Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2404
“To make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Luke 1:17.
JOHN was the herald of Christ—he was to prepare the way for the coming King—but from this text it appears that he was to do more than that. He was not only to make the road ready for the Lord, but he was also “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” That was a great work, a task in which he would require strength and wisdom greater than his own. He would need that the Spirit of God, who was to be given without measure to the coming One, should also be, in a measure, within himself, if he should really “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
This is not at all a usual expression. At first sight, it hardly looks to us like a Gospel expression. We sang just now—
“Just as I am—and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To You, whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come.”
We sang over and over again those words, “Just as I am,” “Just as I am,” and we are prone to protest against the idea of being prepared for Christ. We constantly preach that no preparation is needed, but that men are to come to Jesus just as they are. Yet here is John the Baptist set apart, “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
The fact is, dear Friends, that to get men to come to Jesus just as they are is not an easy thing. To get them to give up the idea of preparing, to get them prepared to come without preparing, to get them ready to come just as they are—this is the hardest part of our work—this is our greatest difficulty. If we came and preached to men the necessity of preparation through so many weeks of fasting during a long Lent, or through so many days of scourging and penitence, they would attend to us at once, for they would be willing enough to make any preparation of that kind! But, when we say to them, “Come just as you are, with nothing in your hands to buy the mercy of God, with nothing wherewith to demand or to deserve it,” men want a great deal of preparing before they will come to that point! Only the Grace of God, working mightily through the Word, by the Spirit, will prepare men to come to Christ—prepared by being unprepared so far as any fitness of their own is concerned. The only fit state in which they can come is that of sinking themselves, abandoning all idea of helping Christ, coming in all their natural impotence and guilt and taking Christ to be their All in All.
Beloved Friends, this is the true preparedness of heart for coming to Christ—the preparedness of coming to Him just as you are! And it was John’s business, thus, “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” That is also my business at this time. May the good Spirit, who dwelt in John the Baptist, work through us, also, that some here may be made ready for Christ—“a people prepared for the Lord”! Let us see how John carried out his commission. We shall then be better able to understand the text.
I. First, John made ready “a people prepared for the Lord” BY AWAKENING THEIR ATTENTION.
The people were asleep—they had fallen into a condition of religious lethargy, when suddenly there stood in their midst a man clothed in camel’s hair and with a leather girdle about his loins—a Prophet, manifestly, by the boldness and truthfulness of his utterances. He spoke in such a way that the people in general heard of his speaking and they advertised him by saying, the one to the other, “That is a strange man who has begun to preach by the River Jordan and whose meat is locusts and wild honey.”
The whole style of the man set the people wondering and talking. And when they came to listen to him, he did not flatter them! He did not utter mere commonplace truths to them, but with burning earnestness he drove straight at their hearts and spoke like Elijah, the great Prophet of fire, had done in the ages gone by. So he set them thinking. That is a great preparation for coming to Christ just as you are, to be set a-thinking! We have always hope of men when they once begin to think about religion and the things of God. See how the bulk of them hurry on with their eyes tightly shut, rushing fast and yet faster, still, down to destruction! You cannot make them stop and think. There are thousands of men who would almost sooner be whipped than be made to think. The last thing to which they will ever come, of themselves, is thoughtfulness!
Let me appeal to some here who are still unconverted. Did you ever give the affairs of your soul the benefit of an hour’s serious consideration? You have your regular time for stocktaking, those of you who are in business—do you ever take stock of your spiritual estate? I know that you are not such fools as to neglect your ledgers, you cast up your accounts to see where you are, financially, but do you cast up the account between God and your own soul, and look the matter fairly and squarely in the face? Oh, if we could but bring you to do this, we would feel that you were being prepared for coming to Christ just as you are, for no man will come to Christ while he is utterly careless and thoughtless! Faith is a matter of thought—it requires a mind awakened from slumber, a mind that has taken wing—and John the Baptist did good service for his Master when he startled men into that condition and so made them consider their ways.