Make Straight the Way

Good afternoon, everyone! Nice to see everyone who's here today. Hello to everyone who's watching on screens. Don't get too comfortable on your couch at home.

Hope everyone had a nice week. It's a little chilly, but it's nice to see the sun out there today.

It always spruces things up. Looking forward to maybe going out for a bit of a walk and enjoying some of the sunshine this afternoon. Is anyone familiar with an earworm? I'm not talking about a creature from the Mandalorian or from Star Trek, but I saw Art nodding immediately. People refer to a song that gets stuck in your head as an earworm. If any of you had that, where you just, day after day after day, you just keep repeating this song. Are any of you familiar with the commercial on the radio, the jingle for cars for kids? That one drives me absolutely insane. In fact, and it just sticks in my head. It's a well-written jingle because if I hear it once, it just kind of keeps going through my head day after day after day. So actually, when I hear that commercial come out on the radio, I immediately grab the dial and turn it before the words start because it just kind of sticks in there and I can't get rid of it. Other things stick in my mind sometimes, too, and maybe you have this happen as well. Do you have certain scriptural passages that kind of stick in your head? Maybe because you just, you see them and you sort of scratch your head and think, there's got to be something else there. I'm not sure I quite get it, and it just sticks there in the back of your head. I'd like to spend a few minutes today during this message talking about one of those for me. It's one that I just sort of mentally bookmarked. I can actually remember hearing and reading this scripture from the time I was a kid and just kind of trying to figure out exactly what it meant before running into some things written up on it over the last couple of weeks that I wanted to share with you today. If you want to turn there, it's Isaiah 40, and we'll read verses 3 and 4 of Isaiah 40. It's a relatively familiar scripture, probably most of you will remember having heard it at some point in time. Isaiah 40, starting in verse 3, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill brought low, the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places smooth. And we probably heard different sermons and messages that incorporate this scripture, but somehow, just like, you know, that jingle, that earworm, it's always sort of stuck out in my head as I've been trying to think through what all of this really means. Why is there a voice crying out in the wilderness?

There's a voice crying out and people want to pay attention to why wouldn't you go in the city and have the voice cry out in the city where people can hear it? Kind of like that old conundrum of the tree falls and there's no one there to hear it. Does it actually make any sound? Why a voice out in the wilderness? Why do we need a highway in the desert? Nobody goes out in the desert anyways. So what's the point of going out in the desert and building a highway out there where there aren't any people? And then mountains. I've lived probably 15 years of my life in different places where they're mountains, and they're beautiful. They're gorgeous. And I've heard some messages implying that maybe in the kingdom all the mountains will be lowered, all the valleys will be raised up, the earth will just be flat, because then we can support more people and we can grow more crops and things. I've just had a hard time with that thought that the majesty of the mountains and just the beauty of it would be something that would be totally destroyed.

And so for all these reasons, this verse is always just kind of stuck in my head, and I've sort of bookmarked it back there and thought, well, what does this really mean? How come it's written in there? What are we supposed to learn from it? And so for better or worse, I've spent a little time digging into it in the last week or so and wanted to share with you some of the things that I found. Hopefully it'll be interesting so you can stay awake, even if you're sitting back on your couch today, and also give you a few things to ponder. So today I want to go through a bit of a journey, starting with this verse in Isaiah. Understand it a little bit more in historical and literary context. See how it was a prophecy that was actually fulfilled in the New Testament, and also explore a little bit of the meaning of this passage for our lives today.

And know we're not all going to become construction workers building highways through the desert.

If you like titles, I've titled this sermon, Make Straight the Way. Make Straight the Way.

So the first part of this message, let's just focus a little bit more on the historical and cultural context, because it can help us to learn a lot more. And you know, something we often hear talked about, and you've probably gotten in discussions with people about this from time to time, is does cultural context matter in the Bible? How would you answer that if somebody asked you? Does it matter? Now, it depends might be the right answer to that, because I think we know that the truths that are written in the Bible, the words that are there transcend time, they transcend culture. The Bible continues to be a best-selling book long, long after it was written, and it's because it does include eternal truths and things that are true for people who live in any culture at any time. At the same time, we have to recognize how was the Bible written?

Remember when Moses went up on Mount Sinai, God actually etched the Ten Commandments into the stone, says, with his finger. But the rest of the Bible wasn't written that way. It wasn't delivered as a completed package written by the hand of God. In fact, it was written by human beings.

Human beings who we know were inspired by God, but who lived in certain cultural contexts.

And they used things, they referred to things, that happened in their culture as they were writing things down. We turned to some scriptures in Revelation during the sermonette today, and when we look at some of the things that are described in some of the accounts in Revelation, it's pretty easy to recognize the fact that words didn't exist for John as he was writing Revelation to describe some of the things that he saw. There are things talking about flying things with hair like women's hair and stings like scorpions.

Now, in the vocabulary that we have today, if indeed, as many people would think, he was brought in vision to a battle scene that would be in some modern time including machinery like we have today, airplanes and helicopters. See, we already have ways to describe things that John would have had no ability to describe at that point in time. A missile, perhaps, mounted on the wing of an airplane that he sees fired.

How do you describe that when you're living in the first century AD? So you can see immediately how the culture that people live in, what they experienced, what they knew around them, would inform the way that they wrote, not to mention the language that they would use, and the way that they would form sentences, paragraphs, ideas, and bring them forward. So understanding the cultural context of things that people wrote about at the time that the Bible was written, while it's not essential to understand the Word of God, it can add additional meaning. It can add additional understanding as we go through some of these things that are written and try to understand even more broadly and perhaps more deeply how they can apply to our lives.

This verse is one example of this. I'd like to read to you a passage from one commentary, and it's by far not the only commentary that brings out some of these things about Isaiah 40 verses 3 and 4, but I'll read an excerpt from Barnes' notes on the Bible, which I found incredibly interesting. Hopefully you will as well. It says here that the idea in Isaiah 4 verses 3 and 4 is taken from the practice of Eastern monarchs, who whenever they entered on a journey or an expedition, especially through a barren and unfrequented or inhospitable country, sent harbingers or heralds before them to prepare the way.

So if there was a king and he was going to go to a far country or queen to visit some of her lands, she would send out emissaries or messengers ahead of him or her, especially if it was going to be going through a wilderness, a desert, a way that wasn't traveled very often. To do this, it goes on, it was necessary for them to provide supplies, to make bridges or find fording places over the streams, to level hills and construct causeways over valleys, or fill them up, and to make a way through the forest which might lie in their intended line of march.

This was necessary because these contemplated expeditions often involved necessity of marching through countries where there were no public highways that would afford facilities for the passage of an army. Thus the historian Arians says of Alexander, he now proceeded to the river Indus and the army that is part of the army, or an army sufficient for the purpose of going before, which made a way for him, for otherwise there would have been no mode of passing through that region.

When a great great prince in the east, says Paxton, sets out on a journey, it's usual to send a party of men before him to clear the way. That kind of makes sense, doesn't it? You're living, again, you have to transport ourselves back. There were trade routes, there were roads that people would travel, but there were a lot of places that people wouldn't normally travel in between different locations.

And so if, especially a monarch, was going to travel to a place that's not as broadly traveled and would be off-roading it, essentially, they'd send these people ahead of them. Because you could imagine you've got the king or queen, you've got an army around them, and they're not going to spend days slashing their way through underbrush or trying to go up mountains and down through valleys and forward streams where they've never been before when they've got their king or queen with them.

So it stands to reason. You'd take these people, you'd send them ahead of time, you'd send them with provisions, you'd send them with a smaller force of people, and they'd prepare a road. They'd make a way that would be flat, more easily traveled so the monarch would have comfort, and be able to make it through without having to take extra time to do it. Going on in Barnes' commentary, the state of those countries in every age where roads are almost unknown and from want of cultivation in many places overgrown with brambles and other thorny plants, which renders traveling, especially with a large retinue, in-im-comodius, there's a good word.

This was written a few years ago, we don't really use the word in-comodius anymore, requires this precaution. The emperor of Hindustan, in his progress through his dominions, as described in the narrative of Sir Thomas Roe's embassy to the court of Delhi, was preceded by a very great company, sent before him to cut up the trees and bushes, to level and smooth the road, and prepare their place of encampment. We shall be able, perhaps, to form a more clear and precise idea from the account which Diodorus gives of the marches of Semiramis, the celebrated braided queen of Babylon, into Media and Persia. In her march to Ekpatana, says the historian, she came to the Zarsian mountain which extended many furlongs, and being full of craggy precipices and deep hollows, it could not be passed without taking a great compass.

Being therefore desirous of leaving an everlasting memorial of herself, as well as of shortening the way, she ordered the precipices to be digged down and the hollows to be filled up. And at a great expense, she made a shorter and more expeditious road, which to this day is called from her the road of Semiramis. Afterward, she went into Persia and all the other countries of Asia subjected to her dominion, and wherever she went, she ordered the mountains and the precipices to be leveled, raised causeways in the plain country, and at a great expense, made the ways passable.

So what does this tell us now a little bit differently as we read Isaiah 40 verses 3 and 4, as we understand what the custom was at this day and time, which was when a monarch was going to go out, when the ruler was going to go, they would send a group of people ahead. They would go out into the wilderness areas, the impassable places, the unknown places perhaps, and they would have them prepare the road so that as that ruler was going out, they could pass on a flat road, a clear road. There would be no guesswork about where you would cross the stream.

I don't know if you've read any of the old accounts, I think sometimes, of Lewis and Clark, when they made their way across the country, and they'd get on a river and they'd start hearing this roaring noise, and they'd realize, I'd better get to the bank really fast and walk ahead to see if there's rapids or a waterfall that we're going to go over. Now, when you've got the ruler traveling with you, you don't want to chance those things. They scouted these things ahead to see what it was that was going on.

So what's being talked about here in Isaiah is something that would have been common and known practice at that point in time. The fact that if a ruler is going to travel, they're going to have a way prepared for them by someone. Now, before we go back to this verse, we're going to do one more thing if you'll forgive me for being a geek, and we'll take a brief grammar detour. So, how we use commas can make a really big difference in our language.

I think we know that. I'm going to give you a three-word sentence. Let's eat comma, grandma, exclamation mark. Now, when we read that sentence, we know it means, let's eat, grandma! It's time for dinner. Now, let's take the comma out of that sentence for a minute. Let's eat grandma!

Now, that's a little bit jarring. We're not going to dwell on that. But it means something really different depending on what punctuation you have in there. How a sentence is constructed, and even a small difference in how we do that can make a huge difference in how we understand what we read.

Let's also understand one other thing, and that is that there are different literary and poetic methods that are used in the Bible. One of them is something that's called parallelism. I'll mention what it means, and I'll read an example or two, and I think you'll get it immediately because we've read it so many times, but we don't always think about it. Parallelism is a literary device that has parts of writing that are grammatically similar. So, it creates an emphasis on ideas that get repeated and can also connect ideas. So, in poetry, parallelism can add in the meter the memorability and efficient connection of ideas. So, when you think about songs that we might sing, it helps us. Rhymes, perhaps, that we learn can help us to remember things. I know people have studied for tests by taking things that they need to study and working them into songs because they can remember them that way. Other people, there was a method when I was in college, and they would say, attach ideas to things in your room, and then when you're in the test, you can visualize your room and you can think, well, my nightstand means this, the mirror means that, the carpet means this, and I know some friends who studied and remembered things for tests that way as well. So, all of these are ways that we can better absorb and understand and remember things that we read. Britannica Online says that synonymous parallelism involves the repetition in the second part of what has already been expressed in the first while simply varying the words. So, we'll skip all the rest of the definitions, and let's look at an example, and we'll take an example out of Proverbs. I forgot to write down the chapter. I think it's Proverbs 9. It's verses 10 through 12, and this is a group of parallelisms, and I think you'll recognize them immediately in the fact that you've got two sentences in each one of these that mirror each other. Verse 10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. So, you've got the same idea being repeated twice in slightly different ways. Verse 11, by me your days will be multiplied, and years of life will be added to you. And in verse 12, if you are wise, you are wise for yourself, and if you scoff, you will bear it alone. And so, if you read through Proverbs especially, because it's a book that's written in a poetic style, you'll see a lot of this in there. You'll see some of these literary devices, and they don't always translate as well into English as what they might have meant in the Hebrew, but it helps to understand how some of these devices are used within the Bible in order to sometimes cement an idea by repetition, or to make it more clear in saying it in a couple of different ways. So let's go back with all these things in the background to Isaiah 40 verses 3 and 4, and we'll read it again. First of all, just in New King James version, again it says, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert the highway for our God, a highway for our God. So we know now, based on the things that we see historically and what would have been done back in those times, we understand that when a ruler is traveling there would be a need to go out ahead of that ruler and to make a space, to build a highway, to lower mountains maybe, to raise valleys so that you had a smooth course of travel for this ruler that would go across. And now let's read this in a different translation. I chose the New American Standard Bible, and we think about parallelism.

This is actually a parallelism where when we move the punctuation, the meaning changes at least slightly. The New American Standard Bible and many other translations renders it this way.

The voice of one calling out, clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. So it's not saying there's some voice out there crying in the wilderness where nobody can hear it, but what it's saying is there's a voice crying out. Make a way for God in the wilderness. Build a path for Him through the desert.

Okay, that brings a different meaning to what it is that's being said, doesn't it?

As we understand it. So let's move on, and as we finish this section, in looking more closely, I hope we've seen at some of the cultural references and the practices that people would have known at that time, we can draw a different meaning, maybe subtle, but a different meaning for what it is that's written here in the passage. And we can understand what it was that was being pointed out here, the passage that was being made for rulers, what's being talked about.

And in the parallelism that's there, it further shows how grammatically it's not a voice crying out in the wilderness, it's a voice crying out to make a road in the wilderness, to make a path through the deserts. This passage, like many others, makes additional appearances in the Bible.

Can you think of where this verse is used in the New Testament?

This was actually a prophecy. Any thoughts? Maybe jot a note to yourself or make a mental note if you can think of where this was. This actually was not a messianic prophecy. I guess you could say in some ways it was. It's foretelling things that happened before Jesus Christ began his ministry. Turn to Mark 1 with me, if you would. Most of the many of the scriptures that are in the Old Testament then show up again in the New or Messianic prophecies. This is certainly related to the coming of Jesus Christ, but directly refers to John the Baptist. If you recall, when he was asked by the religious rulers of his day who he was, they came to check him out when he was out there in the wilderness, baptizing people. They came to try to understand what in the world it was he was doing and who he claimed to be. And that's when he referred back to this verse.

We'll read the account in Mark 1. There's also an account in the latter part of John 1.

That's a little bit shorter that says essentially the same thing. Mark 1 verses 1 through 5.

This is the very beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, and make his path straight. Now, interestingly, as I looked in all the different versions and translations of the Bible, it doesn't give an alternate way to view the voice crying out, and then attaching the wilderness to preparing the way of the Lord. It's pretty clear what it meant in Hebrew. Perhaps it's the fact that here it was written in Greek, but the fact that we know he was quoting Isaiah. Many commentators would say that all the things that I was just telling you about how Isaiah 40 verse 3 and 4 is to be constructed in those couple of verses is correct. Then verse 4, John came baptizing the wilderness and preaching a baptism or repentance for the remission of sins.

In verse 5, then all the land of Judea and those from Jerusalem went out to him, and all were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.

I'm going to read a short passage from our ancient paths.org. There are a number of different websites and online commentaries I was looking at which echo different elements of this same thing.

Here they write, John and the prophet Isaiah were not calling out in the wilderness for someone to make the paths straight. They were calling out for people to make a path for Jesus in the wilderness, to prepare for him a highway in the wilderness. We are to prepare in the wilderness a place for the king to pass through. As the harbinger or the person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another of Messiah as first coming, John the Baptist was proclaiming with a loud voice, calling out to those who would come to level and prepare the roads in the desert by which the Messiah was about to march. You see, the first century congregation or church was dry and in the desert spiritually. John was calling out to prepare for Messiah's coming. The first step in making paths straight for the coming of the Messiah, repentance. Repentance always comes first, and after that discipleship is necessary. A path for him in the wilderness preparing a highway for Jesus Christ and his people to pass behind him. A wilderness preparation, but a spiritual preparation.

So as we see in a lot of these in the Old Testament, they have a physical fulfillment, but they also have a spiritual fulfillment to them. And exactly as discussed in the context of Isaiah, John is pointing out here in the beginning of Mark, to be there was to be a forerunner. He was to come first, and he had a ministry of, depending on who you read, two to three before Jesus Christ came, like preparation. It's a very long time when you think about it. Jesus Christ's ministry is understood to be three and a half. John's ministry was just a little bit less than what Jesus Christ had, with his whole job being to prepare that in a spiritual desert, if you will.

The one cent in this case was John, and he was claiming in Mark and in the Gospel of John.

What about the wilderness? A little bit in what I read there, the wilderness he was sent into was first century Judea, and it was an area that was a spiritual wilderness. There was another article or commentary that I read on this to point out something I hadn't really thought about, and that was the fact that there hadn't been any prophetic utterance in Israel for years before the time it came. You could say there were a few minor things that weren't public, like predicting Jesus Christ shortly before the time that he would be born, but there was significant prophetic proclamation during several centuries before the time that Jesus Christ came, and it had been in terms of God's inspiration. Even in the minds of many of the people that lived in time, they thought that perhaps the inspiration of God and God speaking to him, and working perhaps even with him, kind of makes you think of some of the predictions about inventions that happened back when they were first made, when people just did it when the PC was invented, and people said, I can't see how they would market for more than a year.

Because you live in this moment, you see, around, you can't conceive of anything being different than that. And so you were living at a point in time here, and kind, set up the idea of direct interaction between God and his people several centuries old. Jesus laid this out in Matthew 23, and he was weeping for Jerusalem. If you'll look there, Matthew 23 verses 37 through 39.

Again, he's talking about the condition, the wilderness, the desert, spiritually speaking, that he was coming into. Matthew 23 verses 37 through 39.

Here Jesus says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I want to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you are not willing. See, your house is left to you desolate, for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Here Jesus Christ was commenting on what the state was of people there, the people that he came to preach to, their viewpoint towards God and their understanding, and he talked about being desolate.

And so that was the wasteland in the desert that John first came into to prepare a way for Jesus Christ. So we read in that short snippet again that I read to you that repentance was the way, as it is today, for people to understand Jesus Christ, to be able to receive God's Spirit, to be converted. And that was what John was preaching. He was preaching a need for repentance and for baptism. And again, cultural context comes into play. Now for myself, having grown up in the church, the idea of being baptized is something that's always been there in the back of my mind.

It's just it's something that people do. And so when I thought about the ministry of John the Baptist, I thought, okay, you know, he's going out there and he's baptizing people. That's what people do when they accept God. But I didn't really think as carefully until actually I was preparing for this about how revolutionary that would have been at that point in time. Why is it that I say that?

If we put ourselves again into the context of that time, if you were a Jew living at the time of John the Baptist, what did you think? You were one of God's chosen people. There was a covenant made with Abraham. Through circumcision, you were one of the chosen of God. By definition, as a Jew, why would you have to be baptized? You were already accepted of God. You'd been born into it.

Who was baptized at that point in time? There's another study guide that I want to just read a couple paragraphs from that talks a bit about baptism at that point in time. Baptism, it says here, was already practiced in the Jewish community in the form of ceremonial immersions, but typically it was only among Gentiles who wished to become Jews. For a Jew in John's day to submit to baptism was essentially to say, I confess that I am as far away from God as a Gentile and I need to get right with him. This was a real work of the Holy Spirit. Not really something that I've thought of before, but it makes a lot of sense. Unless you, there was a level of understanding that had to go to these people in order for them to realize, I need to take a step of being baptized even before Jesus Christ came on the scene. And what John was doing as that forerunner in preparing the ground was helping to build an understanding, at least in part of this populace that Jesus Christ was going to come out to and talk with, that there is such a thing of sin.

And the fact that you were born physically into a certain group of people was not going to guarantee acceptance by God. And in fact, there was a step that was going to have to be taken. Repentance signified through baptism in order to actually come fully to God through Jesus Christ.

This guy goes on saying John's baptism might have been related to the Jewish practice of baptizing gentile converts or to some of the ceremonial washings practiced by the Jews of that day. Though it may have some links, at the same time it was unique, so unique that John simply became known as the Baptizer. If a lot of people had been doing what John did, it wouldn't be a unique title. Also, a good point, one that I hadn't really thought of so much. That's why he's known as John the Baptist or John the Baptizer, because it was such a unique and groundbreaking really thing that he was doing at that point in time for those people. Just like today, you know, we have plenty of people named Smith, and I guess probably back in the day they were blacksmiths, but nowadays the name doesn't really mean anything. You wouldn't point to somebody and say, hey, she's the one who has a car. It's pretty meaningless. Everyone, just about everyone, has a car. It's a very common thing that we see around. John was the only one that was out there baptized, and that's why he became known as that. It was such a unique and unusual thing to be happening at that point in time. So what does this analogy now tell us about our own Christian lives?

We saw what these verses in Isaiah mean when they're understood and thought about in the cultural and grammatical context where they would have been written, and how it's preparing away for a ruler. We see how John fulfilled that when he came before Jesus Christ, most importantly talking about baptism and repentance in preparing people to understand that Jesus Christ was coming, and there was a different relationship with God that he was bringing, one where God would actually dwell in them through the Holy Spirit and not just choose people through physical lineage for physical blessings. Let's go through a few of these elements that we talked about in the balance of this message and just look at them in the context of our spiritual lives that we live and how it informs the things that we do and the way that we live our lives. First of all, thinking about one who is sent. We saw that John the Baptist was one who was very clearly sent before God in order to make a place for him. And like the four runners set before an ancient king, we're also representatives of a different kingdom and living here for a specific purpose. We heard Glenn talk about some of those things in the sermonette earlier. In fact, we've got a different understanding, as Mr. Thomas was saying in the announcements as well. It's more and more in contrast from the world around us as time goes on. Turn with me, if you want, to Matthew 5 verses 14 through 16.

We won't... I'll read this passage briefly. Matthew 5 verses 14 through 16.

Actually, we'll start in verse 13. A very familiar passage, I think, to most people in the sermon of the Mount. Verse 13, you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It's then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. You are the light of the world, a city that is set on a hill, cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

It's that last part, as I've talked about in the past in messages, that I think is incredibly important and that we have to understand as well in this context, because we are sent out in front.

We use the term firstfruits sometimes, especially as we get near the Feast of Pentecost and think about a small harvest of people that God is calling today. But it's for a purpose. It's not only to receive eternal life, to receive sonship in God's family for us, but it's also to be forerunners that are going out there as ones sent into this world, to be salt, to be light. And as Jesus points out here in the Sermon on the Mount for a specific reason, that as they see those examples, as they see in an increasingly darkened world, the light of Christian people shining, that they might glorify God. I heard an interesting analogy. A friend of mine told me once as a way to think about our lives.

He said, you know, if you were dragged into court and you were accused of being a Christian and your neighbors and your co-workers were sent in to testify against you, would you be convicted?

That's a great way to think about it, isn't it? If your neighbor came into court, they said, you, Andy Lee, are being accused of being a Christian. We're going to call your neighbor in. We're going to call the person who sits the cube next to you in, and they're going to testify.

About what they've seen of you, and based on what they say, we will determine whether or not you are a Christian. How would we stand up? That's what God is saying as a forerunner, as salt, as light.

The fact that we're being sent into this world to be something different, to represent something other than what we have in the world around us. Turn with me, if you will, to John 17, verses 15 through 18. John 17, 15 through 18. It's a scripture I've used numerous times before, and one that I think about quite a lot as well. Because, you know, we often look at the world around us and say, well, why in the world am I here? All I want to do is get out of here. I want life to be different. John 17, verses 15 through 18. This is Jesus Christ's prayer right before he was to be taken and ultimately crucified. He says in verse 15, I don't pray that you should take them out of the world, talking about us, the people who would come afterwards, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They're not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. Now, of course, this was met first and foremost for his disciples, who were right there with them, but also for those who would come after, and as Jesus Christ said, do greater things than he had done. And so what it tells us is that with forethought, very specifically, we were sent out into this world, as we read about in Matthew 5 for a purpose, as we think back on this analogy of preparing a way through the wilderness, making a straight road through the desert, a specific purpose for being sent out. And that purpose is to prepare a way for God. And the thing that we have to think about as we consider our lives is, what are we doing that helps to prepare the way for God in the lives of other people? Are we opening up a path so that as God reveals himself to someone, they will have a straighter road, an easier time, less bumps coming to a relationship with God? Or are we setting up obstacles and throwing boulders in the way, perhaps building up brambles and barriers so that when they come to God, they find out that I was a Christian? Say, well, I'm not so sure I want to have a part of that.

Something we have to think about as we reflect on our lives. Let's look secondarily at the wilderness. So looking at another element of this analogy in Isaiah 40 verses 3 and 4, and think about that as well. And there are probably two dimensions, really, that we can think about this in. Number one, the wilderness within ourselves. Think about our own selves as human beings. Then secondly, the wilderness in terms of the world that we're living in today.

When we think about our own lives, it's pretty clear from what's written in the Bible that without God's Holy Spirit, our lives are empty like a desert as well, needing that additional element of God's Holy Spirit in order to be full. We won't turn there, but in Romans 8 verse 7, we read that the carnal mind is enmity against God. It means that the human mind of itself, without the involvement of God's Holy Spirit, is a wilderness. It's a desert in terms of anything coming out of it that's going to have eternal good. There's certainly things that we can do in this world. There are things that human beings can do in the lives of those around them out of sincerity, wanting to help other people. But in terms of building something that can bring salvation, that can bring forgiveness from sins, redemption, that doesn't come out of the human mind. It doesn't come out of the human condition. The human condition is a desert with regard to those things. Paul talks further about it in Romans 7, where he talks about all the things that he wants to do. He finds this law that works within himself that actually the things that he wishes he wasn't doing in his life is what he ends up doing. At the same time that the Spirit of God is warring with that physical will that's within him, as he ends up too often following that physical will rather than following the lead of the Holy Spirit. And so one way to think about the desert, making a way in the wilderness, is the way that God's Holy Spirit is working within us, as it's clearing those obstacles and making more of a road within our hearts and our minds as we become more and more in the image of Jesus Christ. The second way we can think about it is the world that's around us. And as we talked about the wilderness that's out there, turn with me if you will to 1 John 2 verses 15 and 16. 1 John 2 verses 15 and 16. I think this is really the way to think about it is where do lasting solutions for the human condition, the sinful human condition come from? There are a lot of solutions that can be driven and are driven through human means.

As much as we might complain about the situation that our country is in, that our culture is in today, the fact is we live in a time, physically speaking, where lifespans are long, health is better than it has been in a long time, as terrible as things like inequality are, if you look statistically, inequality is actually at an ebb across most of the world. It's amazing.

I was in a seminar at work a couple of weeks ago and there's a quiz and I can't repeat all the questions for you because I don't remember them offhand, but it goes through all of these indicators in terms of health, in terms of income disparity, in terms of access to water, and is it better or worse than it was 10 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago? And the fact is that physically we are, despite all of the things that we see in here, better off statistically than we have been in a long time. But when we look at the world through a different lens, in terms of just the spirit that's there, where we are spiritually as humans, in the way that we act with one another, the way that we interact with each other, the way that we try to solve problems, the way that we end up not being able to solve problems, I think we could argue that we're in a much more difficult place, and that's because those lasting struggles that go right down to the depth of what we are as human beings that needs to change to be converted, there's not a human solution to that. We're solving some of the physical human problems that we can solve as human beings, but as we continue to reject God as society as a whole, we can't find those more eternal answers in terms of how we relate with each other. And that's why 1 John 2 verses 15 and 16 is written. And sometimes it's difficult because we can see some of the good things that are out there that happen in the world. We can see technology and all these other developments and what they bring, but at its heart, in terms of solving the eternal problems of the human condition, 1 John 2 verses 15 and 16, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. So what it's telling us is the things that sit deep within us, that govern the way that we act towards one another, whether or not we can get along with one another, how it is that we govern our affairs with one another, the world is not the way. And we can't love the way the world does these things because there's a different way, one that we're called out to be a forerunner from, and the world that's around us in terms of solutions for those enduring problems is a wilderness. So let's go down last then to this third element and look at a straight highway. Again, verse in Isaiah talks about making a highway, making a straight path, lowering the mountains, raising the valleys. Again, we can look at this in terms of things happening to us internally, and also what we're meant to accomplish in the world around us. Now I can recall actually when the U.S. State Highway System was just being finished. I think it was Eisenhower who kicked off the interstate highway system after World War II.

And there was one particular section of it that I always found really interesting. When I lived in California as a college student, we would go every winter and we'd take a drive out to Colorado and we'd go skiing in Colorado. And there's a passage that you would drive through that was at that time under construction. It was finished in the early 90s through Glenwood Canyon. I don't know if any of you have ever driven through or seen Glenwood Canyon. It's a beautiful stretch. It's about 12 and a half miles long, and a river has cut this deep gorge through the rocks, and it just meanders back and forth. And before they finished the interstate, there was a two-lane highway there.

So if you get stuck behind a delivery truck or something, you would for 12 and a half miles be traveling 35 to 40 miles per hour, you know, getting frustrated, trying not to swear under your breath, because you couldn't pass. And these roads that were winding back and forth, it was a two-lane road. And so one of the last elements of the interstate highway system was to complete Glenwood Canyon. It took 11 years to build. I didn't write the number down, but it was some 400 and some million dollars, I think it was, to build. This was back in the late 80s into the early 90s. So incredibly complex thing to build. It includes 40 bridges, including many tunnels and even cantilevered lanes to weave between the soaring cliffs of this gorge in Glenwood Canyon. And it's designed to flow with the natural geography of the canyon. So if you ever get to Colorado, I highly recommend driving through Glenwood Canyon, because it's just a breathtaking drive. But think about this. The time, the expense, the care that's taken to build a road through a place like that. You know, we compare that to John the Baptist and his ministry. Nearly the length of time for Jesus Christ. The careful preparation that God built into his plan so that when Jesus Christ came, everything would be built and curved and contoured to fit right so that Jesus Christ could accomplish his ministry.

And likewise, that's happening in our lives. Whether we look at it internally and the things that are happening within us. We'll talk about that in a moment. Or if we think about it externally.

Because just as God was working with the world before the coming of Jesus Christ, God is working with the world before the second coming of his Son. And make no doubt about it, the preparations are just as intricate, and they are taking place whether we can see them or not.

And that's something that we have to have faith in as it's going on. Now, when we think about this internally, again, as I was reflecting, it's really interesting how many phrases we have in our lives that kind of refer to this idea of making a straight road. We talk about people needing to straighten up their act. We talk about people who aren't honest. What are they? They're crooked.

Right? They're not straight in the way they deal with you. We talk about the inefficiency of running around in circles. We talk about finding the shortest path from point A to point B.

We talk about paving the way in order to get something done. That's kind of interesting to me. I have no idea what all these phrases connect to, but it's really interesting to me how it closely connects this idea of making this straight road. And as I reflected on this building, too, of a highway, the other thing I thought about was what I used to love when I was a little kid was these road graders and earth movers, and you'd see them out there and how they could spend. We've got actually a new development going in behind where we are, and probably since springtime, they've just been grading. They're just earth movers out there. They're moving dirt. They're flattening out the lots so you can build houses. They're building culverts. They're putting in water. All of this preparation is going on before the building takes place. And then you think about something like building a tunnel so you can take I-70 through Glenwood Canyon. You've got blasting that has to be done. You have grading that has to be done. You have bridges that have to be built.

You have all of these things happening. And to me, it's useful to think about that when we look at our own lives, because God is building a pathway through us directly to our hearts. And sometimes it involves blasting. The dynamite goes off. We can all probably think about that in our lives, when something just suddenly happens. The dynamite went off. And what is it that's happening? God's trying to blast something out of the way in our lives. Other times, maybe it's just this slow process of grading. You know, as those earth movers go through and they smooth out the hill, they take that earth and they distribute it to a low place to flatten everything out and smooth it and make it exactly how it is. I think it's an interesting analogy just to spend some time on as we ponder our own lives and the things happening in our lives and how God works in them.

Turn with me, if you will, to James 1. I think it brings a little more context to what we read in James 1 verses 2 and 2 through 4.

Here James says, James 1 starting in verse 2, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.

Talk about a scripture that sticks in the back of your mind. You're wondering, how in the world does that make sense? Verse 3, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, but let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Of course, we know, we talked about before, perfect here means whole, complete, fully furnished, not perfection in terms of you're never going to do anything wrong again because we're still human. But just like grading a road, this is what the trials are for in our lives. Now imagine if you're making a road, you've got two crews out there. You've got a crew working at the day, you've got a crew working the night time, you're building Glenwood Canyon, and you send in the crew with the dynamite and they blast out the rock during the day. What does the night crew come in? Night crew comes in with big tubs full of super glue and they start taking those shards of rock and they pour super glue all over them and they start shoving them back into this tunnel that's been blasted. Now that's probably a good allegory for my life and the things that I do. As trials and things happen in my life and what do I do?

I try to turn everything back into what it was before, before the blast went off.

Instead of thinking about what is it that God's trying to blast away? What is it that he's trying to create? What is it that he's trying to grade in our lives so God's Spirit can move on a more straight road so Jesus Christ can live within us? It's a good thing to think about as we're considering our trials, how these straight roads are being made within our lives. And then lastly, externally. We won't turn there, but 2 Corinthians 5 verse 20 says that we are ambassadors for Jesus Christ. As though God was imploring people through us to be reconciled to God. So again, making those straight roads, laying a foundation, giving an example, having an interaction with other people that they attach to our Christian belief, so that as they come and have the opportunity to know God, the fact that they knew us will facilitate that relationship with God, will help to smooth out some hills, perhaps. It's not our job most of the time to get out the dynamite. We leave the blasting to God through the Holy Spirit. But grading those roads smooth, filling in some of those nooks and crannies, so they will feel comfortable embracing a relationship with God when he reveals himself to them. So in conclusion, when I started off this message, I indicated I wanted to do three things today as I kind of shared some things that I've learned about a scripture that's been stuck in the back of my mind for a long time. I wanted to examine Isaiah 40 verses 3 and 4 in a historical and literary context, understand a little bit more about what was meant by it.

Hopefully you found a few useful tidbits in that process. I wanted to look at how that prophecy was fulfilled in the New Testament. We saw how John the Baptist came and the things that he did exactly as prophesied in Isaiah as he made a way for Jesus Christ, preaching repentance, baptizing people who thought that they were already accepted of God by human lineage, by physical lineage, and helping them to understand there was something totally different that God had planned through his Holy Spirit. And then lastly, exploring the meaning of this passage for our lives today. We think about the fact that we're sent. We're sent out for a purpose.

We are in a wilderness. We have to make sure we don't grasp hold of that wilderness, but we remember the things that we were sent with, why Jesus Christ, why God has put us out into this world. And then lastly, the fact that we are to build a straight highway. It's construction that's happening within us and something that we have to do and the people that we interface with as we go through our daily lives. So hopefully it spurs some additional thoughts in all of our minds, not only in different ways to study the Bible and reflect on some of the things that are in it, but also more specifically with regard to this passage to better understand the things that are being done in our lives as God is constructing something new and different in us and how we can continue to participate in his work and preparing a way for the glorious second coming of Jesus Christ and may it be so.