Advent 4

John 1:19-28 - Advent 4 - December 21, 2014
A Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness

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What is greater, the sun or the sunshine?  What is greater, the instrument or the music?  What is greater, the messenger or the message?  It’s difficult to even make distinctions between these things since they are so closely associated.  That’s natural.  This is why those sent by the Pharisees were so annoyed by John the Baptist.  John insisted that the distinction must be made between who he was and what he was preaching.  His answers become shorter and shorter.  Did you notice this?  “Who are you?” —“I am not the Christ.”  “Are you Elijah?”—“I am not.”  Are you the Prophet?”—“No.”  John’s answers became shorter and shorter because he was getting tired of talking about himself.  He wasn’t sent to talk about himself.  That would be like a violin screeching out information about violins rather than filling the air with melody, or like a candle radiating factoids about wax and wicks rather than lighting a room.  No, a messenger’s job is not to bear witness of himself, but to bear witness of someone else.  That is what John did.  As the Evangelist writes a few verses earlier:

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.  (John 1:6-9) 

When we speak a word with our voice, our voice forms the word and in a sense creates it.  But this is not so with God’s Word.  His Word is eternal.  God’s Word is God himself.  And through his Word, he created all that exists.  He also creates the voices he sends to speak his Word.  

John was such a voice.  He was not the Word.  Like Elijah before him, he was a voice.  The Word comes before the voice that speaks it.  The Word is greater than the voice that speaks it.  This is exactly the distinction that John made concerning himself and Christ, “It is He, who coming after me, is before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.”

The message is greater than the messenger.  The messenger speaks it because God tells him to speak it.  The music is greater than the instrument.  The instrument plays it because the musician tells it to.  The sunshine is greater than the sun.  The sun shines because he who is Light of Light tells it to.  In fact, through his Word, God created the light to separate the night and day on the first day of creation, and yet he didn’t even make the sun and moons and stars until the fourth.   And this teaches us a lesson.  God doesn’t need his servants to do what they do.  We do.  

God doesn’t need the sun to make the day bright.  But since God uses the sun, we need it and thank God for it.  God doesn’t need the preacher to make himself known.  But because God chooses only to be known through the message that is preached, we need preachers and thank God for sending them to us.  The Gospel has been ringing like music in heaven since God first made the promise to crush the devil’s head through the Seed of the woman.  And by sending pastors to preach this gospel on earth, like instruments of varying quality, Christ causes this same ancient song to ring in our ears still today.  

The Ministry is greater than the minister.  We must make the distinction.  It is Christ’s Ministry.  It is Christ who serves us through the ones he commands to speak his word.  The preacher doesn’t make what he preaches true.  Rather the eternal truth of God’s Word is what makes the preacher true.  Yes, he studies and plans and prepares.  But what he says is always deemed worth listening to based on whether or not it is in fact the word of God.  They’re his words to be sure.  But you listen to them insofar as and because they are what God has already said. 

The Ministry is greater than the minister.  We distinguish between the two.  But we must not divide them.  As surely as only a fool would hide from the sun because he loves the sunlight so much, so it is the fool who says he doesn’t need to hear God’s word preached to him since he already believes it.  When Jesus sent the Apostles to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel, he instituted the Office of preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments.  “And lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.”  And so he is.  The light continues to shine in the darkness because Christ, the Word of God, continues to send his servants to bear witness of what he teaches.  Today is the shortest day of the year.  And yet the sun still shines because God still gives it light to shine. 

God’s Word is a light to our path and a lamp to our feet.  Amen.  By this we mean the Bible.  It is God’s word.  It is good for us to seek guidance and wisdom by reading the Scriptures at home and to our families.  In fact, God commands it of us.  But God also commands preachers to preach it.  That’s what the Bible says.  And he commands Christians to listen.  “He who hears you hears me.  He who rejects you rejects me.”  He said this to preachers.  God did not send Bibles down to earth from heaven.  He sent preachers who had born witness of Christ.  It is their words that were originally preached.   And it is their words, now preserved for us in Holy Scripture, that every faithful preacher is accountable to.  Because we heed God’s Word, we listen to the voice that preaches it, and judge it as faithful or not based on the written Word. 

Without constantly hearing the word of God, our hearts grow dark and faith is lost.  Just consider how depressed you get by the middle of November because the sun doesn’t shine as long as it used to.  You can’t store up summer by holding memories of it.  So also, you can’t retain your faith by simply remembering the gospel.  If seasonal darkness has such an affect on us, surely spiritual darkness is even more powerful than that!  God so wills that you hear the gospel with your ears often.  Just as we enjoy the sun while it shines abundantly in the summer and light more lamps when the days grow short, so also we hear the word when God’s servant is preaching it and seek to hear it all the more when the world outside has grown spiritually cold and dark around us. 

God works through means.  He does in nature.  He does as he governs the affairs of this world.  He does when tending to your eternal salvation.  He does so by sending messengers today.  Consider Mary.  God could certainly have conceived his eternal Son in her womb without sending an angel.  But he didn’t.  His Holy Spirit works only through the Word.  God never deviates from this.  Ever.  He sent his Word through an angel.  And through the word of the angel, the eternal Word of God was made flesh. 

Angel means messenger.  God created angels for the same reason he created the stars.  They give him glory by serving men.  They carry out his errands from heaven to earth.  The light that shines from the stars is older than the stars themselves.  Think of it.  The stars are millions of light-years away.  But they have only been shining for thousands of years.  This means that the service that the stars are privileged to render is to shine forth light that has been shining longer than they have.  This is a perfect comparison for angels.  They speak God’s Word.  But the Word they speak predates them from eternity.  All they do is bring this Word to earth. 

John was an angel in a manner of speaking.  He was a messenger.  But what made him great is no different from what made the angel Gabriel great.  Gabriel was privileged to be the voice through which the Word was made flesh.  John was privileged to be the voice that prepared hearts to receive the Lord once he had begun his earthly ministry.  Through both of them the Holy Spirit worked.  Both of them glorified God by serving men, as the angel also told the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” 

John calls himself “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”  He is citing Isaiah 40.  As a voice, he cries out.  But he also tells us to cry out.  Listen to how Isaiah 40 continues,

The voice said, “Cry out!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?” 

“All flesh is grass,
And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.”  (Isaiah 40:6-8)

And this is how John prepares us.  He tells us to cry out with our own voices that we are grass.  Grass withers because the breath of the Lord blows upon it.  But what about us?  What does the breath of the Lord do to us?  Oh, he blows.  He blows by sending his Spirit through his Word.  He blows not to cause flesh to wither and fade, but so that he might become flesh himself.  The Word by which all flesh was made took on human flesh.  Flesh fades.  But the Word of the Lord stands forever.  And now the Word of the Lord is made flesh so that our flesh may not fade forever – so that, though we wither, we might have hope. 

We made a distinction earlier – between the message and the messenger, between the Word and the voice – an important distinction – but we must never divide the one from the other.  So also we make a distinction between the divinity of Jesus Christ and his humanity.  He is God from eternity.  He is man in time.  His Godhead predates his manhood.  And yet, though we distinguish between his two natures, we must never divide them.  He who is God from eternity will remain our Brother for eternity.   He who stands forever joins himself to us who wither and fade. 

He joins us in order to take our sin upon himself.  This is what Christmas is about.  He lives the perfect life of obedience to God.  He walks through the jagged pathways that our sins have turned this world into.  And he lays them flat and straight as he journeys headlong to the cross for us.  He walks through the darkness and the cold – where the son does not shine and the warmth is not welcome.  And by the light of his gospel he sheds light and heat wherever he speaks.  In him the Word and the voice find perfect communion.  In him the sun and the shine join together as one.  In him the instrument is prepared to play the sweetest tune, because he becomes for us the instrument of God’s saving peace.  He makes peace between God and man, not by becoming man alone, but by suffering the wrath of God at the hands of men.  He bears our sin for us and lets his body wither and his beauty fade as his life itself is offered as a sacrifice for our sins.  But the Word of God stands.  He stands back up.  The God-Man dies and the God-Man rises.  He who is the Word made flesh has eternal life to give through the forgiveness of our sins. 

God joins himself to us in his incarnation.  He has won for us salvation.  And he delivers this salvation by joining us to himself in Holy Baptism. There we are buried with him and raised with him.  And our preaching of repentance and faith reflects this reality.  We are prepared for Christ by being reduced to grass.  We receive Christ and all that he has by being exalted through the Word. 

So, in conclusion, we have heard two things regarding the Word of God.  First, we must distinguish between the minister and the Ministry – between the messenger and the message preached.   Second, although we must distinguish, we must not divide.  The two go together.  I could think of a clever example to illustrate these two points, but in the spirit of pointing away from myself and bearing witness to the Word of God instead, it is fitting that we have the perfect possible example right here in our Gospel lesson: Baptism. 

Baptism is not just plain water, but it is the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s promise.  So in the same way, the preacher is not merely a voice.  He is the voice that carries the eternal Word of God to you.  The water and the Word are joined – so also the voice and the gospel are joined.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear. 

But we must make a distinction.  Baptism works the forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe – not through the water, but through the Word of God in and with the water, and by faith that trusts the word of God in the water.  So also, it is not by hearing my voice that your sins are forgiven.  It is by the Word of God in and with this voice that works and strengthens faith in you who hear. 

But the two must not be separated – just as Christ, the eternal Word must never be separated from his spoken word.  So long as there is a voice that preaches Christ to you, gather to hear it.  This is where Jesus comes to you.  So long as Christ remains Man – so long as the Word remains flesh – which is forever – find your confidence in what he says.  He cannot lie.  The Sun of righteousness cannot fail to shine on you who look to him for the warmth of mercy.  The instrument of God’s peace cannot cease to cheer your soul with the melody of eternal joy. 

Amen.   

Let us pray:

Oh, rejoice, ye Christians loudly, For our joy hath now begun; Wondrous things our God hath done. Tell abroad his goodness proudly Who our race hath honored thus That he deigns to dwell with us. Joy, O joy beyond all gladness, Christ hath done away with sadness! Hence, all sorrow and repining, For the Sun of Grace is shining! Amen