You can open your Bibles to Hebrews
chapter 10. I'm preaching on a subject this
morning rather than just from a single text. So we'll be looking
at several texts of scriptures. And the subject is prepare or
preparation Prepare in whatever form of that you want. Prepare. Now I'm sure this is going to
surprise you, but I'm not very good at preparation. I'm pretty
good at dreaming, but I'm not really good at looking ahead
and knowing this has got to be done. That's got to be done.
If I'm going to go on a trip, I know that I have to pack. But
I'll generally reserve that till just before I go out the door.
And it takes me so much time, because I'm just not good at
making decisions what clothes I'm going to take. And I end
up taking a lot more clothes than I need. Not good at preparation. But
God is. For every purpose, that God has
made for every decree that he shall bring to pass, God has
made preparation. He knows what shall come because
he's the one who decided what will come. And he, it is that
orders everything, arranges, prepares everything in order
for his purposes come to pass. Now we're going to look at several
scriptures where we find this word prepare.
First one is here in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 5. Therefore when Christ came into
the world he said, sacrifice an offering and You did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me. With burnt offerings and sin
offerings, you were not pleased. Then I said, here I am. It is
written about me in the scroll. I have come to do your will,
O God. The first thing I want to look
at is a savior prepared, a savior prepared. Now, I doubt that there's
anybody here that thinks they don't need saving. That is none
of the grownups anyway. You understand and you've been
told about our sin and how our sin separates us from God. and then our perceived righteousness
keeps us separate from God. That we are, spiritually speaking,
dead, blind, deaf, lame, totally unable to remedy our
problem. We don't need a helper, we need
a savior. but not just any savior will
do. In verse one here of Hebrews
10, it says, the law is only a shadow of the good things that
are coming, not the realities themselves. Now, the writer of
Hebrews was not speaking of things yet to come from the viewpoint
of when he wrote this. He's speaking from the viewpoint
of the time frame of old covenant Israel. And he says all those
commandments in the law, all those observances in the law,
they were only a shadow, a shadow of the good things that from
that vantage point they were yet to come. In other words,
they all foreshadowed Christ and his gospel. Now, I remember
reading a commentary or a comment by Brother Charles Spurgeon on
Psalm 23 that says, yea, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death. And he says, we walk, we believers
walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Now, the shadow
of death is a shadow, but the shadow of death cannot kill.
Shadow of a sword can't kill. Neither can the shadow of death. Shadows have no power, do they? And that's true of those shadows
in the law. They had no power to save. Many of the Jews mistakenly thought
they did, but they didn't. Paul said concerning that righteousness,
which is in the law, I was blameless, which means he had done all those
things that the law required for a man to do. And nonetheless,
He needed saving. Why? Because all he had performed
was shadows. For this reason, it, the law,
can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly, year after year, make perfect
those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have
stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have
been cleansed once for all and would no longer have felt guilty
for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual
reminder of sins because it's impossible for the blood of bulls
and goats to take away sin. Now, here's what he's, the simple
argument that he's making. The law went on year after year
after year. Because despite all that blood
on Jewish altars poured out, not all that blood could cleanse
one person's conscience of guilt before God. If it had, if it had ever been successful,
they would have ceased the offering. Why? Because once the job's done,
you don't need to do it again. However, the law, instead of
removing sin, was an annual reminder of sin. If those sacrifices and all the
other aspects of Jewish worship, if they said anything, If they
testified anything to the conscience of a man, it was this, you are a sinner. Because if they weren't sinners,
they wouldn't have needed any of those sacrifices or anything.
It's impossible that blood of bulls and goats can take away
sins. Now, in another place in Hebrews, it says, without the
shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. But not just
any blood will work. The blood of animals cannot pay
for nor cleanse a man or a woman from sin. It can't be done. Therefore, when Christ came to
the world, he said, sacrifice an offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ is
the eternal God. He existed before the world existed. He's one with the Father, one
with the Spirit. I don't understand all I'm talking
about, but this is the way the scriptures put it. That singular
eternal God expressed in three persons living in that timelessness
of the divine existence. I don't know how else to describe
it. Our Lord Jesus prayed in John chapter 17, restore to me
the glory I had with you before the world began. Now, when he
came here, he laid aside that glory. But now he's saying that glory
I had with you before the world began, that divine glory. Not
just the divine glory of a super being or a God, the divine glory
of the one and only God. He existed that way. But God, if he is to save us,
must become one of us. He cannot save us from his throne,
so to speak, from that unapproachable existence of his. If we are to be saved, then something
must be done about our sin. And seeing that God is a just
and righteous God, that means our sins must be punished. So
if we are to be saved from that punishment, the only way is that
someone else bear it. And that someone else must be
one of us. Therefore, sacrifices and offering
you did not desire. He's talking about the old covenant
sacrifices. They never pleased the Lord.
That is, they never put away the anger of the Lord against
sin. They were only shadows. Our Lord goes on to say, but
a body you prepared for me. Every Christmas we celebrate
the birth of the Lord Jesus, and one of the Aspects of that
is that he was born of a virgin. So obviously he was not conceived
in the normal way. Rather, the Holy Spirit of God
did a divine work and he prepared a body for the Son of God to inhabit,
to take on. that He might be one with us. In John chapter 1 it talks about
in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and
the Word was God. Setting forth in no uncertain
terms the absolute divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. But then
it says in verse 14, and the Word became flesh. That eternal spiritual word became
temporal flesh. When he was born, there wasn't
anything about the way he looked that would have made you think
that he was anything other than a normal human being. Isaiah said, when we shall see
him, there is no majesty that we would desire him. It was just a baby born in Bethlehem. We can't prove that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God, can we? We believe it to be so. But you
couldn't look at him and tell. God prepared a body for him,
a body like yours and mine. Now, it had not been corrupted
by sin. I suppose that had our Lord Jesus
chosen to, he could have left earth, gone right into heaven
with that body and lived forever because sin and the results of
sin were not in that body. But it was a human body and a
body that while it didn't have to die, it could. And that body was prepared. that
in that body he might perform the will of God. Now so often
when people think of the will of God, I remember when I was
a teenager, they'd say, well, you need to find out what the
will of God for your life is so that you can do it. And as
teenagers who were already confused about so many things, that gave
us one more thing to worry about. Doing God's will, is this really
what He wants me to do? Isn't that something they said
was so important for you to know God's will and do it, and yet
somehow or another, God's not telling you what it is. I guess
we were just supposed to guess until we came upon it or hope
for the best, I don't know. But that's not the kind of will
He's talking about here. To perform His will, His will
was this. that Jesus Christ be honored
and glorified and held above every creature because of his work as the Savior
of God's people. The sacrifices and offerings
of the old covenant were not God's will. They were a shadow
of God's will. Jesus Christ and him crucified
is God's will. And that's what Jesus Christ
came to do. He said, I did not come down here to do my own will,
but the will of him who sent me. He was a man on a mission
and his mission required that he have a body because his mission
was to die. There are some men and women
who have been willing to risk their lives in behalf of those
they loved. There are some who did acts of
heroism in behalf of their loved ones, and they knew that it would
cost their lives to do it, but they did it anyway. But there's
something different about our Lord laying down his life. Those others, death was a consequence
of what they were doing. If they could have rescued or
done their work of rescue without dying, that's how they'd have
done it. But see, with Jesus Christ, he was not risking his
life. Nor is it simply a necessary
consequence of what he did. His death was the act by which
he saved us. He came to die. In another place he said, shall
I pray, Father, save me from this hour? It's for this very
hour I came into this world. Our Lord's death was not the
accidental consequence of his work. His death was his work. And that required a body. And
God prepared him one. And in that body he was tried
in every point like we are, yet without sin. Now look back at
Matthew chapter three. Matthew chapter three. In verse one, we read, in those
days John the Baptist came, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying,
repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. This is he who was spoken
of through the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling in the
desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for
him. Now what John was saying here,
very simply, is this. Your Lord is coming. Your king is about to show up. Prepare a way for him. Make straight paths. What does
he mean by that? Well, not crooked ones. You know,
when people of dignity People of power and authority
in this world travel from place to place. They prepare a way
for them because they think it's important.
They believe that the person has something valuable and that
he should be treated with honor and respect and that no obstacle
should be put in his way or allowed to remain in his way. He's escorted
from place to place. They make a straight, level path
for him. How much more so? Should such
a path be made for the Lord Jesus Christ, Lord of heaven and earth?
And how is this path to be made straight? Well, you had to get
all the crooked people out of it, all the crooked things. He says in verse seven here,
but when he, that is John the Baptist, saw many of the Pharisees
and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to
them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming
wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with
repentance, and do not think you can say to yourselves, we
have Abraham as our father. I tell you that out of these
stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already
at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce
good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. How do you prepare the way for
the Lord? By eliminating every other way
but his way. Those Pharisees and the Sadducees,
now they didn't get along. The only thing they agreed on
was their hatred of Jesus Christ. And through their common hatred
of Christ, they found a way to work together. And so they showed
up in all their religious finery, looking better. And remember,
John's out in the wilderness here. He did not set up a fancy
baptistry. He did not wear fancy clothes.
He probably looked a little like a wild man. And then here comes religion. And John looked at them, those
who were highly esteemed among men, those who loved that esteem,
and he says, you brood of vipers. I wonder how that message would
go over in most churches. Everybody shows up dressed to
the nines, wearing whatever the ecclesiastical fashion is for
that day. All proud of their deportment. All proud of how they have not
done this or that thing. All proud of the fact that while
many stayed home that day, they were in church. What if a preacher
stood up and looked at him and said, you brood of vipers, who
warned you to flee the wrath? What are you doing here? How do you make straight paths?
You get rid of the rubble. You get rid of that which is
hindering the plain declaration of Jesus Christ, who he is and
what he's done. It says that when they were going
to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, he said there was much rubbish
there. In other words, when they torn down the walls, there were
stones laying everywhere. Before they could even get to
the business of building the new walls, they had to get rid
of all that old stuff. And here's what he's saying.
Here, make straight a path for the Lord. Get rid of all of this
self-righteousness. Truly repent. He said, bring
forth works that are consistent with repentance. Now, what kind
of works could he been talking about? Well, I would say one thing that
would probably be a suitable work of repentance for the people
he was addressing specifically is to quit wearing that religious
finery that made them stand out and in which they boasted There's nothing wrong with dressing
nice, but they weren't just dressing nice. They had clothes that everybody
recognized who and what they are or what they claim to be.
Just like if you go down the street and you see a guy in all
in black and a white collar around his neck, you know what he is.
He's a religious clergyman. It's meant to exalt. And he says,
if you want to bring forth fruits of repentance, it'll be fruit
of humility. Fruit of realizing you're no
different than these filthy shepherds that I'm baptizing. No different
than these prostitutes who have come and repented of their sin
and been baptized, calling upon the name of the Lord. You know, repenting from this
or that transgression is easy compared to repenting of your
own righteousness. But while your sins will never
prove a hindrance to your salvation, your righteousness will. You want the Lord to come to
you? You want to hear his word? You
want to experience his grace. Well, that rubble of self-righteous
rocks that you've been screwing everywhere, you need to get it
out of the way. I have found this in my own experience. The Lord is never silent when
my heart is broken, but when there is pride. I don't
hear him. I don't hear him. When I am in
judgment of others because of how they've acted, and I think
I acted better, I don't hear the Lord anymore. Why? I've made a crooked, rubble-filled
path. prepare the way of the Lord. Now let's look over at Luke chapter
1. Luke chapter 1 verse 17. We have had a Savior prepared.
We have seen a way of the Lord prepared, a way for him to enter. And now we'll read about a people
prepared. Luke chapter 1 verse 17, and
he, who are they talking about here? The angel is telling Zechariah
that he and his wife are going to have a child in their old
age, and that child we know as John the Baptist. He will go
on before the Lord. He's the forerunner of the Lord,
the last of the Old Testament prophets. But he's going to be
what in entertainment world and things
like that, they call it an advanced man. The one who goes to the
venue ahead of time and make sure everything's arranged so
that once the celebrity arrives, Everything's in order. And that's
what John the Baptist is going to be. And it says, he shall
go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the
hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient
to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared
for the Lord. Now, John the Baptist was an unusual
character and occupied a unique position. But his word was like Elijah. In Elijah's day, Israel was in
such a state of apostasy. There were false gods everywhere.
And actually what Elijah's name means is, my God is Yah, or Jehovah. And his job in Israel was going
around establishing that the God of the Jews is Jehovah, the
one and only. That Baal has no right to be
there. Ashtoreth has no right to be in there. None of the gods
worshipped by the pagans are real. None of them have anything
to do with Israel. There is one God. And so John
goes out in that spirit, declaring the one true God but declaring
him in a way that they had not known before. Because not only
was he going to declare that there's only one God, he was
going to point to him and say, there he is. Behold the Lamb
of God that takes away the sin of the world. And that Lamb of
God was the Lamb that Jehovah spoke to Abraham about and said,
I will provide a lamb for the offering. I myself will do it and I myself
will be that lamb for the offering. He came to prepare the people
to receive them. Some of the prophecy concerning
the coming of John the Baptist says every valley shall be exalted
and every hill made low. That's the way you build a road.
You take the tops off the hills and fill the valleys with them.
And so John, in preparing this people or making ready the people
that had already been prepared by God, what he did was debase
the proud and lift up the humble. And that's what the gospel always
does. That's what the coming of Christ
does. But these people were prepared by God. They were prepared by
His sovereign choice of them before the foundation of the
world. Jesus Christ did not come to earth to see if He could save
anybody or see if anybody would allow Him to save them. Such
a thought never enters the scripture anywhere. Jesus Christ came. As the high priest of Israel
did, he came with the names of his people written upon him. He says, this is the will of
my father that sent me. Of all that he has given me,
I would lose none but raise him up in the last day. Now, God
didn't give everybody to him. He gave everybody he chose. You say, why did he choose them?
I don't know. It certainly wasn't because of
anything in them. It's not that he looked down
through history and said, that guy's not so bad, or that guy's going
to believe, he'll make a decision for me, so I'll choose him. No.
He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world,
and it had absolutely nothing to do with us, good or bad. You
say, well, why do you say good or bad? There wasn't any good.
I know, but that's just the way we talk. There was nothing for God to
foresee in us that would move him to choose us. He chose us
because it was his will to do so. He chose us. He continues to
prepare this people. By the sacrifice of his son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, because though they are chosen, they're
not fit to be in his presence. Though they are chosen, sin is
upon them. They can't be in His presence in any safety. Preparations
must be made. He prepared a Savior for them,
and the Savior prepared the people to be with Him. And He sends
His Spirit to further prepare them by giving them spiritual
life and faith. And when He is all done, we shall
have been prepared to stand before God without fault, full of joy. We will be like Jesus Christ. That's a lot of preparation,
but that's what God is doing. OK, John, Chapter 14. A savior prepared the way of
the Lord, prepared a people prepared. And then John chapter 14. Verse one. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust God. Trust also in me. In my father's house are many
rooms. If it were not so, would have
told you I am going there to prepare a place for you." Now he didn't just go directly
there to prepare a place in order to get there to prepare a place
there was a certain path he had to walk and it was through Calvary
it was through death That was the way he could go to that place
and prepare it for us. Now, sometime this week, Brother
Drew Deets and his wife, Sister Melinda, gonna show up at our
house, Lord willing. And I guarantee you before then,
or before now and then, Bonnie's gonna do some preparing. She's
gonna have a place. Now, she is good at preparation.
I told you I wasn't, and that's true. I wouldn't know what to
do if she didn't tell me. But she will have that place prepared.
She will have it ready so that anything that they could possibly
want will be at hand. That's preparation. There will
be a room. There will be a bed with clean
sheets on it. There will be clean towels and
washcloths. We got a little refrigerator
down there full of water. We got just regular purified
water. We got sparkling water. There's a coffee maker down there.
Anything that you might want under normal circumstances, she'll
have it prepared. Now I want you to think of this.
The Lord Jesus Christ has gone to prepare a place for you if
you're among his people. And as good as my wife is at
preparing, the Lord Jesus Christ is better. Peter says we have
through the knowledge of him all we need for life and godliness. Everything is prepared. This is not heaven. The feast
of heaven is not a potluck where we fix what we decide to bring. We don't even have to bring silverware.
Don't have to bring something to drink. Brethren, when we arrive
at the Father's house, we shall find everything necessary for
a blessed eternity already in place. And there will be nothing for
us to add to it. And then there must be a way
prepared for the people. We saw about the way of the Lord,
there's also gotta be a way of the people. And that's found
in Isaiah 62. Isaiah 62, verse 10. Pass through. Pass through the gates, meaning
the end of the city. Prepare the way for the people.
Build up, build up the highway. Remove the stones. Raise a banner
for the nations. What's he talking about here?
Actually, this is all a picture of gospel preaching. We call on people to pass through
the gates of the city. The book of Revelation pictures
the church of the Lord Jesus as a great city with 12 gates
coming down out of heaven. And there's people passing through
those gates, becoming citizens of that great city. And so He's
saying, pass through, pass through. But wait a minute. They can't
pass through the gates unless there's a way to the gates. Well,
prepare the way for the people. Prepare it. Build up the highway. Here this past year, I was coming
up from one of my trips down to the southeast, and I got there
south of Omaha, and here's a big sign that says you can't, you're
going to have to find another way home, a detour. Yeah, they built up the highway,
but they hadn't built it up high enough. Because the Missouri
River in Interstate 29 became one just north of Omaha. So build up a highway. Build
up a highway that nothing can block it. Build up a highway
so that no flood can reach it. Build it up. Remove the stones,
every obstacle laid in the way. I get so upset if there's anything
that the false religion does, it really upsets me. And I don't
even know that it's a spiritual upset, but I do get upset when
they put blockades between people and Christ. And I think side
rails are good. Keep you on the path of Christ. That's fine. Don't put anything
in between the sinner and Christ. Before you come to Christ, you
gotta... No! Coming to Christ is the first
thing you do. Is there an obstacle in your
way? Is there something right now? Maybe in your mind you're
considering it. You're thinking, I should come
to Christ. I've heard of Him now for a long time. And I need
Him, I know that. But you know, I just don't think
I'm ready to come to Christ. What do you mean you're not ready?
Are you not a sinner? What else do you need to come
to Christ? Well, I figure I should first
put away some of these words. No! That's an obstacle in the
road. That's an obstacle in the road
put there by the devil himself through some of his mouthpieces
that are preaching in pulpits today. And let me tell you this,
I want to get it out of the way. You don't have to do anything
good to come to Christ. You don't have to bring anything
with you. Well, once I'm sure I have a broken heart. If you're
not sure you have a broken heart, go to Him to get one. I'm telling you this, God, the
sovereign Lord of the universe, has put no obstacle between you
and Christ. And if you see one there, it's
probably an obstacle of your own making. Remove. the stones, raise a banner
for the nations. Raise up that banner of Christ
and him crucified so that everyone can see it. When the Israelites
were dying from the fiery serpents, God told Moses, you get a serpent,
you put it on a pole, and anybody that looks to that
will live. I don't know how tall it was,
But I know this, they put it there where everybody could look
to it. And it might be awful far off,
but you could see it. Raise up a banner for the nations.
Oh, we should be glad for that. Why? Because you and I are the
nations. We're the Gentiles. Oh, this way has been prepared
not for the Jews only. But for Gentiles like you and
me, all right, a couple of minutes on one other thing, and then
we'll be done about this preparing. Back to Amos chapter 4. I love preaching things in a
sweet and encouraging way. I don't know if sweet's the right
word, but you know what I mean. I like to encourage you. I don't like to scare people.
But sometimes we need some sobering up. We read this chapter and saw
that all the grievances that God had against Israel and how
he had done various things to get their attention, still they
wouldn't turn to him. And he says, therefore, this
is what I will do to you, Israel. And because I will do this to
you, prepare to meet your God. And I want to say right now,
these are not words of grace. He's saying, you spurned my grace.
You turned it away. He said, I've held out my hands
to a perverse and stubborn generation. God holding out his hands, come.
Jesus Christ said, come unto me, all you that are weary and
heavy laden. He said, all right. then you
prepare yourself to meet your God. And what does the book of
Hebrews say? It's a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God. Our God is a consuming fire. You say, how does one prepare
himself to meet a God like that? Well, there's nothing you can
do. That's for sure. There's no asbestos
suit that's going to protect you from that fire. There's no
place you can hide. But there is a way to prepare
to meet that God. And that is to flee to Christ.
That's the only way you dare meet him. You're going to meet
him. That's for sure. Question is,
how will you meet him? Paul said that I may win Christ
and be found in him. God's going to find you. In fact, he already knows where
you are, but he will find you. He's going to come to you. You're
going to meet God. Where do you want to meet him?
I want to meet him in church. And you're done. You're toast. Well, I want to meet him in my
daily devotions. Not going to work. I want to
meet him in the baptistry. Not going to work. I want to meet him in my charitable
works. Won't be enough. Prepare to meet your God by fleeing
to Christ and hiding yourself in him. Well, may God add his
blessing to his word.