besquared.org Blog

Today’s Text
The world needs to get ready because Jesus is coming. We have had foreshadowing, and baby pictures, but now the fun is just about to begin. The arrival of the new king and the new kingdom is almost upon us. There is just one more thing. We need to build a highway. There are some mountains that need to be moved to make ready the way of the Lord.

But before we talk about that let’s talk about a few other cool things.

The political setting.

Luke begins chapter three by giving a a political update. About thirty years have passed since the last one so we need to be caught up. Luke tells us,

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert.

There is so much that we can learn from this introduction. But we will just focus on what we can no about the situation in Palestine. Thirty years ago, Augustus was the Emporer. Rome taxed Palestine but mostly let King Herod the Great do what he wanted. King Herod was personally very evil, but for political reasons he mostly gave the Jewish people what they wanted. Times have changed.

Late in Augustus reign (and through all of Tiberius’) Rome had a colony in Palestine called Ceasarea Phillipi. From this colony Rome directly ruled southern Israel, including Jerusalem. Even Herod and Phillip had little power and were little more than Roman puppets. Herod may have been hated and evil but at least he represented local strength. Those days are long gone.

(The naming of two high preists has some cool implications too but I’m not telling unless you ask.)

In the context of this oppressive political situation Palestine had become a region of rebellion and violence. Popular uprisings based upon Messianic hopes (hopes that God had sent an anointed redeemer of Israel) were …(what’s the word)… popular.

The scriptural setting.

I hope that you are in the habit of looking up OT scripture quotations when they occur in the NT. Occasionally our NT authors prooftext (Use an OT quote out of context), but usually the context of the quote is very enlightening to understanding its present use. This is certainly the case for the text today.

Luke uses the words of Isaiah to describe the ministry of John. Luke has already established that John is a prophet like the prophets of old.  When he says that the “word of God came to John” this is a conscious echo of the prophetic books of the Old Testament.  Luke wants us to know that John is the last great prophet of the anticipation.

More specifically, Luke wants us to that John was coming with the words of comfort from Isaiah 40.  Isaiah 40 was a message of hope to the people in exile in Babylon. Isaiah was able to proclaim that the time of their suffering was at an end, that God was coming and that God’s word of hope to them would endure and prove faithful. So there are some obvious theological parallels between Isaiah’s proclamation that God is coming and John’s proclamation (Although those parallels imply some pretty powerful things about who Jesus is). The real shock to me comes when I look back to find that Is. 40 begins this way,

Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.

A voice of one calling:
“In the desert prepare
the way for the LORD;
make straight in the wilderness
a highway for our God.

Isaiah’s words are to be words of comfort. But can we say that same about John. Is he really making a straight highway or is he just throwing up roadblocks? My instinct would not be to call John’s teaching a word of comfort, but when I pause to take a look at Isaiah I need to consider that possibility. In fact, in verse 18, Luke describes John’s message as good news, so if his words don’t sound like good news to me on first read, perhaps I need to take a second look.

Finally to John

So having examined the setting both politically and scripturally, lets take a look at John’s ministry. Luke summarizes it early on with the phrase, “preaching a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins.” Among other things I see John doing these three things:

1. He identified the crisis.

These people have come out to be baptized. These are the people who have heard his message. These are not random crowds, they are precisely the people that are taking their first steps in faith, and John winsomely calls to them, “You brood of vipers,Who told you to flee from the coming wrath?” Every other political and religious movement of the day started by saying, Rome is the problem, or Herod is the problem, or the corrupt priesthood is the problem. Not John; he starts by saying, “You are the problem, who gave you the impression that you could escape the trouble that is coming?”

If he gave them a chance to reply I suppose they would say, “You told us to flee form the coming wrath. You gave us the impression.” But of course the get no chance to reply as he moves on to his main point. He wants them to know that it is not not enough to be a child of Abraham. It is not enough to be submerged in the waters of the Jordan (There is a lot of cool stuff to say about the baptism of John reminding us of the Israelites crossing into Israel. I’ll get into that the next time I blog through a gospel) The crisis they face is so great that neither their race nor religious ritual will help them.

So John starts by showing them that the crisis is both of a different kind than they thought and it is worse than they thought. So they respond with good sense, “What should we do then?”
2. He got specific with a response.

John’s response is straightforward. Live the same but still completely differently. Live, just as you do but live right. Get dressed and eat, but share your extra clothes and your extra food. Like Jesus whose opening call was “Follow Me,” John focuses on a redirected lifestyle. I mind myself noticing that I very often teach a baptism for the forgiveness of sins but I may sometimes forget to emphasize what John does which is a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
3. He articulated his hope.

Finally he directs them beyond himself. He has warned them of this crisis and called them to repentance for one reason: So that when Jesus comes and calls them to follow them will be ready. He baptizes with water now so that when Jesus comes to baptize with the spirit, they will be ready.

And it worked!

We often forget just how effective the ministry of John was. Many were convicted, many were baptized.  John’s ministry began an international movement.  (Paul meets followers of John in the middle of Asia Minor [Turkey].)  John ministry was important enough to upset the king.  In no small part John’s ministry laid the foundation for the ministry of Jesus.

Even today an important part of accepting the gospel of Jesus to come to grips with the magnitude of the crisis.  It is greater than a crisis of political, or religious corruption, it is a crisis of personal and moral corruption.  This crisis cannot be effectively met by appeal to special status or ritual.  A crisis this big needs life change, forgiveness and something new that is about some that is unlike anything ever seen before.

The gospel of John is not the whole gospel but it remains an essential prelude to the gospel of Jesus.

-Ethan