Luke 1:5-25
The Promise of John the Baptist – Making room for Jesus
Are you ready for Christmas?
What do you do to get ready for Christmas?
Are you ready for Jesus?
Read Luke 1:5-25
This is an amazing story – the old priest encountering Gabriel in the temple, the old couple conceiving a baby, and old woman being honoured by God…
But today I’m not going to focus on the story – I’m going to focus on the baby, John.
Verse 17
“He will go on before the Lord, in the Spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
John himself describes himself in Isaiah’s words; “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord!’” – John 1:23 (Isaiah 40:3)
How do we prepare for Jesus?
How do we “Make straight the way for the Lord!” in our own lives?
Making space for Jesus right now.
How do we get ready for the Second Advent – when Jesus returns, or when we return to him?
1 John 2:28
And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.
I think we find the answer in the promise of John the Baptist.
Turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.
Fathers to the children – I don’t want to get too metaphorical to quickly here.
I want to talk to the fathers present.
We fathers get ready by turning our hearts toward our children. We men can get so distracted by so many things, and our hearts can get drawn away by so many things, so that even though we may not die, or leave the house, we orphan our children. We get drawn away by our jobs, we may tell ourselves that we are doing it all for our families, but our families would likely be better off with less money and more of us, or less prestige and more of us.
We can get distracted by hobbies, addictions, or causes: even helping others so that our own children are fatherless while we go about helping other orphans.
We need to set these distractions aside and realize that the best thing that we can offer this world is a well-parented child.
I think that God singles out the fathers here because we are the ones that are more easily distracted of the two genders – it is not true of every man and every woman, but in general it is true. This is why third-world development agencies are realizing that it is often more productive to work with women rather than men – the women will be sure that any resources given to her will go for the benefit of her children and family while the men have been known to waste it away.
A few weeks ago we looked at the passage that says that this is what love is: to lay down your life for another. (1 John 3:16) If we are going to turn our hearts toward our children, we must lay down our lives for them – to set aside our interests for theirs, to lay aside our growth for theirs, to set aside our passions for theirs, to give our lives to them so that they can be who God created them to be.
They say that Christmas is all about the kids – as we fathers prepare our hearts for the coming of the Savior, it is all about the kids.
Turn the hearts of the Husbands to their wives
I know that it does not say this here, but It is another issue of the modern era that we men are not only distracted from our children, but also from our wives.
We are distracted from our wives by the same things as distract us from the kids, and we can add to that the distraction of paper and digital women, as well as the false images of real live women.
The words written in Proverbs are as true today as they were thousands of years ago when they were written:
Proverbs 5
Dear friend, pay close attention to this, my wisdom; listen very closely to the way I see it.
Then you’ll acquire a taste for good sense;
what I tell you will keep you out of trouble.
3-6 The lips of a seductive woman are oh so sweet,
her soft words are oh so smooth.
But it won’t be long before she’s gravel in your mouth,
a pain in your gut, a wound in your heart.
She’s dancing down the primrose path to Death;
she’s headed straight for Hell and taking you with her.
She hasn’t a clue about Real Life,
about who she is or where she’s going.
7-14 So, my friend, listen closely;
don’t treat my words casually.
Keep your distance from such a woman;
absolutely stay out of her neighborhood.
You don’t want to squander your wonderful life,
to waste your precious life among the hardhearted.
Why should you allow strangers to take advantage of you?
Why be exploited by those who care nothing for you?
You don’t want to end your life full of regrets,
nothing but sin and bones,
Saying, "Oh, why didn’t I do what they told me?
Why did I reject a disciplined life?
Why didn’t I listen to my mentors,
or take my teachers seriously?
My life is ruined!
I haven’t one blessed thing to show for my life!"
15-16 Do you know the saying, "Drink from your own rain barrel,
draw water from your own spring-fed well"?
It’s true. Otherwise, you may one day come home
and find your barrel empty and your well polluted.
17-20 Your spring water is for you and you only,
not to be passed around among strangers.
Bless your fresh-flowing fountain!
Enjoy the wife you married as a young man!
Lovely as an angel, beautiful as a rose—
don’t ever quit taking delight in her body.
Never take her love for granted!
Why would you trade enduring intimacies for cheap thrills with a whore?
for dalliance with a promiscuous stranger?
Or, to quote Bono & U2
“True love never can be rent
But only true love can keep beauty innocent
I could never take a chance
Of losing love to find romance” – A Man and A Woman, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
I say this partially because there are a number of us who feel like the families of the church are under attack. We need to give up the distractions, turn our hearts toward our children, our spouses, and do the things that it takes to strengthen those bonds.
One way to turn our hearts toward our children is to strengthen our marriage relationship – our children need parents who love each other.
Marriage course
Falling Forward
Parenting classes
Fathering & Mothering the fatherless, motherless
Shift gears to the more metaphorical.
We are all called to spiritually father and mother the younger Christians around us. Those of us who are longer in the faith are supposed to turn our hearts toward those who are younger in the faith and mentor them in love.
I came into my boys’ bedroom to pray for them just before I went to bed a few months ago, and as I watched them sleep, I had this overwhelming amazement that I am a father. “Who let me be a father, and what were they thinking?” I think that many of us feel like this in our Christian lives, we don’t feel ready to “parent” a younger Christian. I remember a friend of mine who leads a large Christian organization saying “I keep wondering when God is going to send the real leader of this organization.” We don’t feel up to the job, which might make us the prime candidate for the job. We need to parent or mentor in humility. I think that every Christian should have a mentor and someone they mentor. They say we are living in a fatherless generation – we need to take up the mantle of fathering and mothering each other.
The other way that John prepares for the coming Messiah is to:
“Turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous”
There is a wisdom in living right that the people around us don’t always see. Sometimes our desire to live for God is seen as quaint naiveté, but in God’s understanding, it is the righteous ones who are wise.
The other way that we prepare for Jesus, is to, as Peter writes, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day that he visits us.” – 1 Peter 2:12
In John’s Gospel, John the Baptist’s ministry is described as making a strait path for the Lord through the wilderness. The way that we make a straight path for the savior in our lives is to turn from doing anything that we know is wrong, and do the things that we know are right.
This is how we get ready for Christmas – we turn our hearts to our children & families, and we make straight path in our lives. This might seem overwhelming for you, but the good news is that,
The Messiah has already come, and he helps us prepare the way!
If we are overwhelmed by the prospect of giving up our lives for our children – natural or spiritual, if we have a distraction that we just can’t seem to get rid of, if we are wracked by the guild of not turning our hearts to our children, or not building the strait and narrow. Jesus Saves us from all that., Through his life, death and resurrection, he has made the way clear for us to be forgiven for not making the way clear! And when we give our crooked lives to him to straighten up, he gives us the Holy Spirit who works in us to want to prepare ourselves for Jesus, and he gives us the power to do what it takes to prepare ourselves.
Are you ready for Christmas? Are you ready for the Messiah? Let him make you ready.
