Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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December 7, 2008                                                                                                                               Advent 2
 
/The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God./
/2 It is written in Isaiah the prophet: /
/“I will send my messenger ahead of you, /
/who will prepare your way”— /
/3“a voice of one calling in the desert, /
/‘Prepare the way for the Lord, /
/make straight paths for him.’
”/
/4 And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him.
Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
6 John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.
7 And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.
8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
(Mark 1:1-8)/
 
*How did God Prepare the Way?*
* *
            One summer when I was studying to be a pastor, I met a girl whom I can only describe as a free spirit.
She wore tied-dyed clothes.
She liked to party.
She lived very much “in the moment.”
When she discovered that I was studying to be a pastor, surprisingly, she thought that was “very cool.”
But she had a lot of unusual ideas about what the ministry should be like.
The thing that really bothered her about the way Lutheran pastors work was the idea that I actually prepare my sermons in advance.
She thought I should just stand up here and speak extemporaneously.
I think she thought that would be truer to myself and that it would be more free and moving.
Well, what do you think?
I think that it would be a whole lot more repetitive.
I think it wouldn’t make a great deal of sense.
I think that you’d get tired of it pretty quickly.
But even worse, I know that I wouldn’t do a good job of teaching you what God’s word actually says.
Being faithful to the Scriptures and preaching a message that convicts you of your sin and then comforts you with the gospel require study and preparation.
If anything, I should spend more time preparing than I do.
Even God prepared for the ministry.
Not personally, of course.
God doesn’t need the kind of study and preparation that I need.
But God did prepare the way for Christ to come.
He didn’t just drop Jesus down in the middle of his people and say, “Go!”  God carefully prepared the ground for the Savior’s work.
What did he do?
*How did God prepare the way?*
*            I.
He prepared the messenger to go before him.*
*            II.
He prepared the message to introduce him.*
*I.*
The messenger is John the Baptist.
Jesus said that *“among those born of women there is no one greater than John.”*
That’s quite a tribute!
John didn’t come by accident or coincidence or a strange twist of fate.
God sent him.
*God prepared the messenger to go before Jesus.*
*            *God planned for John to come.
Mark, writing under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, cites two different Old Testament prophecies that speak of John.
In the book of Malachi, God said, *“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way.”  *Later, in that same book, God said that Elijah would come – not a reincarnation, but a prophet like him.
But the prophecy that Mark focuses on is this prophecy from Isaiah: *“A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”
*This prophecy tells us what John would be like.
He would be a voice crying out.
He would be a prophet – someone who preaches God’s message to God’s people.
He would come in the desert.
Certainly, that was literally fulfilled.
John did preach in the desert.
But if you look at the whole section from Isaiah 40, you realize that God was thinking of more than just the physical desert when he said these words.
John didn’t literally build a highway.
He didn’t literally cut down mountain tops and fill in valleys.
All those things were figures for the rough and hardened nature of the human heart.
John came to break our hearts and to create a road for Jesus to enter them.
That road is the gospel.
The straight path that God calls us to prepare for Jesus is nothing other than a heart that trusts in him and that attends to his word.
God ordered the history of the world so that Jesus came in just the right time and place and under just the right circumstances to accomplish his mission.
God planned for Israel to be the people he was born from.
God planned for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, the city of David, from a virgin who was descended from King David.
God planned for him to grow up not in Bethlehem but in Nazareth in Galilee.
God planned for him to preach and teach and to turn Israel upside down with his message.
God planned for him to do miracles.
God planned for him to ride into Jerusalem as a king and then to be betrayed into the hands of sinners.
God planned for him to suffer all that our sins deserve.
God planned for him to die and then to rise again.
God revealed all these things to Israel centuries before any of them happened.
And a key part to the whole plan was the coming of John the Baptist, the messenger who went before Jesus to prepare his way.
God prepared John to be that messenger.
Mark says, *“John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.”
*That description matches almost exactly the description of the prophet Elijah in the book of 2 Kings.
It describes a man who didn’t live in comfortable society.
John the Baptist lived in the desert and he made do with what was there.
I doubt that camel hair feels all that soft next to your skin.
And eating locusts and wild honey is not like eating a fancy restaurant – although it did not seem gross to the people then.
In fact, what his own people would’ve noticed about it was the fact that this was food that God allowed Israel to eat.
The Old Testament specifically says that locusts and grasshoppers are food they can eat, while pork and shellfish and rabbits are food they can’t.
John’s diet shows his commitment to following the Lord.
You may remember the story of his life.
John was a miracle child.
He was born to Zechariah and Elizabeth when they were too old to have children.
John’s father was a priest.
He recognized John as the promised messenger of the Messiah.
Without a doubt, he raised John to know the Old Testament law codes and the promises that God had made about him.
But he also probably died when John was young.
The Holy Spirit took over his instruction.
He prepared John to live the kind of lifestyle that the messenger of Christ must have.
God did all that for you.
In his eternal love, he knew that you and I would need Jesus.
Before he created the world, he understood that we would be lost unless he did something impossible to save us.
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