I am back in the pulpit this Sunday, and it has been a week in which I have been reflecting upon the paths that God has directed me over the past year. Just as John the Baptist called the people of Israel to ‘prepare the way of the Lord’, I can look back and see how God was preparing me for the new paths that lay ahead.

Whenever I read this passage I have an image of a camel haired India Jones wielding a machete to clear the jungle plants that have grown over the holy yellow brick road. John was coming out of the wilderness where he had been on long-term retreat, so perhaps there was an element of that; I think it more apt that John was encouraging his fellow Jews and Israelites to clear the weeds that had tangled their hearts, so that they were able to receive all that Jesus was (and is) and has to bring. The long awaited Messiah was on his way.

But Jesus wasn’t the only one that the people of his time, and hundreds of years before, had been awaiting. Malachi’s prophecy isn’t of the Messiah to come, but of the one who is to come ahead of the one who is to come.

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

Malachi 3:1

And this is what is exciting me as I read these well known advent passages afresh this year. Malachi prophesied, spoke God’s promise, that the messenger would appear ahead of the Lord, and here he is. A promise, 400 years in the making, but a promise that was true. God promised, Malachi prophesied, and John appeared, coming out of the wilderness speaking words of purification and refining.

John came and spoke God’s promise that the Messiah was in his way, now, and you had better get ready: ‘you’d better not cry, you’d better not pout’ has nothing on the warnings that John had for those who deemed themselves Religious and holier than though. John came with the might of the refiner’s fire.

We know that these things happened. There are historical records outside of the Bible that are as valid as the reign of Julius Caesar. If we can trust and rely on these accounts, then we can also trust and rely on the promise that Jesus will return.

This prophecy, this promise made by Jesus himself has been more than 2000 years in the making already, but just as true as were the prophecies and promises that John would appear to prepare the ways, and that a Messiah would come to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, so too can we trust that Jesus will return.

It’s hard to trust, hard to hold on to such a loooooong promise. Perhaps that is why we have a tendency to look back to the first Christmas instead of looking forward to the second creation. God has promised though, that Jesus will return and will bring healing to this world and all who have ever walked within it, and that all those who have reached out to Jesus in faith will be invited to enter into it for all of eternity.

That is what we are praying for each Advent. Come Lord Jesus, make us ready, restore our faith and our hope in your promise. Come, Lord Jesus.

Read the Gospel passage here.