Good morning. By a show of hands, how many of you have heard of the biblical character John the Baptist? Most of you have heard of him of course. When you think of John the Baptist, what kind of image comes to mind? A little wild. A guy running around the desert dressed funny and eating bugs mixed with wild honey and that sort of thing. We do stereotype John the Baptist. The stereotype really is not ungrounded because there is a verse out of the book of Matthew that describes John like this. It says that John’s clothes were made of camel hair and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locust and wild honey. All kidding aside, we tend to sum up John by this verse, which really isn’t fair to identify one man in the Bible by one verse because there are so many other verses in the Bible and especially in the gospels that really fill in the picture about who John the Baptist was. We find that in the birth narratives of Jesus Christ. You may recall, if you are familiar with the birth of Jesus, Jesus and John were second cousins. Jesus’ mother Mary was the first cousin of John’s mother Elizabeth. You also know that John, from the very beginning while he was still in his mother’s womb, had a very special relationship with Jesus. So much so that when Mary came to visit Elizabeth, John leaped in his mother’s womb. He filled his mother with the Holy Spirit so much so that she shouted out “Blessed are you amongst women and blessed is the child that you will bear.” Any Catholics in the audience? What is that the first line of? Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now in the hour of our death. Amen. That is where they get that. They get that from that particular scripture. We find out about John in the Jesus narratives. Just as the birth of Jesus was foretold by an angel, the birth of John the Baptist was foretold by an angel. You may recall that John’s father Zachariah was a priest who had hoped to have a child. He thought his wife was barren and wasn’t able to have a child. He went into the temple and began to pray and he was visited by an angel. We see that in Luke 1:8-17. (Scripture read here.)
We learn a lot about John the Baptist from those few verses. Some things we learn about him include these seven things. He will be a joy and a delight to his parents. Many will rejoice because of his birth. He will be great in the sight of the Lord. He will never take wine or fermented drink. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit since birth. He will go before Jesus in the power of Elijah. He will turn many people back to God. What parent would not want to have a child with these character traits? But we remember him as somebody who dressed funny and happened to eat funny foods, which is really what most teenagers do nowadays anyway. We really don’t have a lot of information about the John the Baptist from his birth to his public ministry, but we do know from another scripture, Luke 1:80, that “The child grew up and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel.” That is where we pick up the story of John the Baptist today. We actually pick him up in the book of John; the book of John is the book of the apostle John where John the apostle references John the Baptist. If you were here last week, you might recall we read the first 18 verses of the book of John and that was called the prologue. John the Baptist gets a mention very early on. He is connected with Jesus, but this time he is spoken of being connected with the word of God. You may recall John 1:1-5 (scripture read here). Then in verse 6 is where he introduces John the Baptist. “There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.” This is where we get the introduction of John the Baptist. John the apostle is saying that John the Baptist came as a witness to the word. As a witness to the light.
We pick it up in verse 19 and we begin to see that not only was John the Baptist a witness to the light, not only was he a witness to Christ the word, he was a voice of God. We are going to pick it up at verse 19, but before we get there, I want to set a little bit of historical context of what is going on at this time because I think it is important. The more you understand what is going on, the more you will appreciate the ministry of John the Baptist. During that time you had a lot of religious and political turmoil going on. The religion of the Jews had been in place for centuries. The sacrificial system. Like many religions, after a while they can become institutionalized. They become very rigid. They can serve not the people but they serve the leaders of the religion. What happens then is the people themselves instead of feeling freedom by being part of that faith, they feel restricted. They feel a burden. They feel oppressed by a bunch of legalistic rules. That is what was going on in the religious side of things. If you wanted to fill that in a little bit, you look back in Matthew 23 where Jesus is slamming the Pharisees for what they made happen to the Jewish religion. On the other hand, you had the political problem going on. During that time, the area known as Palestine was controlled by the Roman government. They had set up these provinces around that area. They had governors that were in charge of the particular area. One of the responsibilities was to squeeze as much tax as they could out of the people. If the people would complain, the other responsibility they would have would be to clamp down on them. Make an example of the people that would revolt. So you had this highly charged religious and political environment where one spark could set things in motion. Not too much unlike what is going on in the Middle East today. In the midst of all that, you had people who would see this political and religious turmoil as some sort of a sign out there that something was about to happen. God was about to intervene. God was about to step into the situation and take care of it. This was a common view. In their history as the Jewish people look back that is what would happen. The people would go along for a certain time. They would do okay and then they would start doing some bad things and things would start getting worse. Pretty soon they would be taken over by the foreign armies and then they would be crushed and God would come in and restore peace. Once again, all this turmoil was a sign that God was about to step into the situation. He was about to put his hand in the situation. He would then also restore a king that would be followed by a period of peace and prosperity. All this would be preceded by a messenger. Somebody would show up and begin to speak as though he is the voice of God. That was what John the Baptist was doing. Basically, when they hear John the Baptist out there saying repent for the kingdom of God is near, he is drawing the attention of both the religious establishment and the political establishment. Their curiosity is up. The religious guys don’t want their institution to be upset and the Roman government doesn’t want anything to be upset because they are charged with keeping the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. They hear John the Baptist saying all these things, so the Jews send out some people to visit him and find out who he is.
That is where we pick it up at John 1:19. (Scripture read here.) The situation here is that John is rocking the boat a little bit. The Jews are sending people out to check up on him. They send priests and Levites. The priests were the religious scholars of the time. They were out to check on John to make sure that he was saying the right things about God. The Levites were more the administrators of the temple. They were the ones that were in charge of making sure that everything was done properly within the temple and around the temple. They were out there to find out if John should even be baptizing anybody. That is the people that were going out there to see him. They go out to visit John and before they can even ask John who are you, he says I am not the Christ, which probably caused them to think a little bit. They were thinking we didn’t think you were the Christ. As you might know, the Christ actually means messiah or the anointed one. When we say Jesus Christ, we are not saying Jesus and his last name Christ. Christ means messiah or anointed one. Anointed one is one that is separated for a special work by God. When he says I am not the Christ, they are thinking we didn’t think you were the Christ. But if you are not the Christ, then who are you? Are you Elijah?
Some of you know the Old Testament stories. You know that Elijah was a very special prophet in the Jewish history. Elijah was the one that predicted famine, but he is better known as the one who went up against wicked King Ahab and not only wicked King Ahab but all his 450 prophets of the pagan god Baal. He went up against them to prove that the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh God, was a better God and a bigger God than their god Baal. He did quite a showing. When they put the beef on the altar and the prophets of Baal called down their god to burn the beef and nothing happened. When Elijah called down God to send fire down onto the bull, he did. He burned it right up. Elijah was a hero in Old Testament Jewish history. Not only was he a hero, but the people expected that Elijah would come back again. He would rise up from the dead and somehow show up. We know that from the second to the last verse of the Old Testament. In the book of Malachi it says “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.” They anticipated Elijah so they asked him are you Elijah. He says no I am not. Well are you the prophet? That is another interesting story. Moses was the man who led the Hebrews out of captivity from pharaoh and took them through the Red Sea. Moses writes in the book of Deuteronomy that someday God is going to send a prophet like him again. We read in Deuteronomy that “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.”
So they ask are you Elijah? He says no. Are you the prophet? No. Finally, in frustration, they say well “Who are you? Give us an answer so we can take back something to the people who sent us.” This is where we see John reply in verse 1:23 in the words of Isaiah the prophet “I am the voice of one calling in the desert. ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” This probably got their attention. What John is doing is quoting words from an Old Testament prophet Isaiah that lived about 800 years prior. He is applying words quoted by that prophet to that particular circumstance. He is saying he is the voice. A little history on Isaiah. Isaiah was one of the major prophets of the Old Testament. He was one of the more popular prophets of the Jewish people. When he lived, he wasn’t popular at the time because he was a prophet who would heap condemnation on the people for the way they were acting. He was the one who would say you guys are being immoral. You are acting badly. You are committing all sorts of sins. You are not living according to the law. You are not promoting justice to the people. You are taking advantage of the poor and the oppressed. Worse than that, you are worshiping idols. The most terrible thing you can do. He would warn them back in the first 39 chapters of the book Isaiah if you don’t clean up your act, God is going to remove his spirit from the temple. He is going to send in foreign armies to take over your people and destroy the city and bring people out into captivity. We read about the Assyrian and Babylonian captivity of the people. Isaiah was a prophet who heaped condemnation on the people. At the same time, he was a prophet who would also speak of comfort to the people. After God was finished pulling them into captivity where they had to pay for their sins, someone else would come. A messenger would come who would promote the coming of a king that would lead to an extended period of peace and prosperity. That is the context that John the Baptist is referring to. If we look back in Isaiah quickly, we see exactly what John is referring to. In Isaiah 40:1-2, speaking for God, Isaiah writes “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for and she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” What he is saying is that you have suffered enough. Your sins have suffered. You have paid for them and now you are going to get out of this situation. Then he goes on to say “A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepared the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all mankind together will see it for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’” This is the extended version of John’s quote. This is the full version of John’s quote from Isaiah.
A little bit of background here, when Isaiah says “Make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain” it kind of draws up the image of a king who used to travel through the wilderness. They would send people ahead of the king to clear the pathway. So when the king finally came through the valley or the wilderness, they could go straight. They didn’t have to go around. They didn’t have to stop and get out and move rubble and rocks. It was a straight pathway for the king. What John is doing here is taking this passage and bringing it into that first century context and he is saying to the Jews from Jerusalem, the Pharisees, priests, and Levites, I am here. I am that voice crying in the wilderness. The underlying Greek word for voice is phone. It is the same word we get the word telephone from. John is saying I am the phone call from God. I am here. I am the one. I am not Elijah. I am not the prophet. I am the voice of God crying in the wilderness make a straight pathway for the Lord because the king is coming. He is saying you better clean up your act. You better repent. He would get people to repent. To repent was to turn from your ways. From the way of the world and begin to walk back toward God. He would do it through baptism. They would call it a baptism of repentance. The baptism was symbolic of the idea of people turning back to God and turning away from their sin. That was John’s way of clearing the rubble and clearing the pathway. He is saying this is the voice crying in the wilderness. Move away from your lousy traditions, the bad religion you have been experiencing. Get away from some of those bad habits and oppressive behaviors. Move free from the political climate. Make way for the Lord. The thing about John we don’t realize, especially if we stereotype him, John had a single purpose in life. From the time he was in his mother’s womb, he knew his sole purpose was to be a witness and a voice for God crying out in the wilderness. He had no doubt in his mind what he was called to do. When we think of John in terms of he dressed funny and ate bugs, really what we are doing is having a low view of John the Baptist. The reason he acted like that is because he was focused like a laser beam. He knew that his sole mission in life from the moment he was born was to go out in that wilderness and be the mouthpiece for God that would open up the way for the king of glory to come in. He didn’t care about what he wore. He didn’t care what people thought about him. He didn’t care what he ate. All he knew was he had the awesome privilege and responsibility to prepare the way for the king of glory. He took that sense of purpose all the way to his death. If you know your gospel stories, you know that he died a brutal death. He was beheaded by King Herod at a birthday party because he insulted Herod. Because of his single focus, Jesus referred to him as one of the greatest men who ever walked this earth.
When we think about this situation, we wonder if there is an application here. Is there some way we can take it to the 21st century. I have been thinking a lot lately about some of the things that are going on in the world. We watch the news and see bizarre weather patterns going on. Snow, flooding, earthquakes, tornados. It just seems like the last year has just been incredible. We also begin to look at nature and begin to think that nature seems to be acting a little strange. Some of you might have seen on the news about the birds falling out of the sky. Most of us are aware of the economy. It has been up and down. You begin to look at this stuff and you begin to think maybe there is something going on here. You begin to look at lately what is going on in the Middle East and what is going on in Egypt and the surrounding area and you begin to think what is going on here. I am not one to be a doomsday guy or an apocalyptic thinker or whatever you would call it. But let’s imagine for a second that maybe there is something going on behind the scenes. Maybe like the first century or even the time of Isaiah, we are in a time where things are getting really bad and really shaken up and God is about to say, I think it is time to intervene. It is about time to put my hand in the situation. Once again, I am not one to predict the end times, but you can’t help but look at all this stuff and begin to wonder what if this is the case. The conclusion I came to is if this is the case, then you can approach it in a number of ways. You can be an atheist, a non-believer and look at this stuff and just say it is chance. It is nature reacting. It is people being mean to each other. It is just chance. You can look at the situation from that standpoint. You can see a lot of things but what you aren’t going to see is hope. You are going to see despair. Really the best you can hope for is that you are going to die a natural death and not get hit by a meteor or get killed in a war or by a terrorist or something like that. It really is a hopeless situation. Or you could be somebody who might believe in God or you believed in him in the past but you have kind of fallen away from God. You really hope there is a God out there. You see all these things happening and you begin to say if there really is a God, maybe I better clean up my act. Especially if he is about to come on and this is some sort of a message that God is about to intervene and maybe I better turn from my ways and decide to start following God. Then there is another option. You could be somebody who has been a Christian all their life and follows Jesus and prays and reads their Bible and everything else. You look at this situation and all these things and you don’t get despair, you get hope. You know that no matter how bad things get, in the end everything is going to be okay.
There is even a fourth alternative. You could be a Christian and you could say maybe I need to follow in the footsteps of John the Baptist. Maybe I need to be a witness for Jesus and a voice for God in the desert that I am called into. You say what desert is that? Just look around you. It is the workplace, the schools, homes, areas here in the community. Those are spiritually dry places. They are empty. They are deserts. You can go in there as a witness to Jesus Christ and be a voice for God and begin to clear the pathway for the King of Glory to come in. You say how do I do that? It is really quite easy. You go into the building that you are working in and you look around and you are going to see people that have their priorities mixed up. They are spending too much time at the office away from their kids and spouse. Their whole life is caught up in gaining material things. If you are a Christian that used to work in that environment but have changed because of your relationship with Jesus, you say I used to be like that. I know what you are doing, but it leads to nothing. It is a dead end. Jesus got a hold of me and I changed my priorities. I spend a lot more time at home and with my family and in church. Or you can be a high school student and you can go in your school and find the kid who is trying to get the higher high and you go up to that person and say you keep wanting to get a higher high, you can’t be high enough. Tell the kid I used to be like that wanting to get high all the time. Now I get high on Jesus. Why don’t you come with me Tuesday night to our youth group and I will show you how you can too. You go into a friendship where you experience somebody who is just constantly depressed and constantly down and feeling kind of low because they are still living in their past. The words of comfort that they needed from their parents that they never got. Or from their teachers or whatever. You realize the people are getting their significance from the wrong things. You go to them and say I used to struggle with depression. I used to struggle with anxiety. What I figured out is that I am trying to get my self-worth from the wrong place. I am trying to seek the significance from people, places, and things, and I learned that I can get my significance from the mere fact that I am a child of God, a new creation. You can go out into the poor places of the community and you can see the injustices. You can see the abuse. You can go in there and be the hand of Christ. You can be the compassionate one that would come alongside somebody and when they ask you why do you do this thing; it is because I serve a compassionate God and let me tell you about him. Or you could find the people who are burned out by religion because they had a bad experience at a church sometime. They walked away from God and you say I used to be like that too. I used to think that it was all this religious nonsense. I realized Christianity is not about a religion. It is about a relationship with Jesus Christ and let me tell you how to do that too. Or you go into a hospital setting or a funeral setting and you yourself have struggled with grief and you come alongside a hurting mother or father or daughter and you come beside them and you feel that pain that they feel. You say I feel this pain. I felt it myself. I understand what you are going through. I also know that as a Christian, every death is followed by a resurrection. Yes we die because Christ died but we live because Christ lived and continues to live. What you are doing when you take that witness, when you take that word, when you take that voice out into the community, is you are removing obstacles. You are taking the rocks, broken branches, muck, and you are setting it aside. You are taking the mountains of pride and pushing them down low. You are taking the valleys that are low and filling it up and putting them high. You are creating a pathway for the glory of God to come through in the environment. You have that choice to be that person. You have a choice to be a witness for Jesus. You have a choice to be a voice for God. Let us pray.
