Second Sunday in Advent [b] December 6, 2020
Mark 1:1-8
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, 3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'” 4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
In the Name of Jesus.
Comfort from God. Comfort for you and me, for our families, comfort to any in distress. God sends his prophets for just that, to bring comfort. Isaiah 40:1:
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
What is this comfort? The prophet gives us that, too:
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.
[Isaiah 40:2]
There is comfort and then there is comfort.
We may start out of thinking of the comfort of a mom putting a band-aid on the scraped knee, a dad telling a child struggling with homework that it’ll all be okay, a friend visiting a sick one in the hospital, the comfort of words and acts of kindness.
These are gifts of comfort from one to another.
But Isaiah speaks of the most profound comfort of all—of a sinner standing at the face of God, waiting to hear the verdict for sin, and hearing this word from the mouth of God: I forgive you; I cleanse you; I cover you in the honor of my own Son; for all your sin, all your shame, all your fear, I hand to you abundant grace, an overflowing, double portion for all that is needed.
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.
[Isaiah 40:2]
Everything the Lord has been doing from the beginning when he gave to Adam and Eve the promise of a Savior; everything he’s been doing since giving the promise of a greater Son to Abraham and Sarah, a Son who would be a blessing to all peoples; everything he’s done since gathering Israel to the Tabernacle to be cleansed by the blood of the sacrifice; everything the Lord did by sending the prophets to call Israel back from sin and gather her again to his grace—he has done all of it to comfort the sinner, to pardon iniquity, and to give grace from the Lord’s hand double for all the sin.
So as the Lord comes in the flesh to be with sinners, as he starts his trek, which will take a couple years, to take his place on the cross at Calvary, he starts it by sending a prophet. Not Isaiah this time—Isaiah he sent 700 years before this. This time, it’s the prophet John.
John is out by the Jordan preparing the way for Jesus. He’s gathering sinners—people who need profound comfort from God, who need to know that God has come in the flesh to pardon iniquity and give grace from the Lord’s hand, double for all the sin. And gathering these sinners, John is giving gifts. Mark 1:4:
John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
That word repentance may not at first hit us with the sound of gift. It’s harsh, demanding. Only sinners need to repent. If you’re not a sinner, there’s no need of repentance.
So repentance is a word which first hits with the Law’s sting of accusation. But from the Lord, repentance is a word of life, a word of gift. John is proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Repentance doesn’t just hang out there on its own as something the sinner must do. It’s repentance into something—into the forgiveness of sins. If you have no sins, then you get no forgiveness. You can’t forgive what is not there to be forgiven.
So repentance is pure gift from the Lord. Not something we do by the Law’s demand, but something we are given for the purpose of forgiveness.
The prophet speaks the Law, and by that Law we know our sin.
But to know that we are sinner is gift from the Lord; for it is reality, and now we can stand before the Lord not deceiving ourselves as to who we are, but as exactly what we are: sinner.
Standing before the Lord as sinner, we may now hear him for the one gift he most wants to give us: Comfort. The word of comfort that our iniquity is pardoned, that we receive from the Lord’s hand double for all our sins.
That is comfort—to hear God’s word of Law telling us what we really are, and then, in this gift of repentance, to be forgiven, double for all our sin.
That’s how John prepared the way for the Lord. By gathering sinners to the Jordan and cleansing them in this baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of all sin.
Now, John is not for us. He did his job back at the Jordan. His appointed task is over. By his martyrdom at the hands of King Herod, John the prophet has gone to be with the Lord in eternity.
John’s job is over, but he brought us up to Jesus. And Jesus is the comfort for every sinner.
To Jesus, we confess our sin, knowing that this sin we confess is the sin he took upon himself when he was publicly baptized by John in the Jordan, and is the sin he then bore on our behalf to his death on the cross. To Jesus, we confess our sin, knowing that this repentance is his gift to us, for it is always repentance into forgiveness.
And then we hear his Word of comfort: his Word that his cross was for us, his Word that he brings the gift of his cross to us in his Word, and that in hearing the Word of Christ Jesus crucified for us, we are given comfort—more than the comfort of a mother’s tender care for a child, of a father’s encouragement, of a friend’s consolation, but the profound comfort of knowing that even as we stand at the face of the Father in our sinful flesh, we stand as those who bear the Name of his Son.
We stand as those whose warfare is ended, for the Lord has pardoned our iniquity and from his hand we have received abundant grace, double measure for all our sin.
In the Name of Jesus.