Sermon Tone Analysis

Last week we were held in awe of the majesty of the Deity of Christ as the Apostle John proclaimed Jesus as the Word and the Word becoming flesh to dwell among us.

The beauty of the reality that Christ came to live among us should leave us in absolute wonder.

Tonight, we continue that wonder.

We continue tonight in the first chapter of John’s Gospel verses 19-34.

And the title of tonight’s message is “Behold the Lamb of God.”

The Scripture says,

The opening of this section explains that this is the testimony of John the Baptist.

As we saw in the first part of chapter one, John’s purpose is to proclaim Christ, the Messiah, to prepare a people to receive him.

It is interesting that the Greek word here for testimony is the word martyria which is where we get our word martyr.

It means to be a witness.

And that is why we call those killed for their faith martyrs, they were killed for being a witness.

So John is bearing witness to what he knows, to the reason why he has been sent.

As we discussed last time, John had a purpose from before he was even born.

We do not know much of John the Baptist.

We see the recording of his conception and birth as we discussed last week in Luke’s Gospel.

And in that first chapter of Luke’s Gospel it says:

So John the Baptist was living in the wilderness.

We do not know what he did while in the wilderness but we know that he was prepared for this specific purpose and then, when ready, he made his public appearance to start his ministry in Israel.

He was told by God when this was supposed to happen.

Luke 3:

God speaks to John and tells him that it is time to fulfill his mission.

So John goes to the Jordan region to proclaim repentance for the forgiveness of sin.

Now the region of the Jordan is central throughout Scripture.

We have the Israelites crossing the Jordan on their way to the promised land, Elijah is taken to Heaven at the Jordan, Naaman’s leprosy was healed by dipping in the Jordan, and Jesus Christ is baptized in the Jordan.

So John is preaching repentance at this river and the Jews send priests and scribes to talk with him.

They wanted to find out what he was up to and who he was.

Now I want to note that when we see the term Jews in the Gospel of John, more times than not it is referring to the Jewish Religious Leaders, namely, the Pharisees.

I think it is important for us to spend a few minutes talking about the Pharisees and who they were because they are going to be a dominate force as we go through the Gospel of John butting heads with Christ and the disciples frequently.

There is much that is unknown regarding the Pharisees but we do know a few things about them from the Scriptures themselves and from the ancient historian, Josephus, who himself lived according to the rules of the Pharisees.

Josephus tells us that the Pharisees were not the only religious sect in Judaism.

There were also the Sadducees and the Essenes but the Pharisees had popular support and that made them rulers in the political realm as well as the religious thought.

The Pharisees were strict in their interpretation and adherence to the Law of the Old Testament.

And, as we will see in the book of John, they tried to force everyone into that same adherence.

They were so strict in their rules that they even would question Jesus.

When we get to chapter nine, the healing of the Blind man, we see them say that Jesus cannot be from God.

John 9:

They were more worried about keeping rules and regulations, often beyond what the Law called for or twisting what it actually said, then caring about being close to God.

The Pharisees are referenced in 265 verses in the New Testament.

Out of those, 69 are here in the Gospel of John.

So it was this group of people who has sent the Priests and Scribes to John to ask a simple question.

John was plain saying that he was not the Messiah.

And that is our first point tonight, John is not the Messiah.

Verse 20 says this:

Now this seems a little odd that he would immediately say that he was not the Christ.

But remember, earlier in the chapter we see him proclaiming the Messiah.

Look in verse 15:

So John understood what they were asking him.

“Do you consider yourself to be the Messiah?”

Of course, if they had been paying attention they would have already known that he did not consider himself to be the Christ, but was proclaiming the arrival of Christ.

But not to be deterred, they asked him more pointed questions.

The Jews then, and still today, know that Elijah never physically died.

He was caught up into Heaven.

So Elijah is talking to his disciple Elisha and he is caught up into Heaven.

And in Malachi, we see why the Jews thought that John the Baptist might be Elijah coming back to life.

Malachi is one of the minor prophets.

This particular book was the last written before the Lord ceased sending prophets to write Scripture.

And these are two of the last things Malachi wrote to Israel.

Now this causes some confusion because the Jews were looking for Elijah to physically return since he had never died.

They were looking for the physical Elijah to be preparing the way for the Messiah but John answered that he was not Elijah.

This is also confusing for some today because Christ said in

So Jesus has said that John was Elijah who has come, and John said that he is not.

Is this a contradiction in Scripture?

Which one of them was wrong?

Well, we need to note that it is important when we come across things that seem contradictory in Scripture we must look to find out if there is a way to harmonize the contradiction.

This is important because Scripture does not and cannot contradict itself.

Otherwise it would not be the inerrant Word of God.

In other words, you either believe the Bible is God’s Word or you don’t.

And God does not lie, it is not in His nature.

I want to point out which we discussed last week in the first part of .

remember is when an angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah in the Temple and foretold the birth of John the Baptist and we see this from that angel in verse 17 of Luke 1:

Now we see this in and we now understand what Christ was saying.

John fulfilled that prophecy and if we look back in we see the exact phrasing that we see in :

So there is no contradiction here.

Was John Elijah?

Yes and no.

He was not the physical Elijah that the Jews were expecting to see, but he was the one in the spirit and power of Elijah preparing the way for the Messiah.

After denying that he was Elijah they asked if he was the prophet.

Now there is a lot of speculation about what this could be talking about.

Moses said in that a prophet would be raised up to speak the word of God.

However, in the first century they did not know who this prophet would be.

Some though Elijah, some thought Moses or another one of the prophets would be resurrected.

Nobody knew.

But John knew it was not him.

But the Jews had to have an answer.

They had been sent and they were not going to go back empty-handed.

So they asked again, Who are you?

And this brings us to our second point tonight, the first was the John was not the Messiah.

The second point tonight is that John is the fulfillment of prophecy.

This is a direct fulfillment of a prophecy found in Isaiah chapter 40:

John was the fulfillment of this prophecy.

He is the one declaring the way of the Lord.

He had lived in the wilderness most of his life and now he comes to prepare the way for the Christ.

This is one of the few instances where a story or quotation is covered in all four Gospels.

It is here as well as in , , and .

This is a big deal and it was an answer that the Jews were probably not expecting.

John accomplished two things here by quoting this verse in Isaiah.

The first is that he has now revealed who he is and what his purpose was.

He was the fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah.

But he also declared to make straight the path of the Lord.

It will be the very next day, as we will see momentarily, that John would identify Jesus of Nazareth, his first cousin, as the Christ, the Messiah, the Lord.