Prepare for the coming of the Lord

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

It is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way" -- a voice of one calling in the desert, `Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.' "

And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit" (Mark 1:1-8).

As Noah went up the steps to enter the Ark, his last message to those who stood outside was not "God is in His heaven and all is right with the world!" Jeremiah was not put into a pit for preaching "I’m okay, you’re okay." Daniel was not thrown into the lion’s den for telling people to "visualize it and it can be yours." And John the Baptist was not beheaded because he preached "smile, God loves you." No, the message of all these men of God was a message that many did not want to hear: "Repent."

John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way for the coming of our Lord. It is only fitting, then, as we get ready to celebrate the anniversary of our Lord’s coming into the world, that we consider John’s message on how to prepare ourselves. But John’s instructions for getting geared up for Christmas are not something that we enjoy hearing. Instead of telling us how to get ready to have a good time with parties and gift exchanges, John tells us that we should repent.

Hundreds of years earlier, Isaiah had announced the coming of John: a voice of one calling in the desert, `Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him' (Isaiah 40:3). John was sent to prepare people for the Lord’s coming; he was to do this by instructing the people to make ‘straight paths’ for Him. It is interesting that John did not speak of just one straight path, but many straight paths. This is because the straight path is not found in the physical world, it is found in the human heart. Each person must make a straight path to his own heart for the Lord to enter; that is why there are so many paths to make straight.

Scripture uses the image of straight paths to show contrast with human sin. Many times in the Bible, we read of iniquity—an example is from Psalm 51: Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. The word ‘iniquity’ refers to something that is uneven, crooked. Since our God is a God of perfection, the imperfection of crookedness is unacceptable. In English, to refer to someone as ‘crooked’ is to call him a criminal. The prophet Isaiah tells us that Jesus was sent to remove iniquity from the faithful: We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). Isaiah tells us that like straying sheep, we have wandered off the straight path; because of sin our paths have become crooked and unacceptable to God.

Sin is what makes us crooked. Sin is our natural tendency to ignore the needs and wants of others so that we can follow our own agendas. The problem is, our personal agendas only benefit ourselves. We expect everyone else to do what we want to do, all the time; sin does not allow for compromise or taking turns. We expect everyone else to apologize to us after a fight, but we never want to say we’re sorry because we don’t want to admit that we could have been wrong; sin prefers pride over humility. We expect everyone else to support the church, talk publicly about Jesus, and run for church office, because we have done as much as we feel comfortable doing; sin tells us to take it easy and let others do the work.

Saint Paul tells us, we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10). We were not created to pursue our own agendas. God has work lined up for each of us, and when we stray from His path to pursue our own interests, we become disobedient and rebellious. When we fail to do God’s good and gracious will, we sin.

John the Baptist tells us to make straight paths for Jesus’ coming. The way to have a straight path is to stop enjoying sin and to reject it in favor of God’s way. This happens when we repent. To repent is to have a change of heart. To repent is to look at your sins in a completely different way. Perhaps there is something that you routinely do, some sin that you have made peace with. Perhaps you often get drunk, but you have convinced yourself that it’s no big deal because you don’t drive yourself home drunk or beat your wife while under the influence. Perhaps you like to gamble, but you don’t worry about it because you limit how much you are willing to lose each time you go out. Perhaps you sleep with another person that you are not married to, but you believe it’s okay because you use protection to prevent the spread of disease and an unwanted pregnancy. Perhaps you like to participate in gossip, but it’s not a problem because you are careful about who you share secrets with.

A repentant heart looks at sins differently. A repentant heart remembers First Corinthians 3:16 --Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple. A repentant person knows that drunkenness damages his body, and that such behavior is a sin.

A repentant heart remembers the Parable of the Talents, where Jesus says, Again, [the kingdom of heaven] will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. When one servant was found to have not invested the money he had been entrusted with, he was told: `You wicked, lazy servant!…you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest (Matthew 25:14-27). A repentant person realizes that all he has is on loan from God, and that it is to be used responsibly—gambling is not a responsible investment of God’s resources.

A repentant heart remembers the Sixth Commandment, you shall not commit adultery, and the 8th Commandment, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. A repentant person realizes that any sexual union outside of marriage is a sin, and that any words spoken about another person that damage his reputation violates the command of God. A repentant person does not make peace with his sins, he acknowledges them for what they are, and turns his back on them completely.

At this point, we need to make a distinction between repentance and walking on a straight path. Repentance is about acknowledging our crookedness, our iniquity; repentance is about rejecting sin as the way that we prefer to live our lives. But repentance in no way gives us the ability to live a sinless life. For example: while on a trip, you might find that your car starts to only drive in circles. When you stop and get out, you discover that it is because a front wheel has become broken. Now, just because you know that you can’t finish your trip with a broken front wheel, that in no way enables you to drive the car straight down the road. It is the same with sin and repentance. Just because you know that a life lived in sin cannot get you to heaven, that does not mean that you can live your life without sinning.

Which is why John the Baptist wanted the people to prepare for the Lord’s coming. He did not tell the people to make straight paths so that they could go out to meet Jesus; John told them to renounce the crookedness in their hearts so that Jesus could enter them. Jesus desires to live in our hearts. Jesus wants to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all our iniquities. Jesus enters our lives to help us see the straight path through a crooked world, a path that He walks with us, hand in hand, that leads out of trouble and into happiness.

Jesus can forgive us and lead us to heaven because of what He did for us the last time that He walked here among us. Jesus was born into our world two millennia ago to die. He did not have to die; the Son of God was perfect, holy, righteous in His relationship with His Father. But Jesus chose to die in order to save us from the terrible consequences of our iniquities. The name ‘Jesus’ means "God saves", and that is exactly what He did for us. The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Paul tells us, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus died under the weight of our sins; the curse that we had earned put Him to death.

But the result has been nothing but blessing for us. Because of Jesus, God’s promise through Jeremiah has been fulfilled: I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more (Jeremiah 31:34). Because of Jesus, David was able to say, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12). And because Jesus did this great act of love for us, Paul writes: Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9-11). Because of Jesus’ sacrifice of love, He reigns forever as our King and we will live forever as His beloved subjects in His perfect kingdom.

John the Baptist wanted the people to realize that they were sinful, that they needed a Savior from sin and its’ curse of death. It’s like buying an older home. No one pays for termite treatment unless an inspection turns up evidence of infestation. In the same way, no one gets excited about the coming of our Savior unless they see in themselves the infestation of sin; the only people who anxiously await the coming of the Savior are those who know that they need help in escaping their crooked iniquity.

When John began his ministry in the wilderness, many people flocked to see him, some walking from as far Jerusalem, which was 4,000 feet up in the mountains and 20 miles away. They came because it had been 400 years since God had sent a prophet, and they were anxious to hear what this representative of God had to say. Yet less than three years later John lay dead, beheaded, because Herod’s wife did not like it that John had told her to repent of her improper marriage to her brother-in-law. John’s message to his listeners is "repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is near." Your Lord Jesus draws near. Every day that you live, you draw a day closer to that final day when you will stop celebrating Jesus’ birth among us because you will see Him yourself, face to face. This is not a message that we like to hear at any time of the year, let alone just before Christmas. But John’s plea is that you use this Advent season to reassess your sins and make straight paths for your Lord, that He might forgive you your sins and cleanse you from all your iniquity.