The Voice in the Wilderness

Amen.

Isaiah’s Promise of Comfort and the Voice in the Wilderness

Well, please turn in your Bible to Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40, beginning in, we will read verses one through eight together. The preaching will be on verses three through five. When you have that, please stand.

That can be found on page 599 of your Bible. Isaiah chapter 40. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low. The uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain.

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. A voice says, cry. And I said, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower field.

The grass withers, the flower fades. When the breath of the Lord blows on it, surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever.

Amen.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the promise of the gospel. We ask that you would help us to understand it more fully today as we look to your word in Isaiah.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, this is, of course, a very famous passage. Though there are many passages in the prophet Isaiah that are not well known, this is one that is well known. It is one that is quoted in all four gospels and it even appears in parallel passages in the Old Testament, notably Malachi.

It can be easy to simply look at the fulfillment that we know of from the gospels and John the Baptist and miss more of what is being said here. But I'd like to just simply consider who this voice is, what this voice is, and whether or not it still speaks.

The Return from Babylon and the Imagery of the Wilderness

What this voice is and whether or not it still speaks. So consider this first in the immediate context. There's a voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. What is this speaking of?

This is addressing, as we have seen before, following on the heels of Isaiah 39 where it said that the people are going to go into Babylonian captivity. This is speaking of their return from Babylonian captivity.

That when the temple is ransacked and all the instruments are taken from it, the glory of the Lord departs from the temple so that it no more has his presence. When his presence is gone from the temple, his presence is gone from the land and the people no longer have his favor.

And so when it talks about preparing a way for the Lord in the wilderness, it's talking about getting ready for God's return to his land, that he will come back to his temple. This is spoken of as a wilderness because the situation of captivity is one of death.

The wilderness is something that represents death. If you ever go into wilderness, you realize there's not much that is alive.

In the wilderness.

Things die very easily in the wilderness. And so the wilderness, similar to the depths of the seas in Scripture, represent a place of death. It also speaks here of valleys and mountains. Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low.

Valleys and mountains here refer to obstacles to the return of the Lord. You can imagine that as the people go away into Babylonian captivity, there would be many obstacles to the people returning from that captivity.

But the promise is that every mountain and hill will be made low and the uneven ground shall become level. If you've ever gone hiking, you know this is how it works. The obstacles that you face are the mountains and the valleys, and you count your progress, not necessarily by how many miles you've traveled, but by how many mountain passes you've gotten through.

When you're up on the tops of the mountains, it's dry, there's no water, it's rough and difficult. And then when you are low in the valley, there's a lot of vegetation, it becomes difficult in different ways.

But if all those things are gone, then you simply have a flat path that can go very quickly. Even with driving, you know this, right? Most of the country, what's the maximum speed limit? Maybe 65, something like that.

But you go to the Midwest where all the roads are very straight and there's nothing in the way, you can go 80 miles an hour, and that's perfectly okay. All the signs say that it's okay. Now, this is what is being promised, that everything will become level so that there will no more be any kind of obstacle.

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. All flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. What is the glory of the Lord? The glory of the Lord is His presence. His presence will come back to the temple, just like the cloud of glory surrounded the tabernacle in the days of Moses.

So the glory will return to this temple from which that glory will be taken away. Now, a word of caution. I know that when I was a younger Christian, I believed that all these prophecies were very literal.

And so when I saw that every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain hill be made low, that this would happen in a very literal sense, that all the mountains, perhaps in the whole world, would just disappear until the earth was, you know, just a perfect, perfect smooth sphere.

But this prophetic imagery simply refers to the removal of all obstacles. This is what we should anticipate, the removal of all obstacles to the Lord going to His house, the Lord going to His temple. Now, there are a few reasons why it is obvious that this voice, though it may in some sense refer to Isaiah, perhaps he is the one crying for this to come back, cannot be fully fulfilled in him.

First of all, Isaiah proclaims this around the year 700 AD. The people will not, or excuse me, 700 BC. The people will not go off into captivity until 586 BC is when Nebuchadnezzar comes and attacks the temple the first time.

And so, given that delay, he cannot be the voice crying for them to come back because he is coming even before they have gone away into this. And then moreover, when the people return to the land and God returns to His temple, when they rebuild the temple, this is not something that all flesh sees.

This is something that many people see, but not all flesh, not all humans. And so, the New Testament interprets this as referring to something greater. Though perhaps it speaks of Isaiah, though it speaks of the people returning from Babylon, it prefigures something much greater that fulfills this in a far greater way.

John the Baptist and the Deity of Christ

Now, as I said a moment ago, every gospel quotes this passage, but Luke does so most extensively, so I'd like to read Luke. Luke three from one to six. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip Tetrarch of the region of Aeturia and Trachonitis and Lysanias, Tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.

And he went into all the region around Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight, every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

So John the Baptist, fulfilling this in an even greater way, proclaims that the Lord is returning to his temple. What is he referring to? What is the way of the Lord? It is a way of repentance. As Jesus Christ is coming, he heralds the Messiah, the Messiah being the Lord himself.

This itself, a proof of the deity of Christ. You know, a lot of people will claim that the idea of the deity of Christ is something that doesn't happen until John. A lot of people who oppose the deity of Christ will say this kind of thing, that you look at the earlier gospels and they don't speak of the deity of Christ.

What is John doing when he's saying prepare the way of the Lord, and he's preparing the way of Jesus? He is identifying Jesus as the Lord. He's identifying Jesus as Yahweh. And so this passage is fulfilled, in a sense, through John the Baptist calling the people to repentance, making the way for Jesus Christ, making the way for his reign.

How is he to dwell in the people? How is his way to be prepared through repentance so that he can reign over people's lives? Where there is no repentance, there is no reign. Christ is king, he demands obedience.

Those who are rebels, those who do not repent, are not submissive to his rule, they are not part of his kingdom. But those who, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, have been transformed to repent, they are part of his kingdom because they submit to him under his kingship.

And this is something that has multiple parallels here. If you notice that he is one crying in the wilderness, and as a prophetic sign act, he even goes into the wilderness. The point of the passage is not that, okay, this prophet is going to be in the wilderness.

That is a sign act to demonstrate the kind of death that he is calling people away from. These are people that do not have the presence of God as they ought. These are people who do not have life as they ought.

They are dead in their sins, and so they are to be called out of it. And all the mountains and hills shall be made low, and the crooked path shall become straight. All the valleys will be made level, and all flesh will see the salvation of God.

And all flesh does see the salvation of God. The gospel goes out to all the nations. It is not just Jerusalem, it's not just Judah, but the gospel goes out to the ends of the earth so that all salvation sees Jesus, learning of him and his gospel, and having their eyes open spiritually to more greatly understand who he is.

And this is a work that is accomplished not by the will of man, but by the will of God. And so at this point, it would be helpful to ask the question, is this a completed, fulfilled prophecy, if it is the case that in Isaiah's time, and even after that, that the return from Babylon was not the final fulfillment of this, and then John the Baptist coming later, fulfilling it further, is this completely fulfilled at this point?

I think it is obvious that not all flesh has seen the glory of God. There is still a need for people to see the glory of God. There is still a need for repentance. There is still a need for the way of the Lord to be made clear.

Now Christ has arrived, but he is coming again, and there is a call for further repentance. And so who is the one that is to proclaim this? If Isaiah proclaimed this at first, and then John the Baptist, has it not been passed to us to proclaim this to those who are not yet part of the fold, to be the ones comforting those people who have not yet joined with the fold, giving them that comfort, letting them know that they should join in with God's people because he has returned to his kingdom, and he is returning in an even more manifest way yet to come?

We are called to do this, and this is something, as I have said, that is not accomplished merely through man's activity. It is accomplished through the will of God. Consider what Isaiah says later. The Lord says in Isaiah 49, 11, and I will make all mountains a road, and my highways shall be raised up.

This is not just a call for the mountains and highways to be made by man. God is promising that he will make the mountains and highways. He will accomplish his purposes by working in the hearts of the people to bring about repentance, to bring about salvation.

And this should be a great encouragement in the work of evangelism, in the work in proclaiming the return of Jesus Christ, in the work of calling people to repentance. Because if you imagine that your task is one to level all the mountains, to raise up all the valleys, you are not capable, we are not capable.

We do not have the strength to do it. Even just thinking about the physical analogy of what it would take to level mountains and raise up valleys, even with the kind of technology that we have today, it would be impossible to do such things on a wide-scale level.

So it is that much more impossible for us to do things spiritually without the aid of the Lord. But what is the promise here? The promise here is not that we would do such things of our own power. The promise is that the Lord will do this.

Isaiah 49, 11 again, and I will make all mountains a road, and my highways shall be raised up. How will he return to his people? He will return by the way that he has prepared. This is how he came the first time.

God laying the way, bringing about the virgin birth by his almighty power, sending John the Baptist, filling him with the spirit that incredible works would be done, giving the apostles and prophets to go after Jesus.

And then us, with us he has given an outpouring of his spirit that we would be equipped with everything needed in order to fulfill this to the fullest so that at the Lord's return, all flesh would see the glory of God.

Not merely some flesh, not merely a few, but all flesh. Every repentant man will see the glory of God and enjoy it in its fullness. And every unrepentant man will see the glory of God and perish under the wrath that they will experience.

The New Testament Expansion of the Temple and the Binding of Satan

Consider all the ways that God has equipped us. First, no more is this temple that the people are supposed to be preparing away for, right, they're preparing away for God to come back to this physical temple.

That's the idea is he is returning to the land of, to Jerusalem, to Zion, to dwell in his temple. Now, this would be difficult, this would be a difficult task to have all flesh see the glory of God, et cetera, if it were the case that his temple were so narrowly constrained to one place.

But what has he accomplished in the New Testament? In the New Testament, he has accomplished creating a temple that dwells in each one of us through having sent his spirit dwelling in us so that he, by his spirit, dwells in us.

He has expanded his presence in such a way that it is not, his favorable presence is not so constrained to one place but is wherever his people dwell and then especially wherever his people gather together.

And so there are not the geographic limitations that exist anymore because of what God has done in the gospel. Now, moreover, there is not the limitation of the spiritual, the work of Satan to deceive the nations.

You see what Jesus says in the gospels when he has sent out his disciples. He says when they return, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Okay, this is alluding to Isaiah 14. He sees Satan fall so that he no longer has power.

In Revelation 20, it says, and he sees the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for 1 ,000 years and threw him into the pit and shut it and sealed it over him that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the 1 ,000 years were ended.

So there is a promise that as Satan had the ability to rule over the nations in a particular way in the past, he no longer has that ability to deceive them so that the gospel is free to go to other nations.

Now, it was the case certainly that in former times, there were individuals from here or there and other nations who would learn of the greatness of God and would repent, but that was a rarity. Now, it is the norm by the work that God has done, by the work that Christ has done in binding Satan and casting him down.

And so, we have a great promise to know that, and I'll add this too. This is something more tentative, but my understanding of what Scripture says in Daniel and in Hebrews when it talks about the prince of Persia, you know, this demonic power that's behind the prince of Persia, and then what it says in Hebrews 2 when it talks about not having subjected the world to come to angels, the suggestion is the world before was subject to these angelic powers in a way that it is no longer, that it has been freed from those things in order that the gospel may advance.

Okay, there is a great competence that we can have in the power of the gospel to advance to the nations that did not exist prior to Christ's work, prior to Christ's ministry. Now, the Holy Spirit has been outpoured so that no longer is it the case that there are special people who can speak God's word, prophets and priests that are so gifted that there wouldn't be a widespread ability to share this message, but now with the outpouring of the Spirit, we are called a royal priesthood, one who is able to intercede for others, to call out to God for their salvation, and we are commanded to do so and given confidence that he will accomplish things by this, that many people will be saved by that intercessory work, and by our proclamation of the gospel, many would be saved.

And that outpouring of the Spirit is not merely on those who believe now, but is guaranteed for those who will believe in the future. So we know that that work is not just on his workers, but it is also there so that it will work in the hearts of his people in order that they will believe.

So that outpouring gives us a confidence, not only for us and our empowerment, but for the here that we would trust that God would work in his elect. And then he also has given us the apostles and the prophets on which the church is founded.

Perhaps you've never considered what a great privilege it is to have the fullness of revelation in the 66 books of the Bible, but this is not something that existed before Jesus sent out his prophets and apostles.

After Jesus sent out his apostles and they record the New Testament, we have a clarity about God's revelation because they have him interpreting it for them. In Luke 24, it describes he opened their eyes to understand all the things that were written about him.

And then they go off and explain these things to us, giving us the interpretive framework that we might understand all of Scripture and giving us even further revelation so that we might know more, further equipping us for this work that we might proclaim the word to others.

We have this confidence as well. Well, all these things are mountains being removed, valleys being raised, highways being built. And so we ought to evangelize with boldness. We have no reason for cowardice, we have no reason for holding back.

We have every reason to trust in the power of God and to share the gospel boldly. Now, it was not by any kind of coordination that Pastor Tim talked about friendship evangelism today, and I am speaking about this now, but this is one of the major ways that this truth is denigrated, is by the notion of friendship evangelism, that in order to properly evangelize, you must build up rapport with people first.

Friendship Evangelism, Bold Witness, and the Highway God Builds

Now, this exists in various measures. I wanna tell you about one extreme I've seen, and then I wanna tell you about lesser extremes that you're probably more familiar with. One extreme that I've seen, I knew a man who invited me to a party where he had a bunch of international students, and so this man, his full-time job was basically to socialize with international students and to share the gospel with them.

Now, he is funded by a nonprofit organization that all his donors, I don't know if they know exactly how he goes about this, but they all fund him so that he lives pretty well. He has a nice place, because it's a place that is good for hosting lots of people, and when he invited me to this, he said, now, I want you to know, and I don't think you do this, but I want you to know that I don't want you sharing the gospel with any of these students that will be there, because I've been talking to them for a long time.

I've been building a relationship with them, and I don't want you to ruin any of that by sharing the gospel before I've had a chance to build up more of a relationship for that, and I was surprised, because I'd never seen anything like that before, and I imagine this is on the more extreme end.

I hope I don't see it again, but that was wild to me, to think that there are people supporting this man who has been building up a relationship for years with these students, for literally for years, and has not shared the gospel, and this is his work that he's being paid for.

Now, it is, now, that is one extreme, but it is so common, I hear this from all kinds of people in solid theological circles, that in order to approach someone and call them to repentance, you would need to have rapport with them.

You would need to have some kind of social capital. You can't call someone to repentance until you've demonstrated to them that you care about them, and if you can't demonstrate to them, and if you don't have the time to do that, like with an ongoing relationship, then you should not call them to repentance.

Now, what does that do? That essentially distrusts the Spirit's working in all these ways that God has given us these assurances that he will work through the proclamation of the gospel. We should not go about it with the mindset that there are tall mountains, there are low valleys, we've gotta be really careful about how we go out.

You don't just wander out into the desert without enough supply of water, without enough equipment. You know, you be very careful about how you go out into the desert. You be very careful about how you go into the mountains and through the valleys.

That would make sense if there were mountains and valleys. Those things have been removed because the Lord is at work. He is removing those things for us, and so we have every reason to go with confidence, to proclaim the name confidently, not to say I need to keep a low profile while I'm at the workplace.

I can't let other people know that I'm a Christian because, you know, that's something evangelizing, sharing the gospel is something I'll do outside of work, but in the workplace, I don't want anyone to know.

Now, none of these things are warranted if you believe that God is lowering the mountains, that he is raising the valleys, that he is building the roads for himself, and that he has come to his temple already and has guaranteed that that will be perfectly manifest at the Son's return.

All of these things have been accomplished. Let us proclaim the word boldly without hesitation, without, yeah, without being impeded. You know, it'd be crazy if someone were to go on a highway very slowly.

Now, I do this at night sometimes, right? Like, if there's a, when I've been in some of those regions that have the really high speed limits and it's at nighttime, I'll end up going pretty slow because I can't see that far in front of me, and I'm thinking, well, what if there is a turn?

What if there is? And it's just straight. But this is how our situation is. We feel like there might be some unknown obstacle, but the Lord has given us a guarantee. He has removed any obstacle that needs to be removed, and so we should, with boldness, go forward, trusting him, regardless of how far the headlights go, and go full speed ahead trusting him.

Malachi’s Messenger and the Coming Day of the Lord

I mentioned that Micah also alludes to this passage, or excuse me, not Micah, Malachi. Malachi chapter three, verse one says, "'Behold, I will send my messenger, "'and he will prepare the way before me, "'and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come "'to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant "'in whom you delight, behold, he is coming,' "'says the Lord of hosts.

"'But who can endure the day of his coming, "'and who can stand when he appears? "'For he is like a refiner's fire, and like a fuller's soap. "'He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, "'and he will purify the sons of Levi, "'and refine them like gold and silver, "'and they will bring offerings in righteousness "'to the Lord.

"'Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem "'will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old, "'as in the former years.'". Now there's a sense in which this is accomplished at the first coming, even John the Baptist speaks of that fire that Christ will baptize with.

As you look at Malachi, and you look at the remainder of the context, you realize, speaking of the day of the Lord, he is in mind, not just the implicit judgment when Jesus separates the wheat from the chaff among his own people of Judah.

What is in mind, in addition to this, is that final return of the Lord. He has sent this messenger. He is preparing the way. It has already been prepared for his first coming, and he has come. It is being prepared for his second coming, and he is coming again.

Proclaim the Lord's name with boldness. Call people to repentance, and do so without fear of mountains, without fear of valleys, knowing that the Lord is the one building the highway, giving us the guarantees, so that we do not have to strategize, we do not have to figure it out.

We can simply trust the Lord for the work of the gospel.

Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this great work that you are doing in the gospel. We thank you for these assurances that we have of your spirit's work in order that the gospel would go forward, in order that everything would be prepared for that final day when Christ returns.

We pray that you would hasten that day, and that all flesh would see the glory of God. In Jesus' name, amen.