Sermon- The Baptism of John Scripture: John 1:19-28 Nov 1, 2015 Today we are in the main body of the Gospel of John. And how does the main story in this Gospel begin? With John the Baptist of course. Now I have already preached two sermons on the Baptist and the last one was just 2 Sunday s ago so before I go on, I want to point out why it is possible to preach multiple times on the same passage or on the same character in the Bible. Couple things. Firstly, the Word of God is a living being which means that it is not static but with every new day it takes on a new life. That is why you could hear Psalm 23 for example a 1000 times and it will still comfort your soul the 1001st time. The second thing to know is that the Bible is coming from an infinite source and so what we are looking at when we see the words on the page, these are not words on a page but windows into the infiniteness of God. And so every time we look at these words we are only scratching the surface of possibilities. So talking of possibilities, there is a lot of new ground to cover even with the Baptist, so let s get started. Our text for today opens up for us with an encounter between the Baptist and some temple officials. Now John the Baptist you see had become known in the community. He had an unusual lifetystle, he taught scripture and had quite a following. Now you can imagine, anybody who has a big following is automatically on the radar of the authorities. But there was another thing about the Baptist that may have piques people s curiosity. You know his wardrobe of camel hair and diet of wild honey. The last person who did something like that was prophet Elijah. And prophet Elijah had such a stature in the Bible that he was one of just three people in the Bible who God kept from physically dying and where taken straight to heaven. Not just that of those three people he is the only one who the Bible says would come back even. Malachi 4 verse 5 says, 5 See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. As if that is not enough, Jesus himself in Matt 11:14 says this about John the Baptist. 14 And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. Now given all of this buzz about the Baptist, the temple authorities as you can imagine were pretty desperate to find out if Elijah has actually returned. So they quickly come to find out and think the best way is to ask the Baptist directly. So imagine the scene, they dress in all their official robes and with all the authority they can muster, they ask Elijah, Who are you? Are you Elijah? Tell us. Now the Baptist of course answers very emphatically that he is not. Now before we deal with the reaction of the temple authorities, we need to deal with our own confusion at this point. Because if you notice by saying he is not Elijah 1 P a g e
he seems to be directly contradicting the Words of Jesus himself. So let me clear some fog here. Fortunately, besides Jesus statement in Matthew and the Baptist denial in John we have Luke s Gospel that gives us another perspective. Now if you look at Luke 1, 17, it says 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah So Luke s explanation of Jesus words is simple, John the Baptist is simply an Elijah like figure who comes in the spirit and power of Elijah. Of course a number of people who want to believe the Bible is full of errors and contradictions and therefore not reliable jump at the explanation in Luke and say Luke here is being a spin doctor. I think it is important to answer this allegation and here is how I look at it. Now according to Luke s Gospel, John the Baptist was Jesus cousin who was born to the old couple Zachariah and Elizabeth. It was also common knowledge to the Jewish people that Elijah was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot without experiencing death. So if Elijah had to return literally, he would not come in the form of a baby, but would in fact have to return in his adult state. After all the Bible does not support the idea of reincarnation. So when Jesus was speaking about John the Baptist being the Elijah who was to come, he was clearly speaking about a metaphorical and not literally Elijah. In fact the very phrase that Jesus uses in Matthew, if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. In other words what Jesus was saying was, -if you are willing to see it that way, then John is the Elijah who was to come. OK having settled what kind of Elijah the Baptist was, let s get back to our exchange between the Baptist and the temple officials. So the officials at this point are confused and even more curious. So they ask, then are you the prophet Moses predicted would come? And the Baptist says, no I am not. So they ask him, then are you the Messiah who everybody is waiting for? And as you can expect to that also the Baptist says no. At this point, the interrogators are out of options, but they cannot go back without any answer. So at this point busting with curiosity and really stressed out about needing an answer, they turn to him one who time and ask him, so then who in heaven s name are you? And the Baptist is ready. He says, I am the voice shouting in the wilderness, Clear the way for the LORD s coming. Now we need to pay close attention to the Baptist s answer. The interrogators want to know who the Baptist is. The Baptist tells him what is job is and leaves it to them to decide who he is. The Baptist in fact is a very humble man and does not want to be drawing attention to his titles. He knows that he is here for a task, - to clear the way for the Lord. The Baptist knows that this is not an easy task or a small task and he cannot let anything including his own title distract him from his God given task of preparing the hearts of the people to receive the coming Messiah. On the 2 P a g e
other hand, the temple officials are not very impressed with the Baptist at this point. From their point of view, the Baptist is not one of the big three so they thing maybe he is not anybody important. But they still have one last question of him. They say, ok tell us. If you are not one of the big three, then what right have you to do this big symbolic baptism and have all these followers around you? Before we get to the Baptist s response, I want to pause and address a more basic question you may have had about John s baptism. And that is, where did John get the idea of baptism from in the first place? After all there seems to be nothing about baptism mentioned anywhere in the entire OT. OK so I am glad you asked the question. Because if we find an answer to where John got the idea of Baptist from it will make the purpose of the Baptist much clearer. Well now if you were to look carefully, you will find that even though baptism is not mentioned specifically, the word baptism actually means a ceremonial sprinkling or immersion. And if you were to look for ceremonial cleansing in the Old Testament you start to find it all over the place. In Ex 30:1-17, you have instructions for the priests that they had to ceremonially wash their hands and feet before they did their sacrifices. In Lev 16, the High Priest on the Day of Atonement had to ceremonially wash his whole body before and after he did the sacrifices. Now besides these ceremonies, the OT also talks about a different kind of ritual cleansing that is going to take place in the future. The prophet Ezekiel in Ez 36:25 prophesies about what God will do in the future with these words, Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away, and you will no longer worship idols. Prophet Zechariah too prophesies in Ze 13:1 On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. End quote. Of course the fountain Zechariah is talking about is Christ, who is the living water who will cleanse the inhabitants of Jerusalem from sin. There is one more kind of baptism that we need to know off. This Baptist is called the Jewish proselyte baptism and the only reason we know about this kind of Baptist is because of non-biblical writings of the practice. What this was was has to do with the process a Gentile had to follow to become a Jew. Now what we know about this is that such a Gentile would have to do three things, study the Torah, if male then be circumcised, and finally be baptized or have a ceremonial dip in the water. With this background in mind, let s come back to John s Baptism. Let s start with Baptist s stated purpose of preparing the hearts of the people for the Messiah. The reason why this was a challenging job is because the Jewish people thought that their 3 P a g e
Messiah would liberate then politically from Roman rule and restore the glory days of David and Solomon. Now if you were to prepare people for a political liberator you would be making speeches about the Roman problem and getting people all riled up about that. But the Baptist never bothered about talking about the Romans. Instead he focused on asking people who were already Jews to be baptized, with the baptism of repentance. Imagine what the average Jew would think if you asked him or her to do something that at the time was only expected of Gentiles trying to convert to Judaism. But by focusing on just repentance as the preparation for the Messiah, the Baptist was clearing all false ideas and upholding human sin and not Roman rule as the problem the Messiah was coming to deal with. As you can imagine, this reorientation of thinking was really critical preparation for the coming ministry of Jesus Christ. Let s pull this into our world now. I am sure you are asking, so John s Baptism was trying to prepare people for Jesus. So today 2000 years after the time of Jesus, why is John the Baptist still relevant to me. Here is why. You see when we go about our day, we are usually thinking of the problems we face, be it health issues, or financial issues or relationship issues or work issues. And the way we perceive our problems defines who our saviors are. For example, if people are very fearful of intruders they will perceive weapons to be their savior. If someone is very afraid of poverty then their income source will be their savior. Now each of us has our own perspective of what the biggest problems in our life is and our perception of our problems defines where we will go for solutions. There is no problem with us connecting problems with solutions. The problem is that the enemy is constantly trying to deceive us about what our biggest needs or problems are. And the enemy can use the media, life circumstances or even our own feelings to deceive us. So before you and me can fully turn our faces towards Jesus Christ we need to be able to put aside all competing voices and understand from the Baptists that God will send our way our desperate and incredible need for Jesus Christ. So here is the deal, if you do not have Christ in your life already, take the Baptist word that your biggest need right now is to repent. That means taking a u-turn on the path you are on right now, and allowing Jesus Christ to take the wheel and take control of your life. If you need help in this area, please come and talk to me or one of the elders of our church and they will be able to help you turn your face to Jesus Christ. If you are one of those people who has already asked Christ to come into your life, it is possible that Christ has got lost in the clutter of bigger problems. Remember Christ is not a sin vaccine, that we take once and then have immunity for the rest of our life. No the thing 4 P a g e
that happens when we first ask Christ into our life is that for the first time we begin to acknowledge our need for Christ. Then as we continue on the journey of life and the enemy starts throwing the kitchen sink at us, remember that God permits those things to happen to us simply to tell us to ramp are dependence on Christ. Meanwhile the enemy will bring all kinds of other things that you can depend on. If you resist the temptation to turn to other saviors and instead have deeper conversations with your Savior Jesus Christ then your relationship with Jesus Christ will grow and you can overcome everything. On the other hand if you fail the test, other things will take the place of Christ and Christ himself will become distant. Remember, the Baptist reminds us that there is no bigger problem then our personal sins and so there is no bigger savior than Jesus. If you are a believer the enemy wants to block your relationship with Christ and preoccupy you with other saviors. Remember this, nothing can supersede our dependence on Christ. See every challenge that you face as an opportunity to get to know Jesus Christ more intimately than you have ever known him before. And you will overcome everything that the world will throw at you. Let us prayer. 5 P a g e