Prepare the way of the Lord

Scripture:

Isaiah 40:1-5

“Comfort, yes, comfort My people!”
Says your God.
² “Speak ^[a]comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the Lord’s hand
Double for all her sins.”

³ The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make straight ^[b]in the desert
A highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low;
The crooked places shall be made ^[c]straight
And the rough places smooth;
⁵ The glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Observation:

I observe in this passage:

1. The heart of God to cry out and speak comfort to His people. Though He is an Omnipotent God, He needs a vessel He can use to comfort, to speak, and to be evidently present to express His heart — someone to stand in the gap for Israel.
2. Speaking freedom to Israel, not literally from slavery, but from their iniquity, for they were repeatedly committing sins.
3. I am not sure who this voice crying in the wilderness is, but this passage talks about His people preparing for the coming of the Messiah. In the desert, we can’t see a straight path, they only used the heavenly bodies for direction. During that time, their only hope was the Messiah, but it seemed impossible because they didn’t know how or where. But God is commanding His people to prepare a way for the coming of Jesus.
4. I believe those crooked places, hills, and valleys represent their lives that need to come to repentance, as John the Baptist mentioned in Luke 3.
5. And it came to pass that these prophecies were fulfilled when Jesus came here on earth.

Promise:

The glory of the Lord has been revealed to all mankind, when Jesus was born, when He lived with the disciples and showed us examples, when He died on the cross, when He resurrected from the grave, and when He ascended into heaven. Not all witnessed it, but to those who did, God gave the command to disciple the world.

Application:

As His disciple, I still want to apply these verses in my life, to comfort His people, to cry and intercede for them. Even though Christ died for us and gave salvation to everyone, not everyone has received it. I want to be that one crying in the desert, saying, “Prepare for the second coming of the Lord, for it is near.” Many are lost, heartbroken, and still living in darkness. Many are praying and crying to the Lord because of their personal life’s burdens. But I will cry for others, intercede, stand in the gap, and seek to know the heart of God.

Summary:

The glory of the Lord has been revealed to mankind because of the finished work of Christ. But people today will see and experience it through a life that walks in and lives out what the Lord Jesus would do every day.

Love the unlovable then His glory will be revealed to them. The same goes for the needy, the rejected, the fatherless, the LGBTQ, and even those who sin against us daily.