We recommend you begin your worship service and sermon with a focus on Advent. The theme of the Third Sunday of Advent is Joy. You might include focusing on the theme, reading Scripture, lighting the second Advent candle, and offering a prayer of gratitude for the Spirit’s fruit of joy. See our Advent Church Hack here.

Psalm 126:1–6 • Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–11 • I Thessalonians 5:16–24 • John 1:6–8, 19–28

This week’s theme is God moves first. In our call to worship psalm, the people remember the great things the Lord has already done for them and ask him to continue what he has already begun. In Isaiah, the anointed one declares that the Lord has already sent him, anointed before he speaks a single word, to bind up the brokenhearted and clothe them in righteousness. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul assures believers that the One who calls them is already faithful, and he will finish what he has started in them. And in our pericope in John, John the Baptist testifies that the Light the world has been waiting for is already standing among them, unrecognized, before anyone has gone looking for him.

Reminder: This introductory paragraph is intended to show how the four RCL selections for this week are connected and to assist the preacher prepare the sermon. It is not intended to be included in the sermon.

How to use this sermon resource.

God Moves First

John 1:6–8, 19–28 NIV

Today, on the third Sunday of Advent, the Church celebrates joy. Our hope and peace are joined by joy because Advent tells the story of a God who does not wait for humanity to find its way to him. God comes toward us. God speaks, sends, reveals, and saves. Before we ever respond, God moves first.

Today is the Third Sunday of Advent, and our theme is joy. Advent is the first season on the worship calendar. Our reading for today is John 1:6-8, 19-28 NIV:

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.” They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.” Finally, they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.'” Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing. John 1:6–8, 19–28 NIV

Introduction

Weeks, sometimes months, before a president ever steps off an airplane, a small team of people has already been at work. They walk the routes he will travel. They survey every building he might enter. They coordinate with local police, measure distances, test radio signals, and plan, down to the footstep, exactly how the visit will unfold. By the time the president actually arrives, an enormous amount of work has already been done by people the crowd will never even think about.

When the president finally does arrive, and the crowds gather, and the cameras turn, the advance team doesn’t step forward to take a bow. They recede into the crowd. Some of them are standing right there, in the very group of people cheering, having done everything necessary to make that moment possible, and almost nobody around them has any idea who they are or how they prepared the way for the president to speak.¹

This is the God we meet throughout the season of Advent, a season that asks us to wait for someone who is coming. But what our passage this morning shows us is something even more remarkable than a promise still on its way. It shows us the God who moves first, acting, sending, and arriving, often before we’ve even noticed.

Sent Before He Spoke

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. John 1:6 NIV

Notice how John’s Gospel introduces this man. Not by telling us what John believed, or what his credentials were, or how he felt called to ministry. It simply says he was sent. Before John preaches a single sermon, before he baptizes a single person in the Jordan River, before he says one word recorded in Scripture, the decision has already been made and it wasn’t his. God sent him.

He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. John 1:7–8 NIV

And notice too what his purpose is described as, not to draw attention to himself, but to testify, to point toward a light that was not his own.

This pattern runs throughout Israel’s story. Moses was tending sheep in the wilderness, with no plan of confronting Pharaoh, when God met him in a burning bush and sent him. Isaiah, who described himself as a man of unclean lips, was worshiping in the temple when he was swept into a vision and commissioned. Jeremiah protested that he was too young, and God answered that he had known him and appointed him before he was even formed in the womb. None of these people auditioned for the role. In every case, the call came first, and the response came after. John simply stands in that same long line, a man sent before he ever had the chance to volunteer.

All of this tells us something about how God works before it tells us anything about what we’re supposed to do. This is the God who moves first. Long before John’s own ministry gets underway, God has already set things in motion, already commissioned a witness, already begun preparing the world for what’s coming. John doesn’t create his own significance. He simply steps into a role that was already prepared for him.

This is where we see the Father’s own heart at work in this passage, quietly, in the background, sending a witness ahead of His Son. Before the world was ready, before anyone asked the right questions, the Father was already moving, already sending, already at work preparing the way for what he was about to do in Christ.

The Titles He Refused

Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. John 1:19 NIV

The religious leaders in Jerusalem send priests and Levites (full-time religious servants) to interrogate John, and they come armed with categories that carry enormous weight in that world. The prophet Malachi had promised that Elijah would return before the great and terrible day of the Lord. Moses himself had promised in Deuteronomy that God would raise up a prophet like him, someone Israel was still watching for centuries later. And Messiah, of course, was the hope carrying the weight of everything Israel had waited for since her exile. Each of these titles would have given John instant religious authority, instant credibility, instant significance in the eyes of everyone watching.

He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.” They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No” (John 1:20–21 NIV).

And John refuses every single one.

This is not false modesty. This is a man who understands exactly who he is and, just as importantly, who he is not. He will not accept a title that was never actually his to wear, no matter how flattering it might have been to simply nod along. There must have been real pressure in that moment to take at least one of those titles and run with it. Instead, John answers with a plain and repeated no.

Most likely we will never be offered a title as significant as messiah or prophet, but we know this pressure in smaller, everyday forms. A family has already decided who you’re supposed to become, and living any other way feels like disappointing them. A workplace hands you a title that doesn’t actually reflect what you’re called to do, and you find yourself performing it anyway. A child who calls you “Mom” or “Dad” and you wonder how you can properly fulfill that responsibility. Even something as ordinary as a social media profile can become a curated identity that we feel pressured to keep living up to, whether or not it’s actually true of us. John shows us a different way. Real identity doesn’t need to borrow someone else’s title to feel important. It rests in whatever God has actually called us to, nothing more and nothing less, and it’s entirely acceptable, even healthy, to say no to significance that was never ours to carry.

A Voice, Not a Title

Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” John 1:22 NIV

Finally, the priests and Levites stop offering John titles and simply ask him to describe himself.

John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.'” John 1:23 NIV

And notice John’s answer. He doesn’t claim a role. He doesn’t claim status. He describes a function. I am a voice. Nothing more elaborate than that. A voice, calling out in the wilderness, making the way ready for someone else.

There’s a striking image that has helped numerous Christians understand exactly what John is doing here. In the sixteenth century, a German artist named Matthias Grünewald painted a large altarpiece depicting the crucifixion. Though not actually present at the historical event, he painted John the Baptist standing near the cross, pointing with a long, exaggerated finger directly at Jesus. The theologian Karl Barth kept a print of that painting above his desk for years, because he wanted his own life’s work to point to Jesus. Barth once wrote, “Witnessing means pointing in a specific direction beyond the self and on to another.” ³

John the Baptist is quoted in the Gospel of John:

“No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.’” John 3:27–28

John refuses every title offered to him because his entire identity is wrapped up in pointing at someone else. And this isn’t only a task for individuals like John. It’s a picture of what the Church itself is called to be in every generation, a Body of people whose collective life exists to point beyond itself. A congregation isn’t meant to draw attention to its own programs, its own reputation, or its own size. Like John, the Church’s purpose is to be a voice, making the way visible for people to see Christ clearly. This is what it looks like to live in response to the God who moves first, not chasing significance for ourselves, but gladly pointing toward the one who has already begun moving toward us.

Already Among You

Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” John 1:24–27 NIV

Here is the turn the whole passage has been building toward. The priests and Levites press John further. If he isn’t the Messiah, Elijah, or the Prophet, why is he baptizing people at all? And John’s answer reaches past their question into something far larger. He tells them the one they’ve been waiting for is not simply coming soon. He is already there. Standing among them. Unknown, unrecognized, but present. He even confesses that he isn’t worthy to perform the lowest task of a household servant for the one who is coming, untying his sandals.

This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing. John 1:28 NIV

John tells us this all took place at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, a detail easy to skip past, but worth mentioning. This wasn’t the Bethany near Jerusalem where Lazarus lived. It was a different location entirely, out past the river, on the far side of the very water that once marked Israel’s entry into the promised land generations earlier.⁴ Even the geography carries a quiet echo of arrival, a people once again standing at the edge of something new, without yet realizing how near it actually was.

This is the Son entering our passage, not with any outward sign that would have caused the crowd to turn and stare, but simply present, already among the very people who are questioning John so intently. It’s worth noting that just a few verses earlier, John’s Gospel had already told us that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). This is the ancient promise of Immanuel, God with us, not a title describing something still on the horizon, but a name describing something already true. Christian faith begins not with human beings finding their way to God, but with God coming all the way to us in Jesus.

John will go on, just past our passage, to tell us that the Spirit himself descended on Jesus like a dove and remained on him, the very sign the Father had promised would mark the one to come. Father, Son, and Spirit, gathered quietly at the edge of an ordinary river, already at work before anyone watching had the eyes to see it.

What we’re seeing acted out here, in a crowd on the banks of the Jordan, is that same reality. God has already moved, already come, already taken up residence among his people, whether or not anyone standing there that day had recognized it yet.

This is something worth meditating on this week. What if the God Christians confess is already nearer than we think? What if God’s presence isn’t confined to religious places? The priests and Levites came looking for someone with the right title and nearly missed him standing right in front of them. We run the same risk every day, walking past the very places Christ has already chosen to be present.

Christ is present among us. And not merely present, Christ has acted for us. Jesus did not come merely to show us how to find our way back to God. He came to do for us, in our humanity, what we could never do for ourselves.

Closing — An Invitation

So here is where our passage leaves us. Long before anyone asked, God had already sent a witness. Long before anyone recognized him, Christ was already standing among his people. This is the same God we’ve traced through all of this week’s readings, the God who had already done great things for his people in the psalm, who had already anointed and sent his Servant in Isaiah, who Paul reminds us has already proven himself faithful to finish what he started in us. Every one of these texts tells the same story from a different angle. This is who God has always been, the one who moves first, acting before we ever notice, present before we ever ask him to be.

And this Advent season invites you into something amazingly simple. Not a demand to work harder at finding God, but an invitation to open your eyes to a God who has already drawn near. And what might this mean for us together? What if we became a congregation known less for drawing attention to ourselves and more for noticing where Christ is already at work — in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and community — and joining him there? The Church does not have a mission that we ask God to bless. God has a mission, and by grace he gives the Church a place in it. Where is God already at work, and how is the Spirit inviting us to participate?

We do not carry Christ into a Christless world. The risen Christ is already ahead of us. The Spirit is already at work. Our calling is to discover with joy where God has gone before us and join what he is doing.

Because this is who he has always been, and this is who he still is today. Not a God who waits to be summoned, but the God who has already come, and who is already among us, closer than we ever imagined.

The Father sends the Son because God refuses to leave his creation alone. The Son comes among us in our own humanity and gives himself for us. And the Spirit opens our eyes to recognize Christ, draws us into his life, and sends us to participate in what God is already doing in the world. This is the movement of the triune God: from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit — and always toward us before we ever move toward him.

God moves first!

1. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/22371/chapter/8
2. https://barth.ptsem.edu/research/karl-barth-society-of-germany
3. https://lutherandi.wordpress.com/2016/02/12/isenheim-altarpiece/
4. https://www.bibleref.com/John/1/John-1-28.html

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