Throughout this life we are always on trial. Always judging and being judged, by ourselves
and others. Our sense of fairness is
satisfied when evildoers get what we judge is coming to them. They victimize the weak and violate the
vulnerable to fulfill their twisted desires.
For far too long they felt safe.
Justice would never catch up with them.
Or so they thought until condemnation fell upon them.
However,
even when that happens to one enemy of humanity, there are so many more out
there hurting and abusing children and adults.
The cops and criminal courts do what they can, but they cannot stop it
all. So if only God would come
down. If only He would visit, then He
would see how horrid they are – and how great we are. And He would be happy with us and bless us,
His people.
But
when God looked down at His people in Noah’s day, He saw all sorts of violence
and perversion and lack of faith. Years
later, when God visited Abraham and promised Sarah would have a son, she
laughed in His face. Centuries later, when
God visited Moses and the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai, He found them worshiping
the golden calf. And when God was almost
ready to make His greatest visitation of all, becoming flesh like us, telling
Zechariah he and Elizabeth would have a son who would prepare the way of the
Lord – what did He find? He found one of
His own priests who refused to believe an old man and woman could become
parents, despite knowing the story of Abraham.
He found people with lives more like crooked highways than the straight
and narrow path that leads to Heaven. Nevertheless they thought their place in
Paradise was secure simply because they were born in the right religious
family. He found hearts that were cold
and dead to faith, and yet they were lifted up in pride. He found eyes blind to the fact that they
were sitting in darkness, the very shadow of death.
Open
your own eyes and repent. God sent John
to preach to a people who are not nearly as different from us as they ought to
be. We go
to bed wanting to think we are good. Though
not innocent, we tell stories that we think that will somehow explain we have a
good reason for how we have behaved. I’m
good, except those few times when I’m not.
Will the Lord’s visitation to you reveal
that you are better than they are?
Better than the people of Noah’s times?
Or have you never doubted and ignored God’s Word? Have you never laughed in God’s face? Have you never victimized God’s children to
fulfill your twisted pride or anger, lust or envy? Have you thought you will get away with it
all, that justice will never catch up with you? The Truth hurts.
St.
Paul warns us never to think more highly of yourself than you “ought to think,
but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that
God has assigned” (Romans 12:3). For the
judgment of God is a sobering thing. Not
the judgments we think He should pronounce, but what He actually says. There is no one righteous. No, not even one. Not even you.
All of us need to hear John’s sermon this day, “Repent, for the kingdom
of Heaven is at hand.” Return to God
from your deadly ways.
And
what a blessed God we have. Praise the
Lord, for He has not only visited His people, He has also redeemed them. Without redemption, God coming to you gets
deadly. If God visits the world with our
iniquity, our guilt, then all is lost. You
cannot live without God – that is Hell.
But you also cannot live with the Holy Lord Most High in your sin either
– that would result in your destruction.
However, when the Lord visits His people
in Jesus Christ, there is redemption.
Here God comes, with mercy and Divine compassion, using preachers like
John the Baptist “to give knowledge of salvation to His people in the
forgiveness of our sins.” And so John
does not only preach “Repent.” He also
points to Jesus, telling God’s people, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world!”
In
the blood of Jesus, the world is redeemed.
The great visitation of God against sin falls upon Jesus, and He bears
the terrible weight of all your guilt and mine.
Like a sponge, Christ soaks up all our evil at His baptism in the
Jordan, He carries it with Him to the Cross, takes it down with Him into His
grave. And then He leaves your pride,
your anger, your bitterness, and every other sin that victimizes you and other
children of God. All of it is left there when He rises from the dead. By this forgiveness, you are saved.
Zechariah says that God's people will serve Him without fear - but how is that possible, when there are so many worries about doing the wrong thing when working for God, so many opportunities for sin? And then what condition will I be in when God
visits? Will He find you and judge you
to be outside His kingdom? Well, listen
again to how Zechariah ends his praise of God at the birth of John: It is all “because of the tender mercy of our
God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who
sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of
peace. “ This is the way it is with God,
in the Old Testament, and today, and even around the time of the birth of His
Son Jesus Christ. He finds us sitting in
sin’s deadly darkness, weighed down by our guilt, blinded by ignorance of His
ways, overcome by Satan’s lies. The
Savior, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life comes to people who can never
make themselves ready for Him. He brings
to us the Light as Christ teaches us to know His gift of forgiveness. And with that we live in peace with God.
Throughout
this life we are always on trial. Always
judging and being judged, by ourselves and others. But in the end, God is our Judge. And Christ, who has taken the blame for your
guilt, is our only hope. Amen.
