Text:  Luke 3:7-18                                                                                                   W 3^rd Sunday of Advent

“What Should We Do?”

            In the name of our coming King, dear brothers and sisters in Christ … yes, my beloved brothers and sisters with whom I am joined in the family of God through our mutual confession of holy faith in Jesus Christ our Savior – that’s my usual way of addressing you: as my family and dear friends, for that is what we are in Christ.  All of which stands in stark contrast to the way we just heard St. John the Baptist address his congregation that was gathered on the banks of the Jordan River to hear him preach.  “Brood of vipers”, he calls them.  That’s not the kind of language you’d expect from someone trying to win friends and influence people.  And I’m just guessing that none of you would appreciate it very much if I spoke to you that way, especially considering that when he says that they’re the offspring of vipers, he’s referring to “the great serpent” that deceived our first parents. In other words, he’s calling them the spawn of Satan.  So, it’s kind of strange, isn’t it?  Here, I address you as God’s beloved children; but John addresses his congregation as the damned children of the Devil.  Why do you suppose he’s so hard on them?

Well, one answer would be to assume that John is directing his remarks to the unrepentant:  to hardened sinners who really needed an extra-heavy dose of hellfire and brimstone to shake them out of their spiritual lethargy; in which case we might be able to justify the kind of verbal assault that John gives them.  But according to the text, that’s not who they are.  These are the very folks who came to John to be baptized – the same folks we heard about last week who came in repentance to be baptized by him for the forgiveness of their sins.

And please understand that this was no easy trip for them to make.  Here, many people in our day consider it a major sacrifice to drive a half hour and sit in a padded pew through a sixty-minute worship service to be assured of God’s grace and forgiveness.  If it were more of a hassle than that, they’d probably stay home.  But these folks left their homes in the temperate Judean hills and coastal plane, and walked for two or three days (at least) to come out to the scorching desert to hear John.  Most of them probably stayed several days listening to him before making the long, hot, upward climb toward home.  My point is that these people weren’t the spiritually indifferent or insensitive kind who are perfectly content to live in their sins, nor were they the merely curious who just happened to be passing by and stopped to see what all the commotion was about.  No indeed, these people were driven to John staggering under the heavy burden of their guilt.  They were hoping to find relief for their troubled souls.  They were justifiably worried about the coming wrath of God, and were looking for a means of escape.  And as a matter of pastoral practice, you don’t heap the law’s fierce judgments and terrors on those who are already sincerely sorry for their sins. No, if they’re repentant, then the law has already done its work, so you give them the Good News of the Gospel and the assurance of God’s forgiveness through faith in the Savior.

And yet, today we hear John blasting away at these repentant, baptized, forgiven, and now faithful people as if they were the worst, most hardened sinners that ever walked the face of the earth.  Why does he do that?  How can he use such harsh language with these forgiven children of God?  How can he call them the Devil’s seed?

            Well, I suppose it’s because the statement is absolutely true.  Yes, they are repentant sinners who have been forgiven through their faith in the coming Savior, and at the same time they are still very much sinners who are addicted to their sinful ways and who are continuing in them.  John’s scathing words reveal the truth that every believer has what might be thought of as a split personality – sort of a Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde kind of thing going on inside them.  (Actually, the technical theological term for it is a “dual nature”.) The result is that those who hold to the Gospel are at once saints and sinners; they are true believers and true doubters; the children of God and the children of the Devil.  Which is why John can address his congregation as he does, and I can address you as I do, and both of us are correct – and we still would be if even if we switched it around the other way – it all depends on to which of your two natures the preacher wants to direct his comments.

And it happens that in the course of any Gospel message, the preacher has to address both sides of you.  That’s because your two natures are in conflict.  The saint in you, redeemed by Christ and forgiven of sin, loves God and delights to do his holy will; the sinner loves only the self, and is interested in serving only its own will.  The goal of the preacher is to use the power of God’s Word to help you fight the battle within.  He wants to assist you in seeking out and destroying the sinner with the Law of God. That’s what reveals the sinner and puts him to death.  When that’s accomplished, the preacher wants to give strength and faith to the saint with the assurance of the forgiveness we have in Christ Jesus.  That’s how the battle is fought.

And this side of the grave, the battle never ends.  That old sinner within is a real tricky character.  He’s an expert in camouflage and deception. He loves to hide, or pretend he’s not there, or that he’s really not so bad after all.  He’s got a number of great disguises.  One of his best tricks is to pretend that he’s really quite good and that he’s been working hard to do things that really ought to please God – and he’s always willing to show you the list of wonderful things he’s done. He’s good at comparisons too: “See how much better I’m doing than the rest of those folks?  They have the nerve to think of themselves as Christians.  Why, they’re nothing more than hypocrites – not like me.”  With regard to the internal conflict, the sinner within is always trying to call a truce – not because he wants peace, but because he wants to be free to continue unmolested.  He hates the true light of God’s law because it shows what he really is and condemns him.  And that’s what St. John is up to this morning:  he’s hammering away at his hearers to help them expose the sinner within. Other times the mission calls for more of a stealth attack, like when the Prophet Nathan confronted King David about his secret sin with Bathsheba – then he had to sneak up on the sinner and lure him out of hiding to get him to show himself.  Either way, the mission is the same:  help the Christian seek out and destroy the sinner within, and build up the believing saint with the grace and forgiveness of God in Christ.

            That’s why Luther described the whole Christian life as a life of repentance.  He saw, like John, that the way to grow in faith and godly virtue is to daily identify old nature and its sins and to put it to death with the Lord Jesus on the cross, and then to rise with Christ to new life, serving him with humility and gratitude.  Continuing to seek the sinner within leads us to be dependent on God’s forgiveness in Christ Jesus – and that’s what leads to bearing the fruits of repentance that John exhorts his hearers to produce.

            Which leads us to the question, “What does such a life of bearing the fruits of repentance look like?” It’s the same question that some of John’s congregation asked when they said, “Okay John, we hear you; and we want to bear the fruits of repentance like you’ve said.  What should we do?”  It’s an important question for us as well.  John, as you probably know, had some more or less permanent disciples. They were living out there in the desert with him, depriving themselves of creature comforts, and constantly fasting and praying.  John himself set the example for them by wearing uncomfortable clothes and subsisting on a diet of grasshoppers.  So, behind his hearers’ question, “What should we do?” is the question, ”Is this what it takes?  Should we forsake our lives back at home and stay out here fasting and praying with you all the time?  Is that how we should be showing forth our repentance?”  It seemed logical to the people back then – and indeed it’s seemed like the right answer to many people throughout history.  That’s what drove people by the thousands to enter convents and monasteries during the middle ages, and still does today to a lesser extent. But we also have other forms of the same idea in which Christians believe they are being more faithful if they isolate themselves from the rest of the world and carefully avoid its pleasures and influences.  No drinking, dancing, listening to secular music or reading books from other than Christian authors; you can forget motions pictures and TV, of course.  It also includes conscientiously avoid fancy clothes, showy cars, and any other form of excess or self-indulgence. Instead, spend every waking moment reading the Bible, praying, and telling everyone you meet how much you love Jesus (oh, and how you spend every waking moment reading the Bible and praying).  You get the idea:  it’s to show God how sincerely repentant you are through various forms of self-deprivation. It’s still a very popular idea.

            That’s why it’s important for us to see that’s not at all what John tells them.  Instead, he simply says, “Let him with two tunics share with the one who has none. And let him who has food do the same.” There’s nothing about deep personal sacrifice or anything about making superhuman efforts to make yourself miserable here.  It’s basic showing love for your neighbor that John points us to.  Give from your excess to those in need.  Love others as you love yourself.  That’s how you bear the fruits of repentance.

            And what happens next in the story helps us unpack it a little further.  There steps forward people from two occupations that were thought of as especially ungodly.  It was generally held that no one calling himself a child of God could do these either of these jobs.  First are the tax collectors.  They’ve got two strikes against them.   First, because they helped the Romans in collecting the required tribute, they were considered traitors who collaborated with the enemy against their fellow countrymen. And secondly, they were considered thieves because as a rule they made themselves rich by cheating and overcharging their fellow citizens.  The others who step forward are the soldiers.   For the most part they were native Jews who had joined the Roman foreign legion.  They served under Roman commanders and functioned more or less like the police do in our day.  It was a situation very similar to what we’re doing with the police in Iraq right now.  And like those police, and the tax collectors, their fellow Jews also considered these soldiers traitors.  In addition to that, because their wages were quite low, it was typical for the soldiers to augment their income with a number of dishonest practices.  Police corruption is nothing new – and back then it was widespread.  As a matter of fact, it was more or less expected and tolerated.  Now people from both these hated professions ask John, “And what about us?  What should we do?”

            Again, John’s answer to them is not at all what we might have expected.  Everyone listening might have anticipated that John would tell them to leap some major spiritual hurdles here:  shave your heads, sit weeping in sackcloth and ashes, and plead on your knees for God’s mercy.  Above all, stop what you’re doing and go get acceptable jobs, doing something noble, that’s righteous and pleasing to God.  But that’s not what John says.  Instead it’s, “Keep doing your jobs; but do them honestly.  Don’t cheat people, don’t overcharge them; and don’t threaten or extort them; simply be fair.”  Taxes have to be paid and somebody has to collect them.  Likewise, we need people to keep the peace: to keep society running in good order, to capture and punish criminals, and to defend us from threats abroad.  There’s nothing inherently immoral about these careers, and you can properly serve God and man while working in them.  Just do whatever you do in Christian faith and love, and you are bearing the fruits of repentance.

And since John applies this principle to the two “worst jobs” of his time, it’s safe to extend it to all useful and legal vocations.  We tend to think that we’re only “serving the Lord” when we’re doing something that directly applies to the work of the church.  That’s not right.  The truth is that is every task that is done with faith in the Lord Jesus, no matter how small or degrading it may appear to be, is as good and holy a work as the most celebrated accomplishments of the biblical saints. In fact, strictly speaking our true worship of God is not what takes place here on a typical Sunday morning, but rather what we do the rest of the week.  We come here in repentance, like people came to John, to be assured of our forgiveness for Christ’s sake and filled with his Word and Spirit.  That’s what equips and empowers us to go forth from here, knowing what God’s will is, and with the desire and ability to do it. Here God serves you; out there is where you worship God by your life while bearing the fruit of repentance, which is living the life of love.

            It’s as you’re out there honestly trying to live that life of love that you’ll realize how far short of the mark you fall.  God gives freely to the just and the unjust, to the deserving as well as the undeserving.  He shows his mercy to all.  That’s the standard he calls us to.  It’s so easy to say – but so hard to do.  Making that your goal in whatever it is you do is what will provide you with the best and most constant source of reminders that your sinful old nature is still very much active in pulling you down and preventing you from being the child of God you’d really like to be.  And that’s what will bring you back to Christ in repentance, and keep you seeking his forgiveness and strength to keep fighting the good fight of faith, and to keep doing what the Lord wants you to do – in Jesus’ holy name. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!