LUKE 3:1-6PREPARE THE WAY FOR THE LORD:MAKE STRAIGHT PATHS FOR HIM!

1In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—2during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4As it is written in the book of the words of Isa-iah the prophet: "A voice of one calling in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. 5Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. 6And all people will see God's salva-tion.'"

I’ll admit it! I can’t deny it! There are times when I am amazed and dismayed by the world in which I live! I am often astounded and nearly overwhelmed by the preparations our American society feels are necessary for what they call Christmas! Everywhere you turn, there is something whose only purpose is to get you ready for this season of the year!

I understand that in our economic times, sales in the last few weeks of the year are vital to a business’ suc-cess or failure. To bring in customers, they must first be convinced that they want and need what is being sold to be properly. But is it really necessary to begin these sales in October or extend Black Friday into Thanksgiving Thursday or to initiate a Cyber Monday?

And I know that people love Christmas because it rekindles so many happy memories from the past. We all like to be in the holiday spirit! We are anxious to prepare ourselves for it with the music, the decora-tions, and the atmosphere of Christmases past. But do we really need Christmas in early November, along with a warm and fuzzy array of events that begin at the same time? Can the feelings these things evoke, really have any meaning by December 25th?

What distresses me most is that almost none of it mentions or even refers to Jesus and his birth in any pur-poseful way. It really has become a winter holiday instead of Christmas. What is truly sad is that most people actually think they are getting ready for Christmas – not some soul-less holiday based on nothing but gifts, memories, and hoped-for pleasures.

As Christians living in this society, we are certainly subject to the pressures and enticements that are all around us. And it is all right for us to go along with the world in this way if we acknowledge that the holi-day season and Christmas, the arrival of Jesus Christ, are two entirely different events – events we must separate in our minds.

We can’t allow ourselves to think that we are ready for the coming of Jesus, when we are only ready for the events of the season. We always get into trouble when we confuse the two – when we think we’re pre-paring for one, when all we’re doing is getting ready for the other! Our sermon text clearly delineates what preparation for Jesus’ arrival is like, and it’s nothing like the world’s preparation for their winter holiday!

Our text introduces us to a man named John. To firmly establish John as a real man, someone who truly lives in history, Luke carefully details the time in which he lived. He even supplies John’s lineage and

background. He identifies the region in which John carried out his work. He tells us everything that can be known about John by human observation.Then he goes on to tell us something about John that is not so obvious. The inspired Evangelist Luke quotes the inspired Prophet Isaiah and informs us that John is A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all people will see God's salvation.”

There is no doubt about it – John was a very odd individual! His diet, his home, his clothes, and his ap-pearance were all quite unusual. But what made him really different was the role that was his to carry out in the kingdom of God. He was an Old Testament prophet, but more than that, he was the last of the Old Testament prophets. He would finish what other prophets had begun.

All the others pointed ahead to the Savior who was coming. John would point to the Savior who had al-ready come. The Savior would follow closely on John’s heels! John had the special mission of preparing the way for the Lord to carry out his work of our salvation. John would have the privilege of preparing the people for the long-anticipated Christ.

For all that, he is often referred to as the Way-Preparer. And as Isaiah and others speaking for the Lord make clear, such preparation would not be easy. Preparing for the Lord would not involve relatively soft activities like shopping or baking or decorating or singing. It would be work, hard work, for everyone who wished to be ready for the coming Christ!

Our sermon text compares it to road building, of all things! Now in our day, roadbuilding is accomplished by huge earth moving machines and sophisticated building equipment. Even at that, it is a laborious and lengthy process. It costs millions of dollars and takes months and years to complete. Building roads is dif-ficult! But it is nothing compared to roadbuilding in John’s day.

With only man and animal power, along with rudimentary tools, roadbuilding was not easy in any way. Crooked pathways made by wandering foot traffic had to be widened and straightened out for use by wag-ons and other vehicles. If straightening out the road required filling in low spots and leveling high spots, it had to be done by hand! If the road was still rough, it had to be worked on until it was smooth.

All this arduous preparation went into the construction of a new road. That, Scripture tells us, is what it is like to properly prepare for the Lord’s coming. Christians should not expect it to be easy or fun to prepare themselves for Jesus’ arrival. So, that was the task entrusted to John. He was to assist God’s people in their preparations for the arrival of his Son.

And how was he to do that? What was the difficult preparation that needed to be done? Luke sums it all up in verse 3: John went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repentance is the God-directed and approved method of proper preparation for anyone who wants to be ready for Christ’s appearance in their lives.

To be prepared, we must repent of our sins! We must confess that we have sinned against the Lord our God. Now, at first that doesn’t appear to be too difficult a task. We do it all the time. We did it just a little while ago! And it is true, isn’t it? I can see my sin almost as clearly as I can see your sin! And there’s no particular shame in this confession of sin – we are all the same in this regard!

What’s so hard about that? Well, let’s consider what the Lord means when he calls for repentance. First of all, when he demands that we repent, he demands that we repent of all our sin. By that, he isn’t calling

upon us to list every sin, big and small, that we have ever committed. Nobody has that much time or that good of a memory. It is impossible to do!

Rather, he expects us to confess that we are completely sinful. We are born of sinful parents as someone who is sin through and through! We are so thoroughly sin that we are unwilling and unable to do anything that is good in God’s sight. We may appear to be good to others, but how could sinful people possibly be able to know what good is it? It is something they have no experience with!

Anything truly good begins with love for the Lord. Without such love, nothing we do can ever be good. So it is that is the way repentance must begin. People who think they really are not so bad, must confess that they are evil in every aspect of their being! People who want to think that they can do the good things God commands, must believe that no such power exists in them! Does that sound easy?

To be prepared for the Lord’s coming, we must follow up that painful admission with this logical next step. Because we are so totally sinful, it follows that we are totally incapable of making things right with God. Whatever God may expect or require of us to escape the punishment we’ve brought upon ourselves, is something we simply cannot do!

We are utterly helpless to help ourselves! We look at our situation and see that we have no hope! We are going to hell! And with that acknowledgment, comes great sorrow and dread. We grieve that thoughts in our own minds, words from our own lips, and deeds we choose to do, have taken us away from our God and dragged us into a terrifying damnation.

We live in terror of the future and what the righteous anger of God will do to us. Does that sound easy? No, but it is at that precise moment, the moment we give up any hope of saving ourselves, that proper re-pentance and preparation for the Lord’s coming is complete. We are now prepared for Jesus’ arrival in our lives. Gone are all the crooked and hilly and rough roads that once kept us apart!

Gone are the excuses for sin and the notion that we can atone for our own sins – beliefs which isolated us from his love. In their place is the blessed assurance that we don’t have to do anything to save ourselves. We don’t despair because our Jesus assures us that he lived and died in our place. We are comforted by his promise that he has done it all for us.

We are prepared – we are emptied of our sinful pride and futile reliance on our good works. We are ready to be filled with the hope and joy that come when we humbly acknowledge that a gracious Lord has come to redeem us! I truly hope that in the next few weeks you will enjoy all the preparations and trappings of this holiday season that appeal to you! But I pray that first you will prepare for the coming of your Lord and Savior – and repent! Amen.