Are You Ready For Christmas?

I hope we are all making some progress towards being ready for Christmas. We know the drill, decorations, shopping, Christmas cards, wrapping presents, cooking, and so on.

Today we meet John the Baptist, who gives us a very different list of things we need to do to be ready to meet our Lord, things that may be harder to do at first because they move us against the flow of where everyone else is going, but the things that will give us lasting blessings.

To help you appreciate John the Baptist, I was trying to think of someone similar in our world today. But I don't know of anyone like John the Baptist. The job that God gave him to do was something like the warm-up band for a rock concert. His job was to get the crowd’s attention and get them into the mood to participate. But his message was much more than a warm up band. His job was to get people ready to meet the Son of God, who was about to begin his public ministry on earth, not just enjoy an evening of music.

There is no way you would find John the Baptist on the cover of People Magazine. John’s clothing was not trendy. He wore what people wore when they couldn’t afford anything better, the poorest, cheapest stuff you could get, camel’s hair fabric. Sounds scratchy to me. He ate the food that you could find out in the wilderness, things like grasshoppers and wild honey. He never showed up at high society functions. He stayed out in the desert. He had no influential friends. He had no money or political power.

There is no way you would find John the Baptist on the cover of People Magazine. You might have found him in the National Inquirer, but they’d have his story all wrong.

I think it would be fair to borrow John McCain’s campaign slogan back in 2000, “The Straight Talk Express” to describe John the Baptist. He never beat around the bush. I’ll read an excerpt from one of his sermons in a minute. When I do, listen to how he spoke. He spoke to people very directly, going to the heart of the matter.

You could compare John the Baptist to Dr. Martin Luther King because his refusal to compromise God’s message eventually cost him his life. But when we meet him in today’s passage, huge crowds are coming out to listen to him. And it’s not just the religious people you would expect, but the ones you hear interacting with him in the passage are the people that normally weren’t considered very religious at all. But in John the Baptist they knew they were hearing the truth, straight from the heart of God. He gave them hope that God was about to do something very special. And they were hungry to hear all about it.

Does that give you something of a picture of John? Our text for this morning is Luke 3:1-18. We’ll read it in parts. I’ll be the narrator. Bill will be John, and you all can be the crowd.

Pastor: (1) In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler 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.'"

(7) John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him,

Lay Reader: "`You breed of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? (8) Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. (9) Even now the ax is laying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.'

Pastor: (10) And the crowds asked him,

All: `What then should we do"'

Pastor: (11) In reply he said to them,

Lay Reader: `Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.'