Make Ready Rev. Dr. M. Taylor Bach

I will begin my sermon today with asking for a little audience participation. If you have the courage, will you shout out what you believe to be symbols of Advent? Go& “The color purple.” “Candles.” “Greenery.” “Angels.” That is pretty good! I didn't hear these symbols shouted with gusto though. (Laughter) Oh well. This is the first time we ever tried that. I am going to add a new symbol. Do you know what it is? Can you see it (holding a bar of soap in my hand)? It's soap. Soap. In fact, this bar happens to be Ivory soap but any soap would do. How in the world would soap be a symbol of Advent? Here is the explanation. Advent comes from the Latin word adveno which means I come. So it is Jesus announcing, “I am coming to you.” We find in the Advent Bible readings the story of Zechariah. Zechariah was the father of John the Baptist. Zechariah is discovering the fact that his wife is pregnant and John the Baptist is on his way. He tells the purpose of John's coming. The purpose of John's coming is to prepare for the coming of Jesus. John is to shed light on the coming Messiah. As John gets here, his mission is defined in the Bible as making crooked places straight, taking the curves out of roads and purifying individuals' lives. So John comes as a baptizer to purify people. He has them go into water and repent, confess their sins, come out cleaned and also having insight.

John the Baptist gives two ways of preparing. #1 is washing. Now you get the connection with the soap. The other is through insight. Jesus Himself was to later come along and talk about how He comes to people. I mentioned last week that He said, “If you obey my words, then my Father will love you and He and I will come and take up our residence inside you.” Wow! God inside of you. That is incredible. But how do we prepare for that? How do we make ourselves ready for God taking up his residence inside you? Paul in 1 Corinthians has a clue. He said we are all like pottery. He said each of us is like a pot. God is the potter. To prepare for God to take His residence inside you, you need to clean out your pot. You need to prepare yourself from the inside out. Not just make a show or display of external things but to actually purify yourself and change from the inside. How do we do that? Let's look back at John the Baptist. John gave clues as to Jesus. John said&

#1  Repent. So we tell God we are sorry for our sins and have the firm commitment to never commit them again. #2  Have insight. How do you get insight? The answer is by turning to the Word of God, the Bible itself, and as you turn to the Word, you'll find that there is a cleansing effect. In fact, some interesting research was recently done that was to me, mind boggling. I would like you to listen to it carefully. The researchers examined people who read the Bible once a week, perhaps just listening to it in church, twice a week, three times a week and four times a week. The researchers discussed that just hearing the Bible on Sunday doesn't change people very well. It doesn't clean out your pottery. Once a week, twice a week and three times a week doesn't really have much of an effect. But if you cross that line and read the Bible four times a week, there are amazing results. 36% of you would be less likely to smoke if you are a smoker. 57% would be less likely to ever get drunk. Tell that to all those people at the Bengal's tailgate party who are skipping church to be at the game. 61% would be less likely to get on the internet and get into pornography. 68% would be less likely to have sex outside of marriage. That is amazing. All of that comes from reading this book  the Bible. As we prepare the way of the Lord, as we prepare to clean ourselves out so that God can take up His residence inside of us, especially at this Christmas time, let us repent, obey God's words and read the Bible. Sounds simple. That's it! Let's do it!