Jerry Jenkins, the writer of the Left Behind series, says a real writer is someone who cannot not write. One of the professors of theology at a major Christian college said that if you can do anything else do not go into the ministry. What both were saying is that behind our labor is a passion to do it. Many go to work every day without any passion for their work. Many Christians get up Sunday morning and go to church without any passion for worship. Passion comes from within not from without. For example, music does not produce worship but worship produces music.
For the Christian, nothing is more fulfilling and satisfying than ministry unto the Lord. Whether we are in what is termed “full-time” ministry or ministering unto the Lord every chance we get, the quality and passion for ministry is the same. What we do for the Lord should have such passion and energy that there is no question in anybody’s mind that we are serving the Lord. Notice the positive passion of the apostle Paul, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
We come now to the ministry of John the Baptist. Although his ministry was unique in every sense of the word, there are aspects of his ministry that serve as a prototype of what our ministry should be. Certainly, John was especially called of God to do a work that nobody else could do.
John the Baptist’s ministry was to break the 400 years of silence and prepare Israel for the coming of the Messiah, the dynamic ministry of Jesus Christ.
Ministry is not what we do as much as who we are in Christ. True ministry is rooted in Christ and reflects Christ in everything we do.
Perhaps it is an understatement to say the John the Baptist ministry blew the doors open like no other prophet before him. The ministry of the prophet is not to soft-pedal the message but rather to get in the face and rattle the cage of people who are in a spiritual snooze.
The degree of stupor determines the level of shock.
Just like a patient whose heart has stopped needs radical shock treatment to shock that heart back into pumping.
An example…
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (3:7).
Sounds a little rough around the edges to me.
Let’s explore some of the aspects of John the Baptist’s ministry.
I. The Preparation for His Ministry
Every activity demands a certain amount of preparation. The more important the activity, the more intense the preparation.
For example, preparing to be a heart surgeon takes more intense preparation than flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Who would want their surgeon to have received his preparation and training from a book entitled, “10 Easy Lessons for Heart Surgery”? And he carries it into surgery.
The key to John the Baptist’s preparation is seen in chapter 1.
“And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel” (1:80).
And then come over to chapter 3,
“… the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness” (3:2).
The word “wilderness” has the connotation of separation.
This was the basic aspect of John the Baptist’s preparation. From his birth he lived a life separated from the world. That is what it means.
If you look at all the people God has used mightily, there is this aspect of separation from the world.
Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness… Get Egypt out of him.
The apostle Paul also spent years in the wilderness… Get religion out of him.
Separation is a key element of God preparing us to go into the world with His message. His message has to be undiluted.
With John the Baptist we see the instruction given to Zechariah his father, “for he will be great before the Lord, and he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb” (1:15).
This is usually associated with the Nazirite vow similar to the one Samson had in the Old Testament.
This was to separate him from the world and insulate him from the effects of worldliness around him. It is hard for us to understand how important it is to live a life of separation. This truth has been obscured and abused to such a sense that people do not understand what it means.
G.K. Chesterton said, “The world is not changed by giving into it, but by the saint that contradicts it the most.”
If we are going to have an impact in our community and world we are going to have to contradict it. The only way we can properly contradict the world around us is to be prepared by God who separates us from the world in order that He can send us back into the world to do His work.
This was the preparation of John the Baptist for his ministry.
II. The Premise of His Ministry
This is perhaps the most important. Every ministry must have a premise. That is, to lay out the direction of the ministry. To know the premise is to understand what your ministry is all about.
Define the premise.
For John the Baptist we find it in the first chapter.
“And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (1:16-17).
Then in chapter 3, we read this,
“And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (3:3).
This premise as applied to John the Baptist was set forth in the Old Testament. (3:4-6).
“And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
(Isaiah 40:3-4).
A premise establishes the limitations of the ministry. If you know what God wants you to do, it is easy to begin eliminating other things. It is not the sinful things that bother us as much as things not included in the premise of our ministry, but things that obscure and compromise our ministry.
John the Baptist did not have the freedom to go out and do his own thing, as we say today. He was operating within guidelines of an established premise and to do that was to fulfill his ministry unto the Lord.
In verses 10 through 15 we see John applying this message to the people he was ministering to. And it is interesting to read and see the three categories. The crowds, the tax collectors and the soldiers. I think it is interesting that Luke boils this down to these three categories.
His message of repentance affected people at the heart of their life. The application is different for each person.
An important aspect of this premise is that it led up to and introduced the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
“I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (3:16-17).
John the Baptist’s premise is quite clear. And, as the record shows us, he fulfilled his ministry to the fullest. He knew what he was called to do and he did it to the best of his ability.
Jesus’ evaluation of John the Baptist’s ministry says it all.
“I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John” (Luke 7:28a).
III. The Product of His Ministry
I think John’s preparation enabled him to understand the premise of this ministry, which enabled him to vision the product of that ministry.
It is in this area where we are most vulnerable. Unless we know the premise of our ministry, we will not be able to identify the product of that ministry, or the fruit. Many have trivialized their ministry to such an extent that they do not see or understand what the end product is. They are less than God’s intention for them. How sad, just going through the motions.
Look at John the Baptist. The end of his life was martyrdom. That does not sound like a happy ending. After all John did, he died for what he did. If you do not understand the premise of his ministry, his death does not really make sense.
John understood this when he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
The product of John the Baptist’s ministry was Jesus Christ. Preparing the way for Him to come “to seek and to save the lost.”
Notice the end of chapter 3.
“Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (3:21-22).
The appearing of Jesus Christ meant the departure of John the Baptist. The purpose of John the Baptist’s ministry was to prepare the way for Jesus Christ - and then get out of the way.
The product, or the fruit, reveals the truth.
“Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:17-20).
If we know the premise of our ministry we will easily recognize the product of that ministry, and focus on that.
Conclusion…
John the Baptist’s ministry is a prototype of what our ministry should look like.
God desires to thoroughly prepare us by separating us from the world. This is not so much a physical separation, although it can be, but rather a spiritual separation so radical that the world no longer influences you.
“Greater is he that is in you, then he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
Once that preparation has taken place, then we begin to understand the premise of our ministry and what we can and cannot do in order to fulfill our ministry.
The authenticity of our ministry is seen in the product. What are we producing?
The fruit is what we presented Jesus Christ which stands the test of time and follows us into eternity as our gift to Christ.
