John the…Pastor
St. Matthew 11:2-11
In the name of the Father and of the d Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 2:11a [Jesus said,] “Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… There are a lot of strange-looking people in the world today. And there are a lot of folks who act strangely. You go through an airport or the mall or a busy city and you can see all manner of different and colorful people – colorful in how they dress, and colorful in how they act. This reminds me of my first visit to Pearl Street in Boulder. It was very revealing and entertaining!
But I suggest to you this morning that even the strangest-looking, weirdest, and most creative characters in any airport or mall or city street cannot compare with John the Baptist. Without a doubt, John the Baptist has to be one of, if not THE strangest figure in the New Testament. Outfitted in a suit of camel hair and living off a diet of grasshoppers dipped in honey, John the Baptist was not exactly what anyone would call ordinary.
In fact, there was nothing ordinary about John the Baptist. Even his birth was unusual. His parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, were well past the age of parenting. St Luke’s Gospel says John’s parents were “well advanced in years” (Lk 1:7). And in their old age they were childless. Yes, they had prayed for a child, but none had been given. I would guess that they had more-than-likely made their peace with God’s wisdom on this matter.
Then one day, when Zechariah was taking his turn in performing his priestly liturgy in the temple, the angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a son. Like Elijah of old, the son which was to be born to this old couple would be filled with the Holy Spirit and would turn many to the way of the Lord. And in time this angelic word was fulfilled as Elizabeth gave birth to a son who was given the name John.
John would grow into manhood, and in God’s time he would appear in the wilderness surrounding the Jordan River preaching, baptizing, and calling all Israel to repentance and faith in the Messiah whose coming he announced. John the Baptist was a servant of Christ, a faithful steward of the mysteries of God. As Paul says of preachers in today’s epistle, “Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.”
John was faithful in the task that the Lord God had given to him. He preached a sermon that was not popular; that sermon can be summed up in one single sentence: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Not once did John retreat in this preaching; not once did he soften the blow. To preach repentance is to call sin exactly what it is. And without respect to person, John proclaimed the law of God that calls the pious Pharisee, the religious Sadducee, and even the politically potent Herod to repentance. In our day and age John’s preaching is political suicide; it was politically incorrect for John to expose Herod’s adultery and ultimately it cost him his life. Nevertheless, John the Baptist preached that intrusive word to the high and low alike. That was his calling, that was his office; that was what God directed him to do. John was no pampered preacher, no court chaplain who would tell the king whatever his itching ears wanted to hear.
For John, as for all genuine preachers, the law was preached in service of the gospel. The law was preached in order to lead sinners to repentance, that is, to kill in them any thought that they could make themselves right before God. John was a gospel preacher. He proclaimed the Christ, the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. John’s whole life was spent in the service of this Christ. Of Him, John said, “He must increase and I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). So it was that as the brightness of Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, dawned on this sin-darkened world, John the Baptist faded into the shadows. He himself was not the light; he came only to bear witness to the light. And frankly, that was fine for John. He had no need to call attention to himself or to gain any kind of personal prestige or importance. He was simply and profoundly willing to be spent and consumed for the sake of making Christ known.
And what did John get for all his troubles? His faithfulness landed him in jail, and soon he would be put to death – his head would be lopped off – for his faithful service to Christ. And it is there in jail that John began to look back on his life. The narrow walls of that prison cell closed in on him and he had plenty of time to think. Was it worth it? Did all that time in the wilderness preaching and baptizing make any difference? Was Jesus really the Messiah?
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Jesus went on to confirm John’s identity. John was no religious freak; he was no spiritual spectacle out there in the wilderness. John was no reed blown around by the winds of human opinion. He was not the kind of court preacher whose presence in the king’s palace would make the king look good and respectable.
No, John was a prophet, just like Elijah and Isaiah and Jeremiah of the Old Testament. But he was more than a prophet. He was, in fact, the messenger who was sent to go ahead of and before the Messiah in order to prepare the Messiah’s way. John was, in a very real sense, all of Old Testament prophecy brought together in a single point of light – a light that pointed to Christ alone. John simply did what prophets and preachers are given to do – he prepared the way of the Lord. He announced the coming of Jesus.
John did not trim or change or water down the Word of God to fit his times. He did not try to soften the impact of God’s Word in order not to offend anyone. He did not seek to change the Word of God or leave out the offensive parts. He did not tweak the prophetic words to make them more easily acceptable to his audience. He did not try to make repentance and faith easy or user-friendly. He simply proclaimed law and gospel; he simply proclaimed sin and grace.
John the Baptist proclaimed the truth about sinful mankind, that by nature man is sinful and unclean and deserves only God’s wrath and eternal punishment. He preached that mankind can do nothing in order to bring God’s pleasure, nothing to please God on his own. He preached that good works mean nothing when it comes to God’s forgiveness and acceptance. And that, dear friends, is a message that still needs to be preached uncompromisingly and with abandon today, for there are way too many people – those who claim to be Christian – who still would answer the question, “Do you believe you will go to heaven” by saying, “Yes, for I believe I have done enough good in my life.”
The Bible clearly states that “no one is righteous, no, not one” (Rom 3:10). And St Paul, speaking by the Spirit of God in Ephesians 2:8-9 proclaims, “For it is by grace you are saved, through faith – and this faith is not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not by works lest any man should boast.” This, in essence, was John’s message about God’s law.
But John was also determined to know and preach nothing but Jesus Christ. In fact, when John first saw Jesus coming to him by the Jordan, he pointed to Him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). That was what John was called to do – point to Christ and away from himself. And so he is John the…pastor. And that, by the way, is still the main job of preachers today: to point unfailingly and uncompromisingly to Christ and not to man; to point people to the only way that their sins can be paid for, the only way to heaven and eternal life.
Christ has done it all for you. He has taken upon Himself all of your sins and willingly allowed Himself to be arrested, tortured, and killed for your sins, for that is how great an offense they were against God. And since Christ died to sin once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, all your sins are paid for in Jesus Christ alone. There is nothing more to be done, for Christ has paid for all sins in His body on the tree of the cross, and has been raised from the dead victorious over all sin, all death, and all the power of the devil for you and in your place. And through God-given faith and trust in Christ, forgiveness and salvation are yours.
John’s goal was not to make the Word of God relevant to his hearers, but to make his hearers capable of hearing God’s Word. John was not offended at the Christ whom He was called to proclaim. That was his blessedness.
“Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” Those words spoken by our Lord to John are also for us. Our blessedness comes not by way of human approval and popularity polls, but solely through faith in Jesus Christ who says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to Father but by Me” (Jn 14:6). The world in which we live judges that truth claim to be the highest form of intolerance; in fact, the exclusiveness of Christianity is referred to by some as “spiritual terrorism.” Christians are branded as narrow-minded bigots. Those who claim to be so tolerant are extremely intolerant of the confession of Jesus. Jesus Christ is still the cause of offense, but “Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”
God grant us such blessedness through faith in Jesus Christ. God grant that we still receive Christ in all the ways He wants us to have Him as He comes to us in His words and with His body and blood to comfort and sustain us with the joy of His salvation.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
