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Morris Wood's latest novel, The Clowns of God, has one specific plot. The Pope, who is a sincere, honest, pragmatic man, not given to mysticism or emotionalism, has a revelation from God that Jesus is coming right away. He feels a sense of integrity to share this announcement with the whole world that everyone might engage in the Advent, which means to prepare for His coming.

Some of the cardinals in the Vatican Council get word that he is going to make the announcement and they panic. This would upset the whole world. It is all right for military strategists, for political columnists, for economists, for the Pentagon to say that nuclear war is on the shadow of the horizon and the end is coming soon. But don't let any religious man say that! They realize that, if people thought that Jesus was coming soon, the institutional church would lose some of its authority and there would be a weakening of the organizational structure of the church. Gangsters, mobsters, and political dictators around the world would get word that he might make this announcement, and that would destroy all their projects for crime, all their wars and dishonest treaties and alliances. How could you get someone to go out and fight a war against his brother when he thought that tomorrow Jesus was coming? People would drop their arms and go home. In the novel, economists were frightened because, if people thought that Jesus was coming tomorrow, it would destroy the whole economic structure of the world. Who would care about material things, about the Dow Jones average, about Wall Street, if they thought that tomorrow Jesus was coming? All the "powers that be" realized that they had to do something immediately! They had to dilute the Pope's message and revelation or silence him. There were all kinds of plots, not only to dilute what he said, but to assassinate him.

We see all kinds of strategy to dilute the message of Advent, which is that Jesus is coming and you had better get ready. For example, we start celebrating Christmas at Thanksgiving. We don't have Advent any longer. Even church people don't want to sing Advent hymns. They want to sing Christmas carols in Advent. We see the same kinds of gimmicks going on in the commercial world, trying to keep us so busy and so occupied with the things and the activities of Christmas time that we don't really have time to get down and spiritually examine ourselves and repent. During Advent, as in Lent, the church puts up the colors of purple (or blue) on the altar to remind us we need to repent, but we go on with the green, red, and white as our Christmas colors. With our parties and our shopping we try to cover up the sins and the frailties in our lives. It is one of the gimmicks of diluting the message. Instead of cleaning up our lives and our home, what do we do? We don't dust the table. We sprinkle cotton or snow across it so we don't see the dust and we stick reindeer on top. Or we hang up tinsel and wreaths to cover the spiderwebs. We don't clean our house in the corner; we put a Christmas tree over there. If the dirt looks bad, we put some lights around to distract. We cover up with all of our decorations and activities worse than Watergate. But the ultimate reality is that there is dirt and sin in our lives.

Now let's be honest. The world would try and stop me right now from bringing to you the revelation from God which says that Jesus is coming. They would try and stop me, but they don't because they don't believe that you will believe me. Let's look at this passage.

The Gospel of Mark begins with this revelation, God-prophesied by Isaiah:

Behold, I will send a messenger, before Thy face,
Who shall prepare Thy way;
The voice of one crying in the wilderness.
Prepare the way of the Lord
Make His paths straight.

The concept of a forerunner or a messenger to get everyone ready and prepared was a part of the messianic hope of Israel during Malachi's era. John the Baptist came to take on characteristics of this "forerunner." He became the prototype of Malachi's messenger. The purpose was to remind the children of Israel of the prerequisites for the Messiah's coming which require confession, repentance, purification and refinement of our sin. All reformation begins with moral and ethical reform which is the "getting ready" ritual. Malachi's Advent message was that we cannot fool God the way we fool ourselves and others. Just as a "refiner's fire" chemically separates pure silver and gold from other alloys, so God's coming will separate the pure in heart from those with mixed motives and morals. This prophet is calling us to clean our house and get it ready, because God will not enter or dwell in a life that is not clean.

I. Confess Sins

Malachi writes, "Who can abide?" The Bible talks about confession as "acknowledgment of." A lot of us see sin in our lives, but we don't acknowledge it as sin or identify it as sin, do we? We have our rationalizations or our interpretations or our qualifications. We don't just directly acknowledge it as sin. You could have sinful thoughts and acts existing in your life and not have the knowledge of the impact that it makes on your soul and the kind of impact that your wrong decision or action has made on God and others. Confession means not only acknowledging but admitting. But it is hard to confess our sins, isn't it? It is tough.

The reason we are not so fanatic about cleaning house is that we are not so conscious of dirt. You don't know what cleaning house is unless you saw my grandmother clean house. Twice a year, in the spring and in the fall, everything in the house had to come out - every piece of furniture: everything! All the clothing in every closet and all the junk had to come out. Can you imagine that? Twice a year all the mattresses had to be placed on horses in the yard to be aired, beaten, and cleaned. After she got everything out in the yard (that had to be done by seven a.m.) and sitting in the sunshine, she proceeded to clean the house. She had a black wash pot filled with boiling lye which she diluted a little bit with water. She had a cornshuck mop with which she scrubbed the floors, the walls, everything. The floor would be so clean that I would be scared to sit on it in the middle of August in my short pants because the lye would take the skin off my rump. And then she had this secret potion for getting rid of the possibility of bedbugs. It was camphor and turpentine. You would take a little feather and dip it in the potion and put it down in the lock where the bed fitted together. She had to take the beds apart. Everything was sterilized! Now she was conscious of a world around her that was filthy.

You and I pretend it is not that way. We cover it up with our carpets, decorations, and furniture. We hit it here and there with a vacuum cleaner or we hide the spiderwebs with a wreath. And so it is in our own lives. You and I need to confess our sins. Luther says that the moment after his confession was the cleanest and best moment of his life. Everyday when he confessed his sin he felt clean. This is the greatest moment in life, when we have confessed our sins, for only a sinner needs a Savior. Yes, we must confess. That is the first preparation.

II. Repentance

Malachi asks, "Who can stand?" The second thing Malachi told to the people of his day to do in order to get ready for the coming of Jesus was to repent. It is not enough just to confess. I know a lot of people who go around confessing their sins. "Oh, I did this." "Oh, I did that." They love to give testimony about how terrible their sins were. But that is not repentance. Repentance means to "turn around," away from the direction we are going, toward God. Isaiah called it "returning to the Lord." Jesus, in the parable of the prodigal son, described repentance when he said, "and he turned and returned to his father." That is repentance. I saw a bumper sticker last week that said, "If we are separated from God, who moved?" That is what repentance is. We turn around and go towards God. It is not just enough to confess; we have to repent of our sins.

The Bible's call to repentance means that you still have a chance to go in another direction. I heard of an old preacher who was preaching a sermon on repentance. On the pulpit he trapped a fly and pressed the fly's wing against the pulpit. He said, "The last judgment is really the final blow." And he reared back his other hand to swat the fly. As his hand came down the fly flew away. He said, "That's the way it is; there's still a chance!" He was trying to say to the congregation, "There's still a chance!" A call to repentance means there's a chance for us to go in the other direction.

Graham Greene, one of the great authors of our time, wrote a book entitled The Heart of the Matter, which I liked very much. It was about a fellow named Scobie who was morally better than
any man I have ever heard described. He only committed a few sins in life. But his problem was he couldn't repent of the ones that he committed. There is a scene in which he is talking with the priest. The priest says to him. "It is better to sin seventy times seven and repent each time than to sin once and not repent. You can't have the end without the means!" And Scobie answered, "Oh, I'm sorry for all of them; I feel guilty for all of them, but I cannot promise to stop." Now that is the difference between confession and repentance. Confession is to admit it and feel guilty about it. Repentance is to stop, to turn around and go in another direction. You and I need that radical kind of repentance.

III. Refine and Purify

But the third and final preparation that Malachi said we must make is to be purified. We must understand that "purification" is nothing like what you and I have made it today. We have made it a sacrament, an ordinance, and we call it baptism. In the Bible, baptism and purification were spiritual acts that one daily performed to purify one's self. Every Jew baptized himself before he ate even a sandwich. They cleansed themselves. They washed using water. Before they prayed, they baptized. It was imperative. That is what Luther meant when he said, "I must be baptized daily. Every day I must be washed in the blood of Jesus, to have all my sins cleaned." That is what John the Baptist was thinking about when, out in the wilderness, he sat and watched that water, clean and pure, rushing down. Water has the ability to purify like nothing else in this universe. He says. "You must be washed; you must be baptized." I need it every day. It is a marvelous feeling.

Early every morning I run, and when I get back, I am perspiring and hot. I sit and read for about an hour and a half, until I start getting chilled and smelling so bad I can't stand myself. When it gets to that point I get up, fix a cup of hot Sanka, and go take my shower. I tell you, it must be a sin to feel that good! When you get that bath and get cleansed and clean, that is a good feeling! Have you ever experienced that spiritually? When you really get washed, your whole inner being cleansed, that is a marvelous feeling. That is why John said, "You must be baptized." God said to the children of Israel on Mt. Sinai the day before he made the covenant and gave them the Ten Commandments, "Back to your tents and wash, cleanse yourselves, and put on your best clothes for tomorrow. You must be cleaned and washed." Most of us need a good scrubbing to be purified, don't we?

I heard of a fellow who was being baptized. He was one of the meanest fellows in the neighborhood but had a change of heart. They were down by the river. The preacher had the man out in the water and looked up to the congregation on the bank and said, "Now, does anyone have any reason why I shouldn't baptize brother so-and-so?" An old fellow in a Western hat standing in the back shouted, "Well, no, but I just want to remind you that he has always been a mean man and just one dip won't be enough for him. What you need to do is anchor him out in the deep water overnight." That is why the Bible says you must be baptized. It is not just a once-and-for-all kind of thing. It is a daily cleansing of your life to get ready for the coming of Christ.

When my grandmother thought we were going to have company, she scrubbed me so hard the skin almost came off. We need to clean up for the coming of Jesus. In the early church, up to the eleventh century, the baptismal poois or fonts were outside of the church. They weren't inside the church buildings. They would build a little chapel outside the church for them. At the leaning tower of Pisa, Italy, there is a baptismal pool outside the church. You must go to the baptismal pool before you can go in the church. You must get baptised and cleansed before you can go into the presence of God.

You and I need that purification in our lives. We need an Advent. We need to hear Malachi's message, that revelation from God that Jesus is coming. And we need to get ready by the confession of our sins, by the repentance of our sins, and to be baptized and purified. He is coming! We need to get ready!