Sermon Tone Analysis

Crazy John in the wilderness- the guy who ate bugs and stuff

John the Baptist

Now you may have guessed it but we are talking about John the Baptist today!

From all of this it should be clear that Jesus regarded his ministry as in continuity with, and bringing to a climax, the work of the great prophets of the Old Testament, culminating in John the Baptist, whose initiative he had used as his launching-pad.

N. T. Wright

Now that we know what we are studying next year:

Ephesians

Spiritual Beings

Denominational History and Beliefs

Malachi/Galatians/Romans

it puts me at freedom to prepare us for that and allows us to use this as the baseline, which is truly a gift.

So let’s dive into the next portion of the text:

So our mission should we choose to accept it, is to make sense of this.

One tactic that I have been taught is to break down the section based on how you would shoot a movie as a director.

So overall, we are talking about a guy name John the Baptist, so after an epic opening kind of like the Star Wars opening of the scrolling text, the opening scene is a guy, his name is John.

Scene:

It recounts a conversation John has with some people (who they are we will discuss later).

End Scene

Next Scene:

John sees Jesus walking and decides to exclaim He is a piece of livestock from God and that has some relation with sin and then he must apparently be talking to some other people around saying, see see, this is the guy I have been talking about.

End Scene

Next Scene:

John tells a story about what he witnessed about Jesus and then what he thinks it all means.

End Scene.

This technique is helpful to break apart narratives to see what is going on.

Sometimes you will read something and go…what in the world did I just read.

This helps to answer that question.

Does anyone have any questions so far?

So the basic flow we have is this:

Seeing

This is asking the who, what, when, where why

Understanding

What does this mean, considering what we learned above, what is happening.

It is in this step we have to consider cultural contexts, history etc

This is the step where we ask, what does this passage say about God, Man, Original Audience.

Sharing

What truth/wisdom is being conveyed to me the modern reader, based off of what was meant and learned in the previous two steps

Responding

This is the step where after we have examined the text we need to respond to it, there could be emotions.

The passage could be asking us to do something, how would we implement that?

3.

This is the time for reflective based

questions.

Now depending on how large your passage is, the scope or range that you do your study analysis should vary.

For today we will just do the passage that is up above.

It is best to do a whole “scene” like I described above that way you can get the arc of what the author is trying to convey in the different “scenes”

Seeing

We need to identify who the main players are in this story.

John the Baptist

Jewish Leaders

Priests

Levites

Messiah

Elijah

The Prophet

Isaiah the Prophet

Pharisees

Jesus

Lamb of God

Israel

Holy Spirit

That is a lot of people, with almost no explanation of who they are, the author just assumes we will know.

So who are these people?

John the Baptist:

Jesus’ cousin

Nazarite (vow) not Nazarene

He was a prophet

We could do a whole study on him alone but this step is just saying who it is

Jewish Leaders

Now there were at the time many “leaders” this term is not meant to cast the jews negatively, but like we talked about they are portrayed as the main opposition to Jesus and His ministry.

These leaders could have been a ruling counsel like the sanhedrin or more likely temple leaders like the Sadducees.

Priests

People who offered the sacrifices everyday at the temple and were ministers of God.

Had to have specific lineage to be a priest.

Levites

The levites were the priestly tribe, but what this will refer to are the people who were not actively priests but assisted with temple running.

Think facilities and maintenance people.

Still have to be of a certain lineage (literally the tribe of “Levi”)

Messiah

Messiah.

A title that means “anointed one.”

In the OT “anointed one” refers to Israel’s king (see, e.g., 2 Sam 1:14; see also 1 Sam 16:1–13), priest (see, e.g., Lev 4:3; see also Exod 29:7), and patriarchs in their role as prophets (see Ps 105:15; see also 1 Kgs 19:16).

Jesus is the anointed king, priest, and prophet par excellence.

MESSIAH (מָשִׁיַח, mashiyach; “anointed” or “an anointed one”; “messiah”).

Rendered into Greek as Χριστός (Christos), cognate to the verb χρίω (chriō, “to anoint”).

In this sense, it is essentially the same to say that Jesus is the “Messiah,” or the “Christ.”

In contemporary Bible translations, the former is sometimes used when the term is functioning as a title (the Messiah) and the latter when the term is functioning as a name (i.e.

Jesus Christ).

a. Messiah is then a title, now it is a very charged title, with a lot of meaning, but in the most literal sense it is for the anointed rulers of Israel, their Kings and Priests

6. Elijah

Are you Eliyahu?

That is, are you the Prophet Elijah, who is to come before the Great Day of Adonai, according to Malachi 3:23(4:5)?

See notes at Mt 11:10, 14; 17:10, where Yeshua makes clear that Yochanan the Immerser is not Eliyahu reincarnated but does come in his spirit for those who will accept him.

7. The Prophet

Are you the prophet?

That is, are you the “prophet like me” whom Moshe promised would come to the people of Israel, and whom they were to heed (Deuteronomy 18:15, 18)?

For more, see Ac 3:22–23&N.

8. Isaiah

a. Prophet is the former kingdom, big scroll in the middle of your Bible

9. Pharisees

P˒rushim and Tz˒dukim (plural; singular Parush, Tzadok), “Pharisees and Sadducees.”