Mark 1:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Mark 1:3

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Then he quotes Isaiah 40: ‘The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God’ (Isaiah 40:3). John says that he is that voice, predicted by Isaiah as the forerunner. He is a lone voice, crying out in the wilderness where John has gone to baptize. He is an unnamed voice of little significance in comparison to the one who comes after him, whom he announces. He is a voice of warning, a voice that speaks of the coming of the Lord and tells the people to prepare for that. Prepare the way of the Lord is not the way which the people will travel to go to the Lord, but the way which the Lord will travel to come to us. That way is to be made straight, or level in the Hebrew, so that it is easy for the Lord to come to us. The way this is to be done is through repentance. The obstacles which lie in the way consist of all of the pride, the unwillingness to submit to his Lordship, the deceitfulness, the justification of sins and the excuse making. These and many other sins make the path which the Lord has to travel to come to us anything but straight. Prepare the way of the Lord, because Christ has come into the world, and he is coming to visit his people Israel. If Elijah, in the person of John the Baptist, does not bring them to repentance through his preaching, they are in great danger. Malachi says, ‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: ⁶ And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse’ (Malachi 4:5-6).Now there was an enormous problem. For the Jews at that time, there were so many obstacles to their believing in the Messiah and his coming; the prophecies of Isaiah and Malachi refer to these obstacles. ‘Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight’ (Isaiah 40:4) – that's quoted by Luke. Any journey is made much harder if great valleys have to be crossed, or great mountains scaled. The picture is of these features of the land being levelled off to make the easiest possible journey, and again, this is to be done through repentance. The twisted obstacles that stopped the Jews from understanding about Messiah. All this had to be cut through. The scribes and the Pharisees, had taught them, completely wrongly, that salvation was through works. You must observe all the minute regulations of the ceremonial law and God will be pleased with you. The ceremonial law was supposed to draw attention to the need for the great coming sacrifice of Christ. But no, their clergy taught them that by meticulously observing all the washings, and the fastings, and the ceremonial worship, God is pleased. Salvation by works! All that had to be got out of their minds somehow before they would understand a Saviour, who was the one promised, who would make an atonement, and give free salvation. Then too, the clergy, the chief priests and scribes and Pharisees controlled all the platforms; they controlled everything with an iron hand. You couldn't preach, you couldn't teach without their permission, without their training, without their licences. How were you going to get a hearing? Well, John the Baptist was able by the power of God to cut through all that. He preached in the wilderness, beyond their reach, outside their licence, as it were, and the population went out to him en masse. The barren wilderness of Judaea, with its undulating landscape, dry as a bone, covered in shale pebbles, sand, and sparse vegetation; that's where John was, beyond their region of control, and out went the vast crowds, and all the land knew about it. It was a sensation. He performed no mighty works, no miracles, but his preaching by the power of God just compelled the multitudes.

Application

God will not deal with us if we do not show we are serious about finding him. We must make straight his paths. The people of John’s day understood what this figure meant. Our sins stand in the way of the Lord. If we wish him to come to us, we do not put obstacles in his way, but we clear the ground making it as easy as possible for him to come.

Questions

This is double prophecy, dual sense in prophecy. There are people today who say, there's no dual sense in prophecy. The Scripture and prophecy only have one meaning. No, the Scriptures are full of dual sense in prophecy. It’s simple; this is how it works. The first fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah in chapter 40 was the release of the Jews from captivity in Babylon. The prophecies are literally fulfilled, when the captive nation is released, and a vast number, a large number – a minority altogether – are able to return to Jerusalem and to Israel. But that's only a partial fulfilment. That in its turn – that token, that literal token – is a prediction of the coming of Christ, and how multitudes of Jews and Gentiles, like captives released, will return to God through Christ. This is how Mark applies it. It has already been applied by the Jews to the release from the Babylonian captivity, and now for the second time it's applied by Matthew, Mark, and Luke to the coming of John the Baptist, and the coming of Christ. The prophecy had two fulfilments: a physical fulfilment which only partly honoured the terms of the prophecy, and a spiritual fulfilment in the coming of Christ. That is how prophecy works, and you don't understand Isaiah unless you understand the dual sense in prophecy. A token fulfilment; a true fulfilment, to all the great prophecies.

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Mark 1:3 Commentary and Bible Study