As it is written in the prophets.
The appropriateness of this double prophecy
Its authors were-
I. The first prophet (Isaiah 40:3) and the last (Malachi 3:1.) who wrote. John was the last prophet of the old dispensation and the first of the new who spoke.
II. The one like John was a prophet of hope; the other like him again was the prophet of despair.
III. Isaiah set the door ajar for Christianity which John flung wide open: Malachi began to shut the door on judaism which John closed. (Anon.)
Which shall prepare Thy way before Thee.
Need of preparation for Christ
In the East, few good roads are ever made; and such roads as have been made are generally kept in most wretched repair. Hence, when a sovereign is about to visit any part of his dominions, it is requisite that a messenger be sent on before to get the way made ready. Such, in things spiritual, was John’s mission. Men’s ways were in a wretched state. Encumbrances and stumbling blocks lay everywhere scattered about. Mud and mire were the order of the day. It seemed impossible for anyone to get along through life with unpolluted garments, or without stumbling and falling, and getting bruised and broken. The real preparation that was needed was in the hearts of the people. (J. Morison, D. D.)
How to prepare the way for Christ
How was John to prepare the people to receive Christ?
1. By foretelling them that Christ was to come immediately after him.
2. By preaching the doctrine of Christ, touching His Person and offices.
3. By preaching the doctrine of faith in Christ, stirring up the people to believe in Him as the Messiah.
4. By preaching repentance, exhorting them to turn unto God from their sin, that so they might be fit to receive Christ.
5. By administering baptism. (G. Petter.)
Man’s part in the work of spiritual preparation
Though the preparation of the heart for Christ is the special work of God’s Spirit, yet He requires that we also should do that which lieth in us toward this preparing of ourselves: though God only can work this preparation, yet He will have us use the means by which it may come to be wrought. He does not work in us, as in stocks and stones that have no sense or motion; but He first moves us by His Spirit, and enables us to the preparation of our hearts, so that we being moved by Him may, after a sort, move ourselves in using the means to prepare our hearts.
1. We must labour to be truly humbled in the sense of our sins, and of our natural misery without Christ. We are never fit to embrace Him, till we feel how wretched we are without Him.
2. We must labour to forsake all sin in heart and affection, and we must purge the love of it out of our hearts.
3. We must get a hungering and thirsting desire after Christ.
4. We must use all means to get faith, whereby to receive Christ into our hearts. (G. Petter)
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The heart prepared to receive Christ
Labour we daily in preparing our hearts unto Christ: strive we to make Him a plain way, and a straight path into our heart. To this end, remove the annoyances of this way of Christ: thy sins and corruptions are the hindrances: take away these by true repentance, that they stop not up the way of Christ, and bar Him out of thy heart. Labour also for true faith in Christ, that by it thou mayest be fitted to receive Him, and that He may come to dwell in thee. Do not think that ever Christ will come into thy heart to dwell there, or that thou canst ever be fit to receive Him, if thou be not careful of preparing thyself to entertain Him. Will any earthly prince go to take up his lodging in such a house or city, where he knows there will be no preparation for his entertainment? No more will Christ in a heart unready to receive Him. (G. Petter)
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Preparing the way of the Lord
The reference may be to the state of the Jewish Church and the Gentile nations. But what is applied generally to the nations is equally applicable to every human heart.
I. There are formidable obstacles to be removed.
1. Prejudice. The gospel is often viewed under a false light, or through a perverting medium. The self-denial, the purity, the separation from the world which Christianity inculcates begets prejudice in many.
2. Carnality. Base desires, carnal affections, etc., present formidable obstacles to the claims of the Lord (Luke 14:18-20).
3. Hardness of heart. By nature impenitent, blind to its own extreme sinfulness, and, even after confession of sin, unwillingness to forsake them (Isaiah 46:12-13; Ezekiel 11:19).
4. Self-righteousness. Though spiritually diseased and dying, men imagine themselves “whole,” and without need of a physician. They will not accept salvation by simple faith in the merits of another (Romans 10:1-2).
II. Repentance is necessary to the removal of these obstacles. (A. Tucker.)
Christ’s way to be prepared, not ours
See what all ministers of the Word must chiefly labour in, even to prepare men for Christ; and this is the main thing to be aimed at in our preaching-we are not to preach ourselves, but Christ; we are not to prepare our own way, or the way of any other, but the way of Christ in the hearts of our people. To this end, we are to speak so to the consciences of our hearers that we may (if possible) by our ministry work faith and repentance in them, and so make way for Christ to enter into their hearts. (G. Petter.)
Preparatory work needful for spiritual progress
When you see a party of men engaged in taking levels and measuring distances along a particular line of country, and a little afterwards, other men laying rails, and building bridges, and cutting tunnels, it is not difficult to guess that the great tide of commerce is about to surge over that region. When loads of wood and stone are laid down on a vacant lot, it is at once evident that a building is about to be erected. So the Old Testament prophecies and John’s preaching showed that the way was being prepared for the coming of Jesus. After the Romans had reduced a country to the position of a province, one of their first cares was to construct a strong military road into it. Thus the way was always prepared for their legions. In the East when some great chief is passing through the country, it is not uncommon to make new ways for his passage. Travellers in unsettled parts of the country soon learn to appreciate as never before the advantages of having roads along which to journey. Ways must be constructed for the progress of Christ’s truth in the world and in the heart. (The American Sunday School Times.)
Road building in the East
To “prepare the way” before a sovereign is, and always has been, so universal a practice in the East that wherever an unusually good spot of road is found, or indeed any piece of way that shows signs of labour, a tradition or fable is almost invariably found to lie along it to the effect that that piece of road was built expressly for the passage of such a royal personage, either the sovereign of the realm which includes the territory, or one of his guests of equal exaltation. On going from Cairo to the pyramids, over an exceptionally good road, the traveller will not fail to be told that it was built for the Prince of Wales, or for the Empress Eugenie, or for the Khedive himself, or even, rarely, for Napoleon the Great. (The American Sunday School Times.)
The law of preparation
God doesn’t need man’s help in anything; but He chooses to call for it in a great many things. And when God does leave a place for man’s work, man must do his part-or take the consequences. God is ready to give a crop to the farmer; but He calls on the farmer to plough and plant and harrow and hoe in preparing the way for God’s sun and shower, and power of increase. If the farmer fails to so prepare the way of the Lord for a harvest, he must prepare for a famine-or starve. God is ready to give a blessing on our homes; but we must prepare the way of the Lord for a blessing there, by our love and our faithfulness and our industry. It is not enough to bang up a framed chromo on the dining room walls: “God bless our home!” As in the field and in the home, so in our hearts. If we want God’s presence and blessing there, we must prepare the way for them. We must plan to find room for the Lord in our hearts. We must make ready to do His bidding We must decide to give up all habits of life that are inconsistent with His service, We must make a proffer of ourselves, of our time, of our talents, of all our posses sloes, to the Lord. If we refuse to do this, we must not wonder that whoever else has a blessing we are without it. (The American Sunday School Times.)