe it hits me differently as a pastor with services to plan and musicians to get things to. But it’s not just pastors that have Christmas pressure. We want our houses clean and ready for out-of-town guests. The kids have concerts and programs to get ready for. We have to find just the right gifts for those we love. Pressure! What a welcome relief it is to gather again in worship and remember that a real Christmas needs none of that. All we need to meet Christ is repentance. We don’t need to work to impress Jesus – indeed, repentance is the opposite of work. Repentance is humbly admitting our sin while joyfully trusting that God comes to us in love. It’s why the angel’s message at Jesus’ birth was one of “peace on earth to all men on whom God’s favor rests.

Christmas is supposed to be about peace. Last week we were reminded how Jesus comes to us in his Word while we wait for him to come again in glory. Today as we hear these famous words from Luke about John the Baptist let’s consider not just what God says about John, but what he’s saying about us. When the Lord comes near we find peace in God’s call. Both his call to repentance and his call of salvation.

The generation of people that lived at John’s time needed a call to repentance. Not because they hadn’t been told about their sins before, but because they kept refusing to hear it when they were told. The people of Israel had been given the special privilege of knowing that a Messiah was coming. Out of all the billions of people on earth, God had revealed to them that the Savior would come and deliver the world from sin.

But you only have to know a little bit of Bible history to know how Israel repeatedly showed that though God called them, they often didn’t hear him. Israel failed to repent. Repentance is really a very simple concept. It literally means to turn back or turn around. To recognize that there’s something wrong with the way that we’re going and turn from it to a different way. Someone points out our sin. We realize the path of sin we’re on is leading us to hell. And so we humble ourselves and look to God for forgiveness. That’s repentance.

But that’s not what Israel showed throughout their history. God sent prophets to his people to call them to repentance. Men named Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Micah, Malachi and a host of others. And over and over, those prophets shared God’s call to repentance with Israel. A call to turn from their sin. The people’s reaction? Far too many times it was indifference or worse. Elijah & Elisha were scorned by their countrymen and king. Other prophets were ignored, persecuted, or killed. God called out to his people, but they refused to listen. And for their impenitence, God brought judgment. He took their nation into captivity. Destroyed their homes and capital city. God used the Babylonians to tear down his own temple to show them what they had done. Even after he showed grace by bringing a remnant back, he let his people fall under the rule of Rome.

John the Baptist was the people’s last chance to repent before the long-promised Messiah came. John was the voice of God once again calling out to God’s people for repentance. He came with an easily summarized message. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!” It was a message all about preparation, and that’s why John is the Advent prophet. John told the people that the Savior was coming, and indeed had already come. As the quote from Isaiah describes here, John’s work was to “clear the path” – to “prepare the way” – so that people would see the Promised One coming.

And he did it same way he had done it through the prophets for centuries before. God sent John to show the people their sin. To call them to repent, to change. John prepared his generation for Jesus by pointing out sin, and leading people to repentance. To you, God has sent Brohn and Schramm and Enter and Wolfe. The messages you hear in these services, and from this pulpit continue a centuries-long message from God to his people.

The message doesn’t have change because our sinful hearts don’t change. That call to repentance that John spoke speaks still to us, maybe even more because the kingdom of heaven is 200 years nearer now. Do you hear that call still? The abomination of our sins is a stench to God. Christians making a mockery of marriage by living together before it, or cheating during it, or polluting it with pornography. Business owners cheating their employees and customers. Employees stealing time or resources from their work. Christians who put their names on the church membership list but don’t worship, study, or serve in that church. Sometimes our sins are obvious. Sometimes they’re more…subtle. The laziness, pride, and selfishness only we see and know in ourselves. But God knows. That’s why he calls us to repent. To turn from those ways and the destruction it leads to. Ywa, this voice of John calling out in the wilderness calls out to us across centuries too., “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is near!”

Repentance, though, is an interesting thing. God calls us to do it, but we can’t. We can’t stop sinning, no matter how much we want to. Our sinful nature doesn’t get weaker with age. The devil doesn’t tire from his evil work and the world always has new temptations to share. But in grace, God provides once again for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The preaching of God’s law and our sin is always meant to prepare people for Christ. For the gospel. To open our eyes. To lead us to give up on saving ourselves and instead turn to him. By calling us to repentance, God prepares to call us for salvation. Only when we’ve recognized that the life of sin we’re living leads only to hell, only once we’ve given up on the pride that says we’re not so bad – only then we find that God is there to take us by the hand and show us our salvation already completed. It’s as if God has to knock down the little castles of sand we make for ourselves so that he can bring us into his own palace of true strength and beauty.

When John called out in the desert, crowds came to him by the thousands. As these repentant sinners came to John, he didn’t just tell them to go on their way and try to do better. Do you remember what John said to his disciples when Jesus finally arrived at the Jordan? “Look the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John’s message of law and judgment always led to his preaching of forgiveness to the penitent. The law must always lead to the gospel.

Of course today we call John “the Baptist”. Luke here describes John’s baptism as “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” John’s baptism was something completely new for the Jews. Jews had baptism and baptized people before John, but it was only for Gentiles who had decided to adopt the Jewish laws. Up until this baptism was a sign of burden on people. A commitment to live a certain way. To do good works, you might say. But John’s baptism was for repentance and forgiveness, and he urged all the Jews to be baptized. This was something new. Something different. John’s baptism wasn’t a contract of obligation; it was a seal of salvation. The Holy Spirit took those repentant hearts and gave them exactly the peace they needed. The comfort that God was with them. Their Savior had come. And God’s salvation was for all mankind.

As we prepare this Advent season for the Lord to come near once again, we hear God’s call for salvation in our own baptisms. There the Holy Spirit came into our sinful hearts and called us away from the burden of law into the joy of salvation. God created a new person within us different than the sinful nature we were born into. A new person who wants what God wants. One who wants to know God better and more fully. This new self wants to follow God’s will in the way we live and the things we do. The new self recognizes that in Christ we are forgiven for our hidden laziness, pride, and selfishness. Forgiven for those missed times at church, lost opportunities to serve, sins in marriage or business. Those sins are washed away, sealed by baptism as a permanent reminder. And all that remains are the robes of righteousness that Jesus won for us in his life and in his death. Fellow sinners, repent and trust that in a world without true and lasting peace you have the most important peace right inside you. Peace with God because our sins are forgiven by the blood of the lamb.

So today, hear John’s call from the wilderness and prepare yourself for Christ’s coming once again. If some sin has you trapped or deceived, turn from it today so that it doesn’t drag you away from the Savior God who loves so freely and fully. Know that you don’t have to do what the sinful world does because you don’t belong to that world anymore. Christ has come and called you to salvation. Christ has carried your sin for you already. No guilt remains. You are his, and his alone. The unbroken message of the prophets remains for us today: Prepare the way for the Lord and see God’s salvation. Amen.