Preparing the Way

So this morning, as we gather together something, I want to talk about something significant that happened last night.

So who in here is a basketball fan?

You can raise your hands.

Okay, some of you are basketball fans.

Of those who just raised their hand, how many of you watched the league's most important exhibition game in history last night?

Nobody, oh, a couple of you watched the league's most important exhibition game in history.

So for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, the NBA is our professional basketball league, the National Basketball Association, and for a few years now they've been running into a problem where there has not been a lot of interest in both fans and players in the games during the regular season.

The good teams kind of said well, we're going to be in it in the end.

So you know, we'll win enough games, we'll be okay, but we'll rest our players a lot and just make sure we're all in it for the playoffs.

And so the NBA saw this as a problem.

They want fans fully engaged.

They want fans ready and anticipating the playoffs and the finals.

They don't want them to just all of a sudden turn it on come June, come the end of the season, when we gear up for the championship.

So this year they tried something new and they instituted something that they call an in season tournament.

Basically, they play, they come up with seeding, they get put into a bracket and then they have a series of one game eliminations.

Now all of these games count in the regular season, so they all mean something, except when you get to the end and the championship.

That doesn't count.

So that's why I call it an exhibition game.

But my team and my son raised his hand because he was excited for this.

My team is the Los Angeles Lakers.

You can boo that if you must, I know, I know Not very popular, but that is my team and I'm proud to say the Los Angeles Lakers have won the inaugural NBA Cup, which my son looked at like a championship game.

He's like they've never, they've never won a championship, except like when I was first born, and so I've never gotten to see it.

So he was excited about it and I just like literally looked at it like an exhibition game and the reality is is probably somewhere in the middle.

It's important, it's historic, it's exciting and he enjoyed it and that's great.

But the thing that was interesting about this game is that you got to the end after the Lakers had won and their best player in that game was Anthony Davis, who scored 41 points.

And they go and interview him, they put a microphone in his face and they ask him you know what?

You know what?

What do you think?

What's going on?

What's in your head?

And his answer is well, we're excited, but it's not the real thing.

The first words out of the first sentence out of the mouth of an NBA player right after winning the cup is it's not the real thing.

And everybody knew it.

Everybody knew it wasn't the real thing.

They made a big celebration.

Obviously, they had the court, they had the lights, it was in Las Vegas, it was a big thing, but all of this happened.

All of this was done by the NBA to build excitement and anticipation for what was to come.

And you know what I could mock it.

I could say it wasn't all that good, but the truth is is it got a lot more people talking about the NBA early in the season.

Well, here we are and we're in our Advent series and you're like why are you up there talking about the NBA?

Well, here's why it's because it actually serves as a decent picture for who we're going to talk about today, and obviously we always talk about Jesus, but what we're doing right now for our Advent series is we're talking about people in the Christmas story, and last week, both I and Pastor Bob talked about Mary and kind of how and used her as a as as one to tell a view of the story.

But today we're going to talk about someone else, so we're going to talk about John the Baptist.

Now, you might say John the Baptist, he's not in the Christmas story.

I, I have a manger scene on my mantle and there's no John the Baptist in my manger scene.

I sing all the songs and there's no John the Baptist in any of the songs.

How is he part of the Christmas story?

Well, open your Bibles to any gospel and look at the Christmas story and you know who's there in every single one of them, taking up a significant number of verses John the Baptist.

He's a part of the Christmas story, whether you want to think of it or not, and so the reality is is that John came to do something.

He came to prepare the way, and so that's that's what I'm calling the.

The sermon today is preparing the way.

But as we go into this.

I want, I want us to to realize that that John is an important part of this story.

Even last week, when we talked about Mary, we were in the gospel of Luke.

Interspersed within the gospel of Luke is the story of John the Baptist.

He had his own miraculous conception.

He had his own prophetic vision that was given.

His father was blinded for a season, while he basically had said, cast his doubt on whether or not this could be true, and the angels, like I stand before God, I'm telling you it's true, but since you need a sign, let's make you blind and and so that that's kind of kind of the part of the story.

But here we are, john the Baptist, and I want to kind of look, just briefly.

We're going to look at that part of that story in Luke before we get to our main passage.

Our main passage is actually going to end up being in Matthew, but in Luke 1, after the birth of John, the Holy Spirit comes on Zachariah's father and opens his mouth so he's able to speak words for the first time.

Everybody has been like why can't you speak words?

What's going on?

We couldn't tell them because he couldn't speak words.

So here we go.

He has his chance.

The Holy Spirit comes on him and he opens his mouth and he sings a song you watch like musical movies or whatever, and people break out in song.

That's kind of how I envision this being.

I don't know if it really happened like that, but that's just like what I.

All of a sudden, the mute guy is singing a song, but part of that song he sings to his child, to John, and he says this, starting in verse 76.

He says and you, my child, will be called a prophet of the most high, for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet Into the path of peace.

So we're talking about this child who grows up to be known as John the Baptist, not to be confused with the apostle John.

John the Baptist is one who has a very particular ministry to prepare the way of the Lord.

The apostle John refers to him in this way.

He says there was a man sent from God whose name was John.

He came as a witness to testify concerning the light so that through him all might believe.

He himself was not the light, he came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

So John served the important role of being a proclamer, a herald of what was to come, and so that's what I kind of want to look at today.

But as we explore that in Matthew 3, I want to focus on answering a question.

So I'm going to present a question and then after the question, we will work through the text and then we'll answer that question at the end as kind of our big idea of the sermon.

So here's the question why is John the Baptist a part of the Christmas story and what does it mean for me?

Why is it that John kind of should have a place on your mantle?

I mean, I'm not saying you really need to put a little statue of John the Baptist on there.

He was not an attractive guy or whatever, but he is a part of it why?

Why do all four gospels place him in there?

And then what?

As we understand why John was sent.

What impact does that have on us?

And so, to answer that question, we're going to look at Matthew 3.

And there's a couple characteristics of John that I want you to notice.

The first is that John was a preacher.

He was a preacher that was sent by God to proclaim the arrival of the king, and you can see that in verses 1 through 3 of this passage in Matthew, chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

All the gospels tell the story, but here it is in Matthew.

In those days, john the Baptist came.

So this is he's about 30 years old.

This is right before the ministry of Jesus.

He came and he was preaching in the wilderness of Judea.

That word preaching is heralding proclaiming.

He came telling people a story, preaching something.

What was he doing?

Besides preaching?

He was also baptizing.

Let's look at the next verse.

Sorry.

So he came preaching and baptizing and saying repent.

Verse two, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

He came preaching this message.

Now, john was arriving in a land, in a place where the people had a expectation that the Messiah was coming.

So it's not a surprise that John the Baptist would have arrived, would have come and would have begun telling people hey, the Messiah is coming.

But his message would have landed as a surprise.

I want you to think.

I want you to listen to what people expected and then what John actually preached.

People expected that the Messiah was going to come, that he was going to rally a nation, that he was going to lead a revolt of some kind, presumably raise up an army, overthrow Rome and give freedom to the people of God and sit on the throne of David and re-establish the monarchy and do that.

That's what they expected.

They didn't expect to be told you need to change, you're in the wrong, you need to repent.

Repentance literally means to turn around and go the other way.

He's saying repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

There's those two parts.

Repent why?

Because the kingdom is almost here and you need to be ready.

Verse three says this is he who was spoken of and we read this passage and I didn't plan this, but maybe I don't know, it was just in the electionary.

Just in the electionary.

God is sovereign and we're in Advent and I'm preaching on John the Baptist and it was there.

But here it is quoted by Matthew.

He says this is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths for him.

Basically, the idea is hey, the king is coming, and right now the ground, it's a desert.

We need to build a highway through the desert.

Recently I saw a documentary on Route 66 and then the interstate highway system and it's interesting.

You would think, oh, the desert's an easy place to build a highway, but the truth is getting supplies out into the desert.

Doing all of that took a lot of effort.

The nation that thought of themselves as having arrived, they thought of themselves like a beautiful garden.

They thought of themselves as God's people, that they did not need a savior to deliver them from bondage to sin and death.

They needed a savior to deliver them from the bondage of Rome.

What John came to tell them is no, you're not a beautiful garden.

No, you don't have it all figured out.

No, you instead are a barren wasteland, you are a desert.

You are void of life.

And in order for the king to arrive, we need to prepare a highway, we need to till the ground, we need to lay out a road so that Jesus can come and deliver the same message that I'm delivering.

So so I'm not going to go all throughout the book of Matthew.

But in the book of Matthew it's interesting that the message that John the Baptist is preaching is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And then, as you follow Jesus throughout the book of Matthew, so many times, matthew refers to Jesus's very own preaching as repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

That message is the same message.

Verse four John's clothes were made of camel hair and he had a leather belt around his waist.

His food was locus and wild honey.

So, like I said, he wasn't a very attractive guy, he was a wilderness man.

He wore the clothes of a prophet.

Those were.

There were two things I wanted to emphasize.

He is a preacher and he was a prophet.

Okay, he was a preacher and a prophet, and I said my notes are messed up, but let's let's, let's keep looking.

Verse five the people went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of Jordan.

So it's not like he made it easy.

He wasn't going to the cities like Jesus was.

He went out in the desert and people were like there's some crazy guy out in the desert talking about the Messiah, let's go find out.

So these are people who sought him out.

They would.

They would make the trek to get out there and then listen to this.

They would what they did?

They were confessing their sins and were baptized by him in the river, in the Jordan river.

That's significant, because do you want to know what baptism was for?

Baptism in that day was a part of the ceremony that non-Jewish people converting to Judaism would undergo to kind of have their ritual cleansing and become a part of the people of God.

But this was Jewish people who did not need that ritual cleansing because they were already Abraham's seed right and so they didn't need this.

But they came to John and John gave them a message and he said the Messiah is coming, the kingdom is coming and you, you need to repent, even though you think you're good.

You need to turn from your sins so that you can follow him when he gets here.

And to symbolize that repentance, we're going to baptize you.

We're going to do to you this act.

That would have seemed humiliating.

It's like that's not for Jewish people, that's for Gentiles that want to become like us.

But you're telling me I need to do it and people were doing it.

And then verse seven.

The regular antagonists show up verse seven.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them so there's a lot of news going around, everybody's excited to go see this guy in the desert.

The Pharisees and Sadducees decide, well, everybody's going out there, we might as well go too.

And so they come.

And then John has a very encouraging, loving message to deliver to them.

Okay, he says you, brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, who told you you needed to come out here?

I don't want to tell you the message.

I get the impression that John was kind of a feisty kind of guy.

And then he tells them see, here's the thing, because he pronounces them as a brood of vipers and questions their authenticity.

But then he tells them what to do.

He says produced fruit in keeping with repentance.

And do not think you can say to yourselves we have Abraham as our father.

I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children from Abraham.

The axe is already at the root of the trees and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

He's saying hey, you're not good.

You need to repent or you're going to be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Then he talks about his baptism.

He says I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me and here he starts directly pronouncing Jesus is coming.

He says after me, after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.

He will baptize you in a different way.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

He made it really clear.

He made it really clear you don't come to Jesus based on your own righteousness.

You don't come to Jesus based on your heritage.

You don't come to Jesus because of you.

See, their confidence was in something other than God, whether it be in their works or whether it be in their blood.

Whatever it was that was the source of their confidence.

It was not lived out in repentance.

Yeah, this group of people, everybody in the land would have looked at them and said they're the holy ones, they're the good ones, they're the ones that have it all.

Perfect.

Paul was a Pharisee and Paul talks about his own life and he calls him his own life.

He was perfect, he was blameless, he had no guilt.

He also had no repentance.

Yet he was also incredibly lost.

Yet he also needed a Savior to deliver him from his bondage to sin and death.

You see, the call of God to his people has always involved repentance, and that repentance is what we are called to in Christ.

So we've kind of looked at who John the Baptist is.

He came before Jesus to tell people you're not ready, right?

They thought they were ready.

They thought they just needed the Messiah to come and raise an army and give them deliverance.

That's what they thought they needed.

John came to say no, that's not what you need.

You actually need someone to come and redeem you.

You need someone to come and deliver you from your sin, because you are not on the path.

So I want to go back to this question that we asked at the beginning why is John the Baptist a part of the Christmas story and what does it mean for me?

You see, john was needed to prepare the way for Jesus coming, because the people didn't know they needed a Savior.

They didn't know.

There was a time when you didn't know.

If you're here today and you're a believer, you know you needed a Savior.

You know you still need a Savior every day as you live a life of repentance.

But you want to know what else, besides you needing to remember that you need a Savior as you live out, day by day, a life of repentance is that as you go out into this world around you, you need to know that what you are called to do when you carry the gospel to the world, is to let them know that they need a Savior, because the world doesn't know it.

We go out in a land, in a place, and not just because it's California and the Bay Area.

Wherever you go in the world, people don't think they need Jesus.

They don't.

They think they're good.

They think, oh, I'll just be good if they even believe in any kind of afterlife.

But the point is this they need the message of John the Baptist just as much as we needed the message of John the Baptist, just as much as the people preparing and excited for the Messiah to come needed the message of John the Baptist.

And that message is repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

So what does that mean for us?

That means, as you go about your day to day life.

You are called also to be a herald, because you know what this is Advent, and in Advent we look back to the first time Jesus came.

Advent means coming.

We look back to that and we all get together in our houses and we celebrate Christmas and we might decorate and we might put up a tree and we might do all of these things.

But we also look forward to the fact that he is coming again.

And you know what, as we look forward to the fact that he is coming again and even desire to as we read in 2 Peter this morning to hasten that day, to prepare, the truth is we are preparing away now.

That's the task given to the church.

And so we today are the heralds, the preachers, but I don't mean preaching from a pulpit, though we do that.

But no, we go out into the world.

We go into our places of work, into our schools, into our communities, into the places where we do business, into our day to day lives, our clubs, the sports that we like, whatever it is.

Every place you go, you go and you are a herald preparing the way for the return of the Lord.

I don't mean to say that you can do something to influence it or change it.

He will come when he will come.

But our task now is to be a herald of the good news, yes, but also the hard news that you need a savior, because we live in a world where nobody knows it.

Nobody knows it except those to whom it has been revealed, those who have been given eyes to see Jesus.

When he read the scroll, he opened to Isaiah and he read the words about the coming Messiah, and one of the things that he said is that he comes to give sight to the blind.

Can that mean physical healing to the blind?

Act?

It can mean that, and Jesus did give physical sight to the blind.

But the Holy Spirit has the power to open the eyes of the blind to the reality that they need a savior.

The Holy Spirit has the power to bring someone who is absolutely dead in their sin and unable to respond to God and give to them life so that they can repent and follow.

And we have the privilege of heralding that news.

Don't hold on to it, give it away, proclaim it.

Don't rely on the pulpit to proclaim it, but take it to the ends of the earth.

That is our task, that is your task.

So my encouragement to you as we are in this Advent season, and remember Christ's coming and look forward to him coming again.

Remember your job, remember your task to be a herald, and remember to preach to yourself that you need him every day as you seek to live in repentance.

Let's pray, father, god, we thank you, thank you for this day, thank you for this passage of scripture.

I even thank you, lord, that I got off my notes I think you use that and, father, I just pray that, as we come before you at the table, that you would help us to remember, indeed, that we are called to be the heralds of the good news.

Father, help us to be faithful In Jesus name.

We pray amen.