Can you imagine what it would be like if John the Baptizer were the pastor of this congregation today? I wonder who would run away first, John or all the rest of us? The way the scriptures decribe him, it sounds as if he would have been very hard to get along with. The man could never have come to your home for dinner, for instance, because he ate only locusts and wild honey. Most of you ladies don’t know how to fix locusts, I don’t think. He never drank any alcohol so he would have been no good at a cocktail party. He was loud and probably obnoxious. He looked like a "weirdo," going around in a coat of camel’s fur. If he were our pastor we’d probably be embarrassed to death if we ever had to introduce him to any of our friends.

Worst of all, he was always talking about sin, harping at people, preaching repentance over and over again. He even did that to the king. John does not sound very attractive; and yet the scriptures say about him, "There was a man sent from God, and his name was John ..." (John 1:6).

While John may not sound very attractive by description, nevertheless there was something about him that attracted people to him. Mark tells us that all of Judea and all the people in Jerusalem came out to see him. Multitudes of people were attracted to him and believed what he had to say because they were baptized by him. All kinds of people came - tax collectors, soldiers, Pharisees, Sadducees, Temple priests - they all came asking John what to do and they listened to what he told them.

One could attribute John’s popularity to a charismatic personality perhaps. Every once in a while a person comes along with such a magnetic personality that everyone automatically looks up to him. John Kennedy was like that. Whether he did good or bad didn’t matter all that much to most people. People just plain liked him. And one could say that John the Baptizer was of that charismatic type also.

Maybe. But there was a great deal more to it than that.

John was a man sent from God with a specific job to do. Writing for God, Isaiah prophesied that John would come and explained what he would do. "Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who shall prepare your way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord ...’ " John was sent from God to get people ready for the arrival of God’s Son, the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. God prompted people to flock to John so that he could prepare them for the good news of salvation.

In the play, "Godspell," a modern retelling of the good news of Jesus Christ, John the Baptizer is the first character on stage. The play begins with him, much as God’s plan of salvation began to be unfolded through him. In the play, John appears on stage dressed like a circus ringmaster. One gets the message that his job was to "get the show going." As "Godspell" begins, there is a beautiful song which John sings. The melody is haunting and the words repeat over and over again, "Prepare, ye, the way of the Lord...."

John was special from the very beginning. Saint Luke, whom tradition tells us was a doctor, relates an incident in the early life of John that shows how powerful God’s influence on him was from the very start. When John was still in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, in about the sixth month of pregnancy, Mary, pregnant with Jesus, came to visit Elizabeth. The two women were relatives. When Mary came close to John’s mother, John leaped within his mother’s womb. Those of you who have been pregnant can appreciate the wonder of such acrobatic activity. He jumped inside the womb, Dr. Luke explains, because when he heard the voice of the Savior’s mother he recognized her to be the mother of the Lord. Luke knew about babies moving around in the womb. He also knew that John was chosen by God, before time began, to do a job for the Lord.

John’s purpose in life was given to him by God. All that God expected from John was that he do what God wanted him to do. God put him at the right time and the right place to do it. Our purpose in life is given to us by God as well. He has put us in the right place at the right time for us. All he expects of us is that we obey him. When we do, he promises to fulfill his purpose for us (Psalm 56:2).

John’s God-given purpose in life was to prepare the way of the Lord. He did that by preaching sin. John preached sin with enthusiastic abandon. He called the people who came out to him "vipers" and condemned their insincere religion. "Bear fruits that befit repentance!" he shouted. Don’t just say you are sorry for your sins. Show it!

John’s goal in preaching sin so harshly was not to humiliate people, but rather to shake them out of the idolatry of believing in themselves and their good works. He wanted to show them how desperately they needed a Savior. Having convinced them of their sin, he pointed out to them the solution to their problem by pointing at Jesus and announcing, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." From John, the people not only heard about their damning iniquity, but also about God’s redeeming love, his deliverance in Jesus Christ the Savior.

The proclamation of sin is as valid today as it was in John’s day. Sin has not stopped being a problem. It is still an inherent part of every human life. The good news of salvation in Jesus Christ still begins with the bad news of sin. There are some who would preach sin less and God’s love more. We need to preach God’s love as much as possible, but it will have no meaning at all if we do not also preach sin. To fail to preach sin is to place an obstacle in the way of the Gospel.

It’s a mistake to make light of sin. Our Lord Jesus thought it was pretty serious stuff. In fact, from some of his miracles one gets the distinct impression that he thought it was our greatest problem. Jesus always forgave sin first and then healed sickness. As bad as infirmity is, sin is far worse, because sin kills.

Instead of addressing the real problem of sin, we have developed a tendency in these latter days to sugar-coat the problem with our language. We speak instead of cultural revolutions. People living together before marriage is not a sin problem, they argue, but the result of our cultural revolution. As part of the cultural revolution that we are experiencing right now, we are suffering from an erosion of respect for authority. Nobody wants to respect authority anymore. Children do not respect parents, teachers, or anybody else. Adults do not respect the boss, the spouse, or the government officials. This is not a cultural problem but a spiritual one. It is sin.

Perhaps one of the worst indicators of sin in our lives is the fact that we almost never stop to ask if something is right or wrong any more. We only ask if it "feels good," is convenient, expedient, or easy. Especially in our use of technology, we do this. Our technology has expanded so wondrously that we can do all kinds of near miracles now. Babies are conceived in test-tubes! We can do these things, hut we have often not stopped first to ask whether they are right or wrong.

Paul wrote a catalog of sin to describe Roman society nearly 2,000 years ago. What was happening back then has not changed much. Listen: Homosexuality, wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, gossip, slander, hatred of God, insolence, haughtiness, boastfulness, invention of evil, disobedience to parents, foolishness, faithlessness, heartlessness, ruthlessness (Romans 1:26-31). These are not cultural dilemmas. They are sin.

John preached repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repentance is nothing less than owning up to the reality of our sinfulness. Some people define repentance as turning away from sin, not sinning anymore. If that’s the case, then no one has ever truly repented, for we sin over and over again until we die. True repentance is a turning away from a careless attitude about sin. Repentance means turning away from believing that sin is not a problem and confessing that it is indeed my problem. The unrepentant in John’s day were the Pharisees who said they had no sin; the repentant were all those who confessed their sin.

Many people came to John confessing their sin. That’s the way to handle the problem. It does no good to pretend sin isn’t real, to try to cover it up. Adam and Eve tried to hide from God after their first sin; they hoped God would not see them. They tried to cover their nakedness, their sin, with fig leaves. But the fig leaves didn’t do the job. They didn’t work. There is no way to deny the reality of sin. But, when we confess it, God is faithful and just and forgives us. He covers our nakedness, our sin, with the sparkling robe of Christ’s righteousness.

Because God lives in us who believe in his Son Jesus as our Savior, we know there is no way to hide from him. We don’t even try. We confess, "O God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Mercy is precisely what God gives us for the sake of Jesus, the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." In his precious name, we thank God that such mercy is so freely given. Amen