Matthew 11:10 * December 13, 2006 * Midweek Advent 2 * Pastor Pagels

In the name of Christ Jesus, dear friends:

Take something as simple as hosting a Christmas party (which my wife and I will be doing on Friday). All you have to do is decide to have a party and all of the details will take care of themselves. All you have to do is open the front door and the guests will automatically arrive on time. Right? Wrong!

Have you ever thought about how much planning goes into hosting a holiday gathering? First you have to pick a date, a date that doesn’t conflict with all of the other engagements on your calendar.

Then you have to make a guest list, which can be easier said than done. Do you limit it to your friends? Will you tell anyone at work, and if you invite this person, do you have to invite that person to avoid any hurt feelings? What about your family? What about your neighbors? And what about kids? You get the idea.

Then you have to decide what kind of party it will be. Will it be formal or casual? Will you provide everything (in which case you will also have to decide on a menu and prepare all the food) or will you ask your guests to bring something? Will there be a gift exchange, and if so, what will the suggested price limit per gift be?

Once you’ve made all those decisions, all there is left to do is address the invitations, send the invitations, clean the house, decorate the house and hope that the weather will cooperate. All of which goes to show that if you are thinking about hosting a Christmas party, you had better be prepared to prepare well in advance.

Preparation is one of the major themes of the Advent season. Preparation is one of those words that causes us to think and look ahead. As we prepare to celebrate our Savior’s birth (in twelve short days), we also prepare for our Savior’s return (at an undisclosed date in the future).

Instead of focusing exclusively on the future this evening, instead of limiting our discussion to that which lies ahead, the words of Malachi quoted by Jesus and recorded by Matthew allow us to approach the subject from another angle. As it says in the bulletin, the theme of this sermon is “Advent = Preparation.” But tonight I also ask you to consider this sub-theme…

BEFORE WE LOOK FORWARD WE NEED TO LOOK BACK

I. Malachi prepared the way for John the Baptist

II. John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus

III. Jesus prepares us to meet him

“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you” (Matthew 11:10). Jesus spoke those words in reference to his cousin John the Baptist, but those words did not originate with him. The prophet Malachi wrote them some four hundred years before John and Jesus were born.

Malachi lived and worked at a very depressing time in Israel’s history. What had once been a great nation now existed in little more than name only. The northern kingdom had been destroyed. The southern kingdom had been deported. A handful of Jews had returned home to rebuild, but it just wasn’t the same.

And Malachi found himself in a very difficult position. On the one hand, he was supposed to offer hope to the hopeless, to remind the people of God’s promises, especially the promise of the coming Messiah. On the other hand, he had to confront those who had forsaken the true worship of the one true God. And what made a tough job even tougher was the fact that the priests (the spiritual leaders) were just as guilty as the people.

To help Malachi with this difficult work, the Lord gave him a special revelation. Malachi prophesied that another prophet was on his way. God promised to send a prophet cut from the same cloth as Israel’s greatest prophet, Elijah.

Four centuries later that prophet arrived, and John lived up to his billing. He was God’s messenger. He did prepare the way. But before we fast forward to the time of John the Baptist we need to go back. We need to look back and appreciate what the Lord did at the time of Malachi.

Even though the people had abandoned God, God did not abandon his people. Even though the people had been unfaithful to the Lord, the Lord remained faithful to his promises. In fact, he repeated them.

And that is a very comforting thought… because we are not always the most faithful of followers. We have a tendency to keep God at arm’s length. We want God to be close enough to help us but not close enough to control us. We see and hear all the depressing stuff that is happening in the world, and we can’t help but get a little depressed ourselves.

Until we remember God’s promises. Until we remember that God has fulfilled his promises. The prophet Malachi prepared the way for John the Baptist. And when John came, he prepared the way for Jesus.

The first time John encountered Jesus we are told that he leaped in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:44), and I doubt that his initial excitement ever wore off. His cousin was the one, the one whose coming had been anticipated for generations, the one who would make everything right again.

Imagine the joy that was stirring inside of John when the people came to see him in the desert. He couldn’t wait to tell them that the kingdom of God was near. He couldn’t wait to tell them that the Messiah was in their midst. And eventually he did. But before John proclaimed the gospel, he had to preach the law. Before he could point the people forward he had to take them back.

John’s message of repentance (Matthew 3:2) takes us all the way back to the Garden of Eden, where we see a man and a woman hiding in shame. John’s call for repentance forces us to remember all the shameful things we have said and done. John prepares the way for Jesus to come into our hearts by declaring that we would be lost forever without him.

And whenever he comes, penitent hearts will be ready. When John says, “Look, the Lamb of God,” we know exactly who he is talking about. When John says, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” we can truly appreciate what that means.

John’s words cause us to look forward to the empty cross and the empty tomb. Jesus’ death and resurrection allow us to look forward to our own resurrection. Everything John said prepared the way for Jesus, and everything Jesus did prepares us to meet him.

Blue is the color of the Advent season, and that was not an arbitrary decision made by the company that makes our altar paraments. Blue is the color of the sky. Blue reminds our eyes that the day is coming when we will see Jesus descending from the clouds. Believers look forward to that day, but before we look forward we need to look back.

We need to go back two thousand years to a stable in Bethlehem, where a perfect baby was born in less than perfect circumstances. We need to go to the temple in Jerusalem, where a young boy made it clear that he had to be about his Father’s business. We need to go to a wedding in Cana, where one of the guests put his divine power on display for everyone to see. We need to go to the Garden of Gethsemane, where the Lord set his divine power aside.

We need to go to the courtroom of Caiaphas, where the silence of the innocent man on trial was deafening. We need to go to Pilate’s private chambers, where the prisoner looked at his captor and spoke the truth in love. We need to go to Calvary, where the Son of God was forsaken by his Father. We need to go to the cross, where Jesus cried out in triumph: “It is finished” (John 19:30). We need to go to Joseph’s new tomb, where the angel made this death defying declaration: “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said” (Matthew 28:6).

This is not just history. This is salvation history. The gospels don’t tell the story of a great man. They chronicle the saving work of the God-man. Jesus became one of us. Jesus paid the ultimate price for us.

As we look back at everything our Savior has done for us, we can’t help but look forward. We can honestly say that we look forward to Judgment Day. We look forward to that day because our sins are forgiven. We look forward to that day because our Judge is our Savior. We look forward to Jesus’ return because the Last Day will be the day when we get to move into the special places that have been prepared for us in heaven.

“Advent = Preparation.” When you think about those words, I don’t want you to get anxious or agitated because preparing for Christ’s coming is not necessarily the same as preparing for Christmas. I don’t want you to equate Advent preparation with running around like crazy trying to get everything done in the next twelve days. Instead I want you to take a deep breath and relax because the important work had been done already.

As we prepare for another Christmas, as we prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus, looking back to the past gives us every reason to look forward to our glorious future. And that is why we pray: Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.