Straight Path in the Wilderness

By Jared Warner

Willow Creek Friends Church

December 07, 2025

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Click to read in Swahili

Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili

Matthew 3:1–12 (ESV)

¹ In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ² “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” ³ For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’ ” ⁴ Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, ⁶ and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸ Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. ⁹ And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. ¹⁰ Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

John the Baptist is one of my favorite characters around this time of year. We do not talk a great deal about him except around this time, but he is important. I have spoken about how the community would have been watching this man because of the miraculous things surrounding his life. His advent announcement was not hidden from the nation, but was present before everyone. His father was the one priest that was that went into temple to burn incense in the holiest place within the temple. The priest went in carrying the prayers of the nation to the very feet of God, and he would return to bringing the blessing of God to the people.

The problem with this is Zachariah went in to pray, but when he returned he was mute. He was unable to deliver the blessing. Everyone stood waiting. Every eye was on him, and he could not speak. Did God hear their prayers? Did God remove the blessing to the nation?

John had all eyes on him. He was raised as a son of a priest, and when he was of the proper age he would have started training to become a priest. We often forget that about John. We forget just how many people would have had a vested interest in his life and his future. We forget, or probably more accurately we did not know. John had all these eyes on him, but he did not follow in his father’s footsteps. He did not dawn the linen robes of a priest, instead he took a different path.

I want us for a moment consider the religious framework surrounding Israel during this time period. The temple had been destroyed about 500 years prior as the people went into captivity in Babylon. A couple of generations they lived in exile and then their ancestors had returned they rebuilt the walls of the city, they rebuilt the temple. And then they again faced a foreign foe as the Macedonians under the leadership of Alexander the Great conquered Persia. They survived that conquest. But something dire happened shortly after. One of Alexander’s generals took control over the land as the empire was divided after Alexander’s death. They lived under Hellenistic rule, and the Macedonians did not treat them as the Persian treated them. The religion of the Persians was Zoroastrianism. This religion is in many ways similar to the faith of the Hebrews. Their focus was on the struggle between good and evil, truth and the lie, order and chaos. And they worshiped in a temple without idols, instead they had a flame to represent the presence of their god. The Persians did not believe that their religion and that of the Hebrews were equal, but they saw that the teachings were similar enough that they gave them liberty to worship freely.

The Greeks did not have the same views. They did try to protect and respect Hebrew culture, but the Greeks felt that their culture was the greatest in the world. And Alexander sought to take that culture everywhere. The Greek culture is important. Other than the Bible preserved by Israel, the philosophies of the Greeks have been one of the greatest influences of the western culture. But there were some that resisted this foreign influence and eventually Antiochus IV got tired of constant push back from the religious leaders. He wanted control over the people and that control meant that he would need to take control of the temple. He outlawed the Jewish traditions, and installed a Greek-Jewish hybrid cult as the religion and it is said that he took a great swine into the the temple and sacrificed it on the alter of God as he dedicated the temple to Zeus. He then forced the Jewish priest and leaders to eat the swine’s flesh. This is what would become known as the abomination that caused desolation, which Jesus refers to later in the gospels. It corrupted the temple. It prevented the people from worshiping as they once did.

The people revolted against this blasphemy and they drove Antiochus from the temple and they fortified within the temple. The temple now being under their control, they then needed to purify it, but they only found enough sanctified oil to last one day. In faith they light the holy lamps and begun the rituals of purification, and miraculously the oil which should have only been enough for one day burned for eight. This was a sign that God was with them, and that he had blessed the temple once again. And this miraculous light inspired the Jewish people to push the Greeks out of Israel, giving them full independence after centuries of occupation.

The miracle of Hanukkah, or the Feast of Dedication, has been celebrated by the Jewish people from that moment until today. Even Jesus celebrated this feast. In the minds of the people God was again with them. But then something changed, a new empire was gaining strength. This newly founded nation was nervous about being reconquered so they drew up a treaty with this emerging empire that would provide protection from the Greeks. But this new empire seemed to just incorporate the entire world. Anywhere they marched became their territory. The Jewish people found their freedom, and slowly over time Rome they seemed to just merge into the Roman empire. With each generation they lost just a little more freedom, and were more beholden to the the Emperor. Until the last of the Jewish kings had died, and Herod the Great, the husband of a Jewish princess took over, he killed all the remaining members of royal family and secured his throne. And then he gained favor with Rome by building a city dedicated to the emperor and gained favor with Israel by expanding the temple of the one true God.

This was the world that John was born into. They had this temple that God blessed through the miraculous oil, but that temple had been commissioned by an outsider, a convert, someone that married into the covenant. And John’s father went into the temple to offer the prayers of the people, and he came out unable to speak the blessing.

All eyes were on John, but John left the temple. He did not follow his father. Instead he went out into the wilderness. There was tension building. They felt to the core of who they were that the Messiah would soon come, but then there were things all around them that seemed wrong. Some teachings at the time said that the Messiah would not come until they cleansed all the land from unrighteousness. They thought that if they could only purge the uncircumcised from land then the Messiah would come and establish the kingdom. Some taught that it was not the uncircumcised but their own sin that needed to be purged. Others thought that the philosophies of the Greeks had merit similar to the teachings of the Persians and they wanted to make room and broaden the reach of the mind. While there were others that just thought they should continue doing the things they had always done, just keep the traditions, perform the rituals, and celebrate the feasts.

They had nationalistic zealots, they had liberal thinking progressives, they had traditionalists, and they had ascetics. John and Jesus came into the world during a time where the cultural divide is mirrored by our own. What we see today resembles what we see in the pages of biblical history. This has lead many to believe that the time is near, the advent is upon us. I do not want to be an alarmist but it is true that it could be soon. But I am a skeptical person. I know that my parents believed that the end was near. I know that my grandparents, and great grandparents thought the same. Every generation since this time has felt as if Christ could come at any moment. And it is true he could. And that is what the people in first century Israel thought too.

The priest stood silent before the people, the blessing they anticipated had been withheld, what could this mean? The son, promised to the priest had come and the priest could speak once again the moment his name had been announced at the naming ceremony. The boy was called God’s gift, John. But John, God’s gift to the people did not enter service. He went out into the wilderness, and when he returned he did not dress as a favored spiritual leader, instead he was clothed with camel’s hair and a belt. He ate locusts and wild honey, he stood just outside of the land promised to their forefathers and cried out, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

This statement says a great deal. Repent means to stop and go the other direction. But John does not just yell this out to the people that society regarded as sinful. He cried out to everyone. He called out to the tax collector, the Roman soldiers, the men and women from town, and even the religious leaders. He went so far as to say, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”

We know what repentance means. We know that it means that we should turn away from the things of this world and return to the things of God. But John was yelling this to everyone. He was urging them to reexamine their lives. I have said many times that the Quaker Queries are our gift to the spiritual disciplines of faith, but nothing is new under the sun when it comes to God. John was encouraging everyone to examine their lives. He was encouraging them to consider their thoughts, their actions, their intentions. Why are you doing what you are doing? And where is God?

This voice is coming not from within Israel, from the one in the wilderness. The wilderness is extremely symbolic in the religious thought. It is the place of unknown. Danger lurches in the wilderness just as it sneaks around in the darkness. In the wilderness we are alone, vulnerable, at risk. Anything could happen. Robbers and bandits were in the wilderness. Those incapable of living within a community were in the wilderness. When the sins of the people were placed on the goat on the day of atonement, the sins were not placed on the one that was sacrificed to God on the alter, but the sin was transferred to the goat that was later chased out into the wilderness. That goat, the goat that carried the sins was not for God, but was for Azazel.

What is this Azazel? Some have said that it is place, like a cliff. Some say that it just means the goat that goes away, but if you were to look up the word in Leviticus 16, you would notice that it is used as a proper noun, and in our English translations it is capitalized. This has led some to believe that it is not merely a place or a description, but an entity. The goat was going to the demon of the desert. It was from Azazel that injustice, and greed came, this desert demon is the source of all sin because in the desert there is no civilization only survival. You take what you must. You look out only for yourself because if you do not you die. The desert, the wilderness is uncivilized and unrighteous and on the day of atonement the priests were sending back to Azazel the sin, the selfish and antisocial aspects of the community.

John was in the wilderness. He was out in the place where the demons ran free. And he cried out to the ones living in the civilized world, repent. And then the Gospel writer references Isaiah:

Isaiah 40:1–5 (ESV)

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The world in John the Baptist’s day was filled with many opinions. They were in the midst of a culture war much like we see today. They had people willing to commit political violence, they had people selling out to the government, people devoted to traditions, people living what they believed to be good lives, and people many thought were just terrible. There is a voice crying out in the wilderness. Its calling all around us, in the places that hold us paralyzed in fear. There is a voice is crying out.

We see John out in the wilderness crying into the land of promise to get ready because the dam is about to break. But when we look at Isaiah, it says, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

It is not a call to isolationism. It is a call to action. It is not a call to remain where we are it is a call to mission. John is calling us to examine our lives and see where God is and where God is leading us. Examine our lives and see if we have been living according to the mission God has given. He is urging us to repent. To turn around and go out into the wilderness, to take on the things that once held us captive in fear. To go out and explore the things that were once unknown and bring them into the light. To go out and participate in and finnish the mission that God had once commissioned our first parents to do.

In the wilderness prepare, make straight in the desert a highway. I looked up the words we translate as prepare and make straight. Each of these words are interesting. The word prepare in some places can be used to speak of turning, clearing, and moving things toward another. In some ways it almost sounds as if it is similar to repent, but there is more to it. It is not only making a decision to turn but to get what is needed to move out into that unknown. The term make straight is a term for leveling, evening out, but there is an aspect to this word that implicates tearing down and destroying along with the positive aspect of establishing a level foundation to build a highway.

I want us to think about the preparation and the leveling as we are called to go out into the wild. What is keeping us from living the life you know, you sense, you hear the spirit calling you toward? What is keeping you from turning, from preparing?

I have said many times that I had received a call to ministry shortly after I returned from Ukraine nearly twenty-six years ago. That is when I began to turn. When I began to prepare and start the leveling. Prior to that God was still working, I just did not want to pay attention. I had my own plans, my own desires. I wanted to do my own thing. And why would he call me, I was just a quiet nobody from the middle of nowhere. Yet when I received my first bible at and began to read in elementary school, I read the whole thing. Early in life God was working, preparing me for what he would eventually do. And I still do not know why. God leveled. He prepared. And he tore down things in my life. He is still doing it, because there is more to do. I am only one person and there is a highway to be built. What will God need to do? And what in your life needs to be torn down and moved out so you can respond?

Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The life, the lifestyle, the very thing you were created to be is within your grasp. But are you looking? Are we too focused on the things of Azazel? Are we focused on what I want and can receive? God is building a highway through the wilderness. God is leveling the things within the world, lifting that low places and cutting down the heights. And he is calling out, He is calling us to join him. Will we respond? The work needs to be done, and he will raise stones to be children of Abraham, he will find whoever, and what ever he needs to get the job done. The Kingdom of Heaven is and will be established. It is established when we answer the call in our lives and take a step into the unknown wilderness and reflect God’s light and lifestyle where we are at. It is established when turn from our quests for the profits of this world and refocus on the things that hold value to God. God will tame the wilderness, God will build the path through our era of history. Will we respond and join Him in the work?

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