Second Sunday of Advent
PREPARE THE WAY FOR THE LORD
Isaiah 40:1–5, 9–11
2 Peter 3:8–14
Mark 1:1–8
Dr. David L. Hall, General Minister
Heart for God, Ltd.
While I was associate pastor at the campus church in the early 1980s Messiah College invited former President Jimmy Carter to be their speaker for the inaugural address in an annual lectureship on religion and society. Months before the date of his coming the Secret Service was there to check security. From the college end, there were invitations and other publicity promotions done in preparation for such a big event. The actual day of Carter's arrival on campus revealed other preparations that had been made. The press and television news crews were there. Hundreds of cars were being directed to makeshift parking by what seemed to be an entire force of auxiliary police. Faculty were making their way to the processional line in their academic regalia. Secret Servicemen seemed to be almost everywhere with two-way radios in their hands. Nothing was there that did not belong. The President had come and everyone was prepared.
The Scriptures today help us think about what it means for us to be ready for God's Son to come into our world. On this second Sunday of Advent we especially remember the Old Testament preparation for Christ's coming. As Christians, we know this has a double focus. Jesus came the first time, and we remember his incarnation at Christmas. Someday Jesus will come again, and we are called to live in preparedness for that second coming.
We can find encouragement to focus on the second coming and understand how to be prepared for it by looking back at the first coming and seeing how preparations were made as Jesus made his first entry into our world. I am directing our attention to two things to help us do that. The first is to see what God has been doing throughout history. The second is to see the message God specifically gave just as Christ was about to make his appearance.
Advent is not just a time for focusing on a baby coming in a manger. Advent is when we remember that God has been at work in our world for thousands of years calling for people to know him as the one true God. Then we realize that the ultimate way he has done this is to bring his Son into our world as a human being. But everything that went before led up to it.
The Old Testament history of Israel is essential to our understanding of who God is and what he is doing. God had formed Israel to lead all nations into the fullness of his grace and his purpose for all people. Over and over God would bless the children of Abraham, but they would use the blessings selfishly and forget God. God would chastise, they would repent and turn back to the Lord.... and then they would let their hearts wander again. Finally God sent a crushing chastisement. It was as if God had totally rejected them, but then he speaks through Isaiah:
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed... (40:1,2a)
Isaiah goes on to promise that the glory of the Lord shall be revealed (v5). The Sovereign Lord will come with power (v10) and tend his flock like a shepherd (v11). But God’s people need to be ready, so the message comes to prepare the way for the Lord (v3).
Yet we are so easily distracted. Just like Israel, we can get excited about God’s blessings—even go through the motions of giving him the credit—but still get all wrapped up in our own selfish desires. Like Israel, our hearts can be pulled away from the Lord to the alluring, and often despicable, things the world flashes before our eyes.
There's a story told of a pastor who was officiating at a funeral. When he was done, he was asked to lead the funeral procession as it made its way to the cemetery. So he got into his car, and he started driving at the head of the funeral procession. He flipped on his radio and became preoccupied, lost in thought; he forgot where he was going. About that time, he passed a K-Mart and thought about something he needed to pick up. So he turned into the parking lot. As he was looking for a parking space, he just happened to glance into the rear-view mirror and saw a string of cars following, all with their lights on!
That is what happened to Israel. God put his people out in front to lead the way, so that all people could see the way to the one true God. Then they took their eyes off God. They became preoccupied with themselves. Now we see them in this first text needing the promise and mercy of God to heal and restore. God has to tell us what he is doing and what he expects. As God says through Isaiah in another place: my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways (55:8). Many people do not know how to prepare for God to come. We think we can be in God’s presence any old way. Some people tend to think that they are doing God a favor when they mention him occasionally or go to church once a week (or a couple of times a month!).
Popular religion turns the focus on us—what we think is good and important. Years ago, in his New York Times column, David Brooks reviewed Mitch Albom, the guy who wrote Tuesdays with Morey and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Brooks said (and I agree with him) we should fear Albom's "soft-core spirituality" and "easygoing narcissism." The eternal reward pictured in Albom's book is different than the biblical one. Brooks observes, "In this heaven, God and his glory are not the center of attention. It's all about you. Here, sins are not washed away. Instead, hurt is washed away. The language of good and evil is replaced by the language of trauma and recovery" ("Hooked on Heaven Lite," www.NYTimes.com, 3-9-04).
Some people dismiss the whole thing. They do not think any Lord is coming, and they think that what Christians know to be the Lord’s merciful delay is proof that there is no reason to worry at all.
There is a story that Satan once called to him the emissaries of hell and said he wanted to send one of them to earth to aid women and men in the ruination of their souls. He asked which one would want to go. One creature came forward and said, "I will go." Satan said, "If I send you, what will you tell the children of men?" He said, "I will tell the children of men that there is no heaven." Satan said, "They will not believe you, for there is a bit of heaven in every human heart. In the end everyone knows that right and good must have the victory. You may not go."
Then another came forward, darker and fouler than the first. Satan said, "If I send you, what will you tell the children of men?" He said, "I will tell them there is no hell." Satan looked at him and said, "Oh, no; they will not believe you, for in every human heart there's a thing called conscience, an inner voice which testifies to the truth that not only will good be triumphant, but that evil will be defeated. You may not go."
Then one last creature came forward, this one from the darkest place of all. Satan said to him, "And if I send you, what will you say to women and men to aid them in the destruction of their souls?" He said, "I will tell them there is no hurry." Satan said, "Go!"
This theme is throughout the Scriptures. We find Peter needing to tell the Church the same thing. When we get tired of waiting and when our eyes get blinded to the Old Testament models, we need a direct word like Peter gives us: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day (2Pet 3:8). And yet Peter is clear: the day of God is coming, and that means you ought to live holy and godly lives (v11,12). That is one way to prepare the way for the Lord.
Think back to the overall scope of Scripture again. God had been at work in our world for years through Israel to prepare the way for his Son to make his appearance. The way he works is through people like Abraham and David and Isaiah—people who have personally experienced his salvation and live holy, righteous lives. Those are the people who truly prepare the way for the Lord.
If we need to be holy to be prepared for the Lord’s coming, what does that mean for us? What do godly lives look like? We tend to put the emphasis (like the scribes and Pharisees) on outward appearance. We too easily fall for stereotypes. We quickly pass over the one key thing that God desires in his people.... because it is the one thing that is so hard for us— admitting when we are wrong. We want to settle for “knowing the right things.” We are even ready to conform to the right code as long as someone can provide one that seems to make us look good.
When the Gospels begin their story, John is the bridge between the Old Testament and the new thing God is doing. His identity was very much in the prophetic mode of the Old Testament. He was someone that would speak on behalf of the God of Israel. He was representative of all the things God had said and done for the past two thousand years. But John was also someone with a new thing to say. This mixture of the old and new worked this way: The Old Testament hope was that God would come, that God would bring salvation from enemies, that God would show mercy. This was the “right doctrine,” we might say. The new twist to John's message would be that in the coming of Jesus all these hopes had been fulfilled, but people needed help to see the very thing they were looking for.
This was John’s message—one single focus: repentance. The job of John the Baptizer was to come out of the wilderness and talk to people and to prepare them, so that when Messiah made his appearance, they would not only know who he was but be prepared to respond to what he said and called them to do. To see Christ, to know Christ, to obey Christ, demands preparation. The baptizer said the right preparation is repentance. Repentance is more than an act.
Repentance is a lifestyle. It is a way of living. To put it in more poetic words, it is the process of keeping soft before the Spirit of God. You cannot be sorry in your heart before God for sinfulness if you are not replacing the sinful acts with righteous acts. Preparation demands that day by day as we look to see Christ, we are substituting right acts for bad acts in our lives. Too much of popular theology says to practice forms of repentance, but not really change our actions. As John prepares us to receive Christ, he says you can't have one without the other. We are called to live in repentance. That is preparing the way for the Lord.
What do you and I say when we are confronted with this implication of God's salvation? Actually, what we say means little if it doesn't match what we do. And what we do needs to be placed alongside God's standards of holiness and righteousness for us to know where we truly stand. If we do that honestly we will know one thing: we need the preparation that the first Advent offers us. We need the mercy that Jesus brings to God's people. We need the first Advent not to be afraid at the second. The call is to prepare, and the way to prepare is to live in repentance for all the ways we fall short of being like God. In the words of Isaiah, we should be praying always that the Lord would, in our souls, raise up every valley and make low every mountain and hill.
I close with a story that shows repentance: Kimberly Shumate tells how she became a Christian after living as a witch. We pick up the story as she, after coming to the end of herself, walks into a church:
As I sat down, I silently shot up a desperate prayer: God, please give me someone in this crazy crowd I can relate to. If you don't give me someone, I'm walking out of here. At that moment, the pastor told the congregation to stand up and shake a few hands. I introduced myself to Lisa, whose dyed-red hair and nose ring suggested we might be at a similar place. My black-and-white hair and spiked belt told her the same. Lisa, a fellow spiritual seeker, and I became fast friends.
Looking back, I wonder how the church members stood having me in their midst for so long. I was angry and exasperated as I sat listening to their "good news." How could there be only one way to God? At the end of each message, I marched down the aisle to the pastor and began firing off an onslaught of questions. After three or four weeks of verbal sparring, he humbly offered the associate pastor's ear. I made my rounds from one elder to another, finally ending up at a Friday night Bible study looking for answers.
As I sat on the floor in the leader's living room, I felt a peace amidst this group of people who seemed to care about each other. After the study, Lisa sat beside me as Scott, the leader, patiently listened to my New-Age arguments. But one by one, the Scriptures I'd carefully prepared to punch holes in the gospel came back at me with hurricane force. Scott's words, but especially the Bible's words, confounded my cosmic view. After we'd sat there for an hour debating, I was exhausted. My hardened heart and argumentative nature finally had enough.
As Lisa drove me home, my mind ached as I replayed Scott's words. All the Old Testament and New Testament verses had one oddly familiar voice, one tone, one heart. I wondered, How could a book written by so many different people over the course of hundreds of years fit together perfectly as if one amazing storyteller had written the whole thing? The Holy Spirit began melting my vanity and arrogance with a power stronger than any hex, incantation, or spell I'd ever used. Suddenly, the blindfold I'd worn for almost 30 years was stripped away, and instantly I knew what I'd been searching for: Jesus! The same God I'd neglected, whose name I'd used as profanity, whom I'd flat-out rejected, was the one who'd sent his Son to suffer for me, to take the guilty verdict so I could be found innocent. My eyes filled with tears as I exchanged the darkness with which I'd grown so accustomed for the light of God's truth. It was such a personal moment between the Lord and me that even Lisa, sitting next to me in the car, had no idea what was going on.
I soon realized my life was filled with empty props, and it was time to clean house. My first act of obedience was to throw out all my books on witchcraft and the paranormal, as well as my Tarot cards. But the most important possession, and most difficult to discard, was my treasured crystal ball.
I called Lisa. She came right over, and we immediately drove to the Pacific Ocean. My heart pounded as if the demons themselves weren't far behind us. We stood at the end of Malibu Pier, our beaming faces reflecting the radiance of the setting sun. I unwrapped the crystal's black velvet cover, and light streamed out like rainbows as the thick crystal met the sun's fleeting rays. As I dropped the ball into the deep blue water, I knew my future was secure. Now I had a Savior who would be with me always. It still moves me to tears to think he waited through all those years of anger, disappointment, fear, and bad choices. All the mistakes I'd ever made were wiped clean. (Kimberly Shumate, "I Was a Witch," Today's Christian Woman, Sep/Oct 2002, pp41-43)
As we go into this Advent season I want us to think about the way we are preparing the way for the Lord. We may not have dramatic stories like the conversion of a witch, but we can legitimately take as much care in preparing our hearts for the coming of God's Son as Messiah College took when President Carter visited their campus—nothing there that does not belong.
Hear the Scriptures: Prepare the way for the Lord.... live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God... truly believe (and model) that the glory of the Lord will be revealed.
Prepare the way for the Lord.
