Last week, we took a look at that which we are preparing for. I mentioned the obvious – that we look back as we prepare once again to celebrate the birth of the messiah, of Emmanuel, God with us – come to save us from our sin and death. We look all around and we see the world preparing to celebrate Christmas. The world may not even know what it’s getting ready to celebrate. Santa Claus and presents may be all they know about. But Christians know. We know this is about the miracle of God having come to us in the form of a helpless baby who would grow to be a man who died for you and me. This is about Jesus.
But the season of advent, as I spoke last week, is not just a season of preparing to look back. It is a season of looking forward and being prepared for the end – when Jesus comes again. Last week I spoke of what that end may be, different understandings of scripture, and of the importance of being ready for it, prepared for the return of Christ.
This week we look briefly at the other beginning question. If it is so important to be prepared, what exactly does that mean? And I do want to start asking this at the very beginning. I want to come back to a fuller answer after Christmas, but I want to begin this journey here, in this passage, because, just as this passage begins the gospels – the stories of Jesus – so also it begins our journey where it ought to begin.
It begins by identifying itself as the good news of Jesus Christ. That’s the title. The whole book, the whole story, and hopefully the whole story of our lives is about giving that title its meaning. Our lives are this story – the good news of Jesus Christ. The title just sums it all up.
And right away, we jump into an Old Testament quotation and John the Baptist. All of this is to give the message to get ready. Everything that has happened before is leading up to what is going to happen next. The climax of everything in the Old Testament is coming up. Get ready. Be prepared. It’s like the last few moments of anticipation of the child who is just about to open their big Christmas present. You sense they can hardly stand it. John the Baptist is such a wild figure out there in the wilderness with the crazy clothes and the insane diet. All of that would have made the people of his day wonder if he was actually Elijah come back to prepare God’s people for the Messiah’s coming. Nothing else matters to him but just how close the messiah is. Be ready. Be ready. Be ready.
And we just begin to get a hint in how – how it is we are to prepare ourselves for the one who is coming.
Some of that hint comes from who that person is that is coming. That is the center of it. And I’ll say more about that in a moment. But John has something first. John proclaimed the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
It is like us to want to know what to do. If we just know what we are to do, then we can handle almost anything. If you just give me the directions, I can follow them. If you just tell me what to think, then I can think it. If you just tell me what to believe, what opinion to have, what stance to take, then I can take it, hold it and believe it. We just want the program, the answer, the process.
John takes that human desire to know what to do and turns it on its head. He says with his words, in essence, it’s about your heart. Your heart needs changing. You are a sinner. You have to want your heart to change. That’s where everything starts. That’s the preparations – to want your heart changed. It is to acknowledge that you are a sinner, and you need a new heart. That’s the beginning.
This is not something you do. This is not something you can accomplish. As a matter of fact, it’s almost the opposite. It is coming to the place of saying, “I tried, but I just couldn’t do it. I just can’t do it. I need a new heart.” And it is a humbling place, because it is a place of helplessness and dependence, …dependence like a little child is dependent. We can’t do it, we need a new heart.
That’s as far as John the Baptist could take people. And that is where the preparations begin – the place of helplessness and the recognition of the need for a new heart. And that is where we are truly ready, truly prepared for the greatness of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For the one who is coming doesn’t baptize us so that we know our need and want a new heart. He baptizes us with a new heart. He gives us a new heart. He baptizes us with the Holy Spirit!!
The whole idea of being prepared is not something we are to accomplish like putting up the lights, setting up the Christmas tree and making everything as pretty and festive as we can. The whole idea of being prepared is to have hearts that long for Jesus and the fullness of His presence in our lives. It is about our hearts longing for God. Prepare your hearts for the Spirit of Christ.
A.W. Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God, is a modern classic that I’m certain will live for many generations. I going to take the liberty to read a few passages from this book that speak prophetically to us of a passion to know God.
“In this hour of all-but-universal darkness [Tozer writes] one cheering gleam appears: within the fold of conservative Christianity there are to be found increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities and will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with correct `interpretations’ of truth. They are athirst for God, and they will not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the Fountain of Living Water. …It can result in a resurrection of life for many souls and a recapture of that radiant wonder which should accompany faith in Christ, that wonder which has all but fled the Church of God in our day.
Tozer goes on to describe modern evangelicalism as if we were the believers on Mount Carmel in the days of Elijah. We’ve got the sacrifices all ready and have been happy to set up the altar, to count all the stones and arrange everything all decently and in order. And we’re just happy with that. But we miss the whole point. Our passion should be for the fire of God to come down from above and consume the offering. “…God be thanked that there are a few who care. They are those who, while they love the altar and delight in the sacrifice, are yet unable to reconcile themselves to the continued absence of fire. They desire God above all. They are athirst to taste for themselves the `piercing sweetness’ of the love of Christ about Whom all the holy prophets did write and the psalmists did sing. ”There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives. They minister constantly to believers who feel within their breasts a longing which their teaching simply does not satisfy. I trust I speak in charity, but the lack in our pulpits is real. Milton’s terrible sentence applies to our day as accurately as it did to his: `The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.’ It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table. The truth of Wesley’s words is established before our eyes: `Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot subsist without right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward Him. Satan is proof of this.’
He speaks of the necessity of solid biblical teaching. Then goes on, “But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
“He will baptize you,” John says, “With the Holy Spirit”.
We’re in a challenging position in our church. We’re getting smaller. We can’t do the things, as individuals in many cases, or as a church, that we used to be able to do. And that can be discouraging. Don’t let it be.
Elijah was alone on Carmel – alone against a world of false prophets. But it wasn’t about what he did. It’s about what God does. One is coming, has come, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
