The Last Prophet

Matthew 11:2-6                      The Last Prophet

2/8/15              D. Marion Clark

Introduction

What would it have been like to encounter Jesus in the flesh? To see him with your own eyes, hear his voice, witness his deeds, and listen to his teachings? What impact would he have had on you? Our new sermon series thinks about such questions. We will consider the testimonies of several characters in the gospels, who bear witness to our Lord. Our first character is Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist.

Text

Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples ³ and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

Let’s review the life and ministry of John the Baptist. We know of his own miraculous birth. His mother was barren and well past the age of child-bearing. Nevertheless, like Sarah of ages past, she conceived and bore John. The angel that had appeared to his father, Zechariah, gave the following prophesy:

…he will be great before the Lord… he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.  And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God,  and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Luke 1:14-17).

After John’s birth, his father prophesied over him:

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
    in the forgiveness of their sins… (Luke 1:76-77).

The next time John appears in Scripture, he is carrying out his mission.

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea,

 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight’” (Matthew 3:1-3).

“Repent” summarizes well John’s message and work of preparing the way for the Lord. John preached repentance and then baptized those who were convicted. Thus, the baptisms he performed were known as “baptisms of repentance.” They signified that the sinner was repenting of his sins and making a new start.

This was how John was preparing the way for the Lord. He was turning rebellious people back to the Lord, so that they would be prepared to receive the Lord’s saving work. The Messiah was coming to save Israel, but before he could save God’s covenant people, they needed to turn from their rebellion and have their hearts made ready to follow him.

Think of John’s work as that of getting a town ready for the visit of a distinguished visitor. Houses and yards must be spruced up. The streets must be cleaned and all visible trash removed. Time to fix up public sites that have fallen into disrepair. John was getting the nation of Israel ready to receive her king. The difference is that he was not thinking of outward changes, but the inner changes of hearts.

John understood his mission and even the prophesy that he was fulfilling. When pressed by Jewish authorities about his identity, he replied, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23). The Messiah was on his way, and he, John, was the messenger sent to proclaim his coming and to get his people prepared to receive him.

But just who was it that John thought the Messiah to be? That is what brings our passage into play. For here is the proclaimer of the Messiah expressing doubt as to who the Messiah might be. Will the real Messiah please stand up?

Why the doubt? Evidently, Jesus is not fitting the profile of the job description that John had in mind. Let’s look further into John’s expectations.

Matthew, in agreement with the other three gospels, crystalizes well John’s teaching about the Messiah:

I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

The baptism of the Messiah is what separates him from John and anyone else. John clearly was an imposing figure and a no-holds-barred preacher. He must have been intimidating. I’m not sure how comfortable I would have felt walking into a river and having his hands lay hold of me. But, as John noted, all he was doing was baptizing with water. The Messiah was going to baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.

John baptized with water to mark a sinner’s repentance; the Messiah would baptize with the Holy Spirit, who would cleanse the sinner from sin and empower him to live fully for his Lord. He would baptize with the Spirit and also with fire. That fire would remove the dross of sin. John’s baptism was an outer baptism; the Messiah’s baptism would be an inner baptism. We see the inauguration of the Messiah’s baptism at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit comes down as flames of fire resting upon Jesus’ disciples. From then on the Holy Spirit baptizes all converts, turning sinners into empowered followers of Jesus Christ.

But is that how John visualized the Messiah’s baptism playing out? It seems more likely that he has in mind the kind of vision for the Messiah’s coming that most Jews would have had. God would send his Anointed to deliver his people from earthly oppression, in this case the Romans. God’s kingdom of Israel would be established as the dominant kingdom in the world and with all Israel’s enemies being thrown down under God’s judgment. But, as Israel was to have all along been God’s holy nation, judgment would start within her domain. All those who belonged to her, but were unrepentant sinners, would be destroyed. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire (Matthew 3:12).

For John that includes hypocritical religious and political leaders in particular:

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸ Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. ⁹ And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. ¹⁰ Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew 3:7-10).

“You think I am tough,” John is saying. “Just wait until the Messiah comes. He will show you what real baptism is. You will get it then!”

One day, the Messiah does come. He walks right up to John with a surprise: “Baptize me.” Taken aback, John obeys and then sees the sign that confirms for him that Jesus is the one who is to come. He sees the Holy Spirit, not as fire but as a dove, descend upon the one whom he has been preparing for. The moment is at hand. The real baptism of fire is about to start. Instead, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus out into the wilderness. Soon afterwards, John is placed in prison where he languishes. It is not clear how long he remains in prison before his eventual beheading, but long enough to have received news about Jesus’ ministry, which doesn’t seem to be filling the bill of bringing down judgment on the enemies of God and oppressors. And so the question: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

What a curious scenario. The one sent to prepare the way is not sure who he is preparing the way for. The one sent to “bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him” is finding that his own mind is darkened. So how does Jesus reply?

⁴ And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵ the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

Instead of a straight answer, Jesus demonstrates before John’s messengers his miracle and preaching ministry. It seems that he is saying, “See how powerful I am?” And indeed, there is another time in which Jesus is speaking to skeptics and he does point to his miraculous works. Yes, the miraculous works are signs of Jesus being the Messiah, but it is not the fact that they are miraculous that signifies who he is, but rather the type of miraculous works, and that is what Jesus is communicating to John. They are both well-versed in the Scriptures and he expects John to make the connections. What are they?

Earlier I referred to John’s response to messengers who questioned who he was. He quoted from the prophet Isaiah, 40:3 to be exact. Jesus does not quote Isaiah to prove himself; he carries out Isaiah’s prophesies for the Messiah.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
    and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
⁶ then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
    and the tongue of the mute sing for joy (Isaiah 35:5-6).

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
² to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Isaiah 61:1-2).

Jesus is not simply performing miracles. He is performing the miracles predicted of the Messiah in Isaiah – making the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk. And he adds a miracle to top all of the others – raising the dead (the widow’s son, the synagogue ruler’s daughter). Note the common theme; they are all about restoration – healing and bringing to life what had died. And he is preaching the good news to the poor – the physically poor and the spiritually poor. He is proclaiming liberty and opening prison doors of those trapped in their sins and those literally trapped by evil spirits.

Again, Jesus expects John to connect the dots and look back to Isaiah. Jesus announced near the beginning of his ministry that he fulfilled the prophesy of Isaiah 61:1-2, which I just read almost all of. I omitted the same words that Jesus did. Verse 2 does read “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” but it continues with “and the day of vengeance of our God.”

John was looking for the vengeance; he was looking for the judgment proclaimed in Isaiah. He was so focused on it, that he neglected the restoration, even the salvation which he himself had proclaimed. Because that vengeance was not being fulfilled as he thought it should, he began to doubt.

And so Jesus ends with a rebuke of John meant to lead him to another connection: ⁶“And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” Isaiah 8:14 speaks of the Messiah: And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. John would have known this scripture passage and easily have applied it to the hypocrites he had preached so virulently against. Could he also be guilty?

Perhaps, but taking the praise that Jesus gives of John in the following passage, we can conclude that John got the message that Jesus was sending and that his doubts were cleared away.

Lessons

Just what was that message? Jesus stated it from the Isaiah 61 passage: to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim liberty to the captives… to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

John’s message was “Repent!” So was Jesus’. His first words were “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Here is the distinction between the two. John urged repentance because he thought judgment was at hand through the coming of the Lord. Jesus, who is the Lord that came, urged repentance because salvation was at hand. That is what the kingdom of heaven signified. There would be a time for judgment, but now was the time for salvation. Jesus spoke elsewhere: I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.  The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day (John 12:47-48).

Now is the time for proclaiming the good news:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned (John 3:16-18).

The good news is the message of the church. The gospel is the identifying proclamation of the church of Jesus Christ. On the side of a large church building in New Jersey is a sign in clear letters that displays the Ten Commandments for all to see. As important as the Ten Commandments are in proclaiming the righteousness that is required of us, they are not the gospel. The gospel is the salvation that God the Son, Christ our Lord, has won for us on the cross. The Ten Commandments justly condemn us; the gospel mercifully saves us.

When the church’s primary message is that of law, it invariably leads its own members to believe that the gospel is about our efforts to be good. The result is usually self-righteousness. We become angry with sinners, not over God being offended, but over sinners not being good like us. The law is essential to teach what is good and to restrain our unrighteous tendencies, but most of all to convict us of our complete need for a Savior. And the good news of the gospel is that that Savior has come!

We must be careful of not falling into the same trap of John the Baptist. He had a righteous anger at the sin around him. He was jealous for God, angry against religious hypocrites and against blatant sinners; indeed, so angry that he got caught up with judgment even to the point of forgetting that “the one who is coming” was coming to save.

He had known the mission of the Anointed Servant. It was John the Baptist, who, upon seeing Jesus, cried out, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Somehow, he let anger against sin turn his focus on judgment. Jesus hated sin, but his anger made him all the more determined to save sinners.

There is a time to judge, a time for the dreadful and just wrath of God to fall upon this sinful world. But now, now is the time to proclaim the good news of salvation. There will be a time to rejoice in the justice that will come against evil doers, but now is the time to pray for evil doers to be given ears to hear the gospel.

John the Baptist was a prophet; indeed, Jesus referred to him as the last and the greatest of the prophets. He was the last in that he represented the old era before the coming of the Expected One, the Messiah. He was the greatest because he was the Elijah prophesied to make way for the Messiah. The Messiah arrived and achieved his mission of salvation. It is now that salvation that we who follow him must proclaim. Yes, warn of judgment, but always follow that warning with the good news that the Expected One has appeared, is even here now, and that he promises to all that whoever hears, believes, and comes to the Savior will not perish, will not receive judgment, but will receive eternal life. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”