God's Love In Preparation

This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

For more information on our church, please visit grandparkway.org.

Well, if uh this is your first time with us, uh we are in the season of Advent.

Advent is a time where we expectantly wait for the coming Messiah.

This is our second week.

It's got four weeks in Advent leading up to the celebration of Christmas, uh, the celebration of the coming Messiah.

And so this is week two, and it is the celebration or love.

Last week was hope, and so we kind of uh ended in the dark, and there was a glow behind us, and that's still there.

But you notice there's a little bit more light in here, so you can't quite see just back here.

Beyond the horizon, it's now illuminated all in here in the sanctuary.

And so we now come with a little bit more illumination, a little bit more expectancy, a little bit more hope for the coming of Messiah.

And today we talk about love in our second week in our Advent series.

And today, really, I want to talk about this God of love in preparation.

God prepares.

There's a reason why we ended with prepare the way, because God's love can sometimes be seen, maybe even mostly seen in the Old Testament, in preparation.

God's love in preparation.

If you're with us, uh if you're if you've got your Bible with you, uh turn to Isaiah 40.

We're gonna be in the Old Testament a little bit.

Um, we're also gonna be uh jumping over to Mark a little bit, but go to Isaiah 40.

If you don't have your Bible with you, it is on page 599 of your Pew Bible.

Advent is this.

Uh, one of my favorite authors, his name is Robert Weber, and uh he was kind of this progressive thinker on the whole Christian calendar thing.

He's got a big series uh called Ancient Future, to where you look back at kind of church history and church culture, and then you kind of look forward to where we are now.

And so if we're in Advent, it would be advantageous for us to kind of look back so that we can kind of see and understand this whole idea of Advent.

That's the candles, that's the whole reason why we have the candles and the wreath and all of that, and why we go to darkness.

Uh and so Robert Weber says this he says, Advent is a time when we ask, even plead with God not to leave us alone.

For when God leaves us to our own choices and turns us over to our own ways, we are certain to drift from Him.

You felt that this holiday season?

Just come do your own thing, shopping on your own budget, doing your own, you know, visiting uh family members with your own idea of what that should look like.

And all of a sudden we we drift a little bit.

So that's what Advent is.

It is a pleading, it is a begging with God not to leave us alone.

And today we talk about God's love and preparation.

I think love, one of love's greatest expressions, is in preparation.

I'll show you what I mean.

Uh for any of you that host a community group today, you will spend probably you spent a good portion of yesterday, maybe your afternoon today, preparing your house, getting everything ready, cleaning up, the stuff that nobody cares about, but if it was dirty, they would care about.

Uh and you do you'll everybody in here that's hosting a Christmas dinner or hosted a Thanksgiving dinner will do the same thing.

You're gonna go home and for the next month, you're gonna you're gonna do emails, you're gonna do phone calls, you're talking about recipes and who's bringing what on potluck, and you're gonna go crazy by the time you get to Christmas, and but it's all gonna be prepared.

Outside of your house is gonna be decorated, the inside of your house is gonna be decorated, all of that hopefully is not because you care about what other people think, but because you want to love them.

And more importantly, you want to maybe love God and your hospitality, and so you want to make people feel welcome and at home.

That's love.

But it's expressed in preparation.

And so that's why we're in the Old Testament today, Isaiah 40.

And let's read Isaiah 40, 1 through 11.

As we do that, actually, we're only going to be focusing on the first five verses, but uh I do think it's important to read the first 11 verses of Isaiah 40.

Now remember this, when we talk about preparation of the coming Messiah in this time of advent, Isaiah was written about 700 years, 800 years before Jesus.

700, 800 years before Messiah actually came to earth, Isaiah was written.

And if we wanted to, if I was preaching an Easter message, we'd go to Isaiah 53 and see the suffering servant.

And it's a clear picture of Jesus.

Today we're in Isaiah 40 and we have a clearer picture of God's preparation.

Isaiah 41 to 11 says this.

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she's received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries, In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain will hill and hill be made low.

The uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain.

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

And a voice says, Cry, and I said, What shall I cry?

All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers and the flower fades, and when the breath of the Lord blows on it, surely the people are grass.

It's the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Get up, get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news.

Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news, lift it up and fear not.

Say to the cities of Judah, Behold, your God.

Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him.

Behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.

He will tend his flock like a shepherd, and he will gather the lambs in his arms.

He will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

Clearly a picture of the coming Messiah, and yet it is written 700 years, 800 years before Jesus.

As we look at that, there's three things I want to emphasize, I think God's emphasizing for us today out of the first five verses of chapter 40.

The first one is this God's love, the second week of Advent, God's love is spoken.

God's love is spoken in the midst of whatever desert you find yourself in, God speaks.

Let me just read the first two verses once again, just to kind of get our minds around this.

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

Now we hear that and we don't quite capture what's really going on because we don't know what's happened, chapters 1 to 39.

I wish that I could read chapters 1 to 39 before you today, but there'd be no one here when I looked up.

And so chapters 1 through 39 is basically this Israel is about to have their land taken from them.

And God's going to do it.

God has prepared the way, brought them out of Egypt, and set them up in a nation, and they have forgotten their God.

They have all of a sudden become apathetic in their worship to God.

They've now just brought their bulls and their lambs, and they've just said, it's Saturday, here's my herd.

And they go back about their business.

There's no heart in their worship at all.

It's all just mind, duty, and task.

And God is about to strip away their land because of it.

And so when you hear comfort, comfort to my people, it comes on the heels of God saying, Now you're going to lose everything to your worst and most hated enemy, the Babylonians.

That's literally the end of chapter 39.

When Hezekiah shows the Babylonians the treasury, the temple, all the gold, and then he gets faced with the truth of we're we're all going to be taken off now.

Because you've not been wise and you've let the enemy kind of survey our land, they're going to take us off into captivity in chapter 40.

Comfort.

In the midst of whatever trial that you and I find ourselves in, that just may be at the hands of God, God is saying, Comfort.

Comfort to my people says your God.

In the midst of the desert, God speaks.

And what's really important about this first verse is this whole idea of your God.

And that's something that we can just breeze on past because it's all throughout the Bible, but sometimes it's not there.

And it's usually when God is dispensing some judgment.

But here he's comforting and he's reminding them that I am your God and you are my people.

It is the language of covenant.

This language of covenant is kind of a weird word that when people use it, you just kind of go, I have no idea what that means, but it's a churchy word, so I'll run with it.

Covenant basically just means this: it's an unconditional, unrelenting pursuit and commitment inside of a relationship.

That's why marriage is not a contract.

Contract is you agree to terms, I'm gonna do this, you're gonna do this, everybody's gonna be happy, we're done.

And that's why marriages fall apart, because we get to the idea that it's a contract.

I've done this and you've done this, and when you don't do this, then I'm unhappy.

And a covenant is one way.

It's no matter what you do, I'm gonna stay with you.

No matter what you do, I'll remain committed.

Do whatever you want.

I will remain committed because you're mine.

You belong to me, and I belong to you.

It's the language found all throughout the Old Testament, but one particular passage I found intriguing was Leviticus.

Ha!

Who thought I'd find intrigue in Leviticus?

But there it was.

Leviticus 26.

It'll come up on your screen, 9 to 13 says this.

I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you.

This is God speaking to Israel, and will confirm my covenant with you.

There's that word.

Now look at what it means when God says, I'm going to confirm my covenant with you.

He says this You shall eat old store long kept.

You shall clear out the old to make way for the new.

I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.

And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves, and I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.

What an unbelievable statement.

But see, we can miss this so easily.

Without Egypt, there's no deliverance.

Without the cross, there's no forgiveness.

Without the desert, sometimes there's no voice of comfort.

I'm going to expand upon that uh here in a minute when we get to our second point.

But there's words of emphasis uh found in Leviticus 26.

Fruitful, multiply, confirm my covenant, make a way.

I will walk among you.

You'll be I'm your God, you'll be my people.

You will not be the slaves of Egypt, and I will make you walk upright.

And even in Leviticus, God's love is preparing for the Messiah.

I will walk among you.

That didn't happen in the Old Testament.

It happened in the New.

When Emmanuel, God with us, came and dwelt among us.

That's what we look forward to in this Advent season.

Have you ever wondered the reason for your trials?

Ever get in a situation where you're just like, okay, my house just, I mean, if you have you probably have family members or know somebody whose house burnt down in Bastrop, whose house burnt down up in Montgomery.

That's a pretty significant trial.

You get to Christmas and Thanksgiving wasn't all what it was cracked up to be, and you gotta do it again in December.

All right, here we go.

Kind of sounds trivial, but can really affect the soul if you let it.

Or even if you don't let it, it still might affect the soul.

We get into these trials and we kind of go, Lord, what are you up to?

I hope that's our response.

We go, Lord, I'm gonna seek you in this.

I have no idea what's going on.

But have you ever wondered that if the main purpose for our trial, our desert, our wilderness, is so that we might draw closer to God.

There's no other reason for it.

It's not to find relief.

Matter of fact, the New Testament is riddled with verses that we go through trials so that we might have hope.

That's what we ended on last week.

And now that we have this hope that will not disappoint us, it's only founded in a God of love that has our best interest in mind and has his glory at the top of everything.

When God speaks the loudest, his people are usually found in the desert.

That's found with Jesus.

When he's in the desert for 40 days, God usually speaks the loudest.

The enemy is sometimes there, but God's speaking.

You find that in even in Hosea, and I think this passage will come up on the board behind you.

Hosea says this therefore, behold, I will allure her.

Talking about Israel and God, and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.

Where does he bring her?

The wilderness.

Not to the mountaintop.

That's where we want to be all the time.

In this lush garden of provision.

When all that's taken away, and we just kind of go, Lord, what is going on?

Get to the wilderness, and that's where God's voice is.

Saying, Comfort.

Tender.

Comfort.

If God speaks there in that trial, in that point of waiting that we're in, why do we want to leave?

Why do we want to leave if we're in that point?

That's where God's going to speak.

It's because we want relief.

We want comfort, and yet God is saying, I will speak comfort to you in the wilderness.

The very thing that we want most when we're in those times of the desert is the very thing that God promises He'll speak while we're there.

Not only does God speak comfort, but he also prepares diligently.

Kind of brings me to my second point found in verses three and four.

God's love is preparation.

We've talked about this a little bit.

God's love is preparation.

We read verses three and four.

A voice cries in the wilderness.

Your translation might say, In the desert.

In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.

Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain and hill will be made low, and uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.

Who is the voice in verse 3?

Amen to that.

Thank you for someone in my in a class today.

Yes.

John the Baptist, seven to eight hundred years before John the Baptist is born, this voice crying out in the wilderness.

If you've got your Bible, turn to the book of Mark.

Now, most of the other Gospels begin with some sort of a birth narrative about Jesus.

Mark gets straight to the point.

Not that that's not straight to the point, but in a different direction.

He just kind of says, hey, we got only so much room to write here.

We're going to start right here at the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Mark 1:1.

Mark 1:1

Read just the first five verses.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

He's writing about Jesus.

And then he says this, and this should sound familiar, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Isaiah spoke of the people in the desert, a message of comfort.

John the Baptist speaks of repentance.

Both are motivated by God's love.

And we're going to talk about that R word, repentance.

In the wait, as we hope, we have got to find a way to be comforted by repentance.

The God of love and preparation calls his people to repent, that's for sure.

And when we hear the word repent, we're kind of in one of two camps usually.

One is we repent of everything.

This is where my three-year-old daughter is right now.

I'll like go into the house and say, Oh man, like I forgot something.

And she'll look at me and go, I'm sorry.

Everything that happens in the house, I'll spill something.

Oh man, I'm so sorry, Daddy.

We can get to the point where we repent of everything, or we're in the camp where we repent of nothing.

And that's where my one-year-old is because she can't talk.

She has no idea what's going on.

Repent of everything, repent of nothing.

And that's kind of where we are usually.

And I think somewhere in the middle is healthy and where God wants us to be.

Repentance isn't talked about.

I don't know when the last time I've heard a message on repentance, and I'm not sure you could either.

Repentance isn't talked about by much.

And it's not really a word or a discipline that we really talk about as far as in the Christian church.

But Jesus would say that this is something that we should be marked by.

And matter of fact, not just Jesus, but there were others that came after him.

Have you heard of a man named Martin Luther?

There was a guy named Martin Luther back in 1517.

Now I ask you that because last year for Halloween, Halloween is actually Reformation Day in the life of the church.

I dressed up, it was a Sunday last year, I dressed up as Martin Luther for Halloween, and it was totally lost.

Like nobody got it.

It was just a weird priest walking around with it was just weird and not good.

And me and my wife were laughing, and everybody else in my family was like, What?

What?

Why are you what?

And so it was kind of, I thought it was hilarious, but no one else got it, and so it's kind of just funny to me.

But this guy named Martin Luther, you see, the reason why you and I don't sit in a Catholic church today is because of a guy named Martin Luther.

The reason why we understand that it is by grace through faith that we have salvation and not by some seven-step sacraments of baptism and all these other things that we work towards salvation.

The whole reason why any of that has come into play for all of us is because of a man named Martin Luther who in 1517 nailed 95 theses or statements, almost accusations and questions against the Catholic Church, up on the castle church.

And when he nailed those theses up on the church, 95 statements of reformation that the world would be set on fire by.

When he did that, you know what the first one was?

Me either.

But it's going to come up for us.

He says this.

This is what Martin Luther said back in 1517.

He had an understanding of what Jesus meant.

He says this when our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said repent, he called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

That's his very first thing that he put up on the door that day.

And when he did, he started to set the world on fire.

And when he changed the world, it was out of a heart of repentance.

Prepare the way, John the Baptist would continue to declare.

The message out of Isaiah.

Prepare the way.

You see, you and I should be known for repentance.

But instead, what are Christians known for?

Looking at the sawdust in somebody else's eye and going, Oh, oh, there it is.

Yeah, I see the sin in you now.

Go away from me.

But instead, we got this hunking log right in our eye.

We're just kind of going, I see everybody else's sin.

Look, I'm good.

We're good.

No repentance.

We're known for the exact opposite of what Martin Luther, of what Jesus, of what John the Baptist, of what Isaiah, of what God would all say that this is what life should be marked for as believers.

Our preparation on this day where we celebrate God's love, and I think it is preparation, is repentance.

So you've got to ask God to prepare you.

This is not something that you and I can go, all right, Lord, I repent.

I'm good, we're good to go.

This is something that God's got to intervene in your life and come around you and inside of you and say, okay, with the heart.

Heart of David in Psalm 139, Lord, search my heart, and whatever way is offensive in me towards you, I need to know about it.

I need a John the Baptist in my life to say, hey, buddy, this isn't pretty.

I love you, but Jesus doesn't love this.

I need somebody to come face to face with me and show me that mirror.

And I'll hate every minute of it.

But that's what a mirror does when you see repentance, doing something wrong, forgiveness all in there.

Remember the first two verses.

You've been forgiven your iniquity, O Israel.

And then three and four come, which is John the Baptist, saying, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.

And I'm beginning.

I don't say I can't say that I've I've captured this whole thing in my Christian life, but I'm beginning to wake up on a daily basis saying, All right, day of repentance, here we go.

Which strips me away of whatever false authority I think I have or entitlement to how my day should go, and just say, Lord, have your way as you will.

That's difficult.

I don't say I succeed at that most days.

That's maybe a once-in-eight-day kind of a kind of a good day right there.

But it's getting better.

Prepare the way.

Not something that we've attained, but something that we should pray for.

God speaks love in the time of waiting.

He prepares through repentance in the midst of the wilderness.

And then finally, as we wait, God reveals.

In the midst of waiting, God reveals himself.

Let me ask you this.

When you're in the desert and you're in the wilderness, there's probably one or two things that you want food or water.

You just want help.

You want relief.

You want some kind of direction, maybe even to get out of there.

You want the solution to the problem.

And verse 5 that I'm going to read doesn't say, hey, Israel, I'm going to send you off into Babylon, but I'll take care of you.

You're going to come back.

He doesn't say that right away.

Instead, in verse 5, he says this, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.

And all flesh shall see it together, and the mouth for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

It's himself.

That's our great reward.

When we wait.

Is God Himself, as if there was anything better or bigger or more satisfying, it is Him.

It is His presence.

It is His glory.

And so when John the Baptist prepares the way for the one who would be with us, the great solution was God would just be here.

And then He would be sent to die.

A man, a God born, coming into this world, the strict purpose of dying for us.

Wow.

There's a lot of joy in that.

There's a lot of purpose in that.

There's a lot of preparation in that.

Unbelievable time of preparation.

But it's only after we've been blind in the darkness or famished in the desert that God reveals Himself.

And I say that because the Hebrew right there in verse 5, and we see it as and in the English.

It's actually then.

And the glory of God will only be revealed when all the other stuff happens, that the voice cries, that the way is prepared, that we've repented, and that everything has kind of been made level.

The mountains have come down and the valleys have been risen and everything's level now because we're all standing before a forgiving God, totally guilty of who we are, before a holy God loving us no matter what, because of his covenant.

That's a mysterious God.

An amazing God to trust in.

Perhaps you and I will suffer trials in this life, experience darkness, is to remind us that this world is not enough.

You and I won't be satisfied in this world ever.

Not by things, not by shopping lists, not by Oklahoma State putting a beat down on OU, although that was satisfying.

Not by watching another university suffer the pains of my alma mater, AM and U of H, not by that.

Although I'm kind of, ooh, Facebook, I got something witty to say.

Like that's gonna satisfy me.

None of that.

Not a business, not a promotion, not finding this great solution in life, none of that will satisfy like God's presence.

Like Emmanuel, like the one that we all are waiting for.

All of this is to bring us closer to Him.

The psalmist understood this.

In Psalm 73, 26, it says this.

This is a great one.

If you highlight in your in your Bible, you're sure to find it later.

But he says, My flesh and my heart may fail, but the God, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

My portion.

When I think portion, I think I'm going out to dinner, and my portion is going to satisfy me.

There is an element of satisfaction of my treasure, my everything.

My heart and my flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I just got back from a conference in October, and my class is for sure sick of hearing this name Larry Crabbe.

Actually, uh they were running through the slides here earlier in the day, and somebody was walking with me, and I said, Ooh, look, Larry Crab in our in our sermon today.

And he was like, Really?

And I was like, hey, I can't help it, okay?

He's an influential voice in how I see God and how I see the world.

And so he he I will share a little bit of Larry Crabbe with you here today.

Uh basically it's this he wrote a book called The Pressure's Off.

A great book about just, hey, it's not up to you.

A plus B does not always equal C to God.

And instead, why don't you just trust him?

And he, on the very first page of this book called The Pressure's Off, he kind of lays out the gauntlet of honesty and he says, hey guys or ladies or whoever's reading this, you're either this person or you're this person.

No in-between.

You can't pick an either, you can't pick, oh, I'm a little bit of A on most days, but B maybe on some days.

No, it's either A or B.

And this is his either-or.

You're either this type of person, you're the type of person that realizes that what you want most out of life is within reach.

And you're doing everything you can to get it.

Sounds pretty good.

But you know the or is coming.

Or you're the type of person who realizes what you want most is out of reach.

And you are trusting God for satisfaction.

And nothing less will do.

And here's the hard part not even his blessings.

Not even the things that make this life a little bit easier.

Not even an iPhone 4S or whatever they are these days.

I can't keep up.

That makes life easier with a little secretary that talks to you and all that.

That's easier.

That's a blessing, right?

None of that satisfies.

Except God, our portion.

In the midst of waiting, we can turn to a lot of different things.

Our family.

We can turn to TV, we can turn to whatever to satisfy what's going on in us.

But the reality is all of that dissatisfaction is totally out of reach.

There's nothing we could fill in here because it's got God's name on it.

And perhaps the first thing we need to repent of is trying to fill it with being busy.

Anybody else feel busy during this time?

Absolutely.

Feel unbelievably busy and hurried.

To sit still is just crazy talk.

But just to feel rest in the comforting, tender, but corrective voice of our God.

Comfort to my people.

We wait for you.

That perhaps is only prepared by repentance.

Which is just changing our mind about what we think about life, what we think about us, and changing our mind most importantly, God, what we think about you.

You, oh God, are a God of love and holiness and justice and all the big words that we could kind of think of to describe you.

You're all those things.

But you prepare.

You are forward thinking.

You have the end in mind of redemption and grace and forgiveness.

And that's why we experience the desert.

That's why your son experienced the cross.

Because you knew one day that there'd be a day of resurrection, day of new life, day of deliverance out of slavery and into a new nature.

And the Spirit would come and make our hearts alive for you.

And while we live in that reality, we also celebrate the season where we just expectantly wait and long for you to make every wrong right.

From the simplest little things to the most complex.

We hope and we wait as you prepare us.

Ross is going to sing over us and as you do, just ask the Lord to prepare your heart.

Perhaps it starts with repentance.

Perhaps it starts with just worship.

Just listing off the things of who God is.

Whatever the Lord's saying to you, this is the time to sit still.

Everything you've knows about to change when a baby saves a day.

So rise up, all you orphan.

Everything you know's about to change when a baby takes a day.

Oh, it's not how we expected him to come.

It's surprising and confound the wisest ones, but to every searching sinner and every stain, what a glory stay, hallelujah, hallelujah, what a day.

So rise up all you orphans, you got a brand new family.

Rise up all you sinners, it's gonna chase your guilt away.

Everything you've ever known tonight is gonna change to rise up, all you fighters.

It's time to love your enemy and all your needs, victory now for peace, every thief and every liar, and every king in the slaves.

The baby saves a day, the baby saves a day.

He promises peace to his people, his saints.

But let them not return to folly.

Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.

Love and faithfulness meet together.

Righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven.

The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest.

Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.

The word of the Lord.

Righteousness goes before us today.

Righteousness has come.

And not only that, righteousness has been given to all those who would believe.

In the midst of uncertainty and of waiting, we trust.

Matter of fact, knowing you, it probably won't.

But if we trust, if we hope, if we prepare, we'll be sure to find you.

And so, God, prepare us during the wait.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Would you guys stand to your feet with me and hold your hands out like this?

Even during a time of waiting, of desert, of wilderness, of trial, you're a blessed people.

God remains committed to you no matter what.

Because that's in his nature.

Prepare now for his coming.

You'll prepare for your family and prepare for him.

Go now and live likewise in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.