Advent Repentance

John the Baptist’s cry still echoes: Repent and prepare the way for the Lord. In this Advent message, we explore the wilderness, repentance, and the transforming fire of the Holy Spirit.

Transcript

Turn with me to the Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter three. The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter three. And when you found Matthew three, go ahead and stand with me for the reading of God's word.

Notice these words as found in Matthew 3, starting with verse 1. In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near. This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.

Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come bear fruit worthy of repentance, do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our ancestor. For I tell you, God is able for from these stones to raise up children of Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees. Every tree therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

I baptize you with water for repentance. But one who is more powerful than I is coming after me, and I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary. But the chaff, he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Speaking, Lord, for your servant is listening, we pray in your name. Amen. You can be seated.

Well, here we are once again at the second Sunday of Advent, which Advent is preparation for Christ's coming. The word means coming. And yet here we're given a text that is quite shocking. Maybe abrupt, disrupting again, it's not warm and fuzzy, is it, you brood of vipers? Unquenchable fire, which we must not mistake.

He means hell. Here there's no doubt quite a text to prepare us for such a joyous, peace filled time of the year. I mean, after all, sort of the topic with our Advent wreath is peace. But have you noticed that when Christ comes to bring peace, he must remove his enemies?

He must remove your enemies. And some of us have aligned with those enemies just as Ancient Israel. Did they remember? Mistakenly, we're actually reading this right now. Made a covenant or a treaty with Egypt.

They were never supposed to do that once they left Egypt, never go back. And they did. And Babylon with King Nebuchadnezzar comes in and destroys them, destroys the temple. And they're left thinking, what is going on? And yet God had sent a prophet before that, actually several that had foretold of these things.

Now what we see here is John the Baptist. All right? Now, if you've ever gone through Advent before, you know that there are at least two prophets that always make a showing Advent, Isaiah and then John the Baptist. In fact, it actually isn't even proper to talk about Advent, which is again, preparation for Christmas. Without bringing up John, you say, why is that, Pastor?

Is that some kind of like law of the church? No, it's just simply in the Bible, as you read the Gospels, guess who you first bump into? John. And every gospel writer is wanting us to see, including John the Beloved. He wants us to even see that John the Baptist is mentioned even there, even in his theological beauty of chapter one, the word became flesh.

And all of that, he still says. And by the way, there was this guy. Amen. This guy, he was a guy, he was a word. You ever heard John preach, one of those kind of things.

You ever heard John preach? Because if you ever heard him preach once, you know exactly what his message was. His message was simple. It was unmistakable and jarring. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And so we're sort of plunged in week two here, as we start this new week of preparation, preparing our hearts, really moving into a time where God is preparing us. We are plunged into the wilderness. Now, again, if you've read the Old Testament, you know that the wilderness is a familiar place to those who are walking with. With God. Now, isn't that interesting, though?

We think if we're walking with God, we should be successful by our standards. Of course, we should have plenty. But the desert, the wilderness is not a place of success and it's not a place of plenty. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It draws out out all of our insecurities.

It deletes and makes unavailable all of our niceties. The desert is raw, the desert is hard. Wilderness areas are dangerous. You don't believe that. Just go, try to stay in the wilderness without bringing anything but yourself for a week.

Even for a survivalist, that's going to be difficult. In fact, it'll be downright dangerous.

And if you have a Cell phone and you just had it turned off, you'd be turning it on, calling for help.

You ever been like that in life? Dropped into a wilderness, dropped into a desert. All of a sudden, what's going on? The water stopped.

Now I'm in a time of need. I had plenty. Now I'm in a time of need. Well, here's the thing about John. John lived in the wilderness.

As an absolute example. This is God's calling for him. And it was a calling for the prophets. Oftentimes they would be called to the wilderness to speak these words. And I find that I need people who are not climbing the ladder in my life.

Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Somebody who has renounced, in fact the things of this world in order to pursue God in a wilderness setting. Now listen, that's not for everyone, but it is for some of us. Some of us are actually called to live a minimalist, a wilderness, like almost ascetic, if we could put it this way, self denying life. Some of us have taken things like that on in our vocation.

And John did, the prophets did, and they are examples to us of how we all should be living, even if we're called to the city.

And of course, Jesus was called more to the city. He did not have his ministry just out in the wilderness. Of course he traveled, but primarily he goes place to place. And of course there's a long list. Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah drops into a wilderness.

Even though he's more connected to the city. His wilderness is in the year that King Uzziah died. Well, what's significant about that? Why is that a desert? Because King Uzziah was actually a fairly good king.

He had ordered the kingdom properly and now that was all going to crumble down. They knew a regime change was imminent and it wasn't going to be good.

Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, David, fleeing Saul, remember, in the wilderness. And then of course, Jesus himself, our greatest example before he begins his ministry right after his baptism, is driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. You see the wilderness. Just because you're in a wilderness right now in your life, just because you find yourself in the desert doesn't mean you're not following God. This is a very good principle for us.

We can't look at somebody's life and say, oh, because they didn't get a job, or they're struggling over here, or things just don't seem to be working out well for them or, or their family looks snake bitten. Let me just tell you, some of us are called to the desert, to live there and to minister from there. Others of us, and really all of us will go through a season of the desert and thank God there's somebody out there like John, because I need that when I get out in the desert, I don't do so well.

And so right away, right up the front of this week, we're just confronted, impacted by the fact that here is a voice, a prophet, perhaps a prophet that has not been heard from for 400 years. Ish. Okay, it's interesting. There's two periods that we find in the biblical history of Israel that are roughly 400 years of just sort of skipping over. In other words, you just turn the page from Genesis 50 to Exodus 1, and by turning that one page, just moving one chapter, 400 years expires and you find them enslaved in Egypt.

And. And then you get Moses. You get Moses, who's a deliverer. Moses, who actually begins his whole journey as a baby, remember, on the water, in a little ark. You remember this?

Plucked from there, which is where his name comes from, right? Moses drawn out, you know, he's drawn out of the water. And then he will draw the people out of Israel, out of Egypt, into the promised land. Well, then you get down to the last prophet, whether your Bible, if you're a Jewish person, the Tanakh ends with second Chronicles, okay, which is a whole retelling of the history of Israel, or like ours, Malachi. Then you turn one page over to Matthew.

400 years, ish has gone by, and what do we have? Well, they're in a spiritual Egypt and they need another Moses, a new Moses, the true Moses, the one who truly will draw us out of darkness and into his light, truly draw us out of bondage and into freedom.

And of course, this is Christ.

And so John stands as a hinge between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And this is why later in Matthew, Matthew reminds us of something that none of the other Gospel writers remind us of. He says, you know what? And I can just imagine this coming to him by the Holy Spirit as he's writing the book of Matthew. He says, you know what?

I remember Jesus saying this about John. And here's what he says. He says, among those born of women, there are none greater.

Now, do you believe that? If you don't believe that, it's just because maybe you've never heard John.

Maybe you've never heard John, because John the Baptist, he is the culmination of all of the Old Testament. Turning now to the one who fulfills all of that who is Jesus? He's not Jesus, but he is pointing to Jesus and at the end of the day has all the other prophets who are mouthpieces of the word of God to us. All of them are culminating in him. That's why he's the greatest.

Born of women. And yet Jesus then says, but he's the least in the kingdom of God. What does that mean, greatest in the least? How can you be both? Well, he's greatest because up to that point, there's no one greater than the message he has and the preparation that.

That he opens up for us. And yet once the kingdom of God is established, he's the least because now we have access to God's Holy Spirit because of Jesus.

And that is the fundamental difference between Old Covenant and New Covenant. Holy Spirit. The entire Old Testament is trying to get, desperately trying to get us to see that we don't just need the forgiveness of sins, but God's Holy Spirit. And even our text here makes a stark contrast between John himself does. Let's just listen to John between his baptism, which is for repentance, and Jesus baptism, or we could say Christian baptism, which is not only for repentance, it includes that, but also for God's Holy Spirit in the soul to be marked in us and sealed, as Paul will say later in us.

And so Jesus comes not only to bring us the Holy Spirit, but his fire. And that's what John's going to bring out here, his fire.

And so he prepares us for the ministry of the King. And he says it this way. Here's the way we should repent, or sorry, prepare and is to repent. Okay, so we repent as preparation. And we repent because the kingdom of God is near.

How much more near is it now? If it was near then as Christ appeared, how much more now after his appearing? We're on the other side of this thing, you see. He has appeared now, and he will appear again, and that will be the final time. It's his second advent, which is what we looked at last week.

And so this message of repentance is hard for us, and it should be.

It's not unnatural to us. We feel the burden of hiding our sin, in fact, don't we? To be honest with you, I watch these, you know, cop shows or investigative shows. People actually want to tell you what they did, and the FBI knows that. And investigators, they work off of you wanting to tell what happened.

There's something about us that when we've done something and we're covering it up, there's something that just feels frustrating, freeing when we say what we've done when we confess. If you have kids, you know this, right? What'd you do? Oh, nothing. What'd you do?

Just tell me what you did. Right. And then there's a bit of freedom in finally saying it. We don't have to keep up with the lie. This takes us right back to Genesis, doesn't it?

Right back to the garden where we first, as humanity fail God and sin. And what is the immediate response is to cover it up. To cover it up and then to start blaming others. And don't we still do this sort of thing when we do so? Oh no, it couldn't have been me now.

It was so and so. It was my parents fault, it was my wife's fault, it was my kids fault. It was. It was the fact that I was hungry or I was tired. We want to blame rather than taking responsibility.

We want to blame and hide rather than to repent and to confess our sins.

But if I could speak personally to you, some sins that had been with me for a long time only were uprooted once I started confessing that sin out loud.

You see, I believe, just like I think the scripture indicates, that to confess our sins one to another is where healing is not just confess our sins privately to God. And you don't need to know anything about me.

That's hiding now. Please don't tell your stuff to everyone. Don't speak it in a public setting like this. Find someone that loves you, that is for you and confess your sins out loud. When it comes out of your mouth that I did this, there it is on the table and it is bad, it is embarrassing, it's exposing, but it's healing.

You know, I find it fascinating to be honest with you. I know many people in the medical field and some of them very, very personally. I find it fascinating that some people wait until things just get really bad to go to the doctor. I can assure you I am not one of those people.

Some people told me, said, man, my toe looked like this. And I finally went. If my toe got discolored even a little bit, I would be like, hey, what's wrong with my toe? I've never seen it this color. Something's not right.

But I guess some people, oh, you know, it doesn't matter. It'll fix itself. Listen, sin will never fix itself in our life. Our unhealthiness toward God and others will not just fix itself over time. Yeah, I'll just get older.

Some people get more Bitter, more entrenched. No, your age won't sanctify you. Only the Holy Spirit will.

Now, you may get better at hiding it in your old age. We often almost think of like older people. Oh yeah, they're just kind of nice and they don't really have a lot going on. Let me just tell you, they probably have a lot going on. They've lived longer than you or me.

Now, that doesn't mean that you're holy just because you're old. Because that is not the case. That doesn't mean you're holy because you're one of these little kids. That's not the case. We all have this principle nature in us that must be cleansed and that only by the Holy Spirit.

He alone, he's the holifying spirit. He must get in there and start doing his work and it'll feel like a desert, but that's where the change and the transformation will happen. We desperately need God's Holy Spirit. And that's what Jesus comes to bring is God's Holy Spirit into our life, his power, his presence, his purity into us.

This of course is shown at Jesus baptism, in fact, where the Holy Spirit descends upon him to rest.

He alights on him and lands. He's no longer notice hovering like he is in the beginning or like when Noah sends the dove off. Now he lands on a person because that person is the giver of the other person.

No, repentance is not sentimentality. Oh, I did this. I feel bad about it. Just because you feel something that's good, that's a good indicator. It means you're alive.

Means God's grace is at work in you. If you do something and you don't feel anything about it, that's vicious. It's actually the definition of vicious and the opposite of virtue. The vicious person does something and doesn't feel bad about it at all. That's how we can say sometimes.

How could they? Do you know, we've even said this before. I'm sure you've seen a news story. How could someone. They don't even think about it because God's grace is not at work in them.

But those who are filled with the spirit, when you do something, there is a noticeable, oh, that was probably wrong.

I need to go and apologize. Don't start the blame game. Don't go hiding. Some things are only healed when you bring them to the light. They only grow in darkness so that if you expose them to the light, they will die in your life.

So if you've Got this nagging sin that's been with you that you can't seem to get victory over. Keep bringing it to the light, keep confessing it so that you might be healed. Maybe the reason you're not healed yet is because you haven't been courageous enough to speak it. I know it's. Listen, I know it's hard.

Nobody wants to admit they're wrong. Nobody enjoys that.

In fact, in our relationship, we don't even always. Like, if I know she's wrong, then I just stop talking, you know? Because to keep poking at people, then what does that do, right? The Holy Spirit. Aren't you glad for him who comes alongside us and he's nudging, hey, you know, you know, you know.

And when I'm wrong and she's right and I'm just like, crap, now I gotta go apologize. It's typically what it leads to. Not to her. It's oftentimes. Honey, you did that to that person.

You said that.

I could tell you a bunch of those, but I'll save you.

Remember the Pharisee and the publican? One says the right things out of his mouth. The other simply says, lord have mercy on me, a sinner. What a prayer for Advent. What a prayer for our life.

I understand it's hard to confess that you're a sinner, but we're all in the same boat. Brother and sister G.K. chesterton said, we're all in the same boat as humanity. And we're all seasick. Something's wrong with us.

We live in a therapeutic culture that wants us to be mindful of the bad things we do or the things that happen to us. But not with repentance. Not with repentance. We try to diagnose, look within, do all of this. But without repentance, John will simply say, repeat, repent.

He's almost like this video that I saw where this lady goes to a therapist. And you've probably seen this before. It's hilarious. Well, it's funny to me, but she comes and she's trying to explain, like, yeah, every time that he does this, like, I just feel these feelings. And, like, I just.

I don't know why I'm feeling them. And she's just trying to explain this. And he goes, yeah, stop it, stop it. Just stop it. She's like, what?

What? Just stop it. You know, you just keep saying, stop it, and it's hilarious. Okay, now, I understand that that doesn't work as a therapist. You get fired.

Okay? But in some sense, we need to say to ourselves. Not necessarily. Just stop it. Because that's not in our power to do always.

We have to have God's power and God's help. But repent. Be honest, that something is wrong and you need help. There's a discoloration in my life. There's a stench in my life.

There's something that's not right in my life. I need your help, Lord. And then go to the great physician and show him. Look, and I get it. Once he.

Here's what they do. They're like, you know, if I say my pinky's hurting and it's really sore. Okay, good. Let me look at it. Okay, hey, hey, hey.

And they start touching on it and they start doing things to it, and it makes me mad because I just told him it hurts. But in order to get evaluated so that we can then get the healing, we got to go through that pain. John the Baptist is the pain. He's the X ray machine. Jesus is the one who gives us a new heart.

He's the one who heals us. Hence, he is the great physician. And, you know, I got to thinking this morning on the drive over here. I thought, you know, during COVID it was interesting that many of us found ourselves in a place that we weren't very distracted. We weren't going to work.

We weren't doing this. We weren't doing everything slowed down. You were at your house, and you know what? Home Depot, Lowe's, they all sold out of home improvement stuff. They made billions of dollars during that time.

Why? Because, well, you were sitting around the house saying, you know what? I never noticed, but that thing's broken. And you know what? That other thing that was broken, I'm going to get to that.

Our lives are so busy oftentimes that we never slow down to notice what's broken. Other people see it, but we don't. We need some quiet time with God. Not in a masochistic way, Lord, show me how bad I am. And listen, that's not the way that works.

Just start looking at him and it'll be evident.

You don't have to go some negative, nasty route. Just start looking at the good one. And then it'll be realized where in our life we're not like him. We get used to the cracks. We get used to the brokenness.

And we're not supposed to. We're not supposed to. We are looking for a day of peace, of shalom, where everything is healed, everything is ordered rightly. And that day's coming, and he wants that to be happening in us. But we must confess our sins.

We must repent and confess, or there will be no renovation.

So let me leave you with this. Some very practical things that I think we can just start doing now. Pray. The desert is a good time to pray when you don't have anything else to do. Just pray.

You should never, as a Christian in your life, say you're bored. That's a lie. You can talk to God. How is that boring? Let's just be real for a second.

You. You're sitting in a doctor's waiting room and you're getting worked up and mad because you gotta wait. I get it. I understand. Start praying.

What time? Like, why waste time on anticipating the exact moment? Just get ready and all of a sudden start praying to the eternal. 1.

Raise your mind to the very heart of the things of God. That's what prayer is. And then secondly, let's wear this world lightly. Like John, you know, he didn't dress up in any way. He was actually, you know, even then, camel's hair wasn't in, you know, like, it wasn't like he had a marmot or North Face jacket on out there.

It was rags, very natural leather belt. We're given his description when we're not given other people's description to say this about him. He wore the world lightly. You could take away what he had and it wasn't much. Is that how we hold our hands, Lord?

It's all yours. Or do we hold tightly? Are we angling at this and that? Listen, I promise you, there is great freedom in believing that God actually owns it all, that he gives you whatever you get in your life, including desert moments, And then perform works of mercy, repentance. John says if we're listening to him, how he preaches bears fruit in our life, which means it doesn't just stay within.

We want to have this kind of thing where it's all internal. And I get it. We're very private as Americans and all this kind of stuff. There's a place for privacy. I get that.

But not with God. There's no privacy with God. He knows it all, he sees it all. And when we're trying to hide from him, it's absurd. And the question comes to us just like it did our first parents, where are you?

So today, where are you truly? Are you practicing the works of mercy, good deeds? Because here's what the Bible says. We were created for good works. We've tried to so separate faith from works because we're too nervous that people are somehow going to work their self into heaven.

I find the exact opposite thing. Somebody need to get to work. Not doing anything and you haven't done anything. There's not even a danger of you putting somehow salvation in works. Get real.

In fact, if some other nation came in here and started saying like, who's a Christian? Some of us wouldn't make it.

Some of us would be pulled out of the line. There's no evidence other than just in our own head, in our own sentimentality. And I'm here to tell you that is not what the Christian life looks like. No, it's filled with good works, particularly aimed at the poor. Now that's not just financially poor, that's spiritually poor too.

That's family poor as well. That's friend poor, neighbor poor.

We have poverty all around us. If we would but open our eyes.

And so let's pray. Let's be called willingly into the wilderness. Let's expose the sin that's in our life honestly. Let's be baptized with the Holy Spirit. And fire.

Not a fire that destroys, but perfects. A fire that brings to fruition all that God has for us.

As it says somewhere in the Bible, come, let us be going. Let's walk with him in this way as we serve those around us. For the king has come and he is coming. Amen.