Luke 3 1-20 2006
Advent 2
Luke 3:1-20
December 10, 2006
“Repentance as Preparation”
Introduction: The world gets ready for the Christmas season, and as Christians, so are we, but with a thoughtful difference. The world gets ready for just one great big blockbuster of a day on Christmas, an annual consumer feeding frenzy, indulging itself in stuff and more stuff. Then when it’s over, it’s over. And all that’s left of Christmas on December 26 is a big pile of wrapping paper and trips to the store for after-Christmas sales.
This will not be the case for us as members of Christ’s holy Christian Church. At least it is not supposed to be the case. For us, when Christmas comes, it stays. It lingers on through Epiphany, the Gentiles’ Christmas, and all the way clear through Lent and even to Easter morning. We continue to ponder the great glad news that God has become man to redeem all humankind out from under the iron grip of death and hell. And we will sing our Christmas praises well into January and beyond. We make Christmas last.
But Christmas hasn’t yet begun; we’re still in Advent. We’re still getting ready. Yet our readiness is much more than just sending cards and decorating our homes and going to parties. It is a readiness of the heart that God desires at his coming. That’s why in our prayer of the day we prayed: “Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of Your only begotten Son.”
In our gospel text, God gives us exactly that: a ready heart, through the prophet of the Advent, John the Baptist. He is the very prophet whom the Lord appointed to clear the way for His coming. And believe me, he prepared the way. There was nothing ambivalent about John the Baptist. He gets right to the point, no tiptoeing around for him. He is downright harsh. Sometimes the message of God given through his messengers has to be harsh to get peoples attention. He laid it on the line to all who heard him. He lays it on the line for us who hear him now: “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees,” he announced. All the dead wood was to be cut out of the Lord’s forest. “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire”.
Now that is a little unsettling if we have the ears to hear it his message. And it should be. For the sad truth is that more often than not, you and I don’t produce the good fruit that our Lord expects. We simply don’t love God with all our heart and soul and strength, much less love our neighbor as ourselves. Despite our best efforts, there are those we have hurt and those we have failed to help. Our thoughts and desires are soiled with sin. There is nothing good within us, in our sinful nature.
That’s how preparing the way for the Lord’s coming begins, when you and I are laid low by the hammer blows of God’s Law, so that we might be lifted up and comforted by the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ Jesus, his Son. The way of the Lord is the way of repentance.
Last week I challenged all of us to not only Keep Christ in Christmas, but to keep the cross of Jesus Christ in Christmas as well. But there is no need for the cross without sorrow over sin. For that matter there is no need for the manger without either. So as Christians, our Advent preparations include preparing for our Savior’s coming by kneeling in repentance. Repentance is a change of mind and heart, which only God can work within us by the power of his Spirit working through his Word.
That’s what we need this Advent season: a change of heart so that we can straighten up—straighten up our hearts and lives, clean out our messed-up hearts so cluttered with sin, and clear out our lives, littered with shame and death, so that they might be filled to overflowing with the life of Jesus Christ as we celebrate His glorious birth.
This is not easy; actually it is impossible for us to do. Repentance means putting to death the habits of the sinful heart. And such habits always die hard. It’s always much easier to love and serve ourselves than it is to love and serve God and our neighbor for Jesus’ sake. It always comes naturally to the sinful heart to lash out with anger when we’re hurt, to return evil for evil, to repay injury with injury. It is much easier to cut down other people than to love them and build them up. It’s easier for the sinful heart to curse and swear, to lie and deceive by God’s name, than to pray, praise, and give Him thanks. That’s why the way of the Lord leads first to repentance and then to the cross before it leads to joy and celebration. That’s why the Christian life is a life of constant repentance. First we confess our sins, then God “is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9). First repentance and sorrow over sin, then Christ’s cross and His payment for our sin…and then the crown. Such is the way, the road, we walk.
But we do not walk alone. The very God who washed away our sins and gave us life has not abandoned us. He who gave up his life for us on his cross and shed his blood to wash our robes and make them white will never let us go. “My sheep know me,” says Jesus, “and I know them. And they follow me. And I will give them eternal life. And no man will ever snatch them out of my hand”.
So this Advent season God again stirs up our hearts. He calls us to change and has given us His holy Spirit. God lifts up the valleys of our deep despair. God brings down the mountain peaks of our lofty pride, and straighten out our crooked ways. God does this for all of us in very personal ways. Each of us has heard God’s word. He calls us to follow it
What this means for you I cannot tell. It means different things for different people, depending on where they are in life. You can tell this from John’s instructions to those who heard his preaching for the first time. For tax collectors, the way of the Lord meant repentance and a return to honesty; for soldiers, it meant repentance and being content, not taking what didn’t belong to them. For everyone, it meant generosity and mercy, giving food and clothing to those who had none, for Jesus’ sake.
God calls us away from lives that are self centered to lives that are Christ centered and cross centered. He calls us to a new righteousness in faith. But how is this done? This is something that I can most certainly tell you…….by the grace of God, that’s how.
The Son of God, who came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, changes our hearts and make them new. He who left the Father’s throne in lowly meekness to be cradled in a cattle trough and wrapped in swaddling clothes is closer in his Word to you now than a child cradled within your arms.
This Lord Jesus has cleansed our hearts from sin and he continues to prepare them for his coming. He straightens the crooked paths by which we have wandered far away from our God and Father. He has brought us home again. He tears down our stubborn pride and melts our hardened hearts to enfold us in his love. He lifts us up out of the pits of our despair and grief and comforts us with the presence of his Holy Spirit to restore in us the joy of his salvation.
So even as we get ready for Christmas. God prepares our hearts through the words of John the Baptist. Get ready for Christmas. Put up your trees and light your lights, then fall on your knees in repentance. Then welcome your Savior that comes to you as a baby in a manger and as the God man on the cross. And again our Advent season will give you true comfort and joy with the knowledge that Jesus Christ has actually come in the flesh and will come again at the end of time. But he comes this very day in His Gospel and His Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to make you new and whole and free.
So as God prepares the way for his coming. Let this be our constant Advent prayer: “Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of your only-begotten Son.”
Come, Holy Spirit. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Ps 51:10). “Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child, Make Thee a bed, soft, undefiled, Within my heart, that it may be A quiet chamber kept for Thee” (TLH 85:13). Amen![i]
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[i] Rev. Harold L. Senkbeil