I. A Particular Grace This Advent 00:00
…us to hear the words that you have to speak, and the ways you want to lead us in this season. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I got up here and looked at my notebook, and I realized I forgot to write an introduction. It says “Intro,” and then “Stuff.” So I guess we’re doing that part on the fly.
I personally have been having a wonderful Advent, and I hope you all have as well. We had a wonderful fire night on Wednesday, where God met us powerfully in worship and in prayer. And I just sense that there’s something that God is doing in our midst. People were prophesying about it, sharing things God had spoken to them at the fire night: that God is transforming us as a people in a particular way this season. Of course, God’s job throughout all of our life is transformation, but I just want you to know there’s a particular grace right now for you, wherever you’re at. If you’re struggling with something, you know God is calling you somewhere, you know there’s something that you need to be doing or changing, give it to him in this season. He is here to help us prepare the way.
II. The Least in the Kingdom 01:09
And so as I talk today, that is the message: prepare the way of the Lord. That’s what we read about in all of our readings, and I want to talk about what it means and why it matters. And in keeping with the Advent season, I’m going to continue to put these winter scenes up there, because we don’t get any of them in our daily life, and so we get to enjoy a little bit of them on Sunday mornings.
We’re talking about John the Baptist today, and Jesus said of John the Baptist:
11 Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Matt 11.11
Then he said this really odd thing. I could stop there and say, “So it’s really important we talk about John the Baptist,” but I had to include the second half of this verse, where he says, “Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” That’s crazy. That doesn’t make any sense. Jesus, you just said he’s the best man who has ever been born of a woman. Raise your hand if you were not born of a woman. That includes everyone. Of every man born of a woman, he’s the greatest. And yet everyone, even the least in the kingdom of heaven, is greater than he.
What does that mean? Well, I think what that means is the heart of Advent. Because John, as the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, the pinnacle of Old Testament revelation, the pinnacle of God’s revelation before Jesus: all he could do was point to Jesus. In fact, the entire Old Testament… the greatest part of the Old Testament is that it points, it witnesses to Jesus, the baby that’s coming on Christmas morning. It all points to him. But even the least in the kingdom of heaven bears Jesus into the world. What an insane paradigm shift.
So when John is saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” you might think, “Oh, let’s make the manger really nice and cozy so Jesus can be born.” What he’s really saying is, “Let’s make the manger inside of your heart ready to receive the Christ that is coming.” That’s what it means to prepare the way of the Lord. You are called not just to point to Jesus, but to bring Jesus into the world. That’s the kingdom.
III. Remove the Bucket 03:37
So when we talk about “prepare the way of the Lord,” we’re going to approach it from that perspective. What does it mean to prepare your heart to receive Jesus, that you might bear him to the world?
There’s another thing Jesus said: no one lights a lamp to put it under a bucket (Matt 5.15). So think about this. We’re not only preparing the candle so that he can be the light in our heart (however you want to image that), but we’re also going to remove the bucket. If you in this room are in the kingdom, then you bear Christ. So why aren’t people looking at you and going, “Holy… it’s Jesus”? Because we have some buckets we’ve got to get rid of. We’ve got some things in the way. So we’re preparing our heart to receive him, and we’re preparing ourselves to shine forth.
When we do the candlelit Mass on Christmas Eve night, it’s one of the most powerful services of our year, as we all bear a candle into the room, and you look out and you just see the light of Christ in all of us. That’s a reality that we’re acting out in the physical, but it’s a reality in the spiritual every day. So let’s prepare our hearts this morning.
IV. Camel's Hair and Wild Honey 04:44
Now, what made John so able to point to Jesus? I think the clue is in Mark 1, verse 6:
6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. Mark 1.6
I mean, we kind of lose the significance of this. But if you saw John, you would not want to listen to him. You would be put off. This guy comes out of the woods (and not like, you know, we have parks here; it was the wood, it was the wilderness, it was the desert). He comes out of there, and he just starts talking to people, and he’s wearing a hair shirt. He’s never cut his hair, so his hair is long; it’s raggedy. And all he’s eaten is locusts and honey, so he’s bare-bones thin. And he’s walking around with a crazy fire in his eyes, saying, “The kingdom of God is coming.” We’ve seen people like that. We don’t tend to listen to them.
But something was different about John. What was going on? He was not in the wilderness because he was insane. He was in the wilderness because he wanted to be as close as he possibly could to God. He was wearing a camel-hair shirt because he knew that comfort will put you to sleep. Luxury and ease are the things that lull us into a place where we no longer hear the voice of our God, where we no longer look to him for provision, because we’ve got it all. So he’s wearing a hair shirt. It’s painful, it’s itchy, it’s annoying. And he’s eating wild honey and locusts. Guess who provides wild honey and locusts? Only one guy. That’s God. He’s looking only to God for his comfort, only to God for his peace, only to God for his sustenance. And he did that intentionally.
C. S. Lewis has a great quote talking about these things. He says:
“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
And I think about that in the context of John. Why was he able to hear this message so clearly? Because he was in pain, purposefully. He was hungry and alone. He was naked and afraid. Well, he wasn’t so afraid. But he was putting himself in these situations for a purpose. Do you know what’s insane? Putting yourself in those situations for no purpose. What’s sane is going out to meet God in the wilderness and hear his voice.
V. Fast from the Noise 07:04
So today I want to ask you: what could you do to be a little more like John? Please do not wear a camel-hair shirt. That is not what I am talking about. But I think there’s one thing that I want to suggest this morning, just thinking about the millions of things that probably get in the way of us hearing God. I think we might think a little differently about how we use technology. Maybe we could find ways to fast from technology, practices that make us a little bit more dependent on God instead of the glowing rectangle, things that we could do that would help us to hear.
Because you know what’s happening in our world? We are being bombarded with so much noise, if you just measured it by data. They have ways of measuring it. You know, if you download a video, it’s this many gigabytes of data. So in the same way, the amount of data that is being shoved at us, auditory, visual, is unprecedented in all of human history. And you’re expected to listen to that wash of noise and find the signal, the meaning. What does “signal” mean? It signifies. It means something. It matters. We’re looking for the signal, which is God’s word among us. We’re looking for him to speak to us, not just in our Bible but in one another and in our daily lives. He gives us opportunities to encounter him in the world, but we’re so flooded with noise, we miss the signal.
Like John, we need to go into the wilderness. Turn your phone off for twelve hours; see how wilderness it is. You know, it’s crazy. We need to isolate ourselves a little bit. We need to experience some discomfort, some pain. I just want to suggest one to start with (and you could do whatever you want, but this is an idea that I had). What if you turned all your technology off at 8:00 p.m., and you weren’t allowed to turn anything back on until after you’d had, let’s just say, your morning cup of coffee or your morning cup of tea or your morning devotionals? You gave yourself some space before you went to sleep and before you woke up. And then maybe in those times God might speak to you. Or you might actually hear what your wife said, or you might connect with a friend. We’re just so tied to these things because they’re comfortable, because they’re easy.
Let’s make our lives more difficult. Seriously. We have swallowed so much technology because it’s easier. Sometimes you need to intentionally make your life harder. It needs to be harder for you to sin. It needs to be harder for you to ignore people. It needs to be harder for you to just get your own way all the time. But you have to be intentional, like John. He wasn’t crazy. He did it because he was looking to follow God’s purpose in his life. I’m not just saying, “Go out there and do the hard things because hard things are hard.” I’m saying, do the hard things that God will lead you to. Make some space for him to lead you to the hard things. Advent is all about preparing the way of the Lord in your life.
VI. Prepare the Way of the Lord 10:44
So what was John’s message? Let’s go ahead and read it, Mark chapter 1, beginning in verse 2:
2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, 3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Mark 1.2–3
Now, Mark’s being a little creative here. He’s actually joining two different prophetic proclamations together. It’s not just Isaiah; it’s also Malachi. But what is going on in these words? “Prepare the way of the Lord.” That’s in both of these.
Does God need you to make a way for him to show up? Not really. I mean, the mountains melt like wax at the presence of the Lord (Ps 97.5). I think he can figure it out. If he wants to get somewhere, he can get somewhere. But there is one place that God has drawn a boundary around, and he will not come in unless you let him, and that’s the heart of man, because he’s given you free will. Another C. S. Lewis quote says his felt presence, in even the smallest, most infinitesimal amount, would overwhelm us. And so he limits himself, not because he wants to keep himself from you, but because he wants you to choose him. He wants to woo you like a lover. He doesn’t want to force you.
So when we’re talking about preparing the way of the Lord, making the crooked path straight, you don’t need to go and do anything in the world to clear away so God can come down in his Rolls-Royce. No. We are preparing our hearts to receive him. Because guess what? There are times when our heart… because of the way that we’ve been living, because of whatever we’ve done, we reject him. He comes knocking, and we turn the other way. Or we don’t hear him because of all the noise. And so we’ve got to open ourselves to what he will do in our lives.
And that’s not just the world, who doesn’t have him as their Lord and Savior. That’s us too. We fall into this habit of doing so much that we leave God no room to invade. Now, he’ll get your attention, let me say that. God is a good father, and your stubbornness, your laziness, your indolence, all of that, he will address. But unless you’ve prepared the way, you might not even see his discipline as a form of love. It might be another reason to complain and to shut the door of your heart to him. My point is, the prophetic voice, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” is for us today, in our hearts.
VII. A Highway for Our God 14:26
So how does John prepare the way? He baptizes for repentance and remission of sin. The sin creates weeds in our hearts that strangle our ability to be sensitive to his presence. He wants to open up the doors of heaven for you, but we’re so focused on us that we miss when he’s trying to lead us that way. It’s all about turning from those things.
So let’s continue to look, and I think there are some clues in here about what that would mean for us. Let’s go back to Isaiah 40, our Old Testament, where this prophetic word came from. Verse 3 says:
3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Isa 40.3
Our hearts are the wilderness. Our hearts are the desert. Think about it. We get so burdened with anxieties and cares and divorce. You hear about suicide, drug usage, the opioid epidemic. Whatever you do, it will lead to nothing without God. It’s like saying, “I’m going to be a fitness buff, but I’m drinking no water.” Good luck. Even if all you did was switch to just Gatorade instead of water, there’s some water in it, so there’s some truth, there’s some goodness. You’re still probably going to die. You need water to live. You need God to water the desert of your heart. You need him. That’s what preparing the way is about.
VIII. Every Valley Lifted Up 16:08
And he continues with this beautiful metaphor in verse 4:
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. Isa 40.4
Now, these prophetic insights are so deep and so rich, so there’s a million ways to talk about it. And I’m going to take it in, I think, a different but true direction. I know it’s true; I think it’s different. You may have heard this before. But think about this, in the terms “hills,” “valley,” “rough places.” I started thinking about the human brain. You look at the brain: it’s knotted, it’s rough, it’s round. And I know there is this insult out there: calling somebody “smooth-brained” means they’re dumb. I get that. I’m not talking about that. I’m not talking about smoothing your brain.
But I do want to talk about neuroscience for a second, if I could. There’s this idea that has been more and more understood in neuroscience, in neural synapses. Basically, these processors in your brain connect to one another, and they find the best and shortest and strongest way to connect different processing points in your brain. And as you live, as you move, as you do things, they’re like, “Oh, when he gets up, he goes straight to the coffee machine.” Well, guess what? The path of the processor that wants coffee is connected to the path of your legs and your hands that walk to the coffee machine and turn the button and pour the cup. And you can do this so well that sometimes people can do things in the dark that they could never do otherwise, without light. You’re just so in it. Your body is supposed to be efficient, and so it’s supposed to find the pathway in your brain so that things are linked, things are married, things go together.
Think about this. You smell a nice, juicy piece of steak. That olfactory processing center is connected directly to your appetite center, and it says, “I’m hungry.” And it’s like, “I just ate five minutes ago.” “No, but I’m hungry.” There’s a neuronal pathway that is connected.
So let me use a story to talk about what I think is going on, because we’re talking about making a path for God. And so when you talk about these neuronal pathways, I think we need to make neuronal pathways for God to show up in our life. I’ll talk more about this as we talk about this story.
Imagine there’s somebody who exists, and may or may not be me, who really wants to get up early and pray to God, wants to spend some time before work. So you set your alarm for 5:30 a.m. And then for months on end you hit the snooze button every morning at 5:30 a.m., and you wake up just before it’s time for work. Imagine that could possibly happen to anybody at any point. That doesn’t have to be me. And over time, what happens is you’ve created a pathway in your brain between the hearing of your 5:30 a.m. alarm and the turning off of your 5:30 a.m. alarm. And that pathway is so strong and so straight, it has smoothed the places. The valleys have been brought up; the hills have been made low. So you are going to do that every time you hear the 5:30 a.m. alarm. If you practice it, it will encode itself into your brain.
So think about this. There’s a connection, a pathway, a highway. Now, to repent from that action, you actually have to find a way to dismantle that neuronal pathway and to create a new one. In fact, anything in your life that is a habitual sin that you tend to go to can be seen in an encoded neuronal pathway in our brain.
Now, this is where I’m going to stop going down the neuroscience rabbit hole. But I want to say one thing. This is one example of how we as human beings exist in the world, but it is so much deeper than that, because there are spiritual pathways, spiritual connections between us and our sin. And so the neuronal pathway is a good illustration, but we are not machines. We are not chemical machines that only do one thing. No, we are multifaceted and layered, and there’s no scientist that will ever be able to explain the complexities of our soul, our spirit and our mind. I’m saying that right now to say what we can learn from this, though: our mind and our spirit are so interlinked that it can teach us how to turn away from our sin. It can teach us how to repent. Well, now, people have been teaching us that for thousands of years. There’s much wisdom literature on how to do this. But this is a new and interesting way, in my mind, to remember how to create a path for God, a path that will be embodied in your brain. That’s pretty awesome.
IX. Creating a Path for God 21:42
In fact, everyone in this room, everyone who goes to church regularly: did you know that you’re forming pathways in your brain that say, “Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m., I am looking not to myself but to God”? How awesome is that? When the music plays, it actually activates chemistry inside of our body that’s connected to our spirit, that says, “Now is the time to worship the Lord.” You become what you practice. You will become what you practice.
And so you’ve got this pathway in your brain, and you want to create a new pathway. Let’s say, in this example, my pathway is a direct path to encountering God in the morning. It’s not hitting snooze on my alarm. It’s going before him and into his presence. I’m going to create that pathway. Well, there’s a couple of things I will suggest that will help you.
First of all, realize you’ve probably created a pretty great path in the wrong direction, so we’re going to have to unlearn that. So make it harder. Move your alarm clock to the other side of the room. All of a sudden your brain has to form a new pathway to get from your bed to the alarm clock that’s on top of the dresser across the room. That will start to interrupt your neuronal pathway. Now, guess what? You can really easily retrain your brain to just hit that snooze button once again and go right back to bed. So there may be more you need to do. Maybe, instead of just using an alarm, you find a friend who also wants to get up at 5:30 a.m. Or maybe you find somebody who’s, in my case, on the East Coast, because nobody wants to get up at 5:30 a.m. But you find somebody who will call you, keep you accountable.
Now, I’m focusing on this story, but there’s a couple of principles that we can pull out of it. If you’re doing something sinful, you need to put some roadblocks in the way of that pathway. You need to find a way to avoid that situation. Get the temptation out of reach. It’s one of the only times in Scripture where it says “flee.” Everywhere else: stand, be strong and courageous, wait on the Lord. You see temptation, you flee. You get that pathway interrupted. Do what you need to do.
And secondly, God built us for each other. Get some accountability in your life. I would not be the man I am today if I didn’t have lots of people who felt very free telling me all the ways that I did things wrong. Truly, accountability is a part of God’s plan for salvation in your life.
And then, of course, this is why the message of John resonated with so many people. The Holy Spirit was speaking through his words and activating people’s hearts, rewriting their chemistry.
I’ve got one more thing to say about this, and we’ll move on. They have done studies about how to end, specifically, heroin addiction. And one of the only things that will end heroin addiction, because it’s so encoded in the brain chemistry of these poor people, is a religious conversion, an encounter with the divine. They don’t know how to say it: Jesus is the only way. That’s incredible. All of this is to say, there is so much hope this season for you, where you’re at. Create a new pathway for God to enter your life. He has been knocking at the door (Rev 3.20), and just because you’ve encountered him before doesn’t mean there isn’t so much more.
X. The Glory of the Lord Revealed 24:48
Okay, in verse 5 it says:
5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Isa 40.5
This is the hope. This is the light. Did you know that the glory of God was revealed on Christmas Day, and like eight people saw it? The glory of God was revealed, and like eight people noticed. I guess they didn’t prepare the way.
Now, I’m being a little silly here. I think God in his grand purpose knew what he was doing, and there were a lot more people who got to encounter Jesus in his ministry, and there was a reason why the angels showed up to those shepherds and not to the entire countryside. But I am saying, when the glory of God is revealed, don’t pretend like you can’t possibly miss it. You could. Now, our God is faithful, and he will complete the work he’s completing with you. Every one of us has the confidence that we will see Christ in all of his goodness. But guess what? There are opportunities every day, every week, every month to see the glory of God. Prepare the way, that you might be one of those who hears and rejoices to see the glory of God.
I’ve got one more example to help us understand how this is. You know, children can teach us a heck of a lot, and I remember being a child, so I’m trying to learn from myself back then. I was a complicated being. Now, no, I wasn’t. I had a couple of desires, and mainly it was rebellion. Mainly it was, I wanted my own way. And so that led to a complicated relationship with my father, as it often does, where I would have a day at home and my dad would be coming home from work, and on any given day it could be one of these two extremes, completely dependent on my behavior.
One: the world was ending when Dad came home. Let’s say I had a note home from school, or I’d been rebellious, or I had ruined a $500 camera, or I had beat up my little sister, whatever the things were that I struggled with as a child. When Dad came home, there was a sense of anticipation that was not pleasant.
Then there’s the flip side. I had a great day. And when I had a great day, I didn’t think about, “Oh, my dad’s going to come home and recognize how good I was that day.” What I thought about was, “I want to spend time with my father, and I’m excited to see him.” I see this in my own kids. I come home and Rhys is like, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” So excited.
But I’m contrasting this. When I was a kid and my life was full of the sin that kids struggle with naturally, I didn’t want my dad to come home. But when I had an okay day (I’m sure I messed up plenty), I was stoked that my dad was coming home. We are human. We have these titanic struggles within us between light and dark, good and evil. If you prepare your hearts this season, we can love the fact that Jesus is coming. Because it’s not just about Christmas. We are still anticipating that Jesus himself will show up, like in a real historical event, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. We are looking forward to that day. So prepare your heart, so you can live in that anticipation, that hope, that joy. There’s two more weeks till Christmas. Hallelujah!
We’re going to end with the collect this morning that summarizes everything we’ve talked about. It says:
“Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”