Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’
Isaiah 40:1-5 NIVUK
Our litigious society has created a culture where the labelling of goods and products often has to state the absolutely obvious. For example, packets of nuts with 'May contain nuts' stated on them. Fish products with 'Contains fish' on them in bold writing. Washing machines and dryers that tell people not to climb inside them.
Sometimes you read these labels and have to wonder just how stupid people can be, but the sad reality is that companies do this because they are needed; because, yes, there are people out there who are this stupid and will sue if something goes wrong.
These few verses can be considered as a form of labelling. They are the label for the message preached by John the Baptist hundreds of years later, as Matthew confirmed:
This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: ‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.” ’
Matthew 3:3 NIVUK
John's message was the message that led many to believe in Jesus. It was a simple message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3). There was nothing complex or smart or sophisticated about it. His ministry was astonishingly plain and direct.
It was, however, very distinctive:
John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt round his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.
Matthew 3:4 NIVUK
John was, in fact, copying the style of the much earlier prophet Elijah (2 Kings 1:8). This deliberate, and somewhat unusual, fashion choice was to ensure the people understood what his role was - he was coming as 'the Elijah' to prepare the way for Jesus:
‘See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.
Malachi 4:5 NIVUK
Rather fittingly, since he lived there and people had to go there to repent and be baptised by him (Matthew 3:1-6), John's ministry is described by Isaiah as being like the construction of a desert road.
However, perhaps there is another potential application of this picture. God's people had also been living for four hundred years in a spiritual desert. This had been prophesied by Amos (Amos 8:11-12). John's ministry prepared the way for the end of this period and took the people to a time when God would walk among them once more in His Son Jesus Christ.
But why are these verses relevant to us?
There are many, many people in the world today who live in a spiritual desert. They do not, and indeed, cannot, hear the Word of the Lord. They are like the Ninevites of Jonah's day: spiritually-speaking, they don't know their left from their right (Jonah 4:11).
Just like in John the Baptist's day, these people need someone to lead them back to God. They need someone to be the conduit, the means through which they will be saved. They need repentance. They need faith. They need a new life.
They need a desert road to lead them home.
What if you and I are that desert road? What if we are the means to lead people out of the desert and into the arms of their Saviour? What if the words we say and the way we live could be just what they need to have their lives transformed for the better?
Isaiah describes four kinds of desert road that are changed to allow the Lord to come. He's not just talking about infrastructure or planning or engineering. Each of these desert roads represent negative character traits that are utterly transformed by the power of the Gospel when we repent.
But here is the thing. We hold out a message that we say transforms lives. And we're correct. It does. But for that message to be credible, it must have transformed us first. Before others are changed, we too need to be changed.
Think about it: would you buy from someone who refuses to buy their own company's products because they think they are rubbish? A CEO of a nationwide jewelry brand made that mistake in the 1980s in the UK. He was famously asked if he would buy his own company's jewelry. He said 'No', because he felt it was poor quality. His stock tanked, his company went bust and that interview became legendary.
And that's just it. We cannot tell people their lives need to be transformed by repentance and faith when we ourselves have not repented and have no faith. We cannot tell them to taste and see that the Lord is good when we haven't tasted of Him ourselves. Our message is completely undermined when our way of life is untouched by the Word of God.
So when we examine these four desert roads, these four character traits that the Gospel changes, we need to ask first and foremost if we have truly been changed.
And there is something profoundly Biblical about this:
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realise that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test?
2 Corinthians 13:5 NIVUK
So, as we study this verse, let's have the courage to examine ourselves, to gaze into the mirror of God's Word, and be changed.
Firstly, let's look at THE VALLEY ROAD.
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