The commentators are excellent on the mission of John the Baptist as the forerunner of the Christ. This John is the “Voice crying out in the wilderness” that Isaiah said would announce the arrival of the Messiah. But only one writer that I have read gets at the other extremely important aspect of John’s ministry. John the Baptist is introducing the greatest change in the prescribed manner of how to worship of God that true religion has ever seen.
John the Baptist, who is born to the priesthood, is not ministering in the temple. The religion at the temple is dead ritualism. John is down by the riverside baptizing only those who can give good evidence of true repentance. True religion has long ago departed from the temple. Worship of God has become corrupt. Very little has improved since the days of the sons of Eli as you can read in 1 Samuel. The Word of God was rare in those days.
Does this condition have any relevance to our day when religion is popular and huge crowds gather but the Word of God is rare? If the Word of God preached to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ is not the central focus of our worship it matters not one whit how good it makes us feel.
A main characteristic of postmodernism is subjective feelings at the expense of objective truth. That is why we must preach the Bible. The Bible alone is the written Word of God. The Bible is the only source for truth about the Lord Jesus Christ and the way of salvation. “These things were WRITTEN…” Take away the Bible and there is no truth.
The vast majority of the religious crowd today could not be any more religious than the crowd that gathered at the temple in Jerusalem and they could not be any more lost and under the wrath of God!
John is the last of the apostles and he gives us this gospel as the record of the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Creator of everything that is not God, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us.
Everything in this gospel springs from verse one.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1
Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Word of verse one, that outwardly unattractive carpenter, says John, is the very Son of God, the Messiah!
Almost no one of any importance in religion received Jesus as the Messiah but God did give some people the ability to receive Him as the Life and the Light of men who has come into the world.
God is always faithful. At the beginning of human history, as soon as Adam, the representative head of the human race, deliberately sinned and plunged the entire human race under the wrath and condemnation of a holy God the Lord God His purpose to redeem a people when He spoke to Satan.
The seed of the woman would be victorious over the seed of the serpent, her seed would be bruised in His heel, His humanity, but her seed [Christ] would bruise the head of the seed of the serpent, which means ultimate defeat.
Genesis 3:15
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel."
Go through the OT and you will find many other types and prophesies concerning the Messiah. Especially study the sacrificial system carefully and learn how everything pointed to the one spotless Lamb of God.
2 Corinthians 1:20
For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen,
Now at the “hinge of history” when eventually calendars and dates would be reckoned by the virgin birth of Jesus [B.C and A.D], John the Baptist appears to announce two things.
Messiah is here dwelling among us!
The Old Covenant under the Mosaic system is fulfilled in Messiah and it is never coming back!
That is how I want to set the stage to present to you:
“The Significance of John the Baptist”.
John the Baptist is sent by God to announce the arrival of the Messiah and what His arrival means to the Jewish nation. Most interpreters of the Bible have missed the significance of John the Baptist. They tend to focus on his role as the Forerunner of the Christ, which is not to be slighted at all, but they completely miss the significance of the complete and final change in the way that God is to be worshipped.
The worship of the OT was centered in the sacrifice. But as with most things the religious leaders emphasized the letter of the law and missed the spirit of the law. Very few understood that the animal sacrifices were symbolic and not the substance.
Hebrews 10:1-10
1 For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect.
2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins.
3 But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.
4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.
5 Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:
"Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
But a body You have prepared for Me.
6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin
You had no pleasure.
7 Then I said, 'Behold, I have come —
In the volume of the book it is written of Me —
To do Your will, O God.'"
8 Previously saying, "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them"(which are offered according to the law),
9 then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God." He takes away the first that He may establish the second.
10 By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
The religious leaders had come to believe that God accepted them in their performance of the rituals.
It is the same today when people are taught that their “offerings”, be they rituals or their religious feelings or their baptisms or their church memberships have any merit before God as to their being accepted by God.
It was the same in the days of John and Jesus. The practice of rituals and feeling religious had replaced the spiritual knowledge of God.
And so when He, that is Jesus, came unto His own, that is the Jewish leaders, they did not know Him as the Messiah.
And so John the Baptist comes on the scene and announces the end of religion, as they knew it and the beginning of the public reign of Christ.
Mark 1:14-15
14 Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,
15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel."
I plan to cover a lot of text in this message and I trust that we will not miss too many of the lessons that God the Holy Spirit has given to us. We will be examining John 1:15-36 and John 3:22-36.
Note to the reader: When I preached these texts I made many extemporaneous comments that are not included in this transcript.
John 1:15-36
15 John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'"
16 And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.
17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
19 Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?"
20 He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, "I am not the Christ."
21 And they asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?"
He said, "I am not."
"Are you the Prophet?"
And he answered, "No."
22 Then they said to him, "Who are you, that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?"
23 He said: "I am
'The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Make straight the way of the LORD,"' as the prophet Isaiah said."
24 Now those who were sent were from the Pharisees.
25 And they asked him, saying, "Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?"
26 John answered them, saying, "I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know.
27 It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose."
28 These things were done in Bethabara beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
30 This is He of whom I said, 'After me comes a Man who is preferred before me, for He was before me.'
31 I did not know Him; but that He should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water."
32 And John bore witness, saying, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him.
33 I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.'
34 And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God."
35 Again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples.
36 And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God!"
John 3:22-36
22 After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He remained with them and baptized.
23 Now John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there. And they came and were baptized.
24 For John had not yet been thrown into prison.
25 Then there arose a dispute between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purification.
26 And they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified — behold, He is baptizing, and all are coming to Him!"
27 John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven.
28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, 'I am not the Christ,' but, 'I have been sent before Him.'
29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled.
30 He must increase, but I must decrease.
31 He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.
32 And what He has seen and heard, that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony.
33 He who has received His testimony has certified that God is true.
34 For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure.
35 The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand.
36 He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
While I take full responsibility for what I preach, I must give recognition to Charles Alexander who first guided me into the broader understanding of the significance of John the Baptist. No other expositor that I have studied seems to have grasped what John the Baptist was sent to do beyond the announcement of the Messiah. They seem to have missed the scope of how the acceptable worship of God was to be changed.
John the Baptist marks the end of and age and the beginning of a new era.
To better understand John the Baptist we would have to study all four gospels in much detail. Luke records that the birth of John the Baptist was a miracle in and of itself. John’s father Zacharias, a priest, and his mother Elizabeth are given the child they had prayed for many years before and had long ago given up any hope of having.
Matthew and Luke record an event at the close of John’s mission when he sends messengers to Christ Jesus to inquire,
“Are you the one that is to come…?”
Why did John baptize? John’s baptism was no mere transition from the washings of the OT system. There is nothing in John’s Baptism that has any counterpart in the Mosaic ceremonies. These OT washing had no significance as to repentance.
John’s baptism was nothing less than the sign of the New Covenant!
Very few of the people of national Israel understood the prophecies of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, which spoke of a washing of water by the word, i.e., regeneration.
Regeneration was not completely unknown in the OT but it was rare.
Now John and Jesus Christ are proclaiming that which had been veiled under Moses!
Repent and be baptized and receive the forgiveness of sins!
Now don’t fall into the error of twisting cause and effect. Repentance, just like faith, is a gift of God and the correct response to genuine repentance is to submit to baptism in faith and obedience.
Repentance and baptism are not the cause of faith.
John’s baptism announces a new people and kingdom are born - a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire. National Israel had never known anything like this except in a few individual believers who were the elect remnant of a nation otherwise given over to sin and pride, which generation after generation wallowed in filthiness and idolatry.
Here is a new nation without geographical boundaries and without national identity; a nation without a visible king, or center of worship or government; an elect nation of kings and priests whom the world would not recognize as such; a peculiar people only recognizable by their personal holiness and separation from this wicked world as they worship the Lord Jesus Christ!
[Charles Alexander]
This is the answer to the enigmatic statement in Matthew 11:11 that,
“He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
John, the last OT prophet did not live to see the fulfillment of the very thing he came to announce, the beginning of the New Covenant. The Christ must be crucified and be buried and rise from the dead. Then the New Covenant will be made known without the veil that covered the eyes of the people of the Old Covenant.
Terms like Old Testament and New Testament, or Old Covenant and New Covenant, must be understood as progressive revelation. The New Covenant is not “new” in chronological time. By that I mean that God did not originate a “new” way of justification when the “old” system of animal sacrifices was abolished. I have often said, “God does not have a Plan B”!
Paul writes in Galatians that God preached the gospel to Abraham long before the Mosaic covenant was given.
Christ is as a Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.
You must go back before the beginning to find the origin of the New Covenant. Before creation the Holy Trinity determined every detail of man’s history and how the Son of God would save sinners. But the full revelation of God’s purpose in redemption was not given until the final Revelation, or Unveiling, was given to John the apostle in exile on Patmos.
But here in the gospel we have in the Baptist the astonishing announcement of what God had always purposed. The Old Covenant is gone forever.
Please do not fanaticize about a rebuilt temple and the renewal of animal sacrifices in Jerusalem.
That system of worship is done away with forever and any ideas of its coming back is a denial of the sufficiency of the one time sacrifice of the Lamb of God who is Jesus Christ, the propitiation of the wrath of God for the sin of His people!
And the Baptist is here to announce that very thing!
Here is the Lamb of God! Worship Him!
We have already pointed out in a previous message that John the Baptist is the Elijah that was to come. The Jews looked for a literal fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy and Jesus corrected them and said that John the Baptist was the Elijah that was to come.
Be cautious of those who insist on a literal future fulfillment of the OT prophecies. I make no apology for repeating this but when the NT interprets an OT prophecy you need look nowhere else for its interpretation. And you will not find a better example of this than Jesus Himself interpreting Malachi’s prophecy of the return of Elijah.
Elijah was a prophetic figure. John the Baptist’s flight from Herod followed the exact same route taken by Elijah. John was baptizing in Aenon near Salim because there was much water there. John had incurred the displeasure of Herod by his denunciation of Herod’s unlawful marriage. Elijah had confronted Ahab and Jezebel. I do not at all agree with most of the writers that call Elijah a “cringing coward” as he flees from the threat of Jezebel. Was Joseph a coward when he fled to Egypt with Mary and the child Jesus? Elijah was a prophetic figure and here is the Baptist exactly fulfilling every detail of his prophetic life.
As you read the close of John the Baptist’s ministry you should be impressed with the completeness of his theology. Of course he is an inspired prophet of God. He is filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. But he dug deeply into the Scriptures and was prepared to announce the arrival of Messiah and the close of the OT system of worship.
In a conversation with the Samaritan woman Jesus will confirm this.
John 4:21-24
21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.
22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.
23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
There is so much more that we could say about the verses in our texts for today. I have only skimmed the surface of what is here for us. But at least you should now have a greater understanding of the significance of John the Baptist.
The ministry of John the Baptist was to announce the arrival of the Messiah and to announce the end of national Israel forever. There was a time of transition from the resurrection of Christ until the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. The Acts of the Apostles records that Peter and Paul and the others continued to go to the temple and the synagogues to preach Jesus as the Christ. But the epistles make it clear that the church is now established and the church will never be overcome by the powers of Satan.
In just forty years from the time of John the Baptist the temple will be destroyed. Was that the end of God’s people? Of course not, our study in Romans made it clear that national Israel were never the children of God.
Romans 9:6-8
6 But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel,
7 nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, "In Isaac your seed shall be called."
8 That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed.
We also saw in Romans 11:1-2 how Paul explained that God had not cast away His people.
Romans 11:1-6
1 I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
2 God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying,
3 "LORD, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life"?
4 But what does the divine response say to him? "I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal."
5 Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace.
6 And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work.
And so John the Baptist can say that his mission is finished and his joy as the friend of the bridegroom is fulfilled {3:29}.
The Creation ends as it began, with a marriage, and redeemed humanity finds its true destiny with Christ its head as joint heirs with Christ.
Scholars differ on who said the words in 3:32-36.
Is this John the Baptist or John the apostle?
It is my understanding that these are the final words of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist states the very highest point of all theology. If you can grasp the import of this statement you will have the key to understanding the Bible. Read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and remember this verse.
The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. John 3:35
This is the reason for all things, the meaning and purpose of creation, the secret of the life of God. All things are for Christ in the eternal love of the Father, returning in the filial love of the second person of the Holy Trinity, in an act of holy submission to the Father’s will, so that the Father is glorified in the Son, and the obedient son receives all things as His eternal reward. [Charles Alexander]
Amen
Sola Scriptura 
