Prepare Ye the Way

John the Baptist steps into Matthew’s account fully formed: preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, dressed in camel’s hair with a leather girdle, eating locusts and wild honey (3:4). His clothing recalls Elijah (2 Kings 1:8), and the angel had promised Zacharias that his son would come “in the spirit and power of Elias” (Luke 1:17). Matthew applies Isaiah 40:3 to him: he is the voice that prepares the way of the Lord. His message is short: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (3:2). When religious leaders arrive, he refuses to let pedigree stand in for change: “think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father” (3:9). Heritage is a gift, but it cannot repent for us.

🔗 Cross-references

• Isaiah 40:3–5 ↗The prophecy of a voice in the wilderness preparing a highway for the Lord, quoted in all four Gospels.
• Luke 1:17 ↗The angel’s promise to Zacharias that his son would go before the Lord “in the spirit and power of Elias.”
• 2 Kings 1:8 ↗Elijah described as a hairy man with a leather girdle, the image John’s clothing calls to mind.

Luke dates John’s ministry with care: the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, with Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas all named (3:1–2). The word of God bypasses every one of them and comes to John in the wilderness. Then Luke records something the other Gospels don’t. Three groups ask, “What shall we do?” (3:10, 12, 14). The crowd is told to share coats and food. Publicans are told to collect no more than they should. Soldiers are told not to extort by force or false accusation, and to be content with their wages. None of them is told to leave their life; each is told to live it honestly. The section closes soberly: Herod, rebuked by John, shuts him up in prison (3:19–20). Honest preaching can cost something.

🔗 Cross-references

• Luke 19:8 ↗Zacchaeus, a chief publican, shows John’s kind of fruit: half his goods to the poor and fourfold restitution.
• Mosiah 4:26 ↗King Benjamin teaches that retaining a remission of sins includes imparting of our substance to the poor.
• Micah 6:8 ↗An older summary of what the Lord requires: to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God.

Jesus walks from Galilee to the Jordan and asks John to baptize Him. John protests: “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” (3:14). The Savior answers, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (3:15). Nephi, who saw this in vision centuries earlier, explains that although He was holy, the Savior humbled Himself before the Father, witnessed that He would keep the Father’s commandments, and showed us the narrow gate and path (2 Nephi 31:5–9). Then comes one of the clearest scenes of the Godhead in scripture: the Son coming up out of the water, the Spirit descending like a dove, and the Father’s voice from heaven. Three distinct Beings, one perfect unity of purpose.

🔗 Cross-references

• 2 Nephi 31:5–10 ↗Nephi explains why the Holy One was baptized and invites us to follow Him.
• Moses 6:64–66 ↗Adam is baptized and the Spirit of God descends upon him: the same pattern from the very beginning.
• Doctrine and Covenants 20:37 ↗What the Lord asks of those who come to be baptized in His Church today.

Luke’s account of the baptism is short but adds a tender detail: the heaven opened while Jesus was praying (3:21). Luke then notes that Jesus was about thirty (3:23) and gives a genealogy that runs backward generation by generation. Matthew begins Jesus’s genealogy with Abraham, the father of the covenant people (Matthew 1:1–17). Luke keeps going past Abraham, past Noah, all the way to Adam, “which was the son of God” (3:38). Luke wrote for Theophilus and a wider world (Luke 1:3), and his genealogy quietly says that this Savior belongs to every child of Adam, not to one nation only. It also reminds us where every one of us came from.

🔗 Cross-references

• Matthew 1:1–17 ↗Matthew’s genealogy, which begins with Abraham and David to show Jesus as the promised King.
• Moses 6:22 ↗The genealogy of Adam’s sons, which also calls Adam the son of God.
• Acts 17:28–29 ↗Paul teaches the people of Athens that we are the offspring of God.

Mark is the shortest Gospel, and it has no birth story. It opens with a headline: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). Then it moves at a run. The baptism takes three verses (1:9–11). The forty days in the wilderness take two, including a detail only Mark gives: Jesus “was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him” (1:13). His first message is simple: “repent ye, and believe the gospel” (1:15). By the Sea of Galilee He calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, and Mark’s favorite word shows up: “straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him” (1:18). James and John leave their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants (1:20). Following Jesus cost them something real.

🔗 Cross-references

• Matthew 4:18–22 ↗Matthew’s account of the same call by the Sea of Galilee.
• Luke 5:11 ↗Luke’s version, after the miraculous catch of fish: “they forsook all, and followed him.”

Mark 1:21–34 describes one Sabbath in Capernaum. Jesus teaches in the synagogue “as one that had authority” (1:22), casts out an unclean spirit, then goes to Simon’s house and lifts his wife’s mother from a fever by the hand. At sunset, when the Sabbath ended, the sick are carried to Him and “all the city was gathered together at the door” (1:33). The next verse is easy to miss: “in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (1:35). The busiest day is followed by the quietest hour. Then a leper kneels and says, “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” Jesus, “moved with compassion,” touches him before He speaks (1:40–41). No one touched lepers. He did.

🔗 Cross-references

• Luke 5:16 ↗Luke notes that Jesus often withdrew into the wilderness to pray.
• Alma 7:11–12 ↗Alma teaches that the Savior took upon Himself our pains and sicknesses so He would know how to succor us.

Return to the Jordan today and let it become personal. Nephi hears the Savior say, “follow me, and do the things which ye have seen me do” (2 Nephi 31:12), and promises that those who follow Him down into the water “with full purpose of heart” will receive the Holy Ghost (31:13). The sacrament brings us back to that riverbank every week. In the sacrament prayers we witness again that we are willing to take upon us the name of the Son, always remember Him and keep His commandments, and we are promised His Spirit to be with us (Moroni 4:3). The Father who called Jesus His beloved Son also knows you. As you take the bread and water today, think of the day you went into the water, or the day you hope to.

🔗 Cross-references

• Moroni 4:3 ↗The sacrament prayer on the bread, with its promises and its covenant.
• Mosiah 18:8–10 ↗Alma’s description of the baptismal covenant at the Waters of Mormon: bearing burdens, mourning and comforting.