The first thing that is noticed with John is how he was
cowed by no one. We can see that in our reading for today. John was out
preaching, and who should show up but some bigwigs from Synod headquarters.
They’ve come to make sure that everything that John is doing is proper and in
order. They’ve heard some strange things about John baptizing, and they aren’t
so sure about that. Had John received the prior approval from his
ecclesiastical supervisors before doing that? Or maybe John has some grand
ideas about himself. Does he think he’s the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet
that Moses speaks about in our Old Testament reading? In any case, they thought
they better get to the bottom of it.
John, however, was indifferent. If the church bureaucracy
doesn’t like what he has to say, then they will just have to continue to not
like what he says. He is not accountable to them. He is accountable to the God
who sent him to preach and to baptize. He has no need for their exalted titles.
He’s content with being just a voice. He is the voice of one calling out in the
wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” The glory of the Lord
is about to be revealed in Jesus Christ, whose sandal strap he is unworthy to
untie. These words do not require great intelligence to be understood. John was
not a genius. He was a voice who spoke what was given to him to speak. But what
did set him apart from others was that his voice was wholly dedicated to God
and God’s will that has been made known through his Word. What other people
thought did not overly concern him.
The word that we might use to describe John’s willingness to
go against the grain might be “independence.” Someone who is independent is not
beholden to others. But that would almost be the opposite of what is really
going on here. John was completely dependent—not upon men, to be sure, but upon
his God. He was free from making his words sound pretty or plausible so as to
please people. God’s truth, served straight, was the way he did things. If
trouble came as a result, which it often did, then he was wholly dependent upon
God for his comfort, strength, and protection. This dependence upon God set him
apart from the herd. Being set apart from everybody else looks like
independence, but this is actually an extreme form of dependence.
Being dependent upon God and becoming only ever more
dependent upon God was the way that John lived and this was the message that he
urged upon those who heard his voice. Independence is not a good thing
according to the Bible. What happened when Adam and Eve became independent?
They ended up going away from God. And when God came after them, they only
wanted to get further away. One of the common pictures used in the Scriptures
for sin is the picture of a sheep wandering off on its own. “We all like
sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” The picture
of turning away from sin corresponds to this. The sheep are called back. They
return to the shepherding of the Lord. When the shepherd finds the one who has
wandered off he places it on his shoulders and carries it back to the fold
rejoicing. Such sheep are independent no more. They have returned to dependence
upon the Good Shepherd.
Something that responsibility requires as an accompaniment
to this message is the danger—the impossibility—of independence from God. It
simply won’t work. Sheep are defenseless against the wolf if they are left to their
own devices. They aren’t very big. They don’t have sharp claws or teeth. They
aren’t that fast. They also aren’t that smart. If a person decides that he or
she wants to remain estranged and alienated from the Good Shepherd, then it is
necessary to point out that this can’t turn out well for them.
John had the guts to lay out this danger clearly and vividly.
The ax is laid at the root of the tree. God’s winnowing fork is in his hand. He
will gather the grain into the bin, but the chaff shall be burned. There will
come a time when it is too late to repent—too late to return. Then people will
be stuck with what they have decided for themselves as being their hope and
stay.
There is an old understanding of hell where the inhabitants
are tortured by the sins that they had so much gusto for in this life. It’s
like the way some people have tried to turn their kid away from smoking when
they have discovered the child experimenting with it. They sit the child down
and make them smoke a pack of cigarettes—one after another—until they are sick
to death of them. So it is with this understanding of hell. The things that a
sinner has turned to over the years for comfort or pleasure, will be the very
things that they will be compelled to turn to. The forbidden pleasure, the
false god will be coming out of their ears—they’ll be so full of it.
God does not pull us into heaven by our hair. To the one who
chooses sin he says, “Let him be a sinner eternally.” To the one who
chooses to go their own way he says, “Let him go his own way eternally.” But
this is not the way that God would have it. The voice that speaks from the
Scriptures is remarkably consistent. It says, “Return to the Lord your God.”
Ever since the fall into sin, this has been the message. You have been
estranged. You have wandered off. You have sought success and blessing and
happiness in all kinds of things beside the only source of good, the Father of
lights. It is not too late to turn away from these things and hold fast to the
Lord—the only God there is.
This might seem as though it is a rather simple thing to
accomplish because it is totally logical. I suppose it should be a simple
thing, but mysteriously it is not. As a child I used to wonder about the people
of God in the Old Testament. I couldn’t understand why they were always going
after all these idols. I thought idols were dumb. I thought they were just
hunks of metal or wood. Why couldn’t they just cut them all down and get rid of
them? Realize, the Old Testament people were never able to get rid of them
totally. Even with the best and most faithful kings, with the best and most
courageous prophets, there were always at least a few that they didn’t dare get
rid of.
Now I understand that what is important about idols is not
that they are statues or poles. It is the ideas or goals or powers to which the
statues are dedicated that are important. Idolatry offers the person a way to
get ahead in life. It says, “Devote your life to me, and I will make you
happy.” And so it is that our friends, families, and neighbors believe much more
firmly that all kinds of other pursuits in life will offer them happiness
besides following after the true God. These are unbelievers. We Christians
aren’t hardly any better. We have made a commitment to Jesus being our God, but
where does the heart really lie? In what do we really trust for our blessing,
that is, our happiness and success? We are no different from the people in the
Old Testament. They went to church, but they also covered their bases by living
according to other sets of rules and beliefs too. So also we go to church, but
our heart is divided. There is a fear that God won’t do squat for us; we better
see to things ourselves.
And so it is imminently logical that returning to the Lord
our God is good for us, but we can’t believe it. Our Catechism says, “I believe
that I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but the Holy
Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified
and kept me in the true faith.” We are not capable of believing, unless the almighty
power of God the Holy Spirit makes it otherwise. If we are left to our own
powers of choice, then we are going to worship the things that give us pleasure
now, but will prove to be our eternal torment hereafter—these demons dressed up
as idols.
And so it has always been God’s plan that he should draw
near to us instead of us drawing near to him. This is John the Baptist’s
preaching, the pointing that is involved in the season of Advent, and the
significance of Christmas. God did not leave us to our own devices. He did not
wait for us to figure out the proper logic and make the correspondingly correct
choice. The King of Glory comes in. He breaks the bars of brass and bursts the
bonds of iron. God draws near to us sinners in the Lord Jesus Christ to be a
blessing to us. It is unheard of that God should become flesh of our flesh and
bone of our bone, but that is what he does in the seed of the woman, in the
Virgin Mary. The way that we are made dependent upon God, and thereby blessed,
is not by anything within us, but by God’s working in us by his Word and Holy
Spirit.
John the Baptist points at Jesus and says, “Behold, the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Are you someone who
deserves to be tortured eternally by demons? Have you been unfaithful to God?
Have you refused to return to the Lord your God, your Good Shepherd? Look,
there he is. He takes away the sin of the world. He was tortured in your place.
He was forsaken by God so that you wouldn’t need to be. The Son of God has come
to you so that you may have a good conscience before God—not because of what
you have done or left undone—but by the gift of adoption by being baptized into
Christ, the Son of God.
The command, “Return to the Lord your God,” is
different than this statement of Jesus’s: “I am yours and your and mine. Where
I am, you may remain. The foe shall not divide us.” This activity on God’s
part, reconciling us to himself, is indicated by John the Baptist’s words about
the baptisms he has been doing. He says, “I baptize with water, but the one
who comes after me baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” It’s as though he said,
“I have been pointing out how you must be dependent upon God rather than
independent, but all the urging and coaching and water and logic in the world
cannot accomplish such a thing. The Holy Spirit—he’s different. In him God
draws near to us and claims us as his own.”
Or we could use a picture to which we’ve already referred.
Jesus is the Good Shepherd who searches for his lost sheep. When he has found
these independent but foolish sheep he puts them on his shoulders and carries
them back to his fold. There he rules over them by his Holy Spirit from the
right hand of God. God gives those who are baptized and who hear his Word his
Holy Spirit so that they are dependent upon him and will only become more
dependent (if God should be so gracious to them).
God is good. He is the source of all goodness. This is the
way that it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. In his goodness he
comes to us even though we are sinners. He does this through his Word and
Sacraments. It’s all part of the salvation he worked by drawing near to us when
the Son of God became man at Christmas. He comes to draw us ever nearer to him
and away from all that is harmful and evil. John the Baptist is a gift God has
given through whom he has worked. The same is true for all Christians today. It
does not matter one bit whether they are pastors or teachers or laymen. When
they are dependent upon God, and show others the way so that they too can
become ever more dependent upon him, they are gifts. They are a voice calling
out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord. There he is: the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
And so we have a role model in John the Baptist, the
greatest man born of woman. He points us the way to the good life, even though
his head got chopped off. He lost nothing by this and gained everything. You
will be blessed likewise following his lead.
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