Since we're really just over a week away from Christmas, I thought it would be very appropriate this morning to focus our thoughts on preparing the way for Messiah, to prepare our hearts for the coming of Messiah. So our passage this morning is in Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 3. Please open to Matthew, Chapter 3. And we'll look at the first six verses together, preparing the way for Messiah in your own heart. Matthew chapter 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 Isaiah, saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight. And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair and a leather and girdle about his loins, and his meat was locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins." Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for the Christmas season and the reminder that the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, took on human flesh. He was born of a virgin in that manger long ago. We thank you for His coming to this earth for the purpose of becoming the Savior of the world. We thank you that He is the Messiah, not only of the Jewish people, but also of all the nations of the world, for any who will come to Him by faith and trust in Him to save them. And Lord, as we have an opportunity this morning to prepare our hearts for the coming of Messiah as we celebrate Christmas, I pray, Lord, that you would speak to us from this passage and just encourage our hearts and focus our minds, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. It has been said that if you leave Christ out of Christmas, all you're left with is a mass, or you might say a mess. Without Christ, there is no Christmas. There's a poem by Pat Towns by that title. Without Christ, there is no Christmas, no reason for us to sing. Without Christ, there is no celebration because there is no king. Without Christ, there are no wise men, no gifts for us to leave. Without Christ, there is no Christmas, no reason to believe. Without Christ, there is no Christmas and no way for us to win. Without Christ, there is no Christmas and no atonement for our sin. Without Christ, there is no Christmas and our lives would be a mess. Without Christ, there is no Christmas, nothing more, nothing less. We can't leave Christ out of Christmas. The problem is Christmas has been de-Christianized. Have you noticed that? In the cancel culture in which we live, every attempt is being made to cancel Christmas as a distinctly Christian holiday. I'm sure you've seen it. Let me just give you one contemporary example, and you may have read this in the newspaper. A few weeks ago, the city manager of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, sent a memo to city employees that banned religious Christmas decorations. And I want to read a couple of excerpts from the memo. I'm quoting now, quoting. We kindly ask that departments refrain from using religious decorations or solely associated with Christmas, such as red and green colors, when decorating public spaces. Instead, we encourage you to opt for more neutral and inclusive decoration that celebrate the season. What season? without favoring any particular faith belief system." So again, that was the city manager of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. I see a couple problems with this memo. I'm sure you do too. The first problem is, how can you be more inclusive if you exclude Christians? Right? And second problem, how can you have a Christmas season Without Christmas, notice that they didn't say Christmas season, they just said season. So not only do we need to put Christ back in Christmas, but we need to make Christ the focal point of the Christmas season. We need to do all that we can to focus on Christ during the Christmas season. So this morning's message is designed to help us do just that, to focus our attention on Christ, to help us have Him be the reason for the season. Jesus is the reason for the season. And so this message today is going to help us to prepare the way for Messiah in our own hearts. A few suggestions that would come from this passage as we consider the ministry of John the Baptist, who was the one sent by God to prepare the way for the coming of Messiah. The first suggestion is for you to clear the way. That's the message of verse three here that is recounting a prophecy from the Old Testament. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight. We need to clear the way. Of course, the Jewish expectation in the first century was that Messiah would come. They anticipated that He would come in their lifetime. And the specific scripture that is in view here in Matthew 3.3 is from the passage that I read during the scripture reading, Isaiah chapter 40, specifically verses 3 through 5. And so let me reread those verses for your consideration. This is Isaiah's prophecy. 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, 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 has spoken it. And so here is Isaiah the prophet prophesying of the coming of the Lord to his people, and in fact, prophesying of one who would precede him, specifically John the Baptist is the fulfillment of that, one who would prepare the way, to prepare the way, clear the way. Now, the prophecy itself uses kind of a road building metaphor here. In the ancient world, when a visiting king would come to a region, they would prepare the way, literally. I mean, they would build a road, maybe. In some cases, there was no road there before, but the king's coming, so we need to build a road. for the king to get here, maybe to repair a road, to clear the way for his arrival. In this case, as we look at this prophecy, the road is to be leveled and straightened and smooth. It is to be a highway for the king. And of course, this is a metaphor for the spiritual preparation that was to take place in the hearts of God's people so that they would be ready for the coming of Messiah. Clear the way, prepare the way. And so it is that based on Isaiah's prophecy and many other prophecies that we have contained in the Jewish scriptures, the first century Jews lived in constant expectation that those prophecies would be fulfilled, that Messiah would indeed come. They were looking for the coming of Messiah. I'll remind you of a couple instances that come from our study in the Gospel of John. Remember the woman at the well? The woman said to Jesus, I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ. When he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus responded to her and said, I that speak unto thee am he. So here's this woman at the well, and by the way, she's a Samaritan, kind of a half Jew, but she and all the Samaritan people along with the Jews were looking for the coming of Messiah, the promised Messiah. And so that's what she's expressing in that statement that she made to Jesus. Jesus said, I am he. Later on, that same woman says, come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ? The Christ, the Christos, the Messiah, the anointed one of God? And then we have the Jews in Jerusalem, John chapter 7. And it says, and many people believed on him and said, when Christ cometh, there's the expectation, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done? And so they're expressing in that there's an expectation, when Christ cometh, we're expecting Christ to come, we're expecting the Messiah to come. Would he do more miracles than this Jesus has done? These Jews in Jerusalem also said later, hath not the scripture said that Christ cometh of the seed of David and out of the town of Bethlehem where David was? So they're anticipating the coming of Messiah. There are so many Old Testament prophecies, Jewish prophecies, speaking of the coming of Messiah. They're expecting it. Later on in John's Gospel, we have Martha meeting Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, her brother. And she said unto Jesus, Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ. the Son of God, which should come into the world. Martha is expressing again that Jewish expectation that Messiah would come, that Christ would come. She's looking for him, and now she sees him with her own eyes. She believes Jesus. She professes Jesus to be the Messiah. And so in the first century, there was the Jewish expectation of the coming of Messiah. What about in our day and age? Well, we have the Christian commemoration of the coming of Messiah. That's what Christmas is all about. It's the Christian commemoration of the coming of Messiah. Really, this ought to be the focus of our Christmas festivities. We commemorate the coming of Messiah into the world. We celebrate the incarnation of the Son of God. and the virgin birth. I'm reminded of the song written by Ron Hamilton that we have sung, the choir has sung before, Born in a Manger. In the darkness of winter's eve, baby Jesus came to earth. In the stillness, hear creation sing of the little baby's birth. Born in a manger long ago, how could the Savior love me so? He left his throne for Calvary. He came to earth for me. That's putting the focus where it needs to be during Christmas, the coming of Messiah for you and for me. So Christmas isn't about the twinkling lights and the cookies. Christmas is not about the evergreen tree and the gifts that go under the tree. Christmas isn't even about family and friends and kisses under the mistletoe. And it certainly isn't about Santa Claus and Rudolph and all the reindeer. We understand the real meaning of Christmas. It's about the birth of Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the reason for the season. So prepare the way for Messiah in your own heart. Clear the way. Remove all distractions. Get your focus on the coming of the Savior into the world. Clear the way and then make the journey. That's really what we see here in verse 5. Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region round about Jordan. Jewish people went to where John the Baptist was preaching and baptizing in the wilderness near the Jordan River. They made the journey from Jerusalem, the capital city, to that wilderness area. They traveled from every corner of the district of Judea and from the entire Jordan River Valley region. People, the Jewish people, came from all over to go to where John the Baptist was because they understood him to be that voice crying in the wilderness. He was proclaiming the coming of Messiah. He was preparing the way. And so people were going to him. They made the journey. Are you willing to make the journey this Christmas? Are you willing to draw near in celebration of the coming of Messiah? So I'd kind of like to apply this concept of making the journey in three different ways. First of all, draw near with your heart. Make the journey with your heart. Our hearts really need to be in it. Our heart's desire ought to be to draw near to the Lord during the Christmas season, and in fact, throughout the whole year. But Christmas is that wonderful time when we can really maybe get a little downtime, you know, maybe we're off work a few days, and we can focus a little more attention on warming our hearts and drawing near with our hearts to the Savior. We're encouraged throughout the scriptures to draw near to God with our hearts. Psalm 119 verse 2, blessed are they that keep his testimonies and that seek him with the whole heart. We want our whole heart to be in it. Isaiah 29, 13, wherefore the Lord saith, forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men. God's saying this is not right. Just an outward conformity to religion, you know, a perfunctory attendance at church, our heart's not in it. And so Christmas is a time when we can kind of rekindle that desire in the heart, that spark in the heart, so that our heart is once again in it. We're here to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. We're here to sing His praises. We're here to glorify His name. And Christmas is a good time to just remind us, you know, to rekindle our hearts a little bit, to warm our hearts toward God. Jeremiah 29, 13 says, the Lord says, and ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord. What a wonderful promise. If we will seek the Lord with our whole heart, if our whole heart is in it, God says, I will be found of you. We will be able to draw close to God, draw near to him with our hearts. And so I'd like to make this application with all the hustle and bustle surrounding the commercialization of Christmas. We find it hard, don't we, to have our heart in it, to have the right Christmas spirit. But what we need to do is we need to, if you'll pardon the pun, we need to dematerialize Right? We need to put aside that material mindset of the world that's being pumped at us, you know, through all the advertising, you know, buy this, buy that, you know, discount sales and so forth. Dematerialize to get those materialistic ideas out of our head and instead to have a more wholesome spiritual emphasis during this Christmas season. And so set aside your Christmas shopping list and your holiday to-do list for a time. Put on some Christ-honoring Christmas music. Sit down and just have a quiet moment with the Lord to reorient your heart, to draw near to the Lord with your whole heart during this Christmas season. So draw near with your heart. Also draw near with your thoughts. Replace the secular thoughts of this world with biblical thoughts. How do you do that? Well, you spend time in the Bible. Spend time with your Bible. Say with the psalmist, Psalm 119 verse 15, I will meditate in thy precepts and have respect unto thy ways. I will delight myself in thy statutes. I will not forget thy word. Delight yourself in the word of God. Let me give you a few suggestions for how you can draw near with your thoughts. First suggestion, perhaps read and discuss the Christmas story during your family get-togethers this Christmas season. As you read through the Christmas story, see if you can discover some little detail that maybe you never saw before, something that you can pick up on. So pay careful attention as you read the Christmas story. Contemplate the amazing truth of the incarnation of the Son of God. What a marvelous thing to contemplate. Think about the eternal Son of God taking on human flesh. It's just mind boggling. Think about the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth, such humble circumstances. He who was in the realm of glory, humbled himself, took on human flesh, was born in a manger. We sang a song this morning that was from the 1600s. I actually have a poem by Henry Vaughan that was written around 1678. It's entitled, The True Christmas. The brightness of this day we owe not unto music, mask, nor show, nor gallant furniture, nor plate, but to the manger's mean estate. His life while here, as well as birth, was but a check to pomp and mirth, and all man's greatness you may see condemned by his humility. It's worth contemplating the humiliation of Christ in his birth, in his meager existence on this earth during his first advent, in the giving of himself on the cross to pay for the sins of mankind. So read and discuss the Christmas story. That's first suggestion. Secondly, you might consider doing a study on the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament that speak of the birth of Messiah and see how those find their fulfillment then in the New Testament in the life of Christ, in the birth of Christ. And it turns out that there are many, too many for me to list here this morning. But you can rediscover some of the linkages between the Old Testament prophecies and the Lord Jesus Christ. Old Testament people, linkages to Old Testament people like Eve, you can go all the way back to Genesis and Eve, and something the Lord said that speaks of the birth of the Savior. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and Jesse. All of these are linkages between the Old Testament people and the coming of Messiah. There are also linkages to Old Testament prophets, Nathan, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and Malachi. There are prophecies of these prophets speaking of the coming of Messiah. There's a linkage to the Old Testament priest, Melchizedek. He's a mysterious figure, and that would be an interesting one to study that linkage. There's a linkage to the Old Testament king, David. So many linkages between the Old Testament and the New Testament, Old Testament messianic prophecies that all find their fulfillment in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So you could do a little Bible study. Third suggestion, just snuggle up with your Bible and a hot cup of cocoa some tea or eggnog, if you like that, or pumpkin spice latte or whatever it is you like to drink at Christmas time. Just snuggle up with your Bible and sit down and read through an entire gospel in one sitting. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, you could pick any of them. If you really want the birth account, you probably should stick with Matthew or Luke. But read through an entire gospel in one sitting. And just take it all in. The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, His life, His ministry, His miracles, His death on the cross, His burial, His resurrection. Take it all in in one sitting this Christmas. So these are just some suggestions for how you can focus your thoughts on Christ this Christmas and focus on the miracle of his birth. So draw near with your heart, draw near with your thoughts, and draw near with your prayers. Christmas can be a wonderful time to rejuvenate your prayer life, to spend some extra time in prayer. Peter writes in 1 Peter 3.12, the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous and his ears are open unto their prayers. So you have an open door. God is going to hear your prayers. And so draw near with your prayers. Ask the Lord to renew your heart, to give you a fresh sense of awe at the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ask God to help you keep the focus on Jesus this season, to put the focus where it ought to be, to not get distracted with all of the glitz and glamour of the world. Thank God for sending His Son. Thank God for giving His Son to die on the cross to pay for your sin. Dwell on the humiliation of Christ through the Incarnation. Thank Him for humbling Himself to the point of death, even death on the cross. Draw near with your prayers. Let me offer up a simple Christ-centered prayer that you can pray, and of course you can pray the prayer in your own words, but I want to share just a simple prayer that was written by a school teacher just a couple years ago. Her name is Callie Logan. Here's the prayer. Father God, we thank you today for this season. And Lord, we seek to remember why we celebrate your son, Jesus, during this time of year. Lord, you sent your only begotten son, Jesus, to the world to be born as a baby, to one day die for our sins. Lord, that is no small thing. And we seek to not only remember the sacrifice that you gave in sending Jesus, but we praise and worship you in thankfulness and humility that you would do so. Lord, help us not forget that the reason Christmas matters is what Jesus did on Good Friday and the rising on Easter. Keep our hearts ever mindful of the severity of what Jesus did in coming to this earth and give us a heart posture of gratitude that he came to die that we might truly live. In Jesus name. Amen. That's a good Christmas prayer. And you can pray such a prayer. Draw near with your prayers. So prepare the way for Messiah in your own heart. Clear the way. Make the journey. Draw near with your heart, with your thoughts, and with your prayers. And finally, and we need to cover this because it is in this passage this morning, repent and confess your sins. This was really at the core of John the Baptist's preaching. This is how he prepared the way for the coming of Messiah, to address God's people and to tell them to repent. That was his message. Look again at verse two. He said, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. We're all familiar with this word repent. The Greek word that's translated repent literally means to change one's mind. It's a change of our mind concerning our sin. To be able to see our sin not as we see it, but as God sees it. To see it as what it truly is, an offense against a holy and righteous God. And of course, following that, we are to change our direction, to turn away from our sin and to turn and face toward God. Now, we often think of Christmastime as a time of year when we might return to our roots. We might go to our home, our place of birth, perhaps, renew family ties during Christmastime. What I want to submit to you is that Christmastime is a wonderful time to come home spiritually to your Heavenly Father, to renew your family ties with the Father in Heaven and with His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a wonderful time for that renewal to take place. It's a wonderful time to get right with God, and to restore our walk with our Savior. So John the Baptist preached a message. He said, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What did he mean by that? Well, the king is at hand, the king of the kingdom, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the king of kings and Lord of lords. He is the king of the kingdom. It's his kingdom after all. And so because the kingdom of heaven is at hand, we are to repent. If we want to be close to Christ, we need to repent of our sin. If we've had some sin that we've just carried as baggage throughout the whole year, Christmas is a wonderful time to jettison that baggage, to get right with God. to repent. And coupled with that, we see in verse 6 that as the people were coming to John and being baptized of him in the Jordan, they were confessing their sin. Confession is directly linked to repentance. In fact, confession is really the first step. True repentance always involves the confession of sin to God. It's that first step taken to come home to the Father. Proverbs 28, 13 says, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. God offers unlimited mercy to those who will come to him and confess and forsake their sin. What a promise. And of course, in the New Testament, we have the promise well-known in 1 John 1, 9. I'll read verse 8 as well. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We wonder, why is our heart so cold? You know, why is our heart not in it this Christmas? Well, it might be because we have sinned, but we're denying it. So John says, let's address that. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Confession cleanses the soul. It has that tremendous cleansing effect, not because of what we've done, but because of what God does. He's promised that He will forgive and cleanse us of that sin. And of course, that cleansing is done through the blood of Jesus Christ. It's His blood that washes away our sin. And so we want to come to Christ and be close to him. And if we see that there is some sin in the way, we need to confess that sin and get it out of the way. We need to repent. You know, this is a good time of year for us to repent of the sins that we've committed this year and not continue those sins into the next year. Repent and confess. This is part of preparing the way for Messiah. in your own heart. Clear the way. Clear the way. Make the way clear for Messiah as He comes to you. Clear the way. Remove the obstacles. Remove the distractions. Get your focus on the Lord Jesus Christ, on His coming to this earth this Christmas season. Make the journey. You draw near to Him. Draw near to Him with your heart, with your thoughts. Draw near to Him with your prayers. And if there's sin in the way, repent. Confess that sin. Get right with God so that you can truly, truly, truly enjoy this Christmas season. Some of you may know the name Hank Hanegraaff. He's most commonly known as the Bible Answer Man. He's also a good servant of the Lord. He offers the following acrostic to help us put Christ back in Christmas. Now, I've kind of abbreviated what he's written here so that it's a little easier for us to digest. So this is the Christmas acrostic. C stands for Christ, obviously, the Redeemer of humankind. H stands for history, the historical reality of Jesus' birth. R stands for rejoice, our response to what Christ has done. I stands for incarnation, God becoming man. S stands for the real St. Nicholas, the 4th century Christian who modeled faithfulness and charity. T stands for tradition, Christmas traditions that enhance our appreciation of Christ's birth. M stands for Magi, who found and worshipped Jesus. A stands for Advent, a word referring to Christ's coming. And S, the final S, stands for salvation, made possible by the coming of Christ. Prepare the way for Messiah in your own heart this Christmas. Our Father, we thank you for this meditation this morning, prompted by this passage of Scripture, where your servant John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of Messiah. He prepared the hearts of the people. He wasn't out there with a bulldozer making a real physical highway, but instead He was proclaiming your truth so that hearts would be ready for Messiah to come. And Lord, I pray that our hearts would be ready this Christmas as we celebrate the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to this earth, His incarnation, His virgin birth, His humble beginnings in that manger. Lord, we stop to contemplate how He stooped from the loftiness of heavenly glory to go to that cross, to die for fallen humanity, that He might redeem us and save us and call us His own. Lord, I pray that we would really put Christ as the focus of what we do this Christmas. In Jesus' name, Amen.