It is a great privilege to be here tonight. It is a little overwhelming to begin the conference and speak tonight.
I would just like to ask two questions. Number one: would you raise your hand if you are here for the first time this year?
That is quite a good percentage of you, and we welcome all of you. We are glad you could be here.
My second question—not trying to give away age or anything—but how many of you would raise your hand if you have been to more than twenty conferences?
Well now, do not start calling out numbers. But you see, there are quite a number here as well. This is, for me, my thirty-sixth conference, and I am the young guy on the block.
It is wonderful to be together. Jerry, thank you for that introduction, giving us a context for our times together this week. May the Lord’s kingdom come, and His will be done among us.
We want to continue to pray through this week because, of course, you realize that in this topic, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” we are dealing with matters of the kingdom. There is great conflict because, of course, the enemy wants to distract us and get our minds off what the Lord wants to say.
So please help us, and let us pray for one another, that the Lord might truly be able to speak clearly to all of us throughout this week. It is such a great opportunity to be together. The Lord can do wondrous things, but we must be alive to Him.
Now, with that said, let us go right into sharing tonight. We want to begin in Isaiah 40, the background for the story of John the Baptist.
I am the brother who has been asked to share on the vessel that prepares the way of the Lord, and so I will try to begin speaking on that matter tonight.
In Isaiah 40, we want to look at the first five verses, just for a little context here.
Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God.
Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the Lord’s hand
Double for all her sins.A voice is calling,
“Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
Then we want to move to Isaiah 64 and read a few passages there—Isaiah 64:1-4, the actual prayer of those who are waiting for the kingdom upon the walls of Zion.
Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down,
That the mountains might quake at Your presence—
As fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil—
To make Your name known to Your adversaries,
That the nations may tremble at Your presence!When You did awesome things which we did not expect, You came down;
The mountains quaked at Your presence.
For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear,
Nor has the eye seen a God beside You,
Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him.
Then let us go to Malachi, because, as you know, in Mark, in the Gospel, it quotes from Malachi in regard to this servant—Malachi 3:1-4.
Behold, I am going to send My messenger,
And he will clear the way before Me.
And the Lord, whom you seek,
Will suddenly come to His temple;
And the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight,
Behold, He is coming, says the Lord of hosts.But who can endure the day of His coming?
And who can stand when He appears?
For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.
He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver,
And He will purify the sons of Levi
And refine them like gold and silver,
So that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness.
Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord
As in the days of old and as in former years.
If we could just move to Malachi 3:16:
Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another,
And the Lord gave attention and heard it,
And a book of remembrance was written before Him
For those who fear the Lord and who esteem His name.
“They will be Mine,” says the Lord of hosts,
“On the day that I prepare My own possession,
And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.”So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked,
Between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.
Then we want to finally turn to Mark 1.
Beginning in Mark 1:1:
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 ahead of You,
Who will prepare Your way;
The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
‘Make ready the way of the Lord,
Make His paths straight.’”John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.
John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey. And he was preaching and saying, “After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals. I baptized you with water; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Immediately, coming out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well pleased.”
Our Father, again we just want to touch base, realizing the importance of not only this hour, but the importance of us hearing. We know that only the Spirit can give us understanding, reveal to us, and open our hearts to pursue this preparation.
We thank You, Lord, for these precious saints who have gathered here for these days. Oh, speak to our hearts. Turn us around. Cause us to be perfected, pleasing, and ready for Thee.
We thank You that the Holy Spirit can quicken our tired bodies after a day of travel and arriving. We believe that the Holy Spirit can quicken our understanding and rekindle our hearts with a love for Thee.
Lord, we come in these end days and know Your perfecting work is as much in secret as it is outwardly. So we ask that You work and interpret, and help each person here to receive something that You are speaking to them.
We commit this time into Your hands, in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
When we look at this passage in the Gospel of Mark, we realize—I think probably most of you know—that Mark was probably written based upon the preachings of Peter. So we are not surprised to read this opening: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” which is so powerful, so vivid in its recounting of what happened in those days.
There is a disconnect between us today and what happened back then. But by the Holy Spirit, we can indeed experience something of the same thing, because it is still the same God, and He is still doing His wonderful work.
You notice what it says very simply after the Scripture from Isaiah and Malachi is quoted. It says in verse 4 that John appeared.
You know, Peter does not give much background about all this. John appeared in the wilderness, and he spoke a message of repentance and preparation. The darkness was broken into by the light of heaven.
It is really so simple. It is hard to explain how God’s people can be on the outskirts of a kingdom that they profess to love. But when this vessel, prepared by God, came on the scene and simply spoke the words he spoke, the people thronged out to see him.
From Jerusalem they came—multitudes out of Jerusalem to see him. From all over Judea, people came to see him. We know, of course, because some of his disciples became Jesus’ disciples, that some from Galilee as well came to hear.
They came, and they heard, and they were convicted. They were humbled. They began to repent, and began to cry, and began to turn from their former ways. They were baptized with a baptism of repentance.
In Luke 3, as Luke recounts this same event, he says in Luke 3:15:
Now while the people were in a state of expectation, and all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he was the Christ—
The people were in a state of expectation, or so my particular version of the Bible says. Just think about that. John, a Spirit-filled prophet and speaker, came and spoke without doing any miracles. He spoke a word that awakened the hearts of multitudes of God’s people.
People from Jerusalem, the center of religion and all of these things—it says that John awakened everybody.
But the introduction, as is understood by most, the Bible teaches, does not stop with the coming of John. The introduction does not stop until Jesus comes immediately upon the scene. It says, “In those days,” in verse 9, meaning in the context of this shocking new awareness, Jesus came on the scene.
He was baptized by John in the Jordan, and immediately, in verse 10, coming up out of the waters, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him. A voice came out of heaven, saying, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Now, the actual Scripture there in verse 10, probably as most of you know, says that the heavens were rent.
Now we see what is happening in this moment of history before us. That prayer—“O Lord, rend the heavens and come down, and reveal Yourself to Your people”—is coming to pass right here.
What was the Lord waiting for? A voice.
For four hundred years, God waited to find His voice again. As soon as His voice could speak—you see, do you remember what it says at the end of that passage we read in Isaiah 40? “Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see Him together.” What does it say? “For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
You see, the voice was not a human voice. The voice was the voice of heaven spoken through a human vessel. It was that combination that our God was waiting for.
Of course, God can do anything He wants, but He waits for a vessel to say what He wants to say. As soon as this vessel spoke, the heavens were opened. They were rent. God’s presence came down. People were enveloped in the sense of the kingdom of God.
During that period of time, of course, the King came Himself. When God rends the heavens, His purpose is to bring His Son before us. So Jesus came before the people. God rent the heavens with a voice.
Now, it is important that we understand something that may appear to be subtle, but really it is not too subtle. We see here in this picture that Jerusalem, the people of which poured out to see this man speaking in the wilderness—and that was no small thing.
It was at least a two- or three-days’ journey. It was not an afternoon picnic run to go see this man just outside town. They had to go down Jericho’s Road and get down to the Jordan, travel out of the way. It took two or three days just to get there.
But the people were so hungry, and all the talk in Jerusalem was about this man isolated down there in the wilderness.
The distinction that might give us some help and understanding today is this: Jerusalem was full of kingdom talk.
You know, Jerusalem was really the religious center. They were professional rabbis, and they had schools of students. Daily they would meet and talk and discuss and debate the meaning of certain Scriptures and how to fulfill certain laws.
It was a professional town. There were professional musicians. You could see men walking around with their instruments, tuning them up, getting ready for their course of worship in the temple. There were professional religious people with all kinds of garments and fanciness. There was always a smell of offerings in the air when you got there to Jerusalem.
It was a religious place, and the talk was the talk of the kingdom. The worship was the worship of the kingdom. The words were the words of the kingdom. But there is a difference between talk and the voice.
It took a vessel prepared by God to bring the voice home. The people knew all of the words. That is the problem with the kingdom: there is a disconnect between the people of God and the voice of God and His kingdom.
There is that interesting Scripture in Acts 13, where Paul is speaking about the disconnect in Jerusalem. He says in Acts 13:27:
For those who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, recognizing neither Him nor the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning Him.
Now, what Paul is saying is this: the rulers, leaders, rabbis, and people who went to the synagogues and read the Scriptures knew all of the Scriptures, especially those about the suffering Servant. They knew Psalm 22. They knew Isaiah 53. But they knew the Scriptures, and they did not hear the voice.
Do you see that? They did not hear the voices of the prophets. They just read the words of the prophets. So they did not even realize they were fulfilling the Scriptures when they crucified the Lord Jesus.
They read every word in the Old Testament, and yet they did not hear it. So they did the very thing that they would never understand—that they could crucify the Messiah.
In Jerusalem, you know, in the days of Jesus, there was Messianic fever. There was so much discontent with the Roman government and its hold over the people of Israel that there were many revolts, thoughts of revolution, and zealous zealots. There were false messiahs raising up, and the Roman garrisons were there.
Every once in a while, they killed several thousand Jews who rose up. These governors who were stationed there in Israel were always writing back to Rome, complaining that these Jews were the worst people to try to govern of anybody in the world.
They were always dissatisfied, always trying to gain some kind of freedom, talking of overthrow. There was all kinds of talk about a Messiah. Yet when the Messiah came, they could not hear.
When we see this, to me there is a greater tragedy, if we could just pull away from Israel for a moment. When we see this, we realize the greatness of the tragedy of man’s fall.
Why do I say that? Because the spiritual reality is this: God is King now.
He always has been on His throne, reigning, ruling over nature, ruling over all His created beings. He is undisputed King of all. He is the King. That is the spiritual reality that man, in his fallen state, has lost sight of.
Just last week, in the state where I live, New York State, decisions were made in our state government that had no reference to God at all.
So it is with modern man. God has no place in the equation—He who is King over every life. Think about that.
But indeed, we know because man has fallen, and he has fallen into a kind of darkness, that man has lost out on his whole destiny and purpose. The other half of the equation is this: not only is God the ruler of this world and the King over the kingdom, but man was created to rule with God.
Man was created a little lower than the angels, but crowned with glory and honor, given dominion over the animals and the various living creatures and plants. Man was meant to rule and reign with God. What a blessed world that would have been.
When we say that sin is to fall short of the glory of God, it is so much more than lying to your parents or cheating on your income tax.
Man has a glorious destiny that daily we default as we live in darkness, in a kingdom of darkness, under the control of a usurper—the enemy—who has usurped our destiny and our providence. Men are now in bondage in this kingdom of darkness.
Even though the kingdom is as near as their mouth and as near as their heart, they do not know it. That is the tragedy.
When we come to God’s people, we see that the tragedy even plays out among them. The kingdom of Israel was to be the earthly testimony of God’s reign. We know by reading the history of that kingdom that there were moments when they were truly submitted to God, and oh, God did wondrous things.
You remember, we read in Isaiah 64. There were moments where God was allowed to show Himself righteous and do amazing, powerful, and miraculous things. God’s children were in order under their King, worshiping and serving Him alone. There were those moments in their history.
But when we come to this passage in the Gospel of Mark, here we see the people of God, Israel, this testimony. A better description of their testimony was that they were a wilderness rather than a kingdom.
There is a shadow of the kingdom that God’s people can live in, but it is not the reality. There is a veil over the hearts of God’s children where they can speak of the kingdom, acknowledge the kingdom, worship the God who is King, and yet there is just something missing.
Surely there is something in this passage as it speaks about John the Baptist speaking in the wilderness, and from the wilderness, and these people flocking out to the wilderness. That is a testimony.
I mean, if you come from Jerusalem, which is the center of everything that is going on, it is like coming from New York down to Richmond. There is nothing going on in Richmond. Everything happens in New York. If somebody comes from New York to Richmond, it is an amazement to everybody. “Well, what are you going there for?”
We have to ask, what are all these people coming down from Jerusalem for? Here is the deal: with all of their religiousness, they are so dissatisfied. As soon as they heard even rumors that there was something real going on in the wilderness, they were willing to humble themselves and tread out to the wilderness to find something real.
It is just a testimony to how so much of their activity and hopes and desires and worships and prayers and institutional carryings-on were in vain.
Then somebody hears a report. You can imagine how the word traveled as people came back to Jerusalem and said, “You have got to go. Take a few days off. Quit your job. Whatever it takes, you have got to go and hear what this man is saying.”
When you go and hear this man, something electric happens. You are shocked by something, because when this man speaks, it is as if the kingdom comes in full color, no longer black and white. You see what is right, and you see what is wrong, because you are in a light. “I tell you, you have got to go.”
There were many, many hungry people all over the place—Judea, the Judean people, maybe not so professional, not from Jerusalem; and, of course, the folks from Galilee, another degree less holy.
Yet all of them were sensing, “We are talking about a kingdom, and we are kingless.” It was a kingless kingdom.
Of course, you can still carry on with a kingless kingdom, but the whole center of the whole thing is missing.
Most of you know, I went to college and went on to seminary. I just happened to get to seminary in 1966. All the talk in seminary, in the New Testament department—which is where I, as a two-year-old Christian, was in seminary, by the way, and so I was open to learning anything I could—in the New Testament department, all the talk was about a man named C. H. Dodd.
This professor from Cambridge had opened the eyes and stirred up the whole New Testament synoptic Gospel community of theologians. It was because he was the main contributor and editor of the New English Bible, which was just being written in those days. The New Testament came out in 1961.
I just happened to be at seminary, and people were getting hold of his book and reading it. “Wow, wow, wow, wow.” What was all the commotion about?
It was because this is the way C. H. Dodd translated this, and this is the way the New English Bible translates it:
Repent, for the kingdom of God has come upon you.
Not near. Not almost here. Not nigh. He translated the word, “come upon you.”
He said that this opening of the Gospel of Mark—and Matthew’s version and Luke’s as well—depicts for us a moment where God invaded this world with His gospel and His King, and changed the whole globe. This is a recounting of the moment.
Well now, it shocked all theologians and everybody, because when we talk about the kingdom coming, we always like the fact that it is not here yet. But Dr. Dodd said, “It is here.”
Now, you have got to admit, that would wake you up. If somebody got up here and preached, “The kingdom is here now. Now is the time. You had better repent. He is here now.”
Well, in fact, that is what John did, and it sent shock waves through the community. They had been living in a kingdom without a King, and suddenly the King was in the midst.
I pause before going any further just to make the parallel. Do you not think we can make this parallel? God’s people today—are they much different than what we see at this time, when the vessel came and spoke the voice, and the voice from heaven spoke?
The church today is, of course, bigger and busier than ever.
We have programs. We have preaching. We have teaching. We have ministries on DVDs, cassettes, if you still use cassettes. There is all kinds of information. You can go online. You do not have to study the Bible anymore—go online and see what anybody says about it. Listen to other people’s preaching. It is so easy today.
Oh, there is so much. The web is just full of Christian words—the kingdom, the teaching, Jesus coming back, the Second Coming.
Oh, Messianic fever. “When is He coming? He is coming soon. What is going to happen? When will it be? When is the three-and-a-half years? Has it started yet?” Oh, there is so much, so much, so much speculation.
But with all of that busyness that is going on, this is why we are really here this week: where is the King? Where is the throne?
Where is that authority in the church that is evidence of His presence among us? Where are those disciples who are being disciplined—disciplined disciples?
This is what we want to ask of ourselves. Today we face this strange situation where, even though as Christians we live in both the church and the kingdom—it is a single spiritual reality—the fact of the matter is that kingdom reality is almost unknown in large segments of the church today.
The interesting thing about it is, is there a formula? Does it work out like this? The less the reality, the more the talk.
There is something that interests me, just as a former musician and somebody who has been worshiping the Lord for a number of years. I believe we have come into an age, at least during my short lifetime, where I have never heard songs so sentimental about the kingdom, about the Lord and His throne, and, “Oh, we want Your presence,” and, “Oh, we just love everything that You do.”
These songs are being written and sung, and you sense people’s hearts surely must be sincere when they sing these songs, but they are so sentimental.
There seems to be a decline, if I could put it this way—this is the way I am looking at it right now—in the robust faith of kingdom servants.
That is not very sentimental: taking up our cross, denying ourselves, being dealt with by God, absolute obedience. These things are hardly spoken of now.
There are two people who say, “It is all of grace.” There are those people who mean it is all of grace, and all of your dealings are by grace, and His grace is sufficient to you through everything, including your radical obedience to Him. To that, we all have to say, “Amen,” because it is all of grace.
But there is another bunch who say, “It is all of grace,” and by that they mean there is no responsibility. There is no obedience. “Look, do whatever you feel the Lord is leading you. By the way, if you do something wrong, He will forgive you anyway, so do not make a big deal about it.”
Unfortunately, I have to say, I have known some—not a few—who go to worship meetings, enthralled with these sentimental worship songs, and then afterwards go out bar-hopping. They do not see the disconnect there.
Thank God we are all saved, and we love His church. The spiritual reality of His kingdom, the Lord wants to recover to His church.
Our Lord Jesus—His last words that He spoke, if I want to take the Book of Revelation at the end as being His last words—were, “I am coming quickly.”
But the Lord is waiting for a church that is ready to receive Him—a bride that is perfected and ready, and has been through the necessary disciplines, most of which come by the kingdom side of our understanding of our life, that produce a character in us that makes Him say, “The bride is ready.”
The Lord wants to rend the heavens, but in fact He is waiting for a voice to tell Him to. He is waiting for a vessel so prepared that when it speaks, its words are not idle words.
May the Lord shock us with the nearness of His kingdom. When we touch the reality of His kingdom, there is one thing that we can say that is probably true across the board: if you are touching kingdom reality, you are out of your comfort zone.
There is something, by God’s grace, that He is asking of you, and it has a precious cost to it with a precious end.
The church is so comfortable. It is so easy to slide into the Laodicean frame of mind. We all here in the United States are so blessed. We are so rich, so increased with goods. We know how to talk this Christian talk.
Oh, the Lord is looking for some folks who are not sure quite what to say, except, “Lord, speak; Thy servant hears.”
The Lord is looking for those who are willing to get up on the wall, as it were, and say, “Oh Lord, rend the heavens and come down.” There is a great cost to that kind of prayer because, when He comes down, He comes down in a certain kind of righteousness that immediately causes an adjustment in our lives.
The repentance of the kingdom is not just the sins we discover in the light of His presence. It is the very fact that He has been right here all this time, and we have not even realized it.
He has been so near. He has been pressing our hearts so long. But because of our still-fallen darkness, somehow we can live in this world without that real sense of kingdom dimension in our lives.
Now we come to looking at this vessel, and we see that God is wanting to rend the heavens and come down—with the return of His Son, our Lord and Savior—but He is waiting for that prepared vessel.
We want to say just a few things here tonight about this prepared vessel and about His coming again. I do not know why He did not come a thousand years ago. I do not know why He did not come May 21st.
But I do know something, and I think we have to start here. It is a simple statement, but it is this: our God reigns, and Jesus reigns at His right hand. He has a plan that is completely in His control, and He is on time with His plan.
In His mercy, He is giving us some time to be made ready. But He knows what He is doing. His timing is perfect, and He is in control.
We see the proof of that in this simple Scripture we have before us tonight. Here is the simple fact that He is in absolute control.
“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ”—Mark opens up by saying this: “It is written.”
Seven hundred years before John the Baptist came as a servant of preparation, it was written. God had a plan all these years. When John the Baptist came on the scene, here he was, the fulfillment of this wonderful verse from Isaiah:
Behold, I send My messenger ahead of You.
He will prepare Your way.
The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
“Make ready the way of the Lord;
Make His paths straight.”
The voice came, as it is written. The vessel is prepared, as it is written. Our God is in control.
The second thing we might notice here is that it is also clear from Scripture that the Lord prepares a vessel that can prepare the way. This vessel is a preparatory, penultimate stage in His coming back.
Isaiah 40 is about this messenger who would come and prepare the way of the Lord. There is a preparatory vessel, a vessel willing to stand for the Lord and speak for the Lord in such a way that the way of the Lord is prepared and a people are prepared for His coming.
That was John in this context, and the Lord is looking for such a vessel today as well.
In Malachi 3, we saw the same thing. There was a prediction of one who would come to prepare the way for the One who would come into His temple and purge and cleanse everything. There is need for a preparatory vessel, and this is clear when we look at these Scriptures.
The rending of the heavens may seem like a sudden, extraordinary, surprising, and shocking event, but the fact of the matter is that preparation has been going on in the secret place before that rending of the heavens ever happened.
These people in the Judean countryside were shocked with a new awareness that the kingdom was there, but John had been prepared by God in the wilderness over time. The Lord is looking for such a vessel who will be prepared by Him.
Throughout the whole Bible, whenever there was a new expression, a fuller dimension of the kingdom of God to be seen, there was always some vessel there who had been prepared—whether it was Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, or Elijah. There was always somebody who was prepared.
Like John the Baptist, he appeared, and God could move and change the age. We use this phrase: the epoch-making vessel. They have been down through the history of the Bible and down through the history of the church.
When God wanted to move with recovery—and that recovery being, as it were, a reuniting of the church and the kingdom together in a wonderful reality—there was always a John Huss who had been prepared, or Martin Luther, or Nicholas Zinzendorf, or John Wesley. There was somebody, a vessel prepared.
We believe that just before the Lord comes back, He is preparing a vessel to prepare a people to receive the Lord as He comes again.
But we also learn a second thing from Luke, and it is very precious. What Luke shows us, if I may put it this way, is that it really is not just an individual. Although John the Baptist is in the forefront of this Scripture and the fulfillment of Isaiah, the fact of the matter is that there was a corporate vessel being prepared for the coming of the Lord.
It is Luke who takes us back to this precious scene. Only Luke begins his Gospel not talking about Jesus. He begins the Gospel of Luke talking about Zacharias and Elizabeth, two faithful people from the priestly family of Aaron who all their lives had been serving God and yet had remained childless.
The blessing of the preparation in their lives led to the birth of their child, who became John.
Now, I doubt very seriously that Zacharias and Elizabeth were alive when John came on the scene. They were quite old, and John came on the scene after thirty years of age. Nevertheless, they were part of that community.
In Jerusalem, we might talk about those professional pundits and rabbis and preachers and false christs and priests and devoted worshipers and Levites and all of these things. But there was a group of people there in Jerusalem—we cannot number them; we have no idea—there was this remnant waiting for the consolation of Israel.
They were waiting for the kingdom to come. They are mentioned: Zacharias and Elizabeth. Then Mary is mentioned, as somebody just available to the Lord. Simeon is mentioned, and Anna is mentioned. At the end of the Gospel of Luke, Joseph of Arimathea is mentioned as a man waiting for the kingdom who came and took the body of Jesus.
Who knows the number of those hungry ones, that remnant waiting for the kingdom? But this is the prepared vessel.
It is not just an individual, nor is God looking for a voice today as if it were an individual. God is looking for this prepared vessel—a vessel of precious ones who are waiting for the Lord to come back and willing to do whatever He wants.
In Isaiah, you see, it was not just Isaiah. I picture him on the wall with his two sons. He had “a remnant shall return” on one hand, and he had “the judgment is coming, and it is swift” on the other. That is what he named his two kids, so he had to keep them close.
Can you imagine them on the walls of Zion, giving God no rest day or night, pleading and asking that Zion would be restored? There they were praying, and there was a remnant, as is mentioned a number of times in Isaiah.
In Malachi, where we hear about this messenger who would come and prepare the way, we read in that same chapter, Malachi 3:16, that there were those who feared the Lord. They talked and fellowshipped and prayed, and the Lord remembered them. The Lord wrote them down and said, “These were Mine.”
This is what the Lord is looking for: a vessel that loves Him, devoted to Him, giving their lives, waiting for the kingdom, praying, being prepared, being dealt with by God. This is the vessel of preparation that will speak the voice, and the heavens will open, and the Son of God will come down and bring His kingdom.
The sovereign rending of the heavens is preceded by a secret, deep work in His vessel.
Let us finally look at a couple of characteristics of that vessel, taking these different ones from Luke 1 and making a composite picture of these ones we have mentioned who were all waiting for the consolation of Israel.
I would like to mention four things that we see within this precious prepared vessel for the coming of the Lord.
The first thing is obvious: the vessel is very humble.
Zacharias, Elizabeth, Mary—the handmaid of the Lord—I do not need to go over all of this. But let us think of John for just a moment.
John was in his heyday, at the top of his popularity. The people were in expectation, as we read in Luke 3:15. The question came, “Are you the Messiah?” He said, “No, I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” “No, I am not.” “Are you sent from God? Do you have a special purpose here? Are you Elijah?” “No, I am not.”
They said, “Who are you?” “I am a voice.”
Think of John in another place. John says, “I baptize with water, but there is One coming after me, and I am not worthy to untie His sandals.”
I know we have an idea that John was a pretty severe person. I am not sure that is really true. But I do know that he was humble to the very core.
Was it not the same man who taught us this? “I must decrease, but He must increase.” What a humble, humble man.
He was the one who said, “You know what? If more people are being baptized by Jesus now than by me, only God could do that anyway. I am just happy to be a friend of this great One who has come.”
There is a servant—a truly humble servant.
Actually, in their character, they were just reflecting their Lord, who was so humble as well. I was recently arrested by a comment I heard somebody speaking in regard to the Lord’s Prayer.
There was a brother here in the United States who took a sabbatical from ministry for a while, and he decided just to meditate on the Lord’s Prayer for six months. After six months, he could not get past this phrase:
Hallowed be Thy name.
Most people today do not even understand what that means. But what it meant for Jesus was this: “Our Father who art in heaven, everything I do, I want to do in reverence for You. I reverence You. I respect You. I want to, in everything, hallow Your name.”
That was the heart of Jesus, and it became the heart of His disciples and should be the heart of all who call upon His name.
Is our whole life to hallow our Father in heaven? Everything we do, “I want it to be pleasing to You.”
Is it not amazing that Jesus says in a few places, “Everything I do pleases the Father”? How would He know that? Is He just surmising that? Is He presuming that? Or has He checked with the Lord to be sure everything He did hallowed the name of the Father?
When you heard Jesus speak the name “Heavenly Father,” there was something so reverent in it. Probably none of us could speak in such a way, but at least it is indicative of the basic humility that you see in such a servant.
This servant is not a haughty servant. This servant is so humble.
Within a month, actually, I went to the memorial service of David Wilkerson, a dear brother up in New York who passed away—a faithful servant of the Lord. They had a series of testimonies from different people.
I was particularly struck by one brother who is now a minister on the staff at Times Square Church. This brother used to be a man on the street.
When Brother Wilkerson went out onto the street, it was the only time he really felt at home. He did not feel comfortable with the big building and all these people calling him Reverend So-and-so. He really had a hard time with all of that.
But if you could let him out on the street and have him meet somebody down and out, this man testified—and others testified as well—there was immediate connection with him and the humble, because he felt so unworthy himself.
People said, “He just felt the love of God pour right through him into me.” He would talk to people ugly and dirty and smelly and just lost, then tell them, “There is hope for you. There is a way in Jesus.” He would pray for them humbly. He was truly a humble man.
The testimony was very clear. God’s servant is humbled before their God, at the footstool of the Lord Jesus. That is the first thing we see.
The second thing is that the vessel of preparation, just from the little passage in Luke—thinking about that introduction—is prepared by travailing prayer.
This vessel that is going to prepare the way of the Lord is prepared by travailing prayer.
That wonderful story of Zacharias and Elizabeth, which has such a happy ending in the birth of John the Baptist, is actually fraught with travail. This couple was faithful, and under the covenant of God they should have been full, with a house full of children. But they had no child and were now barren and past the age of having a child.
They had prayed, “O God, please give us a child. Give us a child.”
Would you not know, in the fullness of time, the lot fell to Zacharias to give the offering of incense. It was the one time in his life he would get to do it.
Of course, he got to do it, but when you do that as a representative of the people, you do not pray your own prayers. You are in there, and there are prayers you pray for Israel and for the Messiah. There is a routine of prayers that they all knew.
When he went in there at the altar of incense, he started praying all these prayers for Israel. That is when Gabriel said, “God is answering your prayer.”
They had always wanted a child, but the one time he could not pray for the child, but rather pray for the kingdom, was the one time the angel came and said, “Now you prayed for the kingdom, and I will give you a child. Not only that, but that child will be the connection to the coming of the King.”
There is an answer to prayer. But boy, the travail of the years—you could just imagine the shadow they must have lived under all those years without a child.
Then finally, Elizabeth was so excited she could not take it. She stayed home. She would not even do the wash. She was waiting. Her reproach had been removed.
It was when his eyes were turned on the kingdom and greater things that God answered the prayer, and the voice was born. So it is that we learn through the travail of prayer.
How many Christians in this world pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done”? How many people do you know who travail in that prayer?
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We see the vessel of preparation travailing, waiting for the kingdom, waiting for the consolation. They are not satisfied with the things of this earth. They are waiting. They are praying.
The third thing we notice very simply through John the Baptist, as the symbol of it, was that he from before birth was a Nazarite.
To make a long story short, because I realize we are all tired, it basically means that a vessel of preparation lives apart, separate from the world.
John lived a separate life. Most say he grew up in the wilderness. He certainly had many hours of isolation, many hours where the Lord worked on his life. He was given to the Lord. He was an offering to the Lord, a lifelong offering, a servant for the Lord. Whatever he did, his life spoke of being given to the Lord.
The examples beyond John that I see in Simeon and Anna simply say this: this vessel of preparation has wasted its life for the Lord.
Anna was a young woman when she was widowed. She spent the rest of her days there in the temple, praying and fasting. “What a wasted life,” you say.
You think, “Wow, okay, now she is forty—go get married. Now she is fifty. Now she is sixty. Okay, stop going to the temple every day.” She spent her whole life praying for the kingdom of God.
Simeon as well, this prophet who said, “Lord, I know I am getting old. Just do not let me die until I see the Messiah. I am waiting for Him. That is all I care about. Forget the comfort of home. Forget the trusting God—He will do it somehow. I want to see the consolation before I die.”
God granted him the desire of his heart. He wasted his whole life praying for that consolation, and as a result he held the consolation in his hands and prophesied.
Oh, listen. When we look at this Scripture, we do not feel that was a wasted life at all, do we? This confirmation of this vessel that was bringing the Lord into this world.
The fourth thing I am going to say is that he came in the power and the spirit of Elijah. That is what was prophesied of him in Luke 1 to Zacharias:
This man, this child of yours, will come in the spirit and power of Elijah.
There is a wonderful prophecy there about John the Baptist’s life. But here is the one thing I want to say about this: this vessel of preparation is a vessel who has been so dealt with by the Lord in the outward man that his spirit comes through.
John was jealous, as Elijah was. John was zealous, like Elijah was. John’s life was expressive of his spirit.
Over the years, I have grown in my understanding of what it means to be filled with the Spirit. Back in the early days, I used to think it was pretty much an outward thing. You were clothed with the Holy Spirit, or something anointed about you, and you could perform some supernatural things.
I always wanted to be more filled with the Spirit in that outward sense. But here is John, who was filled with the Spirit beyond what we see today, I suppose. Yet it was that release of his spirit that enabled him to be the voice.
What is it that God really wants to say? If you had your shot—“Okay, come on up here. What do you think God wants to say? What would you say?”
Nine times out of ten, we would just say something we are thinking about. But John had been so dealt with by the Lord that he could come and express this zealous spirit.
Oh, his words were powerful. Make no mistake about it. If you had any kind of heart, you would be convicted by the words that he spoke.
These people came and said, “Oh, what should we do?” He said, “You brood of vipers.” He said, “Do this, do that, do this.” They were convicted. They saw it was right, but they also heard it was from the Lord.
There are some preachers who are awfully strong, but you get the feeling they are angry with everybody. “Why is that guy preaching so strong?” “I do not know. I think he is angry with his wife.”
But how about a man who speaks forthright and powerfully like John, and you know it is from the Lord? You see, the spirit has come through. He is speaking in the spirit of Elijah. He is on fire, and you can sense it when he speaks. It comes through.
Most of us, our soul is such a veil. It is really hard to know what somebody’s spirit really is because we veil it with all kinds of Christian cosmetics.
The Lord has to deal with us and strip us of them and break them down from us until we come broken and His Spirit can come through us.
Oh, how the Lord is waiting for a vessel that really expresses a heart of love for the Master.
I think I am going to end it here tonight with this final thought. Before the heavens are rent and our Lord Jesus can come back, there has got to be an inward work in this vessel.
There need to be some hearts that are rent before the heavens will be rent, some knees exercised, and some dealings with our flesh in the outer man.
There must be some character forged into us that is robust and full of faith. In the end, we must find the voice—what God wants to say.
Have you found His voice in you?
This is a common expression today. I was reading a man who is a well-known writer of novels. He was telling his life story, and he said, “It took me about the fourth novel for me to find my voice.”
Have you ever heard that expression? “I knew things. I knew what I wanted to say, but it took me a while before I found my voice.”
I am not exactly sure what all that means. I guess it means that he found the way that, when he conveys it, it is his, and he expresses it in a way that obviously many people have appreciated.
Have we found His voice? Do we know what He is saying today?
Is it possible that this week, as we are listening to the various brothers sharing through this week, His voice could speak to us? It would bring the kingdom very near.
The kingdom is very near. As Jesus said, the kingdom does not come with outward observation, so that you could say, “Look, there it is,” or, “Look, there it is.”
But here is the question: is the kingdom in our midst? That is the reality. Is it among us? Is it within us?
Oh, that the Lord could restore His kingdom in the lives of the saints and do that kind of preparatory work where He has a vessel that can speak with a voice to many, many hungry people.
Many multitudes of Christians today are running in that hamster wheel of perpetual Christian motion, and yet they are so hungry for reality. If they could just hear the Lord’s voice, they would come running out into the wilderness and confess their sins and find life again.
Oh, may the Lord recover life in His church. It seems so anemic to me at times. A lot of talk, but where is that robust faith?
Where are people laying down their lives? Where are people sacrificially serving? Where are people who have heard the Lord speak and can speak?
Oh, this is indeed what we are seeing in these last days. The Lord is coming again, and our sovereign God is preparing a vessel that will say, “Come,” and He comes.
May we be such a people. Let us pray.
Oh Lord, we thank You for the times that You overshadow us with a sense of the reality of Your kingdom. You shock us out of inertia with a great sense of purpose and plan and preparation. Suddenly the cross is before us, and suddenly repentance is necessary.
Oh, may it be, O Lord, that Your righteousness might shine in Your church again; that all the mud would be cleansed out; that we could be a people who stand set apart in holiness and righteousness, dealt with by You, and able to hear Your voice.
May we be those who learn how to pray with power, even kingdom praying that can bind and loose. Oh Lord, we want to live in the land of reality.
We know that our Lord Jesus has come as King, and He sits enthroned at the right hand of the Father. Make that real to us in our lives, as everything we do is to hallow the name of our Lord Jesus.
Oh, help us to be faithful in these end days, Lord. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.