John 1:19-34
Notes
Transcript
In John 1:1-18 (what we’ve looked at over the last three weeks), we read that the WORD—Jesus!—took on flesh and made His dwelling among us (lit. tabernacled among us). We read that the eternally-existing Creator of the world, light and life to all mankind, has come into the world.
Those who have been given the right to believe in Him and receive Him become children of God. They are those who receive grace upon grace.
This is the reason the Gospel of John was written:
31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
The Gospel of John urges you to put your faith and trust in Jesus personally, throughout your life, in the most difficult moments of your life.
Believe in Jesus! Believe that He can do exceedingly more than you can ask or imagine.
He is the WORD, the One who was with God in the beginning, the One who IS God. He has come into the world to bring light and life.
We’re still in John 1 this morning, looking at the next group of verses.
What the Apostle John writes here about the other John—John the Baptist—teaches us, not only a bit about John the Baptist, but hopefully teaches us a bit about ourselves.
If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to John 1. We’re going to read our text today in two parts, starting with John 1:19-28
19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”
21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ”
24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
I think John the Baptist is a guy I’d like to know; I wish we knew more about him than we do. He’s an immensely interesting fellow.
One of my favorite characteristics about John the Baptist is that he doesn’t seem to struggle with his identity at all.
And that’s saying something. John the Baptist has drawn a crowd. He has some followers. He’s growing in popularity. A lot of people would find their identity all caught-up in that.
“People must really like me. They’ve come out into the wilderness to listen to me. I’ve got a few people who say they follow me, telling others they’re my disciples. I’m pretty important, I guess. I am John the Baptist.”
But John doesn’t go there. He’s not caught up in all that. He’s humble; he knows his place and his purpose. He’s not full of himself even a little. He’s actually got something much more important to focus upon: Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God!
In verse 19, we’re introduced to a group of priests and Levites who have been sent down from Jerusalem by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.
That’s a really interesting/odd way to introduce these religious leaders: Jewish leaders in Jerusalem...
There weren’t that many other kinds of leaders in Jerusalem; it’s a predominately Jewish city. Lots of Jews.
This must be John’s way of talking about an elite group who was running things in Jerusalem. When these Jerusalem Jews got wind of a religious disturbance taking place where John the Baptist was, they had to figure out what was going on.
“Who is this John preaching and baptizing in the desert?”
“What’s he up to?”
“Who is this?”
So they send their representatives out to John to perform an inspection. They’re going to pull his permits and see if what he’s doing meets with their approval.
They’re going to find out what’s going on and report back to the Jewish leaders in Jewish Jerusalem.
The priests and Levites (the temple elite) and the Pharisees (the scholarly, legal elite) all show up to where John is ministering and start grilling the guy.
But John the Baptist is ready for it. He knows who he is and knows who he isn’t. What’s more, he knows who Jesus is—and is more than pleased to tell people about HIM.
The priests and Levites and Pharisees approach John to ask him a bunch of questions, to get to the bottom of who he is and what he’s up to.
If you know anything about John the Baptist, you know he’s an interesting fella. Strange clothes, strange diet, lived in a strange place, and had—what was to many—a very strange message.
D.A. Carson points out:
“In his appearance and in his message John resembled the Old Testament prophets who sought to call out a holy remnant from the descendants of Abraham, and anticipated Jesus’ insistence that His messianic community would transcend the barriers of race and depend on personal faith and new birth.”
For the religious elite in Jerusalem, it was important that they get to the bottom of things and figure out who John was. In their minds, it was important to bring this to a head so that John could either be corrected or pushed aside and dismissed.
What John certainly understands about himself and his mission is what the religious elite from Jerusalem don’t yet understand.
John the Baptist was, according to John 1:6, sent by God.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
Whatever showdown is to come between John the Baptist and the priests/Levites/Pharisees was decided long ago.
Those who approach John the Baptist here are sent from a group of angry men in Jerusalem.
John the Baptist is sent from God. John the Baptist’s mission is far weightier than those who oppose him.
Those sent from Jerusalem to figure out what’s going on ask John five questions.
First, they ask him who he is. John lets them know, “Well, I’m not the Messiah; I’ll tell you that.”
Next, they ask John if he’s Elijah. “Nope!”
John did have a few things in common with Elijah. John wore “clothes made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist.” Elijah “had a garment of hair and had a leather belt around his waist.”
Both Elijah and John the Baptist were prophets of God who preached openly against sin, calling people to repent. Elijah’s not a bad guess, honestly.
Question 3 posed to John: “Are you the Prophet?”
Notice, they don’t say a prophet, but the Prophet. Prophet with a capital P.
They had in mind something Moses wrote in Deuteronomy:
15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.
The priests and Levites misunderstood who Moses was talking about. The Prophet and the Messiah are one and the same.
The Jewish leadership doesn’t understand and they would miss Jesus, the Prophet with a capital P. Eventually, they’d crucify Him.
“Are you the Prophet?” “No.”
Fourth time’s the charm. They finally ask John the Baptist an open-ended question:
John 1:22 “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
John the Baptist replies by quoting Isaiah (Isaiah 40:3), saying “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”
John knows his role—to make straight the way for the LORD, that is, to point people to God’s Son, the Redeemer, the Messiah.
John wasn’t an OT preacher, but he’s preaching the same message they did. The OT prophets and preachers pointed to Jesus from a distance. John sees Jesus in the flesh, and pointed directly to Him.
John the Baptist’s message is the same as any preacher/prophet in the OT: Not me, but Him.
The people come out to see John the Baptizer. The religious leaders head from Jerusalem to have a conversation with him.
All John does is deflect the attention and steer them to Jesus. John the Baptist isn’t interested in building a following for himself or making a name for himself. He consistently says, “Not me, but Him.”
How much better off we’d all be if we took a page out of John’s playbook, dropped the pride and status and popularity game, and focused on Jesus and making Him known.
Not me, but Him.
Of course, John is baptizing. If John wasn’t baptizing he would have been called “John the Locust-Eater” or “Desert John” (not to be confused with “Dessert John”—that’s a different guy).
John’s baptizing, and by baptizing—another thing questioned by the Jerusalem Jewish leaders (v. 25)—by baptizing, John is saying that a great new stage of redemption is at hand.
He’s inviting everyone to come to the water as a visible sign of repentance. John’s baptism was an opportunity to testify publicly that they were turning from their sin and waiting in faith for the promised Messiah.
Everything John did was about pointing people to Jesus, the One who was to come. He’s preparing the way, humbly directing attention away from himself to the One the people do not yet know.
But John the Baptist is about to show them, the very next day.
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”
32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”
When John the Baptist saw Jesus, he recognized Him and he tells the people that Jesus was the One.
It’s not about John; it’s about Jesus.
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
The point John the Baptist is making is one he was uniquely suited to make. What he was preaching, he knew a lot about.
Remember who John the Baptist’s father was: Zechariah, a priest. John grew up knowing all the detail about the sacrifice of lambs. He would have seen them sacrificed at the temple during Passover.
What John is saying is that everything about the Passover, everything that happened then, is now fulfilled in Jesus, the Christ, the Promised One.
This is another deeply OT theme, something the people to whom John was writing and something everyone listening to John the Baptist’s preaching would have understood immediately.
Again, back to the time of the Exodus, the first Passover was when God commanded each family to choose a lamb, male, perfect (without defect), and have it live with them for four days.
On the fourth day, they were to kill the lamb, wipe its blood on the doorposts of their homes, and then ready themselves to leave Egpyt.
They were to eat a meal (standing up, cloaks tucked in their belts, ready to run); they were to eat this meal with the lamb a centerpiece, being reminded of God’s mercy and grace in light of the lamb’s sacrifice.
But it wasn’t just Passover when this happened. Every day two lambs were killed at the temple—one in the morning and one in the evening. Their deaths were necessary because of sin.
Hebrews 9:22 “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
All the lambs—Passover and temple lambs—pointed to the One Lamb who would be sent from God to shed His blood ONE TIME so sin would be forgiven FOREVER.
27 Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
Jesus was the Lamb sent by God to offer His life as sacrifice.
At just the right time, God decided good ol’ John the Baptist should take his hand and use it to point at Jesus, saying with all the joy he’d had in-utero: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
Under the old way of doing things, the sinner was responsible for providing the lamb for the sacrifice.
But who brought this Lamb to be sacrificed? Well, God did. God was offering His Lamb as a substitute.
We should have to pay the price for our own sin, but God provided Jesus for us.
God sent the Only Lamb who could perfectly and completely pay the penalty for our sins—the One who tabernacled here and experienced the temptation we do.
Jesus, the Lamb of God, died in our place for our sin.
He’s not just another lamb. He’s the Lamb of God. He’s the One who has come to take away our sin—yours and mine—when we trust Him and give our lives to Him.
This is a once-for-all-time satisfactory sacrifice.
Jesus doesn’t need to die all over again to forgive. He has done it.
Jesus has come down to us—tabernacling Himself with us—and offered Himself as the Lamb of God, to take away our sins.
The Passover was about Jesus. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
John’s witness to Jesus is confirmed by a specific divine instruction he had been given.
The One who sent John the Baptist told him that the Spirit of God would descend from heaven on the Messiah, and this would be how John would recognize Him.
The author of this Gospel, also named John, is saying that Jesus is the Spirit-anointed Author of life.
Genesis 1:2 tells us that the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The Word who created all things and is the Creator is now baptized in these waters, and the Spirit of God once more “hovers” over them.
God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rejoice together at this moment when their rescue plan for the world, the Word of God made flesh, is recognized by John the Baptist.
Verse 34: “I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”
John the Baptist has “seen” and has “testified” to Jesus.
We, too, through the written accounts of Jesus in the Bible, encounter the incarnate Word. We’ve seen and heard. We’ve seen and heard and we must testify.
How can we structure our daily lives around making a priority of giving witness to what we know about Jesus?
There’s a story about Charles Spurgeon who was practicing with the acoustics in a massive auditorium before he spoke there later that day.
There weren’t microphones in that day and age. So Spurgeon was testing those acoustics, and instead of saying “test, test” or “testing, testing, 1, 2, 3”, Spurgeon repeated the words of John the Baptist over and over, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
A janitor in the building heard this phrase from John the Baptist repeated and was converted on the spot.
Whether we’ll see any converts from a mere repetition of a phrase is doubtful, but you never know.
What we know is that we must witness, testify, share what we know about Jesus. We must be willing and humble enough to point people to Jesus at every turn.
It’s as we look at the LAMB, rather than at ourselves, our problems, or other people; it is as we call others away from focusing on themselves and instead urge them to focus on Jesus—it’s then that we find and offer life from the Creator and source of eternal life.
Life from the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
We point people to Jesus so that people:
31 … may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing may have life in his name.
