Title: Prepare as you wait for the Lord’s Christ
Text: Mark 1:1-8
2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way,
3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
Dr. Alistair Brown tells a story of walking through a park where he passed a massive oak tree. A vine had grown up along its trunk. The vine started small--nothing to bother about. But over the years the vine had gotten taller and taller. By the time he passed, the entire lower half of the tree was covered by the vine's creepers. The mass of tiny feelers was so thick that the tree looked as though it had an uncountable number of birds' nests in it.
Now the tree was in danger. This huge, solid oak was quite literally being taken over; the life was being squeezed from it. But the gardeners in that park had seen the danger. They had taken a saw and severed the trunk of the vine--one neat cut across the middle. The tangled mass of the vine's branches still clung to the oak, but the vine was now dead. That would gradually become plain as weeks passed and the creepers began to die and fall away from the tree. How easy it is for sin, which begins so small and seemingly insignificant, to grow until it has a strangling grip on our lives.
And yet, Christ's death has cut the power of sin. Yes, the "creepers" of sin still cling and have effect [on us]. But sin's power is severed by Christ, [and through him, we are given new life.]
J. Alistair Brown.
As we wait for the birth of Christ and also his second coming we joy in our new life given us in him as we together,
Prepare for the Lord’s Christ
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
The sending of the messenger to herald the arrival of the messiah had been foretold in the prophet Isaiah. One would come and prepare the way. This messenger is John the Baptist.
John arrives in the beginning of the Gospel of Mark in the wilderness and looking a bit unusual. Dressed in camel’s hair and with a leather belt around his waist, he was certainly not one that the religious leaders would have gone out to see, but one that they probably would have shunned. But John brings a message, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and that is usually what messengers do. John was no different in that respect.
5 And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
John’s baptism was, just as he was, a forerunner of the baptism that we today joy in and remember daily. He called sinners to repentance in preparation for the baptism that Jesus would institute, at the end of Matthew’s gospel, where he calls his disciples to go and make disciples baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Matt 28:19
John prepared what Jesus would fulfill.
In this season of Advent that we celebrate and joy in, we also wait … in preparation for the coming of God who would take on human flesh, becoming as we are yet without sin. In Mark’s gospel, just following our reading for today, you may remember that Jesus comes to John to be baptized himself, to enter into the Jordan to be baptized by John and to be marked as the chief of sinners that Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.
That is the child that we wait for this Advent season;
And that is the child who will be born on Christmas day;
And that is the one on whom God’s favor rests;
And that is where our salvation is found by faith in his finished work;
And that is Christ, in whom we also wait for his glorious return.
In contrast to John, who lived a simple lifestyle eating locusts and wild honey, and dressed most probably in that same camel’s hair coat and leather belt day after day; we also wait … in line … for deals … that we can’t live without.
The season of the day has become so retail focused that Thanksgiving hasn't even ended before the stores are open and the selling begins. Black Friday has now been extended to the entire weekend … and continues on to the internet deals of Cyber Monday in a way to maximize … all the potential that you and I can fulfill as consumers.
And Christ can wait … because we know he will not arrive for another 18 days or so.
Repent! For the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. At least that is how John calls sinners to repentance in Matthew’s gospel. And it is how we all should spend some of our time this Advent season as we continue to wait and focus and prepare … for the coming messiah, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Ill.
Pastor David Roper in his book The Strength of Man says:
The Bible defines worldliness by centering morality where we intuitively know it should be. Worldliness is the lust of the flesh (a passion for sensual satisfaction), the lust of the eyes (an inordinate desire for the finer things of life), and the pride of life (self-satisfaction in who we are, what we have, and what we have done). Worldliness, then, is a preoccupation with ease and affluence. It elevates creature comfort to the point of idolatry; [these things become our god]; large salaries and comfortable life-styles become necessities of life.
He goes on to say …
Worldliness is reading magazines about people who live [their] lives [for the pursuit of pleasure] and spend too much money on themselves … and wanting to be like them. But more importantly, [he says] worldliness is simply pride and selfishness in disguise.
It's being resentful when someone snubs us or patronizes us or shows off. It means [getting mad] under every slight, challenging every word spoken against us, cringing when another is preferred before us. Worldliness is harboring grudges, nursing grievance, and wallowing in self-pity. These are the ways in which we are most like the world.
David Roper, The Strength of a Man, quoted in Family Survival in the American Jungle, Steve Farrar, 1991, Multnomah Press, p. 68.
Wow, does that sound like today, if you’ve been to one of the major stores, and someone has treated you as an obstacle, in the way of what they want to buy, a parking space they desire, or even cringing because you have a place in the checkout line before them.
Or maybe it’s you, or me … that cringe at those, in line before us?
As sinners we all fall short, we all miss the mark, and we all need to repent, clinging to that blessed hope, Jesus Christ our Lord, and in his coming as the child who,
“will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
This proclamation in Luke’s gospel is heralded by John as 7 … he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Prepare … as you wait for the Lord’s Christ
This messenger proclaims Christ. This herald calls sinners to repentance, and we who are baptized, in the name of the Father and of the + Son and on the Holy Spirit are brought to faith, given the Holy Spirit and are made right with God, forgiven our sins on account of Christ and no longer servants but children of our heavenly Father.
Though you are unworthy to stoop down, like John, to untie the sandals of the Lord, Christ has stooped down - in humility - to be as you are, and for your salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man. Nicene Creed
This is he who is the gift begotten of the Father. This is the peace between God and man and the sign that is promised in Isaiah 7
14 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14b
Christ is the comfort of Isaiah 40, our Old Testament reading, to which John is a herald and Christ the means … for which:
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low; Isaiah 40:4a
And it is Christ who tends his flock like a shepherd; and gathers the lambs in his arms; and carries them in his bosom, gently leading them until he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Prepare as you wait for the Lord’s Christ
Because just like that Oak tree entangled with the vine that would continue to strangle and choke the tree unless cut away. So too sin has been cut away and laid upon Christ who takes away the sin of the world burying it with him in the tomb so that you are set free, buried with Christ in baptism, and risen to newness of life covered in the righteous robes of Jesus.
Prepared as you wait for the Lord Christ’s return
In the name of the Father, and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit!
Amen
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