The Gospel of John 1:19-34

So when I was studying for this week, I could not help but laugh. This is a really funny passage that we're going through. On the surface, not so funny. When you dig under the covers, very funny. So last week, We talked about Christ and why he came. This week we're going to shift focus on to John the Baptist, and it's a more historical passage. But there's still good doctrine that we can glean out of it. You'll find that you have two handouts in one, and so if you go two pages back you'll find this Jewish groups at the time of Jesus, so we will be referring to that quite shortly. So, passage starts out that this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask, who are you? And we'll carry on from there.

So, who's worked in a really large corporation? Okay, so a few people have worked in a really large corporation. One of the things that you have to be aware of when you work in a really big company is who's who in which departments, which people matter, who you want to know. This is a person that I really want to know and take out for coffee because they're going to be able to help my group down the road and this person's dangerous and so we need to stay close enough to know what the danger... all of those sorts of things.

The Jews got to do exactly that at this time. And so they're doing two things here. Number one, they're trying to figure out, who's this John? Do we need to pay attention to him? Is he dangerous? What sort of character is he? But they're also a little mad. And so we'll look at both of those. So just to get a sense of all those different corporate vice presidents and stuff that we're looking at, we have this wonderful handout that goes through some of them.

And we're only going to look at the four that really come up in this particular passage. So the first one is Pharisees. Then we'll get into priests and Levites. We'll also get into the disciples of John, who interestingly, after hanging out with John for a long time, many of them ended up completely missing the boat and focusing on water baptism and forgetting about this whole Jesus Christ character. I don't know how you do that, but I guess you do. So first group is the Pharisees.

These are the guys who probably sent these folks out to sniff John and see what he was about. The Pharisees were a group of intellectual Jews. They had positions of power within the Jewish community. And they distinguish themselves by believing the Hebrew scriptures plus all of the oral traditions that went around those. And so oral traditions are just extra bits.

So for example, we start out in Hebrew scriptures with 600 and however many laws. If you count one as one or one as two, you can get different numbers. But 600 some odd laws, they think, oh, that's not nearly enough. Because the problem is they're open for interpretation. So did I miss on this law or not miss on that law? Better to build a protective cage around the law. And then you can't even get into this area where things are uncertain.

And so they added their extra bits. And so the Pharisees were fine with lots of extra bits being added in. Which ones do I want? There were priests that were part of the Pharisees, mostly they're laymen. But there were people in the Sanhedrin. If you look at that Acts 534 passage, you'll find that Galilel was a Pharisee. Like I said, they followed the laws of the Hebrew Bible, but also the traditions. And they were pretty proud of themselves.

I think it's the Luke passage, Luke 18, 10 through 12, where that comes out. Let me just get to that. So two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. So we've got some polar opposites going on. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself, I thank you that I am not like other people, swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I pay tithes of all that I get. Thank you that I'm not one of these because I just really do a great job at keeping the law. I'm so special. That's sort of the mindset.

We'll find out later on today that they really viewed themselves as so spectacular within the religious leaders that they pretty much figured that when Christ came, he would just seek them out. They wouldn't have to go look, they wouldn't have to go find him. He'd just show up at their door and say, hey, I've finally come for you.

And then one key distinction between them and the Sadducees is that the Pharisees believed in life after death. Sadducees, no life after death. So we'll skip over the Sadducees for now, because they don't come up in this particular passage. And we'll move on. Oh, thank goodness.

Somebody was a genius and brought me Kleenex. It's too early for allergies. high priests, chief priests, priests, and Levites. So the tribe of Levi is the sole place for priests and Levites. But I guess the easiest way to think about it is, if you're a priest, then you must be from the tribe of Levi. Simple logic lesson. If you're from the tribe of Levi, you're not necessarily a priest. So the tribe of Levi encompassed a number of different groups. In fact, all of these. The Levites were from the tribe of Levi, which makes great sense.

But they had the specific job of helping out in the temple. So they're going to be musicians and scholars and those sorts of things, but not necessarily the priests who are carrying out sacrifices and those sorts of things. Did I cover what's on here? Yeah, I think that's good enough for now. So we may choose to dig in later. And don't lose this very special supplement, because we'll be referring to it later as we go through the Book of John.

And the last one, disciples of John the Baptist. So during his lifetime, he accrued quite a lot of disciples who were following him. And some of those folks became Christians, some of them did not. And like I said, given what we're going to learn about John today, it's interesting that people chose to follow John, but didn't later come to believe Jesus. So, recognized as a great preacher and prophet, calling the people to repentance.

So Elizabeth and Mary were closely related, which makes John and Jesus cousins. I think Verne said probably first cousins, maybe once removed, who knows, but cousins nonetheless. So they grew up playing with each other and those sorts of things, which will be interesting when we see in this passage that John did not recognize Jesus.

So we'll have to put our thinking caps on around that one. And then he had a very popular ministry, and we'll look at a couple passages around that. Okay, so those are some of the groups that are at play right now. Now we can go back to other handout, just not the supplement.

Okay, so in the first place, We have the Pharisees sending out a group to sniff John to decide, are you dangerous? Should we make an alliance? What sort of thing is going on like you would in corporate America? However, there's another thing that's going on too, which is in Matthew 3. And this is where this passage, I think, starts to get a little funny. So Matthew 3, 4 through 7.

John himself had a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around Jordan, and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? So here come great religious leaders of the Jewish world out to be baptized by John. And he's like, and he insults them. So that's backdrop for this passage here, where we see Then the Jews sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask, who are you?

They're mad. In the Greek, you don't have to put an explicit you into the sentence to make it convey that concept, but they did. The sense that that conveys is more along the lines of, Who do you think you are? And his response, again, is hilarious. I am not the Christ. Did they ask him if he was the Christ? Did he answer their question? He answers the question that he thinks they're thinking in their minds. Who do you think you are? I'm not the Christ. So he's taking that directly away from them. They thought maybe they can trick him. I am not the Christ.

So they ask him, what then, are you Elijah? And he says, I am not. They say, are you the prophet? No. Do they know who he is now? No. So this is a fun little dance that's going on. And notice that he's getting more and more and more terse. I am not the Christ. I am not.

No. So the priests and Levites that came out, it could be Pharisee or Sadducee persuasion. The people who sent them to him were definitely Pharisees. So these are not the Pharisees themselves, but they believe that sort of mindset, and they're coming out to check him out. They ask him if he is Elijah. This is an interesting one because John could have said, yes. So let's look at that just really quickly. If you look at Malachi 4, 5, and 6, this is what this is referring to.

And this is Jehovah saying, behold, I am going to send to you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse." So God's saying, I'm going to send Elijah before the great day of judgment.

And then if we look in Luke, I think it's 117, this is a description of John the Baptist as he's going to come. And it says, it is he who will go as a forerunner before him, meaning Christ, in the spirit and power of Elijah. So it's predicted that John is going to have the same spirit and power of Elijah.

So they come to him. They say, are you Elijah? His answer is no. So he's not worrying about who he is. And we'll see him sidestep this question again and again. And it's going to become clear soon why he's sidestepping the question. Okay, so that's Elijah. The prophet is referring to a passage in Deuteronomy. What is it? 18 and 15? If you search for duet 18 instead of Deuteronomy 18, doesn't get you where you want to go.

So, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen. You shall listen to him. This is according to all that you've asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God. Let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die. The Lord said to me, They have spoken well, I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak them all that I command him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to my words, which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. And so the prophet, of course, ends up referring to the Christ. And the Jews didn't get that. So they always pictured the Messiah and the prophet are two different critters. And in fact, they're not. So we'll flip over to page 2. OK. John says, no, I'm not any of those people. So they pretty much don't have any idea who he is still.

So they ask him really directly this time. They said to him, who are you so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself? So we know at this point they are a chartered group sent from officials of some sort to interrogate John.

He said, I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, as Isaiah the prophet said. And the reference is to Isaiah 43. And this passage is interesting on a number of different levels. First, John still hasn't said who he is to them, right? He sidestepped.

And this is, I'm reminded, I do a fair amount of business with people in China. And in China, you can't separate the person from the company. So when you're working with somebody in China, when I'm working with somebody, they don't see me as Craig. They see me as Craig comma ambassador of the company that I work for.

Those are completely merged. So John is sidestepping the question again this time, saying, who I am doesn't matter whatsoever. Here is my role. My role is, I am a voice crying in the wilderness saying, make straight the path of the Lord. Still hasn't answered their question. So that's one level where this is interesting.

Second level, this make straight the way of the Lord, the roads at this point in time were not great roads. You couldn't always find that beautiful Roman road that still survives to today. So there was a person who ran in front of the king in a procession saying, make straight the way. And what his objective was, was to warn everybody who's coming, hey look, the king is coming and you need to be mashing down little trees and you know, trying to get the big rocks out of the way and stuff because he's going to come straight through.

And we want to make this really easy for him. So this is the cultural reference here, make straight the way of the Lord. Then on a totally different level, this is interesting because when John's trying to answer the question of who am I, where does he look? He looks at scripture. which is something that we can take for ourselves as well. You know, people trying to find themselves, who am I really, should be looking in the Word of God, because that's where we find out where we really are, and John got that. Okay. Not self-help books. Okay. So.

Now, they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him and said to him, why then are you baptizing if you are not Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet? And now we're starting to get to the heart of it. Because from the Jewish perspective, what John is doing is really weird. I mean, really weird. So do you guys know about baptism at this point in time? Did they baptize from the west to the Jewish faith?

Yes, that was one of them. So there were two forms of baptism. One was self-baptism. So a Jew could baptize himself to just purify himself. Quick dunk in the cold water, there's purification there. But that's something he does to himself. The other kind is proselyte baptism. So if a Gentile wants to become a Jew, then there are a set of things that that Gentile must do. One of them is be baptized. And that baptism is by an official with some authority. So he can't just go up to a random person on the street with ringlets and say, OK, baptize me. OK, no. Wee-hoo, I'm a Jew.

So there's got to be a level of authority there. A couple things going on that are really weird to the Pharisees. Number one, John, what's his authority? It's unclear. So why is he baptizing people in general? That's one question, and that's what they're trying to figure out here. The other one is, he's baptizing Jews. What's up with that?

They've never seen that before. That's a different thing, and it's interesting to me that we started out this passage looking at the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to him for baptism. Well, they're Jews, and they kind of understand this whole arrangement, and they're still coming. So this is all really bizarre.

So when they come to him, they say, why are you baptizing if you're not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor prophet? They're saying, what are your credentials? By what authority are you baptizing? because just some random stranger can't start baptizing people. The hidden question is, and why are you baptizing Jews?

And then the other thing here is what I mentioned earlier, which is that the Pharisees thought of themselves as the most spiritually high-ranking men in all of Israel. And they figured as such that when Elijah popped up, or the Christ, or the prophet, which happened to be the Christ, when they popped up, they'd immediately go and check in with the Pharisees and come up with some sort of plan of attack before anything else went on. These people have to send emissaries. These Pharisees have to send emissaries to John to figure out what he's about.

And that's incompatible with their thinking, too. They're like, why didn't John come talk to us immediately? Because we're awesome. And again, John still hasn't answered their question, right? Well, they've switched to a different question. They've switched. They're like, why are you baptizing? And John's answer, I baptize in water. That answer their question? This is grapevine.

So clearly, he's not of the mindset that their questions are worth answering. But look at what he does immediately. So his role is, he is a voice crying in the wilderness. John's role is a voice. Why are you baptizing? I baptize in water, but let me tell you about Jesus. He's staying consistent with that role. Forget about me. Are you Elijah? No, let me tell you about Jesus. Who are you? I'm a voice. I'm announcing Jesus. So he stays always in character, in a role. Okay. So it is he, among you stands one who you don't know. It is he who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

These things took place in Bethany, beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing. So the sandal, who I'm not worthy to untie, the foot washing, the sandal removal, you have to again think about what these roads are like. So if you manage to get on a good road, then there's a lot of livestock that's traveling along these roads. and horses bringing chariots and all this sort of thing and they make a mess and People walk around with open-toed sandals so You can imagine that untying sandals Might not be the most palatable of jobs and it's true. It was like for the lowest of low slave servants okay, and John is saying I'm not worthy to untie Jesus a sandal and So who are you, and by what authority are you doing this, and why are you doing this? And he's like, let me tell you about Jesus. I'm not even worthy to untie his sandal. It's a sidestep, but his goal is to point them at what really matters, at who really matters.

So we're on to page three. The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him and said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So it's clear he's talking about Jesus, and the Lamb was a well, well understood concept for the Jews at that time. And we'll look at a couple passages. So, for example, Isaiah 53, 7. talking about the Christ. 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.

And one other passage that I thought was pretty relevant, 1 Corinthians 5.7. Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new loam, just as you are in fact unleavened.

For Christ, our Passover, also has been sacrificed." And so when John is saying the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, it's pretty clear he's talking about a sacrificial lamb that is going to take on the sins of the world. It's interesting that John is the only one who draws the analogy between the Lamb and Christ in the New Testament.

And it's also interesting that the Pharisees completely missed this. They figured the Christ would come in like completely strong that nothing would harm him in any way, shape, or form. And yet, there's a whole passage in Isaiah that talks about the Christ coming and being a man of constant sorrows. And they were well acquainted with that.

Yes? What do you think that means, that he was oppressed and afflicted? Because none of the Gospels or anything that I've seen really specifically shows that he was sick or that he was homely or that he was different in any particular way than most of the people that he walked among. So oppressed and afflicted can come across in many ways. He was certainly afflicted after he was soundly beaten and was going to the cross. So you've got affliction there. Oppression, he spent a good chunk of the last part of his life with the Jews trying to hunt him down to kill him.

So that certainly fits the bill. Well, even before all of this happened, In his heart, he saw all that was happening around him before he even proclaimed himself as, well, was proclaimed by John the Baptist instead of the Lamb of God. He saw it happening almost from the time he was in the temple as a kid. And it was going on and on and on.

Yeah, that's a great point and it's something that's really struck me a ton over the last month. Just the last month is that Christ was not guarded. He did not come in with blinders the way that we do. He did not have the defense mechanisms that we do. He was not in denial about what was going on around him. And I just, it had to break his heart. Yeah, and it's interesting as they're trying to kill him, it's like, and he walked out of the crowd. Okay, well that worked out pretty well for him that time. Okay, so the Lamb of God reference is pretty clear. There's a whole tense in Greek that is descriptive of this type of passage.

Did John say, Behold the Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world? No. He said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Had Christ done it yet? No. But he's speaking in present tense. So the tense is prophetic present is the name. And the idea behind it is what God says God will do is so certain, it doesn't matter if it's past, present, or future. You can bank on it. So has not happened yet. However, God said this is what's going to happen. So therefore, it's happening. Prophetic perfect.

Take away the sin of the world. Do we still have sin in the world? A little bit? Maybe just a smidge here and there. I've taken a reading, books about the war in Afghanistan. There's sin in this world. I can assure you. So what does that mean? That means that Christ took the sin of the world onto himself when he was crucified. And for those who believe the gospel, the simple gospel, they get to participate in the forgiveness of those sins. So it's a substitutionary death for them.

So every single time anything around this comes up in the Sunday school, just so that we're certain our kids know what is true, we say, what is the gospel? And I'll give you a hint. we accept Jesus in our hearts. The gospel is that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, was buried, and raised the third day.

1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4. Know that passage. Why is it important to know that passage? Because if you tell somebody, if they say, what do I need to do to be saved? You say, make Jesus the Lord of your life. And they believe that. Are they going to heaven or hell? I can't say. If they didn't do any research, it might be a low percentage probability. So it's a matter of life and death. OK. So I cannot improve upon this part of what Vern wrote.

So one other insight we need to bring forward, and that is that John the Baptist seemed to understand things that the apostles never got until very late. 1. Jesus came to deal with the sin problem, not just individual sins or the sins of certain individuals.

2. While Jesus would present the gospel of the kingdom to the Jews, the gospel of substitution was for the whole world, and Jesus was the Lamb of God for the whole world. That is why Paul could write to the Church at Corinth composed mostly of Gentiles that Christ is our Passover. So, when Jesus came, he came to the Jews. When he sent out the apostles, he sent them to the Jews. Don't go to the Gentiles. So it's not like they were being daft, not thinking that this was for the whole world. But John, he got it. Okay, last page.

So, 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 in 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." So, John was born about six months before Jesus, and yet in verse 30 he says, he existed before me. Did John get that this was the Son of God who had the iddy? the womb, perhaps, because he had the Holy Spirit at that time, too. That's right. That's right. And that's one that all the kids love. It's still in the womb. John's like, oh good, he's here.

I think it's also interesting when you talk about the removal of the sin that in Jeremiah it talks about God's going to remove the sin of Jacob in the kingdom. So that concept was not esoteric, or it wasn't something that they didn't understand, because this is something that they were all looking forward to. And what's really interesting, they missed it. I mean, it's so prevalent in Jeremiah and the kingdom, but yet it's here, and they don't see it.

That's right. I mean, it's stunning. Okay, so again, I guess Vern's mentioning that Jesus came to the sons of Israel, sent the apostles out to the sons of Israel, that the gospel that he was preaching at that point was the gospel of the kingdom, and yet John totally got the other gospel. So take a look at Luke 3 and On your handout, you've got 322. Start in 321.

Now, when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized. And while he was praying, heaven was opened. And the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came out of heaven. You are my beloved son, and you I am well pleased. So the doctrine of the Trinity, right there in two verses. You've got Jesus being baptized while the Holy Spirit descends like a dove while God looks down and says, good job. Love that. So you have all three participating in that baptism.

So John was preaching a baptism of repentance of sins. Did Jesus need to go and repent from his sins? He was his own. Even though John was still just as much a human with as without the Holy Spirit. And yet John was able to say, I already know that I can't be in this position. You need to be dealing with that with me. Right. But Jesus says, no, of course, you need to baptize me. So what's going on there? I'm just going to read what Vernon had because I can't improve upon this either.

The baptism of John did not have the same meaning as Christian baptism. John's baptism meant that one was identifying with John's message. So for Jesus to be baptized by John was not to represent that Jesus was born again. Jesus did not need to be born again, but rather say that Jesus, too, identified with John's message that he, Jesus, was the Lamb of God, and that he, the Lamb of God, accepted John's declarations about himself.

Yes? And John was teaching repentance, right? And Jesus did also. as necessary because they were born of Abraham? Right, because they were awesome already. Right. So this was a real shock to them that why would anybody have to repent? And obviously Jesus was sinless, but he was identifying with that message for the Jews. Sure. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, very cool. OK, so I promise we get here.

John the Baptist said a couple of times they did not recognize him, didn't recognize his own cousin. What's up with that? Again, he had the Holy Spirit in him, and that took his attention off of the trivial things, especially with the Holy Spirit as John was growing up. You see, you need to put away the things of the past and concentrate on what I have to tell you and how I can do it.

Okay. I 100% agree with you. Anybody have more? So I think what you were getting at is So let's not worry about these worldly things. Jesus with the beard and all of this sort of stuff. Holy cats. My cousin is the son of God. What a revelation that was. And that happened here.

That didn't happen before that. He didn't know that 18 months prior. I don't believe he knew it the day before when the Pharisees came to talk to him. Could it also mean that he recognized him in a minute degree, but didn't grasp the full scope of who he was and what he was actually doing. Would the Greek justify that? If I haven't read these passages, I will when I get home. Okay.

He recognized him as his cousin. He knew his cousin in intimate detail. He did not know that his cousin was the Lamb of God. Well, he did know that he was the Lamb of God, right? He was told. Where did we get? He said, I did not recognize him. I thought that he got, he came to know him for sure once the spirit descended on him and stayed on him.

At that point, it's like, okay, I know exactly who this guy is. that he's going to take away the sin, which is what it says in Jeremiah. But I don't think he recognized that he was there to take away the sins of the world and for the Gentiles. So maybe it's scope. Maybe it is scope. Maybe it is. This is my cousin. I don't recognize him as my cousin. He's the son of God. I've always known him to be my cousin. I didn't recognize him. So when you're in verse 31, you've got, I did not recognize him. Meaning, now I recognize him as the Son of God. I didn't know him as the Son of God before. And we don't have a clear what his authority was. Right. Yeah. And it had to be really eye-opening for John to see the Spirit descend, stay on him, and hear the voice of God at that moment saying, this is my son. I'm sorry? And my cousin.

So, all this time that John was preaching, it was about this abstract person that he didn't know who it was, or he couldn't say, just an abstract person. That's what I believe to be the case, is he knew that Christ, the Christ, was coming. He did not know that the Christ was his cousin. You could say the same thing about Jesus' brothers because supposedly James didn't recognize him either until he came back and was resurrected. So this is really surprising that John even knew that he was the Passover lamb and that he was the son of God. I mean, that's much more than even his brothers who grew up with him knew.

So this is pretty insightful. And again, like Tom said, that's the Holy Spirit. Yes. Without the Holy Spirit, I mean, none of this is going to be clear whatsoever. For sure. So when John says he baptizes with the Holy Spirit, We see this much later on, 1 Corinthians 12, 12-13, where we're placed into one body by the Holy Spirit because of the work of Christ on the cross. I think we'll stop there. I thought that I had marked a passage because it was pretty interesting. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll look at Acts 19, 1 through 5. So John clearly understood who Jesus was, and you can see in his interaction with the Pharisees that his sole purpose on this earth was to be that voice, to say, not me, but Christ. Not me, but Christ. Not me, but Christ. So it's completely puzzling that you get to this place where it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and came to Ephesus and found some disciples.

He said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said to him, no, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. And he said to them, into what then were you baptized? And they said, into John's baptism. Paul said John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling people to believe in him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. John did nothing but say, not me, he's not even going to tell the Pharisees who he is.

It's like, here's my role, I'm a voice, now let me tell you about Jesus. some of his disciples missed that point, which is interesting. So, anyway, comments, questions? I guess we'll be done early today. Father, thanks for this opportunity to get together and study your Word. I pray that we would take your Word as seriously as John did, that we would look to it for our own identity and never ever miss the fact that it's all about Jesus. And it's in his name that I pray. Amen.