A Voice in the Wilderness

The Baptism and Message of John the Baptist

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, chapter 1, verses 1 -8. The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in Isaiah the prophet, I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way.

A voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him. And so, John came baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The whole Judean countryside and all of the people of Jerusalem went out to him, confessing their sins. They were baptized by him in the River Jordan. John wore clothing made of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

And this was his message, after me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

How Advent Preparation Differs from Christmas Traditions

In the name of Jesus. So how do you prepare for Christmas? How do you prepare for the arrival of Jesus? Well, we all know the American traditions. Starting about the 4th of July, or the 5th, because right after the 5th of July, you put away the fireworks, and then you start getting out the Christmas stuff.

And then by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, out come the Christmas carols, and you put the radio on, like the Ella Fitzgerald channel, and you got this really cool vibe, semi-jazz, Christmassy things going on.

It's always in the background. And you sing along, and you put up the lights, and the tinsel, and the holly, and you put out the little nativity scene. And if you're really industrious, you put out the Christmastown.

You know what I'm talking about, the little tiny Christmastown with the little cars, and the snow, and stuff like that.

And it's just so cute, so...

Yeah, and we just sit there and go, yeah.

Well, Scripture doesn't prepare us for Christmas in that way. The Advent season, historically, has John the Baptist. And John the Baptist is quite the character. It says of him that he wore camel's hair, a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

And his message was repentance. What kind of unruly character is this? I mean, how many people do you know if a vacancy comes open in their church,.

They're saying, you know,.

We've got to get somebody just like that John the Baptist guy. Now, to show you just how unpopular he is, too, how many Christian booksellers right now are selling the John the Baptist diet book? I don't know of any.

How many of the major retailers in New York, Macy's or whatever, do they have the John the Baptist line of clothing? There's nothing practical about this guy. There's nothing that we can use about him that is going to make us money.

In fact, this guy has absolutely no tact whatsoever. I mean, he's not politically correct. He doesn't abide by all the nice ways in which we're supposed to be diplomatic. In fact, listen to this. From the Gospel of Matthew, we have a cross-reference to this text that tells us what happened when the Pharisees came out to John the Baptist's baptism.

Now, remember, our text says that the whole Judean countryside came out, but let's take a look at this character. So it says this in Matthew. When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the wrath to come?

Well, this is not a way to grow a church.

You know.

Yeah, and it gets worse. It gets worse, okay? He says to the Pharisees, you bear fruit in keeping with repentance and don't presume to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our father. I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Wow.

I mean, if this were happening today, whoever the equivalent of the Pharisees were, this would be all over Twitter and Facebook. I mean, this story would go viral. I mean, the headlines on Fox News and MSNBC would be saying, is it time for John the Baptist to retire?

Clearly he's off his rocker. Can't we all just get along, right? Hasn't he seen everybody out there has those coexist bumper stickers on their cars right now, and you're out there telling the Pharisees that their moms are snakes, which is kind of a rough translation of Brood of Vipers.

Your mom is a snake. Well, so much for the soft preparations for Christmas. This guy is quite the character. Now if we go back into our text here, that's kind of a little bit of what's coming. But here's what it says.

Let me reread our text. The beginning of the gospel. Gospel, euangelion, good news. This is the beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in Isaiah the prophet, I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way, a voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.

The Surety of God's Word and the Role of John the Baptist

So how is the way of the Lord prepared? How is the way of the Lord? Are the paths made straight? Well, what's funny is the way the Greek picks this up, and I think the ESV has a better way of doing this.

Mark starts off, if you haven't read the gospel of Mark cover to cover, it's a really quick read. It's oftentimes believed that this is the gospel associated with the preaching of the apostle Peter. And this is the gospel of action, man.

I mean, this reads like a comic book graphic novel. It just has this great pace to it. So the way it kind of reads in the Greek, and the ESV picks this up in its translation when it says that he appeared.

So it says, it's written in Isaiah the prophet, I'll send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way, a voice of one calling in the desert. And then verse 4, and so John appeared, is the way the Greek reads.

It's like, so Isaiah writes this down, the way that Mark writes it. Isaiah writes this prophecy down about the one who's going to precede the Lord, and then poof!

He shows up, right?

And which is, I think, the reason why the people who put the lectionary together gave us that second Peter reading today. Here's what it says, do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that the Lord, with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.

And this tells us something about the surety of God's word. Isaiah wrote his prophecy hundreds of years before John the Baptist ever came onto the scene. But God never forgets his word, and God's word always accomplishes what he sets it out to do.

And so God, through the prophet Isaiah, said that he will send a messenger ahead of the Messiah who will prepare his way, and that messenger will be a voice of one calling in the desert, prepare for the Lord, make straight his paths, and then poof!

John appeared. It's kind of like that. God says, and then it happens. Now in this particular case, it was a little bit of a delay by our chronology, but in God's way of thinking, it happened as soon as he said it was going to happen, because God's word accomplishes what it sets out to do.

So John came baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. How is the way of the Lord prepared? How are the crooked paths straightened? Well, it's real simple.

Repent! Repent! Repent! You are a dirty, rotten sinner, John the Baptist says. And while he's saying it, he spits a grasshopper leg in your face. I'm sure his teeth were black and he probably smelled bad too.

What kind of preacher is this? Well, he's the right kind of preacher for the right job. Now if you think about it, what is John the Baptist? Something to consider here. Is he a prophet? Well, not exactly.

He's kind of this guy who sits with one foot in the Old Testament and one foot in the New Testament. He's retro-dressed, kind of like the old prophets of old. He comes in the spirit of Elijah, so he's kind of like a prophet in that sense.

But see, all of the prophets of the Old Testament, they told us about God is going to someday send the Messiah. But John the Baptist isn't saying God is someday going to send the Messiah, so he's not acting like a prophet in that sense.

Now let me give you a metaphor here. We all believe that we're living in the last days, and truly we are. But there are some people who think we're actually living in the last, last, last, last, last, last, last, last days.

Okay, that Jesus has literally got his foot out the door, he's about to show up. Well, if that's the case, every now and then you always run across somebody who's popular in the Christian church who likes to play that proverbial game of pin the tail on the Antichrist.

This is always a fun game to play. I remember I told you a few months ago there was a guy, when I used to work at a bank in Seattle, who was a Vietnam vet. He'd been injured in Vietnam, and so he was in a wheelchair, and every month he would get his disability check from the government, and he would come in to cash it.

And I remember one time he comes up to me and says, You know, Chris, I'm wondering if Nancy Reagan is the Antichrist. You know, he'd just sit there and go... But here's the idea. In the same way that we're all kind of thinking, could this be it?

Could we be at the end? Could that person be the man of lawlessness? Is the man of lawlessness right now breathing? Where does he live? Is he in Vienna? Maybe he's living in London in a flat. Maybe he's hiding out in Liberia.

Who knows where he is,.

But right now he could be breathing, right? We're just waiting for him to show up on the scene. We all kind of understand the sense of expectation regarding the end and the appearance of the man of lawlessness.

Well, cross out the man of lawlessness here and put Jesus in place, and Christ the Messiah, the one promised in the Old Testament, hasn't shown up yet, but everybody knows it's got to be now, it's got to be soon, it's got to be really, really soon.

Well, John the Baptist shows up, and he's not like the prophet saying, yeah, he's going to come. John the Baptist is like the guy who's the MC at a huge event, and the curtain is drawn, and he shows up, the spotlight's on him, he's out, it's dark all around except for the spotlight, and now, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to Jesus Christ.

And the curtain rises up, and here comes Jesus. That's John's role. So he's not like a prophet in that sense. He already knows that the Messiah is on the planet,.

Breathing, has been around for 30 years.

And so he's there to reveal him, but reveal him in this sense by preparing people for his now soon-to-be-appearing publicly. That's John the Baptist's job.

Right?

So he does this, and the way to prepare for the arrival of the Messiah is to tell everybody, you're a sinner. You're a sinner. You don't measure up. Let's take a look at those Ten Commandments. How well are you keeping them?

You're not. You're wicked, and your paths are crooked. Straighten them out. Repent. This is what he preaches. And you think, well, this isn't very nice. I don't like this message. This is the only way to prepare for the arrival of the Lord, because Christ has come to take away your sins.

And so John the Baptist, in preaching the law, in preaching repentance, it says he was baptizing people for the forgiveness of your sins. In a true sense, John isn't a prophet. He's the first gospel preacher.

And you'll notice that after he's arrested, Jesus, what does he preach? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus picks up John's preaching and preaches it. To prepare for himself, he preaches repentance.

And you know what the apostles preach?

They preach repent.

Repent.

This is what they do.

And so the way you prepare the way of the Lord is not with cute little tinsel and holly and songs and little twinkly lights. No, the way you prepare for the arrival of the Lord is to examine your life in light of the Ten Commandments and see that you come up short.

I come up short. Each and every one of us does. And you see, the reason why the Pharisees didn't really accept the baptism of John is because they didn't think they needed to repent. This is why he said your moms are snakes.

Because they were holy. They were righteous. They were good. They tithed all the way down to 10 of the herbs growing in their little gardens. Oh, they didn't need to repent. And that's why John got in their face and said, Who warned you to flee the wrath to come?

You don't really believe you need my baptism now, do you? But the reality is we all need to repent. We all need to be forgiven. We all need our sins washed away. And before you think for a second that John the Baptist was some kind of arrogant jerk, listen again to his words.

His message was this. After me will come one more powerful than I. And here's the important part. The thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. There's always that saying, Pastor, do you practice what you preach?

Well, John the Baptist did. He practiced what he preached. He had been brought to repentance. He understood that he was in need of forgiveness. And he understood that the one who came after him was mightier than himself.

And he understood that because of his own sin, he was not worthy to stoop down and even untie Jesus' sandals. This man practiced what he preached. He believed that he needed repentance. And the reality is that each and every one of us needs to repent.

Repent daily. Repentance is the way of life of the Christian.

It's the way of life.

This is why we pray at the end of the day. The Lord's Prayer is he taught us to pray. Our Father who art in heaven, holy, hallowed is your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And then you ask God, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. You'll notice this is a daily prayer. Give us this day our daily bread.

If you ask for your daily bread today, do you need to pray again for it tomorrow? We're not praying for a stockpile. And, Lord, give us this year our stockpiled of Y2K survivalist goods that we can keep in our basement.

No, this is not what we're praying. We're praying for daily bread. So if you're praying for daily bread, daily sustenance, everything that you need for today, you're going to need to pray this prayer again tomorrow.

And that's what God promises you. That's what he gave the children of Israel out in the wilderness, daily manna, daily bread. And so because we're praying for daily bread, we daily pray, forgive us our trespasses.

And that reveals that the entire Christian life here on this side of the true promised land, it's daily repentance. The message of John the Baptist never goes out of style, even though his clothing line never will be in style, even though his diet will never be a bestseller.

His message never goes out of style, and it applies to each and every one of us. And so he, John the Baptist, realized his own unworthiness,.

His own sinfulness,.

And even confessed that he was not worthy to untie the straps of the sandals of Jesus. And so he baptizes with water, but when Jesus appears, he said, Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Now, a little bit of confusion about this.

Let's clear it up. There's a lot of confusion, especially in the past century, as if somehow baptism and the baptism of the Holy Spirit are two different things. Scripture teaches they go together. In Acts 2, on the great day of Pentecost, we read that Peter preached the gospel, and it cut people to the quick.

Verse 37 says this,. Now when they heard this, Peter's preaching, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, listen to this, repent.

He sounds just like John the Baptist. Repent and be baptized. Be baptized. There is in the passive voice. It's something that happens to you, not something you do. Be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

According to this text, the Holy Spirit and baptism go together. And so they do. So on the day you were baptized, your sins were washed away, and God gave you the Holy Spirit. And so you have received this promise that John the Baptist foretold would happen, that when he comes, Jesus would baptize them, not just with water, but also with the Holy Spirit.

And so you have been baptized, you have the Holy Spirit, and Christ keeps you and he sustains you. So how do you prepare again for Jesus' arrival? Well, tinsel and twinkly lights are cute, and there's nothing wrong with them.

But the way we always prepare, and the way we prepare to receive Jesus every Sunday, and even every day when we read his word, is by confessing that we are sinners in need of a Savior, and believing and trusting that Jesus Christ, as John the Baptist said, is truly the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

You don't take away your own sin. You couldn't pay for even the simplest of your sins.

If you tried.

Christ bled and died for all of them. So stop striving to be righteous on your own. Trust in the one who clothes you in his righteousness, the one whose sandals you are not worthy to stoop down and untie, but the one who makes you worthy by his shed blood for you on the cross.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

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