This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am (lay-reading), and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 9am.
Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose
sandals I am not worthy to untie. I have baptised you with water, but he will
baptise you with the Holy Spirit.
Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our
hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Our reading today speaks about John the Baptist and his
ministry. And this comes to us from the very first chapter of the Gospel of
Mark. Mark writes: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. The word “gospel” means “good news”. And particularly in ancient
times, when there were various wars going on, the people of a particular city
would have been waiting for some kind of messenger to come galloping on his
horse down the road to the city gates to tell the people some news: either good
news, or bad news. Bad news would be: “the enemy is coming”, “the king is
dead”. But good news would be: “they did it!” “We won!” And all the
people would shout, “Hooray!” And then they would prepare to get ready for a
wonderful celebration for when their king and the army would return, and have
music and dancing and food and celebrating!
In our world today, we are faced with a lot of bad news.
There are tremendous things happening around the world: wars, famines,
refugees. All these things are bad news. Our parliament this week has approved
the marriage of two people of the same sex. This is bad news. Sex and gender
are things which God has created in each one of us and are his gift, and taking
the distinction of gender out of marriage is a serious thing. People in our
country in the last year have wanted even to stop children giving Christian
cards at Christmas, shops are discouraged from having nativity scenes,
Christian Christmas carols are heard less and less on the radio and TV and in
shops. This is bad news. But if we go and look back in the days of the Old
Testament, we will see there many generations of kings, where God’s own people
worshipped idols, golden calves, burned their own children as offerings to evil
spirits, conjured up the dead, performed witchcraft, and all kinds of other
crazy things. At one time things were so dark that Elijah the prophet despaired,
thinking he was the only believer left in the world. Many
Christians are feeling like that more and more today.
There are so many passages in the prophets—whether it be
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel—where everything looks like all is lost. But God
promises to remain faithful—he will always keep a faithful church on earth
that holds to his word. You see, when all around us is nothing but sin and
shame, we need to realise that the only people who will be part of the church
are sinners. God will convert people just as he did to you, and change their
hearts, and turn them back to himself. In Isaiah chapter 9 we read that it is
not the people who already walk in light that see the great light, but the
prophet says: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great
light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light
shone. And later the prophet says: For to us a child is born, to us a
son is given. We must remember as we prepare for Christmas that it is
precisely to a sinful world with no hope from itself that Jesus our Saviour and
our King comes. He comes to no other world than a sinful one, he shines
his light on no other world than a dark one, and he brings his joy to no
other world than a sad one. And so the angel came at Christmas and said: Fear
not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all
the people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is
Christ the Lord.
And so also in our reading today, we read about the beginning
of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So how did this gospel
begin? How did the good news begin?
Mark begins by quoting from two of the prophets. The first
quote comes from Malachi: Behold I send my messenger before your face, who
will prepare your way. The second quote comes from Isaiah: The voice of one
crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight.’ Mark applies these two passages to John the Baptist, so
that we understand very clearly that the messenger that God sends
is John, and the voice of one crying in the wilderness is also John.
John is like the messenger who comes into the city after the battle on
horseback, and says: “We’ve won! We did it!” He prepares the way for the king
to come in so that the people will celebrate when he arrives. He’s like the MC
at a wedding, who gets everyone to stand up, charge their glasses, and prepares
them to welcome to bridal couple.
So John is a messenger, and a voice. It is so
important for pastors when they preach to believe that it is not their
ministry, or their word that they are to speak, but that it is God’s
ministry, the ministry of Jesus, and it is his word that they
speak. Jesus says to his disciples when he sent them out: The one who hears
you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me
rejects him who sent me. And so John the Baptist is the voice of one
crying the wilderness. John is the simply the voice, but it is not him
who crying in the wilderness, but God who cries out in the wilderness
using John’s voice.
Both of the prophets, Malachi and Isaiah, say that this messenger,
this voice— John—is sent to do one thing: Malachi says that he will prepare
your way. Isaiah says: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight. Do you hear this word “prepare”? Can you imagine if an army had
won a battle, and the war was ended, but nobody knew about it in
advance? Can you imagine if at the end of World War II if all the Australian
troops simply came home and marched through the streets without anyone
knowing about it? There would be no ticket parade, no celebration, nothing!
They needed a man on the radio—a voice!—who says: “The war has ended!” And so
he “prepares the way” for the troops!
And so, John also prepares the way for Jesus, so that
when he comes, people are expecting him and they recognise him.
And so, let’s read about what John was actually doing to prepare people.
We read: John appeared, baptising in the wilderness and proclaiming a
baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea
and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptised by him in the
river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and
wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.
Some of you have told me about your travels out to
Queensland’s “wild west”, and some of you might have visited the Royal Flying
Doctor’s Service out at Longreach. Earlier this year, I visited the Royal
Flying Doctor’s museum in Dubbo. And we watched a video there about all these
“bushwackers” in the outback, and how they looked after their health. One man
had cut a skin cancer off his own arm with a knife! The interviewer said:
“Aren’t there germs on that?” And the man replied, “No, not at all! I once
saw a couple of germs on my knife, but not anymore!”
Now, in some sense, this is the kind of person that John the
Baptist is. He’s like one of those bushwackers from the outback! There is John,
dressed in camel’s hair, a belt made out of home-made leather, and what was his
food? Locusts and wild honey. When we think of locusts, we normally
think of them as a pest. I’ve never been in a locust plague, but in the book of
Exodus, we read that locusts were one of the plagues that God sent over Egypt.
The crops would have been completely destroyed. A man once visited me in
Victoria, a week after he had been driving through a locust plague. You can
imagine the front of this car was just full of splatter!
And yet, in the book of Leviticus, God gave certain foods to
the Jewish people as clean, and forbade them from eating certain other foods.
You might know that Jewish people even today don’t eat pork. When it came to
insects, there were also some that God forbade, and some that God
allowed. In Leviticus 11, it says: You may eat… the locust of any kind,
the bald locust of any kind, the cricket of any kind, and the grasshopper of
any kind. But all other winged insects that have four feet are detestable to
you. Honey was also made by bugs, by bees! And so you can see how John
survived in the desert right at the bottom of the food-chain, wonderfully
trusting in God’s own hand to provide for him, relying on locusts for
food, and bees for honey.
Now, what’s amazing about John is that God sends him
(of all people!)—not a respectable, educated man from the city, but a bushwacker
from the outback, the kind that has to cut his own skin cancers off with a
knife! And so, we learn a powerful message here: When God sends a man to
preach, we should take no notice of the man, but of the Word he
preaches. Because it is God’s word that saves us, not the preacher.
If the preacher offends us because of something about him we don’t like, then
we need to be careful that we’re not cutting off from ourselves God’s word.
And so, what was John doing? First of all, he was baptising.
But he wasn’t doing it without explaining it, and he wasn’t doing it in silence.
The same goes for us in the church: when we baptise a person, it never
happens in silence. But it always happens together with God’s word.
So when we actually baptise a person, the pastor says: I baptise you in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We use God’s
word, and the exact words that Jesus told us to use. But also, we
teach people about what baptism does and what it means for us, that baptism works
the forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal
salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare. Jesus
said: Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them, but not only
baptising, but also teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you.
And so this is also what John was doing. He was preaching
the word of God. It says, he was preaching a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins. And we see that a wonderful series of mass
conversions comes about because of this. Now, today people often think that
the Holy Spirit can be manipulated and almost fooled into having
revivals and mass conversions. And in our country, mass conversions like this
rarely happen. In Africa, or in Asia, we might read about many stories
of mass conversions. At the time of Luther, we read about how many, many people
turned from the superstitious practices of the middle ages and started
listening to the bible and heard the Gospel. One thing though that those people
had that many people in our country don’t have is a conviction that the
bible is God’s word. John the Baptist could have preached anything from the whole
Old Testament Scriptures, because it says that he was preaching repentance
for forgiveness of sins. The whole bible can be broken down into these
two teachings: repentance and forgiveness, law and Gospel. And so
it’s so important for us today to confess clearly that, as St Paul says: All
Scripture is God-breathed, or inspired by God. That the writers of
the bible were moved by the Holy Spirit, that the Word of God is truth,
that the Scripture cannot be broken, as Jesus says. Proverbs 30 says: Every
word of God proves true. Our congregation’s constitution says: We
believe and accept without reservation the holy Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments, as a whole and in all their parts, as the divinely inspired,
written and inerrant word of God, and as the only infallible source and norm
for all matters of faith, doctrine, and life. The reason why it’s so
important to hold to this is because when we hear or read something that we
don’t agree with, and that shows us our sin, if we don’t believe
that this is God’s pure, clear word, then we will always harden our
stubborn hearts, and we won’t change our minds and repent when God calls
us to, because God’s Word is the only way that he calls us to
repentance. There is never a time at any stage of our life when God does not
say to us: You need to change, your life is not as it should be,
it must be different from what it is now! Until our last breath, we will
never be free from sin. And so, this is how John prepares the way for the
Lord: he preaches God’s law, and his strict judgment against
sin. We don’t prepare ourselves for the Lord through our own works, but
the Holy Spirit himself prepares us by convicting us of our sin through
his Word. Hebrews 4 says: The word of God is living and active, sharper
than any two-edged sword…and no creature is hidden from its sight. And
if we don’t believe that the Scripture is God’s perfect word, we will never know
our sin, we can never be prepared, and never be ready for Jesus. Who needs a
Saviour, when we don’t know what we are being saved from?
But also, when we’re crushed and burdened by the conviction
of our sin, even more in those times we need to trust that the bible is
God’s word, because the Word of God is the only means by which God
applies to us his forgiveness. There is not one single sin that
Jesus has not atoned for and died for and sacrificed himself for you for. Jesus
is our Lord and our God, our perfect and faithful and trustworthy Saviour.
And so we read how the people went to John the Baptist confessing
their sins. It is a daily task of us Christians to confess our sins to
Jesus, just as he teaches us to pray: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive
those who sin against us.
But also, John’s baptism is not just to call people to
repentance, but it is for the forgiveness of sins. This is the same as
our baptism. And why can John say that it is for forgiveness? Because he
points to Jesus, and he says: Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin
of the world. John himself does not give forgiveness, but he
points to Jesus who gives forgiveness. He says: After me comes he who
is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down
and untie. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the
Holy Spirit.
And so, the same goes for us. Pastors baptise people with
water, but because of God’s powerful and inspired word, we trust that
Jesus is also here baptising people not just with water, but also
with the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, Peter said: Repent and be
baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for what?... for the
forgiveness of sins, and you will receive what?... you will receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit. Here we can see that the baptism which is
performed with water and the word by human hands in the church is the
means by which Jesus the Lord of heaven and earth sends us his Holy Spirit.
And so, what a wonderful privilege and a gift it is to continually hear the voice
of the Holy Spirit in the word of God, through the preaching of
repentance and forgiveness, through law and Gospel, to strengthen and
ground us in faith until our dying breath.
Jesus is mightier than John, because John is nothing
but a voice. John is the messenger, but Jesus is the king who has won the
battle and the victory belongs to him! And so Jesus, our Lord and
our God, comes into our city and shares with us the spoils of war:
he has won the forgiveness of sins, he is the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world, and he is the one who sends and baptises [you]
with the Holy Spirit. And that is good news, that is the gospel
of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the best news that could ever be
spoken. Amen.
Dear Jesus, we thank you for the wonderful gift of your
Word, the knowledge of our sin, your word of forgiveness, and the gift of the
Holy Spirit. Amen.
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