Prepare the Way

Isaiah 40: 1-11
Mark 1: 1-8

Too often we preachers will give you a message that is all about God’s forgiveness and redemption and mention nothing of God’s righteous anger when we do sinful things. Or, we will do the opposite and give a blistering sermon on sinful humanity and mention nothing at all about God’s grace. The book of Isaiah challenges such a one dimensional sermon and reminds everyone that just as God can be angry and punishing, God can also love and forgive. We try too often to put God into a box and that is not where God belongs. We cannot hem in God with our own preconceptions and ideas without having lost something vital to our faith and relationship with God.

We should not separate God’s judgment on human sin with God’s grace and forgiveness for those sins. The reason is that if we only concentrate on the judgmental wrath of God then when God punishes humanity we have a vengeful God without any of the compassion we see in the New Testament. It is like we have two different gods in the Bible. However, when we look at all of Isaiah and 2^nd Isaiah together we see that the God who punishes our sins is also the God who eventually forgives us and welcomes us back, restoring us to our proper place – by God’s side.

For all of us to understand what the Israelites were feeling in these passages, we need to know more about their journey. After God gave them Israel, the people prospered. They defeated their enemies and had food and riches in abundance. Abundance is a downfall to a pious society. It seems to always create greed and a desire for more. The people began to forget the God that had delivered them out of Egypt’s hands and looked only to themselves for their daily bread. They forgot to worship in the temple and instead they worshiped their money and the foreigners’ gods. Every attempt God made to warn them was rebuffed until finally God had had enough. For the first time, when an enemy came to conquer Jerusalem, God did not help to defend the people. The Babylonians rushed into the cities, laying waste to the temples and taking everything of value, including the people as slaves.

For fifty years the Israelites were slaves to the Babylonians. They were without priests to guide them; they were without their rituals to soothe them, and without God to sustain them. So this passage in Isaiah 40 is a welcome relief! They will be saved! God has not forgotten them! God is about to deliver them from their enemy’s hands and give them a straight path back to their homeland.

God goes so far as to promise to even out the hills, make the crooked paths straight so that every man, woman, and child will easily and quickly find their way back home. Hopefully, they will come home a little wiser, a little more wary, and a lot more faithful.

 God never wanted to punish her people. Although God is quite able to pick up a sword to smite a person, God tried often and for a long time to get through to the Israelites before allowing the Babylonians to take over. This is why we must keep the vengeful God at the beginning of Isaiah side by side with the gentle shepherd who leads her flock safely back home. God is not one or the other, God is both.

You may be wondering what all of this has to do with Christmas. The passage we read today in Mark 1 takes a piece of Isaiah 40 to explain the job of John the Baptist. The author of Mark sees that John was one that helped to make the pathways straight for the Lord, so that when Jesus began his ministry, he would have ears willing to listen to the message he desperately wanted us to hear. The Good News that Jesus and John the Baptist spread among the Jews and Gentiles was the one that the Israelites heard 600 years before.

Your God has not abandoned you. Your God loves you and forgives you. You are not alone in the trials you face and yes, there is something better for you than this crazy life you live now. That is the Good News which has never changed – for the Israelites in Isaiah, for the Jews of Jesus’ time and for all of God’s people today.

In both Isaiah and Mark, for us to hear the Good News requires repentance and confession from the people. In Isaiah, the Israelites had to be punished for fifty years before they could bring themselves to God and offer up true sorrow for their past ways. In Mark, John tells the people to repent of their sins and be baptized. What is interesting about this passage is that then John the Baptist goes on to say that there will come another, the Messiah, who will baptize them all with the Holy Spirit.

John the Baptist could have taken all the glory for himself. He could have pretended to be the Messiah because the people were certainly captivated with him. He was a wild man, with camel hair clothes and an unusual diet of locusts and honey. He spoke of forgiveness and new life, a message the people were starving to hear. Yes, John could have proclaimed to be greater than he was, but instead he told everyone who would listen to him that another, greater prophet would soon be here to save them all.

How often do we hear people humbly promote another person’s achievements rather than their own? Let’s look at the political arena. Have you ever heard a new senator thank the previous senator for all their hard work and dedication? When something goes right during the first year of their office, do they credit those that came before them? I have never heard one politician give credit to the previous administration even when it is obvious to everyone else where the credit belongs.

We live in a world where everyone wants a piece of the pie. Everyone wants to be recognized for achievement, but John the Baptist shows us that is not the way. And God also shows us that by sending someone to prepare Jesus’ way. Think about it – even God sometimes needs a helping hand. This season is one of waiting and expectation. We wait for news of our Savior and for the coming of peace on earth.

We too often act like these good tidings are for our ears alone. We pretend that all the good things that have happened in this church are because of what we have done instead of acknowledging we stand on the shoulders of those that came before us. Their hard work makes this church a success. John’s hard work in the wilderness prepared the way for Jesus Christ’s ministry.

This is a season of waiting, but that does not mean we have nothing to do. We are now the ones that prepare the way for the Lord. We wait for news of Christ’s second coming and we are to spread the Gospel to all four corners of the world, letting everyone know that peace, joy, hope and love is waiting for them, just as we wait for Christ.

Amen.