Sermon Tone Analysis
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BY PASTOR GLENN PEASE
It takes all kinds to make a world is an old cliché, and like many old clichés there is a lot of truth to it.
God so made our physical world that it just won't work without differences.
Issac Asimov points out that energy can only be turned into work when you find it in greater concentration in one place, and in lesser concentration in another.
If the world was flat and the sun shone on all of it at the same time, all parts of the earth would be at the same temperature, and you could get no work out of it.
But if it is round, and so one side is dark when the other is light, and it is the reality of these opposites that makes the sun so powerful a source of energy for work.
God follows the same laws in the building of His kingdom on earth.
He does not want everybody to be the same.
In fact, He wants people who are opposites: Not just in sex, but in personality, life-style, and in there gifts and goals.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the contrast we see between Jesus and His forerunner John The Baptist.
They were as unlike each other as a wedding and a funeral, or joy and solemnity.
Do not reject or look down on Christians who are different.
The world is full of Christians who are strange to us, but they are just what God wants.
We are all strange to someone else, but God loves the variety.
The paradox is Jesus and John were so much alike in their preaching of the kingdom that they were mistaken for each other.
People thought John may be the Messiah, and he had to deny it.
Jesus was taken to be John the Baptist because He was so powerful.
People thought he was John come back to life.
In Matt.
14:1-2 we read, "At that time Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus; and he said to his servants, this is John the Baptist, he has been raised from the dead, that is why these powers are at work in him."
Later on Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do men say that the Son Of Man is?"
And in Matt.
16:14 we read this response, "And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
This gives us an insight into the powerful impact John the Baptist had on Israel in the few short years of his ministry.
All the other prophets people thought of were Old Testament prophets.
John was the only contemporary that was put in that class of people whom Jesus might have been, for He was the only man of God like him who had been seen in Israel for centuries.
They could easily imagine that he was the Messiah.
So John was taken for Jesus, and Jesus for John, because they were both such powerful personalities for God.
But they were still very much opposites in their personal lives.
John was a hermit who spent a good share of his life in the desert living the life of an ascetic.
This is the point of Mark 1:6 where his dress and his diet are described.
There is not much point in details like this being preserved unless they have some significance.
What do we care what John wore and ate?
Unless there is something valuable to learn by the contrast with the life-style of the Master, whose way he was preparing, there would be no point in it.
His camel hair clothing was the clothing of a wilderness nomad, and his diet of locust and wild honey were the products of the wilderness.
If we saw John today, we would no doubt point him to a mission, for he would give us the impression that he was not exactly living high off the hog.
He was an uncut diamond, rough and unpolished.
Jesus said, "Why did you go out into the wilderness, to see a man clothed in soft raiment?"
Jesus went on the say you would go to king's houses if all you were interested in was soft and expensive clothing.
No, he said, you went out to see a prophet, and more than prophet.
He is the one who was to prepare the way for Messiah.
And then Jesus makes this amazing statement: The greatest compliment he ever paid to anyone in Matt.
11:11, "Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist."
Who was the greatest man in history?
It all depends on who you ask.
But if you had asked Jesus that question in His day on earth, He would say it was this strange forerunner of his, John the Baptist.
Any survey among Christians with this question would bring in votes for Abraham, Moses, David, and other great personalities of the Old Testament.
Few would choose this wild looking man, darken from years in the desert sun, and unshaven, for he was a Nazarite.
He was too radically different to appeal to us.
It is true he had low overhead for his ministry, the locust and wild honey were free.
Bees were everywhere making honey in the crevices of the rocks.
Some might even consider it a delicacy to eat honey coated locust.
He was getting his protein and carbohydrates with no preservatives added.
But, all kidding aside, John the Baptist was performing a ministry to thousands of people, and he started one of the biggest revivals in all the history of Israel, and he never took an offering of which we have any record.
John was not called to be a fund raiser, or to build a church, or a school for prophets.
He was called to prepare the way for the Messiah, and he did it without money.
He had the lowest overhead of any ministry on record.
Can you imagine what it would cost to get John's results today?
The point is, there was no credibility gap when he preached to others to live the simple life style, and to give to the poor.
Many who preach this live like kings and drive the most expensive cars, but John lived what he preached.
John is one of the few people in history, in or out of the Bible, who demonstrated you can live a life sold out to God, and give up all that the world treasures, and still be successful.
When John's birth was announced to his father the angel said in Luke 1:15, "He will be great before the Lord."
He was destined to be great.
His birth is the only one described in detail in the New Testament, except that of Jesus.
Most of the world, in most cultures, at most times, would not consider John as being very successful, let alone great.
He had nothing of the status symbols of materialism.
Yet he was powerful in his poverty, and we learn from John that the only resource one really needs to be great, as far as God is concerned, is the Holy Spirit.
John is the only person in the Bible who was surrounded by the Holy Spirit from his conception.
We know this was true of Jesus also, but it is only recorded of John.
In Luke 1:15 we read of John, "..he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mothers womb."
This is never said of any other person.
In Luke 1:41 we read of his mother, "And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit."
Here is the most unique family in all of history.
No wonder John was in the eyes of Jesus the greatest man in history.
It is of interest to note that John was the first person to recognize that Jesus came into the world to give His life as a sacrifice.
He saw Jesus coming toward him and he said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."
Some of his disciples followed Jesus because of this, but it was a long time before they saw in Jesus what John did.
John was so special and unique, but there are few sermons about him, and this may be legitimate because he said, "I must decrease and He must increase."
His job was to point the way to Jesus, and not focus on himself, but we can't escape the facts.
There are more words in the New Testament about John the Baptist than there are in 33 of the 66 books of the Bible.
He is the first preacher of the New Testament.
He did not preach the law, but the New Testament kingdom coming with the Messiah.
He was the first man in history called the Baptist.
For decades it was thought that John picked up the idea of baptism from the Jewish practice of baptizing Gentiles.
It was supposed that the Jews baptized them when the came into the Jewish faith.
Modern studies, however, reveal that this came after John and not before.
There is no reference to this practice in the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, Philo, or Josephus, or any record that would indicate that it came before John.
Even the liberal scholar Rudolf Bultmann writes, "No certain testimony to the practice of proselyte baptism is found before the end of the first century."
What this means is that all the evidence points to John as the first Baptist in history, and the founder of the very idea of Baptism.
He also baptized more people than anyone we know of in history.
Note verse 5 of our text: "And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan."
The use of "all" is hyperbole.
It is deliberate exaggeration to convey the point that it was a major movement touching everybody from both the city and the country.
People of all walks of life were caught up in the revival, and were being baptized.
A quarter of a century later Paul, in Acts 19, found a group of John's disciples way off in Ephesus.
Jesus even tells us the Jewish leaders were positively excited about the John's ministry for awhile.
He says in John 5:35, "He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for awhile in his light."
Even some of the Scribes and Pharisees were baptized by John.
There was no revival like this before in history.
It was the preparation for the Messiah, and John was doing the job well.
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