Clough John Lesson 7

John the Baptist – John 1:19-28

We want to review a few items; chiefly the fact that the first section of this Gospel, John 1:1-18 is the introduction to the Word of God; John prefaces his Gospel work with a careful delineation of what he means by the Word of God. He is careful because he wants to cut away human viewpoint distortions of this. And as we studied John 1:1-18 on numerous occasions I pointed out that John was colliding with all of the culture of his time; that he was trying to build up in his reader’s mind the categories necessary to understand the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you carefully followed the thrust of John 1:1-18 there is an operational corollary that comes from that, and that is that all true evangelism cannot proceed hastily to the person of Jesus without first defining God’s character over and against the creation. If that categorization, if that distinction has not been made, if the person does not clearly understand what kind of a God it is that is speaking in Scripture, then all talk about Jesus is a waste of time.

And yet when I make this statement, about two or three weeks afterwards I have a group of people come up and complain that I am undercutting the evangelism programs of this organization and that organization and so. I never mentioned these programs; I never mentioned the organization’s name, and I say if the shoe fits, wear it. I’m not up here to specify what organization doesn’t have the proper form of evangelism; I’m just here to teach the Word, don’t blame me, blame John, he wrote it and the Holy Spirit superintended the authorship of that. But one has to be careful and if you are growing in the Lord today you will be exposed to people who will coerce you into hasty versions of witnessing, particularly to children, and the danger always is that we have a group of children get together and we ask them who loves Jesus and everyone raises their hand and probably not one kid in ten understands what the issue was but they saw everyone raising their hand so they decided to raise their hand with them. Now that is not a prejudice analysis from Charlie Clough at LBC; that follows logically from John 1. It follows logically from the way the canon of Scripture is put together.

And yet we still have people in Lubbock who haven’t woken up to that fact. And still they insist on lowering the quality of our evangelism to the least common denominator. You see, there’s a socialist mentality that has permeated evangelical circles and this socialist mentality argues that we mustn’t have superior people, we mustn’t have people that excel, we have to bring everyone down to the same level. Now when you bring everyone down to the same level the lowest level that is common to all is the level of the moron, and so socialism always winds up with one mass collection of morons, with no one excelling. And we, because of our American character are very susceptible to that kind of thinking. I had several discussions in my office this week, as usual 5% of the people, and it’s low this time, but when daddy’s away the mice play and when I was out of town for about a week everything broke loose. We all do this, it’s part of our sin nature, we all deeply resent authority and when the authority figure is missing we tend to let loose; this always goes on, it’s not deliberate, it’s just the sin nature automatically working, and so we had a few confrontations already and I expect to have a few more until we get everything calmed down again. But this goes on because we have people who are busy with things other than the issue of the Word of God. Always good things in themselves but always something that is less than the best. One of the complaints that I heard was that in LBC was that among you there are people who think they are superior, to which I reply, they think they are superior because they are superior. Obviously the conversation wasn’t too fluid after that. But the point is that when you are well-trained you don’t go around and apologize for it, you use the training. If you have been carefully trained you use your training, and you ought to; that doesn’t a superior person in God’s sight in the overall sense, but it means you are better trained and you ought to be doing a better job; what’s wrong with that? We have superior people; in this congregation we have a large number of superior people and I’m here to compliment you because the majority of you did very well while I was gone and I’m pleased with that. I’m also pleased to be home because we encountered all sorts of interesting believers on the way, including a few pastors, and these were tolerable but we did encounter and were reminded of the kinds of issues that are prevalent all over fundamentalism today about let’s have a little body life and hold hands and carry on with all the…what they call love, which isn’t love; what it is is that certain people have some emotional needs and these kinds of people have particular kinds of emotional needs, in order to be happy they have to have everyone fawning all over them. And this comes up as a form of spirituality and they want to get into a congregation like ours and then impose their non-Biblical standard on everybody in the congregation.

There are some people here, like me, you love me by just staying out of my way, that’s the way I feel about it; I don’t want people fawning all over me and I don’t want to walk out of the aisle, if I were a visitor here and have everyone greet me; I’d just like to come in here and go out, and some of the great saints of this congregation feel the same way and I called them great saints because some of them have encountered suffering and have proved their faith in the trial of death and suffering. One woman told me, she said all I want to do is come in here and fellowship around the Word of God and walk out and I don’t want anybody calling me on the phone, I don’t want anybody glad-handing me at the door. This the most relaxed congregation I’ve ever been in and I thoroughly enjoy it. So pass the word that I haven’t changed my position and if you think you’re going to change me and my position you’re wasting your time because I’m not one that changes in those areas because it’s grounded on the Word; the Word doesn’t make an issue of personality, it makes an issue of doctrine. So let’s stop some of the small mini-revolts we have about we don’t have love in the congregation; we have plenty of love in the congregation. We don’t have a regimented system to satisfy emotionally warped people, that’s correct. And if you’re the kind that has to be patted on the back every week, no we don’t have that because we have other people that don’t like that. And in this congregation I cater to the other people for a change; most congregations cater to the side that wants the pat on the back and so forth. Now there are 399 other congregations in Lubbock and they’d be very happy to have you because they like that. So we’re going to be a little bit different and we cater to the other people, and both of us are one in the Lord Jesus Christ, both of us respect Scripture and this is the way it is.

So with that preface we can understand something that John is going to do before a high commission that investigates Jesus Christ, beginning in John 1:19. Interesting how the Holy Spirit always plans the text of Scripture to fit what’s going on in the congregation. I’ve never ceased to be amazed. Some people used to think that I have a spy system that tap the phones and figure out what’s going on and then I design… well, that’s not true, ask some of the men on the board, it’s usually a last minute hassle to get the service ready. We don’t plan it, that’s just the way it works out when you stick to the Word and go verse by verse. But this evening, when we start verse 19 which is the opening section of the next great section of we’re going to see something that John does and it testifies to the principle. We laugh about it but there is a principle involved here.

From John 1:19 through John 12:50, the end of chapter 12 actually, this is the next great section in the Gospel. This section deals with the incarnation of the Word of God in Israel. And there’s a doctrinal point that will be made over and over and over again in these twelve chapters. It will be made in different ways but however it’s made it’s always a playing out of verse 14, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory,)” the emphasis, we saw His glory, and John by that does not mean that we saw Jesus glory in some mystical dream; it was kind of a vapor that floated through the room. The beholding of the glory to the Apostle John is empirically beholding the glory of Jesus Christ; that means they could see it with normal vision; they could hear it with normal hearing, they could touch Jesus Christ.

In other words, there were no spiritual senses involved beyond the every day senses. He says we didn’t see any flamboyant revelation like the book of Revelation or Mount Sinai, but we rather saw a day by day life that testified to God’s glory. And so John avoids things like the Transfiguration incident; the other writers point that out but John doesn’t because John focuses the emphasis upon the little things, apparently little things of Jesus life; a conversation at noontime by a well with a woman, a Samaritan woman, a little thing like that John makes a big thing out of.

And now he makes a big issue out of, in chapter 1, his first point in these twelve chapters, is the presentation of Jesus to the nation. So John 1 begins with the first scene of the Gospel. In this scene the Lord Jesus Christ is going to be officially proclaimed to the nation. But several issues have to be settled first. As we said earlier, in the introduction, John faces a problem, and historians aren’t too clear what’s going on, but there apparently was a problem in the city of Ephesus with a John the Baptist cult, that is, there were a group of Jews who had affiliated with John the Baptist and had distorted his ministry into that of the Messiah so that in Ephesus you had a tremendous attraction for John the Baptist, but it was a warped attraction for John the Baptist. It was an attraction that made John not into the forerunner of Jesus but into the Messiah himself. John had become therefore, by the Apostle John’s time, not one who makes the crooked ways straight but he himself had become an obstacle to the proclamation of the gospel; not him but the distortions that had grown up about his name.

And so we are going to have a section, a lengthy section in the first chapter to deal with the John the Baptist cult, to get out of the way John as an obstacle and to turn back John into the person he should have been and was, that is, the introducer of the Messiah. So there is a clarification of the issues of John; a clarification of his relationship to Jesus. And also in this section you are going to see a very intimate portrait of John the Apostle because John the Apostle was a disciple if John the Baptist. And it’s in this chapter that he meets Jesus for the first time. And Jesus so strikes his spiritual imagination that when he writes and records the first time he looked at Jesus Christ he mentions the hour… the hour, it was precious in John as the old man who now in his latter days wrote this Gospel, still remembered back to his youth when he first saw Jesus Christ.

In John 1:19 he starts, “This is the witness of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you? [20] And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. [21] And they asked him, Well who are you then? Are you Elijah? And he said I am not. Are you that prophet? And he said, No. [22] Then they said unto him, Well who are you, that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? [23] He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet, Isaiah. [24] And they who were sent were of the Pharisees. [25] And they asked him, and said unto him, Well then why do you baptize, if you don’t be the Christ, nor Elijah, nor that prophet? [26] John answered them, saying, I baptize with water; but there stands one among you, whom you know not. [27] It is he who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not wroth to loose. [28] These things were done in Bethabara beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.”

So from verses 19-28 we have a clarification of John’s role. In verse 19 the witness, “This is the witness of John,” now the fourth Gospel emphasizes over and over the witness. Included in the witness are physical facts, historical facts, verifiable facts. Why? Because John is seeking for you, for me to trust and we aren’t built to trust anything unless it holds our weight. John does not ask for a premature decision for Christ before you are confident of the facts. He never asks you or me to believe unless we are first convinced of the truthfulness of the claim. Now this is a application to both evangelism and sanctification. Since we are to walk by faith in every area of our life, then we must, before we can operate in certain situations, be convinced that we can operate by faith. That is, we must have a clear conscience before God and we must have the facts. We never fault a person who hesitates to act, who hesitates to do something because of an unclear conscience. The only thing that we fault is the person not doing anything about it, not seeking Scripture, not seeking the way. But I would hope that some of you who are on committees understand this; don’t fault someone if they can’t do what you may be asking them to do if they can’t honestly believe it’s right; hold back, and that person ought to hold back until they are first convinced of the validity of the process. Just be patient. John the Apostle was patient, he gave us data, he gave us evidence; he said you consider the evidence, then believe.

So “this is the witness,” and in verse 19 he begins. The first piece of evidence that he submits to his world are the validity of the claims of Christ. And this first piece of evidence is an official investigation, not of Jesus but of John the Baptist. You see, in Old Testament Judaism, in the Mishnah there was prescribed hearing procedures whenever there was danger of a Messianic movement. And the Mishnah prescribed that there be two things done. If there was someone going about claiming to be the Messiah then the Jewish leadership had two things they had to do. The first thing they had to do was send a preliminary committee out to the person or to his followers to confirm in fact that he was making Messianic claims; that was the first thing, to confirm that the man indeed was making Messianic claims. Maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was just being misquoted. So they gave the man the benefit of the doubt and they carefully checked him out personally. Was he or was he not claiming to be the Messiah. That’s the first thing that the Mishnah required.

The second that the Jews were required to do was that if that preliminary investigation found out the man was indeed claiming to be Messiah, then a high commission would be appointed of the leaders of the nation to investigate such said person. So there were two steps to the investigation; in this section of this Gospel you see the first phase of the Judaic investigation system operating. “This is the witness of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you?” They’re finding out first whether John the Baptist is making the claim of Messiah and if he is then further investigation by the second step will be made necessary. If on the other hand they find determinatively that John the Baptist is not claiming to be Messiah then the investigation is off, it terminates there.

So verse 19 marks an important piece of evidence in John’s presentation of Jesus Christ. To present Christ to the world of John the Baptist John the Baptist has to deal with the issue of his local community which was that maybe John the Baptist was Messiah, not the Jewish carpenter called Jesus. So the first piece of evidence that he brings forward was to show that John the Baptist wasn’t the Messiah, he never claimed to be the Messiah, and this clears the way for the later evidences that confirm and substantiate Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. “This is the witness of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites,” now why were priests and Levites sent? We’re not too sure about the exact investigative procedure but one of the tantalizing things is to think of John the Baptist’s own father and mother.

If we turn back to Luke 1 we discover something about the family of John the Baptist. In Luke 1:5 it says, “There was, in the days of Herod, the king of Judah, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abijah; and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. [6] And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless,” and so on. These are the parents of John the Baptist. Notice the word of God makes it clear that both come from the tribe of Levi. Both John’s father and John’s mother are Levitic. His father, furthermore, is a priest. Since his father was part of the temple priesthood of just a generation before, it doesn’t take much imagination to take much imagination to think of what must have been going on in the priestly circles in the city of Jerusalem about this John the Baptist. Why, he was the son of this man, he was the son of a priest that I knew, he was the son of Zacharias, I worked with him all the time, now his son is out there in Jordan baptizing. So therefore the priests and the Levites of Jerusalem were very much interested in this John, he was related to them, he was a Levite also.

So when we come back to John 1 we can understand and appreciate that in this investigation commission there come the Levites and the priests. And they asked him, “Who are you?” They were not yet concerned with disproving his claim, they were concerned only with hearing his claim. That’s a good principle to follow. When you talk about Jesus Christ with someone spend some time listening to them to make sure you understand what is going through their mind. It takes time. So these people are not ready to condemn, they want to hear first.

John 1:20, “he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ.” Now you notice the emphasis in verse 20; there’s a special point, he doesn’t just say I’m not the Messiah; it says he confessed, that’s a strong verb, he publicly proclaimed. There’s a formality to verse 20, it’s not just a casual conversation. There’s an official commission that comes out from the city of Jerusalem and there’s an official answer. John the Apostle doesn’t record a casual conversation on a sunny afternoon in the Jordan valley. He might have heard many casual conversations because many people did come to John the Baptist with questions, but the one conversation that John the apostle brings forward in his Gospel as evidence is not the casual conversations, it’s the official conversation. John wants evidence, evidence that would be verifiable in his generation, that they could go back to the temple and check, or go back to the witnesses that still were living. So “he confessed” it says, and then John repeats himself in verses, “he confessed, he denied not, but confessed,” he’s making a heavy point that John the Baptist never made a Messianic claim and the proof of it was that the day the commission came out to investigate him from the city of Jerusalem he confessed, he made it emphatic and clear that he was not the Messiah.

John 1:21, they’re going to ask him further questions. He said I am not the Messiah, but there was such a diversity of views in this day they had to be sure that he wasn’t claiming to be Messiah so they’re going to ask him a series of questions. They want to close the case because if they can get this case closed they don’t have to go on with a higher investigation, everything be shut off. But they want to make sure before they close the case that he really, really isn’t claiming to be Messiah in any way, shape or form. Now to understand why they are so emphatic and why they probe around the Elijah issue, and why they deal with the prophet issue we have to go back in the Gospels to see what kind of thoughts were floating around at that time about the Messiah.

In John 1:43 we notice we’re in Galilee, they’re just about to go to Galilee, and there is a Galilean culture here, [44] “Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter,” and so we have a northern group of people and it’s in this northern group that they have certain Messianic speculations. So in John 1:45, “Philip found Nathanael, and said unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and in the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” So it shows you from verse 45 that the people in the north, around Galilee knew of Messianic predictions from the Torah; they were aware of the Messianic interpretations of the Toray. They were not Christians reading Christ back into the Old Testament; this was Judaism and Judaism was Messianic Judaism. In verse 46, “And Nathanael said unto him, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” We’ll examine why he said that when we get there, the reason he said that. But obviously he’s a little shocked to think that Messiah would come from Nazareth. And then finally in verse 49, “Nathanael answered, and said unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.” So it shows you very clearly that at least they were squared away on the humanity of the expected Messiah; they were squared away that He would be king and that he would hold political office. So that was the thinking in the north, at least a human Messiah and a royal Messiah.

Now turn to John 4:4 we see the Messianic speculation halfway down from the north and here we see the speculation in Samaria, Jesus goes through Samaria. John 4:25, “The woman said unto him, I know that Messiah comes, who is called Christ; when He is come, He will tell us all things.” So she has the idea that the Messiah is a great prophet who will tell her all things; that’s the Messianic speculation going on in Samaria. In John 4:;29, “Come, see a man, who told me all things ever I did. Is this not the Christ?” So the woman of Samaria had preconceived notions about the Messiah; valid notions. Now when Jesus came along he fit her framework in this area and He validated and substantiated His character to her framework of Messianic expectation.

Finally, in John 5:39 we have the speculation in the south, in the area of Judah. Jesus says to the people in Judah, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me.” Verse 45, “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one that accuses you, even Moses in whom ye trust. [46] For had you believed Moses, you would have believed me; for he wrote of me.” It indicates again that there was a strong emphasis upon the Torah, a strong emphasis upon looking in the Torah to provide the proper Messianic picture.

So all this was in the air; in particular there were two elements that were in the air; we’ve seen how they were in the air in the north, the center of the country, the south of the country, all over the country there’s turmoil going on, there’s this kind of almost subliminal unconscious foreboding that something is going to happen, sort of like the world has in our own generation, this foreboding and these people were more focused because they focused in there’s a person coming. But there was a diversity of opinion about this person from Old Testament passages.

Now turn to Malachi 4:5. Here one of the last prophecies in the Old Testament sort of complicated this picture of the coming Messiah because this prophecy says, “Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the coming of the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD: [6] And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children t their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with curse.” In other words, there’s going to be a forerunner to the Messiah and the forerunner in some way is identified with Elijah. So this is a prophecy that this commission had access to when they walked eastward from the city of Jerusalem out to the Jericho area and the Jordan area.

Now there was another prophecy they had available to them and this is found in Deuteronomy 18:15, “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.” Now I a way this can be applied to the prophets of the Old Testament; true. But from the earliest times the Jews always saw verse 15 as primarily Messianic. There was one Prophet among the many, a Prophet from the midst of thee. [16] “According to all that you desired of the LORD thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not. [17] And the LORD said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken. [18] I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. [19] And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto My words; which he shall speak in My name, I will require it of him.” So therefore this Messiah in the prophetic image is going to make certain claims and the burden that’s going to be put on the nation in verse 19 is if they reject the claims of this man, this Prophet who is coming; they are going to be rejected, so it’s very critical that if Messiah and this Christ is a prophet they’d better listen to what He says because rejection of His message leads to rejection of themselves. It’s very critical.

Now let’s go to Matthew 11:14, the problem is, who is John? The prophecy has it that Messiah will come; the prophecy in Malachi is that before Messiah there will be this Elijah. So if there’s going to be a forerunner before Messiah and Jesus is the Messiah, then isn’t John Elijah? Well, the prophecy of Malachi, like so many cases of Scripture is looking ahead in time; it has many elements in time, like I said this morning. Prophecy is [word sounds like: atelesmatic ah tell is matic], it’s close like this, and when you turn it around if you could, but you can’t get outside of history to look at it, you could see that it’s diverse; it has two different elements, but from the head-on the way we look at prophecy we can’t see those two elements. So within the Malachi prophecy there are these two things that refer both to Christ’s First Advent and His Second Advent. There will also be a predecessor to Jesus before He returns again, and that’s another story dealing with eschatology, but what we’re asking is, what about John. Jesus was not fully accepted by the nation. Jesus, in fact, was officially rejected as the Messiah the first time. The second time no, the first time yes. And because Jesus Christ was rejected the prophecy of Malachi 4 cannot be wholly fulfilled. And therefore in Matthew 11 we read something about John the Baptist.

Matthew 11:14, “If you will receive it,” notice “it” is in italics, if you will receive the program that is going on in your day, that you are not hearing, you are being invited to trust in Me as Messiah and if you do nationally, the kingdom will come now, “If you will receive it, this,” that is John the Baptist, “is Elijah, who was to come.” But it’s conditional, if you all will do that, then John is the fulfillment of Malachi 4, but there’s a condition and the nation never fits the condition. And therefore John the Baptist is only of the spirit of Elijah, he has the personality of Elijah, he has the message and the format of Elijah but he is not the fulfillment, the whole fulfillment of Malachi 4.

By the way, while we’re here notice something else, keep on reading, verse 16, “But whereunto shall I liken this generation It is like unto children sitting in the market place, and calling to their fellows, [17] And saying, We have piped unto you, and you have not danced, we have mourned unto you, and you have not lamented. [18] For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon. [`9] The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, he’s a glutton, and a winebibber,” you see the point Jesus is making in verses 18-19, Jesus and John had totally different personalities and totally different lifestyles. But the problem, and we all have it, the human race has had it since Adam, there’s a strain of legalism in every one of us. We don’t like people that are radically different from us so here’s some believer out her that stands out from the crowd because this person may have certain features in their life, like for example John the Baptist, minus on drinking; Jesus did drink, He drank many times, you’ll see in John 2, it wasn’t grape juice either. John didn’t and Jesus did and everybody wanted to make a federal case out of it. So John would show up and the excuse they’d use was well, John doesn’t drink, he’s not a relaxed type person; John doesn’t have a very nice personality, everybody comes out there and he antagonizes people when he teaches the Word, he steps on them, I don’t like John. So the people would look at John and they’d say I reject the message because of the man. That’s their excuse.

But Jesus says that doesn’t work with me because you same people, you come along and what you fuss about John’s personality, where he doesn’t drink and that bugs you, I do drink and I do socialize and you still don’t listen to the Word. So what does that prove? It proves that those people are rejecting the message and not the man. The man has nothing to do with it. This is a little way people have of kind of faking you out, and if you don’t have discernment you’ll buy it. Somebody will come up to you and because you have certain things in your life that bug them they’ll climb all over you and they’ll say well I’m not going to fellowship with you because of this, this, this and this in your life, because that offends me. And they make an issue and make it sound like these little things are true obstructions to the Word of God in their life. But they’re not because the same person can go in a group of believers who would fit all their stereotype profiles and lifestyles and they still wouldn’t be any more spiritual than they were before. They’d be more comfortable emotionally in a social group that liked their lifestyle, yes. So discern something about this passage. There is a difference between an acceptance of the Word of God and what we will call an acceptance in an emotional sense. This is what’s happening in our circles; people don’t feel the emotional and social acceptance and the say that offends me, that’s a sign the Holy Spirit isn’t working. They’re not interested in the Holy Spirit, they’re only interested in forcing the group into their personality mold and that is legalism. They want to change the standard of the group to make it socially and emotionally comfortable for them, and they do it in a very pious and very clever way by saying oh, this is such a deep spiritual issue with me.

People haven’t changed; people did it right here, they made an issue out of the drinking and eating style of John. John was a natural ascetic; he was the kind of person that liked to be alone. He wanted to be alone; they don’t have hotels every half mile on the dunes out there. John was the kind of person that if you wanted to express your love to him you’d leave him alone; that was his personality, he didn’t want you holding his hand. Jesus, on the other hand, liked to be around people. We see that evidenced many times; of course He got alone to pray, but Jesus was a far more sociable person. You see the same contrast in the Old Testament between Elijah and Elisha. Elijah was the ascetic and Elisha was the socialite. And again the principle was demonstrated, the same people that rejected the Word out of Elijah’s mouth rejected the Word out of Elisha’s mouth. The same people that rejected the Word of John’s mouth rejected the Word out of Jesus’ mouth. So in the final analysis don’t be snowed; people that fuss over these little things are basically little people and the reason they fuss at little things is because they haven’t got the big vision; they’re not concerned with spiritual issues in the first place, so don’t get guilty because somebody comes along and doesn’t like the way you part your hair.

Turn to John 1; that’s the background for the commission; when they come out to John and John says I deny claiming to be Messiah; I’m not claiming that. They want to gather up the loose ends before they close the case so they’re going to ask some concluding questions. And these concluding questions you can understand in the light of all these Messianic predictions that are floating in the air at this time. So “they asked him, Well who are you then? Are you Elijah? And he said I am not.” So that satisfies that claim; they want to make sure he isn’t claiming to be Elijah. Jesus said he would have been Elijah had the nation accepted him. Then they asked him, “Are you that prophet?” a reference to the Deuteronomy 18 passage, just to clarify that loose end. “And he said, No.” [Tape turns]

… there are lots of different combinations and permutations of Messianic predictions, Qumran had two or three Messiahs and these sects had different versions of this so they wanted to just pull everything together in their reports; they want to get the air all cleared. And notice something else in verse 21, one of the great things about John the Baptist. The more that they picked on the details of his life the less he spoke. Do you notice the de-escalation in response in verse 20-21. See the first question, a big long sentence, “I am not the Christ.” The next sentence in response, “I am not.” The third sentence, “No.” Obviously he wants to terminate the conversation. John is that kind of an individual, he does not like to talk a lot and he doesn’t like to carry on big long conversations with people. He is an ascetic, he wants to talk to some locusts out there in the Jordan Valley, that’s fine with John, John enjoys that, but he doesn’t care too much about talking with people. That just wasn’t his personality and it wasn’t because he wasn’t filled with the Holy Spirit, don’t bring that up. John had this kind of personality and that’s just the way it is.

John 1:22, this still doesn’t satisfy them, so they’ve got to do something to pry this guy loose. You’d think showing this great interest you’d try everything Dale Carnegie teaches you to get a conversation started, they asked interesting questions, and surely this would stimulate response, everybody’s interested, aren’t they, if you’re interested I them. No! That is not correct; there are some people that aren’t interested and they would appreciate it if you left them alone. That’s just their personality and John is one of these. So the Dale Carnegie approach failed, they see that’s coming to an end, they aren’t getting anywhere, they still can’t fill out the last line in their report. What is this guy, he isn’t the Messiah, he isn’t Elijah, he isn’t a prophet, well who is he? So they have to start it up again. “Then they said unto him, Well who are you that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself?” By this time you can see the inspector with his little chart of papyri sitting there, well John, I’ve got to fill out the form, what do I put in the last line. That’s what he’s asking. Just give me something, I’ve got to go back there and report to those guys. And then he gives them a quotation from the Old Testament. And again it’s not a big conversation, it’s very brief, very much to the point.

John 1:23, “He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet, Isaiah.” Well, that doesn’t illuminate us to much, so let’s go back to Isaiah 40 to see whence cometh this prophecy. This is the passage that again, like the Malachi passage, is [can’t understand word] that is, it has this dimension of two things hooked together, it’s the First and Second Advent of Christ and because we can’t get outside of history to get this view all we get is this view. So again this passage has kind of a dual fulfillment; it has a partial preliminary fulfillment and John the Baptist was quite First Advent but it has a literal, final fulfillment with the Second Advent. Isaiah 40:1, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, says your God. [2] Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received of the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.” That is the period of discipline is over and she has a chance to repent. Then the prophecy.

Isaiah 40:3, “The voice of him that cries in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. [2] Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” Now that’s not talking about changing terrain absolutely in all areas, in all the world. What it is saying, it’s an image of building a road that will be perfectly level; it refers in its literal fulfillment to topographical changes in the land of Palestine, which will occur in the Second Advent of Jesus Christ. They did not occur at the First Advent. But in John’s day, since it was only a partial fulfillment, the crooked ways and so on are the theological and spiritual areas. John had to cope with these, he had to prepare the way for the people.

Now the Qumran sect at this time in history took this passage, verses 3-5, they took the passage and said the way to make the crooked places straight is for us all to hide in our little community here and we’re going to study the Word all by ourselves and not preach it and not teach it to other people; not evangelize, we’re just going to get all in grown here and that’s the way to make the crooked way straight. John the Baptist differed violently from Qumran on this issue. John the Baptist, though an ascetic and individually and personally could care less about having people hold his hand, he was the kind of individual that was interested that the Word of God go forth to the entire nation. John had a great wide-ranging ministry.

Turn back to John 1, after he quoted Isaiah 40 in verse 23 apparently that was enough to satisfy the investigation because the conversation didn’t continue, except for one group of people that were on the commission. John 1:24, “And they who were sent of the Pharisees.” And in the Greek it’s ambiguous in the syntax, it could be “those of the Pharisees who were with them.” So we have apparently a subset or a segment of this commission that were not satisfied. The priests and the Levites had filled out the form, packing up the bag, ready to go back to Jerusalem but in the part of investigators there were some Pharisees… now just a minute, before we turn around there are some other questions we want to ask you. The Pharisees were the great legalists of their time. In today’s Israel there are modern day theological descendants of the Pharisees. They wear black and they have a little curl on each side of their head and the ultra orthodox within them never recognized the state of Israel but the whole community of them still insists on very legalistic things. They monopolize the Department of Interior in the modern Israeli government and so when you walk into some places there will be dual restaurants; you go into one side and they’ll serve meat products in your food and you go in the other side and they’ll serve dairy products in your food, but they are not allowed to mix the utensils from one restaurant to another; a guy can own the two but there has to be an absolute difference between the two restaurants and the reason for that is in Deuteronomy it says you shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. And so after about 400 deductions off of this verse they came to the conclusion that no dairy product can be mixed with a meat product, and therefore every restaurant owner has double expense of setting up this part of the restaurant and then he has to go set up this part to please the modern day Pharisee.

And then one evening we were walking down the streets of Jerusalem and we heard all this commotion and carrying on, and it was a Saturday night, about 6:30 to 7:00, and it was on the Sabbath day, and in this particular area of Jerusalem the police put barricades over the streets that lead into the sector where these people live because if you drive your car in there they’ll stone you. There’s enough stones in the city of Jerusalem and they’ll still do it the way they did in the Old Testament. Stones that do a pretty good job on a car at least, particularly when it comes through the windshield so the police, to avoid problems, put barricades across. But that doesn’t please them because this particular day they were upset that the cars were starting to drive before the sun down and so they were trying to holler and hoot and carry on and get out in the middle of the street to stop the traffic until the sun set, because that was the official end of the Sabbath. So it’s very interesting to watch the mentality that works here.

This is the same mentality here, the Pharisees are not satisfied with the more lenient forms from the government type people. John 1:25, “And they asked him, and said unto him, Well then why do you baptize, if you don’t be the Christ, nor Elijah, nor that prophet?” Now why are the Pharisees interested in baptism? It’s a very interesting point. The Pharisees promoted baptism; by the way, it was immersion, I have some pictures of baptisteries that we took. At various churches in the first, second and third centuries and also some pre-Christian areas where they had synagogues and all their baptisteries were deep enough to immerse, so apparently sprinkling was unknown, at least in that area of the country, they baptized by immersion. Of course there are other reasons, climatologically probably too, it’s very hot.

So John in this area is faced with the Pharisee’s claim about baptism. Why? The Pharisees argued that when you as a Gentile or if I were going into Judaism, before I could become part of Judaism from outside I would have to be baptized by immersion. That would be the sign of my conversion from being one of the goiim, one of the Gentiles, to coming in as a proselyte and to do so, to cross the fence, I would do so by baptism by immersion. But the hitch was that baptism by immersion was only applied to Gentiles coming into the nation; it was never applied internally to the Jews. So they argued that all the nation was going to be saved, all Jews by virtue of the merits of Abraham. And the Mishnah was filled with this insistence on the merits of Abraham, that we will gain the kingdom of God when Messiah comes because of the merits of Abraham. So since that is the case and we have Gentiles out here, we’ll baptize them when they cross this boundary, but baptism inside the circle was a new thing and that’s what’s upsetting the Pharisees because they knew that when Messiah comes there would be a baptism within the circle to show that their sins were forgiven nationally, Ezekiel 36:25-27. But for John to be doing this confused them. They wanted to know the basis of this baptism; they wanted to get involved in a discussion on baptism.

But notice how John very neatly sidesteps the issue; again we notice a characteristic of John, he says very few words. John 1:26, “John answered them, saying, I baptize with water; but there stands one among you, whom you know not. [27] It is he who, coming after me, is preferred before me…” what does John do there? He gets the conversation completely off baptism and moves it on to the person of Christ. Not that the Pharisees couldn’t have been answered with a detailed defense but John, at this point in his conversation, is emphasizing the person of Christ. John the Apostle, keep the big picture in mind of this Gospel, John the Apostle is particularly interested in showing not the issue of baptism but John the Baptist issue and is he or is he not Messiah. And so in the conversation in the narrative recorded the issue isn’t on the peripheral issue of baptism; the issue is on the central issue of John and the Messiah, and their relationship one to another.

So verse 26, “I baptize with water; but there stands one among you,” an announcement that Messiah is already in existence, “whom you know not. [27] And he is preferred before me,” there is a verse that you want to remember the next time someone comes up with the word meek. The word meek in Scripture means that you know your place in the chain of command. Meekness means that you do not act lower than you are on the chain of command and you do not act higher than you are; translated in gift terminology, if you have the gift of helps you don’t act like you have the gift of teaching; if you are a deacon you don’t act like a non-deacon, you act like a deacon. That’s your office, that’s your authority. You don’t like an elder, you act like a deacon. An elder doesn’t act like a deacon. That’s meekness; meekness doesn’t mean shuffling around and this kind of operation; that is not the Biblical picture of meekness. Meekness means that you recognize your proper place.

So John says that man “is preferred before me,” he recognizes rank, and recognizes that he does not have the rank of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he makes it clear that day, that afternoon or morning or whenever it was, that the official investigation came from the city of Jerusalem. And John the Apostle is telling us I want you to remember, it’s on record, and you could go to those people in that commission and ask them what he said, John never claimed to be Messiah; he claimed Messiah was of higher rank. And then he did so with a very interesting phrase, “whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to loose.”

“…whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to loose.” Now what’s that got to do with it? Well, without reading any background you obviously know it’s an expression of humility, it’s an expression of less rank. But there’s a rabbinic saying in the Talmud that goes back to these times and it gives us the background as to why he said this particular thing. See, in ancient Israel there would be clusters of students that would gather around their teacher. The word for teacher is rabbi; that’s what it means, teacher. So they couldn’t pay their teacher a salary so the students would do menial tasks for their teacher, take his clothing down, wash it, this kind of thing. And they’d cluster in their living communities around their teacher and sort of pay him back not in shekels, not in coins, but they’d pay him back in doing all sorts of duties. But obviously there had to be a control on what the students were obligated to do so they had rules controlling the limits to what the rabbi could tell his students. And there’s a rabbinic statement that says this: Every service which a slave performs for his master shall a disciple do for his teacher, except the loosening of his sandal thong. Every service which a slave performs for his master shall a disciple do for his teacher, except the loosening of the thong on the sandal.

So it was the custom, and that was the one thing the student never did for his teacher, you had the slave do that but the student doesn’t. So John says I will show you where my rank is; I am not even worthy to undo his shoe lace. In other words, John places himself underneath a slave. You see, the rabbi is ranked here, the student is ranked underneath, the slave is ranked here; the student does not take off the sandal off the rabbi, the slave does it. John says I’m here when it comes to Jesus Christ. Now that’s an expression of meekness. And that’s why he brings up the shoe lace; it would have meant something to people who had been schooled in this concept of Jewish teaching with the rabbi and his student.

Finally John the Apostle close in John 1:28, “These things were done in Bethabara beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.” Now thank Origen, the text is all screwed up here. Origen was the man who introduced amillennialism to church history so you might expect he’d screw up, but north of the Dead Sea, the Jordan River comes in here, there’s a place that is called by this name and Origen when he went to Palestine to check out the site traveled probably as far as Jerusalem; we don’t know if he traveled any further east, and he asked around for Bethany because in the original text it didn’t read this word; it read, “Bethany beyond Jordan.” And he asked people hey, where’s this Bethany beyond Jordan; nobody knew where Bethany beyond Jordan was; there was a Bethany that’s right around the bend from the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem but no Bethany beyond Jordan. So it apparently as early as the second century had disappeared.

Keep that date in mind, it’s very interesting. By the second century Origen couldn’t find the place. So he said there’s only one place and tradition links it and it’s this place, but if you look at that map and then look at the verse you see there’s something wrong. Origen and all his genius failed to notice a little elementary point. These things were done in Bethabara, Bethabara is this little place that’s known, it’s still there, just west of the Jordan River. But that couldn’t have been the place where John was baptizing because it says “Bethabara beyond the Jordan,” wrong side, Origen, but that’s typical for an allegorical interpreter. And Origen introduced this into the manuscripts and so now the manuscripts are confused, but the earliest manuscripts on verse 28 said “Bethany beyond Jordan,” that place is still unknown but it’s some place the other side of Jordan. We don’t know where it is; just because we don’t know where it is we don’t have to prematurely jump to a conclusion like Origen did.

With verse 28 we have the place of the occurrence. I suspect one reason why John closes this segment of the text by referring us to the place is so if somebody went to check in the official register they’d have two ways of getting that record out; they could look up the name, John the Baptist, and they could up the place of the investigation. So he’s given us evidence. Always ask yourself, as we continue our study in this Gospel, what solid evidence is he giving us? And think maybe like a second or third century person would think; this evidence is important.

Now also in verse 28 there’s a final piece of evidence; an evidence that’s very valuable for higher criticism, and evidence that points that John wrote John very early. I said by the second century knowledge of the whereabouts of this place had dropped. Now if the knowledge of the place had dropped out by the second century, and as the liberals used to assert, John is a second century writer, how did this man know where it occurred. He’s obviously referring to a place he knew, a place that people did not know of in the second century. So again this is a little fine point but it testifies that this author was the Apostle John writing at that particular early time; not some pseudo John writing centuries later, dressing up Jesus character. We’re ready now to deal with John’s introduction of Jesus Christ. We’ve cleared the air, John the Apostle has shown very clearly that John the Baptist never claimed to be Messiah and if you doubt it, go check the record of the investigation.