9/10/06 First Encounters Pt. 4
Our study of John’s Gospel
has brought us to Jesus’ first encounter
with six men at the beginning of His public presentation of Himself to Israel.
These six first encounters
are recorded for us in the last half of the first chapter of the Gospel of John.
After laying a good deal of foundation for what we’ll be looking at,
two weeks ago we moved into the first of those six,
Jesus’ first encounter with John the Baptist.
And we didn’t actually get to his encounter with Jesus,
but started first of all with John the Baptist’s encounter
with a group of men who had been sent from the Jewish national rulers in Jerusalem,
men who demanded from him
an explanation of who he was and what he was doing.
We saw two weeks ago
that John was the first true prophet to be sent by God to Israel in over 400 years,
a man specially equipped by God
to prepare the way for Christ’s arrival,
and to announce His coming.
Those who confronted him asked him four questions.
Are you the promised Messiah?
Are you Elijah?
Are you the prophet?
And if not, then who are you?
John responded to their questions
by saying that he was not the Messiah,
but then went on to tell them
that the Messiah was, in fact, already on the earth and walking among them.
Do you think that would have been good news
to those who heard John speak those words?
It depends, doesn’t it.
Assuming they accepted John as a credible source,
there were certainly some who must have been thrilled at the thought.
But then there were others,
others who had gained their positions of power, and prestige, and control
through means that the Messiah might not approve of.
And the thought that He was soon to appear
may have been less than good news.
Then we spent the rest of our time two weeks ago
looking at his response to the second question,
“Are you Elijah?”.
The question grew out of a prophecy made by the last prophet to speak to Israel prior to John’s arrival,
the prophet Malachi,
who ended his public prophetic message by saying,
MAL 4:5 "Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.”
We saw that this was, in fact, a dual prophecy,
one that had applications to not one future event but two.
Israel knew that God had repeatedly promised the nation
that He would one day send the Messiah,
a leader who would be the great deliverer for the nation.
What they did not know,
and in fact could not know until after Christ appeared,
was that, though there would indeed be just one Messiah,
yet this Messiah would come to earth not once but twice,
and that His purpose and His appearance would be radically different
in those two presentations of Himself.
And to confuse things more,
frequently the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah
would mingle events from both appearances into the same prophecies
making it impossible for them to be clearly understood
until after God’s plan for the two separate appearances was known.
In some prophetic passages this Messiah was described as an all-powerful conquering force
who would literally rule the entire world
and put all things to right.
ISA 11:1-9, 12 Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, And a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And He will delight in the fear of the Lord, And He will not judge by what His eyes see, Nor make a decision by what His ears hear; But with righteousness He will judge the poor, And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins, And faithfulness the belt about His waist.
And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the ox. The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper's den. They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Clearly this was not the image of Jesus in the first century...
And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.
The Messiah being described in this passage
and many others like it
is a Messiah who possesses absolute power
and uses it with absolute righteousness.
In fact, not only does He conquer the enemies of Israel,
but He removes all strife,
all violence from the entire world.
His rule will produce a world in which all fear is gone
because all corruption, all evil,
and all the effects of the curse brought into the world through Adam’s sin have been removed.
There is one phrase in this prophecy from Isaiah
that I came across years ago,
a single sentence that captures
what is the deepest longing within the hearts of all true children of God.
For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
So often when we look at this world as it now is,
a world so flooded with the moral sewage of the human race,
a world in agony because of the pain and suffering and abuse that immorality always brings,
our spirits long for the day
when that promise will become a living reality on this earth,
a promise that will find it’s fulfillment at the return of the King, “For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea...”.
And that day will come,
and when it does
the Creator of all things
will restore all things to the way they were designed to be.
The book of Isaiah is especially rich
in the promises given to us by God
about the world as it will be at the return of Christ.
Listen to this!
ISA 45:23-24 "I have sworn by Myself, The word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness And will not turn back, That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance. They will say of Me, 'Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.' Men will come to Him, And all who were angry at Him will be put to shame.”
It’s no wonder that Israel expected the arrival
of an all-powerful conquering King,
One who, by the sheer power of His presence,
would literally bring the entire human race to it’s knees before Him
and put to shame all those who once resisted His rule on the earth.
And John the Baptist’s presence,
and the power of his message,
and the sheer forcefulness of his personality
were such that there were many who honestly wondered
if he could be the man.
But then there were other prophetic passages concerning the Messiah,
passages in which he was described as a lamb led to the slaughter,
one who was wrongly accused and yet made no response to His accusers.
ISA 53:3-7 He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.
Such prophetic passages concerning the Messiah
made no sense whatsoever
when placed next to those describing the conquering King,
and as we might expect,
when faced with the two radically different images,
the first century Jews favored and focused on the conquering hero passages.
That was the Messiah they wanted,
the one who would deliver Israel from it’s forced submission to Rome
and drive Cesar and his legions to their knees before Him.
And when these messengers asked John if he was the Messiah,
or if he was the promised Elijah
who would immediately precede the appearance of this long awaited Messiah,
the one who would herald the “terrible day of the Lord”,
to both questions John said, “No.”
But we ran out of time
before we could deal with the last two questions these messengers asked him,
and that’s where we’ll pick up our study today.
The third question they asked John was,
“Are you the prophet”?
And here again we have a question
that came out of an Old Testament prophecy,
one that was made by Moses himself.
It is found in a section in Deuteronomy
in which Moses is giving the Israelites instructions
about their conduct once they enter the land God had promised them.
And in the middle of those instructions,
in Deuteronomy 18:15 all of the sudden he says,
DEU 18:15 "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.”
That promise sat unfulfilled in the history of the nation for the next 1400 years.
Can you appreciate how long that is?
How long have we as a nation existed?
Just a little over 200 years.
And yet here was a promise made by God to Israel through Moses,
a promise they held onto,
a promise from which they drew strength and hope
for a period 1200 years longer than our nation has even existed.
It was a promise
the significance of which most of us would not even begin to appreciate.
Obviously in the hundreds of years that followed this promise being made
there were many prophets that came onto the scene,
and there were many rulers, many kings, many priests.
But none of them met the criteria for the fulfillment of that prophecy.
You see, Moses was not just a prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah.
He was not just a great leader of the people like David and Solomon.
He was both of those,
but then he was something else as well.
First of all,
he was literally the savior, the deliverer of the nation,
freeing them from slavery.
And then he was also a man divinely empowered with supernatural abilities,
a miracle worker unlike anyone else in the history of Israel,
or of the world, for that matter.
When Moses spoke
the entire physical world bowed to his authority.
He could hold up his rod before the nation of Egypt
and turn the waters to blood,
or bring swarms of locusts,
or cover the land with absolute darkness.
He could stand before the Red Sea
and at his command the water submitted to his will
creating a dry road where just moments before
there had been churning breakers.
And it’s no wonder that,
during the 1400 years following Moses’ death,
there was no one in the history of Israel
who was viewed as the fulfillment of Moses’ promise that, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.”
So who was this prophet promised by Moses?
Though it was unclear to the first century Jewish scholars,
it’s clear to us now, looking back,
that the Prophet and the Messiah were one in the same.
And when John the Baptist was asked if he was the promised Prophet,
of course he told them, “No.”
And there’s something else I want to point out here, too, about this question, “Are you the prophet?”
For me, one of the greatest works of God in this whole thing
is found in the fact that they asked that question at all.
Here was a group of Jewish leaders
asking a man if he was the fulfillment of a one-line prophecy
made by a man who lived 1400 years earlier.
That would be like us looking for the fulfillment of a one-line statement
from the writings of some religious leader who lived in 600 A.D.
Do you know how long ago that was?
My recollection of world history is extremely fuzzy, to say the least,
but as I recall that was not long after the fall of the Roman Empire
early in that period of history that we call the Dark Ages.
And yet these men are discussing this prophecy with John
as if it was as relevant and reliable
as any piece of knowledge they possessed.
How can that be?
Well, it could be for only one reason -
because the Spirit of God
chose to etch that promise into minds and hearts of the Jews
as one more piece of His preparation for the entrance of His Son into the world.
And I can give you a direct parallel
of His doing exactly the same type of work
in our world today.
A few minutes ago I shared with you
some prophecies from the book of Isaiah,
words that were written about 2800 years ago
foretelling the establishment of a world-wide empire of righteousness,
a kingdom to be established on this earth by God Himself.
And I told you that the supreme ruler of this Empire
will be a man who lived on this earth 2000 years ago,
a man who will return again to this earth
and who will rule with absolute power.
Jesus Christ will return!
Now I’m a reasonably intelligent man.
There are some who would argue that, of course.
I had a teenager this past week
tell me that, in his opinion, I don’t know anything at all.
I believe we were discussing clothing styles at the time.
But the truth is that I did OK in school,
and I don’t believe I’m, as yet, showing any signs of Alzheimer’s,
and my reasoning processes are as good as most people’s.
And yet here I am
absolutely convinced of the truth of these prophecies,
in fact so convinced
that they literally impact my life values,
my goals,
and my priorities on a daily basis.
And there are probably some of you here this morning
who honestly cannot understand how that can be.
And there are others of you listening to me right now
who think and believe exactly the same way I do.
Now how could that be?
How could many of us place such absolute trust
in the words of men we’ve never met,
men who lived hundreds
or even thousands of years ago?
It happens because we are created beings,
and because there is nothing more powerful on this earth
than the words of our Creator.
And there are some things that He has etched into the hearts of His people now
just as He etched that promise from Moses
into the hearts of the Jews.
The author of Hebrews said it a lot better than I ever could.
HEB 4:12-13 For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
That isn’t some religious truth we are suppose to learn,
it’s a simple statement of fact.
And this fact of human existence
is in no way limited just to those of us whose hearts are open to our Creator.
Certainly for us
there is a unique richness,
and hope,
and a healing power that comes into our lives through the words of our God.
But no human being is immune to its power or the authority of the words spoken by our Creator.
It’s just that prior to our submission to Him
the Word He has etched into our hearts
brings the awareness of our moral accountability to Him.
We hate it, of course,
and try all sorts of things to hide from it, or appease it, or obliterate it.
But still, there it is - creating within us a desperate hunger
for some way to find peace with ourselves and with our God.
If we would dare to be logical,
this should not surprise us, of course,
because there is nothing more powerful in human experience
than the voice of the One who created us.
Did you notice those words spoken by God
in that Isaiah passage I read earlier?
ISA 45:23-24 "I have sworn by Myself, The word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness And will not turn back...
Why did he swear by Himself?
Well, obviously, because there was no higher authority by which He could swear than Himself.
And what He promised is all too clear.
He says that what He has spoken will be accomplished.
It is as certain as He is.
Whether we believe it or not,
whether we choose to build our lives upon it or not,
what God has spoken,
everything God has spoken will happen exactly as He has spoken it.
But let me quickly get us back to John the Baptist before we close for the morning.
John said that he was not the Messiah,
he was not Elijah,
and he was not the Prophet.
Then who was he?
JOH 1:23 "I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,' as Isaiah the prophet said."
He had just one role -
to prepare the hearts and minds of the people
for the arrival of the promised Messiah.
And we see him doing this
both in his call to Israel for repentance prior to Jesus’ appearance on the scene,
and in what he said about Jesus
at the point of his appearance in Israel.
And if the only information we ever had about Jesus
was the information we gained as a result of John’s first public encounter with Christ,
it would be all we needed.
Listen to this!
JOH 1:29-34 The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He on behalf of whom I said, 'After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.' I did not recognize Him, but so that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water." John testified saying, "I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him. I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, 'He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.' I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God."
From John’s words
we gain six crucial bits of information about Jesus.
John tells us that He is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
He tells us that He has a higher rank than John.
He tells us that He existed before John,
which of course is another remarkable statement,
given the fact that John was conceived before Jesus was.
John tells us that Jesus is the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
He tells us that he saw the Spirit of God descending onto Jesus.
And then he tells us that this is the Son of God.
And none of these truths are more crucial
than the first words John spoke.
Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
Now honestly,
where in the world did that come from?
And yet there it is,
the one truth we need most to understand
about that first appearance of Jesus on this earth.
Logically, of course,
we would have expected John to say something like,
“Behold the Messiah.”,
or “Behold the promised One.”,
or “Behold the promised King of Israel.”
But what the Spirit of God did say
captured in a single phrase
the absolute heart of everything God wants us to know about this Man.
It was vivid imagery for those who heard John speak.
They knew all about lambs and sin.
They understood that system laid down by God for them,
that system in which they brought their perfect, spotless lamb to the priest
and he then placed his hand on the lamb’s head
and slit its throat,
allowing that lamb to die as an offering for the sins of the one who brought it.
And now here was John the Baptist
telling his listeners
that this man was
the perfect, spotless Lamb of God Himself
who would take away the sin of the entire world.
And nothing has changed, my friends.
He is still
and will always be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
And even more important,
He is the Lamb of God
who can take away your sins too.
All He wants,
all He needs is your willingness to place your life into His hands,
and your simple trust in Him
that He is telling you the truth
when He tells you that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.