Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 40:3
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
3. The voice of him that crieth ] The word “voice” here and often has the force of an interjection; render accordingly: Hark! one crying. The voice is not that of God (on account of the following “our God”), neither is it a human voice; it comes from one of the angelic ministers of Jehovah and is addressed to beings of the same order. The words in the wilderness should be joined with prepare ye etc., in accordance with the accents (R.V.). A.V. agrees with LXX. and Vulg. and the N.T. citations (Mat 3:3; Mar 1:3; Luk 3:4); but sense and parallelism alike shew that the Heb. accentuation is right.
Prepare ] strictly “clear of obstacles” (see Gen 24:31; Lev 14:36; Psa 80:9; cf. ch. Isa 57:14, Isa 62:10; Mal 3:1). The figure is taken from the well-known Eastern practice of repairing the roads for a royal journey. It may be difficult to say how far the representation is ideal. Allusions to the march through the desert are too constant a feature of the prophecy (ch. Isa 40:10 f., Isa 41:18 f., Isa 42:16, Isa 43:19 f., Isa 48:21, Isa 49:9 ff., Isa 55:12 f.) to be treated as merely figurative; the prophet seems to have expected the deliverance to issue in a triumphal progress of Jehovah with His people through the desert between Babylonia and Palestine, after the analogy of the exodus from Egypt. But all such passages probably look beyond the material fulfilment and include the removal of political and other hindrances to the restoration of Israel.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
3 5. The prophet hears a voice calling on angelic powers to prepare the way of the Lord. It is doubtful whether Duhm is right in regarding this as a case of true prophetic “audition”; it is more naturally understood as a flight of poetic imagination.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The voice of him that crieth – Lowth and Noyes render this, A voice crieth, and annex the phrase in the wilderness to the latter part of the sentence:
A voice crieth, In the wilderness prepare ye the way of Yahweh.
The Hebrew ( qol qore’) will bear this construction, though the Vulgate and the Septuagint render it as in our common version. The sense is not essentially different, though the parallelism seems to require the translation proposed by Lowth. The design is to state the source of consolation referred to in the previous verses. The time of the exile at Babylon was about to be completed. Yahweh was about to conduct his people again to their own country through the pathless wilderness, as he had formerly conducted them from Egypt to the land of promise. The prophet, therefore, represents himself as hearing the voice of a herald, or a forerunner in the pathless waste, giving direction that a way should be made for the return of the people. The whole scene is represented as a march, or return of Yahweh at the head of his people to the land of Judea. The idea is taken from the practice of Eastern monarchs, who whenever they entered on a journey or an expedition, especially through a barren and unfrequented or inhospitable country, sent harbingers or heralds before them to prepare the way.
To do this, it was necessary for them to provide supplies, and make bridges, or find fording places over the streams; to level hills, and construct causeways over valleys, or fill them up; and to make a way through the forest which might lie in their intended line of march. This was necessary, because these contemplated expeditions often involved the necessity of marching through countries where there were no public highways that would afford facilities for the passage of an army. Thus Arrian (Hist. liv. 30) says of Alexander, He now proceeded to the River Indus, the army that is, he stratia, a part of the army, or an army sufficient for the purpose, going before, which made a way for him, for otherwise there would have been no mode of passing through that region. When a great prince in the East, says Paxton, sets out on a journey, it is usual to send a party of men before him to clear the way.
The state of those countries in every age, where roads are almost unknown, and, from want of cultivation, in many places overgrown with brambles and other thorny plants, which renders traveling, especially with a large retinue, incommodious, requires this precaution. The Emperor of Hindoostan, in his progress through his dominions, as described in the narrative of Sir Thomas Roes embassy to the court of Delhi, was preceded by a very great company, sent before him to cut up the trees and bushes, to level and snmoth the road, and prepare their place of encampment. We shall be able, perhaps, to form a more clear and precise idea from the account which Diodorus gives of the marches of Semiramis, the celebrated Queen of Babylon, into Media and, Persia. In her march to Ecbatana, says the historian, she came to the Zarcean mountain, which, extending many furlongs, and being full of craggy precipices and deep hollows, could not be passed without taking a great compass. Being therefore desirous of leaving an everlasting memorial of herself, as well as of shortening the way, she ordered the precipices to be digged down, and the hollows to be filled up; and at a great expense she made a shorter and more expeditious road; which to this day is called from her the road of Semiramis. Afterward she went into Persia, and all the other countries of Asia subjected to her dominion, and wherever she went, she ordered the mountains and precipices to be leveled, raised causeways in the plain country, and, at a great expense, made the ways passable.
The writer of the apocryphal Book of Baruch, refers to the same subject by the same images: For God hath appointed that every high hill, and banks of long continuance, should be cast down, and valleys filled up, to make even the ground, that Israel may go safely in the glory of God Isa 5:7. It is evident that the primary reference of this passage was to the exiles in Babylon, and to their return from their long captivity, to the land of their father. The imagery, the circumstances, the design of the prophecy, all seem to demand such an interpretation. At the same time it is as clear, I apprehend, that the prophet was inspired to use language, of design, which should appropriately express a more important event, the coming of the forerunner of the Messiah, and the work which he should perform as preparatory to his advent. There was such a striking similarity in the two events, that they could be grouped together in the same part of the prophetic vision or picture the mind would naturally, by the laws of prophetic suggestion (Introduction, Section 7, III. (3), glance from one to the other, and the same language would appropriately and accurately express both. Both could be described as the coming of Yahweh to bless and save his people; both occurred after a long state of desolation and bondage – the one a bondage in Babylon, the other in sin and national declension. The pathless desert was literally to be passed through in the one instance; in the other, the condition of the Jews was that which was not unaptly likened to a desert – a condition in regard to real piety not unlike the state of a vast desert in comparison with fruitful fields. It was, says Lowth, in this desert country, destitute at that time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord by preaching repentance.
That this passage has a reference to John as the forerunner of the Messiah, is evident from Mat 3:3, where it is applied to him, and introduced by this remark: For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice, etc. (see also Joh 1:23) The events were so similar, in their main features, that the same language would describe both. John was nurtured in the desert, and passed his early life there, until he entered on his public work Luk 1:80. He began to preach in a mountainous country, lying east of Jerusalem, and sparsely inhabited, and which was usually spoken of as a desert or wilderness Mat 3:1; and it was here that his voice was heard announcing the coming of the Messiah, and that he pointed him to his own followers Joh 1:28-29.
In the wilderness – Babylon was separated from Judea by an immense tract of country, which was one continued desert. A large part of Arabia, called Arabia Deserts, was situated in this region. To pass in a direct line, therefore, from Babylon to Jerusalem, it was necessary to go through this desolate country. It was here that the prophet speaks of hearing a voice commanding the hills to be leveled, and the valleys filled up, that there might be a convenient highway for the people to return (compare the notes at Isa 35:8-10).
Prepare ye the way – This was in the form of the usual proclamation of a monarch commanding the people to make a way for him to pass. Applied to the return of the exile Jews, it means that the command of God had gone forth that all obstacles should be removed. Applied to John, it means that the people were to prepare for the reception of the Messiah; that they were to remove all in their opinions and conduct which would tend to hinder his cordial reception, or which would prevent his success among them.
Of the Lord – Of Yahweh. Yahweh was the leader of his people, and was about to conduct them to their own land. The march therefore, was regarded as that of Yahweh, as a monarch or king, at the head of his people, conducting them to their own country; and to prepare the way of Yahweh was, therefore, to prepare for his march at the head of his people. Applied to the Messiah, it means that God was about to come to his people to redeem them. This language naturally and obviously implies, that he whose way was thus to be prepared was Yahweh, the true God. So it was undoubtedly in regard to him who was to be the leader of the exile Jews to their own land, since none but Yahweh could thus conduct them. And if it be admitted that the language has also a reference to the Messiah, then it demonstrates that he was appropriately called Yahweh. That John the Immerser had such a view of him, is apparent from what is said of him.
Thus, Joh 1:15, he says of him that, he was before him which was not true unless he had an existence previous to his birth; he calls him, Joh 1:18, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father; and in Joh 1:34, he calls him the Son of God (compare Joh 10:30, Joh 10:33, Joh 10:36). In Joh 3:31, he says of him, he that cometh from above is above all; he that cometh from heaven is above all. Though this is not one of the most direct and certain proof texts of the divinity of the Messiah, yet it is one which may be applied to him when that divinity is demonstrated from other places. It is not one that can be used with absolute certainty in an argument on the subject, to convince those who deny that divinity – since, even on the supposition that it refers to the Messiah, it may be said plausibly, and with some force, that it may mean that Yahweh was about to manifest himself by means of the Messiah; yet it is a passage which those who are convinced of the divinity of Christ from other source, will apply without hesitation to him as descriptive of his rank, and confirmatory of his divinity.
Make straight – Make a straight or direct road; one that should conduct at once to their land. The Chaldee renders this verse, Prepare a way before the people of Yahweh; make in the plain ways before the congregation of our God.
A highway – (See the note at Isa 35:8).
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 40:3
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness
The Baptist a pattern preacher
I.
DEPRECIATION OF SELF. Isaiah had predicted simply a voice; and John Baptist, accordingly, with a humility which ministers of the New Testament should follow, laid no stress on anything personal to himself–the announcement of his birth by an angel, his priestly descent, his years of preparation–though all these supplied advantages to his ministry. He concentrated attention on what he had to tell In me there is nothing to attract or benefit. I am only what centuries ago was predicted–a voice.
II. EXALTATION OF HIS MESSAGE AS DIVINE.
III. A PROCLAIMING AS THE CENTRAL TOPIC IN THE EVERLASTING MESSAGE A DIVINE, AND THEREFORE EFFECTUAL, HELPER FOR THE RUINED. He shall gather; He shall carry; He shall gently lead; All flesh shall see the salvation of the Lord (verses 10, 11, with 5). And John Baptist accordingly announced, as ministers of the New Testament should now announce, the presence in Christ Jesus of a perfect Saviour (Joh 1:26-27; Joh 1:29; Mat 3:11; Joh 3:29-30). Who among the audience of the faithful ambassador have rightly caught the message? (1Pe 2:3.)
1. Those who surrender all habits inconsistent with his call
2. Those who rejoice greatly in the guardianship and guidance of the great Deliverer proclaimed (1Pe 1:5-6).
3. Those who steadily tread in the blessed steps of His life (Luk 1:74, 1Pe 1:21). His sheep hear His voice; He knows them; they follow Him. (D. D. Stewart, M. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Isa 40:3-5
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
The way of the Lord prepared
I.
THE JEWISH THEOCRACY. It is a favourite statement with those who seek to account for Christianity on entirely mundane principles, that Christ grew, as it were, out of His age. The age was waiting for some such Teacher, some such Gospel–and Teacher and Gospel came. Just as the wreck of the Roman Republic demanded a hand and brain like Caesars, and they appeared at the critical moment and reorganised the State, so the Great Preacher of the universal Gospel was called for by His times, and He came. There is something in the spirit of an age, we are told, which creates the heroes and teachers of the age. This is very interesting, and has a large measure of truth in it. Men of high genius are singularly sensitive to the influences around them, and are created while they create; but it is blankly impossible to account for Christ and Christianity by natural evolution, with the Jewish theocracy, a grand prophetic system which for nearly two thousand years looked unto and prophesied of the Messiah, standing in the way. There was existing for ages in the world, kept alive by marvellous interventions of a higher hand, a national community, whose function was distinctly, from first to last, to prepare the way for the Advent, for the Divine kingdom which was to rule over and to bless mankind. These Jews were set to bear witness of the reality of the Divine rule, and its necessity, if states were to be saved from chaos, and the whole world from wreck. There was a period, when Moses led them in the wilderness, when the theocracy came out with wonderful clearness. Then there was a period, under their kings, when, through their worldly conformity to the life of surrounding nations, the theocracy was obscured. But the captivity ended that conformity in sorrow and in shame. From the time of the captivity the idea of the theocracy was restored. The prophets are throughout its great witnesses. The expectation, as matter of history, grew intense as the Advent approached. The expectation of the Advent of a Being, a Person, who should fulfil the promise and the prophecy with which their national life and literature were charged; who should bring, what Christ has brought–a Gospel of salvation to the world. It is a wonderful feature of thepreparation, that just as the nation which exhibited the theocracy was dying away as a nation its belief in the theocracy grew more intense, and its witness grew more clear and impressive to the approaching Advent of the great world theocrat–the Christ.
II. THE JEWISH DISPERSION. It was a very wonderful chain of providential agencies which, before the Advent, scattered that people, these witnesses so charged with the promise and the prophecy, through the civilised world. Up to the time of the captivity the Jews kept themselves in a kind of stem, or, as the heathen around them called it, a sullen isolation. They cherished the sense of a lofty superiority. But, after the captivity, they displayed a singular facility of dispersion, a happy art of settling and flourishing among the Gentile peoples, which makes them to this day, pace the Anglo-Saxon, the first settlers of the world. In every chief city of the empire which Alexander founded a colony of Jews was sure to be settled; and the same state of things afterwards obtained in the far wider empire of Rome. In order to appreciate the significance of this, you must estimate the utter confusion of human beliefs and ideas about Divine things and beings which had been the fruit of the Greek and Roman conquests. Neither Greek nor Roman had belief enough in his gods to impose them on the conquered nations; nor did they find anything Divine among the conquered nations which seemed better worth worshipping than their own. This confusion of religious ideas and systems and deities, none of which had power to emerge with absolute or even strong claims to belief, was profoundly detrimental to moral earnestness, and indeed to any high-toned belief about Divine things. There was an utter confusion and decay of faith. But here were communities settled among them who had an absolute and indestructible belief in their Revelation. They had a God to worship of whom they could give intelligible account. The Jews lived among the heathen in isolation still; but the isolation was visibly based on a religious faith, and on religious records. These Jews, scattered abroad, were witnesses everywhere of the reality and necessity of Divine revelation to, and Divine legislation for, man. They familiarised men with the ideas which Christianity proclaimed, and on which it rested its authoritative claim to the homage and the obedience of mankind.
III. THERE WAS A VERY REMARKABLE CHANGE WITHIN THE BOSOM OF HEATHEN SOCIETY ITSELF, IN ITS INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL IDEAS, WHICH NOT ONLY OPENED THE WAY FOR THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, BUT SEEMED TO DEMAND SOME SUCH REVELATION OF TRUTH TO MANKIND. Students of philosophy note a very decided progress between the age of Socrates and the age of Seneca in the consideration of questions bearing on mans individual life and destiny. The supreme interest of a mans life in the golden age of Greek philosophy lay in his relations, as a member of a society, as a citizen of a State. Within the little circle of Athenian society men realised a closeness of relation to each other, which made the State something of a household. The conquests of Alexander created an entirely new order of things. The Greek became, not the citizen of a State almost domestic in its magnitude and character, but the subject of a great Empire, lost in an undistinguished mass of fellow-subjects, and quite cut adrift from the landmarks and the moorings by which he had been wont to steer and stay his life. The Greek must think about himself and his world, and Alexander led him out into a world too big for him, which oppressed and distracted him, and overthrew all the traditions of his schools. It was a world, too, of ceaseless conflict and change. The state of the Greek world between Alexanders conquests and the establishment of Roman supremacy, say, roughly, two hundred years, was such as to throw the thinker back upon himself, to lead him to realise his individual responsibility, to force on him the question, What, after all, am I? Whence did I come? For what am I here? Whither do I tend? I am in a world full of confusion and misery–how am I to regulate my life, so that my happiness may not become a wreck? So the great thinkers increasingly concerned themselves with questions which had to do with the individual man, his duty, his responsiblilty, his destiny, his means of arming himself for the battle of life, his means of saving himself from utter and hopeless loss. Thus there was a growing tendency in men to consider very much the question which Christianity came to treat of as salvation. The thoughts of man, the longings and aspirations of man, seem to be led up step by step to the point in which the cry, Lord, save, or I perish! was ready, did he but know all the meaning of his dumb pain, to fashion itself on his lips. All was waiting for the proclamation, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor, etc. When men went abroad and proclaimed the Advent of a Saviour, they found a ready entrance to the worlds sad, wistful heart.
IV. THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Incomparably the most important secular herald of the Advent was the Empire–an Empire under whose sceptre such a decree could go forth (Luk 2:1). There are many points of view from which the Empire may be regarded as the herald of the kingdom which was destined to master it, and found on it the edifice of Christian society. We are working and building on the foundations of the Empire still. The whole of modern European society is but the fully developed Empire of Rome. It is the centre of the secular, as the Advent of Christ is the centre of the spiritual, history of mankind. I might say much about the universal peace, which made the preaching of a universal Gospel possible. About the universal law and language, which made the career of the preachers, at any rate, far easier and more rapid than it could have been in any previous state of society. The fundamental question opened by the Empire is also a fundamental question of Christianity, the relation of men to each other. Is it enmity? is it brotherhood? Is the struggle for existence the ruling principle of progress, or brotherly sympathy, care, and love? The state of natural enmity and constant war gave way to a state in which peace, good-fellowship, and mutual ministries were regarded as the natural condition of society. Briton and Egyptian, Syrian and Spaniard, formed together a great political unity; and were drawn into bonds of relation to each other, the nature and bearings of which men were eager to explore. There rose on the minds of men the idea of human brotherhood. Men began to speculate about a common good in which civilised humanity was to share, and a duty of the whole human community to its weaker members, its sick, its poor, its wretched. Men wanted to know why and how they were brethren, why and how they were to love. And so arose perhaps the greatest herald of the Advent in secular society, the longing for a kingdom which should fulfil the promise which Rome in the nature of things was constantly breaking; and give peace, concord, love to a distracted world. Thus the way was prepared, the highway through the desert was made. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
The Divine glory revealed in Christ
I. ITS LITERAL ACCOMPLISHMENT.
1. In the appearance of John the Baptist. Ages rolled away, and no such preparing voice was heard in the desert of Judea. But it was at length heard.
2. Following the footsteps of the servant, comes the Master. And as John had said, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, then was the glory of God manifested; and all flesh, living at that time in Judea, saw it together: the glory of God in human nature. Jesus Christ was the visible image of the glory of God all the time He was on earth. The visible image–
(1) Of the power of God. His works were Divine; His word was power. See His power over the elements.
(2) Of the truth of God. The doctrine of Christ has brought us nearer to the unclouded truth of the Divine mind than men were ever brought before.
(3) Of the holiness of God; and that even while He was man upon earth.
(4) Of the justice of God. Though this is not so frequently adverted to as other attributes, yet it is important. Why did Christ die so willingly? If, then, the glory of God was revealed even in the lowliness and sufferings of the Saviour, I ask if the coming of Christ had not in it more real pomp than if He had come with all the grandeur of an Eastern monarch, to a people who waited for Him?
II. ITS SPIRITUAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. This is seen in the manifestation of Christ to the hearts of men. In this there is both preparation and manifestation; for Christ, in mercy, no more bursts upon the soul at once than He did upon the world; He sends His messenger to prepare the way before Him; this is the first part of the process. That preparing herald, figured by John the Baptist, is repentance. Consider what repentance is, and you will see how it prepares the soul for Christ, for pardon, happiness, and purity.
1. The first element is a deep and serious conviction of the fact of our sin. For if we justify ourselves, there will be no preparation.
2. The second element is a conviction of the extreme danger of sin and its infinite desert.
3. The third element is a burdened and disquieted spirit. This supposes a feeling that we are not able to deliver ourselves. The way of the Lord is then plain; all obstructions are removed when we come to this; for all true repentance, like the preaching of John the Baptist, concludes by saying, Behold the Lamb of God! It is here alone that we see the glory of God. For what is the happiness of a pardoned soul, but one of the brightest manifestations of the glory of God upon earth? Here is a visible manifestation of the glory of the Divine patience; that man, amidst all his repeated provocations, should at last be saved and made happy. The glory of the grace of God! What a comment on the words of the apostle, By grace are ye saved! And then, see the glory of that working of the Divine power by which the soul is finally brought into the enjoyment of all the mind that was in Christ; the soul changing from glory to glory, and the work completed by an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom. This is the manifestation of Christ to the soul.
III. ITS ALLEGORICAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. It is seen in the establishment of Christs kingdom upon earth. He sends forth His heralds. It is by the ministry of His Gospel that His dominion is established. The doctrine to be preached is that of repentance. So St. Paul preached at Athens. The manifestation of the master follows. Here is a manifestation of the glory of the heavenly wisdom, raising, exalting, and purifying the human intellect; of the Divine righteousness, putting a stop to all cruelty and injury. The glory of peace and harmony; the union of mans heart to man, the extinction of external wars, and the diffusion of internal harmony. The glory of that order among families, and societies, and nations, preserved, and sanctified, and so regulated that no part infringes on the other, but the whole proceeds harmoniously, like a piece of sound mechanism. The glory of mercy and charity: teaching men to remember those that are in afflictions, as being themselves in like manner afflicted. This is a glory peculiar to the Christian revelation. (R. Watson.)
Preparation for the Advent Messiah
A positive preparation of the race itself was necessary, before the plan of redemption could be successfully revealed. This preparation was gradually going forward at the same time that our moral helplessness was so amply illustrated. If we reflect upon the nature of the Christian revelation we shall be convinced that its conceptions belong to an advanced period of civilisation. It addresses itself exclusively to the spiritual nature of man. But, in the earlier periods of our race, our conceptions are all from without; they have to do almost exclusively with sensible objects. The Gospel has to do with thought, feeling, sentiment, motive, and all their various attributes; and it could not be well understood until the mind of man had become somewhat at home in these conceptions. Nor is this all. The Christian religion addresses itself to the moral nature, the conscience of man.
I. Hence, a remedial dispensation would naturally be delayed, until the moral character of man, both individual and social, had been fully displayed; and MANKIND HAD BECOME IN SOME DEGREE CAPABLE OF APPRECIATING THE FACTS THUS PRESENTED TO THEIR NOTICE. But, besides this, the Gospel is a revelation communicated to man by language, and its authenticity, as is meet, is attested by miracles. Now, considerable progress must have been made in civilisation before such testimony could be given as we would be willing to receive on a question of so vital importance. Until the laws of nature are to some extent known, we cannot determine whether the Creator has or has not in a particular case departed from them. And this leads us to observe, again, that a revelation from God to man, informing him of this wonderful change in the conditions of his probation,–a revelation designed for all ages to the end of time, and destined towork a perfect transformation in the moral character of our race,–could not have been completed until language had arrived at a considerable degree of perfection. It was necessary that the doctrines and motives peculiar to the new dispensation should be promulgated with all possible explicitness, and yet guarded from all tendency either to incompleteness or excess. Amidst all the agitations of society, throughout all the overturnings of empire, the human mind, during this long period, had been gradually attaining maturity. Each nation, during its brief existence, had either added something to the stock of human knowledge, or made some contribution to the materials for human thought. Every revolution had illustrated in some new phase the principles of conduct, and had bequeathed the lesson to succeeding generations.
II. We see, then, that God not only prepared a language in which this revelation for all coming ages could, be written, but HE DIFFUSED THAT LANGUAGE OVER THE CIVILISED WORLD. He created a suitable vehicle for the truth, and He made that vehicle, as far as was necessary, universal. And this work was accomplished by means of the ambition of Alexander, and the all-grasping love of dominion of the citizens of Rome. Men ignorant of the existence and character of the true God, bowing down to the senseless images which their own hands had fashioned, indulging without restraint their own corrupt passions, were thus advancing His purposes, and opening the way for the advent of His Son.
III.
One other condition remains yet to be observed.
The nations inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean were originally distinct in government, dissimilar in origin, diverse in laws, habits, and usages, and almost perpetually at war.
To pass from one to the other without incurring the risk of injury, nay, even of being sold into slavery, was almost impossible.
A stranger and an enemy were designated by the same word.
It was necessary that these various peoples should all be moulded into one common form; that one system of laws should bind them all in harmony. This seems to have been needful, in order that the new religion might be rapidly and extensively promulgated. In order to accomplish this purpose WAS THE ROMAN EMPIRE RAISED UP, AND ENTRUSTED WITH THE SCEPTRE OF UNIVERSAL DOMINION. In many respects it resembled the dominion of Great Britain at the present day in Asia. We perceive that the overturnings of forty centuries were required in order to prepare the world for the advent of the Messiah. The same omniscient wisdom has ever since been engaged in carrying forward the work which was then commenced. (D. Wayland, LL. D.)
Vox clamantis
It were surely a vain thing for a voice to cry in the wilderness where none can hear but the startled wild animals; where there are no sympathetic human hearts that can thrill with its message. But we must remember that of old the wilderness had a strange, weird attraction for many who aspired to live a holy life. And other souls who had similar longings, but did not possess the means or the courage to gratify them, would resort to the hermit of the wilderness for counsel and benediction.
1. The metaphor, so wild and striking, of a voice crying in the wilderness, is as appropriate as metaphor could be for representing the man of God who, in a degenerate age, lifts up his voice to declare the truth, to reprove sin, to call men to a new life. Rocks are not harder than hearts sometimes; the wandering blustering winds are not more inattentive to the speakers message than are some souls. To a divinely taught spirit nothing is so truly a desert as the crowded city. To him it is lonely, forbidding, sad, yet mightily attractive, awakening his tenderest compassions, calling forth his mightiest and most patient exertions.
2. Now that it has been done, we probably fall into the way of thinking that nothing was easier than for John the Baptist to preach to the Jews of the time of Herod, or for our Lord to open His mission to the same people, or for Paul to preach Christ at Corinth and Athens and Rome. How different the reality! Could any one of the inhabitants of these places have been consulted by Gods messenger beforehand he would probably have said: Do you think that these cavilling, disputing doctors and philosophers will ever give credence to such stories as you bring? Do you think that these pleasure-loving people will ever wear the yoke of such an austere religion of self-sacrifice as you proclaim? Go home to your ordinary work again, and dont trouble yourself to speak a message which nobody will hear; or if you cannot be at peace unless you say something about it, then go into the desert and speak it to yourself and to nature; for your chances of succeeding will be as great there as anywhere. Strange all this, yet more strange the fact that it is the wilderness and the solitary place which shall rejoice and be glad for the messenger of God who comes to prepare Messiahs way. The unlikely ground yields the harvest; they that are afar off come nigh. The voice in the wilderness is that of a herald announcing that a Greater One is on His way; be ye ready to receive Him. Widespread, radical, and lasting reformation was not achieved through the word of the Baptist; but such souls as could be prepared for the coming of the Lamb of God were aroused, called, separated from the hardened and worldly and unbelieving, and placed under discipline and teaching. From among their number our Lord chose His first disciples and chief apostles. Beyond the fringe of that little company which kept close to the Baptist something of good also was done. A wave of spiritual feeling passed over a great part of the nation; Jerusalem was greatly excited, if not savingly renewed. A general condition of desire was produced.
3. There are many advents of the Son of God, and for every one of them there is some forerunner, some voice crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye His way; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The voice of some John the Baptist has gone ringing through the wilderness of a dead faith, of a formal worship, of a worldly life, and men have been startled into attention, have been made conscious of shortcomings and sins. And although God never ceases to work among men, yet we come on barren dreary years of history, a very desert, when the signs of the Divine working are not apparent. Then arises some John the Baptist, or a general sense of dissatisfaction pervades the Churches, a sense of shortcoming and of shame, and the obstructions to a Divine manifestation are swept out of the way. Hardly a decade passes now without a cry arising from the Churches themselves: Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight. Their conscience becomes increasingly quick and true; their ideal grows nobler; their conception of the Christian life assimilates to the standard given in the Word of God. And with attainment comes a longing for more, a sense of need, a craving for God. Then let us prepare His way, as we would that of a dear Friend whom we long to see, and whom we would not keep from us by any neglect or disrespect of ours. (J. P. Gledstone.)
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
I. GOD HAS MANY MESSENGERS, AND THEY HAVE OFTEN LIFTED UP THEIR VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. Some speak with a voice of thunder to arouse a sleeping world. The doctrine of others distils as the dew. Some open new paths to the seekers after wisdom: to others it is given to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. Ever since man was driven from Eden he has been a wanderer in the desert. The thorn and the thistle around him are the emblems of the sin and the sorrow which spiritually mark his nomad state of existence. No wonder, then, that the wilderness is so often used as an emblem of this present life, in which you and I must listen to the voice of Heavens messengers. We want more law work. Our consciences are too easily satisfied. Modern religion is far too superficial. The law prepares for the Gospel. The Comforter must first convince of sin.
II. ISAIAH USES IT AS AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS OWN MINISTRY. He, too, living now probably in the idolatrous reign of Manasseh, felt himself in a spiritual desert. Yet by faith he sees afar off, and the seer is himself transported into that bright future. Already foreseeing the seventy years captivity of Judah, and then the joyful return of the exiles under the decree of Cyrus, Isaiah writes of these events as if himself living and acting among them. Yea more, he pictures the dawn of the day as ushered in by that return from Babylon.
III. THE TRANSITION IS EASY TO THE PERSONAL TIMES OF THE MESSIAH, AND OF HIS HERALD, JOHN THE BAPTIST. The homely and heart-searching appeals of the Baptist proved him to be the pioneer of the righteous King. Before this wilderness preacher the mountains of Pharisaic pride were levelled, the valleys of Sadducean unbelief were filled up, the tortuous vices of the courtly Judaean were corrected, and the rude ignorance of the Galilean smoothed and reformed.
IV. But even in this day THE WORDS HAD A WIDER SIGNIFICATION. Not only the land of Israel, but the Gentile world, even all flesh, was then being prepared to see the salvation of God. The former was accomplished by Johns own preaching; of the latter he was only the herald. Providential agencies were even then at work preparing Christs way among the Gentiles.
1. At the time when our Saviour was born the knowledge of the Greek language had spread more widely throughout Asia and Europe than has since been the case with any other tongue. What a preparation was this for the spread of the Christian religion. We know that there is no greater harrier separating nations than a difference of language. But at the very period when Christianity began to be published it found one language generally read and understood from the Alps to the Caucasus; and so the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament could now travel, with the gospels and epistles, to the many provinces of the Roman Empire; for the valleys had been exalted, and the mountains and hills made low.
2. A second preparation designed by Gods providence was–the extent of Roman dominion. The chief means employed by that great Empire for consolidating her possessions were her roads and her laws.
(1) It was literally true that, owing to Roman dominion, both in Europe and Asia, the crooked had been made straight and the rough places plain. That sagacious people recognised the civilising power of good roads through their Empire just as we do now of railways in our Indian and other colonies.
(2) It is the province of law to rectify abuses and remove difficulties: and to effect this among the nations Rome ever felt to be her mission. Wherever she planted her colonies she invited all people to share her privileges, and to dwell in safety under the aegis of her laws. Was not this, then, a moral via strata made for the spread of Christianity?
V. HOW THIS PROPHECY SHEDS A LUSTRE ON THE WORLDS FUTURE. Once more in this wide desert the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and not one, but all lands shall see it together. Yes, He who ascended into heaven shall so come again. Are we ready for that day? Are we making others ready? I believe that every Christian should be as the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The true Church, in short, must remain in the desert until the mystic times are fulfilled. She is to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Meanwhile the voice of prophecy is given to cheer her amidst trial and disappointment. We labour for years to tunnel through the Alps: shall we not labour patiently to prepare the way of the Lord? (S. P. Jose, M. A.)
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
I. THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS WHICH HINDER THE SPREAD OF THE REDEEMERS KINGDOM, spoken of here as valleys, hills, etc. Heathenism abroad: ignorance and vice at home. Intemperance hinders the progress of Gods kingdom on every hand.
1. Intemperance hinders the progress of Gods kingdom at home. Our country is occupied by three armies–an army of paupers, an army of criminals, and an army of police, to stand between the vicious and the virtuous, and protect the latter from the assaults of the former. How is this? There is this huge evil established amongst us, which casts its dread shadow over everything that is lovely and of good report. Where, e.g., are the working men of England to be found to-day? Not in the house of prayer. In the case of many of them, they have no suitable clothes; but why is this? Because wages are low? Because trade is bad? I answer, because the money is carried to the public-house, and is thus worse than wasted. There are some who go many times, perhaps regularly, to the house of God, and yet are not saved. Why? The grand neutraliser of the Gospel is the habit of drinking intoxicating liquors.
2. It is also a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel abroad.
(1) They tell us that we cannot, as Christians, take possession of the world, because we have not the means. Is it a truth that England, the richest land upon earth, made rich too by her Christianity, has done what she could for Him who redeemed her when she gives eightpence per head for the conversion of the world? Is it so? Alas! no; for while we have done this, we have spent 4 per head on strong drink.
(2) They say the world is not converted because we have not the men–especially suitable men. How is this? There are men to be found for everything else. One reason is, that the drinking customs have done much to enervate the Church. Strong drink aims high. It aims at the men of active brain and warm heart.
(3) Then there is the third reason–want of success. There are European barriers that are much stronger than heathenism and idolatry. The missionary tells us, over and over again, that he is far more afraid of English drinking than of native idolatry.
II. IT IS THE DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH TO SWEEP THIS ENEMY AWAY. God has decreed that these mountains shall perish.
1. The Church can remove this mountain. Look at her power as a teacher. Are not the children of our country in her hands? Look at the political power which she possesses. Is there an election in which the Christian Church cannot turn the balance? She has not only the ordinary power which men have, but she has omnipotence at her command.
2. The Church must, if she would hold her own. If we are not assailing strong drink, it is assailing us.
3. The Church must, if she would please her Master. How are we to proceed? Abstinence first; then entire prohibition of the traffic.
III. THE GLORIOUS RESULT. (C. Garrett.)
Preparing the way of the Lord
I. THE ADVENT IMPLIED. Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
1. The Lord here spoken of is doubtless the supreme Jehovah; and from the appropriation of the passage by inspired authority to Christ, I apprehend nothing less can be intended than to intimate that He who was coming was the true God and eternal Life. This was that Immanuel who was to bring in an everlasting righteousness, to redeem and restore the Israel of God, and accomplish salvation for all the ends of the earth. Let us, then, inquire, Is this interpretation of the passage justified by other scriptures, and especially by the event itself? Assuredly He came with all the signs and demonstrations of incarnate Deity. He Himself laid express claim to this high character, and most manifestly displayed the perfections which it involves. With these sublime views of His character agrees the testimony of all His inspired apostles.
2. The disciples of John were required to contemplate here the true Messiah coming to effect salvation, to fulfil all the promises made of old to their fathers. It is, therefore, of great interest and importance to ascertain what was involved in that character, and what was the work assigned Him to do. It is expressly declared that He came to do the will of God,–to magnify the law and make it honourable,–to render to it a perfect obedience, and make reconciliation for iniquity.
3. The way of the Lord to us must be understood of His approach to our consciences and hearts by His word and spirit.
II. The charge to prepare the way of the Lord implies that there ARE DIFFICULTIES OR OBSTACLES IN HIS WAY.
1. There is the pride and self-righteousness of the human heart,
2. The heart is by nature hard and impenitent, blinded to its own defects, and, even after the confession of them, unwilling to have them condemned or to give them up.
3. The state of human desires and affections presents other and formidable obstacles to the claims of the Lord. Their desires are low–their affections carnal. The poor grovelling heart must be raised to noble and exalted ends and aims.
4. In some there exists a mass of prejudice, and the truth of Christ is viewed under a false light, or through a perverting medium. They will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, and they cannot enter therein. Some are prejudiced against the authority of revelation–some against the mysteries of godliness–some against the doctrines of grace or salvation by the merit of another; and many dislike the holiness, the self-denial, the separation from the world which Christianity inculcates.
5. Repentance is necessary to prepare the way; humility, to receive and learn the doctrine; prayer, to give it success in the heart; and watchfulness, to carry it out into practice. Every one who is himself a disciple of the Lord, has something to do in preparing the way of Christ in the earth. (G. Redford, LL. D.)
The road maker
(with Mattheew 3:3):–To the writers of the Gospel story this vivid expression seems to have commended itself as peculiarly applicable to the Baptist. He came heralding the speedy advent of the Messiah, and his life and ministry were a preparation for the greater life and more potent ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. In all essentials that task still remains to be performed. The modern road maker–the herald and hastener of a better and holier day–must be distinguished–
I. BY A PROFOUND SENSE OF THE EVIL OF THE PRESENT. The prophet was no blind optimist cherishing a foolish hope of a happier future because he did not see the abounding evils around him. He saw with clear, penetrating eyes the moral and spiritual degradation of his nation and day. He speaks of it, ay, and of the national evils which must issue from it–exile, defeat, the overthrow of their beautiful city. That is true of the prophetic band from first to last–from Elijah to John. The man who deliberately closes his eyes to the evils of his day, or seeing them minimises their importance, or in thought disguises them by some euphonious phrase, will never–let his life be prolonged to beyond the age of the patriarchs–prepare the way of the Lord. Too many of us live in an imaginary world as different as possible from the world of stern fact. The men who do most in their own generation to make a way for a better day in the future are usually the men who see clearly one wrong which needs righting, one obstacle which needs removing, one lie which needs refuting, and give themselves to the doing of that one thing–e.g., Wilberforce and slavery, Wesley and Evangelism, Cobden and Free Trade, Booth and the submerged tenth. One word of warning. To look fearlessly at the evils of your own day is not without danger. Not until that Voice which speaks of comfort through forgiveness has been heard and welcomed does the call come which bids hands and feet and active will prepare the way of the Lord.
II. BY AN UNQUENCHABLE FAITH IN THE FUTURE. The road maker is an optimist because he is a man of faith. There is an optimism which is both foolish and unfounded. But if the optimist has first looked facts in the face, and then rises by sheer force of faith in God above all that contradicts his hope, his optimism is not a vice, but a shining and beneficent virtue. Such was this prophets. So with John. He is certain, despite the manifold evils–moral and social–that afflict his people, that the day of the Lord sanointed will be a glorious day–a day of great things; and he speaks of it and of Him whose shoe-latchet he is not worthy to unloose with an unbounded faith. He must increase; I must decrease. Note on what the road maker rests–not on man. All flesh is grass; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God endureth for ever. The people have Gods Word; when all their human leaders have fallen, and every visible authority for God is taken away, this shall be their rally and their confidence.
III. BY HIS READINESS TO SERVE OR SUFFER. So Isaiah: so John. No good cause but has exacted its toll of both from heroic hearts that have espoused it. (W. H. Williams.)
Comfort for the afflicted Church
I. THE DESIGN OF THIS PROPHECY is to speak peace and comfort to an afflicted Church. Not only to the Jewish Church under a temporal captivity, but to every Christian Church, and every faithful soul.
1. Every valley shall be exalted. As the way St. John was sent to prepare by repentance was in the hearts of men, this must express some change to be wrought in those hearts. And what does it proclaim, but that humility is the way to glory?
2. Every mountain and hill shall be made low. As the lowly and fruitful valleys represent the meek and pious servants of Christ, so do the lofty and barren mountains point out to us the haughty and unprofitable children of this world that oppose Him.
3. The crooked shall be made straight. This is a most essential part in a highway, the end and intent of which is, to lead those who travel in it directly to the place and city where they would be. Man, at his creation, was placed in the straight way to heaven and happiness. Had he kept the eyes of his faith steadily fixed upon it, and walked directly on in the path of Gods commandments, he had soon arrived at it. But he listened to the suggestions of the devil, who drew him out of it, pretending to show him a pleasanter and shorter road than that appointed. But no sooner was man a sinner than God was a Saviour. When the valley of humility is exalted by faith and the mountain of pride and self-sufficiency brought low in your hearts, the crooked shall instantly be made straight before you.
4. The rough places plain. When the low ground is raised, the high levelled, and the whole marked out with a line and made straight, nothing remains but to clear away all obstructions.
II. The words thus explained, what remains but that we APPLY THEM TO OURSELVES, FOR THE DIRECTION OF OUR PRACTICE? (Bp. Horne.)
Preparing the way of the Lord
I. THE DUTY OF PREPARING THE WAY OF THE LORD.
1. The herald. Allusion is here made to an ancient custom, according to which heralds were sent before to prepare the way for the monarch when he was about to march from one place to another. Christian ministers are the voice of God crying in the wilderness. The very circumstance of this voice being needed shows the disordered state of man by nature. It is not enough for ministers gently to remind men of their state and duty–they must cry. Very many are the souls that need to be thus roused.
2. The scene of his labours–the wilderness. This is highly descriptive of the state of men in every age. A wilderness, a desert, indeed, is this world, while void of Gods grace; destitute of beauty, and unfruitful as to every good work.
3. What is the work to which the herald calls? As far as we have it in our power, we are to aid in removing whatever hinders the reception of Christ in the world. What is it hinders the reception of Christ in our own hearts? The success of the messenger will ever depend upon his looking up to the Lord.
II. OUR ENCOURAGEMENTS.
1. Every difficulty, however formidable, shall be surmounted. For every valley shall be exalted, etc. What are the difficulties which present themselves? In the work of salvation there are two leading classes of impediments.
(1) Internal. These are in every heart. There is much anxiety and depression: we are ready to imagine there is no hope; here are the valleys to be exalted. Some are puffed up with conceit of their own merit, and will not come to Christ; here are mountains to be made low. There are some untractable, obstinate passions; here are the roughnesses which are to be made plain. Who is sufficient for all this? None but the Lord alone.
(2) External. In introducing the Gospel among the heathen there are many difficulties.
2. There shall be an universal manifestation of the Divine glory. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. There was a great manifestation of the Divine glory when Cyrus and the foes of the Church were made the instruments of delivering Gods people from their captivity. Christians! this is not our work, or we should soon be dismayed. It is the way of the Lord. He is to work; He is to display His own glory. What tenderness and-condescension has God shown!
3. The certainty of all this. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. When one promises who can fulfil our wishes, we have all the encouragement we can possibly need. In no blindness of mistaken zeal, in no rashness of enthusiasm, yet with all holy boldness, let us labour to prepare the way of the Lord. (W. Williams.)
The Kings highway
I. VALLEYS MUST BE LEVELED UP.
1. Inattention.
(1) If we attend not to the Gospel message we can neither realise its importance nor secure its benefits.
(2) Those who absent themselves from the house of God are indifferently prepared for the coming of the Lord.
(3) So those who while there allow their minds to wander upon their merchandise, pleasures, etc., are ill prepared for the coming of the King.
2. Apathy.
(1) Thousands of professors of religion put forth little effort in the cause of God.
(2) Begin with yourself. Make a stir among your neighbours. Begin now.
3. Despondency.
(1) There are those who are so affected with a sense of their sinfulness that they fear to trust in Christ for salvation.
(2) Some professors take a morbid, gloomy view of the work of God.
II. EMINENCES MUST BE LEVELLED DOWN.
1. The mountain of pride must be reduced.
(1) The pride that will not make full confession of sin.
(2) The pride that will not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child.
(3) The pride of reason that will not accept salvation until its mysteries are comprehended.
(4) The progress of Christ is also hindered by the worldly pride of professors.
2. The mountain of presumption must be depressed.
(1) Sinners are presumptuous when, without forsaking their sins, they attempt to believe for salvation.
(2) Professors are presumptuous when they expect the work of God to revive in the Church without exerting themselves to promote a revival.
(3) While we work as though everything depended upon working, we must trust as though everything depended upon trusting.
3. The hills of ingratitude must be brought low.
(1) Some are ostensibly so zealous for the conversion of sinners that they forget to thank God for the good He is bestowing.
(2) There are others who will not rejoice when they hear good tidings of the work of God, because they are not themselves the subjects of that work.
III. THE CROOKED PLACES MUST BE STRAIGHTENED.
1. Prejudice.
(1) Some object to the movements of the blessed Jesus because He comes too loudly.
(2) Others complain because He comes too silently.
(3) Some dislike them because publicans and harlots are getting converted.
(4) Others find fault because the work of grace takes hold upon the better classes.
(5) And there are those who disparage the work of God among the children because they are too young. Nothing pleases crooked prejudice.
2. Jealousy.
(1) It hears that sinners are converted, but is not pleased because the converts have joined other churches.
(2) We may be anxious for the prosperity of Gods work for party purposes.
(3) How admirable was the spirit of Paul, who rejoiced that Christ was preached, no matter by whom!
3. Censoriousness.
(1) None of us are so perfect that we can afford to be severely scrutinised. We should therefore endeavour to put the best construction upon each others conduct.
(2) We should be especially careful not to impeach good men with want of zeal for God because they differ from us in judgment as to the best way to promote His work.
4. Covetousness.
(1) The acquisition of property is the one end for which some persons appear to exist. It is to no purpose to remind such persons that the world is perishing, and that the Church missions are languishing for want of funds
(2) Can the God of benevolence bless a covetous Church?
(3) The cure for covetousness is giving.
IV. THE ROUGH PLACES MUST BE SMOOTHED.
1. That ugly rock of Sabbath desecration must be removed.
(1) God did not institute His day for our amusement.
(2) It was not instituted to encourage idleness. It is separated from the toil of secular business.
2. That rut of drunkenness must be filled up.
3. Those sinks of immorality must be filled. Lying, cheating, oppression, uncleanness.
4. The rough places of instability must be smoothed.
(1) Like the chameleon, which takes the colour of every object on which it rests, there are those who never remain the same person for four-and-twenty hours. Treating Church membership as a coat that might be put on or off at pleasure.
(2) At one moment they are all in a flame, the next moment they are cold as ice. Sometimes they appear like the oak, at other times like the reed that is shaken with the wind.
(3) In the Church they are one thing, in the world another. Yet are they the noisiest fault-finders against the quiet, steady, unostentatious workers. (F. W.Macdonald, M. A.)
Preparing the way of the Lord
(with Luk 3:10-14):–
I. EXTERNAL PREPARATION (Isa 40:3-5). Our King has notified usthat He wants to encircle this world with His glory, and we are the pioneers to make way for His chariot. Let me indicate a few things about this work if you are going to make it a grand success.
1. There must be a willingness to undertake it. Indifference will kill the enterprise. Difficulties will appear; there must be courage and a cool head to guide a brave heart. Three things must be prominent–
(1) Regularity of effort.
(2) A desire to find ones own particular work.
(3) Surrender to the guidance of the Spirit.
2. There must be an appreciation of the importance of the work. If the King has given an order, there must be some reason for it; and when the carrying out of that order involves careful planning and difficult execution we must infer the importance of the result, and hence of the preparation.
(1) Cutting down forests. What are the dead trees in the way? Apostate Christians. They lie right across the Kings track, and He has to rein up until somebody removes them. What are the strong, sturdy, even luxuriant trees on the way? Worldly Christians.
(2) Levelling the hills. Pride is a high hill. Unbelief is a considerable mountain. Criticism is a rocky mound.
(3) Filling up the hollows. Oh, the deficiencies in the Church to make up!
II. INTERNAL PREPARATION (Luk 3:10-14). Every pioneer of the coming King must observe these demands.
1. Generosity. A niggardly nature is too narrow quarters for the Lord to dwell in.
2. Justice.
3. Peaceableness. It was the soldiers duty to fight, but only when necessary, and only to secure peace. The ultimate aim of justifiable war is always peace. When you have got the way all prepared, you will find that it is–
(1) A highway for the King.
(2) A way of blessing for His subjects.
(3) A way beginning with a cross and ending with a crown. (W. H. G. Temple.)
A great work requires preparation
There is a lesson which man is taught in many ways, but which he is very slow to learn. It is the necessity of preparation before any great work can be taken in hand and brought to a prosperous end. Before men begin to build, they must dig the foundation. Before they reap the harvest they must sow the seed and prepare the soil. The truth is an elementary one and yet through neglect of it, many a good work has failed, many an earnest worker has despaired. And the greater and more lasting the work, the longer and deeper the preparation must be. Things which shoot up quickly, quickly pass away. A tree does not spring up in a night. A nation is not born in a day. History shows us the long period of conception, and the painful period of travail, before great ideas can be brought to the birth and great changes can be wrought in the political world. Geology again teaches us the countless number of the ages of preparation in which this earth was fitted to be the home of man. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Preparation for the coming of Christ
There is one event in the worlds history which by every Christian must be admitted to be unique, alike in itself and in its consequences. The coming of God in the flesh, bringing life to a dying world, light to a dark world, peace to a world at enmity with God, may find its types and shadows, but it can find no parallels amongst other historical facts. There had been comings of great men, but never the coming of the great God. There had been revelations of truth, but now the Truth Himself was revealed. Great kingdoms had been set up quickly to pass away, but now the world-wide eternal kingdom was established. We may call it a crisis in history; indeed it was. It was the crisis, the turning-point in the history of the world, the turning-power in the history of each individual man. We may describe it in its results as a re-creation, but even that word is inadequate, unless it means much more than a restoration of the old creation to its original beauty and perfection. The preparation for this unique event, how can we exaggerate its importance! So much preparation was needed for any one of the ages; how much more for that which is described as the fulness of them all! So many agencies were set at work to fit this world to be the home of man; how can we overestimate the preliminary work by which men were prepared to be the home of God? (F. Watson, M. A.)
The gnostic gospel
It is well worthy of notice that almost the earliest heresy with which the Church battled was one which denied the reality of this preparation. A fundamental gnostic doctrine was the suddenness of the appearance of the Christ in human fashion. There was indeed a preparation, a development, so to speak, of the Supreme Being before He could stoop so low as earth. But there was no preparation of man for the reception of his God. Suddenly, at the time of His baptism, the Christ appeared in human form upon the earth. His human nature, or human body, if indeed it could be called human, had no previous history. It did not grow like ours. It could not trace its origin from the parents of the race like ours. It was an instrument which the heavenly Christ took to Himself for His work, and which He flung away when He had no further use for it. Thus teaching, the gnostics cut off the Christ from all the men before or after Him. They were not bone of His bone, or flesh of His flesh. Thus was denied all preparation of the human nature by which the Saviour of men worked. And the world into which He came, it also had not been prepared for His coming. If the supreme spiritual God bad in any way come in contact with this material world, it had been by accident; nay, rather by mishap. In this world of ours God had not been the king, and never could be king. With this human nature of ours, God had not been and never could be united. The Christ did not come to give this earth, in their fulness, truths of which He had already vouchsafed us foretastes, but He came to deprive us of a higher life, which had unawares come in contact with material bodies, and had been contaminated by them. Instead of light struggling with the darkness to subdue it, the gnostics imagined light struggling in the darkness to escape from it. If fuller light was revealed by their Christ, it was only that He might gather up the stray light lost from heaven and take it for ever away. This is the gnostic gospel. This is the gospel without the Old Testament. This is the gospel without preparation of the Man Christ or mans world. Not such the teaching of the Church. She has taught us to regard the history of the world as the unfolding of the great plan by which God would gather all nations and peoples to Himself. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Preparation among the heathen for the reception of Christianity
This preparation is not to be regarded as confined to the chosen people of Israel. It is true, Darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the peoples. But even darkness, thick darkness, may be preparatory to light. It was so at the creation of the world. It is so in everyday experience. If we believe, as believe we must, that man was created with capacities for comprehending the light; if we believe that in his pure and unfallen state it was natural for him to love the light; if we believe that his higher nature is never wholly lost: then we must confess that the very darkness in its depth and grossness must have caused longings deep and vast. When men groped in the darkness, and missed their way, and felt they had missed it, they must have longed for the Day Star to arise and shine. They must have said, we were meant for something better than this. They must have hoped for happier times. They sat in darkness and the shadow of death, being fast bound in misery and iron. They fell down, and there was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress. He in whose heart a longing for better things has arisen, albeit that longing may be indefinite and ill-directed, has not been left unprepared for receiving a gift from God. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Israels preparation for the coming of Christ
Beyond this general preparation of the nations there was also a special preparation of a particular people. We are entitled to argue this from the condition of that people when the Saviour appeared. You find that nation scattered all over the world; though in it, yet not of it. It was disliked and despised. It was persecuted and down-trodden. In most places it was a mere handful. In no place had it the supreme authority. Numbers, educated opinion, popular prejudice, and state power were all against it and its distinctiveness. Yet it was never crushed, and it was never absorbed; it never ceased to exert power and influence. Low as its fortunes then were, none of any nation were so proud of their history, none were more hopeful of their future. Indeed, it might be said, with some truth, that at that time the Jews alone had hope. The nations were groaning in their pains. Old institutions and old religions were worn out. Mens hearts were failing them for fear, and for looking for those things which were coming upon the earth. The Jews alone hoped for the coming of new and better times. The Jews alone thought that the pains they were suffering were not pains of dissolution, but birth-pangs, the pains followed by new life and fresh joy. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Vox clamantis
The note of all times that are progressive is a note of urgency, preparation, advance. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The appealing voice
Sometimes there is nothing to instruct us but a voice. We hear it, but cannot trace it. It is called the spirit of the times, the voice of the day, the genius of the hour. Sometimes it is personated in one man, one policy; at other times it is a diffused voice, coming, apparently to the ear, from all the points of the compass at once, but with singular unanimity, emphasis, truthfulness. It is never a voice of despair, or a tone that would cast the soul into dejection, but always like a clarion, or a chiming bell, or a fathers call, or a soldiers resounding peal. (F. Watson, M. A.)
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God
A highway in the wilderness
We ought to read here, not the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, but rather, the voice of one crying, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord. Now, the voice of one crying in the wilderness–if you read so–will have a sufficiently direct application to John Baptist and to few menbesides. But the voice of one crying, Prepare a highway in the wilderness, is no more exclusively applicable to him than to John Calvin or John Knox or John Ruskin. It is applicable to everybody who does anything for the world, especially in its waste places and its worst places, in the way of improvement. It is applicable to Copernicus, Bacon, James Watt. Above all, it is applicable to Christ Himself. It is an anticipation of better and still better times for all mankind.
1. Does it matter at all to us who can have no hope of seeing it in our time, who have certainly, as it would seem, to live out our lives in a condition of things in which not so much the presence of improvement as the need of it is conspicuous? To this question, I think, there are two answers, both of which, for religious minds at any rate, have some weight.
(1) Our idea of God, of a Divine order in the world, is very much our whole stock-in-trade in the matter of religion. The question with us, as regards religion, is, how much we can see of God in what is not God, and in what seems opposed to God? Is that which we see of Him, though it must be little, yet enough to give us feeling, emotion, to fill our minds, not with a thousand anxieties and alarms about things clean and unclean, but to fill them to overflowing with reverence, all that constitutes the mysterious life of a spirit conversing with that unutterable Spirit behind the veil? Second to this even, though of infinite importance, is the question whether we shall devour widows houses and for a pretence make long prayers, or meditate upon the Good Samaritan, and go and do likewise. It obviously, then, concerns very much our idea of God, our experience of Him, what we see or feel of Him, our stock-in-trade in the matter of religion, what notion we form and entertain of the future destiny of mankind We know that the past has not been all that could be wished. Plenty of desert in that backward view. Will the future be better? Evidently that is a matter which must go to shape our idea of God, of a Divine order of the world. This is to look at the whole instead of a small part, and form some conclusion or other about the whole. It does matter a good deal to us, therefore, though we are not to live to see it, that, if it is possible or right to entertain it, we should entertain the belief that the endless ages that are yet to come will exhibit the Divine order as beneficent and beautiful in a way in which past ages and our own age have had scanty experience of it.
(2) Another answer to the question, What does it matter to us what the future of mankind may be? is obviously this: It is not so much a duty as an instinct for man to live for posterity. We are all of one stock. With reference to this instinct and this satisfaction, the case is plain as regards the future being other and better than the past or the present. We have all something to do, and can do something for posterity. We have the conviction or the hope in doing this, that it is not going to be in vain.
2. Prepare ye in the wilderness a highway for our God. In this, possibly, rather than in any other form, there comes the Divine call to those in every age, and especially in this age, to whom the Divine order is most of a reality and a power. Personal piety–you must have that, say the professors of ecclesiastical pedagogy–before entering upon this or that work, It is quite true: personal piety you must have to be fit to live, not to say to teach others or help others to live well. But if you have piety enough to have any satisfaction in helping to leave the world a little better than you have found it, then that is enough of a qualification and commission for taking part in work which will occupy your whole life. This general view of the Divine order and of the demands which it makes upon those who are most conscious of the reality of it suggests one or two reflections.
(1) In regard to the fulfilment of the Divine order, it often happens that, while weaker agencies at work in forwarding it are recognised, greater ones, even the greatest of all, escape notice. Since the Divine order is not always clear, it must often happen, in the case of lives of good men and even great men devoted to the advancement of it, that efforts to advance it have other results than those who made them contemplated–great results which they did not expect, no results where they expected great results.
(2) As it is often not the mightier but the weaker agencies at work in furthering the Divine order that are recognised and appreciated, so in the case of men who are more or less consciously devoted to the advancement of it, there is often a failure of insight; and they are found working for issues which they did not anticipate, both in the way of failure and in the way of success. In regard to the Divine order embracing the life of all that is, has been, shall be, the clearest sighted of mankind see through a glass darkly. Constantine was agreed that the triumph of the Christian faith was assured by his making it the religion of the State, though John Wesley had afterwards some reason, in his time, for thinking perhaps that more harm was done to it by that event than by all the Christian persecutions. The Christian world, all but a small part of it, was certain that the devil had broken loose in the Reformation in Germany, and few people who heard it did not devoutly believe that Luthers mother was a witch. John Baptist himself is not so remarkable for what he knew as for what he did not know of his own life-work and its effects. I mean, as regards the eternal order, in which he was no doubt a devout and a brave believer. As a forerunner he was nothing of a foreseer. Not only are the greater agencies at work in furthering the Divine order least recognised among the mass of men, but even among choice spirits devoted to the furthering of that order, misunderstanding as to the results of their own activity and the activity of others is more common than insight. Thus stands the case as regards one class of agencies at work in furthering the Divine order. That which is valued in regard to it is the old ecclesiastical machinery, creak and groan and rattle as it may. In the meantime, discredited to some extent by its association with enlightenment not always orthodox, the spirit of humanity enters from the outside into the religious world, to the creation of new social conditions for whole communities.
(3) What promise there is in this of a better era both for the Church and for the world is better seen as yet by the world, perhaps, than by the Church. The importance of the fact cannot at any rate be overrated. Nothing is so common in religious circles, among good people, as lamentation. The good old times of religion are no more. That is their complaint.
(4) In the meantime, religious people who are so much disposed to complain of the good old times passing away are helping to prepare for times infinitely better than the good old times, in ways of which they are as far as possible from conceiving. They are deepening dissatisfaction with the life, even the religious life of the day, by their lamentations. That is one thing–a negative sort of thing. More positive is the effect of their keeping in their own view and that of others a certain high ideal of life, though it be not the highest of all. (J. Service, D. D.)
Christ requires a straight road
The Kings chariot is coming; you must fill up the ravines and level down the hill,. He will not accommodate His chariot to the tortuous lines of your life. If the Lord Jesus Christ is coming into your soul, He is not going to follow the crooked ways of your iniquitous conduct. You have got to make a straight road for Him. (A. T.Pierson, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 3. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness – “A voice crieth, In the wilderness”] The idea is taken from the practice of eastern monarchs, who, whenever they entered upon an expedition or took a journey, especially through desert and unpractised countries, sent harbingers before them to prepare all things for their passage, and pioneers to open the passes, to level the ways, and to remove all impediments. The officers appointed to superintend such preparations the Latins call stratores. Ipse (Johannes Baptista) se stratorem vocat Messiae, cujus esset alta et elata voce homines in desertis locis habitantes ad itinera et vias Regi mox venturo sternendas et reficiendas hortari. – Mosheim, Instituta, Majora, p. 96. “He (John the Baptist) calls himself the pioneer of the Messiah, whose business it was with a loud voice to call upon the people dwelling in the deserts to level and prepare the roads by which the King was about to march.”
Diodorus’s account of the marches of Semiramis into Media and Persia will give us a clear notion of the preparation of the way for a royal expedition: “In her march to Ecbatana she came to the Zarcean mountain, which, extending many furlongs, and being full of craggy precipices and deep hollows, could not be passed without taking a great compass about. Being therefore desirous of leaving an everlasting memorial of herself, as well as of shortening the way, she ordered the precipices to be digged down, and the hollows to be filled up; and at a great expense she made a shorter and more expeditious road, which to this day is called from her the road of Semiramis. Afterward she went into Persia, and all the other countries of Asia subject to her dominion; and wherever she went, she ordered the mountains and precipices to be levelled, raised causeways in the plain country, and at a great expense made the ways passable.” – Diod. Sic. lib. ii.
The writer of the apocryphal book called Baruch expresses the same subject by the same images, either taking them from this place of Isaiah, or from the common notions of his countrymen: “For God hath appointed that every high hill, and banks of long continuance, should be cast down, and valleys filled up, to make even the ground, that Israel may go safely in the glory of God.” Baruch 5:7.
The Jewish Church, to which John was sent to announce the coming of Messiah, was at that time in a barren and desert condition, unfit, without reformation, for the reception of her King. It was in this desert country, destitute at that time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and good works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord by preaching repentance. I have distinguished the parts of the sentence according to the punctuation of the Masoretes, which agrees best both with the literal and the spiritual sense; which the construction and parallelism of the distich in the Hebrew plainly favours, and of which the Greek of the Septuagint and of the evangelists is equally susceptible.
John was born in the desert of Judea, and passed his whole life in it, till the time of his being manifested to Israel. He preached in the same desert: it was a mountainous country; however not entirely and properly a desert; for though less cultivated than other parts of Judea, yet it was not uninhabited. Joshua (Jos 15:61-62) reckons six cities in it. We are so prepossessed with the idea of John’s living and preaching in the desert, that we are apt to consider this particular scene of his preaching as a very important and essential part of history: whereas I apprehend this circumstance to be no otherwise important, than as giving us a strong idea of the rough character of the man, which was answerable to the place of his education; and as affording a proper emblem of the rude state of the Jewish Church at that time, which was the true wilderness meant by the prophet, in which John was to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The voice; an abrupt and imperfect speech, such as there are many in the Hebrew language. Methinks I hear a voice; or, a voice shall be heard.
Of him that crieth in the wilderness; which words declare the place either,
1. Where the cry was made; or,
2. Where the way was to be prepared, as it is expressed in the following clause, which is added to explain this. And such places being commonly pathless, and many ways incommodious to passengers, it was the more necessary to prepare a way there. But both come to one thing, for the cry was to be in that place which was to be prepared. This place seems to be understood immediately of the deliverance of the Jews out of Babylon, and of smoothing their passage from thence to Judea, which lay through a great wilderness; but ultimately and principally concerning their redemption by the Messiah, whose coming is ushered in by the cry of John the Baptist, who did both cry and prepare the way in the wilderness, as we read, Mat 3:1, &c.; where this text is directly expounded of him. But withal the terms of wilderness and desert seem to be here chiefly used in a metaphorical sense, to express the desolate and forlorn condition of the Jewish nation, and especially of the Gentile world, when Christ came to redeem them; for so these words are frequently used in prophetical writings, as hath been noted in divers places.
Prepare ye the way; you to whom this work belongs. He alludes to the custom of princes, who send pioneers before them to prepare the way through which they intend to pass. The meaning is only this, that God shall by his Spirit so dispose mens hearts, and by his providence so order the empires and affairs of the world, as to make way for the accomplishment of this promise.
Of the Lord; for the Lord, as it is expounded in the next clause, that the Lord may walk in it; which though it may be understood of their coming out of Babylon, when God might in some sort be said to march in the head of them, conducting and preserving them, yet it was much more evidently and eminently fulfilled when Christ, who was and is God blessed for ever, came into the world in a visible manner. Straight; either direct, in opposition to crooked, or even and level, in opposition to the mountains and valleys mentioned in the next verse.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
3. crieth in the wildernessSothe Septuagint and Mt 3:3connect the words. The Hebrew accents, however, connect themthus: “In the wilderness prepare ye,” c., and theparallelism also requires this, “Prepare ye in thewilderness,” answering to “make straight in thedesert.” Matthew was entitled, as under inspiration, to varythe connection, so as to bring out another sense, included in theHoly Spirit’s intention in Mt 3:1,”John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness,“answers thus to “The voice of one crying in the wilderness.“MAURER takes theparticiple as put for the finite verb (so in Isa40:6), “A voice crieth.” The clause, “inthe wilderness,” alludes to Israel’s passage through it fromEgypt to Canaan (Ps 68:7),Jehovah being their leader; so it shall be at the coming restorationof Israel, of which the restoration from Babylon was but a type (notthe full realization; for their way from it was not throughthe “wilderness”). Where John preached (namely, in thewilderness; the type of this earth, a moral wilderness), therewere the hearers who are ordered to prepare the way of the Lord, andthere was to be the coming of the Lord [BENGEL].John, though he was immediately followed by the suffering Messiah, israther the herald of the coming reigning Messiah, as Mal 4:5;Mal 4:6 (“before thegreat and dreadful day of the Lord“), proves. Mt17:11 (compare Ac 3:21)implies that John is not exclusively meant; and that though in onesense Elias has come, in another he is yet to come. John wasthe figurative Elias, coming “in the spirit and power ofElias” (Lu 1:17); Joh1:21, where John the Baptist denies that he was the actualElias, accords with this view. Mal 4:5;Mal 4:6 cannot have received itsexhaustive fulfilment in John; the Jews always understood it of theliteral Elijah. As there is another consummating advent of MessiahHimself, so perhaps there is to be of his forerunner Elias, who alsowas present at the transfiguration.
the LordHebrew,Jehovah; as this is applied to Jesus, He must be Jehovah (Mt3:3).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,…. Not the voice of the Holy Ghost, as Jarchi; but of John the Baptist, as is attested by all the evangelists, Mt 3:3 and by John himself, Joh 1:23, who was a “voice” not like the man’s nightingale, “vox et praeterea nihil” a voice and nothing else; he had not only a sonorous, but an instructive teaching voice; he had the voice of a prophet, for he was a prophet: we read of the voices of the prophets, their doctrines and prophecies, Ac 13:27, his voice was the voice of one that crieth, that published and proclaimed aloud, openly and publicly, with great eagerness and fervency, with much freedom and liberty, what he had to say; and this was done “in the wilderness”, in the wilderness of Judea, literally taken, Mt 3:1, and when Judea was become a Roman province, and the Jews were brought into the wilderness of the people, Eze 20:35 and when they were, as to their religious affairs, in a very forlorn and wilderness condition m: what John was to say, when he came as a harbinger of Christ, and did, follows:
prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God: by whom is meant the Messiah to whose proper deity a noble testimony is here bore, being called “Jehovah” and “our God”: whose way John prepared himself, by preaching the doctrine of repentance, administering the ordinance of baptism, pointing at the Messiah, and exhorting the people to believe in him; and he called upon them likewise to prepare the way, and make a plain path to meet him in, by repenting of their sins, amending their ways, and cordially embracing him when come, laying aside all those sentiments which were contrary to him, his Gospel, and kingdom. The sense of this text is sadly perverted by the Targum, and seems to be, done on purpose, thus,
“prepare the way before the people of the Lord, cast up ways before the congregation of our God;”
whereas it is before the Lord himself. The allusion is to pioneers, sent before some great personage to remove all obstructions out of his way, to cut down trees, level the way, and clear all before him, as in the following verse.
m Though, according to the accents, the phrase, “in the wilderness”, belongs to what follows, “in the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord”; where it is placed by Junius and Tremellius, commended for it by Reinbeck, de Accent, Heb. p. 416. though the accent seems neglected in Matt iii. 3. Mark 1. 3.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
There is a sethume in the text at this point. The first two vv. form a small parashah by themselves, the prologue of the prologue. After the substance of the consolation has been given on its negative side, the question arises, What positive salvation is to be expected? This question is answered for the prophet, inasmuch as, in the ecstatic stillness of his mind as turned to God, he hears a marvellous voice. “Hark, a crier! In the wilderness prepare ye a way for Jehovah, make smooth in the desert a road for our God.” This is not to be rendered “a voice cries” (Ges., Umbreit, etc.); but the two words are in the construct state, and form an interjectional clause, as in Isa 13:4; Isa 52:8; Isa 66:6: Voice of one crying! Who the crier is remains concealed; his person vanishes in the splendour of his calling, and falls into the background behind the substance of his cry. The cry sounds like the long-drawn trumpet-blast of a herald (cf., Isa 16:1). The crier is like the outrider of a king, who takes care that the way by which the king is to go shall be put into good condition. The king is Jehovah; and it is all the more necessary to prepare the way for Him in a becoming manner, that this way leads through the pathless desert. Bammidbar is to be connected with pannu , according to the accents on account of the parallel ( zakeph katan has a stronger disjunctive force here than zekpeh gadol , as in Deu 26:14; Deu 28:8; 2Ki 1:6), though without any consequent collision with the New Testament description of the fulfilment itself. And so also the Targum and Jewish expositors take together, like the lxx, and after this the Gospels. We may, or rather apparently we must, imagine the crier as advancing into the desert, and summoning the people to come and make a road through it. But why does the way of Jehovah lie through the desert, and whither does it lead? It was through the desert that He went to redeem Israel out of Egyptian bondage, and to reveal Himself to Israel from Sinai (Deu 33:2; Jdg 5:4; Psa 88:8); and in Psa 88:4 (5.) God the Redeemer of His people is called harokhebh baarabhoth . Just as His people looked for Him then, when they were between Egypt and Canaan; so was He to be looked for by His people again, now that they were in the “desert of the sea” (Isa 21:1), and separated by Arabia deserta from their fatherland. If He were coming at the head of His people, He Himself would clear the hindrances out of His way; but He was coming through the desert to Israel, and therefore Israel itself was to take care that nothing should impede the rapidity or detract from the favour of the Coming One. The description answers to the reality; but, as we shall frequently find as we go further on, the literal meaning spiritualizes itself in an allegorical way.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Evangelical Predictions. | B. C. 708. |
3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: 5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. 6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: 7 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. 8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
The time to favour Zion, yea, the set time, having come, the people of God must be prepared, by repentance and faith, for the favours designed them; and, in order to call them to both these, we have here the voice of one crying in the wilderness, which may be applied to those prophets who were with the captives in their wilderness-state, and who, when they saw the day of their deliverance dawn, called earnestly upon them to prepare for it, and assured them that all the difficulties which stood in the way of their deliverance should be got over. It is a good sign that mercy is preparing for us if we find God’s grace preparing us for it, Ps. x. 17. But it must be applied to John the Baptist; for, though God was the speaker, he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and his business was to prepare the way of the Lord, to dispose men’s minds for the reception and entertainment of the gospel of Christ. The way of the Lord is prepared,
I. By repentance for sin; that was it which John Baptist preached to all Judah and Jerusalem (Mat 3:2; Mat 3:5), and thereby made ready a people prepared for the Lord, Luke i. 17.
1. The alarm is given; let all take notice of it at their peril; God is coming in a way of mercy, and we must prepare for him, v. 3-5. If we apply it to their captivity, it may be taken as a promise that, whatever difficulties lie in their way, when they return they shall be removed. This voice in the wilderness (divine power going along with it) sets pioneers on work to level the roads. But it may be taken as a call to duty, and it is the same duty that we are called to, in preparation for Christ’s entrance into our souls. (1.) We must get into such a frame of spirit as will dispose us to receive Christ and his gospel: “Prepare you the way of the Lord; prepare yourselves for him, and let all that be suppressed which would be an obstruction to his entrance. Make room for Christ: Make straight a highway for him.” If he prepare the end for us, we ought surely to prepare the way for him. Prepare for the Saviour; lift up your heads, O you gates!Psa 24:7; Psa 24:9. Prepare for the salvation, the great salvation, and other minor deliverances. Let us get to be fit for them, and then God will work them out. Let us not stand in our own light, nor put a bar in our own door, but find, or make, a highway for him, even in that which was desert ground. This is that for which he waits to be gracious. (2.) We must get our hearts levelled by divine grace. Those that are hindered from comfort in Christ by their dejections and despondencies are the valleys that must be exalted. Those that are hindered from comfort in Christ by a proud conceit of their own merit and worth are the mountains and hills that must be made low. Those that have entertained prejudices against the word and ways of God, that are untractable, and disposed to thwart and contradict even that which is plain and easy because it agrees not with their corrupt inclinations and secular interests, are the crooked that must be made straight and the rough places that must be made plain. Let but the gospel of Christ have a fair hearing, and it cannot fail of acceptance. This prepares the way of the Lord; and thus God will by his grace prepare his own way in all the vessels of mercy, whose hearts he opens as he did Lydia’s.
2. When this is done the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, v. 5. (1.) When the captives are prepared for deliverance Cyrus shall proclaim it, and those shall have the benefit of it, and those only, whose hearts the Lord shall stir up with courage and resolution to break through the discouragements that lay in their way, and to make nothing of the hills, and valleys, and all the rough places. (2.) When John Baptist has for some time preached repentance, mortification, and reformation, and so made ready a people prepared for the Lord (Luke i. 17), then the Messiah himself shall be revealed in his glory, working miracles, which John did not, and by his grace, which is his glory, binding up and healing with consolations those whom John had wounded with convictions. And this revelation of divine glory shall be a light to lighten the Gentiles. All flesh shall see it together, and not the Jews only; they shall see and admire it, see it and bid it welcome; as the return out of captivity was taken notice of by the neighbouring nations, Ps. cxxvi. 2. And it shall be the accomplishment of the word of God, not one iota or tittle of which shall fall to the ground: The mouth of the Lord has spoken it, and therefore the hand of the Lord will effect it.
II. By confidence in the word of the Lord, and not in any creature. The mouth of the Lord having spoken it, the voice has this further to cry (he that has ears to hear let him hear it), The word of our God shall stand for ever, v. 8.
1. By this accomplishment of the prophecies and promises of salvation, and the performance of them to the utmost in due time, it appears that the word of the Lord is sure and what may be safely relied on. Then we are prepared for deliverance when we depend entirely upon the word of God, build our hopes on that, with an assurance that it will not make us ashamed: in a dependence upon this word we must be brought to own that all flesh is grass, withering and fading. (1.) The power of man, when it does appear against the deliverance, is not to be feared; for it shall be as grass before the word of the Lord: it shall wither and be trodden down. The insulting Babylonians, who promise themselves that the desolations of Jerusalem shall be perpetual, are but as grass which the spirit of the Lord blows upon, makes nothing of, but blasts all its glory; for the word of the Lord, which promises their deliverance, shall stand for ever, and it is not in the power of their enemies to hinder the execution of it. (2.) The power of man, when it would appear for the deliverance, is not to be trusted to; for it is but as grass in comparison with the word of the Lord, which is the only firm foundation for us to build our hope upon. When God is about to work salvation for his people he will take them off from depending upon creatures, and looking for it from hills and mountains. They shall fail them, and their expectations from them shall be frustrated: The Spirit of the Lord shall blow upon them; for God will have no creature to be a rival with him for the hope and confidence of his people; and, as it is his word only that shall stand for ever, so in that word only our faith must stand. When we are brought to this, then, and not till then, we are fit for mercy.
2. The word of our God, that glory of the Lord which is now to be revealed, the gospel, and that grace which is brought with it to us and wrought by it in us, shall stand for ever; and this is the satisfaction of all believers, when they find all their creature-comforts withering and fading like grass. Thus the apostle applies it to the word which by the gospel is preached unto us, and which lives and abides for ever as the incorruptible seed by which we are born again, 1 Pet. i. 23-25. To prepare the way of the Lord we must be convinced, (1.) Of the vanity of the creature, that all flesh is grass, weak and withering. We ourselves are so, and therefore cannot save ourselves; all our friends are so, and therefore are unable to save us. All the beauty of the creature, which might render it amiable, is but as the flower of grass, soon blasted, and therefore cannot recommend us to God and to his acceptance. We are dying creatures; all our comforts in this word are dying comforts, and therefore cannot be the felicity of our immortal souls. We must look further for a salvation, look further for a portion. (2.) Of the validity of the promise of God. We must be convinced that the word of the Lord can do that for us which all flesh cannot–that, forasmuch as it stands for ever, it will furnish us with a happiness that will run parallel with the duration of our souls, which must live for ever; for the things that are not seen, but must be believed, are eternal.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Vs. 3-5: HERALDING THE LORD OF GLORY
1. “The voice” crying in the wilderness had a partial fulfillment in the person of John the Baptist (Mat 3:3; Mar 1:3; Luk 3:3-6). By his call of Israel to repentance (Mat 3:2), and by his unique baptism (being the first who ever called a Jew to be baptized), he not only prepared a people for the coming of Messiah (Mal 3:1; Mal 4:5-6), but also introduced (or made manifest) the Messiah to Israel, (Mat 3:13-17; Mar 1:4; Joh 1:29-34).
2. It is evident, to the careful student of the word, that much of this prophecy awaits the second coming of the Lord for its ultimate and complete fulfillment.
a. Our Lord’s first appearance was not in such manifest glory that “all flesh” saw it together (Joh 1:1-2; Joh 1:14; 2Pe 1:16-18; Rev 1:7); rather, he came in humiliation; not as a Lion, but as a Lamb. The glory awaits the future, (Isa 35:2; Isa 60:1-2; Isa 62:1-3; Mat 16:27; Mat 24:29-30; Mat 25:31; Mat 26:64; Mar 8:38).
b. Here is pictured the triumphant march of the mighty Conqueror whose power is irresistible – something that did not occur at the first advent of our Lord. He is here accompanied by resurrected and translated saints (kings of the East) who are to share His rule as king-priests, (Eze 43:2; Zec 14:4-5; Rev 1:6; Rev 19:7-8; Rev 19:13-14).
c. When He marches in triumph, all flesh being as grass, opposition will crumble before Him. Rather than the construction of a literal expressway, verse 4 seems to signify the subjection of all things under the omnipotence of the Son of Man.
d. Here is a “new Exodus” which culminates in the deliverance of His people and the establishment of His just and benevolent rule over all the earth.
3. Thus, it appears that the glorious appearing of the coming Messiah may yet be heralded by another fore-runner – after the order of John the Baptist – just prior to the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, (Mal 4:5).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
3. A voice crying in the wilderness. He follows out the subject which he had begun, and declares more explicitly that he will send to the people, though apparently ruined, ministers of consolation. At the same time he anticipates an objection which might have been brought forward. “You do indeed promise consolation, but where are the prophets? For we shall be ‘in a wilderness,’ and whence shall this consolation come to us?” He therefore testifies that “the wilderness” shall not hinder them from enjoying that consolation.
The wilderness is employed to denote metaphorically that desolation which then existed; though I do not deny that the Prophet alludes to the intermediate journey; (110) for the roughness of the wilderness seemed to forbid their return. He promises, therefore, that although every road were shut up, and not a chink were open, the Lord will easily cleave a path through the most impassable tracts for himself and his people.
Prepare the way of Jehovah. Some connect the words “in the wilderness” with this clause, and explain it thus, “Prepare the way of Jehovah in the wilderness.” But the Prophet appears rather to represent a voice which shall gather together those who had wandered and had, as it were, been banished from the habitable globe. “Though you behold nothing but a frightful desert, yet this voice of consolation shall be heard from the mouth of the prophets.” These words relate to the hard bondage which they should undergo in Babylon.
But to whom is that voice addressed? Is it to believers? No, but to Cyrus, to the Persians, and to the Medes, who held that people in captivity. Having been alienated from obedience to God, they are constrained to deliver the people; and therefore they are enjoined to “prepare and pave the way,” that the people of God may be brought back to Judea; as if he had said:, “Make passable what was impassable.” The power and efficacy of this prediction is thus held up for our applause; for when God invests his servants with authority to command men who were cruel and addicted to plunder, and who at that time were the conquerors of Babylon, to “prepare the way” for the return of his people, he means that nothing shall hinder the fulfillment of his promise, because he will employ them all as hired servants. Hence we obtain an excellent consolation, when we see that God makes use of irreligious men for our salvation, and employs all the creatures, when the case demands it, for that end.
A highway for our God. When it, is said that the way shall be prepared not for the Jews, but for God himself, we have here a remarkable proof of his love towards us; for he applies to himself what related to the salvation of his chosen people. The Lord had nothing to do with walking, and had no need of a road; but he shews that we are so closely united to him that what is done on our account he reckons to be done to himself. This mode of expression is frequently employed elsewhere, as when it is said that God “went forth into battle with his anointed,” (Hab 3:13,) and that “he rode through the midst of Egypt,” (Exo 11:4,) and that he lifted up his standard and led his people through the wilderness. (Isa 63:13.)
This passage is quoted by the Evangelists, (Mat 3:3; Mar 1:3; Luk 3:4,) and applied to John the Baptist, as if these things had been foretold concerning him, and not unjustly; for he held the highest rank among the messengers and heralds of our redemption, of which the deliverance from Babylon was only a type. And, indeed, at the time when the Church arose out of her wretched and miserable condition, her mean appearance bore a stronger resemblance than the Babylonish captivity to a “wilderness;” but God wished that they should see plainly, in the wilderness in which John taught, the image and likeness of that miserably ruinous condition by which the whole beauty of the Church was injured and almost destroyed. What is here described metaphorically by the Prophet was at that time actually fulfilled; for at an exceedingly disordered and ruinous crisis John lifted up the banner of joy. True, indeed, the same voice had been previously uttered by Daniel, Zechariah, and others; but the nearer the redemption approached, the more impressively could it be proclaimed by John, who also pointed out Christ with the finger. (Joh 1:29.) But because, in the midst of a nation which was ignorant and almost sunk in stupidity, there were few that sincerely grieved for their ruinous condition, John sought a wilderness, that the very sight of the place might arouse careless persons to hope and desire the promised deliverance. As to his denying that he was a Prophet, (Joh 1:21,) this depends on the end of his calling and the substance of his doctrine; for he was not sent to discharge apart any continued office, but, as a herald, to gain an audience for Christ his Master and Lord. What is here said about removing obstructions, he applies skilfully to individuals, on this ground, that the depravity of our nature, the windings of a crooked mind, and obstinacy of heart, shut up the way of the Lord, and hinder them from preparing, by true self-denial, to yield obedience.
(110) “ Au chemin d’entre Iudee et Babylone.” “To the road between Judea and Babylon.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
PREPARATION FOR REVIVAL
Isa 40:3-5
I BRING you a text this morning which was urged upon me some years ago as I sat thinking upon the essentials to a revival, and enquiring of the Lord for a message for my people.
It has often been my misfortune to select texts for myself, and now and then it is my good fortune to have the Holy Ghost select one for me, and so plainly and powerfully urge it upon the mind that to present else would be sacrilege and sin; and I think I can truly say that this text was given of the Holy Ghost at the time when I used it, and I beg your prayers that I may impart by print all that was imparted to me touching its truths.
As a text, it is at once practical and prophetic. In its further reach it refers to the whole work of Christianity essential to the coming of the King. In its more immediate application, it looks to any field and labor where Gods people wish for His presence, whose presence is grace, and whose work is salvation.
I heard B. Fay Mills, in the days of his professed loyalty, preach from this Scripture a sermon looking to the political and social changes which must come to the church, as he imagined, before Christ could
return in person to the world. It was a sermon that gave ominous suggestion of the drift in Mills mind, and of the day when he should depart from the faith. I cannot, therefore, utilize ought of what he said, but shall seek instead to give to it the interpretation so naturally suggested by the Scripture, and attempt the immediate application to the closer event of having Christ come into this church, and into this city at this time, by His Holy Spirit, to do the work of saving souls. I shall use it in a practical way today, rather than in its prophetic bearing. In that view I learn from it,
THE LORDS COMING IS CONDITIONED
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, that is the condition.
The way must be prepared. There is here an allusion to a custom of ancient times when the people preceded their kings in journeys and prepared a road straight and smooth for the royal chariot. They cut down trees, they removed stones, they leveled hills, they lifted ravines, and sometimes they strewed branches and flowers before his prancing steeds that he might find an easy passage and be greeted with beauty by the way. Surely servile fear, and patriotism, or personal love for a human king, should not shame our service unto Him for whom we are asked to make a highway, even our King of kings, the King of Glory.
We know how to prepare that way. It is not by pick and shovel, but by prayer and self-examination. It is not by levelling hills and lifting valleys, but by seeking holiness and eschewing vice. It is not by going before in phalanxes, but by gathering together to renew spiritual strength in song, by prayer, in Scripture study; and, in dispersing to serve, that we prepare the way of the Lord.
Prepare YE the way of the Lord.
Christs people must prepare this way. The question of Christs coming to Minneapolis at this time, of His visit to this church by His Spirit unto salvation, depends wholly upon what His people do in preparation.
Away over in II Chronicles, seventh chapter, fourteenth verse, I read, If My people, which are called by My Name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from Heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Perhaps the most essential reason why churches enjoy revivals when an evangelist is engaged, is simply because they plan and prepare for such meetings. They talk about them, and pray for them for days before the Revivalist arrives, and by the time he comes the King of Glory has also arrived, and then Salvation is sure. I was a student in The Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, Ky., when Mr. Moody was invited to hold a months meeting in that city in 1887. They planned for three months for that meeting. They built a temporary tabernacle at an expense of $3,000, to hold 5,000 auditors. They appointed many committees on preliminaries, they met often to pray, and long before Mr. Moody arrived Christ came, and the revival began. Twenty-five hundred people came together on the Sunday preceding Moodys arrival, and the Spirit moved upon all hearts, and hundreds were convicted. It meant that Gods people had prepared the way before the King of Glory, and He came to them.
When a people are prepared for a revival, the revival will be on. If they are not, preaching will be at once painful and fruitless.
This preparation is a personal thing. It isnt the church that is to get ready. It is the member of the church. The Church is only a name. The Christian is the unit of weakness of power, and responsibility is wholly with him, with her. Prepare ye the way of the Lord (Isa 40:3). That means me! That means you! There is no occasion, in an hour like this, for one of us to remind another of his duty. He will have enough to do who sees to it that his own soul is right with God! I am not here to call on a one of you, this morning, to get ready. I am solicitous that you should be ready, but the one heart and spirit that costs me most anxiety now is my own. Whatever others may be or do, I want to be right myself. God knows I need to be. I want my heart right. I believe there is just as much work as I can do over against my house.
I speak the truth when I say I am more afraid of failing myself to prepare for His coming, than I am that any one of you will fail. I know that every heart that opens to Him will enjoy a revival, no matter what others experience.
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me (Rev 3:20).
Each of us is to determine for himself the question of Christs coming now. If I am ready He will come to me. If you are ready He will come to you. If we are all ready, He will come to us all, and through us to others. Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
THE ESSENTIALS IN THIS PREPARATION ARE PLAINLY STATED
The first is this, Make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Isa 40:3).
The mind must be spiritualized. Our minds are too often arid deserts, so far as the flowers and fruit of religion are concerned. The hot winds of haste to be rich, blow on them; the burning suns of unholy pride and passion scorch them, until the peaceable fruit of righteousness (Heb 12:11) has died away and they are trackless deserts. At least there is no Kings highway cast up, along which God is wont to go. It is simply impossible for us to think and plan perpetually on how to get gold, or social station, or personal preferments of any kind, without being withered in spirit. The average Christian is not barren from want of ability to bring forth beautiful fruits, but from want of that interest that puts time and talent on Gods altar. The man who hasnt time to spare for Bible reading, daily; for private and family devotions; for prayer-meetings and Sunday services; time, even, for some personal work, will not, can not, keep a spiritual mind.
If you havent had daily prayers, and it is hard to begin, begin now and make Heaven happy and hell sad by spending a week with God.
I went into a house in Chicago where lived a family, the father in which had followed horse-racing and betting for years. But God had touched his heart, and he had quit the races, ceased from unkindness and profanity, and confessing his faults to his own had said, And now bring the Bible and let us read and pray. He said to me, Mr. Riley, we have kept it up, and our house has been made more like to Heaven in consequence. It was a benediction to me to find that mans mind, so long Satans habitat, so changed by the Holy Ghost, that it was then a high-way for our God.
One of the first reasons why we no longer enjoy such revivals of religion as Whitfield, and Wesley, and Livingstone, and Edwards and Moody knew, is because we dont think enough on the things of God. Our minds are forever on the rack of business and professional enterprize, and we know not God because we dont take time to cultivate His acquaintance. No wonder Luther was a power, after four hours of prayer and meditation daily. No wonder Wesley and Whitfield swept human hearts with blazing breath, when they brought the coal from the altar under which they lived. We need now to get back to the blessed experience of the sainted John Glavel, who, more than two centuries ago, meditated one day on Divine love until he was lost, and had to inquire of passers-by his own name and home, and the glory on his face almost made his informants afraid. We cannot plead business as a reason for our neglect here. I knew B. F. Jacobs to be one of Chicagos busiest men, and yet God got his time, and the Word his prayerful attention. David had a whole kingdom to administer, and yet he said of Gods Word, It is my meditation all the day (Psa 119:97).
The heart must be rid of both despair and pride.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low (Isa 40:4).
If one of us is entering upon special meetings despairingdoubting Gods willingness and power then his unfaith is a serious fault, a ravine cutting the high-way of the King. If, on the other hand, any are over-confident in self, supposing themselves to be worthy, then that is a mountain that must be digged down before the coming of the King. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low (Isa 40:4). Unfaith on the one side, and self-confidence on the other side, are the Christians Cylla and Carybdis, in an hour like this; and as we prize an open passage to Gods presence, we must guard against going on either of them.
Then all dishonesty and irreligion must go ere the King comes, for our text says, The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain (Isa 40:4).
The crooked shall be made straight! Oh, for straight Christianity! That Christian whose business dealings will bear the inspection of Christ, and whose fair pretentions cover no foul motives, is the incarnation of the dear Master Himself. We need to multiply his kind. Revival cant come; mercy cant continue while there is an Achan in the camp. One dishonest deal on the part of a professed follower of Christ often shuts up every inquiring heart that learns about it, and Christs coming is delayed, or, for those who study Christianity in church-members, made the basis of His rejection.
I once preached to the men from a large Chicago concern. Several of them were converted, but never confessed Christ. They seemed to get just so far and with all my prayer and pleading, no one from that concern came into the church. At last I asked the head book-keeper, a fine Christian man, how he explained this. Naming the chief man of the firm, a professed Christian and church-officer, he said, The men stumble over his dishonest business methods.
Irreligion in secular matters, if practiced by professors of faith, is deadly to all revival in the sacred realm. The professor who is guilty of dishonesty or irreligion stands squarely in the way of a work of grace until removed by repentance and restitution. The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain (Isa 40:4). It is a time for heart-searching for sins great and small that, setting them aside, the Saviour may come in.
UPON OUR PREPARATION THIS TEXT PRESENTS A PRECIOUS PROMISE
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it (Isa 40:5).
There is the promise of: the revelation of His Glory. We know how that is made good. Gods work in nature reveals His greatness, but this work of grace manifests forth His glory. It was a great thing when God made man. But greater far was that act by which man was and is redeemed. Men never saw the glory of God until they saw God saving the world through His Son. But when the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (Joh 1:14).
But only a few men saw that! The eyes that looked on Christ in the flesh were comparatively few, and yet you have seen Gods glory, and I have beheld it. In an hour when some soul, saved from sin, stood before you with shining face, its radiance, the mark of its redemption, Gods glory appeared. Do we want to see that glory daily? If we fulfill the conditions of this text, we will. By Gods grace we will!
That revelation is to appear to the saved and the unsaved alike.
All flesh shall see it together (Isa 40:5).
It is commonly so. Whenever one soul holds sweet communion with God, and comes into fuller sense of His grace, others see it. The Israelites took note of the glory on Moses countenance when he came down from the mount. The prisoners heard Paul and Silas singing, despite the fact that they were seeing glory at midnight. When the Holy Ghost came upon the disciples in an upper room in the sacred city, the streets of Jerusalem were destined to see a Pentecost. When the Church, worshiping in this house, is the host of the King of Glory, the unsaved about us for blocks shall see the glory of the Lord. Oh, men and women in Christ, when we go into the holy of holies and return, the glory of God will appear to the people.
Dr. Field has painted with his facile pen, a picture of a scene that occurs at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Easter time. Thousands of Greek Christians crowd the building, and when the patriarch comes through the darkness, they fall back and open a pass for him to the holy place where the body of Jesus is supposed to have lain. Outside, for an hour, there is breathless waiting, until the patriarch reappears, with a lighted torcha torch lighted by holy fire, as they suppose. Instantly there are a hundred hands stretched out for it, and they pass that torch from hand to hand, lighting others by its touch until a thousand torches burn with the light that comes from the tomb of Christ. Out into streets of Jerusalem, out into lanes leading to villages, and then into their streets they go lighting torch upon torch until the whole land glows with the glory of illumination, and the unbeliever and believer alike behold it, and know that it celebrates His resurrection, who has power to redeem.
Beloved, if we but kindle our hearts at the altar of holy fire, the unbelievers about us shall see the light and understand the revelation of grace and glory, and walk in paths illumined from heaven.
That revelation is as sure as Gods own speech, if we prepare. The promise will not fail, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it (Isa 40:5).
Brethren, let us beg God to keep us from poverty of spirit and faith, when by His promise we are privileged to be rich in both. Let us enter upon these meetings expecting great things from God, and attempting great things for God.
It is told that Alexander the Great, in a fit of gratitude to a servant who had rendered a gracious act, said, Go to the public treasury, and satisfy yourself for this service. But the demand was so great that the treasurer denied that Alexander had ordered it, and called the King to dispute the claim. But Alexander said, Give him what he asks. He treats me as a King by taking me at my word. Our promise for the coming days is from the King of kings. It is, The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together (Isa 40:5). Let us honor Him by taking Him at His word, For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it (Isa 40:5).
Before Dr. Torrey arrived in Australia, careful plans were made for the revival that was expected. The churches, in the first place, got together. That is the indispensable preliminary to any Christian progress. Then, they held prayer meetings for weeks, imploring God for a great outpouring of His Spirit. No fewer than 16,800 cottage prayer meetings were held, attended by 117,000 people. Then, there was organization. The local committees numbered 700, the choir members were 2,500 and there were 2,000 personal workers. Fifty Australian pastors and evangelists were in charge of the work, under Dr. Torrey. No human provision and preparation was omitted. And then God added His blessing.
The one thing this nation most needs is just such a desire, just such preparation, and just such a result. If we can obtain the first two, the third is sure.
Exchange.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
(3) The voice of him that crieth . . .The laws of Hebrew parallelism require a different punctuation: A voice of one crying, In the wilderness, prepare ye . . . The passage is memorable as having been deliberately taken by the Baptist as defining his own mission (Joh. 1:23). As here the herald is not named, so he was content to efface himselfto be a voice or nothing. The image is drawn from the march of Eastern kings, who often boast, as in the Assyrian inscriptions of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal (Records of the Past, i. 95, vii. 64), of the roads they have made in trackless deserts. The wilderness is that which lay between the Euphrates and Judah, the journey of the exiles through it reminding the prophet of the older wanderings in the wilderness of Sin (Psa. 68:7; Jdg. 5:4). The words are an echo of the earlier thought of Isa. 35:8. We are left to conjecture to whom the command is addressed: tribes of the desert, angelic ministers, kings and rulersthe very vagueness giving a grand universality. So, again, we are not told whether the way of Jehovah is that on which He comes to meet His people, or on which He goes before and guides them. The analogy of the marches of the Exodus makes the latter view the more probable.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
3-5. The voice of him that crieth Rather, A voice crieth, though the Septuagint and the Vulgate translate as in our version. It is rhetorically suitable to read, “Hark! a crier.” So Delitzsch. Who is the crier is not given; nor is it important. More important is what follows.
In the wilderness Not unlikely the allusion here is, as if to a voice across the desert five hundred miles from Babylon toward Jerusalem. The scene is dramatic: Jehovah heads a column of exiles returning to Zion, as he did of old when, across from Egypt to Canaan, he conducted Israel. Both are sub-type and type of John the Baptist heralding the great coming One at a stage which completed the then pending preparatory dispensation.
Prepare ye the way The meaning, spiritually applied, is clear. “Prepare the roadway (of a custom immemorially far back is this an oriental picture) for the coming retinue of redeemed believers; remove rocks, level up gorges, excavate hills, and straighten crooked courses; Jehovah’s glory of victorious leading shall be seen by all.” Of this the last of Isa 40:5 is the solemn voucher. For reference of this scene to John the Baptist, see Mat 3:3; Mar 1:1, and Luk 3:4-6. See also remarks at pages 169, 170, showing Isaiah’s authorship of this chapter.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Coming of the Gospel of Jesus Christ Isa 40:3-11 predicts the coming of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, as well as the proclamation of the Gospel throughout the world.
Isa 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Isa 40:3
Mat 3:3, “For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
Mar 1:3, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
Joh 1:23, “He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.”
Isa 40:4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
Isa 40:4
“and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain” – Comments The rough path that man walks in life will become smooth. Those obstacles that bound man in sin and made life difficult will be removed and every child of God will be able to walk along an easy path. This description is given in Isa 43:2, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”
Isa 40:5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.
Isa 40:5
Joh 1:14, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory , the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
Application – Paul Crouch uses Isa 40:5 to say that the Trinity Broadcasting satellite network, which broadcasts the Gospel around the world today, is being used to reveal the glory of God to all mankind simultaneously as a partial fulfillment of this prophecy. He reads the next verse where God says to “Cry!” He then quotes Isa 42:11 where God tells them to “shout from the mountaintops.” He sees these verses as a reference to the thousands of TBN television towers that are placed upon the highest points around many cities of the world. [55]
[55] Paul Crouch, “Praise the Lord,” on Trinity Broadcasting Network (Santa Ana, California), television program.
Isa 42:11, “Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit: let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains.”
Isa 40:5 “for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it” Comments – The certainty of a prophetic event is confirmed from the mouth of the Lord.
Isa 40:3-5 Comments – Luke’s Prophecy of the Ministry of John the Baptist Of the four Evangelists, the Gospel of Luke offers the lengthiest quotation from the book of Isaiah regarding the ministry of John the Baptist. Luk 3:4-6 quotes Isa 40:3-5.
Luk 3:4-6, “As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Isa 40:6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
Isa 40:7 Isa 40:8 Isa 40:7-8
1Pe 1:24-25, “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.”
Isa 40:9 O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!
Isa 40:9
Isa 40:9 Comments The early Church immediately embraced the word to describe their message to the world. Matthew and Mark use the word twelve times in their Gospels. The Gospel of Mark opens with the phrase “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The term “Gospels” has been used to collectively describe the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John since the early years of the New Testament Church. However, the prophet Isaiah speaks of the preaching of the Gospel as God’s means of bringing comfort to Zion. Isaiah speaks of the coming of John the Baptist (Isa 40:3-5) to herald the arrival of the Jesus Christ, God manifested in the flesh, the Eternal Word of God.
Isa 40:10 Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.
Isa 40:10
Isa 40:11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.
Isa 40:11
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Isa 40:3-5. The voice of him that crieth It is manifest to every reader of this passage, that it exhibits to us the voice of a public herald or harbinger, who, at the approach of an illustrious king, commands the ways to be levelled, and made fit for his reception, easy and commodious for his passage. The metaphor is taken from a custom of remotest antiquity. Thus Arrian, speaking of Alexander, says, “He now marched towards the river Indus, his army going before, to prepare the way for him; for otherwise those places could not have been passed over:” nor can we have a more sublime idea of the entrance of the Messiah into the world, than these words give us. We may suppose the Messiah, the great king of the world, the glory of Jehovah, marching in awful triumph along this road prepared for him, in the desert, while all flesh, all the world collected together on either side, stand viewing, with interested and pleasing astonishment, the triumphant entrance of a king coming to redeem and to save. The evangelists have applied these words to Christ, and have thus given us the sum of them; Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The words, in the desert, belong to both parts of the sentence. The voice of one crying in the desert, prepare ye in the desert the way of the Lord. See Joh 1:23. The word desert may be understood both in a proper and mystical sense; for it is certain that John proclaimed this approach of the Messiah, in a desert, in the wilderness of Judaea; and thence took occasion to consider that people, among whom the kingdom of God was to be manifested, under the figure of a desert, to be levelled before the face of Jesus Christ; for the metaphorical expressions which follow refer to that preparation of mind which is necessary for the reception of Christ, (see Mal 3:5) that raising the low, that debasing the high, that refutation of all false and erroneous doctrine, and introduction of truth and righteousness, which was the consequence of the revelation of Christ. The revelation of the glory of the Lord, evidently means the revelation of Christ. Compare Luk 3:22. Joh 1:14; Joh 2:11. The latter clause in the 5th verse is differently understood. Some read it as in our version; and others, All flesh shall see together what the mouth of the Lord hath spoken. But the better sense seems to be, And all flesh,all people shall see it alike; namely, the glory of Jehovah revealed for the salvation of believers; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. “That Jehovah, who is able to bring it to pass, hath authorized the delivery of this prediction.” We shall have occasion to speak more fully respecting the subject of this passage, when we come to the Gospels.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
All the Prophets, with one voice, proclaimed the coming Saviour; but John the Baptist was eminently pointed out as the immediate herald and harbinger of our Lord; Mat 3:1-3 ; Mal 3:1 . If the passage be read, as undoubtedly it should be read, spiritually, the humbling principles of grace, in preparing for the cordial reception of the Saviour, will fully explain the lowering of mountains, and making straight the crooked. And how is the glory of Christ revealed, in accomplishing those things in the hearts of his people? Precious Jesus! let every thought be brought low, that thou, and thou alone, mayest be exalted! 2Co 10:5 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Preparation for Progress
Isa 40:3-9
That voice is always crying. The note of all times that are progressive is a note of urgency, preparation, advance. The king is always coming; as to the form and method of his coming, who can tell? We had better refrain from speculation that must be useless, and cultivate the spirit of expectancy, hope, sacred joyous confidence. It was a very little wilderness that was primarily meant by this reference, the wilderness between the Euphrates and Judah; but the moral reference is to a wilderness infinite. But even that boundless desert can be traversed by light, quickest of all travellers, coming suddenly, flashing abroad in time that cannot be measured, so brief is it; before we are well aware that it has come, it will have banished all the darkness, and the blue heaven will be shining above us cloudlessly, like a blessing. It is in this spirit we must do our work. Without this spirit we cannot work. The history of the world is full of dreariness, backwardness, enormous difficulty; yet even that history has been making advances, almost imperceptible in their individuality; but surely growing, extending, consolidating, until it would be impossible to roll back the history of the world. Sometimes there is nothing to instruct us but a “voice.” We hear it, but cannot trace it. It is called the spirit of the times, the voice of the day, the genius of the hour. Sometimes it is personated in one man, one policy; at other times, it is a diffused voice, coming, apparently to the ear, from all the points of the compass at once, but with singular unanimity, emphasis, truthfulness. It is never a voice of despair, or a tone that would cast the soul into dejection, but always like a clarion, or a chiming bell, or a father’s call, or a soldier’s resounding peal. Blessed are they who have ears to hear, and who respond to the call of the times with promptitude and diligence and loyalest love: only such shall be blessed with all heavenly treasure and rest.
There are many anonymous speakers in the Book of God. In fact, we cannot get rid of the anonymous element in the Bible: “A voice said unto me;” “A voice shall be behind thee, saying;” “An angel wrestled with me;” “My Spirit shall go before thee;” “A man clothed in white raiment” a figure rather than a man in the ordinary sense of the term, an outline, an all but impalpable glowing vision, yet gleaming, approaching, receding, and wondrously acting upon the imagination, and all the while sounding a note of advance Prepare; make ready; at such an hour as ye think not. Blessed is that servant who shall be found waiting, watching. We may judge of the reality (and need we shrink from saying, the divinity?) of voices by the message which they deliver. When the voice says “Go back” we may be sure it does not come from heaven. Heaven is a growing kingdom. When God’s kingdom rests it is that it may come up again in larger, greener springs, in fuller and more glowing summers and autumns. When the preacher says, “You have done enough: there is nothing more to be learned,” he has lost his ordination; the unction from the Holy One, if it ever touched him, has evaporated or passed to some larger man. Hear a voice that says, “You know nothing yet in comparison with what has to be revealed; what little light you have seen struggling on the horizon is as nothing compared to the great glory that shall flood the infinite heaven,” when a voice so sounding, so charged, is heard, we may be sure that God has somewhat to do with its inspiration. Our law must be growth, development, progress, advance, every day, every year, so that we shall be always casting off our old selves, and passing forward into new identities richer, more useful, manful.
What is to happen? This is to occur
“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” ( Isa 40:4 )
“And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” ( Isa 40:5 ).
Here we want trumpets and organs, thundering voices, and all the great solemn winds that ever careered round the earth, yea, an ocean’s mighty plash and roar, to express the glorious thought. Even here we shall have the co-operation of nature in the expression of thankfulness. What is it that makes all things musical but the miracle-working sun? For a time he is baffled in his best ministry by the cruel east wind; but he will presently melt it, or make it ashamed of its abortive attempts, and send it into some other quarter; and it shall come to us with penitential voice, and humiliation, and amendment, and restitution, from the south-west, and will pray to be taken into co-operation with the music-making sun. All things sing when the sun shines; even croaking suspends its fretfulness, old age looks round for its staff that it may toddle a yard or two under the genial rays; childhood begins to sing and dance because the light fills its young heart, and all nature is joyous with a spirit of jubilee because the sun is in his happiest mood. These are symbolical, dim emblems, faint dawning hints of a grander reality. When men feel the “glory of the Lord” they cannot be silenced. True religious feelings must have musical expression. Sometimes the expression may be loud, incoherent, almost violent, so that men passing by shall say, “What are these mad men uttering?” There is a sane madness, a madness with method, a tempest of the soul in which dwells the spirit of sovereignty and peace. Again and again we have claimed that enthusiasm must return to the church, not by mechanical stipulation, but by an inspiration not of man, a mighty action of the Triune God. “All flesh shall see it together.” The Old Testament is not a universal book in many lines; it is the Jews’ book; it leads a certain people, cares for them, makes them rich with a thousand promises, and strong with inviolable and redundant securities; but now and again it flashes out into the greater humanity, the larger love; the redeeming yearning spirit, that would not that any should be in darkness whilst it has light to offer. We should, however, do the Bible injustice if we thought of its caring for any one people, for that one people exclusively; it is making for itself a point of origin, a point from which its action can proceed, with the larger completeness and with the higher force. Wherever God has cared for any one he has by implication cared for all men. Even God must begin somewhere. The Lord Christ began where he could. He accommodated himself to the moods and needs of the people; he himself might have begun at many a point not within the range of human imagination, but he was content to sit down with men, and to say to them, in effect, “Where can we begin? What wilt thou?” and when the thing was uttered, he said, “Believest thou that I am able to do this?” and when the answer was, “Yea, Lord,” the word was hardly spoken before the miracle was completed. Here we have an escape from locality and limitation of every kind, and the prophecy culminates in a benefaction to “all flesh.”
This is the Gospel in Isaiah; this is the evangelical dawn; this is the commission of evangelisation in its earliest utterances. We shall find other words which occur for the first time. It is infinitely interesting to be present at the birth of words, or at their new uses, or inauguration for larger purposes. “All flesh:” the Jew is there and the Gentile, the bond and the free, the mighty man and his slave, old men and little children, young men and maidens, “all flesh shall see it together;” it shall be a coming blessing, a universal donation, an impartial revelation of the divine glory. What is the divine glory but the divine holiness? We must not detach the attributes of God from his moral majesty. Who cares for omnipotence, except as a momentary wonder, something to be looked at, estimated, gazed upon with more or less of open-mouthed wonder? There is nothing in it, taken by itself, but fear, danger, a sense of overwhelming stress, and that is painful; and when we speak of the divine glory, what is it? If it be only so much light it would overpower human capacity, our receptivity would be distressed; we should say, “Lord, withhold the light, for our eyes are tormented with glory.” God’s power must be another term for God’s goodness, God’s glory another word for God’s holiness. All the terms must admit of moral transfer or translation; and this correlation of forces must be a passage from the abstract, the intolerable, the infinite in mere power and splendour, into moral temper, spirit, purpose; and then when we read of wisdom, holiness, mercy, compassion, and when at last a man arises to say it all in words of one syllable “God is love” it is noonday with civilisation, high noon with manhood, consummation below the heavens.
When the herald was charged to deliver another message it was in reality not another.
“The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” ( Isa 40:6-8 ).
Now we come to the second word which is used for the first time.
“O Zion, that bringest good tidings” ( Isa 40:9 ).
That is the first use of the term in this relation. This is Gospel good-spell, God’s spell, good news. The primary meaning of the Hebrew word is to make smooth ; hence the balance of the sentences between the ninth verse and the fourth verse. All things shall be smoothed, and from smooth the word passes easily to brighten, and from brighten to gladden, and today in the German it is glatten . So do we here and now, in Isa 40:9 , make our acquaintance with the sweet music-word Gospel, evangelisation. Is the evangelist born here? Is history dating itself with a new term from this juncture? O Zion, that bringest gospels. good news, get thee up into the high mountain no mountain high enough and let the world hear that the day of the Lord has come! “O Zion… O Jerusalem:” the appeal is the same; Zion, for the purposes of this appeal, is Jerusalem, Jerusalem is Zion. O Zion, O Jerusalem, to the mountain, and publish the jubilee of the world!
So would Christ have us do every day. The gospel was never given to be kept as a secret. Nowhere do we hear it said, If you have any bread, keep it to yourselves, no matter who is hungry. Nowhere is it said to the Christian Church, “You are in a time of reserve and self-consideration, and you must make your own souls guests at the Lord’s table, without regarding the innumerable vacancies at the banqueting board; eat and drink, O beloved, and do so abundantly, and care nothing for those for whom nothing is prepared.” That is not the voice of Christianity; that is not the purpose of the Gospel; that is not the mission of the Church. Is it possible that men can have good news and keep it to themselves? Here is a man face to face with a sufferer; he observes the sufferer’s emaciated condition, he notes his languid eye, his sunken cheeks, his bloodless lips, his gait of helplessness, his deepening infirmity, and all the time he knows precisely what would meet the case, and never speaks the secret. What is that man if the sufferer should die? He is a murderer! Can he in charity be called by any other name? He knew what would cure the man and never told him, and the man died. What does the Lord say? He says, His blood will I require at the traitor’s hand. “If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain: if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?” These are the questions: what are the replies?
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Isa 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Ver. 3. The voice of him that crieth. ] See Joh 1:25Joh 1:25 , See Trapp on “ Mat 3:3 “ See Trapp on “ Joh 1:25 “ but Luke citeth this text more fully than the other evangelists, applying it to the Baptist crying in the wilderness – sc., of Judea, where he first preached, or, as some sense it, in the ears of a waste and wild people. Hereby is meant the world, saith one, a void of God’s grace, barren in all virtue, having no pleasing abode, nor sure direction of any good way in it, being full of horror and accursed.
a Diod.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Isa 40:3-8
3A voice is calling,
Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
4Let 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;
5Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
6A voice says, Call out.
Then he answered, What shall I call out?
All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
7The grass withers, the flower fades,
When the breath of the LORD blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
8The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.
Isa 40:3 Clear the way This VERB (BDB 815, Piel IMPERATIVE) basically means turn, but here it is used in a specialized sense of clear the path of objects (cf. Isa 40:3; Isa 42:16; Isa 49:11; Isa 57:14; Isa 62:10; Mal 3:1).
The concept of a highway of holiness on which God’s people (returning exiles) came to Him (i.e., to His temple) is recurrent in Isaiah (cf. Isa 11:16; Isa 26:7; Isa 35:8; Isa 40:3; Isa 42:16).
In this context it is YHWH Himself who is returning to His people. They are to prepare the way, which denotes a spiritual/physical preparation.
This verse was John the Baptist’s self-designation (cf. Mat 3:3; Mar 1:3; Luk 3:4-6). This section is reflected in Zec 14:10, where leveling of the physical terrain to Jerusalem is used as a metaphor for access to God (cf. Mal 3:1; Mal 4:5-6). It could be characterized as prepare the road (note parallel line).
the LORD This is a reference to YHWH. See Special Topic below.
SPECIAL TOPIC: NAMES FOR DEITY
in the wilderness Ezekiel saw God’s glory leaving the Temple in Jerusalem and moving east (cf. Eze 10:18-19; Eze 11:22-23; Eze 43:1-3). God went with the exiles and this verse refers to His returning to Judah and Jerusalem.
Isa 40:4 This context refers to a preparation by God’s people for His return to Jerusalem. He will be accompanied by the returning exiles. He will protect, provide, and care for them (cf. Isa 40:9-11). This is an extension and description of making a highway in the wilderness. It is metaphorical for people easily and freely coming to God. God has provided a new way (i.e., the new covenant, cf. Jer 31:31-34). This new way is depicted as the new exodus
1. here from physical exile
2. metaphorically for the end-time
Isa 40:5 the glory of the LORD The glory of the Lord is another link to Isaiah 6 (i.e., Isa 40:3). Chapter 40 is functioning as a second call to Isaiah. See note at Isa 40:25.
This is an allusion to the cloud of glory which appeared in the exodus and wilderness wanderings as a symbol of God’s personal presence. The rabbis called it the Shekinah, from the Hebrew term to dwell. The returning Jews needed the reassurance of God’s continuing personal presence (cf. Exo 13:21-22; Exo 14:19). A new exodus has come!
For glory see Special Topic: Glory .
all flesh will see it together Flesh (BDB 142) means human persons (cf. Isa 40:7). This is the universal element (i.e., Isa 49:6; Isa 51:4-5; Isa 52:10) which is so characteristic of Isaiah.
the mouth of the LORD has spoken This is the Hebrew idiom for the power of the spoken word of YHWH (cf. Isa 40:8; Gen 1:3; Gen 1:6; Gen 1:9; Gen 1:11; Gen 1:14; Gen 1:20; Gen 1:26 and Isa 55:11).
Isa 40:6 Call out See note at Isa 40:1.
NASBhe answered
NKJVhe said
NRSV, NJBI said
TEVI ask
REB, LXX,
DSSI asked
Notice that two voices are involved. Following DSS, LXX it seems to be an angel/spirit speaking to Isaiah.
All flesh is grass This recurrent metaphor refers to the frailty and transitoriness of human corporal existence compared to the eternality of God (cf. Gen 6:3; Job 10:4; Job 14:1-2; Psa 78:39; Psa 90:5-6; Psa 103:15-18; 1Pe 1:24-25).
To whom is the voice speaking?
1. all humans
2. world powers
It seems to be God’s message to human governments. They may be temporarily powerful, but in time and in reality (i.e., in light of God’s power) they are not!!
loveliness This is translated from the Hebrew word hesed (cf. BDB 338, I, #4). This term is often used of God’s covenant love and loyalty.
SPECIAL TOPIC: LOVINGKINDNESS (HESED)
Isa 40:7-8 All of the VERBS are PERFECT (i.e., completed action) except the concluding statement, the word of our God stands forever (IMPERFECT).
This was the truth that the returning exiles needed. It seemed that God’s word of care and protection had failed! However, the problem was not God’s word, but God’s sinful people!
Isa 40:7 breath This Hebrew term ruah (BDB 924) can mean wind, breath, or spirit.
SPECIAL TOPIC: SPIRIT IN THE BIBLE
Isa 40:8 the word of our God stands forever God’s promises are sure, even amidst divine discipline (cf. Psa 103:17-18; Isa 55:8-11; Isa 59:21; Jer 29:10; Mat 5:17-20; Mat 24:35). This statement is the confident faith hope/assurance of every believer.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
The voice, &c. Quoted in Mat 3:3. Mar 1:3. Luk 3:4-6. Joh 1:23. 1Pe 1:24. Compare the voice from the temple in Isa 6, concerning the scattering, and this voice outside the land concerning the gathering. The voice was not Isaiah’s, but heard by him in vision. John [the] Baptist claims it; but this People would not hear; and He Whom he heralded was crucified and His kingdom was rejected (Joh 1:11). The King and the kingdom are therefore alike in abeyance, and the prophecy yet awaits its further fulfilment. Compare Heb 2:8. Rev 3:21, Rev 3:22, &c.
him that crieth = him that proclaimeth. These words are ascribed to Isaiah by the Holy Spirit in Mat 3:3, &c. Ch. Isa 42:1-4 is so ascribed in Mat 12:17-21; Ch. Isa 53:1 in Joh 12:38. Rom 10:16; Ch. Isa 53:4 in Mat 8:17; Ch. Isa 53:7, Isa 53:8 in Act 8:32, Act 8:33, and Act 61:1 in Luk 4:18, Luk 4:19. Not to a “second Isaiah”. App-79.
highway. See note on Isa 7:3.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Isa 40:3-8
Isa 40:3-5
“The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of Jehovah; make level in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the uneven shall be made level, and the rough place a plain: and the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it.”
The first impression here may be that God will precede the captives on the way back home from Babylon, and that these words are a call to prepare the Lord’s way through the desert. However, as Archer noted:
“From Matthew’s application of this verse to the ministry of John the Baptist (Mat 3:3), it is apparent that these geographical features symbolize the arid lifelessness of the unconverted soul. The hills represent the carnal pride of the sinner, the valleys his moods of carnal hopelessness and self-pity.
In short, the meaning is that Judah should prepare their hearts for the coming manifestation of God in their deliverance.
The figure of leveling and preparing literal roads is taken from the practice of some ancient rulers who actually required such preparation when they traveled to distant places. An ancient example of this, given by Lowth, is seen in the march of Semaramis’ marches into Media and Persia, “She ordered the precipices to be digged clown and the hollows to be filled up; and, at great expense, she made a shorter and more expeditious road.
Despite the obvious primary application of this passage to the return of Israel from the Babylonian captivity, “At the same time it is clear that the prophet was inspired to use language of a special design that should also appropriately express an even more important event, the coming of John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah, and the work that he would perform as preparatory to the first advent of Messiah.
As Adam Clarke noted, “We have the irrefragable authority of John the Baptist and of our blessed Saviour himself, as reported by the gospels, that these verses apply to the introduction of the Gospel and the kingdom of Christ, who was to effect a much greater deliverance of God’s people, Jews and Gentiles alike, from the captivity of sin and the dominion of death.
Isa 40:6-8
“The voice of one saying, Cry. And one said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the breath of Jehovah bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand forever.”
The big point in this paragraph is the last clause. It points to the only dependable and certain anchor that men have, namely, the word of the Lord.
Both Peter and James quoted from this passage (1Pe 1:24-25; Jas 1:10-11), bringing to six the New Testament authors who quoted from this chapter, four of them ascribing the passage to Isaiah. No Christian should dare to ascribe it to anyone else!
Isa 40:3-8 STRAIGHTEN: The Hebrew construction is interesting. Literally it is qol qorea, voice, one crying. The first three gospel writers all confirm this found its fulfillment in John the Baptist (Mat 3:3; Mar 1:2-3; Luk 3:4-6).
Certainly, all the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi were commissioned by this command to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. Unquestionably, a faithful remnant needed to be continually prepared so that new generations of a messianic nucleus might be preserved through the centuries from Isaiah to Christ. But it was John the Baptist who had the climactic job of preparing an immediate nucleus for the coming of God in the flesh-Jesus Christ. It was John the Baptist who first immersed men and women in water for repentance unto the remission of sins (Mat 3:1-2; Mar 1:4; Luk 3:1-3). It was the Immerser who pointed some of his principal disciples to Jesus (Joh 1:29-51) and these men became apostles-evangelists and missionaries of the Messianic kingdom, the church, Indeed, even the Lord Himself said of John the Immerser, . . . among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist, (Mat 11:11).
The Hebrew word baaerabah means in the desert. It is the same word from which we have Arabia. The people are in the wilderness and God is going to come to them. They must prepare Him a way. The desert or wilderness was not necessarily an endless, flat sea of sand as we think of a desert today. A wilderness or desert could be any type of terrain which was uninhabited by people. The river banks of the Jordan, cluttered with reeds, brush and rocks was a wilderness. The barren mountains of southern Judea were a wilderness (desert). These wildernesses with their brush, mountains, valleys, rocks, and wild animals presented formidable obstacles to travel in ancient times. When kings and potentates wished to journey and it involved traversing such an unlikely territory, they sent great companies of slaves and workers on ahead of them to fill in valleys and lower hills and generally prepare a safe and easy pathway for them to travel. The desert is a figure of the obstacles and impediments that have kept God from His people. It was their sinful rebellion (Isa 59:1-3) as depicted in the first 39 chapters that was keeping God from His people. This rebellious attitude in the majority will intensify in the days of Jeremiah and Ezekiel until God leaves them (Eze 10:18; Eze 11:23). God wants to come to them in Person-Incarnate-in the flesh. He wants to reveal His glory to all mankind (Isa 40:5). And when they have a remnant fully prepared-when some believe Him enough to remove all obstacles into their hearts-when some are willing to obey Him completely (like Mary, mother of Jesus), then He will come! Isaiah is emphatically the missionary book of the Old Testament. He begins his prophecy (Isa 2:2-3) by stating that all the nations shall flow to Zion. He ends it by stating that all flesh shall come to worship before the Lord (Isa 66:23). One has only to take a concordance and look for peoples and nations in Isaiah to observe how often the prophet predicts that people from all nations will eventually become citizens of the Messianic kingdom of God.
A Voice is saying, Cry out. The Voice of verse six is evidently the Lord calling upon His messengers to add more exhortation to the message of strengthening, First, there is the exhortation to prepare a way for the Lord to come. The N.T. applies this to John the Baptist as the one who would prepare the hearts of people to receive the Messiah (Luk 1:16-17). Further preparation to receive God is proclaiming the message that all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: and the N.T. applies this to mans inability to save himself, the redemption that is in Christ, and mans access to that redemption through obedience to the gospel (1Pe 1:13-24). Now the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi were charged to preach mans frailty and his inability to save himself, and the redemption of God provided by grace in some future era. And all their contemporaries who believed this and trusted in Jehovah were straightened out in their view of man and God. But only the substitutionary death of Christ and His resurrection (the gospel) validated once and for all mans lostness and Gods faithfulness. Only the gospel straightens man out so God can come to him. Only the gospel demonstrated ultimately that the word of God shall stand forever. The New Testament is the fulfillment of the entire strengthening half of Isaiahs prophecy (ch. 40-66)!
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The Forerunner
The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a high way for our God.Isa 40:3.
All the four Evangelists refer these words to the ministry of St. John the Baptist. In the Baptist they received their highest and complete fulfilment. But their first and historical reference is to the return of the Jewish captives from Babylon. The Lord was the King of the chosen people; and in the vision of the prophet, the promised return to home and freedom was to be a triumphant procession across the desert, headed by Israels invisible Monarch. The cause of the holy people was the cause of God; their bondage and shame in Babylon, although a heaven-sent punishment, had been a humiliation for the majesty of Jehovah before the face of the scoffing heathen; their triumphant return would be the work of God, it would also be the manifestation of His glory. No obstacle should stop the path of His resistless advance: Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Clearly there is here a wider reach of meaning than any which can be satisfied by the actual prospect or history of the return from Babylon. Say what you will about the highly poetical form into which the prophet has undoubtedly thrown his fervid thought, still here is the thought beneath the form which clothes it. If it would be a degrading mistake to resolve this passage into a mere description of some vast engineering operation: if valleys were not literally to be filled up, and mountains were not literally to be levelled, something, at any rate, was to take place in the moral, social, or political world which should correspond to this vigorous imagery. And that something was to interest, not merely the Jewish race and their heathen neighbours, but the whole human family: All flesh shall see it together. It is clear that the particular, local, temporal deliverance melts before the eye of the prophetas, gazing on it, he describes itinto a deliverance, general and world-wide in its significance, extending in its effects far beyond the limits of time. The deliverance of deliverances is before him. He sees the great escape from bondage, of which all earlier efforts at freedom were but shadows; he sees it afar off, the pathway of mankind across the desert of time from the city of chains and sorrow, whereof Babylon was the earthly type, to the city of freedom and glory imaged in Jerusalem.
And thus it is that the Evangelists so unhesitatingly apply the passage to St. John the Baptist. St. John was the immediate forerunner of the Deliverer of humanity; St. John, as a hermit of the desert and a preacher of repentance, supplied, by his life, the connecting link between the literal and spiritual senses of the prophecy; St. John gathered up in himself, embodied and represented the ages of prediction and expectation. He was the mind of the Old Testament in a concrete form, laying down its office and proclaiming its work of preparation finished, when the Reality which it foreshadowed had come.1 [Note: A. L. Moore.]
The prophets mind is haunted by the vision of perfectness. He has seen it. Not in some dream of shadowy romance has his mind toyed with the bright imagination, but in his hours of deepest commerce with the unseen has this great thing been unveiled, and he has gazed upon its holy beauty. It may lie in dim distances. It may be the final issue of many a bitter conflict and many a dreadful struggle. It may tax the faith, and try the hope, and wear away the strength of generations of holy men and women before its fine glory shall be translated into the actual fact of life. But there it isa profound and actual reality. His inspired imagination has run forward to greet it, his sometime despondent heart has rested in its certainty. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. That is the revelation, that the certainty, the hope, and the joy. The world may have no eyes for the glory of the vision, the wise may be deaf to the Voice that declared it. The cynic may burst into ironic laughter, and the coarse interpret its holy prophecy in terms of madness. But goodness ever has its own vision. The prophet has ever been the man with eyes in his soul. He can sing with Abt Vogler
But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome: tis we musicians know.
One holy vision fills his mind and heartthere is a perfectness which is dowered with supremacy, beauty, and abidingness. And ultimately that shall surely triumph.1 [Note: G. B. Austin, The Beauty of Goodness, p. 190.]
I
The Need of Deliverance
1. The herald and hastener of a better and holier day must be distinguished first by a profound sense of the evil of the present. The prophet was no blind optimist cherishing a foolish hope of a better and happier future, because he did not see the abounding evils around him. He saw with clear, penetrating eyes, the moral and spiritual degradation of his nation and day; saw how king and priests and people were, with few exceptions, eaten with idolatry as with a cancer. He speaks of it, aye, and of the national evils which must issue from itexile, defeat, the overthrow of their beautiful city. That is true of the prophetic band from first to lastfrom Elijah to John. They saw, they were oppressed by, the evils in Church and Statewere almost overwhelmed by themand rose up in indignant condemnation. They pointed out the unescapable issue of the evil they saw, and demanded a return to a simpler and purer life. Elijah, with trumpet voice, demands: How long halt ye? And John lifts up his voice in the desert and bids men flee from the wrath to come. A profound sense of the sinfulness of sin, and of the wrath of God which abides perpetually upon it, distinguishes those who were the road-makers of past ages. I do not say it was not shared by many of their countrymen, but it is as true of these men as it is of men of our own daythe holier and the more consecrated to God feel the evil and the sin most. They see the mountains of injustice that need to be levelled, the abysses of vice to be filled in, the crookedness, falsity of social life, the inequalities which make the existence of myriads a lifelong martyrdom.
2. What then was the evil which Christ was to conquer in man and for man? It was sin. Sin is the one real evil. It is certainly worse than pain, since pain may become a good. It is certainly worse than death, since death is only the effect of sin, and may be the gate of freedom. It is worse even than the devil, since it makes the devil to be what he is. The devil would be powerless, and death would have no sting, and pain would be unknown, if it were not for sin. But sin is not a thing always palpable to and recognised by the sinner. It is, says Liddon, like the peculiar atmosphere in which we pass the great part of our lives here in Oxford. Looking down upon our homes from the top of Shotover, we see the thick damp fog burying this city and valley beneath a shroud of unwholesome vapour; but here in the streets of Oxford we scarcely observe it hanging in the sunlight, except when it becomes excessive in the depth of winter. Sin is just such a mist as this: it is a fog, a blight, impalpable yet real, about us, around us, within us. It bathes our moral life on this side and that, and withal it blinds us to the fact of its existence. If man would take a true measure of sin, he must be lifted out of it; he must ascend to some moral eminence, whence its real character will be made plain to him, and where he may form strong resolutions to close with any offer of deliverance and escape from its importunity and thraldom. Now such an eminence was supplied in early days by the gift of a moral law. The law did not add to the stock of existing evil, but it drew the unsuspected latent sin of man forth into the daylight; it irritated into intense vigour the principle of opposition which, even when dormant, is ever so strong in sinful human nature, and which shows itself, under the irritation, in its true light as sin. The law was like those remedies in medicine which rid us of a disease by bringing it to the surface, or, as we say, by precipitating it; it forced man to see what he really is, and to forget what he had fancied himself to be. By the law is the knowledge of sin.
3. But men must be convinced of the evil and of the need of deliverance from it. Take an illustration. We know that in this country no political measure that really touches the interests of the people can receive the sanction and the force of law, unless the people themselves are convinced that the evils which the measure proposes to remedy are substantial and not fancy evils. No legislative genius on the part of the minister can dispense with this condition of success. If the country is not convinced that the measure is necessary, the minister must take measures that will produce this conviction. He must hold meetings; he must make speeches; he must write dissertations; he must deal in dry statistical demonstrations and in vehemently passionate appeals; he must set in motion all the complicated machinery of political agitation and enterprise which may be at his disposal. Supposing him to be himself satisfied of the necessity of the measure in contemplation, this is nothing more than his duty to his country; he would fail of that duty if he should neglect to diffuse, according to the best of his power, that amount of political information which is necessary to his success.
You will not understand me to be saying that here we have a strict and absolute analogy to the sacred matter immediately before us; because it is plain that the correspondence fails in a most vital particular. We all know that the enactment of a new law in a free country is, in reality, the act not of the legislature but of the people; the legislature is only the instrument of the popular will. But the redemption of the world is in no wise the work of redeemed man; Christ is the one Redeemer, in whose redemptive triumph man could have no part save that of accepting and sharing its blessings. Yet this deliberate acceptance of Christs Redemption by man is of vital necessity to man; man is not saved against or without his will to be saved; and it is therefore of the last importance that he should understand his need of the salvation which he must desire and accept.
4. And not only must men be convinced of the need of deliverance, but the Church (taking the forerunners place) must prepare for the coming of the Deliverer. In the language of the prophet, it is the business of the Church to prepare a highway for Him in the desert. This is a very significant statement, for the world resents the idea that it is a desert and not fit to receive the Saviour when He comes to it. The tendency of all human systems of religion, in these days at least, is to make the best of whatever there is found among men. It is popular to say that there is a great deal of good in the world after all. That is false, however, except so far as the Gospel has won its way into the hearts of men. The world is essentially evil. All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, says the apostle. Men lose sight of this fact, that the whole world lies in sin, and that God is displeased with it. There is no inherent goodness in it that can be brought out into the light and cherished and developed until it becomes a valuable auxiliary of the work of the Church. No, the world is a desert, and its barrenness and worthlessness are brought out into sharp relief by the highway which is to be constructed right through it by the servants of God.
The servants of God have not only to build this highway through the desert, but they have also to make it straight and level, for the Lords unhindered progress into the hearts of men. For there are many obstacles to the spread of the Kingdom interposed by the world, and every one of them has to be met by the Church and vanquished.
(1) Every valley is to be exalted. That is, the lowlands of indifference and sordid worldliness are to be filled up and raised to the Gospel level. Divine truth is the great enlightener and quickener of the world. The vast masses of mankind are indeed sunk in sin and shame, but it is largely because they have been left so long in the pit, in the swampy places of every sort of misery and degradation, that they have lost hope. They but strive to get through the days of this worlds life without grievous want of food or shelter, and that is all. Nothing could be more pitiful than the hopeless misery and stolid indifference of the teeming millions of earths poor. If Christ is to come into their lives, they must first be inspired to look up and realise that better things are possible, that their condition need not be so wretched, as it is only for the few years of this worlds span, and then every good and pleasant thing may be theirs in eternity, if they but ally themselves with the gracious Redeemer who passes through their midst along this high road.
(2) Not only are the valleys to be exalted, but the mountains and hills are to be made low. These mountains and hills are the prejudices and self-satisfied ignorance of men, their wilful ways and false systems, which they choose to think are better than the Gospel, or in any case equally good with it. They will not suffer their creeds and philosophies and ideals to be beaten down. Yet this is just what the Church has to do if she is to prepare the straight path for our Lord. Every human system upon which men pride themselves is hostile to the Gospel. It must be broken down if Christ our Lord is to possess their hearts. The wise one must surrender the fine-spun conceit of his theories and hypotheses, and bow to the authority of the Gospel. And so it becomes the business of the Church in every way possible to overcome the false systems and notions which oppose Divine truth, that the Masters paths into the hearts of men may be levelled.
(3) Again, the crooked places are to be made straight. How many of these there are, and what a Herculean task it seems to be to try to overcome in mens minds the opposition they have to the Divine religion because of the inscrutable things in nature and in lifes experiences. Therefore the servants of God who would make straight His path have to be striving, with tireless patience, to show their troubled neighbours that there is wisdom in all manner of circumstances which at first sight appear merciless and capricious.
(4) Once more, Gods servants are called to make the worlds rough places plain. How many places there are, and how cruelly rough they often are also. We have to contend against this just as much in the Church as without, for alas, Christians so seldom seem to illustrate the Christ-spirit in their lives, in their daily intercourse with one another. As the apostle says, they bite and devour one another; so much so that it is proverbial that ecclesiastical quarrels are the most bitter of all. It is no easy task to soften hard hearts, to comfort sore hearts, to persuade men that there is something better in the Masters religion than they see exemplified commonly in the lives of believers. Yet there is no sort of labour more fruitful in results than this. The constant effort to speak kindly, to act lovingly, to be gracious and sympathetic; slow to take offence, quick to make upsuch things as these move men more strongly than any words of argument to embrace the Divine religion. Thus by making the rough places plain do we wonderfully make straight the highway for our Lord in the desert of this world.
There is scarcely one good road throughout the length and breadth of Palestine. Travellers, as they manage to pass their horses with difficulty along the wretched highways, or choose some adjacent path over the open plain as far preferable to the road itself, often wonder whence come the huge rough stones which so constantly obstruct the way. I was at a great loss to account for the presence of these, until my attention was called, by W. Schick, our able architect at Jerusalem, to the manner in which many of them are brought there. The camel, horse, and mule drivers, when they find the burdens they have arranged on the backs of their sumpter animals are not equally poised, instead of rearranging them, have a cruel and senseless custom of seizing any large stone which comes to hand, and placing it on that side where the weight is deficient. This stone in time jolts off, and is replaced by another and often by a third and a fourth, and in any case, at the journeys end or when the animals are unloaded, is left where it falls in the midst of the way. Besides this, in cleaning the vineyards, gardens, and arable land, stones are constantly thrown out on to the nearest road. None of the highways, moreover, are at any time properly metalled, and in winter they suffer very severely from the tropical torrents of rain. Neither is there any adequate provision for keeping them in permanent order, even if they were efficiently made. Yet, notwithstanding the almost impassable condition of the highways at ordinary times, I have repeatedly showed that on a few occasions for brief intervals they were carefully mended. These few occasions were those of the arrival of some royal personages. As soon as it was known at Jerusalem that a king or prince of the blood was about to come through any of the adjacent parts of Palestine which lie within that pashalic, orders were forthwith issued to the people of the various towns and villages to put all the roads in order over which it was arranged he should pass. This was done as usual by means of enforced labour, as was probably the case in former times.1 [Note: James Neil, Palestine Explored.]
When I was a boy I sometimes used to stay at a little farm in the country, and of the many delights of my holiday there, I do not think that any were more delightful than a ride in the farmers cart. The farmers cart had no springs under it; the tub was fixed straight to the axle, and when it came to ruts or rough places upon the road we knew it. Sometimes we went down with such a sudden jerk that we were almost jerked out of the cart. Well, I used to like that jolting; I did not mind at all those rough places in the road. But I find that as people get on in life they do not like these shakings up; they prefer to go along easily and smoothly. And when people in Brighton want to go for a ride in a cab or carriage, they always look out for one that has written on the lamps, Rubber Tyres. You see, the rubber tyres on the wheels make the rough places plain; that is, they take off the friction; they lessen the unpleasant jolting, and peoples nerves are not so strained as they would be if they went along the road in an old cart like the one I used to enjoy going for a ride in, that was fastened to the axle without springs between or rubber tyres on the wheels. Well, now, I want you to remember that the road of life is rough for most people, and it is rough sometimes even for boys and girls. It is possible for us all to do something to make life easier, to take away the friction and the unpleasantness of life, and to make it more pleasant and more enjoyable for those going over the road.1 [Note: D. J. Llewellyn.]
II
The Deliverer
The discovery of mans deep need was accompanied by another discovery, the revelation of a Deliverance. The hopes of man are as ancient as his despondency. At the gates of Eden was given the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpents head. We interpret that promise, and rightly enough, in the light of its fulfilment. But when it was given it might have seemed vague, and capable of many interpretations; nothing was certain except that mans deliverance would in some way be wrought out through humanity itself. Around this promise all the faith and hope of the earliest ages gathered, and from this point gradually narrows and becomes definite as it proceeds to unfold its true interpretation, until at length, when Isaiah and Zechariah had spoken, the whole life and sufferings of Jesus Christ had been written by anticipation.
For myself, I am a social optimist, simply because I am a Christian; because I am not willing to take up the cry which the pessimist and the social cynic desire to put into my mouth. The sky is not black, but bright with the Christmas star which announces the advent of a King, of a Ruler of menChrist Jesusnot reigning merely supreme in far-off splendour in the glory of the heavenly palaces, but King in England to-day, by His Spirit inspiring, illuminating, transfiguring life, the great Companion, full of love and sympathy for all the sorrows and sufferings of the poor, full of care and concern also for the wider good of the commonwealthe Reformer, the Emancipator of the captive and of the oppressed, the Champion of social right and the Inspirer of social duty. And I am a social optimist also because I am an Englishman; because I believe in what Burke once called the inbred integrity and piety of the English people; because it is bred into my very bone, as I expect it is bred into yours, that somehow with Englishmen things cannot go permanently wrong, but are bound to worry through in the end.1 [Note: C. W. Stubbs, Bishop of Truro.]
It is an old commonplace of divinity, which we are strangely forgetting, that despair is the only utter perdition; because despair binds a man in the prison of his own evil nature, and fastens the chain of the evil spirit upon him; because all hope points upwards to God, and is the response of our spirit to His Spirit. Therefore I say it again, we ought to stir up hope in every human being. Hope for present help from God to overcome the sin that most easily besets him; hope that he shall be able to say to the mountain which now stands in his way, Remove, and be cast into the sea; hope for the future that the glory of God, the Deliverer, shall be fully revealed; and that he, being included in the all flesh of which the prophet writes, bearing that nature in and for which Christ died, shall be able to see it and rejoice in it.2 [Note: F. D. Maurice, Sermons preached in Lincolns Inn Chapel, i. p. 164.]
1. What is the straight line to heaven? Far, far away is the eternal, electing love of God. The visible starting-place is a sense of sin, and a sincere desire for pardon and peace with God. Next is a feeling of forgiveness through the mercy of God by the blood and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This leads on to peace. And then peace runs into love. And love goes on into a new and holy life,a life dedicate, a life loving, a life of usefulness, a life for heaven. This line of life grows broader and broader as it goes on. And it also grows humbler and humbler, till it is all Christ, and no self. And so it brings the traveller to heaven. And not to stay there, but to go on, in the same line, straighter still, perfectly straight, for ever and ever! Thus the straight line isrepentance, pardon, peace, love, holiness, usefulness, humility, heaven. Each runs into the other; and they make one line.
The rough places smooth! Did it ever happen to you to know some very rough man, illiterate, coarse, hard, who became a Christian? You saw, you could not help seeing, the wonderful change! How soft, how gentle, how refined that hard man became. The whole being of that man was smooth. The rough places were made plain. You may be perfectly conscious that there is much in yourself which is very rough; much that grates and irritates; much that is most unlike your Master, and often very grievous to yourself. Rough ways of speaking; rough judgments; rough looks; rough actions. You regret them afterwards. But the roughness is still there. It breaks out again. What shall you do? Think of the gentle Jesus! Often have before your eyes His calm, holy, peaceful look. Cling to Him. Unite yourself to Him. Ask Him to do it, and it will be done. He will make an Advent into your heart. And the more He comes, the more certain is the result. He will bring quietness. He will make your rough places smooth. Or, it may be thus: Perhaps there are many roughnesses now in your path; jars in daily life; rough persons with whom you have to do; rough circumstances; roughening troubles; vexatious annoyances. The whole discipline of life is rough to you! It is astonishing how Christ can, and will, turn those rough edges, if you will ask Him! If He but throw in His calming presence, and pass over it all His smoothing hand, the rough places will soon be smooth! The waters will soon settle down when He speaks Peace! Believe it. It is in the covenant. The rough places shall be made smooth.1 [Note: J. Vaughan, Sermons, Sept. 1881 to April 1882, p. 107.]
2. There are many advents of the Son of God, and for every one of them there is some forerunner, some voice crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye His way; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. His comings mark the great upward strides of humanity towards a nobler, freer, purer life; they are the occasions when the bonds of the past are broken, and the world moves swiftly towards its Divine goal. The greatest and most hopeful epochs of history have been those when the religious spirit, which is the Spirit of God moving in the hearts of men, has been quickened and purified. The voice of some John the Baptist has gone ringing through the wilderness of a dead faith, of a formal worship, of a worldly life, and men have been startled into attention, have been made conscious of shortcomings and sins, have broken up the fallow ground of their hearts, have sown to the Lord in righteousness, and have reaped the golden harvest of a Divine spiritual life.
Let me remind you of three cardinal instances in which living sympathy has prepared the way for Christs triumphal entry into the heart of a generation.
(1) Why was it that while other apostles presented Christ in other waysas Messiah, as Judge, as HealerPaul determined to know nothing but Christ crucified? Not because His Gospel, as he calls it, was the whole of the Divine message, but because the language of sacrifice was the common speech of all mankind. Differing in all else, Jew and Greek, barbarian and Scythian, were one in this, that they regarded sacrifice as the central means of grace. While other aspects of the Saviour might appeal to this class or that nation, this one touched the springs which move the universal heart of humanity. And so it was not James or Peter, but Paul, whose picture of the Christ won the homage of the world.
(2) In Italy, at the end of the twelfth century, Christian faith was all but extinct. So entirely were priests and rulers given up to hatred and greed and luxury that the few humble communities which aimed at a purer life were hunted as heretics. The mass of the people, despised, oppressed and corrupt, lived in one dumb longing for pity. Then came an apostle who, from the storehouse of Christs words of power, drew that which they neededBlessed are the poor! When he claimed Poverty for his bride, Francis of Assisi enacted a parable which all the poor could understand. To choose the life of poverty was to choose that which bound the sad millions to each other. It was to proclaim himself the brother of all. It was to rob poverty of its sting by making it a bond of love. The life and words of St. Francis are one long poem, in which Christ is presented as the Lord of pity. From him men learned once more that the Kingdom of God is the kingdom of love; once more they became its willing subjects; once more there was a Christian Italya Christian Europe.
(3) But not for long. The glorious revival of the thirteenth century was followed by a long decay of faith and morals. The Renaissance which restored the art and the learning of the ancient world, restored its vices too. An ignorant and corrupt priesthood not only oppressed the people, but degraded them; for they taught that all forms of secular life were profane, and none truly acceptable to God but their own celibate idleness. In Southern lands laymen accepted their degradation, and religion became a mockery. But in Germany, in Switzerland, in England, and wherever men had Teutonic blood in their veins, the old German faith in personal value persisted. Outraged manhood led them to scorn the priests, and almost to renounce the religion which was an excuse for the domination. Then God raised up an apostle from among the labouring poor who could understand and convert them. Convert them not by condemning their errors or denouncing their excesses, but by showing them that all their just claims were allowed and satisfied by the ancient teaching of the Church. The doctrine of justification by faith, which Luther drew from Pauls forgotten writings, meant release from the tyranny of the Confessional, meant the recognition of each mans conscience, and the consecration of each mans life.1 [Note: M. G. Glazebrook, in The Church Family Newspaper, March 24, 1910, p. 248.]
3. As the life of the Church of Christ is developed, as its organisation and its methods are kept simply as instruments for the spirit of faith and love to work through, the Church will become less and less dependent upon the zealous efforts of any man to inaugurate reforms and to lead onward movements. The influence of the one man seems to correspond with the generally low and enslaved condition of the mass of the people; great when the people are most needy; comparatively small when the people are more free and more able to help themselves. John the Baptist is a unique, a commanding figure, because the age in which he prophesied was so destitute of spiritual men. Martin Luther is an imposing presence because, until he began to preach, the people, not having the knowledge of God and of His Christ, were abject enough to bow down to a corrupt Church which they hated and despised. John Wesley and George Whitefield stand out conspicuously from a mass of clergymen and ministers of the last century because the Gospel was then so little known, ministers so rarely experienced its power, and the people were in such gross darkness. I greatly doubt whether in our country such forerunners of the Kingdom of God will appear again, simply because I think that the conditions of our Church life are so highly favourable to upward movements springing from a general sense of need.2 [Note: J. P. Gledstone, in Christian World Pulpit, xxxiv. p. 183.]
It is wonderful to see how sensitive the Church of to-day has become to her condition, to her reputation, and to her efficiency. If there is backsliding, there is always a reprover at hand; if there is a low standard of attainment, there is always some one to urge her forward to higher graces; if there is inefficiency in any department of service, there is always some active, enterprising spirit prepared to supply the lack and do the necessary work. If one Church declines, another grows; if one denomination passes by any field of usefulness, another steps in and occupies it. If the Churches at home were to prove unfaithful, they would be rebuked and stimulated by those abroad. If the ministry becomes cold and formal, the Press utters the complaints of the hungry, starving flock. So much work is now cast upon the Church, her enterprises have carried her into so many lands, and require so many workers and such enormous revenues, that she can maintain her ground only by a life of faith. Faith brought her into this goodly land, and by nothing but faith can she retain it. Yet mere retention is not enough. She must make fresh advances; she lives by growth. To stand still is to die. Thus is she continually cast upon God, and to be cast upon Him is to find His faithfulness and truth.1 [Note: J. P. Gledstone, in Christian World Pulpit, xxxiv. p. 183.]
4. What the world requires most of all is a revelation of the glory of God. The material progress which we have been describing is what many people mean when they speak of the civilisation of the nineteenth century, and yet that which has lamentably failed to bless our own people is sometimes vaunted as the best message we can send to the heathen. Many say, Let our trade, and our railways, and all our conveniences first find entrance to a heathen land, and then the people there will be prepared for the Gospel. A grosser delusion could hardly be promulgated. Our own social condition might show its fallacy, and experiment in heathen lands has confirmed it. When Christianity has gone first (as to the South Seas), morality, and contentment, and safety have been generated with a simple religious faith, whose earnestness puts us to shame. But when this so-called civilisation has preceded Christianity, idolaters have become atheists, and their last state is worse than their first. Now, as our text puts it, the great object we Christians are to keep in view, in all our achievements and enterprises, is that the glory of God may be revealednot, you observe, the glory of man, not the glory of a society, not the glory of a sect, but the glory of God. And what do we understand by that? Certainly no burst of light upon the world such as that which overwhelmed Saul of Tarsus, nor any new and supernatural revelation, but a fulfilment of the Saviours words about His disciples, I am glorified in them. As a king, a man finds his glory in the contentment of his people; as a father, a man finds his glory in the well-being of his children; and so the great King and Father of us all finds His glory in our contentment and well-being. And how can that be brought about? It is by the work and words of those who speak comfortably to the sinners, who proclaim a reconciled God revealed in Jesus Christ, who declare to all who in penitence will accept it, that iniquity is pardoned, and that it is possible for all flesh to see the salvation of God.1 [Note: A. Rowland.]
We have produced, during the last fifty years, says Bishop Stubbs, agitators of the John the Baptist type, from John Bright down to John Burns, and they have most of them done noble preparatory work; but we have now to produce, if we can, and from the same classes, admirable administrators, who are quite a different kind of people, a new order of men, a new religious order, shall I say?men who, whilst believing in the possibilities of democratic control, know how essential to efficient administration are all the qualities which are of Christian character, justice, patience, hope, modesty, integrity, frankness, and fellowship. We want, in fact, as great a change, it seems to me, in our conception of the essential qualities which go to make an able public man, a vestry politician even, as Browning described in the wonderful picture he gave of the true function of a poet, which he called, How it strikes a Contemporary. Indeed, now I come to think of it, I am not sure that Brownings poet is not quite the kind of man we want for our county councillors and politicians. Do you remember Brownings lines
I only knew one poet in my life:
And this, or something like it, was his way.
You saw him up and down Valladolid,
A man of mark, to know next time you saw.
He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,
Scenting the world, looking it full in the face.
He turned up, now, the alley by the church,
That leads nowhither; now, he breathed himself
On the main promenade just at the wrong time:
Youd come upon his scrutinising hat,
Making a peaked shade blacker than itself
Against the single window spared some house
Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work,
Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick
Trying the mortars temper tween the chinks
Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.
He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade.
He glanced oer books on stalls with half an eye,
And fly-leaf ballads on the vendors string,
And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.
He took such cognisance of men and things,
If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
If any cursed a woman, he took note;
Yet stared at nobody,you stared at him,
And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,
He seemed to know you and expect as much.
The towns true master if the town but knew!
We merely kept the governor for form,
While this man walked about and took account
Of all thought, said and acted, then went home,
And wrote it fully to our Lord the King.
The Forerunner
Literature
Austin (G. B.), The Beauty of Goodness, 190.
Cook (F. C.), Lincolns Inn Sermons, 279.
Davies (J. P.), The Same Things, 10.
Gould (S. Baring), Village Preaching, 2nd Ser., i. 25.
Hare (J. C.), The Mission of the Comforter, i. 325.
Hutton (R. E.), The Crown of Christ, i. 53.
Liddon (H. P.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 117.
Ritchie (A.), Sermons from St. Ignatius Pulpit, 29.
Rutherford (W. G.), The Key of Knowledge, 63.
Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 191.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xxi. Nos. 12001203.
Wilson (J. M.), Clifton College Sermons, ii. 216.
Sermons for the Christian Seasons, 2nd Ser., iv. 177.
Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts, 2nd Ser., ii. 380.
Christian World Pulpit, xiii. 40 (Baldwin Brown); xxi. 323 (Rowland); xxxiv. 182 (Gledstone); lxvi. 74 (Williams).
Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., ix. 349 (Rowland).
Expositor, 3rd Ser., vii. 280; 5th Ser., vi. 359.
Expository Times, v. 185 (Keeling).
Old and New Testament Student, ix. 164.
Preachers Magazine, i. 508 (Garrett).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
The voice: Mat 3:1-3, Mar 1:2-5, Luk 3:2-6, Joh 1:23
Prepare: Isa 35:8, Isa 57:14, Isa 62:10, Isa 62:11, Mal 3:1, Mal 4:5, Mal 4:6, Luk 1:16, Luk 1:17, Luk 1:76, Luk 1:77
make: Isa 11:15, Isa 11:16, Isa 43:19, Isa 49:11, Psa 68:4
Reciprocal: Deu 4:12 – only ye heard a voice Son 2:8 – the mountains Son 8:5 – from the Isa 19:23 – General Isa 35:1 – wilderness Isa 40:6 – Cry Isa 42:11 – Let the wilderness Jer 31:9 – in a Zec 4:7 – O great Zec 14:10 – the land Mat 3:3 – by Mat 11:10 – General Mat 24:26 – he is in the desert Mar 1:3 – General Mar 9:12 – restoreth Luk 3:4 – The voice Luk 7:27 – Behold Joh 1:6 – a man Joh 1:31 – but Act 18:25 – instructed Heb 12:13 – make Rev 14:7 – with
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Isa 40:3-4. The voice of him that crieth Or, as the Hebrew may be properly rendered, A voice crieth; an abrupt and imperfect speech, implying, Methinks I hear a voice; or, A voice shall be heard; in the wilderness Which word signifies the place, either where the cry was made, or where the way was to be prepared, as it is expressed in the following clause, which seems to be added to explain this. Bishop Lowth understands it in this latter sense, and translates the words, A voice crieth, In the wilderness, prepare ye the way of Jehovah. Which he thus interprets, He hears a crier giving orders, by solemn proclamation, to prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness; to remove all obstructions before Jehovah marching through the desert; through the wild, uninhabited, unpassable country. The idea is taken from the practice of the eastern monarchs, who, whenever they entered upon an expedition, or took a journey, especially through desert and unpractised countries, sent harbingers before them to prepare all things for their passage, and pioneers to open the passes, to level the ways, and to remove all impediments. The officers appointed to superintend such preparations the Latins called stratores. The bishop understands the prophet as referring to the return of the Jews from Babylon, which he has no doubt was the first, though not the principal thing in his view. This deliverance, he says, is considered as parallel to the former deliverance of them from the Egyptian bondage. God was then represented as their king, leading them in person through the vast deserts which lay in their way to the promised land of Canaan. It was not merely for Jehovah himself that in both cases the way was to be prepared, and all obstructions to be removed; but for Jehovah marching in person at the head of his people. Babylon, the bishop adds, was separated from Judea by an immense tract of country, which was one continued desert; that large part of Arabia, called very properly Deserta. This was the nearest way homeward for the Jews; and whether they actually returned by this way or not, the first thing that would occur, on the proposal or thought of their return, would be the difficulty of this almost impracticable passage. Accordingly, the proclamation for the preparation of the way is the most natural idea, and most obvious circumstance, by which the prophet could have opened his subject.
But though Bishop Lowth considers the prophet as first intending to comfort the Jews in their captivity, by predicting, in these words, that God would make the way plain for their return, yet he views him also as employing this deliverance out of Babylon, as an image to shadow out a redemption of an infinitely higher and more important nature. Obvious and plain, says he, as I think this literal sense is, we have nevertheless the irrefragable authority of John the Baptist, and of Christ himself, as recorded by all the evangelists, for explaining this exordium of the prophecy of the opening of the gospel by the preaching of John, and of the introduction of the kingdom of Messiah, who was to effect a much greater deliverance of the people of God, Gentiles as well as Jews, from the captivity of sin, and the dominion of death. And this we shall find to be the case in many subsequent parts also of this prophecy, where passages, manifestly relating to the deliverance of the Jewish nation, effected by Cyrus, are, with good reason, and upon undoubted authority, to be understood of the redemption of mankind by Christ. This interpretation supposes the wilderness to be the place where the way was prepared, rather than the place where the cry was made, and, in the spiritual or mystical application now mentioned, that wilderness signifies the Jewish Church, to which John was sent to announce the coming of Messiah, and which was, at that time, in a barren and desert condition, unfit, without reformation, for the reception of her king. It was in this desert country, destitute at that time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and good works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord, by preaching repentance. It must be observed, however, that, according to the translation of this clause by the LXX., and the punctuation, as we have it in their copies, and as it is understood by all the evangelists, the voice cried in the desert. For they all read, , , &c. The voice of one crying in the desert, Prepare ye, &c. But, omitting the consideration of the pointing, we may allow, with some interpreters of the first authority, that the words, in the desert, belong to both parts of the sentence. The voice of one crying in the desert, Prepare ye in the desert the way of the Lord. And the word desert may be understood both in a proper and mystical sense, for it is certain that John proclaimed this approach of the Messiah in a desert, in the wilderness of Judea; and thence took occasion to consider that people, in which the kingdom of God was to be manifested under the figure of a desert, to be levelled before the face of Jesus Christ; for the metaphorical expressions which follow refer to that great preparation of mind which is necessary for the reception of Christ: see Mal 3:1. That raising the low, that debasing the high, that refutation of all false and erroneous doctrine, and introduction of truth and righteousness, which was the consequence of the revelation of Christ. See Vitringa.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
40:3 The {d} voice of him that crieth in the {e} wilderness, (f) Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
(d) That is, of the prophets.
(e) That is, in Babylonia and other places, where they were kept in captivity and misery.
(f) Meaning Cyrus and Darius who would deliver God’s people out of captivity and make them a ready way to Jerusalem.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Divine intervention 40:3-5
Here begins explanation of how God could offer sinful people comfort. He would break into history (cf. Isa 52:7-10).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Isaiah announced that someone was calling out to prepare a highway in the desert, because the Lord was coming to His people’s aid (cf. Mat 3:3; Mar 1:3; Luk 3:4; Joh 1:23; Joh 3:30). It was customary to construct processional avenues for approaching dignitaries and for idols carried in parade. The wilderness and desert represent the barren waste of Babylon where God’s people dwelt, complete with obstacles and impediments to overcome, and through which He would come to them with refreshment, as He did formerly at Mount Sinai. The idea is that He was certainly coming and His people should prepare for His appearing.