[Steven Britt] "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 shall be brought low, the crooked places made straight, the rough places made smooth. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." These famous words come from Isaiah 40:3-5, made famous by John the Baptist and their application in the fulfillment of the prophecy of Jesus Christ's first coming. But I brought them to your attention today to talk a little bit about how they apply to us.

In fact, if we break them down just a little bit and notice what was said, there's even a shift in language that I'd never noticed before until I started thinking about it. And it starts out, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight a highway, or make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Who's it talking to? For us grammar nerds, this is in the imperative mood. It's a second person imperative. The subject of that sentence is “you.” You, prepare the way of the Lord. You, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Now the next couple of lines, it switches to a third person passive. It simply says things that will happen. “Every mountain and hill shall be brought low, the crooked place... the crooked places shall be made straight, the rough places shall be made smooth.” Someone's going to do those things. It's implied that it's God.

So we have something here that's a command for us to do and then this implied action by God contained in these verses. We're going to hear in the coming weeks through the Holy Days and the messages presented about the incredible things that God has planned in prophecy, the wonderful and awesome things that our God will do on a global scale that will reach every part of the earth. But what is God doing in us on an individual level? What is our part right now in preparing the way of the Lord? That's what I'd like to talk about today.

Now, I've broken the discussion of this up into four points, and we'll kind of get our way through these verses from Isaiah 40 along the message. So point number one, we have to admit, "I am a desert.” I am a desert. Nothing grows in a desert. As we think about this, let's be turning to Romans chapter 8, if you'll take out your Bibles please, Romans chapter 8, we'll look at verses 6 through 8.

Nothing grows in a desert even if the land is fertile. If you look at a place like Israel today, they're very excited about the fact that they're making the desert bloom. Well, it turns out the soil is very rich in the desert in Israel. If you add water – just add water – just about anything will grow. And so it is with us, Romans 8:6, "For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace because the carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God."

If we want to talk about what we can do to prepare the way of the Lord in our lives? “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” We have to realize that we are that desert, we are that desert. Even the best of human nature, the best that we can muster, the best morality that we can muster, the best sense of fairness that humans can muster, apart from God is a desert. It cannot be pleasing to God. It simply cannot be.

If we go back to chapter… to Romans 7, the Apostle Paul… this chapter, it just gets me every time the way he struggles over the question of his own human nature. We'll start reading in verse 14, says, "For we know that the law is spiritual but I am carnal, sold under sin.” And he goes through this discussion that's really hard to say out loud, so I'll just summarize. He's saying how we all have this mindset. We want to keep the law of God, and we have problems with that. We have to fight against something within ourselves. So what I will to do, I find it hard to do.

We're trying to keep God's law. And verse 16 if we come down, and he says, "If then I end up doing what I don't want to do, that is sinning against my own will, I agree with the law that it is good." Now, that's a pretty profound statement actually, isn't it? I agree with the law, the law of God, that it's good.

You see, it's an understanding that it's not our own sense of goodness, our own sense of right and wrong that guides us, that God's looking for. It's not about this modern idea of just being a good person. That doesn't stand up to God's law and ultimately it fails. That's why this world is failing us. It's failing everyone.

Skip down to verse 24, chapter 7. It all concludes, "O wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death?" That is a deep, strong understanding by Paul of his own insufficiency, and that's where we all are before God. This acknowledgment is necessary in order to go towards repentance, to realize our own spiritual poverty.

Let's turn over to 1 John chapter 8, 1 John... sorry, 1 John 1; there is no 1 John 8. 1 John 1:8-10, and we'll talk about that acknowledgment for just a minute. 1 John 1:8 says, "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." What a relief! What a relief. “If we say, we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”

What I thought was really interesting, the word for “confess” here, the Greek word, it does mean to confess, but it's also in the sense of acknowledgment. Literally, it means to say the same thing, to say the same thing as someone else. It's about agreeing with God about what is right and good and just, agreeing with the law that it is good, just like Paul said, acknowledging the spiritual state that we're in apart from God.

Second point, make a highway for God and our lives. We have to prepare a way in the desert, a highway for our God. And the way we do that is repentance, repentance. Come with me to Matthew chapter  3, we'll look at verses 1-3. In fact, we'll see here where these words from Isaiah 40 became famous. I'm sure they were famous within the Jewish community before this, otherwise no one would know what John was talking about. But they're famous now especially because of the work of John the Baptist in preparing the way for Jesus Christ.

Matthew 3:1, "In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' This is He who was spoken of by the Isaiah saying, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make His path straight.”’”

So this is the beginning of that fulfillment of Isaiah 40. And what is that fulfillment? Where is it coming from? What is it that's preparing the way for Jesus Christ's coming even to those people at that time, let alone all people at our time? Well, in verse 5 and 6 the people from Jerusalem, all of Judea, all of the region around the Jordan went out to him and they were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins, confessing their sins.

Again, that word for confessing, going to agree with God about what sin is, confessing their sins when John preached repentance. This is the beginning of the answer to, "O wretched man that I am." Come with me back to Romans chapter 8. In fact we'll be in and out of Romans 8, if you'd like to keep a marker there. I could have told you that earlier, but here we are now. So Romans chapter 8, we'll look at verses 9 through 11. Romans 8:9, so we ended before that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Paul doesn't leave us hanging on that. I left you hanging on it for a few minutes, but Paul doesn't leave us hanging there. I guess Paul's more gracious than me.

"But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.” So we have to have the Spirit of God dwelling in us. “Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His, and if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousness."

"If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." So we need the Holy Spirit, right? We need the mind of Christ. We need God to come into our lives. We have to make a highway for God to come into our lives in this desert.

And it's important to recognize that we don't have a lot of time to do that. Whether we're talking about the end of this age, the coming of Jesus Christ and when time runs out as we know it in this state of affairs that we're in, but for those of us who have been called out today, we have the span of a human life, our own human life. We don't know how long that'll be.

If we go back to Isaiah chapter 40 actually and look at the context, that was on Isaiah as mind there through the inspiration of God, Isaiah 40:6-8. So whether we're looking at the world scale or an individual scale, it's equally applicable. Isaiah 40 and verse 6, so this is right after the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, "Prepare the way" that I read in the beginning. The voice said in verse 6, "'Cry out.' And he said, 'What shall I cry?' 'All flesh is grass and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades because the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are grass.’” The people are grass: here today, gone tomorrow.

“The grass withers, the flower fades but the word of our God stands forever.” There has to be urgency in this message. That's why when John came, he said, "Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." If you look at the parallel accounts, in Mark 1, John's not the only one who came preaching that. Christ came and said, "The time is fulfilled. Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." John preached with urgency, Jesus Christ preached repentance with urgency, and we have to live repentance with urgency.

We can't drag our feet in making a commitment. We can't say, "Well, I think I'll be a better husband a month from now, when I'm not so stressed," or a better wife. I mean, we should always be endeavoring to be a better husband or wife just kind of always. So yes, I do want to be a better husband next month, but today I need to be a better husband.

We can't say, "Well, my current job, it's hard to keep the Sabbath. My next job that I get, I'll keep the Sabbath right." We can't say, "I'll start taking religion seriously and start really going to church and getting right with God after I graduate college. I just need to have a little fun. I need my space right now." You can't say that.

If we do, over time, put things off and put things off, we develop habits that we have to undo. We make mistakes; in some cases it might affect us the rest of our lives. We'll start finding excuse after excuse to put it off a little more, a little more. God calls us to act now, to act now, make a highway now so that God can come into our lives.

Number three, straighten out the crooked places. We have to straighten out the crooked places, and we do that being converted. Come with me to Acts chapter 3, Acts 3:19-21. Now repentance is a part of conversion, certainly. The key is it's the beginning of something, the beginning of something.

Acts chapter 3 and verse 19, “Peter and John answered and said to them, whether is...” No, I'm in chapter 4, excuse me. All right, chapter 3:19 of Acts, "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, that He may send Jesus Christ who has preached to you before whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things."

This word "converted" comes from the Greek, epistrepho. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's the same word where we get apostrophe. What's an apostrophe represent? I'm doing a lot of grammar today, a lot of English grammar. So an apostrophe, like when you make a contraction, like the word, "don't", instead of writing that letter "O" to make "do not", you start writing a letter and you take your hand back. So you get just a little mark, and we call that an apostrophe, or that's the idea and the etymology of it anyway.

The idea is that you change your mind about something. You change your mind. You completely cut off that letter, or in our case, that spiritual uncleanness, that sinful behavior. Conversion is the proper follow-up of repentance over time, not continuing in sin but truly growing and overcoming, allowing that growth to happen in this desert once God comes into it.

It encompasses the larger process that begins with repentance and baptism, which is an important point not to skip over. We repent. We're baptized to formalize the commitment we've made to God, and then we carry out that commitment throughout our lives.

Skipping down to verse 26, it says, "To you first, God, having raised up His servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you and turning away every one of you from your iniquities." It's a blessing that Christ is in our lives to turn us away from our iniquities. That's a blessing for us. As we become more fully aware of sin, root it out, overcome it, we have a better life, a better life by anyone's standards. And it talks about these times of refreshing. And we tend to think about just the end times, the time of refreshing when Jesus Christ returns, but there's a time of refreshing that can happen in our lives right now, right now, individually.

Let's turn to John chapter 7, and we'll read about that. John 7:37-39, and you'll see that I'm not the first to make this analogy; Jesus Christ did it. John 7:37, "On the last day, that great day of the Feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.' This He spoke concerning the Spirit that those believing in Him would receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified." So again, part of that process – we repent, we're baptized, we receive the Spirit, and what happens to our desert? God causes living waters to flow out of us.

In fact, we sang earlier, I was really glad we sang “Wake My Heart” because I had that song in mind. There's that lyric where it says, "Water shall burst forth and gladden everything that grows." Our lives can be like that and the things we do can be like that. We have to receive God's Spirit and live by God's Spirit.

Come with me back to Isaiah 35. Isaiah spoke about this in what seems like, applying mostly on the level of the coming of the Messiah, the return of Jesus Christ, and the things that will happen then. Well, we can apply these things to our personal lives. Isaiah 35, and we'll look at several verses, starting in verse 1. It says, "The wilderness and the wasteland shall be glad for them. The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing." What a wonderful thing this is.

Skipping down to verse 5, “The eyes of the blind shall be opened. The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.” Our eyes are opened when we come to God. Our ears are unstopped. “The lame shall leap like a deer. The tongue of the dumb shall sing. The waters shall burst forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become a pool and the thirsty land springs of water."

It's talking about a transformation. God has a plan for our personal desert, and it looks very different from how it starts out, just like these deserts will look very different once they have water. We can look at a little sense of that in Romans chapter 12. Romans 12:1-2, where Paul describes exactly this sort of thing, the transformation.

Romans 12:1, "I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

This is talking about what we do in our lives right now. We have to be transformed. We have to be converted. We use that word "conversion" or being converted, and it sounds like it has a very heavy theological sense to it. It can sound very heavy and weighty. We do have to undergo a dramatic change, but we can think of it just like we use the word in everyday English, "converting something," changing it from one thing to another.

We go through a process of being changed from one thing to another. Converting from a different power source may we say. Converting from our own power, which is really no power at all, to depending on the power of the living God by His Holy Spirit dwelling in us. That's what it means. That's what it means.

Now in that process, we acknowledge that our ways are crooked, more crooked than we even realize when we first came to God and repented. Conversion is that lifelong process of straightening out what is crooked in us, of smoothing out the rough places. Come with me to Hebrews chapter 12, verses 14 through 16. Hebrews 12:14 tells us what this... Sorry, Hebrews 12 beginning in verse 12, tells us what this life looks like in more tangible terms.

"Therefore, strengthen the hands which hang down and the feeble knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed." Do we want to be healed? Do we want our paths to be straight? "Pursue peace with all people in holiness, without which no one will see the Lord, looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble and by this many become defiled."

There's a little bit of empowerment even in there. It gives us a sense that this is something we can do. It's something we're being told to do, to straighten out our path, and we can do it because God is the source that helps us to do this. He works in us according to our desire to change.

Again, thinking back to Paul and Romans 7, what we desire to do, when we've committed to God, God helps us achieve that over time. If we look back a few verses earlier, it's all about the chastening that comes from God in this chapter, and verse 10, it talks about our “human fathers who chastened us as seemed best to them, but God, for our profit, chastens us so that we can be partakers of His holiness.”

God straightens us out. Did anyone… Did your parents ever say that to you? "I'm going to straighten you out." I heard that a few times, and it usually got me. I was a pretty timid kid. You know, I didn't get many spankings because I was always afraid of getting punished. There's an element in that that we can learn, to be straightened out by God.

We don't want to offend God the way that we have in our former lives. We don't want to cause God the sorrow that He feels when we go astray. We want to be straightened out. If we desire those times of refreshing, the restoration of all things in our lives today, we have to endeavor to be converted by the power of God.

Fourth point, be a voice crying out, be a voice crying out. “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’” Let's turn to Matthew chapter 6, where we find the model prayer in verses 9 through13. In fact, we find several of the elements that I've talked about today just condensed into the model prayer.

It's really amazing how compact of a statement this is in Matthew chapter 6. And I won't read this directly but I'll reference to it, and it's good to have it in front of us while we do that. We heard about some of it this morning even. So we've got these elements of repentance in there, "Forgive us our debts. Lead us not into temptation," verses 12 and 13. Conversion is in there. That spiritual maturity step of saying, "As we forgive our debtors." That's more straightening out. That's more advanced material, but there's also an element of crying out to God. It's the beginning of the model prayer actually, in verse 10, "Your Kingdom come. Your will be done." That's crying out to God.

"Your kingdom come. Your will be done." Those are things we want. “God, make this happen. Make this happen for me. Make it happen for all of your people. Make it happen for the whole world. Bring our sinful way of life to an end. Establish your peace in us.” We need that. We have to cry out for that.

“Bring an end to this age, establish the Kingdom and Your peace for all people forever, bring that.” James chapter 5, verse 16. I won't turn there. It's a memory scripture. The entire book of James by the way is a memory scripture. [laughter] Well, I'm sort of joking but if you read it, the book of James, every other scripture feels like a memory scripture.

"The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." "The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." So as we go through a process of coming to God in repentance, of being converted, of living a righteous life, we get closer and closer to God, we cry out to God, and God hears us. Our prayers have to be effective and fervent, and we need to be righteous.

We're in a better position to cry out to God the closer we get to Him, the closer we get to Him. And you know, this is nothing new in the Bible. This is not strictly a New Testament idea. If we go back to Exodus chapter 2, in fact, we'll read verses 23 to 25, very powerful words. Exodus 2:23. This was about the time that Moses had fled Egypt and people of Israel being slaves. In verse 23, “Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of all the bondage, and they cried out, and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So God heard their groaning. God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob, and God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them.” And we know what God did for them afterwards.

We know, and we know that those things are a type of what God is going to do for the entire world. So if you heeded my warning to keep a spot in Romans 8, we're going to go back to Romans 8. We do have to ask ourselves whether we are fervent in prayer on this matter, whether we are crying out to God desperately, if we fully recognize the oppression of spiritual Egypt on the world all around us in which the way of which we once lived.

Romans 8, verses 19 to 24. Romans 8:19, "The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope, because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." The world is caught in a trap that it does not understand.

Verse 22, "We know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs until now, not only that but we also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies."

The world doesn't understand why it suffers the way it does, but we know. We know what is wrong. God has shown us where the suffering and hurt and pain in this world come from. It comes from sin. And we know the answer. The answer is a world set free by a loving God, a powerful God.

Looking forward to that, knowing what we do, we have a responsibility to be groaning, to be praying fervently, crying out, "Your Kingdom come." So as we start to conclude, I want to share a few thoughts about the upcoming Holy Days. On Monday we have the Feast of Trumpets; a week and a half later, the Day of Atonement; a little bit past that we're in the Feast of Tabernacles. And we know that the prophetic events pictured by these days, Trumpets and Atonement, are preparing the world for the coming of Jesus Christ, the deliverance that we just read about that's pictured in the Feast of Tabernacles, the deliverance of the creation into the glorious liberty, the sons of God, starting with the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ, an awesome time. But they also serve to prepare us on an individual level to inherit that Kingdom. The Feast of Trumpets announces the coming of Jesus Christ to the world, but do we take that announcement personally?

We've heard the proclamation. The world hasn't heard it but we have, and it's a warning. It's a call to action. Have we heeded that in our lives? We need to consider that in the coming days. Atonement pictures reconciliation with God and the removal of Satan's influence for the world to come. But do we take those elements personally? Have we been reconciled to God the Father by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ through repentance and through baptism, receiving the Holy Spirit, and are we continuing to live a life of conversion and overcoming?

Along with that, are we putting Satan out of our lives in that conversion process? Another memory scripture from James, James 4, verse 7 sums it up very nicely. James 4:7 says, "Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." We can do that in our lives today.

So how do we understand the words of Isaiah 40? "Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God." We have to declare, "God, I am a desert. Make me bloom." We have to prepare a highway for Him within ourselves so that He can come into us and so that living waters can flow out of us by His power. "And every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low. The crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth."

We are the crooked places made straight by God. We are the rough places made smooth by God. "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." His words, simultaneously a warning, a battle cry, a desperate personal appeal, and the promise of a better world tomorrow for those who seek God today.

So let's repent. Let's be sure that we have committed through baptism. Let's be converted. Let's cry out to God in prayer as we each prepare the way of the Lord.