Sunday, December 14, 2025, Third Sunday in Advent
“Love Prepares the Way”
Psalm 146; Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-11; Matthew 11:1-15
Divine Service III, without Communion
Hymns: “Come, Thou Precious Ransom, Come” #350; “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” #357; “Let the Earth Now Praise the Lord” #352
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Do you know anyone who has ever been bullied into God’s Church? Has anyone ever been forced or pushed or shoved or nagged into the kingdom of God? As tempting as it may be to lay the Bible upside someone’s head, or to use Scripture as a “guilt club” to try to make a Christian out of someone, that never works. What does work? Love works! - love that’s expressed in gentleness and kindness and honest truth. It’s love that paves the way for God to touch a heart, and love that prepares the way for a heart to receive the Good News about the love of God to us in Christ. May we learn to speak the truth in love, and to love as God has loved us.
John the Baptist was a preacher of love and truth. Oh, he was brutally honest when he had to be, but he was only speaking the truth in love to people that needed to hear it. When people came out to the desert to hear him preach, he called them to confess their sins – but only because that’s the first and necessary step in opening your heart to the Savior who can take those sins away.
And then the Pharisees and Sadducees and leaders of the Jews came out to hear him, and they refused to repent of their sins or get in the water to be baptized; and he told them the honest truth, too. He told them they were “a brood of vipers”, and he warned them about what would happen to them if their hearts didn’t change. That made them angry; but John still told them the truth they didn’t want to hear, because he loved the sinners, too, just like Jesus did, and he wanted them to be saved.
John was brave, courageous, and honest to a fault. So brave and honest, in fact, then when he heard that King Herod had stolen his own brother’s wife, he wasn’t afraid to called out the king; he said, “O King, it isn’t lawful for you to have her.” He would have loved to hear old Herod confess his sin and change his ways and come and be baptized; that would have been such a victory for the kingdom of God. If Herod would have turned to Christ, so many of his people might have followed. Instead, he had John arrested; and as our Gospel begins today, the prophet was sitting in a dark, damp, and awful dungeon beneath Herod’s fortress, not knowing if he’d ever get out.
John, says our Gospel, sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus a question, and his question seems to be so full of disappointment, hopelessness, and despair. John must have been praying his heart out in that terrible place. “O Lord, why is this happening to me? I did everything You asked me to do. I preached Your truth in love. I called your people to repent and be baptized; and it was such a joy to see some of them coming back to You. I even preached the truth to Your enemies and those who hate You, to try to bring even them into Your kingdom. And for the love I showed, I got only hate in return, and it was telling Your truth got me put into this terrible place. Now I’m wondering if I was wrong about everything, and if I was wrong about You. So Lord, ‘are You the One who was to come, or should we look for someone else?’”
Now Jesus really loved that man. They were family; they were cousins. They’d known each other since mother Mary had walked into Elizabeth’s house, and pre-born John had leaped for joy in his mother’s womb at the presence of his Savior. Jesus knew what John was going through, and He knew that his time was short, and that it wasn’t in God’s plans to rescue him – at least, not in the way he had in mind.
So John’s disciples came to see Jesus, and they relayed John’s question to Him: “Are You the One?” And Jesus invited them to stay for a little while, and to see for themselves what was going on. Then, when they’d seen it all for themselves, they could go back and tell John what they’d heard and seen. Because the answer to John’s question was in what Jesus said and in what He did.
What did they hear Jesus say? They heard Him speaking the truth in love. They heard Him saying the same thing John had always said: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” They heard Jesus speaking words of love, hope, and grace. They heard Him talk about forgiveness for sin, and about loving God and loving one another, and about living in peace. Not hateful words, but joyful ones. Not more bad news, but Good News for a change - Good News about the love of God, and about how God had sent love into the world in the Person of His Son, and about how “God loved the world so that He gave…”
And what did they see? What Jesus was doing was more than just words. It wasn’t just talking, it was reaching out and touching. They saw Jesus reaching out in love to heal people’s hurts, and acting with love and compassion to heal everyone who came to Him with a need. “Jesus healed them all,” the Scripture says. Jesus told them to go tell John, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” Don’t fall away, John. Be strong, keep the faith, keep on loving God like you always have, even in the darkness you now find yourself in; because I’m just who you’ve always believed Me to be.
As John’s disciples were leaving, to take that word of comfort to a man who was in desperate need of it, Jesus turned and began to ask the crowd about John. "What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind?” Did you want a preacher who was good at “reading the room,” and telling you what you wanted to hear? Or one who’d tell you want you needed to hear? Did you want false comfort, or honest truth? God loves you as you are, that’s true; but it’s also true that He loves you enough not to leave you as He found you.
So, what did you go out to see? Did you want a preacher dressed in fine clothes, wearing a $5000 suit and diamond rings on his fingers? A preacher with a thirty-room mansion and a corporate jet? No, those things are for rich men and kings. “Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.” Do you know what God’s prophets are sent to do? Do you know what their job is? All a prophet can do is say what God sends them to say: “Listen, O people, this is what the Lord says.” Whether it’s a good, happy, and joyful word, or a warning to change your ways and leave your life of sin, what the Lord says is what the Lord says. People might like it, or maybe they won’t, but “speaking the truth in love” is what God’s prophets do; truth that confronts sin and makes people aware of how awful and dangerous it is; and the truth about Jesus being the only One to turn to if you hope to find forgiveness for it. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
John the Baptist, says Jesus, wasn’t just a prophet, but the greatest of all the prophets. All the Old Testament prophets, all down through the years, pointed the people to the coming Christ. And John was the last prophet in that holy chain of prophets – the last of the Old Testament prophets, and the first of the New. All the others – the Elijahs, Isaiahs, and Jeremiahs – reminded the people that their Savior was coming; but John, blessed man that he was, got to tell the people, “Your Savior is here!” Jesus says in our Gospel, “This is the one about whom it is written: 'I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
And yet Jesus says in verse 12 of our Gospel, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” That seems contradictory and strange and out of place. No one comes into God’s kingdom by force, right? No one has ever been pushed or shoved or bullied into coming to faith. Love alone prepares the way. So what can He possibly mean?
Here’s the thing: God’s Kingdom advances, moves forward relentlessly, whether people will like it or accept it or not. God loves us all, whether we’ll turn to Him or not. God won’t ever stop or back down or give up. His Holy Spirit will always be living and active in the world, and He’ll keep sending us pastors, preachers, and messengers, who – if they’re faithful – will keep bringing us the same old message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven in near.” And then also the same sweet and wonderful Good News: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” God’s truth will advance, it will go on, until Jesus comes again at last. Nothing will stop it or stand in its way.
And “forceful men lay hold of it” means that we have to be relentless ourselves when it comes to our faith, no matter what dark place we may find ourselves in on any given day. We have to be forceful and deliberate in pursuit of God’s Word, and in worship, the Sacraments, and prayer. And we have to be relentless about speaking the truth in love into the world around us, and about doing everything we can to tell people about the love of Jesus- because that’s how we’ll love people into God’s kingdom. This “speaking the truth in love” mission our God has given us isn’t for wimps or for the faint of heart. Our place here is to love God with all our hearts and all our souls and all our mind and all our strength; and then to put everything we have into showing the love of God to our neighbors. Telling God’s honest truth isn’t pushy, mean, or judgmental; it’s just the loving thing to do.
“He who has ears, let him hear,” Jesus says. And it’s our spiritual ears He’s talking about, what the Scriptures call the “eyes of our hearts.” May God open our eyes to see the hurts and the needs in the world around us, and then open our hearts to do something about it. God in His love has opened the way for our hearts to know our Savior. May the love we show open the way for others to know Him, too. In Jesus’ name; Amen.