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The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. You may be seated. Dear Emmeline, and to all the baptized, grace and mercy and peace be yours from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. We’re going to consider this morning this great character given to us in the scriptures, St. John the Baptist. The last of the prophets, the greatest… Born to women, says Jesus, although the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than him.
And I’d like to consider John in five little subcategories, really. And I’ll have to admit to you all that this, the text and the man John and even the sermon is a bit beyond me, so I’ll need your help to get there. In fact, I’d love to hear your own reflections on some of these things afterwards. Because John, he presents us with this really clear line. In fact, if you want to imagine it, John is the one who’s drawing a line in the sand. And he says, on this side is the kingdom of God. And on that side is the kingdom of darkness. The kingdom of the world. The kingdom of the devil. And he’s inviting us into the kingdom of God.
John is, here’s the first part, John is a hero. If you’re looking for a hero, I would commend John to you. In fact, it’s one of the very helpful things for us all to know that we have meaning and purpose from our heroes in life. And John is one of those heroes, first of all, because he’s brave. I mean, he stands up in the middle of the wilderness and he starts blasting away at the people, even the greatest people, the Pharisees and the judges, the Sadducees and the rulers were all coming to hear John. And he, from that wilderness pulpit, was blasting away.
I mean, look at the first thing that he says in the Gospel text. He says, You brood of vipers. I don’t know how you’d want to come back if that’s how I started every sermon. Dear brood of vipers. But that’s what John preaches in the wilderness. And he blasts away at the people’s sin, at their haughtiness, at their pride. In fact, he goes straight after Herod, the Tetrarch, the ruler, and that’s why John is in prison and eventually why his head is cut off, because he preached the sixth commandment to Herod and said, you shall not commit adultery while he was married to his brother’s wife, Herodias, who was also his second cousin, one of the Herod things.
So he wasn’t afraid. I think this is especially helpful for us because we live in a culture which is in the height of the sexual revolution, hopefully coming to its end, where if you say things like, marriage is a man and a woman, or a man is a man and a woman is a woman, or you shall not commit adultery, the world is raging against it. And so we need this hero, John, who was not afraid to stand up and say, you shall not commit adultery. Even if it cost him his life, he wasn’t afraid.
And so we want to claim John as our hero, as the one who will stand up and speak the Lord’s truth. But as our hero, point two, we want to listen to what he preaches. That’s his main thing. He was a preacher of the kingdom of God. And this is the summary of his preaching. Matthew and Mark give it to us like this. John was preaching, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Now, I think thinking about that passage, we say to ourselves, what do those two things have to do with one another? It’s not at first obvious. There could be a lot of other things that would go together with the kingdom of heaven. Run away, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Or straighten things up, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Or get out the finest gifts, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Right? But John says that our readiness for the kingdom of heaven is repentance.
In fact, I’d like to submit it to you this way, that the kingdom of heaven is in fact repentance. Remember that line in the sand that John draws? It’s on this side of that line, on the kingdom of heaven side, is repentance. And on the other side is not repentance or anti-repentance. That’s the difference between being in the kingdom of heaven and being out of the kingdom of heaven.
And because we want to be in the kingdom of heaven, this is what we want to think about. What does it mean to repent? And maybe I could suggest that there’s three ways to not repent. This is part three. There’s three shapes of anti-repentance. There’s three ways to be on the other side of this line. The first, maybe the easiest to think about, is hedonism. Chasing after your own wants and desires. Like Paul says when he writes to the Philippians, their God is their belly. This is probably where we see it in our culture today.
This is the idea that if you’re free, it’s so that you’re free to just do what you want and do what pleases you. I guess I threw my dog Brandy under the bus in the first service, so I better do it again so it’s even. Is that right? We live like my dog Brandy who spends her whole life just sniffing around for something to eat. That’s what I tell her all the time, your God is your belly. I told the early service not to tell her I was preaching bad about her today, but…
This is the basic idea of this kind of animalistic life, is that we’re just chasing after pleasure, trying to avoid pain and appease the sinful flesh. And John comes right up to that and he says, repent. He draws the line. No, if you are just living for pleasure, to please yourself, you are certainly not in the kingdom of God. You’re in a different kingdom. You might think that you’re free, but you’re enslaved to your own passions and your own lusts, and you’re just chasing after them.
And for us, it is to recognize that, that even though we have a sinful flesh that’s fallen and wants all of the wrong things, we recognize that that’s wrong and it’s bad. It’s pulling us away from the Lord and His Word. And so we come over the line into the kingdom from the anti-repentance of hedonism by contrition, by recognizing like we did whenever we confess our sins that I’m a poor, miserable sinner, that we haven’t lived like we ought to have lived, that we haven’t done what we ought to have done, that we haven’t wanted what we should have wanted, that we too have chased after things for their own ends. We repent. We repent.
There’s another way to be outside of the kingdom, and that’s the anti-repentance of despair. This might come when we recognize that we’re sinners, and we recognize that we’ve broken God’s law. And I think our first instinct is to try to fix things up ourselves. Like to say, well, okay, look, I’ve done wrong, and maybe God’s mad, so I better do right. And we could go about that attempt to make things right by our own efforts for a little while, but eventually it falls short.
It’s like Adam and Eve and their fig leaves. I mean, remember after the fall, they realize, oh, they’re naked and they’re ashamed and they… what are we going to do? And so they come up with their own solution. They stitch together these fig leaf garments and they think for a little while it worked. Right? Look, we’ve covered our naked. We’re not naked anymore. We’ve fixed the problem. That was pretty easy. I thought the fall would be worse than that. But now we’ve made things right ourselves.
And that went for a while until, remember, they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden. And then they realized, whoa, these fig leaves are not enough. They ran and hid in the bushes. And that’s not enough. To recognize, this is the slavery, the anti-repentance of despair, and that is to think that because we are so bad, and because we cannot solve our own problems, and because we cannot save ourselves, and because we cannot be holy by our own efforts, then we must be out of the kingdom of God.
And in and against that despair, John the Baptist came preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins. He came baptizing. Amen. And that’s what baptism means. Baptism means that all your sins are washed away. It’s not the washing of the body from dirt. It’s the washing of the conscience, the pledge of a good conscience towards God, the stain of sin removed by the blood of Jesus so that we’re born again and adopted into his family. John was baptizing for the forgiveness of sins.
And this, dear saints, is what it means to be on this side of that boundary line, to be in the kingdom of God. It means that you are baptized. Your sins are forgiven. You are covered in the blood of Jesus. You are declared righteous and holy. This is why this kingdom of God is not some sort of abstract kingdom of our own efforts. It’s not a philosophy or an ideology. It’s a man, a Savior, the Lord Jesus, who says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest.
That’s why John the Baptist is a hand on the window there, that first window next to the transept. You don’t even see his arm or his face or his beard or his feet or his camel clothes or the locust legs sticking out of his teeth. All you see is his hand pointing to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is what John does because this is what the kingdom is. The kingdom is Jesus, the Savior, who gave himself for you so that you might be his.
So hedonism into the kingdom through contrition; despair into the kingdom through faith; baptism. Trust in the Lord’s word. There’s one other way to be outside of the kingdom. And that is pride. Or this life that is simply serving itself. I think that’s why John says, when he preaches, he says, who told you to bear fruits of repentance? And when he starts to tell, when the people come and they say, well, what are we going to do? How are we going to live? How are we going to act? He says, well, if you have two tunics, give one of them to the person who doesn’t have any. And the same with food. If you’ve got two meals, give one of those meals to the person that doesn’t have any.
This is the fourth thing we want to think about because when you are part of the kingdom of God, you are called to a different kind of life, a life that is okay with giving away your second coat. And I want us all to think about what that means. Because if you had two coats and you were sitting next to a person that just had no coats, why would you hold on to that second coat? I think it’s because there’s a fear. I mean, after all, the coat that you have on is going to get old and it might get extra super cold. Well, maybe not here, but somewhere it might.
And you might need two coats or something like that. There’s a fear that I have to take care of myself. If I’ve got two meals and the guy next to me doesn’t have any meal, I’m going to hold on to this meal because I’m afraid that tomorrow I might not have it. But you are part of the kingdom of God. Right? The Lord is your Lord. The Creator is your Creator. God is your God, and He knows what you need.
The Gentiles seek after… Remember how Jesus preaches? The Gentiles seek after all these things. What am I going to eat? What am I going to wear? You are not a Gentile. You’re not a pagan. You are not living in a dog-eat-dog world. You are not fighting for the survival of the fittest. That’s the way it goes out there on the other side of this line. You are in the kingdom of God where God, your heavenly Father, knows everything that you need. And he will provide it for you. He will give it to you. He will take care of you.
And now, living on this side of the kingdom of God, we are able to serve and to bless. We’re free to be generous, to not have to fight always, to defend our own stuff, to serve and to bless other people, because we know that God will take care of us. If you have two cloaks, give one away. If you have two meals, give one to the guy that doesn’t have any. Trust that the Lord is your Lord.
And so we’re living in this world, but we’re living in an entirely different way. Which brings us to the fifth point, which is that even though we’re living in the kingdom of God, we still are living in the world, but again, it’s a transformative thing. Now, here I think is what happened when everyone was coming down to John at the Jordan River, and he was preaching. And he was preaching the kingdom of God and calling people into the kingdom of God and saying it’s different here than it is out there.
Then some of the people were getting pretty worried about their jobs. And really, you have two examples, which is really quite wonderful, the tax collectors and the soldiers. So everybody says, what are we supposed to do? And John says, you’re supposed to live fearlessly and generously. And the tax collector says, what about me? Right? And I want you to hear in this question, actually a really important point.
The tax collector is asking, can I still be a tax collector and be in the kingdom of God? And it’s interesting that I think throughout Christian history, a lot of different churches have said no. The Anabaptist tradition, the monastic tradition in the church in Rome, and all these other different traditions, they said, no, you’ve got to leave all that worldly stuff behind. But that’s not what John the Baptist says. He says, yeah, you can be a tax collector, but don’t take any more than you’re supposed to.
The same with the soldier. It’s just a really important theological question. The soldier says, what can I do? And John doesn’t say, put away the sword. You can’t be a soldier. You’re a follower of Jesus. You can have nothing to do with that kind of violence. That’s not what he says. He says, be content with your wages and do what you’re supposed to do and don’t take money from people. Don’t be a thief. But he can still be a soldier.
So that the Lord Jesus, when he calls us into the kingdom of heaven, is not calling us out of the world. You are all still the child of your parents, and the grandchild of your grandparents. And if you’re married, you’re still a spouse. And if you’re a father, you’re still a father. If you’re a grandparent, you’re still a grandparent. If you’re a citizen, you’re still a citizen. If you’re a worker, you’re still a worker. But your life looks totally different there, in those places.
That you’re not there for yourself, to serve yourself. You’re not there for yourself, but to serve the people that the Lord has given you because, because God in Christ has come to serve you and bless you. His forgiveness sets you free to live a life of mercy and kindness and love while we wait for him to come and bring us to eternal life.
So, to Emmeline and to all the baptized, since John was baptizing in the Jordan River, we rejoice. That we are the children of God. That we are the citizens of heaven. That we belong to his kingdom. We belong to this King, the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us, who loves us, and gave himself for us. May we rejoice eternally in this kingdom.
In the name of Jesus, amen. And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
