Preparing for Jesus

You may like to read Matthew 3:1-12

I was driving the other day when I saw a road sign that asked Is your car prepared for winter?  Well, it’s not wrapped in a woollen blanket and hasn’t had its flu shot, but I have put stuff in the radiator and washer bottle to stop them freezing and I will be putting a shovel in the boot (trunk) in case of snow.

Some of you may be preparing for Christmas.  I’m guessing most of the ladies certainly are though I know that some of us men leave it until 24^th December.

When we are preparing for Christmas we are really preparing for Jesus – and that’s just what John the Baptist was doing and preaching about.

We are in the season of Advent, we’ve just lit the 3^rd Advent candle, and Advent is all about preparing for the coming of the Son of God; preparing to remember and celebrate his birth in Bethlehem so long ago and preparing for his Second Coming.

Before John burst onto scene there hadn’t been a prophet in Israel for about 400 years.  People thought that the time of the prophets has passed; how wrong they were.  We should never try to predict what God will do.  Suddenly, after 400 years, John appeared like something out of the past, a voice bringing God’s message to his people and crying out against their leaders.

Like the prophets of old John had a specific task; to prepare the Jews for the coming of their Messiah, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  The message he preached can help us today to prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus.

John’s message can be summed up in the words “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”  This was also the message that Jesus began preaching after his forty days in the wilderness.  In Matthew 4:17 we are told “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’”

Repent!  The preachers of old used to bellow that word from the pulpit.  Repentance was a serious issue for the church of not too long ago and it should be for us today.

Repent!  Repentance isn’t just about confessing all the wrong selfish, God-defying things we’ve thought, said and done; it’s about being determined to turn our lives around and not doing those things anymore.  Only if we confess and repent do we receive forgiveness.

Repent!  The Greek word translated in our Bible as repent literally meant to turn around and go in the opposite direction.  It was the word a Roman centurion would use when he commanded his soldiers to turn 180 degrees and march the other way.

There is an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is talking to God and, in response to something God says, retorts angrily, ‘You’re not the boss of me!’  Then Homer looks up at God, thinks for a moment, and says, ‘Oh right, you are the boss of me.’  That’s repentance!

Like confession, repentance isn’t a one off thing.  As God works in our lives he is constantly showing us things we need to confess and repent of as we work with him to become more like Jesus.

Advent is a time of the year for reflection, a time for preparation, a time to think about our relationship with God and a time to confess and repent.  In the busyness of our physical preparations for Christmas we must not overlook our spiritual preparations.

If we do not prepare ourselves, if we do not look at our own lives and personalities to discover where repentance is needed, then we are in danger of being like the Pharisees and Sadducees who John called a “brood of vipers”.  They had obviously not repented at all because God tells them to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance”.  They were sure of their standing with God, not because they had confessed and repented but because they were descended from Abraham, they were the leaders of God’s chosen people.  They were spiritually arrogant.  John tells them that being descended from Abraham offers them no protection because God can make children of Abraham anytime he chooses.

There is a danger that we who are Christians today can also be spiritually arrogant.  Whilst it is impossible for anything to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, as Paul so eloquently tells us in one of his letters; we can let sin creep into our lives to such an extent that it spoils our relationship with God.  We have all heard the stories of prominent evangelists who have fallen from grace because of the sexual sin or financial impropriety they thought they had got away with.

Brothers and sisters we must not be a “brood of vipers”.  We must produce fruit in keeping with repentance.  It is obvious when a person truly repents because there is an obvious change in their lives and personalities.  They begin to manifest the fruit in keeping with repentance, the fruit of the Holy Spirit such as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”.  The Holy Spirit is given to those who confess and repent and accept Jesus as Saviour and Lord and if the Spirit is in a person the fruits of the Spirit should be present in that person’s life and character.

I have said that Advent is a time of preparation, but what are we preparing for?

Jesus.  Advent is all about Jesus!  The Bible is all about Jesus!  Our lives should be all about Jesus, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end!

During Advent we are preparing ourselves spiritually for Christmas, to remember and celebrate the fact that God loves us so much that he became one of us; to remember and celebrate the fact that the Creator of the Universe became a helpless baby in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago so that he could grow to manhood, teach us how to live and show us how to love, stretch out his arms in love for us on the cross and die for us and the be resurrected to new life, giving us assurance of life eternal.

During Advent we prepare ourselves spiritually for Christ’s return in glory, when he will judge the world and there will be a new heaven and earth and God himself will be with us.  This return could happen at any time; it might be a thousand years away or it might happen before the end of this service.  How many of us would think ourselves spiritually prepared if Christ came right now?  I don’t honestly think that I would.

What is your picture of Jesus?  How do you see him?  As gentle Jesus meek and mild?  As a preacher and healer?  As a social revolutionary?  As a crucified Saviour?  As risen Lord?  Jesus once asked “Who do you say I am?”  It is a question he asks us and one we need to think about.  What is your picture of Jesus?

John paints a picture of Jesus that many of us may find uncomfortable.  To be sure we can accept the bit about baptising with the Holy Spirit and with fire because that happens in Acts; but what about “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire”?

At first this is not a comfortable image of Jesus and it seems at odds with the picture we have of Jesus in the gospels.  Or does it?  In all four gospels Jesus is very clearly shown to hate sin.  Jesus loves sinners and goes out of his way to draw them towards confession and repentance, but he certainly does not in any way condone their sin.  Jesus is stern in his condemnation of that which is unloving, that which is selfish, that which is an act of rebellion against God.  To give a brief example, Jesus shows compassion for the woman about to be stoned for adultery, yet also says to her, “Go now and leave your life of sin”.

We must remember too that when he returns Jesus will be our judge and this too is suggested in John’s image of the wheat and the chaff.  Some people, even Christians, find that thought scary; but Jesus will be the most perfect judge there has ever been.  His judgements will be completely fair and just.  If we are Christians who have confessed and repented of all our sins then we need have no fear.   We don’t need to worry about the sins that we have forgotten about or are ignorant of because those too are covered by our general attitude of confession and repentance.

Advent is a season of preparation.  Two thousand years ago John came to prepare the way for the Lord.  Over this Advent season let us too prepare the way for the Lord to come into our lives and hearts, day by day.