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Sunday, June 24, 2012

John the Baptist



Luke 1:57-80 - Nativity of John the Baptist - June 24, 2012 
Serving God Without Fear

Six months before Jesus’ birth, John the Baptist was born to prepare his way.  Six months from today is Christmas Eve.  And so today, on June 24, we celebrate the nativity of the greatest prophet and preacher who ever lived.  Of course John’s ministry didn’t begin until he was much older, but even before he grew and became strong in spirit the events surrounding his birth tell us quite a bit about his mission as the prophet of the Most High.  These recorded events also teach us about our duty always to listen to what God says. 

Zacharias, John’s father, was a priest.  He was one of a number of minor priests who took turns offering incense in the Temple on behalf of the people.  Upon doing his priestly duties one day, the angel Gabriel, the same angel who appeared to the Virgin Mary, appeared to him and gave him the wonderful news that his elderly and barren wife Elizabeth was going to have a baby.  Their child was to be named John, and he would prepare the way for the coming Savior of the world.  He would fulfill those words from the prophet Malachi, the last words of the Old Testament:  
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.  And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse” (Mal. 4:5-6). 
This is what Gabriel told Zacharias.  The angel’s words were as clear as the prophet’s words.  John would prepare the way of the Lord in the only way that is possible: by preaching repentance – by raising every valley and by leveling every mountain, as Isaiah foretold he would. 
But Zacharias didn’t believe it.  Now, don’t misunderstand this.  Zacharias was a God-fearing Christian man.  He believed that God was gracious; he believed the promise concerning the coming Messiah; he waited for the advent of the Suffering Servant who would redeem Israel.  But when it came to actually applying the promise of the gospel to himself and his own impossible situation, then it was that doubt flooded his fleshly mind. 
“My wife is way too old to be having kids,” he thought. How shall I know this?”  But what a foolish thing to say! —How shall I know this?!  “Because I told you,” said the angel Gabriel.  “Because the prophets told you. Listen to them.”  Now, of course, I’m paraphrasing here.  But look at Abraham.  His wife was old too. Yet Abraham believed God and God counted his faith to him as righteousness.  “Therefore, Zacharias, because you don’t listen like your father Abraham did, God will teach you how.  You won’t be able to talk until your son is born—not until you see that the words I have spoken are true.” For nine months Zacharias could not speak.  Imagine that.  He doubted the gospel that he had spent his whole life believing and his unbelief brought him the wrathful sentence of God’s holy messenger.  But that’s what God’s messengers are for. 
The law is intended to silence us – not just before we’re converted and turn our lives around and follow Jesus – no, but throughout our lives.  Yes, we’ve heard the gospel.  Like Zacharias, we’ve heard that God is gracious.  You know it.  You have believed it and staked your long life upon it.  But God’s word still speaks what you need to hear when you need to hear it, even in old age.  The law of God reveals sin.  But the chief revelation of the law is not just a long litany of transgressions you’ve committed throughout life.  The law reveals what is at the root of it all: unbelief.  It reveals unbelief and doubt even in the heart of the Christian who has been fed and nourished by the pure milk of the Gospel. 
Because in your heart of flesh you still fail to fear God.  You still do not love him with all your mind and soul.  And experience has shown that you do not trust him as you ought.  Just consider those few commandments that we just recited.  Whatever else they expose in us, they expose especially that we have not done what faith requires: “You shall fear and love God.”  The law reveals our inborn inability and refusal to believe what God says and to apply the good news to ourselves. 
“I cannot by my own reason and strength believe…” We know it.  But we still fall back on our reason and strength when the promises of God contradict what we see and feel.  So what problems in life have plagued you?  What doubts return again and again?  What regret have you not been able to shake out of your mind?  What impossible situation in your life causes what you hear in church to seem irrelevant and inapplicable?  I guarantee you that what you really need is to hear the word of God. 
We’re not naturally inclined to believe that God really is as gracious as he says he is.  And so God’s word often does to us what God’s word did to Zacharias.  It is as St. Paul writes in Romans 3, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Rom. 3:19).  
God’s law silences us because God has a gracious purpose when he speaks it.  His gracious purpose is for the world; it is for all who are guilty.  And this gracious purpose cannot be accomplished while we are talking.  So God shuts us up so that we might consider what Zacharias had nine months to consider.  And what was that?  Well, think about what message he confirmed when God finally let him speak again.  What is it that he said?  He confessed boldly what he had at first doubted.  He said what the angel of God prepared him to say.  He wrote down: “His name is John.” 
The same Gabriel who told Mary that her son would be named Jesus also told Zacharias to name his son John.  And this is not just historical minutia.  It was necessary for John to be John in order for us to know Jesus as Jesus.  And here’s why.  The name John means, “The Lord is gracious.”  The name Jesus means, “The Lord saves.”  John did his work so that we might know the work of Jesus.  And still today, he who prepares sinners for the Lord’s salvation must preach the grace of God in Christ – he must do what John the Baptist did.  We cannot return to where the Lord saved us on the cross.  And so we must gather instead to where the Lord reveals his grace in the message that we hear. 
We need to hear it.  St. Paul asks, “How will they believe without a preacher?  And how will they preach unless they are sent?”  Christ could have lived a thousand holy lives and satisfied the law a thousand times in our place, and died for our sins just as many times.  But it would have done us no good at all if God did not send his messenger to preach it to us.   But he does. 
In the Augsburg Confession, which is the confession of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and of all faithful Lutheran pastors and congregations, right after we confess that the sinner is justified by grace alone through faith in Christ, we then immediately confess how it is that this faith in Jesus comes to us:
So that we may obtain this faith, the Ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted. For through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Ghost is given, who works faith, when and where it pleases God, in those who hear the good news; which is: that God justifies those who believe that they are received into grace for Christ’s sake. This happens not through our own merits, but for Christ’s sake.  [AC V]
We cannot speak of justification – we can’t talk about the forgiveness of sins – apart from where God comes to us in his holy word to deliver it to us.  For this purpose God sent John the Baptist; for this purpose God sent your pastor and all true ministers of his word. 
At the end of Luke’s Gospel, after Jesus rose, and before he ascended, Jesus said to his disciples, “Thus it is written [i.e. in the Old Testament Scriptures], and thus it was necessary [and then he tells us two things that are necessary for our salvation] for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day [that’s one], AND that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Lk. 24:46-47). 
Think of this!  TWO things are necessary! – not only that Jesus earn our salvation – that he be born and live a holy life and die in your place and rise, but that the message be preached – and not just a generic message of unidentifiable love from God.  No, it is the specific message of the Lord God of Israel who is gracious, and who keeps his promises, and who has sent prophet after prophet to preach this to us ever since the world began – this is the Lord who saves.  And this message must be preached to sinners. 
Jesus was born, as his mother sang at the news of his conception, to be our Savior, to become a curse in our place, to take our punishment and die so that we might live in his resurrection.  John was born, as his father sang at his birth, to give us knowledge of this salvation through the forgiveness of our sins. 
The job of John – like the job of Elijah and Moses before him – the job of every pastor is to make sinners out of you by teaching you to repent.  And this is important, because it is the job of Jesus, who comes to you through the other word your pastor preaches – the Gospel – it is the job of Jesus to save sinners.  He doesn’t save anyone else.  In order to believe that what Jesus lived and died and rose to win is for you, you must believe and know and confess what you are.  And dear Christian if you are a sinner, then you are the object of God’s grace and mercy. 
That’s what Gabriel convinced Zacharias of.  And he had a long time to consider it.  Upon the birth of his son, Zacharias, by naming him, confessed what God wants us to know and confess as well – that he is gracious to sinners.  God opened Zacharias’ lips and loosed his tongue in order that he might speak again of the mercies of God in Christ.  And in the words of our Gospel lesson this morning, Zacharias did just that. 
So likewise for us, as the law silences us, God prepares us to consider what he says.  And so we consider what he says.  We don’t make excuses.  We don’t compare ourselves to others.  We don’t look for ways to mitigate or soften our shameful status of “sinner.”  No, we confess it.  And with every true confession of sins to the Lord who saves (Jesus), there is with it the confession that the Lord is gracious (John).  And it is here, where the Lord cleanses and adopts us through the washing of water by the word of Christ, it is here through the holy Absolution spoken through the loosed lips of a sinner like me, it is here where God opens your mouth to receive the body and blood that atoned for all your sin, that God works and confirms in you the faith that receives it all. 
But God opens your mouth also that you may confess what you know.  And our creeds and our confessions and what you have learned from the catechisms and what we talk about in Bible class are not just dry facts.  It is the knowledge that John was sent by the Most High God Almighty to impart to us as he pointed to Jesus saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  The knowledge of your salvation is far superior to anything else you can know or have or own or care about—because it is the knowledge of Christ.  It is the knowledge that you are his, and he is yours.  It is the knowledge that you may forsake your own righteousness, which seeks approval from the very law that condemns you, and be found instead in Christ who has earned approval from the God who saves you.  It is the knowledge that Christ’s righteousness is yours by faith. 
Jesus delivers us from the hand of our enemies.  He did this on the cross where he bore our sin, and in his resurrection where he left them buried.  And he delivers us today through the word that he gives us to listen to and repeat.  They are words of comfort, comfort to God’s people, as Isaiah said in our Old Testament lesson.  Our warfare is ended, because Jesus has earned us peace with God and gives us double for all our sins.  This is what it means to “serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life,” as Zacharias sang.  It is to be bold before God claiming his faithful word!  And it is to be bold before the world with the true confession we have, knowing that he who saved us through the bright light of his word will through the same word graciously guide our feet into the way of peace as we journey through the valley of the shadow of death.   
In Jesus’ name, Amen. 


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