December 10, 2023       Text:  Mark 1:1-8

Dear Friends in Christ,

Just over a century ago, in 1919, a young lieutenant colonel and two hundred and fifty soldiers made the first road trip across the United States.  The caravan traversed 3,242 miles through eleven states in sixty-two days, and average of fifty-two miles a day.  Poor roads, rough pavement, winding routes – the message was clear:  for our nation’s security, to move forces and equipment in case of attack, to say nothing of ease and comfort, there needed to be a better way.  The young lieutenant colonel was Dwight Eisenhower.  Forty years later as president, Eisenhower instituted the Interstate Highway System that allows us to make the same trip in well under a week.

John the Baptist entered a world where the way for the Lord’s arrival was as rough and winding as that first American road trip.  John is the advance man who comes to prepare, to make straight, the way for the greater One following.  As he proclaims a Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, the way is opened and prepared to meet the Lord Jesus Christ.  John the Baptist is . . . 

“A ONE-MAN ADVANCE TEAM”

This one-man advance team is foretold by Isaiah.  He is the last prophet of the Old Testament.  He lives in the wilderness with camel hair clothing and has a diet of locusts and wild honey.  John’s message was urgent and unmistakable.  The long-expected Messiah is coming.  Now is the time to prepare.

This wilderness/desert locale is an appropriate place to begin his work.  In the desert the Lord had molded His people into a nation once they left Egypt.  It was in the wilderness that God comforted Elijah from the fury of Ahab and Jezebel.  The harsh reality of the land stands in contrast to the lush paradise of Eden.  It is a picture of sinful degradation of God’s once perfect creation.

John the Baptist, this one-man advance team, had to let people know that he was not the Messiah.  He deflects attention from himself and directs it all to Jesus.  He is humble.  Jesus is the center and focus of this advance man.  John prepared for Jesus by pointing away from himself to Christ.

That works for us too.  John prepares for Jesus by turning us from our sins to Christ.  John could have reveled in the attention – what a great preacher he was, and how about his faithfulness to God’s calling – after all, he was the one spoken of centuries before as the guy who would be a special messenger for God.  Pretty seductive.  Maybe the advance man wanted to become the star attraction.

We can relate.  We think we are the show.  We walk out of Meijer and we don’t just throw a few pennies in the kettle, we fold up a bill and push it downward…what a good boy I am!  After a little office party imbibing, your co-workers come up to you and tell you that you are the one in the office they have always admired, and you believe it.  People are gracious to complement us on a sermon and we think we are John the Baptist.  Everyone gushes over your Christmas sugar cookies, and you are the next Betty Crocker ready to hand out your recipe with a wink and a smile.  John comes preaching a message of repentance and we think we would have done a good job with that.

None of us though can properly prepare ourselves to meet Jesus.  It is the Lord that graciously calls and comes to us.  No sinner can stand in God’s presence with his own strength or character.  Look at Moses when he saw God, or Peter, James, and John on the mountain with the Lord.  They were overshadowed with His being.

This one-man advance team boldly proclaims a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  This is a gift of God.  Many of us can misunderstand and think that repentance is our own doing.  John’s baptism is unique.  One must first be washed to be able to repent and be forgiven.

People from all over came out to John.  They were baptized in the Jordan, confessing their sins.  They were told to turn from those sins and cling to the one that John was proclaiming.  Though they didn’t know His identity yet, they were trusting that their sins were being forgiven by the Christ, the Messiah.  And they were.  Our sins are being forgiven because Jesus took them from his own Baptism by John in the Jordan to the cross.  Our sins of pride are washed away as we trust the Christ and Him crucified.  

The focus today of the Christian Church should always be on the One this advance man proclaimed.  John’s work was completed, and he is numbered with the martyrs who gave their life in service to the Savior.  He enjoys the eternal life that we are looking forward to.

The advance man did his job . . . here comes the King!

Amen.   

December 6, 2023 – Advent         Text:  Galatians 5:22-23

Dear Friends in Christ,

Have you made your lists for your relatives?  I still write mine on a piece of paper but then Toni has to transfer it to a spreadsheet or Google doc put together by a brother or a niece.  Do you feel the way I do that it gets harder and harder to come up with things on your list?  I already have clothes in four different closets at home, Spotify so no CD’s needed, and most of the sports equipment I need, though golf balls are always accepted.  Cologne and Page-A-Day calendars are always winners, but I have to think outside the box.  Ah, going to Germany next year so there are some ideas.  Would like a lava lamp, always enjoyed those.  Should I add bell bottom jeans, a headband, and doorway beads?  Far out dude!

What goes on your list?  What should be on our list?  Our text for tonight is a good beginning.  It is a list that tells of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Our theme this year for Advent is “Gifts”, and it has to start with a list.  So, let’s do that . . .

“GIFT GIVING LISTS”

I don’t know if you have every broken down this list into the threes, but it fits quite nicely.  The first three gifts on the list are love, joy, peace.  These all come directly from God.  He is love.  God loved the world, understood all its depravity and purposed to remove it.  He sent His Son Jesus to cleanse it.   

With this love goes joy.  “Joy to the world, the Savior comes, the Savior promised long.”  Enduring joy should be bubbling up in our heart from all the grace of God in our possession.  It is a joy undimmed by tribulation.  This joy ever beams for the believer and merges into the joy of heaven.

Peace is the quietness of the soul, the opposite of dread and terror.  The feeling of all who walk in the Spirit of God.  We have peace between ourselves and God because of the gracious work of Christ.

The second trio is composed of gifts that appear in our contact with men and women.

Patience.  A good word for this time of year.  Children wait patiently for gifts.  We wait patiently in lines.  Headphones while waiting in lines do wonders.  Take yourself away with Christmas songs, hymns or your favorite tunes until you hear, “Can I help the next in line!”

  Our world can always use our kindness.  In our being kind to one another it benefits our society.  

Goodness is not our moral excellence, but as goodness doing good to others.  Instead of a self-indulgent life how can we share goodness with those God has called into our sphere of influence?  

Faithfulness could go with these last three in this sense.  Can men and women trust us?  Will we make a faithful commitment?  Do others see you as someone they can count on?  But because of its active nature in the original Greek language, it is better positioned to think of it as something God gives to us.  We receive the faith which in turn leads to our faithfulness when it comes to God’s Word and his will.  

Our gentleness helps when a calm voice is needed.  Maybe that will be yours at your Christmas gathering.  It comes through in how you speak to little ones and your spouse.

Self-control brings up the caboose in our list.  This is one where I think most of us have one area where this is a struggle.  We make a list in our head where self-control is always there, but then there’s that one thorn in flesh that gets us every time.  “Lord, I want to do better.”  May the Holy Spirit help us in that endeavor.

In my Christmas Eve gatherings with my extended family when I was a child the list of gift openers was really long.  We opened one person at a time.  Kids first by age, grandma, and then my aunts and uncles by age and finally my mom and dad.  Doug Lueck might sit there for three hours or more to get to his gifts.  Who was paying attention?  Certainly not the kids or the uncles setting up the kid’s toys.  For all of us gathered around the Christmas tree these gifts of the Spirit were on display.  It was a spectacle of wrapping paper and my mom explaining every gift she got for somebody.  But what joy it was.  It is hard to replicate that memory.

We don’t have to.  The Lord remembers us.  We made his list before the creation of the world.  We wait in patience for that ultimate gift home.  The Lord has explained His saving act in the pages of Scripture.   Naughty or nice, it doesn’t matter.  Forgiven and redeemed through no merit of our own, that matters.  Making the list?  You are on it.  Thanks be to God whose gift we possess.

Amen.