Prepare before your God!

[AI translation] On this Sunday, God's message to us is so brief and definitive: 'Prepare for your God' - Three simple questions could be asked here: Why should we prepare? Why should we prepare? and How should we prepare? This is what I want to talk about now!Well, the Word itself tells us. So, because God wants to do something with us! Perhaps I could say it even better: because if we don't prepare in time, God will do something terrible to us! Someone might say: but that sounds like a threat! - Well, it is, indeed, a threat! Almost the whole book of the prophet Amos is a threat! Sometimes it is almost as hard as if he were to strike the table with his fist, as if he were to throw lightning bolts from his eyes. Even here it is as if he were saying: - Beware, for God will...! Yes, God will do this and that to you if... We don't like such harsh prophetic talk, Old Testament ranting! Especially at Christmas time, when the angels' song is so sweet and comforting: "Peace on earth and good will toward men!" Amos' voice is very different from the atmosphere of Bethlehem. It is not about judgment, but about mercy, kindness, forgiveness, love... So what does Amos mean by this threat?
Well, brothers and sisters, is it really so certain that there is no threat of judgement in Christmas, in the good news of Bethlehem? I am not so sure! In fact! John the Baptist is not an Old Testament prophet, but the very first messenger of the New Testament. And listen to his Advent prophecy! We can see how he saw the coming of the Messiah. What does he say about it? Listen again to Mt 3,11-12. Can you see how the Old Testament prophecy of Amos and the New Testament prophecy of John the Baptist about Advent fit together? We don't like it when the Bible speaks to us so harshly. But God also has such harsh, stern words in the Bible. Sometimes it is good to hear it and take it seriously! Even in Amos' day, people did not like to hear God's threatening words of judgment. They said to Amos, "Speak to us kind words..." Sure," says Amos, "you would like to hear that, but a sermon is not about what we like to hear, it's about what we need to hear! And here Amos says, that's what we need! Because God has had enough of the godlessness, the hypocritical religiosity of His people. Oh, the many ways God has tried His people! With blessings and with adversity! If the word of God remains a word crying in the wilderness, there comes another word of God: calamity! In this chapter, too, there are a whole lot of terrible plagues, as a warning instrument of divine love: "I have forgiven you famine, drought, barren years, disease, wars, natural disasters," God laments, and again and again, almost in a refrain, five times in succession, this sad phrase is repeated: "And yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord God." Well, well, well, that's why God wants to do something different now! If neither the loving call nor the hard blow works, beware, for God will...!
Therefore prepare thyself before thy God, O Israel! Think not, O Israel, that God will spare His people! On the contrary! It is written that judgment will begin right on the house of the Lord! Whatever you do, there is one thing left: judgment! The judging God! So get ready! That is the meaning of prophecy! And it is very good if the same threat of judgment permeates our Advent preparations! In these days and weeks everyone is preparing in some way for Christmas, everyone wants to have a good Christmas. How much money people are spending! They shop, plan, write greeting cards, expect guests, bake, cook, prepare for Christmas... God has no objection to it, and that's just fine! Just...! What will happen in the meantime - to Jesus? Yes, Jesus! - In all the preparations, are we preparing a place for Him in our homes, in our hearts? Will He be at the Christmas bonfire and the Christmas dinner? Will He have a place in our home for His feast? Will He have something to do with our celebration? For beware: even if our world, in the great preparations for Christmas, forgets the celebrant himself, God will not forget him! If his manger and his cross no longer say anything, let us beware lest we be struck down and shaken by that other word of his: his plague! For twenty centuries God has been speaking through the manger and Calvary, but judgment is still to come! Amos and John the Baptist are right: the message of joy at Bethlehem includes the threat of judgment. Jesus' first coming includes his second coming! Beyond the manger and Golgotha, he will come in the clouds of heaven, and whoever has not accepted the Child lying in the manger will not be accepted by the Lord coming in the clouds of heaven. So, "since I am doing this to you, get ready."
2) This actually already includes what to prepare for. Our Word says: "Prepare thyself before thy God. Perhaps it is better to say, "Prepare to meet your God. Yes, this is what makes Christmas truly Christmas and truly a celebration. Without which it is all worthless nothing! May you meet many lovely people and things during the holidays. You may have some long-lost dear guests, perhaps from the countryside. It will be nice to be with them again for a few days. You're looking forward to it. You're doing well! Good for the one who can. It's a time for everyone to do their best, to be nice to each other, to surprise each other, to give presents. That's nice! But if you don't meet God, then despite all the other kindness, cosiness and warmth, it's not really Christmas! Then the whole Christmas is like an empty shell from which the egg has been blown. The shell may be nicely decorated - but it's empty! Empty! Soon it will be in the bin. And vice versa: even if you miss all this lovely, cosy family togetherness at the holidays, because you might have to spend Christmas at work, or in hospital with an embarrassing illness, or because you no longer have people on earth to meet - but still, if you meet God, God meets you, you will have a real Christmas! Happy holidays! Because Christmas is all about meeting God!
Our Word says: with your God! God wants to come to us not as a stranger, but as your God and my God. Even if we have forgotten that we are His children, He is still our God. He says: I am your God! With this little word, He is, as it were, reconnecting between us the thread that has been broken or is in the process of being broken. Look: this is the great gift of Christmas, that God is still your God, that God still loves this world. At Christmas, that's what happens: the reconnection of the broken ties between God and you! No matter how much the world may say to God: I don't know you, God still says to the world: but I know you! I am your God! Nothing proves how truly and completely he is your God better than that manger in Bethlehem. There God lies in love. Can there be a more convincing proof of how God is your God than this?! Your body and your blood, your humanity, your tears and your sorrow, your sin and your curse, your death and your judgment! That is how much God really wants to meet you. That is how much he has made it easy for us to meet him. We cannot meet God in heaven while we are on earth! That's too high for us and too holy! We cannot meet God in the world of wealth, science, art, power. There is only one place in the whole world where an encounter is possible: in a stable! The only place to meet the mighty God, like a tender little man, a poor child, is in a stable! That is what man does not want to understand! You really have to be prepared for that, because you are not prepared for that. To meet God in his poverty and his lowliness. To meet God as a child in a stable, you have to be really well prepared! Get ready for your God!" is the Advent message. How truly and completely your God is, nothing proves it better than the manger of Bethlehem! There lies the love of God!
3) And finally: how to prepare? For a meeting of great importance, one tries to clean oneself up, to dress neatly, to comb not only one's hair but also, if possible, one's thoughts, to appear in a dignified way before the one one one is meeting. Even when it comes to meeting God! Yes, one must cast off one's filth, impure thoughts, angry feelings, selfishness, envy, dissatisfied, nervous attitudes... Somehow we should appear at that meeting different from the way we are! Jesus once said, "Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect!" If we want to meet with the holy and perfect God, we must surely think that our whole conduct and action must be according to His will. Perhaps that is why we have often not had a real Christmas, because we have not prepared for it in that way.
So this call to "get ready" means to cleanse yourself! So get ready! John the Baptist made this demand of his hearers when people flocked to him on the banks of the Jordan. Listen, he cried out to the crowd, "You race of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath of God? Produce, then, fruits worthy of repentance!" Amos also preaches the same obedience to God's law when he says: "Seek good and not evil, that you may live, and then the Lord God of hosts will be with you, as you say. Hate evil and love good; restore justice in the gate; may the Lord God of hosts have mercy on the remnant of Joseph." (Am 5:14-15) Isn't this the way we should be preparing for Christmas? With a great big purge! Really doing all we can to meet our God at the table, in our homes, in our offices, in our workshops, in our bedrooms! So much of our Christmas celebration is lost in the everyday things like this. It's in the dirt, the garbage, the filth in our daily lives! Because God's people don't take God's law seriously!...
If we really wanted to prepare ourselves to meet God in this way, all our Pharisaical pride would be gone, for whoever begins to purify himself seriously, sadly realizes that he never does! He finds himself in a terrible contradiction: he wants to meet God, and he finds that he cannot meet God! God calls us to Himself and we do not know how to appear before Him. Because the way we are, no way! Or is there someone in this church who thinks that he can appear in a way worthy of God in this great meeting? That the cleansing that he can do in himself is enough? That the garment of goodness, of love, of duty, of responsibility, which he puts on himself by his own efforts, is a suitable, worthy garment? The psalmist King David did not consider himself such a man. Nor did the Apostle Paul. Neither did Martin Luther. No one who has ever really tried!
You see, the only truly right way to prepare is to deeply, deeply feel and weep for our own unworthiness, inability, inability to meet this encounter! He who prepares with a broken heart and a broken spirit prepares correctly! For it is the broken heart that - how do we sing? "A contrite heart, O Lord, thou lovest, thou wilt not despise!" The self-righteous heart, the proud heart, the self-satisfied heart, the Pharisee's heart, yes, the Lord despises it. Not the honest heart! The man who comes to Bethlehem on a high horse will not fit through the door of that little stable, and so will not have an encounter. See how He comes to us? Very lowly, in the person of a child lying in a stable, in a manger. So low that even we have to stoop to Him! The mighty God, in order to meet us, has become very small, so we too, if we really want to meet Him, must become very small! All that is great, strong, beautiful, glorious, famous in us - must go down into the abyss. Yes, as we just sang: Mountain top to the abyss! All that you are proud of, all that you feel excellence in yourself, all that you imagine yourself to be above others, let it go down into the abyss!
Prepare, yes, that means: purify, and that means humble yourself, descend! A great God can only dwell in a small heart. So get ready! Get down, even lower, even deeper! Even that mountain top, and that mountain top, lower yourself. Lower still! Down on your knees, down low, so that everything, everything kneels within you! And then you'll see what happens! Then you will have the full blessing of a rich, happy Christmas.
Amen
Date: 12 December 1965.