Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Luke 3:1-6
Pastor: Pastor Berg
Sermon Date:  December 5, 2021

Is there any single event in our lives that we prepare for more on an annual basis as Christmas? If you stop and think about it, Christmas preparations begin before Thanksgiving. Our school children have been practicing for their service for weeks already. And now all through this month of December, we’ll be getting ready for that grand Christmas celebration. There are decorations to be hung, trees to be trimmed, presents to be purchased and wrapped, cards and letters to be written and signed, cookies to be baked and on and on. All that preparation!

Interestingly, Christmas preparations aren’t without Biblical precedent. What we spend almost two months preparing for every year, God has prepared for all eternity. And ever since the fall into sin, God has been preparing his people for the arrival of Christmas. To help with those preparations, God promised that he would send a messenger, a herald to prepare the way for the Savior to come and complete the work that God had for him to do. That messenger and herald was John. John, whom we know as the baptizer, prepared the way for Jesus to come. He did so by preaching. This morning, as we add one more thing and undoubtedly the most important thing to our Christmas preparations, we hear some Preparation Advice from an Advent Preacher.

The Evangelist, Luke, was not an eyewitness to the life of Jesus. A contemporary of the Apostle Paul, Luke did extensive research into the details of what happened. The Holy Spirit led him to record some rather extensive details about what was happening when John appeared on the scene. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene—during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.” Luke is very careful to establish the exact time when John’s public ministry began. All of these secular rulers can be found in the pages of history. John is not a mythical character in some epic novel.  He came at a real time in history, to a real people, with a real message. And that message is still valid today. 

Luke tells us, “The word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. He went into the whole region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Just as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet: A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight. Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be made low. The crooked will become straight, and the rough ways smooth. And everyone will see the salvation of God.””  

John was the messenger, but the message wasn’t his own. John didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to preach up and down the Jordan River. The Word of God came to John. John was that messenger that was prophesied by Isaiah. John lived in the wilderness. HIs dress was reminiscent of Elijah. He was as rough and rugged as they come. And yet this was all intentional. His dress and his place of living were a picture of the wilderness of the hearts of Israel. John’s audience had turned themselves away from God. They had not been following his ways or paths. Their lives were filled with valleys of despair, mountains of sin, and crooked paths of disobedience. And so John came by God’s plan and with God’s message: “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near! Turn from your wickedness and turn back to me!” 

What do you think of when you hear that word “repent”? Is it law, something we have to do? Or is it gospel, something that God has done for us?  It sounds like something that we have to do, doesn’t it? It sounds like something that has to be produced within ourselves, by our own strength. And yes, it is true, we need to hear the preaching of God’s Law. We need to hear that our lives are filled with mountains of personal sins. We need to realize that each one of us has those dark valleys that we don’t want anyone ever to see. We need to understand that our path, our natural path, is a crooked one. So, when we hear that word “repent,” when we hear the prophecy from Isaiah with words like, “prepare,” and “make,” it sounds like something we need to produce. 

But we also need to remember that turning away from our natural way of thinking and living is not something we can do on our own. By nature, we’re dead in our transgressions and sins. We can’t come to God. We can’t turn back to him. We can’t meet him halfway. No, repentance is not something that we work in ourselves. Repentance is the humble admission of our sin combined with the joyful trust that everything we needed to bring us close to God has already been done by him. You see, repentance is a gift of God’s grace. Repentance is not only a changing of our minds about sin, repentance is a changing of our minds about salvation. We can’t earn it. We can’t achieve it. It’s always only and ever a gift. This complete change of mind and heart that the Scripture demands is not found in us, but is given to us.

Think of the farmer’s field. Right now, that field is rock solid, frozen hard. You won’t make a dent in it with a simple spade. That’s our hearts by nature. There is no way, with our single spades of works could ever turn that heart into a bountiful field. But then God comes with the plow of his law. He is able to turn over that rock hard soil of our hearts and make them fertile ground to receive the seed of his Gospel. That’s what the preaching does. That’s how our hearts are prepared for Christmas. 

Listen again to what Luke tells us: “He went into the whole region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Just as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet: A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight. Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be made low. The crooked will become straight, and the rough ways smooth. And everyone will see the salvation of God.””  

Preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And what happens? Look at the passives here! Look at what’s happening to us. By God’s power, the valleys of despair are filled with God’s undeserved love in Christ. The mountains and hills of sin are made low as Jesus takes each one of those sins and washes them away in his blood. The crooked and rough are made straight and smooth as God works through the gospel in Word and Sacrament to empower his people to follow his will. And as we stand prepared and forgiven, we see God’s Salvation. We see Jesus coming just as God promised. 

The true beauty of this Preparation Advice from John, our Advent Preacher, is to let God do the preparing! In fact, that’s all we can do. In every picture of God’s promise of salvation, God comes to man, not man to God. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, God went to find them as they hid in shame. God made the promise and asked nothing in return. When God came to virgin Mary with his messenger, Gabriel, it was God who was with Mary, not Mary with God. Isaiah says and Luke quotes, “And everyone will see the salvation of God.” This is not God needing to be saved, but rather the salvation that belongs to him! Man cannot hope to come to God. We can’t even meet him halfway. The way to God needs to be prepared and God is the one who has prepared it. Through his law and gospel, God works that change of heart in man so that Christ and come in. God can plow up our frozen, hard, hearts so that his Gospel can take root. And when God graces us with his Word and Sacrament, we do indeed see God’s Salvation!

We see God’s salvation in the little baby, lying in the manger. We see God’s salvation in the young boy in the temple, needing to be in his Father’s house. We see God’s salvation in the man, Jesus, who healed the sick, comforted the brokenhearted, even raised the dead. We see God’s salvation in Jesus, dying on the cross. We see God’s salvation in the empty tomb. We see God’s salvation in Jesus promising to come again. We see God’s salvation in the daily use of Scripture. It literally jumps off the page. We see God’s salvation as we enter and exit this house of worship. Every time we look at the font, God’s salvation is there. Every time we eat his meal, God’s salvation is there. God has kept his promise!

So how are those preparations coming? I’m not concerned with the cookies or the tree, I’m talking about John’s advice for us? Have we prepared our hearts to greet our coming king? My dear friends, we thank God for sending John and for continuing to send his messengers and heralds to us today! We thank God for providing the means of grace and the power for us to prepare. And when we understand that our preparations are only possible by God’s grace and blessed by him, preparing for Christmas isn’t drudgery, but joyful! Let’s take the advice of our Advent preacher. Let’s turn from our sins by God’s power, and let’s look upon God’s salvation, in the manger, and one day soon coming on the clouds of heaven. Amen.