Transcription of the Video: The Way of John the Baptist

Listen to the audio with transcription: https://otter.ai/s/coznAfZQSjSVQTgtBKci3w

"Repent! The Kingdom of Heaven has come near." With great intensity, John the Baptist, John the Baptizer came proclaiming that message. And the next great chapter of God's plan to reclaim his broken world was ushered in. 

He came to places like this. He baptized in all the country around the Jordan, Luke writes, near Jericho where Jesus would be baptized, and Aenon near Salim for there was much water there. [Luke 3]. Or in Bethania - Bethany beyond the Jordan, which many scholars-- which I believe is this general area. 

John came, using the Jordan River as the water of his repentance baptism. But before he came to places like this to baptize, John lived in the desert. Like the Hebrews in ancient time, like Jesus, like Moses, John started in the desert. 

The Bible tells us that when the Hebrews were in Egypt suffering brutally under the domination of that powerful Egyptian empire, Moses came with a message. He said, "The Lord has heard your cry. He's going to deliver you." But the text tells us they did not listen, for they were discouraged, or as the Hebrew says, they were crushed in spirit. 

So in a sense, God led them out into the desert where he strengthened their spirits - strengthened their spirits in manna from Heaven and water from the rock, healing from snake bites, a Tabernacle where he met them intimately, Mount Sinai where he took them to be his bride. And in their strengthened spirits, they raised up a generation of children who would enter the Promised Land and faithfully carry out God's mission. 

Or Elijah called fire down from Heaven to Mount Carmel. But then Elijah's spirit is crushed and he's discouraged because Israel doesn't listen. When Jezebel wants to kill him, no one steps up to defend him, and Elijah went out into the desert and sat in the shade of a broom tree and pleaded to die. God came and sustained him, sent him 40 days and nights in the desert without eating and drinking then on Mount Sinai, in a quiet whisper, strengthened Elijah's spirit. 

So with John. Before he was ready to proclaim a message, calling people to obedience and repentance so the way would be prepared for the coming of the Messiah, he too found strength of spirit, intense devotion to the Lord in the desert. Come. Let's walk in those dusty sandal prints of John as God strengthens his spirit for his ministry of repentance and baptism. Come.

Whoever thought of the idea that the biblical land is a picture of what it means to live for God, I don't know if that person got the full idea that was never supposed to be easy. There's really nowhere you can go here that's easy. I don't care where you hide from or to, it's always uphill. And maybe that's God's way of teaching us what he expects in this Kingdom life he wants us to be part of. 

We've come up the mountains a bit in the Judea Wilderness, and you can see below us the ruins of Qumran. I'd like to ask the question up here, first, was John one of them? Was John an Essene? Well let's start with a story of John. 

He was the son of a righteous priest and his wife - Zachariah and Elizabeth. That may not strike you as odd. God often uses righteous people. But if you read it from a Jewish point of view, that's sort of like saying a pastor who's a Christian. Or we have a rabbi who's Jewish. You kind of assume that if it's a priest, it's going to be righteous, and that indicates to you how corrupt the priesthood had become in the first century, that you have to note that this particular priest is righteous; otherwise if you had just said priest, you would have assumed not. And I think that's part of the story. Those Essenes weren't wrong. God's people had forgotten the lessons of the desert and they no longer were that community that God had tried to shape there. 

So God is going to act again like he did with Moses and with Israel and then the next generation of Israel, and then people like David and Solomon. You know the stories. 

They had a son. His name was John, they decided, which was odd apparently. Zachariah was told that John would be in the spirit and power of Elijah. Let's look at that for a moment. To a Jew, Elijah is the ultimate in passion. You probably remember his Mount Carmel story. He climbed up, had this contest with the Baal prophets, built an altar, slaughtered a bull, prayed his heart out, came all the way down miles to carry out judgment on the Baal priest, climbed all the way back up to pray, all the way back down to run ahead of a chariot for 18 miles, all apparently in a single day. That's how you think of Elijah - this intensely passionate man that gave everything for God. 

So if you're to be in the spirit and power of Elijah, you are going to be on fire. So this must have been a fiery person right from birth. Because he was going to be in that spirit and in that power. It's interesting to me how John shows us that he caught it. And I'm not sure that unless you're a Jewish thinker or an Eastern thinker, you might catch. 

Notice two things. Have you ever thought about where John baptized? Now the obvious one is in the water. But what water? Well the text says he baptized all around the Jordan. So it must have been lots of places. But there are three places mentioned in the Bible. One is at a place called Bethany Beyond the Jordan. They debate that. I think most likely it's way up north by the Sea of Galilee, in the wadi there, in the province of Bethania, because in John's Gospel, he calls Bethany Beyond the Jordan an area, not a village. So the first place I believe that's mentioned is way up there. 

Now that's not the place Jesus was baptized. That's where John saw Jesus coming and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God." And then he said, "I saw the Spirit descend on him." In other words, it's in the past already. 

There's a second-place John is baptizing, which is discussed, at a place called Aenon near Salim. It's about halfway from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. Jesus is not baptized there either. 

The third-place that is mentioned is right over here. Now there is a new archaeological excavation that claims to be the place. If you look right here at the north end of the Dead Sea, you can see where the Jordan River runs. It's that dark line of trees that kind of snakes away from us. Just to the right of it, a little bit up on a hill by a spring that runs as a tributary into the Jordan, that may very well be the place.

In other words, John wasn't baptizing in the river proper, but in a small tributary that they would have thought of as part of the Jordan. And that is where Jesus was baptized. Whether it's at that exact location that they think maybe or not, it's somewhere here. 

Now what makes that intriguing is that those are three Elijah spots. The one up by the Sea of Galilee is where Elijah hid in a cave, and God fed him with ravens if you remember. [1 Kings 17] 

The Aenon near Salim place is where Elijah called Elisha - at Abel Mahola, they call it. Here is the place where the chariot came and Elijah made his ascent to Heaven and Elisha took over for him. [2 Kings 2] That's here. So it's as if the Bible wants to say, "Do you catch that this guy's Elijah?" 

Now most of us never even look on a map where he might be baptizing. We never even think about it that way. But I think John is saying, "I'm Elijah, so I'm going to go to Elijah places."

There's another thing. Do you remember what he was wearing? Okay. Camel hair. Not camel skin. Camel hair with a leather belt. That isn't so unusual I suppose, but there's only one other character in the Bible that's mentioned dressing like that. And that's Elijah in the book of Kings. [2 Kings 1]

So it's as if John the Baptist showed up one day in his Elijah suit. And you can hear some child say, "Hey! Mommy, Daddy look. There's a guy dressed like Elijah." And of course, that's who John thought he was according to what was promised to his father, and it's who Jesus said he was. "He's the Elijah to come," - the Elijah that's predicted in the Old Testament. [Matthew 11]

We also know-- and this is an intriguing passage to me. Let me share it with you. John the Baptist grew up in the desert. In Luke 1, it says this, "And the child grew and became strong, and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel." That appears, from childhood, John lived in the desert. Now we know that the Essenes apparently took children that people didn't want to be tainted with the world they lived in and they would raise those kids in the fear of the Lord. So one wonders whether John was with these people down here. I'm not saying he was, but it is intriguing.

It also says, "He was strong in spirit," which I find very interesting because in the Old Testament when Moses went to Israel and Egypt, they didn't listen because they were crushed in spirit. [Exodus 6] Your English Bible will say discouraged, but the Hebrew literally says, "crushed in spirit".

So John came to the desert like Israel did to become strong in spirit. At that point, Jesus came to him. Jesus was also apparently in the desert. We learn of what John's message was because the text says John was preaching, "The Kingdom of Heaven has come near." [Matthew 3] And the phrase, "has come near" there implies a very close intimacy.  

Remember that Kingdom of Heaven. That's also an Exodus idea. The Jews believed the Kingdom of Heaven started when God acted with great power and showed his finger. It continued when they fell on their faces by the Red Sea and called him Lord. And it continued when he said, "Okay. I've redeemed you. Now come to Sinai and learn to obey me so that I can be your king." 

So when John came preaching the Kingdom of Heaven, I think that's what he was preaching. God is going to act with power. You need to see him as Lord. And now obey him. So his message is, "Repent! Repent! Because if you're going to obey him, you're going to have to repent from what you've been doing." 

Right in the middle of that sermon, Jesus showed up. John of course, recognized that Jesus didn't need to repent - the Sinless One. But remember you go into the baptism after you've become pure and holy. So Jesus insisted never-the-less to fulfill all righteousness, "I want to be baptized by you." And John proceeded to, whatever he did in those days, to conduct the baptism. 

At that moment, it says, "And the Heaven was torn open, and the Spirit of God came down." [Mark 1] I love that passage. That's of course, a reflection as you immediately recognize to the book of Isaiah, in which Isaiah writes, "Rip open the Heavens, oh Lord, and come down."  [Isaiah 64] And here, it comes true at least in Mark's Gospel, in his words.

My point as the Spirit ascended, God, spoke and said of Jesus who was being baptized, "This is my son, the Chosen One," - words from Isaiah 42 and Psalm 2 both thought to be Messianic Psalms. So from there, Jesus goes into the wilderness for his temptation. 

But that message of John sounds very much like the message we've been talking about the Essenes. So let's ask the question one more time. Was John an Essene?

On the yes side, we can say he had the same sermon. We can say he's in the same desert. We can say he practiced a similar baptism. We can say he also was against the Temple. John doesn't seem very favorable to the Temple authorities. In fact, his prediction that God would stand at his threshing floor and thresh the people and put the chaff in the fire and bring the grain into his barn, they would have heard as a judgment on the Temple, because the Temple had been built on a threshing floor. So a Jew would have heard it as a criticism of the Temple authorities.

His vocabulary sounds Essene. For example, he talks about a brood of snakes, the same language you read here that the Essenes said. So there are a lot of similarities.

On the other hand, honestly, I do not think John was an Essene - at least the kind in the New Testament. And there are three reasons I feel that way. One, there's no reference in the Essenes anywhere or Josephus who describes John and the Essenes in great detail, that they have any connection at all. 

Two, more importantly, John is very much a public figure calling people to repentance. The Essenes said, "Hey, if you want to join us, sell everything you've got and come here." They did not go out looking or inviting that kind of repentance.

And third, John sends people back to a world the Essenes said you had to withdraw from. Clearly, John cannot be an Essene at the time of the New Testament. But I think that does not weaken the point at all that God has raised up here a community of people calling his nation to repentance and holiness and righteous living and into that context is going to come to the Messiah, much as he brought Israel into the desert to learn to live in a righteous way because he had a mission for them. And I think this passionate Elijah of a man, who came to prepare the way so Jesus would come, also needed to be shaped and molded. Come. Let me show you.

So John, like the Essenes, preached a message of repent. So when Herod Antipas, the king of the Jews, had the nerve to divorce his own wife in order to marry the wife of his brother, John stood up and publicly declared, "That violates Torah. That's adultery. Our king sins." That didn't sit well with Herod. But he was afraid because John was well-liked, even by soldiers, history records. So Herod arrested him, was afraid to hurt him, and imprisoned him. 

Now, Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian tells John's story in an extended fashion. Josephus says Herod imprisoned John here. We're in the country of Jordan, not far from the Dead Sea, in a fortress called in those days Machaerus, meaning sword in Greek. It had been destroyed by the Romans before Jesus' birth, and Herod the Great, the killer of the babies of Bethlehem rebuilt it. And it had been inherited by his son, Herod Antipas, way out in the middle of nowhere, up on top of a gigantic mountain. You see a little bit of Herod here. And imagine, in one of these rooms off to the side here, our hero, the Elijah to come, this passionate man who went to the desert to call people to righteousness sat alone in his cell. We don't know for how long.

And then he called two of his disciples-- I don't know how they came here or found him-- and he said, "Go find the rabbi from Nazareth, Jesus, and ask him, 'Are you the Coming One or not?'" [Matthew 11]

What happened? This is John, that passionate desert man, who had the fire of God in his soul. What happened? Well if we look at it in the cultural setting, I don't think John lost faith that Jesus was the Messiah. How could he have? He saw the Heaven ripped open. He heard the voice say, "This is my son." He had baptized him. He saw the dove. I think if you look culturally, what troubled John was this. In the Old Testament, the Messiah is predicted. But there's also someone who's called the Coming One. In Zechariah 9, he's called "Your king, O Jerusalem. The Coming One will come and do some powerful things." 

In the book of Malachi [3], it says the same. "Your king will come." And I think John asked, "Okay, I know you're the Messiah. But are you the Coming One? Are you that one who's going to do these powerful things?" The reason I say that is look up John's sermons sometimes they're all about fire and judgment and axes at the root of the tree and chaff being thrown and threshing floors being cleaned and swept, judgment - all things the Jewish people believed this Coming One would do. And I think John's question was, "I know you're the Messiah. But did I mistake who the Coming One was? Where's the fire?" In fact, it becomes very poignant when you realize John sent his disciples to Jesus to say, "Are you the Coming One?" 

And in Zechariah 9, immediately after the Messiah is called your king, the one who comes, it says, "And he will set the prisoners free." And I think John's question was, "If you're the Messiah and the Coming One, why am I in Herod's jail? Nobody gets out of Herod's jail."

Jesus answers in a fascinating way. He doesn't say, "Yes." He says, "Go tell John the blind see, the lame walk, the leper is cured, the deaf hears, the dead are raised, and the poor hear the Good News. John, your end times charts are off. John, you got it right. I am the Messiah. But at my first coming, it's not about power. It's not about the fire. It's not about judgment. It's about love for people who are experiencing chaos. It's feeding the hungry. It's sitting with the sinner. It's touching the leper. That's how the Kingdom comes, John." And he quotes a whole series of phrases from Isaiah about blind and lame and lepers. And the one he leaves out, the prisoners will be set free. And I think John heard in that answer, "John, my friend, I am the Coming One, but you've got my message wrong. That will be the next coming. I came to love the broken. But John, you will die in jail."

And so one night, some have suggested right here in this banquet hall, the columns of which have been restored, original capital even, there was a party. And they brought that passionate, desert preacher who wanted people to walk and live Torah to one of these rooms, maybe the one you stand in if Josephus is right, and they cut his head off and brought it on a plate here. 

And other than an occasional picnicker or a busload of tourists or two, this place stands in silence. So what do we do? Be a John the Baptist. Everything about him pointed to Jesus. Everything! Everything he said, everything he did pointed to Jesus. And when you fail, seek his forgiveness. You're not going to see it all happen either but go after it. 

Do you have his fire? Do you have the courage to speak what you believe lovingly, gently, but convincingly even to power in a culture where God and his ways are increasingly irrelevant? [Luke 3] Will you speak to the one with two coats and ask him to share? Will you speak to the one who has food and convince him or her to give to the hungry? Will you live that? Will you speak to the soldier and the tax collector and even the king? This place moves me deeply. He died alone at the hands of a wicked man because of what he believed in was deep within him. 

May God raise up a generation not only of Essenes who love the text but Johns who live and die for that book. And may everything you do point to Jesus. For me, it's a great honor just to stand here.