Prepare

 

“A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the Lord;’”

—Isaiah 40:3

Christmas preparations seem to begin earlier every year. If you’re like me, you would rather have a more leisurely time to get ready than become swept up in a last minute rush. After all, the point of the trappings, gifts, decorations, baking, and carol singing is to create an enjoyable anticipation, right?

We prepare for Christmas by shopping and gift buying, putting up the tree, baking all those special cookies and treats that our families love, and gathering with friends to sing carols. The day itself, for which we have so carefully prepared, comes and goes before we know it. But, the warm glow of the anticipation of it seems to last much longer.

If we think in spiritual terms, the holiday that celebrates the birth of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, also requires a careful preparation. We consider the Season of Advent as that time of anticipation and readiness for both the celebration of Christ’s incarnation and also for His ultimate return. We sing hymns that reflect a poverty of spirit and humble consideration of how desperate we are without the new life that Christ came to give us.

One image that often gives me pause is that of the desert. We prepare for the Lord while we wander “in the desert.” We can think of this in terms of our dry, lifeless hearts coming in expectation to God. We can also reflect on the “desert places” of our circumstances. Perhaps the year has brought distress and sadness through grief, or sickness, or loss. God asks us to make this “desert” a prepared place into which Christ may come to us.

John the Baptist was sent to prepare the people for Jesus’ first coming. John lived in the desert and preached repentance of sins to those who so long had anticipated the coming of the Messiah. The Scriptures tell us in Luke 3:2-3:

… the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the desert. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

So, how should we prepare our hearts for Christmas? Contemplation, repentance of sin, viewing our trials as a place for God to come and do new work in us, and considering, with thanksgiving, all He has done in sending Jesus to be our Savior, Lord, and King. In the words of Psalm 50:23:

He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.

As we prepare for the celebration of Christ’s birth and spend time making our homes welcoming places for family and friends, we would do well to remember to do the same in our hearts. Let us truly make a welcoming place in our hearts for our Savior. Let us, indeed, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”

 

 

Creaky Gates

 

“Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord through which the righteous may enter. I will give you thanks, for you answered me.”

—Psalm 118:19-21

When you come upon a creaky gate, what adjective comes first to mind? To me, I think “neglect.” If a gate makes a sound, it obviously has not been used often and needs lubrication. Or, it needs a new coat of paint and a couple of new hinges.

What if the gates of the Lord’s house make a squeaky sound, are stuck, or are hard to open? Would not a few swings of the gate help? Perhaps the gates need some children running in and out? Or, perhaps the gates need a squirt or two of oil on the hinges?

I really don’t think the mention in Scripture of the gates of the Lord’s house really refers to the gates themselves. Rather, I believe these references point to the practices and use of God’s house by His people.

If we belong to God through Christ, Scripture found in 1 Peter 2:9 declares that we are a royal priesthood. Surely, priests need to frequent the Lord’s house.

The Scripture passage from Psalm 118 at the beginning of this blog post seems to indicate that thanksgiving lubricates those gates. When Christians come together, they should enter God’s house full of thanksgiving and joy. Certainly a robust congregation will demonstrate this gratitude. Psalm 100:4 tells us to:

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise…

Hebrews 10:25 gives us a strong admonition:

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Obviously the author of this latter passage of Scripture saw the importance of keeping those gates swinging with our usage.

If the “gates” of your place of worship depended on you for their usage, would they swing easily on their hinges, or creak and fall off? Is it your “habit” to neglect the meeting together of the church? Even those of us who make well-worn tracks into and out of the church building can do so without the joy and purposefulness that God requires.

When Sunday rolls around this week, why not make it your glad intention to enter the gates of the Lord’s house with joy, with thanksgiving, and with encouragement for your brothers and sisters in Christ? Say with the cup-bearer Nehemiah, as found in Nehemiah 10:39:

We will not neglect the house of our God!

 

 

Shoddy Worship

 

I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”

—Psalm 122:1

In these current days, we can all see how the vast majority of Christian churches are struggling to stay alive. Congregations seem to have dwindling numbers and aging members, faithful but stagnant. Meanwhile, Sunday sports events draw crowds of thousands and enthusiasm never seems to wane. Even children’s sports teams that hold matches on Sunday do better with attendance than many churches.

From some 780 years before Christ, we can identify with the observation of the prophet Amos, as he quotes the people in his generation, found in Amos 8:4-6:

“When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath ended that we may market wheat?”—skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

Does that not sound like the world we live in? If people even occasionally attend worship services on Sundays, they often do so hurriedly, so that they can get back to buying, selling, and attending to matters other than meditation and prayer. Yet, upon a closer examination of the spiritual state of Christians in our society, it appears that shoddy attention to worship results in a lethargy that produces ungodly and sinful work.

May I be so bold as to suggest that what we give ourselves to on the Sabbath—our Sunday—determines the way we manifest Christ’s divine presence in our lives during the rest of the week? Any activity that requires us to forsake the gathering together with our fellow believers distracts and detracts from the effectiveness of our spiritual formation and our spiritual growth.

The prophet Malachi, the last prophet to write before the birth of Christ, had plenty to say about the way people in his generation approached worship. He admonished them for giving mediocre attention to their offerings before God, insisting that what they gave of themselves was far below the standard of excellence that reverence to God requires. In those long ago days, much like today, even the priests dedicated to serving God violated the covenants of the Lord.

Yet, God promised a messenger—a mouthpiece for the Lord—to purify His servants and to call His people back. God’s standard for worship requires the attention of His people to the purity of His cleansing power. Note the Prophet’s words from Malachi 3:2-4:

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in the days gone by, as in former years.

Perhaps God is preparing His church for His Son’s second coming, as He was preparing the people of Judah in Malachi’s day for the birth of His precious Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We need an adjustment to our Christian culture that puts first things first, so that not only do we worship our God acceptably on Sundays, but we also give our devotion, our obedience, and our work the other six days to Him, as well. Out of joy and gratitude, we need to consciously and purposefully strive to please Him in every way.

As we consider all that God has done for us and continues to do for us, may we make necessary corrections to our priorities so that we can say:

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”

 

 

Clusters of Mercy

 

“Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge.”

—Psalm 57:1

One prayer we can always pray and know God will answer is, “Lord, have mercy.” In reading Charles Haddon Spurgeon, that great preacher of the 1800s, I came across a devotional that opened up the word “mercy” to me. The definition reminds me of my hydrangea bushes.

When you look at the bush from a distance, you see the clusters of flowers that look like pom-poms, but when you take the time to look up close, you see tiny petals that make up the smaller flowers within the larger blooms. According to Spurgeon, God’s mercy resembles the hydrangea. Perhaps we have to come to the place where we see our need for God’s mercy up close before we truly realize the beauty, power, and depth of it.

Spurgeon first reminds us that the mercy of the Lord is a tender mercy coming from the gentle, loving touch of God. It is a great mercy. Like God Himself, His mercy shows His infinite bigness. God’s mercy is undeserved mercy. We have no right to it. This mercy is also rich mercy. It has efficacy for all our wounds.

God’s mercy is manifold mercy. Here we see the cluster of multitude blessings. God’s mercy is abounding mercy. We can never exhaust it. It is unfailing mercy. God always gives it to us and it will never leave us.¹

As Psalm 23:6 tells us:

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow thee all the days of thy life.

Why would we not call for mercy? We can never live beyond the beauty and breadth of it. When we come to the end of our own resources and those of everyone we know, remember that God makes His mercy available to us. And, His mercy will never fail.

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1 Spurgeon, Charles H., Morning and Evening. McLean, VA: MacDonald Publishing Co., Public Domain. p. 588.