Third Sunday in Advent—Are You the Coming One?
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4).
That is from Romans 15. It was from the Epistle last Sunday.
This passage—Romans 15:4—is a verse of the Bible that speaks to one of the five uses of Scripture that our Lutheran fathers have emphasized over the centuries.
The first four uses of Scripture are in 2 Timothy 3:16, where it says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
And the next verse goes on: “That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17).
So from these two passages—2 Timothy 3:16–17 that I just read to you, and then Romans 15:4 that I said earlier—from these we are taught that Scripture is useful for making the Christian perfect and complete, fit for every good work, through teaching, correcting false and sinful teaching, correcting false and sinful living, instructing us in how to live a godly life here and now, and comfort and consolation—the last one coming from Romans 15:4.
This last one—comfort or consolation—is absolutely essential.
If our conscience that is terrified over our sins, knowing what we deserve from God because of these sins and everything else that accompanies that true contrition worked by the Holy Spirit through hearing the Law—if we do not receive consolation and comfort that the blood of Jesus has washed away all those sins, as John the Baptist says, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)—
if we do not receive that consolation when our conscience is terrified over our sins and the fact that we justly deserve not only punishments in this life, but eternal damnation, if we do not receive consolation in the midst of that, then we are not going to be able to receive teaching from the Scriptures or correction in doctrine or life from the Scriptures, and we certainly are not going to be able to be trained in how to live a godly life.
You cannot live a godly life—a life that is pleasing to God—apart from faith.
“You must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
You have to have saving faith for any of the other things that the Scriptures would give you to be of use.
So it is absolutely essential.
But consolation that our sins are forgiven is not the only comfort that the Scriptures give us, that the Lord would give us in the Scriptures.
There are many situations in the life of a Christian in which we need comfort of various kinds, not just the knowledge that our sins are forgiven.
Today we see in the Holy Gospel an example of this fact, that God gives consolation in His Word for more than just the circumstance of a conscience terrified and grieved over sins.
“When John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, ‘Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: the blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me’” (Matthew 11:2–6).
John is in prison, and we do not know at this point in Matthew 11 how much he knows about his impending death—that he would be beheaded. But there is no doubt that he was languishing, suffering in prison.
Prison now does not compare to what prison was like when John the Baptist was imprisoned under King Herod.
John had preached the coming of the Messiah and pointed his own disciples already to Jesus, saying, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
He was in the wilderness as the new Elijah that had been foretold, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (cf. Malachi 4:5; Matthew 3:1–3).
He even baptized the Lord Jesus.
And when Jesus came to that baptism, John the Baptist said, “I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?” (Matthew 3:14).
Still, he baptizes Jesus, and he is given the gift of seeing the Holy Spirit descend on the Lord Jesus in the form of a dove, and hearing the Father’s voice say, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16–17).
All of this happens to John the Baptist before he is in prison.
And then he is thrown into prison. And he is not thrown into prison—or at least stuck in prison—because of what he said about Jesus.
He is stuck in prison because he keeps telling Herod that he is committing adultery by being married to his brother’s wife (cf. Matthew 14:3–4).
That is why he is sitting there in prison—suffering, languishing, probably getting more and more sure that he is going to die there.
As he languishes away in prison, coming closer and closer to death, he sends his disciples to Jesus so that he and they might receive consolation.
Not a consolation directly and explicitly concerning the forgiveness of sins.
John the Baptist does not send his disciples before him to the Lord and say, “Are my sins really forgiven?”
This is not in the context of private confession, where John the Baptist is confessing those sins which he knows and feels in his heart so that Jesus would give him the words of absolution.
He is not asking Jesus if his sins are forgiven.
John the Baptist is asking Jesus if He is the Messiah.
John the Baptist wants consolation that his own preaching, suffering, imprisonment, and eventual martyrdom are not in vain.
He wants to hear from Jesus that it was not all pointless.
And to be sure, it definitely has to do with the forgiveness of sins, because that was what the Messiah was supposed to do—to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
But that is not explicitly the question John the Baptist is asking. It is not explicitly what he is struggling with.
He is seeking consolation while languishing in prison.
He wants to hear from Jesus. He wants to be reminded again that Jesus really is who He says He is, and that He is going to do what the Messiah had already said He would do, as told through the prophets.
That is the kind of consolation John the Baptist is seeking.
And he is seeking consolation in this way, just like all the prophets before him.
When Moses was before the Lord in the burning bush, insisting that he could not be the one to go speak to the people because he could not speak well, God gives him consolation (Exodus 3–4).
Finally, even in his stubbornness, God says, “Fine, I will send Aaron with you, and I will speak to you what you should say. You tell Aaron, and Aaron will say it” (cf. Exodus 4:10–16).
It was His consolation to say, “Do not worry. I am going to be with you in this. You are not alone. I am going to help you even in your speech impediment. I am going to send your brother with you to do this thing for you, to show My glory to the Egyptians and to bring My people out of slavery.”
When Elijah is hiding away in the cleft of the rock, as Jezebel wants him dead, as he had all the prophets of Baal killed, he hears that still, small voice, where God is asking him, “What are you doing here?” (1 Kings 19:9–13).
And Elijah goes on this long, “woe is me” sort of line of thinking: “They have killed Your prophets, torn down Your altars, and I alone am left; and they seek to take my life” (1 Kings 19:10).
Elijah is not in the cleft of the rock because he is terrified regarding his sins.
He is in the cleft of the rock because he is despairing and doubting and struggling with God’s doctrine of election—the doctrine that there is always a remnant of God’s people, that you are never alone.
Even if you feel like you might be the only true believer alive right now, God always has a remnant.
And so the consolation that He gives to Elijah is not, “I forgive you for the sake of My Son, Jesus Christ.” The consolation He gives is on the basis of that.
But the consolation He gives Elijah is, “I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal” (1 Kings 19:18).
“I have a remnant. You are not by yourself.”
And then He lays out what Elijah is going to do next.
That is the consolation that He gives to Elijah when Elijah is struggling with his own affliction.
When Isaiah saw the Lord enthroned and the seraphim flying and calling out, “Holy, holy, holy,” he fell down and said, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:1–5).
So here we do have a forgiveness-of-sins consolation.
An angel comes, puts a coal to his lips, and tells him that the Lord has atoned for his sins and purged them away—that he was not going to die by being in God’s presence (Isaiah 6:6–7).
When Jeremiah told the Lord, “I am but a youth,” when he was called to be a prophet and doubted and struggled and said, “I am a youth. How am I supposed to go do this great and marvelous thing of being a prophet to Your people?” God gives him this consolation:
“Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’ for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you,” says the Lord (Jeremiah 1:7–8).
The consolation was that you do not need to worry about your youth. It does not depend on you. “I am going to be with you. I am going to give you the words to speak. You are not going to be alone.”
Like the Lord says in other places in the Scriptures, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
That is the consolation that is given to Jeremiah. He does not say, “I cannot do this because I am a sinner.” He says, “I cannot do this because I am just a youth.”
To John the Baptist’s question, as John the Baptist is languishing in prison and wondering, “What was this all for? Was this preaching true? Is this the Coming One? Is this the Messiah? Is this the One? Is this really the Lamb who is going to take away the sins of the world? Or have I been preaching falsely? Am I suffering now for no good reason? Am I stuck in prison for no greater purpose than that I would not stop speaking?”
Jesus gave this consolation for the disciples to deliver to John: “The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” (Matthew 11:5–6).
That is Jesus pointing to what He is actually doing. He says, “Tell him what you see and hear.”
You are seeing Me do these things. And what He lists are all the things that the Messiah was to do according to the prophets—that He would restore sight to the blind and make the lame walk, that lepers would be cleansed and the deaf would hear, that the dead would be raised up, and that the poor would have the Gospel preached to them (cf. Isaiah 35:5–6; Isaiah 61:1).
Jesus is the One of whom the prophet spoke when they said, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor… to proclaim liberty to the captives” (Isaiah 61:1; cf. Luke 4:18).
That is the consolation that these disciples are sent to give back to John the Baptist from Jesus.
Jesus does not say, “Why are you asking this, John the Baptist? You already said everything that was true before. What is the deal? What has changed?”
He does not do that.
He tells them to go back to John the Baptist and give him this consolation—that this was what he was supposed to do, that he was conducting his office faithfully, that he was pointing to the true Messiah, that his sins were washed away, and that it was not pointless.
That when the ax was going to be laid at his neck and it was going to remove his head from the rest of his body, that he was not going to go off into nothingness, that he was not going to go into everlasting fire, but that he was going to shine in glory in the Son and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus—with his debt of sin paid for, with double given back to him for his sins—and that he would be rewarded on top of the forgiveness of sins for his faithful work as a prophet pointing to the Lord Jesus (cf. Isaiah 40:10; Isaiah 61:7; Matthew 5:12).
That is the consolation that He is giving John the Baptist—not berating him for doubting, but giving him consolation to strengthen him.
And He does the same for us.
We Christians need to be willing to ask Him, though.
“Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3).
Should we be here? Is there a point to this? Should I be sitting here? Do I really need to drag myself, my spouse, my children to this place with all the other things that I have going on in my life and all the other things I have to do? Do I really need to be here, or am I wasting my time?
If you are doom-scrolling and you see some atheists with some real strong arguments against the existence of God, you need to ask the Lord Jesus, “Are these people right? Or are they just scoffers like You warned us about? How can I know?”
“How can I know that the Christian faith is true? Are You the Coming One, or am I supposed to look for another? Is it one of these talking heads on my screen that is going to save me?”
You should ask. You should ask and expect an answer.
And it is not going to be in the YouTube comments.
The answer is going to come from your Lord Jesus.
The same way the answer came to John the Baptist from the Lord Jesus: “The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” (Matthew 11:5–6).
You have seen the same works done among you—that sinners are baptized, that sinners are absolved, that the Messiah whom the prophets told us would gather the nations of the earth, nations that never knew the Lord, would seek after Him (cf. Isaiah 2:2–3; Isaiah 11:10).
You have seen it fulfilled in your own family tree.
I do not know for sure, but for most of you—and I know this from my own lineage—this is probably the case. We all somewhere along the line came from pagans who had never heard of the God of the Hebrews, who were worshiping trees, sacrificing their babies to pagan gods, sacrificing other human beings, and committing all sorts of abominable acts.
We all came from slaves and pagans and barbarians, and we are sitting here right now in a land far distant from our ancestors who never knew the Lord of the Hebrews, and yet the nations came to seek Him.
Pay attention to that over the next few weeks too, especially with Epiphany, because you are going to hear those words of the prophets. You are seeing—you are witnessing with your own eyes—the same things that these disciples witnessed when they saw the blind see and the lame walk, the lepers cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead raised up, and the Gospel preached to them.
You are seeing the nations being gathered in.
Look at modern-day Jews. Seriously.
Look at modern-day Judaism that rejects Jesus as the Messiah. Are they pulling in the masses of pagan nations into the true faith?
No—and they never really have. And they never will, because they are not the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.
The Lord Jesus is.
But none of you are Hebrews according to the flesh—not fully. Maybe some of you have a little bit, but you are not. You came from pagan stock.
You are, right in front of your very eyes, a fulfillment of Messianic prophecy. Be consoled in that.
And the last thing—some of you may have heard this before. You may have heard me talk about it.
But when we are in our own prison—when we are dealing with falling into sin and struggling with that and grieving that, or you are struggling with doubt, either doubt because you are hearing these scoffers and the masses of people that say, “This is all a joke. This is not real,” and you are like, “Are they right? Or is this true?”
Or you are struggling in doubt because of afflictions laid upon you—like we talked about last week, with loved ones being snatched away from you in death, or them falling away from the faith, or whatever other suffering you are enduring.
Or you are weighed down by the cares of this life, and you are like, “Well, should I really be spending time here in the Word of God and prayer and receiving these things? Or do I need to devote this time to more important matters of this world?”
In all of that, something that you can do—kind of a mental exercise—I am stealing from Blaise Pascal.
It is called Pascal’s Wager.
That is what it is called—Pascal’s Wager. He did not call it that, because he was Pascal.
But essentially, if you could imagine it, there is a four-square in front of you.
On one axis is: trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, or do not trust in Jesus Christ for salvation. You really have to pick one or the other, because you either trust in Him for salvation, or you are an unbeliever. You may believe all sorts of other things, but you do not believe that first thing.
So it is either: believe in the name of the Lord Jesus and be saved, or do not believe (cf. Acts 16:31).
That is on one axis.
And then on the other axis it is: this is true, or this is false.
So your choices are: you believe or you do not believe, and it is either true or it is false.
Then think about the outcomes.
If you believe in the Lord Jesus and it is true—that He really did die for your sins, that He really rose from the dead, and that He really is coming again in glory to save you—if you believe that and it is true, you have eternal life, eternal bliss. You have infinite reward (cf. John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 15:20–23).
If you do not believe it—either out of apathy or rejecting it explicitly or ignorance—you just do not believe it, and it is true, then it is eternal wrath and damnation for the sins that you have committed in your body. Infinite damnation. Infinite punishment (cf. John 3:18; Matthew 25:46).
If none of it is true, and you believe in the Lord Jesus and you live the Christian life—you believe in the Lord Jesus and you try to live a godly life, a godly marriage, you go to church, you are around a community of other people that believe the same thing as you—but it is not true, you die and you rot in a box, and nothing happens.
You lived a pretty good life, but none of it was true, and you rot in a box.
If you do not believe it and you live however you want to live—you live like, fill in the blank, whoever you think is the happiest person in this whole world, somebody like Bill Gates or Elon Musk, because they have loads and loads of money and own a whole bunch of farmland and do not have to worry about all those documentaries about how you are not going to have any water because they can afford to buy it—you just live like that because you do not care about the ramifications and you do not believe any of that Christian stuff, and then you die.
Nothing happens. You rot in a box.
If it is not true, the same thing happens to both groups. You die and you rot in a box.
But if the Christian faith is true, you either believe and receive infinite reward and all the promises that the Lord has made you in Holy Scripture come true, or you do not believe and it is eternal wrath.
In that wager—in those options—the only one that makes sense is to continue in the Lord and to trust in Him.
And I think this is a helpful exercise—not because you can trick yourself into believing, as if you could trick yourself into believing that the moon is not there. You cannot do that. You cannot just say, “I believe; I am hedging my bets.” And that is not what Pascal is saying either.
What it does mean for you is this: when you struggle with these doubts, when you are in your own prison of affliction and doubt—from whatever reason it might be, in the various trials and temptations of this life—you need to ask the Lord, “Are these things so?”
And the way that you ask the Lord if these things are so is by continuing in His teaching.
If you want to be sure your sins are forgiven, you have to ask Him by showing up and confessing your sins and receiving absolution.
And then you have the answer: “Yes, your sins are forgiven.” Yes, your sins are forgiven.
If you want to be sure that this is all true—that it is something that you can believe and be saved—you need to ask Him and remember what the Scriptures say: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).
So that means that if you struggle in your faith, you are not going to be certain of the Christian faith—certain that the Lord Jesus really is the Savior that you hope for—by any other way than hearing His Word read out loud and preached.
You need to ask Him.
And that is His answer: “Keep hearing My Word, and no one can snatch you out of My hand” (cf. John 10:27–28).
If you want to be certain that the sufferings you endure in this life—when you are doubting whether or not they have a purpose, whether or not it is really for your good that this or that person or thing or situation was stripped from you—
and that you seem to be trapped in the circumstances of your life, and they are difficult and seem to have no end—
when you are doubting in that, you need to ask Him like John the Baptist asked Him: “Are You the Coming One, or should we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3).
And then here is His answer.
“Do not give way to covetousness, but be content with what you have. For He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we may boldly say: ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?’” (Hebrews 13:5–6).
Remember that no man can really do anything to you but take your earthly life away.
And death—because of the blood of Jesus, because of His death and His resurrection—cannot hurt you one hair more. Not a single ounce more. Not a single second more.
When it is over, it is over.
When you have passed through that death into everlasting life, you are not going to receive consolation unless you have that conversation with Him and ask Him by continuing in His Word—by being where His Word can be found, by being where His Body and Blood can be found—because that is where you are going to get the answer.
And it will be nowhere else—only His Word.
And that is His answer to you:
“Yes, I am the Coming One.”
You have seen the unbelieving, pagan sinner damned being brought to the water of Holy Baptism, being taught the Word of God, remaining steadfast in the faith, suffering and even dying for that faith.
You have seen it happen.
And you did not just see it from people who were related to Abraham according to the flesh. You saw it from pagans whose ancestors sacrificed their own children to trees.
You have seen it from the nations who did not know the Lord Jesus, who now call upon Him as His people and who are now the Israel of God (cf. Galatians 6:16).
You have seen it.
Keep asking Him in your doubt, and you will keep getting the answer from your Lord, who will always deal gently with you, the same as He dealt gently with John the Baptist in our Gospel.
Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, faithful and true Savior of all believers, You make known in today’s Gospel that we should wait for none other than You alone—the sole, eternal, and living Son of God—who took upon Yourself human nature for our comfort and stood in our place before the eternal curse and wrath of God. We ask You to show the power and might of Your Word also to us poor sinners. Make our blind hearts to see, our paralyzed and troubled consciences joyful and living, our leprous bodies and souls clean by grace, and our perverse hearing right and attentive. And as we have become corrupt unto death through sin, raise us up again unto life, and clothe and adorn us with Your innocence unto eternal honor and glory. For You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
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