Prepare the Way Part 1

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Welcome to the Teaching Ministry of Jubilee Church International. Jubilee is devoted to making disciples, winning the loss to Christ, building strong families, and taking the gospel to the nations. Open your Bibles and join us as the presence of the Holy Spirit helps us to grow a little deeper.

Amen.

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How many of you are ready to get into the Word this morning?

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Amen.

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So we're going to start a new series this morning called Prepare the Way. We've talked about this whole past month knowing the way.

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Amen. You can't show the way if you don't know the way.

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Today, we're going to start talking about Prepare the Way.

Amen. Now, most of us equate that phrase with John the Baptizer, also known as John the Immerser. Now, I'll tell you a quick little story one day. I was coming in the back gate of Camp Robinson, and there were these two security guards. One was a retired colonel, and one was, he'd never been in the guard, but he was an Irishman, okay? And I always talked with those guys, good friends, and the colonel was a good friend of mine, and they both knew that I was a pastor. And I'm coming in the back gate, and they said, hey, Dr. Barham, you're a pastor and we got a Bible question for you.

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I said, okay, shoot.

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And the Irishman, he says, tell him that Peter was a Catholic, because the first church was in Rome. And I said, okay, what's your question?

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He said, tell him John was a Baptist. Southern Baptist.

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From South Jerusalem.

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That's why he's called John the Baptist.

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And I said, well, hate to burst y'all's bubble, but you're both wrong.

He was called Yohan the Immerser, and he was an Essene Jew, who had taken a vow, not just of poverty, but a vow of consecration to consecrate his whole life to proclaiming the coming of Messiah. To call people to repentance.

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For that was his preparation of the way, calling people to repentance.

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And Peter, Simon Peter, was not a Catholic.

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He was just a Jew, just a Jew, who was a zealot.

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And we know he was a zealot because he carried a little dagger. And there was a group of zealots who were called the dagger people.

And they liked to get in crowds of Romans and stick them with the little daggers. Or, you know, make people defile people with their little knives. You know, when this temple guard comes to arrest Jesus, and he pulls out his little dagger, and he cuts the little part of his ear off.

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Right?

Why? Because now that guy was defiled, deformed, and could no longer serve in the house of God.

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So, the first church wasn't in Rome, it was in Jerusalem.

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And so, they were quite disappointed. Prepare the Way.

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It goes much deeper than John running around in camel skins, eating locusts and honey. In fact, we even, it's so funny.

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Many Christians, well, John, he ate locusts and honey, the Bible says. Locusts, that's those little cicada bugs that every time one gets in the house, all the girls in the house go, ah, ah, it's gonna eat us, or something.

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But those things are a little scary and nasty, you know?

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You ever seen those things?

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That's not what he was eating.

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Locusts, in the Hebrew, there's another word, and it's actually a type of fruit or flower in that region.

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He wasn't just eating, he wasn't running around eating bugs.

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And so we have all these misconceptions, and the same thing about preparing the way.

Well, today, what's our conception of Prepare the Way? Well, I get me some dried food, and I store it in a bunker, and I get me a whole bunch of cans of tuna fish that will last for a long time, and I get prepared for the apocalypse so that when Jesus comes back or I'm raptured away, then I'm good to go, you know, and prepare the way spiritually. Well, that's the pastor's job. Him and Pastor Woody, they're preparing people, right?

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They're getting them ready. No, no, no, there's more to it.

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Let me start by saying this. What I'm going to talk about this morning in terms of preparing the way is prophetic preparation. Now, the mere words or efforts of men cannot speak life into a dead man or cause the eyes of a blind man to see naturally or spiritually.