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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” So preached John the Baptizer, so preached Jesus (Matthew 4:17), so preached the twelve apostles He sent out (Matthew 10:7), and, with today’s Gospel Reading and this sermon, so preaches the Church this day. Last week, on the First Sunday in Advent, as on every First Sunday in Advent in our three-year lectionary series, we heard of Jesus’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, and this week, on the Second Sunday in Advent, as on every Second Sunday in Advent in our three-year lectionary series, we hear of John the Baptizer’s preaching repentance as preparation for the Messiah. (Next week, on the Third Sunday in Advent, as on every Third Sunday in Advent in our three-year lectionary series, we will hear more of John the Baptizer, though the event we hear of on that Sunday is not the same in all three years.) Today we focus on John the Baptizer’s, Jesus’s, the apostles’, and the Church’s preaching, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”
“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” So John the Baptizer came preaching, in the wilderness of Judea, in those days, fulfilling God’s prophecy of John spoken hundreds of years earlier through the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah’s fortieth chapter originally comforted God’s people still captive in Babylon, mentioning this voice in the wilderness and its giving the command to prepare for the triumphant return of the Lord and His people to their land. Later the people did return, crossing the great stretch of wilderness between Babylon and Israel, but the greater comfort is the greater fulfillment of that prophecy that heralds the coming of the Lord’s anointed one, His Messiah, His Christ. Repentance prepares a way for Him not a way across a literal desert but a way across a figurative desert, across the hearts of His people, hearts filled with hindrances and obstacles that separate us from Him. John dressed and ate like prophets before him, especially Elijah, who had disappeared in that same wilderness and whose own “return” in some sense was prophesied before the coming of the Messiah. John the Baptizer was that “Elijah” in a sense, and, perhaps to some extent recognizing that, people from Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him (imagine our walking from Kilgore to Henderson), and those people were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
Well, at least most of the people going out to him confessed their sins and were baptized and so received the forgiveness of their sins. When John saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he called them a “brood of vipers”. In today’s Gospel Reading St. Matthew does not tell us whether or not John in fact baptized the Pharisees and Sadducees, but elsewhere St. Luke tells us that the Pharisees and “lawyers” rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by John (Luke 7:30).
In today’s Gospel Reading John warned the Pharisees and Sadducees about thinking that they might be escaping God’s wrath when they were still subject to His wrath, and John’s words likewise warn you and warn me. Maybe you are a false saint who thinks that you do not need to repent. Or, maybe you are a false Christian who thinks that you earn something by repenting or are saved by something other than Jesus Christ. Or, maybe we are false penitents who think that we have repented but are ungrateful to God, still indulge our bodies in lusts, or otherwise show contempt for His commandments. By nature, we all are like the Pharisees and Sadducees, a “brood of vipers”, offspring of poisonous snakes, vicious children of that ancient serpent the devil, who inherit sin and too often let it have free course in our lives. By nature, we all deserve the wrath to come, not God’s anger, but His holy and righteous condemnation of our sin. Eternal torment in hell, justly awaits every sinner on the last day, but, as John the Baptizer makes clear in today’s Gospel Reading, we are subject to judgment even now. We all need to hear the continued preaching, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”
“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” We all need to hear that continued preaching, but how do we, as individuals, respond to that continued preaching? Do we more than go through the motions of repentance? Are we converted from unbelief to faith? Do we turn away from ourselves and our pet sins? On our own, we cannot repent in such ways, any more than people on their own can, as Isaiah 40 calls for, lift up valleys and make mountains and hills low. But God comes to us and through His Word and Sacrament so enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. He forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake.
As John the Baptizer, the prophesied forerunner of the Lord came, so also came the prophesied Lord Himself: the Shoot from the stump of Jesse, prophesied in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 11:1-10), the Branch from His roots; the servant of Jew and Gentile alike, as St. Paul describes in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 15:4-13), Who welcomes us for the glory of God; the Mightier One coming John the Baptizer in the Gospel Reading described as coming after him, whose sandals John was not worthy to carry. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in the flesh of the man Jesus is able to gather His wheat into the barn and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. In the person of Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s reign, is at hand, is here. So, we should repent and receive Him. In Jesus, God shows His love for us, and, with His life of perfect obedience, death on the cross, and resurrection from the grave, He for us fatally bruises the serpent’s head and raises up those who believe as children to Abraham, whose belief was credited to him as righteousness. Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10). Jesus forgives our sins, and He does so through His Word and Sacraments.
Today’s Gospel Reading refers to John, the son of the priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, with the title “the Baptist” or “the Baptizer”. (Especially here in East Texas, I, for what I hope are obvious reasons, prefer the title “the Baptizer” to “the Baptist”.) At a minimum, the title helps distinguish “the Baptizer” from other “Johns” in the Bible, such as John the disciple, apostle, and evangelist, who no doubt also baptized. But, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth especially deserves the title “the Baptizer” for not only was his baptizing one of the most-identifiable characteristics of his prophetic ministry, but through him God gave the sacrament of baptism to the Church.
Like the Church’s, the apostles’, and Jesus’s own binding and official preaching, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”, John, through his water baptism with the Word, worked the forgiveness of sins, rescued from death and the devil, and gave eternal salvation to all who believe. The benefits of John’s baptisms in the river Jordan are not substantially different from the benefits of baptisms in our time at fonts such as this one, though in some sense all baptisms after Jesus’s death and resurrection are greater than John’s since the Messiah since has come and fulfilled His work and so abundantly gives the Holy Spirit. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God once spoke of sprinkling water and thereby removing our hearts of stone and giving us hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:25-26), and He does that through Holy Baptism. Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to John and were being baptized by him. We find no distinction of age or ability. Similarly, Jesus commissioned His apostles and their successors to make disciples of all nations, baptizing then in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all that He entrusted to their care. Again, no distinction of age or ability. In such ways Jesus is with us always, to the end of the age. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, here, in preaching. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, here, in baptism. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, here, in individual absolution. And, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, here, in bread that is Jesus’s body and wine that is His blood, given and shed for you and for me for the forgiveness of our sins and so for life and salvation.
John the Baptizer preached, Jesus preached, the twelve apostles He sent out preached, and the Church this day preaches, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” We do not repent only in the season of Advent, or only in the seasons of Advent and Lent, or only on Sundays, but we repent every day. The form of the Greek verb translated “Repent” indicates an ongoing state or condition, a life lived in repentance, appropriate for our Lord’s final coming at any time. The first of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses was that God wills the entire life of believers to be one of repentance, and our Lutheran Confessions likewise describe how saving faith in Jesus Christ lives in repentance. Fruit in keeping with repentance should follow, but, when fruit does not follow as we might like, we need not necessarily despair, for God knows our hearts and the genuineness of our repentance, that we may want to but at times fail to do better. We always pray, as we did in the Collect this day, that the Lord would stir up our hearts to make ready the way of His only-begotten Son, that by His coming we may be enabled to serve the Lord with pure minds.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +