John the Baptist and Jesus

Reading: 11.1-19

A well-worn saying goes like this, “Teaching isn’t really teaching unless the learners have learnt.” The purpose of teaching isn’t some kind of ego-trip for the teacher. It isn’t the sending out of words and sounds and visual images. The purpose of teaching is that the hearers will learn. Many new and innovative educational processes have been devised, all with the ultimate goal of enabling the learners to learn.

I recall a small country town where we lived a number of years ago. One of the small churches in the area had an open-air meeting every Saturday night. They would set up a microphone and public address system and sing hymns, read the Bible and preach the gospel across the main street from where the people walked that night. They said to me, “None of those people will ever be able to say in eternity that they haven’t heard the gospel!”

We respected and loved those people and had a number of them at a weekly Bible study at our home. Yet I couldn’t help reflecting, “Have they heard? Have they grasped? Have they really had the opportunity to accept or reject the message?” I was not at all sure they had – though only eternity itself will give the answer to those questions.

In Romans 10, Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah, “ ‘How wonderful is the coming of messengers who bring good news!’ But not all have accepted the Good News. Isaiah himself said, ‘Lord, who believed our message?’ So, then, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message comes through preaching Christ” (vv. 15b-17).

What you hear and see

In today’s reading we have the question from John the Baptist. John cannot preach any more, calling people to repentance. Herod has had him arrested and thrown into jail. John had baptised Jesus and seen the Spirit descend as a dove. He heard the voice from heaven declare Jesus to be the Father’s beloved Son.

Now in jail he heard the occasional report about Jesus, but wonders – he wants to be sure. So he sends some of his disciples to Jesus to ask him, “Are you the one John said was going to come or should we expect someone else?”

The prospects for John seemed rather gloomy, but he had been called to a task and wanted reassurance that he had faithfully and successfully completed it.

John was the last of the prophets, the last representative of the Old Testament revelation. Has the Old now been fulfilled by the New?

“Go back and tell John what you are hearing and seeing: the blind can see, the lame can walk, those who suffer from dreaded skin diseases are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are brought to life, and the Good News is preached to the poor. How happy are those who have no doubts about me!” (vv. 4-6).

Jesus was deliberately making reference to what Isaiah had said eight centuries before. Listen to Isaiah 35.5-6, “The lame will be able to see, and the deaf will hear. The lame will leap and dance, and those who cannot speak will shout for joy.” And from chapter 61 – the words read by Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth – “The sovereign Lord has filled me with his spirit. He has chosen me and sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to announce release to captives and freedom to those in prison” (vv. 1-2).

“Happy are those who have no doubts about me!” Was the Old fulfilled in the New? Yes, it was! Had John faithfully discharged his task of making the way ready for the Lord? Yes, he had! Did John need to be worried and perplexed by doubts? No, he didn’t!

There’s a principle for us too! Sometimes we have the idea that the promises are somehow truer because we believe them. But that is not so! So often, as Christians, God promises are there for us, but we fail to enter into the joy of the Lord because of doubt and uncertainty.

John the Baptist

But now John’s disciples are leaving and Jesus turns to the crowd. “When you went out to John in the desert, what did you expect to see?” People had certainly gone out in their thousands. No, not for a nature experience – to see “a blade of grass bending in the wind.” Nor yet “a man dressed up in fancy clothes” – you don’t find such a person in the desert! Did you see a prophet? You certainly did – yet one who was greater than any prophet before him – come to open the way for the Lord’s coming!

But notice v. 11, “I assure you that John the Baptist is greater than any man who has ever lived. But he who is least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than John.” On the surface that might seem a contradiction. But Jesus is saying that to belong to the Kingdom of God – even as the least member – is to be in a far more privileged position than the highest position under the Old covenant. As a humble believer in Jesus Christ, you are greater than John the Baptist!

Verse 12 is a difficult one. “From the time John preached his message until this very day the Kingdom of heaven has suffered violent attacks, and violent men try to seize it.” This may refer to groups like the Zealots – a kind of Jewish underground resistance movement – who may well have taken the public interest in John’s preaching about the Kingdom and tried to hijack it for their own purposes. Or it may be a reference to the fact that John was now in jail and Jesus himself would be the target for those opposed to the teaching about the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of heaven – God’s rule – was not really a new theme. It had been the theme of the prophets and the Law of Moses – all was on the basis that God has the right to our allegiance and obedience. God is rightfully King. John the Baptist is part of that long line of prophets “and if you are willing to believe their message, John is Elijah, whose coming was predicted” (v. 14).

At the very end of the Old Testament, in Malachi 4.5-6, we read, “But before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes, I will send you the prophet Elijah. He will bring fathers and children together again; otherwise I would have to come and destroy your country.”

In John 1, we read that the Jewish authorities were trying to find out who this John really was. One of their questions was, “Are you Elijah?” to which John answered, “No, I am not” (Jn.1.21). He was John, not a reincarnation of Elijah, and yet his coming was a fulfilment of that prophecy.

We hear this theme again in Matthew 17. Jesus was returning with Peter, James and John from the mountain where they had seen Jesus transfigured before their eyes. There he had been conversing with Moses and Elijah. So their question, “Why do the teachers of the Law say that Elijah has to come first?” Jesus answered them, “Elijah is indeed coming first, and he will get everything ready. But I tell you that Elijah has already come and people did not recognise him, but treated him just as they pleased. In the same way they will also ill-treat the Son of Man.” Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist (vv. l0-13).

Responding to the Message

But the purpose of the prophets, the purpose of John, the purpose of the coming of Jesus... is to lead us to a response – the positive response of faith. The Word of God isn’t really there so we will have no excuses in eternity. It is true that if we fail to hear and heed, it will certainly stand in judgement against us. But it is given so we may believe and have life in his name! How are we responding to God’s word to us?

Jesus likened the people of his day to children sitting in the market-place, arguing about which game to play next, never satisfied with anything, not able to be happy, not wanting to be sad. It seems as if one group of children is blaming another group for refusing to join in either of the games which they have suggested, whether a game of weddings in which some played festive tunes on pipes while the others danced, or a game of funerals in which some imitated the wailings of the hired professional mourners, while the others smote their breasts in mock sympathy or shed tears of pretended grief. They tire so quickly and easily at the game they are playing, and are constantly wanting to start something fresh. So the play-time just ends up in a quarrel.

God has sent his message to them through John – rough-clad, spartan with a severe, though hopeful message. When they ceased to be overawed by him, they rejected him as a madman. Then comes Jesus – although he was the divine Son of man, he was outwardly like any other son of man. But they were no more satisfied with him than they were with John. They called him “a friend of tax-collectors and other outcasts.”

And such he was, for he had indeed come into the world for all sinners – including “tax-collectors and other outcasts”! Yes, and including these “goody-goody” sinners who were currently his critics. As Jesus was to say later, “I tell you: the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you. For John the Baptist came to you showing you the right path to take, and you would not believe him; but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. Even when you saw this, you did not later change your minds and believe him” (21.31b-32).

So, Jesus says, “God’s wisdom is shown to be true by its results” (11.19c). God knows what he is doing. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “we proclaim the crucified Christ, a message that is offensive to the Jews and nonsense to the Gentiles; but for those whom God has called, both Jews and Gentiles, this message is Christ, who is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For what seems to be God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and what seems to be God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor. 1.23-25).

God’s word is inescapable and it is for us. God’s ways – unlike ours – are always wise. The question is how we respond to his spoken and written words and to Jesus the living Word. We need to hear and and to heed, to be welcomed into his Kingdom family and into a whole new life and life-style.