Clough John Lesson 8

Mission of John the Baptist – John 1:29-34

For those of you who have been stimulated to do some reading may I suggest several books to relate the Word of God to American history. One of these books is entitled This Independent Republic, by Rousas John Rushdoony. He has written another one, The Nature of the American System; these two books will give you some detail about the principles that went into making our nation. I cite this because we have in our circles as evangelicals a very discouraged defeatist attitude, a spirit that puts up with the mediocre, that tolerates the mediocre in the name of grace. It’s wrong for the Christian to excel and train hard in order to evangelize with quality; such whining crybabies that we have in our circles suggest the severe forms of training because for them excellence in the area of the Lord’s work is not a goal worth pursuing. Mediocrity, always mediocrity and then write it off in the name of grace, that’s the slogan. And then when one does want quality then he’s an oddball, standing out of the main stream of history. And you people who show a determination to get in the Word and to stay in the Word, to consistently take it in when you can, you will reap the long term benefits that come from this and be encouraged; there are not too many with that kind of determination. The Christian woods are full of people who never would have made the Revolution. Christianity is filled with copouts, with people who do not want the Word of God to rule their personal life, seriously; who do not want the Word of God to reign in the homes or in the nation, and then excuse it by saying it’s too hard for me. Now what that is, is simply laziness, stripped of its pious terminology.

And we must be careful as we come to the Gospel of John that we’re not deluded by its simplicity. This Gospel is always the one that such Christians love because it appears to be so simple that anyone can understand it, and that’s true. But John wrote to more than just the simpletons; John wrote to the mature believer also. And John, as I said in the introduction, is a strange Gospel because you can read it 100 times and the 100^th time that you read it you still are very strongly aware that you really haven’t grabbed it yet, there’s still more there. And you can read it the 200^th time and still be in the same position. Now if I were to adopt the logic that some people that come in here at 11:00 o’clock adopt I would no longer read the Gospel of John because it’s too difficult, because it escapes me, because John aims to too high a level; in the name of grace I would tolerate a lower level and I wouldn’t strive, after all, it’s just the person of Jesus Christ at stake, why bother to know Him better? So John is a Gospel that will reward you over and over and over again.

Tonight we come to a section that begins in John 1:29, a very famous verse. Usually the new Christian, again by recommendation, if you have led someone to the Lord Jesus Christ or if you are a new believer in Christ or you’re just getting into the Word, you didn’t know Deuteronomy from a two-humped camel, if that’s the case, John is the place to begin. I’ll give you a running start in Scripture; don’t worry if you don’t understand all the details. When you walked into math class you didn’t understand all the details of higher and differential calculus. But how you eventually get there is a little bit at a time coupled with great patience and endurance. And what I’m trying to do is stimulate in you a determination to mature in the Word of God. I am not saying that you can’t be a Christian, that you can’t be filled with the Holy Spirit, God spoke through Balaam’s ass so that it’s not necessary that we be outstanding personalities, but who wants to be an ass all their life? Hopefully God would chose to speak to somebody a little higher up on the totem pole than an ass. So just because God’s grace uses asses at times is not an excuse for you to be an ass. So when we approach the Word of God we approach it seriously and we want to excel in our understanding of it. We will be open to the criticism by other believers that we are superior; of course we are.

John 1:29, “The next day John sees Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. [30] This is He of whom I said, After me comes a man who is preferred before me; for He was before me. [31] And I knew Him not; but that He should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. [32] And John bore record [witness], saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him. [33] And I knew Him not; but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he who is baptizing with the Holy Spirit. [34] And I saw, and bore record [witness] that this is the Son of God.”

Now we have studied so far in this second section of John, for John 1:19 through the end of chapter one deals with the introduction of the Lord Jesus Christ to the nation Israel. Jesus is introduced as Christ. Now remember that the word “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name. Jesus’ last name, if you wanted to call Him by His first and last name would sound something like Yeshua Ben Yoseph, Jesus, the son of Joseph; Ben Yoseph was Jesus’ last name. Christ is not His last name, it is His title. It is Messiah, it is the one who was anointed, and if He is the one who is anointed then there must be an anointer, there must be one who anoints Him. And so John the Baptist is that person.

Now John the Apostle, not to be confused with this John the Baptist, the anointer, John the Apostle, the author of this document, is particularly concerned that it be clear to his readers, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that John the Baptist was merely the anointer and not the anointed, that John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus, not the Messiah Himself. And John is interested in building faith in his hearers and so John doesn’t give you a narration of the titillating spiritual experiences that he had while he was in the presence of Jesus. John knows that though these experiences are nice and we can rejoice in them, they are not what builds your faith; your faith is only built as you understand the Word of God, and not just understand it but understand it as truth, in the same way you understand 2 + 2 is 4 and that Washington crossed the Delaware; historic facts! And in the same way that you understand those things to be truth you understand the Word of God to be truth, your faith grows in proportion. So John is concerned with testimony; this Gospel is over and over and over and over and over again concerned with he bore record, he bore witness, he said this, he said that because John wants us to believe and the only way we can believe is when we have access to digestible facts.

So from John 1:19-28, the first piece of the text of the Gospel proper, beyond the introduction, dealt with one basic fact; it was a historic fact, open in his generation to someone to check this fact out if you don’t accept John’s word for it, and that was did the council of investigation of the Sanhedrin report back to Jerusalem when they checked out John. And so he has that report and he has said if you don’t believe me, then go check the record; the records testify to the report of the investigating committee. He gave you, in verses 19-28 the place it happened; he gave you the name of the man, he gave you approximately, as we will see, the time. The reason for that is that you can go back into the records and check for yourself. Christianity always is open to investigation; the Christian never need be ashamed and hold his head as though the first skeptic off the block is going to disprove your case. This is what I have meant by preparing for evangelism. I’ve only said this 35 or 40 times and most of you people understand it but there are some in the congregation who apparently, from the criticisms I’ve been receiving, the message still hasn’t gotten across, so you can help us all out if, when you find these people that don’t understand, you will tell them what I mean. What I am talking about in separation for evangelism is to supply adequate information in order that a person with an IQ over 60 can believe. That’s what I mean, and you cannot be in the position of providing adequate information if you don’t have the information yourself. And the information that you must provide at times will be more than four verses. It may be a detailed argumentation; it may be a detail of the resurrection of Christ. Now it’s true you can witness with four verses, you can witness with one verse, you can witness with no verses and be an ass, but I don’t want a congregation of asses; I want a congregation of mature believer’s, that’s what I’m striving for. And apparently some people still have not caught on to the big picture. So as we go through the Gospel of John once again I will make my point, that as John does, so do I; I want to give you information that is historically relevant, that forms a basis for our faith, so you can walk into anyone’s office, you can walk on any job, face any teacher with a confidence that not one person ever as long as you live can bring a fact to disprove the Christian faith up before you; never! It will always be something that will be consistent with the Christian way of thought. Now at times we all need correction and oftentimes we have a wrong interpretation and we can correct our interpretation, within limits but we have an adequate base for our faith.

From John 1:29-34 we have the second evidence. The first evidence John gave us in verses 19-28, the Sanhedrin commission. And we don’t have access to the Sanhedrin records but that doesn’t make any difference; what makes a difference is when the document is first generated and submitted to the community of people for criticism who have access to those historic records, that’s what counts. The validity of the Gospel does not need the continuing Sanhedrin report for its validity, all it needs is an age, a short period of time, when the most hostile critics of the Christian faith could go to those records and refute the Christian faith if they could. And history has testified that the most powerful opponent and the most powerful opponents of the Christian faith were living right in the city of Jerusalem, were not able to subvert these factual materials. They had the records, this was before 70 AD when the temple was destroyed, these records were open to Paul when he was Saul; they were open to the Sanhedrin that persecuted the early church. The records were there and available for any person’s observation. And yet during this time when men so desperately wanted to put the Christian faith down, isn’t it strange, with all the records available, not one record was ever found that refuted the Christian faith. And this comes even from the pen of the most skeptical group.

In John 1:29, what is this second evidence. The first evidence was the Sanhedrin commission report. Now the second evidence in verses 29-34 is John’s official testimony. From verses 19-28 we have the Sanhedrin’s commission’s report on John, and that’s relevant because it proves that John never claimed to be the Messiah. So you can’t say that John was the Messiah. That clears the air of confusion that later on did develop in Asia Minor. But in verses 29-34 we have the second piece of evidence John throws out to his generation for their consideration. And that is that John the Baptist had two reasons for believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. So he is going to throw out the evidence of John’s faith, John’s message, John’s testimony. Notice verse 34, how this section ends, “And I saw, I bare record that this is the Son of God.” And please notice, you can examine these verses from verses 29-34 over and over and over and over and over and over again and I challenge anyone to show me any place between verses 29 and 33 where the basis of John the Baptist’s faith is some inner feeling. The testimony is made in verse 34, “I saw and I bore record,” but the basis for his bearing record has nothing to do with how John the Baptist emotionally responded to Jesus. His emotions do not play a role in how true it is.

Last Sunday night I pointed out from Matthew 11 that socially and personally and emotionally John was completely different from Jesus. The two men did not socially get together much at all, in fact there are evidences here that they apparently didn’t care too much for one another either. John and Jesus were two completely different personalities; they loved each other in the Lord but they were not the best of friends. That comes as a shock to some of you, because some of you have this pious evangelical response that we all have to be gooey or we aren’t filled with the Holy Spirit, as if the Holy Spirit is some sort of goo that oozes out. That is not found in Scripture; if we’re honest with the text we don’t see it here. John goes back to the facts. John had an emotional response to the facts and Jesus did in His humanity but those responses to the facts are different.

You see, you can have two, three or four, different kind of personalities and what always happens is you have one set core of the facts; you have the Word of God, that’s the truth; that’s standard for all men, that never changes. But you have A, B, C, D, and those represent four different kinds of people. Person A believes the Word of God and becomes a Christian and is filled with the Holy Spirit and manifests the filling of the Holy Spirit by acting in a certain way because that person’s personality is partly amoral and partly moral. For example, this person may be an artist, he has a very creative type personality, he’s not very critical in his thinking, he’s more creative in his thinking. That’s just the way he is; he may be somewhat of an introvert; he may be a person who prefers to be by himself, he trusts in the Word, he responds to the Word, he loves the Lord in his own way, and that’s his manifestation of the filling of the Holy Spirit. Person B may be the party type, maybe not such a good thinker but a party type, likes a lot of action. He considers the claims of Christ, he becomes a Christian and when he’s filled with the Spirit he manifests it a certain way. He may manifest it in a social way. Person C he may look at the truth, same facts, same Savior, same Word of God, same content of the gospel, the Holy Spirit opens his eyes, he’s regenerated, he’s filled with the Spirit and he manifests it in some other way. He may be an academic type and then for the rest of his life it’s fantastic that he wants to specialize in certain specialties and pursue those for the rest of his life as unto the Lord. And that’s his thing that he does; he’s the intellectual type. And over here you have somebody else, all of these people are different individuals. All of them respond to the same truth in different ways.

Now all of that is fine because that’s nice and theoretical, but let me show you what happens. Sooner or later, we’ll take person B; person B says you know, he gets looking and person C is different from person B, and he looks over here and he sees A and A is different from B. And so what B wants to do is say hey, you’re not filled with the Spirit if you don’t respond to the gospel exactly like I respond to the gospel. And so since he responds to the gospel socially he wants this person to be a socialite, he wants this person to be a socialite, now you know what that is? That’s legalism. Do you know why it’s legalism? Because it’s imposing non-Biblical standards on all believers, standards that are not authorized in the Word of God, and God’s Word has enough standards, you don’t need to add to those standards. But inevitably these kinds of people will have these little legalistic standards and they are not happy until they clobber you over the head with their standards. You have to kowtow to their standards. You have to be a socialite and an extravert in order to prove to them that you are filled with the Holy Spirit. That’s all wrong, that is legalism. And I’ve just discovered, since I was gone for five weeks, the bullies came out of the woodwork while I was gone and they started putting pressure on a few people and now they want to force everybody into their little mold. The longer I’m in the ministry the more I see the wisdom of the man I trained under, Bob Thieme. I used to think some of the things he did were cruel and unnecessary and the more I see of the rebellious depraved nature of the sheep the more I am in total sympathy with his most cruel tactics. Now be thankful, I’m not like Bob Thieme, I manifest my frustrations differently.

The point is that we all have this autonomous desire to define Christianity in our own terminology with our own fame and force everybody with it, and over the years there have been people who come in here, and you’ll encounter them, I’m talking to you primarily tonight because most of you are on committees or into some activity. Some of you are new, you’re getting into a committee structure, you’re going to have some people you’re going to be working with to do a job. Watch it, just watch it, watch it that in the sphere in which you work you allow freedom to all kinds of people as unto the Lord. Obviously we don’t allow, condone, outright violation to the Word. That’s not what we’re talking about. Be sensible! But the Holy Spirit permits people to grow in their own way at their own rate, and I have leaned over backwards not to force people into a mold. If you don’t want to come that’s your problem; I have never faced anyone down in the city of Lubbock because they didn’t come. I have never forced or twisted anyone’s arm because they didn’t get in some activity.

We have had people that have understood and recognized this principle, we have had some of the most fantastic Christians of young people I have ever seen. They got together a few years ago with this Friday night tape class, and it’s very interesting how that worked out by way of a principle that we’re talking about here. They recognized that there was a need among some college students for a social life. They recognized that need. Now they didn’t come in here and say hey, everybody at LBC between ages 18 and 21 have to be socialized. What did they do? They formed their own time, their own gathering, their own little group based on principles of the Word of God for those who were interested and whose interests lay in that area, and they’ve had a fantastic ministry. It has been an open ministry, you’re free to come, you’re free to leave. They’ve grown a lot and learned a lot of things. Now how did that all happen? It happened because these fellows that got together loved the Lord and they wanted to express that in their own way. And they created a ministry…created a ministry. They didn’t follow any textbook; they created their ministry. Now they didn’t expect everyone else to do it, they did it themselves.

Over here we have some other person, and maybe this kind of person wants something; do it just like the guys did, we have freedom around here; get a group of believers that enjoy your kind of style and get up and get with it, minister with it, but don’t try to cram your deal down everyone’s throat. That is violating the freedom of the Spirit. Yeah, there are some people in this congregation that have, to me, queer behavior patterns and I’m sure I’m a queer to them but that’s all right, I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone; it’s that simple. Because I cut my hair short I don’t expect everybody to cut their hair short, I don’t expect you to have it down to you ankles but that’s because of 1 Corinthians 11. I don’t go around here with a yardstick measuring how long your hair has to be; come up to the girls and find out how short your skirts are. That’s your business because this is the right of the individual, the liberty of conscience in other words. And so many people just do not understand this, the liberty of conscience.

I want you to notice how free in his own way this ascetic desert wanderer called John the Baptist was in coming to a knowledge of a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, how he came to it. John, in verse 29 sees Jesus, it’s a historic present; it’s a historic present that lends vividness to this. Why is there vividness? Because the writer of this text, John the Apostle, probably is in his very late teens or early 20s; we know this because he died at such a late era as an old man that going backwards by arithmetic you can figure out his age, he was very young; he was one of the youngest men ever to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, John the Apostle. And this book was written while he was an old, old man. And his memory is so keen to those first days when he was a very young man and his eyes first looked upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And he’s giving you the details, and so to make it vivid he takes you there and he says, “The next day,” it’s as though is John is saying I was there with my teacher, my rabbi, because John the Baptist was the rabbi of John the Apostle, I was there with my rabbi and “John sees Jesus,” present tense, “coming unto him, and he says, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

Now when Jesus is coming to John He is coming out of the wilderness. Here’s the north end of the Dead Sea, here’s the Jordan River, and they’re over here some place, and over here there is vast wilderness. And Jesus, for forty days had wandered through this wilderness being tempted of Satan. He had first come down and was baptized; step two He went into the wilderness for forty days; step three, He now has finished the temptation and comes to John. So when he sees Jesus coming this is the first time John the Baptist has seen Jesus. He has met Jesus before, he has; apparently John the Apostle hasn’t, but John the Baptist has. He has baptized Jesus, and he has seen certain things happen, and he has a month and a half to think, to pray, to think, to pray, to think and pray to make sure this really holds together. And so now forty days have elapsed and now he sees Jesus coming back. And so he, as it were, looks to his disciples that are following that are him and he points and he says look, there is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” And when he called Jesus he doesn’t say there is Yeshua Ben Yoseph, he doesn’t refer to Jesus by His name, he doesn’t even refer to Jesus by the title “Christ.” He refers to Jesus by the title “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

Now we have to stop here and say what does it mean, because if you look in a concordance this expression is never used again in the entire New Testament. Jesus is called a Lamb occasionally and even in the places He is called the Lamb the most is another writing of John, the book of Revelation. But the exact expression is a hapax legomenon, it never occurs elsewhere in the entire Bible, “the Lamb of God.” If this is such a unique expression why is John using it; he must have a reason for saying this. John was a man, as we saw last week, of very, very few words. And when he opened his mouth he said what he had to say, closed his mouth and that was it and you were free to accept it or reject it, it’s up to you. So when he says this there’s content to these words.

What does he mean by “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” He must mean something that he wants his disciples to understand about Jesus. There must be something about Jesus character and about his forth coming ministry that his disciples have to understand and so Jesus has this name, this title. Now fortunately we have help; we have help by going to every passage in the New Testament that mentions John the Baptist and if we patiently wade through every one of these passages that speak of John the Baptist and we find out what John preaches, what references of the Old Testament John uses, and even when we go to Jesus Himself and we find Jesus helping John with the time of his failing faith, Jesus uses a certain portion of the Old Testament. When we put all this data together we come up with an interesting conclusion. Do you know what John the Baptist’s favorite book of Scripture was? It was the book that gave him his vocabulary. You know when the Pharisees and Sadducees came down, he said you snakes, what are you down here for, obviously not being very loving to the people of his generation, in the wrong, this gooey sense that’s the thing in evangelical circles today. It wasn’t the thing in John’s day, fortunately for John. And John looks out and he says you snakes, and he uses the word “viper” which is the most poisonous snake in the land of Palestine, you rattlesnakes, that’s what he called them.

And then John also says I speak of one [Matthew 3:12,] “Whose fan is in his hand, and he will” wave his fan and separate and so on, “he will gather his wheat into the granary, but] he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” All that vocabulary, wherever you see John speaking comes from one book of the Scriptures, the book of Isaiah. John, apparently, was an avid student of the book of Isaiah. If you’ll turn to Isaiah 53 you’ll see what must have been one of the key passages of his study. This is a fore view of the Lord Jesus Christ that we often read in communion. Isaiah 53:7, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,” this was a clear prophecy. For those of you here whose faith is small and you’re just considering the claims of the Christian faith, I would encourage you to look at this entire chapter when you have a chance, read it through, get a modern translation or something, but I challenge you to read through Isaiah 53 and consider that this chapter was written before 750 BC, and consider how it prophecies perfectly the Lord Jesus Christ. And then after you’ve considered this passage of Scripture, ask yourself in the depths of your soul, whose voice is speaking in Isaiah 53? What kind of a voice comes out through this author? Who writes this kind of thing eight and a half centuries before it happens so accurately? You’ll have a blessing in reading through this if you concentrate and look at the details.

But tonight, just as Isaiah 53: 7, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.” And it goes on to describe the prophecy of the grave, verse 9, fulfilled by Joseph of Arimathaea, eight centuries later. Here is a lamb imagery, the lamb, the lamb who somehow was given of God, notice verse 4, he was “smitten of God,” and so John in his Bible study had studied Isaiah and he realized the lamb, the lamb of Passover is also the Messianic lamb, “the lamb of God.” And then he also knew from Isaiah 53 something else. Verse 5 says, “He was wounded for our transgressions, eh was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his wounds we are healed,” a reference to Jesus bearing our sins. Clearly understandable to a Jew who would celebrate Passover once a year and would see the daily sacrifice. So we have the Lamb of God.

Now, who is taking away the sin of the world; it is in the present tense. That Lamb, he says, is right now in this moment of history going to remove the sin, not of Israel, not just of the righteous Jews, but the sins of the entire world. John recognizes that from his study of Scripture. I want to underscore John’s study of Scripture, in particular John’s study of prophetic Scripture, Scripture whose prophecies are going to be fulfilled because one of the evidences that John the Baptist uses for his faith that Yeshua Ben Yoseph, Jesus the son of Joseph, is indeed the anointed one, that in fact I, John the Baptist, I was right after all in anointing that guy and not some other guy, I was right, I didn’t get a miscue in the process and goof and authenticate the wrong man for the office. He had to have that, for forty days John must have wondered, did I really do the right thing, everybody else has come down to the Jordan, I baptized for the remission of sins, this man comes down to Jordan and I don’t. Am I really sure that I’ve done right. And when John seeks a base that is sure for his faith, where does he go? Fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. So one of the bases of this second piece of evidence is fulfilled prophecy; you have to be a student of the Old Testament. Now many Christians are like Colonel Bottomly when he became a believer in the film, Isaiah was before my time, I just know about the New Testament. John didn’t.

Let’s come back to John, “Behold the Lamb of God, who is taking away the sin of the world.” So John is confident that Jesus fits the profile of prophecy. That is one source of his faith; Jesus fits the profile of prophecy. And then he goes on to show us his deep understanding of prophecy. Verse 29 is nice, it points us back to prophecy but John 1:30 is better because it points back to his understanding of prophecy. “This is he,” says John, “of whom I kept saying,” I said this in the past, it was my ministry, over and over and over and over and over and over I said this, “This he of whom I said, After me there is coming a man who is preferred before me; for he always was before me.”

Now there are three verbs here, each one different. This was the message, “after me there is coming,” that means into public life at that point in history, I was on the scene first, all of Jerusalem knows me, not all of Jerusalem knows Jesus yet. His peak of His ministry will follow the peak of my ministry; Jesus must increase, I must decrease. So he says, “this is He whom I said after me is coming a man who has become ahead of me,” the verb tense in verse 30 is perfect tense, “he has become,” “he has become ahead of me.” Notice the perfect, “has become ahead of John?” Well, Jesus didn’t have one disciple at this point, not one; John had multitudes of disciples down in the Jordan Valley, John the Apostle being most noteworthy. But at this point, forty days after Jesus’ baptism when Jesus returns John says He is now become ahead of me. Now this shows true meekness. John again was the kind of person who was not socially desirable, not that he was immoral, that wasn’t the point. John’s holiness biblically was great; the point though, that the text makes, is that John was a meek man ready to assume his place in God’s plan, whatever that was. That’s meekness; not weakness, meekness. Meekness means you wear the rank that you have been given you from God. It means that you don’t act like a sergeant if are wearing Lieutenant’s bars. It also means you don’t act like a Colonel if you’re wearing Lieutenant’s bars; you act like a Lieutenant. So meekness means you don’t act under your rank and you don’t act over your rank.

This is something that many Christians have to learn over and again in the local church. There is rank in the local church. Yet we have individual believes who have been a Christian for 3 or 4 months and they know everything and they’re going to come in and straighten the pastor out. Now if the criticism is valid I’ll listen to it; but over the years I’ve just noticed that 90% of it is just worthless material; for one reason it’s premature, people don’t know all the facts. And it’s a disrespect to the rank of the pastor; what it’s saying is that I too have bars on my shoulder and I will proceed to straighten you out. Now that’s the wrong way to operate, very wrong way to operate. Some of you who have been appointed by the Board to do certain functions; you have a position in the rank of the local church. You men who are on the Board, you have a position of rank; act like it. Don’t act higher, but don’t act lower. The sheep do not determine the pasture they feed in; the shepherd does. [Tape turns] …of his rank, and it’s the wrong passage the Lord will take care of the shepherd, but the sheep don’t tell the shepherd where they’re going to eat. There is rank inside the local church and it’s against all our sin natures, it’s against all our sin natures to recognize rank. Why do we know this? Because we refuse, all of us, to recognize God’s rank. So we all have that rebellion against rank, it’s just built into us from the fall. So if you feel the thing rising in your heart when a deacon puts you down for something, just relax, that’s all part of the sin nature, chalk it up to where it comes from and move on, just be relaxed, the world hasn’t caved in, you haven’t made an unalterable mistake, you’re not going to fall apart tomorrow, God isn’t going to take you home because you had a little incident with a deacon. Just relax, but just recognize, when you cool off just recognize there is a rank structure. I don’t like my deacons being subjected to all the kind of crud that they were subjected to while I was out of town.

Now the rank, John says Jesus has come before me, and then he adds the startling little phrase, so typical of the Apostle John, little phrase, a bombshell of truth, so innocently packaged you’d never think it was there until you stop and read it very slowly, and you read the last part of verse 30 and what do you read, “for He was before me.” In the Greek it’s imperfect, “he always was before me.” Now let’s read it over with an amplified translation of the verb. “This one,” and he sees Jesus coming down to the shore of Jordan, John the Apostle is here by John the Baptist, and John the Baptist points out, he says see that person over there, because he sees Him coming, we don’t now how far away, maybe he was 500 yards away, 200 yards away, 50 yards away, we don’t know what the distance was but He was within sight, and he says I want you to see something, he says see Him, this is the one who I kept telling you, there is coming a man after me who has now come before me, and do you know why? Because he always was before me. It’s a recognition of Jesus’ deity. John recognized that besides being the son of Joseph He was also God.

John 1:31, “And I knew Him not;” John says, he wants this clear, I didn’t pick this man out because of his attractive nature, and by the way, this is one of those beautiful historic points that always intrigued me about the Word of God; it’s something you don’t get until you appreciate the depth of what’s going on here, but I just referred you to Isaiah 53 for the title, “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” Do you know what else in the text of Isaiah 53? A portrait of what Jesus looked like and in the portrait, those of you who were here 3 or 4 years ago when Dr. Waltke from Dallas Seminary came, remember he exegeted that whole section of Isaiah 52 and 53 and he pointed out that what Isaiah 52 and 53 is saying about Jesus, if you could look in His face was that He was the most plain individual that you could ever imagine. He wasn’t [can’t understand phrase; sounds like: Holman Hunt’s Aquilian Aryan [?] Savior. He was a common ordinary face that would never have stood out from the crowd; never! This must have, and we just speculate here, but this must have bothered John a little bit; you know, after all, here’s the Messiah, the guy that’s going to take away the sins of the world, now John didn’t know all the details about how Jesus would take away the sins of the world but he knew he was going to do something with the sins of the world and this guy comes down and I baptize him and then he disappears off into the wilderness; a month and a half he’s out there, and John’s thinking, you know, he wasn’t very outstanding, there’s nothing… he wasn’t the most attractive man that came down to the Jordan to be baptized; he wasn’t the tallest man, he wasn’t the shortest, he wasn’t the strongest looking man, he wasn’t outstanding in any way and it must have bothered John until John did something because he was a disciplined mature believer.

When he was troubled with the question, where did he go? Back to the Word. And John must have said I’ve got to back to my Isaiah scroll, and so he would unroll the scroll and he’d re-read Isaiah 53 and as he re-read Isaiah 53 he would see, he is a man without form or comeliness that we should desire him. That’s right, that’s exactly the way he was. And so his faith would be confirmed by matching the prophetic details of Scripture to what had happened in front of his face. Put the two together, you have the mushroom of faith. Now this is why he can be sure.

So in John 1:31 he wants us to understand I didn’t now Him, I didn’t know who he was going to be, and notice in verse 33 he repeats himself, I didn’t know him, because he wanted us to understand, I didn’t pick this guy out, something else played a role. “I knew Him not; but that He should be manifest to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water.” I was to prepare this nation for the coming Messiah. That’s all I knew; evidently he did have some direct revelation. God the Father told him, John I want you to go baptize with water. Yes sir, he went on and started baptizing with water. Now God didn’t tell him what was going to happen, all he knew at first was when he began his ministry that it had something to do with preparing the nation for Jesus Christ. So he kept on baptizing with water.

Now if you hold the place and turn to Matthew 3 you’ll see this baptizing with water and we just want to note in passing something that every once in a while we have someone that comes along and wants to say that baptism brings salvation. This is why it takes, I’m convinced, longer to teach a verse of Scripture 19 centuries after Jesus came than before, because after 19 centuries of bologna that has accumulated and all the heresies and all the misunderstandings, it takes you longer just to paw your way through all this junk to get back to the good stuff. Now in the first century all you had was just the content of Scripture, you could just go on and move; now you have to go down, dig through the sewer before you can find the goal.

Matthew 3, this is what John was doing. This is what he had been told to do; now he did not know all the details. A lesson for us, when God directs you to do something He is not going to tell you all the whys and wherefores. He’ll give you a basic outline but don’t expect handwriting on the wall that is going to tell you turn left here, turn twenty steps and turn right, jump and when you fall do something else. That is not the way God leads. So in Matthew 3 he isn’t told to go preach and the content of his message was verse 2, “Repent,” it means change your entire way of thinking, NOT your way of feeling, you way of thinking; it’s metanoeo, there is a way of saying that in the Greek if he meant change the way you feel. Do you know why he didn’t say that? Because you can’t; try it some time, you can’t change your emotions directly, no way. The only thing you can do is change the way you think and then your emotions will respond. That’s the trouble, you don’t help somebody who’s having a (quote) “emotional problem” by working with their emotions because they can’t change their emotions. A lot of men never understand this about their wives. If she’s all out of it you’re not going to change her emotions by saying “get with it, one, two.” It doesn’t work because she can’t control her emotions, leave alone you do it. You’ve got to woo her around and change her thought pattern, and that’s what John is saying; change your thought pattern for the kingdom of heaven is ready to go. In other words, this age is about to begin, “For this is he,” and then he quotes Isaiah and describes him a little bit. And he says in verse 6 they came out “confessing their sins.” We’ll note that later but that was part of the preparation.

Then in Matthew 3:8 please notice it says he demanded evidence of repentance before he gave the baptism. Then in verse 11, I baptize you unto repentance. Now watch what’s happening. Look at Matthew 3:8 and 11 and you’ll see something very interesting. In verse 11 it is called a baptism unto repentance, exactly the same grammar that is used in Acts 2:38 when Jesus says this is a baptism unto the remission of sin, and everybody oooh, your sins aren’t remitted until after you’re baptized, because it’s a baptism unto the remission of sins. But just a minute; how was that phrase understood in the first century Judea. Remember when Peter said Acts 2:38 he was only 30 miles away from Matthew 3, he was just about 30 miles down the road from where Peter was. So they’re going to understand the grammar the same way; a baptism “unto” something doesn’t mean the baptism accomplishes it. The baptism of John didn’t accomplish repentance because he refused to grant baptism to people were weren’t repentant. If the baptism brought repentance he would have said well come on, be baptized, and then you’ll repent. No, in verse 8 he deliberately insists upon the repentance first, then when the repentance exist in the soul, then he baptizes unto it. So the baptism is a ritual that testifies to something that has already happened. It does not bring it about; it looks backward.

And so when you see the phrase in Acts 2:38, a baptism unto the remission of sins it’s the same thing; when your sins have been remitted, then each one of you be baptized; that’s what it means, and you can show it from verses 8 and 11 of Matthew 3. This is a key passage because the grammar is exactly the same in the original language. Again verse 11 underlines baptism … (dot dot dot) unto repentance. Baptism unto repentance, that’s the official label, that’s the official message; baptism unto repentance! But then draw a little dash line up to verse 8 and in verse 8, underline verse 8, “Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet” or signs of “repentance.” And then you might draw a little arrow up to the word “baptism,” in verse 7 because these people came out to be baptized; before they could be baptized they had to first show proof of repentance and only after verse 8 do you have the baptism. So when you go down and you read in verse 11 a “baptism unto repentance,” the baptism isn’t causing the repentance, the baptism is a sign of the repentance that has already happened. And that was the standard Jewish way of thinking about it. Qumran thought that way, the Essenes thought that way, orthodox Judaism thought that way, and only the Campbellites think the other way.

Now let’s go back to John 1:32, “And John bore record [witness], saying, I have seen,” the word “saw” in verse 32 is perfect tense, I saw in the past and I still remember it vividly, “I have seen the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it stayed [abode] upon Him.” Now verse 33 is an explanation, “And I knew Him not; but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same” now who was it that sent him to baptize with water? God the Father. God the Father had commissioned the John Baptist to baptize and then he gave him a little footnote instruction, he said John, I want you to go out here and I want you to prepare the nation for the Messiah. But John, I also want to tell you something else; one of these days when you’re down in the Jordan Valley baptizing there’s going to come somebody and when you come out to Him the Holy Spirit is going to descend upon Him in the form of a dove; it’s going to look like a dove empirically, you’re going to see this, people around you are going to see it, it will be an empirical miracle that will happen in front of your face. When you see that, that’s the man; don’t look how high he is, how tall he is, how big he is, whether he’s handsome, whether he’s ugly, that’s not the issue. Just like Samuel called David, Samuel had all of Jesse’s sons there, this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy and he thought there’s the guy; no God says, because I look after the heart not after the outward appearance.

So he says, and this is the second piece of evidence why Jesus is the one. Not only does Jesus fulfill the template of prophecy but a direct miracle occurred that fits within this prophecy, verses 32-33. “I knew Him not…but I saw the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him,” and he is the one who identifies us with the Holy Spirit. We’re going to get into what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is later.

Now John 1:34, the conclusion of the passage, “And I have seen, and I have borne witness, that this one is the Son of God.” Now we don’t know how long, whether this is an abbreviation of what John was talking to John, they were talking together, but Jesus kept coming forward, He kept getting closer and closer and closer and closer, all the time the conversation was happening. And when he finally gets to verse 34, we don’t know distance wise how close Jesus is, but as John the Apostle must have stood there, he must first have looked at John the Baptist and then looked at Jesus, and then looked at John, and then looked at Jesus, because a decision was welling up in his soul. And that decision is going to be the product of the next day’s ministry. We’ll go into that later on but we want to conclude by pointing again to two great doctrines.

There are two key doctrines in the divine viewpoint framework that you want to look at and remember in this passage; the doctrine of faith and the doctrine of judgment/salvation. The doctrine of faith says that your faith has got to be dependent upon the content of verbal revelation; no revelation no faith. You cannot grow in your faith by staying away from the Word of God. You need the Word of God desperately, it is your life. We have seen tragedies of people who were going on with the Lord and then they got out of a regular intake of the Word of God under a local church system and went right down the drain. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be perfect but no matter how badly you’re hurting, if 18 people ring on your door Sunday and they’re all relatives and they say we’re going to have a party right here, you say well you can have a party right here but I am going to take in the Word of God, and that way you’re giving testimony to something, you are saying to them that the Word of God is the most important thing in my life. You don’t even have to open your mouth and explain the gospel, just that fact of insisting you are going to take in the Word of God, period over and out, just that is a testimony to your faith. At least it’s a start and it shows other people and puts them on the alert. You’re not twisting their arm to believe or disbelieve, you’re asking them to respect your rights, and one of your rights is to intake the Word of God spiritually. The doctrine of faith is very much present here, faith is grounded on content, historical empirical verifiable content. And John emphasize this in his testimony. Again, have you seen anywhere in verses 29-34 one report of the inner state of the emotions of John the Baptist? Is there one reference to how he feels about this event? Not one.

A second doctrine which is going to increase as we go on is the doctrine of judgment/salvation. Those two words, in that order, not the other way around, judgment first, then salvation, always in that order, God judges the old world then brings in the new world. God’s Son bears the sins of us upon Himself at the cross where they’re judged, then we enjoy the blessings from it; never in reverse, always in that order. And so here, the people who got a chance to observe Jesus Christ the first day were those people who had come out to Jordan to deal with the sin problem. It was not in Jerusalem, but in the Jordan Valley where the people first saw Jesus. They were privileged and they received the blessing because they were in the place where they were dealing with their own rebelliousness before God. That was exactly where Jesus showed up the first time. He did not go to the streets of Jerusalem because the people in Jerusalem did not care to deal with the sin problem and because they did not care to deal with it, Jesus didn’t care to deal with them. It’s always that order. Judgment and dealing with the sin problem, whether it’s an unbeliever who must receive the cross atonement of Christ or whether as believers it’s with our own sin patterns and our depraved rebellious natures in every area before the Word of God, that has to occur first in our life before the blessing. It’s always true in every area of theology; judgment before salvation.

And you remember that as we come further on in this Gospel of John we’re going to see these truths repeated time and time and time again, and we hope that as you study with us through this that you’ll apply some of these principles in your life; take this to heart, think about them. If you don’t believe them, that’s all right, think about them and think about why don’t I believe it? Why does this particular doctrine or this particular truth go down hard with me? Is there some presupposition in my thinking that prevents me from being sympathetic with this text? If it is, I’d like to know that. This ought to be your attitude towards your own mind. You ought to at least understand if you don’t believe why you don’t believe and be able to articulate why you have trouble believing this content.