says that like it's nothing. I could have been working on that for like 18 Friday afternoons. Well, I mentioned a few Sundays ago that I was going to do a few Sunday evenings talking about John the Baptist. And that was spurred on by Vivian's lesson on a Wednesday night a few weeks ago. And I realized, as I mentioned, there's a lot there. It's not as concise as other accounts, if that makes sense. It's spread across the Gospels. It goes in the Old Testament and in the New. And so John the Baptist's account of his life and the things that he said are certainly there for us to see, but may require a little bit more study than perhaps a specific story that's covered in a chapter or something like that. And in doing that, I realized that I should probably talk about some of the things that John said. because he said a lot of things and he said several things repeatedly. And one that I want to talk about today is one that we've probably all heard. And I know I've mentioned it in the past and kind of talked about it a little bit at different times, but I want to look in Matthew chapter three, Matthew chapter three. I just want to read, um, starting with verse 1, Matthew 3, 1 through probably 3. In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Elias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. And we'll pause there for just a minute. Like I said, you can go on and continue reading about, um, John and the other things that he preached and the things that he said and the reason that he came. But I want to focus today on verse three, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare you the way of the word, the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. And I don't know that we've really spent much time, this seems like a very poetic kind of phrase, one that's fairly easy to memorize and keep in your mind, but I don't know that we often very much think about what exactly it means. What does it mean to make the paths straight? What does it mean to prepare the way? What was John doing in preparation? Well, we know that he was preparing for Jesus Christ. the Messiah, the One who could save us was coming and it was John's job to get everything ready for that. And so we look at that today and want to know what exactly is this talking about? And the easiest way is to go back to Isaiah, so turn to Isaiah with me for just a moment because this is where this phrase comes from, is Isaiah. If you look at Isaiah chapter 40, again, this is a very common chapter. Many of us know parts of this. Many of us probably know the ending. It talks about, have you not known, have you not heard the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary. And there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint." As I said, many of us know that verse could probably loosely quote many parts of it. But what's interesting is the opening of that chapter, that famous ending to this well-known and famous chapter is the quote that we're talking about today. So turn back to the beginning of the chapter. I'm going to start with verse 3 this time, Isaiah 40, verse 3. It says, "...the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. The voice said, Cry, and he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all goodliness thereof is the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass, and the grass withereth, and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever." And so knowing this, as many of the Hebrews and the scribes and the Pharisees and all the religious elites and rulers and just people in general, they would have known Isaiah. They would have studied Isaiah very closely. And so when John the Baptist came and quoted this verse, they knew exactly what he was talking about. And they understood the context of that probably better than we do today. That what John is saying is that he is there the voice of the one crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for the Lord, preparing the way for the Messiah to come." Now, we don't know a lot about John and how long this went on. It's a great question. How long was he preaching before Jesus showed up, before Jesus was revealed as the Messiah? We don't know the answer to that. It could have been a short amount of time. It could have been a long time. But the point of all this is not only that he was just saying that we need to repent and get ready, but he is quoting Old Testament scripture saying, I am the one who was to come to proclaim and prepare the way of the Lord. But he didn't know when that was going to come. People have been proclaiming that the Messiah is coming for a long time. And John didn't know either. And we'll hopefully get into that in a few Sunday nights or maybe a Sunday morning I don't know that I really think John knew that he was the Messiah until he was revealed as such. And so John was preaching just like I'm preaching, and I'm saying that the Lord is someday coming back to get those who were saved, and I don't know when that's going to be. And so John the Baptist is likewise preaching, saying the Messiah is coming, but I don't know when it's going to be. And so what we should do before he gets here, while we're waiting for him, is to make the paths straight. to make the mountains and the hills low, to raise the valleys, to make things that are crooked straight. This has lots of important context and meaning for us today. Now, this testimony of John and this phrase, in fact, is used in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. All four Gospels talk about John the Baptist and identify him as the one who is the forerunner, the precursor to Christ, who's going to come and to do this. We also know that Zechariah, John the Baptist's father, mentioned this, and John himself proclaimed to be this person. So let's do a little bit more flipping. Turn to Luke, if you will. Get a little more detail in Luke. Luke's a great book for detail. Luke 1. I believe with verse 13. This is the story. We won't read the full part of it, but this is the account of John the Baptist's birth and the events that went on there. So picking up with verse 13, we see an angel speaking to John's father. But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias, For thy prayer is heard, and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have the joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall turn to him I'm sorry, shall he turn to the Lord their God and he shall go before them in the spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts and the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. And so we see here again, the angel is telling John's father, Zacharias, exactly what John the Baptist is going to do and who he's going to be. Later on, same chapter, verse 76, we see this again. So, this is chapter 1, verse 76, "'And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His way.'" And so we see all these different ways. Each of the gospels talk about John the Baptist fulfilling this role. The angel told Zechariah that he would fulfill this role. And John himself proclaims to be this person when he says that, I am the voice of the one crying in the wilderness. What an amazing blessing. Again, we think about the life that John had. It was probably very As we pointed out on Wednesday night, locusts probably aren't easy to catch and they're probably not enjoyable to eat. Rough clothing isn't pleasant to have. Living out in the wilderness isn't always fun either. But what an honor to be the one who gets to proclaim that Christ is coming. John taught a very valuable lesson, a very important lesson. One of the things he taught over and over again was that heritage isn't going to save you. He was very straightforward about that. I think I even read this last week or the week before. Many came to him wanting to be involved and wanting to get baptized by him. And he said, no, I don't think so. And you can't trust because you're children of Moses to get you to heaven. Instead, he taught that you must repent of your sins. You must turn away from the things that you're doing. You must fully seek after God. You must have a life changing faith in the Messiah, in the one to come. That is how you are connected with God, not your heritage, not your church membership, not anything else other than repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. And so this was a key point that John was trying to make to so many. And as I pointed out, he had the great privilege of introducing Jesus Christ. That's in John 1. I'm going to turn there. Got you flipping a lot today. John 1. Like I said, to get the whole story, you have to move around quite a bit. John chapter 1 and verse 29. It says, "...the next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and say, Behold, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world." Now I really considered preaching on this today, maybe that will be next week. The Lamb of God, the beautiful imagery that is there that we see carried forward from the Old Testament with the sacrifices all the way forward. And then all the way to the conclusion in the book of Revelation, we see Christ depicted as a lamb, and that has very important meaning. But again, picture this, John living his entire life, not always a pleasant life, telling everyone they had to repent, they had to stop doing the things they were doing that were wrong. They had to get ready for the Savior to come, and in the river, this is how I always picture it, I'm in the river baptized, and all of a sudden Jesus walks up, and the Lord God reveals to him that his own cousin, is in fact the Messiah. Now I've thought this before. A lot of y'all have cousins. Knew them growing up. Can you imagine one day if God says to you, your cousin, that's the one. What do you think John thought? I don't know what he thought. Do you think surely Lord you got a mistake? Or did he go, that makes sense. He's always been such a good boy. I don't know what John thought, but I know that he did what God told him to do, which is he went out in the desert and he preached and he preached and he preached. He told everyone they had to repent. He prepared the way he made everything smooth and straight for the one to arrive, not trying to be better than the one to arrive. but preparing the way for him. And when that day came, when Jesus Christ was ready, when God revealed to John the Baptist who he was, he got to stand there and say, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. How beautiful is that? What a wonderful opportunity that he got to have. So let me return to this concept of making the path straight, lowering the mountains and the hills and bringing the valleys up. I've mentioned, again, this before when you go hiking. And you'll find that what happens is you go hiking in a forest and where there's a path you generally follow, and a tree falls over. And if no one comes and removes the tree, all of a sudden you have a path around the tree. Sometimes we get paths that go off in an easier direction or a harder one. But what happens over time as you're walking along is these paths become very crooked, very twisty, very turning. And at some point, and I've seen this happen myself and I've mentioned it here before and I think it's very interesting when it does happen. I've only seen it I think once. I was out hiking with a group of men. And this long train of people came through. There was about a dozen of them. And each of them had a different tool. Some of them had the same tool, but there were six, seven, eight different tools. And they were coming along, and they were straightening the paths. They were trimming up the trees. They were blocking off the ways that didn't go the direction they wanted you to, and they were kind of sweeping everything through. If there was a big tree root coming up, they would cut it so you wouldn't trip over it. If there was a hole, they would rake some dirt and gravel into it to fill it up to make it smooth. If there was a stone that was picking up, sticking up, you'd trip over it, they'd move it out of the way. What they were doing is preparing the way for us to walk on it safely and to the destination we're trying to get to. Maybe you don't get out very much and hike. I don't anymore. I do end up doing a lot of driving. And one thing I really enjoy doing when I drive is to look and see if I can find the old roads. A few of you shook your heads. If you drive, especially in this part of the world, on these small back roads, even the winding curvy roads, if you look closely, you can almost kind of see sometimes where there's a little flat path that goes off to the side and there's trees on either side. And there's grass there now, but what that used to be was the old road. And more than likely what happened is that was a really dangerous curve that someone came in and they made a new road and they straightened it out. or there was a big dip that went there, or it went down, this happens very much around rivers, you see where there was a ford, which means you're gonna drive like basically through the water, through the river to cross over, and the path would wind down in a nice sloping descent where you could go and then come back up. And years and years later, we come, we build a bridge over it to make it smoother and faster and safer, and we don't go that way anymore, because it's not the direction to go. And I've always really enjoyed doing that. You can see lots of these around here as you drive, so I encourage you when you're driving and, well, hopefully paying attention to driving, but you can kind of glance and see some of these little roads off to the side. The point of all this is when we straighten roads, when we take down the hill a few feet, when we fill in the valley, roads become straighter and faster and safer. And when we make application to our lives, here's the real question. John the Baptist was coming to make the road straight and fast and quick for Jesus. Easy. He was laying the groundwork so that when Jesus came, when He began His ministry, there had already been a work that had started in the people's lives, and they were filling in the potholes, they were cutting down the mountains, they were making the valleys a little less deep, and they were making the road a little straighter. And the reality is in our lives, we should be doing the same thing for ourselves. What's the stone you always trip over? Maybe you should move it. What's the valley you always get stuck in? Maybe you should fill it up a little bit. What's the mountain you just can't quite get over? Maybe we should take it down a few feet. If we want to see God do amazing and wonderful things in our lives, then we need to prepare the way for Him to do that. We need to consider what it is that we need to move out of the way. We need to consider what it is that we need to align better. We need to consider whether or not we are allowing God to work in our lives, or if we, over time, have left a winding, uneven, rutted path. We need to make the paths straight. We need to remove the obstacles. We need to provide the way. John was born to do just that for Jesus Christ in a specific time and way. I'm not claiming that any of us are John the Baptist. I'm not trying to apply this verse specifically to us. I do think that when it was prophesied it was talking about John the Baptist. But I think the application that we have in our lives today should be very clear for us. We should be seeking to do the same thing, to keep the road straight and smooth so that we are prepared for whatever God wants for us to do in our lives. Let me read back in Isaiah again in a different translation. It says, clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, remove the obstacles, make straight and smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised, every mountain made lower and let the rough ground become plain and the rugged place a broad valley. I've shared with you numerous times my salvation testimony. And one point that I don't always include, or maybe you've forgotten, but I'm going to tell you again anyway, is how that started was a challenge for me to pray and to read the scriptures. And I did that pretty faithfully for about a month or two before I was actually saved. See, what that did was prepare my heart. It prepared the way. It put the words of God in my mind and in my body. It put me thinking about God. It put me focusing on who He was and trying to understand the scripture. It had me talking to Him. And what began to happen was I began to correct the path. And it made it so much easier for God to come into my life and to speak to me. Now, I'm not saying it can't happen otherwise, but what I am saying is so many times, if we want something from the Lord, if we want salvation and want to seek it, then we should make our paths as straight as possible, the highway to become plain so that the Lord can come directly to us. We're not tripping on our own obstacles and our own selves. The same is true today. Whatever it is that you think that you need in your life, whatever it is that you're praying for God to do, then we should spend more time with Him because He will make our paths straight. He will remove obstacles. He will lower things. He will raise things up. He will make it plain. This is so important today that we remember hear from the Lord the first time, we need to start cultivating our lives, getting ready for it. And even after that, after we've been saved, we must make sure, as John the Baptist proclaimed, that we are keeping things plain, that we are keeping things straight. Because as I mentioned, if anyone again has gone hiking, over time we start getting these paths, don't we? We start taking the shortcut this way. We start wandering that way and it gets more challenging. I don't know what in your life you've been wandering around for very long, what needs to be removed, what you need to focus on. But I pray that we all would pray that we would all consider where God wants us to go. And I pray that we would all make our lives ready for him to speak to us. It's entirely possible sometimes that God has been speaking for a while, we just weren't listening. In fact, I think that's most often the case. We're just not listening, not ready, haven't made the path straight for Him to communicate with us. And so I ask that you would join me in a word of prayer today as we consider these things. And I want you to really think about how you can make your path straight. And if you are in a period of need, let him communicate with you. If things are going well, how could you make your path straighter? Again, I don't know why I'm so fascinated with road work, but I always think it's interesting. I've watched for years as they do construction and they'll come in and widen the road and sometimes they'll take just another foot down off of a off of a hill, and they raise another valley up just a foot or two, just a little bit more. So maybe you're at a point in your life when you're doing pretty well, things are going along pretty well. The question is, could they be better? The answer is, well, yes. Even just shaving off a little bit of height in this valley and using it to fill in over there would certainly be better. And as we all know, especially in this state. Once you start getting a pothole, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger every time you ride over it. Join me in a word of prayer. Lord, I pray that you would be present just now. Lord, I pray that you would help us to see the things that we should correct or to know the way that we should go. Lord, I pray that you would give us the wisdom and the strength to change these things. Lord, that we would consider the words of your prophets, Elijah and John the Baptist, the idea that we should make the way straight, the valley to rise, the hill to lower, the obstacles to remove. Lord, may we not be so closed off to think that these are always negative things. They can be quote unquote good things in our lives too. Lord, I pray that all of this, Lord, you would speak truth to us, speak into our lives, help us to know what we should do. And Lord, give us the courage and the wisdom and the fortitude to actually do these things. Lord, I thank you for John the Baptist. I thank you that he came and was obedient to what you told him to do. I'm thankful that you worked in his life to prepare the way for your son. I'm thankful that your son came and was able to walk upon the ground that John had laid to speak truth into the life of so many and ultimately to live and to die for us and for me. Lord, I pray that you would help us to remember these truths. Help us to seek you. Help us to love you with all that we have and all that we do so that we can follow after you so that our paths will be straight and we can pursue a life of following you and seeking after you. In your name we pray. Amen. Anyone else have anything? I'm not really sure how to end. Alright, well let's all stand and sing one verse of a hymn real quick. Do you have something?