Luke has written an account of Jesus’s life, but as we already saw in Luke 1, even before Jesus, Luke wrote about John the Baptist, who would play a critically important role in Jesus’s ministry. John’s role was to prepare the way for Jesus to come.
Luke quotes Isaiah, saying that John was the one that Isaiah wrote about in Isaiah 40 when he said:
“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
Luke 3:4-6
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
And all people will see God’s salvation.’”
Isaiah had written this originally to the people of Israel in Isaiah chapter 40. Just before he had written that, though, in chapter 39, Isaiah had written about the coming of the Babylonians who would come to destroy Jerusalem and conquer the Israelites, including, this time, the Kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom of the two Israelite kingdoms. The Babylonians were to come as a punishment upon the Israelites for their infidelity to God and for the sin that was rampant amongst them.
Yet now, in Isaiah 40, Isaiah says that the Israelites should be comforted. They should know that the Lord is coming. Their sins have been paid for, twice over in fact, and their Lord is coming to them. It is a picture of a coming king, a conquering king. One who is worthy to have all imperfections of the road upon which he is striding be prepared and repaired prior to him coming so that his travel will be smooth and his glory to be clearly seen. This is the king that will be coming to the Israelites.
And yet now, Luke says that John is the one that Isaiah is speaking of when he talked about the one who would come. John is the one who is announcing that the Lord is coming. He is the one calling for the valleys to be filled in. He is the one crying for the hills and mountains to be made low. He is the one shouting for every crooked road to be made straight.
But what does that mean? Did that ever happen? Did John get the Romans to go out and knock down the hills? Or fill in the valleys? Or make the windy roads of Israel straight?
No, this is a reference to the spiritual reality of our lives. John’s message was of repentance. He called the people to repent, to leave behind their wicked ways, to leave behind the sinfulness of their lives. John called them a brood of vipers and he called them to come to God in repentance.
By repenting, the hills and mountains in their lives would be made low. By repenting, the valleys would be filled in. By repenting, the crooked paths of the people’s lives would be made straight. And by repenting, the way of the Lord would be prepared so that he could come. Jesus would come to the people who have prepared the way for him to come, in repentance. And Jesus’s glory would be made known both within them as well as through them.
This, in fact, was the same message that Jesus gave to the people as he came:
“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Mark 1:15
If we want to prepare the way of the Lord, there is one way to do it. It starts with repentance. It starts with leaving behind the sin of our lives. It starts with declaring that we no longer want the things of this world, but instead wanting God himself. We prepare the way of the Lord, the coming of Christ in our lives, in one way: through repentance.