The
Second Sunday in Advent
                                                                                
                                 
See With Your Ears,Part 2
 
Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father and our Lord Jesus
Christ! Amen. In today’s Gospel, when John the Baptist “saw many of the 
Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to
them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’”
 
Dear
Christian friends,
 
God
desires very much to explain for us the meaning of everything we see. Stated
another way, God wants us to distinguish between the thing that we are looking
at, and what He tells us concerning that thing. God wants us to see with our
ears, so to speak.
 
·        Take the example of your house, your car, your business, or anything
else you own. That thing looks as if it were built by your own hands, or paid
off over period of time, or inherited, and so on. But that is just the surface
of the thing; the way it seems. The real meaning of the thing is what God 
explains
concerning it. Your house, car, business, whatever: it is a gift “from above, 
coming down from the Father of lights”
(James 1:17).
 
·        In last week’s Gospel, God again distinguished between what you see and
what He says about it. Jesus rode donkeys into Jerusalem. That is all the
people could see: a peasant riding donkeys. God needed to explain the meaning
of what they saw, and He did so through His prophet: “Say to the daughter of 
Zion, ‘Behold your king is coming to you.’”
The people could not have guessed that they were looking at their king, unless
God first said to them, “Behold, your
king.”
 
In
today’s Gospel, God again uses the same distinction between what you see and how
He explains what you see. God wants you to see with your ears, as it were. As 
God’s prophet John stood
on banks of the Jordan River, he saw many people who looked holy and
well-established in the church. John saw people who looked meticulous about 
their
duties, faithfully performing everything God requires. But prophets do not 
declare
what a thing looks like. Prophets declare what God says the thing is.
 
Who
were these men, coming to John for baptism? The quick answer is, “Pharisees and 
Sadducees,” as you heard
in this Gospel. But take a broader view for a moment. Dial your vision back and
look at these men from a distance. They are people who have gathered to hear
the preaching of the church, for whatever reason. These are people who have
come to receive the gifts of God from the hand of the prophet whom God had
sent. 
 
·        It is NOT my point that we should all think of ourselves as Pharisees
and Sadducees. My point is that these Pharisees and Sadducees stand together
with us to hear the preaching of the Church and to participate in the divine
gifts. After all, these men were “coming
for baptism.”
 
·        We should each identify ourselves with these Pharisees and Sadducees, 
but
NOT because of their legendary hypocrisy. We should each identify ourselves
with these Pharisees and Sadducees because God’s prophet looks at these men,
not according to what is seen with the eye, but according to what is declared
in the divine Word.
 
Look
around this sanctuary. What do you see? This town is a small enough that
everyone pretty much knows all there is to know about everyone else. Probably 
the
only one still in the dark is the preacher. You know the liars, the gossips, and
the cheats. You know those who cannot be trusted with a dollar, much less a 
position
in the congregation or the community. You know those who only look good, those
who do not even try to look good, and those who seem to think they look better
than everyone else. You know the skeletons people have in their closets—some of
them decades old—and you know where all the dead bodies are buried, so to
speak.
 
God
wants you to know that things are much WORSE than they appear. God wants you to
draw a distinction between what you see with your eyes and what He explains
concerning the thing you see. For all the evil actions you have seen and heard
from others, their condition is actually much WORSE than their actions suggest.
God wants you to know that their sin does not merely consist of what you can
see. Their sin is a viperous and deadly poison. Their sin is fully capable of 
death
for them and misery for everyone around them. John could look at the Pharisees
and Sadducees coming for baptism and John could say to them, “brood of vipers,” 
NOT because of the way
these men looked, but because of what God says concerning all people everywhere.
What does God say? God says 
 
·        “Every inclination of a man’s
heart is evil” (Genesis 8:21).
 
·        We were “sinful from birth,
sinful from the time our mothers conceived us” (Psalm 51:5).
 
·        Our minds are “hostile to God”
(Romans 8:7).
 
This
is what God says about the Pharisees and Sadducees who came to John, despite
the outward appearance of their holiness. This is what God says about every one
of you, no matter who you are or how long your list of sins. This is most
especially what God says about me—and it matters not one bit how things might
appear to your eyes. God wants you to draw a distinction between what you see
with your eyes and what He explains concerning the thing you see.
 
Look
around this sanctuary. What do you see? Everyone pretty much knows all there is
to know about everyone else. In-laws and outlaws; well-known sinners and 
lily-white
saints; naggers and braggers and pains-in-the-keister, all thrown together into
the same pews.
 
God
wants you to know that things are much BETTER than they appear. God wants you
to draw a distinction between what you see with your eyes and what He explains
concerning the thing you see. For all the evil actions you have seen and heard
from these others, their condition is actually much BETTER than their actions
suggest. God wants you to know that their sin has been assumed and carried by
Christ the Sacrificial Lamb whose Advent we celebrate and anticipate in this
season. God wants you to know that the viperous and deadly poison of their sin 
has
been injected into Jesus’ veins; that the poison of their sin has found its 
antidote
in the blood that poured from our Lord’s cross. These others around you have sin
that is fully capable of death for them, but God in Christ has transformed their
death into eternal life for them and for all who believe. Their sin is indeed 
capable
of misery for everyone around them, but God now promises that all things now
work together for the good of those who love Christ Jesus (Romans 8:28). After 
all,
what does God say these others, and you, and me? God says    
 
… you may not sin. But if anyone
does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He
is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the
sins of the whole world (1 John 2:1-2). 
 
What
does God say? God says
 
…
while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For
one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person
one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6-8). 
 
What
does God say? God says
    
He
has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom
of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins
(Colossians 1:13-14). 
 
On
nearly every page of His Scriptures, including today’s Gospel, God our heavenly
Father teaches us to look at the world, not with our eyes, but with our ears,
so to speak. God
wants us to distinguish carefully between the thing that we are looking at, and
what He tells us concerning that thing. God greatly desires to explain for us 
the
meaning of everything we see, so that we may see everything rightly, from now
to eternity.
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