Advent 4 John 1:19-28 (2021)

The Voice Points To Christ

John 1:19-28

            In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

            John 1:22-23  ²² Then they said to him, “Who are you, that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?” ²³ He said: “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the Lord,”’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord…  I am guessing that at least some of you follow the reality TV show called “The Voice.”  If you do, then you know that at the end of each season, one singer is chosen to be the best from among many contestants over many weeks of competition.  The people who win become famous, they get a recording contract, and they have their lives changed dramatically.  But, of course, it won’t change the lives of anyone who listens to that voice.  The winner’s voice may be wonderful.  But that voice has no power to save.

Not so when it comes to John the Baptist.  In our Gospel for today, he claims to be “the voice” to which all men must listen.  They must listen to his voice if they would be prepared for the Lord’s coming.  And so, on this Sunday before Christmas, our final preparation to celebrate the birth of Christ and to receive the coming of Christ at the end of the age is to meditate on the words of St. John the Baptist, the prophet – the voice – sent by God to prepare the people of Israel for the arrival of His Son.  God sends John’s voice to us still today to prepare us, not just for the coming Christ, but for the Christ who even now stands in our midst.

Now, John prepared no one for Jesus’ birth, except maybe his mother Elizabeth as he leaped for joy in her womb when the newly-pregnant Virgin Mary came to visit her.  But fast-forward some thirty years, and there was John on the banks of the Jordan river, doing the work God gave him to do, which was to prepare people for the public revealing of Jesus as the Christ.  By this time, the events in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth had been all but forgotten, and the baby who was born there had disappeared, gone into hiding; Holy Scripture records nothing of Jesus from His birth until He was about 30 years old except at age 12 when He was in the temple listening and asking questions.  The disturbance in Jerusalem over the coming of the wise men and the supposed birth of the Christ had long since faded from the minds of the Jews.  That was by design, for the time of the Messiah’s public revelation had not yet come.

But that was all about to change.  Now here comes this prophet named John.  He is wearing clothes made of camel’s hair and he has a leather belt around his waist.  He is eating locusts and wild honey.  He doesn’t fit in, but he’s not supposed to fit in.  He has been given a direct call from God to preach repentance, to administer baptism toward the forgiveness of sins, and to proclaim the arrival of the Christ.

Paraphrasing what our Lutheran Confessions say about repentance, we hear something like this “You are all of no account, whether you are obvious sinners or saints in your own opinions. You have to become different from what you are now. You have to act differently than you are now acting, whether you are as great, wise, powerful, and holy as you can be.  Here no one is godly…”  John was to accuse all people and convict them of being sinners with the purpose being that they can know what they are before God and acknowledge that they are lost.  They needed to be prepared to receive grace from the Lord, and to expect and accept from Him the forgiveness of sins.

This is the true preparation for the coming of Christ: to recognize that you are not good enough to win heaven or to avoid hell, no matter who you are or how good and decent a person you think you are.  You need a Savior; and not a partial savior, not a 50% or even a 90% Savior.  You need a 100% Savior who will bear all your sins by Himself and who will provide 100% of the goodness and decency you need to stand before God.

That is the Savior who is coming, declared John.  And then finally, one day, that Savior came.  He walked right up to John at the banks of the Jordan and asked to be baptized, after which He then went off by Himself again for 40 days to be tempted in the wilderness.  That is when our Gospel account takes place – right at the end of those 40 days.  During those 40 days, John’s message had shifted; he was still preaching repentance, he was still preaching baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  But his message had changed from, “Christ is coming!,” to “Christ is here!”  He said, “There stands One among you!”  He is already here!

Well, that finally got the attention of the Jewish leaders which resulted in them sending a delegation to John to ask him just who he was claiming to be.  Apparently their first question to him was, “Are you the Christ?”  The Apostle John tells us that John the Baptist denied that claim in no uncertain terms.

 Well, then, “Are you Elijah?”  They wanted to know if John was literally the prophet Elijah who had come back from the dead – or rather, back from heaven after being taken up in a whirlwind and a chariot of fire.  And John denied being that Elijah, even though he was the figurative Elijah whom Malachi had prophesied would come to prepare the way for the Christ, the one who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah, as the angel Gabriel had foretold to John’s father Zacharias.  We heard about that in last Sunday’s Gospel.

Then they asked, “Are you the Prophet?”  They may have been referring to the Prophet that Moses had prophesied would come back in Deuteronomy 18, referring to the Christ Himself.  And John denied being that Prophet, even though Jesus would later declare that John was, indeed, a prophet, and more than a prophet.  We also heard that in last week’s Gospel.

Then the delegation asked John, “Who are you, then?”  And John responded, I am “’The voice – the voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the LORD,”’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”  In other words, John claimed to be no one special in and of himself.

Like all true prophets of God he knew that and he freely confessed it.  “I am no one. I don’t matter.  And yet you should listen to me, because God sent me.  In fact, when you hear my voice, it is really the voice of God you are hearing.  I am not just any voice, but the voice of the Lord crying out to you.  He wants you to hear me when I call you to repentance; He wants you to hear me when I accuse all of you of sin and insist that you must change, that you must turn from your sins.  You must turn humbly to the Lord for mercy.  He also wants you to hear me announcing the grace of the coming Christ, so that you let yourselves be baptized, so that you do trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins.  And He wants you to recognize me, John, as the very one whom the prophet Isaiah said would come ahead of the Lord.”

So it is with all the prophets and apostles and pastors whom Christ has sent.  We are no one special, and we know it better than anyone.  You should not follow us or join or stay at or leave a church because of us.  But you should listen to us, not because we’re anything special, but because God has sent us so that you may hear His voice through our voice as we point out your sin and point you to Christ.

That is what John did. The delegation sent from the Pharisees wanted to write John off.  “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”  But John just kept pointing his finger away from himself; instead he continually pointed to the One who made his baptism valid.  He pointed to the One from whose name baptism derives its power.  He pointed no longer to the coming Christ, but to the Christ who had come.  “I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know.  It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.”

A better translation might be this: “It is He who, coming after me, has gotten ahead of me.”  Jesus, we know, was born six months after John’s birth, and He began His ministry after John.  But once He appeared on the scene, He went ahead of John and took over.  His teaching and His ministry had now overtaken that of John.  From now on, John would decrease, and Jesus would increase.  From now on, John would be sending his disciples away from himself, sending them to follow Jesus.

And that, dear fellow redeemed, is the role of the faithful voice: never drawing attention to itself, but always and only drawing attention to Christ.  There is power in that voice: power actually to change your heart, power to bring you to trust in Christ Jesus.  He stood in the midst of the Jewish people for a time, but most of them didn’t know Him.  

That same Jesus now stands in our midst in a different but equally powerful way.  He stands here in His Church, in His Word, in His Sacrament.  He won’t deal with you directly, as He did when He walked the earth at the time of John, not until He comes again in judgment.  Instead, He has instituted this office of the holy ministry to deal with you through the voice of His called servants.  This is where you find Him until He comes again – not tucked away in your heart, not under your Christmas tree, not sitting at the table with your family.  It is here where He gives Himself to you.  It is here that He speaks to you with His voice.  

Here He is, the one whose sandals even the great prophet John was unworthy to untie.  Hear His voice today, and come to the Christ-Mass and spend it with Him this Friday and Saturday.  Here you will find Him, lying in the manger of His Word, offering to you again His body and blood, born of the Virgin Mary, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.  This is where Jesus will be again on Christmas, to help and to save you, to hear and to accept your songs of praise and worship.

With all the voices in our world today, there is only one Voice to which you must always listen: the voice of Your Savior, Jesus.  His voice said, “It is finished” as He died to take away your sins.  He and He alone loved you intensely by giving up His body on the tree of the cross to pay for all your sins.  He has called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light.  He has called you out of your sinfulness, displaying to You His intense love and care. 

And it is His voice which now bids you come to this altar to receive His true body and blood in His sacrament of love.  His “Take, eat; take, drink,” is a voice you can absolutely trust as you walk through this crazy world of sin and turmoil.

And one day, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a while, but one day you will clearly hear Him say, “Come Home.”  And there you will be with Him forever in the bliss of sinlessness and in the full glory and majesty of His eternal kingdom, never to suffer again.  In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.