Read Matthew 3:1-12

Hi Family!

I hope you’re having a GREAT day today! Hey, which one of yous guys doesn’t like a surprise? We all love surprises–if they’re good ones. There are bad surprises too. But let’s stay with the good ones. It’s really fun to watch kids at Christmas time because their faces are full of surprises. When you guys were little, it was so much fun watching you open up your gifts and see the surprises on your faces.

Christmas is all about surprises, and this last part of Matthew 3 is REALLY a surprise. It was really a surprise to John the Baptist. John was baptizing people and calling them to turn to Jesus the Savior. Jesus was coming, and boy oh boy, if you were going to get it. The ‘it’ was either the Holy Spirit or judgment fire. John thought that the judgment was right around the corner, thus the urgency in his preaching.

To be sure, God’s judgment is coming. But the big surprise is that it’s not here yet. You need to believe that it is coming. It could be tomorrow. It could be next week, or it could be 1,000 years from now. But–it is coming. So, are you prepared? If you take a ho-hum attitude, then you’re not prepared. People who take ho-hum and hum-bug attitudes toward Jesus will get a real surprise on the Last Day. And it won’t the a good one AT ALL!

The the Christian is different. The Christian has already received the big surprise from Jesus. In Baptism, you received the judgment of your sins against God. In the Holy Waters God took you and me kicking and screaming from the judgments of Hell and Hell’s fires, and into the His Kingdom of Grace, Love and Mercy. You received the gentle Spirit of the Christ-child–God’s Holy Spirit. Now, the Christian simply lives in security and joy–and the Big Surprise–that God doesn’t hold anything against us. He held everything against His Son on the cross–the Christ-child.

Live everyday of your life in the Big Christmas Surprise.

I love you! Dad