Matthew 3:1-12 - 'Tis the Season for Repentance - December 8, 2019

“’Tis the season.” The question is: the season for what? The season for shopping? Baking? Parties? Working overtime? Expanding waistlines and shrinking bank accounts? Maybe out there. But not in here. Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending (CW 29), isn’t about shopping, it’s about Jesus’ second coming. The other Scripture lessons this morning didn’t speak about a Holly, Jolly Christmas but about the call to repent in light of judgment. Even Christmas itself, the fact that it was necessary for God to send his only Son into the gloomy darkness of this world to save it from itself, doesn’t exactly lead you to think about Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or a fat man in a red suit. Unlike Advent out there in the world, Advent in the Church is a season for repentance.

You know it’s Advent when John the Baptist shows up. He’s going to be our Advent preacher for the next two Sundays. But I need to warn you…you may not like him. The good, church-going, religious people of his day didn’t. He called them a brood of vipers, so I guess you can hardly blame them. And that wasn’t all. His appearance was odd – with the camel’s hair tuxedo, locust guts on his breath, and honey running down his beard. If he walked into church this morning, you might mistake him for a homeless man. In a sense, he was homeless. He was a man of the wilderness. John grew up in the wilderness, likely raised as an orphan after his elderly parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, died. There’s speculation that John was raised by a group called the Essenes, who were preparing for the coming of the Lord in the wilderness. Why? Well, they understood Isaiah 40:3 to be telling them to go into the desert to prepare the way for the Lord. So they did. And so did John. Luke tells us that he lived in the desert until he began his public ministry in the desert (Luke 1:80).

The question is: what, if anything, is behind John’s strange appearance and strange location and strange message? I suppose people today might ask the same question about a guy who wears a weird black dress and preaches behind a piece of furniture called a “pulpit” and claims that his words are actually God’s. But the point of all the oddness surrounding God’s spokesman then is the same as now. It’s not about the man. As Isaiah predicted he was nothing more than a voice in the desert. John’s appearance made it clear that it wasn’t about him, it was about his message and the one to come after him. He was the warm-up act, not the main event.

What about his preaching location – in the desert? Well, the Desert of Judea, a barren wilderness on the eastern side of the Jordan River, was rich in biblical history. It was the place where God had carried Elijah to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1-18). It was the place where Israel had crossed the parted waters of the Jordan from the wilderness to enter the Promised Land (Joshua 3-4). And now John was calling Israel back to the waters of the Jordan, back into the wilderness. He was calling them back to their roots, back to the basics, away from the man-made rules and institutions that had gotten between them and God, back to where it was abundantly clear that what stood between them and God was their sinfulness and all that stood between them and death was God’s grace.

In that sense, John was a throwback. A refreshing change from the worldly, pandering, superficial religion practiced by the Pharisees and Sadducees. He did not pander. He preached Law and Gospel. He called people to repent of their sins and be baptized for forgiveness. That was his message. That is how he prepared the way for the Lord. And…that is the only way that hearts twisted by sin and corrupted by unbelief are ever made straight to receive the Lord. He came preaching and baptizing. Sound familiar? It should. That’s what the Church should still be doing today. The Christian church today is to be the NT version of John the Baptist – calling the world to repentance, urging the world to be baptized for forgiveness in order to escape the coming wrath.

What do you think John would say to us if he were here today? He would certainly approve of the baptizing we do here. John was all about baptizing. He is called “John the Baptist” after all. And he would certainly applaud our public confession and absolution. But, at the same time, John wasn’t naïve. The Lord had blessed him with the gift of seeing right through a person to their heart – as he did with the Sadducees and Pharisees. What would he see if he were looking at your heart when we were confessing our sins earlier? Would he have noticed that your mind was wandering to other things? Would he see that you didn’t really mean what you said – that you just said it because that’s what we always say? What if he followed you around this week, would he notice you committing the same sins you just confessed? Would he give us the same look he gave the Pharisees and Sadducees, who hid behind their heritage and say, “You bunch of Lutheran snakes! Talk is cheap. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Show me some fruit. And don’t try to hide behind Martin Luther or brag about how pure your doctrine is or how much good you do or how nice your potlucks and soup suppers are. God doesn’t need you or anything you can offer any more than he needed the Israelites. He can raise up all the children he wants from a pile of stones.”

I warned you, didn’t I? You that you might not like John. John makes it clear that genuine repentance produces fruit; if it doesn’t it’s not repentance and it doesn’t matter what you said. We get this, right? We know that the child who says “I’m sorry” for splashing the bathwater on the floor three times, isn’t really penitent when they do it a fourth time. We know that that neighbor who blows their leaves and throws their snow onto our property isn’t really sorry when they do it 6 years in a row. On a more serious note, we know that the couple that’s living together outside of marriage aren’t really repentant when they don’t do anything to change the sinful situation; that people aren’t really repentant when they neglect Word and Sacrament for weeks or months; when the 8th commandment tells us to take others’ words and actions in the kindest possible way – and yet we repeatedly hurl criticism and blame at our fellow believers. Repentance produces fruit; if it doesn’t, it’s not repentance. And without the fruit of repentance, we deserve the fate of that fruitless fruit tree: to be cut down and thrown into the fire. We get that too, don’t we? Wouldn’t you do the very same with a tree you planted and watered and yet it refused to produce fruit. You would feel justified in cutting it down and throwing it away. That’s judgment and judgment is all that Christmas brings to all who pretend to repent and yet bear no fruit. Christmas might be the night when churches are fullest, but to all who think that appearing in God’s house once or twice a year will save them – John would ask the same question he asked the Pharisees and Sadducees: who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. In other words, those who don’t recognize their sin with repentance cannot recognize their Savior in faith.

That was John’s message. John preached the Law. John preached the wrath and judgment of God. He even viewed Jesus through the lens of the Law. Like many of the Old Testament prophets, John was looking beyond Christmas to Judgment. He saw the Messiah as the Judge who has his ax in hand and ready to strike. He’s coming to chop down the unfruitful trees and throw them into the fire. You can understand John’s confusion, then, when Jesus actually arrived on the scene; how he wasn’t preaching in the desert – preaching fire and brimstone, but among the people – preaching grace and forgiveness even to known sinners. “Where is your winnowing fork? Where is the ax chopping at the root? Where is the fire and wind to separate the wheat from the chaff, believer from unbeliever?”

Those will come. Judgment is coming, but there was something that Jesus needed to do first. And this is the good news. First Jesus had to undergo the judgment, by dying and rising. That’s the part John did not see and could not see. John could see justice and judgment, but he couldn’t see how God would bring about his merciful and gracious redemption. John could not see God’s grand plan of salvation played out in Jesus’ life because no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9).  

So John wasn’t wrong, he just didn’t have the full picture. Before Jesus would come in judgment he had to do his work of redemption. He had to be baptized as a sinner, a sinner who had never sinned. He had to take the place of sinners – take my place and yours – to become our sin, to shoulder and take away the sin of the world. He had to be cut down as an unfruitful tree. The fire of God’s wrath had to burn against him so that he might pour out the life-giving fire of the Spirit on the world. He had to become our curse, be hung on a cursed tree and hurled into the cursed depths of hell to remove the curse of sin from us.  

Preaching Law and Gospel: this is the way that God has always chosen to work, to convert sinners, to build his Church. It might not be the method taught by church growth experts or seem to appeal to the masses – especially when everyone is pandering to you in these days before Christmas, but it’s the way the almighty God has chosen to prepare a human race lost in sin to receive his Son. John prepares the way for Jesus. The Law always prepares the way for the Gospel. The commandments lead us in repentance to Jesus for forgiveness. And where Jesus is, the Law is silenced. Jesus is the end of the law for all who believe (Romans 10:4). Where the Law screams “do” and “don’t do,” the Gospel proclaims the glorious truth that in Jesus it is finished (John 19:30).

So follow John, this voice in the wilderness. Don’t be offended by how he looks or what he eats or where he preaches. Listen to his message. Follow where his finger is pointing. Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). John is your Advent reminder that you need baby Jesus. You need him even more than you think you need him. You need him as much this year as you ever have. You need him as more than just a figure in your nativity scenes. You need him to save you. You need him to die and rise for you. You need him to be chopped down by the ax of God’s justice, you need him to be picked up like chaff and thrown into the fire of hell in your place. So, as strange as John might be, as strange as faithful preachers today may be, thank God for voices like John’s. They cut through all the secular and sentimental junk that fills these days before Christmas and go straight to the heart; to our sinful, rebellious, wayward hearts. They prepare our hearts for Christmas by calling us to repentance and pointing to Jesus as the only one who can save us from the coming wrath.

Yes, ‘tis the season. Not the season for shopping or baking or decorating but the season for repentance. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. And don’t let repentance simply become Sunday morning lip service. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Let the Law knock down the high, prideful places in your heart and the Gospel raise you up from the valley of despair and then you will be ready. You will be ready to receive God’s gift of a Christmas Savior. More importantly, you will be ready to welcome the Judge when he returns. Advent is a season of preparation. Not the kind of preparation that takes place in the kitchen or at the mall – but right here, in the heart. Advent is a time for preaching repentance and producing the fruit of repentance. Amen.