Sermon manuscript:
All four of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, make
reference to our Old Testament reading, Isaiah chapter 40. All four Gospels refer
to Isaiah chapter 40 when John the Baptist is brought up. He is “the voice
of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord!’” This
is the way that others saw John the Baptist, and it is the way that he saw
himself. He was the forerunner of the Christ. With his preaching of repentance,
and with his baptism, God set people’s heart and minds straight.
This is a very needed thing, for our hearts and minds are
not naturally straight, but rather crooked. Psalm 14 describes us quite well
when it says, “They are corrupt. They do disgusting things. There is no one
who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on all the children of Adam to
see if there is anyone who understands, anyone who seeks God. Every one of them
has turned away. Altogether they have become rotten. There is no one who does
good. There is not even one.”
And if you should want to disagree with the Psalmist’s
characterization of you and of every single person, I’ll just ask you one
question: Have you sought after God? That is, have you panted and thirsted
after him like a deer for water? Have you loved him with all your heart, soul,
strength, and mind? Have you even genuinely prayed the Lord’s Prayer—that God’s
name would be holy to you, that his kingdom should come to you, that his will
and not your will would be done?
If Psalm 14 doesn’t describe you, if you are good, then you
have no need for John the Baptist to set you straight. You have no need for
Jesus Christ. You can stand on your own two feet.
But then you might consider the preaching of John the
Baptist that was prophesied hundreds of years beforehand by Isaiah: “All
flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like a wildflower in the countryside.
Grass withers, flowers fade, when the breath of the Lord blows on them. Yes,
the people are grass. Grass withers, flowers fade, but the Word of our God
endures forever.”
You believe that you are good enough. Then why does death
hunt you down? Why does God hunt you down? God is not in the habit of punishing
those who do his will. That would be like a father punishing a child right
after the child had done exactly what the father had asked him to do. Wouldn’t
that be supremely evil—to spank a child for doing good? That seems to be how
the devil would parent. So if you are good, then why should God punish you? Why
should you die? Either you are not good or God is some kind of devil.
But, in our times especially, we have to talk about one more
possibility, because it is so popular of an opinion. Folks say that people die
because that’s just natural. The leaves burst forth with life in the spring,
thrive in the summer, wither in the fall, and die and decay come winter. All
around us we have this pattern of birth, growth, decline, and death. “The fact
is,” they say, “there is no God. Nature just takes its course.” This is seen as
being very sophisticated wisdom. Because science and stuff. The only reason
those ancient people talked about God so much is that they were such idiots
that they couldn’t conceive of anything so sophisticated as there not being a
God.
But that is not true. With the psalm that I have already
quoted from, Psalm 14, I left off the very first verse: “The fool has said
in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” This psalm was composed by King David
around 1000 B. C. He, obviously, was able to conceptualize such a thing as
believing that there is no God. In fact, it is the opening theme to his whole
song on the wickedness of mankind.
And, indeed, we can go back even further. What were Adam and
Eve hoping in after they fell into sin? Where not they hoping with all their
heart that there was no God? For if there was a God, then they would surely
die. So please, please, please let there be no God. They almost died with
fright and disappointment when they perceived that God existed because they
could hear him walking through the garden in the cool of the day.
Indeed, this belief, or rather, this hope, that there is no
god, is known by every child who has done wrong. They do not want to be found
out. They do not want to be held responsible. This is not sophisticated or
profound. It did not take hundreds of years of scientific study to discover.
Every sinner has known it. Every sinner has believed in it. The sinner’s hope
is that when death comes a callin’ God has nothing to do with it. Maybe, just
maybe, then, I have gotten away with what I’ve done. We won’t be held
accountable for our sins, and we will just melt away into nothingness. But this
is the false hope that Jesus alludes to when he talks about people wanting the
mountains to fall on them, to cover them up, on Judgement Day. They wish that
they could just decay and melt away, but find that they are unable.
So let this truth be established and proclaimed: “All
flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like a wildflower in the countryside.
When the breath of the Lord breathes upon this flesh it withers and dies.”
This is the preaching of repentance that John did in his day. This is the
preaching that still needs to be done today.
And it’s hard, because, unfortunately, we so prefer the
comfort of lies to the truth. That makes us slippery as eels. We’d like to take
refuge in one false hope after another, and so a preacher of repentance must
leave no hiding place unexposed. Every valley must be raised up; every mountain
and hill made low. The rugged ground must become level and the rough places
smooth. The whole earth must become guilty before God—for that is what they
truly are.
But all this is for an unexpected reason. When Adam and Eve
were drawn out of the bushes, was it for the purpose of crushing them and
killing them? To be sure, God did inform them of the harsh consequences of
their sin, but his whole purpose in coming to them was to restore fellowship
with them. He brought them glad tidings of great joy that would be for all
people. The seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head.
So it is also with the preaching of John the Baptist,
foretold by Isaiah. He prepared the way for the Lord. All the hiding places
were taken away. But to what end? So that the glory of the Lord would be
revealed and all flesh together would see it. John the Baptist preached God’s
grace for you and for all. He pointed at Christ and said, “Look! He is the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He is the one upon whom
the curse of the Law has fallen. He drank the bitter cup of death. He
experienced God’s full wrath for sin. He became guilty, so that we should be
declared righteous because of him.
Because Jesus took our place, our death has been stripped of
its most awful characteristic. Our death is no longer God’s wrathful punishment
for sin. Our death is no longer God hunting us down. God is not wrathful
towards us. God loved the world in this way that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For
God did not sent his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the
world through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned.
The preaching of repentance requires wills to be broken. The
comfort of lies must be mercilessly stripped away. The end of the Law is death,
and there is so much awesomeness to this preaching that we are always wanting
to put a veil over it to cover it up. But once we have been stripped of our
idols, once we have been stripped of our false beliefs, the rough treatment is
at an end. God turns to us a Father’s heart. In fact, we must be careful that
we embrace this Father’s heart toward us and leave the terror of the Law behind.
For, as Paul says, there is another covenant besides the Law
whose glory is so great that the awesomeness of the Law ends up having no glory
at all. It’s like how the sun comes out with all its glory so that you cannot
see the moon or the stars. The glory of the sun is such that the others go
away. This more glorious covenant that Paul is speaking about is the Gospel of
God’s forgiveness and acceptance.
The Gospel is God’s eternal will toward mankind. Even before
time began, God had already chosen you for salvation in his crucified Son. It
is not as though the Gospel was an afterthought, a patch-up job after the
covenant of the Law had failed. No, it has been God’s intention that you should
see the glory of the Lord in the crucified Lord Jesus Christ. It is his will
that all people and every individual should reach repentance and enjoy the
forgiveness of sins that Jesus has worked for all people. The greatest of all
things is love. God is love. And, quite simply, God would have you enjoy the
glory of his love. That is what he wants for you.
We hear of God’s will toward us, we hear of God’s Gospel, in
a special and emphatic way in our reading from Isaiah. It says: “Comfort,
comfort my people, says your God. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and call out
to her. Her warfare really is over. Her guilt is fully paid for. Yes, she has
received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” God saying
“comfort” once just isn’t good enough. “Comfort, comfort my people,” he
says. Speak to the heart of the people, right at the core, so they know that it
is really for them. Warfare and death are over. Guilt is gone. It’s almost a
little over the top—a little too gracious—for he says: “Yes, she has
received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” It sounds almost as
if the Lord is rewarding us—giving us double—for our sins. The more we sin the
more gracious he is.
But the point that is being so forcibly made here is an
important one, and that is that our sins or lack of sins do not enter into the
covenant of grace that God makes with us in Jesus. Our sins have absolutely
nothing to do with our relationship with God when we believe in Jesus, because
Jesus has fulfilled the Law. The covenant of the Law is done. We have been
given a new covenant in Jesus’s blood for the forgiveness of our sins. This is
the thing that Jesus himself says less than 24 hours before he would be lying
dead in the grave. “Drink of it all of you. This cup is the new testament in
my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do as often
as you drink it in remembrance of me.”
Because God’s favor and blessing is not on the basis of
whether you have sinned or not sinned, but based rather on the holy, innocent,
bitter, sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, you may be certain that
this message and gift is for you. It doesn’t matter if you are a big sinner, a
little sinner, or any kind of sinner in between. It isn’t based on you and your
sins. The covenant is based solely on God’s actions in Christ. And now God
sends this Word out into all the world: “You are my people, Comfort,
Comfort.” Whoever hears it may believe it and be benefited by it, for it is
not dependent upon anyone besides God. God has redeemed us. Now he sends out
his Gospel so that sinners may believe it and be saved by that faith.
There is encouragement for us to do our part in our reading.
It says: “Get you up on a high mountain, O Zion (Zion is you, the people
of God)! Lift up your voice with
strength, O Jerusalem (that’s you), you herald of the Gospel. Lift it
up! Do not be afraid! Say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’ (that
is, ‘Here is Jesus for you’).”
We are fast approaching one of our great festivals where we
can go tell it on the mountain. Our beloved Christmas hymns, perhaps even more
than our Easter hymns, are songs where God’s people announce to one another and
to the whole world God’s good will toward mankind. The world is invited to
behold our God.
And so we sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” “Oh
come, all ye faithful. … Come and behold him, born the King of angels. Oh,
come, let us adore him. Oh come, let us adore him. O come let us adore him,
Christ the Lord!” “Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the new born King.
Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” These hymns preach
the Gospel. So lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem (that’s you). Lift
it up! Do not be afraid! Declare to all who will listen, “Unto you is born a
Savior who is Christ the Lord.”
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