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Sermon for Gaudete – Advent 3
Malachi 3:1-6 + 1 Corinthians 4:1-5 + Matthew 11:2-10
There sits John the Baptist in Herod’s dungeon, awaiting his eventual beheading. He has done everything God sent him to do. He has lived his life alone, out in the desert. He has refused all the comforts of life. He has preached God’s Word boldly and purely and tirelessly, and he has done it all in a spirit of true humility as he sent his disciples away, one by one, so that they might follow Jesus from now on instead of John.
And for what? So that he can die in prison. What kind of a God lets his faithful servant waste away and die in prison? Answer: The same God who allowed believing Abel to be murdered by unbelieving Cain. The same God who allowed His faithful servant Joseph to be sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. The same God who allowed His faithful prophet Jeremiah to be thrown down into a muddy pit and then dragged off to his death. The same God who allowed King Herod to slaughter the innocents of Bethlehem after the birth of Christ. John and his disciples knew all those things; they knew all about that God. He was the God of the Old Testament whose ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. And they still believed in Him. They recognized that God uses the evil intentions of wicked men to carry out His good purposes for His people, even if it seems like His people are always on the losing end of things.
But now the Lamb of God had appeared. John had pointed his disciples to Jesus, and as John had once declared about Jesus: His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Surely the Lamb of God will make all things right. Surely the Lamb of God will destroy wicked men and save His people from suffering at the hands of sinners. But He hasn’t, not yet. The Lamb of God is not destroying the wicked, not destroying anyone, nor does He seem to be saving the righteous or setting up any kind of earthly kingdom at all.
So, once more, John sends his disciples to the Lamb of God, because either he is confused or his disciples are, or both. As we discussed this past Wednesday evening, many of the Old Testament Messianic prophecies left many of the Jews with the idea that the Messiah would set up an earthly kingdom in Israel, to make life on earth better for His people. But that’s not the kind of king Jesus is turning out to be. Are You the Coming One, Jesus, or do we look for another?
What a great question, and one that even New Testament Christians might ask sometimes. Nothing seems to be improving in my life, in spite of my being a Christian. I see my sinful flesh just as wicked and active as ever, and I feel the struggle between faith and unbelief taking place in my own heart. I see the world apparently winning battle after battle against Christians, and I see the Christian life becoming less and less comfortable as the days goes by. I see Christians suffering and dying right alongside the wicked, and the devil seems to be laughing all the way to the bank. And the holidays? Some people feel lonelier at this time of year than at any other time—though still probably not quite as lonely as a faithful prophet waiting to die in the dungeon. Is Jesus the Savior or isn’t He? And if He is, then why doesn’t He save me?
Jesus has an answer to John’s question, and to yours. He knows what lies behind the question. He knows the doubts that afflict even His believers. And He doesn’t apologize for the kind of Messiah He is; He doesn’t make excuses for His lowliness or for His refusal to take all the suffering away at once. Instead, He points John’s disciples to the things He has been doing: Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.
Big miracles. Unheard-of miracles were being performed by Jesus. Not everyone in Israel or in the world was being healed or raised from the dead, not yet. But some were—the first beginnings, the first signs of the greater healing that will have to wait until the end of the age. And the poor—the poor were not being raised up out of their poverty. We know of not a single poor man who became rich as a result of Jesus’ ministry. But the poor in spirit, the guilt-laden consciences, the sin-sick souls were having the gospel preached to them by Jesus. Not the social gospel or the socialist gospel, but this Gospel: God has become man in order to save sinful man. Christ, the Lamb of God, bears your sins. He will also suffer for them and die for them. You have no righteousness with which to pay God and earn a place in His heaven? Don’t be afraid! Jesus is righteous for you. With His righteousness, covering you as a garment, you have all you need to show God in order for Him to let you into His heavenly kingdom. God will count faith in Christ for righteousness in His sight, and He’ll give to all believers an inheritance in the new heavens and the new earth one day, at the end of the age, when Christ comes again.
What kind of a God allows His faithful servant to suffer on this earth and even die at the hands of the wicked? The same God who sent His Son to do that very same thing, to suffer and die at the hands of the wicked, for our salvation. That’s why we call Jesus the “Lamb of God,” not because He is a cute, cuddly, harmless animal. But because He came into this world to be sacrificed and slaughtered, as countless lambs had been slaughtered on the altar in Jerusalem. Only this time, the blood of the Lamb really does have the power and the worth to take away sins.
That’s the kind of Savior Jesus is, and that’s the kind of salvation He came to bring at His first Advent. He didn’t come to make life on earth easier for His believers. On the contrary, He told us ahead of time that it would be harder, in many ways. But He is a good and compassionate Savior, who accompanies us in our trials, in our imprisonments, and in our suffering. He is the Lamb of God who will surely make all things right, but not yet, because He still has compassion on the wicked. He’s still giving them time to repent, to believe and be saved, even as His patience with this world has led you to repentance and salvation.
Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me, Jesus says. If you want a Santa Claus-Savior, a jolly, happy Savior who brings you toys and presents and health and healing, if you want an earthly Savior from your earthly troubles, then you will be offended because of Jesus and you will miss out on His salvation.
But if you want an Advocate before God in heaven, if you want someone to stand in between you and the devil, if you want Immanuel—God with us, who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death and gives us eternal life, then, rejoice! Jesus is that Advocate, that Immanuel.
Which means that God has a good purpose for anything that His children suffer. If you suffer for sins you committed, then your Father is disciplining you as a son, for your good, so that you learn. If you suffer for doing good, as John the Baptist did, as Jesus did and the apostles and martyrs all did, then you are serving as a witness to God’s grace, so that all may know that Christ is a Savior worth suffering for, even worth dying for, because suffering and death won’t last forever, but the joy of eternal life will.
So rejoice today, as you remember God’s faithful prophet John in prison, not with the rejoicing of the world, but with the rejoicing of one who knows a secret that the world does not know. Rejoice as one who knows God rightly—the God who suffered with us, who suffered for us, so that He might save us, first from the sorrow of sin and a guilty conscience, and then, at just the right time, from all the sorrow and suffering of this life. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Amen.
