Make Ready

How do you get ready for guests coming to stay? We had Scrooge stay at our house a week ago. That is to say, our guest was Bill Carmichael, the Broadway actor who played Scrooge in the recent production of “A Christmas Carol” at Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center. Even though it was Scrooge coming to stay, we tried to make sure our bathrooms were clean, we put fresh linens on the bed along with a clean towel, and we purchased some extra food. 

Now, let me re-phrase the question this way: “How did you or how would you prepare for a newborn baby coming to your house?” When we were expecting each of our children, we made sure the nursery was ready and freshly decorated. We purchased seemingly endless supplies of baby paraphernalia, especially for our first child. And of course, there was the need for baby clothes, for a newborn and for each stage of the first year of life. And with our first child, more than subsequent ones, we read books like, “What to Expect when You’re Expecting”.

With all this in mind, I ask the question: “How should we make ready for the coming of the Christ child into our lives?” Though our text for today is about a time some thirty years after Jesus was born, it addresses the question of how we should make ready for the coming of Christ. Listen for God’s word to you from Luke 3:1-6…

 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler^[a] of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler^[b]of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler^[c] 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 region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴ as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,    make his paths straight.
⁵ Every valley shall be filled,
    and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,    and the rough ways made smooth;
⁶ and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

Before we examine the answer to the question “How can we make ready for the coming of Christ?” I would like to examine a few other things we see in our text for today.

First, our text for today teaches us that we have a faith rooted in history.

Luke, who is very interested in history, gives us no less than seven markers tying the events of John the Baptist and Jesus’ life to first century history. 

Tiberius was the successor of Augustus and therefore the second of the Roman emperors. He became sole emperor when Augustus died in AD 14. The fifteenth year of his reign would therefore be AD 28-29. Thus, Luke begins by setting the life of John the Baptist against a world background—that of the Roman Empire.

The next four names Luke mentions are connected with the political organization of first-century Palestine.

• Pontius Pilate was appointed by the emperor to govern Judea beginning in AD 25 and he continued in that position until AD 37.
• Herod the Great died in 4 BC and divided his kingdom between three of his sons. Herod Antipas ruled over Galilee and Peraea from 4 BC to AD 39. He is a major figure looming over the Gospel of Luke, and Luke’s second volume, the book of Acts.
• Herod Philip ruled over Ituraea and Trachonitis from 4 BC to AD 33.
• We know very little of Lysanius, ruler of Abilene, though he is mentioned by the Jewish first century historian Josephus and in two fragmentary Greek inscriptions.

Finally, Luke mentions the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. Annas was high priest from AD 7 to 14. He was moved out of office by Rome and was succeeded by no fewer than four of his sons and his son in law, Caiaphas. Though Caiaphas was in the office of high priest when John the Baptist and Jesus came on the scene, Annas was really the power broker behind the scenes.

Why do I belabor all of this ancient history? Because we have a faith that can never be divorced from history. Some religions, like Hinduism, survive regardless of their historical connections. It is not so with Christianity. Christianity never would have come into being without certain historical claims, namely that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person who lived in first century Palestine, died on a cross, and rose again from the dead.

A second thing I think we can learn from this passage is that God’s word comes to seemingly ordinary people in seemingly ordinary places.

After telling us about no less than seven important people in first century history, Luke says very simply, “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

Earlier in his Gospel, Luke has told us the story of John’s parents, Zechariah (a Jewish priest) and Elizabeth (cousin of Mary, the mother of Jesus). John came from a relatively simple background. There are certain things, like John’s ministry in the wilderness, and this passage from the prophet Isaiah being spoken about him, which possibly connect John to the Essenes. The Essenes were a first century Jewish sect that lived a separatist life in the dessert, preparing themselves for the coming of the Messiah. It is the Essenes who produced what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in eleven dessert caves near Qumran in the 1940s and 50s.

If John was a member of the Essenes, the trajectory of his life changed when the word of God came to him in the dessert. At that point, he may have left the separatist community he was a part of, and he carried the word of God to all the people of Israel who needed to hear it in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Luke pictures John’s call very much in the manner that God called the Old Testament prophets to serve him.

But the main thing I want you to see here is that John, compared to the “important” people of the first century that Luke mentions, was a seemingly ordinary person from a seemingly ordinary place. 

I am reminded of Francis Schaeffer, who wrote a book entitled “No Little People”. In that book he said, 

We must remember throughout our lives that in God’s sight there are no little people and no little places. Only one thing is important: to be consecrated persons in God’s place for us, at each moment.[1]

A third thing I think we can learn from this passage is that when God’s word comes to us it is something that must be shared. No sooner does the word of God come to John then we read that: “He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

The word of God is not something that we can contain. Again, John’s experience was very much like the Jewish prophets of old. Jeremiah said, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9)

This was the experience of the Jewish prophets. It was the experience of John the Baptist. And it was the experience of the first Christians. Dr. Richard C. Halverson, former Chaplain of the United States Senate once wrote:

For the New Testament Christians, witness was not a sales pitch.

They simply shared, each in his own way, what they had received. Theirs was not a formally prepared, carefully worked-out presentation with a gimmick to manipulate conversation, and a “closer” for an on-the-spot decision…but the spontaneous, irrepressible, effervescent enthusiasm of those who had met the most fascinating Person who ever lived.

The gospel is not theology. It’s a Person. Theology doesn’t save. Jesus Christ saves. The first-century disciples were totally involved with a Person. They were followers of Jesus. They were learners of Jesus. They were committed to Jesus. They were filled with Jesus.

They had encountered Jesus Christ and it simply could not be concealed. They witnessed not because they had to, but because they could not help it.

Their school of witnessing was the school of the Spirit where they learned continuously. Authentic Christian witness is born of the Spirit.

Madison Avenue, with all its sophisticated know-how, can’t improve on the strategy. Nothing is more convincing than the simple, unembellished word of a satisfied customer. American business spends millions of advertising dollars annually in an attempt to achieve it.

The simplest Christian does it effortlessly when he tells a friend what Christ means to him.[2]

So, how can we “prepare the way of the Lord” today? How can we make ready for Jesus coming to town? Luke mentions three aspects of John’s preaching which are just as important for us today as they were in the first century.

One is baptism. A number of ritual or ceremonial washings probably existed among the Jewish people in the first century. The Essenes practiced baptism. So, this is another factor that may tie John the Baptist to the Essenes. We also know that later on, baptism was a rite that Gentiles would undergo who wanted to convert to Judaism. If this is where John got the practice from, then it was almost as if he was saying to his fellow Jews: “You must start your spiritual life, your spiritual journey, all over again from the beginning.” How humbling!

Now, there are at least a couple of major, important differences between the baptism John practiced and Christian baptism. For John, baptism was something he offered to his fellow Jews to help them prepare for the Messiah who was coming. Baptism for the Christian is an outward sign of belonging to the Messiah, Jesus, who has already come. Furthermore, John’s baptism was not trinitarian. The baptism Jesus has commanded us to perform is. Jesus said,

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:18-20)

So, baptism, something that John practiced two thousand years ago, is still something we are doing today, but with these important differences: our baptism is trinitarian and it identifies us as belonging to Jesus the Messiah who has already come.

But simply going through the outward ritual of baptism is not enough to save us from our sins and grant us the gift of eternal life. We must also possess the inward spiritual reality of which baptism is an outward sign.

Part of that inward spiritual reality is repentance. The word means “a change of mind that results in a change in direction”. We must change our mind about our sins, our self-centered ways of living and we must deliberately choose to follow Jesus instead.

I had an interesting phone call some time ago from a man who said he was possessed with or oppressed by a demon. He spent quite some time telling me about his experience of demon possession or oppression and the things in his past that he thought might have led to this demon possession/oppression. After listening to this man tell me his whole life story for thirty minutes or so, asking questions along the way, I finally asked him, “Have you ever invited Jesus to come into your life.” He said, “No, not in those words.” And then he went on to tell me of various occult practices he had been involved in. Finally, I said to him again, “If you want to get rid of this demon in your life as you say you do, then you need to invite Jesus into your life. Once you do that, you can command this demon to leave your life in the name of Jesus.” The man responded, “Jesus has always been part of my life.” To which I said, “Well, actually, no he hasn’t.” You see, none of us are born with Jesus in our life. If being born in a Christian home would make you a Christian, then by that same logic, being born at McDonalds would make you a hamburger. You actually have to invite Jesus to come into your life. You have to make that deliberate decision to turn from sin and turn to Christ, that decision that John the Baptist and Jesus both call: repentance. John 1:12 says, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

Unfortunately, the man who I talked to on the phone the other day did not want to invite Jesus into his life, though he said he wanted to get rid of the demon that was causing him so much pain. Still the door is open for him and for each one of us to make that decision.

The second inward reality of which baptism is an outward sign is receiving the forgiveness of our sins. This is a popular topic for Luke. “Forgive” and associated words appear some 16 times in the Gospel of Luke, more than in any other Gospel, more than in any other book of the New Testament, more than in any other book of the Bible. You might say that Luke is the Gospel of Forgiveness.

According to John the Baptist, repentance leads to forgiveness. However, in the Gospel of Luke, more than once, we see Jesus forgiving people who have never even asked for forgiveness. Jesus forgives the paralyzed man whose friends bring him to Jesus for healing. (Luke 5:20) Jesus forgives the woman who anoints his feet and washes them with her tears, drying them with her hair. (Luke 7:47) Even while he was hanging on the cross, Jesus prayed for those who were crucifying him, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

In fact, Jesus’ act of forgiving others is one of the clearest signs of his deity. C. S. Lewis comments on this in his book, Mere Christianity, 

One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, , and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.

Here’s the difference between John and Jesus: John the Baptist preached about forgiveness. Jesus actually forgave people of all of their sin. And he could do it because he went to the cross for us. Jesus really meets one of the most universal and greatest needs we have as human beings: the need for forgiveness. Do you want to make ready for Jesus in your life as we approach Christmas? Then turn from your sin and yourself to him and receive the love and forgiveness he so wants to give you. It will not only transform your celebration of Christmas, it will transform your life.

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[1]Francis A. Schaeffer, No Little People, Ch. 1.

[2]Richard C. Halverson, No Greater Power, pp. 79-80.