Holiday Survival or Christmas Anticipation

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon
Sunday, December 18, 2011

[Video] “I gotta go potty.” “Could you move over please?” “I’m hungry. Can we get a hot dog?” “Can you get off my foot please?” “I gotta go potty now.” “Do you smell that?” “I want to be done now.” “Enough. Whoever created this stupid holiday should be beaten, strung up and left for dead.” “He was.”

Have you gotten to that point yet? What, we’re six, seven days out? The stress is on. The pressure is there. You end up blurting something out, only to regret it. You see, the pressure is building upon us, so no longer do we have the days of just casually looking through catalogs or strolling through the mall looking for that perfect gift. No, no, no. Now time is short. You have a list and you need to check things off of that list. Your house is a mess. You have more people coming over for Christmas than what you anticipated. Have you crossed over the edge and gone now into survival mode?

Survival mode means that you’ve just had enough. You don’t want to do it anymore. You want to get through this week and you can’t wait until the whole thing is done and you can pack it all up and put it away for another twelve months. Is that where you’re at? Because I think a good deal of people are. By the time you get just six or seven days out from Christmas, we’ve had enough. We don’t want to do it anymore. It’s no longer fun. Now it’s just work.

Well, then maybe, just maybe you’re preparing for the wrong thing. If you’re preparing to celebrate a holiday, then you have an endless list of tasks that need to be accomplished and not enough time to do it. But if you’re preparing for a holy day, now that’s completely different. Preparation for a holy day is much different than preparation for a holiday. Preparation for a holy day is more internal than external. Preparation for a holy day has more to do with your heart than it does with your home.

This morning, I want to challenge you to get ready to celebrate a holy day, not just some holiday. I don’t want you to fall into holiday survival. Instead, have a Christmas anticipation of the joy of remembering and celebrating when God came into our world. We prepare for a holy day much in the same way that John prepared the people for Jesus to begin His ministry. John was getting the people ready for their king to come among them and so, this week, we want to get ready for our king as He enters into our world.

Matthew, the writer of the Gospel, says that when John came, it was fulfillment of the prophet, Isaiah. The prophet said, “Behold, the voice of one calling in the desert. Prepare the way for the Lord.” You dig in a little bit deeper to that. What was the prophet saying? What would that mean to the people? Well, the word “prepare” actually means to clear out, to get things out of the way. When the king was going to come to His people, there should be nothing that stands in the way between the king and His people, so all the brush, all the debris has to get cleared off of the road. The holes need to be filled in so there is a clear pathway, so the king can be among His people.

This week, we need to clear the pathway to get ready to celebrate the king coming among His people. I’m not going to soft sell it this morning. I see my job this morning as to take you to task and to take me to task because the preparation that we need to go through is not an easy preparation because there are a lot of things that need to be cleared out of the way, and I’m not talking gifts, decorations or the rest of the things that preachers love to rail about. I’m talking about something deeper, something tougher and that is clearing the way to our hearts and getting our hearts ready for the celebration.

John was trying to get the hearts of the people ready for Jesus to begin His ministry, so his words echo true to us this morning as well. So it says, “John came among the people preaching, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’” How did the people respond to that call? Well, it says this, “The people went out to him from Jerusalem, all Judea, the whole region of the Jordan, confessing their sins.” The first preparation for us is a confession of our sins. In other words, there has to be an acknowledgement. There has to be an admission that we need a Savior. We need the king to come among us. We have to come confessing our sins because the sin is the barrier. It’s what stands in the way between us and our God.

Now maybe you never thought of it this way before, but why is it that we have to confess our sins? After all, God knows everything, right? He knows every word you’ve ever spoken. He knows every action you’ve ever done. Then why in the world do we have to relive it and confess it to God? Because if we don’t verbalize it, if we don’t confess it, it’s an unresolved issue between you and your Maker. It’s an obstacle that stands in the way. It’s something which is blocking the path.

Think of it in your own personal relationship. If you have an argument with someone, you have a disagreement with someone, have you ever tried to just forget about it? I’m talking about a sharp disagreement, not just a little bit of an argument, something that you really are divided by. Have you ever tried to say, “Fine, I’ll just get over it.” How does that work? I suspect not too well. Maybe on the surface, you can be cordial with that person. Maybe after a while you forget about it but then something small happens and it brings it right back up to the surface and, all of a sudden, that pain and that anger is right there again because it’s unresolved. If you don’t talk about it, if you don’t work it out, it is an unresolved issue. The same is true with God. If we don’t come clean with God, if we don’t confess our sins to God, that’s something which is in the way. It’s blocking the path. It’s not going to allow us to have an anticipation of the king being among us. We have to confess the sin to resolve the issue.

And we confess sins in specifics. It isn’t just simply, “God, I probably messed up. Sorry.” It isn’t just a couple of minutes in a worship service and we stand quietly and not even sure what we’re supposed to be thinking. It’s something much deeper than that. It gets down to the nitty gritty. It gets down to specifics of exactly “What is it that I’ve done against my God?”

Again, go back to the relationship that you had a disagreement with somebody. There’s a huge difference between saying, “You know, if I hurt you with what I said, I’m sorry,” there’s a big difference between that and saying, “Yeah, I’m sorry I called your brother a lazy oaf.” “I’m sorry I lied to you.” “I’m sorry that I got angry and I yelled at you.” When you get specific with someone, that says you’re taking it seriously. You understand the damage that it did to the relationship. You’re not just talking in generalities. You’re getting exactly to the point of contention. That’s how we clear the path with God. You get specific with Him. This is hard work.

This is hard work, so we come before our God and we lay open our hearts and we’re honest with Him, not just about the little things but the big things. Unresolved issues that you have with God, maybe that have been there for months, for years, things that you’ve buried down deep inside because you’re ashamed of them, you bring them to the surface and, this time of year more than ever, you bring them to the surface so you can celebrate God being among us. We confess our sins to God in specifics.

But we confess them with confidence. We confess them with confidence because we know who we are confessing them to, and we know how they’ll be received by God. John says that he’s preparing the way but one is coming who is more powerful than him. He’s talking about the coming king, the king whose birth we’re about to celebrate but you and I know more than just His birth. We know the life of Jesus. We know the death of Jesus. We know the resurrection of Jesus. We come confessing our sins, but we do so in confidence because we know it is for our sins that God came among us for the very reason to save us from our sin, to remove the barrier between us and our God. We know that He lived the life we couldn’t live, that He died the death we couldn’t die. He paid the punishment for us that we couldn’t pay. Through His blood spilt on the cross, we know that our sins are forgiven. They’ve been removed from us. The pathway is clear to God. We confess our sins to God not out of fear of punishment, but out of assurance of the forgiveness that Christ has granted to us.

We prepare our hearts first by confession to God and then by repentance. When John came preaching repentance, repentance in the broad sense begins with confession and then it goes on to repent proper. So the first thing the people did was they confessed their sins to God, but the actual word “repent” means to change, to change your ways. In fact, in the Old Testament, it literally means to go in the opposite direction. So we begin by confessing our sins, being honest with God but then the next step is to repent, that is, we want to repent because we don’t want to repeat. If all we do is confess our sins to God, express to Him our sorrow over the things we’ve done and then go right back living the way we were, doing the same things we were doing, saying the same words we were saying, what have we accomplished? We’re doomed on a continual cycle of repeating over and over again of sinning against our God. To repent says that we change. We go in the opposite direction.

Think of it this way: Say for some reason in December, you want to go to the Twin Cities. I have no idea other than family why you’d want to go north in December or January, but let’s say you have it in your mind you’re going to go up to the Twin Cities in January. You hop on the road and, at about three miles down the road, you realize that you’re going south on I-35. So about seven miles down the road, you admit to your spouse that you are going south on I-35. At about eight miles down the road, you pull off on one of the exits, you look at the map and you say, “Yeah, we’re never going to get to the Twin Cities because we’re going south.” You do not immediately get back on the southbound lane. You turn around and you head north. You can’t just say, “Yeah, I’m going in the wrong direction,” and keep going in the wrong direction.

To repent means that we change our behavior. We turn things around and we live differently. We live according to the pathway that God has set for us. That’s why in Scripture it says there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents. It goes deeper than that, not just one sinner who confesses but over one sinner who repents. Look at what Jesus says in Luke. He tells the parable of the one lost sheep, how He leaves the 99 behind and He finds the one and brings it back and there’s great celebration. Then He says, “I tell you, in the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over the 99 righteous persons who don’t need to repent.” Why is there rejoicing over repentance?” Because it means they got it, they understand. They’re not just feeling remorse over their actions. They’ve confessed them to God and now they want to change. They want to live differently. They want to turn things around. There’s rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.

We’re preparing our hearts this week by confession, repentance and then produce the fruits of repentance. It’s one thing to confess the sins and get specific with God and then to say, “I’m going to change. I’m going to turn around. I’m going to do things differently,” but then to actually put it into action, to actually follow through.

Obviously, John had an issue with the Pharisees and Sadducees of the day. He had some pretty harsh words for them, don’t you think? It says, “But when he saw the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers.’” Not a way to influence friends, I guess. He says, “Who warned you of the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” Why is it that Jesus had such an issue with the religious leaders of the day? Why does John have such an issue with the religious leaders of the day? Because they could say all the right things. You could even look at them and say, “Well, they look like they’re doing the right things,” but there’s no change in them. Their heart remains the same. They could talk about love, but they weren’t loving. They could talk about forgiveness, but they weren’t forgiving. They had to produce the fruit of repentance.

We need to produce the fruit of repentance. If God was willing to come and live among us, He was willing to die for us so we could be free from our sins, so we could live differently, we produce the fruit of that faith that God has given to us. We can’t just talk the talk. We have to walk the walk. What I’m saying is you could walk out those doors this morning and go right back into the same routine. You could sit here right now and you could nod your head, “Yep, I have to get my heart ready. I have to get focused on this holy day, not the holiday. I have to confess those sins. I’m going to change my ways,” and then walk right back out and get right back into the stress of things and can’t wait until the whole thing is over.

Or you can produce the fruit of repentance. I say that you can because of the promise that John has here. He says, “There’s one who’s coming after me. He’s more powerful than I am.” He says, “I baptize with water. He baptizes you with the Holy Spirit.” Each one of you has the Holy Spirit of God living in your heart and that Spirit empowers you, enables you so you can go out and you can have the courage and you can live differently this week. I’m not proposing to you that you stop buying gifts. I’m not saying don’t have parties, don’t have the families over, don’t travel. Do all of that in its proper place. But make time, not to just prepare for a holiday but prepare your hearts for a holy day.

Don’t live this week in survival mode but live it in joyful anticipation, anticipation of that moment when you can celebrate, once again, God’s incredible gift coming and living among us and the eternal difference that it’s made for all of us. I’m challenging all of us this week and me, too. Let’s do the hard work. Let’s make our Christmas celebration that much more special. Come clean with God. Whatever it is that’s between you and Him, whatever obstacle that’s there, whatever’s in the way, confess it to Him. Change. Turn around. And then follow through. That’s joyful anticipation. Amen.