Prepare the Way of the Lord
For the Lord’s Day:  the 8^th of May 2004

John 1: 19-28 & Isaiah 40: 1-6

Introduction:  Our theme today involves preparing our hearts for the coming of our great King of Kings.  In times past, worldly Kings and Queens have also had their comings and goings prepared for.  In the middle east, whenever great monarchs traveled, new roads were regularly built.  Once Catherine the Great, ruler of all the Russia went traveling.  Special Prompkin villages were built along the chosen route. These villages were especially clean and painted.  Those not up on the road had only one wall, that which faced the road.  Serfs were scrubbed up, positioned in fields and streets and urged to wave happily.  Catherine believed that her people were all happy and prosperous.

In a like manner, when I was in the Army, we would regularly have inspections.  The amount of work we had to perform was directly proportional to the rank of the intended visitor. There was never so much as a thread out of place when a General Officer came through!  Why on one occasion, we were even issued new towels and such to put in our locker especially for the inspecting general.  He was no sooner out the door than the supply sergeant came through to collect the precious towels for keeping till another inspection.

John's plan of preparation was slightly different!  To all who heard, John the Baptist gave strong warnings to "Repent!".  In Matthew and Luke, John the Baptist even has sharp words for the Leaders of Israel. 

“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?  Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.  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.” (Matthew 3: 7-9)

Luke reports that the Word of God came upon John and he began preaching a baptism of repentance throughout the Jordan valley.  Soon word spread about his work, and people flocked from all over.  Eventually the Jewish authorities sent a delegation to ascertain what John was up to.  This brings us to the beginning of our text today.  “And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levities from Jerusalem to ask him,  ‘Who are you?’  He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed ‘I am not the Christ.’"  (John 1: 19-20)

Development:  In this verse the term Jews refers to the religious authorities.  This group is possibly a delegation from the Sanhedrin, the official religious organization in Jerusalem.  In this period of History, all nations around the Mediterranean were living with heightened expectations of some great event soon to happen.  In this time of intense expectation, the official Old Covenant Church sought to find out who it was who had been arousing the people.  The essential concern of the Sanhedrin was determine if a new prophet had come after several centuries absence of any real Word from God.  John energetically denies his identity with any of the religious leaders of popular expectation.  Yet, despite his own claim here, some of his followers formed a sect and worshipped him into the third century as the real Messiah!

“They asked him, ‘What then?  Are you Elijah?’  He said, ‘I am not.’  ‘Are you the Prophet?’  And he answered, ‘No.’"  (John 1: 21)  Strange as it may seem to us today, many of the Jews believed on the strength of a passage in Malachi that Elijah would return to prepare the world to receive Him.  "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful  day of the Lord comes." (Malachi 4: 5)

Now the Jews would have good reason to ask John the Baptist if he were Elijah.  He wore garments like those of Elijah, He is called a voice from the desert, and in some minds an Isaiah passage was combined with that of Malachi. Listen to the words in chapter Forty, verses one through six.

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to here that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries:  ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.  And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’

John continues to disclaim that he is the prophet.  He says that he is not any of the expected ones.  Just as many versions of the second coming and rapture currently set forth popular human expectations, so John denies that any current crop of millennial expectations will be met immediately through him.

“So they said to him, "Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us.  What do you say about yourself?”  (John 1: 22)  These leaders here are getting frustrated.  They want to know with whom they are dealing.  Religious organizations have remained similar throughout all of history, this particular delegation was seeking to find out if John the Baptist was any threat to their own base of power.  And here is where the Isaiah quotation comes into the picture:  “He said, ‘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)

Here John the Baptist explains his role.  The Isaiah passage originally was seen as the role of the angels in preparing a way home from Babylon for the Israelites.  John perceives his role not to return the people, but to open up their hearts, level their pride, and fill their spiritual emptiness and thus through repentance prepare people for God's own personal coming into their lives.  Over and over we read in the Gospels that John was the ambassador, or in an older thinking: a herald for Christ.

“(Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.)  They asked him, ‘Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Propeht?”  (John 1: 24-25)  After all John was the son of a Priest, he should know that certain things should not be done on one's own authority. Certainly baptism was nothing new.  New converts to Judaism were ritually cleansed before becoming members of the faith. But John was going beyond that, he was baptizing people who were born Jews, and raised up in the Jewish faith.  It was almost like going into mainline churches and telling life long members that they were sinners!  And John even suggested that they needed to repent in order to be saved?  In churches today, you might not cause a riot, but if looks and stony silence could kill?  As John stated in the last verse, his role was to prepare people for Christ.  And before people are ready to be saved through Christ, the best of people must admit that they have fallen short of the glory of God, sinned and need God's forgiveness.

"John answered them, ‘I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.”  (John 1: 26-27)

Application:  Here John is like every minister of the Gospel, we as humans can accomplish nothing in the process of salvation.  We may baptize, catechize, marry and bury people with words of faith.  But, our work is only symbolic.  John's job and ours is to continually point to Him who still stands among us. 

The baptism of John just as our baptism today was and is only a sign.  Baptism never causes union with Christ.  The purpose of baptism is not to effect union with Christ but rather to confirm and testify to such union.  When we baptize our little ones, it is in our hope and His promise that they will be saved.  It remains for us to regularly prepare our covenant children for accepting Christ when the Holy Spirit comes into their lives.  And for us who have been long baptized, we must like our confession states improve our baptism by growing in Christ as we are sanctified.

 “These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.”  (John 1: 28)

 In closing this portion of Scripture, John the Apostle reminds us, that yes, these things did happen in space and time and were witnessed by many clouds of witnesses as Paul tells us.  The Christian faith is unique in that the important events are not some mystical vision of just any old guru but life events firmly rooted in History.

Years ago, coming up I75 north of Dayton, Ohio I saw two neon signs that were placed so that they appeared to be one. If you read them together, they said:  “JESUS SAVES   GREEN STAMPS.”  Only as you got closer could you see that the two signs had separate purposes. In a like manner, let us not mistake the sign of baptism for something it is not. Baptism itself has no power, it is only a sign of what is going on in our lives.  As John came to prepare Israel for Jesus, so those who would know Him, must prepare themselves to accept Him.  And that preparation involves admitting our sins and repenting sincerely in our hearts of them.  As our Christian life progresses and the Holy Spirit assists us in sanctification, we grow in grace and become assured that we indeed do belong to Jesus.  Dear friends, if you do not have that seal of assurance, then the words of our confession should be instructive, we should go on to improve that baptism as we look to the Christ who alone does save.  Amen.                   

Logan County Mission (PCA) 11 Dec 83  -  Sante Fe Christian Union Church 29 Jan 84
Christ Covenant Reformed  (PCA) 11 Dec 88
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PREACHING RESOURCES

 Brown, Raymond E.  The Anchor Bible:  The Gospel According to John.
MacGregor, G.H.C.  Gospel According of  John.
Parker, T.H.L.  Calvin's Commentaries: The Gospel According to St John.
Tasker, R.V.G.  Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Gospel According to John.
The Holy Bible:  English Standard Version.
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