We are in the second week of our “Looking at Jesus through Disciple’s Eyes,’ series, a series in which we are hoping to learn more about Jesus by looking at some of the life-changing experiences of those who initially followed him. Maron started our series last week looking at what Jesus’ disciple Nathaniel tells us about Jesus. And this week we are looking at someone who, while not technically a disciple of Jesus, was one of the first people to publicly confess that Jesus was the Messiah… and that person is John the Baptist. John the Baptist played such an important role in the story of Jesus’ life that all four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, mention him and taken all together, they tell us a great deal about John and his experiences with Jesus. But before we look at John’s experiences with Jesus, let’s pray together.
I said that all 4 Gospels mention John the Baptists. Well, actually, the Gospels do more than ‘mention’ him; all four gospel writers give us detailed descriptions of John’s ministry of preparing the way for Jesus; plus, along the way we learn about John’s parents, his miraculous birth, his preaching style, his interactions with all sorts of people, his arrest and finally, his unjust execution. Make no mistake about it, the 4 Gospels were written with one primary focus: Jesus… and yet, John the Baptist still gets a lot of attention… and the reason is simple: John the Baptist played THE key role in introducing Jesus to the world; he is a very important person in the story of Jesus’ life. But, as important as he was, we must admit that he was also an unusual fellow. Let’s start with his birth. He was the only son of a couple named Zechariah and Elizabeth… a couple which the Gospel of Luke tells us were ‘very old’ or literally, ‘very advanced in their days’ when Elizabeth miraculously gave birth to John. And not only was John miraculously born to aged parents, but his coming birth was announced to his father by an angel! And listen to what angel told Zechariah about his coming son, ‘You, Zechariah, will have great joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the eyes of the Lord. He must never touch wine or other alcoholic drinks. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. And he will turn many Israelites to the Lord their God. He will be a man with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will prepare the people for the coming of the Lord. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and he will cause those who are rebellious to accept the wisdom of the godly.”
Luke’s gospel also tells us that when John was born, due to John’s parents’ age and the circumstances surrounding his birth, the entire region was abuzz… or as the King James Bible puts it, ‘News of John’s birth was noised abroad!’ Why, Zechariah even wrote a song about his infant son that speaks to all the amazing things John would eventually do, not the least of which was introduce the coming Messiah to the Jewish people. My bet is that as John was growing up, he heard about his miraculous birth all the time, and I’d also bet that he heard his father sing his song about him over and over… and Luke 1 ends saying that everyone in young John’s life was expectantly waiting to see what would become of this special young man.
One thing we can be certain of, though, is that John’s two elderly parents certainly died while he was still relatively young. His parents were ‘very old’ when he was born and there is no way that a Jewish, 1st Century only son would have abandoned his parents to go and live in the wilderness, as John eventually did, unless his parents had both died. But John, in time, did leave his home and live in the wilderness east of Jerusalem… and there he began what was to become one the most unusual of ministries in all the Bible. First off, John was unusual in appearance. Both Gospels of Matthew and Mark tell us that John the Baptist wore camel hair clothing with a leather belt around his waist. Camel hair is rough stuff; nobody chose to wear it for its comfort! It was ‘rough conditions’ clothing… and John lived in the wilderness about 20 miles east of Jerusalem and the conditions were rough in the wilderness; the wilderness warranted camel hair. And the mention of a leather belt is an important detail; workers would wrap the bottoms of their robes in the belts so they could move around easily; it was called ‘girding your loins.’ Rich people didn’t have to worry about being able to move around, so they wore sashes or little, flimsy belts. But John had work to do and his belt was a sign of solidarity with the working poor! But the bottom line is this: most people didn’t wear a camel hair robe with a leather belt. He looked unusual.
And John was also unusual in his diet; we are told that he ate locust and wild honey. Locust, think grasshoppers, were not a regular part of a Jewish diet… and ‘wild honey’ is also an interesting detail. The Roman world had a very thriving beekeeper/ honey making industry and honey was a part of most ancient diets. Wild honey, on the other hand, was gathered by finding a wild beehive, smoking the bees out with fire, and then quickly gathering the honey. Apparently, John the Baptist wanted nothing to do with the commercial honey business. He preferred wild honey… with grasshoppers… and that, too, was unusual.
And John was especially unusual in what he had to say. Preaching in the first century Jewish world consisted mostly of civilized, rhetorical finesse. It was saying the right words with great flair, but it seems that John the Baptist wanted nothing to do with any of this, either. All four Gospels say that his preaching sounded like the fire of the old-time prophets. And he was preaching, “A baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins as preparation for the coming of the Messiah… a Messiah who was coming in judgment!” Now, to us, this doesn’t sound all that radical: It sounds like a lot of modern-day preaching: repent and have your sins forgiven, get baptized, and avoid judgment and punishment. But to a Jewish crowd in the first century this message was not only unusual, it was almost unimaginable… for a number of reasons. First off, Jews didn’t get baptized. Baptism was something Gentiles did when they chose to become followers of Jewish law. It was a symbolic moment called “being born again.” Converts would go into the water as gentiles and come out ‘born again’ as Jews. Jews didn’t need to do this. Secondly, most Jews believed that simply due to having been born a Jew guaranteed they would inherit eternal life in God’s coming kingdom. Judgment by the Messiah wasn’t on their radar. In fact, we know that many religious Jews felt that repentance was a silly, unnecessary bother. And yet, John the Baptist’s message was essentially this: You Jewish people have wandered so far from the way God intended for you to live that it’s as if you aren’t even Jewish… you need to repent from your foolish lives and if you are serious about a relationship with God you need to do what Gentiles do: get baptized and be born again… and this was unusual! But multitudes of people responded to John’s message of repentance in their hope that the Messiah was coming soon! For most Jews John’s message was a message of hope… yes, it was tinged with some rough things about judgment and repentance, but it was also a hopeful message that said, ‘Our Savior is finally coming!’
We also know from the Gospel stories that John the Baptist had a good number of disciples, people who were traveling with him, learning from him and looking forward with him to the arrival of the Messiah. And when Jesus did arrive on the scene, it was John who first publicly recognized that Jesus was the savior! Why, Jesus’ disciple John, the disciple that wrote the Gospel of John, (and BTW 1 out of 5 Jewish men in the 1st Century were named John) tells us that one day John the Baptist happened to see Jesus walking towards him and even though Jesus hadn’t even started his ministry yet, when John saw Jesus he shouted out, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, the one who takes away the sins of the world.’ (John 1:29). This is the one and only place in all of the 4 gospels where Jesus is called, ‘The Lamb of God,’ and yet we know that John the Baptist would never have called Jesus by this name, a name filled with all sorts of meaning to the Jewish people, if he’d not believed with all of his heart that Jesus was The One he was preparing the Jewish people for. In fact, once Jesus did begin his public ministry, it was John, himself, who said over and over that he, John, was not the Messiah, that Jesus was the coming savior, and he even went so far as to encourage his own disciples to leave him and begin following Jesus. John the Baptist said directly that Jesus needed to become greater and greater… Jesus needed to increase, and that he, John, had to become less and less, such was his confidence that Jesus was the Savior of the world.
But even though Jesus was gaining in popularity, John the Baptist was still someone people were paying attention to, and not just the Jewish people, but also the ruling Roman establishment and particularly Herod Antipas who was the highest Roman official in the region of Galilee. You see, Herod, who claimed to be living by Jewish law, had stolen his brother’s wife and John the Baptist had been very vocal about how stealing your brother’s wife and marrying her was a direct and wicked breaking of God’s law… and, of course, neither Herod nor his wife liked John going around publicly accusing them of being the worst of sinners! But Herod was shrewd enough to know that John had so much popular support that he couldn’t just kill him to shut him up. He knew the people believed John was a prophet and they might riot if he killed John. So, to keep John quiet, Herod had John arrested and thrown into prison. Now, it’s important to remember that John was not in prison due to anything related to Jesus. He was there because he had offended Herod and his wife. And how long John languished in prison we aren’t told, but what we do know is that while he was there, he was wondering about things… not the least of which, he was wondering about Jesus. Listen to what we are told about John’s wondering in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 11, starting in verse 1. We should all turn here together. Page ??? When Jesus had finished giving these instructions to his twelve disciples, he went out to teach and preach in towns throughout the region. John the Baptist, who was in prison, heard about all the things the Messiah was doing. So, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?”Matthew 11:1-2 A lot of people see this as doubt on John’s part. I’m not so sure about that. Think about John’s character. Clearly, he wasn’t afraid of anybody, and he’d been preaching a strong message that the Messiah would be coming in judgment! My bet is that he was expecting that whoever this Messiah was, he would come with an attitude! I think the question is more like, “Jesus, are you going to start taking names and kicking you-know-what, or should we be looking for someone else to bring judgment on this evil world? John was okay with Jesus being a prophet and a teacher… even a healer, and yet he was still uncertain about Jesus’ lack of bold action which John’s preaching said the Messiah was going to bring! And again, John wasn’t in prison for anything connected to Jesus… he just wanted to know whether Jesus was going to live up to John’s expectations.
But look at what Jesus told John’s disciples, “Go back to John and tell him what you have heard and seen: the blind see, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.” And he added, “God blesses those who do not fall away because of me.”
What Jesus did was to point John back to a prophecy in the book of Isaiah that was central to much of what the Jewish people believed about the coming Messiah. Jesus was pointing John to Isaiah 35 a passage that from it’s very first words through to its final verse were a source of comfort, hope and good news to the Jews…now, most of the verses in this chapter are verses of good news… good news of how wonderful it will be when there is a total restoration of God’s Kingdom… and boy, is it worth a read! But right in the middle of this passage is this: ‘And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unplug the ears of the deaf. The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will sing for joy! Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the wasteland.’ It’s important to know that all the people mentioned in this passage: the blind, the lame, and the deaf were thought by the Jewish people at that time to be as good as dead…. You see their blindness or deafness or physical disability kept them outside of the life of the community in almost every respect… the worst being that they weren’t allowed to enter the temple. And to make matters worse, almost everyone then believed that it was someone’s sin, either the disabled persons sin or their parent’s sin, that had caused them to be disabled in the first place! And Jesus, by healing them, was in the minds of the people of that time, giving life back to the dead… he was raising the dead! And did you notice the little addendum that Jesus added in his message to John? ‘God blesses those who do not fall away because of me.’ The raw Greek of this statement by Jesus is something like this: ‘And blessed is the one who is not offended in me.’ A couple of things about this final statement. First, the word ‘blessed’ here does not mean, like we tend to mean, that you’re getting some good things from someone… we tend to say that something was or is a blessing from someone to us. What Jesus meant, though, is that there will be an inner happiness, a deep sense of contentment within our souls if we aren’t… and then he says, ‘offended by him.’ Now the word that is translated ‘offended’ in our Bibles is difficult to translate fully into English: the Greek word is scan-dal-id-zo… it is a word that is translated all sorts of ways: offended, stumble, fall away… its root is a word that means to bend a sapling across a pathway in the hope of tripping someone up. We get the word ‘scandal’ directly from this Greek word. But the Jesus wasn’t using this word to say, ‘Blessed is the one who isn’t scandalized by me.’ What he was saying is more like, ‘The person who isn’t tripped up by what they see in me is going to be contented, they’ll be happy, in their souls.’
And this has got me thinking. What would it have been about Jesus that would have tripped John up in his confidence that Jesus was the Messiah? Well, I can think of a number of things! First, Jesus didn’t carry himself like an Old Testament prophet the way John did. There was nothing unusual about Jesus. He was a regular man who lived in regular ways. John had lived his entire life as what was known then as a Nazarite… someone who didn’t cut their hair and never drank wine and never touched a dead body…all as a sign that he was totally committed to God… and while we don’t know what sort of hairstyle Jesus had, we do know he drank wine and touched dead bodies. This difference could have tripped up John. And while John had directly challenged the political rulers… he was in jail for challenging political rulers for heaven’s sake, yet Jesus said things like, ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.’ This difference could have tripped up John. And John preached repentance and a coming judgment on everyone, yet Jesus was preaching forgiveness and understanding. Now it is true that Jesus did call people to repentance, but he focused far more on the love of God and the goodness of the coming of the Kingdom of God than anything. I can see why John might wonder if Jesus was ‘The One’ they should be looking for… In John’s mind, very little about Jesus said he was THE MAN! It makes sense to me that John would wonder about Jesus and feel the need to ask, ‘Are you the one?’ In his mind Jesus wasn’t living up to his expectations and it was probably tripping him up as he sat in a dark, nasty prison cell.
And, of course, all of this got me thinking about what would cause me to not hold on to my confidence in Jesus… what is it that can cause me to stumble and become discontented. Well, that’s an easy one: when I’m not getting my way in life, I start to wonder if Jesus really cares about my hopes and dreams… and when difficult times come, I start asking why is this happening? Isn’t Jesus paying attention; why would he abandon me like this? And speaking of abandoning me, when people do abandon me or they abandon the church (and I’m talking about both church in general AND this church in specific) I start wondering why, if Jesus said he has ‘such great plans’ for me, why is he letting this happen? And when the wider world isn’t going the way I think it should go I start to wonder if Jesus even cares enough to fix things. All of this makes me stumble… it trips me up and makes me wonder if Jesus IS The One I should be looking to as my hope.
We hear nothing of John’s response to Jesus’ answer. We do know that he lost his life soon after this exchange and that his death was a complete miscarriage of justice. Still, we have no report that John ever reconsidered Jesus. What must have happened was that John came to realize that God’s intensions were far different than what his expectations had been… and that Jesus was God’s means to God’s ends; Jesus lived up to the expectations that matter: The blind were seeing, the lame were walking, those with leprosy were cured, the deaf were hearing, the dead were being raised to life, and the Good News was being preached to the poor.
And that is the issue for me… and for you. Jesus’ obligation was to do the will of his father… not to live up to other’s expectations. And from all that we can tell, John figured this out. And what I’ve found is that this is still true today in my life… you and I don’t follow Jesus so that he can live up to our expectations… no, we follow Jesus because he has promised to be present with us in whatever may come, be it difficult or wonderous… whether it breaks our hearts or brings us great joy… and God’s will for you and me, like his will for John the Baptist is that we are willing to trust him and serve him, no matter what comes our way, and not be offended.