Luke 3:1-6
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar – when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— 2 during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:
“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.
5 Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
6 And all people will see God’s salvation.’”
Prepare the Way for the Lord
There are so many preparations to be made for Christmas. Are you going to send out Christmas cards or a family newsletter? You should probably send them now if you want them to get there by Christmas. Are you hoping to get away for a day or two during the holiday? I hate to break it to you, but you probably should have booked your room a couple months ago. There are decorations to put up, presents to purchase and wrap, cookies to bake, paper stars to make. There are so many preparations to be made for Christmas.
Why, though? Why do we go to all the trouble for one day of the year?
It’s not for family. Under “normal” circumstances you could plan to see your family whenever you want. Under the “new normal” you might not be able to see your family at all. We don’t go to all this trouble for family. As a Christian you know that it’s all about what brings family together – it’s about the celebration of our Saviour’s birth.
If you thought you had things to prepare to celebrate this Christmas, imagine the preparations that God was making to celebrate the first Christmas – to prepare for his Son’s arrival on earth and the work he had sent him to do.
Luke goes into great detail about the historical context of that coming. He mentions prominent members of the Roman government and the hierarchy of the Hebrew high priesthood. We don’t need to go into the details, but Luke mentions them so that you can know that all these true events took place “when the set time had fully come.”[1] God had set the stage to fulfill his promise to send a Saviour. He orchestrated the events of history to prepare the way for his Son.
This was tremendously good news for the people who lived under Pontius Pilate and Herod and Philip and Lysanias. They had been waiting for thousands of years for the Saviour to come, and finally he was on his way. In fact, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,[2] Jesus was already 29 years old. The Saviour had come; he just hadn’t announced himself yet. God had kept his promise. Salvation was on the way.
That’s why we celebrate Christmas and make all the preparations that we do, because God was true to his word. The Lord did come. That is a fact worth celebrating with decorations and special music and midweek worship services. God sent his Son at Christmas to be our Saviour.
But here’s a truth that’s easy to forget this time of year. Jesus still comes to you today. He comes to you in Word and Sacrament, i.e. through the waters of Baptism and the bread and wine – his own body and blood – in the Lord’s Supper. Jesus still comes to you every time you sit down with your Bible and read your daily devotion.
During the season of Advent, we don’t say, “The Lord was coming.” We say, “The Lord is coming,” because he still comes to you today in Word and Sacrament, and because Jesus is coming again on the Last Day.
Jesus is certainly with us today, but someday soon he will return with the clouds of heaven, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God.[3] The Lord still is coming. That’s good news worth celebrating.
But it’s also news that means that you and I need to hear the same message that John shared with all those people out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”[4]
John, of course, isn’t being literal. God doesn’t need us to pave an actual highway to heaven to prepare for his arrival, but he does call us to prepare our hearts, and John told the people how to do that. He came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.[5]
If you were to summarize John’s entire ministry of preparing the way for the Lord in a single word, it would be “repent.” The Greek word here refers to a complete change of heart and mind. In other words, repentance means that you think and feel differently about both sin and salvation. And this is important as we prepare for the coming of the Lord, because the two greatest enemies of preparation are arrogance and indifference.
I mean that makes sense in earthly things, right? You have midterms coming up. Half of your grade is dictated by how you do on this one test. If you’re arrogant and you think you know everything already, then you’re not going to study and you’re not going to be ready. Or if you’re indifferent – if you just don’t care – then why put in the effort at all? Either way, you’re not prepared for what’s about to happen.
Those are the same enemies that we have to fight as we prepare for Christ to come again. We can’t afford to be arrogant, and yet, arrogance in the church, among Christians, is far more common than you would ever hope or believe.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it. New Christians have a much greater appreciation for Jesus because they know what they’ve been saved from. Maybe it was a life of addiction to alcohol or drugs or sex. Maybe it was a heart hardened against God – that denied or hated God. Maybe it was complete ignorance that there is a God. New Christians often get it. They know what they’ve been saved from.
Those of us who have been Christians for a bit longer are more susceptible to arrogance. We might think we know it all already. We might think that we’re already leading a good and godly life… until someone points out to you that the way you talk about other people is not only rude but it’s shameful and sinful. We might think we’re leading a good and godly life, until someone points out to you that even looking at a woman lustfully – like the women on your favourite TV-MA TV show – even looking at them with desire is sinful, let alone the Google searches that follow, or, God-forbid, the illicit meetups you don’t want anyone to find out about.
That’s no way to prepare for Jesus’ return as Lord.
Neither is indifference. There’s a lot of that to go around too. This will be my ninth Christmas as a pastor. Christmas is easily one of the top 2 days of the year for Christians. But every year on Christmas morning, as happy as that day is, I can’t help but feel a little disappointment. We might get 70-100 people here on Christmas Eve, but only a fraction come back the next day.
And I get it! You’ve already been to church. Who really needs to go to two church services within 18 hours of each other? But that’s the thing. It’s not about need. It’s about desire – desire to be with God, with other Christians, around God’s Word. And that’s true of Christmas morning, but also of daily devotion and prayer. We can grow so indifferent and can’t be bothered to care.
That’s no way to prepare for Jesus’ return.
The way to prepare is to repent – to have a complete change of mind and heart about sin and salvation. As one poet put it:
There is no mind so good that it doesn’t need to be changed.
There is no mind so bad that it cannot be changed.
There is no sin so small that it doesn’t need to be forgiven.
There is no sin so great that it cannot be forgiven.
My mind is not so good that no change is needed, and your sin is not so small that it doesn’t need to be forgiven. Repentance means seeing those seemingly innocent or accidental or unintentional sins as acts of rebellion against God deserving punishment and death and hell. That’s what sin is, “great” or “small.”
But repentance also means having a complete change of mind and heart about salvation. My hope for heaven is not based on how good I can be or how little I can sin. It’s based on the work that my king came to do.
Again, that’s why we celebrate Christmas and make all the preparations we do, because it’s at Christmas that the words of Isaiah come true:
“And all people will see God’s salvation.”[6]
That’s what Jesus came to give you by dying on a cross. That’s what he still gives you through his Word and Sacraments. He gives you the forgiveness of your sins.
Earlier I told you the Greek word for repentance– a complete change of heart and mind. The Greek word for forgiveness paints a good picture too – it’s a complete removal of your sins from you forever, just like God promises you in the Psalms:
As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.[7]
Or, again, through the prophet Micah:
You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.[8]
That’s what Jesus came to give you – complete removal of your sins from you forever. And he won that for you by his death on the cross.
That’s why Jesus came at Christmas – to be your Saviour from sin. That’s why he’s coming again – to take you home to be with him forever in heaven.
But there’s work for us to do before then – and it’s not leading a crusade to right the ship in Canada, to protect my personal rights and freedoms, to get Santa out of the malls and Jesus on the grounds of the Legislature Building; it’s not a crusade to get anyone else to change anything in themselves. We have work to do in our own hearts.
That’s what Advent is all about, and that’s what repentance is all about – completely changing the way we think about our sin, hating the sins we used to love and loving the godly things we used to find boring, but, above all, rejoicing when we see Jesus, because when we see Jesus we see God’s salvation and our forgiveness – the complete removal of our sins from us forever.
This Advent, may God give you a heart of repentance too, and may he who began a good work in you carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1] Galatians 4:4
[2] Luke 3:1
[3] 1 Thessalonians 4:16
[4] Luke 3:4
[5] Luke 3:3
[6] Luke 3:6
[7] Psalm 103:12
[8] Micah 7:19