John the Baptist was on a mission.  It was not his idea; there was no self-interest in pursuing a long-cherished ambition.  God had commissioned him before his birth (Luke 1:13-17).  So, before Luke narrates what John did, he tells us John’s job specification.  About 700 years previously, Isaiah the prophet had written about a person who would announce God's Messiah.  That man would preach urgently about the need to get all the obstacles out of the way so that the Saviour would be welcomed (Isaiah 40:3-11).  That was John's divine appointment.

John's ministry was to call people to get ready for God coming to them.  In the same way in which workmen travelled ahead of an eastern king, mending the road so that he could travel safely and speedily, Isaiah predicted that God would send His workman to call people to repentance. Only repentance, of everything that opposes God, will make a satisfactory road for the Lord.  The arrival of Jesus required the potholes of doubt to be filled in and the mountains of pride to be brought down if the King of kings was to be honoured.

The prophetic ministry was about bringing people back to God’s covenant (Luke 1:16), so that they choose to submit to His Word and repent of their sin (Lamentations 3:40).  Repentance expresses personal grief over someone’s self-centred rebellion against God; it admits their proud arrogance, and even self-righteousness in their religion.  These are the same real obstacles to the ministry of Jesus in the world today.  Whether it is the high places of idol worship or the low places of grumbling, or depraved thinking and behaviour; the deviant nature of human sinfulness or the rough world of pragmatic survival - all these need to be dealt with if we are to make peace with God and welcome Jesus.

God still works in exactly the same way.  Nobody can receive Jesus as Saviour and Lord if they are committed to themselves or a false worship.  So the first thing to do, when we feel far from God, is to say, ‘Lord, please show me who or what I have been worshipping, and putting in place of You’ (Psalm 139:23-24).  There is an easy test: whatever/whoever you spend your time, thought or energy on - that is your idol!  The Lord of all will not come back into the centre of your life until idols are renounced: but when repentance is willingly offered, the road of your heart is ready for the Lord.