Hey everybody.
Thanks for being with us as we close out the week here in the Gospel of John.
Continue to work our way through the first chapter.
A little bit of a change of pace.
The first 18 verses really function for John as a theological underpinning.
Not that John is done with theology by any stretch, but now we do begin
to get into some narrative, some story,
and we pick that up today in verse 19.
As we again meet this character that has been referenced, not really.
As we meet for the first time, this character that has been referenced,
John the Baptist here, not the author.
So this is the description of what
John is up to, what he's been doing, what he's been saying,
and it's an interesting place for the story to start.
We'll come back to that after I read a few verses here.
Starting in 19.
This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests
and Levites from Jerusalem to ask, who are you?
He confessed he did not deny it,
but confessed, I am not the Messiah.
And they asked him, what then are you Elijah?
He said, I'm not. Are you the prophet? It.
He answered no.
And they said, who are you?
Let us have an answer for those who sent us.
What do you say about yourself?
He said, I'm the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness.
Make straight the way of the Lord.
In all of the Gospels.
John the Baptist is a key figure.
Figure, particularly shows up early in the story.
He is the Herald.
He is the forerunner, the one who goes before John gives us the,
I think in some ways, the crispest or the clearest conversation with John.
You know, John starts with the question, are you the Messiah?
That's the first thing we hear him say.
I am not the Messiah.
So just we we know that there was in the early church
a group of people who followed John the Baptist right here.
We're going to hear in the story as it unfolds.
Disciples John the Baptist has disciples, people who are with him and follow him.
We know that he also has a large following of people
who come out to hear him preach and get baptized.
And yet, the first words in this story
are from John the Baptist, or I am not the Messiah.
And that's a significant point for the way that John, the author, tells this story.
And as we meet this character Mark right there,
there's a sense in which the other gospels build us up to this moment.
I think a little a little slower.
John just starts right off with it.
Yeah, right.
And the reason that John is so important and we've we've said this before,
but now as we turn our attention to John the Baptist, the reason that he's
such an important character and just given such a prominent place
so early in this story is because he is witnessing, he's confessing.
And we see this specifically.
The word that we have in this translation is the testimony given by John
and that that word testimony is used 37 times in the New Testament.
30 of them are used in the Gospel of John.
That is how important that this theme is within the whole gospel,
and it's why it is given such prominence, and why John the Baptist has given
such a clear place within the story so quickly.
Clint is because he is the chief testifier.
He is the one with good character, with a humble attitude,
shows up on day one and from the start
he confesses, I'm not the Messiah.
I'm not Elijah.
I'm not the prophet, the one who is coming after me.
We're going to find that's the one who's greater.
So I just want to make sure that we see right from the start
that John prepares the way for Jesus.
Both in terms of the people's imagination, and he's going to call the people
to a form of repentance, in this story to come.
But what we have right here
is very, very clearly that John is the first character of the story,
verse 19, who's already giving us that testimony.
He's giving us that witness.
He's setting the tone of how the characters of the story
are going to all, in their own individual ways, be
witnesses and testimony, bringers of the gospel of Christ.
Scholars suggest that because we jump into this story
like this, it's an indication that the Gospel of John is written
and written to people who are all already pretty familiar with John the Baptist.
His message, this conflict or controversy of whether he's the Messiah,
the growing conflict with Jewish leaders,
that it it makes sense if you just think about it.
Given that there's no real prelude to this, there's no explanation, given
that this question is already on the forefront
in the very first part of the gospel, it seems reasonable that those
who are the intended receivers of this gospel are familiar with those things.
And so John does this fairly comfortably.
Just leaves out some details.
And when that happens,
we are left with the assumption that those who are reading the gospel
probably already knew those details and didn't need them.
There will be other places that John will fill in some gaps,
but when he doesn't, we assume it's because those things are already known.
The answer that John gives here is also wonderful.
They say, well then who are you?
And he
answers, I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
make straight the way of the Lord, which is a quote from Isaiah chapter 40.
And one of the wonderful things about some of these quotes
is that they didn't live with a lot of expectation.
It wasn't understood that Jesus
or that John knew what these things meant in the broader context.
In other words, they weren't picking, they weren't picking verses
that were well known by people and had established meanings.
This a similar reality would be Jesus calling himself
Son of Man, which is a fairly obscure title
in the Old Testament, and not one that carried a lot of baggage with it.
So John says here I'm I'm the forerunner.
I'm the voice that cries out in the wilderness,
make straight the ways of the Lord.
In other words, I'm, as you said, my God, I'm the one who testifies.
I'm the one who announces, I'm the one who tells the truth
about the one who is coming after me and is greater than I am.
And this is what gives John the Baptist
his flavor, especially in this gospel, the Herald.
And he has this essential role that he plays, and we jump straight into it.
There's also another introductory note that I think is pretty subtle here,
and I don't want to pass by it with us missing it in verse 20 there,
when he confesses and doesn't deny,
but says, I am not the Messiah.
Now, if you've not read the Gospel of John yet, that may just sound like a denial,
but if you've read the Gospel of John, you might know that to come
Jesus will several times make him statements.
Jesus will say, I am the bread of life.
I am the vine, I am Jesus repeats these.
I am statements affirming who he is.
It's it's fascinating that the very beginning of the book,
one of the first words offered by the one who gives a witness is I am not.
I am not the one who is going to come.
And this, just as you see the richness of this text, later on,
we're going to discover that Jesus is all of the things
that these human witnesses could not be for themselves.
And what's so amazing about John, I think, the telling of John
the Baptist is that he is not competing for attention.
He's not looking for notoriety, he's not seeking popularity,
and he's also not looking to be raised up to to high religious power.
What simply what John wants to do
is to point others to the one who represents
God in flesh, to
who is the one that has come to save the world,
and that is the the beautiful witness that that sets off the tone.
And, you know, if you're going to think about
gospel starts and you want to think about the beginning of Jesus's story,
I think most of us, Clint, we think of the Christmas story.
We think of angels and shepherds,
and we think of nativity scenes and all these things.
But in the Gospel of John, the most important
introductory character is none of these.
It's rather a person fully grown, simply recognizing Christ
for who he is and giving witness to those who come asking about him, saying,
this is who Jesus is. He is the Messiah.
And that that is an amazing sort
of opening invitation to to what's going to follow.
We've noted this before, but the other thing that's
sort of noticeably absent in
John's
gospel is, at least at this point, prophecy.
All of the other gospels
equate the coming of
Jesus with predictions and forecasts.
The closest we get here is this reference to Isaiah.
But it's fairly minimal.
And so
John tends to focus on the moment at hand
and tells the story with a kind of current urgency.
And so that that's what we have here.
I'm who are you?
I'm the one making straight the way of the Lord.
And we don't need, we don't get, nor do we need a lot of reference for what
that means.
We continue verse 20 for the next couple verses.
So they asked him they had been sent from the Pharisees and they asked him, why
then are you baptizing if you're neither the Messiah nor Elijah, nor the prophet?
John answered, I baptize with water.
Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me.
I'm not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.
This took place in Bethany, across the Jordan from where John was baptizing.
So, here
we have this reference to John being the Baptizer.
We call him John the Baptist.
But Baptizer is probably a better translation
of some of the titles, at least as they often appear in the Greek.
He's the one who baptizes in baptism.
There's history out there.
You can get into it.
We won't take the time to dive deeply into it.
It was not a practice that John established.
It had grown in some popularity, but it wasn't a widespread practice
among the Jewish faith, though in small places, small,
in certain places
and in small minorities, it was practiced.
And here John seems to have had a great
following of people who responded to it.
The idea was repentance.
The idea was,
turning away from your sin of being washed.
It had that kind of symbolism, symbolism in it.
It is not inherently Christian, though.
It becomes fully Christianized in the wake of the gospel
and in the testimony and work of John the Baptist.
And really,
his place in the
story cements baptism as a kind of Christian ritual
that ends up becoming one of the things we even call sacrament.
So actually, baptism is one of the components of this
that is so confusing to the religious leaders who come
because we have the Pharisees.
And you may know that the Pharisees represent a group
within the Judean faith
that was taking very seriously.
The moral law, the the sort of handing down
of the faith and trying to live that out in very concrete ways.
So here, baptism in the Jewish tradition is certainly the Pharisees
interpretation of it was connected to the end times.
It was connected to everything being fulfilled.
And so here, there they at this point,
the story, are likely asking this as a legitimate question.
There's there's likely not a whole lot of,
sort of argument or force behind it yet on the curiosity, if you are neither
the Messiah nor Elijah, nor the prophet, then why are you baptizing it?
And when John answers, this is an amazing statement.
I baptize with water.
And one
commentator makes the point of saying, this is written to almost have the force.
I only baptize with water.
And that is the amazing kind of witness and testimony we see in John, a kind of
really unparalleled humility of a person from day one
who is not striving for self.
I think of someone like Peter, another example of a of a very prominent
biblical character and we know,
as we see Peter's story told in the Gospels
that he struggled to to hear what Jesus was saying.
He often got off place, either trying to build a tabernacle for Jesus, or
he was trying
to, you know, gain power and privilege in the places where they were here.
John the Baptist is simply out in the wilderness.
And here, this place, Bethany, that we talk about,
it is really an unknown place to the archeological record.
So it's a small place.
It's out in the middle of nowhere.
It's kind of off the beaten path.
And even there, John is trying to set the path straight.
He's trying to proclaim the good news.
He's trying to, say to the people what they need to hear
so that their hearts might be prepared to receive the Christ who is coming.
I think that's what is so amazing about how John tells this story.
It's both, on one hand, telling us
that Jesus is a person who is great enough and powerful,
not because he's the Word of God taking flesh,
that it's right for someone to proclaim his arrival.
On the other hand, if that isn't done, if we aren't baptized,
if we're not transformed and clean from the inside out,
then we won't be ready to know and to understand the story of Jesus Christ.
And also, John is the kind of character who represents an ideal, or a call
or a purpose for every Christian that follows Christ that,
in other words, just like John was there proclaiming this.
So Christians too are called to proclaim just as he gave testimony.
So to we are to give testimony that.
So there are many, many layers functioning in the text like this.
And I think every single one of them is important
because 28 verses of chapter one,
we've yet to have the first word of Jesus that's going to come next week, Monday.
Join us for that.
But up to this point, we've had this beautiful prolog,
the theological foundation that's been laid.
Now you have the first witness to the glory of Christ,
and now we're going to see Christ himself.
And John's built that for some purpose.
It's kind of a matter of perspective, but one of the things
that scholars wonder about is that in this opening
part of the gospel, the first few chapters,
there is a kind of comparison
of John and Jesus, and the speculation is
that John is aware of a community that lifts
John the Baptist up, perhaps, in his opinion, too highly.
And so while he simultaneously celebrates
John's role in the gospel, as the Herald, as the announcer,
as we go through this, notice how many times John
is going to say things like, I'm not the Messiah.
He's greater than I am.
He must turn into more while I turn into less.
That any
any comparison that could be made is addressed by John,
the author in the gospel to make sure that his readers understand
that Jesus is in the superior role here, that John is a servant,
a willing one, a knowledgeable one on an incredibly important one,
but that he himself understands he is a subordinate to Jesus.
And that has again just led some to speculate that
maybe John is aware of some questions along those lines,
and he just wants to make sure he provides absolute clarification.
That's not so much a part of the text as it is with
what people have wondered about the text, but you will notice
that as we go through these first couple chapters, whenever John shows up,
he clearly understands his relationship to Jesus
to be one of underling underneath servant.
And that's important in in the context.
And it creates a kind of tension even within this gospel client.
Because on one hand,
John is such an important character because of the witness he gives.
And on the other hand, the gospel writer John doesn't want us to give John.
To or. Credence that he's do either.
That is a that's a balancing act that is intended to be held in tension.
And yeah, that's absolutely purposeful.
Hope that you found this conversation interesting.
Hope that you might join us for the study as we continue.
Indeed, next week on Mondays, we continue together.
We're going to come right
into the heart of Jesus's arrival and some of those first words from him
and hope that you will be part of the continuing study as we learn,
not just about the
I am not that we discovered today, but the image of Jesus to come.
So subscribe so you get more of that.
I like this video if you found it helpful and we will see you next week.
Have a great weekend!