CLEAR THE WAY FOR THE LORD

Isaiah 40

“1 “Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.  2 “Speak kindly to Jerusalem;  And call out to her, that her warfare has ended, That her iniquity has been removed, That she has received of the Lord’s  hand Double for all her sins.””  

Isaiah is told by the Lord to comfort His people

Beginning with this chapter, Isaiah describes the events which will occur in the nation Israel.  He is writing words of encouragement  for his people after they are taken captive  to Babylon.  Isaiah’s words are words of encouragement for a people who have been overwhelmed by their own sense of sinfulness and failure. Their life in Babylonian captivity appears hopeless. Their life as a nation is a failed life as a result of their sin and disobedience to God. Now the great Prophet has given them hope. God has not forgotten them. God tells them through Isaiah, “Comfort them!” There is still hope’ (confident expectation) that they still possessed in the Lord their God.  God would one day return a faithful remnant, restore the city and nation, and once again the people would live in their own land and serve their God.

Though the people had sinned and failed the Lord and were now suffering the consequences of their sin, individually and corporately, Isaiah is told by the Lord to ‘comfort’ them. 

The Lord often brings comfort and consolation in the lives of His people.  The great preacher H.A. Ironside noted that God the Father iss called the God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3

The Lord tells Isaiah to ‘speak kindly’ to Jerusalem.  The people had already suffered the consequences of their sin, having been disciplined severely by the Lord because of their having departed severely from the path that He had for them, and now was the time for healing and restoration to begin.  God would now begin to reconstruct lives to live humbly and obediently before the Lord.

 

Christians need to realize that the Lord does not bring difficulties, trials, tribulations, and chastisement in our lives randomly or because of a motive of vengeance, rather like any loving father does with his children so the Lord disciplines His children in order to teach them those valuable lessons that will motivate them to go in the right direction in the future and end up being good and God fearing people, not evil.

The sin of the people of Judea was so severe that in the Lord’s reckoning she had to suffer double the consequences for her sin during this time of her discipline at the hand of the Lord.

Isaiah tells his people that the Lord has now completed His discipline of the nation, for now her ‘warfare has ended’, however now the nation will take a full 70 years of captivity in order to fully turn back to the Lord and be healed and restored into His fellowship as His nation and people.

The prophet Jeremiah spoke of this Jer. 29:10-14 “For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,‘ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.

Verses 40:3-5  - “ A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness;  Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.  “Let 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;   Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, And all flesh will see it together;  For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.””

In Isaiah’s day when a king would be brought into a land, he would be carried upon his throne by his minions, and it was very important that the road on which the king would be carried be as level and straight as possible.  Here, we see that the Lord who is king over the nation needs the road by which He would come to His people as the Messiah to be as level and straight as possible.

 

This prophesy of the need for a proclamation to ‘clear the way for the Lord’ had a dual fulfillment:

The Messianic fulfillment:

These prophetic verses we know are Messianic for they are quoted by Matthew in Matt. 3:1-3 in reference to John the Baptist fulfilling them, “1 Now in those days John the Baptist *came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying,2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”3 For this is the  one referred to by Isaiah the prophet, saying, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight!’””

John the Baptist fulfilled these prophetic verses by his preaching the message of repentance to the people.  As the people repented of their sins, that is made a 180° turn and returned back to the Lord and obediently following Him, then the people would be ready for the Messiah to come.  Their hearts would be in that place where they would be able to hear and respond appropriately to His message.

The valleys of sinful actions and habits must be repented of and brought to the level ground of the righteousness of God.

The lofty mountains of pride and self-exaltation must be repented of and removed to be brought to the level ground of the righteousness of God.

The crooked ways of perverting and twisting of our ways from the straight ways of walking uprightly with the Lord must be repented of and straightened out to the righteousness of God.

The rough ways where though we may try to be walking uprightly with the Lord and yet we are not as genuinely loving and gentle towards others as we should be must be repented of and smoothed out to the righteousness of God.