On April 13th, 1742, in the great Music Hall in Dublin, Handel’s Messiah was performed for the first time. The editor of the Dublin Newsletter, who attended the public rehearsal, advertised the work as “...far surpassing anything of that Nature which has been performed in this or any other Kingdom!”. Gentlemen were asked not to wear their swords and ladies requested not to wear hoops in their dresses so that they could pack as many people as possible into the Music Hall. In total, 700 people packed Dublin’s Great Music Hall to the rafters. The performance earned unanimous praise from concert goers and critics. One of the members of the press wrote, "Words are wanting to express the exquisite delight it afforded to the admiring and crowded audience."
It has been said “Since its first performance, there has been no year in which the Messiah hasn’t been performed”[1] In recent years the Messiah has become a Christmas holiday tradition. In the season of Advent Handel’s Messiah is routinely performed all over the world. The next performance of Handel’s Messiah here in Atlanta is December 19th. The last 11 tickets were selling for about $500 a piece if anyone interested. (Wife?)
Before you snap up a ticket for yourself and your husband, who has been telling you for the last 15 years that he wants to go to the Messiah, you should know the concert is typically over two hours in length. I don’t think most people realize that. I suspect when most people think of the Messiah, they think only of the Halleluia Chorus and understandably so. The Halleluia chorus of Handel’s Messiah is powerful and moving. It is a stoic individual who holds back tears as praises to the King of kings and Lord of lords soar from the chorus as to the heights of heaven where He shall reign forever and ever and ever Alleluia. I will confess I am often less than stoic when the Halleluia Chorus of Handel’s Messiah is sung in my presence.
When I hear the Halleluia Chorus, I understand why Handel’s Messiah is so popular in the Christmas season. Like the angelic chorus that performed a concert for the shepherds outside the little town of Bethlehem, the joy that wells up inside of us as we prepare to celebrate Christmas longs to burst forth in songs of praise to our newborn King. But before you start belting out halleluiahs, it might interest you to know the Halleluiah Chorus is the 44th movement of the 8th scene of the 2nd part of the Messiah. There are 43 previous movements in the Messiah that build up to the singing of the Halleluia Chorus and the first 4 of those movements are from the words of the prophet Isaiah which are quoted in our gospel lesson for this morning. “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness; prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Ev'ry valley shall be exalted, and ev'ry moutain and hill made low; the crooked straight and the rough places plain.”
Today in Luke 3:1-6 The Holy Spirit prepares us to sing praises to our newborn King. But, as Handel correctly understood, before we can sing our halleluiahs, we must first prepare our hearts, and, as we are about to see, prior proper preparation requires repentance.
In chapter 3, Luke, the careful historian, begins with a detailed description of dignitaries so that we know with a fair amount of certainty exactly when the events of our text occurred (26 A.D, for those of you who are curious, about 1 year before Jesus began his public ministry). At this time, Luke then tells us, “2… the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. 3 He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” John the son of Zachariah, also known as John the Baptist, is one of the more interesting characters in the biblical narrative. John wore a camelhair coat that was secured by a leather belt he wore around his waist. John’s diet consisted primarily of locust and wild honey. John lived and worked in the remote wilderness region east of Jerusalem beyond the Jordan. But it is not John’s fashion sense, culinary choices, and apparent agoraphobia that interests us this morning. Rather, it is his voice. Saint Luke identifies John the Baptist as “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”.
Saint Luke identifies John the Baptist as the wilderness voice that 700 years earlier Isaiah prophesied would come to prepare God’s people for the coming of the King. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, saint Luke describes the preparatory work of John the Baptist with these words, “5 Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth.” Sin separates us from our God; it gets in the way; at best it sours the praises we sing to our newborn King, at worst sin altogether prevents us from singing His praises. Which is why, in picturesque language, Luke tells us our preparations to sing the praises of our newborn King require repentance.
The first step of repentance is to recognize that you have sins that require repentance. Now, the valleys, mountains, crooked roads, and rough ways need not be identified as specific sins. It is probably more than enough to think of categories of sins. You might think of crude, lewd, and rude sins when you hear about “valleys”. You might think of egotistic, self-seeking, pride when you hear about “mountains and hills”. You might think of lying, stealing, and cheating when you hear about “crooked paths”. Finally, you might think of wild living and indulgent behavior when you hear about “rough ways”. As I said it is not important that you identify specific sins, but rather that you recognize somewhere in this list you have sins that require repentance. Before we move on and discuss how one goes about repenting of sin, you should have a handful of sins in mind. If you can’t think of any sins, might I suggest you look to the mountains and hills? I think you might discover you have several peaks of pride that require some repentance.
Now that you have a handful of sins in mind, the next step of repentance is to acknowledge the seriousness of your sins. It is not enough to be embarrassed when your sin is exposed, not even enough to feel shame for the sins you have committed. In our text saint Luke uses adjectives like “crooked” and “rough” to describe our sins, but he is just being poetically polite. Our sins are a violation of God’s righteous law, they are an act of outright rebellion against the heavenly King, they are a hostile declaration of war against all that is good and holy. As such, the wage of our sin is death, and not simply the cessation of breath but the casting out into an outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth for all eternity kind of death. Never mind embarrassment and shame, the nature and consequence of sin fills us with dread. It doesn’t matter what the sin is; it doesn’t matter if you classify your sin as a valley or a mountain or a crooked road or a rough way, all sin is serious.
After you acknowledge the seriousness of your sin, the next step of repentance is to stop doing those sins. It is a commonly held fallacy that one can be repentant of a sin while at the same time deliberately continue to do that sin. This is not to say that if you ever repeat the same sin twice you are therefore unrepentant of that sin. Some of you have heard me say this before, but there is a difference between struggling with a sin and strutting in a sin. The person who struggles truly honestly doesn’t want to do that sin again, but because of sinful weakness, they slip into the sin again. Conversely a person who struts in a sin does the sin willfully, intentionally, and easily. True repentance requires a turning away from sin, a doing that which is the opposite of the sin. Notice that Luke describes repentance as a “filling in” of the valleys, a “making low” of the mountains and hills, a “straightening” of crooked roads, and a “smoothing” of rough ways. Repentance is a turning away from sin, a doing that which is opposite of the sin. For example, repentance replaces gossip with encouragement, repentance replaces greed with generosity, repentance replaces anger with kindness, repentance replaces lust with love, repentance replaces arrogance with humility, and so on and so on. I think you get the point. If you can’t identify the opposite of your specific sin come talk to me privately and we will let God’s Word guide us to an answer.
After you have identified sin in your life, acknowledge the seriousness of the sin I your life, and turned away from that sin, the final step to repentance is to look at that newborn King Who was born of a Virgin and laid in on of Bethlehem’s mangers and see Him as the sinless Son of God and your Savior from sin. In verse 6, saint Luke invites all mankind to look at Jesus and “6… see God’s salvation”. The reason John the Baptist preached a message of repentance to the people, the reason I am re-preaching that message of repentance to you is, as Luke said in verse 3, “3… for the forgiveness of sins”. Before the prophet Isaiah, whom Luke extensively quotes, wrote about a voice calling in the wilderness, he wrote, “2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”[2] The prophet Isaiah, John the Baptist, and saint Luke all agree; repentance is not complete until we look to Jesus as the one who has “completed hard service” or lived perfectly in our place, repentance is not complete until we look to Jesus who suffered and died on the cross so that the wage of our sin has been paid and we have been forgiven, repentance is not complete until we look to Jesus and see God’s salvation. Repentance is not repentance until you find yourself standing before Jesus, totally forgiven and absolutely saved.
There are 43 movements in the Messiah before the Halleluiah Chorus is sung. The first four movements are about repentance. Handle understood what John the Baptist preached and saint Luke has shared with us this morning, before praises are sung there must be repentance. Therefore, my dear fellow believers, if, this Christmas, you like so many of God’s people before you, want to be prepared to sing Halleluiahs or any other songs of praise to the newborn King, you will want to take the time to prepare yourself for the performance. Take the time to identify sin in your life, acknowledge the seriousness of that sin, turn away from that sin, and look to Jesus as your Savior from that and all sin. Take time for repentance and you will be prepared to sing His praises. Amen.
[1] Stapert 2010: 53
[2] Isaiah 40:2