A three-year-old was helping his mother unpack their nativity set. He announced each piece as he unwrapped it from the tissue paper. “Here’s the donkey!” he said. “Here’s a king and a camel!”
When he finally got to the tiny infant lying in a manger he proclaimed, “Here’s baby Jesus in his car seat!”
Well, it wasn’t a car seat, but that would be an easy mistake to make, wouldn’t it?
We all love nativity scenes. Baby Jesus in the manger . . . Mary and Joseph hovering reverently over the holy child . . . shepherds, wise men, assorted cattle, sheep and camels . . . and, of course, a donkey.
But, as someone has noted, there is always one person missing from these nativity scenes. “Correct me if I am wrong,” writes the Rev. Darrik Acre, “for I imagine that collectively we have seen a tremendous amount of Christmas displays. So if you have found him somewhere, please let me know. But have you ever seen John the Baptist in any of the nativity scenes? He would be this hairy, unkempt, wild-looking guy wearing camel’s hair. There would be a piece of locust caught between his teeth and dried honey in his beard. Louder than any Santa says, ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ you would hear the automated voice of John the Baptist screaming, ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Has anyone noticed a figure like that in any of the nativity scenes that are traditional to our celebration of Christmas?” (1)
Well, no. At least, I’ve never seen a nativity scene featuring John the Baptist. Yet, on the second Sunday of Advent, we always encounter this strange lonely figure sounding his message out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord.”
The Gospels give us a rough outline of John’s life. According to Luke, John was Jesus’ second cousin. John also was the product of a miraculous birth. His parents were both quite elderly when John was born.
According to Luke’s account, before the angel Gabriel was dispatched to the Virgin Mary, he first appeared to an elderly priest named Zachariah. At the time, Zachariah was in the temple performing his priestly functions. Gabriel told Zachariah that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a son, even though she was far past normal child-bearing age. Zachariah became literally speechless at this announcement. His speech did not return until he named his newborn son, John.
John the Baptist came from good stock. Both Zachariah and Elizabeth were of priestly lineage. Elizabeth was about six months pregnant, when her much younger cousin Mary came to her and announced that she also had conceived a child, but this child was of the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth’s unborn child “jumped for joy” in her womb at Mary’s announcement. So John the Baptist’s birth was a very special event just as Jesus’ birth was very special.
We know nothing of John’s childhood, but we have a very vivid picture of him as an adult. He was a preacher of justice and righteousness, who called people to a baptism of repentance. And people poured out of Jerusalem to hear John preach his austere message. Among those who came to John to be baptized was his cousin Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that John was reluctant to baptize Jesus. “I need to be baptized by you,” he said. Jesus persuaded John to baptize him nonetheless (Matthew 3:13-15).
The scriptures are also very clear about John’s role in the drama of the nativity. John was to prepare the way for the coming of Christ. According to Luke 1:17 John’s role was “to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
There are several passages within the Old Testament which are prophetic of John the Baptist in this role. These include Malachi 3:1 that refers to a prophet who would prepare the way of the Lord: “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me . . .”
The Jews of Jesus’ day expected Elijah to come before the Messiah; indeed, some modern Jews continue to await Elijah’s coming. This is why the disciples asked Jesus in Matthew 17:10, “Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?” Jesus tells his disciples that Elijah has already come in the person of John the Baptist. This was John’s role to prepare the way.
Some of you are old enough to remember when President Nixon made his historic visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972. Up until the 1970s, few major nations recognized the legitimacy of that nation’s communist government. Nixon’s visit had considerable political peril for the United States, since it risked straining relations with the Soviet Union, Japan, and Taiwan which thought of itself as the real government of China.
Someone had to go before Nixon to lay the groundwork for his visit. That someone was U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In 1971 Kissinger held secret talks with China and he visited there in October 1971 and February 1972 to continue laying the groundwork for Nixon’s visit. The details to be worked out were staggering. Kissinger did his job well and history was made. (2) Today China is one of our most important business partners, and while China is not as open and progressive as we would like it to be, it is not nearly as threatening militarily as we thought it might be. In much the same way that Henry Kissinger prepared the way for President Nixon, John the Baptist prepared the way for Christ.
John’s message was one of righteousness and justice. John’s message was much more austere than that of Christ, but it was necessary. People needed to know what was at stake before they could be receptive to the work of a Redeemer.
One writer compares the work of John the Baptist to that of a doctor named Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis, today known as the “savior of mothers.”
In 1818, Semmelweis was born into a world of dying women particularly women dying in the act of childbirth. The finest hospitals lost one out of six young mothers to a scourge known as “childbed fever.” And here’s why.
A doctor’s daily routine began in the dissecting room where he performed autopsies. From there he made his way to the hospital to examine expectant mothers . . . without ever pausing to wash his hands. Semmelweis was the first man in history to associate such examinations with resultant infection and death in maternity wards. His own practice was to wash with a chlorine solution, and after eleven years and the delivery of 8,357 babies, he lost only 184 mothers about one in fifty which was a miniscule number in that day of primitive medical practices.
Semmelweis spent the vigor of his life lecturing and debating with his colleagues. Once he argued, “The fever is caused by decomposed material conveyed to a wound . . . I have shown how it can be prevented. I have proved all that I have said. But while we talk, talk, talk, gentlemen, women are dying. I am not asking anything world shaking. I am asking you only to wash . . . For God’s sake, wash your hands.”
But virtually no one believed him in spite of the fact that various studies showed that hand-washing reduced mortality to below 1%. Doctors and midwives had been delivering babies for thousands of years without washing, and no outspoken Hungarian was going to change them now! Semmelweis’s practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory. In 1865, a nervous breakdown (or possibly Alzheimer’s) landed Semmelweis in an asylum, where ironically he died of septicemia, at age 47. (3)
Incredible, but that’s how we treat our prophets. All he asked people to do was to wash their hands. John the Baptist came telling people to wash themselves as well. He didn’t know of ways to protect the physical health of people, but he knew what you must do to protect your spiritual health wash away your sins. That’s what his baptism was all about. You can’t prepare the way for the Lord unless you rid yourself of sin.
That’s true for us as well as it was for the people who heard John preach. If you have difficulty getting into the Christmas Spirit, look into your heart and see if the problem could be greed, or lust, or anger, or resentment, or guilt. Sin always robs us of our joy regardless of the season.
Evangelist Franklin Graham tells about a woman named Tia Ana who discovered the joy that comes to those who have been washed of their sins. Ana grew up in the capital city of El Salvador. As a young girl, Ana was abused by close family members. She ran away from home at the age of seven. Once on the streets, she had to fight to survive. Eventually she fell into prostitution.
The result of those tragic years as a prostitute made it impossible for Ana to bear a child. As her lifestyle took its toll on her, she became desperate and cried out to God, asking Him to save her from the life she was living. He did, and Tia Ana turned her life over to the Lord and began serving Him.
Ana desperately wanted to have a child, but she knew that would never happen. Again, she sought the Lord and laid her burden before Him. “Lord,” she said, “if You will just give me a child, I will raise that child to serve You faithfully.” Through the support and encouragement of her church, she began to minister to the people on the streets, in particular the children of prostitutes. In the process, the Lord did bring into her life a little orphan girl, and Ana began raising the child as her very own.
As time passed, Ana realized that there were so many children without parents. She noticed that the daycare centers downtown were closing, especially those that cared for the children of prostitutes, leaving these children to fend for themselves. Ana opened the doors of her home to feed and love these children.
Tia Ana now runs a daycare center that ministers to approximately seventy‑five children. Ana told Graham, “I try to give them the most important value of life: To have faith in the Name that is above all names the Son of the Living God.” (4)
Ana had discovered the true joy of Christmas the love of Jesus Christ reaching out from her heart to others. But first she had to repent from her sin.
You and I need to repent of our sins as well. Our situation is not as desperate as Tia’s, but we also have our issues with sin. Perhaps it is the sin of being obsessed with our own needs and concerns. Perhaps it is the sin of being obsessed with materialism and greed. It may consist simply of a blindness to the needs of others.
A Peanuts cartoon strip featured Linus writing a letter to Santa Claus: “Dear Santa, Please don’t bother to come to my house this year. I realize that there are many children who will not have a Christmas at all. Go to someone more needy.”
Lucy walks by and happens to read the letter. In exasperation she says, “What kind of letter is that?”
Linus responds, “I’m hoping he’ll find my attitude particularly refreshing.” (5)
Well, I suspect Santa would find it refreshing. That is not where most of us are. And I’m not talking about just children. It’s true of adults, too. The more we have, the more we feel we need. And the more we feel we need, the less we feel we have to share with others. And Christmas, ironically, brings out the worst in us. In Jesus’ name we go on a hedonistic binge that mocks the Savior born in a stable among the least and the lowest.
I was amused to read a review of a Christmas song that pop singer Cliff Richard released in England a few years back. The song reached the top 10 charts in Great Britain. The lyrics of the song titled, “Savior’s Day,” reflected Cliff Richard’s Christian faith and included lines such as “Life can be yours on Savior’s Day Don’t look back or turn away.”
A pop magazine reviewed the song. The reviewer wrote these words about “Savior’s Day”: “The song is ok,” the reviewer said, but “there is no holly, no mistletoe, no wine, no presents around a tree, no Santa. In fact,” wrote the reviewer, “this song hasn’t got anything to do with Christmas at all.” (6)
If that doesn’t make you laugh, it will make you cry. What have we done to Christ’s birthday? John the Baptist would probably have a few choice words to say about that. In essence, he would tell us to repent. He would tell us to open our hearts to the real meaning of Christmas. He would help us look beyond our own needs to the needs of those less fortunate. “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.”
We’re all too much like a proud mother, interestingly enough, named Mary. Mary was trying to get her son ready for the church’s annual Christmas program. Certain that the whole church clamored for her six-year-old Billy’s great talent, she looked forward to teaching him Joseph’s part. When he was only selected to play a wise man in the program, she decided he would be the best looking wise man in the program.
Though she had an impossible holiday schedule, Mary frantically finished making the costume, complete with bushy, fake-fur beard.
The pageant was magnificent, especially Billy, and especially all the beautiful carols the children sang. Mary praised Billy to the stars for singing them all.
Then the director announced they were trying to establish a new wardrobe closet where costumes could be accumulated for future pageants. Would the children donate their costume? Mary urged Billy to donate his, which he did. Except for the beard, which he continued to wear. Pressing him to hurry so they could go on to the next thing on their schedule, he refused to give it up. “Why, Billy?” Mary asked.
“Mom,” said Billy, “you know those songs in the pageant? I never learned them. With this beard on, I could just move my mouth and nobody knew.”
Mary said, thinking of her busy meaningless schedule, “That was when it hit me. I was going through the motions of Christmas when I didn’t know the song.” (7)
Do you know the real song of Christmas? John the Baptist did. Tia Ana did. Billy’s mother Mary did when she stopped long enough to reflect. It’s about preparing the way of the Lord by repenting of our sins and opening our hearts to the Lord of love. Are you ready for Christmas? Do you need to hear the voice of John crying, “Repent”?
1. Preacher’s Magazine, http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/pmol/pastissues/2005%20Advent/webdec4.htm.
2. Ronald L. Nickelson, The NIV Standard Lesson Commentary, 2009-2010. Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 2009, S. 161.
3. Rev. Adrian Dieleman, http://www.trinitycrc.org/sermons/lk19v42f.html.
4. The Name (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2002), pp. 141-142.
5. “Guilt-Free Praying,” by Robert Jeffress, MOODY, September 1995, p. 29.
6. Bud Precise, http://www.blueroof.org/Sermons/sermon122604.htm.
7. Davis Carothers.