Advent 3

Matthew 11:2-11 - Advent 3 - December 16, 2012
What We Come to See and Hear

John was a preacher.  Faithful preaching can have various effects on people.  Some people love it.  Some people put up with it.  Some people hate it.  It’s not the fault of the preacher.  The preacher’s job is to preach.  They’re not his words – at least not if he’s doing his job.  They’re the words of God.  A faithful preacher preaches the message of another.  He is a steward.  A steward is one whose job it is to administer his master’s goods.  It is not the preacher’s job to avoid offense in his preaching.  It’s his job to preach clearly what God gave him to preach.   It’s not the preacher’s job to figure out what his hearers want to hear.  It’s his job to preach what God wants his hearers to hear.  It’s not required of a preacher that he be likeable, handsome, or good with the youth.  It’s not required of a preacher to smile when he preaches or to engage lazy minds with clever rhetoric or trite illustrations.  No.  Of course, God can and just may use any number of a preacher’s personal strengths in order to further His kingdom.  But they are God’s to use.  It is God’s kingdom. 

But what is required?  What does God require of His preachers?  He requires that they be servants of Christ.  He requires that they be stewards of the mysteries of God.  Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.  That's what God tells us.  It’s the job of the preacher to preach the kingdom of God and to do it faithfully. 

That’s what John was sent for.  And he was spectacularly successful.  That’s what our Gospel lesson today teaches us.  Although, we do learn that success in regards to faithful preaching doesn’t always take the appearance that we’d expect – or that we’d like.  John landed himself in prison, after all.  It all happened because he kept preaching what God told him to preach.  It wasn’t his fault.  God never told him to stop.  Although, basic social awareness would have suggested that maybe he should have stopped.  The rules that govern how we interact with one another for sure would have required that John at least step back when it came to certain delicate topics – especially when it would be dangerous not to keep silent. 

Just consider the gross and public sin that John called out.  King Herod took his own brother’s wife.  That’s disgusting.  We know it.  Everyone else knew it too.  But John said it.  God told him to.  Now, it’s not like God told him in a dream or something to address this particular situation.  He didn’t need to.  God had told John what He tells us all: He says in the 10 Commandments what is good and right, what is wrong and sinful.  John simply applied God’s word.  He had no choice.  He wasn't sent by God to make exceptions.  He was sent by God to preach. 

The faithful preacher says things that we know are true.  But we also know you’re not supposed to say anything.  Like, say, divorce.  Who’s going to condemn that anymore?  Jesus does.  John sure did.  Or how about living with someone outside of marriage. That’s an awkward sin to confront.  How about the sin of skipping church, and doing something else instead?  It is for sure easier just not to bring it up – especially when you’re worried that by doing so you'll just drive them away!  It’ll do no good anyway.  And so the sin is ignored.  There are consequences to speaking the truth.  Aren’t there?  And we don’t always think that these consequences are worth it.  Do we?  But the consequences that we see, that make us so squeamish when sin is squarely addressed are not the same consequences that God sees and that God accomplishes through the straightforward and unbending preaching of the Law.

God prepares us to receive Christ.  John was sent to prepare His way.  And he did.  The Evangelist St. Matthew, in his third chapter, introduces him like this: 

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”  For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying:

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make His paths straight.’”

Now John himself was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins.

He preached repentance.  Such preaching has various effects on people.  Those who love it are those who are crushed by the Law of God and convinced by the Holy Spirit that they need a righteousness, which they have not produced themselves.  They confess their sins.  They embrace the faithful preaching of repentance because through it, God prepares a highway in their hearts for Jesus to come and have mercy on sinners.  And He does.  God reveals our sin in order that we might in faith receive our Savior, who forgives us our sins. 

Those who hate the preaching of repentance are those who resist the Holy Spirit.  Instead of being driven to Christ who bears our load and gives us a spotless robe of innocence, they depend rather on their own righteousness; and they resent any attempt on the part of the preacher to poke holes in it.  They think they’re doing fine; their so-called faith-life is strong enough without any need to listen to some preacher.  And so they refuse to allow the valleys to be raised and the mountains to be brought low.  But they need that.  They refuse to be measured by God’s law.  But they are.  They insist on being measured by their own general goodness.  But they’re not. 

Such hardness of heart is not God’s intended consequence of preaching – although it is more common than not.  But it’s the consequence of sin.  Sin is powerful.  It infects us all.  We were born in sin.  We live our lives in these sinful bodies.  We struggle against the desires of the flesh until that day when our sinful bodies die.  We repent of our sin.  We resolve to do better – that’s what it means to say that we are heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them.  But you don’t find this desire to repent – you don’t find the power to lay your guilt before God within your own heart.  No.  There is the source of sin. There is the root of unbelief that doesn’t trust God.  There is where excuses come from.  No.  The Holy Spirit prepares our hearts for repentance only through the oft-repeated message of the preacher. 

John preached and preached and preached the same thing.  He preached the Law.  He preached the Gospel.  He preached repentance - into the forgiveness of sins.  He didn’t just preach one grand and heart-wrenching appeal that got the countryside rending their garments and turning their lives around—and then John’s job was done.  No.  Sinners still sinned.  Sinners who repented, who had already been baptized still sinned.  Sinners who had witnessed John baptize Jesus to fulfill all righteousness still sinned.  Sinners who had seen John point with his own finger to Jesus, identifying Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, sinners who believed the Gospel, who trusted it and loved it – these sinners still had need to rend their hearts before God and confess again and again their sin, beseeching Him in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to grant forgiveness.  This means that sinners still had need for John to keep preaching.  Because they still had need for Jesus. 

So it is today.  The preacher needs to keep preaching, because we need to keep hearing. 

Of course, we want to see success.  We want to see in our own lives our sins conquered.  We want to be free from temptation, and to see in ourselves evidence that we are new creatures.  So does the preacher.  He wants to see his words have power.  He wants to see his message make a difference.  But he doesn’t always get to see it.  The preacher doesn’t get the job done.  He just keeps doing the job that God gave him to do.  It is God who accomplishes what He will.  It is Jesus whose works truly matter.  That’s why it’s the preacher’s job to point sinners to Christ and to preach what Jesus does.  

John’s disciples came to him in prison and reported to him what Jesus was doing.  Imagine what they would have told him. 

John.  While you sit in this prison accomplishing nothing, do you know what’s happening?  Jesus, the one you preached about, is giving sight to the blind, he’s making the lame walk, he’s cleansing the lepers, he’s making the deaf hear, he’s raising the dead, and preaching the gospel to the poor. 

This is what John needed to hear.  Jesus was doing.  The one whose deeds John had spent his ministry preaching about was doing what God said He would do.  What encouragement for a preacher!  Not to see tangible, countable results – but to hear and know that through one’s own preaching, Jesus is doing.  These are the things that confirmed that John had pointed in the right direction.  He had pointed to the One who has compassion on sinners. 

In Isaiah 35, the Holy Spirit told Isaiah to preach the same message as John:  “Say to those who have an anxious heart: ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.’” 

Then God continued and explained to Isaiah what would follow as a result of such preaching: “Then,” says God, “… then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.”   

Like all the prophets that God sent, John preached the coming of the Lord.  “Behold your God,” he said.   And what happened?  Exactly what God said would happen.  Jesus had compassion just as Isaiah had been told.  

When John sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the Coming One or if they should wait for another, he was not expressing doubt.  I don’t think so.  He was doing the same job that he had always done.  “Go to Jesus.  Go to Him to whom all of us prophets have pointed.  See what He does.  Does my ministry look to be a failure to you?  Does it look like I have done no good?  Well, look and see what Jesus does.  Ask Him if I failed.”  

They did.  And Jesus gave no apology or lengthy discourse on how He must be the One.  No.  Instead He simply gave His credentials; He pointed to the very works that God had promised would follow faithful preaching.  Therefore John preached well.  Tell him.

Tell him what you hear and see: “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”   And this tops it off.  The poor have the gospel preached to them.  This is the greatest work that Jesus accomplishes.  Because the good news consists of this: that Jesus came bearing our weakness, illnesses, our blindness and deafness, our strokes and heart-attacks, our uncleanness, our shame, and all our sin, and even death itself.  He came to take it all off of us.  That’s what His miracles taught.  He came to put it all on Himself.  That’s what it means to be the Lamb of God.  He came to save poor sinners from the misery of this passing world not just by healing the illnesses of their fading and withering bodies of flesh, but by giving a message to preach – the forgiveness of sins through which we have the guarantee that we will be raised again to eternal life.  And this is the word of our God that stands forever. 

And He expects preachers to preach it.  That’s why God sent John.  That’s why Jesus sends ministers today.  “As the Father sent Me, so I send you … to direct poor sinners not just to their need for a Savior, but to where salvation is won on the cross.”  That’s why we preach Christ crucified.  The preacher reports the deeds of Christ.  The preacher points to Jesus.  And Jesus does.  And this is His greatest deed.  Because it is on the cross that the Lamb of God was offered as our Substitute.  It is there that God received His holy life as payment for our unholy lives.  It is there that His bitter sufferings and death guaranteed our eternal life and blessing.  It is there that our sins are taken away.  “Tell John that he pointed in the right direction,” said Jesus, “because see! Hear!  I accomplish the world’s salvation!” 

But then Jesus added a blessing – one that was not only intended for John, but that was intended for all those who listened to John: “And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”   In other words, blessed is the one who believes what the preacher has preached.  Blessed is the one who sees the misery that faithful preaching often brings.  Look at John.  Blessed is the one who sees no discernible success or growth in his church despite faithful preaching and administration of the sacraments, but who cherishes these anyway.  Blessed is the one who is not offended by the message of the prophets who were stoned because he loves the message of Jesus who was crucified.  Blessed is the one who is not offended by the lowly means of grace through which God has mercy on sinners.  For it is there that Jesus does His work for you. 

He baptizes and clothes you in His own innocence.  He absolves and gives you the peace He won by reconciling God and man.  He gives to Christians to eat and to drink His own body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, and as a seal and pledge of God’s good will toward you. And so as we draw near to receive from Jesus the fruit of His death and resurrection, we sing those words that John the faithful preacher first cried out.  O Christ, Thou Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.  And He does.  This is a cause to rejoice! 
 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.