Preached · December 8, 2019
Series · Advent 2019
Text · Matthew 3; Matthew 3.1-12
Preparation Is Important
Preparation is important, because if we don't prepare, then we won't be ready for whatever it is we're preparing for.
When Emily and I first moved into this area almost ten years ago, we lived in the condos by the Okoboji movie theater. We were a year into our marriage, just learning how to cook and how to be a married couple together in our early twenties. And I read this article about how to prepare a steak from frozen. It was about skipping the preparation, which sounded really great to me, because you could save a bunch of time — you could prepare a steak from frozen. The instructions from this terrible article said that you take the steak from frozen, you heat your skillet as hot as you possibly can, you put some oil into it, and you throw the steak on. And it looked — this is not a true picture, but it looked something like this.
No joke: Emily's on the phone on the couch, looking away from the kitchen. I'm in the kitchen, I throw the steak on, and she hears this "woof." As she turns, she drops the phone — she's like, "I gotta go!" Fortunately, there was no tragedy. I just slid the lid onto the pan, the fire was put out, turned off the stove, and I'm like, "Well, I guess tonight's another pizza night."
Preparation is key for success. If you don't prepare, you end up with flames like that — kitchen fires everywhere. You need to prepare in order to have success for whatever it is you're preparing for.
Advent: Remembering the Future
And that's what Advent is about. It can be very easy to get to Christmas, year after year after year, not prepared, because we've spent the past 360-odd days in a rush and in a hurry, forgetting what Christ has done and what Jesus promised he was going to do. My favorite summary of what Advent is: it's remembering the future. Advent is about remembering that Jesus came, and that what we believe about Jesus as Christians — what the church has historically believed — is that Jesus was God in the flesh, that he was Emmanuel, God with us. So Advent is about remembering that God showed up in a specific place in history, at a specific time, in a specific location. And we don't remember just for the sake of getting wistful and nostalgic. Nostalgia will get you nowhere. What we're doing is remembering the future — remembering that what Christ has done, he promised he will do again, and he will make all things new. But if we think we don't have to prepare for that, we might end up looking a lot like the characters in the early chapters of the Gospels, who were not ready for God to show up. So we have to remember the future.
Text: Matthew 3:1-12
Our ushers are going to hand out Bibles; we're in the book of Matthew, chapter 3. If you didn't bring one today, no shame in that — just put your hand up in the air and somebody will hand a Bible to you. It's the first book in the New Testament; if you need to use the index, that's fine. And if you don't own a Bible, or if you've lost it, you can keep this one — it's our gift to you this morning.
We're talking about a character named John the Baptist, and his work is all about preparation. So if you're able, would you stand with me for the public reading of God's Word? This is what Matthew writes:
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is he who is spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: "A voice of one calling in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'" John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. And people went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan, confessing their sins. They were baptized by him in the Jordan River. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, John said to them, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think that you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me comes one who is far more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not even worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
Brothers and sisters, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.
John Has the Work of Preparation
As we look at today's passage, there are a few points I want to bring up. Number one is the fact that John has the work of preparation.
So let's talk a little bit about John the Baptist. John is a relative — a cousin — of Jesus. Jesus and John probably knew each other; they had some relationship as they grew up. What's not clear to me is whether John knew who Jesus was going to become. Maybe he had an idea. But John had the message of preparation. He knew that Messiah, the Promised One of Israel, was going to be showing up any day now, and John was given the mission and purpose of preparing the way for the Messiah.
As we've talked about many times over the years, Israel desperately needed and wanted a Messiah. Messiah is a Hebrew word that means God's anointed, and anointing is what you did for a king. So what Israel was desperately needing and seeking was a new kind of king. They had all sorts of ideas and expectations wrapped up about who this king — this anointed, this Messiah, or the Greek word Christ — was going to be. What kind of king was he going to be? What was he going to do? How was he going to rule and reign? And like most people would in that time, they expected a king to be violent and bloody and to kick their oppressors out. They expected someone to show up who would be kingly, who would show up in a kingly fashion, whatever that means. And John has the work of saying, "Okay, the king is coming. Get ready."
Declaring the Kingdom
Now, John has this work, and he does it in a couple of different ways. First of all, he declares the kingdom. The kingdom is the hope and expectation of Israel. They had gone through the wringer as a nation. They had suffered, they had been abused, they had been exiled and moved around and sent from here to there and everywhere, made slaves, had their property taken from them, had their buildings destroyed. And what they so deeply desired was a kingdom — a place where God's rule and reign was true. The kingdom is where God shows up and makes all things right. And the way the kingdom shows up is by Messiah, by Christ, coming. So John the Baptist says, if you want the king, and if you want the kingdom — if you want God to rule and reign in this place again — you have to get ready.
Preparing the Way Through Baptism
So he has the work of preparation by declaring the kingdom and by preparing the way. How does John prepare the way? He does this through baptism. Now, baptism to us — if you've been in Christian circles for any length of time, maybe you've seen an infant baptism, maybe you've seen an adult baptism, maybe you were here a couple of weeks ago when we baptized a lot of people — baptism almost seems normal to us. It seems like the kind of thing you do when you're doing something that has to do with following Jesus. But if you're a first-century Jew and you hear that John the Baptist is baptizing — a word that literally means "emerging," is that a word? — dipping people into water so that they are entirely wet and getting them back out again — you would be a little befuddled, because Jews don't need to get baptized. Baptizing was an act in those days that usually was done to Gentiles, to non-Jewish people, who were going to get circumcised, start following the kosher laws, and start following the ways of the Jews — believing in Yahweh, offering sacrifices at the temple. They were being proselytized; they were coming into the Jewish faith. So Jews didn't get baptized, because they were already Jews. They were born into the family of Abraham, they had been circumcised if they were boys as young children, or they had married into the family, they had offered sacrifices, they had gone to the festivals all their lives. They didn't need baptism. Only the Gentiles did, if they decided to follow after the way of Yahweh. But John comes along and says, "No, no, no. Even us Jews — even those of us who have been part of the right family, part of the right tradition, doing all the right things all these years in anticipation of the King and the kingdom that is to come — even we need to get baptized." John is critiquing the religion of his day and saying, "Something isn't right, something has to change. If we want Messiah to show up, we have to admit we were wrong, and we've got to go a different direction."
Preparation Requires Repentance
And that gets us to what preparation requires from us. If John is doing the work of preparation by declaring the kingdom and preparing the way, preparation requires from us the work of repentance.
Preparation means we have to look at the situation at hand and say, "This ain't ready yet." We look at the frozen steak and say, "I probably shouldn't throw that into a screaming-hot skillet, should I?" Preparation means, "Oh — our parents, our in-laws, our family, our relatives are coming over, and my house looks like a disaster zone. FEMA is about to show up with a trailer." Preparation means looking at our lives and saying, "If Emmanuel, God with us, were to show up right now, would I be ready? Would he recognize me as someone who has dedicated his life to following this Messiah? Would he recognize my life as the result of someone who has given his life to follow Messiah? Or would Emmanuel, God with us, show up and say, 'This ain't ready. This isn't even ready for my rule and my reign'?" Because if you want a new ruler, a new king, you have to come to a place where you're ready to say, "Take it. It's yours."
Preparation requires the work of repentance. The Greek word is metanoia — to change your mind, to return to what God had originally called you to. Go back to the place where God created you and said, "You're my son, you're my daughter, you're the Imago Dei, and I love you." Go back to that place. I say it requires the work of repentance because repentance isn't a singular action. Repentance isn't a one-and-done deed. Repentance isn't something that happens overnight. Repentance is ongoing action; it requires a life change that keeps going toward repentance.
Repentance Requires Confession
Repentance requires two things. Number one: confession. Confession is the idea that something is wrong in the first place. Confession is that action, that deed, that moment where we realize something is wrong — something has to change. And so John the Baptist goes and says to the people, to the leaders, to the crowds, "You need to be baptized. There's something wrong with the system." And so as they go to be baptized, verse 6, they confess their sins. They confess their mistakes. They confess that something is wrong. But confession, in and of itself, is not enough.
Repentance Requires Good Fruit
Confession requires fruit — good fruit. The religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, agreed about very little. But they could get behind the idea that what John the Baptist was preaching was revolutionary and probably needed to be stopped. Because if someone comes along and says, "Our religion is wrong, and you need to repent from it to prepare for the one who is to come, the Messiah," the Pharisees and Sadducees, the leaders of the day, would say, "Can we put a record scratch on that and just stop that whole thing? Because what if the people actually believe you, and they stop following us and start following you instead?"
So in verse 7 it says, "When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing" — notice that the Scripture doesn't say "coming to get baptized," but coming to see John baptize others — John turns to them and says, "You brood of vipers." Now, the language John is using is a little too strong for church; they wouldn't let it on network TV. Because a brood of vipers, back in that day — the belief was that young vipers would turn on their moms and kill them. So what John is telling the religious leaders is, "You mother-killers." And you can imagine what the equal term today might be. It's not a kind word. So he turns to them and says, "You brood of vipers, you mother-killers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance."
Confession in and of itself is a starting place. But confession that does not lead to results — confession that does not lead us to actually make choices that look more and more like Jesus — isn't truly confession. It's just words. Verse 9: John says, "Don't think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.'" In other words, don't say your genealogy, your ancestors, your past can somehow propel you into your future. Don't rely on the actions and the faith that other people had in God. Where's your own faith and trust in God? "I tell you," John says, "that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
Repentance is the idea of following Jesus — of saying, "My way, my will, my actions by themselves aren't going to get me anywhere." Following Jesus, admitting that I need a different leader, a different king of my life — that's repentance. And if it doesn't produce good fruit, it's not truly repentance. If following Jesus doesn't make you more loving and more kind, if it doesn't make you more grateful and more patient and more joyful, and give you a better sense of humor and a better ability to smile, and if it doesn't give you the ability, even in the hardest, darkest parts of life, to endure — repentance that doesn't do that isn't worth anything.
So John has the work of preparation. Preparation requires repentance.
Someone More Powerful Is Coming
And then John says this, verse 11: "I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me comes one who is more powerful than I." Someone more powerful is coming. And this is where John is laying out the good news. He says, "Someone more powerful is coming, whose sandals I can't even carry, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn" — that's good — "and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire." That doesn't sound so good.
Preparation only matters when we have something to prepare for. So when we celebrate Advent and Christmas and all of that good stuff, if we only celebrate it with the intent of celebrating a day of the year — whoop-dee-doo. Lots of people do that, all around the world, for all sorts of different kinds of days. As a matter of fact, you may have heard that somewhere around December 20 to December 30 there were lots of pagan holidays that celebrated the winter solstice — that the days were going to start getting longer — and maybe there was a god or a goddess involved that was not the true one God. So what are Christians doing, taking one of those days and calling it their own? Christians are saying, "If they want to worship some fake, false god, I guess that's up to them. But what we know to be true is that, just like the days start getting longer, we also know that hope is coming." Just like we believe that Jesus came and was going to make all things right back then, we also believe that Jesus is coming to make all things right even now. That's why we claim this period of time as Advent and as Christmas — because we're looking forward not just to a day, but to something even greater and bigger and grander than we can imagine.
So preparation only matters when we have something to prepare for. Advent and Christmas are fine by themselves, but we all know there's a whole world of people out there who can celebrate Christmas without even recognizing the reason they're doing it. Our purpose, our intention, is to prepare not for Christmas, but for what Christmas is pointing us toward — and that's the return of Christ.
He Will Gather
John says this of the Messiah, of the one more powerful who's coming. Number one: he will gather. He will gather those who have repented and confessed and have borne good fruit, and he will gather them into his barn. And trust me, brothers and sisters, that's where we want to be. In this metaphor, this analogy that John is using, we want to be in the barn with Jesus. We want to be the wheat. We want to be the good fruit. Because that means we get to be with Jesus, with God, with Emmanuel, forever.
He Will Burn
But there's the second part that ends our passage today, which made me figure out: how am I going to preach about hell during Christmastime? It says, "He will gather the chaff and burn it with unquenchable fire." So I had to sit and ponder and think about this. If the gospel, if the good news, is really good news, then it has to be good news even in verse 12, when it talks about burning up chaff. How? How is this good news, God?
As I sat and wrestled with this passage, I recognized: wait a second — there are lots of things that deserve to be burned. Maybe not that poor steak from ten years ago. But things like cancer? Yeah, Jesus, take that and go burn that, please. Things like poverty and hunger? Yeah, Jesus, if you could come back and take those and burn them so they never exist again, I'd be really, really grateful for that. Things like death and grief? Yeah, Jesus wants to take that and burn that too. And the part that makes us just a little bit uncomfortable, but is the necessary component of this, is that the people who would propagate, who would insist on keeping people in poverty or hunger, the people who would inflict violence on others and cause them to die, the systems and the carcinogens and the stuff in the world that makes us sick — all of that needs to go too.
There's a great, great quote from Rob Bell in his book _Love Wins_. He says this:
Speaking of the expansive, extraordinary, infinite love of God, there is always the danger of neglecting the very real consequences of God's love — namely, God's desire and intention to see things become everything they were always intended to be, God's kingdom. And for this to unfold, God must say about a number of acts, and to those who would continue to do them, "Not here you won't." Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.
Conclusion: Will We Prepare?
So, as we move forward to Christmas — as we live in this place called Advent, as we remember the future — we're left with a choice. Will we prepare, or will we not? Will we take the moments and the time necessary to look at the life around us and the life inside of us and say, "It ain't ready"? Are we willing to say, "If Jesus were to show up and say, 'I'm King,' is every aspect of us ready to say, 'Okay'"? Or are there parts of us that say, "No, thank you"?
As we move forward to Christmas, can we embrace the wholeness of the good news of the gospel — that Christ comes to burn away the things that don't belong in his kingdom, and to gather, to bring us into his barn, to be his good fruit, and to show the world what it's like to live like Jesus is King.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
