Sermon Tone Analysis

Exegetical Point: John the Baptising was not the Christ, but testified that Jesus was.

Homiletic Point: Hear that Jesus is the Christ, and testify it to the world!

Intro

How do we prove something happened?

In court proceedings, innocence or guilt comes down to whether you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt whether or not something happened.

The Judge and the Jury were not present at the scene, so how do they know what happened?

You need witnesses.

You need someone who was there, who observed what happened to clarify the truth.

Maybe think about when something incredible happened to you - something that was just one chance in a million!

I caught a fish this big, but it jumped out of the boat...

The car passed literally this close to me while crossing the street...

I thew the ball and it went through the hoop, bounced through the hoop again...

When crazy stuff happens before our very eyes, how can we validate it?

How can we verify that it was a real, true event?

With witnesses!

Witnesses can testify about what happened.

Confirming that you’re not spinning a tall tale.

Now these days, in courtrooms we rely on more than just eye-witnesses, we have video and photographs and DNA evidence etc. that act as witnesses as well.

When we pull off an amazing trick-shot or have a near miss sometimes its caught on camera which then acts as a confirmation that it really happened.

But before the advent of such technology, you could really only rely on the words of others to try and understand truth.

That’s why in the Old Law you could only convict law-breakers on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

The Apostle John was one of those witnesses of Jesus.

He lived and saw and heard, and experienced Jesus as the Son of God.

He writes in this book about many of the confirmations of who Jesus was, whether it be people saying it, or miracles, or prophecy fulfilled, all of it testifies to the Divinity and nature of Jesus as God-in-the-flesh.

We know what John is doing with the way he writes and what he leaves out for what he puts into to his account, because he told us the express purpose of the Gospel of John is:

John wants the book to confirm, to testify, that Jesus is God’s Anointed one.

Yet even before the John wrote this book, God sent someone to be the initial witness to testify about Jesus’.

This man who came first, we call John the Baptist.

He came to confirm that Jesus was the Christ, the anointed one of God.

He came to get people ready, get them looking the right direction so that when Jesus came, they would be ready to receive Him.

So when John was writing his history of Jesus, he starts with John the Baptist (as does Mark) as the first witness.

Recap

But, lets do a quick recap of what we covered last week, so we can be jump into this next bit.

Because the book doesn’t start with the historical events of Jesus life on earth - it has this epic prologue.

John Told us in the prologue:

Who the Book as about (word of God, the light),

the corroborator John the Baptising,

What the light came to do (rescue the children of God),

and how he was going to do it (Became flesh, revealed the father, gave grace and truth.)

As we said, there was so much packed into the prologue that we couldn’t unpack, but, the same ideas and themes we breezed through in the Prologue will come up in detail throughout the book.

We pick up today a theme that has already been driven home in the prologue: John the Baptist was a Witness of the Christ.

But now we are seeing how that becomes a reality.

The Prologue was kind of a top down summary of Jesus, Word of God, The Light of All Mankind

Now we’re stepping into the body of the book, where John shows us Jesus from the bottom up - from the perspective of people and places, in time and space.

He tells the story with Witnesses and Testimony, from records and experience.

Remember - John the Baptising is always called John, whereas the author of the book of John is John the Apostle - whenever he comes up in the story he refers to himself cryptically as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”.

John

What has already been said about John the Baptising in the Prologue?

and,

John 1:15 (NIV)

(John testified concerning [the Son].

He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’

”)

So the stage is very clearly set on what to expect about this John the Baptising character:

He is Sent from God

His job is to affirm the “Light” of all humanity

He was not the main show, he was the warm-up act.

Unlike the other Gospels, there is little attention paid to the ministry of John.

The author is not interested in fleshing out all the details about John’s ministry, because he was only telling us what we need to know to show that Jesus was the Christ.

Aside: We notice that John is quite different to the other Gospels, but putting in details or leaving them out of a story is not misleading - whether you’re writing a 200 word news report, or telling an interesting story to your friends, you always make choices about what elements of the true events you leave out or put in to a story.

Effective communicators leave out details that do not help you understand the point they’re trying to make.

All Biblical writers did this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Now in saying that, do not ask me what the 153 fish at the end of John has to do with Jesus being Messiah.

So that’s the top down view of John the Baptist, but How does that play out on the ground?

Well it’s shown to us through a story that answers the Questions:

Who is John the Baptising?

And where is the main Event?

1.

Not the Messiah (v19-21)

Delegation to find out what’s what.

We know form other places that JB is preaching repentance and forgiveness, and seeing that spiritual story play out with a physical sign of ritual washing.

John was building a following and having an effective ministry.

These guy come to see what this guy was doing.

The delegation has priests serving (levitical religious officials) and levites (maybe a reference to temple police).

There also appear to be some pharisees in the mix as mentioned further down.

John was from a priestly line - ritual washing was a family trade, but John was doing something outside the standard order.

Not an invitation for innovative worship practices - God had told them how to run the temple rituals, and told John to do what he did.

Unless God is speaking from heaven, we don’t have any grounds to play around with the elements of worship - not talking about style, but content.

Because he was “out of order” the authorities wanted to know on what basis, or on what authority JB could introduce this new stuff.

They knew their Bibles, they were waiting for the promises of God, so they considered the possibility that JB was one of the promised people they were waiting for.

There were three people that they were waiting for, and John answers each one.

Are you the Messiah?

They were waiting for a Messiah - and Annointed one, a.k.a. a Christ.

Daniel specifically prophesies this:

Daniel 9:25–26 (NIV)

“Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’

It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.

After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing.

There was also the expectation of the anointed one as a King in the line of David, who would restore the throne and the fortunes of Israel.

John Says:

SO John is not the Christ they were expecting.

Well, what about option be?

Are you Elijah?

Elijah, if you know the story, never died.

He left the earth in a Chariot of Fire.

Many Jews believed that Elijah would return some day, before the end of the world.

Now God had also spoken though the prophet Malachi the Elijah would come back:

This meant that some were expecting the literal Elijah to return and continue his prophetic ministry.

Now John denies it: “I’m not Elijah”

John 1:21 (NIV)

They asked him, “Then who are you?

Are you Elijah?”