Advent: Repentance and Preparation for Christmas

Well, it is the second Sunday in Advent.

Advent's that season we are in, waiting and hoping as we lead up to Christmas.

There's four Sundays in Advent.

Here's how the Sundays break down Advent Sunday one, last week, hope and holy longings.

Advent Sunday two, today, repentance and preparation.

Advent Sunday three is all about joy next Sunday.

And then Advent Sunday four, just before Christmas, love and the incarnation.

So today we're in Matthew chapter three, and we learn about and we hear from John the Baptist.

In the Old Testament, prophets spoke for God.

The people of God didn't have a Bible.

And so prophets were speaking for God.

And then suddenly there was no prophet.

There was 400 years of silence.

Nothing.

And then into that silence comes this intense wilderness man, John the Baptist.

He wore leather and camel hair, he ate bugs and honey.

People are flocking to hear him speak and preach.

They want to be baptized by him.

But he's saying something quite different than other religious leaders at the time.

And he's saying something that sort of shocks us.

If you're like me and you're in that kind of warm Christmasy Hallmark movie, Christmas Bible.

Anybody watch a Hallmark movie this week?

I watched the holiday calendar.

I don't know if you watch the holiday calendars.

Kind of put the fire on and you know, have hot chocolate and watch the holiday calendar.

Well, this is shocking.

This morning is shocking if you're in that vibe.

Let's read again Matthew 3, 1 through 6.

In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, for this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, The voice of the one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.

Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.

Then Jerusalem and all of Judea, all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Point number one is this relief comes, relief to us comes when we admit what's already true, that we are people in need of God's help.

And when we refuse to admit that need, that confession, we live in a constant grasping the house, but we love it.

We have an amazing I have a lovely house a few blocks from here, small little house, but we love it.

We have an amazing back porch.

I have respectable, manly backyard Zoija.

Zoija, I would be proud to show you.

I love my I love my house, but still, still, when I'm a little fussy, I'm a little anxious, just like a normal night, I'm tired.

Man, I love, and I've confessed it before, I can scroll Zillow.

I can look at Zillow for any other Zillow addicts.

Like you're just like, yeah, I'm an addict.

We can have a group, Zillow addict.

There's some of us, I know you're out there.

You just go and look at houses forever.

Y'all know that I like to look at mountain houses out west.

That's and this week I was daydreaming way too much about this little humble house out west on the Big Wood River.

Just a humble little fishing cabin.

Nothing big.

I don't need anything extravagant, guys.

I mean, just if we're gonna daydream, we need to go big, right?

Like if you're gonna daydream about something, let's let's go big.

Now, why?

Why do I do that to myself?

I'll never have that house.

Why do I why do I do this to myself?

Like, why do I do it so much?

Um, or why do I still want the Orvis Helios fly fishing rod, um which I still don't have, and Doug Forster bought one, which I thought was very rude of him, um, because he kept mentioning it a lot.

Um, and Orvis keeps sending me catalogs, and then this week on Instagram I got this image.

Um, you know, it's like the Helios 3, you know, it's just like rubbing it in.

I don't have this, and I need it, you know, I have four other rods, but I need that rod, and I've talked about that rod because I still want that rod, and I'm pretty sure I could be like that man, you know, like manlier than I am, more muscles than I have, like sense of security, and I mean he's looking off in the distance, he can conquer things, like that's that's like who I want to be, like right, right, and if I had that, like the point is if I had that, and you play the game with something, if I had that, then I will be okay, fulfilled, whole, I won't be anxious.

We do it with our guilt, feel guilty.

Huge mistake, little mistake.

And if if I if I just attend church more, then God would forgive me based on my attendance.

You know, if if I just give more, if I do more good than bad, then I'll be forgiven.

Then God will love me.

And that's just a conditionality of the world, a conditionality of religion.

But the gospel works on an unconditionality.

It's a promise given to us.

And that's why the conditionality of all the games I play with the Helios rod and houses, and you play it with whatever, however you play, or in religion, that conditionality, if then doesn't work.

It never brings comfort or peace or forgiveness.

And John says to all of that, repent.

And John's strange, he's a strange character.

Because he's in the New Testament, right?

And you go to the New Testament, sound like I'm ready for grace, I'm ready for love.

We're done with the Old Testament law and right.

But John doesn't sound like that.

I mean, John's pointing us to Jesus, but he sounds like this fiery, like Old Testament prophet.

So, how do we understand John?

Well, to understand John, we have to understand his context.

Remember, John doesn't have the full picture.

He doesn't have Jesus' life and death and teaching and resurrection.

He doesn't have Paul's letters explaining Jesus.

He doesn't have justification by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone worked out.

He just knows to point to Jesus.

He just knows Jesus the Messiah is coming.

So he still has a tone of the Old Testament prophet of law and wrath.

We could say it this way: John the Baptist drives us to Jesus.

Paul helps us understand Jesus.

And Paul says, hey, when you're gonna think about repentance, like when you think about like repentance, like John the Baptist is telling you to repent, think about it theologically this way.

It's God's kindness that brings you to repentance.

God's love is wooing you.

And that feels quite different than someone yelling at me to be a Christian because that's what I experienced yesterday walking into the SEC championship game.

Three different street preachers yelled at me with large, aggressive signs that did not feel loving to me, and told me that I was gonna go to hell.

And I'm like, I'm not going to hell.

I am a Christian.

I have repented.

And a lot of us, that's our experience with this word repent.

And it can become baggage.

But the word repentance means so much more.

That word repentance is the word metanoia.

It's a change of mind entering a better course of life.

A change of mind entering a better course of life.

Two weeks ago, our family went to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

We're not fancy people, so we went when they were doing the music to Home Alone 2.

That's more of our vibe.

Is Home Alone's our vibe?

And so it was just fun.

On the way, we stopped at Publix because I'm not paying the candy prices at the Symphony.

And so we stopped at Publix and like bags of candy, water.

I mean, my pockets, because the girls are like, I'm not carrying it.

I'm not gonna do it.

I'm like, I'll load up.

I'm loaded up, and I'm like, I'd like to see any of you symphony fancy people try to call me out that I'm smuggling in candy.

It was gonna be a scene if I had to unload everything that I had.

So we're pulling out of the publics, and and I should have turned right to get back on the interstate, but I accidentally I turned left.

As I turned left, Waze recalculated a new route.

A better course was presented to me.

And we took that new and better course.

Repentance gives us a new, better course of life.

Repentance is the change of mind, entering a better course, a better route.

Now, maybe you repented out of fear.

You don't have to, maybe you did.

Because God's kindness is wooing you.

We repent initially, giving our lives to Jesus, and then we learn that actually repentance is a way of life where we're ongoingly confessing our shortcomings, our need.

It's that great transformation we've talked about from I got this.

Right?

Sam touched on it last week, the beginning of his sermon.

Controlling, pretending self-sufficiency is all you.

And the transformation that repentance gives us is I need help.

This is what's true about me.

I'm gonna need forgiveness.

Here's my mistakes.

My favorite quote, which I've read before, about repentance, Jack Miller said this: repentance is our ongoing calling to collapse on Jesus, acknowledging our need and receiving his supply.

Point number two, repentance is a turning into Jesus' provision and care.

At the time when John the Baptist would be saying this, repent, repent, in the Jewish religion, you had to cleanse yourself before you could go up to the temple mount.

Cleanse yourself before you went into the presence of God.

All around the temple, there were baptismal pools called mikvas.

Here's a picture of a mikvah.

We've seen this before.

And before the Jews could go up to the temple to the presence of God, they had to cleanse themselves.

You cleansed yourself.

Then you could be right with God.

Then you could, if you do that, then you are clean.

Then you can enter the presence of God.

And John says, to that context, or everybody understood the idea of immersion, he says, you need an immersion of repentance.

You need an immersion of honesty.

That you're more broken, more sinful than you originally thought.

And yet God fully loves us, knows us, forgives us, and makes us righteous in Jesus alone.

Verse 7, but when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, so this religious group, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

And do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

Point number three is this gospel fruit grows in us as our hearts take deeper root in God's grace.

Gospel fruit grows in us as our hearts take deeper root in God's grace.

John blasts the Pharisees for something so easy to do in spiritual and Christian life, and that is look at my resume.

Look at my pedigree, look at my performance, look at what I've done, look at me and my work.

And this is the toil and exhaustion of self-justification by the world or in religion.

The gospel's different.

It's that unconditionality of a promise given to you, and Christ alone you're forgiven, and Christ alone you're righteous.

And gospel fruit comes as we as we dive in and we get deeper and deeper into the great wealth that we have as sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father.

So my family gets to the symphony.

The music in the movie begins, we're eating our public's candy.

I'm having a great time calculating all the money I saved.

I love that.

And right behind me is a midlife guy with some friends.

The movie starts, it's very obvious from the beginning that this guy loves Home Alone 2.

Because every time a joke comes up, he could say the line with the line.

And it was clear he knew all the lines, but he was socially being appropriate and reserving just the jokes.

And then he would say the line just loud enough for everybody here, like, we got you, you're a fan.

And then everybody would laugh, he would laugh, and then the people with him had not seen it.

So then they would recite the joke after the joke, and then they all laugh again.

And my family's laughing at a joke, but then we're laughing at them laughing because their laughter is kind of contagious.

They love the movie.

He loved the movie.

This guy, this guy, in all his home alone to fandom, he kind of caught me up in his own love.

Like he was he was having such a good time.

I had a great time listening to him have an amazing time.

He had the fruit of a Home Alone 2 fan.

I don't think he was trying to impress anyone.

I don't think he was trying to impress anyone with his memorization.

I don't think he was trying to impress anyone with his like passion and zeal for the movie.

He just loved the movie.

And because he loved the movie, a certain amount of fruit just kind of came out of him.

Right?

Like gospel fruit comes out of us as we gaze and behold Jesus more.

Our calling is not to obsess about our fruit and to measure it and look at it.

That obsession is actually self-oriented.

Our calling is to gaze and behold more on Jesus, his sufficiency.

That rooting and deepening into him, fruit will come.

Fruit will come.

Now remember that word repentance, right?

It doesn't just mean I'm sorry.

It means I'm sorry enough to head on a better course, which you have for me, God.

I love how author Tim Keller, pastor and author, he connects the honesty and repentance to personal growth.

Listen how he explains this process.

Our hope is in Christ's righteousness, not our own.

So it's not traumatic to admit our weaknesses and lapses.

In religion, we repent less and less often.

But the more accepted and loved in the gospel we feel, the more and more often we will be repenting.

And though, of course, there is always some bitterness in any repentance, in the gospel there is ultimately a sweetness.

This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth.

Verse 10 Even now the axe is laid to the roots of the trees.

Every tree, therefore, that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

John seems to be thinking about afterlife here and people who refuse God's grace, refuse to repent.

The idea of fire is a way to say the refusal of the grace of God welcomes a disintegration of the soul and the self here and in eternity.

A life accepting the grace of God moves further into the soul, being integrated, whole, forgiven, and righteous.

Verse 11.

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 gather his weed into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Now, verse 12, without the preceding verses, would be kind of haunting.

Am I in?

Am I out?

Am I going to burn the fire?

Is my life good enough?

Is my record good enough?

What does God think about me?

What does he think about me when I indulge?

What does he think about me when I indulge in something sinful?

What does he think about me when I just like buy Gucci luggage or I finally give in and buy the Helios 3 rod and I don't really need it, but I really want it?

Like, how is God going to judge me?

How is he gonna judge me as a husband or a dad or a friend, a son, daughter, whatever your role is?

What does he think of me?

Man, that's a lot of insecurity if it's based on our record and work.

But remember, John's leading us to Jesus' life, and remember we understand Jesus through Paul's teaching, and what Paul teaches us is in Jesus we're fully forgiven.

And in Jesus, we're fully righteous.

Theologian Fred Craddock helps make sense of this passage as he thinks about the gospel story and he says this when repentance and forgiveness are available, judgment is good news.

The primary aim is to save the wheat, not to burn the chaff.

See, Jesus is judged for us.

That's why there's good news, because Jesus is judged for us.

Our sins put upon him, and he has paid all of our debts.

So we're right with God, we're secure with him.

How God feels about us is already settled.

And it's not settled in our record or how we're doing this morning.

It's settled in Jesus' record, which means you're saved.

And it means that in Jesus you're also being changed.

That better course of life.

Last week in Florida, a family of four took a boat out to go fishing.

They get 20 miles out in the ocean.

20 miles out in the middle of the ocean, the boat starts to take on water, and then eventually it rolls.

They didn't even have time to contact the Coast Guard.

So they're clinging to the, here's a picture of it.

They're clinging to the boat out in the middle of the ocean for 20 hours.

And slowly the boat is getting lower and lower.

They have no way to contact anyone.

They couldn't do anything.

They're helpless.

They have to have outside help.

And then a plane flies over them.

I mean, can you can you imagine that plane flying over here?

A Coast Guard plane out of Miami, a HC-144 Ocean Century flies over and sees them.

Send a boat out to them, rescues them.

I mean, what an image of needing help and having no hope to do it on your own.

This is our position in our sinfulness.

We're not going to swim the 20 miles in to get to the Heavenly Father.

We're not going to be able to, with our record or pedigree or performance, going to be able to win over God's love.

We have to receive it.

And I know you have felt helpless, like you're drowning in some area of your life, perhaps some huge mistake.

Maybe just some scenario or situation.

It's easy to get exhausted and beat down and broken.

But there's hope.

Because the hope comes to you from outside of you and it pursues you.

See, God pursues you in your mess.

And so as we go to pray, we're going to pray this historic prayer that's written just for Advent Sunday day two.

We're going to put it on the screen.

I'm going to pray it.

You can just look at the screen or you can close your eyes and receive it as the prayer that it is.

Let's pray together.

Merciful God, who sent your messengers, the prophets, to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation.

Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.