NEW Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Advent - December 10, 2023

Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Advent, based on:

Isaiah 40:11

2 Peter 3:8-14

Mark 1:1-8         

Sermon originally delivered December 9, 2023

 

Repentant Joy

Let us pray: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.” Amen (Psalm 19:14).

The text for our meditation this evening is the Gospel, read just a few minutes ago. You are welcome to follow along with it as printed in your bulletin.

We are now in the Advent season, and if you are an old-timer, like me, you might remember how things used to be.

• The color of Advent was purple, the same somber color we use in the Lenten season when we think of the suffering and death of Jesus for our sins.
• We omitted parts of the worship that were more joyous, as we still do, but we were especially to avoid any Alleluias until Christmas Eve.
• I was taught to avoid, also, singing any Christmas hymns in worship until we actually reached Christmas Eve itself.

Things change, don’t they? We value tradition, as Lutherans, as they keep pointing us to the Scriptures and to Christ, but there is no Scripture that says we must do Advent in only one way.

The blue color we now use is beautiful, and it reminds us of looking up at a blue sky on a beautiful day and thinking of the eternal joy that Jesus came to bring to us, as He was born in Bethlehem, as our Savior - and the joy that He will bring us when He comes back from the sky, with some clouds, on the last day, to bring us everlasting joy in heaven.

It is what Mark says in the first verse of our Gospel lesson. The Advent season is “the beginning of the Gospel - the Good News - of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” who came for us, to bring us hope and joy.

We can’t avoid our culture, either, with Christmas songs, many of them secular, beginning long before December, and many Christmas movies on competing TV channels already beginning in mid-October. And much of this “Christmas” emphasis stops right after Christmas, when we are just beginning our Christian Christmas celebration and the singing of Christmas hymns, through Epiphany, January 6.

What we don’t want to miss out on, though, in all these changes, is another important part of the Advent message - that the only reason Jesus had to come was because of our own sins and the many sins of our very troubled world.

Mark quotes in our text for tonight from the Old Testament prophet, Malachi, and then from the prophet, Isaiah. God said through Malachi that He would send a messenger before Jesus, who would prepare the way for Jesus. Isaiah predicted, in our Old Testament lesson for today, that this messenger would be “a voice, crying in the wilderness and calling people to receive “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of their sins.”

Mark clearly identifies John the Baptist as this messenger, this voice, preparing the way for the Lord. Mark also indicates that many people from Jerusalem and Judea went out to see and hear John and were baptized by Him, confessing their sins.

Some, if they knew their Old Testament, would realize that John was wearing the same hairy clothes and a belt of leather that the great prophet Elijah wore (2 Kings 1:8) - and that there had been predictions that Elijah would come, turning hearts of people, before the Promised Savior came (Malachi 4:5-6). Jesus Himself identified John as the one coming in the spirit and power of Elijah, as did an angel earlier (Luke 1:16-17, Matthew 11:11-14).

And yet John was always pointing beyond himself, as our text says, to Jesus as the Mightier One. In fact, John says that even as a prophet of God, he was not worthy enough even to stoop down and untie the sandals of Jesus. Among the Jews, a servant could be asked to do almost anything his master wanted, except for undoing his master’s shoes, some rabbis taught. Only the lowliest of slaves could be expected to do that. In comparison with Jesus, John was putting himself even lower than the lowliest of slaves.

John could baptize with water. But only Jesus was the Christ, the One anointed by God to be the Savior of the world and to do the work necessary to forgive our sins, by His perfect life and His suffering and death on the cross and His mighty resurrection. Only Jesus was the Son of God, as well as a man, sent from His Heavenly Father, and able to baptize not just with water, but with the power of the Holy Spirit.

And think now about the call to repentance from John and, later on, from Jesus Himself, and how well people do with that. To repent means not only to be sorry for our sins and confess them; its root meaning is “to turn,” to turn away from our sins and to the Lord and His will for us.

Some churches say that we must make that turn on our own, as an act of our own will, and only when we have made that decision, will God pay attention to us. Many others have found, though, that they can’t make that turn on their own. No one can, the Bible says.

If you have ever read about groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and other such “Anonymous” groups, you know that their first two principles are:

• “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol” (or whatever our problem was) and
• "We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us.”

AA gets off track in other ways, because they don’t speak clearly of the Biblical fact that only the One True Triune God can restore us. Our God is the only real Higher Power, as God the Father sent Jesus, God the Son, born in Bethlehem to rescue and forgive and restore us, and bring us to faith through God the Holy Spirit, whom He and the Father sent.

Martin Luther discovered that, through the Scriptures, after he had struggled and struggled in his own power and life to be a good Christian, and couldn’t do it, in His own power. Luther finally wrote, in his Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot, by my own reason or strength, believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel (that Good News Mark speaks about in our text) and enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified and kept me in the true faith” (Explanation of the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed).

On Pentecost, Peter preached the Good News of Jesus as Savior, and then said, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit;” and 3,000 people were brought to faith. The whole package, from repenting and confessing and turning to Jesus, was the promise and the gift of God through His Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38-39).

There’s an Old Testament prayer in Lamentations 5:20 that literally says, “Turn us unto You, O Lord; and we shall be turned; renew our days.” God turns us, through Christ and through the Holy Spirit, to Himself in the gift of faith.

And even repentance is a gift of God that God enables in us. When the early Christians preached the Gospel to fellow Jews, they said in Acts 5:31, “God exalted Jesus at His right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” And as the Gospel was spread to non-Jews, the believers in Acts 11:18 “glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the Gentiles also,” (even to non-Jews) God has given repentance that leads to life.” Martin Luther said, in His 95 Theses, at the beginning of the Reformation that “the whole life of a Christian is one of (that kind of) repentance” as a gift of God.

We have a confession of sins in every Communion service in our church. But sometimes we just rattle through the words and forget what a great privilege it is to think and talk honestly about our sins and our struggle to do right, and that our Lord still cares about us and forgives us and is the one who can turn our lives more toward Him and His will, through His power.

And later in our service, we remember our baptism, when many of us were brought to the Christian faith through the Spirit’s gift of new life for us, and as our liturgy says, “With repentant joy,” we come to the Lord’s Supper and “receive again the salvation accomplished for us,” as a gift, “by the all-availing sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood on the cross.” Receiving such gifts is truly Advent “repentant joy” in our Lord.      

Please rise for prayer: “Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds safe, only where they are safe, in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Amen (Philippians 4:7).