God told Jeremiah to tell them to build houses and make families during that seventy years; to pray for their enemies, and to ask God to send them peace. And God heard their prayers; and when the seventy years were accomplished, He fulfilled the prophecy in a very wonderful way, by raising up Cyrus, King of Persia, to send the Jews back to rebuild God's Temple at Jerusalem. And Cyrus helped them in every way, even giving them back the sacred vessels of the House of God which Nebuchadnezzar had taken; and by encouraging his people to help the Jews by giving them silver and gold, and beasts to carry the treasures, and all that they needed.
Thus God fulfilled His own word, and the people returned at the end of the seventy years.
[IX. "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord"]
Isa. xl. 3.—Matt. iii. 3.
Seven hundred years before our Lord Jesus was born, in Bethlehem, the Prophet Isaiah foretold that a man would live in the wilderness, and would cry aloud, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God! . . . The grass withereth and the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand for ever! . . . O Jerusalem that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!" That was the prophecy, and we read the fulfilment in the Gospels of Matthew and John.
"In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judæa, and saying, Repent ye: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight!"
Do you not think that John the Baptist must have felt greatly honoured to know that he was this messenger of the Lord?
He was the cousin of the Lord Jesus. And before John's birth, an angel told his father, Zacharias, that his name was to be John, and that he should be great in the sight of the Lord, and should preach in the spirit and power of Elijah, and make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
It was John the Baptist who, you remember, had the great honour of baptizing the Lord Jesus; and it was he who uttered one of the most wonderful sentences in the Bible: "Behold the Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world."
PROPHECY OF CHRIST'S BIRTH.
Isa. ix. 6.—Matt. ii. 11.