June 27, 2000

• Luke 3:4-6 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

  
  

  A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, Part 1

  Luke 3:4-6

  God is the author of history.  History unfolds not as a random series of serendipitous events influenced by a myriad of disconnected forces, but history unfolds as the purpose of God and the plan of God worked out in precision.  It unfolds from beginning to end under His sovereign control.  At the center of history and really the purpose for history, the purpose for the universe, the earth and its human population is the salvation of sinners.  That is the saga that gives meaning to creation.  God brought the universe, the earth and mankind and all his environment into being in order that He might redeem sinners.  History then is primarily His story, it is the story of redemption.

  In that sense all of history has integrity, continuity and purpose as designed and executed carefully by God.  Nothing proves God's control over history and particular God's concern about the story of redemption, nothing proves that better or more convincingly than fulfilled prophecy.  One of the reasons we know God wrote the Bible is because there in Scripture hundreds of prophecies about future events, very precise prophecies, many of which have already come to pass in the first coming of Jesus and in other historic events that occurred in Old Testament times.  There are many more prophecies yet to come to pass, connected with the time around the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

  Anybody who really wanted to know whether the Bible was in fact written by God need only to honestly and thoughtfully and objectively look at what the Bible predicted which has already come to pass with precise accuracy.  The Bible is filled with hundreds of prophecies, most of which relate to the coming of Christ, either His first coming which have already been fulfilled, or His Second Coming yet to be fulfilled.

  Just one of those hundreds of prophecies, a most magnificent prophecy, a most far-reaching prophecy is the subject of our study today.  Look at chapter 3 and let's read through the text. 

  "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.  And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."  Then the prophecy, "As it is written in the book of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight, Every ravine shall be filled up and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall become straight and the rough roads smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

  That is a prophecy, as Luke indicates, from Isaiah 40:3-5.  That prophecy was given 700 years before John and Jesus began their ministries.  This prophecy in the context of Isaiah has sweeping implications.  Luke, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has picked a perfect prophecy that has immense theological, historical and salvation implications.  It is not just limited to John, the forerunner crying in the wilderness, it is the whole message of what he is saying that is coming to fulfillment at that moment with the arrival of Messiah.  All its implications are for Israel and for all flesh, that is all people across the faith of the earth.  This is a sweeping prophecy that literally covers all the ground of redemptive history.  

  We can safely say that John stands as a large looming rebuke to the popular church growth movement which claims that cultural relevance and social savvy are the key to effective ministry.  Well John didn't care about cultural relevance, he didn't have any social savvy.  He didn't know his culture by personal experience or study.  But he knew his God and he knew the message of his God, that's the way God wanted it.  The true prophet of God has never been called to find the common ground with his culture.  The true prophet of God has always been called to bring the pure uninfluenced Word of God to confront that culture, preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sin.

  We saw as Luke unfolded the historical setting and the geographical setting, and then we looked at the theological setting.  When John came he came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  They were religious people, they were lost.  They needed the forgiveness of sin.  The theology was they had a form of religion without the reality of it.  They had a zeal for God but not according to a true knowledge of God, as Paul put it.  And so John tells them their sins can be forgiven but only if they repent.  And if they repent so deeply that they're willing to be baptized in the same way that the Gentile was when a Gentile wanted to enter into Judaism.  When a Gentile wanted to be a proselyte, they were baptized in a special ceremony to show that they needed to be cleansed before they can engage themselves with the covenant people of God.

  By baptizing Jews, John is saying you have to repent to such a depth that you will confess your no better than a Gentile.  So he preached a baptism for repentance for the forgiveness of sin. That was the theological perspective.  People were under the damning burden of guilt and they needed forgiveness which God always has given, always will give to those who repent, whose repentance is genuine and in this case evidenced by a willingness to say I am no better than a pagan.

  That brings us then to a fourth component of the setting, the historical, the geographical, the theological and finally the prophetical.  There is a context here that fits into the scheme of Scripture.  The really important element comes at this juncture because with the coming of Messiah, it is critical to make certain that everybody understands this is in fact the true Messiah, and the true forerunner of the Messiah, and evidence can be gained by looking at an Old Testament prophecy.

  Obviously it is critical that the Jews believe the gospel, and that is going to necessitate some continuity from the Old Testament.  John doesn't want to step on the scene and just launch something in a vacuum.  He wants to put a hook in the Old Testament that is very tight, a clasp that can't be broken and show that his ministry and the coming of Jesus is a precise fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.  This is the true word of the same God who wrote the Old Testament.  And so John calls on a prophecy from Isaiah.  And again, this is a powerful and really a ponderous prophecy in the sense of its great weightiness.  It is this prophecy that comes written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight.  Every ravine shall be filled up, every mountain and hill shall be brought low, the crooked shall become straight, the rough road smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

  The obvious thing there is that the prophet Isaiah predicted a time when a voice would come in the wilderness.  Well here's John and he's been in the wilderness since a child.  That's his domain, that's where he's always lived.  He's the voice in the wilderness.  And when that voice comes it will say, "Make ready the way of the Lord," and that's exactly what John was called to do.  When the angel Gabriel came to Zacharias and said you're going to have a son, and that son is going to be the forerunner of the Messiah.  He's going to make a people ready for the coming of the Lord.  That's what Zacharias was told by the angel Gabriel who came from God.  So from the beginning, John was to be the prophet in the wilderness who got the people ready for the Lord's arrival.

  John's responsibility was to prepare the people for the coming of the Lord.  The analogy that is used by John is from the prophecy of Isaiah in which Isaiah under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit likens preparedness to getting the highway ready for a king.  In ancient times when a monarch went on a tour of his domain and approached the various cities and towns along the route, there would be an advanced message "The king is coming and you need to make things ready.  We don't want the king going through deep ravines, we don't want the king having to climb over great high rocks and mountains.  We don't want the king going on some circuitous pathway.  We don't want the king to have to come stumbling over rocks and boulders and great holes in the path.  We want a highway for the king that's suit his dignity and one that provides ease for the monarch.  We want you to get a highway ready for the great king to come to your city."

  The people would set about to do this.  It was the greatest of events to have the monarch come to their town.  They would know of such an arrival.  They hadn't seen the king so it was an act of faith, but a forerunner came and said he's coming, get everything ready so that he has easy access into your city.  Start preparing a road.  Start constructing a road because in a matter of months or whatever the time might be, the king will be arriving.

  Isaiah said in his prophecy, the king will come some day but before he comes, a voice will come in the wilderness and tell people to get the highway ready for the king.  And here Luke quotes that because John is the fulfillment of that.  He is the voice crying in the wilderness.  He has come to the people and he is saying to the people of Israel, "Get the highway ready, the king is right behind me."  And truthfully, about six months later the King did begin His ministry.

  John is taking that prophecy of Isaiah and fulfilling it.  And Luke makes note of that fulfillment.  John was calling on the people to prepare a highway for the true King who was Messiah. 

  Before we look at the specific fulfillment of the prophecy in Luke 3, I need to go back to Isaiah 40 because I need for you to understand this prophecy the way the Jews who heard it would understand it, or the Jews who read it would understand it.

  In the time of Jesus the Jewish people, for the most part, knew the Old Testament.  And if they knew anything about the Old Testament, one of the things they knew about was the prophet Isaiah.  Isaiah was a great prophet.  Isaiah's prophecy was a large prophecy, it was a prophecy they were very, very familiar with.  And when Luke in his writing refers to Isaiah 40:3-5, which is what he quotes, immediately the Jewish reader would understand the whole context and flavor of that prophecy.  There would be a complete setting in the mind of any knowledgeable Jew, you need to understand that because you can't grasp the greatness of this prophecy if you don't have a framework and a context for it.

  First of all, you immediately see a repetition of the word "comfort."  "Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God." 

  For you it's...oh, that's nice, I'm glad God feels that way about comforting His people.  You might have just nothing more than that minimalistic response if you didn't know what I'm about to tell you.  The great book of Isaiah has 66 chapters.  The first 39 chapters major on severe judgment.  The northern kingdom, Israel, has gone into captivity from which they never returned.  The southern kingdom, Judah, in which the city of Jerusalem exists, is now the only Israel there is.  Judgment already fell on the northern kingdom for their unabashed and unrelenting idolatry and they were carried off into captivity never to come back.  The only Israel there is now is the southern kingdom.  And God has been pronouncing judgment through Isaiah on the southern kingdom, severe judgment which was fulfilled in the Babylonian captivity 586 B.C. and is still being fulfilled today as God brings judgment on unbelieving Israel even in our time.

  You'll read in the first 39 chapters about God's judgment on other nations as well.  By the time you get through 39 chapters, it's pretty easy for you if you're a Jewish person to believe that there's no much hope for the future, that all that's going to be left for you is doom and gloom and judgment.  All of that judgment is based on God's reaction to Israel's sin and to the sins of the other nations.  That's why when you come to chapter 40 and you read, "Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God," it is dramatic. 

  The words of judgment and of comfort were written by the same writer and they were authored by the same God because the same God who pronounces judgment can also offer comfort.  That's certainly not impossible to comprehend.  But it is stark in the dramatic change.  Look a little further in verses 1 and 2.  "Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God.  Speak kindly to Jerusalem and call out to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been removed, that she has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.  Tell Israel the judgment is over, the war is over.  The iniquity is removed.  The payment has been made."

  This is a shocking change. There isn't even as much transition, it's just kind of a cold change.  Chapter 40 then launches the rest of the book of Isaiah all the way to chapter 66 and the message changes from judgment to salvation, from warning to encouragement.  And the latter half of Isaiah's prophecy is all about salvation and the Messiah and His Kingdom and righteousness and joy and peace.  And the simple message of the overall view of the book is the same God who has judged Israel for sins will some day save Israel.  That is the great message of the book of Isaiah. 

  The same God who promised terrible judgment on a sinning Israel, promises salvation on a penitent Israel.  That is at the heart of redemptive history.  God is not finished with Israel.  Whatever may lie ahead and the prophet Isaiah knows what's going to lie ahead, he's said it for 39 chapters and the people know it, and it's also been prophesied by many other prophets, but whatever may lie ahead for the people of Judah and Jerusalem, God's ultimate purpose for them is not judgment, God's ultimate purpose for them is salvation.  God's ultimate purpose for them is not destruction but redemption, not death but life.  God's ultimate purpose for them is not the abolition of His covenant, but the fulfillment of His covenant.

  Here is a dramatic insight into the unfolding and eternal purposes of salvation that God has purposed for Israel.  There is a future for Israel, for Jewish people who today reject their Messiah, but some day will be saved by the very Messiah they reject because they will look on Him and see Him for who He really is and turn to Him for salvation and Zacharias said, "A fountain of cleansing will be opened to the house of Israel."

  These two verses have a warm affectionate and tender tone, something unfamiliar in the first 39 chapters.  God is saying there will come a time when sin has been paid for.  There will come a time when the suffering is over, warfare has ended.  There will come a time of salvation so here's the message, comfort, O comfort My people.  Who's God talking to?  It says "your God," who's He talking to?  It doesn't tell us.  I can answer it.  He's talking to anybody who ever speaks to Israel.  If you ever get an opportunity to speak to Jewish people, tell them this...yes, you've suffered, yes, God punished you, yes, God took the northern kingdom into captivity, God took the southern kingdom into Babylonian captivity, yes, God has punished the nation that has rejected Him and rejected Scripture and rejected the Messiah, yes, you have suffered even in this century at the hands of Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Arab terrorists, etc.  Yes you have suffered but the purposes of God toward Israel are salvation. And so, please, whenever you speak to Jewish people, will you say this to them?  Comfort, comfort, comfort...warfare has ended, iniquity has been removed, sin has been paid for.  That's the message.

   I don't ever want to be responsible to say to the Jews, "I hate to tell you this, folks, but all the promises God ever made to you about salvation are now fulfilled in the church, so you're out."  That is not the message to Israel.  The message to Israel is not that you've been excluded, the message to Israel is comfort, comfort, comfort.  Sin is paid for, all can be forgiven.  And then that becomes the theme, it's introduced in verses 1 and 2, that becomes the theme of the remaining prophecy of Isaiah.  And as you go through this prophecy from 40 to 66, that is the theme.

  To show you how dominant a theme it is, let me just show you in succeeding sections what it says.  Go down to verse 6, still in chapter 40, a voice calls and it says, "Call out," here's another calling to anybody who speaks to Israel, "tell them this...what shall I call out?...tell them this, all flesh is grass and all its loveliness is like the flower, the field, the grass withers, the flower fades."  Just tell everybody...Hey, grass and flowers die, tell them that.  And it happens whenever the wind, the breath of the Lord, the wind blows on it and people are like grass and they wither and they die, but the word of our God stands forever.  We live in a world where things die, people die, grass dies, flower dies, things die, but the word of our God doesn't die.  Whatever God promised He will do. 

  So, get up on a mountain he says in verse 9, whoever you are, they're talking to Israel.  "Get up on a mountain, O Zion, bearer of good news and lift up your voice mightily.  O Jerusalem, bearer of good news, lift it up, do not fear.  You talk to Zion," which is just a synonym for Israel.  "And you talk to Jerusalem," a synonym for Israel, "and you say to the cities of Judah, here's what you say when you talk to Jewish people, verse 10, behold, the Lord God will come."  You tell them that.  You tell them God will come. 

  See, you've got a problem.  You are alienated from God, Israel, you are suffering, you're in unbelief, an apostate religion.  And at the time when John came on the scene and this prophecy was fulfilled and Jesus showed up, as I said, Israel was apostate and unbelieving.  And sad to say, they rejected John, they rejected Jesus, they're still that way.  But he says, "Whenever you talk to Israel, tell them this, 'The Lord God will come.'"  You need to underline that.  That is critical.  That solves the problem because the problem is this, how can God say, "O your warfare is ended, your iniquities removed and your sins been paid for?"  How could He do that?  Does He just decide He's not going to make an issue out of sin?  Or did the people do enough good deeds to cancel out the bad deeds?  Or did the people devise some means to save themselves or to satisfy God?  NO.

  The only possible way that comfort could ever come to sinners, the only possible way that Jerusalem could ever be comforted, that warfare could end, that iniquity could be removed and sin could be paid for was if the Lord Himself came.  That is so critical.  After 39 chapters of indictment and you're feeling the tremendous weight of sin and sinners under the weight of Isaiah's prophecy are feeling the accumulated weight of the record of crimes against God's towering holy perfection, and they're crushed under the weight of their guilt and then comes this announcement, "Comfort, O comfort you, My people," and the question is...how in the world can we be comforted under such a weight of guilt?  How can our sins be forgiven?  How can this happen?  And the answer is, "Get up on the mountain and shout it out, I've got good news, the Lord will come."

  The whole story isn't told in the judgment.  Comfort My people, says your God, comfort them with good news, the Lord will come.  Look at verse 10 again, "And He'll come with power, with His arm ruling for Him, with His reward, and His recompense.  He's going to come and rule His people and reward His people and He's not going to be like a judge, He's going to be like a shepherd and He's going to tend His flock and in His arm He'll gather the lambs and carry them in His bosom and gently leave the nursing ewes, the female sheep that are nursing the little ones."  And the picture is of this loving shepherd who just gathers up in his arms the little lambs that can't walk and who walk slowly because the ewes are laden with milk because they're nursing and they can't go in a rapid way, so He's just tenderly dealing with His flock.

  This is a vision of God that's different.  This is a promise of restoration and salvation.  Go down to verse 28, "Do you not know, have you not heard, the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth doesn't become weary or tied?  His understanding is inscrutable.  He gives strength to the weary.  And to him who lacks, mighty increases power.  And though ewes grow weary and tired, even young people, vigorous young men stumble badly."  We all experience human weakness.  "Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength, will mount up with wings like eagles, will run and not get tired, will walk and not become weary," that magnificent and familiar verse is telling us that God who is the Creator, God who is the everlasting God, the Lord, God is going to come but when He comes, if you wait for Him to come, He's not going to come to judge you in the end, He's going to come to strengthen you.  He's going to give you strength so you can fly like an eagle and run and never get tired and walk and never become weary.  He's going to infuse you with a new kind of eternal life.  That's all salvation blessing. 

  Go down to chapter 41:8, "But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, meaning Israel, descendant of Abraham, My friend, you whom I have taken from the ends of the earth and called from its remotest parts and said to you, 'You are My servant.'"  God is going to take Israel form all over the globe, gather them back and they're still going to be His servant because that was His elective purpose.  And then I love verse 10, "Do not fear, for I am with you.  Do not anxiously look about you for I'm your God, I will strengthen you," like He said in verse 31 of chapter 40, "and I will surely help you and I'll lift you up and hold you with My righteous right hand."  What a great promise.

  In verse 13 He repeats it.  "I am the Lord your God who upholds your right hand, who says to you, 'Do not fear, I will help you, do not fear, you worm, Jacob, you're lowly, you're earthly, but don't fear, you men of Israel, I will help you,' declares the Lord, 'and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.'"  That same holy God who punishes your sin is your Redeemer.

  So, we come to Isaiah 40 then and we see that God is tender and kind, something very easy to overlook after 39 chapters of indictment.  The prophet is as much as saying...Yeah, that's all true and God will punish sinners and God is punishing sinners and He does always punish sinners, even Jewish sinners, even people in the covenant, even God's chosen people, they will be punished like everybody else for their sin.  But that's not the end of the story because there is another part of the story, God is compassionate and God is forgiving and God will bring comfort to those who repent."

  Look at the verse...verse 1, "Comfort, comfort," in the Hebrew that is a word used often in the Old Testament to express encouragement to someone who was grieving over the death of a family member.  Genesis 24:67, Genesis 37:35, 2 Samuel 10:2 and I think Jeremiah 16:7, this is a word to speak of the deepest kind of bereavement, comforting someone who lost an intimate family member. 

  So God is speaking a true deep word of comfort and they are spoken to My people, says your God.  Back in the first 39 chapters He often referred to Israel as "this people...this people do this...and this people dishonor Me...and this people disobey Me."  You can see it in chapter 6:9, chapter 8:6 and elsewhere.  This people that have refused to honor Me.  But all of a sudden, "this people" becomes "My people."  This people may have committed willfully and constantly iniquities against God, but they're still God's covenant people.  They are still the people He chose.  They are still the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, the patriarchs.  And they do not need to fear that God has cancelled His promises with them, He hasn't.  Israel God has not cast off forever. 

  In the Old Testament God did divorce Israel, the northern kingdom.  Said, "I divorce you."  But He never divorced Judah.  There was nothing redeeming in the northern kingdom.  There was no penitence at all, but God separated from Judah, there was a separation in that marriage, but not a divorce.  There was only a temporary separation.  He had to separate from those people because of their sin and that separation still exists today.  And His anger against them has been serious because the sin has been so serious.  And Israel has every reason to believe.  They have the scriptures, the doctrines, the promises, the covenants and even the Messiah.  But God in the end will be faithful to that covenant and there will come a time when He takes Israel back, separated but not divorced and He'll take that...all that is Israel today, the remnant of Judah and Jerusalem and He'll take them back and that's part of the message of the latter part of Isaiah.  Look at chapter 49, I have to give you this. 

  Isaiah 49:14 - If you were in Israel and heard nothing but judgment, you might say, "But Zion," again just a synonym of Israel or Judah.  "But Zion said the Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me."  That wouldn't be too hard to come to that conclusion.  We've had all this judgment pronounced on us and that's the end of that, the Lord has turned His back on us, the Lord has forgotten us.  And here's God's answer, quoting Him, verse 15, "Can a woman forget her nursing child?"  I don't think so, for two reasons, because your nursing child will not let you forget.  Secondly, neither will your body.  That's the perfect illustration.  You can't forget you're nursing.  "Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb?"  No that's not possible. 

  Even if they could forget, I wouldn't forget.  God says, "I'm not going to forget, I'm not going to forget My covenant, I made a covenant with you and I will keep that covenant."  And then in verse 16 He uses another analogy, "I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands."  That is the part of the human body which you see most often.  There are parts of yourself that without mirrors you would never see but the palm of your hand is what you see most in just the tasks of life.  And right there most visible, God says I have you down in indelible, permanent ink.  I won't forget you, there's no way I would ever forget you.

  Chapter 51 again is reassuring about this.  "Listen to Me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the Lord."  Oh, you see, that's always the caveat, you know there is salvation but there must be the pursuit of righteousness.  You really want the Lord, you want Him, you want salvation?  "Look to the rock from which you were hewn, to the quarry from which you were dug.  Go back to the covenant God.  Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah who gave birth to you in pain.  When he was one I called him, when there was only one, only Abraham and only one child, only Isaac, the nation, the covenant was established with that one man, Abraham, and that one son, Isaac.  A covenant was established that will sweep across all redemptive history and ultimately bring salvation to the whole remnant to the nation Israel. 

  Verse 3, "The Lord will comfort Zion and the Lord will also comfort her waste places, and the wilderness He'll make like Eden and the desert like a garden of the Lord and joy and gladness will be found in her and thanksgiving and the sound of a melody."  That's the promise of salvation and that's the promise of the kingdom of Messiah in which the desert will blossom like a rose and Isaiah does have things to say about that.  And the whole topography of the globe will be changed in the Messiah's Kingdom. 

  He says in verse 4, "Pay attention to Me, O My people.  Give ear to Me, O My nation, for a law will go forth from Me and I will set My justice for a light of the peoples, My righteousness is near, My salvation has gone forth."  In the end, God brings salvation to Israel and the world.

  Go to chapter 54, this similar note, "Fear not, fear not for you will not be put to shame."  They were shamed at the time of John.  Living under the oppression of pagan Romans was an embarrassment and a humiliation to them, worse than any other.   But He says, "You're not going to be put to shame, neither feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced, not in the end, you will even forget the shame of your youth."  You're in a period right now of your youth where your suffering shame, but you're not going to feel it anymore.  Why?  Verse 5, "For your husband is your maker whose name is the Lord of host and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel who is called the God of all the earth, for the Lord has called you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit and like a wife of one's youth when she's rejected, says your God."  You're My wife and yes there was a time when I rejected you, yes there was a time when your sin separated.  Verse 7, "For a brief moment I forsook you but with great compassion I will gather you."  And the end of verse 8, "With everlasting kindness I will have compassion on yousays the Lord your your Redeemer."

  How can people think that there's no future for Israel?  And then in chapter 55:6, "Seek the Lord while He may be found, call on Him while He's near, let the wicked forsake His way, the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return to the Lord, He'll have compassion on him and to our God for He'll abundantly pardon."  And here are the terms...you want the salvation I offer?  You want the comfort I offer?  You want the consolation, and he encouragement?  "Then seek Me, call on Me, forsake your ways."  What's He calling them to?  Repentance, the same thing John preached.  John is such a perfect fulfillment of this prophecy.  He's not just a voice in the wilderness.  He's a voice in the wilderness announcing the Lord is coming.  He's a voice in the wilderness announcing the Lord is coming, get ready.  He's a voice in the wilderness announcing the Lord is coming, get ready by repenting and God will forgive you.  And then in verse 12 He says, "You will go out with joy and be led forth with peace."

  How can You do this, God?  How can You just forgive disobedient people?  Well verse 8, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts and your thoughts."  This is beyond you.  But this is what I will do.

  The call of Isaiah 40 is to anybody who ever speaks to Israel, tell them this...the burden of sin is great, the punishment has been severe, but it's not forever and it's not the end of the story.  Tell everybody who ever talks to Israel that God offers them comfort and forgiveness if they will call on Him, forsake their evil ways, seek Him, turn to Him, He will have compassion and abundantly pardon. 

  So what was John's job?  He comes, he says you've been under judgment, you were under judgment by the Babylonians, then you were under judgment by the Medo-Persians, then you were under judgment by the Greeks who desecrated your temple.  Now you're under the judgment of God, executed at the hands of the Romans.  You're even feeling the judgment of God by the corruption of Annas and Caiaphas and the whole apostate form of religion.  You've suffered a long time but John's message is this, "The Lord will come.  In fact, He's nearly here."  What does John ask them to do?  To recognize their sin and repent.  It's the very same message that Isaiah gave.  John fulfills the whole picture of Isaiah's prophecy.  So whenever you talk to Jewish people, tell them...yes, the punishment has been great because the sin has been great.  But that's not the end of the story.  You are still God's people, He is still your covenant God and He offers you comfort and forgiveness and the fulfillment of all the promises if you repent and receive His salvation.  And then John would point, "And there's the salvation in the Lamb of God who alone takes away the sin of the world."

  So the comfort of God offered in Isaiah 40 is not some sort of repayment for Israel's unjust suffering.  Israel's suffering is just, the suffering of all sinners is just.  All sinners suffer justly.  The comfort of God is not some repayment as if they've suffered unjustly, the comfort of God is simply and only God's unmerited grace, that's what it is.  God punished the nation with severity, He will also bring salvation to that nation, to any person who repents.  And one day in the future that nation together will repent.  That's the story of Romans 11.  Has God permanently set aside Israel?  Romans 11:1, "May it never be."  Has God cancelled His covenants?  No, the gifts and callings of God are without repentance.  God will bring salvation to Israel, that's the promise.

  So the message of Isaiah was this...there's going to be salvation but man isn't going to bring it, there isn't any man who can bring it.  But God's going to come and He's going to bring it.  But before He comes to bring the salvation, a voice is going to tell you He's on the way, get ready.

  John was that voice saying get ready by repentance, the Lord is coming to bring salvation.  People can't help themselves, God has to leave the holy throne room and come into the human realm to provide salvation.  I close with this, Isaiah 59, this is just a beautiful picture.  Chapter 59 starts, "And behold the Lord's hand is not so short that it can't save, His ears aren't so dull they can't hear.  The problem is, your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He doesn't hear.  Your hands are defiled with blood, your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken falsehood, your tongue mutters wickedness.  No one sues righteously, no one pleads honestly.  They trust in confusion, speak lies, conceive mischief, bring forth iniquity."  The next one means they poison and ensnare each other, "Hatching adders eggs, weaving a spider's web and from that which is crushed, a snake breaks forth."  The poison of those snakes, sort of indicating the way people treat each other.  "Their webs, it says, will not become clothing, nor will they cover themselves with their works."  That's to say the machinations of their wickedness don't hide the reality.  "Their works are works of iniquity, too flimsy to hide their true condition and their feet run to evil.  They hasten to shed innocent blood.  Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity.  Devastation and destruction are in the highways.  They don't know the way of peace.  There's no justice in their tracks.  They've made their paths crooked.  Whoever treads on them doesn't know peace."

  This is a mess.  This is depravity and this is Judah.  "Justice is far from us and righteousness doesn't overtake us." And then comes this pensive desire, "We hope for light and behold darkness.  We hope for brightness, all we get is gloom.  We grope along the wall like blind men, we grope like those who have no eyes, we stumble at mid day as in the twilight among those who are vigorous.  We're like dead men.  All of us growl like bears, we moan sadly.  Cooing like doves we hope for justice.  There is none.  For salvation, but it's far from us.  For our transgressions are multiplied before You and our sins testify against us and our transgressions are with us and we know our iniquities, transgressing and denying the Lord and turning away from our God and speaking oppression and revolt and conceiving in and uttering from the heart lying words.  Justice is turned back and righteousness stands far away and truth has stumbled in the street and uprightness cannot enter.  Yes truth is lacking and he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey."

  In other words, if you try to do anything good you become a victim of all the people who want to do evil.  There's no way out.  This is the human dilemma.  This is Israel's own confession in the mouth of the prophet here.  Verse 15, in the middle, it says, "The Lord saw and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice."  Verse 16, "And He saw that there was no man.  He was astonished that there was no one to intercede."  Now here's the dilemma, salvation is going to come, it's not going to come from a human, there's no man, there's nobody to intercede, the Lord can't find anybody, there's no one.  "Then His own arm brought salvation."

  The only way for salvation to happen is for God to bring it.  His own arm brought salvation.  It shows Him getting dressed in verse 17, He put on the righteousness like a breastplate.  This is the incarnation.  Put on a helmet of salvation on His head.  He put on garments, vengeance for clothing, wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle and said according to their deeds He would repay wrath to His adversaries and recompense to His enemies, to the coastlands He would make recompense."  He's going to come and there's going to be some judgment when He comes, but not just judgment.  Look at verse 20, "And a Redeemer will come to Zion and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob."  Jews who turn from transgression.  Verse 21, "As for Me, this is My covenant with them."

  God looks and says...I promised to save you but there's nobody that can do it but Me.  And so God says I'll come, I'll come and save the sinners.  That's what the incarnation was about.  John is saying He's here and He's about to begin His work.  Are you ready?  Ready means repentant.  You can't save yourself but you can prepare your heart for the only one who can save you.  Get ready, He's coming.  And for us, He's already come, hasn't He?  Already died for sinners.  And when you repent, you are forgiven.  Some day Israel will do that, until then, Jew and Gentile alike can do that and do as the Spirit works in their hearts. 

  ---

  

  A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, Part 2

  Luke 3:4-6

  As we approach this third chapter, imagine a world where righteousness and goodness dominated.  Imagine a world where there is no injustice.  Imagine a world where everyone is treated fairly.  Imagine a world where no court ever renders an unjust verdict, or an undeserved sentence.  Imagine a world where what is true and what is good and what is right and what is noble marks society, commerce, education, and everything else.  Imagine a world where there is pervasive total lasting peace, where there's the absolute absence of war and conflict.  Imagine a world where joy abounds, where health is widespread, where people live for hundreds of years. 

  Imagine a world where a lion and a lamb lie down together.  Imagine a world where children can play in snake pits because snakes are no longer poisonous.  Imagine a world where a bear and a cow can walk together led by a child.  Imagine a world where food is profuse.  Imagine a world where well-being is common.

  Imagine a world ruled by one perfect person who knows everything there is to know in the universe, natural and supernatural, observable and non-observable.  Imagine a world ruled by one perfect omnipotent, omniscient God in human form who is mediating that rule through glorified perfected people who are His agents and they carry out His will and His purpose everywhere.  Imagine a world where all sin, all iniquity and all transgression is dealt with instantly and firmly.

  If you can imagine such a world, you are not imagining and imaginary world.  You are thinking about the earthly kingdom of Jesus Christ.  Everything I just said is promised in the scriptures.  In fact, all that I have said to you is taken from the Old Testament where God promised that some day Messiah would come and establish His Kingdom.  His throne would be in Jerusalem.  He would reign from the nation Israel over the entire world.  This is how history ends.  It began with amazing precision as God created the entire universe in six 24-hour days.  God knew exactly what He was doing when He set the whole thing into motion.  God also upholds and sustains and works out His perfect plan as history unfolds minute by minute.  And the ending of the story has already been written with just the same amount of precision that the beginning had and the middle.  History is not meandering at a random pace trying to find its way to some meaningful conclusion, nor are we left to figure out how to end it all or how to, better yet, perpetuate it all.  The whole story has been prewritten and human history will end when Jesus Christ comes to Earth to establish His Kingdom over the entire world.

  The character of that Kingdom is described again and again and again throughout the Old Testament, as well as certain New Testament passages.  And it is a great grief that there are so many people, even theologians, who do not understand this or are not willing to accept the clear teaching of Scripture on this.  We are looking for the coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His earthly Kingdom, that is what Scripture promises.

  In 2 Samuel, for example, in chapter 7 God speaks and He speaks to David and He says to David the king through the prophet Nathan, verse 12, 2 Samuel 7, "When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you who will come forth from you and I will establish His Kingdom.  He shall build a house for My name and I will establish the throne of His Kingdom forever." 

  God promises to David that out of his loins would come the Messiah who would build a Kingdom way beyond David's kingdom, way beyond Solomon's kingdom, way beyond anybody's kingdom and it would be a kingdom that would be established forever.  That is the great promise of Messiah's Kingdom, an eternal Kingdom. 

  In Psalm 2:6, God has installed His King on His holy mountain, meaning Mount Zion in Jerusalem.  God has installed His King and He says to His King, "You are My Son," in verse 7.  So God will install His Son as King.  And He says in verse 8, "Ask of Me and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance, the very ends of the earth as your possession.  You shall break them with a rod of iron, you shall shatter them like earthenware."  In other words, this is a sovereign rule of God's Son who is set on God's throne in Jerusalem.  This is another indication of messianic promise, messianic fulfillment.

  In Isaiah 2 we find a reference as well to the coming Kingdom.  Verse 2, "It will come about that in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains."  The mountain on which the house of the Lord or the temple exists, of course, is in Jerusalem, and that will become the chief of all mountains, it will be raised above the hills, as metaphoric, all the nations will stream to it.  It will literally become the center of the earth.  "Many people will come and say...verse 3...'Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob that He may teach us concerning His way that we may walk in His paths, for the law, the law of God will go forth from Zion and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem and He will judge between the nations, will render decisions for many peoples.'"  And there's a familiar statement after that, "They will hammer their swords into plow shares, their spears into pruning hooks, nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war." 

  God will establish His King in Israel on Mount Zion where the house of the Lord is, the temple, there He will rule and there He will establish a peace that pervades permanently across the face of the earth.  Were you to go further in Isaiah you would read again and again very similar promises to this about the coming Kingdom.  In chapter 35 of Isaiah, "At that time the desert will blossom, it will rejoice with a shout of joy," and it goes on to describe some of the physiology.  And it says, "They will all see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God."  There is going to be a dramatic change in the planet, we'll say more about that in a moment, when the Lord establishes His Kingdom, the Kingdom of His Son, the Messiah.

  In Jeremiah 33:18, "Days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the good word which I have spoken concerning the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  In those days at that time I will cause a righteous branch of David," that is an offshoot of David, the Messiah, "who is the line of David, out of the loins of David," that's why the genealogy of Luke, which we'll see later, and the genealogy of Matthew take the line of Jesus all the way back to King David.  "Out of David's loins will come the Messiah, He will execute justice and righteousness on the earth.  In those days Judah shall be saved, Jerusalem shall dwell in safety and this is the name by which she shall be called," that is Jerusalem, "the Lord is our righteousness."  It will be a time when all of Israel embraces the Lord as their righteousness and His Kingdom is established. 

  In Ezekiel 34:23-24, the same Kingdom is referred to. "I will set over them one Shepherd, My servant, David," that's the one out of David's loins, the Messiah, "He will be the one Shepherd and He will feed them, He will feed them Himself and be their Shepherd and I the Lord will be their God and My servant David will be prince among them.  I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will make a covenant of peace with them."  That's the New Covenant.  God says in the day when I...when I save them by virtue of the New Covenant, which, as you remember, is the covenant of forgiveness, I will establish My King and He will reign and rule and shepherd My people and I the Lord will be their God.  What we're talking about here is the salvation of Israel and the establishment of their promised Kingdom.

  In Daniel 2:44, "In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a Kingdom which will never be destroyed and that Kingdom will not be left for another people, it will crush and put an end to all kingdoms, but it will endure forever." 

  History ends with the establishment of an eternal Kingdom in which God rules through the Messiah who, in the next verse, is called "A stone cut out without hands."  That's a reference to His virgin birth, and He crushes all other empires, according to verse 45, and establishes His eternal Kingdom by the same promise in other prophets, Hosea chapter 3, Joel chapter 3 and many other places.

  Where is history going?  History is moving toward this great climactic end, when the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, the promised King, the Son of God comes to earth to establish His Kingdom and to bring back paradise that was lost in the Fall.  History does not end in a confusion, it does not end in a puff of smoke.  It does not end sort of wandering and meandering into oblivion.  It does not end in a holocaust generated by man.  It doesn't end any other way than the way God says it will end, and that is when the King Himself comes and establishes His glorious Kingdom on the earth and according to Revelation 20, it will last for a thousand years.  And when it is over, the universe as we know it will disintegrate, it will be uncreated and God will instantaneously create in its place the new heaven and the new earth which will last forever.  This is the flow of human history.

  This is not a random universe in any sense.  It is upheld by the word of His power. They will never be able to discover what it is that is the force that holds it all together because the force that holds it all together is Almighty invisible God, not subject to any scientific experiment.  And God who holds everything together by the word of His power has a plan for history and history is unfolding exactly the way God has designed it to unfold, and He couldn't have been more clear, He repeatedly again and again and again and again says that in the end paradise will be regained.  This world is not going to go up in a puff of amillennial smoke.  When you get to the very end of this thing, it is going to unfold step by step exactly the way the prophet said it would unfold and that incorporates a final Kingdom in which Messiah reigns on the earth over the earth.

  Let me just give you sort of a quick overview of what this Kingdom is like.  First of all, you can look at it politically or socially, let's take it first at that perspective and we'll take three perspectives.

  You can look at the promised Kingdom politically or socially.  When you look for the political characteristics of this Kingdom, three things jump out at you.  One, it is Christ's universal rule.  There aren't any other kings, there aren't any other national entities.  There isn't going to be a League of Nations or a United Nations.  There isn't going to be any kind of conglomerated Europe.  There isn't going to be any amalgam of leaders.  There aren't going to be any kings.  There aren't going to be any potentates.  There aren't going to be any rulers in the world because Christ will universally rule the world and literally cover the entire globe with His rule.  All other kings will be made subject to Him, that is the testimony of Psalm 2, the testimony of Daniel 2, the testimony of Daniel 7, the testimony of Revelation 19:16 which says Christ will come as King of kings and Lord of lords.  It will be universal rule.  There will be a dictatorship over the entire face of the earth and all the people of the earth and that dictator will be the perfect one, the God who became man in the form of Jesus Christ, risen, exalted, glorified and returned to establish His Kingdom.

  Secondly, it is not only a universal Kingdom, it is an absolute Kingdom.  It is an absolute Kingdom.  It will be, I like this, it will be a Kingdom without a senate.  It will be a Kingdom without a congress.  It will be a Kingdom without any representatives.  It will be a Kingdom...it will not be a democracy,  It will not be a republic, there won't be discussions, there won't be committees.  Everything will be perfect disseminated from an absolutely perfect monarch who knows everything there is to know, observable and non-observable.  And He will pass down His rule through glorified and perfected saints who come back to reign with Him, as well as through the nation Israel to the world.  It will be absolute in its nature.  Psalm 72, Isaiah 11, many, many passages talk about the absolute nature.  He will break literally all other rulers, as Psalm 2 indicates.  He will use His rod of iron to wash all other entities that would in any way compete for that absolute rule.

  Thirdly, it will be a righteous rule.  Universal rule, absolute rule, and righteous rule, He is a King of righteousness.  Israel will say, "The Lord is our righteousness," and He will rule with righteousness because He is righteous.  Everything He does...all that means is everything He does will be absolutely right, absolutely right.  He will make every decision absolutely right.  In Isaiah 11:4, "Righteousness will be the belt about His loins."  Every thing He does will be wrapped in righteousness.

  Secondly, you can look at the Kingdom not only politically and socially, but you can look at the Kingdom physically and even I guess you could say geologically to some degree.  But you can look at it physically and perhaps geologically, topographically and from the standpoint of human life and what do you find?  You find several characteristics.  Number one, the curse is lifted. And I mentioned that...lion lies down with the lamb...because animals are no longer enemies of one another.  The animal kingdom is dramatically altered, it goes back to being the way it was in Eden.  A bear and a cow munching grass together in a field, being led by a child.  Snakes no longer poisonous.  Isaiah 11, Isaiah 30, Isaiah 35, first part of the chapter in the latter, down in verse 7 or so, the lifting of the curse. 

  The whole of life on a physical level is going to change.  Joel chapter 2 verses 21 to 27 says there will be abundant provision for everyone.  There will be a flourishing of growth.  Things will begin to grow like they did once in the Garden of Eden.  The desert, on the backside of Jerusalem, the whole of Jerusalem is going to split.  God is going to send a river flowing into that desert and it's going turn it into the Garden of Eden again, the world is going to change dramatically.  And that may not only happen in Jerusalem, but other places in the world as God renovates the earth and it begins to produce in ways that were perhaps will approximate the way it was even before the Fall in Eden.  There will be abundant provision everywhere on the face of the earth.

  Thirdly, there will be health.  People will live hundreds and hundreds of years.  The prophet said, "If somebody dies at a hundred years, they die as a baby."  Isaiah 29:18, Isaiah 33:24, again Isaiah 35, Isaiah 65, Isaiah chapter 30, I think it's around verse 19 and 20 talks about a high birth rate, even people will flourish.  They will be healthy and they will live long lives.  And imagine if you live for hundreds of years how many babies you can have. Iif you die at a hundred you die like a baby.  So it will be again like a pre-flood condition, it will be like it was when the curse of sin hadn't so dramatically affected life.  We'll live long lives and it will be productive.  That's why you can have a few people going into the Kingdom, just a few believers will survive and go into the Kingdom, but they'll populate in a thousand years, they'll populate in an incredibly explosive and exponential way.  Health will abound everywhere.

  Israel will be altered.  The topography of Israel will be dramatically altered.  Jerusalem will be exalted.  So there's going to be some really dramatic physical changes in the world, as well as some political changes that will be dramatic.

  Thirdly, spiritually, you can look at the world of the Kingdom of Messiah politically, you can look at it physically, but most importantly you can look at it spiritually.  What's going to happen spiritually?

  Let's go to Zechariah 12.  This is the word of the Lord concerning Israel, it comes to the prophet, Zechariah.  Verse 1, "Thus declares the Lord, He stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him."  See, again you go back to this point, folks, if God isn't the God of creation, then He's not the God of history.  I'm trying to get people to understand this.  You can't come to me and convince me that if we're here as a result of random evolution, if it's random evolution that has made the world the way it is, then how am I supposed to believe that history is under the absolute sovereign control of God.  If God can't control the physical part of life, then how am I to assume He can control the spiritual part?  If there's anything random in this universe, then everything is random.  The fact of the matter is, you will find as God here is given the responsibility and the authorship of the end of human history, He is identified as the creator of human life.  It is the Creator who is the sustainer.  It is the Creator...it is the one who designed and made the universe who is designing and making its course of history.  So it is God who stretches out the heavens.  It is God who lays the foundation of the earth and on the earth creates man.  It is that God who is going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around.  And when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah.  Judah and Jerusalem are simply describing Israel back in its land, what's going to happen in the end, He says, God's going to gather all the nations of the world against Jerusalem. 

  That's where human history is going, folks.  The focal point of human history isn't going to be Europe, it's not going to be the United States, the focal point of world history is going to be the Middle East, namely it's going to be the land of Israel, namely it's going to be the southern part of the land of Israel, it's going to be the city of Jerusalem.  That's where history is going.  At the very end, all the nations of the world, according to the prophets of the Bible, and according to the book of Revelation, are all going to gather to the land of Israel and they're going to come against Israel to try to destroy the Jewish people. 

  That is not some kind of human political ploy.  That is a satanic ploy because Satan always wants to thwart the purposes of God, right?  He tried to destroy the people of Israel by intermarriage after they came back from the captivity.  He tried to destroy the Messianic line and it got down to just one person in the times of Athaliah.  He tried to destroy the Messiah when He was born, when he had all of the babies around Bethlehem slaughtered under two years of age.  He tried to destroy the messianic purposes of Jesus by taking up into a high mountain and tempting Him and then He would have yielded Himself to Satan and He would have violated the purposes and the plan of God.  He would have been disobedient and He would have been disqualified.  He tries every way he can.  He tried genocide against the Jews with Joseph Stalin.  He tried genocide against the Jews with Adolph Hitler.  And eventually at the end of the world there will be another massive attempt at genocide to wipe out the people of Israel so that God can't finish His plan, save the people of Israel and give them the promised messianic Kingdom.

  God allowed that to happen.  He allows that siege against Jerusalem to be the culmination of the man's day, the culmination of human history because that becomes then the purging point that leads to Israel's final salvation.  He's going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the people. 

  It's graphic language.  Jerusalem looks so inviting, they come to attack and to plunder and the nations are sort of seen as drinking with the plundering kind of passion. But as they drink they become drunk and as they become drunk then they become easy prey for God to destroy, all the nations coming, as it were, getting drunk, as it were on the blood of the Jews.  As we'll see later, they're going to destroy two thirds of those people and apparently those two thirds are rebels that God uses the Gentile nations to purge out.

  It says, "In that day...verse 3...I'll make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples."  You know, you lift up something that's too heavy, it can't be carried and it can injure you, and that's exactly the picture here.  These nations are going to try to lift Jerusalem and they're going to find themselves severely injured in the effort.  And all the nations of the earth, at the end of verse 3, are going to be gathered against it, describing as they come to drink...that's one metaphor, as they come to lift and destroy Jerusalem...in that day, verse 4, I'll strike every horse with bewilderment, the rider with madness.  I'll watch over the house of Judah when I strike every horse of the people with blindness."  I'm going to protect the people of Israel, My covenant people because My plan is still in place and I'm going to destroy those who come against them.

  "In that day...He says in verse 6...I'm going to make the clans of Judah like a fire pot among pieces of wood, a flaming torch among sheaves."  In other words, they're just going to ignite this thing in a great conflagration.  "They'll consume on the right hand, they'll consume on the left all the surrounding peoples."  In other words, God is going to step into that situation and He's just going to wipe out those armies.  The book of Revelation calls this the battle of Armageddon.  This is the battle that's going to go from the Plain of Megiddo all the way south to Jerusalem.  It's going to cover that entire area and the blood is going to be splattered up to the horses' bridles over a length of hundreds of miles as God destroys the enemies of His people. 

  Verse 7, "The Lord will save the tents of Judah first and then He will bring glory to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, as well."  Verse 8, "In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem.  The Lord's going to protect them.  And even the one who is feeble among them in that day will be as strong as David," and we all know how strong David was, he knocked off the biggest man who ever lived, Goliath.  "And the house of David is going to be strong like God, strong like the angel of the Lord before them.  It will come about in that day that I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

  That's what's going to happen and here's how history ends.  Eventually it focuses more on Israel.  Israel feels the pressure of the world coming against it, so Israel decides they need help.  As that scene unfolds toward the end of human history, they make a pact with a great world leader who is to be their protector, Daniel 9 talks about this.  They sign a covenant with a great world leader.  Well, that world leader turns out to be the Antichrist and it isn't long into that pact that the Antichrist turns against them and it is the Antichrist who leads the coalition of world forces against Jerusalem.  Why?  Because he wants to wipe out Jerusalem.  He wants to wipe out any vestiges of the worship of the true and living God in order that he alone may be God.  And so he has captured the minds of the world.  He is the ultimate Hitler of all Hitlers.  He has convinced the entire world to come in an act of genocide against Israel to wipe out the rival to his own deity and his own sovereignty.  So he brings all these nations together and it's at that point that the Lord comes at the battle of Armageddon when they're coming against the people of God, against Israel, against the nation Israel that Jesus Christ appears.  God protects His people, Christ comes and destroys the nations.  You can read the whole thing in Revelation chapter 19.

  But look at verse 10, here is where we want to go.  You have in verses 1 to 9 God's protection of Israel in the end of human history.  Then in verse 10, "And I will pour out on the house of David, on the inhabitants of Jerusalem," again these are titles for the people of Israel, the Jewish people, "I'll pour out on them the Spirit of grace and of supplication."  What's going to happen is, I'm going to pour out grace on them and I'm going to convict them and out of that conviction they're going to turn to Me and they're going to supplicate, they're going to pray, and they're going to look on Me whom they have pierced.  And that can only describe one thing, who was pierced?  Jesus was pierced in both feet, both hands and in His side by a spear.  They're going to look on Me, God, who was pierced.  There's a good indication of the deity of Jesus.  And they're going to mourn for Him. There the Father separates Himself from the Son, He includes Himself as one with the Son in the pronoun "Me" and then separates Himself in the pronoun "Him."  They're going to mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son, weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. 

  God protects Israel from the onslaught of Antichrist's armies at this great conflagration at the end of human history.  In the middle of that protection comes conviction and they begin to examine their situation and they look back in history and realize they executed their Messiah.  God is going to literally convict them and they're going to mourn and they're going to weep and repentance over what they have done. 

  Verse 11, there's going to be great mourning and he goes on to talk about that.  Every family is going to mourn, verse 12.  And he goes on to list various sort of representative families.  In verse 14, all the families that remain, every single family by itself and all their wives by themselves...you've got all the nation Israel mourning that they killed their deliverer, they killed their Messiah and that's why things have gotten so bad.  That's why it's so terrible.  When the Messiah came the first time they should have accepted Him.  When He came the first time they should have embraced Him and they would have had their Kingdom and all this history never would have taken place.  Now look at it, they've got through holocaust after holocaust and here's the holocaust of holocausts, as the entire world is coming against them. 

  There comes protection at the end and then there comes conviction.  And then chapter 13, there comes salvation, "In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David, for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for impurity."  That is the greatest, that is God saying,  "In that day I'm going to save Israel, I'm going to bring them to salvation, I'm going to bring them through repentance to forgiveness of sins.  And then they can have their Kingdom."

  Go down from there to verse 9.  Well, we ought to look at verse 8, "It will come about in all the land, declares the Lord, that two parts in it will be cut off and perish, but the third will be left."  Of all the Jews alive when this happens, of all the Jews alive when this happens, two thirds are going to perish, two thirds are rebellious, two thirds are unbelieving, two thirds resist the work of God and they will be destroyed by the gathering powers of Antichrist.  But one third will be left.  "And I'll bring the third part through the fire and I'll refine them as fire is refined and I'll test them as gold is tested and they will call on My name and I will answer them and I will say, 'These are My people.'  And they will say, 'The Lord is my God.'"  There's the salvation of Israel.

  This is as clear as clear can be.  This is referring to Jewish people.  They're repeatedly called Judah, Jerusalem, Israel, sons of David.  They're even identified as those associated with Nathan and Levi and the Shimeites back in the end of chapter 12.  These are Jewish people in the end protected by God. 

  First comes protection, then comes conviction, then comes salvation and then you come in to chapter 14 and you get further insights.  "A day is coming for the Lord which the spoil taken from you will be divided among you.  I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished, and half the city exiled, the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city."  So this again describes the purging out of peoples.  "But the Lord...verse 3...will go forth and fight against those nations as when He fights in a day of battle."  After they've done what He wants them to do in purging out the rebels, then the Lord comes to fight. 

  And how does He do it?  Verse 4, great one, one of the great verses in the Old Testament, "In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives."  He's going to come right out of heaven in glory, Revelation 19 describes Him as having a blood-splattered garment, coming out riding on a white horse, that's metaphoric for power and strength.  And behind Him are all the saints in their white robes and they all come pouring out of heaven as He comes down to earth.  His feet land on the Mount of Olives and when He hits the Mount of Olives the Mount of Olives is going to split.  It's going to split in the middle from east to west by a very large valley.  The half of the mountain will move toward the north, and half toward the south.  Literally, from the Mediterranean Sea toward the desert behind Jerusalem the whole valley splits, the whole mountain, I should say, into a massive valley.  And all the people of Israel are protected by fleeing down in this valley.  And the Lord will come, in the end of verse 5, "My God will come and all the holy ones with Him." 

  When that happens, He says in verse 6, there will be no light.  The luminaries will dwindle.  That's exactly what the book of Revelation says.  The sun goes out, the moon doesn't give its light.  The stars of heaven fall.  The whole universe goes black and you can't see anything but the blazing glory of the Son of God coming to judge.  It's a unique day...verse 7...which is known to the Lord, it's not day and it's not night, that's because all the heavenly bodies are put out, "It will come about that at evening time there will be light, it will come about that in that day living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea, the other half toward the western sea, it will be summer as well as...it will be in summer as well as winter."  Verse 9, I love this, "And the Lord will be King over all the earth."

  In that day the Lord will be the only one and His name the only one.  Listen, there won't be any other king, there won't be any other monarch. There won't be any other religion...none.  And the land will change, verse 10 says.  And the rough, rough mountainous land will be changed into a plain.  Jerusalem will rise.  In verse 11 it says, "And the people will live in it, there will be no more curse.  Jerusalem will dwell in safety."  That's how human history ends, folks.

  Let's go back to Luke.  Now you needed to know that, didn't you?  Here comes John and what's his message, folks?  "Messiah's coming, repent, make sure your sins are forgiven so you're ready when Messiah comes so we can receive His Kingdom."  That's John's message.  They had been waiting so long for this.  they had been oppressed by the Babylonians, they had been oppressed by the Medo-Persians.  They had been oppressed even by the nations around them after they came back from their captivity.  They had been oppressed by the Greeks.  They were currently being oppressed by the Romans.  Their land was desecrated by Gentile occupation.  They desperately wanted the Messiah to come.  They had waited for centuries for the Messiah to come.  Jeremiah the prophet said, Jeremiah 23:5, "Behold the days are coming, I will raise up for David a righteous branch...that's the Messiah...He will reign as King and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land.  In His days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely and this is His name by which He will be called, the Lord our righteousness.  Behold the days are coming.  And when that day comes nobody is going to say anymore, 'Oh the Lord is the one who delivered us from Egypt,' they're going to say, 'The Lord is the one who brought us from all the nations of the earth back to the land for the Kingdom.'"

  They waited for that.  Believe me, they longed for the time when the righteous branch out of David, the Messiah, the Son of God would come and establish His Kingdom.  In Jeremiah 30 the Lord says, "Your wound is incurable, your injury is serious, there's no one to plead your cause, there's no healing for your sore, there's no recovery for you.  All your lovers have forgotten you.  They don't seek you.  I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the punishment of a cruel one because your iniquity is great and your sins are numerous."  God says you're in deep trouble.  You're wounded, you're pained, you're in disease.  "But...verse 17...I will restore you to health, I will heal you of your wound."  God says...I have a plan to save you.  "I will restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob.  I will have compassion on his dwelling places.  The city shall be rebuilt.  The palace, I'll stand on its rightful place," and so forth.  "I will punish oppressors."  Then in verse 22, "You will be My people and I'll be your God."

  Micah chapter 4 said the same thing.  Isaiah 61, Isaiah 62, so many times the promise, the promise of the Kingdom, the Kingdom.  And summing it up, there will be a Kingdom for Israel.  The Messiah will reign on the throne in Jerusalem and He'll reign over the entire world.  Truth will dominate the earth.  Righteousness will flourish everywhere.  Peace will pervade.  Joy will abound and Holy Spirit power will flow everywhere.

  All of this was waiting for the Jewish people and the world when Messiah came.  John comes and when did John come?  Look at Luke 3, it was in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene.  It was in the days of those Gentile rulers.  And it was also in the days of the priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas that the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness where he had been since he was a boy.  And John, having been called by God to begin his ministry of announcing Jesus who would come six months after him, came into all the district around the Jordan, preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 

  Why?  Because if you're going to come to the Messiah, if you're going to embrace the Messiah, have the Messiah embrace you, if you're going to receive the Kingdom you're going to have to have forgiveness of sin.  And if you want forgiveness of sin you have to repent.  And so, John fulfilled, verse 4 says, what was written in the book of the word of Isaiah the prophet.  He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight."  That was John's job.

  If you ever talk to Israel, give them comfort, will you?  Tell them their sins have been paid for.  Tell them their warfare is over.  Tell them there is forgiveness from God.  Tell them it's all available.  Tell them that.  If you ever speak to Jews, tell them that, because the Lord is coming.  Salvation can't come from man.  If we're ever to be delivered from sin, if there's ever to be comfort for anybody, any sinner, the Lord has to bring it, so you tell them, the Lord is coming, Isaiah said, the Lord is coming.  But tell them this before He comes, there will be a voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight."  Before the Lord comes they'll come a prophet pointing to Him and that's John.  John's the fulfillment of Isaiah 40.  

  John came along and preached forgiveness of sin, according to verse 3.  He said there's forgiveness, there's forgiveness, your sins can be forgiven, your sins have been paid for, your warfare is over.  I'm telling you there is forgiveness.  But if you want that forgiveness it calls for repentance, it calls for repentance that's deep.  It calls for a serious repentance that involves a baptism.

  The only immersion, the only baptism that they had apart from ceremonial washings, the only baptism was the baptism of a Gentile who wanted to become a part of Israel.  If you wanted to become a proselyte to Judaism, you had to go through immersion which symbolized that you were an unclean person outside the covenant and you had to be washed to even be accepted into Israel.  And John is saying...what you need to do as Jews, as sons of Abraham, what you need to do is recognize that you're not better than a Gentile who is outside the covenant, you need to be baptized and confess the depth of your sin and alienation from God.  And if your repentance is that kind of repentance, then God will forgive your sin.  So he preached the forgiveness of sin based upon repentance and a repentance that recognized that even though you were a Jew, you were outside the covenant and you had no relationship to the God of Israel whatsoever.

  To make that even more graphic, the Holy Spirit led Luke to record that John fulfills this passage that says this, verse 4, "Make His paths straight, every ravine shall be filled up, every mountain and hill shall be brought low, the crooked shall become straight and the rough roads smooth and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." 

  You say, "What's that all about?"  Well look back at verse 4, it was written in the words of Isaiah in Isaiah 40, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness," we know that's John, he's telling people make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight, make His path ready.  And Isaiah and here, of course, in John's case and Luke, they're using an analogy.  If a king is going to come to a town or a village, he would send a herald or a forerunner ahead a few months and say you've got to get ready, the king is coming, you've got to make the road ready so he can come with ease and dignity to your city.  That's what John did.  He said the King is coming, the King is coming, Messiah's coming, you've got to get ready and ready means you need to have your sins forgiven and that calls for repentance and a deep repentance that even acknowledges you're outside the covenant, you're no better than a Gentile.  So you need to repent.

  Now he gives a further definition of repentance in this analogy.  Jesus was coming as Messiah.  If Israel accepted Him as a nation they would have had their Kingdom.  Matthew 11 says if that was the case, if they had believed in Messiah, received Him as Savior, they would have received the Kingdom and John would have been the fulfillment of Malachi 4, 5 and 6 which said that before the Lord establishes His Kingdom, one will come in the spirit and power of Elijah.  Well, John did come in the spirit and power of Elijah.  If Israel had believed, He would have been the fulfillment of that prophecy, the Kingdom would have been established.

  Sadly, that's not what happened.  They rejected the Messiah.  John got his head chopped off.  Jesus was executed.  They didn't receive the Kingdom.  The kingdom was not cancelled, however, the Kingdom was postponed because the gifts and callings of God are without repentance.  God doesn't change His mind.  God knew how it would go all along.  But John is saying to them...Look, if you want to be ready to receive the King as a nation, it starts with individual repentance...it starts with individual repentance.  And repentance is described in the analogy. 

  How do you make ready the way of the Lord?  How do you make His paths straight so He has access?  How do you do that?  Well, you take the low places, the ravines, you bring them up.  You take the high places, you bring them down.  You take the crooked places, you just straighten them out.  You take the rough places, you smooth them over. 

  The wilderness is the heart.  The voice is crying in the wilderness...Get the pathway through the wilderness ready.  The wilderness is really the heart.  It's the sinful heart, the sinful mind through which a path must be made.  And that path is the path of repentance.  And this is a magnificent analogy of what repentance is like.  Here's where it starts.  Every ravine shall be filled up.  What's that?  Low places, analogous to the low, base, dark, hidden things of the heart.

  Repentance involves an honest dealing with the depths of wickedness in your heart and mine.  You've got to go down deep into the ugly muck of your sinful life and bring it up.  And then he says, "Every mountain and hill shall be brought low."  You know, the Jews were not only good at hiding the filth down low, but they were really good at elevating themselves in self-righteous ways, weren't they?  You've got to knock down the proud, haughty, self-righteous attitudes.

  And then you've got to take the crooked places and straighten them out.  That's the word skolios, from which we get scoliosis, which is a curvature, the devious, the deceitful, the lying, the perverse. 

  You've got to dig deep into the filth of the hidden things.  You've got to go high and pull down your pride and self-righteousness.  Then you've got to deal with all the perverse, devious, deceptions of the heart.  And then he says, "And the rough roads smooth."

  What's that?  Anything that's laying out there on the road of repentance.  Could be self-love, could be love of money, could be love of the world, could be lust of the flesh, could be indifference, could be apathy, could be unbelief, any of that.

  Do you want to get the path ready through the wilderness of your heart?  Then repent and that means deal with the deep, base, hidden, secret, dark, low things.  That means deal with the pride of your life, bring it all down to where it needs to be.  Deal with the deception, the perversity, the wickedness, the devious elements and everything else, all the junk laying out there in your life that needs to be wiped clean.  See, John is calling for a full repentance.  And he says to them...If you do that, look at verse 6, if you will do that, all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

  That's just another way to say the Kingdom will come.  The whole world is going to see the salvation and if you do that then the nation will be saved and the nation will be exalted and the Kingdom will come and salvation will cover the earth, if you do that. 

  Messiah's arrived and He offers you a Kingdom.  If you want to be in that Kingdom you need your sins forgiven.  If you want your sins forgiven you must repent.  You have to prepare a pathway through your heart, a path of true repentance and the Lord will come to that heart and He'll reveal Himself and He'll save that sinner and that nation.

  In verse 6 John quotes from the Greek translation of Isaiah 40, rather than the Hebrew.  And he does that so as to include the interpretive rendering of the Septuagint, the Greek translation, which used the word "salvation."  In the original Hebrew and in your own Bibles you won't see the word "salvation" in the passage in Isaiah.  But that's what it means and the translators of the Septuagint interpreted it, added the word "salvation" because that's essentially what is indicated there.  All it says in Isaiah 40 is, "You'll see the glory of the Lord."  But the glory of the Lord is revealed in Messiah by the salvation of God that He brings.  And it was a right understanding of that passage and that's why the Holy Spirit inspired the writer luke to include that here. 

  So what is John saying?  You want salvation, you want salvation personally, you want salvation nationally, you want salvation of God to purvey the whole world, you want the Kingdom, you want all flesh to see the salvation of God, then repent of your sin and embrace the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.  If anyone wants to see the salvation of God, if you want to see the salvation of God, if you want to see God's power to forgive sins, then you have to prepare a path in your heart, a path of repentance of sin, the low sins, the high sins, the crooked sins, the clutter of sins and embrace Christ and His work for you with an attitude of repentance.  When you do that, you'll be forgiven and when Israel does that, they'll be forgiven.  Sadly, they refused and so the Kingdom was not cancelled, the Kingdom was postponed and in the future, Romans 11, "All Israel will be saved."  The day will come, a great war will come and out of that will come the salvation of Israel, as Zechariah showed us, and then the Kingdom of Christ.

  They had their opportunity now in this very hour.  John offered it to them as he preached the message of repentance.  And so do I offer it to you as one who stands, I guess, in the tradition of John.  I say to you, there is salvation for you, there is the complete forgiveness of sin, but you need to make a pathway through the wilderness of your heart, a pathway of true repentance and embrace Jesus Christ as Savior.  That is the constant message we give to the Jew and to the Gentile. 

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