Can You Tell the Difference?

2nd Sunday of Advent, 12/10/17
Mark 1:1-8


Can You Tell the Difference?
I. Between Advent persons?
II. Between Advent work?


I recall seeing it countless times while watching TV in my youth. It was an ad which compared the advertiser’s brand with the “other” brand. In fact, it was often a low-cost alternative verses the higher-priced, best-selling version of that product. And the results were predictable. Of course the lower cost, advertiser’s product either performed just as well or better than the industry’s leader and more expensive alternative. But since at that age I wasn’t the one paying the bills and keeping a roof over my head, I couldn’t have cared less. But I’ll have to admit, when I began buying my own necessities and as I passed through the aisle at the local supermarket or department store, I recalled those ads. Would I be satisfied with the less expensive product? Would it perform as well or even better? Even if it didn’t, would the cost savings be worth it?

Throughout our lives we make comparisons, consciously or unconsciously. We’re stricken with the compulsion to compare ourselves to others, whether we’re children at play or adults under the constant pressure to remain employed, or at least comfortable in our employment situation. Later this month, we’ll succumb to the compulsion to compare Christmas gifts—either received or given. Before buying those gifts, we’ll compare prices, online ratings, and performance reviews. Making such comparisons is almost inescapable!

So, we make our way to worship this morning and settle into our favorite pew and begin to enjoy some of our favorite Advent hymns and then comes today’s Gospel reading from St. Mark, and what do we hear? We hear John the Baptist, the great forerunner of Jesus, asking us, calling on us, encouraging us to make another comparison.

But this time the one encouraging you to take the time to make a comparison isn’t motivated by sales figures or revenue. In fact, there isn’t anything in it for him, but there is for you. To be sure, there’s an eternity of blessings in store for those who heed his call to make the comparison before you.

Not like a slick advertiser, but exactly like a proclaimer of divine truth, John the Baptist asks each of us this morning, “Can you tell the difference?” As he asks that question, he humbly holds up himself next to Jesus and asks us to make the comparison/contrast. Let’s do that and receive the Advent blessings of our Lord Jesus!

Part I.

Remember when you felt you had to look like the other children in your classroom? If some of your fellow students had the latest fad in footwear, you just had to have it, too. Remember when your children weren’t simply happy having a winter coat to wear? It had to be the latest style, or they pitched a fit. And if it wasn’t a winter coat, it was always something else.

Apparently, John the Baptist didn’t suffer from that same inner compulsion to look like everyone else. Listen to what he wore, “John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.” Elsewhere we’re told that John was a lifelong Nazirite. Not Nazareth the city. Nazirite. A Nazirite was a person who took a vow of consecration to the Lord. Part of that vow was not to have your hair cut during the time of your vow. John was one of a few lifelong Nazirites in the Bible, meaning he never cut his hair. Coupled with his wardrobe selection, can you image what John looked like? Kind of a religious freak, right?

And his diet didn’t exactly make him blend in with anyone either. Locusts and wild honey. Yikes! Honey I can imagine. But locusts?!? I’ve been told they’re a good source of protein. I’ll take their word for it. John ate them regularly.

And he spent his time in the wilderness to boot. You talk about living off the grid! Some years ago I was driving on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere here in Ohio and I came upon an abandoned school bus and it was evident someone was living in it. Really? John wasn’t much different.

Bottom line, John wasn’t concerned about what other people thought of him. He didn’t feel any pressure to fit in.

And neither did Jesus. Jesus successfully resisted the temptation to be the kind of leader and king his fellow Jews wanted him to be. He was his own man. He didn’t care much for creature comforts. He asserted that he had no place to lay his head. He purposely avoided the Jewish mecca of Jerusalem for the most part because he didn’t want to be associated with the religious elite of his day. But when Jesus did dine with his fellow Jews, enjoying food that was acceptable and expected among the Jews, his fellow Jews accused him of being a glutton and eating with social outcasts. Like John the Baptist, Jesus just didn’t fit in.

But he was worlds apart from his relative, John the Baptist. John proclaimed, “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.” Loosening footwear in Bible times was the task of domestic servants. Dignified people didn’t do that. John states he isn’t even worthy of doing that for Jesus. And yet later in his ministry, Jesus would call John the greatest among those born of women. So, was John feigning self-deprecation in order to call attention to himself? Not at all. John knew his place under Christ and he wants us to know our places under Christ, too. He wants to impress on us just how infinitely greater than any human being Jesus is.

Can you tell the difference? Can you tell the difference between John and Jesus?

Of course we can. We know and confess that John entered this world in the normal way, while Jesus entered it via a virgin birth. John was the sinful son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Jesus was and is the holy Son of God. We know Jesus for who is he by what he said and what he did. His death and resurrection are the heart and center of our Christian faith and the reason we praise him as our Savior. We know and believe the difference. So why do we struggle so mightily with showing it? Why do we think we can dismiss what Jesus tells us in his word as if it were nothing different from the advice in a self-help magazine online or in the grocery store check-out aisle? Why do we struggle to worship Jesus as he rightly deserves? Why is it so hard for us to take him at his word, as if his promises to us were no greater than anyone else’s? With every sinful Christian we declare, “Lord Jesus, we can tell the difference. But we confess that often we haven’t believed it or shown it. That’s how miserable and how fickle we are. And that’s why we need to heed the call of John the Baptist to repent as we prepare our hearts for you. By your grace, Lord Jesus, you have revealed the difference between you and everyone else and everything else. Now empower us to believe it with all our heart and live it as we look for your coming to this earth.”

Part II.

A couple years ago a young man in the US military’s security service was in worship here at Resurrection. When I asked him why he was in Dayton, he told me he was going to be here for a couple weeks making sure everything was ready for the visit of an Air Force General at WPAFB. I recall thinking, “Really? That’s your job? Is it really necessary? After all, WPAFB is one of the most secure places I know of.” But his business here shouldn’t have surprised me. The impending visits of important people have always required proper preparations.

If that’s true for any variety of important people, then of course that was true for history’s most important visitor, Jesus Christ. That was the duty of John the Baptist—to prepare people for the coming of Jesus Christ. Listen to the Lord describe John’s work, “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way—a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” John called one and all to repent. In other accounts we hear that he didn’t back down even in front of society’s most powerful and influential people. He hit them with their sins right between the eyes.

And where the law of God did its work of exposing their sins and driving them to despair, then the gospel did its work. Mark informs us that John was baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins.

But John knew that his work was not the end all and be all of God’s kingdom activity. He stated, “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” John’s baptism was in essence the same as your baptism and mine. It was a means of grace by which God brought forgiveness and eternal life. But John also wanted his listeners to know that Jesus was bringing with him another baptism—a baptism of the Holy Spirit. Just what did he mean? Jesus spoke about that Baptism with his disciples and when he did so, it’s evident he was referring to the day of Pentecost when he would pour out his Holy Spirit on his Church, enabling and empowering his followers to bring his saving gospel to the ends of the earth.

John’s work was locally powerful, preparing people for the coming of the Savior. Jesus’ work was universally powerful, saving people for time and eternity.

Can you tell the difference? The difference between Advent work?

By God’s grace we can, and that’s one of the reasons we gathered here this morning. We look forward to celebrating our Savior’s birth and we look forward to his return to this earth on the Last Day. As baptized, repentant Christians, we are prepared for both. There’s no difference there! Amen.