Preparing the Way for Jesus

would turn with me to Matthew, chapter three, and we'll be reading from verse one, matthew, chapter three, verse one In those days, john the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near, for he is the one spoken through the prophet Isaiah, who said, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord, make his path straight.

Now.

John had a camel hair garment with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.

Then people from Jerusalem, all Judea and all the vicinity of the Jordan were going out to him and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.

When he saw many of the Pharisees and said to his coming, to his baptism, he said to them Brut of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath.

Therefore, produce fruit consistent with repentance and don't presume to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our father.

For I tell you, god is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones.

The axe is already at the root of the trees.

Therefore, every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

I baptize you with water for repentance.

But the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I.

I am not worthy to remove his sandals.

He himself will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

His winnowing shovel is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn For the chaff he will burn with fire that will never go out.

Well, has everyone seen the Lion King?

Or you know about the Lion King.

You know how the Lion King starts right.

The baby cub Simba is being presented to all the animals, and it's a great scene.

Simba is suitably cute and harmless, in fact.

But this is the future king of the beasts.

So what do all the animals do?

They bow down before their future king.

Well, we're in the season of Advent, that four weeks that leads up to Christmas, and Advent means coming.

So Advent is a time of preparation for Jesus and of course, at Christmas, christmas day gets a lot of focus.

We focus on the nativity of Christ as first coming.

But Christmas isn't the only reason for Advent.

Advent is also a time for preparing Christ to come into our hearts, receiving Him into our hearts afresh or for the first time, and anticipating His future return.

Of course our culture loves baby Jesus, gentle, harmless, like Simba.

But, as Mr Beaver said, in the Lion, the witch in the wardrobe, he as land isn't safe, but he's good, he's the king, I tell you.

You know, when we divorce the baby and the manger from the man, we're actually celebrating something other than the real Jesus.

We risk creating a myth, one we've tamed and associate with other things in our culture, like family, which is that's good, but shopping really events more than the true call the king makes on our lives and we often forget as a culture that this Christmas cub grows up to be one day the lion of Judah.

And the fullness of who Jesus is encompasses both gentleness it does encompass that but also power, and he's beyond anything we contain.

So, roughly 30 years after Jesus was born, at Christmas John the Baptist began to prepare for Jesus' ministry, not with messages of comfort and a baby and a manger and all that stuff, but with dire warnings and with exhortations for the people to repent.

This might seem an overly negative passage at Christmas and around our expectations of the holiday season, but to truly grasp the good news of Christmas we really need to reckon with the true identity of Jesus as the coming king and the bad news.

That is the reason that Jesus came in the first place, that he came to address.

When the crowds came out to see John, he welcomed them, but he baptized them with this message of repentance.

They confessed their sins.

Revival seems to have been stirring, yeah, but when some of the religious leaders come, john ramps up a little bit.

It's more than a little suspicious, and he had a warning for them, and it's in two parts.

And the first, he said a day of wrath is coming, a day when God pours out His judgment and divine fury, a day when he's going to right wrong, restore justice and shine a light into the darkness.

Now, the idea of God's wrath can make us feel understandably uncomfortable.

Isn't God all about love?

Well, yes, he is.

But in a world of sin and evil and injustice such as fills our newsfeeds, can we really have love without anger as well?

Just bringing it back to home?

For those of us who are parents, what parent would not get angry if someone hurt our kids?

Why do we get angry?

Because we don't love our kids?

Of course not.

It's because we do love our kids, and so it is with God and the Old Testament particularly and the New, but the Old it's the precursor names a number of things that incur God's anger.

God's wrath Worshiping false idols, false gods, was one.

Exploiting and mistreating God's people, treating holy things casually, as if they're nothing, just every day.

Disobedient to God's covenant Now, some of these things were specific to Israel, but not all of them and the nations were also subject to God's wrath.

That was the Old Testament.

We still live in a world that doesn't just indulge in but actually embraces pride, worshiping false idols of different sorts we may not call them gods, but things like money and all sorts of things.

We live in a world that exploits people as much, if not more there's more ways probably to exploit people now than there's ever been.

We live in a world that refuses God's grace, and really, in such a world, justice and righteousness demand an answer, and love has to give one, and so a day will come when God gives that answer and writes every wrong.

A day to look forward to if you love justice, but it's not such good news if you love evil.

So that's the first part of John's message.

A day of wrath is coming, and the second is related to it is that the coming one, jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit that's good news.

We'll talk about that in a minute and with fire Now, putting the Holy Spirit and fire together like that.

You might think of something like revival fire or being set on fire for God, which is a good thing, but I don't think that's what John's talking about here.

Fire is only ever used of either physical fire or of judgment.

In the Gospels.

Here we see that Jesus is going to clear out the threshing floor and burn the char in fire.

I think this is what John is talking about the fire of judgment.

Even this idea of threshing is itself a pretty violent image.

To thresh grain, you have to beat it around and you're trying to separate the outer hus of the chaff from the actual kernel.

And the way they did that traditionally was they beat it with rods or drove over it with wheels and oxen and stuff like that to separate the two.

The chaff, john says, is those who don't produce the fruit of repentance, those who don't change their hearts and their ways.

They're the ones that will be burnt up in the fire, a fire that never goes out.

It's a picture of eternal judgment Again at Christmas.

Look, you know, there's some.

It's not a message we particularly like nowadays.

Some people say, oh, that's not Jesus.

He's full of grace and love, and yes, he is, but if it seems a bit extreme and not very Jesus.

He remember in Matthew 10, 34, jesus himself said I did not come to bring peace, but a sword the challenging words.

So this baby born in Bethlehem came to judge the world and purge it with divine fire.

The lion of Judah entered our world.

Changes up the sweet scene at the manger a bit, doesn't it?

Baby lion may be cute, but it still has sharp claws and pointy teeth.

So Isaiah the prophet said make straight paths for him.

That was John the Baptist's job.

How do we make straight paths for Jesus, then, in this Advent season?

Well, john's first part of his message was to repent, and the fruit and the proof of repentance would be evident in a changed life.

That was the fruit, a life lived God's way.

We talk about plenty here.

Repentance means to turn around.

So, in the things we've talked about, from idolatry, worshiping other things, worshiping self to worshiping God, from exploiting people to loving and serving them, from dishonoring holy things to treating them with reverence, from disobedience and faithlessness to faithful obedience, doing what God has commanded what is commanded for our good and for his glory.

You know, jesus said the whole law can be summed up in just four words Love God, love people.

That's pretty much it.

Now I want to be a bit careful here, because you might rightly point out that aren't we saved by faith, not our works?

And yes, we are saved by faith.

It's through Jesus' finished work on the cross that God made the way for us to be saved.

On the cross, jesus and this is the great news of Christmas on the cross, jesus took that wrath, that wrath of God, onto himself, and so for the believer, here's the good news the day of wrath has already happened.

That's good news.

There's no more wrath for us.

So the first step in repentance is putting our trust in the one who bore God's wrath so we can participate in His righteousness.

But here's the thing you can't have faith in Jesus if you don't always have also have faithfulness to Jesus.

They're the same word in the Greek it's our faith that saves us, or God's grace more strictly, through our faith.

But as the letter of James says, we prove our faith by what we do.

The evidence of faith in Jesus is faithfulness to Jesus.

So we need to repent and the second is we need to be baptized.

John baptized the people as a symbol of repentance, to prepare their hearts for Jesus, but he pointed to a greater baptism, baptism with the Holy Spirit.

Now it's as if well, it's not as if we are.

You know, jesus came to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

We're all going to receive a baptism.

It's like Jesus offers us a choice.

We can receive a baptism in the fire of judgment by that bushfires that went through Wannaroo recently.

They just burned everything up.

What a mess.

Well, actually not a mess, there's not much left.

Or we can be baptized with the Holy Spirit, who transforms our hearts and makes us into something beautiful.

But we will be baptized.

In John 3, jesus said that to enter God's kingdom we must be born again, born of water and the Spirit.

The thing is in being baptized.

I say we have to be baptized, but it's not our action, is it the thing that is done to us?

You can't baptize yourself.

You kind of can, but it sort of doesn't really count in Christian theology.

If you try to baptize yourself, someone has to baptize you.

It's the same with the Holy Spirit.

You can't baptize yourself.

In the Holy Spirit, only God.

It's a sovereign act of God to bring about that renewal in the Holy Spirit.

You can't control it, but you can prepare for it by turning to God in faith and in repentance.

So how do we even know if we've been baptized by the Spirit then?

If it's so mysterious and we seem so helpless in it, well, we see it by the fruit of repentance.

If you see someone who's on a journey, not of perfection, they're moving towards perfection.

But very most of the time we're not perfect on this journey, are we?

But we see increasing love, we see increasing holiness towards God and His people, and we see that we see someone who has the Holy Spirit at work in their heart and their life and they're part of the week that's gathered into the barns that God is preparing.

So the bad news is that a day of Roth is coming.

God's going to judge sin and evil.

The great news of Christmas is that Jesus has come to bear God's wrath and as we reflect on Advent, we consider Jesus coming not only at the first Christmas, but His coming today into the heart of every believer by His Spirit, and we look with anticipation to the day when the Lion of Judah returns Now.

Of course, for those of us who have been walking with Jesus for a long time, this is a very familiar message I'm preaching to the converted, but it always does us well to check our hearts.

Advent is a great time for us just to recalibrate.

Do you know that in the Christian calendar, the beginning of the liturgical year was last week, with Advent 1?

Week 1, that's the beginning of our Christian calendar.

Traditionally, it's a great chance, isn't it?

Just to reflect and start to think about the coming year, reflect on the year that's gone, and are we then in a place where we can still receive Jesus and the transforming power of His Spirit to continue to work in us, and do we look forward to the day when he's going to return?

But, you know, for many of our friends and family, our colleagues, our community, roth still remains, and this grace is a message that they still need to receive, and so I want to encourage you at this Christmas simply to pray for them.

Pray for the people in your life who don't know Jesus that they'll see Jesus as more than just a sentimental story, a display and diminishing number of places but there's still some shopping centers that show it To see Jesus as more than just a baby in the manger.

Ask God to help you be a John the Baptist to them and prepare their hearts, prepare the way for Jesus to come to them.

And may God prepare our hearts this Advent season, bring fresh life by His Spirit.

May we receive Christ anew.

Let's pray and then we're going to have communion together.

Father, we thank you for the good news which really only makes sense when we just think back again on the bad news, the bad news of sin and evil and your Roth, your judgment, which must come if there's going to be any justice.

The Father, the Great News that Jesus has taken that all on Himself in our place.

We thank you, lord, for your just, mind-blowing love.

May we be a people who revel in that, who worship you and live appropriately because we understand the fullness of what you've done for us.

Let us have an increasing understanding of your love and this Christmas, help us, father, to be bold, to share your love with the people around us, that they can know this hope as well.

In Jesus' name, amen.