Advent: Preparation & Waiting
Text: Isaiah 40:3–5 ESV
I have found over the years that every family has a very distinct way they prepare for Christmas and for handling the waiting and transition between the Thanksgiving and Christmas. For some families, any time after Halloween marks the beginning of ‘Thanksgivemas’ or ‘Christgiving.’ One long holiday consuming the months of November and December, full of Christmas lights and Christmas tree, turkey and stuffing, with no discernable distinction between the two except the holiday days called Thanksgiving and Christmas. For other families there are hard and fast rules of how to prepare, wait, and get ready for each. Christmas music can start in November, but no tree. For others they get a tree, but no lights and ornaments until close to or on Christmas Eve. Or Thanksgiving first and then on the Friday after Thanksgiving, it is like every storage closet and bin blew up all over your house consuming every noticeable surface with garland, ornaments, lights, and Precious Moment figurines. And some families are lucky if they buy Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve and maybe pop up a symbolic “Charlie Brown” tree for the one night.
I admit, I am in the “clear distinctions” camp. No Christmas music or tree until after Thanksgiving. Let me prepare for the turkey, stuffing, the Macy’s parade and family flag football game, and then I can turn my attention to outside lights, a tree, decorations, and Christmas presents. I like preparing for just one holiday at a time and enjoying what each one distinctly brings to the fall and winter season. Waiting for the Christmas part, for me, heightens the anticipation and makes it work the wait.
I thought I had won this discussion early in our marriage, only to find my wife is more cunning than me and has slowly coopted my children toward the Thanksgivemas and Christgiving version. A tree crept in this year before our Thanksgiving meal. I found the car radio station on the one station in town that plays Christmas music immediately after Halloween. I am sure I will survive, and I can appreciate the excitedness they have in preparing for Christmas as early as possible and enjoying and relishing anything they can of Christmas in the waiting for Christmas morning.
We all prepare in our waiting differently. Some students happily buy every supply they could ever need, label each binder, have a stack of books waiting for the first class, while others are sure their half-used #2 pencil from last year and a scrap piece of paper should suffice for at least the first several weeks. When we are moving to a new house or apartment some people have all but the bare essentials packed weeks before the actual move and live like they are visiting a relative or a hotel with minimal clothing and food timed just right in the fridge, while others of us figure what else is moving day but a great chance for our friends to help us empty our drawers and organize every last paperclip while we get the trucks loaded up. That’s is one efficient!
Preparation in the Wilderness
Our passage this morning is all about a very specific type of preparation and the waiting that leads to it:
“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 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.”” (Isaiah 40:3–5 ESV)
This preparation has a very particular context. The people that Isaiah is calling to prepare are “in the wilderness.” This idea of wilderness is the same idea as the place where Hagar ran to with Ishmael when Abraham and Sarah sent her away (Genesis 21:14–20). This is the same type of place where the pit was that Joseph’s brothers threw him in as they prepared to sell him to slave traders (Genesis 37:22). The wilderness is where Israel wandered for a generation (Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua), and where David hid from Saul when he tried to kill him (1 Samuel 23–26). The wilderness is not meant to be a nice nor happy place. It is not a tranquil meadow or slightly overgrown forest, but a picture of a desolate and barren place, harsh and demanding. It is the opposite of what being in God’s presence is supposed to look like. If the Garden of Eden and the new heavens and the new earth are epitomized by lush goodness and fruitfulness, the wilderness is the exact opposite.
We should expect that the people talked about here would want to leave, or at the very least are looking for some hope and promise (as we talked about last week) in the midst of this dry experience away from the joy of God. Hagar was looking for God to deliver her, as was Joseph, Israel, and David. And this exactly where Isaiah goes. He declares someone is coming into this wilderness. A king—Yahweh our God, himself.
Isaiah is talking about the type of preparing and waiting we do for our God himself. For thousands of years people awaited his first coming and now, for thousands of years, we have waited for his second coming. Preparing and waiting is core to our life with God, and it isn’t a small thing. This isn’t just the cleaning of bathrooms and the nice sweater you pull on. This isn’t the last minute scramble to pick up as people pull in the driveway.
The example we have here in Isaiah calls for dramatic steps for God’s people to take in an effort to be ready and prepared in their waiting. The King, God himself is coming. His people are called to make a straight highway for the king. A road, perfect, flat, and ready for the most wonderful king himself to travel on. You and I, we get frustrated when the intersection of Cole and Franklin is under construction for a year. Imagine what it would be like to do this kind of work. The ancient Roman road, the Via Appia spanned 132 miles and took from 312–264 BC to complete in many different stages. Many people, digging dirt by hands, laying rocks one at a time. Here, Isaiah is talking about entire valleys lifted up, mountains leveled, and every rock moved out of the way to make the smoothest path for Yahweh our God. This is an amazing preparation for his arrival. And why: why do all this preparation in their waiting? Because “the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” God will be seen and known. Not just a personal knowledge, but a knowledge of him before the entire world.
As we talked about last week, this is exactly the hope and promise that you and I should be waiting for in our own life, the hope and promise that all of Scripture builds to. Israel was a people in sin. The Gentiles were people in sin. You and I were people in sin, in the wilderness, the rough and barren soil of life outside of God’s mercy and grace. And he came to us, those in our sin, those in the wilderness!
Preparation in Beholding the Object of our Waiting
I am so thankful that throughout Scripture God chooses to talk to us in these types of pictures and metaphors, because it appropriately grabs us in exactly the right ways to help us know how to prepare our hearts in our waiting. Whether we are preparing and waiting in remembrance of what Christmas was and is to us today, or whether it is in preparing and waiting for Jesus’s second coming, our preparation and waiting is best guided not by what particularly needs to happen, but rather, by what (or who) you are preparing and waiting for.
It is exactly this section of Isaiah that Mark grabs onto as he starts his gospel. Right from the beginning he quotes from the prophets Malachi and Isaiah. Listen to Mark 1:1–3:
“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 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,’””(Mark 1:1–3 ESV)
Mark and the other gospel authors tell us it is John the Baptist who is the voice crying in the wilderness, a literal picture of the plight and problems of Israel and of all of us in our sins. And when Jesus himself arrives on the scene in Mark’s gospel, he says in Mark 1:15:
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.””(Mark 1:15 ESV)
The King himself has come, that is what we celebrate in Christmas. He came here on an initial mission of mercy and grace. He is letting his people know that the kingdom is almost here, about to break into our world visibly and definitively. He is entreating his people to repent and come back to the king while he is offering them mercy and grace, and before he returns in righteousness and judgement.
As we are in this season of Advent and preparation and waiting for this wonderful holiday reminder of Jesus’s coming to his people, you and I will best be served not by making rules of how we should prepare and all the things we need to do in our waiting, but by looking to the wonderful object of our joy and desire—Jesus—and finding he himself works the preparation for us as we wait with wonder and love of his grace to us.
I think Antoine de Saint-Exupery says it well:
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery (author of The Little Prince, and pilot)
De Saint-Exupery was the French author of the book The Little Prince and a pilot. He flew mail routes all over Europe, South America and Africa in the early 1900s. He knew the draw of faraway lands are what fueled his passion and that his preparation came naturally when he focused on the destination he was headed to. Our life of preparing and waiting is best served and motivated by a longing to know and be with God himself—to yearn for the sea, rather than focusing on the elements of our waiting—the building of the ship.
In a sermon about preparation and waiting it would be easy to go to many different verses that describe things we should “do”. For example, in 2 Timothy 2 Paul has Timothy remind and charge the Ephesians to not quarrel about words, to avoid irreverent babble, to do their best to present themselves to God approved. He says in 2 Timothy 2:21:
“if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready [or prepared] for every good work.” (2 Timothy 2:21 ESV)
“If anyone cleanses himself.” We can read passages like this and unintentionally turn back to the law that Paul knew would never save us. We try to begin a work of preparation and waiting for God that relies on our own work and not his. We could turn this season of Advent into one to double down on our prayer life, ensure we actually read the bible at least 15 minutes per day, and fight as hard as we can in our own power to ride ourselves of every sin and prideful thought that we hate. We don’t need to pit good works and faith—Scripture says these must go together. These would all be good things to do, but done for themselves and in themselves, we miss the entire point.
The New Testament never talks about preparation and waiting this way. In Ephesians 6:15 we are told to put on the readiness (or preparedness) of the gospel of peace as shoes for our feet. We prepare ourselves by going to the gospel, the good news that we couldn’t fix ourselves up. Peter says it this way in 1 Peter 1:13:
“Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:13 ESV)
Everything that follows in 1 Peter about being obedient children, having conformed passions and proper deeds and conduct (1 Peter 1:14–21) all presuppose that we have started our preparation by setting our minds on the grace we have in Christ’s first coming and the joyful future we have in his second coming. We find this Advent season that our ship of preparation and waiting is built as we view our majestic savior’s love, mercy, and grace for us and long to be with him forever more.
Waiting is talked about similarly throughout Scripture. Psalm 27 says this:
“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living! Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” (Psalm 27:13–14 ESV)
When we behold the glory of God as Isaiah says, when we move from the wilderness to the land of the living we learn to wait. We are not waiting for the best moment to spring our plan, or waiting for others to realize we have everything together. No, rather, we wait on God!
Later in the book of Isaiah the prophet says of God:
“Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 30:18 ESV)
Our God himself has shown that this kind of waiting is right. He himself has waited a long time and finally, when the time was right, he exalted himself through Jesus Christ. Why? That you and I might receive mercy. This is how God waits—by looking to himself—and we should too.
“The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.” (Lamentations 3:25 ESV)
Application
It might sound easy to say that any preparation and waiting we do should be mostly about the one we are preparing and waiting for instead of the things we do during the preparation and waiting, but what does this really look like in your life and my life today? We could say it is similar to the difference between two different athletes—let’s say basketball players. Both run several miles every day, both work out and throw free-throws, two pointers, three pointers, run drills. Yet when you ask them what they are doing, you get different answers. One says, “I am doing this to show you I am a good basketball player. Good basketball players run drills, throw many practice shots, and stay in shape.” The other says, “I am doing this to win the big game. All of this is to that one end.” Or two different dads. Both go to work every day for long hours, earn money, help around the house. When asked, one says, “I do this to show you I am good dad. Good dads provide, work hard, and help out around the house.” The other says, “I do this because I love my God and his calling on my life and I love my family.”
Of course, they are each right on one level. Many good athletes, moms, dads, explorers, and friends end up doing may of the same things, but the goal and the focus is often very different. Imagine an athlete that only practices but never plays a game. One who has chosen to only focus on the image of themselves as a good player instead of the goal of their athleticism—winning the game. It sounds silly in a sports analogy, be we all know and perhaps even struggle ourselves with being the dad or husband who works hard but forgets to engage his family. The mom who exhausts herself in keeping up but misses the joys of her children. The outdoor enthusiasts who move from challenge to challenge and forgets the people they are with and the God who made the wonderful obstacles. The friend who values the Instagram post over the moment of closeness with one another.
We don’t want to be Christians—followers of Christ—who prepare and wait well for the sake of the preparing and waiting alone. Our preparing and waiting has an object—the very glory of the LORD revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Our times on this earth—a time of waiting and preparation between Christ’s first coming and knowing and trusting him in faith and his second coming—will be filled with many good things. Prayer. Reading Scripture. Fighting sin. But if we are preparing and waiting to simply do these things, we miss the object of our joy. Christ himself said that he endured the cross, “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2), namely, the joy of knowing the father and being in his good will.
Conclusion
Whether it is this Advent season or every other season where we are preparing our hearts constantly for our God, where we are waiting to see the final hope and promise he has given you, don’t make it about a time to create a set of rules and requirements for yourself to try to make yourself ready for God. What is needed in your waiting and my waiting look very different at any given time because our lives are very different, much like our Thanksgivings and Christmas times might look very different. Look to the sea instead of the trees, look to God instead of your own actions. Pray because you expect to encounter God when you pray. Go to Scripture because you are certain you will know, love, and enjoy your God more as you see him better in his great story to us. Fight sin because you hate how it separates you from God, not just to do the right thing. Find this Advent in your preparation and waiting that you are best served to prepare and wait well when you focus most clearly on the object of your preparation and waiting—Jesus Christ our Lord.