Prepare ye the way of the Lord

In chapter 1 Matthew demonstrated that the genealogy of Jesus Christ could be traced back to Abraham and David. In chapter 2 the circumstances of His birth fulfilled prophetic announcements, see vv. 5, 15, 17, 23. Now in chapter 3 Matthew shows He had the prescribed forerunner.

The man. ‘In those days’, when Jesus was living in obscurity in Nazareth, ‘John the Baptist’ came ‘preaching in the wilderness’ in fulfilment of the words of the prophet Isaiah, and everything about the life of this man added weight to his testimony. Though of the priestly line, his sphere of ministry was in the wilderness, outside of the established camp of Judaism, v. 1. He was content to occupy the place appointed to him in scripture, as a ‘voice’ crying in the wilderness, his own identity being of secondary importance to the message he brought, v. 3. His clothing and character of life all conformed to the solemn words he spoke, v. 4. Is the clarity and consistency seen in John’s witness equally evident in our own life and testimony?

The ministry. As the forerunner, the focus in John’s ministry was to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord by making a straight path -one in which every obstacle that might hinder His coming to, or blessing of, the nation has been removed. In the quotation from Isaiah the word for ‘Lord’ in Hebrew is ‘Jehovah’, and used as it is here in connection with the ministry of John the Baptist it is a testimony to the essential deity of the Lord Jesus, the One for whose manifestation John prepared.

The message. Since the sins of the nation had issued in the glory of the Lord departing from Israel, repentance and confession of sins was foremost in John’s message, vv. 2, 6. He was fearless in exposing sin, forthright in speaking of ‘repentance’, ‘wrath to come’, and ‘unquenchable fire’, and was faithful in his testimony to Christ, asserting that a man’s relationship to the Lord determines his future destiny, vv. 7-12. This was not the message the Pharisees and Sadducees wanted to hear. Later, the Lord said to them, ‘John came . . . and ye believed him not’, Matt. 21. 32. It might have been unpalatable, but John did not shrink from preaching it, and neither should we, 2 Tim. 4. 2.