Prepare the Way of the Lord

Isaiah 40:3-5 “Prepare the Way of the Lord”

Traveling on the roads of Guyana was always an interesting experience. You always had to be on the lookout for roaming animals. In fact, many of the Guyanese had fences around their yards to keep animals out. Dogs, cats, goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, and donkeys were commonly seen trotting down the road. For those of you who have encountered deer with your vehicle, you will understand the danger. It was the practice of drivers, when they encountered animals, to put their 4-ways on to warn the drivers behind them.

Like probably any country, we had our share of pot holes. The road past our house was a mixture of dirt and gravel and quickly got potholes during the rainy season. Thankfully they repaired our road once a year when the president came past to visit an historical site up the road. One time, a pot hole developed into a small pond, so the people in that area collected money from passing drivers to purchase a load of dirt to fill in the crater.

In our text today, Isaiah says: prepare the way of the Lord. Smooth out his way. Get the road ready.

Read Isaiah 40:1-8, look at 3-5

This prophecy of Isaiah tells us that God is bring salvation, and he is unstoppable.

1. God’s way revives his people (3)
A way is to be prepared for the Lord. Where? In the wilderness…in the desert. When we think of a desert, we think of heat…dry…thirst. This is not the only picture of a desert in Isaiah’s mind. The wilderness was a place of desolation and judgment. Think of a bombed out city or a burned-down house. No life.

Isaiah 27:10 says- For the fortified city is solitary, a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness.

The wilderness is also a place of new beginnings. The wilderness is where God led Israel and made them his people and gave him his law. But it turned into a place of judgment because their sins.

God is coming…he is coming to save his people…in the desert.

Look at 41:17-18; 43:18-19

God is doing something new. His people are wandering in the wilderness of judgment, and God is bringing them life and refreshing. When we read vs 3, it may seem at first like God is getting on his bulldozer and clearing a path through everyone and everything. Yes, he is coming, but he’s coming to get his people, save them, and restore them.

Another part of traveling in Guyana was the ferry crossing. We lived about 70 miles from the capital, and between us and the capital there was a very large river without a bridge. Whenever we would have to do business or shopping in the capital, we would wait at the ferry crossing, sometimes for hours on end. We would sit and bake in the sun. There would be people selling snow cones, but we wouldn’t dare have them, because they were made with unfiltered water. We would pay the price later. But there was something we could have: coconut water. They would the harvest the green coconuts, chill them, hack off the top, and put in a straw. Nothing like it on a hot day.

That’s what God is promising to do. He is going to refresh his people with salvation and rescue.

2. God’s way reverses the world’s order (4)
We could drag the bulldozer idea into vs 4 as well. Fill in the valleys…flatten the mountains. Pave a road for God. Here’s some breaking news: God doesn’t need a road for his way to go forward. Verse 4 is showing what God will do. Like any good poet, Isaiah uses pictures to describe God’s actions.

-Every valley will be exalted- this is the language of exalting the lowly and humble

-Every mountain and hill will be made low. Almost every time this word for “made low” is used in Isaiah, it is talking about humbling the proud.
2:17 And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled,
and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low,
and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

-The crooked or uneven ground will be made straight. This word for crooked is the same word used in Jeremiah 17:9. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. God is saying- I’ll straighten things out.

The point is, when God comes, he is going to reverse the order of the world. He will humble the proud, and lift up the lowly. Think of Mary’s words in Luke 1:51-53

51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
52 he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

God will save the humble who trust him and squash the proud who reject him.

3. God’s way reveals his salvation (5)
When God comes, he will reveal his glory to all people. God’s glory is seen in different ways. Here, God’s glory is seen in the salvation of his people.
Turn to Luke 3. John the Baptist is the one Isaiah 40:3 points to: a voice crying in the wilderness. He is getting ready for the LORD—Yahweh—who is Jesus Christ.

Look at what happens in verse 6. It says: all flesh shall see the salvation of our God. Luke is not misquoting Isaiah…in fact he is reading Isaiah in context.

Isaiah 52:10 says this:
The LORD has bared his holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God.

God is coming to save his people. We look up, and we see Jesus Christ coming to save his people. He is revealing God’s glory in bringing salvation to us.

4. God’s Word realizes God’s way (5c)
When we first read these verses in Isaiah 40, it seems like we should get into our bulldozers and clear a path for Christ. The king is coming: make him a highway! But when we read carefully, the one who prepares a way in the desert, the one who takes the mountains and fills in valleys, is God himself. His Word accomplishes his purpose. Because God said, it will happen. John the Baptist fulfilled Isaiah 40 by preaching repentance from sins. He prepared the way for the Lord by speaking the Word of the Lord.

Yes, John the Baptist is in the wilderness crying- prepare the way of the Lord. But the wilderness is not significant just because Isaiah 40 says the word “wilderness.” It is also significant because God is starting something new in the wilderness. In a place of desolation and judgment, Jesus comes to reclaim his people. Jesus doesn’t just reclaim his people, he starts something new: he brings salvation to all people, to Jews and Gentiles alike.

As we think about the command, prepare the way of the Lord, we know it is something God does. He speaks; it happens. He brings salvation; nothing can stop him. But, is there a way we prepare the way of the Lord? We follow what John the Baptist preached when he prepared the way of the Lord. We get off our bulldozers and bow before the King. We repent.

I have 3 reasons why we should repent in light of this text.

1. God has brought spiritual life out of judgment
For Israel, God promised to restore them from their judgment in exile and take them back to their land. But as we read through Isaiah 40-66, we realize God is doing something bigger than just getting the Israelites home. He is bringing salvation for the whole world, even the Gentiles. He is going to reveal his glory…his salvation…to the whole world. He is still in the process of doing that.

God is a God who brings life out of judgment, and spiritual life out of the desert of sin. When we are wasting away in the desert of sin, God comes and gives our parched souls the Living Water. When we realize that God is on a mission to rescue lost sinners, that should lead us to repent and accept his salvation

2. God humbles the proud and exalts the humble
When God comes bringing salvation, he doesn’t bring it to the proud. He squashes them. He comes to those who know they are broken sinners, and know that Christ is the only one who could fix them. Pride has no place in salvation. When we acknowledge that we have nothing and Christ has everything, there is no room for pride. God looks to and saves the humble.

Isaiah 66:2
But this is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word.

3. God brings salvation, not us
We can’t clear our own way to salvation. God must to that. When we repent of our sins, we at the same time repent of our efforts to save ourselves. God will reveal his glory…his salvation to all people. We don’t find it…God brings it to us. It is not our words that save us…it is God’s Word that comes to us and accomplishes salvation.

Isaiah 45:8
“Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit; let the earth cause them both to sprout; I the Lord have created it.

Isaiah 59:16
God saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him.

This is our God.
He revives his people
He reverses the world’s order
He reveals his salvation
He will do it. Because he said so.