This morning we continue in our Advent series, the Season of Expectation, and today we have an introduction of John the Baptist. Now they call him John the Baptist because he was more well known in that time as John the Baptizer, where he would baptize people in the Jordan River for their forgiveness of sins. And when John came along, he was an interesting guy.
We’re not going to talk about how he dressed and the locusts he ate and all that stuff in the text today, but I often wonder if my, you know, going out in the wilderness for me in Overland Park, Kansas is going out into my backyard. You know, the grass sometimes gets over three or four inches tall. And I’m always out there taking our dog out because she, with this puppy thing still going on, won’t really go out and do her business without me there.
So I’m walking around the yard with her, and at night I’m walking around the yard with her with a flashlight, and the fence is only three feet or four feet high in places, so if the neighbors are looking, it just is me wandering around the yard. And I bet some of them are thinking, he’s a crazy man like John the Baptizer. Will you stand as you are able? Our text today comes out of the book of Luke chapter three, one through six.
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip Tetrarch of the region of Aeturia and Traconitus and Lysanias, Tetrarch of Abilene, that’s Abilene, Texas, not Abilene, Kansas. During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah in the wilderness, and he went into the region around the Jordan, proclaiming the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God, thanks be to God, amen. You may be seated. I forgot to mention that when I wander around with my dog, I’m repeatedly saying, go potty.
Just go potty, I’m getting cold. So that probably adds to the weirdness of it. John at the end of this says, all face shall see the salvation of God.
One of the greatest things that Israel had expected was the salvation of God’s people. Now if you can imagine being an Israelite, even today, facing oppression, facing bigger countries coming in and taking over. At the time Jesus was there, it was the Roman Empire that was ruling over them.
You go further back, you have the Babylonian exiles, the Persians. We have so many different attacks they faced for all of history, and they’re waiting for God to save them, to save their king, and to save their people from their enemies. And the first thing we have to note is we are moving towards the season of Advent, as they expected a king to ride in and conquer Rome.
They didn’t expect a king to come as a vulnerable baby in a manger. There’s something we have to make clear. There is the salvation that Israel expected versus the salvation that Jesus offered.
Now the salvation that Israel expected is not just isolated, because sometimes we think, why are they just so stubborn, and why do they think like that, and why don’t they get what God is trying to do? And we look in the mirror and we say, hey, we’re pretty similar. What do we spend most of our time praying for? Things in our life, people in our life, things to be easier in our life, things that are tough not to be so tough. And Jesus came in and he separated from what’s more important in our lives is not who rules over us.
It’s not that if we switch presidents, then all of a sudden everybody’s going to receive Jesus into their lives, and it’s going to be so easy to be a Christian in the world today, and you can walk around saying Merry Christmas without wondering what someone is going to think about you. It’s that Jesus said there’s something even bigger than that. There’s something bigger than that that says when I bring salvation, that means I’m going to save you from your sins, your sins that have brought you down.
Since the fall of man and we were kicked out of the garden, I say we because we deal with all that in our lives, that Jesus came and John the baptizer said the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness, and we think of John being the one to prepare the way for Jesus, and he did. He had disciples of his own, and he sent some of those disciples to Jesus, and there were others that weren’t part of the twelve who became disciples later, and he helped prepare the way of the Lord. But he also preached to the people, you prepare the way of the Lord.
See, it says he came crying, prepare the way of the Lord. And he says these words, and you’ve got to kind of think about them. Make straight his path, it shouldn’t be an obstacle course to find the Lord.
Make straight his path. Every valley shall be filled, it means you don’t have to fall down or go down and work your way through. Every mountain shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and the flesh shall see the salvation of God.
Now if you read the Old Testament, that is still relevant to Christians no matter what people may say, the Old Testament, if you read the Psalms, you see when David is crying out to God, he says, don’t take your spirit from me. The greatest troubling, most horrific thing, not only for a Jew, but can also be for us, is that being outside the presence of God is hell. Being outside the presence of God is torture.
So when we make the path straight, when we make the mountains low, when we fill in the valleys, when we make it easy for people to know Jesus, John is basically just saying, stop putting obstacles in front of people. Stop making it seem like it’s the most difficult thing, like God is far off. Because the Lord is coming, the Lord is right here, and now in our lives, the Lord is in our hearts, he’s in this room, and we make it easy for them to know.
The salvation Jesus offered is different because it’s a salvation that brings us into the presence of God, not just when we feel warm fuzzies, but even when we face the mountains in our lives, even when we face the challenges, they’re that much easier because God is with us, and God gives us the strength to move through each of those things. Now in Matthew 21, when the angel Gabriel came to Joseph, he said, of Mary she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Now Jesus is a name we heard thrown around so much, and people take it however they want, but the simplicity of knowing Jesus here in this season of Advent as we are drawing it near to Christmas, is to know what the name Jesus means.
Matthew tells us what it means in there. It’s simply the Hebrew Yeshua, but the Aramaic shortens it to Yeshua. Yeshua is really, if it’s directly interpreted from the Aramaic, it’s Joshua, but it’s the Yeh, which is short for Yahweh, and the Shua is simply saves.
Jehovah saves, Yahweh saves, the Lord himself saves. So is there any other thing we need to know about Jesus right now, besides knowing his name and remembering the name that God gave him through the angel and through Mary and Joseph, that he saves us? We should have an expectation during Advent for our salvation. And it’s a salvation that happens in eternity, but it’s also a salvation that happens today because we can be in the presence of God, and we do everything we can to make it so others can know the Lord and make the path straight for them to find it.
Jesus said it this way when he went to the tax collector’s house, who had swindled people, his own people, taken their money, he said, and the Pharisees started grumbling going, if this man really was a prophet, he would know what a sinner that this guy is. And Jesus said, today salvation has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham. Zacchaeus, for the son of man came to seek and to save the lost.
Why did Jesus come? To seek and to save the lost. We all have things we feel lost on, things we’re not in control. Is anybody in control of everything? Who’s got total control over everything going on around them? There’s a lot of things we can’t control.
There are a lot of things that make it seem like the mountain is insurmountable. And we, even as disciples of Jesus Christ, even make the past crooked instead of preparing the way of the Lord like the prophet John, when we don’t remember the name of the one we should be expecting. We sometimes make the past crooked when we say, okay, it’s not just about knowing Jesus.
It’s about doing all this other stuff. And we tie it all into salvation. I think we were talking about this Wednesday or Tuesday at Hope Builders too, that, you know, different things like, oh no, it was at the Bible study on Wednesday.
Uh, like even something as simple as churches saying, oh, well, you were baptized in this church, but now you have to be baptized this way. And putting all these barriers towards salvation or, well, you might’ve been saved yesterday, but today you got a lot of work to do. Megan Buckman put it like this.
She said, she mentioned how she saw an ad for the U.S. Marines picturing a sword and beneath that sword were the words earned, never given. If you want to become a Marine, be prepared to earn that name through sacrifice, hardship, and training. If you get it, you deserved it.
If you want to become a follower of Jesus, you must have the exact opposite attitude for the message of the gospel is given, never earned. Which one of those sounds like a lower mountain or a filled in valley or a path made straight? During the season of Advent, we cannot forget that we are saved by grace through faith. We are saved because of what God gave us in that manger of what Jesus did for us on that cross.
We are saved because Jesus came even for sinners like us. Megan goes on to say, you cannot save your own soul and God will not save anyone who tries to earn their salvation, but only those who humbly receive it as a gift through faith in Jesus Christ. If you get it, you absolutely did not deserve it.
Advent is a time to remember who Jesus is, what his name means, and why God gave him that name. Another way to look at salvation comes from the great prophet of the 20th century known as Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones was hanging off a cliff in the Temple of Doom, and he had one hand on the cliff and one hand reaching, and he could just barely touch it.
There is a, this was the last crusade, and he was hanging and he was reaching for the goblet that supposedly held the blood of Jesus Christ. And he wanted that goblet and he could see it and he could almost grab it and he kept slipping and almost falling. And above him was his father, played by James Bond.
No wait, his father was Sean Connery. And he’s reaching to him playing, Junior, take my hand, in a Scottish accent. And he said, take my hand.
Finally, his father tells him, let it go. And India, Indiana reaches up for his father to take his hand and he pulls him up to live. Salvation is kind of like that.
We reach for all these things on the earth that we think will provide our salvation. They may be good things that could lead us to God. They could be religious things.
They could be church things. They could be doing good deeds for others. But what we expect during this season of Advent is not that God says, you have to jump through these hoops to see me.
That you have to do this and this and this. He says, just open your hearts. Look for my son who I sent to seek you, to save you, to make the lost found, to bring you into my presence, to make the path easy so that your salvation isn’t something that is just out of your grasp.
In so many religions, it’s just out of their grasp if they just try harder, if they just pray more prayers during the day, if they just reach further. But with Jesus, salvation is right here. It’s open that you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your hearts that God raised him from the dead and you will be saved.
Don’t go through every day expecting that salvation is out of your reach. Go through the day with the peace that Jesus did all the work for us and we just have to receive what God has given. During the season of Advent, I invite you to spend time anticipating the salvation of God, opening your heart to God, knowing that whatever mountain you have before you, whatever obstacle course you see that starts on Monday morning, whatever difficulties, stress, anxiety, pain, hurt, discomfort, uncertainty, doubt, insecurity, all that stuff, Jesus came.
Jesus overcame and he is right here. To give us peace, to bring us into the presence of God and he’s reaching for us now. I pray that you can experience God, that you can experience the true peace of God during this season and that love is something you’ll share with others.
Let’s pray. Almighty God, thank you for our salvation. Sometimes we take it for granted and assume, sometimes we also assume that we haven’t done enough, that we haven’t worked hard enough, that we haven’t given enough.
Help us to let go of all that other stuff we hold on to, we grasp, we squeeze so tightly. May we let it go and only hold on to your hand. And trust in you and know that you are right here.
You’re not somewhere down the road. You’re not a prize at the end of an obstacle course, urging us, asking us to take your hand so we can walk with you every day. In the comfort and in the joy of knowing that we have salvation in Jesus Christ.
And with that, all God’s people said, Amen. Will you stand as you’re able and we’ll sing our hymn of response.