"Expect The Unexpected This Christmas”

“It wasn’t what I expected.” Whether you are young or old, a man or woman, a girl or a boy, you have probably experienced something that caused you to have that reaction. Perhaps it was connected to some food that you tried. You were feeling a little adventurous and you ordered something at a restaurant that you had before. When your server asked you how you liked it you said, “It wasn’t what I expected.” Or it might have been a movie, or a television program, that you heard about. After you watched it all you could say was, “It wasn’t what I expected.” Or maybe this has happened to you in relation to an event, or a place, you visited. You thought you knew what you were going to being seeing or experiencing. But the realty was far from it.

Since Christmas is just two weeks away, I guess it would make sense to apply the statement, “It wasn’t what I expected,” to both the upcoming holiday and the related tradition of giving gifts. As you reflect on past Christmases and past Christmas gifts were you ever left saying something like that? Things didn’t go as planned. The gift you had your heart set on didn’t meet your expectations. Yes, again, I am sure many of us have experienced these things. One of the goals of the Advent Season is to align our expectations for Christmas with the blessings and gifts God wants us to enjoy. It’s interesting that if we look at our Gospel Lesson for today, we notice that the same thing needed to happen around the time of the first Christmas. God’s people, and it seems that even John the Baptist, had misguided expectations of what the Savior came to do and even about the kind of Savior they needed.

If we are honest with ourselves we’ll find the same kinds of misguided expectations in our minds for both Christ and our upcoming Christmas celebration. Let’s use the event from Jesus’ life in our Gospel Lesson to help us properly adjust our expectations. We’ll look at John the Baptist’s expectations of Jesus that seem to have prompted him to question if Jesus was the Promised Savior. And we’ll examine Jesus’ assessment of what people expected of John. As some of said, “If we expect to hear the Christmas gospel without the Advent call to repentance, we will find ourselves surprised by John and unprepared for Jesus.” So, we ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to the message and ministry of both John and Jesus. We pray that through his guidance we would be led to:

“EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED THIS CHRISTMAS”

I. From John (vv. 7-11)

II. From Jesus (vv. 2-6)

These verses of our Gospel Lesson for this Sunday present us with a puzzle that has challenged believers for centuries. Did John the Baptist really have doubts about Jesus? Was John, who had identified Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” beginning to question that conclusion? Although it is possible that John may have simply sent his disciples to find out for themselves who Jesus was, I think the evidence points to real doubt on John’s part. Think about the fact that John was in King Herod’s prison. He was there because he pointed out that king’s sin of an unscriptural divorce and adultery. And Jesus didn’t seem to be doing what John had hoped he would, right? Where was the fire and brimstone preaching? Why wasn’t Jesus shaking up the sinful status quo? “He’s not what I expected!” That seems to be the bottom line for John when it came to Jesus.

I.

But before we look at John’s expectations of Jesus let’s focus on the people’s expectations of John. The Baptizer had one job in life. He was supposed to prepare the way for God to come to his people. We might say he was supposed to use the bulldozer of God’s LAW to make a spiritual highway into the hearts of God’s people. The purpose of his fiery preaching was to bring demolition to sin hardened consciences and the dynamite of God’s LAW to rebellious hearts.

But as we might expect many of the people didn’t have a positive reaction to John. Jesus addressed that in our Gospel Lesson. “As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings’ palaces. John was not swayed by popular opinion. In that way he was not like a reed swaying in the wind! John was not a people pleaser who did the will of those who could reward him financially. No, he stayed focused on his work of preparing the way for Jesus. He did that even though he wasn’t what the people expected.