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Mark 1:1-4 The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; 3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'” 4 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Isaiah 40:3-4 3 A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
The Straight Highway
Today is the second Sunday of Advent. This morning we lit the candle of peace. Peace is needed in many places in our world. We need peace in the Middle East and peace in Ukraine. I recently read an article that said that Russia is eventually going to invade Europe and there will be war throughout Europe. We need peace in our own country and peace in our lives.
The good news of Advent is that God is coming; coming to comfort His people, coming to bring them hope. Today we hear that we have work to do. Isaiah says a voice cries out in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. What does that mean?
In Isaiah’s time it meant for a way to be cleared for the Israelites to return from captivity. The book of Isaiah has salvation as its theme and promises deliverance from Babylon, a return to Judah and the restoration of Jerusalem. God worked through various leaders of foreign countries and the people did return home and did rebuild Jerusalem. The immediate prophecy was fulfilled but biblical prophecies are often fulfilled several times in several ways.
Isaiah’s words of salvation speaks both to the people’s delivery from bondage in Babylon and equally to John the Baptist and the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. John the Baptist used these same words from Isaiah and applied them to his ministry in the wilderness. He called for the people to repent of their sin in order to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. John the Baptist was preparing the way for Jesus by getting people to straighten out their lives. His call is valid for us today too. We too are to prepare a highway for the Lord.
I don’t know what a highway was in Isaiah’s day but we certainly have enough highways in our country nowadays. When I come to the church in Aston I often drive down on 476. I am grateful for the smooth highways to drive on and I imagine it must have taken a great deal of work to build them. We don’t need to literally build a highway for God. He isn’t going to come rolling into town on 476! Today we hear these words “prepare the way” and we apply them to our hearts. God is coming into our hearts and so it is our hearts that need to be prepared. We prepare the way for our hearts to receive our King. It takes a great deal of effort to build a highway and it will take much effort to clear the road for God to enter our hearts. Why do our hearts need to be prepared, what is wrong with our hearts? Let’s look back at Isaiah again.
When Isaiah spoke to the Israelites they were an enslaved nation, languishing in Babylon, longing for freedom, longing to come home. We have many in freedoms in our country. But if we examine our lives closely we will find that we are just as enslaved as the Israelites were. Not enslaved by Babylonians but enslaved by sin. So much of our lives can be ruled by sin. We become so used to it that we no longer see it. Try to go through a single day without committing any sin and you will find it impossible. Where I worked before I went to seminary my co-worker had a sign up at her desk, this is what it said. “Dear Lord, So far I’ve done all right. I haven’t gossiped, haven’t lost my temper, haven’t been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent. I have not whined, complained, cursed or eaten any chocolate. I have charged nothing on my credit card. But in a few minutes, God, I’m going to get out of bed. And from then on, I’m going to need a lot more help.” It’s humorous but also true.
How do we prepare our minds and hearts for God to enter them more deeply now? How can we receive God’s blessings of grace, forgiveness and salvation? John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus by calling people to repent and to long for the kingdom of God. He increased their hunger for God. We can ask ourselves this Advent if we are hungry for the things of God. Do we truly worship God, is God our highest joy? If you can answer yes, wonderful! If you don’t feel this way, if God is not at the center, than perhaps this season is a good time to ask God to change your priorities.
The voice cries out, in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. The starting place is in the wilderness. Let’s talk a little about wilderness. The wilderness is a place to testing. Jesus Himself was tested in the wilderness. Wilderness times are those times when we feel we are tested to our limits, and we describe those times in terms such as: dry, desolate, lonely, trying, difficult, agonizing. We speak of hunger, thirst, and longing in the wilderness.
This morning we hear that we are to prepare the way through the wilderness. How can we construct a highway in the wilderness, how can we make a way in the desert of life? Our hearts can be like a barren and stony wilderness. Our life can be a lifeless landscape withered by self-centeredness. We need to search out those areas of sin that we keep hidden even from ourselves. Spend some time this Advent asking God to reveal any areas of sin in your life. Ask God to draw you closer to Him. Let us examine ourselves and our hearts so there is no impediment or hindrance to God. God wants to come bringing streams of living water so the wilderness can bloom and flower. We prepare ourselves to receive this life-giving water from our Savior.
Please don’t misunderstand this. God is sovereign at all times and in all ways. I do not mean that we should work to deserve His coming and it’s not our efforts that could cause Him to come. No, neither is possible. But God does not come if we do not welcome Him. God does not invade our hearts; God comes when we invite Him. God wants a relationship, He does not force His way in. Sometimes, even when we don’t mean to, we can erect barriers to God inside ourselves, obstructions to His love and grace. What kind of things am I talking about? It varies for each of us. For some it may be anxiety and fear, for others, pride and self-centeredness. It could be anger and an unwillingness to forgive. It could be we deceive ourselves and think we are able to handle life on our own. The list is long.
The message of the voice that cries out is a stark reminder of our absolute need for God in our lives. We cannot do it on our own. We cannot prepare the way without God’s grace. We cannot remove the obstacles unless God does it in us and through us. Not only can we allow obstacles to block the way to God but when we neglect our spiritual lives we can become scorched and barren as a desert. Our hearts become a wilderness when they are not cultivated.
I haven’t built any roads but I have kept gardens over the years. Gardens need their soil prepared. The rocks have to be removed. Any clumps of soil have to be broken up. Weeds need to be pulled. The ground needs to be fertilized and watered. We say we cultivate the soil. In the same manner we can cultivate our hearts. We can cultivate our hearts through reading scripture, God’s Word for His people. We can water them with worship. We can weed out sin through repentance. We can do all of this with God’s help. We have but to ask, God is ever willing to help us.
Mark begins his gospel with our verse from the prophet Isaiah. The opening scene is John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness, urging the people to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. John called the people to repentance before Jesus appeared on the scene proclaiming the coming Kingdom of God. John prepared the way for Jesus. In the same way the sermon this morning is calling us to repent of our sins, to remove any obstacles in our hearts that might block God. We are to make the path straight for God to enter our hearts.
C. S. Lewis has a great analogy of how God works in our hearts. He said we ask God in expecting a little repair work and find out instead that God has major renovations in mind. Listen to what he wrote.
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
Let this Advent season be a time of self-examination. Let us ask God to search our hearts and reveal any sin. Let us repent and ask God to forgive us. And may the peace of the Christ child reign in our hearts this Advent and always.