We never find our Saviour idle, but continually going up and down doing good, and we find him most intent upon preaching and teaching, which doubtless is the great work of the ministers of the gospel; of what quality soever they be, they call pretend to no higher than Christ’s. Nor did our Saviour think it enough to send others in his stead, as his curates, he went himself. Luke notes, Luke 10:1, that he sent the seventy, two by two, into every city whither himself was to follow; so as it seems he did not judge it enough that one proclamation of the gospel should be made to them. For those that think there is a distinction to be made between preaching and teaching, κηρυσσειν and διδασκειν, they may learn from this text, that they are both the work of Christ’s ministers, if they be bound to take example from their Master, and not think the servant is above his Lord. Those that under value preaching, as the least part of the ministerial work, do both forget this text, and what Paul said, that Christ sent him not to baptize, but to preach the gospel; that is, not so much to baptize as to preach. If any think that people are now so instructed that there is no such need of preaching, they should do well to question their people a little, and they may discover their own great mistakes. Besides that experience teacheth us, that those who are best instructed are most desirous of that which deserveth the name of preaching; which lets us know that there is yet something further to be known, or that we had need have our remembrance stirred up, or at least our affections quickened.

As John Baptist was a great man, so the Lord hath owned him as such, giving such a success to his ministry, that ever since he began the course of it, men have been carried on with a great ardour and heat, in hearing and receiving the gospel, which is the gospel of the kingdom, and bringeth men into the kingdom of Christ amongst men, and at last to the kingdom of glory. The hearts of men and women have been inflamed with a desire after the knowledge and obtaining of heaven, and heavenly things. They are great persons whom God thus owneth; and those whom the Lord thus owneth, are ordinarily such as have some measures of the spirit of this first gospel ministry, making the great things of God the matter of their discourse, and doing their work with a seriousness, zeal, and fervour fitted to it.
The violent take it by force: they are not lazy wishes or cold endeavours that will bring men to heaven.

It is no wonder that there was such a heat kindled in the souls of people upon John the Baptist’s coming, for they understood that Christ, typified in the law, and only foretold by the prophets, was now come. So as the ceremonial law from his time began to die, and all the prophecies of Christ in the prophets began then to have their complement. John showed them with his finger him who before had been only darkly revealed under types and figures, and in the prophecies of the prophets; men came to see that they had not hoped or waited in vain for the salvation of Israel.
Prophesied, in this verse, signifies, made dark revelations of Christ and the kingdom of heaven.

God had told the Jews, Malachi 4:5,Malachi 4:6, that he would send them Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest (saith he) I come and smite the earth with a curse. This prophecy related to John the Baptist, as our Saviour here teacheth us; so, Luke 1:17, it is confirmed by the angel to Zacharias, and Mark 9:11. From which last text it appeareth, that the scribes had a tradition, that Elias should come before the Messiah. Their mistake was that they looked for an Elias to come in person, whenas God meant no more (as the angel expounds it, Luke 1:17) than one in the spirit and power of Elias, as bold and free a preacher, who should no more fear the face of men in the discharge of his duty than Elias did. Saith our Saviour, if you will believe, this John was that Elias prophesied of by Malachi.

It is an epiphonema or conclusion often used by our Saviour, (and by St. John in the Revelation), quickening up the hearers to a just attention to and belief of what in the doctrine preceding he had revealed to them; intimating that he knew, that what he had said would not be entertained or believed of all, but only of such whose ears and hearts God had opened, or should open to receive spiritual mysteries. But it was a matter of great concernment, he therefore calls upon those whose ears God had opened to attend to it. So Matthew 13:9,Matthew 13:43; Mark 4:9; Mark 7:16; Luke 8:8.

Our Lord had hitherto spent most of his time in Galilee, and the cities belonging to that province: there both John the Baptist and himself had preached the gospel, there he had wrought many miracles, by both aiming at their repentance; but there were multitudes that did not receive him, nor would be brought to any sight of their sins, or any acknowledgment of him as the Messias. He now begins to reprove them smartly, not that they did not applaud and commend him, but because they did not repent. This was Christ’s end in all his preaching, and in all his miraculous operations, to bring men to repentance, and to receive him as the Messias; and this should be the great end pursued by all his ministers.