Sermon for the week of Advent 1

Malachi 4:1-6  +  Luke 1:5-25

The Advent season always takes us to John the Baptist to help us prepare for Jesus’ arrival. And with good reason. Because that was always John’s purpose. It’s why he was born. He was born to prepare the Messiah’s way.

Six months before the angel Gabriel visited the virgin Mary in Nazareth, to announce to her the miraculous birth of a Son, he visited Zacharias in Jerusalem, also to announce the good news that Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth would have a son. Now, we’re told that Zacharias and Elizabeth were both descended from Aaron, from the tribe of Levi, the tribe of Levitical priests. And we’re also told that they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. That’s high praise for anyone in Israel. It doesn’t mean they weren’t sinners in need of a Savior. It means that they lived in daily contrition and repentance, that their hearts were set on keeping God’s commandments, and that they were well-known for their obedience and godliness. They were model citizens of Israel, and they had God’s favor.

But having God’s favor doesn’t mean everything goes well for you, or that all your prayers are granted. As Gabriel later informs us, they had been praying fervently for a child. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years. We don’t know how old they were, but they were well past the age when married couples usually had their first children, so decades had likely passed with those prayers going unanswered. Why hadn’t God rewarded their righteousness with that special but common gift that He gives freely to so many parents, even those who hate Him?

The answer is all laid out for us in this little story with which St. Luke begins his Gospel. God had a wonderful gift laid up for Zacharias and Elizabeth—just as He had made Abraham and Sarah wait decades before Isaac was born. A very special son would be born to them in their old age.

The setting for the announcement was the temple in Jerusalem. It was Zacharias’ turn to burn incense for a week on the altar of incense, inside the Holy Place, right in front of the veil that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. It was a special privilege that fell to the priests by lot, according to their priestly order, to enter the Holy Place and burn incense in the morning and in the evening. It was during Zacharias’ service, while he was alone in the Holy Place, that the angel Gabriel appeared to him and said, Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. Now, as far as anyone knows, these are the very first words that came from God to man since the prophet Malachi died some 400 years earlier. During that whole time, not one prophet or angel had been sent to Israel to bring them a message from God. So of course Zacharias was afraid! But the angel hadn’t come to harm. He had come to deliver this wonderful bit of news. “Your prayers have been heard! God is going to bless you with a son!”

And more than that. He will be great in the sight of the Lord. In other words, the Lord has big plans for your son. He will accomplish great things. In fact, a few decades later, after John had almost completed his ministry, Jesus would say this about John the Baptist: Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist. Why would this child be so great? Because he would be given the special task of heralding the Advent of the Christ.

To mark him as special, to get people’s attention already from an early age, the angel adds that he shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. We have to go back to the Old Testament law to understand what that’s talking about. It’s part of what’s called the Nazirite vow. It was a special vow a person could choose to take to dedicate himself fully to the Lord for a period of time. He wouldn’t cut his hair. He wouldn’t drink any wine or other forms of alcohol. And he wouldn’t allow himself to become ceremonially unclean for any reason. In only a handful of cases, like the judge Samson, or like the prophet Samuel, the Nazirite vow was imposed on a person for his whole life. That’s how special John would be, and it would get people’s attention.

And, Gabriel says, He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. Don’t let anyone try to convince you that an unborn child is less than human, or is unable to have faith. If John could be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, then he was both a living human being and a believer in the true God. In two weeks we’ll see an example of the Holy Spirit working in John’s heart even before he was born.

Then the angel revealed the most important thing of all, what John’s purpose would be, what he would accomplish for God, the reason for his existence: And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Remember how I just said that the last time a prophet had spoken to Israel was some 400 years earlier, the prophet Malachi? You heard in the first lesson Malachi’s last written words to God’s people, 400 years before Gabriel appeared to Zacharias—words which Gabriel himself quoted to Zacharias: Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. John was the promised Elijah—not the actual prophet Elijah who lived some 800 years before Christ, but the prophet who would come in the “spirit and power of Elijah,” a no-nonsense kind of preacher, a powerful preacher, with a vitally important task: to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that, when the Lord comes, He doesn’t have to strike the earth with a curse.

In other words, John’s preaching would turn the people of Israel back to obeying God’s commandments, from the heart and not just with outward obedience, back to caring about their souls and about the coming judgment. His preaching would bring people to see their sins, and to repent of them. His preaching would put the people of Israel back on the path of obedience to God, and on the path of the “wisdom of the righteous,” which means the wisdom that comes from God, the wisdom of understanding that our righteousness itself comes from God, not from ourselves, that we depend on and live by God’s mercy alone, not by our own works, that all men are sinners who need the salvation that only God can bring, and will bring through His promised Messiah, who is, as John later proclaimed, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And so John would get the people ready for the Advent of the Lord Jesus, so that, when He appeared, they wouldn’t sit back lazily and ask, “What do we need Him for?” but instead, having been shown their sins and their dire need for a Savior, they would go running to Jesus for the salvation He was coming to bring.

Sadly, Zacharias didn’t believe the angel’s words, and as a punishment, his tongue was tied, and would remain tied until his wife conceived, and the child was born, and Zacharias wrote down on a tablet the name that the angel had told him to give to the child: “His name is John,” which means, the LORD (Yahweh) is gracious.

And the LORD is indeed gracious, to us as well, because John wasn’t only born to prepare the Messiah’s way for the people of Israel at that time. No, God continues to use the ministry of John, recorded in Holy Scripture, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord—prepared to celebrate Christmas for the right reasons, prepared to live in daily contrition, repentance, and obedience to God’s commandments, and prepared to meet the Lord Jesus when He comes again in glory. Keep preparing! And keep rejoicing at the birth of the one who was born to prepare the Messiah’s way! Amen.